The Sense of An Ending

Part 2

We still have a show next Sunday in East Williamsburg! Tickets here.

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It’s not often that the world calls your number. You wait there, dutifully, with your little ticket stub, hoping the deli man will get to you soon—but it’s not every day that it happens so quickly, and with such righteous ferocity.

You see, a lot of people write—and a lot of people write newsletters. To what end, you might ask? Is there an ultimate purpose? Is there some material goal the writer aims to achieve, some tangible fruits in exchange for the toils of his labor? You could say so. In all honesty, however, most people are just trying out pure crap. They’re shooting blanks; they’re spraying and praying. I don’t begrudge them at all, either. It’s tough work, this Substack gig. It’s maybe the most difficult job in America right now. Publishing week after week of pure shit is a skill that is honed through months of refinement—and to do it all for nothing, no reward at all? It must be tough for all you hoes!

Because it looks like meat’s¹ back on the menu², boys!

And you best believe I snapped that shit up right away.

I’ve been burned before—but this feels right

Look, I don’t want to gloat much more—some of you may still be early in your careers, pining for the byline that really breaks the floodgates open. I’m rooting for you, I promise! But it’s not every day that such momentous public service is enacted through honest-to-goodness, gumshoe journalism. Woodward and Bernstein precipitated the fall of Nixon’s reign. Ronan Farrow trained his deadly sniper on Weinstein’s fat face. And here I stand before you today, the guy who definitely, almost certainly forced Lichen NYC to re-up on their $65 incense blocks.

Me rn

God gives his toughest battles to his whiniest little babies. I spent months in my atrocious, stinky room with nary a secure perch on which to alight my Japanese incense sticks. But did I complain? Did I thrash and moan and be a huge bitch about it? Yes. You were all witness to it, courtside for greatness.

So what’s next for me? Only the man up there knows. But small businesses are shaking in their handmade boots right now. No one else wants the smoke; not one manufacturer of useless home goods dares to catch a fade. Stay backordered, I dare you! It doesn’t matter to me. By the power vested in me through this Substack, I’ll straight up end you. You guys need some West Elm furniture back in stock? HBO Max app too buggy? Maybe you want Netflix to get a hold of the streaming rights to This Means War? Just give me a URL and a reason to believe, and I’m there.

And as for my latent sense of emptiness, evidenced by a pathological need to buy this one specific product, to the detriment of my own wellbeing? I can’t say I feel any better. I’m relieved for this chapter of my life to be over, I guess—but at the end of the day, nothing material has changed. I’m $65 in the hole, and they’re not even shipping it.

Ritam’s Footnote

Sitting at my computer, shaking, crying, sobbing, screaming—yes, that’s right, I’m playing the Sporcle Countries of the World quiz, and I’ve once again forgotten how to spell Kyrgyzstan. 197 countries in the world, and Nabeel chose to live in the only one where it’s deemed socially acceptable to spend $65 on something called an “incest holder.”

1. The Yusho Nishioka ‘Inline Block’ incense holder

2. in stock