The Return

Aging, making trout art, and writing Y/N fanfic

Dear reader,

Hello. It’s been a hot sec. Over a month, to be more precise, and I’m blaming it on the library, my rekindled devotion to journaling, and just some good honest (read: absolute garbage) burnout.

I was delighted to find some new folks hanging out on my subscriber list, so welcome to all of you people! Thanks for boarding the Bookhouse Broad boat, my beautiful little rats. I feel like I should introduce myself; here goes.

I’m Maggie—library science student, part-time archivist, hootenanny hobbyist, and arts freak. I love pretzel buns, micron pens, and long conversations and hate being told what to do. I recently took a fourth job in our museum of archaeology and anthropology, so I’ll be sharing some museum, library, AND archive bits now. Get me in a gallery and I’ll have the full GLAM!

Last month was my birthday and I spent the weeks before and after making people guess my age and/or lying about it to see what people will buy. Here are some ages I could apparently be:

• 22

• 26

• 37

None of them are correct, so make your own guesses in the comments if you wish. Here are some facts about me that might help you with an estimate:

• I didn’t actually watch any MTV/VH1 reality shows growing up, as obsessed with Rock of Love as I am now.

• I was alive for 9/11 and the ensuing “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood era.

• I skipped fourth grade and have dropped out of grad school twice.

• My family used to have a computer room where my sister and I would fistfight over who got the next go at Barbie Explorer on our blocky PC.

• I’m old enough to say “I feel like there’s no toys in the cereal anymore” and “In my day, the chicken fries weren’t a permanent menu item”.

• I was a fervent Nintendogs player (Dachshund and Friends gang for life, baby!).

Also, I spent the actual birthday day listening to every Steely Dan album while working at the archives, which was ideal, so rest assured that I celebrated in style.

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🎞️ BB’s Film of the Week

Audition (1999) dir. Takashi Miike

I went to see Audition at 10 pm on my birthday, post day-of-listening-to-the-Dan. I prefer going into horror films as blind as possible, and all I knew about this one was that it was infamously gory and disturbing. The following Monday, I described it to my poor lunch companion as an almost-Lynchian 90s romcom-turned-nightmare and then realized I am at risk of morphing into one of the pretentious older dudes I used to go out with.

I shall now pivot and say that this film is perfect for those who are sick of dating and being pursued by men, those who support women’s wrongs, and ladies who enjoy smiling diabolically while the chaps in the theater sweat through their flannels and/or cry.

One last note: Beware the vomit scene.

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Meet the RMS

I just mentioned working at an archive, so you all do know that bit of lore; what you don’t know, though, is that we have a mascot. (Unless you work there with me and read this ‘sletter. In that case, *Hello Dolly voice* hello colleague.)

Artist’s rendering because I don’t want to get caught taking a picture of the real guy at work and have to say “o I’m blogging”

Meet Eugene, the Records Management Squirrel! He’s named after Eugene Kerr, the groundskeeper who introduced the ancestors of the current campus squirrels (gray and fox, I’d you wondered) to our university grounds in 1903. You can read more about the squirrels on page 21 of this here document.

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Yearning Heart Creative: The Return

I had last week off, which meant I only worked half the usual hours, dealt with getting my car resurrected, and had about three solid days off left after that. That gave me enough time to do a full studio makeover, start a new multimedia series and map out the general direction I’d like to take it (I’ll show you soon), and paint this Steely Dan trout footstool!

I found it in the dumpster, wouldja believe? (It’s very believable if you get a good look at the thing.)

I’m also open for more commissions and collaborations than usual through mid-January, so feel free to drop me a line if you have an idea.

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💿 BB’s Weekly Jam

Blómi by Susanne Sundfør

After asking me for a Steely Dan recommendation (I almost always tell people to go with Aja first, though it was a miss this time, RIP), I insisted one of my associates recommend me something he’d been listening to recently. He suggested this album, which was not what I expected but very much what I needed in my rotaysh.

I particularly loved Sundfør’s use of nature samples and cyclical themes of death, grief, joy, and rebirth. They reminded me of some of my favorite horror movies, especially Hereditary, and of Boygenius’ The Record (“it all comes back”).

1989 (Taylor’s Version) by Taylor Swift

Oh, you don’t respect Taylor Swift as an artist? Well, then, get out of here! (AN: You don’t have to like her as a person. You can certainly critique her for things like white capitalist girlboss feminism and private jet emissions. I know I do.) Straight men always think it’s so funny to be like “hurr hurr Taylor Swift bad pumpkin spice breakup songs for GIRLS”, which—tell me you’ve never actually sat down and listened to a Taylor Swift album, I get the message. (If you have actually only listened to one single Taylor song and it is “ME!” or “Timeless”, then you have an excuse for hating, I suppose.)

Myself and my associates had a listening party for this latest installment in a string of TS re-releases; the whole night had such good middle school vibes. I enjoyed the entire album, but haven’t been able to stop listening to “Is It Over Now?” and “Now That We Don’t Talk”.

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Bad Habits

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Paper Party

Our History of the Book class had its last meeting this past Friday and I am actually very sad about that fact, so I’m going to share some things we learned and did this semester in an effort to keep myself from crying (a very real concern).

GOATed and Golden (Showers)

We hit the type shop to get some actual hands-on experience a couple weeks ago. We printed these sloth posters with a blurb about goat pee on a series of lovely little letterpresses. (The blurb was about pee because that’s what printers used to clean their ink balls at the end of every workday. It wasn’t necessarily goat pee, though, and could totally have been human man piss!) It felt amazing to get back to physical artmaking when I work mainly digitally these days.

Watermark (by Enya)

Do you know what a watermark is? If so, do you happen to be a filigranologist?

A filigranologist is one who studies watermarks, “the distinguishing mark[s] or device[s] incorporated in the wire mesh of the tray in which the pulp settles during the process of paper making, and visible in the finished product when held against the light” per Carter and Barker. You can sometimes use these marks to figure out when and where an old book was printed—here’s a watermark database if you’re interested in seeing some of them! We had to draw our own in my History of the Book class the other day. Mine is a fancy goose.

Vatman, Coucher, Layer

The three main jobs of chancery papermaking are the vatman (pronounced like and autocorrected to Batman), the coucher (pronounced “coocher”, no comment) and the layer (like a hen). Tag yourself! I think I am a vatman.

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olivia rafferty

and I have been using our writers’ credentials to produce what may be the most unhinged Y/N fanfic yet seen on Substack Notes. Read on and commune with the Bloodcraven Prince, Jaxon Van Halen, at your own risk.

Prepz, stop flamming!11!!!

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Me: I’m not mentally ill; I am, in fact, feeling very hinged this month

The header of my group project Google Doc:

My group project partner:

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While I have been dormant online for the past month, the cool people inside my computer have been putting out the absolute goods on here.

• Miter
  produced an Adult Swim-esque show with a spicy stew of collaborators!

• olivia rafferty
  published a collaborative Beatles issue that you’ll probably be into if you liked the Steely Dan issue we did together!

• Ponytail Press
  shared some kind words about BB and some other stacks you people might be interested in checking out (and you can check theirs out, too)!

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Stay warm out there, my lovely worms, and have a bussin’ week!

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