All That You Lost, You Get Back

OPENING MONOLOGUE

Hello there from Poland.

I got a lot of responses from last week’s newsletter. I’m always grateful that people are reading this, so when people hit reply and write back, well, that feels like desserts. Thank you.

This week I talk about the deterioration of the internet, my old comic strip Youth in Asia, how I learned to stop asking “How are you?” and more. I even have a special treat at the end.

Today's reading

• Youth in Asia

• A Year in Editing

• You Shall Know Our Velocity

• How are you?

• Coca-Cola Cake

Youth in Asia

I’ve been thinking a lot about how the internet has been deteriorating. Even reliable tools like the Wayback Machine — meant to preserve the internet — have become jittery. We can see that the internet is not forever, as promised and warned about over the last 30 years.

For instance, Youth in Asia was a comic strip I wrote and drew for Legion Studios, an online publishing company I ran with my friends Derrek and Scott from 2001 to 2005. It was one of two comic strips that we published (the other being Broken Seal).

Youth in Asia was about a group of terminally ill patients in a hospital with a particular focus on Watson, an elderly man who was most likely a serial killer. Here’s what it looked like:

I realized recently that I didn’t have any copies of the original strips saved. So I went online to see if there were any I could find. After exhausting the usual options, I visited the Wayback Machine to review the old Legion Studios website. Previously, there were dozens of saved captures of the website, but I was dismayed to see that there was only one now. And, sadly, that capture was broken.

Then I remembered that I also published Youth in Asia in print thanks to TooSquare Magazine. It was distributed throughout the Tampa Bay area on the first weekend of each month between 2001 and 2003. TooSquare was meant to rival the Weekly Planet — a juggernaut publication that has since become Creative Loafing — but honestly, no one had a chance against it. TooSquare went out of business in 2003, right before I moved to Poland.  

Of course, I don’t have any print copies of TooSquare.

But they had a website, so I went back to the Wayback Machine and found the broken remains of TooSquare’s site. I managed to find one of the Youth in Asia strips (above). 

I think there were about ten strips in total, but all I have is one.

A Year in Editing

When I was teaching back in the day, I could see a clear path to editing full-time but I was too afraid to branch off on my own. I mean, starting my own business? In Poland?

And now I’ve been editing for a living for seven years. It’s crazy to think about.

None of this would be possible without the amazing clients I’ve had the chance to collaborate with – especially those who keep trusting me with more work.

Here’s how 2024 broke down:

⭐ 1,319 projects*

⭐ 7,839 pages

⭐ 1,501,805 words

For some perspective, that’s like editing ALL of the Harry Potter books and then continuing with another 500K words.

Not bad for a year’s worth of work.

*Projects include blog and academic articles, whitepapers, decks, social media posts, landing pages, newsletters, short stories, and a novel.

You Shall Know Our Velocity

This is the second time I’ve read Dave Eggers’ You Shall Know Our Velocity. I remember liking it when I first read it in 2005 and I walked away with a greater appreciation of the story this time around.

The book tells the story of Will (the narrator) and Hand who decide to travel around the world in a week and give away a large sum of money. Naturally, accomplishing these two things turns out to be more difficult than you’d think.

On the surface, You Shall Know Our Velocity is a frenetic road trip story, but it’s really about Will coming to terms with the recent death of his childhood friend, the aftermath of a brutal physical assault that left his face bruised and scarred, his own abandonment issues, and his mortality.

It’s also chockful of some lovely prose.

I like Eggers when he’s trying new things with text, as he did with his debut novel, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. It’s the kind of thing readers tend to love and hate in equal measure, but I like the electricity that comes from the page when writers are trying new things. And You Shall Know Our Velocity has a few tricks that I adore.

Since its publication, there’s been a revised edition of the book with 49 pages of new material (the hardcover edition is titled Sacrament and the new paperback edition adds an exclamation mark to the title: You Shall Know Our Velocity!), which, I’m told, fundamentally changes the story in some significant ways. I’ve read about these changes, and I think I’m perfectly fine with the book as it was originally published.

How are you?

I didn’t realize until I moved to Poland that Americans use “How are you?” as another way of saying “Hello!”. It’s a statement, not a question.

You’re walking down the street and someone says, “How ARE you?” and it wouldn’t be unusual for the other person not to answer and say, “How are YOU?” and just keep walking.

But then a funny thing happened in Poland. I was shopping when I saw a Polish colleague. We were walking towards each other and he said, “How are you?” and I said, “I’m good, how are you?” and then the weirdest thing happened — HE STOPPED AND TOLD ME HOW HE WAS DOING LIKE SOME KIND OF PSYCHOPATH!

“Oh, Christian, my day isn’t good at all. It’s terrible.” He kept talking. There was even a moment when I thought he was going to cry.

Anyway, long story short — I now mean it when I say it because, you know, you’re supposed to.

So, how are you today?

Coca-Cola Cake

Some of you reached out with questions about the Coca-Cola Cake. Some asked for the recipe, but mostly, people wanted to know what the hell it was.

Before I give you this recipe, please understand that this cake is decadent. It’s loaded with an obscene amount of sugar. There is no swapping ingredients to make it healthy. There is only the mad joy of how depraved and indulgent this cake is to eat.

And you should eat this cake, because you fucking deserve it.

Mix the flour and sugar in a large bowl.

In a pan, mix the butter, cocoa, and Coca-Cola and bring to a boil.

Pour the pan ingredients into the bowl with the flour and sugar, and mix well.

Add buttermilk, baking soda, eggs, salt, and vanilla. Mix again until it’s well blended.

Pour the mixture into a greased pan (I usually use a 9×13 baking dish).

Bake at 350°F (180°C) for 30-35 minutes.

Heat the butter, cocoa, and Coca-Cola in a pan and bring to a boil. Add the powdered sugar and vanilla. Stir to blend.

Make holes in the hot cake with a fork and pour the hot icing over it.

Lock your doors. Close your curtains. And enjoy.

As Drunk Hulk once said, “YOU CAN HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO! ESPECIALLY IF YOU BAKE THAT CAKE IN SECRET!”

NOTES:

• I usually make buttermilk. In this case, put ½ cup of milk in a bowl and add ½ tablespoonful of vinegar or lemon juice. Stir it and wait a few minutes as it starts to curdle.

• Poking the cake with a fork is a must because you want the icing to seep into the cake as it cools.

• If you’re curious about what it tastes like, imagine a Dunkin Donuts chocolate glazed donut on steroids.

That’s it for this week.

Thanks for reading.