Emchap's Shit from the Internet 02/6/20 🍠
Today's letter comes on a Thursday, because for the (I think) first time in the 157 weeks I have been doing this newsletter, I just straight-up forgot to write this last night. Even the mightiest Google Calendar regimen must one day fall, I suppose.
I sort of wish I had an exciting reason for why I forgot, but my Wednesday was spent doing very dull things. I got a fancy coffee, and went to therapy, and bought very cheap paper towels at the dollar store, and came home and ate soup and chatted on the phone and went to bed. It was nice.
One of the things spoke to my therapist about in that session was my anxiety over the fact that my life–unusually for me, I think–has wound up in a happy place without any clearly-presented next step goals. It is hard for me as a diagnosed sad person to tell if that sort of pleasant lack of drive is depression or is simply being in a good place. Even when things are nice my brain cannot resist chewing on itself.
When I started writing this newsletter (157 weeks! can you believe! three years last week!) I was living in New York, and I was depressed and not on anything for it, and I was spending a lot of time alternately talking to an awful ex-boyfriend and making cow eyes at a variety of men who did not want to date me, and the general tenor of the thing was one that periodically led to my dad giving me phone calls whose subtext was, I think, a slight concern that I might be Unwell.
So! Things are good now, and I think my lack of immediate goals is more about the sort of gentle contentment that Southern California and being happy with my life engenders, rather than depression, and I am continuing to work on my brain not trapping itself into a gnawing little corner. It's a whole Thing.
Shit to read
A coworker sent this awful and bananas true crime story to me.
McKinsey is a poison and so is the fact that we let 22 year olds do any sort of management consulting. (Consulting was itself a major at my alma mater and it always made me laugh because what complete dumbass nonsense is that.)
The way TV writers write about New York.
Come for the lesbian joint poetry, stay for the unaddressed incest.
A great article about queer Iowans and jesus christ this election is going to kill me.
Please read about this former slave who was a drag queen.
You couldn't pay me to bike in LA but I enjoyed this.
Shit to eat
Pull up another person's newsletter with the other newsletter's recipe for a soup that has taken the internet by storm.
Wonder if it is odd to write about another newsletter.
Nonetheless, continue:
Chop up an onion, being careful to for once in your life avoid stabbing yourself.
Mince some garlic while you're at it.
In your largest and prettiest pan, toss some olive oil and the onion and some salt, and stir everything together until soft and pleasantly onion-smelling.
Add the garlic, and hang out for another minute or so.
Split open a package of Italian sausage from its casings, and sort of section it off with your thumb into the pot. Cook for 10 minutes.
Because your discount super market does not offer chickens sausage, be left with a lot of pork fat that you half-heartedly drain off with a basting spoon while also burning your thumb.
Toss in a can of tomatoes, a drained can of beans, four cups of water, and four tsp of bullion. Feel guilty about not making stock from the game hen corpse you've had in your freezer since Thanksgiving.
(The recipe author has a stock recipe you've been meaning to try.)
Bring everything to a simmer, and dump in a bunch of kale that you have not actually chopped up so much as torn off the stem into pieces, because you will forever regret buying greens that have not been pre-processed.
Close the lid, cook for another 10 minutes on low.
Toss in a handful of pre-grated parmesan because it's Monday and you're tired.
Stir, taste, salt and pepper to taste.
Scoop as much into a bowl as you want, top with a squeeze of lemon, go after the sausage especially and realize that the reason the recipe is so good is in fact partially just that it includes a LOT of sausage, which is nice.
Enjoy.
(Adapted, of course, from Roberto.)
Shit to listen to
Shit to buy
I am about to buy this travel pillow. Maybe this will be the travel pillow I finally like!