After the five-fecta of Thanksgiving, Panda Head Mag: Issue 7 (yay!), Christmas, New Year's, and my birthday, consider me thrilled to not only be OUT OF THE HOLIDAY WOODS, but to have a little bit of time to sit around and stare at the wall. I know I'm not alone in January standing as an OASIS OF (relative) CALM, and as such I asked this month's newsletter contributors - Gareth Branwyn, Casey Weir, Brittany Martin, and Svetlana Legetic - to riff any which way on the theme of mindless indulgences. From listicles to tarot-as-guilty-pleasure, I'm thrilled with how this edition of NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS shaped up (and I hope you enjoy it, too).

As always, you can navigate this month's newsletter using the tabs below each post, or you can view everything at once via that "January Newsletter" header at top. Thanks so much for subscribing!

THIS MONTH'S NEWSLETTER
The Tacky Tarot.  I'm Ron Burgundy?
Mindless Indulgence.  Eighty.  Mindless Pleasures.

by Gareth Branwyn

When I was 15 years old, I declared myself a witch, after reading a trashy paperback on the subject and stealing my mother's copper kettle plant hanger to use as a cauldron (I still have the book and the cauldron). So, there I was, a witch, and witches need tarot cards. My first deck was the Rider-Waite (which is really the Waite-Colman Smith – Pamela Colman Smith did the illustrations but got stiffed on the credits).

I was terribly earnest about the tarot in my youth, and collected lots of earnest decks. I loved seeing all of the creative and strange ways that artists and romantic symbolists chose to paint their “Devil's picture book.” And I liked learning about the ideas behind the cards by trying to understand each artist's interpretation. Being a depiction of such a general, archetypal “Hero's journey," you soon realize there's lots of room for interpretation. And that's where the fun comes in. So, I decided to collect decks. When there were 20 or so decks floating around head shops and occult bookstores, that wasn't a problem. Then the lid came off the universe of tarot card creation. Suddenly, there were new decks coming out monthly. There were Giger decks, and Dali decks, and Art Nouveau, and modern art decks.

And then things got really silly. Now every possible subject (zombies, angels, robots, steampunk, punk-punk, pets, still life(?), to name a few) has been squashed to fit into the structure and symbolism of a tarot deck. And anybody and everybody can produce a commercial deck (and apparently everybody has!). There are uncountable numbers of decks out there today. I gave up trying to keep up a long time ago. I also lost a lot of my deeper esoteric interest in the cards (and I was never really interested in the fortune-telling part).

But my interest in the “folk-arting” of the tarot has only grown. Now I mainly collect decks that I think get it really wrong on some level, or the ol' so-bad-it's-great –- outsider art in 22 major arcana! There are also some really impressively goofy oracular decks, like the Anubis Oracle, the Angel Therapy Deck, and the Gaia Oracle. Some of these are so over the top, with 70s van-worthy art, that it's embarrassing to me (in, I must admit, an enjoyable way) just having them in my collection. Many of the oracle decks feel like they've been painted by unicorns inside Santa's workshop cottage as rendered by Thomas Kinkade.

My interest in tarot cards also led to a fascination with cards in general as a way of communicating ideas. I now collect flash-type cards (“Pictorial Webster's”), art cards (Edward Gorey's “The Fantod Pack”), “heroes of” type decks (“Heroes of the Blues”), and other card-borne curiosities. And then there's the only oracular deck that I've ever used with any regularity or “faith:” Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies (and ironically enough, that's the most minimal deck of them all).

Here are cards from a few of my decks, to give you an idea of the wonder and diversity of the tackiness we're talking about.

The Morgan-Greer Tarot, or the 70s Porn Tarot, as I like to call it.

The Lord of the Rings Tarot (& Card Game), starring Boba Fett as Golem and Madonna as the Lady Eowyn.

The Mount-Saint Johns Tarot. I predict the birth of Rob Reiner's head!

The Secret Dakini Oracle. I think I know the secret of that one in the middle.

And so you know that I'm not just tittering over other people's tacky tarot, here are some cards from a color your own deck I painted and modified when I was 18. The scariest thing here is that I actually identified with that hippie Fool in the Zodiac dashiki. Now that's tacky.

BTW, I just “drew” an Oblique Strategy card for today (via the Oblique Strategies iPhone app). It reads:
“Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities”
Like any oracular reading, I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

PS: So what decks do I actually like, in a non-ironic, non-smug-hipster way? Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot is my all-time favorite deck and I've regularly perused it for over 30 years. Lady Freida Harris did the amazing artwork (and also gets no credit in the title) and the cards pretty much data compress Crowley's entire occult universe (and most of Western hermeticism in the process). And I'm still partial to my first Waite-Colman Smith deck – endlessly copied and riffed upon, rarely equaled.

Gareth Branwyn is Editorial Director at MAKEzine.com.

THIS MONTH'S NEWSLETTER
January.  I'm Ron Burgundy?
Mindless Indulgence.  Eighty.  Mindless Pleasures.

by Morgan Hungerford West

I've seen Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy roughly forty times. I almost cheapened it, by saying A MILLION or A TRILLION or INFINITY TIMES, but no. I have LEGIT seen Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy roughly forty times, and mostly over the span of the last six months I was in college.

It was a mindless indulgence in an era of mindless indulgences. When it came out on DVD - at the very end of 2004 - I was days away from turning 24, and having had an errant few years post-high school, I was still in college. Like, FULLY, full-time IN COLLEGE, two hours away from home in a small college town IN COLLEGE, committed to my core classes but wildly content with C minuses in everything else IN COLLEGE, and so while the bulk of the higher education-bound class of '99 had for several years been worrying about 401Ks and savings accounts and paying rent, I was still existing in this strange bubble of meal plans and keg parties and - most foreign of all, now - no job, just class, and a seemingly endless amount of free time.

I bought Anchorman at Wal-Mart, down at school, having returned just after Christmas to avoid a hometown New Year's. The first three or four times I watched it I wasn't blown away - to be fair, though, on that same shopping trip I'd also purchased my first sewing machine, and at some point during the construction of what, in retrospect, was the Most Hilariously Crafted New Year's Dress in the History of Hilariously Crafted New Year's Dresses, I'd thrown it on, on repeat, as background music. And when I finally finished the dress ("finished" and "dress" being overly generous verbiage) and turned my full attention to the 1 hour and 38 minutes that is Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (Unrated, Uncut, and Uncalled For), I very nearly missed the party to which I never should have worn that dress out of the house. Because the movie was perfect, and I needed to watch it again.

I'm not going to try to convince you that it's a perfect movie, because you either already know, or already disagree, or you just haven't seen it (and if that's the case then you SHOULD, you really SHOULD, if only so you know exactly why the 32 year old next you at the bar is screaming that she's in a GLASS CASE OF EMOTION) - but I am going to say this: EVERY LINE IS FUNNY, and the cast is on their A-game, and when you, the viewer, are existing in a perpetual state of hangover, then anything that you can simply lie on the couch and enjoy for all of its perfect and exquisitely crafted stupidity - over, and over, and over again - is a treasure. Anchorman is a dumb movie made by smart people, and that is one of my very favorite kinds. But that's not the entire story.

In 2004/2005 I spent the majority of my free time fucking up (in a variety of ways), taking self-portraits for my MySpace page, drinking way more than I should have, and speaking far more often than was necessary, nearly always with the sole purpose of hearing my own voice. The trappings of one's early 20s are inescapable, and mine were made worse - caricatured, even - by my having taken up residence just out of bounds of the real world. And not once during the roughly 65 hours spent on that masterpiece of a film, laughing hysterically at the SHEER, EGO-DRIVEN RIDICULOUSNESS of Ron Burgundy, was an ounce of irony realized.

I'm Morgan Hungerford West?

THIS MONTH'S NEWSLETTER
January.  The Tacky Tarot.
Mindless Indulgence.  Eighty.  Mindless Pleasures.

by Casey Weir

I'm not going to mislead anyone into thinking that I sat around over the holidays making cookies, watching DVDs, drinking red wine, and eating cake with ice cream until I turned into a wet noodle of a young man, passed out on my parents' couch, warm and farty under a big soft blanket, with a fire roaring at my feet. There was no spirit to guide me towards those holiday traditions of consumption that should always be a source of pleasure. I say with a degree of shame that I found little joy in the company of my family, and even less in the giving and receiving of gifts.

I wanted to indulge in the food, drink and merry-making of the season. I wanted to be a mindless glob of content in the living room watching movies with my family. But I had no capacity for it; I was an unmistakably miserable person.

Upon the passing of the day we call Christmas, I was excited to see my phone awake and buzzing at the reception of texts and calls from good friends who had flooded into town. My heart was lifted and I smelled the musk of joy blowing from around the corner. And it smelled like beer.

For the next five days, I found myself in the good and constant company of my friends. After late nights of drinking wide spectrums of ale from end to end, I would sleep late in the day, waking only to the stir of hunger in my guts and the desire for coffee down my throat. I would eat, the phone would buzz, friends would join together, and we would do it again. It became a mindless routine; a ceaseless indulgence. And most importantly, it made me feel better.

Casey Weir is a writer living in Alexandria, Virginia.

THIS MONTH'S NEWSLETTER 

January.  I'm Ron Burgundy?
Mindless Indulgence.  Eighty.  Mindless Pleasures.

by Brittany Martin

The skyline of the city of San Francisco faded into the punctuated darkness of suburban sprawl miles ago. Billboards and chain stores blur past as I drive south. It is 3:42 in the morning and I will probably make it down this whole stretch of I-80 without ever having to go much below eighty miles an hour. Right now, it feels like my life is a perfectly pleasant disaster and the only time my mind is quiet is when I am speeding this car down the interstate, alone.

I moved here for some wrong reasons. Two wrong reasons, specifically. The one with whom I now share a little white house with a garage and a lemon tree on a quiet street in a small South Bay town; the one who lives up in the city, in the apartment I sit outside of once a week, late at night, a bit too drunk as I fiddle to select a record to listen to on my drive home. My drive in this same car that, just months ago, brought me here, packed with the few things I bothered to keep from my old life that I thought would make sense in my new life. I ended up giving away most of them after I got here, because I judged poorly. I judge poorly.

Growing up, I never needed to drive, and so put off learning. When I finally did, I was at first so blindingly tense behind the wheel that it was not unheard-of for me to pull over to panic and cry before resuming course. But California has no patience for vehicular anxiety, with its spread-out spaces and long, wide roads, so when I tossed out my belongings and identity and moved west, I had to leave that behind as well. If only it were so easy to get over the new anxieties that now make me panic and cry without such a conveniently-identifiable cause. A cause which I could always just have parked and walked away from if it ever became too much. Instead, these days I am forced to face that the real problem has always been me and a continent's width doesn't change anything that matters.

Driving north requires my attention. Traffic is always dense and tense and slow. Driving north I think about driving. Before I leave our tidy, white garage, and when I'm in the grey, unpleasant city, my mind races with any number of fixations. Driving back south, though, when the road's population is sparse but never empty, I think, gratefully, about nothing at all. It is just me and the bleary streaks of lights and a too-loud song I know by heart. It's reckless, but at least I can understand the relationship between my foot on this accelerator and the comforting rhythm at which the white dashes pass under me - something I cannot say at any other time - and that allows me a precious few moments to let go and relax. 

Brittany Martin is a writer in Washington, DC.  

THIS MONTH'S NEWSLETTER
January.  The Tacky Tarot.  I'm Ron Burgundy?
Mindless Indulgence.  Mindless Pleasures.

A Baker's Dozen Listicle by Svetlana Legetic

Disclaimer: I have spent the last 5 years not sleeping enough, working til my body would turn against me, avoiding such things as vacations and regular doctors appointments, and over-thinking everything, all the time. To say I am neurotic and in a constant state of movement/panic is the understatement of my life. Still, every once in a while, I allow my brain to turn itself off for a brief spurt of time, and then, in the name of mental vacation, more often than not I do the following:

1. Plan My Netflix Queue - If you know anything about me, you know that I LOVE movies (all caps, boldened, underlined, italicized kind of love). I worked in a video store when I was a teenager (and by worked, I mean I hung around it until they let me sit behind the counter and then I never left) and random movie trivia occupies my brain in the same fashion that sports facts occupy the brain of some men we know. I also have pretty good taste (if I say so myself), but I don’t ALWAYS FEEL LIKE EXERCISING IT during my limited spare time. Still - I spend about 30 or so minutes every week just adding and subtracting things from my Netflix queue, constantly planning for that perfect 3 day break in life when I could just watch 72 hours of it, without break. French dramas, really good documentaries, revisiting ARISTOCATS and MARY POPPINS, anything involving Jeff Goldblum or Peter O’Toole, stuff like that. At last count my instant queue has 393 movies in it, and I had a blast just click-adding them all in.

2. Girl Dancing - On account of having spent my formative years between Eastern Europe (where men don’t dance with you), South America (where men dance with you in the most intense way and it can still mean nothing) and the Depths of the American South (where men dance with you and it always means something even when you don’t want it to), I have always overthought dancing with men to a point where it is really not all that much fun for me (unless I trust you and/or you’ll twirl me a lot). BUT I HAVE ALWAYS, ALWAYS been really good at dancing in a circle with a bunch of my girlfriends. That’s like my jam. You put on Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” or Q-Feel’s “Dancing in Heaven,” you let me throw my hair in my face with abandon, and for 3 or so minutes, I am not thinking about anything but screaming along to that chorus and doing some weird “sexy”/robot/60s Beatles fan/electric slide/hip-shake things. I think part of this is that despite spending my formative years between Eastern Europe, South America and The Depths of the American South, Outkast’s “Hey Ya” and Destiny’s Child’s “Bootylicious” were hits everywhere (both of which are the pillars upon which Girl Dancing Churches have been built).

3. Reply All Emails Between Friends - You guys, I have some really great friends. The kind of women you want in a foxhole with you. The are all smart and funny and successful and really good at girl dancing, and they send you flowers and hold your hand during Julia Roberts movies and...yes, possible a little crazy and overanalytical at times. And because we are all very busy, we apply the group support email method a lot. Someone starts, things spiral out of control, and even if 3 out of 4 people on the chain are busy, the 4th one will be there to catch your fall. These tend to spiral into 60+ email sequences involving dresses that we should buy, moderately scary Facebook-stalking findings and links to pop music videos, and you don't have to think during any of them. Because everyone on that email is NOT JUDGING, ok?

4. TV Shows Involving Really, Really, REALLY Great Hair - Namely anything starring Connie Britton (ie: Friday Night Lights, American Horror Story and now, OMG, Nashville, all of which have her colorist listed in the credits) and also New Girl (the hair on that show, while obviosuly not God-given like Connie's, is INSANE). I feel absolutely no need to explain or justify this selection.

5. Sports Underdog Stories (on Film) - I am really not that into sports, unless it somehow involves a Serbian national team, but I AM REALLY, REALLY into: music montages, overcoming difficulty through music montages, and being VERY personally invested in something for under 2 hours. Sports movies are a perfect combination of all of the above, and usually also feature a very satisfying ending (unlike real sports). Win win. Some favorites include: Miracle, Blind Side, Rudy, Girls Just Want to Have Fun (whatever, competitive disco-dancing is TOTALLY a sport), The Rookie, Breaking Away, and way too many more to count/number.

6. Vanity Fair - I am subscribed to a lot (A LOT) of magazines (I think we're looking at 20+). None of which I have any time to read and all of which pile up on my floor or my office or my bag or...you get the picture. But, I always find time for VANITY FAIR. Because it is perfect. If I could spend my life with anyone else's job but my own (since my job is pretty amazing, frankly) it would be Graydon Carter's. He puts together a perfect combination of superficial content that, somehow, you NEVER EVER feel guilty about reading. And that, my friends, is not easy. I read it every month front to back and I never ever think about any of it. It feels too good to spoil it with that.

7. COMPELLING Thrillers - Everyone in my family is a reader. A proper one. My Grandmother, with whom I spent A LOT of time, was a World Literature professor and she would feed me things like The Forsythe Saga and the Alexandrian Quartet as casual, pre-teen reading material. So my way of rebelling was the only way I could think of: by reading all the Agatha Christie novels in my hometown's library in one Summer. And it stuck. Even now, if I read a mystery synopsis in the NYTimes Review or in EW (which I totally get every week, and totally trust, so shut up) - I WILL go and buy it. And then read it in one sitting, time-permitting. My recent favorite is Gillian Flynn, who you may know as the woman behind Gone Girl, but I recommend springing for Sharp Objects and Dark Places, her two earlier novels, too.

8. People Doing My Nails/Spending Money on Lipstick - I am groomed to a bare minimum. For the past 3 decades I have coasted by on decent genes, a metabolism that despite professionally eating and drinking nonstop still somehow won't let me turn into a whale, and a solid head of hair that can mask all manner of sins. Still, walking into a nail salon, handing my hand over to someone and walking out with a perfectly dark purple or teal or pale pink set of digits on my tortured fingers is one of my favorite indulgences. Same goes for buying a good lipstick. I talk a lot and use my hands a lot when I talk, so a long time ago I decided that these are a-ok investments and I should not worry about them.

9. Putting an Egg on It - An egg makes EVERYTHING better.

10. Walking Around My Apartment in Heels - I am very tall (6'1" in bare feet) and have been this tall forever (since I was 13). This means that, while I am very happy with said height and would not change it for anything else, heels are often not an option, unless you want to attract the kind of unwanted attention in places of assembly where no one wants to talk to you about anything but the fact that you are currently 6'5" (trust me, this is from first-hand experience). And since I would prefer to talk to people about other things, I wear flats. I do own a ridiculous pair or two of stiletto heels though, and and I sometimes wear them around the house, just so I can see what my legs would look like in them and to pretend everything else outside would be in proportion if I left my house in them. It feels pretty damn good.

11. #HASHTAGGING - I don't have a personal Twitter account and am a very recent Instagram convert, but there is something about hashtagging that I find inherently hilarious. It is like a punchline only you need to get; a personal code between friends. Recently I have taken to using them in text messages, WHICH IS MORTIFYING, but I decided I don't care. #Caitlin #ThisIs32 #MenScarves #DealWithIt.

12. Riding in Cars With Boys - I don't know how to drive, but there are few things I enjoy more than being driven around. I will sit next to a person, roll the window down, totally monopolize the music selection, trust all the decisions you make while we're on the road, eat McDonald's for all three meals in a day (hey, we're on a budget, right?) and stay awake the WHOLE TIME WE ARE ON THIS ROADTRIP. And we will not get lost, I promise.

13. HUGS - Human contact matters. Hi-5s are good, hand shakes are better, shoulder pats work (unless it is at the end of a date), your friends holding your hand during Steel Magnolias is better, BUT hugs are the best. THE BEST. I am a really good hugger, and I will definitely like you a little more if you are a really good hugger too. During a really good hug, all is good with the world. No overthinking, no work, no nothing. JUST HUGS.

Svetlana Legetic is founder/Coach Taylor of BrightestYoungThings.com.

THIS MONTH'S NEWSLETTER

January.  The Tacky Tarot.  I'm Ron Burgundy?
Mindless Indulgence.  Eighty.