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.