this past sunday was, i realized, the first day on which i've seen every member of my immediate family in 14 years (when my sister got married in san francisco). we weren't all in the same place: i woke up at my mother's house, went down to tiburon with that sister for my cousin's celebration of life (and we saw our father and other sister), then swooped back up to mom's. that's...better, honestly; i don't know that there's much to be gained by rounding all of us up, though it would be wonderful to have to consider it when, say, my niece or one of my nephews gets married one day. my niece, speaking of, asked at dinner the other night if we thought the robot apocalypse was nigh, and what did we think the world would be like in 30 years? she's latched onto the idea that the ozone layer repairing itself means that ecological disaster isn't nigh, and her mother does not wish to disabuse her of that notion. her father offered that he thinks there won't be any cars, and i predicted that humans would clot in denser living arrangements and free up more contiguous green space. i also more or less admitted that i expect her to grow up into a postapocalyptic warrior-chieftain who rules gently-parented peon-followers with an iron fist, which she seemed to take in stride; she noted that she thinks she's ready to see the terminator, and i warned her that she's going to have to deal with arnold schwarzenegger's bare ass if so. i guess that if a macho 11-year-old girl is going to experience an ass, that one is relatively benign?
on apocalypses, we saw m3gan 2.0 last night and i was prepared to be disappointed after learning that, as in terminator 2, the titular killer robot is repurposed to defend the very fleshbags it was once intent on annihilating. i'd forgotten how much i enjoy allison williams's unexpectedly-legit comic delivery, and kate bush is deployed delightfully. i'm not all that interested in talking about AI, but that was a pleasant riff on the end times.
Showing posts with label the internets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the internets. Show all posts
02.25.25 [on the M train]
our apartment has been photographed for a tour, as have i, though joe and the cats will i guess remain unknown to the blogosphere! i wish we'd made an appointment even earlier, since by the time we got down to business the last of the extra-golden light was slinking out of the living room, but at 9 a.m. i was already a scattered babbler, so god knows what would have happened if we'd aimed for some properly rosy-fingered dawn. the photographer spent a full two hours doing her thing, only 15 minutes of which were watching me try to convince maya to let me hold her for more than three seconds (the shape of a proper camera is scary, and it makes such mysterious clicks). i wasn't nervous, but i still can't smile on command, so we'll see what J the blogger and her team think about that.
apparently it could be months or even a year or more before anything is published online, which feels like fair play after all the house tours i've kicked down the calendar as a freelancer. and sometimes tours get killed? though that seems unlikely here, since they shelled out for a proper photographer and i don't plan on becoming a flamboyant public racist or anything? even if i do and it is, the apartment's in the best shape of its nearly 15 years with us: with this shoot hanging over my head i finally got the coat rack installed beside the front door (it had been crouching against the mirror on our dining table for at least six months, which probably means a year), the curtains are up in the bedroom (they'd been in the back of the closet since february of 2020), the bowls of christmas ornaments and lights are out from under the dining table and hidden behind the crazy silk flower garland i created above the kitchen cabinets, and those flowers are all off the dining table. it's all very exciting.
apparently it could be months or even a year or more before anything is published online, which feels like fair play after all the house tours i've kicked down the calendar as a freelancer. and sometimes tours get killed? though that seems unlikely here, since they shelled out for a proper photographer and i don't plan on becoming a flamboyant public racist or anything? even if i do and it is, the apartment's in the best shape of its nearly 15 years with us: with this shoot hanging over my head i finally got the coat rack installed beside the front door (it had been crouching against the mirror on our dining table for at least six months, which probably means a year), the curtains are up in the bedroom (they'd been in the back of the closet since february of 2020), the bowls of christmas ornaments and lights are out from under the dining table and hidden behind the crazy silk flower garland i created above the kitchen cabinets, and those flowers are all off the dining table. it's all very exciting.
12.28.24 [on the F train]
this could be the weekend i finally get around to arranging the heap of silk flowers i've been saving up to create a european-ish sidewalk-boutique arch to hide all the crap we've piled on top of our kitchen cabinets. i still don't really know how i'll anchor them so that they look dimensional and fabulous without making it virtually impossible to access the crap they'll be obscuring, but that's something i can't really know until i haul out the ladder and packing tape and get going. (there's a version of this DIY in which i make, i don't know, a wall-spanning little roll of chicken wire or floral foam or something to serve as that base, but i think at the end of the day i'll be coming back to packing tape.) i swooped by michaels the other day to feast on heavily-discounted seasonal flowers and wired ribbon and found neither; most of the christmas-ish stuff on clearance was stocking-stuffer trinkety business, and who wants that? i dropped off a print i've been meaning to frame for several months and got a dopamine hit that felt a little like finishing an apartment-wide dusting jag. i'm puttering thus now because i was teasing a blogger about how she should feature a tour of our place—who else has so many copies of nineteen eighty-four, a rhinoceros head made of cargo pants, and an unflattering michel gondry portrait?—and she said yes, let's do it, so at some point in the new year a photographer will come over and memorialize all the weird little crafts i've made instead of progress on paying work. my motivation here is something like my friend abbe's when she and her now-husband were moving from brooklyn to philly, though we aren't going anywhere in a literal sense: she wanted to suspend the place she loved in amber, to leave a little fossil record of what she'd assembled around her over the years. she first contacted an interior photographer she found through another online tour, and that person said her rates were high but if she pitched the project to a site, said site would pay for her work, and lo! a tour came together. in our case there is, of course, a little of my look-at-me-don't-look-at-me craving for strangers' no-stakes approval, which is...pretty harmless, i guess? and i get to talk about my mom and sisters and friends? i am strongly tempted to stage our bedroom with the still-unfinished english paper piecing quilt i assembled in the first years of the pandemic, and just admit that even though it's not quite done i want people to see it; it feels like transparency is the best approach to whatever this is, though i will also be jamming a lot of stuff in our closets and have already lugged home a bunch of those vacuum storage bags people use to minimize their linens.
what dad and i had planned as a post-holiday central park walk turned into a manhattan-spanning trek yesterday; we met at columbus circle and wandered up the western side of the paths, then cut into the upper west side in search of bulk holiday cards he could use for gifting at his office. i promised he'd find a bunch at my old nonprofit bookstore (not so!), so we took the subway down to soho and wandered uptown again after failing. he said i'd never brought him to the bookstore before? that feels wrong, but i can't prove otherwise, and since he clearly doesn't remember it in its glory, which is why i'd hope he's mistaken, it doesn't matter. i guided him to a beloved taqueria on st. mark's and a bakery i frequent in cooper square, and he will remember those. after walking all the way back up to the east 90s and meeting up with our spouses for dinner i abruptly ran out of gas, which hopefully didn't read as intensely as it felt; surely it was an okay night, even if my face lost the ability to do pleasant face-things. i am not expecting to change significantly in the new year, but maybe we'll all have a bit more energy and a rising tide will lift all butts? this is my wish for the people. i really don't want to fall asleep on this train.
what dad and i had planned as a post-holiday central park walk turned into a manhattan-spanning trek yesterday; we met at columbus circle and wandered up the western side of the paths, then cut into the upper west side in search of bulk holiday cards he could use for gifting at his office. i promised he'd find a bunch at my old nonprofit bookstore (not so!), so we took the subway down to soho and wandered uptown again after failing. he said i'd never brought him to the bookstore before? that feels wrong, but i can't prove otherwise, and since he clearly doesn't remember it in its glory, which is why i'd hope he's mistaken, it doesn't matter. i guided him to a beloved taqueria on st. mark's and a bakery i frequent in cooper square, and he will remember those. after walking all the way back up to the east 90s and meeting up with our spouses for dinner i abruptly ran out of gas, which hopefully didn't read as intensely as it felt; surely it was an okay night, even if my face lost the ability to do pleasant face-things. i am not expecting to change significantly in the new year, but maybe we'll all have a bit more energy and a rising tide will lift all butts? this is my wish for the people. i really don't want to fall asleep on this train.
12.27.22 [on the B train]
i was going to start emma straub's newest book last night and couldn't find it, which is mildly concerning, as it's a big-ass hardcover that has been waggling its eyebrows at me from my etagere-nightstand for a week. it is not under the bed, or under a pile of folded laundry, or behind groceries, or shelved. is it possible i didn't buy it after all? my TBR pile is tall, and i am very undisciplined about adding to it and reprioritizing what's in it, so anything is possible - but i don't think this is one of those things i dreamed and am now thinking is a memory. am i one of the snails in the gastropodlighting news that resurfaced on social media this week? also unlikely, given my relationship with salt, but then again there's this end-of-the-year relationship with mucus.
speaking of emma straub, 2022 was the year i really made myself comfortable among fellow commenters on a popular lifestyle blog. (given that the majority of my freelance work has almost always been on that beat, i'm not really sure why this came as such a surprise.) though i don't share the community's interest in meg ryan's film fashion, podcasts, or non-underwire bras, it was a delightful shock to realize i do like, say, elizabeth strout (and ended up reading all of her olive kitteridge and lucy barton books in two big gulps this year; joe and i both liked the olive miniseries). i really like being pointed at rare john derian sales and, uh, have invested in an astronaut linocut and an embroidered velvet bat accordingly. but the real draw is that i can’t deny the fact that they like me. right now, they like me! they aren't shy about saying so, and i've grown to feel that i have a little pod of strangers rooting for me on the internets. i think and hope i'm a bright spot for them as they are for me? sometimes self-care is taking compliments?
speaking of emma straub, 2022 was the year i really made myself comfortable among fellow commenters on a popular lifestyle blog. (given that the majority of my freelance work has almost always been on that beat, i'm not really sure why this came as such a surprise.) though i don't share the community's interest in meg ryan's film fashion, podcasts, or non-underwire bras, it was a delightful shock to realize i do like, say, elizabeth strout (and ended up reading all of her olive kitteridge and lucy barton books in two big gulps this year; joe and i both liked the olive miniseries). i really like being pointed at rare john derian sales and, uh, have invested in an astronaut linocut and an embroidered velvet bat accordingly. but the real draw is that i can’t deny the fact that they like me. right now, they like me! they aren't shy about saying so, and i've grown to feel that i have a little pod of strangers rooting for me on the internets. i think and hope i'm a bright spot for them as they are for me? sometimes self-care is taking compliments?
12.25.22
i'm not on a train! i mean, as far as i know i'm not on a train. for all i know i could be an extraterrestrial's in-flight movie, in which case i had better not be an amazon studios project.* now more than ever, fuck those guys.
chouette (book). i wish i could remember where i first heard of this novel. knowing my interests, i probably just perked up when someone said it was the story of a woman who gave birth to an owl-baby? that both is and isn't literal; the narrator's daughter is and is not an owl (i think some review said she seemed most like an eastern screech-owl, but i read a lot about owls and could be remembering that from something else). the maternal urges and feelings she describes are frequently repulsive to me, and once i realized that and started sitting with my discomfort and thinking about how i tend to other [the verb] people who are really into their children, well. claire oshetsky's dust flap bio notes that chouette "draws on her own experiences of motherhood," and i know that she has a child, but it's, ah, safe to say this isn't autofiction. from here, it's a novel about what it is like to be the birthing parent of an uncommon child, and what it is like to disagree fundamentally and strenuously with one's coparent about how to approach an uncommon child, and reading it made me a more compassionate person. i've read a lot of strange books about mothers this year; i prefer this one to rachel yoder's nightbitch, which i also liked, and claire vaye watkins's i love you but i've chosen darkness, which was wild when it fictionalized watkins's experience as the daughter of an especially notorious member of the manson family and also weirdly annoying in its treatment of polyamorous people? i don't feel the need to sit with my annoyance in the same way i recognized and was ashamed of the way i think about parents; i support polyamorous people and wish them all the ease and happiness in the world, i just find the procedures of their love lives boring. i find the procedures of just about everyone's love lives boring! also "joyfriend" is the silliest word in town. chouette is worth reading.
the harbinger (film). i learned of the brooklyn horror film festival's existence just as it started this year and wish i could have seen more, but oh, am i thrilled i got to see this; it's a dream-logic tragedy about the pandemic in new york (and everywhere, really, but especially about new york; it was shot here in 2021, and it got the atmosphere of being here in 2020 just right with all kinds of little touches that were agonizing and therapeutic at the same time?) and mental illness is one of the best things i saw this year. i don't want to say too much about it, but i will say that it was a great relief to see several of the actors and writer/director andy mitton at the q&a afterward, for secret reasons.
katjes (plant-based gummi candy). the day i realized my childhood german friends didn't actually know what they were talking about when they contended that haribo goldbären were made with vegetarian gelatin (not a thing) wasn't one of the worst days of my life, but it wasn't a good one. katjes doesn't use palm oil, either! i spent a lot of time in grocery store candy aisles, for science, when we were in berlin this fall, and am here to say that their rainbow gummies are, like, several orders of magnitude better than veg-friendly haribo. (aside: haribo doesn't use palm oil, and almost all sugar used in the UK is vegan.) anyway, katjes seems to have scored some big stateside distribution deals, and their stuff turns up at duane reade and walgreens every now and again (and at economy candy). exciting and dangerous!
chouette (book). i wish i could remember where i first heard of this novel. knowing my interests, i probably just perked up when someone said it was the story of a woman who gave birth to an owl-baby? that both is and isn't literal; the narrator's daughter is and is not an owl (i think some review said she seemed most like an eastern screech-owl, but i read a lot about owls and could be remembering that from something else). the maternal urges and feelings she describes are frequently repulsive to me, and once i realized that and started sitting with my discomfort and thinking about how i tend to other [the verb] people who are really into their children, well. claire oshetsky's dust flap bio notes that chouette "draws on her own experiences of motherhood," and i know that she has a child, but it's, ah, safe to say this isn't autofiction. from here, it's a novel about what it is like to be the birthing parent of an uncommon child, and what it is like to disagree fundamentally and strenuously with one's coparent about how to approach an uncommon child, and reading it made me a more compassionate person. i've read a lot of strange books about mothers this year; i prefer this one to rachel yoder's nightbitch, which i also liked, and claire vaye watkins's i love you but i've chosen darkness, which was wild when it fictionalized watkins's experience as the daughter of an especially notorious member of the manson family and also weirdly annoying in its treatment of polyamorous people? i don't feel the need to sit with my annoyance in the same way i recognized and was ashamed of the way i think about parents; i support polyamorous people and wish them all the ease and happiness in the world, i just find the procedures of their love lives boring. i find the procedures of just about everyone's love lives boring! also "joyfriend" is the silliest word in town. chouette is worth reading.
the harbinger (film). i learned of the brooklyn horror film festival's existence just as it started this year and wish i could have seen more, but oh, am i thrilled i got to see this; it's a dream-logic tragedy about the pandemic in new york (and everywhere, really, but especially about new york; it was shot here in 2021, and it got the atmosphere of being here in 2020 just right with all kinds of little touches that were agonizing and therapeutic at the same time?) and mental illness is one of the best things i saw this year. i don't want to say too much about it, but i will say that it was a great relief to see several of the actors and writer/director andy mitton at the q&a afterward, for secret reasons.
katjes (plant-based gummi candy). the day i realized my childhood german friends didn't actually know what they were talking about when they contended that haribo goldbären were made with vegetarian gelatin (not a thing) wasn't one of the worst days of my life, but it wasn't a good one. katjes doesn't use palm oil, either! i spent a lot of time in grocery store candy aisles, for science, when we were in berlin this fall, and am here to say that their rainbow gummies are, like, several orders of magnitude better than veg-friendly haribo. (aside: haribo doesn't use palm oil, and almost all sugar used in the UK is vegan.) anyway, katjes seems to have scored some big stateside distribution deals, and their stuff turns up at duane reade and walgreens every now and again (and at economy candy). exciting and dangerous!
*i enjoyed sea of tranquility's handling of the simulation hypothesis, though i didn't enjoy it quite enough to include it in this CONSUMED, apparently. i really enjoyed how a slate writer interviewed emily st. john mandel last week per her twitter request so that she could say that she is not married, have it credibly reported, and then update her time-capsule wikipedia page accordingly. as it happens, earlier this year *i* helped someone update their wikipedia page because they needed information related to the dissolution of their marriage corrected! they have not written any science fiction, as far as i know.
08.07.21
so this comparatively-unknown literary magazine just published this creepy sexual poem named for and about a very well known writer whose bestselling essay collection i read a year or two ago and whose parents, i read last night when i was struggling to fall asleep, were once investigated for human trafficking, as someone discovered last year? (lit twitter and weird twitter and weird lit twitter are all over this, the poem, because it's both unsporting clickbait and because the writing is so bad that it's typically referred to as "the poem," the loose consensus is that one should avoid it if possible, for both reasons).*
when i finally went down around five this morning i dreamed that i went to a new, fancy salon-retail-organic-garden** hybrid place, for i needed a haircut, and my stylist was the writer. i explained to her that i envisioned bangs, but she would have to come up with some way to texturize them because i have a cowlick at my right temple and my hair has always parted like curtains right there. i also wanted a pretty short pixie cut, but skewing femme, please, so go soft at the edges and follow a rounded shape at the back of my head, but otherwise i trusted her to do whatever she thought was right. things started off badly, as she accused me of leaving bleach on for far too long when i prepped for dyeing my hair blue at home (true, i ended up with some little scabs last time after frying myself), and then she kept wandering off. the appointment began in the early afternoon, but by early evening we were under a scraggly live oak in the organic garden and the writer still hadn't gotten to work. i knelt before her as though we were gawain and the green knight*** as she finally, finally, started to razor the back of my neck. "if you had a boob**** that was floating in a vat of fluid, what would you do to make it float higher or lower? that's what you can think about while i do this," she said. one of the dickensian orphans gathered around us piped up: one should add stones to the vat, which would increase the volume of its contents and elevate the boob. that's stupid, i said. i would add a fluid with lower specific gravity than that of the boob-fluid if i wanted the boob to sink, and a fluid with higher specific gravity if i wanted it to rise.
when i finally went down around five this morning i dreamed that i went to a new, fancy salon-retail-organic-garden** hybrid place, for i needed a haircut, and my stylist was the writer. i explained to her that i envisioned bangs, but she would have to come up with some way to texturize them because i have a cowlick at my right temple and my hair has always parted like curtains right there. i also wanted a pretty short pixie cut, but skewing femme, please, so go soft at the edges and follow a rounded shape at the back of my head, but otherwise i trusted her to do whatever she thought was right. things started off badly, as she accused me of leaving bleach on for far too long when i prepped for dyeing my hair blue at home (true, i ended up with some little scabs last time after frying myself), and then she kept wandering off. the appointment began in the early afternoon, but by early evening we were under a scraggly live oak in the organic garden and the writer still hadn't gotten to work. i knelt before her as though we were gawain and the green knight*** as she finally, finally, started to razor the back of my neck. "if you had a boob**** that was floating in a vat of fluid, what would you do to make it float higher or lower? that's what you can think about while i do this," she said. one of the dickensian orphans gathered around us piped up: one should add stones to the vat, which would increase the volume of its contents and elevate the boob. that's stupid, i said. i would add a fluid with lower specific gravity than that of the boob-fluid if i wanted the boob to sink, and a fluid with higher specific gravity if i wanted it to rise.
*i immediately found and read it, and i'm now sorry to have given it a click and to have those lines in my head, but here we are.
**i'm on a nordic-authors kick and halfway through auður ava ólafsdóttir's the greenhouse, which i'm enjoying; her miss iceland is a fascinating look at her country's bro-centric midcentury literary culture.
***we saw that movie yesterday; i thought it was quite grand, particularly alicia vikander's green speech, though the CGI fox wasn't animated very realistically.
****ólafsdóttir's hotel silence, also good, concludes with the recovery of three disembodied breasts. like japanese in translation, icelandic in translation has, i find, a very distinctive/characteristic(?) cadence, and it's soothing.
05.27.21
i set at least three alarms to remind me that i had to make a phone call at eight tonight. i was especially nervous about it because the first time i booked the phone call i hadn't realized that i had extant plans when it was supposed to take place, so i spent a couple of days playing email ping pong with various creative directors and friends-of-friends to find someone who could be the person to dial in that first time. this phone call, though, this evening, this was the one for me. it was an experimental theatre project (if i have written to you to encourage you to participate in said project, stop reading now and come back when you've had your call) via the public, and by the by, i recently learned that joe papp kicked up the public's shakespeare in the park with julius caesar at the outdoor venue across the street where i had one of my very last cigarettes at like dawn this past fall. (ex-smokers who tell you they don't miss smoking are dirty liars.)
so i called this number at exactly eight this evening and listened to a bit of hold music while i waited to be connected with another participant, and to join them in following prompts made by a voice-bot that would helm our interaction with one another. we would not be having a conversation, we were told. it would sound like a conversation and yet it would be something else, a thing in which we gradually received portraits of one another. when my fellow participant finally picked up we were told to decide which of us would be A and which would be B. i asked her—per her voice, i assumed she was a her—if she would like to be A, and she said yes.
the bot asked her when she was born; 1972, she said. the bot then asked me if i was alive then, but i didn't quite hear it (the bot explained at the beginning of the call that it might be difficult to hear sometimes but would not repeat itself), so she repeated the question. no, i wasn't. it asked her if she had any siblings, and she said yes, one. it asked her how many siblings she has now, and she said none.
it asked her if she had any particular talents; writing, she said. it asked me awhile later if i had one, and i said writing; she cheered a little in the background, one of the few times either of us broke from the specific responses the bot requested of us. it led us through a scenario involving a blue car's breakdown on a desert highway, then asked us if one of us would build a fire after night fell as we walked to find assistance. i'd build a fire, i said. it asked us to count stars, alternating with each other, and it asked her to "hum that song you love so much." "i can't sing at all," she said, "just imagine me humming 'sister christian.'" she hummed a little of "sister christian" for me anyway. it asked me to think of something i knew by heart and to share it, and so i said "let us go then, you and i, when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table." it asked her to describe someone who had taught her something important, and to describe what that person was doing and wearing now. she described her mother, it was clear, and it was also clear that her mother was no longer alive. what is she doing now? "smiling." what is she wearing? "probably something checkered." what is a thing someone might not notice about her? "her little lower teeth, crowded so sweetly in her mouth." later in the call we were both asked what we would remember about one another. "dusty," she said, referring to a boy i knew in elementary school that i had described as calm and kind. "her teeth crowding so sweetly together," i said, even though the real answer was when she said that she had no siblings. i was asked to describe where she would be if she were in the room with me, and i said she would be sitting on the edge of my bed. she was asked what i would be holding if she could see me; a candle, she said. i think that maybe she is in new jersey or at least grew up in new jersey, for she talked about her childhood schoohouse in trenton and how important trenton was to her. she has blue eyes and blonde hair, and her beloved husband's name is dean. she knows i have blue hair and green eyes and that my husband's name is joe; she knows that i was born in los angeles, but i don't know where she was born. we were asked to sit still and count our heartbeats out to one another, and mine was faster than hers and i wondered how she felt about that. i was asked to describe something fragile in my room and i told her and the bot all about my crystal badger. at the end of the call we were instructed to say goodbye to one another, and i thought maybe she didn't realize she was supposed to go first. actually she was just taking her time.
so i called this number at exactly eight this evening and listened to a bit of hold music while i waited to be connected with another participant, and to join them in following prompts made by a voice-bot that would helm our interaction with one another. we would not be having a conversation, we were told. it would sound like a conversation and yet it would be something else, a thing in which we gradually received portraits of one another. when my fellow participant finally picked up we were told to decide which of us would be A and which would be B. i asked her—per her voice, i assumed she was a her—if she would like to be A, and she said yes.
the bot asked her when she was born; 1972, she said. the bot then asked me if i was alive then, but i didn't quite hear it (the bot explained at the beginning of the call that it might be difficult to hear sometimes but would not repeat itself), so she repeated the question. no, i wasn't. it asked her if she had any siblings, and she said yes, one. it asked her how many siblings she has now, and she said none.
it asked her if she had any particular talents; writing, she said. it asked me awhile later if i had one, and i said writing; she cheered a little in the background, one of the few times either of us broke from the specific responses the bot requested of us. it led us through a scenario involving a blue car's breakdown on a desert highway, then asked us if one of us would build a fire after night fell as we walked to find assistance. i'd build a fire, i said. it asked us to count stars, alternating with each other, and it asked her to "hum that song you love so much." "i can't sing at all," she said, "just imagine me humming 'sister christian.'" she hummed a little of "sister christian" for me anyway. it asked me to think of something i knew by heart and to share it, and so i said "let us go then, you and i, when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table." it asked her to describe someone who had taught her something important, and to describe what that person was doing and wearing now. she described her mother, it was clear, and it was also clear that her mother was no longer alive. what is she doing now? "smiling." what is she wearing? "probably something checkered." what is a thing someone might not notice about her? "her little lower teeth, crowded so sweetly in her mouth." later in the call we were both asked what we would remember about one another. "dusty," she said, referring to a boy i knew in elementary school that i had described as calm and kind. "her teeth crowding so sweetly together," i said, even though the real answer was when she said that she had no siblings. i was asked to describe where she would be if she were in the room with me, and i said she would be sitting on the edge of my bed. she was asked what i would be holding if she could see me; a candle, she said. i think that maybe she is in new jersey or at least grew up in new jersey, for she talked about her childhood schoohouse in trenton and how important trenton was to her. she has blue eyes and blonde hair, and her beloved husband's name is dean. she knows i have blue hair and green eyes and that my husband's name is joe; she knows that i was born in los angeles, but i don't know where she was born. we were asked to sit still and count our heartbeats out to one another, and mine was faster than hers and i wondered how she felt about that. i was asked to describe something fragile in my room and i told her and the bot all about my crystal badger. at the end of the call we were instructed to say goodbye to one another, and i thought maybe she didn't realize she was supposed to go first. actually she was just taking her time.
04.25.21
i competed in my first american crossword puzzle tournament this weekend! i signed up to participate in person last year, booked a weekend at the stamford marriott ("you kick butt in that tournament!" said my reservation gal) and called dibs on a seat at the welcome dinner, then was promptly informed that the tournament was pandemic-stymied and maybe moving to later in the spring, or beyond (have you made plans based on will shortz's analysis of a potential global pandemic? it's chewy). i felt pretty good about how i was doing as of early this saturday afternoon, as i had four clean puzzles and had only missed one square in the bloodbath that is puzzle five, but two of my first five scores weren't showing up. but hey! clean puzzles, decent speed, and i reported my score glitches and figured the correction would puff me up to the first quartile, based on my back-of-the-bookmark-i-found-on-the-floor math.
no, no. i got a couple emails from the tech team at the ACPT this morning explaining that i'd started my puzzles far later than i should have (35 minutes in one case), per the rules (which they hyperlinked)—though when i read those rules they just said that they "must be solved when they are released." well, sure? i asked in the global chat about how long contestants had to start each of the puzzles, and apparently it's 60 seconds (per something will shortz said in an introductory livestreamed thing yesterday that was not described as compulsory.) internets, i was in no danger of doing really well in this tournament, but i got a little shirty when i got that email today about my lack of alacrity. i know that my reading comprehension is execrable as a general proposition, so when i know that i've overcorrected you are also going to know that i've overcorrected.
last night was the mingling portion of the tournament, and i joined zoom chats for both a 19-year-old standup comic from canada who told crossword jokes and a powerpoint presentation from a man who's had 13 puzzles published in the new york times (when i logged into the room he said, "oh, lauren has joined, so i should start over!") and had extensive correspondence between himself and both will shortz and will shortz's assistant. most of the saturday night presenters seem to have actually been at the stamford marriott—the comic was in the basement and made cracks about will shortz's EDM leaking down through the ceiling, and the puzzle designer was clearly sitting at a table in a ballroom with big old headphones and other loud-talking presenters leaking into his scene from elsewhere in the room.
things you should know about this year's confluence, per my notes:
i am usually a very sloppy rule-reader, but i read them all for this, and i think that you’re kind of asking someone to nitpick with you if you tell them their scores were DQ’ed because of rules (that you then hyperlink) and those rules don’t support what you said. i even re-read them just now to see if there was a Will Shortz Voice of God clause that made anything he said instant canon, and there is not; the closest they have is a line about how their decisions are final.
also please note that there is a player in the global chat known as Won’t Shortz
there is no talent show this year. instead there is a pre-taped crossword esoterica presentation.
oh man there’s a musical component.
it’s a rapped retelling of theseus and the minotaur
holy shit. consensus in the global chat: that totally slapped
okay, filmed finals with color commentary coming up
whenever someone’s name is called they list their letters’ point count afterward, eg OPHIRA EISENBERG (15)
much joking about how anyone who got the pfizer vaccine doesn’t have to film themselves completing the puzzles.
drawing out the pregame banter because the actual final will be about 3 minutes long.
asking the presumptive (and very taciturn) winner if he’s being held against his will.
also much trash talk: “pencils are for golfers and children”
OH GOD FASTEST SOLVER HAD A TYPO
and seeing the way they typed i get why this is a tech person’s game - they try incorrect things based on probability vs putting in words they know for sure first, and they don’t go straight down the acrosses and then straight through the downs - they solve quadrants.
in my heart and on my scratch pad i was in the top quartile, reader.
no, no. i got a couple emails from the tech team at the ACPT this morning explaining that i'd started my puzzles far later than i should have (35 minutes in one case), per the rules (which they hyperlinked)—though when i read those rules they just said that they "must be solved when they are released." well, sure? i asked in the global chat about how long contestants had to start each of the puzzles, and apparently it's 60 seconds (per something will shortz said in an introductory livestreamed thing yesterday that was not described as compulsory.) internets, i was in no danger of doing really well in this tournament, but i got a little shirty when i got that email today about my lack of alacrity. i know that my reading comprehension is execrable as a general proposition, so when i know that i've overcorrected you are also going to know that i've overcorrected.
last night was the mingling portion of the tournament, and i joined zoom chats for both a 19-year-old standup comic from canada who told crossword jokes and a powerpoint presentation from a man who's had 13 puzzles published in the new york times (when i logged into the room he said, "oh, lauren has joined, so i should start over!") and had extensive correspondence between himself and both will shortz and will shortz's assistant. most of the saturday night presenters seem to have actually been at the stamford marriott—the comic was in the basement and made cracks about will shortz's EDM leaking down through the ceiling, and the puzzle designer was clearly sitting at a table in a ballroom with big old headphones and other loud-talking presenters leaking into his scene from elsewhere in the room.
things you should know about this year's confluence, per my notes:
i am usually a very sloppy rule-reader, but i read them all for this, and i think that you’re kind of asking someone to nitpick with you if you tell them their scores were DQ’ed because of rules (that you then hyperlink) and those rules don’t support what you said. i even re-read them just now to see if there was a Will Shortz Voice of God clause that made anything he said instant canon, and there is not; the closest they have is a line about how their decisions are final.
also please note that there is a player in the global chat known as Won’t Shortz
there is no talent show this year. instead there is a pre-taped crossword esoterica presentation.
oh man there’s a musical component.
it’s a rapped retelling of theseus and the minotaur
holy shit. consensus in the global chat: that totally slapped
okay, filmed finals with color commentary coming up
whenever someone’s name is called they list their letters’ point count afterward, eg OPHIRA EISENBERG (15)
much joking about how anyone who got the pfizer vaccine doesn’t have to film themselves completing the puzzles.
drawing out the pregame banter because the actual final will be about 3 minutes long.
asking the presumptive (and very taciturn) winner if he’s being held against his will.
also much trash talk: “pencils are for golfers and children”
OH GOD FASTEST SOLVER HAD A TYPO
and seeing the way they typed i get why this is a tech person’s game - they try incorrect things based on probability vs putting in words they know for sure first, and they don’t go straight down the acrosses and then straight through the downs - they solve quadrants.
in my heart and on my scratch pad i was in the top quartile, reader.
04.02.21
the dirty dozen {twelve youtube comments about kate bush}
01
Doctor : you have 4 minutes to live
Me : play Wuthering Heights
Doctor : but it's 4:26
God : it's ok
02
friend: your crush is coming, quick act normal
me:
03 Absolutely sad and strange underrated song. One of the favorites songs of 2pac.
04 If she was a ghost, she wouldn't have to ask to get back in, she'd simply go through the wall.
05 St Vincent said in a interview that Wuthering Heights is her karaoke song
06 They play this continuously at the supermarket I work at. The speakers are on a really weird volume and all you can hear is the high pitches part of the vocals and it took me forever to Shazam, glad I found it though
07 no algorithm brought you here..... you searched for it
08
It's just a song it can't hurt you
the song:
09 That first pointed synth goes right into my rib.
10 So 36 years later, and we all agree this is still a God-tier song, right?
11 Play this at my funeral, and I will not come back to haunt you.
12 Dancing in my kitchen with Samsung at 75 years old, stay young everybody
01
Doctor : you have 4 minutes to live
Me : play Wuthering Heights
Doctor : but it's 4:26
God : it's ok
02
friend: your crush is coming, quick act normal
me:
03 Absolutely sad and strange underrated song. One of the favorites songs of 2pac.
04 If she was a ghost, she wouldn't have to ask to get back in, she'd simply go through the wall.
05 St Vincent said in a interview that Wuthering Heights is her karaoke song
06 They play this continuously at the supermarket I work at. The speakers are on a really weird volume and all you can hear is the high pitches part of the vocals and it took me forever to Shazam, glad I found it though
07 no algorithm brought you here..... you searched for it
08
It's just a song it can't hurt you
the song:
09 That first pointed synth goes right into my rib.
10 So 36 years later, and we all agree this is still a God-tier song, right?
11 Play this at my funeral, and I will not come back to haunt you.
12 Dancing in my kitchen with Samsung at 75 years old, stay young everybody
02.08.21
since the beginning of the year i've been doing team-based escape-from-zombies fitness-tracker challenges with my college roommate jen and her various social and professional circles; it's been a delightful way to fold check-ins with a dear friend into my daily life and has also turned me into an aaron sorkin character. removing old green nail polish? can totally happen while i'm racewalking around the apartment. emailing a dermatologist for a story follow-up? can totally happen while i'm racewalking around the apartment. worrying about what's going on in the bartlet biden administration? fooled you, i stopped doing that at the end of january. okay, i mostly stopped doing that at the end of january.
it turns out that motivation is a much bigger problem for me when the world is just mostly on fire instead of completely on fire. i've been so frayed and overcommitted for most of the pandemic that i didn't think about the fact that i was doing too much; now that, i don't know, we're watching two hours of news a night instead of three and i'm quilting at the coffee table instead of writing letters to georgia voters as we watch, i've started to shy away from the work that wasn't a problem a few months ago, or wasn't a problem i could avoid. that's where the racewalking out of the zombies' clutches comes in: you're not really procrastinating if you're getting steps en route to returning a library book (for which you won't even get late-fined until june) to help friends bust through a roadblock of undead wolves. the work is still happening, but i've started asking for the leeway that social media assures me i've deserved all this time. i think i ruined my sneakers on a walk up to midtown that got us to the next safe house just as some bar television played the national anthem at the beginning of the super bowl and it was totally worth it (also they had started to smell, a bit).
it turns out that motivation is a much bigger problem for me when the world is just mostly on fire instead of completely on fire. i've been so frayed and overcommitted for most of the pandemic that i didn't think about the fact that i was doing too much; now that, i don't know, we're watching two hours of news a night instead of three and i'm quilting at the coffee table instead of writing letters to georgia voters as we watch, i've started to shy away from the work that wasn't a problem a few months ago, or wasn't a problem i could avoid. that's where the racewalking out of the zombies' clutches comes in: you're not really procrastinating if you're getting steps en route to returning a library book (for which you won't even get late-fined until june) to help friends bust through a roadblock of undead wolves. the work is still happening, but i've started asking for the leeway that social media assures me i've deserved all this time. i think i ruined my sneakers on a walk up to midtown that got us to the next safe house just as some bar television played the national anthem at the beginning of the super bowl and it was totally worth it (also they had started to smell, a bit).
01.01.21
2021: THE YEAR IN REVIEW
i bought razor blades, soap, and kitty litter.
i arranged the second row of the quilt i started sewing together last night, then cut and basted fabric for a bunch of new pieces.
i went for a walk and picked up a prescription for joe.
i listened to a baxter dury record.
i switched pokémon go buddies.
i took some recycling downstairs.
i bought razor blades, soap, and kitty litter.
i arranged the second row of the quilt i started sewing together last night, then cut and basted fabric for a bunch of new pieces.
i went for a walk and picked up a prescription for joe.
i listened to a baxter dury record.
i switched pokémon go buddies.
i took some recycling downstairs.
04.23.20
was the neighborhood guy who masked his mini-pinscher prescient? i hear that two cats have contracted coronavirus, though the news, thank goodness, seems to be that they will recover and that they won't pass their setbacks to their humans.
we persist. i've been seized with a wild urge to chain-smoke, à la every fictional world-wearied beat cop confronted with the eleventh-hour, extra-grisly case that will end up defining her or his career, and have spit on that impulse by reactivating my long-dormant pokémon go account (abandoned in the summer of '16 when i realized that i'd gone three weeks without talking to my mother).* i sure hope that pokémon go isn't a villainous, terrible app; it pings my interests in animal husbandry, hoarding, quantified physical activity, vexing the neighbors' kids, and so much more.**
that's self-care in these parts, then: weekly grocery runs for the neighbors, daily walks with joe, near-constant local-tween-owning. i've been quilting and watching my brilliant friend. getting into fistfights with bus stops is totally normal.
*on my first post-pokémon walk i stumbled upon A LIVE EEL IN THE STREET sine-waving on land like a regular old black snake that couldn't breathe; i did my damndest to catch and return it to its grand street live-seafood tupperware tub and have a new appreciation for that whole slippery-as-an-eel thing. i saw said eel en route to my local bank branch, where i was to explain that someone had accidentally deposited a random $18,000 into my checking account (true story, i was mixed up with another, fancier contractor); when i arrived my hands were eel-slimy and bowery-grimy, so i wiped them on the carpet before i approached the teller. "oh hi," [spreads mysterious goop on the floor] "i have a lot of money that isn't mine."
**on this afternoon's walk, pokémon go taught me that charlie parker lived on avenue b; while tech will unquestionably be one of the deaths of us, i will take that factoid with me to hell.
we persist. i've been seized with a wild urge to chain-smoke, à la every fictional world-wearied beat cop confronted with the eleventh-hour, extra-grisly case that will end up defining her or his career, and have spit on that impulse by reactivating my long-dormant pokémon go account (abandoned in the summer of '16 when i realized that i'd gone three weeks without talking to my mother).* i sure hope that pokémon go isn't a villainous, terrible app; it pings my interests in animal husbandry, hoarding, quantified physical activity, vexing the neighbors' kids, and so much more.**
that's self-care in these parts, then: weekly grocery runs for the neighbors, daily walks with joe, near-constant local-tween-owning. i've been quilting and watching my brilliant friend. getting into fistfights with bus stops is totally normal.
*on my first post-pokémon walk i stumbled upon A LIVE EEL IN THE STREET sine-waving on land like a regular old black snake that couldn't breathe; i did my damndest to catch and return it to its grand street live-seafood tupperware tub and have a new appreciation for that whole slippery-as-an-eel thing. i saw said eel en route to my local bank branch, where i was to explain that someone had accidentally deposited a random $18,000 into my checking account (true story, i was mixed up with another, fancier contractor); when i arrived my hands were eel-slimy and bowery-grimy, so i wiped them on the carpet before i approached the teller. "oh hi," [spreads mysterious goop on the floor] "i have a lot of money that isn't mine."
**on this afternoon's walk, pokémon go taught me that charlie parker lived on avenue b; while tech will unquestionably be one of the deaths of us, i will take that factoid with me to hell.
04.09.20
i woke up at seven this morning and saw that L had just liked one of my instagram posts. i met her when her husband, a guy i've known since we were twelve, was on one of my trail relay teams a few years ago, and i will never forget how tenderly she smoothed sunblock across his scalp and cheeks every few hours (his little brother died of skin cancer in his teens). L had a baby girl a few weeks ago, and i don't know if her doctors allowed anyone into the room for her birth. L works for amazon.
E texted a few days ago to say that while we'd planned another video call for this weekend and she very much wants to be in touch, stress is even worse for her after that kind of contact because she associates it with crisis. she doesn't think she'll always feel like this, maybe in a few months—
our E abroad is vague about his training, but he seems to be a reservist. he was surprised when we said that we wouldn't necessarily fly across the country to our parents if we found out the virus had hospitalized one of them; i explained that there was a strong likelihood that we wouldn't be permitted to see them. E was asked to volunteer for early service and declined; he would want to take care of his parents if they fell ill. later he said he'd read that COVID-19 deaths felt like drowning. he is waiting.
E texted a few days ago to say that while we'd planned another video call for this weekend and she very much wants to be in touch, stress is even worse for her after that kind of contact because she associates it with crisis. she doesn't think she'll always feel like this, maybe in a few months—
our E abroad is vague about his training, but he seems to be a reservist. he was surprised when we said that we wouldn't necessarily fly across the country to our parents if we found out the virus had hospitalized one of them; i explained that there was a strong likelihood that we wouldn't be permitted to see them. E was asked to volunteer for early service and declined; he would want to take care of his parents if they fell ill. later he said he'd read that COVID-19 deaths felt like drowning. he is waiting.
12.17.19
the dirty dozen {excerpts from yelp reviews of crystal springs rhododendron garden*}
01 During our trip to Portland to see extended family, I set a goal of walking as much as I could.
02 I came across this online and realized it's not too far from our house. I thought it would be a nice excuse to get outside and do something on a decent weather day.
03 I will say there was one very big duck that I definitely got frightened of and I felt like the other ducks could probably feel my fear.***
04 Some poor fool was disappointed that there was no "foods." It's a fucking park, bring a picnic for yourself if you must have "foods" "because this is America ."
05 I went to the garden and the lady at the front desk had the audacity to yell at me and my Girl Scout troop. All we did was walk up to have a ceremony with my girls to celebrate growth in there life. and she screamed at us with a horrible tone.
06 Not a concern unless you have a bee allergy. It is a garden, so there are, naturally, bees around the area. Be aware of this if you are allergic to bees.
07 Turns out I spoiled an opportunity to get proposed to in the rain on the bridge by the lake. It's a perfect setting to be proposed to. The person that gets propose to here would be lucky.
08 Watch some birds do bird things. Sit by a pond or lake. Stare down a squirrel. All around good times.
09 If you're having a tough time deciding whether you want to procreate, there are usually enough well-behaved, cute kids here to push you over on the side of spending the quarter million dollars it will cost you over 18 years. And then you, too, can take your own cute, well-behaved kids here and hear them scream, "Look at the weird duck, Mommy!"
10 It's a garden. And like the many other gardens, foliage, parks, and recreational destinations in and around Portland, it's gorgeous, well maintained, and generally awesome. I love shit like this.
11 On the way out there was an enormous road sign that said "Inmate Work Crew Ahead" that wasn't there on the way in. Now, I'm sure they were all non-violent offenders but if I was a Mom with an infant in tow I think I would be a bit unnerved.
12 They have some hideous and rare type of goose here that has a red fleshy head similar to a turkey. Does anyone know what this hag bird is?****
*where we saw our first nutria!** we thought they were beavers and then that they were muskrats, but no, they were nutria.
**i pity the nutria, and the other invasive species portland rehabbers like the local audubon society won't help; it's not their fault they were brought here for their fur. we're an invasive species, too, and our fur is worthless.
***i'd totally forgotten joe is afraid of waterfowl until he startled away from a couple of canada geese. geese, no less! i'm a goose whisperer, he totally gets the family and friends discount!
****yeah, a muscovy duck, hater.
01 During our trip to Portland to see extended family, I set a goal of walking as much as I could.
02 I came across this online and realized it's not too far from our house. I thought it would be a nice excuse to get outside and do something on a decent weather day.
03 I will say there was one very big duck that I definitely got frightened of and I felt like the other ducks could probably feel my fear.***
04 Some poor fool was disappointed that there was no "foods." It's a fucking park, bring a picnic for yourself if you must have "foods" "because this is America ."
05 I went to the garden and the lady at the front desk had the audacity to yell at me and my Girl Scout troop. All we did was walk up to have a ceremony with my girls to celebrate growth in there life. and she screamed at us with a horrible tone.
06 Not a concern unless you have a bee allergy. It is a garden, so there are, naturally, bees around the area. Be aware of this if you are allergic to bees.
07 Turns out I spoiled an opportunity to get proposed to in the rain on the bridge by the lake. It's a perfect setting to be proposed to. The person that gets propose to here would be lucky.
08 Watch some birds do bird things. Sit by a pond or lake. Stare down a squirrel. All around good times.
09 If you're having a tough time deciding whether you want to procreate, there are usually enough well-behaved, cute kids here to push you over on the side of spending the quarter million dollars it will cost you over 18 years. And then you, too, can take your own cute, well-behaved kids here and hear them scream, "Look at the weird duck, Mommy!"
10 It's a garden. And like the many other gardens, foliage, parks, and recreational destinations in and around Portland, it's gorgeous, well maintained, and generally awesome. I love shit like this.
11 On the way out there was an enormous road sign that said "Inmate Work Crew Ahead" that wasn't there on the way in. Now, I'm sure they were all non-violent offenders but if I was a Mom with an infant in tow I think I would be a bit unnerved.
12 They have some hideous and rare type of goose here that has a red fleshy head similar to a turkey. Does anyone know what this hag bird is?****
*where we saw our first nutria!** we thought they were beavers and then that they were muskrats, but no, they were nutria.
**i pity the nutria, and the other invasive species portland rehabbers like the local audubon society won't help; it's not their fault they were brought here for their fur. we're an invasive species, too, and our fur is worthless.
***i'd totally forgotten joe is afraid of waterfowl until he startled away from a couple of canada geese. geese, no less! i'm a goose whisperer, he totally gets the family and friends discount!
****yeah, a muscovy duck, hater.
07.13.19
the dirty dozen {instagram accounts i appreciate}
01 @drlindseyfitzharris: a medical historian; i have yet to read her book on joseph lister and victorian medicine, but it's on the list for later this summer. posts fascinating, disturbing images of everything from shrunken heads at the warsaw ethnographic museum (processed with rocks and sand over fires, then worn around warriors' necks) to the french death mask that became what we know as the cpr doll. captions are mini-essays.
02 @secondshelfbooks: a boss new bookstore in london that focuses on rare and rediscovered books by and about women; sold me a boss inscribed copy of eavan boland's object lessons when we were in town this spring. a+ source for zelda fitzgerald's thoughts on breakfast, gorgeous woolf editions, modern dances for english ladies. go to there.
03 @asari.wildlife: turkish wildlife photographers abdullah and pinar; they said hello a year or so ago after i uploaded a few images of patients at the wild bird fund. what could be finer than glamour shots of long-eared owls, european bee-eaters, and common kingfishers? learning to greet them by their names (kulaklı orman baykuşu, arıkuşu, and yalıcapkını, respectively) in turkish, obvs.
04 @gatheredgrown: nate's the brother of a friend of a friend; he and his wife, emily, live on a small lake in rural northern minnesota and make, well, everything? it's hard for me to see things like the knife he forged and sheathed in a rawhide beaver tail, but it's impossible not to appreciate their craftsmanship and commitment to sustainability. i learned the term "competence porn" the other day; this is legit competence porn. bearpaw snowshoes! mukluks! a damn canoe! i try not to think about the bear fat in the birch syrup cookies.
05 @vandervonodd: the first and last time i wore a corset—for a rasputina concert with dirty uncle paul—i ended up freaking out in a denny's on el camino, a literal and spiritual place to which i hope i shall never return.* vander von odd (aka antonio yee) won the first season of dragula and makes me want to wear corsets and wigs and this cursèd dress, and to drop $350 on a victorian mourning collar. in a world where marilyn manson keeps whatever his version of a low profile is, vander von odd saves me.
06 @fiance_knowles: south african textile artist danielle clough last sold some of her original embroidered rackets when we were in india last fall, and i wanted one so badly that i spent almost a full day in goa trying to figure out how to jump into her online store as soon as they dropped (reader, i failed). she embroiders rackets, scrap metal, surgical masks...and shows the backs of her projects, oh my heart. look at these fucking portraits.
07 @drinkingwithchickens: i have yet to watch the second or third seasons of stranger things, but when i do i will put on my big bartender pants (a thing) and make kate's tribute to barb ("rum, curaçao, coconut water, and lime, with a drizzle of blood orange grenadine"). she'd be a wildly talented and entertaining garden-to-glass mixologist anyway (hi, peppered rose paloma and honey basil julep), but she has all these chickens and she shoots them with her drinks. a ginmaker i know checked out my instagram feed a few years ago, took note of all the birds and beverages, and gently steered me over to kate's. other boozestagrammers, please try harder.
08 @hannahflowers_tattoos: i follow a lot of tattoo artists (surprise), and the local ones in particular are dangerous as hell: why, i could be at kings avenue in fifteen minutes if i wore my running shoes. tasmanian artist hannah flowers is a leetle safer, as she's london-based and her work would require a big commitment (from both space-remaining-on-my-body and plunge-into-a-new-style perspectives), but not much: i gasp every time i see one of her art-nouveau / art deco / vargas-inspired women (and she's fantastic with animals, too, gulp). while i admire the traditional tattoo aesthetic, its female nudes tend to get me down; hannah's, on the other hand, feel like characters rather than objects. her skill with color and white detailing, particularly in faces, is flat-out stunning. okay fine, i kind of want a lady.
09 @isopresso_balloon: self-taught japanese artist masayoshi matsumoto spends between two and six hours weaving balloons—and that's it, no cheats like adhesives or embellishments—into critters like violin beetles, octopuses, colossal squids, snow monkeys...i'd say clowns, please try harder, but it's irresponsible to encourage clowns.
10 @TheAmandaWoods: amanda woods, an australian writer i met on a press trip in turkey,** has carved out a magnificent travel niche for herself: she's the flame-haired queen of super-fancy transportation (like the belmond grand hibernian, singapore air's new 787-10, the belmond royal scotsman, the venice simplon orient express...yeah). beat envy is rare for me, but i have a thing for trains, and she takes the kind of trips i thought joe and i were going to take when we booked a "deluxe" cabin from milan to berlin. i bet she has to solve murder mysteries on her trips all the time! happily, she's such a lovely person that i can just enjoy her agatha christie-ing vicariously and without rancor.
11 @angeladeane: angela deane's ghost photographs give me life; in my last year as an editor in an office i got myself through lulls and frustrations by paying homage to her with wite-out and magazine spreads in my cubicle. we actually own a print of one of her older works, and as soon as i get around to actually pulling it out of its mailer and framing it i will tell you precisely which one it is. strong work with witches, too.
12 @tasteofstreep: self-explanatory, and immensely satisfying.
*costumes and denny's and i have a weird past: at some point high school friends and i went to disneyland on halloween (which was free if you dressed up and got there early enough), and i dozed off at breakfast and woke up without the faintest idea of why i was wearing a nun's habit. harrowing.
**that shot on her homepage is from our cave hotel in cappadocia, my all-time favorite digs. we attempted to go rogue and take a hot-air-ballon trip one morning, but it was too windy.
01 @drlindseyfitzharris: a medical historian; i have yet to read her book on joseph lister and victorian medicine, but it's on the list for later this summer. posts fascinating, disturbing images of everything from shrunken heads at the warsaw ethnographic museum (processed with rocks and sand over fires, then worn around warriors' necks) to the french death mask that became what we know as the cpr doll. captions are mini-essays.
02 @secondshelfbooks: a boss new bookstore in london that focuses on rare and rediscovered books by and about women; sold me a boss inscribed copy of eavan boland's object lessons when we were in town this spring. a+ source for zelda fitzgerald's thoughts on breakfast, gorgeous woolf editions, modern dances for english ladies. go to there.
03 @asari.wildlife: turkish wildlife photographers abdullah and pinar; they said hello a year or so ago after i uploaded a few images of patients at the wild bird fund. what could be finer than glamour shots of long-eared owls, european bee-eaters, and common kingfishers? learning to greet them by their names (kulaklı orman baykuşu, arıkuşu, and yalıcapkını, respectively) in turkish, obvs.
04 @gatheredgrown: nate's the brother of a friend of a friend; he and his wife, emily, live on a small lake in rural northern minnesota and make, well, everything? it's hard for me to see things like the knife he forged and sheathed in a rawhide beaver tail, but it's impossible not to appreciate their craftsmanship and commitment to sustainability. i learned the term "competence porn" the other day; this is legit competence porn. bearpaw snowshoes! mukluks! a damn canoe! i try not to think about the bear fat in the birch syrup cookies.
05 @vandervonodd: the first and last time i wore a corset—for a rasputina concert with dirty uncle paul—i ended up freaking out in a denny's on el camino, a literal and spiritual place to which i hope i shall never return.* vander von odd (aka antonio yee) won the first season of dragula and makes me want to wear corsets and wigs and this cursèd dress, and to drop $350 on a victorian mourning collar. in a world where marilyn manson keeps whatever his version of a low profile is, vander von odd saves me.
06 @fiance_knowles: south african textile artist danielle clough last sold some of her original embroidered rackets when we were in india last fall, and i wanted one so badly that i spent almost a full day in goa trying to figure out how to jump into her online store as soon as they dropped (reader, i failed). she embroiders rackets, scrap metal, surgical masks...and shows the backs of her projects, oh my heart. look at these fucking portraits.
07 @drinkingwithchickens: i have yet to watch the second or third seasons of stranger things, but when i do i will put on my big bartender pants (a thing) and make kate's tribute to barb ("rum, curaçao, coconut water, and lime, with a drizzle of blood orange grenadine"). she'd be a wildly talented and entertaining garden-to-glass mixologist anyway (hi, peppered rose paloma and honey basil julep), but she has all these chickens and she shoots them with her drinks. a ginmaker i know checked out my instagram feed a few years ago, took note of all the birds and beverages, and gently steered me over to kate's. other boozestagrammers, please try harder.
08 @hannahflowers_tattoos: i follow a lot of tattoo artists (surprise), and the local ones in particular are dangerous as hell: why, i could be at kings avenue in fifteen minutes if i wore my running shoes. tasmanian artist hannah flowers is a leetle safer, as she's london-based and her work would require a big commitment (from both space-remaining-on-my-body and plunge-into-a-new-style perspectives), but not much: i gasp every time i see one of her art-nouveau / art deco / vargas-inspired women (and she's fantastic with animals, too, gulp). while i admire the traditional tattoo aesthetic, its female nudes tend to get me down; hannah's, on the other hand, feel like characters rather than objects. her skill with color and white detailing, particularly in faces, is flat-out stunning. okay fine, i kind of want a lady.
09 @isopresso_balloon: self-taught japanese artist masayoshi matsumoto spends between two and six hours weaving balloons—and that's it, no cheats like adhesives or embellishments—into critters like violin beetles, octopuses, colossal squids, snow monkeys...i'd say clowns, please try harder, but it's irresponsible to encourage clowns.
10 @TheAmandaWoods: amanda woods, an australian writer i met on a press trip in turkey,** has carved out a magnificent travel niche for herself: she's the flame-haired queen of super-fancy transportation (like the belmond grand hibernian, singapore air's new 787-10, the belmond royal scotsman, the venice simplon orient express...yeah). beat envy is rare for me, but i have a thing for trains, and she takes the kind of trips i thought joe and i were going to take when we booked a "deluxe" cabin from milan to berlin. i bet she has to solve murder mysteries on her trips all the time! happily, she's such a lovely person that i can just enjoy her agatha christie-ing vicariously and without rancor.
11 @angeladeane: angela deane's ghost photographs give me life; in my last year as an editor in an office i got myself through lulls and frustrations by paying homage to her with wite-out and magazine spreads in my cubicle. we actually own a print of one of her older works, and as soon as i get around to actually pulling it out of its mailer and framing it i will tell you precisely which one it is. strong work with witches, too.
12 @tasteofstreep: self-explanatory, and immensely satisfying.
*costumes and denny's and i have a weird past: at some point high school friends and i went to disneyland on halloween (which was free if you dressed up and got there early enough), and i dozed off at breakfast and woke up without the faintest idea of why i was wearing a nun's habit. harrowing.
**that shot on her homepage is from our cave hotel in cappadocia, my all-time favorite digs. we attempted to go rogue and take a hot-air-ballon trip one morning, but it was too windy.
07.12.19
CONSUMED: A PARTIAL LIST.
horses and divorces (bar). joe and i visited our local honky tonk a few weeks ago and spied a poster for a bar that advertised a rosé super soaker as part of its fourth of july party. fellow tonkers told us that it was a burt-reynolds-themed sister joint a few blocks away, and i insisted on stopping by—not because it was the fourth of july (it was not) or because i was interested in being sprayed with rosé, but because i appreciated the terrible audacity of that establishment's plans—on our way home. we encountered and eventually exchanged soulful hugs with both the bouncer (who had shared a ride with joe from manhattan a few hours earlier, and was a buddy of ours from the tonk) and a mancunian olympic judo fighter (who shared our opinion that morrissey must be stopped). i left my phone there after hearing a-ha's "the sun always shines on TV" and demanding to buy the perpetrator a drink,* and when joe went back to williamsburg to retrieve it, he met another mancunian who attempted to take him home. horses and divorces has shag carpet on its ceiling.
los espookys (series). i am, for the most part, no good at watching shows as they air; season-long netflix-ish drops work for me, but i can't be bothered to tune in at the same time every week for series that aren't game of thrones or the handmaid's tale, both of which end/ed up making me feel uncomfortable and, oddly, hungry. enter los espookys, which caught my eye on a bathroom wall because i thought it was a band with an especially good name. i looked it up when i got home, as olds do, and reader! it is the six-part (this season) story of a group of friends in an unnamed latin american country that produces scrappy horror scenarios. it is mostly in spanish, and it is aspirationally absurd. i have rewatched each of the five episodes that have aired. you are much cooler than i am and already know all of this already, but OH MY GOD LOS ESPOOKYS.
trader joe's tofu spring rolls (foodstuff). while i understand that my longstanding amazon boycott is probably ludicrous when one considers all of the big tech and big-box properties i continue to enrich: fuck amazon, fuck it right in the ear.** my grocery shopping became considerably more difficult when amazon bought whole foods, and i was, if i'm being honest, pleased when trader joe's moved into the lower east side. it's been a godsend for styling props for the craft projects i've published over the last year—i'm good at foraging for floral arrangements, but i'm not that good—and though i can mostly ignore its superplastickypackaged treats, these little vegan slugs are A Thing. you've got to drench them in sriracha, but friends. i am trying to roll into my locals, spread my apron, and ask them to fill it with millet, and in the interim i am >75% questionable tofu spring rolls, and content. (con-TENT, not CON-tent.)
horses and divorces (bar). joe and i visited our local honky tonk a few weeks ago and spied a poster for a bar that advertised a rosé super soaker as part of its fourth of july party. fellow tonkers told us that it was a burt-reynolds-themed sister joint a few blocks away, and i insisted on stopping by—not because it was the fourth of july (it was not) or because i was interested in being sprayed with rosé, but because i appreciated the terrible audacity of that establishment's plans—on our way home. we encountered and eventually exchanged soulful hugs with both the bouncer (who had shared a ride with joe from manhattan a few hours earlier, and was a buddy of ours from the tonk) and a mancunian olympic judo fighter (who shared our opinion that morrissey must be stopped). i left my phone there after hearing a-ha's "the sun always shines on TV" and demanding to buy the perpetrator a drink,* and when joe went back to williamsburg to retrieve it, he met another mancunian who attempted to take him home. horses and divorces has shag carpet on its ceiling.
los espookys (series). i am, for the most part, no good at watching shows as they air; season-long netflix-ish drops work for me, but i can't be bothered to tune in at the same time every week for series that aren't game of thrones or the handmaid's tale, both of which end/ed up making me feel uncomfortable and, oddly, hungry. enter los espookys, which caught my eye on a bathroom wall because i thought it was a band with an especially good name. i looked it up when i got home, as olds do, and reader! it is the six-part (this season) story of a group of friends in an unnamed latin american country that produces scrappy horror scenarios. it is mostly in spanish, and it is aspirationally absurd. i have rewatched each of the five episodes that have aired. you are much cooler than i am and already know all of this already, but OH MY GOD LOS ESPOOKYS.
trader joe's tofu spring rolls (foodstuff). while i understand that my longstanding amazon boycott is probably ludicrous when one considers all of the big tech and big-box properties i continue to enrich: fuck amazon, fuck it right in the ear.** my grocery shopping became considerably more difficult when amazon bought whole foods, and i was, if i'm being honest, pleased when trader joe's moved into the lower east side. it's been a godsend for styling props for the craft projects i've published over the last year—i'm good at foraging for floral arrangements, but i'm not that good—and though i can mostly ignore its superplastickypackaged treats, these little vegan slugs are A Thing. you've got to drench them in sriracha, but friends. i am trying to roll into my locals, spread my apron, and ask them to fill it with millet, and in the interim i am >75% questionable tofu spring rolls, and content. (con-TENT, not CON-tent.)
*it was the bartender, and i sketched him out, of course. "THIS WAS THE FIRST TAPE I EVER OWNED AND I BOUGHT IT WITH QUARTERS FROM MY ALLOWANCE!" "to...[clink] the eighties?"
**this was a problem last year, as i'd been doing a brisk business in lifestyle shopping roundups, and one of my biggest writing outlets transitioned to affiliated stories. i miss that money.
07.09.19
the dirty dozen {excerpts from yelp reviews of the brooklyn bridge}
01 Dirty, noisy and full of freaks.
02 Probably one of the most stressful things I've done this year, if not my entire life.
03 The overall design of the bridge is pretty cliche if you ask me. It looks like every other bridge that is featured in almost every movie.
04 The main stressor in my life.
05 Do the bicyclist have shame that they have taken much more than their fair share. I think they don't.
06 I went here during construction so it smelled weird
07 Yes, it's iconic, but it's a bad idea, and it doesn't work.
08 All in all, This is my second favorite East River bridge after the Williamsburg Bridge!
09 Ok, so I guess it's pretty cool to walk across such a glamourous bridge, but be prepared to dodge throngs of others thinking the same thing.
10 Personally it no "wow" factor for me because of the Golden Gate Bridge in SF.
11 what would really make this walk more exciting is if the street vendors sold broom sticks so you could whack the bikers.
12 Manhattan is a grid, my a**.
01 Dirty, noisy and full of freaks.
02 Probably one of the most stressful things I've done this year, if not my entire life.
03 The overall design of the bridge is pretty cliche if you ask me. It looks like every other bridge that is featured in almost every movie.
04 The main stressor in my life.
05 Do the bicyclist have shame that they have taken much more than their fair share. I think they don't.
06 I went here during construction so it smelled weird
07 Yes, it's iconic, but it's a bad idea, and it doesn't work.
08 All in all, This is my second favorite East River bridge after the Williamsburg Bridge!
09 Ok, so I guess it's pretty cool to walk across such a glamourous bridge, but be prepared to dodge throngs of others thinking the same thing.
10 Personally it no "wow" factor for me because of the Golden Gate Bridge in SF.
11 what would really make this walk more exciting is if the street vendors sold broom sticks so you could whack the bikers.
12 Manhattan is a grid, my a**.
02.12.19
the dirty baker's dozen {excerpts from comments on jim lahey's no-knead bread recipe}
01 I used to enjoy this recipe. It's a decent recipe for beginners. But as all things Bittman, and Clark go, you sacrifice a great deal by being lazy and knowing nothing.
02 We decided the dog loved it even more than caribou!
03 Rocky Mountain Help!
04 450 degrees of what? Sorry for asking just does not seem to be clear to me.
05 Whoever said that one should place the bread on a tea towel for the second rise should be shot.
06 Help! I have attempted to make this bread recipe 3 times. I even bought a metal bowl and watched the video.
07 I am a beginner baker and I felt triumphal as my husband inhaled a whole loaf in one seating; and, he supposedly watches his figure. This recipe opened the joy of baking for me.
08 This might be very good bread, but you are making a completely different recipe. Not helpful for this project.
09 I personally love messing about with bread dough and handling it, but I recognize from my classes that many Americans just don't want to get involved with their food or "get messy."
10 Baby blankets from the hospital,the ones with pink and blue stripes, work great for bread.
11 The best bread is the bread that you like and if you like the bread that comes out of your bread machine that's the best bread for you and you have absolutely nothing to apologize for.
12 The last time I attempted to bake bread, my husband (now ex) threw it across the room and it made a dent in the plaster. Enough said. This recipe is nothing short of amazing. My dough did not look sticky after mixing, so I threw in about a 1/4 cup of Prosecco (I was drinking the dregs of it anyway...) and tossed the dough around.
13 Bought the book, My Bread, for several friends and have taught
some including men at age 86 and 94 the technique for this simple but excellent bread. The 94-year-old German recently experimented with using soy milk for half or more of the liquid and he and I think it improves the bread.
12.05.17
i roped joe into a facebook meme the other night.
WITHOUT prompting, ask your significant other these questions and write EXACTLY what they say.
1: What is something I always say?
2: Circa 2012, "lovely!"
1: What makes me happy?
2: Candy, sleeping.
1: What makes me cry?
2: Tigers.
1: How tall am I?
2: Five seven.
1: What's my favorite thing to do?
2: Candy, sleeping.
1: What do I do when you're not around?
2: Candy, sleeping.
1: If I become famous, what will it be for?
2: The Great American Novel.
1: What makes you proud of me?
2: That you struck out on your own, and are doing your own thing, and are putting yourself out there.
1: What is my favorite food?
2: Candy, sleeping. No, lentils.
1: What is my favorite restaurant?
2: Mission Chinese, interestingly, because you will not get Chinese food anywhere else.
1: What is my favorite place to visit?
2: Iceland.
1: If I could go anywhere, where would it be?
2: Antarctica.
1: How do I annoy you?
2: Questions.
1: What is my favorite movie?
2: Labyrinth.
1: Who is my celebrity crush?
2: I don't know. Just put who it is.
1: You get a phone call that I am in trouble, who am I with?
2: Your mother.
WITHOUT prompting, ask your significant other these questions and write EXACTLY what they say.
1: What is something I always say?
2: Circa 2012, "lovely!"
1: What makes me happy?
2: Candy, sleeping.
1: What makes me cry?
2: Tigers.
1: How tall am I?
2: Five seven.
1: What's my favorite thing to do?
2: Candy, sleeping.
1: What do I do when you're not around?
2: Candy, sleeping.
1: If I become famous, what will it be for?
2: The Great American Novel.
1: What makes you proud of me?
2: That you struck out on your own, and are doing your own thing, and are putting yourself out there.
1: What is my favorite food?
2: Candy, sleeping. No, lentils.
1: What is my favorite restaurant?
2: Mission Chinese, interestingly, because you will not get Chinese food anywhere else.
1: What is my favorite place to visit?
2: Iceland.
1: If I could go anywhere, where would it be?
2: Antarctica.
1: How do I annoy you?
2: Questions.
1: What is my favorite movie?
2: Labyrinth.
1: Who is my celebrity crush?
2: I don't know. Just put who it is.
1: You get a phone call that I am in trouble, who am I with?
2: Your mother.
07.21.16
i had a theory that no one would pay me to write things this summer—editors love their vacations—and that i should focus on pretending i'm bold enough to write and promote a book; to that end, i've been setting aside various instructive memoirs and conducting interviews with ben bird, who has nearly recovered from being stepped on at the hospital (and suffering a nasty broken shoulder) a couple of months ago. i can approximate his songs well enough to elicit responses—his full-fledged car-alarm routine, actually, which he hasn't been singing for anyone else—which is both exciting and a little terrifying (what if he's cursing? i might speak a bit of cardinal, but i can't hold substantive conversations yet). the staff assures me that it's his i haven't seen you in such a long time, friend song. i hope they're right.
i was wrong about no one paying me to write things! i mean, not dramatically wrong, but i file a piece or two each week. i'm getting better at interviewing doctors and researchers, though i'm still terrible at transcribing my conversations. a piece on ben (and a photo of us!) will be on newsstands this fall; a piece on thomas pynchon will be online in a week or two. the latter feels like a reported version of the writing i do here, which is very exciting; i'm hoping to ride that weird into more creative nonfiction.
i miss you.
i was wrong about no one paying me to write things! i mean, not dramatically wrong, but i file a piece or two each week. i'm getting better at interviewing doctors and researchers, though i'm still terrible at transcribing my conversations. a piece on ben (and a photo of us!) will be on newsstands this fall; a piece on thomas pynchon will be online in a week or two. the latter feels like a reported version of the writing i do here, which is very exciting; i'm hoping to ride that weird into more creative nonfiction.
i miss you.
Luke loves BHV for the music. All day long it plays excited, taped Christmas shopping announcements, backed with appropriate tunes. Some of the tunes we recognize—it plays the Looney Tunes theme, for instance—and some seem vaguely familiar but are hard to name, so we give our own names to them: "The Love Theme from BHV," "BHV's Victory at Sea," and the "BHV Christmas Anthem." His ears undimmed by fifteen years of the IRT, Luke can hear them all even over the din of appliance shopping, and when he notices a favorite, he rises from his stroller, a cobra in mittens, and sways solemnly back and forth.
(adam gopnik, from "the winter circus, christmas journal 1," in paris to the moon)
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