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.