This was my introduction to Pepperidge Farm’s Frozen Coconut Layer Cake. By the way these folks talk about it, this cake is a dessert staple that, despite being born and raised in these United States, I have managed to overlook my entire life. Should I assume it has the same cultural clout as the Milano cookie, another Pepperidge Farm offering that everybody recognizes?

(This essay is not a paid advertisement for Pepperidge Farm. But reach out to me with five or six figures and we could fix that.)

Thus, after poking around the grocery store’s frozen dessert section—an area that I purposefully avoid with the same intentionality as I did with the Barbie aisle at the toy store when I was a kid, except replace the cooties with diabetes—I found that it does, in fact, carry this cake. Well, there goes my only possible excuse right out the window. Guess I have to try this thing.

First off, I gotta say: you can buy this sucker for less than $6 (as of this writing in February 2026)(I have to be specific with timing because it’s safest to assume the economy is going to bottom out any day now). I’ve paid more money for jars of spaghetti sauce. It’s not a particularly large cake; they suggest 8 servings, which was probably accurate back when it was first released and American serving sizes were still, you know, reasonable. But it’s also somehow less expensive than a package of Milano cookies. I’ll let you figure out the math on that, because I sure can’t.

I also took pictures of the unboxing, to fully document the experience:

Not exactly what I would call “exciting”, but this is a sub-$6 dessert that can serve 4-8 people, so expectations should be adjusted accordingly. Anyway, there’s not really a whole lot one can say about a shaggy-looking white square, so I guess there’s nothing else to do but cut this thing open already.

I appreciate the box providing the helpful suggestion to rinse the knife with warm water between slices, because I’m too dim-witted to think of something like that myself and it really did make cutting this frozen cake into nice, even portions a breeze. It also recommends letting slices sit at room temperature for 20 minutes before eating; which, again, a very useful tip, but it also means I can’t eat cake until nearly half an hour after I decide I want to eat cake, which is an agonizing challenge for anybody raised in a society accustomed to instant gratification. Especially when you have an incessantly-demanding sweet tooth. Yet I persevered, if only for the sake of retaining my journalistic integrity.

I started my cake-consuming process by taking a bite of the sponge by itself, without any icing. This methodology isn’t typical for me—I can eat cake like a normal-ass person, promise—but I wanted to confirm a suspicion I had that, despite a whole five or ten minutes of research, I could not get the internet to either verify or reject. See, I needed to taste the sponge on its own as the very first step of my experiment, before muddying my taste buds with any flavor of coconut, to answer my one burning question: is the cake itself coconut? Or just the frosting?

My friends… this is not a coconut cake. This is a yellow cake with coconut icing.

Pepperidge farm is wholesale lying to us about the flavor of this cake! And lest you think I’m being pedantic over here—“but Skep, if the end result tastes like coconut, then isn’t that enough?”—consider: if you put chocolate frosting on a yellow cake, you don’t call that a chocolate cake, do you? Hell, red velvet and carrot cakes are traditionally served with cream cheese icing, but they’re still named entirely after the contents of the cake! So, yes, while I will concede that at least the icing itself has coconut flavor that isn’t borne solely from the smattering of flakes on top, if the sponge does not contain coconut, then calling this cake “coconut” is false advertising. Pepperidge Farm will be hearing from my legal team.

(Again, hit me up if you’re still interested in that sponsorship deal!)

That objection aside, the cake is pretty good. I’m fairly coconut-neutral, so in spite of my fundamental issues with the name of the product, I think I actually prefer the plain yellow cake. It balances out the icing’s coconut flavor, which remains present without declaring itself the sole focus like you’d get from something like a Mounds/Almond Joy. Actually, I’d go so far as to say this cake would be entirely forgettable without that coconut. Considering that Pepperidge Farm has been selling this frozen cake since the 70s, I’d say “forgettable” clearly isn’t a term that applies to it.

And uh, yeah, I guess that’s my review. Like I said, it’s a cheap freezer-aisle cake, but it’s not bad for what it is. I wouldn’t get one if I was trying to impress somebody, but if I didn’t have time to make a dessert for family or friends or something, this could do perfectly fine in a pinch (so long as nobody had any serious objections to coconut). I don’t think I can sit here and say, damn, I can’t believe I’ve been missing out all this time. But I can understand why a 6-year-old might pick it for their birthday.

Still though, for a party, just go with chocolate or vanilla.

The strip published on January 29th starts with Susie handing out plates in preparation for serving cake and ice cream (in my own opinion, cake and ice cream requires a bowl rather than a plate, but that is an argument for another day). During this prelude, Calvin confesses to Hobbes his fear that Susie picked one of those offbeat cake flavors that are generally regarded as undesirable to the general population, such as coconut—a fear that, knowing Susie, is not unfounded, though in my headcanon her favorite is a less-divisive red velvet.

However, Hobbes confirms that the cake is, in fact, chocolate—much more appropriate for a party. Yet this raises the question: how in the world does Hobbes of all people know what flavor of cake it is? Calvin asks as such, but before Hobbes can respond, a shout goes out:

The discovery of the missing slice of cake and Hobbes’s description of it being “nice and moist” is a strong indication to the reader that Hobbes, in fact, is the cake-cutting culprit. How could he know the texture of the cake without tasting it himself? This seems like an open-and-shut case. But is it?

I’m not interested in arguing about how Hobbes knows what. The flavor of cake is never revealed to the audience by anybody but Hobbes; and since his entire existence is in doubt, we can’t assume that his claims are necessarily true. That cake could just as easily have been vanilla. Were this the case, perhaps we’d find ourselves wanting to understand why Calvin comes to believe the cake is chocolate when it actually isn’t, but that would be an example of not seeing the forest for the trees. The question we should be asking instead is: if Hobbes didn’t preemptively sneak a slice of cake, then who did?

Suspicion immediately falls upon Calvin. The strip’s been running for a year and a half at this point. We know his game. We’ve seen how impulsive he is, how he prioritizes short-term reward over long-term consequences. And I’ve argued extensively that he is quick to assign blame for his own actions onto others—most commonly, Hobbes. Calvin is the clear and obvious culprit.

And yet… I can’t bring myself to believe that Calvin cut that cake.

To be quite honest with you, if you review all the strips from this week-long arc, this just might be the most well-mannered Calvin we’ve ever seen. He’s on his absolute best behavior. I know this sounds entirely unbelievable; this is Susie’s birthday party, for crying out loud! This should be prime time for mischief and hijinks! But that’s not what we’re shown. To illustrate my point, let’s go through the other strips in this arc leading up to the incident in question:

Day 1 — Calvin and Hobbes walk down the sidewalk on their way to Susie’s house. Calvin carries a neatly-wrapped gift, revealing that it is a bike horn—a token gesture, perhaps, but it is at least an agreeable and inoffensive offering. Although he contemplates skipping the party and keeping the horn for himself, he goes through with this act of social obligation anyway.

Day 2 — Susie greets Calvin at the door and invites him in; Calvin presents the gift and politely wishes her a happy birthday. Susie sees that Hobbes is wearing a tie and gushes over how cute he is. With mild annoyance, Calvin acknowledges that Hobbes was correct about how positively the tie would be received; though it’s interesting to note that, if Hobbes is indeed an inert stuffed toy as this series posits, Calvin must have taken the initiative to dress the tiger himself, displaying additional thoughtfulness toward Susie.

Day 3 — Susie announces a scavenger hunt will be played as a party game. The first item on Calvin’s list is an old license plate. Fortunately, Calvin already knows where one can be found and heads there immediately… where he begins removing the license plate from a car parked nearby. This act represents the height of his misdeeds this week, and while it does demonstrate a lack of civility that I don’t support, I have difficulty pinning the entire blame on Calvin for this one. I say this because some dunce (Susie, most likely) thought that old, abandoned license plates were items that would commonly be found laying around the neighborhood and could reasonably be found and collected by multiple kids (along with a list of other items) within the span of thirty minutes as part of a competition. Of course somebody was going to try yanking a license plate off of a car. Calvin might not even be the only one who attempts this. Really, just a surprising lack of foresight on Susie’s part.

The incident in question then occurs on Day 4. Here’s it’s worth noting that, as Susie hands a plate to him, Calvin is sitting calmly and politely thanks her. He’s not griping about being bored or having a bad time or anything. Had there not been a slice already cut out of the cake, the party may have concluded without any incident at all.

Still not convinced? That’s fine. Because our most definitive piece of evidence comes from Day 5:

Look carefully. As she thanks Calvin for attending and for the gift, Susie’s expression is perfectly pleasant (as is Calvin’s, for that matter). And that’s what’s so odd; because normally when these two characters part company, at least one of them is disgruntled or bears some ill-will towards the other. But there’s no resentment on Susie’s part here. Not even so much as a hint that she suspects Calvin ruined her party but just can’t prove it. She has been the victim of Calvin’s antics more often than most; she should know better than anyone what this kid is capable of and always approach him with an ounce of suspicion.

Despite the defilement of the birthday cake, none of those feelings are present here. For once, Susie was glad for Calvin’s company. As such, there’s only one conclusion we can draw from this: she already knows who the perpetrator is, and it isn’t Calvin. We may never know who actually ate that slice of cake, but if Susie isn’t accusing Calvin of the deed, it can only be because she knows with 100% certainty that it was somebody else.

Following that logic, if Susie has already identified the culprit, then it can’t be Hobbes either, as suspecting him would require Susie to believe that he is sentient. It goes without saying that this interpretation of the dynamic between Susie and Hobbes is preposterous and unworthy of consideration.

…Er. Probably.

Verdict: I guess I’m going to have to re-read the entire strip with this new “Susie is a Hobbes truther” theory in mind now, just to make sure.

Future-proofing with JSON

One of the things I’ve started doing with the home page of Skep’s Place—really, something that Eleventy allows me to do—is keeping a simple JSON file with the sole responsibility of holding the data that I regularly update in all those little boxes. Thoughts, Updates, Currently Listening/Playing, etc. If I want to update the works, I don’t have to find each spot in the HTML; I just update the JSON file. When I rebuild the site with Eleventy, shortcodes pull in the relevant data, apply the proper HTML, and slap it in the right places; then the output file is ready to go. It’s probably a little overkill, but it makes updating that much less of a hassle and helps keep me from forgetting anything.

I mention this because this is, essentially, how the RSS list is constructed. The index.html page I work from doesn’t have a bunch of lines of HTML; it has a single shortcode called “getLinks”. I also have a JSON file that stores details about each site, such as its name and URL. When I rebuild the site, getLinks uses Javascript to pull in this JSON file and loop through each site entry, extracting the data and adding the relevant HTML, and eventually returns the whole big mess back to the index page, which is what gets uploaded (and is what you see).

Yes, I could skip this process and manage each line of the HTML myself. A couple reasons not to, though:

• If I want to change the HTML in any way, I only have to update it once within the shortcode instead of for every site (and this could one day be a BIG list)
• So far, I’m only generating the list during the site build. Eventually, I’m going to want to use Javascript to give users a more dynamic way to interact with the list, and this is probably going to be a lot easier if it can pull data from the JSON rather than trying to extract it from the HTML (and I can store information in the JSON that might not be relevant in the HTML).
• Again, smaller chance of me missing stuff.

However, I also wanted to be able to sort the list, and did this lead me down a small rabbit hole.

Sorting out sorting

I wanted to put the list in alphabetical order. Or, to be more precise, I wanted the list to be in alphabetical order, without me needing to do the ordering myself.

“I’m sure Javascript has a way to do that for me,” I thought. I was… half-right.

Javascript does have a .sort() function I could use to sort items in an array (AKA, my list of website names). By default, it takes two items, compares their first letters, and whichever has the smaller Unicode number is placed first.

In practice, this is absolutely useless for sorting through a list of fun, creative website names. Because of the way Unicode works, all capital letters would be placed before all lower-case letters. The easy solution was to just compare versions of the site names that had been converted to lower-case, and it didn’t take me long to work that out, but it’s the principle of the thing.

But since I was futzing around with the sorting function anyway, I also added some code to exclude any “A” or “The” at the beginning of a website name from counting towards how it’s alphabetized. This was actually so easy to do that I’m now pissed off at every music streaming service that alphabetizes all “The ____” artists together (which is all of them). But I’m also mad at Javascript for not having a better baked-in sorting function.

Let’s get flexible

I posted a comment on Neocities hinting at this a few days ago, but I’m pretty sure I’m overusing nested Flexboxes in the design and I refuse to apologize for it.

Now I’m learning new software for this project?

I wasn’t going to do any sort of logo imagery on the page at first. Then I thought the RSS icon could add some visual interest. Then I realized that adding the Neocities logo next to it could be cute (and thankfully, Neocities seems to be perfectly fine with anybody doing anything with their logo). To be completely honest, the Neocities logo actually ended up inspiring the design of the links, with the black-white border and shadow effect.

I wanted to apply the border and shadow effect to the RSS icon, too, to give everything a cohesive look. It was easy enough to import the .svg files into Gimp (which I’ve been using exclusively for nearly two decades at this point), make the changes, and save the result as a .png.

And then… somebody asked me to make a site button. That’s when I started kicking myself for not doing the logo as a vector despite both of the input files being .svgs, because if I had done a vector logo, resizing it to that small size would be a lot easier. So I decided to remake the logo after a grand total of about 20 hours. Of course, Gimp doesn’t actually work with vector images, so I would need to use an application called Inkscape. And boy, it sure isn’t Gimp.

It took a morning of trial and error, because Inkscape uses an entirely different design language. But I at least figured out how to add borders and a passable shadow effect to the RSS icon to match the Neocities logo, and now I have a nice .svg that is nearly indistinguishable from the original .png I did. I like it! And I hope I never have to use Inkscape again.

...Nearly forgot this is the Internet

A realization that occurred fairly late in the process: some part of me is aware that Neocities allows sites containing content intended for adult audiences, and it would not be inconceivable that such sites may maintain an RSS feed and may wish to be included in the list. In running the RSS List, I’m not really interested in acting as a censor or being choosy about who gets to be added (although if I find out you’re making or promoting any sort of hate speech, I am dumping your ass), but at the same time, I feel like implementing some kind of barrier—even an insignificant one—that requires a user to opt into viewing this content would not go unappreciated.

I almost decided to not mention anything and wait to see if the issue would ever come up, at which point I could then implement a ruling; but that seemed unfair to whoever might be the first person to unknowingly hit that wall, because clearly I had expectations and just didn’t voice them, and that kind of makes me the asshole.

So, I included the policy that’s currently on the Join page. I won’t say it’s perfect, and if you have opinions on it I am happy to hear them, but for not knowing what the hell I’m doing I feel like it is at least a reasonable compromise for this project that is just supposed to be a fun, community-oriented thing.

People seem to like it!

The feedback so far has been really positive! RSS seems like one of those technologies where the people who use it really make it an integral part of how they interact with the web, and they might collect feeds simply to have more feeds to read (I am guilty of this). In my opinion, sites on the small web—especially those that are hand-crafted—greatly benefit from implementing feeds, due to their predilection toward creativity in design and routine tinkering. It can be difficult to know when somebody adds new content to their site or where they place it, and having a good feed can solve both of these complexities.

I’m very delighted to see so much interest right out of the gate; for a little bit there, I was adding a new round of sites to the list a couple of times a day. And I’ve already heard from a handful of wonderful folks who want to contribute resources they’ve already made, or who are interested in helping me make new ones. I don’t know why I’m surprised by this given how readily you all jumped in to make the Virtual Potluck happen last year, but I will never not be overwhelmingly appreciative whenever somebody donates their time to one of my daft schemes.

Looking at the list of stuff I still want to do to make the RSS List truly shine is daunting, to say the least. But damn if y’all aren’t worth it.

So over the weekend, I’ve been pecking away at a prototype for such a page. It’s nothing fancy; it is largely just a list of links to the sites, profiles, and feeds of folks who you can subscribe to via an RSS reader. Or at least, that’s the plan. I just need some sites.

I know a selection of sites that have an RSS feed, because I’m already following a bunch of them. And I could use this knowledge to build up a decently-sized list pretty quickly. But after I thought about it, I figured this should be an opt-in sort of thing. I didn’t want somebody who objected for any reason to have to come track me down and ask to be removed. I’m not here to be a pain in the ass.

However, that means that the list currently contains a single site: mine. Skep’s Place. Kind of a lame list (and doesn’t give me a lot to test by). So if you have a feed and you want your site to be included when I launch this thing—which I don’t expect to be very far in the future—hit me up. Here is the information that will specifically be shared:

• Site name and URL
• Neocities profile name and URL
• Feed URL
• Neocities tags (if available)
• Button (if available)

I’ll try to track down these items myself, but if you don’t want me to miss anything it’s best to email me.

Eventually I think this RSS site would also be a good resource for tutorials on creating and subscribing to feeds and recommending reader applications, but I am a man of big ambitions and little time, so I expect these things would come later down the line. I would love to make this a community effort and showcase though, so if you’d be interested in writing a guide, helping with code, or anything else of the sort, I’d be happy for the company.

But mostly I just need things to put on the list.

Tchia

I took my time getting all the collectibles and completing most of the activities (the shooting galleries are 100% bullshit). The sheer amount of unlockable clothing is delightful and lets you give Tchia all kinds of looks, although because they tied clothing to stats, you don’t really have as much freedom as you’d like here (especially since not all stat boosts are equally useful).

Also, weirdly violent in places for such a cartoony presentation? It wasn’t overdone or anything, just felt out of place when it did occur. Most of the time though, I found it to be a charming way to unwind in the evenings. The cutscene animations were tremendously well done, and I loved every single time the game decided “okay, now we’re going to have a music scene”. I’d play it again just for those.

Korter 1996

I found this game via its Neocities site! I would call it a… point-and-click puzzler, perhaps? You explore some of the apartments in your complex, collecting and repositioning items here and there to ascend further in the building. It’s got some vibes that are slightly retro and soothingly surreal. And… yeah, maybe it’s a little obvious that I played this one two months ago and I’m already having difficulty recollecting it. It has a short runtime—perhaps too short to have left a lasting impression on me. It’s absolutely not a bad game, and I would say in this case, don’t judge it off of what I’m saying because clearly I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Go check out an indie project from a small team and see if it might be for you!

Rift of the Necrodancer

I did play Crypt of the Necrodancer, and gosh it was hard. As much as I wanted to, I could never really get the rhythm of the game down, and none of my runs made it very far. I wanted to like it, though.

Rift of the Necrodancer, rather than being a rhythm-based roguelike, has more in common with Guitar Hero. Well hell, I played Guitar Hero on Expert difficulty back in the day, I should be able to pick this up pretty easy.

…But gosh, is it hard. It’s not as simple as just hitting the notes as they reach the bottom, because now the notes like to jump around the fretboard. You have to memorize a dozen or so different movement patterns, which are represented by the different enemy types (to say nothing of the additional effects you encounter sometimes that can alter how an enemy behaves). Even on Medium difficulty it’s so chaotic that if I’ve had a whiskey, I simply can’t play it.

Unfortunately, I suspect this might end up like its predecessor: a game I want to like, but which I have no desire to put in the effort to get to the point where it becomes enjoyable. We’ll see.

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy

Another step in my quest to play through the Ace Attorney series for the first time. At this point, I’ve completed the first two entries in the trilogy (Apollo Justice and Dual Destinies). Largely, more of the same good stuff! We do have some cracks starting to show though.

In the original trilogy, Phoenix received the Magatama by game 2 as a way to inject a bit of the evidence-driven deduction-making gameplay into the slower-paced clue-finding phase, and this was good. But because our protagonists need equivalent special gameplay-altering abilities now I guess, in Apollo Justice, Apollo just shows up on his first day wearing a magical bracelet that lets him easily see “tells” that indicate a witness is lying. It’s kind of justified late in the game, but before then, there is exactly zero reverence for this fascinating piece of jewelry, and it is absolutely bizarre at how little attention it receives in-universe. Also, the gameplay it adds is pretty bad; the game hyper-zooms in on the witness as they slowly repeat a statement, and during one part of that statement, one part of their body will behave differently—the “tell”. This sucks; the camera is so zoomed-in that you can only cover maybe a quarter of the witness’s body at once, and you might only have a couple seconds to drag the slow camera around and identify the tell during the few words that it’s visible. If you miss it, you have to cycle through the entire slowed-down statement again and hope you find it this time… all of which is assuming you’re examining the correct statement to begin with. I guess the developers wanted a way to be able to advance the courtroom scenes without needing evidence all the dang time, but this is such a bad solution because it’s not asking the player to challenge their assumptions (you know, the best part of the game); it’s more like an elaborate spot-the-difference puzzle.

They at least do it a little better when they bring in Athena in Dual Destines. Her ability to analyze a witness’s moods during testimony is, you know, a thing she studied how to do, and identifying anomalous emotions is at least asking the player to think critically about the information being presented to them, so I don’t hate it. Still, both of these abilities only take place during the courtroom scenes, and the Magatama is used incredibly sparingly in the clue-finding phases, so those are still boring as heck.

My biggest complaint, as I said with The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, is that these cases get so dragged out. I don’t think these games need to be this long. I still like them, but I will sit down with the expectation that I’m close to the end of a case and I’m going to finish it, and then by the end of my play session it’s still not done. That is so frustrating. Anyway I’m going to take a break and come back to Spirit of Justice later.

Oblivion: Remastered

Gosh, I’m really not used to talking about the same game three quarters in a row. Well, let’s see. Just today, I wrapped up the main quest and all the faction questlines. Nothing much but DLC left. So that’s pretty exciting.

One of the things I don’t like about Bethesda’s style of RPGs is that they are so unfocused and sandbox-y that your character doesn’t feel like a real entity. The world exists to cater to you. The NPCs all feel like NPCs. Things like that. Calling them “RPGs” is honestly a bit of a misnomer, because you are playing the absolute barest hint of a role. I could go on, but I won’t. What I will talk about is, although I wouldn’t say my current Oblivion character has an interesting story, per se, she definitely went through an arc this quarter, and that was kind of fun to experience.

See, my bitter and exhausted mercenary slowly began to discover that overwhelming destructive magic was a far more effective means to solving her problems than a sword was, and after joining the Mage’s Guild, she was using spells to take down her enemies with brutal efficiency. She stopped feeling weary, and began to feel empowered. Eventually, a few different side quests coincidentally brought her in contact with a number of different vampires, and she began to grow enamored with thoughts about how such a transformation might enhance her own power. So, she becomes a vampire herself (an act that I have painstakingly gone out of my way to avoid for years, ever since vampirism traumatized me on my very first playthrough).

Keeping a nocturnal schedule was annoying but manageable. Being outright shunned by most people she tried to talk to was honestly a bit vexing, but she could look past that. No, it was a singular incident that broke her: spending 14 hours of daylight holed up in an insect-riddled cave, at what should have been the absolute height of her inhuman power, all because her body wouldn’t tolerate a goddamn sunbeam anymore.

So, I immediately proceeded to do the Cure for Vampirism quest. At least it’s a lot easier to do at level 30 than it is at level 4. Ask me how I know.

For next quarter: Like I said, I’m taking a break from the Apollo Justice Trilogy to work through Mosaic of the Strange, the newest entry in the Mosaic series of games I’ve highlighted a few times. With any luck, I’ll finish Oblivion in the next few months. After that, I really don’t have anything planned despite the backlog piling up… so I suppose we’ll see what the new year brings!

10. Sleigh Ride

We all know that at this point, there’s only three or four Christmas songs that are considered “safe” to play over the speakers in stores and other commercial settings anymore. As Sleigh Ride is one of these select songs, I fully understand that some may feel like it’s been played to death; however, I find it so light and bouncy that the repetition doesn’t hurt it as badly as, say, Winter Wonderland. Sadly, it falls so low on this list because musicians have some weird compulsion that obligates them to loop a sound clip of jingling sleigh bells incessantly throughout the song’s duration.

9. We Wish You a Merry Christmas

I don’t have too much to mention about this one. It’s just a friendly carol with solid Christmas vibes that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Really, the only bad thing I can say about it is that it only works with a group; singing it solo is cringe.

I decline to comment on “figgy pudding”.

8. Duel of the Fates

Wait, I might be thinking of Carol of the Bells. It’s definitely one of them, although if you’re not listening to them that closely, they’re practically the same song.

7. This one particular version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer by Bing Crosby and Ella Fitzgerald

As a kid, did you learn the “silly” version of Rudolph, with extra jokes and sound effects between the lines (such as following up “you could even say it glows,” with “like a light bulb!”)? Even though this song doesn’t copy it one-to-one, Crosby and Fitzgerald clearly leaned into that here… and then kept on running with it, adding an entire back half to celebrate Rudolph’s success in a way that gets slightly unhinged at times (the bit about the fedora and cigar lives rent-free in my head to this day). That said, no, I don’t understand what they’re saying half the time, either.

6. O Come All Ye Faithful

Most Christmas songs pick a lane. The fun ones, the intimate ones, the solemn ones, the joyful ones. Rarely does a song deviate from its lane; if an artist tries, the result generally is not worth the trouble (think of any poorly-conceived attempt to make Little Drummer Boy hip and cool and you’ll know what I’m talking about). O Come All Ye Faithful is the exception to this. Modern pop and country singers in particular have been doing more soulful renditions of this one to showcase their range and to try to convince us that they’re not just corporate shills like everyone else. Sometimes, the result is hauntingly beautiful, like Nat King Cole’s take above. But that same amount of emotional force also makes this a song that begs to be shouted in holy rapture to the backdrop of a brass section blaring at full volume. With this much sheer potential, why does everybody insist on subduing it?

Case in point: I need you to check out this performance by Yemi Alade. Honestly I would have used it as the video for this entry, but Coke Studio Africa won’t let me embed it. To that, I say: drink water and go watch that video with an ad blocker turned on. Merry fucking Christmas, Coca-Cola.

5. The Twelve Days of Christmas (the Muppets version)

The Twelve Days of Christmas is an utterly bizarre song. The premise is short and simple, but there is so much repetition that it has a tendency to drag on with little to show for the investment. The gifts themselves are absolutely absurd, and you really ought to be concerned if your true love is gifting you so many birds OR so many people. How did this ever become a popular Christmas tune?

But the Muppets, man. You forget how weird this song is when the Muppets sing it, because they just pour so much personality into it. It’s fun to hear the Muppets. You can’t help but smile because they’re just so delightful. In fact, if you can’t smile at the Muppets, then like, are you okay? What is even keeping you going every day? What makes you continue to live a life where you willingly deprive yourself of joy? Whatever it is, how could it possibly be worth it???

…Ba dum bum bum.

4. Good King Wenceslas

I consider Good King Wenceslas to be the “cult classic” of Christmas carols—it doesn’t get much play, but those that love it swear by it. I have to agree; the bright melody has a pleasant, consistent cadence that remains interesting to listen to multiple times without growing overbearing. Additionally, some Christmas songs show their age by featuring a single word in the lyrics that has either fallen out of fashion or has come to mean something new, with it now being a distracting element. However, Good King Wenceslas has retained far more of its original language, making its lyrics charmingly quaint instead of outright laughable.

Plus, the message is good! The king looks out, sees a peasant collecting firewood on a cold-ass night, and instantly and unwaveringly dives headfirst to deliver a Christmas feast! I mean, I won’t claim it’s a GREAT message—Wenceslas doesn’t seem to be eager to enact sweeping societal change promoting equality since such an act would instantly remove him from power—but like, as far as an example of Christmas spirit goes, it’s pretty okay!

3. A Holly Jolly Christmas

With the introduction of rock ‘n roll music to the public consciousness in the 50s, it makes sense that artists would eventually try to incorporate some of that sound in their Christmas songs. Thus, we enter what I would dub the “Christmas party era” of music, with songs like Jingle Bell Rock by Bobby Helms and Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree by Brenda Lee designed to be fresh, fun songs built to get you moving and swaying. These entries into the canon, while now iconic, have lost some of their luster over time. Helms’s lazy drawl drags out what should be an energetic bop, flattening the tune and giving real “bad office party” vibes. Lee manages to inject more character into Rockin’, but so many Christmas references are crammed into the lyrics that it feels like we’re going down a checklist; this is the song that might be performed at a good office party.

On the other hand, A Holly Jolly Christmas expertly incorporates the guitar without it being the focal point of the piece; it offers something fresh while remaining respectful toward the season. Now, this song wasn’t written for Burl Ives, but you’d be forgiven for thinking it was. His rendition is authentically playful in a way that will forever make his the definitive version of the song. Combined, these elements perfectly encapsulate what you imagine a good Christmas party to be—a relaxed atmosphere, filled with family and friends and awash in warm, fun conversation interspersed with laughter. Hell yeah, that’s the party I want to go to.

2. Joy to the World

Okay, I have to ask a real question here. Why in the fuck aren’t there more Christmas songs that are basically “HOLY SHIT the creator of the WHOLE GODDAMN UNIVERSE is HERE! On EARTH! With US! This is AMAZING, are you KIDDING me with this shit?!?!” Like, it seems like that should be the ONLY kind of Christmas song there is, right???

Instead, we pretty much just get Joy to the World, which is an absolute banger for this very reason. If it weren’t for this one song, though, I’d have to claim that Christianity completely fumbled the ball when it comes to rejoicing.

1. Silver Bells

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why Silver Bells is so overlooked. It has that type of old-timey composition everybody loves, and there’s a good chance your favorite crooner has done a version of it. It isn’t repetitive, it’s not propped up by any annoying elements, and it hasn’t grown outdated. If nothing else, it’s a perfectly suitable song; yet I consider myself lucky if a Christmas playlist includes a version of it.

But what sets Silver Bells apart is that it feels attainable. This isn’t some idealistic movie version of Christmas full of peace on earth, winter hijinks, and long-forgotten traditions that cling to relevancy. It says, hey, maybe Christmas doesn’t need all those things. The fact that it’s Christmas is, by itself, enough to introduce that little bit of magic into the world. You can feel that holiday spirit no matter where you are; you just need to slow down for a moment and let it wash over you. Don’t let it be about the shopping, or the music, or the parties, or whatever design Starbucks is using on their cups this year. You don’t have to stress about any of that. Just let Christmas be Christmas, and that’s enough.

And can you think of a cozier, more comforting feeling than that?

The burning question surely must be: was it all worth it? I think I would say yes. This isn’t a jubilant “YES!” that I will be shouting from the rooftops, forever hassling everybody I meet online that they should implement Eleventy for their site generation needs; it’s more of a “Yeah, I like it enough.”

It’s definitely not a one-size-fits-all solution; if you have a small site that you don’t add new pages to often, or if you really like customizing the look and feel of every page, I can’t imagine you’ll see a lot of benefit from Eleventy. If you’re just starting out with HTML and CSS, you will likely be challenged by its more technical nature (trying to do pretty much anything aside from applying layouts to pages requires a fundamental understanding of Javascript which I just do not have).

If you are regularly adding new pages to your site, which maintains fairly consistent styling throughout, it can be worth considering. Ideally, your site content should be laid out in a straightforward manner, preferably in one giant block that you can just slap a header and footer on. It doesn’t offer a lot of flexibility without coming up with some hacky solutions; really, the best time to start working with Eleventy is before you start creating your site, so that you don’t have to try to adapt Eleventy to what you already have.

With that made clear, let’s talk about the fun things I can do now.

Link Management

This was really one of the big ones I wanted. If I want to add a new page, I have to consider the following items:

• I need to update the table of contents for the corresponding section to link the new page.
• I may need to update the navigation at the bottom of the new page to link to the previous page.
• I may need to update the navigation at the bottom of the previous page to link to the new page.
• I need to update the breadcrumb navigation links at the top of the new page to identify it.

Eleventy can handle this legwork for me. I have to explicity define the site structure as well as give each page a unique date/time so it knows what order to put them in, but the former you only have to do once and the latter is also used for the RSS feed so I don’t mind updating it. I haven’t thought about manually editing these links in months. It’s great.

Markdown Editing

A small benefit, but one I’m using right now as I type this: I can write a page using the simpler Markdown format, and Eleventy will convert it to an HTML page. I can worry less about <p> tags and coding lists. A small but welcome convenience; and if I need greater control over the content, I can still plug HTML into the Markdown file and it works just fine. That also means I don’t have to go back and convert all my old HTML-based content to Markdown (thank god).

Header Updating

One of the other features I was looking for. In fact, I’m using it with this very update. I found out about skip links, an accessibility feature that lets users skip over less-important content (such as the site header). A cool idea, but to use it, I’d need to add the link to the top of every page! Well, no worries, because the header is part of the layout, so I just need to update the layout, re-build the site, and it’s done. The hardest part is re-uploading all my pages!

In addition to this capability, I picked up one other neat trick that you can technically use without any sort of site generator, but I find using Eleventy helps implement it.

Most of us small web creators have, at some point, had to instruct our readers to use Ctrl-F5 to do a hard page refresh so that the browser loads in the new version of the CSS file that we just painstakingly updated to overhaul our site’s visuals. Really takes the wind out of your sails. Turns out, though, that you can trick the browser a little bit. In the header, where you tell the page where your CSS file lives, specify a version number, like so:

<link href="style.css?v=1.01" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all">

If you update the CSS file, increment the number in the ?v=1.01 part. The browser caches the the path to the CSS file, so when it looks at the page it goes “oh, this path doesn’t match the one I already have, better grab the new file”. This path obviously doesn’t exist; but since the version number is an optional parameter, the browser will proceed to disregard it and pull style.css as normal, which is now your updated CSS.

Shortcodes

In my original write-up I mentioned the hacky way I was using Shortcodes to handle putting the page content into the correct sections. That was clearly a solution born of necessity; since then, I’ve found other, saner uses for Shortcodes. If you are at all familiar with programming, you can think of them like functions; you can call them, pass arguments if you need to, and get a corresponding snippet of HTML.

So now, I’ll use Shortcodes just to make my code easier to read. For example, each entry in the list of buttons currently on my Links page uses a single Shortcode to pass the site name, URL, and image URL to generate a table row with the proper image and link tags. Again, I didn’t strictly need to do this, but the HTML code for tables is fatiguing to read on a good day; now, it is so much simpler to work with.

RSS Feed

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but like, man. I love not having to mess with my RSS file. I just upload the new version after I rebuild the site. Not that updating the RSS was hard before, just, you know. One more thing I had to do.

Caveats

Despite having simplified a bunch of areas when it comes to creating an maintaining my content, there are still some things I worry about. Nothing has been detrimental thus far, but here are a couple things that could come back to bite me later.

Complexity

Eleventy has undoubtedly introduced a higher level of complexity to my site maintenance. While day-to-day use is easier, I can already sense that I’m starting to lose my grasp on how the entire setup works—sort of like going back to muddle through old CSS code you haven’t touched in a while. Sometimes, half the challenge is figuring out what your code is doing. So now I just have more of that threat looming over me at all times. You know, no biggie.

Application Updates

I’m, uh, kind of scared to update Eleventy. I know it’s probably fine, but all I need is an update breaking my setup, and having to figure out how to fix it before I can post to my site again. Which won’t be easy, thanks to my previous point—I forget exactly how I got all this to work in the first place.

Maybe some weekend when I’m feeling particularly brave and/or foolhardy I’ll give it a go. May the lord have mercy on my soul.

Final Words

That’s about going to put a cap on this section of the site. This was a fun series to do, but now that I have Eleventy set up the way I like it, I don’t really want to spend a lot more time fussing with it. I just want to get you folks more of… well, whatever it is I actually do around here.

If anything, maybe I’ll go back and touch up some wording in the previous entries; re-reading them now it’s clear I was rushing through them, and I’m not sure they make a whole lot of sense in some places. But perhaps that’s a problem for Memorial Day weekend next year.

1. Nothing.
2. Do not buy me anything.
3. I do not want you to spend money on me.
4. I don’t want more stuff.
5. I don’t want to have to find some way to integrate something I did not ask for into my life.
6. I don’t want to reduce this magical holiday to an exchange of cheap, thoughtless commodities we purchased online and had shipped to our doors.
7. I don’t want my happiness to be based on the relentless search for the temporary thrill of novelty.
8. I don’t want the guilt of perpetuating this greedy, destructive, consumerist mindset.
9. I am begging you, please, for the love of god, I do not want to receive anything.
10. A fun pair of socks.

10. Potato Chips

In the US, chips are such a staple snack item that my local 13-aisle grocery store dedicates an entire aisle just to chips (and the occasional pretzel, but I digress). But that’s not what makes them American. No, what elevates them to true patriot status is the fact that you cannot eat these things without feeling like the most disgusting person on the planet. They’re uncomfortably greasy, they’re so crunchy that they practically announce to the world “I’m eating chips”, and they are either so large and misshapen or so cracked and broken that there’s no way to elegantly insert them into your mouth. This displeasure is multiplied when you are consuming them straight from the bag, inserting your greedy, grubby hands over and over, rummaging through the crinkly material, digging crumbs out of the corners, suffering the shame of it all as you do so. Our national snack, everybody.

9. Soda Pop

When they were first created, “soft drinks” were marketed for medicinal use, largely because a) they contained cocaine, and b) nobody thought it would be easy to convince people to regularly consume what essentially amounts to effervescent sugar water. Eventually, we made cocaine illegal to everybody who wasn’t a high-power business mogul (easily the most American of professions), so soft drink companies pretty much had no choice but to fall back on the “well, it also tastes good” argument. This ended up being easier than they expected, and now people drink so much of this stuff that even RC Cola is still able to continue existing somehow. Of course, nobody makes it with sugar anymore, because sugar isn’t cheap enough; now they make it with corn syrup, which is somehow even worse for you. But you need to keep drinking it because your favorite restaurants rely on its huge profit margins to keep from going out of business.

8. The Egg McMuffin

Only the United States could be so brazen as to go “Hmm, we need Americans to leave the house as early as possible in the mornings to drive to the office and start generating capital for us, but we also need them to eat an adequate and fulfilling breakfast so they’re capable of working through lunch,” and instead of deciding that these two goals might be somehow incongruous with one another, they figured out a way to charge us $4.99 for it.

7. Pizza

I know what you’re thinking. “But pizza is Italian!” Technically accurate. But let’s be real here: Italy is so invested in spaghetti and alfredo and shit that they essentially let their trademark on pizza lapse, and we snatched it up in a BIG way. Pizza is everywhere over here. Wikipedia says that, on any given day, 13% of Americans consume pizza. We get into fights over which regions make the best pizza. I have maybe 8 restaurants near my house, and 7 of them are pizza joints; and when one of those happens to go under, they just replace it with a new pizza place, because even if demand for pizza does have an upper limit, it sure as hell doesn’t seem like it does.

Pizza is Italian? Please. Overpaying for delivery so we have one less reason to do anything outside our house is so American it hurts.

6. American Cheese

No, I’m not just including this in the list because it has “American” in the name. But, look, if your boss asked you to make an “American” version of cheese, and you gave them a neutered orange square that neither tastes good nor absorbs light in a convincing way, AND you needlessly wrapped each slice in its own sheet of plastic, they would make you president of the goddamn company.

5. The Denny’s Grand Slam Breakfast

Really, I could have gone with any combination platter featuring pancakes/waffles/French toast/scrambled eggs/fried eggs/soft-boiled eggs/eggs benedict/omelets/hash browns/home fries/sausage links/sausage patties/bacon/Canadian bacon/scrapple/corned beef hash/country fried steak/sausage gravy/oatmeal/cereal/grits/yogurt/white toast/rye toast/English muffin/bagel/fruit, cooked exclusively in butter and lard, and served with a cup of coffee/tea/hot chocolate/orange juice/apple juice/milk/chocolate milk/strawberry milk/Coke products/Pepsi products/water for under $15 at an establishment somehow equipped to offer this smorgasbord to you 24 hours a day, but I’m giving it to Denny’s because they named theirs after baseball for some reason.

4. Fried Chicken

Naturally, I had to include SOMETHING deep-fat-fried on this list. That plus the state of Kentucky is synonymous with fried chicken, and if I was doing a list of the most American states, Kentucky would be pretty high up there.

3. Pork Barbecue

This is the only entry on this list that I, as an American, am not horribly embarrassed by.

2. Hot Dog

Recall that earlier in this list, I looked at pizza and argued that it’s kind of an American thing now. Well, picture that for hot dogs, except worse. We basically took German sausage and weaponized it in our War on Culture, converting a food that was earnest and nuanced into something that’s pink, floppy, and sold in packs of 12. A hot dog is not a delicacy; it is easy to cook and easy to eat, which is why it is commonly associated with backyard grilling, ballparks, and street vendors alike. Hell, a hot dog has more value to us as entertainment than it does as a meal. We now fire hot dogs out of cannons at the faces of eager stadium-goers because it’s funny. We wear hot dog costumes as a joke. We have people who make entire careers off of a once-a-year hot dog eating contest, undergoing intense training regimens, developing new strategies, pushing the boundaries of hot dog consumption, all so we can witness a person stuffing as many hot dogs into themself as humanly possible.

You know how we look back at the Roman Colosseum drawing in roaring crowds for blood sport and understand how it says something damning about the society of that time? Yeah, that’s going to be Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest someday.

1. Hamburger

I could rattle off some armchair historian bullshit about how the need for an on-the-go food staple took advantage of ample pasture lands to produce a beef patty that could easily be slapped onto a bun by underpaid workers and sold quickly and cheaply to the Great American Motorist, thus explaining how the hamburger came to be closely tied to the United States; and I would probably be right. But what I know is, you ask any non-American what an American food is, they’re going to say hamburger. That’s all there is to it.

]]> Sun, 23 Nov 2025 18:00:00 GMT Skep https://skep.place/top-10s/american-food.html https://skep.place/classics/treasureisland/12.html At the very moment that Jim is going to be discovered hiding in the apple barrel and eavesdropping on Silver’s plan to take over the ship and ride off... At the very moment that Jim is going to be discovered hiding in the apple barrel and eavesdropping on Silver’s plan to take over the ship and ride off with the treasure, the sentry shouts, “Land ho!”

While Captain Smollett plans their landing with Silver, Jim informs Dr. Livesey that they kind of have a major problem on their hands, and they need to talk in private. Livesey plays it cool, quietly passing the news to Smollett, who distracts the crew by allowing them to pour out some grog as thanks for their efforts thus far, and the crew gives a hearty cheer for the man they are actively plotting to overthrow.

In short order, Jim meets with Smollett, Livesey, and Trelawney below deck and tells them everything he overheard, about Silver’s scheme and how many men are in on the plot. Trelawney owns up to being an ass, though even Smollett admits that if there are plans to mutiny, there’s usually some indication that it’s a possibility; but not so with this otherwise agreeable crew.

But Smollett isn’t a man to waste words, so he lays out everything they know for certain:

1. They have to keep going for the treasure, because calling the whole thing off now would be way too suspicious.
2. The pirates won’t make a move until the treasure is found, and maybe not even until they disembark again, so they have some time left.
3. Silver had mentioned that some of the crew weren’t in on the plot.

Smollett’s best course of action—as desperate as it is—is to wait until an opportune moment, then launch a preemptive stike on the pirates to take them by surprise. This isn’t a particularly encouraging plan, given that the number people they can trust is incredibly low: themselves, and the handful of men Trelawney brought along as his entourage… meaning they are more or less outnumbered 3-to-1.

“I’d be willing to blow the ship up,” Trelawney adds helpfully.

]]> Thu, 20 Nov 2025 01:10:00 GMT Skep https://skep.place/classics/treasureisland/12.html https://skep.place/classics/treasureisland/11.html Huh. So Long John Silver is actually a pirate. You think the author would have foreshadowed this or something. Huh. So Long John Silver is actually a pirate. You think the author would have foreshadowed this or something.

]]> Thu, 20 Nov 2025 01:05:00 GMT Skep https://skep.place/classics/treasureisland/11.html https://skep.place/classics/treasureisland/10.html With a rousing rendition of “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!”, the Hispaniola disembarks for the sea. Jim recounts that the voyage itself was very... With a rousing rendition of “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!”, the Hispaniola disembarks for the sea. Jim recounts that the voyage itself was very pleasant, aside from a couple of events that he says we should probably know about going forward, which is really underselling what he’s about to tell us.

For example, the first mate Mr. Arrow eventually disappears in the middle of the night and nobody bats an eye at it. To that point he’d been constantly getting drunk—though nobody knew where he was getting the booze—and when he finally goes missing (presumably falling overboard), even Captain Smollett says, yeah, honestly I’m fine with that.

If there are any other notable events that take place on this voyage, however, we’re going to have to wait, because Jim now spends some time recounting what life on the ship was like even though he told us he wasn’t going to do that. There’s brief mention of the weather, and of Smollett’s and Trelawney’s continued bickering, but most of all we get more insight on Long John Silver, who is apparently badass enough to warrant having a second nickname from the crew, this one being “Barbecue”. I don’t love it, but you weren’t ever going to top “Long John Silver” when it comes to cool pirate errr… sailor… names, so I appreciate Robert Louis Stevenson not really trying.

Anyway, Silver is well-respected by the crew, and by Jim, who he spends a lot of time telling stories to. Silver also has a talking parrot, who he calls “Cap’n Flint”, which was the name of the feared pirate captain we learned about at the beginning of the book so you’d think that would be a red flag, but the connection isn’t even mentioned.

Lastly, Jim tells us about a barrel of apples that is open to any man hankering for a snack at any time. Although a seemingly insignificant detail, Jim says that he went to fetch himself an apple one night to discover the barrel nearly empty. Apparently, his solution to “I want one of the apples at the bottom” is to climb into the barrel, and subsequently crouch down so that he conveniently can’t be seen by anybody who might happen to be doing some secret scheming nearby.

Well, it turns out that while he’s crouched down in the barrel, some people DO come nearby to do some secret scheming. And wouldn’t you know it—one of them is Long John Silver.

]]> Thu, 20 Nov 2025 01:00:00 GMT Skep https://skep.place/classics/treasureisland/10.html https://skep.place/blog/2025-11-10.html

]]> Tue, 11 Nov 2025 02:00:00 GMT Skep https://skep.place/blog/2025-11-10.html https://skep.place/misc/stamps.html Something that came up in the Neocities comments recently—and something that I had completely forgotten about myself—is that I had a stamp collection... Something that came up in the Neocities comments recently—and something that I had completely forgotten about myself—is that I had a stamp collection when I was young.

Now, I would not go so far as to say I collected stamps. But I had a stamp collection. This is a key distinction.

This was so long ago that I can’t recall exactly how it started. I can nearly guarantee I never wanted a stamp collection. While I admit that I had my share of baffling and untenable desires as a child, I have difficulty picturing a world where stamps were something I yearned for. However, I suspect I can trace the roots of this collection back to my formative years in the Cub Scouts, which, for the unfamiliar, is pretty much “Boy Scouts, but for pre-teens”. You can see why the Boy Scouts of America would want to develop such a program, because A) that’s twice as many years of selling you overpriced uniforms and pinewood derby kits and shit, and B) it’s more reliable to pull you into the system when it’s your mom signing you up, rather than expecting you to decide at the age of 12 that you want to spend your Tuesday evenings learning how to whittle.

I’m pretty certain the Cub Scouts were involved because if you wanted to progress through the ranks, you had to become a well-rounded, model child by completing all manner of requirements across many various vocations (or at least scraping by with as little effort as you could get away with); and looking back on it, these requirements seemed to be really good at locking me into doing things I didn’t actually want to do. For example, although I played two years of youth recreation soccer during this time, I distinctly remember not wanting to do the second year, largely because I had reached the point in my life where my body was deciding that, actually, being able to run for 30 seconds without growing winded was overrated, and wouldn’t we be much happier just having self-esteem issues the rest of our life instead?

In the end, nobody was particularly pleased at me signing up for that second year of soccer, least of all me. Given the fact that I tended to spend two out of four periods every game sitting on the bench—more than everybody else, and I suspect, the most allowed by league policy—my coach would have preferred to cut me from the team if he’d had the power to eject a hapless kid from a recreational league. This meant my mom was carting my ass around to practices and matches just to watch me spend half the game not playing; I don’t assume she was very enthusiastic about this. However, in my eyes, sitting on the bench was a sweet mercy, because in spite of my clear and embarrassing lack of cardiovascular endurance the coach had decided I would cause the least amount of damage playing midfield, a position that requires covering both sides of the pitch and constantly running back and forth along 80% of its length. If given the choice, I would have played goaltender, or alternately defense; but in the end, my pleas were unheard, and I spent the season growing to despise the position I had been relegated to in the increasingly rare instances I was allowed to play.

As I write this I realize why, throughout the entirety of my high school career, I eagerly volunteered to be the goalie in every net-and-field sport we played in gym class: soccer, field hockey, street hockey, lacrosse, you name it. In my broken little brain, using my body to block incoming projectiles—without any protection, I might add, because the school didn’t have the funds for it—was less painful than the psychological torment of having to run around for 20-30 minutes.

I’m getting off-track here, but I think you can see how the Cub Scout program is a likely culprit behind how I ended up possessing a stamp collection while lacking any interest in possessing said stamp collection. I’m sure that somewhere along the way, my guide book said (paraphrasing here) “if you want this badge, you need to have a collection of something”, and apparently my chest full of assorted Lego bricks didn’t count.

But why stamps, of all things? Alas, thanks to my poor memory, this requires even more speculation than before. I can, however, easily picture a world wherein my mother, being equally as exasperated with this process as I was, started rattling off popular types of collections for lack of any better ideas:

• Insect collecting? Ick. Who wants to catch, gas, and pin up bugs for the pleasure of looking at dead bugs?
• Coin collecting? Hey, this is circa 1999; a quarter from the Tooth Fairy in exchange for a bicuspid still gets a kid a lot of buying power. If I’m gathering loose change, it’s just so I can turn around and spend it.
• Stamp collecting? …Well, hey, stamps come to the house attached to mail all the time. We’re just throwing them out. This will be easy!

Obviously, I did not put a lot of forethought into this idea (although in my defense, I did not want to do the idea in the first place). Corporate mailings tended to be pre-paid and didn’t include postage. Anything else that might be lumped into a group generously labeled “personal mail” was likely to be using the 32-cent standard with the American flag design. Well hell, my dad kept two rolls of those in the stationary drawer, I didn’t need to collect them from envelopes. Maybe if I was lucky I’d see some seasonally-appropriate designs attached to Christmas cards. Not to mention, if this is your approach, you’re only ever going to see stamps as old as anybody happens to have sitting around the house. What about the rich and varied history of stamp designs ripe for the collecting?

This presents something of an issue to a child who lives 45 minutes away from the nearest major metropolitan area, which itself barely cracks the Top 10 list of most populated cities in the state. We’re also a good five years out from reliable online shopping. Where the hell do you even get stamps? (aside from the post office, that doesn’t count)

Thankfully, this was a solved problem by the late 90s. It’s time to talk about Mystic Stamp Company.

I’m sure this was one of those companies from this era that sent unsolicited catalogs to your address, or advertised in the back of magazines or on local television stations, something to that effect. It could have been one of these advertisements that put the idea into my mother’s head in the first place; again, I was so divested from this process that my parents were doing all the legwork in arranging this collection just so I could cross off the stupid checkbox.

But wouldn’t you know it, Mystic Stamp Company sold stamps via mail-order! All kinds of stamps, from all eras, at prices I can only assume were egregious!

And conveniently, they also sold branded albums and materials to safely mount and protect your stamps, again at prices I would probably be outraged by today!

(It doesn’t escape me how, in reliving all these distant and nearly-forgotten childhood memories of activities I engaged in, instead of allowing myself to indulge in the warm veneer of nostalgia all I’m capable of feeling is unrepentant, biting cynicism. No wonder I’m so goddamn depressed.)

Here’s how it worked: Mystic Stamp Company sent you an album full of pre-printed pages, organized chronologically and by collection, each with black-and-white images of stamps that would act as a placeholder until you acquired the real thing. 99% of these placeholders would never be filled in, but I guess it was a cool way to get you excited about the stamps you could possibly obtain, assuming it is possible to be excited about stamps (it is not). Of course, you don’t just affix the stamp to the page using its built-in adhesive, because then it would ruin the resale value (in the unlikely event your next-of-kin finds a willing buyer for that particular stamp). Instead, you buy these plastic mounts that are folded on the top and bottom and have a clear panel on the front; insert the stamp, adhere the back of the top fold to the page over the placeholder, and you have a relatively secure system for storing that piece of history you’re going to place onto a bookshelf and never look at again.

I know the stamps themselves came from Mystic; I don’t know how they were chosen, because, as should not be a surprise at this point, I did not pick them out myself. I wasn’t excitedly sitting down with the Mystic Stamp catalog and a felt-tip marker the same way we all did with the Sears Wish Book three weeks before Christmas. As best as I can recall, there never seemed to be any rhyme or reason to what stamps I received from what collections, and it’s easy to guess that they had “assortment” packs made up of excess inventory that they charged slightly-less exorbitant prices for, making them appealing targets to beleaguered parents trying to get their 11-year-old son to show an interest in literally anything besides his Game Boy.

I do remember evenings spread out uncomfortably on the living room floor (because I hadn’t yet grown a brain and realized I could do this at the damn table), retrieving a stamp from the pile, flipping through pages in my album until I found wherever the hell this one was supposed to live, wrangling it into its plastic mount, and affixing it into its proper place, then repeating the process ad nauseum, all the while wishing I could be doing something more fun, like math homework, or cleaning my room. I know I reached a point where stamps kept coming in (why were we still buying these?!) and I was just putting them aside, figuring I’d get around to organizing and mounting them later.

I never did. Conveniently, the entertainment center that held our TV had two cabinets underneath—a perfect place for hiding away stamp albums where I never had to think about them ever again. I did make it through the entirety of the Cub Scouts and graduated into the next tier of scouting, but once it became evident that the Boy Scouts were going to require actual investment on my part, I bailed and dedicated myself to video games full-time.

Turns out, Mystic Stamp Company is still around, doing pretty much the exact same thing they were doing back then. Look, you can even get the same cheap 3-ring binder filled with what look to be the same placeholder pages they sold 25 years ago. $40 for a single volume, collect all six.

They’ll also sell me one of those 32-cent American flag stamps brand-new for $1.30. Who needs to invest in stocks when you can invest in postage stamps.

I’m not exactly sure what became of the stamp “collection”. I moved on to college without giving it a second thought. I believe my dad asked me fairly recently if I wanted it. I told him he could sell it. Seems fair; it was probably his money that paid for it all, anyway. Maybe he could recoup some of the losses.

But, who can say. He might still have it, and I’ll find it later on down the road when I’m in the process of carrying out his will, probably tucked away forgotten in the attic somewhere. Or maybe he’s taken it upon himself to fill out the blank pages, scouring auctions and estate sales for the odd postage stamp that would be insignificant to most people today.

In which case, good. That man needs a hobby.

]]> Tue, 28 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT Skep https://skep.place/misc/stamps.html