Habit- Forming Substances

Which tools actually do it for you?

Hello, Dames Nation!

For the opening topic of tonight’s issue, I bring you: a celebrity auction. Did our last issue also focus on celebrity auctions? MAYBE. But you know what?

If this is TOO MUCH celebrity auction content, you should go ahead and find less. JKJKJK, please don’t leave us, we love you!

My better argument in favor of this seeming repetition is that tonight’s auction is a very different kind of celebrity auction. Dame Sophie’s auction issue was about individual famous women selling their own personal effects. The auction I’m bringing to your attention tonight is an altogether zanier and more joyous type: a celebrity fundraising auction, specifically one to benefit the U.K. charity Medical Aid for Palestinians. While none of the goods or services on offer are quite as immediately iconic as those offered in September 2023’s SAG-WGA Auction, I think we can all agree that it would have been a fool’s errand to attempt to top items like “Lena Dunham Will Paint a Mural in Your Home” or “Adam Scott Walks your Dog for 1-HR (LA Based Doggies Only).” And there are definitely still some entertaining offers to consider. For example, we have a Read a Bedtime Story-Off between two prestigious British actors: First we have actor and director Rebecca Hall, currently fetching £325:

…which seems fine until you see that Tilda Swinton, offering the very same service is currently fetching… £1,000.

Searing embarrassment for Rebecca Hall. At least she has Morgan Spector, her outrageously attractive husband, to comfort her after this sure-to-be-crushing defeat.

Next up in Auction Entries of Note, please allow me to share the item in this auction I would most appreciate receiving:

I know, I hear you, you’re like “Margaret, wait— isn’t Rose Matafeo already your girlfriend? Can’t she annotate and sign a script for you any old time?” and obviously, yes, we’ve been together since Starstruck first premiered in the U.S. in 2021. But I have to support my baby!!!!! I want her auction item to perform well!!! It’s for a good cause, after all. So this is still the item I would most appreciate a generous benefactor purchasing for me.

That said, if supporting my beloved girlfriend Rose wasn’t my #1 priority, I would be sorely tempted by this thoughtful offering from Ayo Edibri:

But actually tempting offers aren’t really what I’m here to catalog. I’m here to catalog oddities. Like two British film critics offering to crochet you a copy of a blanket seen on Breaking Bad:

But the undisputed victor of this auction, the only item that even comes close to touching the hem of “Natasha Lyonne Will Help You Solve the New York Times’ Sunday Crossword”’s garment? That is, without question, The Crown’s Young Prince Charles’ “perfect porridge tutorial + recipe”

Well done, Josh O’Connor. In addition to being so handsome that many felt you portraying Charles was tantamount to royalist propaganda, you have also handily won this celebrity auction. Others might earn more for their goods and/or services than you do. But none will earn their charity dollars more memorably.

---

Celebrity Outrage Generation: Send Me Your Questions!

---

Fuckin’ Habits: How Do They Work?*

As a person living with ADHD, habit formation is both my salvation and the most elusive bitch on the block. Cementing a good habit is the #1 way to permanently improve my life and I cannot make myself adhere to any new ones for the life of me— save for a few key exceptions! Which I feel obliged to share because, like, if they work for me, a person whose brain is literally allergic to habits??? Who knows how much they might be able to do for the neurotypicals out there— lllolol, jk jk, I know all the neuros in this audience are probably at least a LITTLE divergent. Either way, here are the only helpful habits I can recall forming:

1. At some point in my early work-from-home days, I bought myself a whimsical vintage candy jar for my desk. “Candy on the desk, so adorable!” I thought to myself, “What a nice way to put the ‘homey’ in home office.” Then two weeks and roughly 19 pounds of Haribo Peaches later, I realized I cannot be trusted to conduct myself responsibly if there is AN ENTIRE JAR OF CANDY ON MY DESK. I’d awake, see the jar, think “Ah yes, my suggested daily dosage of candy!”, and unhinge my jaw so I could pour the entire thing directly down my gullet. So I started keeping tampons in the jar instead (cheeky, feminist), leaving my bulk candy downstairs in the kitchen. And THIS is where my good habit came in: I realized that, if decanted into one of my many pieces of vintage glassware, I could actually view a literal serving or maybe two of a snack as sufficient snack. And this remains true to this very day. This very day, I counted 18 individual Dorito chips (a serving and a half; Sweet Thai Chili flavor), placed them in an elegant Blendo snack bowl, and clipped the chip bag shut in which state it has remained for the rest of the night. Me, who’d never met a bag of chips too large to be a single serving!!! The secret is definitely the profound satisfaction of using my pretty dishes. So, for this to work, you may need to have pretty dishes and no other reason to use them. But if you have those specific conditions???? Then by jove, this habit may be for you.

2. This is the oldest life hack I’m sharing today: more than 10 years ago, when I realized that as I switched from purse to purse as my outfit demanded, I always left some essential item behind in the discarded purse. So I bought a little striped mesh zippered pouch and turned it into the Heart of My Purse. Thenceforth, all my everyday purse essentials— lip balm, keys, Altoids, aspirin, a pen I don’t hate writing with, bandaids— went into the Heart of My Purse, leaving me just one item to transplant each time I switched purses. It’s become impossibly crowded and heavy over the years, like if a regular-sized Mom Bag collapsed in upon itself like a dying star. But I nearly always have my keys and lip balm so, in the end, I think it’s worth it.

3. My final useful habit: find a list-making app on your phone you don’t hate, one that will let you check items off without having them disappear once checked. I use To-Do, which is the shockingly unobjectionable Microsoft application that ate the independent app I initially embraced. Don’t use this app to make normal to-do lists, though— they’re a trap. Instead, next time you travel, take 15 minutes BEFORE you begin to pack and make a brain-dump checklist of all the stuff you need— power cords, hairpins, shampoo, sun block, chewing gum, every piddling little thing. And boom: you’ve made yourself a tool that will make the next 15 years of your traveling life at least 60% better. Now, once you’ve packed, just open that list, check off the items you know you’ve added to your bags, and— here’s the important part— thereby identify whichever necessary thing you were on the brink of forgetting. As your needs develop, you can just add new things to the packing list. This method also works great for “ingredients in dishes you cook regularly”— I put them all onto a check list, do a lap through the kitchen checking off all the items I’ve got in stock, and bam: I have a shopping list of what I need from the the grocery store! I am sure there are so many other great things this app could help me do, but I figured out the two circumstances in which I reliably use it, and DAYENU.

These are the three good habits I’ve developed in nearly 39 years on this earth. PLEASE COMMENT BELOW with any good habits you’ve successfully adopted. Maybe I’ll find a fourth in time for my fourth decade!!!!!

XOXO/Dame Margaret

*If you heard the title of this section in an Insane Clown Posse voice? You and I, we understand one another. I see you and cry “Comrade!”