Emchap's Shit from the Internet 08/25/21 đ
Because this newsletter is really just a replacement for regular blogging for me and originally just went to people I knew personally, I forget that Substack offers business metrics as part of its platform. I was poking around in them today before I started typing out this newsletter, and discovered that it assigns subscribers star ratings based on their engagement, which I think is very funny. Whatâs funnier is that apparently thereâs a single member of this mailing list whose engagement rating is higher than mine, which is frankly impressive. I commend them. (The other fun thing to learn from the metrics is how many of my friends have successfully implemented address+filtertag@theirdomain.com as part of their newsletter subscription process, which I envy as someone with an absolutely fucking feral email inbox that I check maybe once a week.)
I got a glimpse last night of what seems to be Normie Portlandâit was a bar with 40 craft beer taps and an elaborate minigolf course inside of it. (One of the holes was Bigfoot themed. Bigfoot was wearing a mask, natch.) The back patio had a food truck serving absolutely mediocre deep fryer food, and a bunch of adirondack chairs (my nemesis). Thereâs a golf simulator, and the bathrooms are all labeled as locker rooms, because golf is technically a sport, I guess.
I asked the person I was there with how theyâd become aware of the giant warehouse full of minigolf, and apparently theyâd been there as part of a bar crawl on one of those pedal taverns where you get drunk on a nightmare frankenbike, which was a cultural phenomenon I had previously assumed was specific to Nashville bachelor parties. (In my defense, searching âpedal tavernâ just now auto-suggested for me ânashvilleâ as the completed search phrase.)
I spent much of my time there playing some game that was⊠sort of shuffleboard, but notâit involved using a sawed-off mini-golf club to gently shove golf balls into a bullseye on the other side of the astroturfed table. I forgot the rules immediately, and the fact that the table was slightly slanted made each round a fun adventure. It was quickly abandoned for my favorite social activity of âsittingâ and âtalking with significantly more emotional fervor than is okay about D&D realplay podcasts.â It was a good time, even if it did have sort of the general vibe of a Sandy Springs activity center that offers laser tag for drunk adults.
Shit to read
Are any mayors not completely useless?
This article on the Bama rush tiktok fashion introduced me to a bunch of brands I was unaware of and made me feel a million billion years old.
I really enjoyed this AHP article on nap dresses, which I am sure I will buy one of as soon as theyâre on the way out of being fashionable, as is my way. (I absolutely finally cracked and bought a smocked nap dress-style top in an attempt to dress like Iâm not an art teacher.)
This piece on how canonizing Dolly Parton serves nobody was, I think, generally on point.
Iâm a big fan of Ted Lasso just like every other person who cries at Subaru commercials, and I enjoyed this interview with the man who plays Roy Kent (who is also a writer on the show, which I hadnât realized). Roy Kent is perfect and I love him.
Though I donât agree with all of it, I found this essay on the ways in which fandom culture + the way we handle media coverage has made writing about media properties basically awful generally persuasive.
Shit to eat
Put three rice cooker cups or washed jasmine rice and half a can of coconut milk + the rest of the water that you need into the rice cooker. Let it do its thing. Regret having waited so long to purchase one.
Mix up four tablespoons oyster sauce, six of soy sauce, two of fish sauce, two of brown sugar, and the juice of a lime. Put it in a deli container, shake it up, and put it to the side.
Chop up two pounds of pork loin into slices.
Chop up 10 cloves of garlic into smaller pieces of garlic, and a bundle of green onions into smaller bits of green onion.
Heat up a large pan until it is hot; add enough oil to cook things.
Add your many cloves of garlic and a teaspoon of ancho chile powder because itâs what the store had; this will not be enough, so add more or stronger if you are not a coward like me.
After theyâve cooked for a second, in goes the pork for 5 minutes.
It is at this point that you will realize that youâve possibly screwed up something in the process because your stir fry will wind up distressingly wet. It wonât be bad. Just⊠wet.
If things dry out, add chicken stock. I did, and this was a mistake.
Dump in the sauce, and keep things going for another 2 to 3 minutes over lower heat.
Toss in your many green onions and half a container of basil that will, if you have played your cards right, be in the freezer because it doesnât matter in cooking applications and it keeps it from going off in your fridge.
Put the rice in a bowl, add meat on top, and fry an egg and put it on top.
(Adapted from The Kitchnâs Stir-Fried Thai Basil Pork.)
Shit to listen to
I think this was my answer last week, too, but it remains true: I really like the new Lorde album. Plus music video.
Shit to buy
Currently awaiting the arrival of this jumpsuit.
This is the color I painted my bedroom.