Emchap's Shit from the Internet 4/11/18 🍠
As of Sunday, I am back in my home timezone for a work trip to New York. I am staying in a perfectly serviceable Marriott sub-brand hotel in Chelsea, two blocks from my office, and I am obviously upset about the fact that it is still somehow winter in New York.
People keep asking me what it's like to be back in NYC in the way that people making smalltalk do, and I keep answering "cold" (which is not a lie), but the actual answer is probably more like "a bit like running into an ex-boyfriend two months after you broke up" which is a situation that readers should know I straight-up moved out of Atlanta to avoid.
It is emotionally complicated, is what I mean.
It is very easy when visiting here this week to wonder why I left. It is busy, and not so bad, and there are so many things to walk to! But of course I couldn't afford to live in Chelsea (allowing me a walking commute) when I lived here; that's artificial. And this week I don't have to worry about hauling groceries or fighting with the post office or being brought to actual tears because it is just so cold and has been for months and I've nearly fallen on the sidewalk ice again. The vacation version of a big city is always nicer than the living in it version, and in New York—a city that prides itself on making the living-in part needlessly difficult, for toughness points—that's a particularly large gulf. But it's hard to remember that when New York is full of so many people who I love so very, very much and they're excited to see me because I'm only in town for such a short period of time.
And even in its vacation version, I've paid too much for mediocre dinner, and been irate at the fact that Duane Reade made me call a staff member to buy toothpaste, and had to reschedule my plans tonight because the train I decided to take was delayed and then just skipping the station (keeping my poor friend trapped in the park for an indefinite limbo period). New York has thankfully kept up its end of the bargain by doing the city version of not texting me back, which is probably for the best.
That said, I am within walking distance of a Dairy Queen, and I have been in a weeks-long quest to get a Blizzard in LA that has failed, and if you don't think that I'm going to buy expensive trash ice cream even though it's too cold out then you don't know me.
Shit to read
An exploration of nudes and the weird double-edged sword of empowerment and feeling shitty about yourself that they represent.
Sam Irby wrote an amazing goddamn thing about bleeding on surfaces. It, like everything else she writes, is perfect.
Speaking of people who write things I love, Patricia Lockwood wrote this brutal piece on how to write now in this, our worst timeline. Go read Priestdaddy if you haven't.
Junot Diaz's essay on his childhood rape and its impact is really tremendous.
I met Lillian Karabaic at a conference we both spoke at last year, and she's a delight, and I am a clotheshorse and a nerd, so obvi I loved her article breaking down all of the clothing she owns.
Go read this article about Heathcliffe, the cartoon cat best known for not being Garfield. Just go. It's great.
Molly Ringwald talking about John Hughes is really worth reading, and is a phenomenal example of how to revisit something that you were a part of that maybe makes you somewhat uncomfortable in retrospect even if it was a positive experience and even if you still value it.
Shit to eat
See a Twitter promoted tweet for a Dairy Queen peanut butter cookie dough blizzard.
Go "ew"
See the ad 100 more times
Go "I must have this or I will die"
Look up the nearest Dairy Queen
If it is 5 miles away and not well served by transit and you don't own a car, idly do this every two days for a week and a half
See if it's on GrubHub
(It's not)
Download Postmates
Set up a Postmates account
Decide that you'll go for it even if Postmates has a shitty fee structure
Order the blizzard to your house
Fifteen minutes later, when you receive a cancellation notification from Postmates, cry a single tear
(It's possible you're PMSing)
Fly to NYC
Write a newsletter
When that newsletter is sent, walk the .7 miles down to Union Square
Feast
(Hopefully)
Shit to listen to
Like fucking obviously it is the "Pynk" music video which is amazing both in its just profound gayness without Tessa Thompson and Janelle Monae publicly confirming their relationship (they're dating and also both possibly Prince-style space alien magicians?) but also independent of the video is it just a really fucking good song. Get high and make out with someone to it. Blast it while driving down a road in the sun while singing it. Wait for the Miguel remix of it and do what you would like to do. It's good.
Shit to buy
Warp + Weft made fat bitch shorts yessssss (I have worn actual, multiple holes in the thighs of the Warp + Weft jeggings I'm wearing rn)
And I take back everything I said about their stock patterns last week because they have the actual jeans I want available now!!!! I'm buying them to replace the above-mentioned thigh hole pants.
Aerie is still dead to me for killing the high-waist bikini cut though.
I'm not going to re-link to it but the Madwell shirts I mentioned last week arrived and I have worn them each like four times. They make me look like an indifferent sex goddess who shows an inappropriate amount of bra at work but also maybe it's French so it's fine.
Pay your taxes. It's like you're buying roads and schools!