Emchap's Shit from the Internet 06/5/19 🍠
Periodically when I am out and about in LA, I look up and just sort of marvel that I get to live here, a place that is culturally synonymous with beauty and ease and warmth, that people pay money to visit. I love Atlanta, where I'm from, and it is beautiful to me in the way that your family or your cat or your home are beautiful, but LA inspires in me a just complete glee when I look at it as the sun is going down and the mountains that I can always see off in the distance are hazy and everything is golden because the sunsets are amazing here–the light is amazing here, full stop—and everything is blooming and smells like flowers and I'm waiting for the train in full view of palm trees.
This hit me my whole commute home from Highland Park today, because the lazy long golden hour that we get between 6 and 8 this time of year is an easy time to love anything, but it was particularly amplified as I walked down Fountain back to my house. It's a pretty street, with pretty stained glass and stores to admire as I wandered home, and as I finished a phone call with my friend my Spotify shuffle tossed me an "Have to Explode", which is a softball for wide-eyed wonder in the way that all Mountain Goats songs that aren't about slogging on until death are (and even some of them, really).
But the feeling persisted even through "Boyish", a song which has the great lyrics, "I can't get you off my mind/I can't get you off in general" sung over a hazy surf-rock backing track. And of course even if it is a heroin-paced ode to some dude's weird sex shit, that entire sound was designed in the core of itself to be listened to in Southern California while looking at the waves and being that sort of genteel, sanded-off kind of depressed that you are in beautiful climates.
In those small moments, everything here feels very much like it cannot last (and nothing can, anywhere—my living here is contingent on wealth that is in no way guaranteed, fire season isn't going to get better, and I may pull it all up and bop off to Portland), which is both true and melodramatic. But, for as long as it lasts, I am excited to be here.
Shit to read
Gotta love wife content.
One of my favorite things about fanfiction is watching it invent new literary forms which make complete sense in-community and are as far as I'm aware completely not discussed outside of it. I was thinking about that this week while reading a 5+1 format story (five times x happened and one time it didn't), which is a beloved format of mine, and did you know there's a whole wiki article about it?
Hell yeah gay YA.
Keanu Reeves continues to seem solid.
Patricia Lockwood is the best weirdest person.
I say I was grew up in Atlanta and it feels truest, but until I was 12 I lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I loved this look at coolification of cities including and like Tulsa, and what it means for the people who live there. It is wild to me that Tulsa is cool now, even though if you told me about it as it currently stands I'd probably go visit.
People are rarely lazy and rarely malicious but they are often operating from a different understanding of the world than you and often dealing with shit you are not aware of.
I have been reading Love Affairs of an Old Maid recently and it is an absolute blast, so check that out.
Shit to eat
Blearily trudge to the kitchen in the morning, because though you are obeying your own no-phone-after-9:30-rule, your cat spent much of the night trying to fight you and you did not sleep well.
Put a frying pan on medium heat and add some oil. Crack two eggs into it, add some salt, feebly scramble them.
While that's happening, take two flour tortillas (small ones) and put them directly onto a lit burner for 15-ish seconds on each side.
Pop them on a plate, add the eggs to each, and return to the stove.
Heat up whatever bean item is in your house. Refried beans, black beans, hummus, whatever.
Add that to the tacos.
On top, stick a quarter of an avocado into each taco.
Add some cotija and some cilantro and maybe some crema if you got it.
Eat a deeply, deeply satisfying desk breakfast.
Shit to watch
The Good Omens miniseries is a surprisingly well-executed blast! Go watch it.
Shit to buy
I am completely obsessed with these tile stickers and these interlocking wood floor tiles. The chances of me stickering my ugly-ass bathroom wall tile at some point soon are not low.