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.