NAT’S LETTER | FUND MY BALL ROOM

Guess what! It’s still before midnight here in beautiful Los Angeles!

That means it’s still April, which means this newsletter still counts for the April newsletter!

Did you think I forgot about this arbitrary promise I made, mostly to myself, that I would send a newsletter once a month?

Hell no. 

I’ve been lying in wait, holding out for the perfect time to unleash the following three little pieces!

And so, without further ado, here is the cure for what ails you…

WE NEED MORE BALLROOM

When life’s got you down and your troubles seem to multiply like oversexed rabbits, don’t be sad! Don’t get mad! Don’t focus on the bad! 

Just remember: You can always build a ballroom.

That’s what we’ve always said, right? When life gives you lemons, build a ballroom.

The surefire answer to any sort of misfortune or strife, the ballroom first waltzed its way onto the architectural scene sometime in the seventeenth century. We think. Actually, wikipedia doesn’t list a specific date for this so we’re kind of flying by the seat of our pants here. We know they’ve been around since at least King Louis XVI, and - shall we just say - some truly decadent, wig powdered balls were held in that room right up until the guillotine cut the party short. 

Sadly, not everybody knows what a ballroom is. Some folks think of the place where they went to prom or to their high school homecoming dance - the sort of cavernous linoleum-floored multipurpose room one might find at an American Legion hall, one’s local church basement or, say, a Hilton.

What you should know is that those are unsecure locations - the sort meant for them. For the poors.

No no, what we’re talking about is a ballroom. Ballrooms are wondrous rooms - the most glorious rooms anyone has ever seen. They have lacquered wooden sprung floors and gold leaf ornaments and the walls are papered with $400 million dollars worth of taxpayer money.

$400 million of your dollars for a room that people may or may not be able to visit on a tour one day, assuming it ever gets built and the money isn’t instead smuggled by the giant dollar-sign emblazoned burlap sack-load into a bank in Qatar. But those are poor people worries, not ball people worries!

As it has been written: our grief is big, but our balls are bigger.

What is a ballroom good for exactly? The simplest answer: holding balls. And while sure, you can most certainly hold your balls (or anyone else’s balls for that matter) in the ballroom, the cameral delights of a tastefully appointed event space extend well beyond the matter of containing a jolly, jostling ball!

A ballroom can be so much more.

Do you need a place to have a swinging good time while, say, huge swaths of the nation’s forests burn or while lakes and rivers flood beyond their banks or while we wait out ever-expanding gas lines? Why, spring for a sprung floor and build a ballroom!

Do you find yourself in need of a bullet proof, drone free location to hide from the consequences of incredibly unpopular public policy that you and your sycophantic underlings have shoved down the nation’s throats despite the desperate flashing of countless warning lights? Would you like a sort of bunker that doubles as a place to do the electric slide with seven of your best billionaire friends? Why, bury your heads beneath the ball’s room!

Would you like yet another thing to put your name on - yet another freaking thing - something with more substance than just rebranding an existing cultural institution? Do you need to cover over a giant hole that you tore out of the White House for no apparent reason? Are you worried about your rapidly fading legacy? Do you want to leave something more behind than agony and torment and increased social division and a metaphorical boatload of fake-ass crypto currency that you cannot take with you beyond the grave? 

Build the ball! Build it now! We need more room for balls! 

Let us be honest for once in our lives: the spaces where the public forces us to hold our parties have become too restrictive for our elephantiasis-inflamed balls. Also, for some reason that’s completely beyond our comprehension, people keep threatening to do violence to us. 

We need isolation! We need protection! And we need privacy - for people keep getting angry at us for eating our cake! They watch us eat our cake, their mouths drooling and their brows knit into scowls, like they’re upset at how much cake we’re eating! Why don’t the people eat cake?! Let them eat their own cake!

In this fraught time, with rising grocery prices and energy costs choking you and ICE deporting you and the FBI threatening you over your social media posts and your soldier family members getting rockets shot at them for wars that we technically aren’t fighting and bots screaming at you about the radical left and the Supreme Court restricting your rights and the politicians trying to limit your ability to vote… could somebody at least do us the solid of giving our rich people  another nice place to congregate??

Is that so much to ask??

For just a little more ball room??

For a place to hold our rapidly decaying, botoxed-into-oblivion, sagging, greying balls???

We need it. We need it. We NEED it.

After all, if you’ve never experienced bad times then how can you appreciate the ball times? Right? Right??

And now, our new (woefully) monthly segment…

GROUNDHOG REPORT FOR MAY 2026

We know many of you have been eagerly awaiting this information, so we’re pleased to report that our friend, Prince Handsome the Groundhog, peeked his fuzzy little head up from his hidey hole today. 

He saw his shadow, took a quick little walk around the yard, and then he let us know that the Straits of Hormuz will be closed again this month - although he wouldn’t say if Iran or the continuing US blockade were to blame.

And yes, this is a groundhog that we keep specifically for forecasting geopolitical conditions.

He also mentioned that the markets can expect certain members of our government to say the straits are open, only to then turn around and threaten civilizational destruction - as they are wont to do - when ships refuse to go get shot at with rockets.

Please calibrate your insider trading accordingly.

Unrelated, but Prince Handsome did a fair amount of whimpering. We may have caught a tear or two running down his cheek, and we also think we may have seen dried blood on his claws, which we can only assume came from nervous scratching - he tends to scratch himself when he’s incredibly stressed or upset. 

We offered him extra groundhog chow, but he claimed not to be hungry before retreating back into his den to resume watching reruns of The Office.

Check back next month for another update, provided there’s been no resolution to the “armed conflict” and provided our little buddy is sober enough to come out again.

Finally, never meet your heroes and never meet your ancestors….

THE SAGA OF TREVOR

“I won’t accept this kind of treatment,” shouted Trevor at the top of his lungs. “I come from good Anglo-Saxon stock. My ancestors basically created Western Civilization as we know it. This superior nation of ours, the one whose teat you mistreat like a chew toy, could not exist without my people. I will not sit here and listen to you make excuses. I see only more evidence here of the insidious rot of inferiority - the sort of mediocre dealings that are rapidly degrading what used to be the hottest country in the world.”

Trevor took a breath to refill his bellows, offering just enough of a pause for the voice in the squawk box to chime in. “Look, man. We’re out of tostadas. We can’t do the extra Mexican pizza. I don’t know what to tell you. Do you want your chicken chalupas combo or not?”

For a moment, Trevor considered lambasting the insolent order taker further with another broadside of invective, but his stomach growled and, judging from the chorus of angry car horns sounding out their fury, the drive-through line behind him had grown quite impatient.

“Fine but I want a Baja Blast. And a nachos grande. I assume you have corn chips, or is that too much to ask of a fast food Mexican restaurant?”

As Trevor pulled forward, he thought about his ancestry. Sometimes, when he got really mad or indignant, he liked to imagine some great great great grand ancestor standing near and guiding him, with one hand on Trevor’s shoulder and another on his sword - the sort of mythical weapon deserving of its own special name, spoken of in epic verses passed down from generation to generation.

The cashier opened the drive-through window and tapped Trevor’s phone for payment. She passed his Baja Blast through his car window. As she handed one the food, she ducked down to look him directly in his eyes.

“Tonight you will be transported back in time to meet your ancestors,” she said rather calmly. “To be clear, this is a curse. I am a practicing witch who also works in fast food and I am officially cursing you. On behalf of the whole staff here at the South La Cienega Taco Bell, I hope that it’s an incredibly unpleasant experience for you. Now, would you like any hot sauces?”

Trevor blinked. “Uh. Medium?”

“We don’t have medium. We have hot or fire. Those are the medium choices.”

“Mild, then. Also, I’ll have you know that I will be grading this restaurant very poorly on my socials.”

“Knock yourself out,” said the cashier as she unclenched a fist full of sauce packets into his to-go bag.

~~~~~

Trevor’s night started out quite normal. 

He used his VPN to place a couple of Polymarket bets on several tragedies he hoped would happen any day now. He watched some Tucker Carlson clips on his phone before pleasuring himself. In the afterglow, he laid in bed and entered one star reviews for various Disney films on Rotten Tomatoes.

So completely had Trevor exhausted himself with these endeavors that he completely forgot about his earlier heinous drive-through debacle, as well as the insolent cashier’s curse. In fact he was happy as a clam, flicking through his tiktok algorithm and watching influencers donning period-accurate medieval armor or buxom trad wife lasses kneading dough for the camera.

But with all this entertainment consumption he had worked up a second appetite, and Trevor recalled that he still had some takeout left. So, to cap off another successful Friday night, he decided to finish off his half-eaten nacho.

As Trevor shoveled the last chip, with the final swipe of refried beans and the only remaining glob of nacho cheese left on the plastic platter, into his awaiting maw, he noticed the room begin to spin.

The walls fell away. The floor dropped out from beneath him and the ceiling flew off into the abyss.

Trevor found himself swept up into the swirling heart of some supernatural tempest.

“Da fuck…?” was all Trevor could muster for words as he plummeted through space and time, eventually landing with a great thud in the middle of some tall grasses.

~~~~~

After getting his bearings, Trevor hiked through what appeared to be some sort of wheat-like plants to the edge of the field where he found a long fieldstone wall. He followed it as the wall wound its way up a knoll. As he reached the top, he heard a hissing.

A squirrely looking man ducked his head up over the other side of the fieldstones. He had almost the exact same wild, unkempt black beard and rosy cheeks as Trevor.

“Who the shit are you?” asked the wild man.

Trevor looked him up and down, his eyes wide with utter disbelief. “Oh my God!” he exclaimed. “You must be my great, great, uh…”

“I don’t give a shit who you think you are,” said the man. “Get your stupid ass out of my field. I have to reap later and the last thing I need is you tromping all over the crops. Ass.”

“You don’t understand,” explained Trevor as he clambered over the field stones. “I’m your descendant. I come from the future. I’m Trevor.”

“Ah hah,” said his descendant as he lifted a sack of feed onto his shoulder. “Well. My name’s Aelf. Now get lost. I have work to do.”

“Let me help,” offered Trevor. Aelf gestured towards another sack of feed, but Trevor was too caught up with excitement to notice and instead paced up and down the path. “I can’t believe this. To think, that fool of a cashier thought this would be a curse! I’ve fantasized about this since I was a teenager, to be standing here in glorious Anglo-Saxon England - the motherland.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” claimed Aelf as he dragged the second sack behind him up the hill.

“Speaking of, how can you understand what I’m saying? The language I’m speaking is over a thousand years developed past the version of English you speak.”

Aelf spat. “I think you have your stupid brains confused. We speak whatever shit Aethelbald speaks.”

“Who’s Aethelbald?” asked Trevor.

Aelf snorted. “You’re really not from around here, are you?”

“No, that’s the point,” proclaimed Trevor. “And I can’t believe my luck. I was just at home, savaging the latest Pixar offering and ruminating on the disrespect shown to my noble Anglo-Saxon forbearers, and now here I am, questioning none other than my own ancient progenitor! What an incredible life full of honor and adventure you must lead! What is this?”

Aelf stopped in front of a thatch hovel, where he deposited the bags of feed. “It’s my hovel. We live in this stinking weed-covered shack.”

“Oh,” said Trevor, trying his best to hide his disappointment. “I always envisioned a big ancestral manor. Stone and… like a castle.”

“‘Castle,’ eh?” repeated Aelf.

“Yeah, you know. A big defensive building. And a stable full of horses.”

Aelf let out a great laugh, then took a chunk of cheese out of a satchel slung around his shoulder. “Horses? Who am I, Aethelbald? You’re funny. No, we’re farmers. I’m a farmer. I farm shit. I get up early, I do the shit-work of farming, occasionally we eat, and then at some point my ass will die and my sons will have to fight over who gets this rocky chunk of shit land we call home.”

“No,” said Trevor as Aelf cut a piece of mold from his cheese. “No, you don’t get it. We’re a great people - the Anglo Saxons.”

“You keep saying this word, ‘angasackins,’ and I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about,” said Aelf, specks of cheese flying from his lips as he spoke.

Trevor shook with exasperation. “That’s you! You’re Anglo-Saxon. You come from Anglo-Saxon blood - the same pure blood that flows in my veins.”

“That’s a weird thing to say,” said Aelf as he brushed cheese dust from his beard. “Blood is dirty. You get blood on you and you wash it off. What kind of sinister elf talks like that, pure blood? That’s creepy. You’re not a creep, are you?”

“Come on. Don’t tell me you don’t know what an Anglo-Saxon is.”

“I know Saxon and I know Angle and I know Jute. None of that means pig shit to me. I’m Aethelbald’s man. Everyone in the hamlet - we’re Aethelbald’s people. We crossed over the sea with his grandfather many years ago and we’ve been squatting here ever since.”

“We’re… we’re immigrants,” repeated Trevor, the words leaving an unpleasant metallic taste in his mouth.

“Yes. Well, not my wife - she’d be a Celt. And my mom was Romano-British. So I guess you could say we’re-”

“Mixed blood,” said Trevor. He felt a sudden dizzy spell overtaking him. He reached out for any sort of support to guide his fall, his hand gripping the empty air.

“Oh, hey, you don’t want to sit there,” warned Aelf, but it was too late.

Trevor plopped down into Aelf’s manure pile.

“Aw damn it, now look what your dumb ass has done!” Aelf crouched down next to his great great great etc. descendant. “Listen. You’ve clearly been through a lot of shit.  You’re swimming in it right now as we speak. Why don’t you wash yourself off in the pond? My wife Edith can make us a nice supper. She’s cooking cat tonight.”

Trevor looked at his great great great etc. ancestor. “Your name is Aelf and you eat cats?”

Just then, a loud cry went up among the other families in the hamlet. A bell rang out.

Edith stuck her head out from the hovel.

“Aelf!” she shouted “Those goddamn Vikings are back! They’ve come to steal our cats again!”

“Gods damn it!” exclaimed Aelf. He scrambled towards the barn and grabbed a pitchfork that was leaning against the walls.

“Well, come on,” he shouted at Trevor. “Grab a shovel or something. We got Vikings to run off!”

Trevor sort of sat there and shrugged. Aelf prodded him. “Let’s go, mister Pure Blood Great Stock. Time to prove your valor, show ‘em what we’re made of.”

“Aw man, I would but, uh. I strained my calves the other day.” Trevor shifted uncomfortably in the manure.

Aelf shook his head. “Figures. Ass.”

As Trevor hurried off to protect his feline food supply, a solitary thought broke through Trevor’s clouded mind. He wished that they had just had tostadas. None of this would have happened. Stupid South La Cienega Taco Bell.

And then he saw a Viking raider, battle ax raised high in the air, bearing down on him in the manure pit.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Another light month this month, but we still have a couple of offerings in case you missed them:

Our Best Little Boy - yeah everything is messed up, but what if we told you that the national fail son is hard at work?

Gospel of Travis - the last chapter has posted! Our favorite wannabe apostle gets his reward! You can read the whole thing from the very beginning by going to the table of contents. I plan on making the PDF of the whole thing available as well, so check back in a week or so.

Thank you so much for reading!

If you have not done so already, consider becoming a subscriber! It’s free (unless you’d like to throw a buck or two my way) and signing up helps me out immensely. If you’d like to support my writing, you can always send me a small donation at the link.

Hope you’ve enjoyed!  Love each other! Take care of each other!