How a millionaire guy forced me to spend like an hour figuring out what he wants
Some thoughts about Brian Heywood, who's this guy who lives in Washington state and basically wasted my time.
Heywood you vote for my initiatives
I moved to Washington state a little over two years ago, and much to my surprise this qualifies me to vote in their elections.
I take the responsibility seriously: Every time King County sends me a ballot, I send it right back to them with the maximum allowable filled-in circles. I’d fill in all the circles if they let me! Coloring is FUN and all the candidates deserve some credit just for putting themselves out there like that.
Last week I received the latest ballot, and I was eager as ever to fill it out. But my progress on the circle-filling felt stymied from the get-go with several technical-sounding statewide ballot initiatives I hadn’t heard of.
Now, I like to do my homework before I color my circles. I don’t want to vote for something only to find out later that I voted for shutting down schools or banning pizza for the elderly or whatever. So I started looking around on the internet about these initiatives, and I found out they all pretty much come from this one millionaire guy named Brian Heywood.
Basically Brian found some state laws he didn’t like, then got a bunch of people to sign petitions so he could force everyone in the state to vote on whether they wanted to keep those laws.
Honestly, if I were a millionaire guy like Brian, I probably wouldn’t like these anti-Brian laws either:
A tax on people who make $260,000 or more in one year by selling stocks and bonds and such. Obviously that’s bad for your everyday hedge-fund-collar worker like Brian.
A program that helps people pay for things when they’re too old to take care of themselves. Brian doesn’t need that — he’s a millionaire guy!
A program that helps the state cut down on global warming pollution. Now that’s exactly the kind of thing that really grinds Brian’s gears: making rich people pay money to make things better for everyone else.
I filled in the “no” circle for all of Brian’s initiatives, but only because I’m not a millionaire guy. Call me selfish, but I don’t vote for anything that doesn’t benefit me personally.
But Brian’s efforts made me think: What if I had the gumption of a millionaire guy to repeal things that are personally annoying to me? What kind of ballot initiatives would I propose?
So I came up with three of my own initiatives. Because the Ryan Email Club is governed as a democracy with a figurehead monarch1, you all have the right and privilege to vote on these legally-binding proposals.
Here are my ballot initiatives. I humbly ask for your vote.
-Ryan
Click Roulette
The below links match one of the two descriptions provided for each. Click at your own peril!
CLICK HERE FOR LINK ONE. This is either:
A Pinterest board that’s just closeup photos of some guy’s belly button.
An interview with Al Pacino where he reveals his Shrek phone case.
CLICK HERE FOR LINK TWO. This is either:
A 40-minute survey gauging your satisfaction with masking tape.
Footage of a soccer game where all the players are forced to dance at all times.
CLICK HERE FOR LINK THREE. This is either:
A newsletter with no purpose or topical focus that gets sent to you without your explicit approval every Tuesday.
A compilation of wombats scratching their butts set to “Pump Up the Jam” by Technotronic.
Wish fulfillment
In last week’s edition of the Email Club, I shared nine of my most incontrovertible beliefs and asked you to dispel them if they were wrong. Because I am without scruples and incapable of conviction, I’m happy to announce that I’ve changed my positions based on your half-hearted challenges.
My new firmly-held opinions are as follows:
Crocodiles and alligators are the same.
Andrew R. points out that “you can tell the difference between an Alligator and Crocodile by whether you see them later or in a while.” This subtle temporal difference is irrefutable. Thinking back to my personal experience, I’ve seen crocodiles once in a while, and when I see them later they appear to be alligators.
REVISED POSITION: A crocodile and an alligator are two counterbalanced forms of the same quantum being.
If tragedy plus time equals comedy, then comedy minus tragedy equals time.
Weezer didn’t get worse. I got older.
Corey sagely notes these two distinct beliefs are connected. A similar and inadvertently supporting claim comes from Jayce C., who says Weezer peaked with their seventh album, “Ratitude.” In fact, this 2009 release is demonstrative of the formula that anything in canceling proportions of comedy and tragedy (and any other substantive attributes) results in no value except the time I wasted listening to it.
REVISED POSITION: Weezer got so bad that they’re accelerating my aging process.
If a donut doesn’t have a hole, it’s a cake.
Drawing from his masticatory memory, Jayce C. put forward this challenge: “Every donut without a hole that I have had is a yeast dough, and I have never had a cake with a yeast batter. A donut without a hole is not a cake.” As a culinary layman, I can only speak to the physical shape of foods, not their content. I have no choice but accept Jayce’s premise that cakes are made of batter, and that this batter is always without yeast.
REVISED POSITION: If a cake has a yeast batter, it’s a donut.
I don’t like wasabi.
Jayce C. suggests perhaps I’ve never had real wasabi — “just the fake, horseradish shit.” Again, I’m not qualified to comment on the ingredients of wasabi or literally anything I put in my mouth, so I must defer to Jayce here. It is entirely likely that I’ve never had real wasabi.
REVISED POSITION: I won’t like wasabi.
Tortoise pic of the week
Wordle hint (SPOILER)
The list of usable Wordle words will be exhausted by 2027. That means sometime in the next three years, PENIS will be the word of the day.
A thing I typed into my phone’s Notes app that doesn’t make sense anymore, and probably never did
“A chef who can predict exactly what someone wants just by reading their minds!”
— Written on Oct. 21, 2023, at 11:23 p.m.
Buttons
Still drafting the constitution and openly fielding applications for “figurehead monarch.”
To add another wrinkle to the donut and cake saga, the type of donuts without a yeast risen dough are called "cake donuts." Every "cake donut" I have had has a hole or IS the hole! It is a troubling revelation.
I have voted in favor of initiative 3, but I am uncertain of the mechanics of it. Does everyone get to pick a day to skip? We might get to skip the whole year in that case. Or, do we have to vote collectively which day to skip each year? We should skip Brian Heywood's birthday. Fuck that guy.