Thursday Noodles (10/5) Tassie Edition
A show from Tasmania to beam straight into your eyeballs, a book worth a re-reread, and a podcast to high-five through the radio waves.
Hey friends! First - deep appreciation to those of you who reached out after Monday’s post. Truly, your small acts of love added up to feeling *big* loved. Thank you.
Second - I’m still agonizing about contemplating ways to publish here that feel fair and equitable while also showing appreciation for paid subscribers and providing an incentive for more of you to become paid subscribers.
And thus … Thursday Noodles (and some other posts) will be for paid subscribers only.
Noodles will unlock after a month or so.
Monday posts will remain accessible to everyone.
If you can’t afford a paid subscription for any reason, please let me know. Send a note that says, “The Great Cosmic Echidna loves Oreo milkshakes.” Or something else true like that. Your choice. The point is, you never have to justify why you can’t pay. Just reach out.
Now, recommendations. Some real favorites this week!
Show:
Deadloch on Amazon Prime
This show. This show!
One of my (many) quirks is that, although I laugh free and loud like a braying donkey or a reckless hyena in real life, I hardly ever even crack a smile when watching a show or movie. Even when I think something is very funny.
Not so Deadloch.
Last night I was laughing so hard that Husband was concerned. He cocked an eyebrow. “You do know this is a murder mystery, right?”
I do. I know.
Originally called “Funny Broadchurch” by the writers, Deadloch is indeed a murder mystery. But it is cheeky as hell and apparently exactly, precisely my humor.
It’s running a bit under the radar, as Australia and certainly Tasmania, is wont to do here in the States. I heard about it from a fave podcast.
In a great piece for Vanity Fair, aptly titled “Deadloch is the Feminist Crime Parody You Didn’t Know You Needed” Joy Press says:
Welcome to the Tasmanian town of Deadloch! It’s the site of a simmering culture war between the blue-collar, old-school residents and a recent influx of lesbians who’ve put the place on the map, bringing performance art and gourmet nose-to-tail dining with them. That’s on top of the much older turf war between the area’s indigenous inhabitants and the white settler families who colonized this island off the southern coast of Australia.
…But funny.
I’ve only watched episode one and am already in lerve.
Also it feeds images of Tasmania straight into my eyeballs which makes me just ACHE to go back.
I know I’m a writer and all, but words can’t really describe how beautiful Tasmania (Tassie, pronounced “TAZ-ee”) is. A sky clearer than I’ve ever seen. Pristine wilderness and gum forests. Well, except for the clear-cut parts.
N.b. I truly believe there are still Tasmanian tigers out there in the wilds.
So yes, Deadloch.
If you’re grieving over the end of Reservation Dogs, I’m right there with you. Deadloch is not the same, but it still may help scratch that itch.
Book
I’ve been reading a lot of nonfiction and don’t guess y’all want to read 4-5 biographies of Martin Luther by personal choice (but if you do, I have no dearth of opinions).
However. I was at the op shop the other day and picked up an old copy of Prep by Curtis Sittenfield and thought, “Right. Yes. This is just what I need.”
I read it when it came out in 2005, did you? I liked it even better this time.
Also - that cover. Iconic. The designers hit this one out of the park.
Prep was Sittenfield’s debut novel and I’ve really liked almost everything Curtis Sittenfield has written, especially American Wife and Rodham.
Podcast
The wait for season 3 is over.
Friends of Unruly Quaker know I do not buy from Multi-Level Marketing companies (MLMs) because —SPOILER ALARM— MLMs are a more palatable name for pyramid schemes.
I know “there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism,” but y’all, MLMs are particularly bad.
(For the record: I did buy one product ~ 10 years ago, before I knew the company was an MLM.)
I have friends who say they’ve been “very successful” in an MLM, but what success in an MLM really means, if we’re all being completely honest, is that you earn income by having a “downline.”
A downline is people you recruit to work under you. You tell them what a great opportunity it is. Buy in now! And then you get a percentage of your downline’s orders.
Important — I call them orders, not sales. It does not matter whether they actually sell the products or not. You get a percentage either way. The company calls them sales either way.
If the folks in your downline (“distributors”) recruit their own downlines, you get a percentage of THEIR downlines’ sales orders. And so on.
This what makes an MLM a pyramid scheme. It’s based on the fiction of an endless chain. If you get in early, and you recruit a downline, and your downline recruits downlines, you can potentially make money.
But inevitably, by design, you making money means that somewhere down your downline are “distributers” who, by the very structure of the MLM, are absolutely going to get in over their heads.
Because distributors are required to buy a certain number of products every month according to the MLM agreement.
They are trying to sell these products to an already saturated market, depending on how far down the downline they are.
Who can sell to a saturated market? No one, that’s who.
Search for “GOOB” videos on Facebook and you’ll see. (GOOB = Going Out Of Business.)
Fewer than 1% of all MLM distributors ever earn a profit and those earning a sustainable living at this business are a much smaller percentage still.
Robert Fitzpatrick, MLM researcher
(emphasis mine)
Imagine having friends in this impossible downline situation. They’ve spent their money on products they can’t sell. MLMs tell these “unsuccessful” folks they’re not trying hard enough. So they try harder, listening to their “coaches” (their upline, who wants to earn money from their orders) and falling into the sunk cost fallacy.
MLMs rely on folks blaming themselves for their lack of success. Distributors need to feel ashamed so they don’t talk about their experiences to anyone else.
Which is too bad, this silence, because there’s power in shared experiences and worker solidarity.
Oooh lordy, I could say a lot more about MLMs and how exploitative (and cult-adjacent) they are, but guess what, The Dream does it for me. And better.
Listen from the beginning for your best experience.
You’ll get used to Jane Marie’s Michigan / Wisconsin nasal tone and sharp A’s. She will grow on you. I learned a TON from this pod.
Solidarity
Speaking of the power of worker solidarity, big ol’ high fives to the WGA and the success of the Hollywood Writer’s Strike.
Three cheers for organized labor. I hope it keeps making a comeback.
And let the writing begin again! And again. And again.
Big love and huge appreciation to all of you.
XOXO
What Tom said…
What Tom said….