👞✉️ The First Shusletter!

Happy hump day! Welcome to the inaugural edition of the shusletter, the world’s #1 Shumaker-based newsletter! I’m Matthew G. Shumaker, and here’s my newsletter. Expect the shusletter to arrive most Fridays to celebrate hump day. (Note: none of these sections are guaranteed to show up in another edition of the shusletter)

If the welcome email was confusing at all and you wanted to ask for clarification about anything, sorry!

this week’s anthem

( apple music / spotify )

…is Home Sweet Home, by Mötley Crüe. I thought I’d start simple with one of my favorite rock (Google calls it “glam metal” which is my new favorite term) songs by one of my favorite bands. Discounting their… scandalous history (I mean it’s usual 80s rockstar stuff— but still), I’ve always loved their music and the fact that they think they’re so much cooler than they are¹ , but this song in particular always sticks out to me. The piano intro and outro always felt so cool to me for some intangible reason that led me to instantly fall in love with the song.

¹This is one of my favorite ways to describe the band. I’m sure they were really cool for their time but looking back it’s hard to see past the classic 80’s goofiness (that I adore so much).

what’s up

The last time I created a Shumaker-focused medium of expression (excluding The SHUCAST) was all the way back in fourth grade— September 2014 to be exact— when I created a Blogspot blog with the incredibly original name My Daily Life. I ended up only writing four entries from September 16-19:

September 16, 2014

I started my blog off strong by opening by writing about my fourth grade crush rejecting me. Seriously, I published this on the internet:

I think this is genuinely hilarious. I wrote this. I’m so upset that the image was deleted because the fact that I attached a picture of a note I got rejected on is sending me. The note said something like…

…which, okay, sure she was like 6 months older than me but we were in fourth grade. I’m not still upset. I’m not still upset. We’re still friends, it’s okay.

I’m glad that even back in fourth grade I felt that the world cared that much about my life. I no longer feel this, though— now I know that the world cares that much about me, and the only way I can fulfill this desire is through this weekly shusletter. Alas, this has been written. Thank you all for your support.

Sure, me publicly posting me getting rejected is hilarious (Yes, the website is still up. No, you’re not getting the link), but what I think is funnier is how protective of my own privacy I was. I only went by “M22” for my personal blog that everyone knew I was running, which is great for a fourth grader to care about that, but I guess I did not care about anyone else’s privacy because I fully name-dropped E.M. (name redacted for their 2023 privacy) for a section in the blog that ultimately meant nothing. I was so scared that someone would steal my fourth grade identity so I was only known by a letter, but I had the audacity to drop the full, legal name of this friend of mine for… some reason.

This was really the only blog post I made that mattered. I wrote some others about nothing, but even I started to know it didn’t matter because on September 18, 2014 I only wrote:

So, in the spirit of my 4th grade blog, I hoped you enjoyed!

this week in shumaker history

• On Feb. 3rd, 2020 AD/CE (not to be confused with AC/DC) Shumaker & Theodore Eccleston Clifton IV went skiing at Whitetail Resort in Mercersburg, PA.

• On Feb. 2nd, 118 B.S. (Before Shumaker), the first Groundhog Day was celebrated.

• On Feb. 2nd, 69 B.S. Babe Ruth was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

• On Jan. 30th, 36 B.S. was the Beatles’ last public performance.

what’s up with the rat patrol?

Reuben and Gullard were both on vacation this week, as rats cannot legally commit crime between January 29th and February 4th, so there was no need for them to be on duty this week. Because of this, there will sadly be no hijinks from the Northwest Old Hartford Rat Patrol this week.

fictional creature of the week

it is pokémon lickitung look at how silly he looks

links

If you’ve ever wanted to see what Google looked like in 1998, then just Google “google in 1998” (Sadly, I think this only works on a non-mobile browser). Sure, this is a well known Easter egg that’s not really meant to blow your mind, but I just found out about it and I think it’s cool so don’t get upset. This is my newsletter, not yours. Cool it, man.

This is a little known fact about me, and sorry if it ends up ruining our friendship (I’m looking at you, Lorenzo the “Italian”) but I am a massive frozen pizza fan. I mean I would pick fresh pizza of any sort over frozen pizza, but that doesn’t mean I don’t consume an ungodly amount of it. I’ll expand on that another time though, now I’ll talk blank it this list of the best frozen pizzas. Frankly, I don’t agree with many of them, but doesn’t that make it that much more beautiful? If everyone blindly agreed on the same thing for no reason without consequence, then what is the point of having favorites? Anyways, it’s a good article despite this.

If you’ve ever seen Breaking Bad, then you’d recognize the name Gale Boetticher. Well I was looking through Gonzaga’s Wikipedia page and found that his actor, David Constabile, graduated from Gonzaga in 1985 (And was a part of the GDA). Cool.

This one is again more aimed towards the Gonzaga students, but you should check out The Aquilian Daily. It’s a website of news articles from the senior journalism class. They have a newsletter, too, but it’s definitely not as good as the shusletter.

(There will be more non-Gonzaga specific things in the future, don’t worry.)

Genuinely, thank you so much for reading this. I know writing a newsletter is absurd for some random high schooler to start doing but I get so much joy out of this, and I want to share that joy with you, the reader. I would love some feedback (“X section did not work,” “Y section was hilarious”) but please don’t feel obligated to. I know this newsletter has a tongue-in-cheek vibe that I don’t want to make too serious, but seriously, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for taking the time out of your day to read these insane ramblings of mine. See you next hump day!

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