Emchap's Shit from the Internet 07/17/19 🍠
As I mentioned last week, I was in Portland through the weekend. I had a lovely time in a silly hotel; I saw friends; I drank a perfect cocktail in a perfect bar and ate so much food. I even bought a dope-ass suit and won a typing contest (124 wpm, motherfuckers).
I was excited to come home to my friends and my house and my cat, but LA in the summer is not my favorite. I don't have central air, and it's very hot out, and everything is that sort of horrible lethargic summer weather where you feel slightly sick and any tile you touch feels hot on your hand somehow. (I am fine; I have a window unit; I will be parked in front of it until September. The cat has not forgiven me and has rebelled by shedding aggressively on his side of the bed.)
(Yes, my cat has a side of the bed. Shut up.)
There is something sort of comforting about this kind of summer, though, which is that it feels like the appropriate weather in which to set one's sights sort of low, activity-wise. Much like the cat, I've been spending my days doing small self-maintenance tasks and napping and dreaming of central a/c. I'm reading books and watering my (still alive!) basil plants, and waiting for nightfall to become active beyond a slow amble over to Glendale to get my chin hairs lasered off.
Speaking of chin lasering—you know how it's a Thing that eyebrow waxers at nail salons will try to upsell you on having your mustache done as well? The laser salon version of this is the woman who asked me yesterday whether I wanted to try tattoo lip color. She assured me it was very natural.
(I declined, though who can say where the future will take me.)
Once this is done, I plan to read a zine I bought at Powell's, take a nap, and go to a birthday party once it's cool out. Accomplishment can wait until fall.
Shit to read
The coffee shop where I spent ages 15-20 has closed for good. I'm very sad.
Millennials are becoming nuns for the same reason that we all want to fuck the priest from Fleabag: we want some sort of freedom from decision fatigue.
Super pumped my farmers market is mostly brown people so I don't have worry about fucking white nationalist farmers, which is a fun new anxiety.
A wild ride about gerrymandering and family trauma from start to finish.
Shoutout to my friend JJ for sending me the saddest article in a sad series.
A tremendous read about racist bus stop design in LA.
This also works for Robin McKinley books. (Who wants to train in the sword yard before starting a hot but inappropriate relationship with the local blacksmith, c'mon.)
Evangelical culture was not part of my own experience of teenhood, but I still liked this piece about the two.
This article on mutual aid for drug addicts is so tremendous.
Fuck yeah hometown startups.
Shit to eat
Buy three kirby cucumbers from the handsome man at the farmer's market. Make sure he's not a white nationalist.
Wait a half hour for the bus.
When you finally get home, wash the cucumbers, and slice them thinly. Sharpen the knife beforehand or this will be annoying.
Toss the coins into a jar. I used a big jar left over from drinking a jug of light-up lemonade. Yours may be different.
Add a teaspoon of kosher salt, three tablespoons of white vinegar; two bay leaves; some red pepper flakes; and two smashed up, skin-on garlic cloves.
Shake everything up and pop it in the fridge.
After eight hours, eat the fridge pickles while standing in front of the A/C.
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen.
Shit to listen to
I'm really into this live version of a mostly joyful song about trying to make art.
Shit to buy
Cucumbers, some avocados, a couple of ears of corn, a bundle of cherry tomatoes, and a dozen eggs, from the farmer's market. Make some elote and some avocado toast.