Christmas Sale!
Annual subscription 30 percent off through December 25
Christmas is a time of hard choices. Do you shower entitled friends and family with the gifts they want and have come to expect? Or do you honor the true reason for the season: clawing a little something back for yourself while nobody’s looking? My vote’s for you. I’m on your side.
Which is why Slack Tide is having a 30 percent off sale on annual subscriptions, now through Christmas Day, for you late shoppers. A rarity around these parts - only the second sale in our history, since I try not to make a habit of costing myself money. If you don’t celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, the sale works for you, too. Call it a “winter sale” if it makes you feel better and/or you hate the Baby Jesus. This applies to annual subscriptions only. Not monthlies. (And this is for new subscribers only. Unless you’re an existing paid subscriber buying a gift subscription for someone else. I’m forever grateful for existing subscribers, but if you cancel your subscription and try to re-enroll under the Christmas sale, it won’t work, and it will end up costing us both money and aggravation. So be a pal, and please refrain from trickery.) What the special means is instead of $50 for a one-year subscription — already among the lowest-priced subs on Substack — it will now only cost you $35 if you’re a new subscriber and take advantage of this deal by Christmas Day. (The 25th, in case Yultetide awareness isn’t your specialty.) That amounts to a mere $2.91 a month, which would buy you a lousy third of a Chipotle burrito, a lousy quarter if you order it with guacamole. At the end of your year, a subscription renewal will revert back to regular price. However, Substack will give you sufficient notice before then, allowing you to easily cancel in the unlikely event that you haven’t become hopelessly addicted to the searing insights and dazzling waves of prose that will be washing up in your inbox on a steady basis. Though not punishingly steady. We don’t want to get sick of each other. We both have lives.
A gift subscription is a fine idea for others, as well. They hated that tie you bought them last year. (They told me.) And whatever you do, don’t buy your kids a pony. Ponies spend lots of time outdoors. And kids hate the outdoors. They’d rather be inside, reading the internet, which lucky for them, is where Slack Tide appears. The middle-aged and elderly are increasingly staying indoors, too. Which is unhealthy. But not to worry. I have you covered. I wrote 3,000 words last week on trees, for instance. I go outside, so you don’t have to.
We cover the waterfront, here: politics, culture, religion, dystopia, misery, happiness, nature, music, fly fishing. The way we see it, all things are related. A paid subscription (now 30 percent off, in case you’ve already forgotten), guarantees that you won’t miss a single otherwise-paywalled piece, that you have access to the complete archive (you’ve already missed a lot of goodness), and that you can mix it up in the comments section with other literate, thoughtful people like yourself. I bounce trolls who act like abusive goons, though we don’t attract many of those in the first place. So our comments section remains one of the most civilized corners of the internet. I even make regular appearances there, often doing my real work by exchanging with subscribers. And since this will be the last original before 2024 dawns (will run a golden oldie in the week between Christmas and New Year’s, since nobody reads then, anyway), paid subscribers should feel free to mix it up with me and others on any topic of your choosing over the next couple days below. A Christmas free skate. Just be courteous, and don’t make me go King Herod on you.
So what are you waiting for? New Year’s Day? We’re not having a sale, then. I’m a procrastinator by nature too, but now’s the time. Treat yourself or the ones you love, or at least like. And if your enemies hate Slack Tide, it makes for an excellent spite gift, as well.
Bonus Track: My early Christmas gift to you: a 19-year-old Aretha Franklin singing “Blue Holiday.” According to the scholars at 365 Days of Aretha (you can never have too many Aretha days), The Queen of Soul knocked this tune out just before Christmas at Columbia Records in New York, while eight months pregnant and desperately homesick for her family back in Detroit.