Once upon a time, I loved getting mail. Sending it, too.
My grandmother taught me early on to send thank-you notes and write fan letters to people who inspired me. I used to collect colorful stamps and trade handwritten notes with a handful of pen pals.
I even got excited about receiving my first bills. It seemed to me proof that I was officially growing up.
The same thing happened when I got my first email address.
AOL’s iconic “You’ve Got Mail” was a pure dopamine hit.
But then…I started working. And the volume of incoming correspondence—paper and digital—morphed from delightful to overwhelming.
No matter how many systems I try, managing all my personal and professional inboxes always seems to become a headache-inducing chore.
Don’t get me wrong—I love hearing from friends and subscribers. Please note that this is NOT a request to get fewer comments or emails! I live for sassy, silly, and sexy mail (and males). Smart and sweet ones too. And I do my best to respond in kind.
But the rest of it? All those random requests, cold pitches, and spam?
Out damn spot and fuck that noise!
Lately, especially with the move, I’ve even fallen behind on the “fun stuff.”
So if you’re waiting on a reply from me:
Thank you for your patience.
I see and appreciate you.
And I’ll do my best to respond soon.
Some days, it feels like I’m living inside an inbox—literal and virtual—stacked with paper, emails, tasks, and more emotional clutter than I’d care to admit.
Most of it? Not my circus. Not my monkeys.
So here’s my goal and plan: Over the next three days, I’ll move as much as humanly possible from the old place to the new one and tackle my overflowing inboxes. One banker’s box and one correspondence at a time.
Keeping calm and carrying on!
Clint 🌈✌️
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ON THIS DAY = AUGUST 1
BIRTHDAYS
1819 = Herman Melville = American writer 🌈
1843 = Robert Todd Lincoln = American lawyer and politician
1877 = George Hackenschmidt = Estonian-English wrestler and strongman
1908 = Jimmie Daniels = American actor and nightclub owner 🌈
1914 = Jack Delano = American photographer and composer
1933 = Dom DeLuise = American actor, singer, director, and producer
1936 = Yves Saint Laurent = Algerian-French fashion designer 🌈
1942 = Giancarlo Giannini = Italian actor and filmmaker
1942 = Jerry Garcia = American singer-songwriter
1957 = Taylor Negron = American actor and screenwriter
1960 = Chuck D = American singer-songwriter
1963 = Coolio = American rapper, producer, and actor
1964 = Adam Duritz = American singer-songwriter
1965 = Sam Mendes = English filmmaker
1966 = James St. James = American club promoter and author 🌈
1976 = Don Hertzfeldt = American animator, filmmaker, and voice actor
1979 = Jason Momoa = American actor, director, and producer
1988 = Charlie Carver = American actor 🌈
1988 = Max Carver = American actor 🌈
EVENTS
1774 = British scientist Joseph Priestley discovers oxygen gas, corroborating the prior discovery of the element by German-Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele.
1893 = Henry Perky patents shredded wheat.
1936 = The Games of the XI Olympiad are opened by Adolf Hitler in Berlin.
1939 = Frances V. Rummell (aka Diana Fredericks) published Diana: A Strange Biography, the first explicitly lesbian autobiography in which two women end up happy together.
1961 = Sixteen men attend the first meeting of the Mattachine Society of Washington. The FBI learned of the meeting and began tracking the group.
1965 = Frank Herbert's novel Dune is published.
1966 = Gay and transgender customers rioted at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco in response to continued police harassment. It’s one of the first recorded LGBT-related riots in US history, three years before Stonewall.
1971 = The Concert for Bangladesh, a pair of benefit concerts organized by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar, is held at Madison Square Garden in NYC.
1981 = MTV begins broadcasting in the US and airs its first video, "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles.
1991 = The first issue of Queer Reality, a magazine produced by the UK organization OutRage!, is published.
1995 = “Gangsta's Paradise” by Coolio is released as a single.
HOLIDAYS + OBSERVANCES
PORTRAIT + QUOTES OF THE DAY
“Fashions fade, style is eternal.”
Yves Saint Laurent
“I just tried to be an artist in my own metier.”
Yves Saint Laurent
I know what you mean. I chose to receive most of the emails that I get, but I still get far too many of them just to keep up, as is evidenced by the age of this one I'm just now getting to, and you're on my priority list. Once an advertiser gets in, it often is nearly impossible to get them out again. And google is mostly to blame. One dan unsubscribe one day and a slightly altered version appears the next. Even worse are the ones companies pay Google directly for you to get. Then, every time you seek to block it, they just change it, I'm sure through AI and you keep on getting them no matter what you do. Makes me mad frankly.
I snooze so many emails to the weekend, but then the weekend comes! OOOPS