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drew brown

@drewfoundland.bsky.social

4.6K followers 565 following 341 posts

writer & newly-minted therapist. recovering journalist. ex academic. prodigal poster. i'se the bi.

Posts Replies Media

drew brown @drewfoundland.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

you can really feel the enthusiasm for NL's 2025 provincial election!!! (from vocm.com/2025/09/15/p...)

VOCM headline: "Premier Must Call Provincial Election Today" above photos of NDP leader Jim Dinn, Liberal leader John Hogan, and PC leader Tony Wakeham.

Text: "The minimum length of an election is 28 days. For Premier Hogan to meet the mandatory fixed election date of October 14 he has to make the call today. The betting is that the call will come at about 6:00 tonight."

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drew brown @drewfoundland.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

a friend sent me this photo of his logic textbook... truly delighted that riffing on the trudeau-castro conspiracy theory might be my most enduring contribution to human culture

a list of questions from a textbook about logic, one of which reads:

"Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau looks suspiciously like former Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Trudeau's parents travelled to Cuba many times and met with Castro, and there are pictures of Trudeau's mother looking fondly at Castro. Is it too far-fetched to believe that Fidel Castro is Justin Trudeau's real father?"

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drew brown @drewfoundland.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

rereading the 1981 Captain Newfoundland comic and totally forgot about the arc where, after teaching a kid in a wheelchair how to do astral projection and speak with the dead, the Captain travels to a mermaid kingdom in order to defeat Satan using only his insights about the nature of consciousness.

Horizontal comic panel announcing [MEANWHILE, KING SATN FACES CAPTAIN NEWFOUNDLAND!]. Satn points at the Captain and says "It is said you have the unity state of consciousness! Let us see if you maintain that state in *my* domain!"

to which the Captain retorts: "Unity is unity in whatever dimension, Evil One! Try your best to make me think that ANYTHING is separate from the SELF!"

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drew brown @drewfoundland.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

perennially reminded of this perfect Worker's Spatula (RIP?) headline

November 23, 2019 headline from satirical Marxist blog Worker's Spatula that reads "Anxious Maoists Unsure How Much More Excellent the Situation Can Get"

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drew brown @drewfoundland.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Embrace Premier Smallwood Thought (the grindset)

Epigraph that reads: "Work harder. Work longer hours. Work more days in the week and weeks in the year. Eat less. Wear less. Practice more abstemiousness. Live lower on the hog and produce more. - SMALLWOOD."

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drew brown @drewfoundland.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

sometimes i roll my eyes at all the stuff from the 70s comparing smallwood to mao because it seems so obviously overblown but then i will open a government document from 1967 and find stuff like this

NL Premier Joey Smallwood standing on a podium in a giant coat, pointing authoritatively at something out of frame. Caption: "My purpose: the good of Newfoundland."

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drew brown @drewfoundland.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

started idly reading about my hometown last night and now i am having my worst flareup of Newfoundland Madness since moving home in 2016. bodes well

a stack of newfoundland history books piled up on my coffee table

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drew brown @drewfoundland.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

86 years ago today, some people wrote so many angry letters to the editor of The Grand Falls Advertiser about Windsor being incorporated as a town that half of Newfoundland's Commission of Government had to go look into it (before concluding that the protesters were cranks). time is a flat circle.

"...Catholic School on Station Road and a petition was signed and sent to the Commission Government requesting the Act of Incorporation be repealed and Windsor have its original name restored. The people wished to be part of Grand Falls and popular feeling ran high against the present board of management and its dictatorial tactics. The general feeling of the people was that the Act of Incorporation gave the Board of Management too many powers and the people did not want to separate from the town (Grand Falls). The government replied and asked for a more extensive report."

General unrest manifested itself through letters to The Advertiser to the extent that three commissioners came to Windsor to investigate the situation. The night of Dec. 9, 1938, is described as Demonstration Night at Windsor as dissenters gathered near the railway waving banners and shouting, "We don't want taxation. We don't want taxation." Commissioner Emerson took this opportunity to speak to the people and is quoted as saying, "The act was carefully drafted to serve the people of this community and if it was misrepresented to you as you claim, then this is your own responsibility and not of the government of this country."

The act was to remain as the basis of the Town of....

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drew brown @drewfoundland.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

two guardians appear before you. one always lies and the other always tells the truth. how do you proceed

A pair of black cats—Smith (L) and Siouxsie (R)—sit together on a pair of grey joggers left lying on my bed.

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drew brown @drewfoundland.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

people are often saying i would make a great helicopter pilot or perhaps a submarine captain of some kind

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drew brown @drewfoundland.bsky.social · 14/07/2023

Venus in Furs (1870). 5/5. come for the erotic adventure in 19th century femdom; stay for the extraordinarily thoughtful (and funny) reflections on fetishism and the pleasures of pain from the man who gave us the term "masochism". plus, its proto-feminist conclusion makes for a nice surprise ending.

a copy of the penguin edition of leopold von sacher-masoch's novel venus in furs.

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drew brown @drewfoundland.bsky.social · 13/07/2023

No One Is Talking About This (2021). 4/5. this funny & touching novel—in content & in form—captures the experience of twitter in its heyday & the very specific way Posting colonizes your mind ("like a BPD spiral," as a friend put it); Online as a simulacrum of connection masking a deeper alienation.

Patricia Lockwood's novel No One Is Talking About This.

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drew brown @drewfoundland.bsky.social · 12/07/2023

A Complicated Kindness (2004). 4.5/5. fun, spellbinding 'memoir' of a teenager in a rural mennonite enclave processing an adolescence defined by religious trauma and family disintegration, where holding onto love feels like abandonment & real abandonment is tightening a death grip. it's complicated.

a copy of Miriam Toews' novel A Complicated Kindness.

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drew brown @drewfoundland.bsky.social · 12/07/2023

The Fake (2023). 4/5. total page-turner, if rushed. cammie is the only character who feels fully realized, an effect faithfully replicating the experience of loving someone like her. perfectly captures the maddening pain & futility of trying to reconcile real kindness with real abuse & manipulation.

holding a copy of Zoe Whittall's novel The Fake (2023)

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