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GOOD, I HOPE IT EATS ME 😒

Happy Peanut Cluster Day! Unless, of course, you are allergic. If you are and are something of a grammarian, consider instead celebrating National Proofreading Day instead. If you are allergic to both peanuts and well-constructed sentences, it is also National Retro Video Game Day. So many options!

Meanwhile, I am waiting for the lions March promises to come eat me and put an end to my problems before the lambs arrive with their soft, downy false hope. Pass the bottle, Tin Man!

Chandler gets it.

GIF via Friends / NBC

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If you're in the market for some Boredwalk goodies — like that cute, soft Wizard of Oz-inspired Liquid Courage tee up top — be sure to use code SAVE15 at checkout for 15% off orders of $95+, not to mention free U.S. shipping on orders of $75+ — no code needed!

(We also wanted to mention that our vendor who prints our books sent us a bunch of copies of our 1990s Adult Activity books with the wrong paper type. They are still usable, but the paper works best with pens and color pencils (not as well with markers and crayons). Anyway, we are selling them at cost to get them out of our warehouse to avoid throwing them in a landfill. Grab one if you want one.)

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While you're waiting for your new Boredwalk gear to arrive you can also treat your earholes to the latest episode of the Boredwalk Podcast!

Meredith & Tess discuss gross eHarmony ads, Boredwalk's most recent burglary, ineffective law enforcement, and the general bad vibes swirling around Boredwalk for the last several months.

They also debate which is more powerful: capitalism or misogyny? Meredith is pretty sure it's misogyny and lays out why, and Tess supports this hypothesis with some first-hand experiences working on ads for some of the worst companies on the internet.

They then check in with the internet troll contingent, and the trolls did not disappoint. (They never do.)

Thankfully, Karen left a 5-star review for her new Grievance Journal, which helped the troll pills go down a bit easier.

Our co-hosts move on to reacting to fan answers to the Question of the Day "what fragrance do others like that you can't stand?" and patchouli was the runaway 'winner' among fans, but Tess & Meredith had their own strong opinions on this question.

They wrap things up by trading answers to the Delve Deck Venting and Joy Edition questions "what problem can you not believe technology hasn't solved yet?" and "what's your favorite guilty pleasure right now?"

Get in on the action and listen to the hilarity on the platform of your choice!

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Here are a few historical tidbits and famous birthdays to kick off your weekend:

• In 1910 French aviator Raymonde de Laroche became the first woman to receive a pilot's license

• In 1917 the US Senate voted to limit filibusters by adopting the cloture rule. LOL, problem solved, no notes!

• In 1950 the first Volkswagen Type 2, aka VW Bus, aka every hippie's favorite mode of transportation, rolled off the production line.

• In 1979 the compact disc, aka the best audio media format ever invented — I AM NOT ENTERTAINING CHALLENGES TO THIS ASSERTION, VINYL FETISHISTS — was demonstrated publicly for the first time by Dutch manufacturer Philips

• Birthday peanut clusters all around (unless you're allergic, of course) for: Singer-songwriter & actor Micky Dolenz of The Monkees (1945), singer-songwriter & bassist Randy Meisner of The Eagles (1946), English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and car enthusiast Gary Numan (1958), Irish-American actor Aidan Quinn of Desperately Seeking Susan and Benny & Joon fame (1959), actress Camryn Manheim of The Practice fame (1961), actor Freddie Prinze, Jr. of She's All That, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Scooby-Doo film franchise fame (1976), actor James Van Der Beek of Dawson's Creek and Varsity Blues fame (1977), tattoo artist & model Kat Von D (1982), Uzbekistani-American actress & comedian Milana Vayntrub of AT&T commercial and Werewolves Within fame (1987), and English actor Kit Connor of Heartstopper fame (2004)

• Pour one out for: French composer & conductor Hector Berlioz (d. 1869), German businessman & fragile airship inventor Ferdinand Zeppelin (d. 1917), Grateful Dead keyboardist & songwriter Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (d. 1973), jazz singer Billy Eckstine (d. 1993), baseball icon Joe DiMaggio (d. 1999), and English composer, conductor, record producer, and "Fifth Beatle" George Martin (d. 2016)

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OK, that's it for this week!

We'll be back here in your inbox on Monday with another email and maybe a fresh customer Q&A if any brave soul (perhaps you?) volunteers! If you'd like to be featured in an upcoming email, reply to this one and let us know!

Peace, love, and courage (liquid or otherwise)

Matt

YOU DA REAL MVPs

If you missed Monday's Boredwalk email, well, it was a doozy. I'll spare you a repeat of the gory details, but our offices were broken into and burglarized (again) for the second time in as many months last weekend.

I and the entire Boredwalk team have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support in response, from placing generous orders to messages of encouragement and empathy to sharing what happened on social media to help spread awareness about our weird little brand.

A HUGE thank you to everyone who replied to the email or reached out via DM over Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and elsewhere. We are by no means out of the woods, but we do have a much-needed spring in our step as we continue to navigate all the challenges 2024 has thrown at us so far.

Thank you so, so much!

No, seriously — thank you

GIF via CBS

Random occasions? Have at them:

• National Dentist Day — Seriously? Gum reaper is out here looking for a statue? Hard pass.

• National Frozen Food Day — I don't know about you, but I would not have made it out of my teen years without fish sticks and frozen peas.

• National Oreo Day — My annual opportunity to remind you that Hydrox were first and Oreos are cookie-come-latelies riding their coattails!

• In 1836 3,000 Mexican troops finally succeeded in storming and capturing the Alamo following a 13-day siege defended by a mere 187 volunteers comprised of US colonists and Tejanos rebelling against the central Mexican government. Shoulda tried hiding in the basement!

• Dmitri Mendeleev presented the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society on this day in 1869

• Birthday sandwich cookies all around for: Italian painter, sculptor, and teenage mutant ninja turtle Michelangelo (1475), French author & playwright Cyrano de Bergerac (1619), English-Italian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806), songwriter, bandleader, and King of Western Swing Bob Wills (1905), actor & comedian Lou Costello of Abbott & Costello and "Who's on first?" fame (1906), famed illustrator & publisher Will Eisner of The Spirit fame (1917), comedian, actor, announcer, and large check enthusiast Ed McMahon (1923), legendary jazz guitarist & songwriter Wes Montgomery (1923), singer Mary Wilson of The Supremes (1944), English singer-songwriter & guitarist David Gilmour of Pink Floyd fame (1946), actor & filmmaker Rob Reiner of All in the Family, This Is Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, The Princess Bride, and When Harry Met Sally fame (1947), comedian, actor, producer, and screenwriter D.L. Hughley (1963), actress Connie Britton of Friday Night Lights and Nashville fame (1967), basketball icon, savvy businessman, and walking hilarious soundbite Shaquille O'Neal (1972), English singer-songwriter and guitarist Guy Garvey of the perpetually underrated band Elbow (1974), and rapper Beanie Sigel (1974)

• Pour one out for: Colonel & knife enthusiast James "Jim" Bowie and frontiersman, politician, and raccoon hat enthusiast Davy Crockett (d. 1836), who just couldn't make it to that elusive basement in time.

Also dribble a tipple in honor of novelist & poet Louisa May Alcott of Little Women fame (d. 1888), conductor and composer John Philip Sousa of marching band music fame (d. 1932), Mount Rushmore designer & sculptor whose name sounds like the result of a bet his parents lost Gutzon Borglum (d. 1941), novelist & Nobel Prize laureate Pearl S. Buck (d. 1973), Russian-American "philosopher" and professional whiner Ayn Rand (d. 1982), painter and "flower" enthusiast Georgia O'Keeffe (d. 1986), singer-songwriter & guitarist Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse fame (d. 2010), singer-songwriter & guitarist Alvin Lee of Ten Years After fame (d. 2013), and surgeon & Tommy John surgery pioneer Frank Jobe (d. 2014)

Alright, on to the amusing links!

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1. 🍸 Sir, she bought you a drink. You know the rules!

Tess woman-spreads all over the place and explains the transactional nature of this "free" cocktail. Now be a good little boy and grab your rubber mallet and socket wrench set — that weird noise isn't going to fix itself!

For more LOLs from our team be sure to follow us on our OG social accounts such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and/or Facebook. But if you're looking for merch, just buy directly from a brand's website. These social media jabronis don't deserve to get a cut.

sdsd

2. 🗳️ And the nominee is...

Matt Buechele has thoughts on this that are funny, but less funny and more depressing is the fact that I literally wrote in "Lucifer Morningstar" on my ballot for a couple of uncontested seats the other day and am more confident in a fictional literary character's bona fides than those of whichever living, breathing jabroni just got elected because no one else felt like running against them.

3. 🍌 The ultimate side hustle

Evy Kay reveals the secret to untold riches on social media (and killer banana bread)!

4. 🧙🏽‍♀️ If they didn't want to get eaten, they should've left the house made of candy alone

It's 2024, and social media users are still being judgmental AF about non-mainstream dietary choices. I thought we were past this!

5. 🧌 Riddle me this, taxpayer!

Gabe has run afoul of the tax troll, and while this is a comedy sketch, it sure does also seem rooted in fact. Shout out to Tess for writing some awful(ly funny) poetry!

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We'll be back here in your inbox on Friday with more nonsense holidays to dissect, more notable birthdays (and maybe even some notable deathdays!) to celebrate, and more witty content in general. Until then...

Peace, love, and thanks,

Matt

I'm changing things up with our usual Boredwalk email format today. No product photos. No random holidays to enthuse about or make fun of. No notable historical events or famous birthdays to celebrate. No humorous GIFs supporting my inane ramblings. No customer Q&A.

I'm tapped out. Everyone here at Boredwalk is. 

In case you missed it in our (since-deleted) Instagram post over the weekend, our offices were broken into and burglarized early Saturday morning for the second time in as many months.

We're pretty sure it was the same perpetrators of the first burglary on January 4th. We're also pretty sure the Whittier Police Department will be just as ineffectual in finding them as they were two months ago. As excited as the small army of SWAT officers who arrived on the scene shortly after the suspects left seemed at the prospect of being able to fill other humans with lead, they were equally disinterested in doing the less violent procedural tasks of taking crime scene photos and dusting for fingerprints.*

* Look, if you yourself or someone you know and care about works in law enforcement, please don't @ me about the above comment. I was actually here and saw how disappointed they all became when they confirmed the building was empty and realized they weren't going to be able to shoot someone and instead have to do actual police work. The unsubscribe link is right down below. 

The reason I asked Meredith to delete the Instagram post is because in addition to the very kind words of sympathy and care we received in the comments and our DMs, there were many of instances of people giving a lot of unsolicited, uninformed, and wildly impractical "advice" about what we should do to prevent this from happening again. Well-intentioned though it may have been, it still stung to be confronted with a wall of notifications like that, as though these were all obvious and easy-to-implement solutions for a business of our size. And this, after having spent hours going through security cam footage with the police to file the incident report.

• Get a guard dog: Commercial leases, including ours, don't typically allow for that. This is an office park, not a scrap yard. The last thing we need is some snarling hellhound pooping all over the carpet and chewing all our Delve Decks and Grievance Journals and activity books to bits every night.

• Get a shotgun: A shotgun is only of use if I am physically present at the office to discharge it. I already am here 12+ hours a day, six day a week (seven this week, as I am here now typing this). I don't think it's reasonable to expect anyone to live at their office 24/7.

• Spend the night so someone is here to scare them off next time: See above. These degenerates don't really give us advance notice of when they plan to strike, so that would mean I just start living here around the clock indefinitely. Again, I don't think this is a reasonable or practical solution.

• Replace all the windows with steel: Again, we are renters, we don't own this building. The landlords will not allow us to make substantial changes to the construction of our unit. Plus, our lease is up in roughly 18 months. Spending tens of thousands of dollars on building upgrades for such a limited period of utility is not something we have the money for.

• Move to a more secure building: We are under lease until July 2025. Breaking that lease will be prohibitively expensive, as would paying for such a move, and this also assumes that other buildings in different areas will be more secure. They aren't. Criminals are literally everywhere. Even Mayberry had dozens of them on The Andy Griffith Show. This would also likely have a detrimental impact on our staff members. If our next office is very far from our current one, they may not be able or willing to make that commute on a daily basis, and we don't have many roles at Boredwalk that allow for working from home on a full-time basis, especially when it comes to printing shirts, towels, and bags, and packing & shipping orders. We all have great chemistry together and want to maintain that.

• Set up myriad booby traps, Home Alone-style: This is not a Hollywood movie, this is real life. I am 100% confident any booby traps we set up will only serve to injure myself or the other members of our staff. 

• Get a private armed security guard to patrol the premises overnight: That's an extra 84 hours a week in payroll, and we do not have the budget for that, either (see below).

The other thing that a lot of the people leaving these comments seemingly fail to understand is that everything listed above costs money, and not an insignificant amount of it. We are already out the thousands of dollars in shirts that were stolen. Plus we will have to pay another insurance deductible to file a claim, not to mention the cost to replace the glass that they shattered in order to break in here.

That money has to come from somewhere; we can't just conjure it out of thin air like a wizard or the Federal Reserve. So that would entail either finding a LOT of new customers overnight who are willing to spend what we currently charge for our products, or raising our prices significantly.

We also get so many comments on our ads about how "high" our prices are already, but they really are not. We set our prices to be competitive with the rest of the market (read: similarly-sized businesses selling similar-ish products) and to cover the costs of the products themselves, the labor, the rent, the utilities, the shipping materials, and the marketing & advertising costs associated with putting our stuff in front of people (which are a LOT higher than folks seem to know), but people seem to believe Boredwalk prices should be in line with what they see at Walmart or Amazon or Temu or Shein. We are not any of those companies.

Boredwalk is a small business. We have been struggling mightily for several months, and we are on a knife's edge right now. Candidly, if there are items of ours you have had your eye on for a while, I would strongly consider ordering them now or in the near future and not just taking for granted that we will still be around and in business come November or December when you are looking to do holiday shopping. This is not a marketing ploy or a trick — this is just the reality of the situation.

Meredith and I love working on developing fun new products that delight our customers, but we have been struggling so much for months and months trying to shore up other areas of the business that are less exciting but just as (if not more) important to its ongoing function that we have not had time to even discuss new tee designs or Delve Deck expansions or our next activity books, let alone actually work on them.

We just get punched in the face in some new, unanticipated fashion each day. It's getting hard to want to even wake up in the morning.

Look, I'm sorry to slump into your inbox and whine about Boredwalk's problems to you, and on a Monday to boot. I hate doing it. I would much rather share funny jokes and unveil rad new tee designs and games and books that make you happy (or at least marginally happier).

We are still working (extremely, insanely) hard to turn things around. Hopefully we are able to do so. If not, it's been a pleasure sharing time in your inbox with you, whether you've been a subscriber for ten years or ten days.

Peace, love, and tacos,

Matt Snow

Chief Creative Officer / Co-founder

Boredwalk