Both Are True

ok so listen because this is crazy - tomorrow i am doing a live session called MAKE COMPUTERS FUN AGAIN with my besties over at Sublime aka Sari Azout and gabriel. there are, at the time of this writing, 757 people registered. WHAT THE FELL (fuck+hell) i cannot imagine that Zoom can handle that many people. i’ve reached out to Zoom to see what they plan on doing tomorrow and have not heard back. that silence speaks volumes.

Growing up, I’d make my parents say sorry to each other whenever they were fighting. Then I’d check to confirm they’d done it. “Did you say sorry?” I’d ask. “Yes.” “Did Dad say sorry?” “Yes.” “Are you guys still fighting?” Sometimes they’d tell me the truth - “yes, we are.” Other times they’d lie. I wonder how all of that must have been for them. Did my blunt negotiation tactics help? I’m not sure if my blunt negotiator schtick actually helped, but I needed to do it. Like a compulsion.

Alex Dobrenko Aug 7, 2026 Homeroom 213 i feel like everything has become too polished online? like when i think about publishing something on substack, i am immediately and without even realizing it already thinking about how it’ll perform - the shape of it as an experience for the audience. there is little gestation or creative shaping of a thing before it is seen from the POV of the audience that shall receive it.

Hey Billy’s and Joel’s this is me ripping off the cuff off the dome like a freestyle but on the phone it’s rhymed so far but who knows when the time has come for that to end I’m doing this as a voice note. I really hope I get a vote in what you ask. I do not know but this I fear is how it go. So all of that really was a voice note and so is this also I wanted to share this post because I’ve been wondering what the hell the point of Substack even is anymore?

i have a confession: I’ve been using ai a lot. Maybe this isn’t even a confession since i kind of talked about it already and also because i’ve literally already written a post with a header titled ‘confession pt 2’, but still. it feels like i’ve been keeping a secret. like you’ll judge me, like y’all will hate me (more than, of course, you already do, since that’s all an audience who tells you that they love your stuff actually does - hate you).

Wake up babies, it’s go time! No, I don’t know what that means, but i think you do… don’t you? We know so much more than we know, ya know? “You guys know how to drive this thing, right?” “YEA” my kids scream, pudgy hands gripping tightly the two count em two steering wheels of the…shopping cart? car cart? car. This is a car and YEA they know how to drive, so with a guttural bub bub bubububububbbbbbbbvvvvvvvvvvv, the car is on and we are off, into the orange fog of lamps and lumber.

A country is like a family is like a butthole - everybody’s got one and they all stink and we’d be shit out of luck without em. And much like our own family butthole, we know much too much about our own. Its ins and outs and darks and farts. We love to complain when they’re not working right, which is always, except, of course, most of the time, in most of the ways. “You have no idea how good it is here,” my parents tell me. They’re right.

there is a monster on the loose he is my son and he’s a goose

rare is this feeling when tears come like water from the stream and i feel them so much that even my judgement of them means nothing “so much” i say in my daughter’s voice “ i love them so much” she says, about everything her purple pants her babies her bear her kitty cat we moved two days ago a new house a fresh start though the tightness started earlier months? years?

i have a fear of i know not what not a fear of not knowing, though i have that too, obviously, but of starting to write, of finishing, publishing, doing the thing because of what may come. it’s weird to admit this, given how much time i have spent acting oppositely, sometimes even believing it.