Syllabus #102

We have visitors!  We're all vaxxed, waxed, and ready to party.  Or, you know, be in the same room with other humans without wearing full on mustard-gas face protection.

Why do these peanuts look like covid?

What a victory for accountability.  As many have said, justice would be if George Floyd and countless others were still alive instead of being murdered by police. 

Just dropping this here for a little NOLA Thanksgiving 2021 trip inspiration 

Legalize it already, man 

I'm gonna get a little TMI and tell the world (as in all one of you who will read this, hi Mom!) that I, too, am having a messed up period.  It came 5 DAYS EARLY which is a BFD for me because I'm on the pill and that has literally never once happened in all the many years I've been chompin' on the papa stoppas, as the kids say.  The kids don't say that.  Nobody says that.  Also, I had the worst migraine for like 2 days.  I mean I guess it was a migraine.  My orbital bones and the top of my skull felt like my secret conjoined twin was trying to punch its way out the top of my body and I almost vomited at work when the kids got too loud and there was bright sun slanting in through the windows and piercing my retinas.  Ibuprofen and whatever is in store brand Excedrin didn't do a lot besides just take the edge off a little.  So if that's what a migraine feels like, then I guess that was my deal.

Analog Reading:

What do you want from me, it's been busy in here.  Just finished No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood and growing increasingly ashamed of how overdue the George Saunders book is.  NPL is gonna sic Bookman on me if I don't hurry up and return it.

Syllabus #101

Let the record show that I once had two kitties snuggling with me.  This never happens.  Also, I managed to sleep in until 7 instead of waking up at 4:55 or earlier, even on a weekend, and immediately launching my brain into a Times Square News Ticker of all the things I have to do and all the ways I will probably screw them up.

A Tale of Two Kitties / I really did wake up like this

So we went to Jeni's the other night because the power was out and we were forced (forced, I say) to go out for burritos and ice cream, and THEY DID NOT HAVE THIS FLAVOR.  I flipped over a table choked back my tears and got some bomb ass fudgey chocolate ice cream instead.

What do we owe to Hemingway's influence?  This article seems to say, 'not much of any value.'  Yea yea, I get that your fave is problematic and all that, and I wouldn't wanna jump in bed with the guy, but you can't deny that his writing style was and continues to be tremendously influential.  

Not gonna lie, I assumed the show's actual title, Mare of Easttown, was a play on the Philly accent, and she was the elected official serving as the head of her town's governing body.  And her kids get out their box of 96 Crayolas and make drawings with their crowns.  Anyway, I can't wait to watch a British lady mimic my beloved Philadelphia English.

Alternate caption:  What an ass.

This is unbelievable.  Next time I'm having a rough day at work I'll have to remember that at least I'm not lost at sea, eating raw birds and becoming poisoned by the poisonous snake ingested by the bird that I just killed with my bare hands.

Analog Reading:

Finally finished Big Time by Jen Spyra.  The titular story was worth wading through some of the less inspired stories.  It was hilarious and absurd but also made raised some thought-provoking ideas about female solidarity and wokeness.

Started Patricia Lockwood's No One Is Talking About This.  I can tell I'm going to love it.  It feels very aloof and of-the-moment, specific yet totally relatable.

Still working on A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.  It's overdue at the library, so now I'm the worst kind of hypocrite.  A librarian with an overdue book.  I think I should probably just buy this book because I see it more as a reference tool than a one-off pleasure read.  But you know, at least when I do the worst thing I can possibly do in my job, nobody dies (see:  cops killing unarmed black and brown men, women, and children.  If you're upset about that non-sequitur, you should also be furious about the non-sequitur that is being murdered for having an air freshener in your car or some other type of utter bullshit).  

Syllabus #100

 Wow look at this milestone.  100 of these weekly roundups of culture I've been either enjoying with gusto or giving the stink-eye.  Did anybody think I'd make it this far?  I didn't, which shows how much I still have to learn about myself despite the decade + of navel gazing I've been doing in this space.  We know I become obsessive with routines.  I hit day 760 of Duolingo this morning, and I'm into year 4 of doing yoga every single day.  Why should this one be any different?

Sometimes successful bloggers do a giveaway for their readers when they hit a major milestone.  So, Mom, when you guys come out to visit in a couple weeks, dinner's on me.

So what have we (the royal we, including the ghost of Prince Philip) consumed this week, culturally speaking?

Can we call this culture?  Or just a pitstop on our way to the nadir of humanity?  This sexy sea monster movie sounds like the Human Centipede of our time.  "Our time" being the roaring twenties, because I just realized Human Centipede came out 12 years ago.  We've been living with the horror of an unbroken chain of ass-to-mouth-to-ass-to-mouth-to-ass humanity for over a decade.  They should do a reboot where the middle of the centipede gets Covid and loses his sense of taste and smell and is just like 'I'm good with that.'

I actually loved high school, or at least I have very fond memories of it now, but you could not pay me any amount of money to go back to that period of my life, especially not with social media in play.  Some of these cliques of today sound wild.  Which one would you be in?  Not gonna lie, I kinda wanna hang out with the stonks kids, but I feel like I'd be one of the militant social justice kids who has good intentions but is utterly incapable of a nuanced viewpoint.

I can't wait to watch the Hemingway documentary, but it's such a time commitment!  Yes, the pause button exists for a reason, but (see above) once I commit to something it's hard not to keep powering through it.

  

Analog Reading:

Still dog-paddling through A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders.  It's wonderful but I'm taking it in short strokes because he has a lot of valuable insight about the craft of shorty story writing and I'm trying to learn, here, y'all.

Reading Big Time, a short story collection by Jen Spyra, a former writer on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert.  It's funny and dark but reading it in parallel with Saunders' academic distillation of what makes an exemplary short story and what mistakes can drag the form down, I'm feeling more critical of these stories than I might otherwise.  All of these stories would be enjoyable to read in isolation in say, a New Yorker, but reading them consecutively reveals them to be pretty formulaic.  However, the story Monster Goo is a parody of a Goosebumps story taken to its furthest, darkest logical conclusions and I was cackling out loud.

Syllabus #99

 I don't have a lot this week.  It's been a busy one, mostly good.  Fam is visiting, it's Andy's birthday, there are cats playing with tails and sunbeams.

But do they come in a women's 9.5?  Also, whose blood are they using?

Just please watch this short video clip of someone just casually driving a couch down the street.  Not a couch in the bed of a truck.  Just driving an actual couch.  That's the kind of transpotainment this city needs.  

Analog Reading:

Finished The Life of the Mind by Christine Smallwood.  It caused me a lot of discomfort because I recognized so much of myself in it.  It was remarkable in its specificity and I couldn't stop reading it.  Finished in two days.

Finished Winter Pasture by Li Juan, finally.  It was beautiful and fascinating and at times irreverent and funny, but the pace of life was so slow I couldn't stay awake to read it at night.

Started A Swim in a Pond in the Rain  by George Saunders.  What a great concept.  It's like getting to take a course with Saunders, only there's no homework and no grades, but I hope to learn something about the craft of writing.