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You’re reading Wait, Really? — a newsletter unpacking what's in the culture, with a feminist spin. Want to get it in your inbox? Sign up below. Like most teenage girls, there was an ever-shifting hierarchy to my adolescent friendships. One of the ways I could discern my place in that hierarchy was through lip gloss. Yes, lip gloss. Hear me out: Girls you’d share your lip gloss with — these were your real friends.

We’re going to start the journey through biblical imagery with water. Why? Practically, I’ve done some work on water in the Bible already. Also, it is a fascinating image, full of polarities, puzzling inconsistencies, and surprising plot twists as Scripture unfolds. Water is all over the Bible—from the first page to the last and everywhere in between. The things that happen in the storyline of the image of water point straight to the heart of God and of the gospel many times over.

My favorite part about writing this newsletter is all of the people that I get to meet. Producers. Executives. Record collectors. I also get to meet many great writers. One of my favorites is Kevin Alexander from the newsletter On Repeat. From evocative retrospectives to riveting discussions, On Repeat is a one-stop-shop for audiophiles. Click here to subscribe. Since Kevin has turned me on to so much great music over the last few months, I asked him to recommend two songs for my newsletter this week.

“Environments are not passive wrappings, but are, rather, active processes which are invisible. The ground rules, pervasive structure, and overall patterns of environments elude easy perception. Anti-environments, or countersituations made by artists, provide means of direct attention and enable us to see and understand more clearly.”  - Marshall McLuhan, The Medium Is The Massage (1967) “EVERYTHING IS FOR SALE” - The PriceMaster I told myself that I wasn’t going to use this newsletter to relitigate the hardcore twitter discourse of days past but I do think that something that happened over the weekend is a good setup for a topic I want to write about.

Steven Caulker was face down on the floor of a Dublin hotel room, drunk, when he received the call telling him Liverpool were about to sign him. That’s the headline some might take from his fascinating, at times harrowing, 90-minute podcast with the guys from Undr the Cosh, which was released this week, but it’s not the one I took from it. Tales of drinking and gambling, womanising and drug-taking and dressing-room fights, have helped podcasts such as UTC flourish in recent years - aided, I’m sure, by the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, and people’s desire for audio accompaniment on walks, runs and in the gym.

Welcome to our bi-weekely news roundup! Greetings Lit Magtators, How, you are probably wondering, is John Kucera these days? You all remember John Kucera, right? The lit mag world’s serial plagiarist whom we discussed here? Well, if you’re anything like me, you are well aware that Mr. Kucera desperately needs $20. Here’s the most recent of a handful of emails I’ve gotten this month. I’m not the only one getting these.

Little Gray Cat. You know him. You love him. He’s a little gray cat. Sometimes there's two of them. He even has a theme song. He’s a great little character to have kicking around the internet with us. I had not thought much of the little gray cat. Before this year I tried not to research the origin of memes too much, knowing that often, looking isn’t beneficial or all that rewarding.

Cheese & Egg Recipes Italian Recipes Vegetable & Fungi Recipes [Read the article about Sorrel: Bright, Acid, and Early.] A stack of frittatine holds together unexpectedly well for slicing. For the sauce, rather than start with the fresh whole tomatoes below, I’ve been using my home-canned purée, and certain commercially canned tomatoes can be very good. 3 cups ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and choppedsalt200 gr (abo…ncG1vNJzZmiZoqm8p7HAraCnn16owqO%2F05qapGaTpLpwvI6loK2snJp6qL7EnqVmp52auabA056qZp6insG1rdOipZ4%3D

Hey, friends! Welcome to the first official installment of Live, Laugh, Love, Lit. I’m so happy you’re here. If you missed why I’ve made this shift in these Friday posts, you can read a little more here: Thorns and Roses 🌹 Goodbyes and HellosNovember 3, 2023 Author Barbara Brown Taylor coined the phrase, “What’s saving my life right now?” as a way of looking for the little things in her life that were helping…