Emchap's Shit from the Internet 02/20/19 🍠
Yesterday, I paid a very nice man to walk on my back for an hour. (It was $49, which seems like a steal.)
My shoulder and back and neck have been hurting tremendously in a way that has been impacting my sleep lately, which is distressing partially because it's the first time I've ever really had an injury do that and mostly because I hurt myself in some dumbass non-event way like sleeping weird or carrying my purse wrong or being on my smart phone literally 90% of the time that my eyeballs are open. I kept meaning to schedule a massage with the nice hippie woman I normally see, but by the time I would remember to try to do so, she only ever had appointments available for like 11am. So I didn't, and instead went to this place after work yesterday, with vague plans to go to happy hour and then get a massage and live my #best #blessed #life.
What happened instead was that I hit the massage place first (potentially rookie mistake) and was seen immediately, because it was 4:30 in the afternoon and that's a weird time to get a massage. The woman at the front desk showed me to my curtain-room, told me where to stick my clothes, and left so I could get undressed and lie down under the sheet on the massage table. (Which was heated, it was awesome.)
After a 10-minute wait or so where I was slightly worried I'd been forgotten, a dude showed up and said hello. I said hi back with as much gravitas as one can manage when one is naked under a sheet lying face down. He asked whether I had a specific reason I was there, we chatted about my shoulder, and he made note. He asked if he could walk on my back as a warm up, I said sure, and we were off to the races.
The first 10 minutes were spent with him cheerfully jamming his elbow into my shoulder and neck, which was neither unexpected nor pleasant. And then, true to his word, he hopped up on the table. I had never had the kind of massage where you get walked on, and was not anticipating what happened next. The dude braced himself by putting the not-in-use foot on my ass, and then very delicately stepped on my back until my various bones made truly great and horrifying cracking noises. He alternated feet periodically, and used his heel to crack between individual vertebrae, and I learned a lot about where my lungs are located because it was somewhat difficult to breathe when he stood on them.
I'm used to massages from this tier of massage place working mostly in the sense that I'm very sore the next day in a way that distracts me from whatever was previously wrong with me. But this dude—who explained what he was doing the whole time and did a bunch of stretching of my neck—does seem to have legitimately stopped my shoulder and neck from hurting.
Afterwards, the dude told me the same thing all massage therapists tell you about drinking water to "flush out toxins" (granted, he did also tell me that part of what he was trying to do with my back was break up lactic acid to avoid soreness, which is the most scientific explanation of anything I've ever heard from a massage therapist), and cheerfully told me that I should come back once a month "so I can walk on your back." I told him I would, and paid, and headed immediately next door to drink a happy hour martini and eat a happy hour cheeseburger.
Shit to read
Obviously very into this bananas article about Mormon transhumanists.
Women in Sudan had a network of Facebook groups to figure out if their boyfriends were stepping out on them (already good), and have now leveraged it to unmask state police (even better).
The shitty robot maker sent her brain tumor to Antartica.
Yes I did enjoy this article about money and race and familial love.
A thing that was supposed to be good is instead bad.
Some fascinating writing on male sex workers who work with women.
This is a Reddit thread of historical instances of humans doing nice things and it 100% made me sob. It also informed me that Chinue Suihara has a statue here in LA, where he is of course holding out a visa.
Man I have some complicated feelings about this article/comic about a relationship.
Amy Sedaris is a stone-cold weirdo and I love her.
Shit to eat
Go to your nearest super market on a weekend.
Find a table of Girl Scouts (they'll be there, somewhere).
Buy a box of thin mints.
Be annoyed that they're $5 now somehow.
Go home, and put the thin mints in the freezer.
Throughout the week, eat them, two at a time, whenever you are annoyed.
Shit to listen to
Sure, yeah, 2019 is the year I get really into the National, why not.
Shit to buy
A plane ticket to somewhere better.
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