When You're Here, You're Scamily

Unlimited breadsticks. Breadsticks with no restraint, no decency or pity. Scream all you want, the breadsticks will not stop.

December 22nd, 2021

They’ve got Olive Garden on the blockchain now. Do you remember Olive Garden? Do you remember how it sounds in there? The breadsticks, somehow both dry and unsettlingly greasy, but most of all: unlimited. Breadsticks that know no boundaries, breadsticks that are not subject to the laws of time and space. Truly unlimited breadsticks. A horror.

Do you remember sitting in a too-warm dining room waiting for a meal you don’t really want, but you also know will be far too big, surrounded by people you wouldn’t normally have chosen to eat with? Well they have NFTs of that now. You can mint unlimited breadsticks too, but the 880 Olive Garden franchises are sold out.

What is the rarest Olive Garden? By last sale price it’s “Olive Garden store number 1717 located at 401 Oxford Exchange Blvd in beautiful Oxford, AL,” at about $871. Someone thinks Times Square is worth $2 million, but no one’s buying yet. To me the rarest Olive Garden is Michigan City, IN. Ambitious tech reporters: who is she?

A mole inside Bloomberg sent me a clandestine camera phone video of a distraught Matt Levine being dragged out of the Bloombunker by Security B-Units, screaming “LET ME GO! I’M GONNA MINT A FUCKING ORANGE JULIUS! I LEFT GOLDMAN SACHS FOR THIS YOU BASTARDS! I’M GONNA MINT A BOB’S BIG BOY AND GET RICH! ARGH…” The rest was unintelligible. Best wishes to Matt, get better soon buddy!

Patricia Lockwood reviewed Karl Ove Knausgaard for 6000 words in the London Review of Books and I don’t want to read Knausgaard but I would happily read six volumes of Patricia Lockwood writing about Knausgaard.

Karl​ Ove Knausgaard was born – just kidding. His life has been obsessively documented in the six books of the My Struggle series, published in Norway between 2009 and 2011 and respectively titled Death, Please Linda (Don’t Make Me Go To Rhythm Time), I Am a Child, Boner in Class, Didn’t Read This One and Hitler.

There is a delight in every sentence and I don’t care if all of it is made up (but it’s not).

David Roth names Mark Zuckerberg The New Republic’s Scoundrel of the Year.

It is embarrassing and not a little enraging to realize that you are subject to the whims of an amoral and incurious capitalist posing as a visionary optimist. It is especially humiliating when the all-bestriding and inevitable figure in question is such a dim, dull nullity.

The Yankee Candle Index is popping:

Eagle confused. Cartoon Italian guy from “Bob’s Burgers” tried to do a coup and three retired generals were in the Washington Post warning that the military should practice for the next one. Seems normal. Spicy pepper Jack. Renowned film director Steven Perlberg reports that some of Facebook’s handpicked stable of already-famous Bulletin newsletter writers have attracted as many as one thousand free readers. Is that a lot? Who knows. Vox spent all its extra cash on a website about doggos, so for their Christmas bonus this year employees got a $75 voucher for merch. What if they made your vaccine passport into an implantable microchip? Sounds very convenient, I can’t imagine anyone would have a problem with that.

Today’s Song: Modest Mouse, “Breakthrough” (for everyone at NY’s hottest club)

~ Unlimited breadsticks in the hands of limited people always lead to tabs. ~

I might manage to cobble together a 2021 retrospective post tomorrow but right now I am leaning toward not doing that and waiting till Season 5 is over in February instead? It just seems too grim to face right now, in the unendliche Dunkelheit of late December. So if I don’t see you tomorrow, I’ll see you January 3rd! And whatever else 2021 has been, it has been the best working year of my life. I am unbelievably lucky to be able to do this for a living, and it’s only because you’re reading and subscribing. So hey: thanks. ❤️

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