Emchap's Shit from the Internet 5/16/18 🍠
I am in an ongoing and entirely one-sided battle against a woman named Nelly Russell.
It started with a few packages delivered to my apartment when I moved. I assumed that they were misdelivered (I wasn't expecting anything) but they were addressed to my apartment—just not to anyone currently living in it. I figured it was the old tenant falling prey to bad one-click-order settings, marked the packages as return to sender, and (when they were picked up out of my building's courtyard) figured that was the end of it.
It was not. I have continued to receive packages for Ms. Russell at my apartment for the entire time that I have lived here. And recently, on accident, I have opened a few. (You know, how when Amazon packages show up in your mailbox and you're waiting on some clothes from Amazon and you assume that it's the t-shirt bra you ordered and instead it turns out to be a stranger's jeans?)
I've opened two of the packages in the last week, and it's from them that I've learned that Nelly and I wear the same size, and have not dissimilar taste in clothes. She's currently waiting on a blue nightgown that's sitting on my coffee table, and a shirt that's my favorite color of green.
I mentioned this to a neighbor that I am friendly with today, assuming that she knew the previous tenant. She did! Which is how I learned the new and startling fact that the previous tenant's name was Sarah, not Nelly.
So now I'm not entirely certain what's happening, or who this person is who's marked the wrong address on so many packages. Surely she must have noticed by now? It's been months. Facebook has been no help finding her, and she was not (it seems) the previous tenant.
I'll keep returning the packages for now, but am all ears for any suggestions readers may have about the best way to stop the influx of stranger clothing to my apartment before I break and start stealing this stranger's nightgown to wear as my own.
Shit to read
Saturation diving is a job I wasn't aware existed and am now completely terrifed of.
This is a long and beautiful piece about women and girls and starving oneself.
I love the Wonkette and I love making fun of the real estate coverage in the NYT, so obviously this was very two great tastes that go great together for me.
This article, about not knowing how to waste time on the internet anymore, was just so, so good. I find myself just feebly refreshing twitter and ratcheting up my own anxiety and typing xojane into the URL bar just in case it's alive again.
YOU CAN SCRATCH THROUGH YOUR OWN SKULL.
I liked this article on rose quartz and love and "feminine" energy.
This article on incels is tremendously worth reading, as is Jia's old Ask a Virgin series, which she references within it.
This is a small article about adopting a small dog and is worth reading.
Apparently it's possible to get Alzheimer's as a young person. This made me cry and cry and cry, and is worth reading all the way to the end for a truly gutting kicker.
It is worth reading about pet tortoises, and what becomes of them.
Shit to eat
Post on Twitter that you're going to a nearby town for work, and need a dinner recommendation.
Wait until a Twitter friend informs you that she in fact lives there now.
Ask if she wants to go to dinner, as that seems significantly more fun than getting delivery to the airport La Quinta.
Select a pizza + brewery combo restaurant from the options she lists.
Hop into a cab straight from the airport, find a seat near a heat lamp, and order a flight of dark beer and a pizza with figs on it as soon as is possible.
Catch up. Gossip about things that are not possible to post on public Twitter.
Briefly contemplate moving to this new town, realize that you quite like your current town, and discard the idea.
Hug goodbye, and—slightly tipsier—head back to the airport La Quinta to check in and pass out.
In the morning, contemplate the memory of abandoned slices of fig pizza as you look at a truly sad budget hotel breakfast buffet where everything tastes slightly sour and the juice machine is somehow broken.
Shit to listen to
I've been listening to this Dave Rawlings Machine version of "To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)" (I'm doing FINE emotionally) and trying to figure out why it was so comforting and why I knew all the words, and it was not until the VERY MOMENT I was pulling it up for this newsletter that I realized that of course it's from a Ryan Adams album that I listened to approximately 100 times as a kid and which I associate with my dad completely. (I say I listened to it, but I was 9 when it came out, so I suspect I osmosised it from him before picking it up myself.)
And that leads me of course to Gold, which came out the next year, and whose album cover is actually much more stuck in my head, and to "New York, New York" which I have on my own listened to a hundred times. If I have a wedding I suspect this is getting played at it even though I'm still at the "block him and pretend he died" phase with New York.
I guess my dad went through a Ryan Adams phase in the early 2000s?
(Didn't we all?)
And a live version of the cover, go see Dave Rawlings or Gillian Welch if you ever, ever get the chance.
Shit to buy
I just bought a pizza, and recommend you do the same.