HOH Magazine: Correspondences from a New Cocoon (November 2024)

back behind the barricade, the barracuda bites at my brain, the buyout of buoyancy to balance a book or two, before beginning to face a bitter embrace. beneath the binary, do I boast or bury in a busy blush. do I block a bruise, do I better myself from break or bend. beckons, the cocoon. can I covertly circumvent context, or do I merely cover conviviality with continual cortex concern. come come, cozy yourself and connect with my disconnected, discombobulated, disorganized dig-down doozy of a dugout.

HOH Magazine: February/March 2023 Issue

First of all, I haven't shaved my beard yet. I am not exactly sure why. I know I said I would. It seems I have grown to like it this way. There's a significant charm to it now, and I know if I shave it off I won't get that back. Not for, you know, another thousand days. I'm not sure when I graduated from tolerance to affection, but I'm letting myself luxuriate in the big spindly bush before I take control of it. Which is itself a form of control.

Anyway, I wanted to jot down some personal thoughts, and hey that's what a blog is for. Why not just cut out the middle-man and publish it? This is supposed to be fun, not work. Let's see if I still vibe with that approach by the time I'm finished writing this, hah!

HOH Magazine: New Year 2022 Issue

Same year, new me! It's been two years to the Day (St. Patrick's that is) that I started officially quarantining. That's much, much more than eight weeks guys, come on, what's up?

So it's still 2020, and still 2016 as well. I don't make the rules of arrested development, I just serve my time. A lazy, knee-jerk inclination to alter that opening quip to say "same me" was escorted quickly out of my head, because I am still pushing against the ceilings of evermore chrysalis-tine chapels within me, trying slowly but surely to grow and change. Even if the world emphatically doesn't want me to. You will get your David's worth even if you have to choke on it.

HOH Magazine: February 2021 Issue

The Love Edition, whatever that means. Inside, this cold fish will dish out hot tips and outsider info on that crazy little thing called love. I'll help you understand what it is to 'be yourself' a little better. I even write a love letter to my 16-year-old self! Happy Reverse-Valentine's Day!

HOH Magazine: January 2021 Issue

Welcome back, bitches!

New Year, New Issue!

Welcome back! I'm your new Oprah, yet again! Snatching the mantle for smithing my opinions and thoughts into self-help (or just media recommendations) once more! Read on for the new and renewed HOH Magazine!!

What Kind of Butterfly (Final Correspondence From The Cocoon)

Here I am, on the precipice of my chrysalis. Pressing against the dried, transparent walls of my cocoon. Can you see my coloration? I don't worry about what shape or decoration I will take when I emerge but the shape of the world I'm emerging into. But then again, just as all acting is reacting, I don't actually give a fuck about what shape your petty, fetid world is in. It is not mine to control, so what matter should I give to my mind over its form? I guess the tables turned, the facade is down: I do truly, actually worry what shape I will become. How I will be pressed and molded as I molt and shed, poked and bled by this greedy machine of consumption. I'd hope it's "as an avenging angel doing the work of God." But how do I guide that hope – that intention – into practice? Such notions make wrestling matches in my mind, the spectacle of thought.

If I haven't stated it so clearly before, then here: This world was not made for me but I belong in it.

Under A Rock (Correspondence From The Cocoon #3)

Last known photo of me happy. 11/8/2016, 4:02pm

I want to be a care-free person again.

More Correspondence From The Cocoon

'Sup, it's ya boy Hidey-Hoh again. Since writing that last piece, my chest has been free for other stuff to get on it. So I'm writing a follow-up.

“Are you still in hiding?” (Correspondence From The Cocoon)

...

Hiatus Post: Then & Now

"Record Recommendation / Hey 'Sup From Quarantine"

[Drafted as March 8, 2018:] Hey readers, I'm still here. I'm taking an hiatus because, like, ugh. I'm either lazy or busy or both these days. I'll still be doing the backlogged months. I'll get to them. The templates are there, some of them have half-cocked paragraphs or lists.

[Drafter as November 19th, 2020:] Hey readers, I want to use this again. I want to bring HOH Magazine back, with a more lax restructuring that would allow me to not feel weighted down by it, but excited by it instead. But I will also, for now, be using this as a space to make blog posts of a general sort.

Hey, in fact, this Hiatus Post was half-cooked with tags recommending an album that is a favorite of mine. I've been doing something similar in the Isolation Nation feature over on LewtonBus.net. Please check them out.

I never actually talked about Suego Faults by Wolf Gang for Isolation Nation. I haven't listened to the record in full in quite a while...maybe I have during Quarantine...I'm not so sure. But it is a great album worthy of recommendation. The more I listened to it the better it got, and now it's a top favorite. I know nothing of the band, nor have I seen a music video, recorded live performance, or even know of any other records they may have.

This is intentional, even if I'm missing out: the allure creates a thick perfume around it, an aura that sustains a magical quality of That New Sound, that keeps it floating in this little pocket where it is what it is, and what it is spreads out like roots into branches in my mind as I see visions of movie ideas, beautiful locales, and communication with the mental projection of my affection: a correspondence with a pedestal I need to take out from under. This album seems to alternate between fantastic scenarios of grand adventure and longing, love, and remorse. Where are you now? Back to back, we're stronger. I keep trying to move on; there's something in the way...

Listen to it!

Anyway, now that the 2018 intention of this post draft has been fulfilled, the 2020 intention of this post draft is: I'm going to post here more often now, cool? It hasn't been that long since 2018, yeah?

HOH Magazine: July 2017 Issue

July. I'll begin by exclaiming that I've been in (and on) the water more times this summer than any summer for many a recent year. Partly for filming Detective P.I., partly for vacation, or at least vacation-adjacent, purposes. I've grown accustomed to swimming in lakes in the last seven years, even though I still dislike lakes for various reasons. Hey, let's make that the first topic: David critiques Minnesota's most popular natural resource! (Yeah that's right, get bent, iron!)

HOH Magazine: June 2017 Issue

June. Summer. Officially. Let's get it started in hot, let's get it started in here.

HOH Magazine: May 2017 Issue

Well, it's June July but this is the May issue. This is how we work, until I figure out how to "indulge less." I strive to deliver good content, and I don't joke around: this is a hefty magazine. I've got a lot on my mind. Snuffles want to be understood; Snuffles need to be understood. But I never promised anything about being on time. This is something I make in the gaps of time I can fill, and I don't have many, as things keep cropping up every day. Like plowing through a field and you keep finding gold you gotta deal with. Anyway, we'll only cover May affairs. But maybe we'll group all of summer for expedience's sake? Or I'll just write less/phone it in. Who knows!!

I Want To Use This Blog Again

I constructed this blog back in college – now too 5-years-ago to be comforting – because I wanted to.

My plan was to write amusing anecdotes: some true, some fiction. I ended up writing two truths and a draft, the latter of which was just published recently. Two-thirds of them are about taking the bus to school.

The other day, I had an idea. Its catalyst was that I wanted to let people know I was big on Craisins, and I thought "that's what Oprah does." I also probably had the simultaneous thought, (on a subconscious level perhaps) "that's what a blog is for." Anyway, I said the words "Hoh Magazine" out loud, and here we are: I'm remodeling my blog to be a monthly activity, where I do a post that riffs on the model I assume Oprah exhibits in her own monthly publication. I say 'assume' because I don't read it, but I gotta be correct in that if/when you have a magazine that's your own personal magazine, you'll write at least one thing in it about what's up in your life, and – since Oprah's known for having favorite things lists – what you're into at the moment.

I'm not saying I'm doing this to become the next Oprah. I'm certainly open to the idea, but that's not my plan. My plan is to use this blog again, scheduled regularly enough that I'll feel motivated to do it, but not so frequently that I should constantly miss update due-dates. Monthly is amicable.

Soo, the blog is bouncing back! I've upended the URL "nicknamedthepants" – it was always a little clunky – and since I was gonna change the title to "HOH MAGAZINE," I wanted to keep the "Rushed Into Being" phrase, as I had forgotten about it, and was delightfully surprised to see it when I returned to this edge of online. It's a little on the poetic, possibly-pretentious side, but I really find it charming and it flows off the tongue, and keyboard: better for a URL. I've alerted The New Yorker and other publications to update the URL hotlinks in articles where they reference my previous postings.

...What? Maybe they have.

– David

P.S. I'll probably mess around with the layout/colors to my liking, as well. But I've got a March entry to write, firstly.

(Header image from here)