Welcome to A View Off a Ledge
I have so much time on my hands that I had an idea, and I'm arrogant enough to think you should get on board with it. So here we go...
Ever since I left The Heights, I’ve had a lot of free time. I had a cameo at The Dorchester Reporter that was awesome, then I got sick for the thousandth time so I’m back in “I’m in school with nothing else to do” limbo—a plane of existence I proudly perfected from late 2015 to late 2017.
An incredible run of defeating LEGO video games and getting much too into soccer came out of that run. This time, two months off has led to this newsletter—I got good enough at FIFA that I figured I should put my effort into something else that might actually matter at some point.
So: I want to write again, and I’ll be the person who writes the most here, though I’ll leave the door open to other people joining in. I want to write about the stuff that I like, the stuff I don’t, and the random information I happen across. So think…the Politico newsletters crossed with The Ringer’s newsletter crossed with About Last Night crossed with me being unhinged online and you’ve got A View From a Ledge.
I’ll release this once a week to start: A View From a Ledge will come out on Thursday mornings, though I reserve the right to release it early. If I get to it, I’ll put out bonus ones throughout the week, but I can really only say so much before I assume Satan, my true north, drags me back to my home in the depths of Hell.
But that leads me to the other thing…if anybody reading this thinks they’re better than I am (THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE) and wants to spew their garbage on here, you’ll be subject to my whims as an editor but you’re welcome to it. Just email (goldmajk@bc.edu) or text me if you’re at that level of awesome. I’ll probably get back to you.
Before We Get Started, I Feel Like I Should Break Down What the Hell This Is Going To Be
I mean, it would probably be helpful to explain what kind of content you’re signing up for—and by what you’re signing up for, I mean I’d like to write down what I’m committing to so when I actually start working on this I remember what I promised rather than putting up like a single link to a cat video compilation and bidding my frighteningly large readership adieu.
This newsletter is going to be a lot like me: When people talk about it, they’ll say that it “has character” and is “really long winded” and “I didn’t like the stuff labeled ‘garbage.’” So that’s probably the first thing I should lay out: I’m going to give every section a label of some sort: News, Sports, Arts, Opinion, Thoughts, Links, and Garbage. The ratio of which genres I’ll be trafficking in week to week will vary week to week depending on how much news there actually is out in the world.
Speaking of: The News label will be plastered on top of stories that people without a sense of humor would refer to as “Hard News,” which rather than being about inopportune boners will contain info with as little bias or opinion loaded into as possible. If there’s typos here, they’ll be more glaring because I’ll be talking about court cases or terrible legal stuff, so I’ll do my best not to misspell “onus” or “retrofitted” or whatever when I’m reporting about garbage.
Sports and Arts are pretty self explanatory, though I’ll toss a second label on any pieces that include opinion just to be clear because I assume that anyone who contributes to this newsletter will have some goddamn thoughts about sports and arts.
Opinion and Thoughts will blend together a bit. Opinion will be old school newspaper columns where I grumble about young people or old people or middle people. Thoughts will be for grumbling in short form—for example:
HEADLINE: Do I enjoy the television show This is Us?
Body text: Not even a little.
Boom, there’s a thought. I think it’s a fact, but I mean who knows maybe this is all a simulation and I don’t want to get in trouble for lying so I’m going to call it a thought.
Links will send you around the web to stuff I think is interesting. Could be about any subject and will usually be attached to a quick summary and what I think is a funny snarky comment but is actually a preview of the Garbage section.
Speaking of: the Garbage section will be me having as much fun as possible, presumably by myself because I’d encourage readers to log off before this section. This will basically be satire stuff—no quote that is included will be real unless otherwise noted, nothing I write in there will reflect my actual opinion on things. I’ll basically be playing the character of an insane person writing insane things about the real, actually insane things happening in the world. Read “About Last Night” pieces if you’re looking for a preview, because I have a feeling I’ll be ripping that concept off for the vast majority of the Garbage section. Hopefully I don’t piss anyone off, but I probably will, which should be a blast!!
I reserve the right to combine any of these labels at my leisure. Why make arbitrary rules that don’t matter unless you’re allowed to break them whenever you want?
This should be fun. See you around. Don’t fall off the ledge. That’d be gross.