Happy Halloween, dear friends and even dearer enemies. The past couple of months have been eventful on my end, so this edition might be light on the typical list items and heavy on the personal updates. So it goes.

On the travel front, I've been goin' places. First I took my first trip to Brazil and visited São Paulo on Important Business (work conference). I and my very much in-progress Portuguese skills managed to get through and enjoy ourselves. Then I hopped over to Milwaukee to go to my first proper rock 'n' roll show in years, provided by Opeth. Then we took our customary autumn trip to Wisconsin and the House on the Rock, a strong contender for my favorite place on the planet.

Then, unfortunately, loss struck, and I had to say farewell to my longtime pet, Nancy. If you ever spotted her on social media, you might know that she was a lovely little calico tyrant queen who ruled us with an iron paw, and she did so for just over eight years. She was my constant companion and things are a bit lonelier without her, but I'm grateful to have had her as long as I did.

Truth be told, it's been a something of a challenging year for me. I bought my first home, moved, switched to a new role at work, continued part-time classes towards my degree, started my kid off in college, did a bunch of traveling and then lost my pet. It's been a year for doing and not so much for making. I hope that the next few months, if not a longer period, are much quieter and I will make more things.

Until then, here are some things I did make and some things I considered in October.

1. My little horror film podcast is sailing along. In September, we released two episodes on two strange, nihilistic films I am very fond of: Indentikit and 1970's The Strangler. In October, we mixed it up a bit and released our first interview episode, wherein we talked with filmmakers Toby Poser and John Adams about their films past and present. We followed that up with a discussion of their recent monstrous coming-of-age tale, Hellbender.
2. "Many creative people, especially the young, may feel their chaotic or disordered relationship with the world is indispensable to their creative freedom. The more anarchic, the better! However, after considerable fieldwork in this area, I have yet to find it so. I have come to understand that the muscle of the imagination is strengthened through resistance, discipline, and order. These institutional bonds ultimately become a form of liberation where our dreams, alert and concentrated, can find their focus and run truly free." Nick Cave says.
3. I made a second entry in my experimental video series. If you're into that sort of thing. (For the record, the first entry is over here.)

I've been taking a break from both Bluesky and Twitter for the past month or so, and I will likely keep it going for a little while longer, especially with election politics noise happening—but I will be back! If you enjoy the newsletter, please feel free to spread the word in whichever places you tend to frequent. As always, you can reach me by email, should you wish to do such a thing, at [email protected].

Thank you for reading! I'm grateful for you. 🖤