Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that now knows what hour NOT to go to Costco

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.

Instant Band Night 34: NEW YEAR'S BALL III

If you don't have any huge plans for New Year's Eve this year, that's fine, honestly — wear your finest party outfit to Instant Band Night instead!!! Hit the stage and flex those creative muscles or just hang back and watch an explosion of musical inspiration roughly every 9 minutes; I guarantee you've never seen anything like it before.

✨🪩✨
Jan 8 2026
6p
$10
East Bay Community Space
507 55th St 94609

(Eventbrite) (Facebook)

+ + T E L L + Y O U R + F R I E N D S + +
+ + S E E + Y O U + T H E R E + +

Surprising and Unique Ceramics For YOU

The Xmas deadline has most assuredly come and gone but if you think you missed the mark on a gift for someone with extremely esoteric or quirky taste, why not invent a tradition of New Year's Makeup Gifting just for them?? Come 2026 there will be new little guys; I've already hit a rich vein of ideatic ore that longs to be mined. Act now!!

Idea Factory Giveaway

I think it's probably safe to say the podcast is on hiatus after three+ years of inactivity, but I'm putting a link to its evergreen Apple Podcasts presence here, which includes a back catalog over 150 episodes long chock-full of excellent ridiculousness, including an experimental tabletop RPG and a couple of Star Trek fantasy drafts that could almost be their own show if I had the time to make yet another podcast

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.

As I think was the case last year, all I want to use this space for in the final issue of 2025 is to say thank you once again if you're reading this: we made it through the year and we'll do it again goddammit — may the next one be less of a whole damn thing, how 'bout!!

Seriously, thank you for being here and know that I treasure each and every one of you.

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.

I am immensely pleased to report that the kids have taken to my childhood Construx to the exact extent I hoped they would; their current body of work seems to revolve around the system's considerable potential for vehicle construction. I'll show them the raygun design later, I think.

Having a lot of break time is unquestionably going to produce some kind of crash once they have to return to the school routine. On the other hand, I would like for them to not wake up at 520a excitedly shouting babble at each other and then have a double Galaxy-class meltdown twelve hours later when dinner is served and they're wildly overtired already. Other than that, though, they are having a really nice time overall, which is what you want, right?

Recipe Nook

Well, the brussels sprout pasta didn't go over at all — Quentin took one bite of a single noodle after what I would consider a reasonable amount of prodding and declared it "Not for me," which is fine since Mavis and I like it and will be eating the rest of it for dinner over the next week or so (I might freeze some). I wonder if I might need to just stick to the classics for a bit until someone decides they'd like a little variety??

Fascination Corner

I read a lot of newsletters; here are some links that caught my eye.

Liminal Week always means the newsletters coming into my inbox slow down, so this section's a little light too; this probably wasn't a surprise to anybody, really, huh!

• I thought people were joking about the emu. (Richmondside)

• New data suggests the universe may be lopsided, which means The Scientists might need to rethink their entire understanding of the cosmos. (The Conversation)

• "Shutdown resistance" is a feature of The Machine (Generative Flavor) that we should probably have anticipated. (Science Alert)

• This comparative poll on what words men or women are more likely to know is almost cartoonishly Gender. (YouGov)

• What if humans have more than 5 senses? Like a lot more? (The Conversation)

• Jesus creeping Christ in the cornfield: you're going to name your stupid security company Sauron? Sauron???? Couldn't you have at least tried to disguise it a little and call it Annatar? (TechCrunch)

• The Scientists have discovered that giving lab mice anxiety and then letting them touch grass seems to cancel the anxiety out. (Cornell)

• I don't know about you, but I think I'd be able to live with my whole neighborhood smelling of donuts for quite some time. (CBS News)

• A simple study The Scientists just ran suggests evolution may not actually work the way they've thought it does this whole time. (U of Michigan via Science Daily)

• The Scientists propose an argument for why consciousness might — might — be inextricable from biological brains. (Estonian Research Council via Science Daily) (Paper)

• Most digital detoxes don't work super great; The Scientists have been figuring out why. (The Conversation)

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.

A band and their album

(I remembered a formula for making fake album covers that involves searching for a random appropriately licensed photo and then applying your best Graphic Design Skills to the result; let me know what you think this band/album sounds like, because your answers are always incredible)

New Music Roundup

Last week's band/album was:

No reader submissions came in for this one, which looks unassuming to me on the surface but turns out to be absolutely fucking killer dance-rock that unfortunately got overlooked by just about everybody.

I still could use some more submissions to build out a notional Reader Submission Month for band/album/artwork combos! Feel free to send something in; just tell me how you want to be credited!

Thanks

If you've read this far, I thank you. Feel free to forward this to someone you like, or inflict upon someone you don't. If you received this as a forward and would like to subscribe yourself, you can do it at this page right here (which also has the archive)!