Emchap’s Shit from the Internet 6/13/18 🍠
I am back from Atlanta! It was a long and weird and wonderful trip. I'm glad to be back in my own home, which has exciting features like "my cat" and "not living in my dad's house, as much as I love him" and "holy shit the air is so dry here it's amazing, my sweat just evaporates and there aren't really mosquitoes or giant roaches."
I like to keep track of who I run into in Atlanta when I'm back home—the folks that I see without scheduling.
This time we had a man who I know through his status as a superfan of the product I used to work on, who was taking tickets at the entrance to a home tour house I was visiting; a former colleague (soon to be in Oakland!) who I ran into out at dinner with my dad; a former improv teacher who came up to talk to me at the dog park because I looked just like his friend; a whole rambling host of folks at the improv theatre where I dropped in to see a show—most notably a former colleague who was just stopping by for a drink, and a former volunteer who moved to New York soon after I did, who just happened to be visiting home at the same time as I was. A former colleague from a different job was hosting the improv show; I didn't run in to the woman I met through the theatre who's now marrying a man I met at a professional conference in Portland.
Atlanta is full of tangled-up webs of relationships.
My cat, in repayment for my absence, has been a giant yowly pill since I returned. He's learned that if he bats at my jewelry I will get up to chase him off my dresser, which means that my earring rack is now covered by a pillow. He's moved on to stealing my glasses, when he can get them, and failing that tries to pull chargers out from my bedside power strip. At three this morning I had to steal back a vape charger from him. There are few moments in my life so far quite as undignified as stealing back a vape charger from the trash goblin with knife hands who sleeps in my bed, before wedging a pillow on top of my power strip.
Shit to read
Rosner's article on Anthony Bourdain is worth reading, as is his original piece that ultimately became Kitchen Confidential.
Always here for folks reminding us that the Stanford Prison Experiment is a lie.
Loved this piece from the VSB founder about the lingering stress of having been broke.
And this, about the disconnect between the book and movie version of The Fault In Our Stars and what it's like to watch someone die of cancer.
As you may know, I am obsessed with weird top level domains (the bits that go after the period in URLs—.com, normally, or .horse if you are me and purchased cartbefore.horse while intoxicated at a work function), so I am super here for this exploration of who buys them.
This look at why "reach out and get help" is often super trash advice is worth reading.
Hell yeah I'm here for a woman processing trauma through boxing.
Rachel Bloom is funny and smart and talented on a level I cannot fathom.
Shit to eat
Subscribe to O Magazine.
About 3/4 of the way through reading the newest issue of O Magazine while intoxicated, come across a recipe for broccoli tots. Realize you have some approximation of the ingredients, make some substitutions in your head, and wander into the kitchen.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Food process 1/3 of an onion until it's finely chopped.
Swap out the food processor blade for a shredding disk and make big grated strands of a zucchini and a half. (Yes one of the substitutions is that you want zucchini tots.)
Stir in 1/3 cup of flour. (Nut flour in the original but fuck that tbh.)
Add in a beaten egg.
And a minced clove of garlic.
Toss in whatever cheese needs using up. I went with approximately 1/3 cup of pre-shredded parm that was about to go off and the last part of a container of feta cheese that I needed to make use of.
Half teaspoon salt, a bunch of black pepper.
Stir it all up.
I did not use parchment paper on my baking sheets, but you should, because otherwise these things STICK even if you oil the sheets.
Form little tot-shaped lumps out of your batter and place them on the baking sheet. I managed to get 18 out of the recipe.
Pop them in the oven for 15 minutes. Take them out, flip them, and go for another 15 minutes.
Eat them with the condiment of your choice. I enjoyed both sour cream and mustard, but I enjoy sour cream and mustard on literally everything.
Shit to listen to
This is a cover of an entire Talking Heads album by a Beninese artist who sounds a little like Amadou and Miriam if you—like me—have relatively basic afrorock reference points and it is fucking unreal.
Shit to buy
This atist makes beautiful pottery and is currently taking commissions.
Third Love makes big cup sizes now so get on that if you're in the target audience.
It's summer. Buy some raspberries.