Syllabus #41

The list is short and Bernie-centric this week.  I'm tired.  If you have primaries or early voting coming up in your state, get thee to the polls.  That's your only homework assignment.

Children's books are weird, guys.  I wanted to hate this book based solely on the cover, but it had a beautiful message about dressing to please only yourself and not bowing to peer pressure, and had some underlying messages that celebrate gender-nonconformity.  4.5 out of 5 stars, can't wait for the sequel, Chicken Grew a Unibrow and Wore a Vintage Mechanic's Jumpsuit. 

How do you feel about Medicare For All?  I'm down, you down?

How about now?  Would you like to avoid the need for medical tourism and get adequate, affordable care in your own city?

This should be a required and recurring course in elementary, middle, and high school, along with a class that teaches you how to manage your finances.  Actually, my school does have a social and emotional learning curriculum, but I'm still waiting on the finance thing.  Sure would be nice if kids understood how money worked when the book fair rolls around, but I'm not holding my breath for that one.  Actually. I am holding my breath, because money is filthy and kid money is often sweaty and crumpled, which just creates more crevices in which the germs can propagate.

Look, Bernie found the Fountain of Late Middle Age.  It's not a sweet, clear water that bubbles up out of the ground in St. Augustine like the Fountain of Youth.  It's a tepid brown liquid that trickles out of a gas station coffee urn, but it works like a charm.  He hasn't aged a day in 30 years.


I could watch Jayne's Instagram videos all day.  Note to self:  get a haircut soon.  Just don't pay $325.


Are you on the right or wrong side of history in this recipe headnotes war?  As a long-winded person, myself, I sympathize with the desire to provide context and share an anecdote.  If I'm being completely honest, though, I'm a big fat hypocrite, because 95% of the time I scroll right on past the headnotes and skip straight to the recipe.  The only headnotes I read with strict religiosity are Deb's of Smitten Kitchen, because they are delightful.  I even read her meat-centric recipes that I know I will never in my life attempt, because I enjoy her banter.  But it's like this, people:  these food bloggers are givin' that shit away to you for free (like so much emotional labor performed by women, natch).  If you don't want to read the headnote, just scroll on by.  Tolerating the headnote is the food blog equivalent of making polite small talk with a cashier, or asking a coworker about their kids before you ask them for a favor.  You don't have to actually care, but it's part of the social fabric that clothes our transactions.

Analog Reading:

Finished The Revisioners by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton.  It was a quick read, but powerful.  I wouldn't put the writing quite at the level of Colson Whitehead's Nickel Boys, but it is another example of the power of showing, not telling.  It paints a very clear picture of the awful calculations and trade-offs that black people in this country have been forced to make to protect their safety, to protect their children, especially their sons.  The reasons are both explicit and implicit, and this has of course been happening for hundreds of years and continues to this day with issues such as overarching as police brutality and as intimate as the friendships children forge in school.  There are many other books that portray these realities, but until it stops being present reality and recedes into a thing of the distant past, it's a story that needs and deserves to be told.

Just started The Great Pretender:  The undercover mission that changed our understanding of madness by Susannah Cahalan.  This book is the antidote for anyone who, like me, watched Patch Adams as a kid and thought it would be zany and fun to admit oneself for a short jaunt in a mental institution.

About 1/4 of the way through American Dirt.  I have thoughts.  They are mostly not positive, with regard to both the writing and the issue of cultural representation.  I'm trying to reserve the full weight of judgment until I'm finished, but so far, I kind of feel about this book the same way I felt when reading the YA novel Uglies earlier this year.  It feels like the author doesn't have a lot of respect for her readers' intelligence in a lot of instances, but I'm still going to keep reading to find out what happens.  The writing is super melodramatic, and a textbook example of telling, and telling, and telling some more instead of showing.  I had to see for myself what the critical fuss was about, but I am so ambivalent about even admitting that I'm reading this book that I waited until Andy finished reading his copy from the library and snagged it to speed-read before the due date.  I couldn't bring myself to place a hold on it of my own accord.  The secret is safe here, though.

A Children's Librarian Blurbs Adult Literary and Commercial Fiction

My readers' advisory services come with a parental advisory warning.

Syllabus #40

Forty.  Feels at once auspicious and meaningless.  I've been enjoying this habit of publicly digesting my media consumption.  It's a way of holding myself accountable for actually paying attention to the things I spend time looking at, and it forces me to be selective instead of just hoovering up whatever mountain of crap the internet puts in front of my gaping maw each week.  Here's what I've been chewing on this go-round:

Why You Should Be a Socialist by Nathan J. Robinson.  You had me at libraries.

Where was literally every other sentient human being living in this dorm when all this was happening?  Not to make light of what must have been a horrendous and deeply traumatic experience for the young women involved, but like, how does someone's creepy ex-con dad just move into their dorm room undetected?  At the very least, the roommate could have gone to the RA to ask for some advice.

*Knock knock*  

RA frantically fans the air to disperse pot smoke and cracks open door.

"Hey, Susie, what's up?"

"Well, this feels kind of petty, but my, uh, roommate?  Larry?  He keeps using all my toothpaste, even though I told him to get his own.  Mine is for sensitive teeth, and it's more expensive, but I caught him using it three times now.  Also, Larry is actually my roommate's dad.  He just got out of prison and he's like, living with us now or something?  I didn't camp out all night outside the housing office last spring to get a top spot in the housing lottery just to have this crusty Old compromising my oral hygiene and snoring in the bunk above me."

"Well, Susie, I honor your feelings and maybe we can schedule a mediation, but we need to do it in a neutral space, and it looks like the common area is booked solid for the next three weeks.  Why don't you journal about your concerns and we'll circle back in a few weeks.  Maybe in the meantime you can start keeping your Sensodyne in your purse so Larry can't find it?"

Of course, we should probably also read the original article that prompted the authorities to investigate.  That begs the question, though, of why it took so many years and some top notch journalistic work to bring this story to the surface.


I liked Andrew Yang.  It was clear he wasn't going to go all the way with a laser-focus on universal basic income, but I appreciated what he did to advance the idea, which I think is worth exploring.

Remind me to never take a cruise unless I am employed as the ship's doctor.  So, basically, never.

This has me speculating about who Bernie would choose as a running mate.  In my fantasies, he picks Elizabeth Warren.  Wouldn't that be so comforting?  It would be like America's quirky liberal mom and dad, the kind you visit to celebrate your non-denominational winter holiday that you punctuate by smoking weed and performing community service in lieu of exchanging gifts.

Sunday evening, how you feeling?  Amen to the self-contradictory worry that you were neither sufficiently productive nor did you relax enough.  I'm always trying to do both in equal measure and truly succeeding at neither and we really need a 3rd day of the weekend for this.

Analog Reading:

Why You Should Be a Socialist by Nathan J. Robinson.  It's a very approachable book, conversational in tone and not without a sense of humor.  It's not groundbreaking, but he does bring up some arguments for and explorations of the ideals of socialism that I hadn't previously considered.

The Revisioners by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton.  I haven't started this one yet, but I need to get busy.  It's on a wait list at the library so I can't renew it or, in good conscience, be the jerk who willfully keeps it past its due date.

Watching:

The new season of High Maintenance.  I'm so glad it's back.  It has built such a delightfully weird world that I desperately want to live in, and after the first episode of this season, I'm never going to listen to This American Life in quite the same way.

A Love Poem

This geranium is aware it is not a rose

Roses are red,

My butt's black and blue,

I had to wipe with paper towels at work today for the 3rd time this month because the TP ran out and no one bothered to report or replace it,

How 'bout you?

Syllabus #39

What's good this week?  We had a snow day on Friday and the memory of the robo-call we received on Thursday night appraising us of the merciful news will buoy me through some hard times, for sure.  I imagine every teacher in the county felt the same way most men feel when Maury opens the envelope and tells them they aren't the father.  Not my kids, not my problem.

Somebody got paid (too much) to write this book.

It's an established fact that peanut butter improves any food it touches, but this might be the exception that proves the rule.  PB&J deviled eggs sound like they were conjured from the depths of actual hell.  Would you?

My librarian hackles are way up.  It's the public library's whole purpose to provide diverse information portraying the spectrum of existence, thus making accessible as balanced a collection of facts as possible, and providing stories to serve as both mirrors reflecting one's own lived experience and windows into what may be.  It's an individual or a parent's job to decide what media they or their children will ingest.  It is not the job of a random smattering of non-library affiliated bigots to decide on everyone's behalf what kind of information or literature is or is not suitable for everyone.

Speaking of librarian hackles.  They are real and reflexive, and it pains me to think of anyone playing rough with their library books.  When it comes to your own personal books, you can get Anna Karenina printed on a roll of TP and wipe with each chapter as you finish for all I care (just take it easy and limit yourself to a couple pages a day, hemorrhoids are no joke).  Mess with my library books, though?  Nothing pains me more deeply than pulling a brand new book out of the book drop after its maiden circulation voyage to find that it has returned to mama soggy, gnawed upon, or coated in some indeterminate biohazard.  At times like that, I think maybe Anne Carroll Moore had the wrong idea and children should be allowed nowhere near my preciouses.


Two important questions:  Will you 'Roo? Did you used to, too?  By the way, what were they thinking?  They full on Weekend-at-Bernie's-voodoo'ed this product back from the dead and bothered to include those dusty-ass cookies that nobody likes instead of wising up and just giving us a tub of frosting with one of those tongue-lacerating cheese-spreading sticks from the equally nasty 90's era Ritz Handi-Snacks?  Clearly, somebody in the marketing department really screwed the pooch when they failed to invite anyone with good taste and sense to their focus groups.  Get it together, General Mills.  Good effort, though.

Whenever a corporation bungles something related to race or gender in such a severe but ostensibly well-intentioned way, it's actually delightful.  In a manner of schadenfreude, it's so satisfying to watch a bunch of ol' white dudes (I'm assuming here, but no diverse panel of thinkers would have thought this was okay) squirm a little and wish they would have asked for input from the groups to whom they were trying to pay lip service.  Or, better yet, get some more People of Color and female-identifying humans up in those board rooms, babies.

Speaking of people who didn't ask for any input from the people they are claiming to represent!

This is the FANCY Kroger up the road.  You don't wanna know what goes on at the Murder Kroger in my neighborhood.

This is a comforting reminder that even someone with such a powerful voice, so prolific and successful, sometimes struggles to get the words out and get them just right.  And that just because she is prolific and successful and has a powerful voice, her opinions are her own and I am not wrong if my opinions are different.  For example, Roxane Gay apparently really did not care for The Overstory, but I thought it was superb and so different from anything I've ever read.

Analog Reading:

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart.  I picked this up around Christmas and got distracted by a couple urgent library holds.  Now that I've returned to it, I can't believe I ever put it down.  Truthfully, it took about 50 pages to really get into the vibe and flow of the story, but it is rife with hilarious small details and it is shocking how closely this vision of a dystopian near-future from 2010 mirrors our current reality.

2019 Year in Review: Look at All of My Achievements and Feel Some Type of Way About It

The stink of 2020 has settled upon us.  We are firmly in its grip, as the new year has metaphorically perp walked us through January, guilty and exposed.  Even so, there's no reason we can't continue navel gazing on the year 2019, a year we've mostly all felt relieved to watch as it shrinks to a pinprick in the rearview mirror of time.  Every year since 2016 has felt like a bigger trash fire than the next, but in 2019 I managed to turn my back to the flames for a few minutes and do some things I'm actually proud of. 

Let's recap.

The accomplishment that brought me the most personal satisfaction is probably the one that that sounds the least impressive and least worthy of mention, unless you know me in real life.  I hereby declare that my liver and I survived the entirety of the year of our lord two thousand and nineteen with nary a single hangover.  I credit a Dry January that extended until the end of May, coupled with a Sober October.  Aside from the obvious fact of having fewer opportunities for hangovers, it really helped me appreciate how fantastic it feels to go to bed early on a weekend and wake up refreshed on a Saturday or Sunday.  It also gave me the recalibrated perspective to recognize when I'm approaching the tipping point of losing good judgment and over-indulging. 

I know I sound like a USDA Prime Cut Asshole to pat myself on the back for mastering the art of drinking in moderation, but it only took me 16 years to figure it out so I'm going to give myself some credit where it's due.  See the thing is, as I've discussed here before, my alcohol tolerance is so low that my "drinking in careful moderation and only ever on Friday or Saturday" is most people's Tuesday after work.  The slippery slope between the peak of "I'm having a good time and enjoying a nice drink" and the morning-after avalanche rubble of "My skull has been split in half by a mace and Linda Blair ain't got nothing on my projectile vomiting" lies approximately between drinks 2 and 3 on a given evening. 

Other accomplishments on the list show evidence of either daily dedication or obsessive behavior; interpret them how you wish.  I kept up a habit I started in 2018 to do some amount of yoga every single day.  Even just five minutes of mindful stretching counts.  It's about the attention to your body, and the smug feeling you get from using the word mindful.  I also ended the year on a 295 day Duolingo streak, which is now, in February, up in the 330s.  Can't stop, won't stop.  (No puedo parar, no voy a parar.)

Something I focused on throughout the year was taking risks.  Not physical ones, thank you.  I like all my body parts intact.  I like to be mindful about how I move through space.  No, I took emotional risks and exposed myself to criticism and rejection. 

On a whim, I submitted a couple one-liners to the Nashville Scene's You Are So Nashville If... contest.  I forgot about it entirely until an editor contacted me a month later to interview me about my winning joke.  It was a pyrrhic victory, since it seemed like 65% of the Nashville internet hated the joke and totally took it in a way I never intended, but it was kind of exhilarating to have my joke on the cover a magazine.  (The joke was just a dumb pun about the lack of public transit!  It wasn't about Cade Cothran and it wasn't meant to suggest everyone in Nashville does cocaine!  I've never even seen cocaine in real life, but I was at a party once where a guy got kicked out for being coked out and using the host's toothbrush!)

After winning the YASNI contest, I figured I would never win anything again, because I've pretty much never won anything else in my life.  That didn't stop me from entering a Hispanic Heritage Month photo contest at the language school where Andy and I take our Spanish classes.  I submitted a picture I took when we were in Ecuador last summer and...promptly forgot about the existence of the contest until two months later when our instructor congratulated me for winning.  This time nobody on the internet was angry and there was a prize - a free semester of Spanish class.

I spent a lot of time over the summer working on comedy material and going to open mics.  When I heard about the first annual Eastside Comedy Festival accepting submissions for performers, I jumped on it even though I had zero expectations of acceptance.  That seems to be a theme here.  Is it humility?  Low self esteem?  Defensive pessimism?  Or just being realistic? 

Whatever.  As you have already inferred, I was accepted.  I was stoked to get two 8-minute sets, and I was pleased with how they went.  Not even going to lie, the 2nd one was my personal best set ever, and I'm still angry with myself for forgetting to record it.  There was a last minute change in the line-up, and between that and just enjoying the other comics before me, I completely spaced on the recording.  Now it's nothing more than a fart in the wind (which is generally preferable to a fart in the couch fibers, at least if you've ever been scolded for farting on my grandmother's couch, but in this case, I'd rather have something permanent to show for my efforts).

Finally, the most objectively impressive thing I did, not just in 2019 but probably in all of my 34 years on this earth, was to get my writing published.  And before you ask, yes, I have heard of this profession called journalism, in which probably hundreds of thousands of adult humans regularly receive money in exchange for published writing.  But that's not my profession and no entity with an editorial process and a reputation for specific tastes had ever offered me money for something I wrote, much less expressed a willingness to publish it on their platform.  But then McSweeney's published my parody, The Very Thirsty Caterpillar, and now I am rich and famous author I still write stuff that is routinely rejected but I'll always have the memory of that one time my creative endeavors were warmly received.

Will 2020 be part of a continuing trend, or has luck run out?  Only time will tell.

Syllabus #38

Now that it's Groundhog Day and January is officially, blessedly behind us, can we speak confidentially about how we felt about last month?  Because, between you and me, I don't see what all the fuss was about.  Yea, we're tired and depressed and irritable.  The entire internet has been acting like January 2020 was epically arduous.  Have we somehow forgotten how much January always sucks?  Yes, this impeachment roller coaster and the corona virus and Brexit and Australian wildfires and Kobe have us all shook.  Yes, some of you are probably on diets (why tho) and some of you haven't been drinking (me either, good for us, it feels fantastic), and yes the weather this time of year makes we want to face plant into a loaf of bread the size of a sleeper sofa and eat my way out, but how is that different from January 2019, or January 2018, or January 2017?  January's been shitty for a long time, guys. 

Everybody just be cool and pet a kitty.  Read a book, drink some water.  We'll be ok.

HAHAHAAAAAA.  I'm cackling.  Truly.  At the top of my emotional labor to-do list would be "perform exercise in futility by hoping there is any chance this list will be divided in a ratio other than 97%-3%."  'Til death do us nag.

Don't tell the Senate, but in this speculative fiction dystopian future controlled by block chain technology, milk is officially over.  I mean it's pretty much over already, given the high likelihood of a swift and disappointing outcome to the impeachment trial.  Welcome to our totalitarian hellscape.  If a glass of milk brings you a moment of solace, then bottoms up.

This resonates with me on a gut level.  There is so much about American excess that I find embarrassing and regrettable, but as Xenu is my witness, I will never willingly live in a situation with less than a 1:1 human to toilet ratio.  I don't care about showers, it can be a powder room.  The extra toilet is key.  When I get the urge to poop, it's not a now or later situation.  It's  very much a now or this will be a story you try to play off as funny but actually it will make people uncomfortable and you should probably see a doctor about that later situation.  I have lived in 1-bathroom circumstances with Andy, and more than once have I had to seriously contemplate the merits of pooping in a trashcan because my need arose at the precise moment he stepped into the shower, wherein he has very strong opinions about existing in an environment full of "poop steam."

That this exists is...utterly chilling.  Also brilliant.  I just have one question for the people who make these videos.  Who hurt you?

Do you have opinions on the American Dirt controversy?  When I first heard of the book through Oprah, I was intrigued because Mama O is wise and, though not infallible, usually has impeccable taste.  The subject matter is something I care about.  But every subsequent take-down of the book has me feeling...still intrigued on a different level and prepared to hate-read it to see what all the fuss is about.  The most reasonable and clearly articulated argument I have heard against it is some version of this article and what Michael Eric Dyson had to say about it on the January 31st episode of Bill Maher.  The objections to this book are not necessarily rooted in the identity of the author.  Anyone can write about anything if they do it well.  But it's a pretty high bar you need to clear when you claim to be bringing someone else's trauma into the light, when there are so many less-privileged voices who could do a better job of telling their own stories if not for the gatekeeping that occurs at high levels within the publishing industry.

Local rodent confirms climate change.

Would you go on a psychedelic retreat?

Analog Reading:

Finished Normal People by Sally Rooney.  I enjoyed it but I wouldn't say I was especially moved by it.

Re-read The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin for my book club.  How would you live your life if you knew the date you would die?  Hands down, the thing I would most look forward to is just letting it all go to hell during the last week.  The very last day, just a non-stop smorgasbord of every delicious thing that I rationally know will make me feel horrible for days to come, because I know I won't be around long enough to deal with the fallout of lost sleep, bloating, and constipation.

Now reading The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett.  I loved The Dutch House so much I decided I needed to read more of her work, starting with this, her first novel.

Watching:

The new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm.  If there's one constant in this world, it's Larry David.

Accidentally watching under duress:

The Goop Lab.  WHO thought this show was a good idea?  What kind of sadist greenlit this project?  In full transparency, I was exposed to about 10 minutes of this because Andy watched the episode about the psilocybin retreat and I walked in the room to tell him goodnight and couldn't look away from the slow motion car accident of watching him watch this show.  The thing I least understood about the show (aside from why it exists in the first place and also why nobody was steaming their vaginas in this episode) was why Gwyneth Paltrow, Oscar winning actress, appears so dead inside, so uncharismatic and insincere in all of her on-camera interactions with her staff and colleagues.  She looks like someone with a master's degree working at The Cheesecake Factory in a down economy, trying to up-sell another round of drinks to a handsy couple on a first date.  She'd rather be anywhere else, doing anything else, as long as that something else involved jade eggs inserted into a certain part of the female anatomy I've already mentioned but don't want to bring up again because it would start to get awkward, and the last thing I want is to make it weird by continuing to talk about Gwyneth's vagyneth.

It's ok if that made you uncomfortable.  I'm not proud of it.