Emchap’s Shit from the Internet 11/14/18 🍠
One of the funniest things to me about moving is the reminder that so, so much of how we perceive the world is just about variation from norms, rather than absolute values for anything. I was reminded of this when I went outside earlier during this, one of the first cold weeks we've had in LA this year, and went "oh, it's very cold! I need a jacket." (I paired it with an accent scarf because I'm a jaunty bitch.)
I later realized that this happened when it was approximately 65 degrees out, fka "not jacket weather because you are not a literal hothouse plant" when I lived in NYC.
But I was legitimately cold! My ears were cold, I was shivering, I'd spent much of the day curled up under a sweatshirt blanket while I worked and I'd eaten a nourishing soup for lunch. Being cold is just your body's reminder that something around you has changed, more than it is any real report on what the world is like. Bodies live—if not in the moment—then at least in a rolling average of the last six months. (The same seems to be true for cats, if my terrible son's insistence on sleeping under the blanket lately is any indication.)
Several years ago, after my mom died, I wrote something about grief and the weather. Something that was shocking to me about that experience—and, for years, guilt-inducing—was that the grief that I felt then was similar in magnitude and intensity to the grief I felt after a later breakup. I was just at maximum-level sad and at some point I broke the fucking dial, you know? It was not physically possible to get sadder past a certain point.
Obviously I'm much sadder about my dead mother than I am about any romantic outcomes, but emotional states work (I think) just like perception of the weather does. My body, at least, has a binary sort of maximum sadness that it hits, and that's set in relation to my baseline level of sadness mostly in the last few weeks. Whatever bad thing is happening is the Most Bad Thing.
As I layer on additional blankets on the bed for what is absolutely very mild weather, I'm comforted with the knowledge that I have every indication that whatever I'm feeling feelings about at any given moment will pass and be replaced by something else. Sadness isn't avoidable, because if I fix my life I'll just reassign that relative feeling to some other, milder disappointment. I don't know that that ought to be comforting, but on some level it is.
Shit to read
The thing is that the prosperity gospel is bad and its followers should feel bad (especially if they're peddling #girlboss garbage).
This profile of Jay Smooth is great and you should read it and go check out his Patreon.
I miss the randomcore internet just as much as I am mortified by my participation in it. (*glomp* m=^.~=m)
The piece on Larry Nassar is just as horrifying as everyone says, and I hope every single one of the org-affiliated adults in this piece go to jail.
I liked this breakdown of the stats about white women voters because I think it does raise a point that at least feels true about useful demographics for motivating change. I struggle with the "white women, come get your people" push because on the one hand, yes; on the other hand, I don't know any Trump voters in my social life or in my family, because my family from grandmothers on down has hella degrees (I am an underachiever in this regard) and that sounds snobby and it kind of is but also it is a pretty strong actual correlate. I do think that the interview points out something useful about motivating change in white men as something that women can actually do if the women they know already vote like them, which seems at least marginally more useful because literally every single progressive dude in my life has at least one garbage opinion he has felt comfortable sharing with me to my face. (tl;dr: guilt.)
I loved this piece on love and hope and bare knuckling it through winter.
This piece started as a thing about wellness and moved right the fuck into cults.
So many period trackers are so bad.
Shit to eat
Loosely follow it to make chicken stock out of a frozen carcass and some dark green bits of leek.
Leave it in your fridge.
Realize that you should probably... do something with it.
Heat a cup of it up on the stove.
Pour it into a bowl to hang out.
In the pot you just emptied, melt 2 tablespoons of butter.
Add a serving of spaghetti noodles, broken up into small pieces.
Coat them in butter.
Dump in the chicken stock and hella pepper.
Keep over low heat, cover, cook for 10 minutes.
Empty a lemon's worth of juice into everything.
Stir it.
Add more salt and pepper.
Into the previously-was-used-for-stock bowl it goes, with a fork and a smug sense of comfort as you eat what are essentially fancy depression noodles.
(Adapted from this adaptation of Kreitzman's recipe, which uses angel hair like an adult.)
Shit to listen to
Today I listened to three separate Rilo Kiley albums all the way through, and I recommend you do the same. Thanksgiving is coming up, so jam right the fuck out to Better Son/Daughter.
Shit to buy
Groceries! It's Thanksgiving! Prep shit ahead of time! I'm making pie crusts tomorrow.