Syllabus #61

We're all over the place this week.  We're up, we're down.  We're hot and we're cold, we're yes and we're no...I didn't set out to plagiarize a Katy Perry song when I opened my laptop this morning and yet, here we are.

Speaking of Katy Perry...

Wow this makes me look like a KP super fan, and I promise I'm not.  If I am going to have a creepy level of infatuation with a celebrity, I'm gonna make sure you know about it.  She's no JTT or Oprah or Terry Gross in my universe, that's for sure.  I can name at most 3 of her radio singles, and I possess the random but whimsical trivia that she named her cat Kitty Purry and that is the extent of my knowledge.  Is she even still alive?

The point is, there is no through-line with the stuff I've curated this week.  Some of it is lighthearted, some of it reeks of doom and destruction.  Hopscotch your way through it.  Or don't.  It's your Sunday. 

Basking in some more BSC glory - have you watched it yet?  I haven't, and I probably won't because I watch like an hour of TV a week, and I don't say that in a smug way (except I kind of do), it's just not something I enjoy right now.  But I love the fact that a BSC reboot exists and I could watch it if I was in a place in my life where sitting down to watch TV felt good.

Speaking of TV, I don't begrudge an entire industry their livelihood, and this sucks for a lot of people, but maybe there will finally be fewer movies and shows that I have to feel culturally illiterate for not watching because I honestly don't care.

We should all be deeply ashamed.  I mean I'm always feeling ashamed about something, but on a national level, we all fucked up, guys.  I know Biden isn't perfect, but if you don't vote for him and we end up with 4 more years of Cheeto-in-Chief, we're gonna end up a failed state, and we'll all be dead or destitute.   

At first this Berkeley co-op house sounded so utopian and delightful and then I remembered I'm an introvert and decided it would actually be hell on earth.

I dunno man, do we want to read this?  It would kind of feel like a raccoon digging through a dumpster, like, you know there's stinky, rotting garbage in there and you can guess what the contents might be, but do you really need to dive in and take inventory of each item?

Analog Reading:

Finished Processed Cheese by Stephen Wright.  What a journey.  I admired it in concept and for the extensive world-building and absurd naming of people and things, but that also made it a little tricky to read.  It was often difficult to keep track of which names belonged to human characters and which ones referred to corporations or products, which I'm sure was entirely the point because it was a critique of rampant consumerism, but it required close attention.

Inhaled Samantha Irby's new book Wow, No Thank You.  She's one of those writers who make me feel like there's no place for me in the literary world.  I say that in the most admiring way possible.  It's just that her voice and her outlook on the world having me cackling, nodding, and saying yes, same but different.  I feel like if we met in real life we would either hit it off and be the best of friends or realize we were too similar and become mortal enemies.  She has obviously had vastly different life experiences from me, but we seem to arrive at the same place in the way we process life's absurdities and our own foibles, if that makes sense.

You mean everyone doesn't do that?