I believe so.

Why, yes, this IS an A-Team thermos filled with Macallan 18 Sherry Oak Single Malt Scotch.

Every time I put a bow tie back in my bow tie box, I know it immediately gossips, in French, with all the other bow ties.

This weekend, in a conversation about café food, someone said off-handedly, “I see you more as a panini guy,” & I didn’t think anything of it, but it keeps echoing in my head. MJM: a panini guy. This person meets me. Doesn’t know me. Asks questions. Calls me a panini guy. Shame on him. Shame on him.

[my lesbian bestie & I make eye contact across the expanse of a dull party. she flips her hair. I wink. the band plays a merengue. fixed it, yet again.]

Went with my brother & sister-in-law on a little dog walk & during it my brother ran into some guy he knew & was like, “gotta get the walk in before the sha-blah-bee-blah-blah game,” & “I haven’t been to that sha-blah-bee-blah-blah brewery,” & thought, “He was right to shield me from this.”

DOWNSIDE: infuriated UPSIDE: eyes turned periwinkle

I know we are experiencing “important news,” but my second most difficult aunt just sent me this “nice” text (responding to one where I thanked her for a scarf) & something is very, very, very wrong. Whoever kidnapped my aunt, give her back: she will strip you of your meat—you will know no tomorrow.

My official statement:

Café. As I was listlessly looking at a notebook page, a big aura-ed & large scale guy in a Mizzou hoodie came in, talking on speaker phone (which I normally hate), & bellowing, “Welp, I love you, Tammy-Tams,” & honestly? It’s exactly, just this once, what my twee ass needed.

If you're watching a Scandinavian murder show, watch out for the guy with the shaved head and the beard, he did it, unless he has a scarf, then he's the detective.

The corruption of Gondor really hits different this year

I know that my cuff/collar shirts (shirts only worn under sweaters/jumpers for their cuff/collar effect) probably feel bad about it, but they shouldn’t! They’re little stars! I don’t care what the other shirts say to them, they’re very important to me (until I’ve worn them twice).

You can blend all you want; it doesn't erase poor bone structure.

Right before my lesbian bestie got married she gave me a nervous hug & I whispered, “Remember, they’re taking photos so when you kiss do an open-mouthed, relaxed one, don’t pucker, it totally distorts your face.”

👀 —me, twelve hours later, to my college ex who probably drunkenly texted me “Happy New Year!”

Finally figured out why I don’t eat breakfast: it’s too goopy.

I mean, sure. We’ll give it a whirl.

One of those moods where I want to see a freshly forged, still-molten & scarlet, sword put into an ancient stone cistern, full of fresh water, to cool.

I never do "Here's what I wrote this year," because you only have to go to our site and scroll through the roughly 4,000 posts I write every year, but nothing will make me prouder than reintroducing the fabulous Harlow to the world. It's the best thing I've written in years share.inquirer.com/XdfXr9

My fever broke! But I’m giving my body the side eye. Like, I know you can get up to some SHENANIGANS.

Advantages of a 102° fever: Skin. Perfected. Can constantly say, “please refer to me as fervid, not febrile.” Goddard vibes Opening cabinets is, like, a whole thing, a whole drama Edwardian curls Feels like a Yamamoto show The curious allure of grapes Looking hot in taupe (for once) Lips

Will I post this tomorrow once or twice for those precious New Year's Eve clicks? Sure. But why wait?

Accidentally went to the grocery store at slow-dickhead-with-a-cart-o’clock

I’d MAYBE be a Dad if the kids weren’t alive 24 hours a day.

Valentine’s Day hasn’t spoken to New Year’s Eve for years, lol. VD says NYE cheated on it. NYE thinks they just had a chill situationship & whatever happened between NYE & Martin Luther King Day (hot) is none of VD’s business. VD tried to “break up” with NYE & NYE was like, “Fine. Byeeeeeeeeeee.”

Listening to wind for most of the day is more exhausting than shoveling.

My tied-for-first fave YouTuber, Sebastian Furtado, a boho French-Canadian tender & emotional about fragrance, talked in his new video about how he took a break from filming for a bit & somehow delivered the greatest/cutest (Proustia ! Self-interrupting!) monologue of our century probably.

New Year’s Eve hates hanging with the other holidays. Their dowdy asses. Their colonial & religious blah blah blah.

What does a boy have to do to get a lacustrine & foggy landscape around here?

Share a great female villain.

I will only write this once: In the back of my dad’s closet, I found a bolo tie* that I gave him for Christmas** in my junior year of high school*** which I bought in Santa Fe**** during our only day off when I went to summer debate camp there.***** * 👀 ** 👀! *** 👀!! **** 👀!!! ***** 👀!!!!

PERSON: How are you? MJM (thinking of my excellent deodorant that is, nevertheless, a bit dry): One day I hope to be happy.

MJM [looking in the mirror, to himself]: I mean, the brooch is pretty masc?

disco’s classiest moment: in “Upside Down,” when Diana Ross suddenly goes all Shakespearean with “respectfully I say to thee”

Describe your Bluesky account in a single image.

Café. In the back, where I’m sitting, there’s French door that overlooks a narrow, & empty veranda—& while writing in a notebook, in my periphery, I spied a small child, trying to get in, jiggling the handle, & I did not help, being paralyzed with fear, suspecting the dread apocalypse had come.

I’ve watched my own Christmas post 700ish times.

Wishing I had a secret room with an antechamber behind a grand mirror. Quel dommage

[walking across the room, wine glass in hand, with a seeming sense of purpose]

Accidentally discovered the giant bag of Hershey’s kisses in my sister’s cabinet. I slammed the door shut and walked away really fast and am sitting in the other room but already I know that it’s no use and my future is now set in stone.

Café. Fact: the Connecticut pretty barista with the preternaturally healthy high pony is emotionally cold. & yet, today, I wore my fave sweater* that has little snaps along the shoulder & after I ordered she reached across the counter & snapped shut the one by my neck, which I had left undone.

Yesterday slipped a Patrick Ta eye shadow duo (the Still at the Club set) into my lesbian bestie’s stocking so she’ll start a rumour that Santa is young, hot, & gay.

The Christmas carol, The Holly & the Ivy, after being unsung at the Christmas pageant, yet again, for another year.

I changed my Christmas Eve dinner look from “dignified accordion busker with a heart of gold in 1912,” (Marni) to ,“somehow powerfully sexy statistician to the Swiss Undersecretary of Labor in 1952,” (Thom Browne) at the last second & it almost killed me.

Not a lipstick person but it’s that time of year when I’m so pale that if I wore a pale blue lipstick & a black turtleneck I’d look like the ghost of your lover who died by falling through the ice of a skating pond so maybe just this once.

I prefer to focus on restraint, rigorous & arresting graphic shapes—even sculptural aplomb—in interior design but my brother’s family’s mostly tan dog makes a compelling counterargument.

And to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, but walks among us still, an undead specter seeking the release of death at every moment.

SK660 arm chair by Pierre Guariche for Steiner, France 1953

I guess today is the day a “friend” is going to shame me by recounting how once I got up in the middle of the night after attending a very alcohol-forward party to check if the shirts in my tee/polo drawer were organized or not, but guess what?, I’m not going to apologize for being a good person.