You Need, You Need, You Need, You Need – 120225 This newsletter was originally structured around Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. That project got blown up when I started writing to you from a place of crisis after two of my dogs died and my marriage ended. Essie Blue died first, from lymphoma in November of 2022. I separated from
Salt and Burn the Bones Chris, You like horror stories, right? I’ve got a scary one for you, but you’ll have to figure out how it ends on your own. It goes like this: There’s a monster who harms people for his own gain. This isn’t the kind of monster you
Big Diesel Energy My dog Diesel died in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on Sunday, August 3rd, 2024. He passed away only one year and 13 days after he’d come to live with my first dog Winn and I. I started writing this to you from a Quality Inn in Sioux Falls, where
"You Look Divorced" A reprehensible grindcore band in the nineties wrote a song titled “You Look Divorced.” As vile as I know this band’s material was, I have to admit that song title always made me chuckle. It immediately placed a picture in my head of a person with thinning, ragged hair.
Parallel Universe Toys – 013123 This is a newsletter by Christian Sager that comes out every other Tuesday. In it I attempt to make sense of the chaos of the world. I try to sort that information along the model of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. This issue I write about cafeteria vegetables, artificial
011723 – The Death of the Nineties This is a newsletter by Christian Sager that comes out every other Tuesday. In it I attempt to make sense of the chaos I experience in the world. I try to sort that information along the model of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. This issue I write about disturbing
Dirty Jokes & Soft Fingers – 010323 This is a newsletter by Christian Sager that comes out every other Tuesday. In it I attempt to make sense of the chaos I experience in the world. I try to sort that information along the model of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. This issue I write about dirty
The Needs of Ghosts – 122022 This is a newsletter by Christian Sager that comes out every other Tuesday. In it I attempt to make sense of the chaos I experienced in the world. I try to sort that information along the model of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. This issue I write about grief&
Ooooh hoo hoo hoo hoo Essie Blue This is a newsletter by Christian Sager that comes out every other Tuesday. In it I attempt to make sense of the sensory chaos I experienced in the world. I usually try to sort that information along the model of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. I don't
Disruption – 112222 This is a newsletter by Christian Sager that comes out every other Tuesday. In it I attempt to make sense of the chaos of the world. I try to sort that information along the model of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. This issue I write about my dog'
20 Cenobites Who Had Tragic Childhoods – 110822 This is a newsletter by Christian Sager that comes out every other Tuesday. In it I attempt to make sense of the sensory chaos I experience in the world. I try to sort that information along the model of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. This issue I write about
Hardcore Made Me Crazy – 102522 This is a newsletter by Christian Sager that comes out every other Tuesday. In it I attempt to make sense of the sensory chaos I experienced in the world. I try to sort that information along the model of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. This issue I write about
Give Me What I Want and I'll Go Away – 101122 This is a newsletter by Christian Sager that comes out every other Tuesday. In it I attempt to make sense of the sensory chaos I experienced in the world. I try to sort that information along the model of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. This issue I write about
In Through the Out Door – 092722 This is a newsletter by Christian Sager that comes out every other Tuesday. In it I attempt to make sense of the sensory chaos I experienced in the world. I try to sort that information along the model of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. This issue I write about
Us and Them – 091322 This is a newsletter by Christian Sager that comes out every other Tuesday. In it I attempt to make sense of the chaos in our world. I try to sort that information along the model of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. This issue I write about wildfire smoke, the
Murder Comets - 083022 This is a newsletter by Christian Sager that comes out every other Tuesday. In it I attempt to make sense out of the chaos of the world, trying to sort my thoughts around the model of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. This issue I write about a metal show
An Evergreen Introduction – 081622 When I first started talking to people about picking up the newsletter again, one of my friends suggested it have a similar tone to Supercontext, the podcast I did with Charlie Bennett. To me, what made that show work was our combination of analytical reasoning with transparent honesty. That’s
Welcome to Wicked Problems Social media is awful. It doesn’t reach the people I need it to when I need it to. It’s a toxic playground of the worst human behaviors. It doesn’t work for me anymore. And yet... it rules everything around us. My day job relies on social media.
Nothing Left but Things I wrote the short story "Nothing Left but Things" in early 2019. It's a deeply personal story about family, memory and home. But I disguised all that under a veneer of toxic mold and malevolent, otherworldly fungi. Due to the current pandemic I've decided
The Caretaker I’ve been washing my hands obsessively for over two weeks and now they’re starting to dry out, the skin wrinkled, papery and cracked. Frequent exposure to hand sanitizer has left my knuckles scaly, almost calcified with patches of white. But last night when I looked down, I didn’
Greater Elements / Lesser Mysteries You probably already know that writers eavesdrop on your conversations. Look around. We’re listening right now. As I’m writing this in a bookstore cafe I can overhear the employees having a conversation about the new Sonic the Hedgehog movie. One of them is trying to convince the others
Turnstile On New Year’s Eve of 1996 my band Kid Company played live in Manchester, New Hampshire at a place called Café Savoy. The venue was a run-down restaurant in a mini-mall, repurposed by the owners for punk and hardcore shows. There were a bunch of bands on
"What Beautiful Music They Make" In Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury makes a case for the intuitive mind as home for some of our best creative ideas. His problem was reaching that part within himself, so he could harness it to improve his storytelling. So Bradbury started making lists. Almost like automatic
Staggering Through the Present I have nightmares about being immortal. I dream that my body ages and decays externally, but it never actually dies. The only way this version of me can tell that time is passing is by observing slight changes in the environment. In the real world, I assumed I would change
A Wake for Jimmy McNulty We lost one of our residents at Chris & Kelly’s Home For Wayward Dysfunctional Animals yesterday. It was completely unexpected and he was only eight years old, but our bold cat Jimmy McNulty passed away. A blood clot suddenly lodged between his heart and his hindquarters, rendering him half
