Emchap's Shit from the Internet 03/13/19 🍠
I am typing this from the sky, which is both a magic feat of human engineering and gigantically fucking annoying, because this tray table is approximately six square inches and built for a child. I can feel a knot forming in my neck that will hurt tomorrow, because sliding into one's late 20s is full of profound indignities.
I'm thinking of my neck and jaw tension in particular because of a guest whatever-you-call-lecturers-when-we're-singing that came to my community chorus this weekend (this is how I spent my actual birthday). The community chorus is the only place in the world where my acceptance of "woo" shit is anything less than begrudging, and routinely features exercises from 1960s experimental sound art. The guest lecturer dove deep into that, and (after focusing on exercises to relax our tongues and our jaws and our shoulders) we did these guided sound meditations where we minded our breath before beginning to make whatever sound made sense for us.
The whole room swelled into a weird and uncoordinated hum, but when we did it all together it sounded pleasant and vaguely untethered from any individual part of the room. As part of the meditation, we were instructed to stop when it felt right, and even though our eyes were all closed we found a cadence and ended together. It was vaguely religious feeling, in a way I don't often get.
The rest of the session was focused on much of the same; I was particularly struck by one meditation that involved us thinking about what our voices had sounded like before we learned to sound the way we do today. I know that (like lots of women) I pitch my speaking voice down, both in tone and volume. My natural register is higher than I like to admit, and louder than adults around me ever approved of when I was a kid. I have always gotten positive reinforcement for sounding more like Daria than I otherwise would—it seems to fit, to people who hear me, and so down the vocal register went.
I no longer really know what my voice would have wound up as without that feedback, and though I found the general consciousness-raising vibe of the whole thing kind of silly, that realization was profoundly impactful. I'm still mulling it over on this horrible plane desk as I head back east for a wedding. I am not sure what I will sound like out there; I am interested to find out.
Shit to read
On the one hand I am here for any "girl shoots Nazis in the woods" stories. On the other hand, her observation about how horrible it was to kill them, and about how when you see them trying to get up you want to help them has fundamentally fucked with me all week.
I still don't know how I feel about commercial DNA services being used to find killers.
Gimme some goddamn decaf.
This made me want to visit Johnson City (which I absolutely add a mental "Tenneseeeee" after.)
It is expensive to acquire a baby if you're not doing it through free sex baby means, fuck.
John Mulaney! A delight!
I read this proto-blog piece when I was, oh, probably 11 (based on when Sk8er Boi was released) and I think about it often. I always wonder what happened to Allison and her proto-fame. She had merch and a forum and everything! I read her site religiously!
This piece made me feel approximately a million years old.
As someone who comes from a family with more money than this woman and less money than many of the people I have met as an adult, I thought this piece on how much money you need to stop worrying was really good.
Shit to eat
In a large mixing bowl, dump a box of yellow cake mix, 4 eggs, a cup of water, 2/3 cup oil, and—and this is true—a container of coconut frosting like you'd put on a German chocolate cake.
Stir it up.
Realize it looks really oily, and text your grandmother, from whom you got the recipe. Question whether she meant dry frosting mix.
Go down a rabbit hole, discover dry frosting mix is a thing, feel like you're fucked.
Receive a message back saying that no, she meant wet frosting, also what the hell is dry frosting mix.
Spray your nearest fancy bundt pan with all of the Baker's Joy you can.
Dump the batter in, and pop that sucker in for an hour at 350.
Eat the remnants of the batter off a spatula in your sweatpants like a goblin version of yourself.
After an hour/when a skewer comes out clean, take it out and leave it to cool. Ten minutes is probably fine; I went for an hour.
Find a plate and flip that sucker out.
Impress your friends and enemies at whatever event you are at, and then drunkenly proclaim the recipe at any of them who will listen.
(Recipe courtesy of my grandmother, who in turn received it from her mother-in-law.)
Shit to listen to
I made everyone at the party that I hosted listen to this Etoile de Dakar album on loop and someone correctly identified the band, which is the literally single time that has happened to me not in Senegal.
Shit to buy
The ingredients for that cake. It's great.