Syllabus #44

We're in a lot of trouble.  What else is there to say?  It's like we bitched and moaned so much about January and then February turned to March and said, "Yo, I dare you..." and March said "HOLD MY BEER."

This sign is all of us

This. Is. Terrifying.

Cottage-core - can you handle it?  Twee escapism sounds like a generally insufferable idea but also exactly perfect right now.

Do you want your colleagues to actually read your emails?  Especially now that the entire world works from home and do other humans even exist?  Don't waste your time with this article, just make your emails funny.  Not all of them, just some of them.  Intermittent rewards. 

This is us.  We have a decent amount of space in this apartment, actually, but trying to store a Costco-sized quantity of anything in my kitchen would be like trying to stick a Real Doll in a Barbie Dream House.  Vulgar and physically impossible.  Also, we're in that limbo space of knowing we need to do the socially responsible thing and avoid contact with other people, while not really fearing for our own well-being given our age and general good health.

Slow clap, Katie Porter.


Stay safe out there on those streets, man, you're doing the lord's work.

Relatable.  I still feel like I can't justify a lot of expenses.  I get my hair cut more often than I used to, but still 3 or maybe 4 times a year at most, and an inventory of my clothes and shoes would reveal a disturbing quantity of items that would be old enough to vote if they were humans. 

Did you hoard?  What are you going to do with 150 rolls of TP?  Are you such a terrible home cook that you're worried about giving your whole family explosive diarrhea now that you can't go out to restaurants for a while?

Bottom line, stay the hell home.  Just stay home for once in your life.  There's no FOMO.  Nobody's missing out, we're all at home in the same pajamas we've been wearing for the last 72 hours, greasy hair and no makeup, it's a sight.  Call grandma on the phone, don't go dragging your disease vector ass over to her house.  It's like Little Red Riding Hood, only it's a deadly respiratory disease that will follow you through the woods and hop in grandma's bed. 

Analog Reading:

A lot, obviously.  I'm trying to pace myself with the amount of time we are likely to have on our hands over the coming weeks.  I don't want to end up like that guy in the Twilight Zone, finally making it to the place with all the books and then shattering my eyeglasses. 

Finished Caucasia by Danzy Senna.  I enjoyed it.  It explored the complexities of racial identity in America, which is a topic that I want to understand better.  Some of the family dynamics were similar to those in Margaret Wilkerson Sexton's The Revisioners.  In both books, the main character is a woman with one white parent and one black parent, and also a rich white grandmother with questionable motives.  It was interesting to read those two books almost consecutively and draw comparisons.

Read The Captain and the Glory by Dave Eggers.  Brilliant satire.  I read it in one sitting, and started out laughing, but by the end I wanted to cry.  The satire is perfectly on point and the story is ABSURD but the absurdity was achieved by basically taking our present political situation and changing some nouns.  It is so thinly veiled it may as well be Saran-wrapped.  Read it, you won't be sorry.

Reading Stephen King's On Writing.  There's a reason this guy sells millions of books.  I haven't actually read much of his fiction, but he has some clearly articulated ideas about the craft, and he is an engaging storyteller.