Syllabus #107

I spent the first full day of my summer vacation performing an exorcism by way of guerilla landscaping. 

See, the haunted house nextdoor to ours was held in the grips of an unholy force that was spreading unchecked - a bamboo forest.  The bamboo was creeping into our yard, threatening our foundation.  I razed that shit, one stalk at a time, and sprayed it with enough Roundup to create a superfund site.  I'm not proud of that part, but also I don't want that demon weed compromising the structural integrity of my home.  (Also, sidenote, I did get permission from the caretaker guy who doesn't own the place but periodically checks on it for the absentee owners and makes sure the guy squatting in the 2nd floor apartment of the other haunted house two doors over hasn't burned down the joint.)

It took hours in the blazing sun, but I channeled my aggression for all the BS I had to endure throughout the past year and I handled that shit.  Two hours deep into this labor, it occurred to me that I forgot to have coffee that morning, and I was deriving all my energy and life force from pure rage.  When the deed was done, I was glad to have access to a dumpster to dispose of all the cut bamboo.  After a water damage abatement crew came and gutted the house after the pipes burst over the winter, they left a bright orange dumpster full of moldy drywall and soggy carpet sitting in the driveway.  It's been a couple months and it has taken on the piquant odor of sun-warmed dog feces from all the people who walk their dogs and toss their poop bags in there.  Here's hoping the bamboo masks some of the dog shit smell. 

I capped off the first day of my hot girl summer by doing a New Yorker crossword puzzle in pen and getting in bed at 8:30.  Who's living their best life now, Oprah?*

*Still you, girl.  You have a private chef to craft innovative seasonal signature cocktails for you and Stedman and Gayle to enjoy on the porch of your Hawaiian estate.  I poured myself a glass of rose out of a box and sat on my porch next to a dumpster full of dog shit.  The only thing tethering us together across the cosmos is that my porch/dumpster is 5 blocks away from your dad's barbershop, and I'll be damned if that doesn't mean something.**

**You're right, that is meaningless.

A tree grows in Nashville

---

I'm here for all Mare of Easttown cultural criticism. 

Woman lives in man's closet in Japan for a year, gets caught when he finally notices his food is disappearing.  I saw this article the day after I found a mysterious half-empty 12-pack of Busch beer under our porch.  It was slightly weathered and dusty but clearly was placed there within the past few months.  I texted the article to Andy from within the browser and then opened up my text messages and accidentally sent the following sentence to my mom:  "What if somebody is living in our crawl space and using the underneath of the porch as their food storage and that's why that 12 pack of beer was there"

I told Andy not to go for a long ride on a stomach full of hot chicken but did he listen?  

Just hideous 

Sounds like a real anti-climax 

Analog Reading:

Finished Selfish Shallow and Self-Absorbed.  It me, all three.

Also finished Notes from the Bathroom Line.  It was amusing.

Reading Festival Days, and essay/story collection by Jo Ann Beard.  Wow the writing is fluid and beautiful and so well crafted as to seem effortless, but the topics are a little brutal and heavy and sad.

Syllabus #106

What happened this week?  I hit a milestone - 800 consecutive days of Duolingo!  But I still don't know how to say "I hit a milestone" in Spanish, so I'm not sure what this signifies other than compulsive behavior:

Also, I had two new experiences Friday night.  Hanging out a pinball bar, and food poisoning.  How I have made it 35 years on this earth without it (that I can recall) is a mystery.

Pinball Wizard: Or, The Mysterious Tale of the Grilled Octopus of Questionable Provenance that Ricocheted Through My Digestive Tract for Sixteen Hours Before Making an Overly Dramatic Exit

 This article/interview is interesting and it sounds like this guy is doing important work, but the fact that this guy is a white researcher seeking to legitimate African American English is one thing in an academic sense, but speaks to a larger cultural question of 'legitimate according to whom?' Who gets to say what is and is not legitimate or valid or valuable, and why?  Why isn't the fact that this language is used by the community that uses it validation enough?    

I'm so glad to see this article about the precious gift to comedy that is Bowen Yang.  I know a lot of people still shit on SNL, and I haven't watched regularly in years, but I think this season's cast is generally great and he's probably my favorite.  "Audiences are used to straight characters’ sexuality not having anything to do with the joke of the sketch, but if a gay character’s sexuality isn’t a punchline, then its inclusion requires an explicit justification. Yang is challenging this double standard, one sketch at a time."  Like, seriously, Bowen Yang as The Gay Iceberg That Sank the Titanic on Weekend Update was a bright spot in a very dark early part of 2021.

Analog Reading:

Finished Suleika Jaouad's Between Two Kingdoms.  It was so beautifully written.  In less skilled hands, or from a less reflective and introspective mind, a story like Suleika's would make you cringe and turn away.  The only thing stopping me from reading the entire book in one sitting was sheer exhaustion, otherwise I would have read through the night until the sun rose.  The sensory descriptions were evocative without being syrupy, and there were moments of dark humor even in the most serious of moments.  I loved every page.

Reading Notes from the Bathroom Line:  Humor, Art, and Low-Grade Panic from 150 of the Funniest Women in Comedy, curated by Amy Solomon.  Some of the pieces are kind of meh, but I have chortled and/or snorted at several of them so far.

Also reading Selfish, Shallow, and Self Absorbed, an essay collection edited by Meghan Daum, by writers who have chosen, for a variety of reasons, not to become parents.  It resonates.  

Syllabus #105

The weather's heating up and the CDC just gave us all permission to free-nose it so y'all gonna have to look at my sweat-stache for the next 4 months. 

The haunted house next door has some nice peonies.  I've been helping myself to the fruits of their abandoned landscaping, so if I start getting haunted, it checks out.

 If you've been around here for more than a minute, you might surmise that I'm not the least bit religious. That being said, I was raised culturally Lutheran (if you can even say a thing like that) and this makes me proud.  Good on ya, Lutheran Church.

See also:  Did you get the Covid-19 vaccine and then feel so liberated and strange to be enjoying a night out with friends that you, ahem, overdid it a little a shit ton and woke up in your bathrobe on top of your sheets with your glasses still on your face and your bedside lamp still shining, and your earrings were in a kitchen drawer and your wine-soaked shirt was in a bowl of soapy water in the sink?  Or is that alternate title just a little too specific?

Dear Joyce, please accept my sincerest apologies if you feel the slightest bit of exasperation towards me (last Sunday notwithstanding) that Johanna Schopenhauer felt towards her irascible son, Arthur.

Free to be child free

David Sedaris, as always

Listening to Jean Smart and Terry Gross talk about the specificity of the Delaware County accent used in Mare of Easttown, and the idea that Smart, an American person, had to use a DIALECT COACH to learn how to say WOODER and GEW HEWM is so amusing to me.  I mean, sure, Kate Winslet is British, so using a dialect coach for any particular American accent makes total sense.

My biggest gripes with the workplace bathroom are the no smoking sign (in a school, honestly, yes I'm gonna light up in this enclosed, unventilated space within sniffing distance of the principal's office, get bent with that sign, y'all) and the trite motivational quote printed on canvas.  The only new leaf I wanna turn over is the one that was made into the abrasive yet ethereal toilet paper I'm using to wipe my b-hole.

This article is from 7 years ago, but damn.  I was drinking a glass of water while I was reading it, and the glass of water became so much more.

Analog Reading:

Finished The Upstairs House by Julia Fine.  It was a nice companion to all this week's articles about declining to participate in motherhood.  I've had some pretty severe mental and emotional side effects from certain birth control, so I will say a polite no thank you to the possibility of postpartum psychosis.  

Started Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad.  I feel like I need to slow down and not inhale the whole thing in one bite, but it's hard to put down.

Syllabus #104

Due to unforeseen circumstances, this syllabus is a day late.  Probably also a dollar short, except it's free to begin with, so just be cool, aight?

When you peel the whole clementine in one continuous piece

This is why we can't have nice things.

This resonates.  

If this was a real show I would watch the shit out of it.

What we talk about when we don't talk about lady parts.  

I don't know man, the peel?  THE PEEL?  Sounds gross but I might try it. 

Analog Reading:

Finished Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler  Whoa did not see that ending coming.

Put to bed the saga of the wonderful magical but very badly overdue library book.  I did it.  I returned the library's copy of A Swim in a Pond in the Rain and bought my own.  You're welcome, George Saunders.  That extra 18 cents in your next royalty check?  It me.

Reading The Upstairs House by Julia Fine for my book club.  Ooh girl, it's weird.  Not something I would have picked for myself, and I'm not sure that I totally love the writing style, but it's a fun read.  If you can call a book about a woman with post partum psychosis becoming convinced that she's being visited by the ghost of Margaret Wise Brown fun, then yes, it's a romp.

Syllabus #103

We're starting to emerge from our sour PanDemi Moore cocoons, molting our layers of sweatpants and paranoia.  We're not exactly becoming social butterflies, but this weekend we went out two days in a row and had long conversations with people we just met.  We even left East Nashville for a couple hours, which is always a gamble.  It was WYLD. 

Charlie looked so happy laying in the grass.  I hope he remembers this feeling when he is chewing holes in his flesh later because he has mysterious seasonal allergies that are due to present themselves any day now.

What else came to light this week?

Think back to all the movies you rented in the late 90s and early 00s.  What would be the most humiliating one to be arrested for effectively stealing?  I, for one, am proud of the number of times my mom let me rent Captain Ron from Funhouse Video.  However, I am glad I didn't follow through with renting The Oz-porns from the adult section of that video store in Mantua on my 18th birthday because I was too lazy to fill out the membership application.  Boy that would be an awkward one to have to explain to a future employer.    

“I’m thinking he went and got it and didn’t take it back or something,” she said. “I have never watched that show in my entire life — just not my cup of tea.”

That's what they all say, Caron.

It's probably never not going to be weird to think about the reality of living in a major tourist destination.  I think the whole waiting in line to take your picture with a mural thing is dumb, but I've also waited in line for a lot of things in other countries that the locals there probably think are stupid, too.  

Maybe this is Charlie's problem.  He doesn't look like a haunted victorian child but I think he might do better living with a single lesbian who can lavish all her time and attention on him and never raise his hackles by attempting to hug another human.  Sidenote, can it be a full-time job to write endearing yet brutally honest profiles for shelter animals?  Can I be that when I grow up?

THIS EXPLAINS SO MUCH.  My people:  "This is not a state of national mourning in Finland, these are Finns in their natural state; brooding and private; grimly in touch with no one but themselves; the shyest people on earth. Depressed and proud of it."

"Consistent with their Lutheran heritage, the Nordic countries are united in their embrace of curbed aspirations for the best possible life. This mentality is famously captured in the Law of Jante—a set of commandments believed to capture something essential about the Nordic disposition to personal success: “You’re not to think you are anything special; you’re not to imagine yourself better than we are; you’re not to think you are good at anything,” and so on. "  

EMPHASIS MINE, but not because I am anything special.  I just want you, dear reader, to get on my level.  Which is comfortably, achievably low.

Analog Reading:

Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler.  The narrator is very unlikeable and seems like she would be a very low-affect individual to whom things in life just sort of happen.  It's kind of frustrating to read because she just rambles through these overly-detailed descriptions and explanations, yet I find it compelling?

I don't even want to talk about A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.  I carry a lot of shame about this overdue library book I can't bring myself to return.  I need to just buy my own copy and finish it on my own time.  That's what I'll do.  Sorry, NPL.