Syllabus #134

This is going to be my last dispatch for 2021.  School's out for the winter.  See you in '22.  It's been a real one.  Everyone in attendance today gets an A, tell your friends who slept in this morning they're getting a D, and not that kind of D.  The bad kind.  I mean, depending on what you're into.  I don't know your life.

Speaking of the D, that is some active ass yeast up in this dough

Yea I think I need to either move, build an underground bunker, or get a prescription for Xanax.  Or all three, just to cover my bases. 

It's 2:34 PM somewhere.  Nobody asked me, because I would have been a killjoy.  You do you, boo, but for me it's acceptable to start drinking after actual 5:00 and you gotta lay down a good carb base beforehand, or else you can forget about seeing me in a human state for the next 3 days of my life.

Yea dawg, you can probably eat for a year on $60 worth of food from Winco.  I don't miss being that broke but I do miss eating simple food on the cheap, and scooping oats and beans out of those bulk bins was sensory heaven.

I would say this is a load of horseshit but that might get me banned.  Also I just said it.  So there.  Banning books is a load of steaming horseshit.  Don't even get me started, we'll be here all day.

I fully support this.  Life is relentless.  If I could have a 420/365 advent calendar with a little 5mg mint or a pot brownie behind every door, I might look forward to tomorrow just a little bit.  Are Snoop and Martha reading this?  New business venture for you.

Ugh.  No.  Why. 

Analog Reading:

Topics of Conversation by Miranda Popkey.  Oooh boy did I not like this narrator.  Or the author's prose style.  The narrator kept interrupting herself mid-sentence to clarify what she was saying, and she was SO UNSYMPATHETIC.  At once self-important and self-loathing.  Pick a lane, sweetie.  Or you know what, just put it in park, because you're embarrassing yourself.

Syllabus #133

What day is it?  Is it Sunday?  Who even knows anymore?  Not only is it almost 2022 and I still feel like I haven't processed all of 2020 and 2021, but like, I stayed up all night Friday until about 4:30 am on Saturday morning, riding out wave after wave of tornado watches, severe thunderstorm warnings, and tornado warnings that came too close for comfort.  

Again, here I am with survivor's guilt, like we didn't even have any sticks to pick up in the yard, but elsewhere in the county people had downed trees, property damage, and power outages.  And then just an hour north in Kentucky, devastation on a level I can't comprehend.  So I'm like whiney whine whine, I paced around all night, fully dressed and wearing a bike helmet, shaking and frantically refreshing the @nashseverewx twitter feed.  My house is still standing, we are unharmed, the cats have forgiven me for shoving them in their carriers and locking them in a closet in the middle of the night, but now I'm tired.  Woe is me.  

On the plus side, I finally figured out how to work the Red Cross emergency weather radio my grandmom gave me like 10 years ago, and boy are those alerts startling enough to pierce your very soul.

I legit thought this was going to be my last meal

How many of these have you read?  I like year-end best books lists because I can catch up on titles I may have missed, while usually feeling smug about how many I've read already.   I've only read four of these, though, so I should flop down off my high horse and hie thyself to the nearest public library.

Aren't negronis over?  In the sense that they had their moment and now people who order them are basic?  Like the PSL of the cocktail world?  I always feel like a farce when I order one, because they are delicious but I thought they already had their cultural zeitgeist moment and were now uncool again?  Also, miss me with that croffle, the turducken of breakfast pastries I don't enjoy separately and certainly wouldn't enjoy in their portmanteaued Frankenstein state.

I admit, as a card-carrying, certified Old, I clicked on this article about the Birds Aren't Real movement,  ready to tickle my sense of smug condescension.  But what this dude is doing is actually pretty rad and I respect it.  I had no idea.  

This is horrific 

Analog Reading:

Finished Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry.  It was a fast and amusing read, though I'm not sure how it holds up as an artifact of a time when people were openly racist and homophobic and ableist.  Also, how common is bestiality in rural areas, really?  

Finished Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.  It was an abrupt transition in prose style from McMurtry's very literal, concrete, simple prose to something that was at first so very abstract and also British.  About 10 pages in, I had the thought that I was reading words, all of which I understood, but none of which made a goddamn bit of sense in the order they landed on those pages.  Then things started to fall into place, by design, as the narrator's predicament is revealed to himself, and, by extension, us.

Still pecking away at A Carnival of Snackery.  I am following Sarah Silverman's mantra and making it a treat, lest I gorge myself on it all at once and find myself naked and strung out, chasing that David Sedaris dragon.

Syllabus #132

I'm just trying to stay alive until winter break.  

It's Always Sunny has been on for 15 seasons?  Wild.

I never got 'the bride is a woman and the groom is a hedgehog' but I've had some really strange, dark ones on Duolingo.  Also, today is day 997 of my streak, so how 'bout that?

Analog Reading:

Finished Jonathan Franzen's Crossroads.  Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it.  The characters were fully fleshed out and deliciously despisable, each in their own way and to varying degrees.  I wasn't fully satisfied with the ending, but endings are tricky, and I guess the point of this one in particular was to suggest the beginning of a new chapter?

Now reading The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry.  It's amusing and he's very deft at building a world full of sensory details and idiosyncratic characters.  Andy read it and recommended it to me, and I commented to him on how funny it was that the character's boss at the butane delivery company's last name is Fartley.  He hadn't even noticed.  HOW DO YOU NOT NOTICE A NAME LIKE FARTLEY?

Syllabus #131

 These weekly posts are starting to feel more like a homework assignment for me, ironically, and I'm always on the verge of getting a check minus for handing this shit in late.  Nevertheless, here we are.

I hope everyone had a joyous, gluttonous Thanksgiving if you are inclined to celebrate.  I'm fairly certain only my mom actually reads this, so, mom, I hope you enjoyed stuffing your gullet and laughing so hard you nearly peed yourself as much as I did.  If you didn't, I'll light a clandle (sp) and say a prayer for you.

LOL

UGH

Analog Reading:

Still plugging away at Jonathan Franzen's new family epic, Crossroads.  I'm about halfway through, and it felt at first like it might be a slog but once you get invested in the characters, it flies.  

Syllabus #130

I'll just be needing one plate.   No knife.    

Ya love to see it.  

Hello, it's me.  You may notice that my news consumption has morphed drastically compared to this time last year.  I just don't have the mental energy.  It's like, well, the adults are back in charge, I'm sure it's fine.  But meanwhile there's other awful shit going down and I just can't bring myself to look.  It's a privilege but also a problem.

Ah, who doesn't love a good old fashioned circle pit?

Colson Whitehead, cool guy.

Analog Reading:

Finished Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle.  I always find little bits of writing brilliance in his books.  This one was funny, dark, gripping, and ended on an upswing.  I dug it.

Now reading the new Jonathan Franzen book, Crossroads.  I'm enjoying it so far but I'm less than 100 pages into a 560-page time commitment, so like, gimme a minute, alright?

Syllabus #129

So I skipped a week.  If you are not satisfied with your purchase, you can contact customer service for a full refund of $free.99.

Due to an unusually high volume of dissatisfied customers, wait times may be excessive.  

Oh my god oh my god, I made this garlic soup that apparently went viral on Tik Tok?  I made it on Halloween and all I'm saying is no vampires dared to bare their fangs in my vicinity.  But hold onto your butts.  You might not want to eat this if you have a work situation where you can't sneak away and fart somewhere private throughout the day.  La sopa vale la pena, pero ten cuidado.

The reveal of Oprah's Favorite Things just isn't the same when you don't have a fat glossy periodical to hold in your hands, but 'tis the season anyway, I guess.  

Man that's really all I've got to show for the last two weeks.  

Analog Reading:

Finished Margaret Renkl's Graceland, At Last.  It was lovely.

Plowed through Michael Pollan's This Is Your Mind On Plants, with varying degrees of focus and concentration.  Not that it wasn't fascinating and approachably written, but it's kind of hard to zero in on new information when you're sitting in a hospital waiting area.  A little easier to concentrate at 30,000 feet on a mostly empty airplane.  It's been a week, and then some.

Still savoring A Carnival of Snackery.

Enjoying Colson Whitehead's new Harlem Shuffle.  We just had the pleasure of seeing him speak yesterday morning as the recipient of Nashville Public Library's 2021 Literary Award.  He's funny!  He's charming!  He's a little bit weird!  Delightful.

Syllabus #128

It's Halloweeeeeeeeen and I honestly don't know how.  Wasn't it just summer a few days ago?  We are those awful people who turn out our porch light and hide from trick or treaters, mostly because Charlie would stroke out before night falls if the doorbell kept ringing.  And I do not need a lawsuit because my dog ate some random pint-sized Marvel character holding a pillowcase full of fun size candy.  

Lola, on the other hand, was born for this day:

What's your Halloween costume? 

Note to self, get a boulevardier next time instead of a negroni next time I order a cocktail somewhere.

I first heard the parable of the drowning man as a joke our Spanish teacher told us in Ecuador, only the drowning man was an arrogant priest.  It was hilarious.  All the more so because it was thrilling to listen to an entire long-form joke told in another language and understand the literal words AND the humor.  Could I retell it to you in Spanish now?  No.  Absolutely not.  But still.

Use social media to be...less social...or more strategically social?  Or you could just be naturally introverted and socially awkward and have relatively few online connections anyway. 

This makes me want to stick my head in a blender.  If that's the future, count me out.

I'm from New Jersey and I brag about it....See, people, sometimes high taxes, when properly managed, actually render useful social programs and services, what a concept.

Omg the second letter about the roommate who put up photos of serial killers.  I didn't do that exact thing, but that kind of weird behavior is 100% in my wheelhouse, and in fact, I think some infamous murderers and child molesters "signed" the cover of my 6th grade yearbook, so, you know.  Shoulda raised some red flags, but it was the 90s.  We were all fine.

I love the Mountain Goats' I Hope You Die, and find it terribly amusing that the inspiration for it was how much John Darnielle hated the Leanne Womack song, I Hope You Dance, because I, too, despise that syrupy sonic assault.

Analog Reading:

Finished Intimacies by Katie Kitamura.  It felt like...nothing happened?  Reading it just made me feel depressed because the main character was so isolated and unmoored.  

Still nibbling away at A Carnival of Snackery, like each diary entry is a food pellet and I'm but a caged rat in B. F. Skinner's lab.

Just started Graceland, At Last by Margaret Renkl, a collection of her New York Times essays about nature, culture, and politics in Nashville specifically and around the South more broadly.  I like her.

Syllabus #127

Got my Pfizer booster on Thursday because I spend every weekday surrounded by tiny not-yet-vaccinated humans who can't keep their masks over their formless little noses to save their lives (literally).  Friday was deeply unpleasant.  Saturday was great.  Somehow I find myself this Sunday feeling like the garbage truck that ran me over on Friday threw it in reverse, backed over me, and is just idling the engine and leaking trash juice all over my battered body.  

Could be vaccine related, could be my regularly scheduled period migraine, could be a conicidence-cold, definitely couldn't be the three alcoholic beverages I consumed over a span of nearly six hours yesterday, with plenty of water and food.  If we're at that level of can't-hangability these days, I'm deeply ashamed.  On the Can't Hang scale of 0-10, zero being John Belushi in Animal House, and 10 being a Mormon nonagenarian, that puts me at about a 7 - ET getting blitzed on Coors.

Wow thanks good to know.  I always forget to use the other attachments. 

Good help is so hard to find.  Can you imagine the audacity of this dowdy spinster librarian trying to have Frank Lloyd Wright build her a house?  I can't even find a handyman with an extension ladder to scrape leaves out of my gutters, and she's all, Hello, Dr. Fauci, I have a splinter, do you make house calls?

Not the little free libraries!  Rig them up like those demented cookie jars that oink at you when you open the lid, except when you open the door to the little free library and take out more than one book, it shushes you and stabs you in the hand with a knitting needle.  Too much?  Just enough?  Maybe I'll self-publish some terrible fiction and print-on-demand a few dozen copies to stuff in a little free library.  Best seller list here I come.  Best stealer list?  

Talk about a clickbait headline:  My Dad's Homemade Fish Balls are Tender, Bouncy Perfection

Spooky season?  I never gave it enough thought to even consider whether it's an irritating concept.  I think the reason it's such a thing is because when you're a kid, you do get super excited for your favorite holidays, and start anticipating and planning and dreaming about them months in advance.  I have kids asking for Halloween books in the beginning of August, and they've been asking for Christmas ones for almost as long.  Consciously stretching out Halloween, the way most of Western culture already does for Christmas, is an excuse/reminder to indulge in all the nostalgic, comforting aspects of the holiday you love as a kid without waking up hungover on November 1st and being like, 'Shit, I went to Party City yesterday morning, bought a pair of cat ears, got drunk on pumpkin beers, and blacked out at 4 PM so I didn't have to hand out candy to kids.  I didn't carve a pumpkin, I didn't watch Hocus Pocus, I didn't eat my weight in candy out of a pillowcase for breakfast...being an adult blows.'  

Analog Reading:

Finished Sally Rooney's Conversations With Friends, which I enjoyed almost as much as Normal People and Beautiful World, Where Are You?.  Reading this, her first novel, after her more recent two books, it's interesting to see how her craft has developed.  Also, this book is told from the first person by one narrator, which puts some constraints on the story and also seems less natural somehow, compared to her later books that are largely from the third person perspective.  All of Rooney's protagonists seem to have a rich inner life but also be emotionally stunted in terms of relating to other people without a lot of friction.  It's easier to accept that about the characters when we are reading about them in the third person, but when you're supposedly getting a character's interiority and they aren't giving you much, it makes them less sympathetic.  Which is maybe the point.

Started Intimacies by Katie Kitamura.  I'm not sure about it yet.  I'm having a hard time adjusting to her prose style, but I'm interested in the basic premise of the book so we'll see.

And, finally, indulging in A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris.  I'm forcing myself to read just snippets at a time, as the title implies, because I want to savor it.  I'm really good at that.  Y'all, I have a fun size Twix in my pantry that's been there for like 6 months and every time I think about eating it, I'm like, 'But what if I really need chocolate some other time and I've already eaten this?'  And then I remember that Twix have caramel in them, and I hate caramel, and then I also remember that I am an adult human woman with disposable income and the ability to visit a store to procure more and better sources of chocolate, and yet there the Twix sits.

Syllabus #126

I got carded in Disney World by a waitress from a former Soviet bloc country.  In fairness, someone who is my chronological age in her homeland would probably be covered in hairy warts, stooped over a cane, babbling senselessly through toothless flapping lips.  But I was THRILLED because she wasn't carding everyone as a matter of policy.  Just me and the faint whiff of youth that still occasionally emanates from my tired pores.

Best Shirt

This is all I got this week.  I didn't spend a lot of time living on the internet.  We walked 8.5 miles yesterday bopping all over Nashville, having a moveable feast (for my liver) just because the weather was nice.

Investors:  Hey lets invite millennials with discretionary income to drink beer in the crumbling ruins of an industrial building down by the river
Me:  I'd like to start a tab

---

Yes, every town can be a scooter town, even here in Nashville, where a woman just died by crashing into the back of a semi truck, and yesterday the same guy on a scooter almost took me out twice, coming and going, on the same stretch of sidewalk, where scooters do not belong.  

C'mon Dave.  You are an incredibly talented, insightful comedian.  It's not that you can't make the points you want to make without belittling trans people, you just choose not to.  You could be equally, if not more, hilarious without punching down at one of the most vulnerable groups in our society, and nobody would reach the end of your new special and say 'wow, that would have been so much more entertainin if he had taken a beat to shit on the trans community just a little.'  

Analog Reading:

Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead.  He has such range.  Really looking forward to his new book.

Don't Sit On My Bed in Your Outside Clothes by Phoebe Robinson.  I feel like Pheebs and I should be friends IRL.  We're very much alike in the sense that we like unnecessary abbreviations of words, and have chosen not to have kids and have devoted a great deal of time and energy to grappling with that decision.  Actually I guess the similarity kinda ends there.  Where she is hilarious, accomplished, hardworking, and fabulous, I am...not those things.  But opposites attract, right?  Phoebe, call me.

Oligarchy by Scarlett Thomas - short and weird, didn't hate it.

Just started Sally Rooney's Conversations With Friends, which everyone says is her worst book, but to 'everyone' I posit this question - Did you ever write a book in your 20s and have it published to great critical acclaim and did Zadie Smith blurb it for you?  No?  Didn't think so.  Shut that mess down.  The worst Sally Rooney book is probably exponentially better than the best effort of a whole lot of published writers.

Intermission

 

Syllabus #125

Hello, it's me.  Phoning it in this week.

The headline really buries the lede - eels getting high off their creepy slithery faces on MDMA and cocaine.  

Not that there's anything wrong with that.  

This article is like, yea we think we have an explanation for why white southerners are resistant to getting vaccinated, but the only solution is to reanimate the corpse of Nathan Bedford Forrest and have him go on Tucker Carlson to get vaccinated live on air with Moderna in one arm, Pfizer in the other, and a J&J in the asscheek just to be safe.  

Analog Reading

This is a tale as old as time.  I'm about to finally finish George Saunders's A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.  It's not that I haven't been enjoying it, despite the long voluntary hiatus I took from reading it.  It's just that it's good but also I've been trying to learn from it, so it's not a text to breeze through without pausing and reflecting and, at times, re-reading.

Syllabus #124

How was your week?  We spent two nights with an injured feral cat in our downstairs shower.  He's all fixed now (wound-wise and testicle-wise, must to his chagrin I'm sure).  He used to come around our porch looking for food whenever we would feed *our* feral cats, but we haven't seen him since his ball-less release.  He's probably determined to take his chances licking Flaming Hot Cheeto crumbs and Checkers french fry dregs out of the various construction dumpsters dotting the neighborhood before he'll ever ask us for another nugget of Kroger's finest store brand cat food.  Sorry, Nermal, it was for your own good.

*Our* porch cats

Why can't every city do this?  Death to cars.  Yes to walking, biking, and public transit.

Speaking of public transit.  And they say Nashville doesn't have any...

Rick Steves, national treasure.

Well isn't this some great good fun.  Peanut butter and pickle is my strange food indulgence, but that far predates this wretched pan-demi-moore we are still trudging through.  I also used to really get off on putting a shitload of chocolate syrup in Sprite, or making chocolate milk and then drowning some E.L. Fudge cookies in the bottom of the milk, drinking the milk, then using a spoon to mash up the soggy cookies into a pudding-like consistency.  I don't know how I made it to age 18 with teeth and without diabetes.

Autotune my liver

File under: NO SHIT SHERLOCK 

I am shook

Analog Reading:

Finished Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro.  Ultimately loved it, but it took a while for me to get into it.

Sped through Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney.  I know a lot of people love to hate her, and her characters are wildly frustrating, often in very small, petty, navel-gazing ways, but that's what brings them to life and makes the books so satisfying, for me anyway.  You can read a work of fiction where the characters are experiencing something vastly different from anything you'll ever go through, and you can be frustrated by their choices and want to scream at them to do things differently, but with Rooney's characters, you can see yourself having the exact same fights and insecurities and root for them to behave otherwise while at the same time knowing fully damn well you'd buy the same ticket on the hot mess express.  It's at once validating and depressing.

Syllabus #123

Not a lot today.  Yesterday I walked Charlie during a break in the rain, and there were four Lime scooters parked on the sidewalk in front of the AirBnb house where the shooting/broken-bottle-face-slashing happened a couple months ago.  Instead of walking in the street or stepping over them (which Charlie refused to do because of all the glowing green lights and humming noises, like, can you blame him, that shit's weird) I shoved them over in the grass.  I'm not proud of it, but I have no regrets.  Scooters are great if they cut down on urban traffic and pollution, but if you aren't supposed to ride them on the sidewalk why the hell would you park them on the sidewalk in a residential neighborhood where people actually use the sidewalks for, you know, walking?  GFY all the way back to Ohio or Mississippi or Indiana or wherever you sat around with your besties coming up with the quippy name for the Bach Bash Venmo Account you wrote on all your back windshields in order to beg strangers to send you money for drinks.  No, you buy me a drink for the rage I feel every time I have to witness your entitlement.  Thank you for coming to my NedTalk.  It's like a TedTalk but disjointed and not remotely uplifting.

 

A new Colson Whitehead novel!  I've only read his two most recent, heavy novels. Nickel Boys and Underground Railroad were phenomenal, but his range is impressively broad and I can't wait to see him working a more playful angle in Harlem Shuffle.  Even though every time I think about the title I think of this:

Gee this plot of intrigue is really doing the most.  So many twists and turns, so much good old boy network, so many bodies.  It's like if The Righteous Gemstones and The Sopranos had a real life love child.   

Analog Reading:

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro.  At first, it seemed like it had the potential to be too much like Little Eyes  by Samanta Schweblin in terms of focusing on the creepy aspects of technology designed to provide artificial companionship, but despite that common thread it's completely unique.  

Syllabus #122

It doesn't look like much, but what we have here is a collard melt taco from Redheaded Stranger, and a wish fulfillment three years in the making.  The tacos are a riff on the collard melt sandwich made famous by New Orleans sandwich dive Turkey and the Wolf, and proceeds from the tacos go to Hurricane Ida relief efforts.  When we went to New Orleans for Thanksgiving in 2018, we had lunch at Turkey and the Wolf and I'm just a different, better human after eating that collard melt sandwich.  I think about it often, and as I reminisce about the perfect blend of collards, coleslaw, Russian dressing, and cheese, grilled to perfection on rye bread, juices dripping down my wrists, I understand the phrase, "Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

---

Bra-VO, Mr. Sedaris.  Take a bow.  We got to see him kick off his rescheduled speaking tour last night at TPAC.  He was dressed like a Colonial Williamsburg figurine if its clothing was designed by Laura Ashley on LSD.  He read a lot of new essays, including one about his father that revealed even further than this New Yorker essay that Lou Sedaris was not, in fact, doing his best:

"...While the specifics blur together, there will remain one constant, which is you, having to hear things like “Well, I know that your father did his best.”

People love saying this when a parent dies. It’s the first thing they reach for. A man can beat his wife with car antennas, can trade his children for drugs or motorcycles, but still, when he finally, mercifully dies, his survivors will have to hear from some know-nothing at the post-funeral dinner that he did his best. This, I’m guessing, is based on the premise that we all give a hundred and ten per cent all the time, in regard to everything: our careers, our relationships, the attention we pay to our appearance, etc.

“Look around,” I want to say. “Very few people are actually doing the best that they can. That’s why they get fired from their jobs. That’s why they get arrested and divorced. It’s why their teeth fall out..."

Margaret Renkl also hitting it out of the park with this scathing opinion column about how the only things in the South that are rising again are despair, destruction, and death rates from Covid.  

M.F.K. Fisher on cravings - but has she ever gotten drunk and eaten a whole family sized bag of crab chips?

Well that really says it all, doesn't it?  

Listening:

The Maintenance Phase podcast by Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes (of You're Wrong About fame).  I'm late to this soiree but that just means there's all the more content to binge.  The episodes explore the history and misconceptions about various (usually harmful or misused) diet and fitness phenomena.  The episode about the Presidential Physical Fitness Test was entirely too real.  I remember the humiliation of the public weigh-ins, the shame of being able to do exactly zero of any of the exercises except the sit-and-reach (and then getting yelled at for 'showing off' when we did toe-touches to warm up at the start of gym class, but sorry I'm flexible let me just have this literal one thing in the entire world that I'm good at, you sad whore).

Analog Reading:

Finished Better to Have Gone:  Love, Death, and the Quest for Utopia in Auroville by Akash Kapur.  It was a book.  I kept waiting for the good parts, but it felt like reading the minutes from an HOA meeting.  I wanted more human drama and more understanding of the why of this whole community, but the book was so withholding about it.

Now reading Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl.  It's a collection of writings about the natural world and also a family and personal history, woven together in brief snippets.  It's pleasant, and her writing is admirable.  

Syllabus #121

It's funny, or no, it's not funny, but it's something, that I start collecting articles at the beginning of each week and by the end of the week, they are either irrelevant or utterly tone-deaf.  And yet I let them all stand.  Like maybe there was a brief punctuation of time when the week to come had the potential to be normal.  When Hurricane Ida hadn't yet caused chaos and destruction to New Orleans and surrounding areas.  When the storm hadn't yet continued northward to dump rain on us here in Middle Tennessee before somehow gaining destructive powers and unleashing devastating flooding on Philadelphia and many other parts of the Northeast, while leveling half my hometown with freak tornadoes.  When Texas hadn't unleashed a bevy of legislation that is so abhorrent I can't even fully articulate how offensive it all is.  

So like, here's a picture of a cute cat that won't let me pet him but comes running when I get home from work because he knows I'll feed him, and here are some links to some shit I read on the internet this past week:

Can you blame him, though?  I'm not immune-compromised but whenever I catch a kid free-nosing I feel a blood pressure spike.  The other day I gently reminded a kid to cover his nose and he was like 'but I can't my glasses will get all foggy" and I was like DO YOU SEE WHAT IS ON MY LITERAL FACE RIGHT NOW, OF COURSE YOUR GLASSES WILL GET FOGGY BUT YOU KNOW WHAT WON'T HAPPEN?  YOU WON'T END UP IN THE HOSPITAL ON A VENTILATOR AND WE WON'T HAVE TO SHUT DOWN THE SCHOOL BECAUSE ALL YOUR TEACHERS ARE DEAD.

Where was this milk crate challenge during my youth?  I was down to clown AND good at stealing milk crates from behind convenience stores.  Also I only broke bones on playground equipment so there's a 97% chance I would have been totally unscathed.

I wish I could see this street art in person. 

This too shall pass.  I feel like we've been waiting for a whole lot of shit to pass for the past 18 months.  So far everything after 2019 has been one giant spiky kidney stone.   

Texas - all of it.  Abortion bans, the gun carrying, the voting or lack thereof.  Who is it for?  I honestly don't understand.

Interesting take.  Also what baffles me the most about this new law is that anyone even tangentially involved in a woman's abortion procedure can be sued, but not the woman herself.  Some might say that's a silver lining but it actually incredibly pernicious and telling - it says that the woman is completely besides the point in this whole equation because she doesn't have the slightest bit of agency. 

Devastating.

And in case you've been curious about the why the actual fuck of the horse dewormer of it all.  I mean, why are people going to farm supply stores and taking veterinary medicine formulated for animals that are orders of magnitude larger than a human?  Don't y'all morons know your dog probably takes ivermectin for heartworm prevention?  If you're so fucking stupid you think taking animal medicine for an untested purpose is a good idea, at least the math is a little easier when you're scaling up.  Go pop a handful of Heartgard blocks and wash 'em down with a big ol' slug of toilet water just like Fido. 

Analog Reading:

Finished The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson.  It was slippery.  I didn't hate it.

Now reading Better to Have Gone:  Love, Death, and the Quest for Utopia in Auroville by Akash Kapur.  Right about now the urge to GTFO and try something different doesn't sound so strange.

Syllabus #120

Everybody poops, but some with greater frequency than others

Who cares?  We should, but it's getting harder to sustain.

Well I was feeling optimistic about a trip to New Orleans this fall in light of their mask mandate and vaccine requirements, but now I'm just sending good vibes and hoping things are alright for the people of New Orleans.  

Watching:

Barb and Star go to Vista Del Mar is a terrifically weird, unexpected treat.  Absurd in ways I didn't even dare to hope for.

Analog Reading:

The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson.  It's slimy and wiggly.  Maybe it's one thing and maybe it's another, or neither, or both.

Syllabus #119

I am writing this from beyond the grave.  I am clinically dead, killed, murdered, utterly mauled and dismembered because last night Lola looked at me and meowed and halfway through the meow it turned into a yawn and there's just no coming back from that lethal dosage of cuteness.  

Well Tennessee is really having a terrible horrible no good very bad week:

This nearby flooding is catastrophic and sad.  

Phil Valentine finally kicking the bucket is v predictable and way less sad (unless you're his family, but you're probably a bunch of problematic jerks and you're just now reaping what you've sown).

In other news:

Well this just seals the deal.  We're not gonna make it out of this thing.  People are just too entirely fucking dumb.  "Well I don't trust that Doctor Fauci and the billions of dollars of science they used to make that dang microchip delivery system, but I saw a thang on Facebook and now I'm fixin' to go down to the Tractor Supply and get me some horse medicine to cure my covids."

Okay, I know I shat on the seasonally preemptive pumpkin recipes last week, but shantay you stay, apple recipes.  

My mind is actually blown that you can MAKE Chicken Kiev (or Chicken Cordon Bleu) and not just like, take it from a box in the freezer and stick it in the oven.  My grandmom used to buy frozen Chickens Kiev and Corden Bleu for our dinners on the regs, and you can't tell from the outside which one it's going to be.  I was like a mufukkin Puppy Surprise cutting into one of those shits.  I would come to the dinner table salivating at the thought of the gooey hammy cheesy Cordon Bleu and be utterly destroyed when I stabbed into my chicken and had hot butter squirt me in the face.

There could be three, or four, or five!

Analog Reading:

Devoured The Mothers by Brit Bennett.  This was her first novel, published in 2016, when she was ONLY TWENTY SIX.  It was phenomenal.  Not quite as expansive as her 2020 follow up,  The Vanishing Half, but I loved every page of it and was completely in awe when I realized how young she was when she wrote it.

Halfway through This Will All Be Over Soon, a memoir about losing a close family member and mourning his death right as the world was shutting down in March 2020, by SNL's Cecily Strong.  Despite the subject matter, I thought it would be funny?  Spoiler alert...it's not really funny.  Brief moments of wit, but mostly, sad.

Syllabus #118

Breaking news - we ordered a bidet.  Hot vaxx summer is about to be hot cracks summer.  Verdict is still out, will report back after installation, but we have high hopes, as one of the customer endorsements printed on the box said it is "Fantasstic."  

I want a doorbell camera just so I can watch this guy and his brother sleep on our porch.  Our stray cats are cuter than your stray cats.

Can confirm - the entitlement of the American shopper is unparalleled.  Even in my very low-key and mostly fun summer job, I had a few memorably awful customers, one of whom pulled up at a traffic light on the opposite side of the street and yelled at me to bring them a bag of peaches across three lanes of traffic.  No, ma'am.  

I have so many problems with this and you're going to hear about them all right now.  First of all, how dare you call it a pie when there's no crust.  Crust is the whole raison d'etre of a pie.  Pie is just a vehicle for getting more pie crust in my mouth.  Without crust, pie filling is something else entirely.  A custard, a pudding, a mousse, a fruit bake.  Crust or GTFO.  Also, it's way too goddamn early to get on the pumpkin train.   

God damn, so dark. 

I am currently very into (and very good at) the Letterboxed game from New York Times puzzles.  

Analog Reading:

Did I mention that I finally finished The Body?  That felt like an achievement.  I'm still working on The Silent Patient, it's been a busy week.  It's a little predictable and trope-y but the pacing is decent.  

Syllabus #117

We're porch cat people now

It's been a jam-packed week and weekend, getting back into the swing of work and enjoying a visit from friends!  This is all I got:

Inneresting 

Why are summer reading 

Do the math 

It's ironic that K-12 public education is a sector where workers have the least adult interacting and probably the most compelling case to want to get drunk together after work, but that culture seems to be non-existent, at least in my experience.  

 Watching:

I gotta say, we watched two episodes of Sexy Beasts, the furry-adjacent dating show on Netflix, and I hated it so much I just wanted to remove all of my skin and run it through a spin cycle. I felt dirty and sad, inside and out.  In a bid to force people to be less shallow about outward appearances, it seems like the contestants just fixated on the mystery of whether someone would be hot under all the makeup and fake fur, to the exclusion of all else.  Not only was it mostly boring, it was hard to look at and made me wonder if there are any asteroids headed towards earth soon.

Enter the absolute BALM for my soul, another Netflix documentary show called Cat People.  It was also ludicrous but ultimately sweet, and I always appreciate a piece of culture in which I both see myself so clearly but also receive reassurance that I'm not that far gone.  The first episode followed a rich childless couple who were completely obsessed with their Bengal cat to the point of registering it as an emotional support animal to get away with taking everywhere.  They taught the little guy to surf, because what cat doesn't love water, and the episode ended with not one but two birthday parties for the cat, who had almost died days earlier when it ate a fishing lure coated in a neurotoxin (which was alluded to but never fully explained and I have some questions).  

Analog Reading:

So close to finishing The Body by Bill Bryson.  There are some very fascinating, lurid tidbits in there.  See below:

Also started The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides.  It's not my usual preferred genre, but I'm giving it a whirl.  Sometimes a psychological thriller is a fun, fast read (even when it's a book about a woman who supposedly murders her husband and then goes mute for the rest of her life).

Syllabus #116

The other day I had to go to Walgreens and there was a Party Barge taking up half the parking lot.  Upon entering the store, I encountered a gaggle of sunburned bachelorettes wearing matching screen-printed tank tops and cheap cowboy hats.  One of their tribe, in addition to the sunburn, was poking at a constellation of angry red welts on her chest and arms while the others helpfully proffered various rash creams.  #LastFlingBeforeTheRingworm

Also, there's been a proliferation of bachelorettes rolling into town with the most entitled, ignorant twattery written on their car windows - "Last Fling Before the Ring - Buy the Bride a Drink! Venmo @ImAnEntitledWhore" or whatever cutesy name they've concocted for their 72-hour blackout.  There's an AirBnB on the next block over where there were no fewer than 4 such cars parked on the street this weekend.  There's thirsty and then there's thirsty.  Does that EVER work?  Do you ever get anything other than surly locals sending you a request for funds?  

I'm gonna start driving around with my back window painted to say, "Not a bachelorette, just tryna get drunk, Venmo @SadAlcoholic"

 

Just as peach season is winding down, you have to show me another thing I want to do with my haul?  

And can I make this with peaches instead?  Also, doesn't the term Brown Betty just sound like a cute euphemism for when ladies be pewpin'?

Where was this when I was trudging through Medieval Seminar in college?  

There's a theme here, and it's I'M HUNGRY.  This sandwich looks fire, but the question is, is it spicy enough for me?

I want to do the right thing to keep myself and others safe, but like, I'm so OVER sniffing my own face and breath all day.

Well the first photo on this page almost had me bawling but the rest of them are so adorbs I'm sharing it anyway.  Kitties!  I just love kitties so much my heart could explode.  

One of each, please.

Analog Reading:

Read all of Casey Wilson's The Wreckage of My Presence.    It was a funny, fast read, but also heartfelt.

Started chipping away at Bill Bryson's The Body again.  We inhabit such strange and fascinating flesh sacks, and our flawed and incomplete understanding of them over the centuries has led to some rather perplexing medical treatments.

Syllabus #115

I'm becoming the Bubba of peach concoctions.  

Things I have made with peaches this summer:

Peach bars

Peach cobbler

Peach icebox cake (pictured above)

Peach Pie

Peach crisp

Peach and peanut butter sandwich

Peach baked oatmeal

Peach butter

Peach caprese salad

Peach avocado salad

Other than peaches, here's what we've been consuming lately:

I believe the phrase we are using here is 'womp womp'.  Get vaccinated and deprogram yourself from the exceptionalist mindset that bad things only happen to other people.

Bald Knob Pricks Edge of Space 

We aren't ready to re-do our kitchen, but this is the exact cabinet color I have been imagining.  

There are some brilliant items on here.  With a couple of trips coming up this year (hopefully!) I gotta get me some of these.

Analog Reading:

Finally!  I finished The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen.  I am aware this book won the Pulitzer in 2016, and Andy highly recommended it, BUT it wasn't my favorite book I've read this year.  The story was incredibly compelling but there was something about the narrative tone that felt like it was deliberately distancing me from the narrator - like he was being guarded and not giving me the full story (which, if you read the book, makes COMPLETE sense by the end) but I found myself disengaging after reading just a few pages at a time.  I'm that way with people, too.  If you give me closed off, leave-me-alone vibes, I will do exactly that.  But now there's a sequel or a continuation of the story that I feel obligated to read, so it's like, are we doing this again?  

About to finish Somebody's Daughter by Ashley C. Ford.  It's SO good.  It's a memoir by a woman just a bit younger than me, who was raised by a single mother with the help of her grandmother, while her father was in prison.  Growing up, Ashley never knew why her dad was incarcerated, but the book leads up to her learning the nature of his crime, coming to grips with that reality, and then dealing with the complicated emotions she feels when he is finally released from prison 30 years later.

Syllabus #114

How's your hot vax summer going so far?  I'm Julying so hard, shoving peaches down my gullet like I'm trying to get the skitters.  We went to a baseball game AND an outdoor concert in the same weekend, and interacted with other humans like we are real people and not just slovenly misanthropes capable only of 1-sided conversations with our cats.  It's the big time over here.

Mega-rich man puts own life, other lives at risk for frivolous vanity project.  Some people have way too much goddamn money, enough to pull entire nations out of poverty, yet they spend it on fulfilling their own childhood dreams.  To be fair, if I had the resources, I would make my aviation-related childhood dream of eating chocolate meat ice cream on an airplane a reality, but I've never been one to dream big and also that sounds fully disgusting to my adult sensibilities.

Make your dreams a reality - this woman gets it.  I am positive we could train Lola to ride on a saddle on Charlie's back.

What say you about WFH vs. working in a designated workplace outside the home?  As an educator, once school was back to in-person status, it wasn't really a matter of choice for me.  I did not miss the commute, but if I had the option of passive transit where I could read on a train or something, I would actually enjoy that.  It was super nice to sleep in a little and have more flexible workflows, and just be done for the day when I did everything I needed to do, instead of being required to stay until a certain time to fulfill other duties that don't apply when children aren't physically present.  That being said, having to handle teachers' and students' tech problems was a never-ending job so I was never truly done for the day if somebody had a problem that needed my attention.

OH REALLY PLEASE TELL ME MORE 

Tennessee's state motto:  Can't Fix Stupid (and don't you dare try to vaccinate me fer it, neither).  Sometimes I mercifully forget that Nashville is, in fact, in Tennessee and that the rest of the state is responsible for some Very Dumb Shit.

Please watch this show:  I Think You Should Leave

Analog Reading:

Okay I swear I'm going to finish The Sympathizer and The Body, but I got my library hold of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw and I totally gulped it down.  I read more than half of it the first day, and like don't be impressed by that because it is both short and highly snackable, but do be impressed by the book itself and get your hands on a copy right now.

Syllabus #113

What do you do for yourself when you really want to give yourself a treat?  Do you book a spa day?  Buy a bunch of new makeup?  A purse?  Shoes?  Serious question.  How do you live?  Asking for a...me.

I went out and got two extra jobs this summer, and decided to treat myself with...wait for it...3 bras and a fancy vacuum.  And I felt really guilty about it.  Even though all of said items were on sale AND I used a cash-back app.  Even though I fully reserve the right to return any of the above.  Even though I'm way overdue for some properly fitting, not-decomposing bras.  And this new vacuum is cordless and quiet!  And it will not smell like burning cat barf from the one time I used it to suck up cat barf that was apparently not all the way dry.  Rookie mistake.  Will not be using my precious cordless, lightweight, quiet, air-filtering stick vacuum to clean up cat barf.  

I'm not anticipating Vacuum Delivery Day with the stomach-clenching glee of a child who fully believes they are getting a pony for Christmas.  I mean, truthfully, I am, but let's not speak of it, lest the hype be more than this cleaning apparatus can deliver.  I want it to suck, but not suck.

I shed so much my mom had to spend an outrageous sum of money on a new quiet vacuum that won't scare the shit out of me while she uses it to clean up my dog hair tumbleweeds.

If there was ever a time for the good people of Philadelphia to throw batteries at something big and white, this woulda been it, guys.

There's no shame in my expired food game.  Unless food or medication is actively growing fur, emitting sulphuric fumes, or glowing in the dark, I will consume it.  Will the expired food make me ill?  Probably not.  Will the expired medicine have any effect?  Also probably not.

Say what you will about American school systems' various responses to the panini, but at least we weren't asking parents to donate money or time to clean and repair the schools before we re-opened them.  I mean, I didn't have working heat for a couple of weeks in the dead of winter, but ya know, could have been worse?

David Sedaris, National Treasure.  Can't wait to see what he wears when we go to seem him at TPAC this September.  "I used to be so intimidated going into stores. I think really smart stores should have plain-looking staff members. Because when you go into a store, and you think, "Well, I'd never look as good as that person," then chances are you're not going to buy it. If I had a clothing store, I'd hire hunchbacks. I really would make sure that the customer always looked better than the staff."

Analog Reading:

Finished Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing by Lauren Hough, an essay collection about her storied life after escaping a childhood in the Children of God cult.  Her writing style is humorous enough to turn child abuse and getting kicked out of the military as a lesbian during DADT and working a series of low-wage jobs on the precipice of homelessness into a rollicking good time.

Making my way through The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen and still plodding through The Body by Bill Bryson.

Syllabus #112

I don't have a lot this week.  Consider this a partial hiatus.  We have started feeding two stray cats we are calling Seamus and Lana.  I wanted to name them Sammy and Tammy but I don't always get what I want and that's fine.  It's fine.  They seem to be friends and they are very cute.  Our relationship feels like Andy and I are patrons at a strip club and they are the strippers.  They'll gladly take whatever we throw at them and put on a nice little show for us, but we are not allowed to touch them.  Yet.

 

Can we just make R-rated movie versions of every bit of tween fiction I read in the 90s?  Fear Street is a good start, next up, maybe a Baby-Sitters Club Super Special #69 - Logan Loves Mary Anne but Mary Anne Loves Ecstasy and a Manic Pixie Dream Girl named Willow Who She Met at a Rave

A noir heist film about the nefarious role the automotive industry played in redlining and other aspects of systemic racism?  Sounds just improbably enough to be compelling, and the cast sounds aces.  

On what planet in our vast solar system is marijuana a performance enhancer for athletic events?  Unless the event in question is Olympic-level Joy of Painting, this smells like the pile of racist doodoo that it actually is. 

Syllabus #111

Holy crap.  This is some real life Hatchet type of stuff.  You had me at 'fell two miles to earth and landed in a tree and was basically fine' but you LOST me at 'workers poured gasoline on her open wounds to flush out the maggots.'  Has this been made into a movie?  Apparently it was made into a terrible Italian movie in the 70s, and a Werner Herzog documentary in the late 90s, but this has indie film starring Saoirse Ronan all over it.

Hold. up. WHAT.  I HAVE QUESTIONS, I DEMAND ANSWERS AND I SIMPLY CANNOT WAIT UNTIL JULY 21.  Why have you done this to us, Netflix?

Oof, the travel industry right now 

Putting this here as a gift to future me - the best wines at Trade Joes, according to a TikTok Sommelier (which is not a sentence I ever expected to type).

I technically have 3 jobs right now, and I like them all well enough.  Some days are better than others, but I've never had a job so bad (and I've had a few take legal action-level-terrible jobs) that I've considered putting my body in or near a Taco Bell sink.  I hope gaming for Twitch offers him fabulous insurance because I suspect he will need it to recover from whatever flesh-eating microbes went straight up his anus after that cannonball.  Although, also, like the main point of the article, "We’d be a healthier, happier country in the coming years if public policy makes sure more people can make like Steve and cannonball toward their bliss."

Analog Reading:

Finished The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai.  I never wanted it to end, even though by the end many of the characters were dead.  What a beautiful and, dare I say, moving story.  Not that I wanted to keep reading about wonderful people dying horrible deaths on an AIDS ward, but like, I wanted the story to continue, with these people hanging on, until better medicine came along and they could have another shot at life.  It's a crime that after all these years there still isn't a cure.

Plodding along through Bill Bryson's The Body.  It's very interesting but I find that I only enjoy reading small chunks at a time and then I'm ready to switch to reading something else.

Just started The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen.  It's a big adjustment in tone compared to the previous two books I've read, so I'm easing into it and haven't formed an opinion yet.

Syllabus #110

My editor is a real micromanager

The Mare of Easttown writers really put in the work.  When Jean Smart called someone a 'smacked ass' twice in one episode I wondered if that could really be a Philly-specific phrase.  Doesn't everyone say that?  Apparently not.

I love this!  Also, re:  the Secret Service - the 'casual guy' incognito outfits might have been more effective here if they had sprung for some leather.  

Making this peach icebox cake today!  I have to send Andy back to the store to replace the bottle of Andre I bought specifically for this recipe, which he promptly consumed like some kind of sorority girl.  Like, bruh, don't you know that's the cheapest, grossest prosecco there is?  Maybe he just thought it had his name on it so it was for him?  I have no idea.  Those ΔΔΔ are so entitled.

Are you burned out?  Are you feeling like the human equivalent of a cigarette butt tossed in the gutter?  

I am fully on team No Scales In Gyms.  Like, why would you step on a scale, fully clothed and in view of others?  I don't weigh myself every day, but when I do, it's first thing in the morning, fully naked, and only after a really good poop, and never the week before my period because I'm always constipated and bloated.  So basically only on special occasions.  

I'm sorry, what metrics did you consult?  Did y'all just throw numbered darts at a map to make this list?  Could this be that traffic violations just aren't enforced, and lots of accidents don't get submitted to insurance because it's either a hit-and-run situation or both parties don't want to report it?  If I didn't wait fully 5 seconds to go when the light turns green and I'm the first in line at an intersection, I would have been t-boned so many times on these streets.  

Analog Reading:

Still plugging away at The Body by Bill Bryson and The Great Believers by Rebekka Makkai.  Something about having two jobs even though it's summer break is really cramping my reading style.