Episode transcript:

“If it’s a cult, it’s certainly a soft sell,” said Linda. She had dragged her old laptop out to Miriam’s coffee shop, intending to work on her personal essay.

But writing is a task which makes every other task seem more attractive.

She was currently explaining the Squatty Squat to Miriam. Since that day, Linda had messaged a few times with Squatty about ideas for the essay — “Do you think it’s possible I might be an artist? I designed a few logos for the pizza place.” His responses were always encouraging and enthusiastic, but there was never any sales pitch or pressure tactics. Just a bunch of guys making zines and kind of obsessed with some online videos.

That was another of the things she managed to accomplish instead of writing: Squatty had sent her a playlist: “Start here for enlightenment, wink emoji.”

And Linda was starting to get it. Old Gen X hipster with old Gen X anti-corporate ideas. “Stop letting them make you buy stuff,” was the gist. And Linda did.

She had been looking at new watches, because after a few weeks she was learning how hard it actually was. Without the bio-metric scan on her watch, she had no way to access any money besides going into an actual bank, for Christ’s sake. And as everyone knew, contemporary banks were not meant to handle people inside.

Withdrawing her own cash was a miserable experience that drove Linda straight to browsing minimalist watches that cost more that the pizza place netted in six months. There were cheaper, of course, but the minimalist ones had the feeling that re-buying a watch wasn’t a capitulation to a techno-structure that had been making her feel so oppressed. That’s right, she said it, oppressed.

So she ended up not buying a new watch and letting Brian buy everything for her.

As Linda was chatting with Miriam, one of the Squatty Boys came in. Adrian. It was a cloudy day, Linda noticed. Cloudy, damp and cold. The kind of weather that used to be appropriate for this time of year, that you didn’t see any more, now that everyone was choosing perfect conditions every time.

Adrian greeted Linda warmly. “I’ve been working on something for your piece,” he said.

He got a coffee and then he and Linda sat at a table. He pulled up some photos of his work in progress.

Adrian had a faux-vintage watch that mimicked the aesthetics of an old Casio wrist calculator. Linda noticed that people of his age were currently wild for the look of things from a time before she was even born. She also had to admit it was pretty cool looking. More fun than the bougie “timepieces” she had been considering.

But, no. She was committed to a no-watch lifestyle. Maybe that could be the hook for her essay.

Adrian’s artwork was much cooler than even his hip-kid watch. If Linda had had the vocabulary, she would have described it as a mixed media piece; vibrant paper cutouts depicting weather events on a background of decoupaged code.

“It’s the public API that Weather Aboveground uses,” Adrian explained.

It was really cool looking, and Linda said so. “It makes me wish my essay was better,” she said.

“You can starve to death waiting for perfection,” Adrian reassured her. “That’s a Dub-T special.”

Inspired, Linda sat down at her computer again to take another stab. The boys had already produced three issues of the zine in the time since she pitched her idea. Linda had even helped them distribute them around town, to mission-allied book stores and trendy boutiques. But Squatty always held space for Linda until just before going to press.

When she didn’t make it, they just filled it in with a fake recruitment ad for Viva Coco. “We don’t know what this is, but we’re pretty sure you should join.”

One of the guys even made his own buttons for everyone to wear. It was becoming an in-joke with a life of its own.

There came a time when a joke outlived its usefulness.

Today, Linda was going to finish the essay. Just put one word after another.

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