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.