Welcome back to me telling you things that either I have purchased and I think are fantastic, or things I’m looking at disrespectfully (longingly).

Obviously, we can all agree, buying things is bad for the earth. Overconsumption is a scourge. We all simply have to stop buying so many things. And I do agree with that. But I also am a hypocrite and a baby. And I utterly love items. I’m doing my best to only share things that I think are really good and useful and then when we go internet window shopping in the second half of this letter, we can look at things that are not useful at all.

Let’s begin.

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This card game.

I do not care if you are not a card game / board game person. I myself loathed games with the fire of a thousand suns until I was approximately 24 years old and realized that my family was actually just really annoying to play games with but other adults are fine.

Skyjo is the most perfect Everyone game. The absolute pinnacle of card games. It makes Uno look like dogshit. The Monopoly man has a gun in his mouth as we speak1. (Is that too far? Feels too far. Sorry.)

Skyjo is 90% luck— perfect for thwarting over-competitive bozos who make games not fun—there is no reading, the rules are simple, you can play while blasted off your ass on chardonnay. It’s a perfect game. Everyone I’ve ever introduced this game to has ended up playing it with their parents/families and it’s perfect for that. This game can save your holiday get togethers. Shout out to my sister, Lena, for discovering this game.

How to Play Skyjo Card Game (Rules and Instructions) - Geeky Hobbies

(I’m sorry for linking to the Bad Boy website, there are not that many other places to buy this game, and none of them are vastly more ethical).

This hand sanitizer.

I am distinctly not a hand sanitizer girly. Or at least I wasn’t pre-pandemic. First, there’s loads of evidence from an email chain I read once that we’re supposed to be exposed to germs as a general rule, and that eradicating them just makes them stronger or something. Idk I’m not a scientist. On top of that, so much hanny-sanny as I call it makes my skin dry and as much as I love baby crocodiles, I am not trying to look like that.

But then, there is Jao. The Cadillac of hanny-sannys. You know it’s upscale because it’s sold at fucking Anthropologie. Now, of course, that made me initially extra distrustful of this little chic blue bottle. But I worked at a fancy hair salon for a while and they had this and I started using it and folks…. it’s wonderful. It smells good, it makes my hands feel great. It’s refillable. Again, look at how pretty the bottle is. The real kicker is that they say you can also use it on zits and for deodorant. I can’t verify how good it is at either thing, but it certainly doesn’t hurt!

These Italian plates.

Ok, I am perhaps screwing myself over by telling people about Bitossi because it is the love of my product-buying life. When I visited Milan last year (cunty sentence alert) I happened to walk past a Bitossi store and I gasped so loudly you would have thought I spotted Heath Ledger alive and well. (I didn’t go inside because heartbreak doesn’t feel good in an expensive plate store). Anyway! Every year, my boyfriend and I make lists of things we want for christmas/birthdays and every single year I put stuff from Bitossi on it, and this year he got me two plates that are so pretty that I just leave them out on the table so people can see them. I mean. Art.

Pretty much everything they make is tied for the most beautiful thing you’ve seen. And yes $47 (or euros, but idk how to find the euro symbol on my keyboard and I’m too lazy to learn) is way too much to spend on a plate. I AGREE. But it’s an art plate. So think about that!

This diffuser thing.

I am cursed with a fantastic sense of smell. It sucks shit because guess what? So many bad smells exist. If one of my neighbors so much as burns a bag of popcorn, or—as happened to my recently— my other neighbors do landscaping and disrupt a nest of skunks who then start antagonizing my dog (she’s innocent, obviously) I will smell it. I will smell it for days. And I will be a big crabby baby about it. Because I’m assaulted constantly by scent. I’m in an olfactory prison.

Thus I’m very picky and also pretty doubtful about things that claim to make your house smell good. A lot of smelly-good-things don’t actually do much for me. THIS SHIT DOES. The amber & moss scent, which we can all agree is silly because moss smells disgusting, smells like heaven. And you don’t even have to turn the little sticks on this diffuser over for it to keep working. I keep it by my bed and often when I lie down I get a whiff of it randomly.

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NOW! For some internet window shopping!!

This wallpaper, are you fucking kidding me??

I played with Barbies until very late in my life (after age 10, before age 27). I love Barbara Millicent Roberts and the gang. (That’s her full name). I’m enchanted by her, which is probably why my brain is bad or something. I don’t know, but I do know that all mental health issues and insecurities women have stem from their childhood joys like Disney movie and Barbies and NOT from the violent, oppressive systems in place designed to imprison them forever as either mothers or fuckers.

Despite that all my body/mind/life issues stem from this 7-inch-tall bitch with big tits and a taste for men with no weiners, I am very brand loyal. And when I found out Barbie had collabed with a wallpaper brand, I began a coordinated assault on my boyfriend’s peaceful life to get him to agree to decorate our bathroom with it. (I actually haven’t mentioned it yet at all, but I’m going to).

Someone please buy this (or any of the other great Barbie patterns) and then send me photos of your house.

A set of … batteries.

Not to be fucking miraculous, but here is a thing I want that is also possibly good? Or not so bad that I should have my liver stolen out of my body by those two orca whales who are on a murderous rampage, killing sharks and eating only their livers.

These batteries are on my list of things to buy to be less of a fucko, even though I know that consuming things isn’t going to ever fix the earth, whose problem, in no small part because of this very newsletter, is overconsumption. THAT SAID, when I need batteries next and even more importantly, when you need batteries next, perhaps we’ll buy these and feel like Luminescent Cabbage Patch Dolls of Virtue for how much we’re helping The Earth.

Also the box is so cute and they don’t cost more than normal (evil) batteries.

Some ridiculous shoes.

I own 3,247 pairs of boring black shoes, which is good because that is what I do actually wear. HOWMEVER, (the M is intentional), I really want some shoes in crazy shapes and colors. Like this or this or this.

I feel like we gotta have some fun. The sun is staying out later or coming up earlier or both??? (I have outed myself as someone who fundamentally doesn’t understand DST). All I know is that it’s time to put the fun in funky. We need FUN outfits this year. I want wild colors. I want stupid shapes. For the love of god, please don’t dress boring.

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1

I believe most ardently that playing or enjoying Monopoly is a character flaw. Like a red flag. That game is the least fun thing on planet earth. If you have ever finished a game of monopoly you should go to real prison. I don’t even believe in prison.

Here's The Thing

Here's the Things: Part II