Emchap's Shit from the Internet 11/15/17 🍠
I am writing this installment from the living room of my friends' lovely home in San Diego, a place that has been entirely enjoyable to occupy with the small exception of the fact that I wandered into an ornamental bedframe yesterday and now have a big lump on my thigh that is probably related but might be, like, thigh cancer, I don't know.
We spent most of yesterday at the San Diego Zoo, after starting our mornings at a diner that offered $12 "almost-bottomless" mimosas (limit 6), in which I didn't partake but by which I was completely delighted, conceptually.
The zoo was a nice reminder (as the trip has been, broadly) that I have things to talk about that aren't work. (Plus I have been taking the kind of glowy, joyful vaguely-thirst-trappy selfies that one normally puts out after a rough breakup. It's great.)
At the zoo, this turned out to be facts about capuchins, socked away from a long-ago primatology class with Frans de Waal. (They understand unfairness in pay, they preferentially recognize individuals that they know, they can be used as helpers for those with mobility impairments.) After reeling off my fun monkey facts, I read the sign near the capuchins, which reiterated much of what I'd said and had a note that the monkeys were from the Yerkes Primate Center, in Atlanta, which de Waal is located at. The world is very small.
The rest of the zoo was a delight (I got to see a cheetah with its helper dog!!!), and today will involve a safari park, and once that is done I'll be seeing a friend for dinner, and I have been promised museums tomorrow, and the chances of me returning willingly to the east coast tomorrow are smaller by the minute.
Shit to read
I will read most anything by Rebecca Solnit, and this new-to-me exploration of what it is to be a woman without children in the public eye is no exception. It is very good.
We all read the Lindy West piece about anger, right? Just making sure.
Leandra at ManRepeller's writing on infertility has been really excellent and really heartbreaking. She's pregnant now, and the announcement is worth reading.
The article that everyone read last week about algorithmically-generated horrifying children's content is wort pairing with this slightly older piece on the same.
No one knows what Omarosa does and this article is completely surreal.
Catapult is killing it lately, and this piece on the aftermath of a man's familial violence is no exception.
I increasingly agree with part of the thesis of this piece, which is that OKCupid and similar match-type algorithms are not very good at all at predicting compatibility.
Shit to eat
After taking half a second to recover from quitting a job that was making you sad through no real fault of anyone's, sleep-hungover from a slightly lifechanging Mountain Goats show in New Jersey, fly across the country at 9 in the morning.
Arrive on the other side of the country, where your friend will pick you up in the exact same leggings that you yourself are wearing.
Drive to her very nice, very large home in the burbs. There will be a pool!
As you settle in, wait for her and her equally nice partner to noodle off to a wedding reception, leaving you alone to wander around their house and admire how much you can sit on furniture and not touch another living human soul.
Your inner sense of time will be somewhat thrown off by the three-hour time difference, weird waking-up time, and the fact that it now gets dark at 4pm. Lean in to this and raid their fridge at 5:30.
Gather up pickles and hummus and two kinds of cheese and pita chips.
Arrange them artfully on a plate, decide it's called "snack dinner", and go sit by the pool, where you can—even though it's November, and with just a very small bit of discomfort—sit outside without a jacket.
Eat your dinner and call your family on the phone, where you will get into an argument about whether the sex scene in the original Blade Runner is rape (it is), which will slightly sour the evening but not in a way that can't be recovered, because there are hummingbirds, and you are in a location with good weather and people you love and—it cannot be overstated enough—you are not wearing a jacket outside even though it's November.
Shit to listen to
If you're not watching Crazy Ex Girlfriend you absolutely should be. "I Go To The Zoo" is just majestic, weird comedy.
Shit to buy
Do you live near an 85C location? Go there immediately and eat a ridiculous amount of pastry and sometimes promotionally-cheap iced coffee.
I'm trying this Drunk Elephant glycolic thing right now and liking it so far. Their products really do seem to be quite good.
I got the yacht life shimmer stick from Fenty this week and am enjoying it (it's a remarkably subtle color). I might eventually work up to the trio of the same, but we'll see.