Welcome back to the second edition of the newsletter I bet you forgot about. Let me begin by apologizing: the last iteration of this was far too interesting. I launched this blog with the promise of mundane navel gazing and in this installation, I plan to deliver.
And there is no better month than January of 2026 to muse on the inconsequential. Let’s set aside (checks notes) potentially invading Greenland, and examine slightly-lower stakes things like:
- my car
- my social media break
- selling my bike on Gumtree
- my undying love for the movie Hot Fuzz and
- malaphors
Julia’s near-death experience
Why is my car named Julia?
Julia is a green Ford Fiesta. ‘Fiesta’ translates to ‘party’ in Spanish, so my car is a green party, which is the name of a left-leaning political party. When I was in Australia in 2010, Julia Gillard led a minority government in coalition with The Greens. This lead to news headlines such as “Julia Gillard and the Greens agree to…” Because of this, I misremembered Gillard as being leader of The Greens, and named my car to this effect.
By the time I realized my mistake, it was too late. As with boats, you can’t change it after the fact.
In late December, Julia – my trusty steed of five years now – wouldn’t come out of reverse. This is bad because transmissions aren’t something you really fix, only replace, and a new one for a front-wheel drive car costs about $2,000 AUD ($1,400 USD). Because of this, I expected the mechanic to say Julia was only good for parts. As a side note, saying things like that makes me slightly regret anthropomorphizing my car.
To my surprise, it was a simple fix: a plastic bit that connected my gear shifter to the outside of the transmission broke, a known failure point for Fiestas. $200 later, and Julia’s back terrorizing the roads like a #badbitch.
While I was happy that it was a simple fix, I was also a little disappointed. Not only have I recently come to terms with the fact that I’ll never fix Julia like I want to, her potential demise led to me seriously considering what I’d replace her with. When I did, I grew attached to the idea of a car with a manual transmission, the ability to carry a bit more like my bicycle and/or be able to tow a small trailer for my motorcycle, and enough ground clearance to not bottom-out when entering driveways.
I’m debating whether I want to renew Julia’s rego later in the year, and instead replace her. Her replacement would be either – and I hate myself a little for this considering how much I’ve railed against both of these types of cars – a small older ute or an electric SUV like a used Hyundai Ioniq5, though that’s not a manual.
If I had to guess, next month’s edition of this will include thoughts about the advancements of car safety in the last 20 years because boy howdy do old trucks’ crash tests look gnarly as fuck.
A life less Insta
In December, I decided to limit my Instagram screen time for reasons that can be summarized into “It does not spark joy” (with a decidedly ‘old man yells at cloud’ twist).
I found myself posting updates of my life to no one in particular and losing 30 minutes at a time watching reels that were forgettable at best and made me anxious at worst. I just don’t know that I need to experience every travesty of the modern age in first-person view within an hour of it happening, you know?
Despite being on social media for… well, for a while now, it surprised me how even the slightest barrier impacted my screen time. I use an app called ScreenZen which, among other ways to limit your screen time, makes you wait 10 seconds before continuing. The app also limits the number of times per day I can access it, forcing me to ration when I access the portal into the downfall of humanity.
Weirdly enough, I noticed my time savings the most during the Julia saga. The 10 second pause stopped me from posting updates while it happened, and when all was said and done, it wasn’t actually interesting enough to post. Either way, the end result was what I wanted when I set up this blocker: I kept my data away from Skynet, a move that will surely prove prudent when it become sentient and kills all of us.
Someone more insightful could easily make a cogent point about how much information we share and how it affects our personal lives, but I am not that person. All I can say is this: I feel better for spending less time on a (probably) evil app and I still have a diet of memes that will get me stopped at the US border.
Please buy my bicycle
I recently had a flat rear tire on my bicycle. I decided to get two birds stoned at once and fix a few other things while I was there; I needed to replace the worn out tire, it’s jumped gears for the entirety of my ownership, and the brake pads were worn out.
Not only did I not fix any of these things, I made them worse: the derailleur is now so misaligned that it binds the wheel from going forward; I can’t get the wheel back into the frame, so it’s only held in place by the chain and gravity; and somehow, the rear brakes no longer work.
I’m sure someone who actually knows what they’re doing (and didn’t just watch a few videos on his computer) could easily fix this, but those people cost a surprising amount of money. And I don’t care that much: I’ve often second-guessed my decision to buy an e-bike instead of a normal bike, and this trouble has pushed me over the edge into “not for me” territory. So instead of paying someone to fix it, I posted it for sale at about half the price of similar bikes in working condition; I just want it gone.
But the world is not a kind place: marketplace apps, doubly so. Most responses simply ask if it’s still available because it’s a prompt that you can send with a single tap on Marketplace. No matter what you say, they will never respond.
I’ve had quite a few lowballers that are exactly the sort of dudes you’d expect to offer $200 on a $500 listing and then refuse to negotiate. Interestingly, these come almost-entirely after 11pm.
A lot of people don’t read the ad and are then surprised to learn it cannot be ridden away. Someone asked me what the top speed was, and apparently”as fast as you can pedal?” isn’t the right answer.
It’s been six weeks, and the bike remains in my garage.
Hot Fuzz
I just want to gush about this movie for a second: Hot Fuzz is my favorite Simon Pegg movie, maybe even favorite of all time. My friend who was an extra in Shaun of the Dead may be disappointed to hear that, but this video essay about it (it’s 30 mins long) summarizes why it’s a great movie.
Aside from the greatness, it holds a special place in my heart behind rose-colored glasses. In the mid-2000s before memes were a thing (fuck, I’m old), every group of boys had a movie that they quoted incessantly which passed as ‘male bonding’ – and this was mine. My friends and I repeated “the greater good” under our breath whenever we heard it, answered questions with “Narp”, and hyped each other up by saying we were “off the fucking chain“.
It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but the nostalgia plus the quality of the movie means that I can’t not be happy every time I see it.
In closing: malaphors
As a final note, I want to talk about a figure of speech I love: malaphors.
For those who don’t have favorite rhetorical devices, a malaphor is when you combine two idioms incorrectly (like a metaphor, but bad – malaphor). As often happens with the best jokes, malaphors are both hilarious and often so subtle that people think you’re stupid if they don’t know you’re doing it on purpose. But such is life as the funniest person in the room.
To close this out, I want to share some of my favorites:
- We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it
- Get two birds stoned at once
- Worst case Ontario
- Does the pope shit in the woods?
- Do onto others as been done to you
- Where there’s smoke, there’s salmon
- I’ve gotta race like a piss-horse
- You can’t beat a dead horse and eat it too
Thanks for reading this far, and have a nice day.