Emchap's Shit from the Internet 3/24/17 🍠
Guys I know like 90% of the time this section of the newsletter is just me Living My Authentic Sad Self out loud but this time I am going to tell you what I did this weekend:
I got brunch with one person I already knew I liked a great deal and another who was a completely charming conversationalist and there was subway tile and I let out a long, full breath for the first time all that week and realized I might be about done having panic attacks at work which was Good.
Then I went to a tiki bar in Fun Brooklyn with a Friend and I ate vegetarian banh mi sausages and drank vast quantities of rum in coconuts and big tall glasses with swizzle sticks in them and was v. v. happy. (The cocktails were only $10!!!)
THE NEXT DAY there was a working brunch and charming womenfolk to collaborate with and then a tequila cocktail.
And the next next day (I'm extending the weekend into Monday) I went to go see the 2010 Christina Aguilera/Cher (also Stanley Tucci and Alan Cumming and Peter Gallagher and whatever the guy who plays McSteamy is called) vehicle Burlesque at the Alamo and clapped my hands in literal childish glee like 7 times and on the whole it was a very good few days.
So there's that.
Shit to read
This interview between Mallory Ortberg and Patricia Lockwood (the poet who wrote "Rape Joke" and who I saw at the Decatur Book Festival a few years ago, she's wonderful) about being the children of clergy is great and weird and wonderful and deeply worth your time.
Dude, did you know the guy who runs We Rate Dogs is a college sophomore? Read the entire Esquire profile on him, it's bananas.
I know and very much like the woman who wrote this piece on a parent with cancer and not wanting to be the sort of person who cries and when I got to the end I wept.
It is very unchill to admit concern about being alone and wondering if you would have a partner if you were a smaller version of yourself. I liked this Jennifer Wright piece about it. (There was another piece I read a long time ago about how the big players in fat activism/body positivity online tend also to be partnered—I think it was maybe a Lindy West joint?—and I think about that a lot.)
Wright's piece pairs well with this Jess Zimmerman article on female ugliness. (I once went on a date with a man who had previously gone out with her and this fact and his employment as an engineer at the dating site where I had met him were the two most interesting things about him.) I do know that the moments in which I feel the most powerful are the moments in which I deny men my attention (or like more realistically my attempts to get them to like me? more than when I am a snarling angry thing) and when I stop trying to be likeable for half a fucking second (rarely) and I don't know how I feel about that.
Shit to eat
Get an avocado (yes they're expensive but you only need the one), a thing of arugula (pre-washed, because fuck thattttt life is too short), and a small tube of goat cheese.
Resent, not for the first time, how expensive cheese is because it brings you so much simple joy.
Get the tall Ikea tupperware container (or a bowl, whatever) and dump in the arugula.
Cut the avocado in half.
Try to do the thing where you whack the knife into the avocado pit to pull it out, realize you don't know how, and just sort of pry it out with a fork.
Dice the halves and scrape the bits into the container/bowl.
Cut the goat cheese tube open and sort of mush the cheese out in pieces as much as you can; enough so that you don't get one goat blob.
Put a lid on the container and shake it up, or just get a big spoon and stir it around if you went with a bowl.
Enjoy your bomb-ass salad.
Shit to listen to
Maria Bamford is an aspirationally great weirdo and you should absolutely watch this commencement address she gave, all the way to the end.
Shit to buy
I just got an HBO subscription on Roku and it's like $15 a month, just do it. I'll probably get Starz next so I can watch/hate American Gods.
I just got a house for my Aeropress because I am part of the problem. I'm very excited.
Everyone says these short things are the shit for wearing under skirts during the summer so the chances of me buying them in the next month are pretty high since I am already someone who straight carries around Goldbond's bodyglide equivalent in my bag at all times for #chubrub reasons.