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).