moving the newsletter & new workshop announcements

Greetings all,

I hope that as you receive this message, shortly before or after, something incredibly humorous to you occurs and brightens your spirits. A true laugh out loud moment.

My birthday was on the 6th and I had an excellent day, plus my reading party on the 1st was also fun! Thanks if you came or wanted to come. =)

As the title of this newsletter implies, I decided to move it over from the weirdly censorship loving tinyletter over to this substack service. So the look of things might be different in your inbox––I have little idea what to expect just yet. From the backend dashboard that I’m writing in, it’s very bland (but not dissimilar from tinyletter’s). I am annoyed that I can’t change the white background to a dark background but OH WELL.

Alex from Metropolarity and me were texting about substack the other day, and that made me decide to just go ahead and try it. The thing about substack is that you can set up a paid subscription tier if you want. A paid tier newsletter is a bit beyond me at the moment. I set it up so that you can pay if you’re feeling me like that, but right now I’m still in the ‘all my digital content should be free’ boat. I have a job that supports me financially so I don’t want to be charging people for shit, and you’re talkin to the bitch who one way or another puts all their content out for free on the net anyway, so hey. Hi. Hello.

Annnyway, that’s the update on that.

Now to the workshop information:

Text:

a smut reading and you’re invited

A zine release party & reading for the prototype edition of VENUS SATURN SQUARE smut zine. Come see area freaks read their smut from the zine out loud in full person &/or veiled in silhouette!

Open mic signups for those who wish to read their own favorite smut, trashy fanfic, and other conflicted erotic pieces.

This will be a casual affair for the lurkers and lovers. Bring a friend. Send questions to @cyborgmemoirs [me]

SATURDAY JUNE 29th, 6pm to 8pm, LOCATION TBA

Text:

venus saturn square workshops return

You’re invited to a smut writing practice space. For the curious shy embarrassed repressed fighting shame trouble expressing feeling desire saying no saying yes asking for what you want without fear etc. For ppl who have already written freaky shit. Low pressure but come ready to peel back a layer. Bring your favorite smut if you have any. We’ll write & practice reading out loud. Let’s submerge.

june 29 ~ july 13 ~ july 20

2pm to 4pm, LOCATION TBA

Text:

PROP WERX

Learn to read between the lines, hear what’s not said & more in this propaganda dissection workshop. We’ll pick apart ads, movies, headlines, conversations & other content with a simple, repeatable technique.

JULY 4th, 1pm to 3pm, LOCATION TBA

All these events are gonna be in Philly. I should have the locations and everything else pinned down in another week, so stay tuned for that information.

In the mean time, w00t. I watched POSE on netflix finally and it was so nice to watch a show centering trans women and gay people of color without having any violence or fucked up straight gaze objectification shit happening. The other night me and my boo watched some of the new Black Mirror, which again if you missed my previous critiques, has become trash propaganda in SO many ways ever since it’s first harrowing season. The first ep of this new jawn is [SPOILER ALERT]

like oh, ‘no homo’ cis man sexuality at its finest??? SLASH wow I been there role playing wild fantasy sex/tension with friends who I otherwise am not attracted to IRL… buuuut… I was just disappointed in the continual lack of explicit societal consequences––not even consequences, but lack of discourse? If you feel me, the episode is cool in that there’s no white people in the whole episode. It centers Black men and there’s no grotesque or explicit violence that happens to anyone (even when the police show up). But it’s centers cis heteronormative men and their relationships, and makes something of a safe space for them to explore their sexuality in role playing virtual space… and in the end, they’re still just some straight dudes with their wives and girlfriends and kids, and you know, just normal guy stuff no homo! Like dude’s rationalizing of RPing a woman and getting fucked is that it’s ‘like porn’… SIGH!

Then the next episode with that hostage situation and how it all ends, I JUST DONT KNOW MY FRIENDS IT’S NOT THAT GOOD IMO. Wasted opportunities. Normalizing surveillance culture and that deeeep total surveillance via social media giants working with government agencies (finding out everything about dude before the police do and then patching in a tap on his cell phone in real time??), depicting a sympathetic billionaire, a young Black man having sympathy in the end for a guy who threatened to shoot him over and over again, like…………….???????????????????????????

[END SPOILER]

In short, POSE is better sci-fi than motherfucking Black Mirror at this point.

In positive news, I saw some fireflies last night and was glad.

Till next time

-Monk

@}-}-;——