Emchap's Shit from the Internet 11/18/20 🍠
We’re rounding the corner of the end of the year and things almost feel very slightly normal—while I’m in my living room, I can see my advent calendar of jams and the goofy wreath I made out of dollar store stuff, and I can burn candles, and I can drink cocoa and generally be coze.
Everything is a tire fire and everybody’s holiday plans make me anxious and all signs point to this being a horrible winter, but also I have twinkle lights and plans to eat a bird on Thanksgiving. The sun has gone away and so I’m in the sort of dozy, sleepy mood that defines my reality in the winter and it’s a little better than when it was 90 degrees and the rest of everything was still bad. It feels like a small moment of quasi-respite in the midst of everything, though I know that it’s more just a moment of calm in the tropical depression that is 2020. (And, of course, will be 2021 though god knows I can’t think about that for too long or I will scream.)
I have nothing insightful to share about any of it; in my actual house I’m currently focused on trying to convince the cat that he does not need to touch me at every waking moment while attempting to sort out why something in my living room smells like lemon all purpose cleaner, which it very much should not.
Winter is a hunkering-down until the sun comes back, and right now it feels like the national mood is very much the same (not that Biden will be good, but there is some small chance of competent pandemic response that means that this particular horrible thing might end so we can focus on the many other horrible things, but outside, with people). Things feel a little bit fragile; there’s always some hindbrain concern that maybe this is the year that the sun doesn’t, that it’s dark forever, that no new leaves will come back to the trees (if you live in a place where that happens, of course; here the succulents stay firmly be-leaved no matter what we get up to).
I love and miss my friends. I love and miss my family. I’m crossing my fingers that the sun comes back.
Shit to read
Samantha Irby is as always a delight.
Griefbacon is back and it is still so, so good.
Obviously I’m watching the new season of The Crown and I thought this was great.
As someone who is permanently In Her Feelings, I really loved the pairing of this Hola Papi about someone who feels frustrated and alone about not finding a partner when they want one and this Two Bossy Dames about being the sort of person who holds on to memories of people because of how they made you feel in which I very much recognize myself.
Hillbilly Elegy the book is dumb as shit and I enjoyed this pan of Hillbilly Elegy the movie, which is also dumb as shit.
Rachel Bloom has a new essay collection out and wrote about her OCD.
Fucking ugh.
I really enjoyed this piece about how an HGTV star that I like bought a place during the pandemic, because I do think his discussion of the finances around a job like that is really interesting.
Fuck yeah preschool for all.
Lost young dudes getting turned into fascists online through self help horseshit will be the death of us all.
Shit to eat
Buy a small chicken and two mid-sized potatoes. Also some olive oil and kosher salt and pepper.
Take them to your Airbnb. Because you’re smart, you won’t have assumed anything about what the Airbnb might have, you won’t have to be surprised by the lack of a baking dish, or salt, or oil. You’ll have all of it, having brought it from home or the store.
Scrub the potatoes, and salt the chicken. Leave it for an hour if you can.
Slice the potatoes into thin slices, like if you were making oven chips.
Once the hour is up, preheat your oven to 425, and pop your cast iron pan in there.
Do not instead fail to plan for the weird sparse Airbnb kitchen and wind up cooking in a foil roasting pan instead because though it will be fine it won’t turn out like you want and the potatoes won’t get covered in chicken fat.
Melt a knob of butter (a microwave! the luxury!) in a bowl, and add some olive oil in. Toss your potatoes around, and add salt and pepper and whatever herbs you’ve got going to the mix.
Once the oven is pre-heated, cover your chicken in a light layer of olive oil, and drizzle more into the hot pan.
Plop the chicken in there, breast up. Nestle the potatoes around it.
Leave it in the oven for an hour or so, ideally with legs pointed to the back left of the oven and breast towards the center.
Once you’re at the hour and the chicken is at temperature, let it rest for 20 minutes. Enjoy. Turn the leftovers into chicken salad.
Shit to listen to
As everyone has said, the You’re Wrong About about Diana is phenomenal.
Shit to buy
Christmas gift box for your cat. Or a jaunty fair isle sweater!
I love these glasses so much.
It’s cold buy some truly phenomenal snake-themed underwear.