iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 29/09/2026

Did one of those unboxing videos for my novel, DON’T SAVE ME (and revealed where I got the title from), available here: a.co/d/02J37l0s

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 27/09/2026

Here are the top 10 singles from 2026 that were released this year—I’ve heard songs by these artists but almost none of these actual songs. (I was busy listening to albums from 2001!)

January 10
"Choosin'
Texas"
Ella Langley
January 17
"End of
Beginning"
Djo
January 24
"I Just
1
Bruno Mars
February 7
"Aperture"
Harry Styles
February 14
"The Great
Divide"个
Noah Kahan
March 14
"Risk It All"
［UITRI
Bruno Mars
"Stateside"
PinkPantheress with Zara
Larsson
March 21
"American
Girls" 1
Harry Styles
March 28
"So Easy (To Fall in Love) "[K][P]
Olivia Dean
April 4
"Swim"个
BTS
April 18
"Be Her"[K]
Ella Langley

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 26/09/2026

Kiddo is watching this terrible Willy Wonka reality show thing and uhhhhhh nope!!

Wikipedia screenshot. The series has no traditional host and the voice of Willy Wonka is an Al recreation of Gene Wilder's performance from the 1971 film, created with the consent of his estate.

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 25/09/2026

I stanned too hard for the second Andrew WK album back in the day (partially because it was caught in the major-label-refuses-to-release-it vortex so common back in the 00s), but it’s still great. I should’ve just said it was his attempt at making a Queen album, which is true.

Cover of Andrew WK’s close calls with brick walls.

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 24/09/2026

I see the kids figured out how to rename the TV.

A TV icon with the text
55" Tąqqqqqwwąwąqq etc

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 24/09/2026

I couldn’t help thinking that, if every pilot was a furry, they might be more willing to have difficult conversations.

Nathan fielder as captain sully in the rehearsal

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 22/09/2026

This is very accurate but it’s hard to fully capture the vibe without being there. Here, for instance, is Mark Zuckerberg’s house.

Google Maps screenshot showing a pin in a suburban neighborhood a few blocks south of the 101 freeway and an ikea

Google Maps screenshot showing a pin dropped in an unremarkable suburban street

Google Maps screenshot showing a blurred out street view

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 22/09/2026

The diagrams that appear early on in the 1998 SNL cartoon here are almost exactly the same ones Godspeed You! Black Emperor would include on the back of their 2002 album Yanqui UXO, which is why it’s hard to nail down exactly what it means for information to be repressed or hidden.

A black and white handwritten diagram showing the connections major record labels like Vivendi and BMG have to military contractors.

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 22/09/2026

Once upon a time, a company that sells books requiring people to give them money if they want to watch football would’ve seemed like an unambiguously positive development in American culture.

Ad for Amazon prime Thursday night football.

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 21/09/2026

Both really great! You in particular should enjoy Espookys. I was reminded of the end of the Drake episode of Atlanta recently:

Three screencaps. Darius, Van, and two of Van’s friends walk by the side of an empty two lane road at daybreak. Van says: Drake’s Mexican.

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 21/09/2026

10 wasn’t really enough, so I went with some I thought might be overlooked.

My ballot for 10 best 21st century tv shows.

Search Party
Cougar Town
The Great
Los Espookys
The Righteous Gemstones
Carol & The End of the World
Lady Dynamite
Scavengers Reign
Industry
Atlanta

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 21/09/2026

Anyway, I’m now the proud owner of her Janis Joplin box set, which she described as “like records but smaller”. (One of the cats they had when I was a baby was named Pearl, the other was named Zeke.)

The cover of Box of Pearls: the Janis Joplin collection. It has your basic sort of psychedelic artwork.

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 20/09/2026

I accidentally crossposted a selfie to Threads and was getting a lot of engagement so I checked and

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 19/09/2026

Also: incredible innovations in snacking with cannoli chips and cannoli dip.

Plastic containers full of bits of cannoli water

A fridge with different plastic tubs containing cannoli dip. Don’t forget the cannoli chips, a sign says.

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 19/09/2026

Scenes from the Italian grocery store.

A life size cardboard cutout of thr pope (not the current pope) in the middle of a grocery store bakery section

Life size cardboard cutouts of “dream team”
Members Larry bird and David Robinson on top of a freezer case

Life size cardboard cutouts of Emeril and tiger woods atop a freezer case

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 17/09/2026

One for my science comm folks here

Sign in a healthcare facility that says THIS
OFFICE IS NOT THE LAB

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 17/09/2026

The vinyls shelf at the Target by my parents’ house.

Oh jeez who do we got here, Jeff Buckley, Bob Marley, Weezer, Olivia Rodrigo, Michael Jackson, Lana Del Rey, two Mac Millers, Tame Impala, Selena. Morgan wallen, Drake, maroon 5, Chuck Timely

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 16/09/2026

Going through TSA, there’s a sign that says “Do you have a firearm? Do you know where it is?” And the possibility of someone answering yes to the first and no to the second made me think of this classic Sam & Max joke.

A comic panel of a rabbit wearing no clothes and a dog wearing a suit. They are both holding guns. The dog says “Hey, where do you keep that gun?” And the rabbit replies “None of your damn business, Sam.”

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 14/09/2026

All Things Go is really good at booking about-to-blow-up artists—Slayyyyter fourth on the bill this year, Chappell Roan booked fourth in 2024.

Set times for 2026 all things go showing Slayyyyer going on before Ethel Cain, Magdalena Bay, and Mitski

Poster for the 2024 all things go showing roan listed after hozier, Renee rapp, Conan gray

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 12/09/2026

Incredible stuff here www.pewresearch.org/politics/202...

Chart titled “Republicans are more likely than Democrats to identify as 'working class' regardless of education, occupation or financial situation” showing the %of U.S. adults who say 'working class' describes them extremely/very well

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 10/09/2026

We used to be a proper country where towns were named after a joke somebody made about a bar fight.

Screenshot from the Wikipedia entry for Sebastopol, CA.

Etymology
The settlement was originally named Pine Grove. The name change to Sebastopol has historically been attributed to a bar fight in the late 1850s, which was allegedly compared by a bystander to the long Allied siege of the seaport of Sevastopol (1854-1855) during the Crimean War of 1853-1856. The original name survives in the name of the Pine Grove General
Store downtown.

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 08/09/2026

Went to buy my kid a nightlight and I got a s’mores with a face and little tiny legs. This was $10. When I was a kid your nightlight was a curved piece of plastic that burned you if you touched it. Maybe you were lucky and it looked like a seashell.

A silicone nightlight that has two brown pieces on the top and bottom, a marshmallow with a face in the middle and a chocolate coating.

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 06/09/2026

My son is the birthday boy, making me of course the

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 30/08/2026

Became aware that “klaxon” was originally a specific brand of car horn, and when I went digging I lost it at “‘Awooga’ redirects here”

^ Klaxon
"Klaxon" redirects here. For other uses, see Klaxon (disambiguation).
"Awooga" redirects here. For the Calvin Harris song, see 18 Months § Promotional singles.

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 29/08/2026

When I took a girlfriend to visit my hometown, she said I lived in Star’s Hollow. I was too close to the reality to fully buy it, but this visit, I went down to the town green to get cider and found a guy playing an acoustic guitar in a gazebo and four places to buy coffee. So I’ll admit defeat.

A picture of people sitting on a tree-filled town green in folding chairs. Under a gazebo strewn with bunting, a man plays acoustic guitar.

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 29/08/2026

As I always do when I’m home, I made a pilgrimage to the memorial stone that implies Operation Desert Storm never ended.

THIS MEMORIAL IS DEDICATED TO THOSE BRAVE AMERICANS FROM THE TOWN OF KIRKLAND WHO SERVED THEIR COUNTRY IN THE ARMED FORCES
DURING THESE CONFLICTS

LEBANON GRENADA
AUG: 24,1982 JULY 31,1984

PANAMA
DEO.20.1989 - JAN. 31,1990

PERSIAN GULF
AUG. 2, 1990 -
DEDICATED BY HELMUTH INGALLS
AMERICAN LEGION POST 232
VEW. POST 9591
VILLAGE OF CLINTON
TOWN OF KIRKIAND
JULY 4,1991

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 29/08/2026

I’m visiting my parents and was able to approximate the Yo La Tengo album cover the moment I parked in their driveway.

A suburban street at night with a house lit up. It looks like the cover of And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out.

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 29/08/2026

Checked in on tumblr and was delighted to find that my Tim Curry post from last year was suddenly going viral. It’s a great bit and I love to think about it.

barthel
Nov 15, 2025
Not to diminish his other achievements, but we need to give Tim Curry some sort of award for his
30-year commitment to the "I fucked Miss Piggy" bit.
~ #Tim curry #miss piggy

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 27/08/2026

My novel, DON’T SAVE ME, is now available for purchase! a.co/d/03aZECJQ

You're at the end of your rope.
Maybe you set your house on fire trying to build a nuclear reactor from the detritus of your dying father's hoard. (Ok, not you. Fine.
Terrence.) Maybe you've been chronically ill, bedridden, lost all your friends. Your fiancée dumps you after falling down a rabbit hole on YouTube.

You abandon your high-school geology students after a healthcare startup allows your parents to die in a rehab facility.
Maybe someone successful comes along, someone you admire, a shipping magnate or a hedge fund manager, and they offer you a job-not a real job where you make something or help people, but the kind of job where you're just there for them. An assistant.

And maybe you start to become suspicious, notice that none of this makes sense, so you strike out on your own, take some initiative, try to be more than just an assistant. You become the last CEO of a nearly-bankrupt rural health system. You supervise the wargames at a deserted manufacturing site where a multinational corporation got massive tax breaks to build flatscreen TVs. You abandon your new love for a job installing Al labor-monitoring tools on workers in Saudi Arabia, or test a cargo ship manned by robots on a voyage across the Pacific.

Maybe it all goes wrong: the robots break down, the workers get sick with a mysterious virus, the wargames become a war. And then your boss comes back to reclaim you in a strange ceremony, surrounding you with salt and tapping their fingers, seemingly ready to consume you. You might wonder, at this point, just what the hell you've gotten yourself into.

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 27/08/2026

Through a Desmond Child rabbit hole I have ended up at a 00s teenpop act I genuinely do not remember: Brit and Alex.

Low res album cover showing two girls in black outfits under the text BRIT & ALEX Let GO

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 25/08/2026

Here’s her tour bus from Dollywood. I thought about her a lot for the Miley book (she’s Miley’s godmother, among other things). Dolly wanted to pass all that down to another generation, too, and she very much did with Miley and Beyoncé and many many others. It’s not dead. It’s just traveling.

Photo of a bed on the back of a tour bus, surrounded by wooden cabinets and a mirror with framed family pictures. A guitar lies on the bed with an embroidered pillow that says

Never Get So Busy
Making A living
That You Forget To Make A life

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 25/08/2026

Shout out to the guy in the Black Flag jersey studiously ignoring the West Virginia tourist board rep.

Four baseball fans, one wearing a gray jersey with Black Flag III and a hand holding a gun.

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 22/08/2026

Have seen several ads for this now, and hoo boy is “from the hands that crafted Coralline” a well-lawyered statement.

Poster showing a glowing animated woodland scene with the text WILDWOOD
FROM THE HANDS THAT CREATED
Coraline

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Mike Barthel @mikebarthelauthor.com · 22/08/2026

The most “and also featuring” tracklist I can think of for 2004:

20
SUPERSTARS
including
JESSICA SIMPSON
OW
OUTKAST
D12
HOOBASTANK
BLACK EYED PEAS
SWITCHFOOT
GRETCHEN WILSON
THREE DAYS GRACE
YELLOWCARD
LOS LONELY BOYS

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