I’ve started running out of shit to watch on Netflix that isn’t Spooky Germans in the Dark and Clinical Depression the Cartoon Horse reruns. So, when I coworker mentioned she’d started watching a new show in our trash TV slack, I started it over my lunch break. That’s how I’ve found myself a few episodes in to Love on the Spectrum, a questionably ethical TV show about autistic folks going on dates.

Parts of it are good (there are lots of autistic women featured on the show!) and parts of it are not great (the tone it takes is sort of subject-as-other-y in a way that feels gross), but for the most part they picked funny, nice-seeming people to be on the show. It’s easy to root for them. (As I said on twitter earlier, every time someone on the show cracks a joke, I’m reminded of a tweet about how maybe Asperger thought autistic folks didn’t understand humor because he wasn’t funny.)

One of the things I think the show does well—intentionally or not—is showing how difficult it is for the interview subjects to parse out what is weird and horrible about dating in general from what might be a mistake that they’ve made with the interaction. One of the women featured on the show (who is consistently very funny in a family where nobody seems to acknowledge it) gets stuck on a date with a guy who talks at her the entire time. She looks miserable and in the talking head after you can sort of see her trying to figure out whether that’s behavior she’s supposed to put up with given that it feels shitty—which, “does this guy suck or is there something wrong with me” is a conversation I had with myself after about 8 million boring OKCupid dates when I was 23; for her it just seems ramped up in intensity and self blame and with a default assumption that any social difficulty is her fault. It makes me want to desperately hiss “it’s not you, that dude is just self-absorbed” at the TV.

I’ve taken next week off work. I can’t really go anywhere or do much of anything, so currently the plan is books, baths, and garbagio television. I look forward to discovering what Australian made-for-TV docuseries content I will descend on next.

Shit to read

Calling worms dumb is not a microaggression.
A beautiful and horrifying essay on the catch-22 of involuntary commitment.
Goodreads is occasionally good for something.
This is a long piece but I thought was just a fascinating look at something I knew nothing about.
Literally always here for oral histories of reality tv.
A poem that made me cry.
Well, cool.
w e l l , c o o l
Well, cool!

Shit to drink

Befriend someone who has an orange tree. Wait until they give you oranges.
Use your food processor or other, less-fun, juicer to juice a bunch of the oranges. You will feel very accomplished.
Freeze the orange juice in an ice cube tray. Drink the rest.
Take the peels of the oranges and sprinkle half their weight in sugar on them. Toss every so often until you have syrup at the bottom of the container.
Or just buy citrus syrup.
Pop a few juice cubes in a glass.
Top with however much citrus syrup makes your heart sing.
And add a float of club soda.
Enjoy!

Shit to listen to

Fuck, man, I don’t know.

Shit to buy

I joined the Nib today as a member (you can too!) after reading a bummer of a tweet from its EIC. It’s good content!

Emchap's Shit from the Internet 07/22/20 🍠

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