The week of January 13th was bad. Bad for me personally and bad for the world at large. It started out with the revelation of just how monstrous a guy whose work I never liked anyway really was. The next day I learned from the local newspaper that the man who abused me and multiple other men who hurt me…
I wrote this a while ago.
There is a new Sally Rooney novel out. As with Beautiful World, Where Are You‘s rollout in 2021, Intermezzo comes on a wave of recycled discourse about the author: her spare writing style, her Marxism and how it is or isn’t present in her work, what her success Means For the Novel, what she has to do with “literary hot girls”…
Media hors d’oeuvres
I don’t think I’ve completed a blog post, much less any sort of structured writing, since having a baby in March. Yikes. I thought it might be a nice way to use my atrophied muscles to just write some impressions of things I’ve been watching, reading, doing, etc. instead of thinking that everything must be a fully realized essay. It’s…
It’s Me the Marriage Hype Man
It’s probably best to get out of the habit of calling things guilty pleasures. Own what you like and all. But it’s hard to drop common phrases so we all understand that maybe people aren’t actually ashamed when they talk about liking The Vampire Diaries, wearing UGGs, or eating a lot of candy corn. One thing that should not be…
Sugar Addiction
A few days ago, the science fiction author Charlie Jane Anders published a short essay titled “The Sweetweird Manifesto.” Is it an essay? IDK. I hate it when people call anything I do a “write-up” so I’m extending Anders that courtesty. In the piece, she did a “towards a working theory of” type observation of a storytelling trend that pairs…
The Reluctant Hometown Hero
The other day I watched Summer in Andalusia, an anime gem from 2003. It’s by studio Madhouse, but you would be forgiven for thinking it’s a Ghibli venture, since director Kitarou Kousaka worked on films like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. Nasu: Summer in Andalusia follows a Spanish cyclist, Pepe Benegeli, over one day in the Vuelta a España road…
My Favorite Books (this year)
Here are the books I read in 2021 that have stuck with me the most. They didn’t have to come out in 2021, just be read by me in 2021. Apollo’s Angels by Jennifer Homans Apollo’s Angels, by former dancer Jennifer Homans, is a dazzling achievement. It’s fascinating, comprehensive, and pretty much the only book of its kind. If you…
My Favorite Christmas Movies
I was working on a post about a character type I’m increasingly drawn to but I turned in a lot of grad school work and I’m tired, so this is something frothier. I am insanely, vertiginously into Christmas. I can’t even talk about how into Christmas I am. Like, all of it. There is nothing subversive or “a twist on”…
Bachelor Royale
A good friend of mine has taken it upon himself to consume all the death game media he can find. If it seems like there’s renewed enthusiasm for the genre, I’m sure it’s because of the Netflix smash hit Squid Game (which I have not seen yet). Despite some death game narratives becoming enormous hits, it’s still a niche. We…
Things I Just Read
My Body by Emily Ratajkowski When I went to buy Emily Ratajkowski’s essay collection My Body, Amazon autocompleted “Emily Ratajkowski book” in the search bar. The first result was the right one, but immediately underneath it was a possibly unlicensed 2022 calendar dedicated to the model, her name in bold letters barely covering her breasts. I think Ratajkowski would have…
feelings.technology 