Syllabus #21

Your syllabus is coming at you a few days later than usual this week.  I hope this won't negatively impact your evaluations.  I've been busy doing all the employment-related cliches:  working hard for the money, working for the weekend, let me work it put my thing down flip it and reverse it, working 9-5 (except actually more like 7:30-3:30).  You get the idea.

Last night I took Charlie for an evening walk.  It was almost pleasant, because at that hour, the children, other dogs, squirrels, buses, and delivery vehicles are all dormant and Charlie and his basket of 10,000 anxieties can trot beside me in relative tranquility.  The 95 degree heat of the day had abated to a bone-chilling low 80s by that point, and a mere two blocks away, I could hear the marching band of Oprah's high school alma mater playing at the Friday night football game.  It was one of those simple Kurt Vonnegut "if this isn't nice, I don't know what is," moments.  That, or tequila is a helluva drug.*

Here's an un-curated smorgasbord of reading material for this week.  Just like an all-you-can-eat buffet, you can pile on a little bit of everything but you'll probably feel terrible afterwards.

BORING.  What is the point of summer camp without hair-raising campfire tales and heavy petting in the woods?  Actually, I only ever went to church camp so I got neither of those experiences.  Though, if you think about it, a story about a guy getting brutally murdered and then coming back from the dead to haunt his friends a few days later is pretty terrifying.  Christianity pretty much has the market cornered on that plot line.  Also, one of the counselors told us a story about a guy on a camping trip who was so dumb that when he ran out of toilet paper, his friend told him to just use a dollar to wipe and he ended up with four quarters jammed up his ass.  But that was at the dinner table and not around a campfire, so I'm pretty sure the function of that story was to distract us all from how inedible the camp food was.

This lesbian astronaut custody dispute has made-for-TV movie written all over it. 

I think I'm more terrified of Lyme disease than any other ailment I could possibly encounter.  It's such a murky diagnosis and so many sufferers are basically gaslit by doctors for years before they make any progress. 


How to be sober?  Just shut up about it.  But how will everyone know how on-trend I am if I can't 'Gram my cute mocktails and artfully packaged non-alcoholic craft beers? 


I must be getting old because I thought this was...funny?  None of his barbs were over the top, and they weren't exactly mean spirited.  He just seemed bemused by a youth culture that he obviously doesn't belong to, and people love to see themselves reflected in comedy, even when they are the butt of the joke.  Why do you think so many white people watched Chappelle's Show? 

Reading:

Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz - I wish I had read this book and his recently published Spying on the South when we lived in South Carolina.  Nashville is still obviously the south, but it is culturally much more progressive and recognizable to my northern sensibilities.  South Carolina was complete culture shock for me, nearly impenetrable in terms of understanding people's beliefs and customs.

Flow:  The Cultural Story of Menstruation by Elissa Stein and Susan Kim  - This book was published in 2009, before the current wave of period underwear and the resurgence in popularity of contraptions like the Diva Cup, but there's a wealth of historical information about how women handled their periods.  Aside from being isolated for ritual uncleanliness, which most of us know about, the most appalling detail so far is that before the advent of commercial blood-absorbing products, sometimes women factory workers just worked standing up and free-bled on floors covered in a deep layer of hay which was periodically mucked out like they were no better than livestock.  Just typing that made me throw up in my mouth a little.

Sick by Porochista Khakpour - I've fallen down a Lyme rabbit hole and this memoir by a writer and college professor living with chronic Lyme is fascinating and terrifying.

*Mom, calm down, I wasn't drunk, I had 2 palomas 3 hours before this walk, followed by a giant dinner and ice cream, everybody be cool, I'm not stumbling around drunk in the darkness with Charlie as my only protection.

Syllabus #20

Week 20 is upon us.  That feels arbitrarily auspicious.  Drink it all in.  Slurp it all up.  There's some humor and some dreck and some hard truths, as usual.  A balanced (liquid) media diet.

Stop everything you're doing and read this child's beautifully written essay.  Give her parents and her teachers a giant round of applause and then get out your wallet and buy this child an ice cream cone and while you're at it, buy one for yourself because you're gonna need something rich and delicious to bury your feelings.  The world is an overflowing urinal clogged with doodoo, but there are still some little humans out there with inquisitive brains and exquisite feelings, so let's grab that plunger and start fixing some of the damage we've done so they can have a real shot at a future on this planet.


This is satire, right?  I want to go back to a world where that distinction would be more obvious.  I realize what I'm doing here, social media-ing into the void, but like, nobody's paying me, or reading this, I'm fairly confident.  The target demographic here ranges from zero to my mom.  I can't even with some of the thirst these days.


Again, where's the line between satire and reality?  This IS the world we're living in, not the world plus 1 notch of nihilism.


Why anyone would part with this property is beyond me.  Gives new meaning to using the title Esquire to connote property ownership.  Also, can you imagine what these people pass out on Halloween?  Cucumbers.  Zucchini.  Nerds ropes.  Fun Dip.  Flavored lube.  Sky's the limit.


A powerful long read about the broad and devastating consequences on an entire community following ICE raids.

Yup.  That's it.

Do you ever look back on an aspect of your childhood after a good 20+ years and realize something meant to be benign was actually completely terrifying and is at least 30% of the reason you're such a basket case?  Enter Ruth Roberts and her covertly demented Holiday Songs to Tickle Your Funny Bone:

My elementary school music teacher, Mrs. Holliday, used to play these opium nightmare filmstrips multiple times a season every year of my K-6 elementary career.  There was one for every holiday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter, and probably some I'm repressing forgetting.  There was a good couple of years when I thought Mrs. Holliday, with her iconic permed, side-parted, short bowl cut that sufficed for edgy in early 90s suburban New Jersey, must have created these songs because they were holiday songs and obviously, that was her name.  Regardless of attribution, the accompanying visuals have left me emotionally stunted and I feel like I should probably bring some of these videos as a background or context should I ever enter much-needed therapy.

The Update Nobody Asked For

Because "The Update For Which Nobody Asked" would be grammatically correct, yet so pretentious as to increase my bounce rate* to 100%.

Beavis and Butthead taught me never to end a sentence in a preposition.  It's educational, kids!

Charlie's not dead yet.  I don't mean that in a "bless his little heart, he's still fighting," sense.  I mean it in the sense that the vet threw out the possibility of a random terminal diagnosis for no reason whatsoever.  Well, I suspect her reason was motivated by dollar dollar bills, y'all.  Of course a chest X-ray to rule out an enlarged heart would have cost me more money.

His paw is healed, his cough went away pretty much the moment we arrived at the vet's office, and he's only moderately itchy.  His tenure wearing the cone of shame has come to a merciful end.  For him.  For us it was mostly just hilarious to watch him try to pick up his bone with the cone obstructing his face.  It was a real boon that he was unable to fit his face into his bowl to drink to excess, too.

Charlie's Angels.  In the right lighting, he almost looks saintly.

This is my Charlie.  There are no others like him, and (unfortunately) this one is mine.  I do love him, but he's a complicated, difficult dog.  He's like your drunk uncle who can't stop spouting off about some shit he saw on Fox News.  He's a big teddy bear when he's sober, though.  In this analogy, the outside world is Charlie's 30-rack of Coors Banquet Beer, and inside our apartment is sobriety.  He's a total fuzzy pile of cuddles at home, but try and take him out into polite society and he's a stone cold maniac.  Just yesterday, he nearly dislocated my arm to lunge at a guy riding a Bird scooter while his dog ran beside him, as I was picking up his poop.  How I didn't end up bleeding and covered in feces is one of life's great mysteries. 

Every story should end with that rhetorical question.  Forget, "and then I found $5."  It's time we escalate things.


*Absolutely true fact:  My uncle invented the term "bounce rate."  However, he is not the metaphorical drunk uncle in the aforementioned analogy.

Syllabus #19

I have almost nothing to say because the annual commencement of Real Job at Real School has taken over my mental bandwidth.  This development coincided with the death of our coffee maker, which has forced me to rely on the sporadically functioning espresso machine in the lobby of my apartment building, which has drastically reduced my caffeine consumption.  The silver lining is that I don't have the urge to pee every 10 minutes all morning.  The downside is that I bet I'm more of a raging bitch than usual, but no one has the courage to tell me because it's very scary.  Just start a change.org petition to make me buy a new coffee maker, geez, it's not that hard, just get 100 signatures and be cool about it.

Here's a picture of a kid with a future in meme production, which is probably the only job that won't be automated by the time he or she graduates from high school:

View this post on Instagram

When 8 year olds figure out how to rename icons and you’re actually just impressed that they know how to spell.

A post shared by Katie (@katiewes) on Aug 13, 2019 at 6:27am PDT

Speaking of memes, let's get intellectual about it.  It's been interesting to experience the internet from its early days where it was so much easier to trace the source of a meme, to now where it's so difficult to properly attribute anything because everything is so iterative.

We live in a weird, twisted world made all the more strange by the ways we use technology.  Did you have any idea there's a world championship for the Microsoft Office suite of programs?  No, Karen in accounts receivable didn't win Word (you know that bitch is still trying to roll with perennially unhelpful Clippy from Windows 95), but this super churchy kid from Alabama won the PowerPoint competition.  On the 8th day, God said, let the text fade in from the left on slide 37.

I bet PPT kid gets all the ladies this fall in college.  At least he has a marketable skill.  You know who probably doesn't have much going for them?  Whoever has the free time and determination to snag a $400 Lifetime Pasta Pass from Olive Garden.  Pace yourselves, winners, or that lifetime isn't going to last long enough to get your money's worth.

I know what I'll be saying I'm going to do but not actually following through with doing this weekend:  Seeing Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.  When's the last time I went to a movie theater?  I dunno, but Obama was president and it was a lot easier to enjoy things un-ironically and feel safe in crowded public spaces, Aurora notwithstanding.

There was a lot of other horrible news I was going to link to, but we all know what kind of world we live in.  Spend too much time staring at the dumpster fire and you'll burn out your retinas.  It'll still be smoldering tomorrow.

Syllabus #18

School started this week.  Overall, I like my job a great deal but who among us would not choose "permanent leisure" over "waking up at 5 am and spending large parts of your day having humans below the age of 10 shout simultaneous questions into your face as if they are customers in a New York City bakery and you are behind the counter holding the last loaf of marble rye."  Except in this confusing metaphor, the bakery is actually a library, and the marble rye is actually a copy of Dog Man.  But otherwise, same same.

I am tired.  Here are things I vaguely remember reading in the last week, up until approximately 72 hours ago, when I still had a semblance of a life and free time and the ability to empty my bladder at medically acceptable intervals.

As usual, it's a mix of lighthearted and grimly serious, because even though the world is burning, we can maybe roast some marshmallows over the flames.

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Speaking of children's books, I am HERE for this.  I'll bring the popcorn, which I don't even like, but I need to channel my nervous energy somewhere if I'm going to see The Wolf Girl and all her creepy friends on the big screen.

This essay cut deep, if you're looking for a longish read that will linger in your brain for a bit too long.

Mom, don't even click on this one.

You mean there's snakes out there this big?

I was on board with the entirety of this article, but they abused my trust and lost me with the last sentence, "If you frost a moist cake, it stays moist."  I need a trigger warning for articles containing the M word.

The concept of a "When I Die" file appeals to my proactive, list-making nature, but I think I'm just gonna write "pull the plug" on a post it note and sign it.   Does that count or do I need it notarized?

Am I the last living female over the age of 16 who hasn't yet read this book?  My grandmom told me it's one of the best books she's read maybe ever, which says a lot coming from someone with about 80 years of reading under her belt.  But then again, she didn't dig on Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend which easily cracks my lifetime top ten. 

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On a much more serious note, it's sickening to see such devastating proof that this is where we are now as a society.  This horrible situation is the natural conclusion of all the racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric, inhumane treatment of migrants and asylum-seekers, and decades of NRA ass-kissing on behalf of politicians. 

How do you feel about Marianne Williamson?  I find her oddly compelling but clearly not at all viable as a candidate.  How do you feel about reparations?  I'm for it.  I believe it would take a generation or two beyond the payments for some of the more pernicious effects of slavery and overt or institutionalized racism to really dissipate, but that's all the more reason to do it in a hurry. 

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Read recently: 

• Howard Stern Comes Again by, well, Howard Stern
• Hot Young Widows Club by Nora McInerney
• Maid by Stephanie Land

After reading Maid, this article from the SF Chronicle about the many different faces and dimensions of homelessness in San Francisco was especially timely and interesting. 

Does my cat want me to lick her?  No matter what your cat says, your answer should be "Too bad."

In the spirit of other problematic cat behaviors, please enjoy these MS Paint drawings I made of Ajax in 2010 when I was unemployed, which is the only excuse I can come up with for devoting so much time to the pursuit. 

The One Where I Apologize to Charlie

I'm afraid I owe Charlie an apology.  

Will he accept it?  Probably not, but only because he can't read and doesn't have any idea that I recently mocked him on the internet.  Nor does he understand the word sorry, as his vocabulary is limited to more practical words like sit, down, stay, leave it, ok, treat, dinnertime, no, and bone.

It turns out Charlie might have an enlarged heart, which, if you are looking at his little face and thinking metaphorically, sounds both obvious and delightful.  Of course something that adorable and loyal must have an extra large heart to fit all the love he feels for his humans and even his cat siblings. 

In medical terms, an enlarged heart means a roughly 6-24 month prognosis.  Or he could just have bronchitis.  Or, he could be the canine equivalent of a car that only rattles when you drive it, and purrs like a kitten for the mechanic.  Bottom line, he's had a gross hacking emphysema cough for about a week.  We chalked it up to a hairball because he's been licking incessantly from a combination of nerves and seasonal allergies.  He'd surely wear a pocket protector but for the fact that he doesn't wear clothes to begin with.

The licking eventually escalated to frantic scratching and chewing, which has been keeping all of us up the past few nights.  Also, the sound of a dog licking himself is aural embodiment of the word moist, which I cannot abide.

It all came to a head yesterday when he apparently stepped on a piece of glass on our morning walk and cut one his paw pads.  He took it like a champ and I had no idea he was injured until I spotted bloody paw prints in the kitchen.  It looked like a fairly superficial wound so we cleaned it with peroxide and hoped for the best.

After another sleepless night of scratching, biting, and licking of the absolutely non-sexual variety, I thought I should check on his little paw situation.  The cut had split wide open and looked raw and terrifying.  Then he hacked and coughed and barfed up his breakfast.

We went straight to the vet and got a walk-in appointment the minute they opened.  I felt like a deadbeat dog mom listing the Infinite Jest-length tally of all his ailments.  

It turns out his itching is probably because we abruptly stopped giving him meth and the withdrawal is making him feel like there are bugs crawling under his skin.  That, or itching has been a common complaint in the area this summer due to a mild winter and a proliferation of environmental allergens.  

The vet seemed the most concerned about the coughing, which of course Charlie didn't do once while we were in the exam room.  Since he hasn't spent time around other dogs recently, we informally ruled out kennel cough.  He's on steroids for the itching and an antibiotic to prevent wound infection.  I mean, thank god, because if he stepped on glass from a broken beer bottle, the broseph who smashed his Bud Light Lime on the sidewalk was probably packing at least 3 strains of HPV and an alphabet soup of the hepatitis.  

The vet also gave us some kind of cough medicine to use as needed.  Unfortunately the cough medicine is in pill form, because Charlie getting weird on cough syrup would make a lot of my dreams come true.  The hope is that at least one of these drugs helps reduce the coughing, which would suggest that the problem was something minor like bronchitis rather than the death sentence of an enlarged heart.  Add all these pharmaceuticals to Charlie's daily dosage of doggy Prozac, and I feel like I could easily be accused of Munchausen syndrome by proxy.  I swear, I'm not spending hundreds of dollars on this dog for attention or my own sick pleasure.  Truthfully, I do it because I don't want him to suffer, but also because I can't take another night of hearing him lick himself for 6 hours straight.

Finally, the vet whisked him away to clean up his paw.  I could hear him screaming down the hall, which was heartbreaking because he doesn't normally do that unless something is very scary or excruciatingly painful.  He came back a few minutes later all bandaged up.  The picture is a little too small to see, but he has some badass red alligators chomping all over the place on the bandage wrap.

Of course, we must add insult to literal injury.  The number of times Charlie has accidentally head-butted me with the edge of the cone and nearly lacerated my bare legs is in the low double digits.

Charlie's favorite part of this whole ordeal is this very technical, no-expense-spared bandage protecting bootie.  It is, in fact the top half cut off of an empty IV bag, with gauze strips woven into the edge to tie the contraption around his leg.  I feel so comforted knowing his care is in the capable hands of a graduate of the esteemed yet unaccredited MacGyver University of Veterinary Medicine. 

Bag it up

So now I feel like a monster for relentlessly making fun of a poor dog that could be in the process of dying.  I mean, we're all dying, but not usually with an explicit time frame.  He's a difficult dog, but he loves us.  Also, I just noticed his weiner is fully visible in the above photo and not a single damn one of us asked for that.  He really is a difficult dog.