Emchap's Shit from the Internet 12/20/17 🍠
It is very funny to have Big Personal News which surprises literally no one that you are telling it to. On the one hand, it sort of affirms that you're making the right call. On the other hand, there is a brief moment of weird indignation that others think they know you (even though they obviously do, they are your friends, you are in their apartment eating their bourbon balls). That is to say that last week I had a conversation that went almost verbatim like this:
Me: I am moving to Los Angeles!
My lovely friend: Oh, well. You hate New York, so. I'm happy for you!
Which, fair. I love many of the people I have met here so much! And I love my gym and I love the dumpling place next to my gym and I love the bakery next to the dumpling place that does 3 for $1.50 Chinese desserts. (Today I got a taro bun and a coconut danish thing and I think a pineapple bun? TBD.) I love how much New York isn't my hometown. (Not like culturally. Just like very literally I'm not worried about running into ex-boyfriends here.)
But (but!) a (different) friend also said to me during the spring, as I complained about being slightly sweaty all the time: "if you don't like New York right now, I think maybe you just... don't like it here." And he was right, I think.
I don't know where to stand in stores, and I feel too big for physically existing here, and I am slightly sweaty on the train and freezing cold/VERY sweaty outside depending on the season and I don't understand winter layers and I'm always scared I'm going to slip and fall on the ice and I hate carrying home seltzer from the store and I am always always always exhausted in a way that I don't remember always being in Atlanta (except when I was depressed, and that wasn't exhaustion so much as it was being frozen in place like a deer with its leg in a trap; this is just being tired). Everyone I know here is constantly planning on leaving. The air hurts my lungs and I don't ever feel like I can breathe (very literally; I think I might have asthma? like obvi I'm not in good shape but this is just, like, deep breaths while walking around and it is kind of concerning ANYWAY).
(I would like to say for the record that it is NOT because I think people are mean here; I really fundamentally have never experienced notable consistent rudeness here? People tend to be broadly group-minded and happy to answer questions in public, at least if you're a relatively harmless-looking single woman. It's fine! People are very helpful and very used to folks being confused about what the deal is.)
All of this is to say that it doesn't surprise anyone that I'm moving out of New York, though people keep asking why on earth I would want to go to LA, and then they do this hilarious thing where they're like, "You know you'll have to DRIVE there, right? You'll have to buy a CAR?" like it's a big gotcha?? Which is hilarious, because fucking yes obviously I know that, everyone knows that, that's its thing, and it's a reminder that it's very hard to imagine people outside of the context in which we see them because me not having a car has only been a thing while I've lived in New York. I learned how to drive as a teenager and drove to work and everything else in the world in Atlanta.
(I'm going to start telling people who are moving to New York that well that's fine if they like taking the TRAIN and eating BAGELS and living in a place with STREET TRASH.)
Because people have been asking why LA: my very boring answer is that the weather is nicer (the weather knocked Chicago out) and it seemed a little more challenging than going to Austin or Atlanta (which are on the mid-30s settling docket or are where I'll go if I hate LA) and I know like 8 people out there, which seems like a good seed group. I'm excited to live there and not have a commute. If I hate it I'll come back or go to Austin or something.
So! That's that. I'll be leaving at the end of January. I am getting rid of most of my furniture, so, please come take it if you live in Brooklyn.
Shit to read
Climbing Everest seems so profoundly unappealing to me, and I'm gruesomely interested in the part where people use corpses as path markers. The ethics of retrieving those bodies are interesting, and this piece makes great use of its medium.
Read about rich people weddings.
I'm sure everyone has read this article about the romance of the friendship between these two Cultural Figures but if you haven't it's wonderful and tender and interesting.
Everyone is obsessed with skincare because it implies we won't all be dead soon.
This story about a child who declared herself a grown man's enemy while he was teaching in Japan is GREAT and super funny and highlights one of the most distressing things for me from the brief period I was in Senegal and operating mostly in French, which is that NO ONE thought I was funny, and it was crushing.
Amy Sedaris is really fascinating to me (along with Maria Bamford) as someone who is a giant fucking weirdo making amazing work and who gets to be visible in her mid-50s, and I want to be her when I grow up. (The piece also does a great job connecting her work to her brother's, through which many people have most of their picture of her, since she's relatively obscured in her own work.)
That piece links out to this David Sedaris essay on their sister's suicide, which I had forgotten, and it is worth re-reading.
Depending on the brand and the item, I am either the very largest straight size or one of the two smallest plus sizes, and the fact that I am average-sized for an American woman (almost exactly! I am an inch taller, I think) and none of the goddamn stupid startup brands make clothes bigger than me is infuriating. I make a shitload of money and have no kids and terrible impulse control and will buy anything that advertises to me on Facebook, take my fucking money you trash brands. Fat woman do not need to be grateful for you acknowledging something that is to your financial benefit, you dillweeds.
I did not understand the Ta-Nehisi Coates/Cornel West thing that I saw like half of on Twitter, and this article summarizes it well.
Shit to eat
Buy two potatoes.
Accidentally leave them in your fridge for like a week because you keep eating dinner out of the house.
On a rare evening home, wash and peel the potatoes and an onion.
Shred them all using the shredding disk and your food processor.
Fuck, your finger hurts because the disk got you.
Dump the shreds out onto a towel and pour some salt on them.
Go wrap the finger in surgical tape since paper towels aren't helping.
Squeeze out the vegetable shreds and get potato water everywhere.
In a mixing bowl, combine a quarter cup flour, a teaspoon salt, a teaspoon baking powder, pepper, and an egg.
Add in the vegetable shreds and stir everything up.
Fry them up in the cast iron, a little over a minute on each side.
Stir up sour cream and apple sauce, and spread liberally on top because picking just a single topping is terrible.
(Stolen entirely from the Smitten Kitchen recipe because it's great and I have no idea what recipe my grandmother used.)
Shit to listen to
I mean, like, Christmas music if that's your jam, but I assume you know that. If you want something haunting and weird and sad on this the longest night of the year (more or less, I think it's probably really tomorrow), I have been listening to this song since I was I think 15 years old and my friend gave me her copy of Antifolk Vol 1, and album full of artists I've been listening to since. The song reminds me of being in high school and being driven around in my friend's piece of shit Saturn, and of fucking around in various living rooms in Athens, and of a period that has faded into happy fuzz in my memories even though I think I was often quite unhappy during the living of it.
Shit to buy
Egg nog, dollar pizza, and tarro buns from now until you make yourself sick halfway through the end of December. Fuck Amazon.