Syllabus #181

 My brain is officially on Winter Break.  I have nothing to offer you, except photographic evidence that not everything I touch turns to dust:

Finnish Bread!

Look at that rise

I am the favoriteonly child for leaving the chocolate chips out of the first tray, hi, Mom, you're welcome

 

This may or may not be my last missive of 2022.  We'll see how it goes.  I might pop back in with something before the new year descends upon us.  Perhaps something akin to a Spotify Wrapped, except for people who only listen to podcasts at 1.5 speed.  Truly.  It's a sickness.  I can no longer tolerate a normal speaking cadence, it makes me physically ill.  Get to the point or get out of here!  It's a real liability here in the South.

At any rate, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Yule, Blessed Festivus, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy New Year, all the things.

Oh but wait, I do want to shout out a couple books I've enjoyed lately:

Analog Reading:

You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey:  Crazy stories about racism by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar.  Ruffin is a writer and performer known for her own eponymous late night show and also from her work on The Seth Meyers Show.  Lacey is her sister, and the book is about growing up and existing as a Black woman in Omaha, Nebraska.  If you, like me, picture a very caucasian person sitting on the side of the road spooning mayonnaise out of an industrial size jar straight into their mouth when you are asked to picture the average Nebraskan, you will not be surprised that even the largest city in Nebraska is very white and rife with racists of both the simply ignorant and the overtly virulent variety.  The book is a humorously related highlight reel of some of the wildly offensive things that people have said and done to Lacey.  Sadly, there is a sequel.  Sad because Lacey had so many more encounters to share, but also not sad, because the narration of the stories is virtuosic.  The absolute ass-hattery she has to deal with is appalling, and only a master storyteller and comedian could possibly make the telling of these tales take an amusing tone.

On a lighter note, Ive been enjoying My First Popsicle: An Anthology of Food and Feelings, edited by Zosia Mamet.  I think I shared Jia Tolentino's essay about acid chicken that was published in Bon Appetit, and like, duh, food and feelings are inseparable.  Unless you're serial killer.  Are you a serial killer?

Syllabus #180

Bob from Sesame Street died this week.  He was 90.  I saw the news and fully stand by my assertion that when someone is that old and has faded into obscurity in their later years, the headline shouldn't be that they died, but that, until recently, they were still alive.  

With his passing, now all my inappropriately geriatric childhood crushes are dead.  Look, don't overthink this, but until JTT and Zack Morris came along, I only had eyes for kindly but quirky, clean-shaven men born before 1950.  Bob from Sesame Street (1932).  Davy Jones (1945).  Jim Varney (1949), but not as himself even though he was honestly a real smoke show, but specifically Varney as beloved alter-ego Ernest P. Worrell.   

You might be asking, but Katie, what about Mr. Rogers?  All I can say is that a girl has to draw the line somewhere.  For one thing, he was too nice and that was a red flag for me.  Gotta be some skeletons in that closet next to all those cardigans.  Plus, Rogers was four years older than Bob, but he really leaned into the harmless old man thing.  Bob had a little more of swinging hipster vibe.  I mean, just take a look at this denim on denim 'fit:

Dressed like a man fixin' to go slam some PBRs after filming  

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I wasn't very online this week.  Please accept this article about the niche subculture of historic octagonal houses as my sole offering.

Analog Reading:

The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy.  I'm almost done!  I don't hate it, but it is, of course, very weird.  The thing I dislike about it is the way the more straightforward elements of the plot are interspersed with the dead sister's hallucinations, which are about as fun to read as a description of someone else's dreams.  It's tedious.

Syllabus #179

We went to Kroger this morning around 11:00 and the parking lot was half empty, which we thought was wild for a Sunday.  It must have been right before church let out, because it was just us and a bunch of fellow Satan Worshippers, trying to figure out which of the half-rotten vegetables remaining in the produce section would best complement the goats and small children we were planning to sacrifice later for Sunday Supper.  Seriously, I bought the last onion, so if you needed one for your post-slaughter onion juice recovery drink, I'm sorry.  

Anyway, I say we got there right before church let out, because by the time we left, the parking lot was packed and a parade of church ladies was marching into the store in their sensible pumps and wool coats.  HOWEVER, there was also a parade of, I don't know what kind of person, maybe members of the First Reformed Church of Abstaining from Sleeves and Zippers?  Interspersed with the church ladies, every 3rd or 4th person we passed in the parking lot was wearing a blanket instead of a coat.  Otherwise decently dressed people getting out of vehicles they didn't appear to live in, just swaddled like newborn babes.  Fleece blankets.  Afghans.  Chunky knit decorative throws that only people who don't have pets would dare to put on their couch.  All of it.  Like Joseph's Technicolor Dream Not-Coat.  

Life is a rich tapestry.  One that you sometimes wear in the cold, apparently.

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Have you noticed the Wordle being a little too on the nose lately?  FEAST on Thanksgiving was honestly offensive.  Why not GRAVY or PLATE or ROAST or GENOCIDE or oh gosh, that's too many letters, isn't it?  

Save your Spotify Wrapped, I'm here for all the end of hte year best books lists, so I can play catchup and make my reading list for 2023. Here's the NY Times 100.

Not to be outdone by dueling Top Ten Lists from Slate's Laura Miller and Dan Kois.  

Some years, I feel pretty smug, like I'm fully aligned with the book lists and discover just a handful that I missed and want to read.  This year, I can't believe I missed so many of these.

Analog Reading:

Small Game by Blair Braverman was a fast, intense read.  I kind of sped through it because I felt like the faster I read it, the sooner the characters would be out of their misery.  I mean that in a good way, though.  It was a well-crafted story that made me real glad to be reading it indoors, fully clothed, with a fridge full of food.

Flight by Lynn Steger Strong was also excellent and short, which is exactly what a holiday family gathering, the subject of the book, should be.  No shade to my family.  I love you and this is not a criticism.  It's just, it's hard to square each individual's expectations for holiday magic with the reality of time and energy, and my delicate constitution can only take so many consecutive days of eating and drinking like the world is going to end before I just feel like a bloated corpse.  

The Passenger, Cormac McCarthy's new banger.  And by banger I mean book about a guy who is more than a little interested in banging his own dead sister.  Also he's a salvage diver who gets wrapped up in a mystery about a plane crash, but the sister banging is a lot to unpack all on its own, so, you know.

Syllabus #178

Hello, are we tired of eating yet?  I sat down to make a grocery list this morning and was just utterly disgusted with the thought of having to think about food, and cook food, and then put that slop on a plate and transfer it to my mouth and chew it.  If Kroger had a Soylent aisle, I'd push my cart straight to it and be done.  This is not about saying I was 'bad' for indulging in so much rich food for Thanksgiving.  It's not about diet culture, although I hear big butts are out and we all should be doing rails of Ozempic diabetes medicine so we can look like Kate Moss, and like, I'm as tired of squats as the next person, but can we just not do this again?

But no, I just need a breather to renew my palate and my interest in gorging before we do all this shit again in three weeks.  You might be thinking, this all makes you sound like a miserable hag.  And you're not wrong.  You are, in fact, correct.

Ask anyone.  I am the worst.  I nearly caused a riot and ruined Thanksgiving, and had 9 out of the 10 other people in the room screaming at me, so, you know.  

What happened was, we were playing Fishbowl, in which every player gets 3 pieces of paper to write down a Thing.  It can be an object, a place, a well-known person, a familiar saying, a song, etc.  The first round of the game is like taboo, where you can say anything, except the actual words written on the paper, to get your teammates to guess the Thing.  Second round, password - the clue-giver can say only one word.  Third round, charades.  

I was already skating on thin ice from one of my previous submissions, "I was in the pool."  Isn't everyone on the earth familiar with George Costanza's protestation about shrinkage?  I then took things beyond.com because APPARENTLY, 'Kid Rock's Big Ass Honky Tonk and Rock 'n Roll Steakhouse' was TOO SPECIFIC.  I thought it was perfect.  Here's how one might have approached it:

First round:  "It's a horrible place on Broadway in Nashville that is infamous for a guy pulling out his colostomy bag and swinging it around."

Second round:  "Colostomy"

Third round:  *pantomimes removing colostomy bag, swinging it overhead like a lasso*

I rest my case.  I will take no further questions.

This is the only picture I took all week

Okay, I said I don't want to think about food, but this is the exception.  I've never done acid or roasted a chicken, much less eaten one in almost 20 years.  And yet I find myself with a hankerin' for Jia Tolentino's Acid Chicken.  I put the essay collection this came from on hold at the library.  [My First Popsicle:  An anthology of food and feelings, edited by Zosia Mamet, I mean just look at the title of this blog, could there be a more on-brand book for me to want to read?]

Breaking News:  Teaching is hard.  My immediate reaction is to check the byline and feign shock that it wasn't written by Captain Obvious, but also, that's exactly the problem.  It's a given to anyone who works in K-12 education, but most people who aren't teachers think it's a cute little job that ends at 3 pm every day and gives you summers off.  Yea, there are moments where it's cute, and there are times when I do leave at 3:15, but dang, guys, we have kids as young as 4, up to like, 10 year olds who are larger than me, physically assaulting teachers.  Biting, kicking, scratching, pulling hair, throwing objects.  And unless you are specifically trained in safe methods of restraint, you can't even really touch the kid even to hold them away from you.  All this has definitely escalated since March of 2020.  I think the psychological impact on kids has been more of a problem than the learning loss, and if all the trauma dealt with appropriately, and kids felt safe enough to calm down and focus, the learning loss would be a lot easier to address.

ICYMI, petty thievery is in.  

Analog Reading:

The Four Winds improved when I decided to suspend my criticism and just blow along with it.  I was kind of hoping at least one of the winds would be flatulence, but, spoiler alert, none of them were.  By the end, I was very invested in the fate of the characters, and teared up a little over the way things turned out.  

Small Game by Blair Braverman.  A novel about a reality show about wilderness survival.  I'm into it.  Except I need to reread about 10 pages because I popped an edible and got in bed to read, and there's a character named Lenny who I kept conflating with our cat named Lenny, which was very confusing at the time.  Then I fell asleep and dropped my Kindle on my face, and I think my nose advanced the screen a few pages.  All this to say, the closest I will get to wilderness survival is reading about it, and I can apparently barely manage that.

Syllabus #177

The cat in the hat came back.

Apparently, we underestimated Lenny's deep, abiding love for us.  He FREAKED OUT and hid in a chimney when he arrived at what we believed would be his new home.  The people were unfortunately not up to the challenge of earning his trust.  Honestly, it wouldn't have taken much.  All you need to do is feed him, not make any sudden movements or loud noises, and possibly provide him with life-saving medical care.  

That last part might be why he's so attached to us.  It's like that book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.  If you take a stray cat to the vet because his actual ass has been ripped open by another animal, and then let him live in your bathroom for a month while his wounds heal, and give him food and water an safety, and climate control and affection, he's going to love you forever and never leave your house.  That's basically what happened in the beloved children's book written to provide a humorous illustration of cause and effect, right?

I guess he's here to stay.  If anyone has any tips to help two cats stop beefing and learn to tolerate one another, please divulge.  We've tried everything you can probably think of, except drugs.    

Anyway.

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This essay about growing up with an absentee father really hits.  I still to this day remember the first kid who asked, "Where's your dad?  Like, do you have a dad?"  It was partly the question itself, but mostly the totally snotty, condescending way she asked it.  She may as well have been asking, "Do you know you just stepped in dog shit?"  I could conjure a highly detailed police sketch of that awful child, down to her gold hoop earrings and her weird curly mullet that so many little girls had in the early 90s.  I'm sure she has no recollection of this, or even of me, period.  And she's probably a perfectly decent human being.  But in that moment, I wanted to throw her into a volcano and watch the flesh melt off her skull as she sank into bubbling lava.  

True Life:  I am a sucker for documentaries about crackpot theories of ancient aliens and unknown civilizations.  At least, I was as an impressionable youth with a TV in my bedroom in the heyday of The Learning Channel and The History Channel, when they were just transitioning from quasi-educational content to straight up conspiracy theories and reality television designed to gawk at people who made questionable life choices.  It's a format that never truly died, apparently, because here's a new crock-umentary on Netflix that sounds just utterly unhinged.  

In another world, where I host dinner parties and no one complains about my cooking, I would love to unveil this dramatic-ass whole stuffed roasted pumpkin on my dinner table.  

Analog Reading:

Horseman, Pass By by Larry McMurtry.  I loved the Lonesome Dove series, and Andy recently read this and said it might be some of the best fiction he's read in a long time.  I gave it a whirl, and honestly I kind of hated it.  Mostly because there was no real plot to speak of, and not much character development, and the only 3 things that did kind of happen in the book were deeply upsetting acts with no real closure or redemption.  Which is, I guess, an accurate reflection of life, but I expect literature to be a little more than a mere depiction of how much of a shitpile life can be sometimes.

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah.  I feel like I'm really striking out with books that other people have recommended to me lately.  I have read at least one other book by KH, The Great Alone, which was gripping and disturbing, but was a real page-turner.  This one leaves a lot to be desired.  Despite its length, it feels hastily slapped together, and like certain parts of the story were rushed through and under-developed.  The relationship on which the entire book hinges basically begins when a spinster, who sneaks out of her parents' house with makeup on for the first time, fails to gain entry to a speakeasy, meets a rando on the street, fucks him in the back of his truck, and then the rest of the events unfold from there.  It just seemed HIGHLY UNLIKELY and rather abrupt.

Syllabus #176

We sent our sweet Lenny to a farm upstate this week.  

No, everybody chill, that's not a euphemism.  I mean an actual farm.  He isn't dead, he just lives somewhere else.  With other people.  Who don't have another cat that tries to murder him every time she sees him.  

We are so sad, and we miss him terribly.  He is a shy boy, but a very good one, and I hope he's happy in his new home.  We tried everything to stop Lola from opening a portal to hell and attempting to remove his very soul with her claws every time they were in the same room.   We did the usual exchanging of scents, we tried feeding them finest of Fancy Feasts together, we tried pheromones, we tried exorcism.  Lola just was. not. having. it.  

And so we found him a new home with the in-laws of a friend.  They live on a giant farm, where he will get to play outside if he wants, but still come inside to 3 hots and a cot.  Because being a pet is basically like being imprisoned by well-meaning jailers, for the minor crime of being too dopey to survive on the streets.

Ever since Lola realized he was gone, she's been glued to our sides.  We don't know if she was scared of Lenny and that's why she bullied him relentlessly, or if she's now scared that she could be sent away next, or if she's just so thrilled that she got her way in the end.  Whatever the reason, she's basically been my conjoined twin for the past 72 hours.  I can only hope Lenny finds as much happiness in his new digs.

Bon Voyage, Lenny

But OMFG the stock image they used for 'librarian' in this advice column.  

Elon's shiny new toy isn't as fun for him as he hoped.  The rest of us, on the other hand, are doing just fine.  

Analog Reading:

Finished The Regrets by Amy Bonnaffons.  Speaking of regrets, I have some.  I expected more about the metaphysics of being in limbo while cultivating a relationship, and less graphic descriptions of banging a member of the spirit realm.  It was an amusing conceit at first, but I didn't need like 200 pages of deep ghost dicking.

Now is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson was, OF COURSE, fabulous.  We attended his reading at Parnassus Books on Monday, and bought a pre-signed copy before the event.  Wilson is a delightful human, and exactly as quirky as you would expect the person who wrote those books to be.  It was so cool to hear him read passages from the book and then immediately start reading it myself.  I could hear his voice narrating all the while, like my own private audiobook.

Syllabus #175

Hello I am one thousand years old. Last night, in a dimly lit restaurant, I struggled like an Old to find that sweet spot in my depth of field where I could read the menu with both eyes.  If I don't dial it in just right, I end up having to close one eye or deal with double vision.  I have a headache all the time and I am nearly driven to a murderous rage by the frustration It's fun!

Enjoyed this interview with Kevin Wilson, one of my favorite authors of the last few years.  I've read everything he's written so far, and am stoked to learn he has a new book out on Tuesday.  AND we are going to Parnassus Books on Monday to hear from the man himself.  I can't wait.  Andy is indifferent.  I'm sure he would love Wilson's books, but he's only going because he feels bad for me that I can't drive at night until I get new glasses.  

Moving photojournalism.

Heidi Klum's worm costume has been tunneling through my brain, making dirt, all week.  Unsettlingly Grotesque is the new Sexy.

I started watching Weird, the Weird Al mock bio-pic starring Daniel Radcliffe.  The first 25 minutes were so perfectly, hilariously stupid.  I mean that as the highest complement.  It is a sincere and gentle and dumb sendup of the parody master, even while the movie itself is an absurd parody.  I want to finish watching it ASAP.  

We need to do this Natchez Trace Parkway drive sometime.

Oprah's Favorite Things hits so much different in print.  I miss it so.  I guess it's marginally more convenient to have a fully linked version available, but I long for that fat, glossy periodical full of aspirational products arrayed just so on the page.  By the time my eye traveled from upper left to bottom right of the spread, I had experienced the full spectrum of emotions:  indifference to the gardening tools, disgust at the thought of paying money for a stale-ass pie made by a stranger to be sent to you in the mail (homemade pie or GTFO forever), envy and desire for the luxurious skincare items, and complete rage at the suggestion that I spend three figures on a candle, which is literally lighting your money on fire.  

Analog Reading:

Finished Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.  Woof to reading that in the aftermath of the Supremes (the mostly shitty kind, not the Diana Ross kind) overturning Roe.  Also woof to a book about 30 year olds having mid-life crises.  Not a knock on the book, though.  It was superb.  The characters were so real to me that I found myself wondering what they were doing now in the days after I finished the book.

Reading The Regrets by Amy Bonnaffons.  It is unlike any book I've ever read before.  Not to say that it's completely unique, but it seems very of-the-moment and young-Millennial in terms of cultural references and sex-forwardness within the plot.  Also, it's about banging a guy who's technically dead but didn't die correctly so he's lingering on earth until the afterlife is ready for him?  

Syllabus #173

I can see clearly now, my lens is gone.

Yes, that's right.  I, an adult human woman, 37 years of age, had cataract surgery on Friday.  

I've always been advanced.  A vanguard.  Ahead of my time.  A hipster, if I may (I may not, it's fine).  So when all y'all fellow elder millennials start getting cloudy-ass lenses, I can say I replaced mine before it was cool.  Just the one, though. 

And let me tell you, it is wild.  I still can't see great because I'm so nearsighted in my non-cataract-having eye that in order to not eff up my depth perception, they gave me a -3.00 lens, but the difference already is amazing.  Before, looking out of that eye, even with glasses, was like trying to see through a fogged windshield, and colors were all desaturated.  I may as well have smeared vaseline on a contact lens and jammed it in my eye.  Now, there's a point about 30" from my face where I can see pretty clearly, and anything closer or further away is shit.  But like, there's the potential for full sight once I get an updated eyeglass prescription.  So that's something.  

The surgery itself seemed to last less than 10 minutes.  I wasn't completely knocked out, but it was like that twilight sleep they used to give birthing mothers in the 50s, which is appropriate because I'm pretty sure Andy was nervously chomping on a cigar and pacing the waiting area the whole time.  He was far and away more freaked out by the whole process than I was, which was either sweet or mega-weird.  Pero, ¿por que no los dos?  

Those were some good drugs, though.  All I remember is that they taped my head to the table so I wouldn't move.  It was real high tech - they honestly wound a roll of masking tape over my forehead and under the bed a couple times like I was a frigging Home Depot box full of tchotchkes on moving day.  Then they tucked me in all cozy under a blanket and probably covered up my good eye, I assume, and then I was treated to this Pink Floyd-ass light show inside my eyeball for a few minutes.  

Oh, and I definitely remember that before they gave me the drugs, the surgeon came in to answer any questions I had pre-surgery, and I really wanted to ask him how edibles might impact recovery but I narced out and just asked, "What if I'd like to have a glass of wine?" as if I would ever have A glass of wine like a civilized adult.  And he said, sure, tomorrow you can have a glass of wine, that would be alright.  [Ok, fine, I'm trying to sound like a borderline alcoholic chill person but honestly it would be 2 or 3 glasses, not like 7, and even then there's a non-zero chance I'm projectile vomiting the next day and my eyeball just rockets straight out of my face, so I'm not drinking at all for probably like 2 weeks, are you happy now?].  

And then he asked if it would be alright to pray with me before the surgery and inside I was screaming get me out of here but I figured anything that would help this guy feel like he's going to do a better job cutting open my eyeball is fine with me.  So I said, sure, and did the awkward thing I do every time they say grace before a staff meal at work and I just stared vacantly at my lap, dissociating from my body.  But two days post-op, I'm feeling pretty good.  Jesus take the scalpel, y'all.

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I didn't have a lot of time for the internet this week.  I did read this review of Cormac McCarthy's new novels, and even though the review kind of panned them both, I'm intrigued.   I haven't been so jazzed about sibling incest since Flowers in the Attic!  I have them both on hold at the library.  Will report back in approximately 42 weeks.  Guess I'm not the only person with a morbid curiosity.

Analog Reading:

Finished John Darnielle's Universal Harvester.  I am left with questions, but overall it had a mood.  How do we each deal with loss and loneliness and isolation?  Some of us roll up our sleeves and get on with it...others of us never let it go, and can reach some disturbing conclusions in our quests.

Halfway through Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.  I saw the movie when it came out, but I don't remember that much about it.  Something about taking the PATCO to see it at the Ritz at the Bourse and sneaking pony bottles of Sutter Home into the movie theater.  But that just means the book is fresh and untainted.  Even though the book came out in 1961, the idea of confronting your life's purpose at middle age (NOT at a mere freaking 30 years old, like Frank Wheeler, THANKYOUVERYMUCH, but then Hi, it's me, your gal with the surgically extracted cataract so what do I know), shuffling paper piles around at a meaningless job, all that resonates.

Syllabus #172

Might be time to buy a rake

This past week was book fair.  I know all y'all have fond memories from Scholastic Book Fairs of yore, but have you ever RUN a book fair?  If you haven't, then simmer down and reminisce on your own time.  I've got trauma and we are going to unpack it right now.  

Can I tell you how many coins I had to touch this week?  No amount of hand washing will erase the smell of pennies.  I'm going to have to remove a layer of skin with undiluted bleach, that's all there is to it.  And the sweaty money that's been clenched in a tight little fist for an untold amount of time?  Ick.

I had to count out $18 worth of quarters that came out of a sock.  I had to make children cry because, sorry, two dimes, a nickel, and six pennies, is, in fact, $.31, not, as they called it, Nine Monies, and thus, it is insufficient to buy anything.  Never mind the fact that I created a pitifully easy reading challenge that any child could have easily completed, that would have earned them a free book from the book fair.  I'm clearly the monster here.  Just ask the kid who threw a book and kicked a display case because I wouldn't let him use his reading challenge reward to buy a toy instead of a book.

Sidenote, it's amazing how many kids asked if I was making a lot of money from this, and they all were honestly shocked when I explained that it's a fundraiser for the school, and we get only a percentage of the profits, and I'm not actually lining my own pockets with the spoils.  Then again, these are probably the same kids who think I buy books for the library with my own personal money, bless their misguided little hearts.

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Some solid but also very predictable advice for staving off winter illness.  Bonus tip:  Stay away from children.  Those little disease vectors will cough right into your actual mouth while you're talking to them if you aren't careful.  They're in bed with big pharma, I just know it.

Have you read Gone Girl?  I haven't, but this Gone Girl-themed cruise sounds completely unhinged and wonderful.  

This article has it all:  Vulgarity, feminism, and the fascinating use (and limitations) of text-mining to determine the origins of words and phrases, such as, in this case, Barefoot and Pregnant. 

Analog Reading:

The Day the World Came to Town by Jim Defede.  It's about all the US-bound trans-Atlantic flights that had to land in Gander, Newfoundland on 9/11, and how the weird, sleepy little Canadian town jumped into action and welcomed thousands of airline refugees until US airspace reopened.  That sounds like a real big downer, but I've been reading it almost like a bedtime story.  It's a little boring, but I read a chapter or so and then fall asleep thinking about how even in the face of the worst actions man can scheme up, there are plenty of other people who are kind and compassionate.  And then I have night terrors about the book fair, so it's really a wash, but we're trying.

Universal Harvester by John Darnielle (of Mountain Goats fame).  I read his latest book, Devil House, earlier this year, and loved it.  There's something experimental about his fiction, which I appreciate.  In this one, there's a sort of 3rd person omniscient narrator who is gradually revealing him- or herself to be someone perhaps orchestrating all of the events of the story, which centers around a small-town Iowa video store in 1999/2000.  The owner and one of the clerks get sucked into a mysterious and disturbing plot when they find a bunch of their movies have been spliced with grisly home movie footage.  It's odd and I like it.

Syllabus #171

Everybody, everybidet.  

Hot Dads in Children's Books - hilarious.  I think the dad in Alexander books, and the dad in Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing should definitely not make the cut, because they embody the type of toxic masculinity that allows dads in popular culture and real life to be aloof, irritable financial providers who have no earthly idea what goes on in the home or even where their wife keeps the damn peanut butter.  Hard agree with the hotness of the dad in Jabari Jumps, though.  Last time I read that book to a class, a little boy was overly fixated on being able to see the guy's nips.  

States with the worst winters.   I think Tennessee should have ranked closer to the top.  The only thing good about winter here is that it is mercifully short.  It still gets below freezing, and it's that damp cold that sets up camp in your bones from December to February and makes you want to eat bread until you can't feel your feelings anymore.

Watching:

We watch so little TV, and yet, we chose to give Jeffrey Q. Bezos $3.99 plus tax to watch Happy Gilmore on Friday.  Because I have now played exactly 7 holes of golf in my life, the movie truly resonated with me.  Also, his driving and putting stances were absolutely bonkers.  10/10 recommend.  Also, the grandma storyline just really tugs at the old heartstrings.

Gotta say, though, the next night we were like, is Adam Sandler the comedic voice of a generation?  Should we watch Billy Madison?  The answer was yes, but it should have been no.  That shit does not hold up.  Except for the "If peeing your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis" part.  Always and forever.

Analog Reading:

Finished The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid.  It was an intriguing premise, speculating what would happen to society if every white person started turning black overnight, and how individuals would react to a new self-perception.  It was such a short novel, though, and I feel like Hamid could have really done more with the concept.  As it was, it seemed like it only addressed the skin-deep aspects of race, but maybe that was his point, that the color of your skin doesn't have to mean anything about who you are inside?  

Syllabus #170

Hello audience, I hope this missive finds all 1-3 of you well.  I played hooky last week, because I reserve the right to deviate from my self-imposed editorial schedule once in a while, and also, I was otherwise occupied.

Don't talk to me until I've read my funnies

Where does the entitlement come from?  Does it grow on a tree?  Can you mine it from the earth?  Do you pan for it like gold?  Do you pull it out of your own ass?  I want to know where the entitlement comes from to have, not just an opinion about, but an outspoken desire to threaten, something that has absolutely no-fucking-thing to do with oneself.  The people in an uproar about Vanderbilt's pediatric transgender clinic are neither medical experts, nor parents of trans children, nor trans themselves, and yet here we are.  Do they also have strong opinions about pediatric oncology?  Are we doing that wrong, too?  How about juvenile diabetes?  And why limit your opinions to children?  I'm sure you have something to say about my birth control prescription, despite not being me or my doctor?

I must play trombone champ.

Dank Brandon.  

The struggle is (still) real.  

This article about the life of Loretta Lynn was interesting.  As a contemporary of Dolly Parton, a lot of Loretta's songs were so much more controversial and outspoken, but in her real life she was so much more private, and, disappointingly, conservative.  Whereas Dolly lives out loud and is clearly, remarkably, progressive, even though, lyrically, her songs don't really hammer that point home.  

Analog Reading:

Not sure if I ever reported finishing A Gentleman in Moscow, but I finally liberated myself from that one.  The latter 25% was quite good, but the beginning felt like a slog.

Then I read French Exit by Patrick deWitt.  It was short but not sweet.  A delightful, mouth-puckering salty sour treat, with a dash of the absurd.

After that, I swooped into Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird.  It was insightful about the craft of writing and the life of a writer, but so witty and conversational I'd recommend it even to a non-writer.  

I have just begin Mohsin Hamid's The Last White Man, which reads a little like Kafka's Metamorphosis but is somehow utterly realistic.

Syllabus #169

 #169.  Nice.

I got the Wordle in 2 guesses twice this week.  Hope my Mensa invitation doesn't get stolen out of my mailbox.  

Adult Onset Athleticism.  That implies being actually good at a sport.  I wouldn't go that far, but I definitely have a chronic case of Adult Onset Desire Not to be a Sedentary Lump.  Maybe I would have discovered the pleasure of moving one's body for fun a little earlier in life had it not been for the dreaded President's Physical Fitness Test.  Just something about being forced to run a mile in my D-cup jugs without knowing sports bras existed, getting weighed in front of the whole class, enduring shame for not being able to do a pull-up, and then also getting berated for being too flexible in the sit-and-reach really soured me on trying to do any sort of physical activity.  

There was a time before cellphones when I was viscerally offended to find that someone's bathroom was devoid of reading materials.  If you walked in on me reading the ingredients on your shampoo bottle, that's your own damn fault.  

Analog Reading:

Dear god, I'm still reading A Gentleman in Moscow.  I'm enjoying it more, but maybe I'm just like Count Rostov, reconciled to my fate to never exit the confines of its pages.  It's not even that long!  I just haven't had much time to read lately.

Syllabus #168

Look, a picture of something that isn't a cat

Alright I'm going to tell on myself right here and right now.  I am the asshole in this situation.  

So what happened was, Andy's cousin is in town this weekend and we went big on Friday night.  I was the one keeping it semi-together for our collective benefit, but, as these things go, I was hungover Saturday morning and the dudes were both fine.  It wasn't a day-ruining hangover, more like a level 6 out of 10.  Minimal vomiting involved, but nothing that couldn't be fixed with an extra hour of wallowing in bed, petting some kitties, Advil, a shower, and the one-two punch of greasy food and caffeine.

We had big plans to, um, drink more on Saturday, so I had to pull it together.  We dragged ourselves a mile through the cruel sun to grab an early lunch at Red Headed Stranger.  After that, we were headed downtown to board the Music City Brew Hop trolley for a 3-hour 7-hour tour of bad decisions.  

Properly fueled and caffeinated, we went outside to summon a Lyft to take us across the river.  The RHS side of the street was in the blazing sun, so we crossed Arrington to wait in the shade of the trees bordering the parking lot of chef Sean Brock's Audrey.  Their parking lot is bordered by a phalanx of signs warning that parking is for Audrey customers only, so as we crossed the street I was like, "Don't you dare step foot in the Audrey parking lot unless you're ready to pay $300 for a sniff of corn..."  

Which, first of all, a sniff of corn?  What even is that?  Is it the same as a whiff, or does it cost more?  Is it on the cob, or are we talking corn dust, which I hear is an actual thing used to garnish the babydoll spoon portions of Appalachian molecular gastronomy or whatever the hell.  But all that is besides the point, because as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized a guy from Audrey's kitchen staff was walking right past me, reporting for his shift.  He didn't betray any reaction, but there's no world in which he didn't hear what I said unless he was stone cold Helen Keller deaf.

Honestly, who am I to criticize?  I've never eaten there, first of all, so I have no standing.  I'm probably just jealous that I don't feel like I can spend that much money on a tasting menu that I suspect will leave me intrigued but still hungry.  And this guy who heard me making fun of the restaurant, maybe he didn't care, and I'm sure he's heard other people ragging on the place.  But working there is probably a thrill and an honor, and he has to listen to some hungover, PMSing sea hag make fun of what might be his dream job?  

So, kitchen guy, sorry.  I don't know what your specific job is, but I'm sure you grind a real fine corn dust and I hope one day I can afford to sniff it.

Who eats late dinners?  Our dinner time is 6:30 or later.  God forbid dinner is on the table at 6:27, or I get an eye roll and that shit sits there getting cold until the stroke of 6:30 like this is fricking Downton Abbey and we must abide by custom.  That said, anything after 7 on a week night is really pushing into dangerous Hangry territory.  When Andy and I first started shacking up (as the elders liked to call us moving in together less than 2 months after meeting, but guess what that was over 14 years ago and look at us now!) we both worked in a high school.  We'd be home from work by 3:30, back from the gym by 5.  I think we used to eat dinner at 5:30?  It was comically early.  We also had no table or chairs so we sat on the floor at a coffee table and watched Action News on our 500 pound CRT television with an antenna.  I think working an actual 8-5 schedule in an academic library broke us of the earlybird special habit

Lindsay Graham PICKED 15 weeks.  He just chose it.  Picked it the way a child picks ice cream at Baskin Robbins.  Lil' Linds wants Rum Raisin?  Do you know what's in that?  You're not gonna like it.  NO ONE fucking likes it!  How about chocolate?  That's a safe choice.  Chocolate in this analogy is 45 weeks.  Just in case a woman gives live birth and then changes her mind once she loses a few nights of sleep. JUST KIDDING, no one would ever do that.  But that's the point.  The further along in a pregnancy, pregnant people aren't just like, "Well, this has been a fun journey so far, but I just don't feel like buying maternity clothes and making a registry, just kinda over it TBH."  You're hurting the most vulnerable people who are facing heartbreaking choices and life-threatening situations.  To quote the article:  "Yet, perversely, Graham’s legislation disproportionately affects those in the most dire circumstances, when a second-trimester abortion may spare them severe and excruciating health crises."

Analog Reading:

Still confined to the quarters of A Gentleman in Moscow.  It's a little twee in the beginning, and the guy has what modern sensibilities would consider to be an innocent but very suspicious-seeming relationship with a 9 year old girl, but then it picks up about a third of the way through.  I'll allow it.

Syllabus #167

It's a sick sad world

I love articles about new social phenomena that I never worried about before, but now make me question whether, I, too, have this manufactured problem.  Am I toxic?  What if I am?  How to does one detoxify, exactly?

For no real reason except aesthetics (what else is there?) I desperately wanted a Saab hatchback for my first car.  I found one for sale online, only to find out that the pictures, taken of only the driver side the car, concealed the fact that the passenger side was riddled with bullet holes.  Instead, I ended up with a whack-ass Saturn that belonged to a dead guy.  The car had been in a front-end collision that discharged the airbag, at which point the empty cavity in the steering wheel was stuffed with Shop Rite bags.  I should say that this accident wasn't why the guy was dead, and the car was, unfortunately, not haunted.

I've had this article about librarians fighting for intellectual freedom open in a tab since it was published in July, and I just can't force myself to read it because it hits too close to home.

Analog Reading:

Finished Either/Or by Elif Batuman.  I liked it, but towards the end there were an awful lot of date rapey situations that made me want to shake the protagonist and shout, "honey, you deserve better, and you also deserve pepper spray!"

Started A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.  Ehhh.  I really enjoyed The Lincoln Highway but this is the exact opposite.  Where TLH had the characters in constant motion by virtue of being a road novel, this one is pretty much a 1920s version of Edward Snowden, just a dude legally confined to never leave a luxury hotel in Moscow.  It's not really grabbing me, and is making me feel claustrophobic.

Syllabus #166

A very inebriated man at a bar told me today that I'm a redneck now because I live in redneck country and I tried to tell him 'SIR, I have lived in redneck country all my life' but he was too busy ranting about how our country is great because our ancestors were all rednecks who built things.  I think he was just compensating because, moments before, I broke his heart when he pointed to Andy and asked if that was my boyfriend.  I said, 'nah, HUZZBAND' and Andy said, 'Sorry, bro, 12 years.'  We left almost immediately after this happened.  The vehicle parked next to ours was a preposterously large pickup with a high caliber bullet in the place where an antenna would be.  I am certain it belonged to that guy.

Just thinking about alfredo sauce triggers my gag reflex.  Pray for the people of Memphis, especially the TDOT workers who have to clean up this unspeakable horror.  

I want this booster so bad, but I think I need to wait because I just had me a big ol' covid time back in late June/early July?  What is the guidance here?  The article was like, yea probably wait six months, but also maybe 3 is fine?  Look, I don't care if that shit makes me glow in the dark, I just don't want to be locked in a room with my life on pause for 10+ days again any time soon.

Analog Reading:

The Wind (finally) Done (actually) Gone.  Sorry, didn't love it.  I respected it, but I'm glad I'm not still reading it.

Now we've moved on to Either/Or by Elif Batuman.  It's her follow-up to the 2018 novel, The Idiot, which, like an idiot, I read twice because I forgot that I had read it previously until about 1/4 of the way through the 2nd read.  It's an apt portrait of being at once socially alienated and, by appearances, outwardly functional.

Syllabus #165

Boop.

For all his faults, Charlie really really loves me and that's kind of nice

Finnish people are being judgmental about a display of exuberance?  I didn't see that one coming (but only because I was too busy tamping down my own emotions).

We have a long history of debt forgiveness in this country, and in functioning economies throughout human history.  Don't go acting like this is the first time, and that these people are undeserving.  Ever heard of bankruptcy?  If Karen can get the slate wiped clean after she digs herself into a financial pit buying too much Louis Vuitton and Louboutin, then maybe Kyle deserves the same after he blasts out his liver drinking a case of Busch Light every night and flunking out of community college after 3 semesters.  He has 3/4 of an associate's degree, several thousand dollars in debt, and early stage cirrhosis.  Throw him a bone.

If your pits smell like onions when you sweat, that's a good thing.  Until laundry day.  How...HOW...are we removing these odors from clothing?  I've tried the detergent with Febreze in it.  Tried baking soda.  Tried throwing in a couplea tomaters and some garlic cloves just in case Andy's undershirts were the secret ingredient to Your Italian Grandma's gravy. 

Analog Reading:

Plugging away at The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall.  It's not a long read, but I'm not exactly breezing through it.  I respect it, but it reads as a little scattered to me.  In some parts, it's difficult to follow who is doing what and what relationship the characters have to one another.  Maybe that's cultural or historical ignorance on my part, or maybe it's a deliberate choice in the writing.  But then there are other parts where the narrator seems to break character and speak in a modern, didactic tone.  I dunno.  I'm mostly reading it because we were out to dinner a few weeks ago and at the end of our meal, Andy informed me that Ms. Randall herself was sitting at the table behind us the whole time.  Just a real casual name drop.  He had once interacted with her professionally and never mentioned it, but like, guy, that is Kind Of A Big Deal.

Syllabus #164

 leaving this here to motivate myself to schlep down to Costco and buy some relatively healthy convenience foods for work lunches. https://www.thekitchn.com/costco-groceries-back-to-school-lunch-2022-23409056?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Category%2FChannel%3A+main

We're dropping in late today.  That's been the theme of the weekend.  Saturday I slept in past 8:00 which is unheard of.  Unprecedented.  Without precedent.  Saturday night, we stayed out way past our bedtimes at Emo Night, marinating in Emo Night Beer (not too sad, not too hoppy) and millennial, pop-punk nostalgia.  I felt like a high school bully making amends to all the people she tormented, willingly bopping to the likes of Good Charlotte and other bands that, back in the day, I either viscerally hated for being corporate sell-outs or couldn't have cared less about because they were too whiny.

Someone at the show complimented my back tattoo, and I thanked him, saying, "Yea, I appreciate the compliment, it started out as a horrible prison tat so I had to get it covered up pretty extensively."  Who's to say, but from the look on the guy's face, I think he walked away believing I had actually been incarcerated.  I'd just like to let the record state, Judgey McJudgerson, that I've really turned my life around.

Thanks, Amtrak Joe.  I choo-choo-choose you.

This food diary is truly unhinged.  

Analog Reading:

Regretfully, my reading momentum has really slowed down since school started.  I'm just about to finish Yes, Chef by Marcus Samuelsson.  The arc of his career is impressive, and it's clear how hard he has worked to achieve such high points in his culinary life:  cooking the first state dinner for the Obama administration, winning top chef, winning James Beard awards, etc.  

Samuelsson's emphasis on chasing flavors inspired me, briefly, to make a salad, yes an MF'ing salad that earned high praise from Andy.  I probably saw something similar on the 'grams or on a restaurant menu before, but I feel like I kind of just made this up.  I served it with my signature quiche (if you know, you know), and it's all totes my signature dish now.  Hear me out.  Arugula, feta, quick-pickled red onions, walnuts lightly toasted in a skilled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar with a dash of garlic powder, salt and pepper, and the final flourish, figs cut in half, brushed with olive oil, and run under the broiler.  Top it with a dijon vinaigrette.  Hell yes, chef.

Syllabus #163

School resumed this week.  So far, it's gone well.  The children need literacy.

This banner was made for someone named Doug, so, there's some job security

How peach literate are you?  Just sharing this to stave off the DT's from the peach withdrawal I'm currently suffering.

In praise of the siesta.  It's so much more than an afternoon nap - it's important for the planet.  Just want to do my part, guys.  

Analog Reading:

I've been reading Marcus Samuelsson's memoir, Yes Chef for longer than necessary because it's just that kind of week.  I'm enjoying it, but every time I sit down to read it, I'm either in bed and fall asleep within 2 pages, or I'm eating lunch at work, and get interrupted within 2 pages.  I need to finish it because there's a lot of books on the docket!

Syllabus #162

Lenny, former street feline, current house gremlin

Dried apricot vagina is not a phrase I'll soon forget.

If a cat has ever really lived outside, and they're smart, once you bring them in, they're never leaving.  Don't try to tell me that a cat that used to subsist on cicadas, dime bags, and snow is going to be dumb enough to walk out on a warm soft bed to sleep in and a plate of Fancy Feast every night.  Pretty sure even with his ass stitched up and a cone of shame around his neck, Lenny looked at his first plate of wet food and went full Scarlett O'Hara at the end of Gone With the Wind.  As god is his witness, he will never eat lizards again.  

He's much better now

Not a lot of context or commentary to provide for this one, but it's rad.  

Analog Reading:

Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh was weird and dark and viscerally disgusting, but I actually liked it.  I wasn't sure how I'd feel, based on reviews, but I was into it.  The scene in which Lord Villiam plucked out a gray pube really resonated with me.

Just started Yes Chef:  A Memoir by Marcus Samuelsson.  If you're not familiar with him, he's the head chef of Red Rooster in Harlem, but was born in Ethiopia and raised in Sweden by adoptive parents.  His life trajectory is super interesting.

Syllabus #161

In times like these, you have to ask yourself:  Are you the cat, or are you the taco?

Losing my sense of smell from My, My, My Corona was terrifying.  It came back gradually starting about a week after it disappeared.  Cool story, I first realized I wasn't able to smell anything 5 days in, as I was sitting on the floor watching Conversations With Friends and applying Bag Balm to my knees, elbows, and feet.  If you know, you know.  It has a strong medicinal odor, and I was getting nothing.  It was devastating to think I might never fully taste food again, or die because I couldn't smell a gas leak or a fire.  Not to mention how I or my house might smell bad because I just wouldn't know!  I guess there would be a silver lining though, as one person in the article mentioned - no more fart smell.  Kids are notorious for letting it rip beside my head when I'm crouched down beside them to help them find a book, and I really wouldn't miss that.

You bet your sweet bippy those are udders

Our long national vending machine nightmare appears to have mostly abated.  Sharks, on the other hand...  Tangentially, if vending machine tip-overs used to be responsible for more annual deaths than shark attacks, why didn't they just devise a system to secure them to the wall or the floor?  If IKEA figured out how not to have dressers and bookshelves topple over onto toddlers, surely we can do the same for vending machines?  And then let's bolt all the sharks to the floor of the ocean for added safety while we're at it.

I, for one, fricking love Pilates.  Much like yoga, I think nearly anyone with a body can do it, to whatever degree they are currently able.  The goal isn't to get better at it, but to feel better doing it, which carries over to the functional movements in your daily life.

There is a theme here.  Aquatic challenges and physical activity.  I tried paddle boarding this summer and, dare I say, I was not terrible at it?  Thanks, Pilates!  Thanks, yoga!  Andy had to eat a pile of Nashville Hot Crow* tendies because he thought I was going to be awful at it, but I stayed up the whole time and he fell in the water twice.  

*Nashville Hot Crow is like eating regular crow except you feel pretty good about it in the moment, but the day after you take back what you said, your rectum becomes an uncapped fire hydrant spewing jet fuel and broken glass.

Speaking of challenges, I accept.  I think the marketing department could have come up with a better name than CinnaFuego Toast Crunch, though.  Like, I could see if it was that churro cereal, yea, drop some fuegos in there.  But why not Cinnamon Roast Crunch or Red Hot Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Nashville Hot Cinnamon Toast Crunch, or even just classic Flamin' Hot CTC?  Guys, you need to consult me on these matters.  I'm out here.  

It's a curious concept for cereal, because most people consume cereal with milk, which will decrease the heat factor.  Does that mean they really take it to Flavor Town, knowing people will most likely be milking it on down a few notches on the Scoville scale?  If you raw dog your cereal, are you in for a world of hurt?

Analog Reading:

Finished The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  A couple reactions:  Wow, the 1950s were a simpler time.  After reading Young Mungo, I was full-body cringing whenever 8-year-old Billy was left alone with any of the other male characters in the book, fully waiting for him to be molested or beaten.  Everything's fine, Billy's fine, he just saw some titties at an X-rated circus, narrowly missed seeing a dead body, and was almost thrown from a train by a deranged religious con-man, no bigs though.  After all that saccharine stuff, though, man, the ending was a little tough to swallow.  Also, 98% of the plot of this book would be shot to hell if the characters had cell phones.  

Noir by Christopher Moore.  From the title alone, it's obviously going to be very on-the-nose to the point of genre parody.  The prose is amusing but it takes some getting used to.  It's a lot of slang and period/sub-culture specific dialog that reminds me of the scene in an episode of Gilmore Girls when Lorelai goes behind the counter at Luke's and starts calling out orders to the kitchen in 1950s diner slang:  "Adam and Eve on a raft and wreck 'em! That's real live diner talk, see? The wreck 'em is the scrambled part."

Can You Ever Forgive Me by Lee Israel.  The best I can say is that it was mercifully short.  If it had been any longer I might have bailed after the first 20 pages or so.  It was 130 pages of, "Yes I did this kind of bad thing that was technically illegal but I can explain!  And also I was good at it!"

Started reading Ottessa Moshfegh's new novel, Lapvona.  Maureen Corrigan's review of it on Fresh Air was not super positive, as she was just kind of grossed out by the whole book and didn't really see the point of it.  I kind of felt like she was daring me to read it, so here we are.  Set in what seems to be the Middle Ages, it is evoking a lot of filth and brutality, but it's not a terrible read so far.  Will report back.

Syllabus #160

Thus begins my last week of summer vacaysh from my Real Job.  It started off with a literal bang, when an inattentive driver plowed into me and totaled my poor old Honda.  RIP old girl.  You had a good 14 years criss-crossing the continent and wearing plates from 5 different states.  Hot Girl Summer got even hotter and moister when I contracted an ill-timed case of Corona Extra (I would have preferred Tecate but nobody bothered to ask, it's fine, whatever) that wiped out most of our vacation plans.  It's been a wild ride.  Or more like wild walk, because that's pretty much all I did besides work, and I have excellent tan lines to show for it.  From shoulders down to butt cheeks, it's a blinding 17 shades whiter than my arms and legs.  

 

Weed is in the air...every time I sniff around...  I've joked before that kids who grow up in East Nashville are going to think all the flowering trees smell like weed, and they'll get to college (this imaginary kid is also very sheltered somehow despite the nightly gunshots, etc.) and smell weed on their hall and remark, "Ahh, why does it smell dogwoods in bloom indoors in September?"  It's like as soon as winter ends and the weather turns halfway decent, everyone in the land carries their bongs out to the front porch to get baked en plein air.  I don't even need a weed guy in springtime, I just go for a walk and snag a contact high for free.

Maybe I should aim higher, but getting at least one entry published in the annual You Are So Nashville If contest feels like some kind of accomplishment, even if I'm really just chasing the dragon of my winning entry in 2019.

This article is oooooold, but it holds up.  The Oregon Trail Generation is a great descriptor for people who feel like they aren't old enough to be Gen Z but are a little too old school to resonate with most Millennials.  I didn't have the sosh meeds until after high school, we didn't have a computer in the house until 6th grade, and I most definitely dined out on those AOL free trial CDs so I could get up in those creepy chat rooms.  My proudest use of AOL chat rooms was in doing research for a group project in 7th or 8th grade where we had to research a given city and make a proposal to host the Olympics there - we were assigned Dublin and I was the only functioning human in my group of wastoids so I did ALL the work, including the research on public infrastructure.  I popped in an Irish chat room and asked what the sewage and plumbing sitch was like over there, and some very helpful chap said he didn't know much about the pipes but he could assume they were robust because "the Irish lay massive bricks."   

Heat waves been faking me out.  It's wild that our regular-Tuesday-in-Nashville weather caused such havoc in Europe.  I get it, they don't have infrastructure designed to withstand these temperatures, anymore than we are equipped to deal with prolonged bouts of below-freezing temps.  Two winters ago, during the same cold snap when the electrical grid in Texas went to hell, a pipe burst in the abandoned house next door to us and there was a frozen waterfall cascading down the outside of the house from the upstairs bathroom.  

Analog Reading:

Memphis by Tara Stringfellow was fantastic.  I breezed right through it in about a day and a half, which sort of makes me feel bad for the author, like when you spend two whole days making Thanksgiving dinner and then everybody fills up on cheese and crackers and booze before the meal, eats a fraction of what you anticipated, and leaves you to do the dishes 30 minutes after you carve the bird.  That said, I can guarantee I enjoyed this book way more than most people enjoy their annual plate heaped with various piles of beige slop and overrated, dry poultry.  It was also a neat coincidence that the three generations of women in the family almost exactly mirrored my own in terms of our ages and birth years.

The rest of this week I've been rambling along The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles.  The prose is fluid and the adventures (and comedy of errors) never cease.  At over 500 pages there sure better be plenty of movement, and unlike Stephen King's gratuitously unedited The Stand, there's no discernible fluff!  The story is a bit saccharine, though.  It reads like a PG-13 Larry McMurtry novel.  It's reminiscent of The Last Picture Show without all the banging of the coach's wife and the best friend's girlfriend's mom.  Nevertheless, it's a very sweet story that actually makes me smile while I'm reading it (truly, I'm as shocked as you are), which is kind of a welcome break after the extreme violence of Young Mungo and the heartbreak of Memphis.