Emchap's Shit from the Internet 12/29/21 🍠
This is the last one of these for the year; the first was sent January 1, 2017, so this marks I think 5 full years of doing this basically every week, which is wild to me. It’s spanned 3 cities and 4 houses and 4 jobs and 1 organ removal and please god just the one global pandemic.
I’m in the very weird position of being miserable and overwhelmed with omicron closing in + the last several years having made being online even more awful, while at the same time having had an objectively good year in 2021. I turned 30; I bought my first home; I moved; I made a bunch of money; I managed to use a one-month “I guess this probably won’t kill me” post-vax stint on Hinge to find a boyfriend that I’m a big fan of. I’m playing the pandemic on the easiest possible mode and still I’d describe the last few years as pretty fucking miserable.
I was meant to go up to Bend this week and canceled the trip because of new transmission worries and it’s of course not that big a deal but still, fuck, I’m so tired of this and so tired of how the CDC has ruined any trust anyone had in them and so tired of the Democrats being just useless and so tired of anti-vax dipshits and perfect-behavior-or-nothing scolds who are bragging about sterilizing groceries despite that not being a transmission mechanism. I hate it and I’m so tired of this being my life, you know? I want to hang out with my friends and not be worried about it. I want to not be worried about my friends in healthcare.
But nothing much to do about it except stay at home, when I can. I’ve been working my way through the Lord of the Rings films (theatrical cut, because I’m old and my bones hurt) for the first time in probably 10 years this last week. They’re of course mostly about The War and the way in which it ruined the psyches of a generation of Europeans, but a friend pointed out on Twitter that of course Tolkien also lived through the 1918 flu pandemic, because that period of history was really a pretty shitty time to be alive.
And there is something kind of comforting in watching the movies and reading anything written about Tolkien’s relationship to the war because that dude did not want to be part of it! He was not sold on the glory of the military, he delayed going until he could get his degree even though everyone thought he was a coward for doing so, he had a miserable time during it, and all he wanted to do was hang out with his wife, who he had known since he was a child and liked very much. (So much that he basically wrote Wife Fanfiction. Tolkien: consummate Wife Guy.)
So much of particularly the first part of the trilogy is about the hobbits being pretty open about how, given the choice, they would not be doing this shit; they go through a profoundly awful experience because it’s the right thing to do and if they don’t do it, they’re going to be hosed, but at no point is there the commitment to Larger Concepts of Bravery in the way that you maybe see from other races of the fellowship. There’s no sense of adventure, really—just fear and unpleasantness and the assumption that their friends have died and the unfairness that they still have to do this shit because it needs done.
Every time the Shire theme comes on—still unquestionably perfect, 20 years later, Howard Shore is the GOAT—there’s a reminder that none of the hobbits want to be doing this; they want more than anything to go back home. Frodo’s the hero and he does not want to fucking be there. And it was unexpectedly resonant to watch that scene at the end of Fellowship in the midst of the omicron outbreak and a run on rapid tests and a complete despondent fury at the failures of our federal government and the CDC. May we all haul our asses up the mountain and find some eagles, I guess.
Shit to read
There was some good TV this year.
Always fascinating to be made aware of a side of Tiktok I never see.
Remember it’s Christmas until the 6th, baybee.
Shit to eat
Order Ethiopian food.
Tip 30%.
Enjoy.
Shit to watch
All Stephen Colbert LotR content is the best.
This podcast twofer about some people in Uruguay who were like “I think the government is… bad?” and then had some feedback.
Shit to buy
These very pretty oven mitts, which I received for Christmas and have been enjoying.