Little Upgrades

with apologies to Tori Amos

Helllooooo, Dames Nation! We’re back, and we have an announcement to share! We’d like to hold watchalongs more routinely, and we’ve decided to put our trust in you, dear readers. 

All paid subscribers will be eligible to participate in the drawing to choose our next communal cinematic adventure. We’ll send out a separate issue to those readers so those who want to do so can opt in, and then once we have a movie & date selected, we’ll let everyone know all the details. 

Want a shot at bossing this lovely and lively little corner of the Internet? One step & you’re all set!

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Dame Sophie’s Best Doo-Dads Round-Up

Last week’s open thread on Unexpectedly Great Doo-Dads unleashed A+ recommendations by Dames Nationals, for Dames Nationals. If you missed it, feel free to add more, or to respond to others’ suggestions. Here’s a brief summary of some of my favorite finds, loosely grouped by category:

Cleanliness! 

Tons of praise for the queen of oft-recommended doo-dads (by the Strategist and BuzzFeed, among others), the Tub Shroom, specifically the chrome one, which stays less-gross longer

We’re also very into this odor-reducing sponge-saving caddy that you can throw in the dishwasher whenever you want. Here’s another good one, suitable for both double- and single-basin sinks!

And I can’t refrain from offering one more shout-out for Lume’s biofilm buster. For my money, it’s better than Biz or OxiClean, especially the pre-laundry soak. Pairing it with a super-gentle scrubbing brush has quite revived a number of my favorite bras.

Office Supplies! 

As much as I love conquering laundry conundrums, quality office supplies that won’t break the bank are my truest low-stakes life-improving favorite. One day we’ll do a pen & pencil round-up and then you’ll both feel and be extremely justified in cursing our names as you fill up your cart at Jetpens or wherever you acquire your special writing implements.

This time, we’ve got an endorsement for some colorful to-do lists sticky notes you can tip into your favorite notebook. You can even color-code your tasks! (Though that’s pro-level task tracking, and is by no means required.)

This ultra-sharp (but designed with safety in mind) cutting tool is perfect for opening up shipping packaging and those dreaded theft-deterring clamshell packages. As one reader pointed out, it’s magnetic, so it can live on any magnetic surface (by which I mean, it won’t get lost).

I want to take a moment here to extol the modest joys of a pop-up post-it dispenser. I know, so obvious, so…fine? The classic square design is unobtrusive, but you can always go a touch more zazzy with a dispenser that looks like a Polaroid camera. I have a second one, in the shape of an apple. I keep the apple in the kitchen and the camera in the living room, so I can jot down ideas, errands, and questions immediately, lest they fly from my brain the next moment, never to be recalled. 

Hair Care!

I’ve always been really self-conscious about my hair. My natural color (what I can recall of it, anyway) is kind of mousy, the texture is very fine, it wants to curl but then doesn’t want to stay curled. Annoying! 

One thing that’s working for me (temporarily, at least) is a technique I learned about on YouTube called root clipping. Basically, you take your wet hair, apply whatever products you like, and then use these big-jawed clips to catch and lift sections of your hair at the root (hence root clipping). It’ll dry with more volume – just a bit in my case, maybe lots for others. 

Your fellow readers had great things to say about this very affordable hair growth oil (I ordered some, myself), and products from LA Beautyologist, including no-drip cleansing cuffs and an edges protector headband.

Kitchen!

Almost too many great suggestions here: tiny spatulas (also handy for extracting the last knockings of favorite skincare products), tiny whisks (I use mine daily), a flexi-ladle that scrapes down the side of the pan as you’re dishing up a soup, sauce, or stew (their sales are worth waiting for!), and a fizz-protecting bottle opener that I will be giving as a dead useful hostess gift from now on.

Whew! Once more, you dazzle us with your clever thoughtfulness. Both we and internet retailers the world over thank you!

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Dame Karen’s Newsletter Recommendations

Working on this newsletter is one of the true joys of my life. Having this space where I get to (and HAVE to!) write something every week and knowing it's being read by a community of really smart, thoughtful, and receptive people is not something I take for granted. Furthermore, it’s made me more aware of and appreciative of the work of other newsletter writers. So much of writing in public feels like yelling down a well and getting a ringing echo back, especially when you’re not someone with A Name and an enormous audience. [I know there are other, probably bigger and stickier challenges for Names with enormous audiences, but I’m me and I don’t know how that feels!] 

This week, I want to give some attention to some newsletters I enjoy whose authors aren’t, as far as I know, ubiquitous when it comes to lists of people making good newsletters. I always want to know about more of these -- when people say we have enough newsletters they are LYING, as far as I’m concerned. Feel free to post them in the comments, especially if it’s YOUR newsletter or other project! 

I’m also trying to get better about actually paying for the words I like. I bought a vase shaped like a butt on Amaz*n last week, for crying out loud. I’m sorry to report that this particular hellsite is the cheapest place to buy the hundreds of pill pockets and fish yogurts my ancient cat consumes each day. I try to just stick to the plan and limit my purchases to these “must haves” but I’m only human and the extremely silly, cute, and relatively inexpensive butt vase is now mine. 

I’m not sure how, but this made me all the more determined to cough up some money for people whose work I read, use, and enjoy. If I can be tempted by an Amaz*n butt vase, I can also be conscious enough to support enterprises I actually want to succeed -- people writing about the weird little things (and commonplace big things) that are important to them and sending them out into the world. I contain multitudes! Hell, paid subscriptions to Two Bossy Dames are one of two forms of steady income right now for me. Maybe you’re in the same boat, or maybe your writing is a “side hustle”, a phrase I hate but acknowledge, or maybe you don’t think your writing is worth money, which is probably nonsense, or maybe you’ve never thought of charging for your work and don’t want to because it’s a hobby that you want to continue loving or at least liking, no strings attached, which is beautiful. I don’t know, but I’m interested. 

Maybe you’ll subscribe to TBD [and if you already do, thank you!!!! You helped fund the cat med helpers AND the butt vase and I really do love it!] and I’ll subscribe to your newsletter and we’ll just pass the same $7 back and forth each month forever? Like the late Ram Dass said, we’re all just walking each other home aka floating the same $7 back and forth to one another, desperately trying to stay afloat in the muck of modern life and acknowledge each other and say “good job, friend, I see you and I appreciate you and I want you to have bread AND roses, that is, bread and whatever might be your equivalent of a butt vase.”

Web Curios - Matt Muir and collaborators

This is a weekly, exceedingly generous cornucopia of amazing internet finds. I know there’s a glut on newsletters that revolve around “here’s what I saw on the internet this week” [yes, hello, we know], but this is truly a leader of the pack. The picks from this week alone include a site with “an entirely new, infinitely-scrolling Chinese landscape tapestry every time you load it”, a “specially trained AI” that uses data from the subReddit “Am I The Asshole” to answer your question and determine if you are the asshole, and “a web exhibition that enlivens historical activist posters from ONE Archives at the USC Libraries through tactile analysis and storytelling.” Then there are nearly sixty more offerings! I can’t figure out how to subscribe to this with money and maybe I can’t. 

Displacement Blues - Tarin Towers 

Tarin Towers is a wonderful writer and her newsletter is written in the style of the very longform diary entries that were a very normal way that people wrote on the internet 20-25 years ago. I very nearly died over the “it’s giving blog” tweet from…oh look, just a few months ago, I was going to guess two years? What is time, anyway? Anyway, it made me laugh but “giving blog” is what really made me interested in the internet in the first place way back in 1997 and I’m grateful that some people still write in this way. I particularly appreciated Tarin writing so well and so beautifully about grief while she was in the thick of it when her father died. My best friend died around the same time and my own thoughts were primarily howls of pain and long bouts of dissociation. It was very comforting. Tarin, if you’re reading this, I sent you some stuff from your Amaz*n wishlist -- no butt vases to be found, but still.

You Know What I Mean - Andrea Laurion 

Another great writer with a newsletter that, as she says, is “like an old-fashioned letter from me to you without the possibility of a paper cut.” Chatty, pop culture savvy, often includes recipes written in a way I, someone who hates cooking but likes to eat home-cooked food and lives alone most of the time, can appreciate. If you like Two Bossy Dames, you’ll like You Know What I Mean. She’s also started including recordings of herself reading poems with some issues, which I really enjoy, including the last issue, which was about Angels In America and grief. Grief, man. It’s everywhere.

The Remix - Crunk Feminist Collective 

The Crunk Feminist Collective is actually very well known and have been around for over a decade at this point (again, time, I don’t even know). Founded by Black feminist scholars Brittney Cooper and Susana Morris, their mission statement reads: “The Crunk Feminist Collective (CFC) will create a space of support and camaraderie for hip hop generation feminists of color, queer and straight, in the academy and without, by building a rhetorical community, in which we can discuss our ideas, express our crunk feminist selves,  fellowship with one another, debate and challenge one another, and support each other, as we struggle together to articulate our feminist goals, ideas, visions, and dreams in ways that are both personally and professionally beneficial.” Their archive remains online (and some of it is in this excellent book) but their new writing comes out in this newsletter and it’s, without fail, great. The last two essays that ran, “Trap Genealogies: A Rural Black Girl Story” by Brittney Cooper and “Hey Auntie: Musings on the village and identity by a not-so-rich, childfree aunt”  by Susana Morris were both fabulous. The Collective also has a paying subscribers-only podcast that I’m excited to check out now that I’m what? That’s right, finally paying for something I regularly read and enjoy. 

Two Bossy Dames is brought to you by:

• Your essential, must-read thread of the week: “Lou Alcott was trans. Period.” - Peyton Thomas on Twitter

• Another wonderful thread, this time re-examining The Cure and the rich, nuanced language they’ve given us to think and talk with more subtlety about big marquee emotions like sadness and love. You’ll never guess who wrote it!

• The literal lifeblood of this whole enterprise

We appreciate you, readers of Dames Nation!

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