Book 45 of 2025: KILL YOUR DARLING by @claymcleod.bsky.social. Read this in one sitting for @horrorbookstore.bsky.social’s book club and now I am very sad! It is depressing-scary! A good one to devour quickly, though. 📚👀

I made you a fall #playlist featuring, somehow: Nova Twins, George Harrison, SASAMI, Lady Gaga, Wet Leg, Lord Huron, & more. 🍂 open.spotify.com/playlist/3lc...

Picnic, anyone? 👻

It’s important to find ways to cope with the current hellscape—and you could do a lot worse than attending a @themountaingoats.bsky.social concert and screaming I AM GOING TO MAKE IT THROUGH THIS YEAR IF IT KILLS ME with hundreds of strangers.

Opened my Ticketmaster app to grab my Mountain Goats tickets and it told me I needed to download the Ticketmaster app. 🙃

Hey Louisville: Weird question but do I know anyone who works at Churchill Downs/who knows someone who works at Churchill Downs?

Over the past month I’ve been working my way through the Criterion Channel’s Nunsploitation collection. It is a blast, if you’re into that sort of thing. Favorites so far are The Devils and Alucarda, but I still have four more films to go…

We’re protesting outside the Broadview ICE facility and an agent came out to tell us to go away. We said we’re exercising our First Amendment rights so he shot the ground with pepper balls and said, “Your First Amendment rights are on the sidewalk.”

Book 44 of 2025: A SUNNY PLACE FOR SHADY PEOPLE by Mariana Enriquez. I think this is her best book yet, which is saying something considering the others were so good. A monstrous talent. 📚👀

Beyond cancelling Kimmel's show are about 200 writers and crew members in LA who just lost their full time gig.

This morning, my dog puked all over my bed. I threw the blankets and sheets in the washing machine—and about ten minutes later, I realized the banana I’d meant to eat must have gone in the washer, too. Luckily I was able to stop the cycle before it dissolved and ruined everything. Sigh.

Book 43 of 2025: THE COVER GIRL by @mossyair.bsky.social. Spent half the day in bed finishing this gut-punch of a novel about a teen model in the 1970s and her relationship with a much older rockstar—and her gradual, painful realization that “relationship” is the wrong word. What a debut! 📚👀

This week has been a long year. But you know what to do. 😍

Apropos of everything I just want to say that trans rights are human rights and I love you 🏳️‍⚧️ 💗

Volunteering tonight with a Trum* supporter! She has already brought up the current news once and I have already managed to politely change the subject once! Let’s see how this goes!

Louisville: just fyi, I was able to schedule COVID and flu vaccines at Walgreens, and the only hoop they made me jump through was randomly pointing at a laminated list of “preexisting conditions.” Piece of cake! 💉

LOOK AT HER!!

Book 42 of 2025: HARD COPY by Fien Veldman, translated from the Dutch by Hester Velmans. I love office satires. I love when inanimate objects are characters. I loved this book. 📚👀

Book 41 of 2025: THE CORNBREAD MAFIA by @jimhigdon.bsky.social. Figured I’d learn a little Kentucky history while driving from Louisville to Chicago and back. For a trip to Amsterdam, no less. Subject matter appropriate! If you love true crime where you root for the criminals, this one’s for you. 📚👀

Anyone in Louisville know a good contractor? There is water damage in the floor beneath my shower and my handyman friend says I need more professional help and that it’s probably going to cost me 😭

I can’t believe it’s even necessary to say that NO city in ANY country deserves or should be INVADED by its federal government. I thought we cared about people. Isn’t that the real point? Everyone needs liberation, most of all the people who don’t know.

This sale lasts just a few more hours! Don’t miss it. ⚡️⚡️⚡️

About to fly back to the U.S. I miss my dog, but otherwise the Netherlands was a very welcome reprieve from *waves hands at the dumpster fire that is the states.*

Book 40 of 2025: PEOPLE WITH NO CHARISMA by @jenteposthuma.bsky.social, translated by Sarah Timmer Harvey. Those of us writing books about dead parents gotta stick together, even if we’re writing fiction vs. nonfiction, and in Dutch vs. in English. This was great—bluntly funny, gently sad. 📚👀

IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN

Join me on a walk through Amsterdam’s de Nieuwe Ooster cemetery, which I may or may not know how to pronounce. #deathpositive #cemetery #amsterdam

465 steps up the Domtoren today. Procuring a much needed beer before trekking back to the hotel.

Book 39 of 2025: KLAUSEN by Andreas Maier, translated by Kenneth J. Northcott. A rambling story about an attack that’s not an attack in a small, northern Italian town that can’t figure out its place in the world. The second book I’ve read this year with Big Thomas Bernhard vibes™️. 📚👀

Epitome

Can confirm the rumors have reached the Netherlands. They’re ringing the bells in Utrecht and people keep joking it’s in celebration.

I love drinking with academics. Easily the best people to drink with. Anyway, I have to be up in 5 hours.

Joining the aerial gym was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life. I never thought I’d be strong enough to do anything like this. And the crazy part is I still have so much ahead of me! I’m stuck in level one classes until my abs figure out how to do their job! 😂

Book 38 of 2025: THE ANTIDOTE by Karen Russell. A Wizard of Oz-tinged fantasy reimagining of Dust Bowl Nebraska that asks us to remember what we forget about our role in empire and climate change. 📚👀

Yeah, I did get ten people to come to the public library on a Thursday night to talk about death 💅

A few weeks ago I went to Gen Con and came home with a storytelling card game about grieving, because of course I did! Read my brief review of Tony Tran’s “In Memory Of.” www.deadparentswhatnow.com/updates/can-... #deathpositive #ttrpg

Book 37 of 2025: TOO POOR TO DIE: THE HIDDEN REALITIES OF DYING IN THE MARGINS by Amy Shea. What happens when people can’t afford the on average $8k cost for a funeral and burial? How can unhoused folks receive hospice care? Honored that Amy sent me an early copy of her book. Preorder yours now! 📚👀

Recently multiple people have seemed surprised that I am 37, which apparently means I am supposed to be an elderly hag. They keep asking me about my moisturizer, which is Cetaphil Oil Absorbing during the day and store brand Cerave at night, for the record. Hope this helps.

If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I have impeccable taste in books. (And in music, but that’s neither here nor there.) Consider buying books from my meticulously curated affiliate shop? 👇📚

the intensity of my anger at those who would criminalize the homeless — a population literally created by the greed and callousness of the ruling class — is very hard to contain. it was you who dismantled the safety net. if you don’t like the results, put it back

Book 36 of 2025: SAINT SEBASTIAN’S ABYSS by Mark Haber. A very funny novella about one navel-gazing academic’s relationship with another navel-gazing academic and their shared obsession with an obscure painting. Reminded me of reading Thomas Bernhard in grad school. 📚👀

NBC: hey, do you have that Hannibal crime procedural we commissioned? Bryan Fuller: sure thing, boss. Real fucking sexy just like you wanted NBC: what

Weapons was a fun horror movie. Absolutely should not be called Weapons, but I had a blast.

Friendly reminder that you should do “touristy” things where you live from time to time. They often draw tourists because they are interesting and fun! This is all to say: we had fun on the Belle of Louisville yacht rock cruise last night.

Hey Louisville! I'll catch you at @lfpl.bsky.social on August 21 for our next death salon. We're talking about donating our bodies to science. Generous? Yes. Confusing? Also yes. Let's figure it out together. #deathpositive #louisville #deathsalon #deathcafe #library #bodydonation

Book 35 of 2025: MY EX, THE ANTICHRIST by Craig DiLouie. If you are a Millennial who attended (or wanted to attend) Warped Tour and you like horror novels, you’ll probably enjoy this one. Wish the Shivers were a real band—but kind of wish Universal Priest were real, too?? 📚👀

Book 34 of 2025: LITTLE ROT by Akwaeke Emezi. Literally everything I read by Emezi is a) a different genre and b) unputdownable. This sexual thriller was no different. Hot, brutal, and bleak. I recommend it. 📚👀

YouTube added a bunch of Hitchcock films free w/ ads — including 5 of the 7 Netflix just removed(*): ROPE (1948) THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY (1955) THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1956)* VERTIGO (1958)* PSYCHO (1960)* THE BIRDS (1963)* TORN CURTAIN (1966) TOPAZ (1969) FAMILY PLOT (1976)* #FilmSky

I have walked by so many of my favorite @dropout.tv people at GenCon and have totally kept my cool. Very impressed with myself.

@constantpodcast.bsky.social I just listened to the most recent episode and I need you to know: I grew up in Gurnee and the American Eagle at Six Flags ALSO TRIED TO MURDER MY FRIEND EMILY! We were maybe 10? Her lap belt popped up and we held it down the entire ride, screaming our heads off.

Holy shit, they did it. They wrote the headline.