Life is hard. Here is someone.

"whats ur social? i need it bc u are my benificiary bc if i’m dead mom will most likely be..."

Fri, 04 May 2012 13:10:00 -0400

“whats ur social? i need it bc u are my benificiary bc if i’m dead mom will most likely be already lol”

- my sister’s getting life insurance!

Morning affirmation (Taken with instagram)

Thu, 03 May 2012 10:46:12 -0400

Morning affirmation (Taken with instagram)

To the people who don’t see why this is sad: He put his sunglasses in his little cloth...

Wed, 02 May 2012 17:46:30 -0400

To the people who don’t see why this is sad:

He put his sunglasses in his little cloth drawstring sunglasses pouch thing —

then he put them in a hard case.

Are you with me now?

Typed this into my phone today mid minor emotional breakdown on...

Wed, 02 May 2012 17:28:01 -0400

Typed this into my phone today mid minor emotional breakdown on the L train platform (which was experiencing a 30 minute delay — all I could think was, Someone better have died). Anyway, holds up.

Kickstarter rewards this week. The circle of life. Or something.

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:36:16 -0400

Kickstarter rewards this week. The circle of life. Or something.

I am so angry at the world tonight because I can’t find a...

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:48:00 -0400

I am so angry at the world tonight because I can’t find a way to watch episode 2 of Girls online for free. ::shakes fist:: (update, thanks pirate friends!)

Argh.

So I guess I could tell you I read these two books over the weekend. Dustin brought them home from work at my behest.

“tHE OLD ONE IS ABOUT CRIPPLING ILLNESS. yOU UP FOR THAT? i MEAN, SHE SURVIVES, SO. DID YOU KNOW SHE’S A GENIUS NOW?”

I don’t know why he was doing all caps, but I accepted it.

He got home around 11pm and I stayed up past 2 reading the first one. Then on Sunday I read the second one in the middle of the day, on the couch, while it rained.

They are very good. Sort of detached, lyric, very measured, distilled shit. Like Lydia Davis and Maggie Nelson kinda stuff. I’M INTO IT.

I wish I had them to read again. I mean, I do. But it’s not the same!

Sarah Manguso! She’s also a poet. I am in her corner.

"To decide to do “this” as a living is to invite barbs that generally pile up around..."

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:18:34 -0400

“To decide to do “this” as a living is to invite barbs that generally pile up around gender and power. The poet is a fag, the poet is a drag, the poet is righteous. But really I think people resent our freedom. Our choice to keep doing something they may have done badly when they were younger and were full of feeling and to keep doing something that supposedly anyone can do – making something out of something as practical and mundane as language is to brand oneself as a lifelong fool rather than merely a fool in her youth. People feel sad about what they disavowed to become who they are now. Poets are human of course and have disavowed plenty, but to stand behind this nonetheless significant or foolish act – it’s a kind of self identifying, self categorizing act (like language itself) that enrages people exactly in the place where they’ve made choices and need to assume you haven’t. This – to be a poet – was the biggest choice in my life, and I suffer fools gladly and have a great life. Look at this. I just wrote a book called snowflake, for god’s sake.”

- Eileen Myles on the Hairpin!!!

This is how my alma mater — Notre Dame — addresses...

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 10:00:00 -0400

This is how my alma mater — Notre Dame — addresses the “sexual assaults on campus.” (37 reported since 2005! Reported!) The article is called, “Anything But Clear” and is Reason #3456789965:22457 why I fucking hate the fact that I still owe these people upwards of 30 thousand dollars for the privilege of having my mind fucked for four years.

My boyfriend agreed that sure, my face qualifies as a plausible...

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:48:33 -0400

My boyfriend agreed that sure, my face qualifies as a plausible face in the ensemble cast of a Terence Davies film. He will never live this down.

Photo

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 15:13:19 -0400

I never understood the appeal of Quora UNTIL NOW.

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 21:47:44 -0500

I never understood the appeal of Quora UNTIL NOW.

This book this book this book. I found it on what was for an...

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 19:38:00 -0500

This book this book this book. I found it on what was for an afternoon the Lost & Found table at work and the guy who cleans our office told me to take it. I hugged it to my chest. I am sure it’s someone else’s. This blog post may be my undoing.

This is I guess what people call a “food memoir” which I suppose means it has two strikes against it and makes people stand up and shout, “I COULD DO THAT! WHY HER?” from the bottom of their bellies, instinctively. But shut up for one damn second because this book is the goddamn best. Fuck every other book.

I don’t know that it’s a memoir so much as it’s this weird thing where she just…basically is like working under the premise that she pretty much has it all figured out when it comes to eating/cooking/etc and has lived to tell about it, and is now going to tell you about it. She is also an excellent writer, downright lyrical. Only occasionally annoying (I know!). She’s just like, “Okay look here is how you [boil water, make the best salad, be amazing, have a dinner part, etc].” And then you’re like, Oh this is everything I ever wanted to know, written in paragraphs and just fucking TOLD to me in this one book.

Really.

Maybe that isn’t your thing. If it’s not, it’s not. I personally feel like this was the book I didn’t even dare hope to exist (oh my god, someone pay me to write blurbs for them). I self-soothe by reading cookbooks cover to cover. There is not only the repetition but also the assurance that I am gaining real, finite knowledge. I never really remember the recipes I read - at best I remember that one or two exist, later on when I need something — but as I read them it all feels very essential.

In the age of Wikipedia (sorry) there are so few things we can’t, if we want to, immediately know (I know that statement is too grandiose and general to be accurate, but you know what I mean!). And I want to know every great recipe in the world. I want them all inside my head like a rolodex and I want to stare at my cabinet and see three things and make something that will make Dustin tell me I am a genius and I’ll say, “Oh please,” and try not to smile.

Many great cookbooks start with a little bit about a “well-stocked pantry.” I study them. I go back and re-read, trying to commit them to memory. I DON’T REMEMBER ANY OF IT. I don’t follow it! I never have once. But I still straight-up long to know the Answer to this. Some deep part of my brain is so sure there is a Platonian pantry out there and SOMEONE knows about it and maybe if I read every list of suggested ingredients for a well-stocked pantry, this knowledge will be mine and every time we go to make a meal I’ll say things like, “Oh, red wine vinegar? Yep, GOT IT.” (Just want to say that we actually do have red wine vinegar. #countit) Nothing would be out of my reach. No quick trips to the corner store would be made. Dinner was fate. We were meant to eat this perfect amalgamation of whole grains, a root vegetable, and vinaigrette. We are good at life.

[When trying to conjure dinner out of the handful of things already in our kitchen, I will NOT go to the deli on the corner that has everything. That’s cheating! Someone else always goes and I try to protest and then end up revealing that I am challenging myself in some unnecessary way for no real reason and I have to give in. Fine, go buy the leeks. “If you want.”]

When attempting to make dinner out of whatever it is we have, Not Knowing All the Recipes hurts my brain in this very particular way. I go searching for something seemingly just out of my reach, like a word I can’t seem to find or the way a dream fades from your consciousness as soon as you try to talk about it out loud. SHOULD HAVE READ MORE COOKBOOKS.

Sure you can google a few ingredients and find stuff but then cut to me sitting in the dark of my living room, starving in front of my laptop, reading every comment on every stupid ass Epicurious recipe that exists. Outcome: not as good as knowing everything there is to know.

Maybe we should back up. I am new to cooking. No one ever taught me. Okay, smittenkitchen.com taught me (holla!). My boyfriend has tried to teach me how to use a knife a few times but I don’t take criticism very well. I took a pickling class once. And so on. So this is very new and while now I know that if nothing else I like doing it, and I know what I like, and nothing seems too insurmountable.

So I can make pies and handle Thanksgiving dinner and host dinner parties and come home after work and whip something up, studied recipe by studied recipe, but I want more of that thing that Tamar Adler is referring to, I think, when she talks about “grace.” This is something I can know so completely in my head but I find it hard to articulate. I even have this hand gesture to try to explain it. A certain je ne sais quoi. You wave your hands, palms down, to the left and right a little. When you have this thing, you move through the kitchen with ease — back and forth, left and right — like that in my mind. You glide. Dinner appears before you, fully-formed in your mind’s eye, as soon as you open the fridge. You get a little thrill and then get to work. You see some leftover something in the fridge and it feels as if the Universe is unfolding according to plan. You have tamed life and made it yours. You are the picture of resourcefulness. You roast beets on the weekends. You save the broth for next time. When next time comes around you feel unparalleled levels of assurance. In yourself. You glide.

This state of being is what I want to unlock. This is all I want. Not how to make bread but how to make bread with ease so that it fills the house with bread-ness in the morning before work and you feel like you are probably on at least your 3rd or 4th life because no one got it this right the first time. Step aside, every other measure of success. This whole homemade bread thing is all that matters!

This is basically what this book is about. And if you think I sound like a loon, granted, but this woman is even crazier. In the best way, obviously.

Here is a test to see if you would like this book. Read the sentence I have pasted below and if you hate it in a bemused way — like you groan and laugh and read it aloud to someone but are also like Okay lady I see where you’re going, then you should read it. If you downright scoff and hate the world, this book may not be for you:

“The degrading of mayonnaise from a wonderful condiment for cooked vegetables or sandwiches to an indistinguishable layer of fat has been radical and violent.”

It’s that authority! It’s like, only someone with her level of Kitchen Grace could call mayo hate violent. I want her to hang out with me and make bold proclamations about the status quo.

My mom is great and I don’t want a new mom, but do you ever find yourself wishing for some wise, idealized person to swoop into your life and tell you how things are done? In reality I would end up trying to poke holes in their worldview and start resenting them, but I still long for this sort of presence in my life. And I think in a better world I would have a disembodied Tamar Adler telling me what to do and how to live, in all sorts of ways. Because she gets this way of things, and exalts it, without quite naming it, again and again. And while I don’t really remember any of the recipes or all of the Things To Do / Ways of Being (like saving stems and cooking with them later, roasting vegetables on the weekend, having little kids shuck peas for you), I do feel like I have internalized her approach a little. And I try, a few times a week, to find myself feeling like, Yes, I have done it. I am gliding back and forth around my kitchen with ease. Everything feels like fate. The universe is unfolding as it should, and by that I mean there are leftovers being brought to lunch and soup is always better on the next day. That sort of thing.

"I’m always surprised when people in their early thirties have children, even though it’s a standard..."

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 17:30:32 -0500

“I’m always surprised when people in their early thirties have children, even though it’s a standard accomplishment. A similar surprise comes into play when I meet a twenty-something who owns a sofa.”

- Magic Molly

BOOM! Haha. Sheila Heti interviews Joan Didion in the Believer...

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 09:14:00 -0500

BOOM!

Haha. Sheila Heti interviews Joan Didion in the Believer and it’s online and pretty great!

"Don’t swim upstream, baby. The future was right where you were."

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 18:37:00 -0500

“Don’t swim upstream, baby. The future was right where you were.”

- Ze Frank.

Ze Frank launched a Kickstarter project last night to bring back a new version of the show, now A Show, and I’ve been all nostalgic and watching handfuls of these old videos every night before bed (better known as “partying like it’s 2007”). Anyway some of the thrill of what he was doing is lost now that VLOGGING is a thing but it’s still hilarious and silly and occasionally profound. He said this about some woman back in the day (in internet time, “back in the day” is appropriate for anything from over 3 years ago) who was streaming an in-house concert from her bedroom every night for 21 days and then got signed by Sony BMG. I love the sentiment — it’s an argument I have every few weeks (tough life) — and also just how the words sound together. God.

Sorry I guess this is kind of NSFW. Sorry, mom! Sorry, catholic...

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:14:00 -0500

Sorry I guess this is kind of NSFW. Sorry, mom! Sorry, catholic cousins!

But I would be remiss not to mention that this amazing photo project ends today. This woman, Barbara Nitke, was a still photographer on porn sets in the 80s. There’s all this funny behind-the-scenes stuff of like, Nina Hartley talking to the director all serious-like while some guy has his head between her legs, or girls hanging out taking naps surrounded by dildos. ET CETERA. But the work is SO GREAT. The kind of thing where you force your boyfriend to watch the project video when he gets home from work and then he yells enthusiastically about how great it is great. And you’re like, yess, I am not crazy! There is just something about this that is so good!

The only question that remains where the hell you put a bunch of prints like this in your home. Think I’m about to find out.

melissa: Coming & Crying (Which you can go get here, now…)...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:30:44 -0500

melissa:

Coming & Crying

(Which you can go get here, now…)
(I know!)

Hey, remember this old thing? If you missed out, or just want the book on your e-reader thing, it now exists. Hooray! Thanks to MGG for doing ALL OF IT, TOTEBAGS* AND ALL.

*Is there a better totebag slogan than, “I like books and have feelings”? Besides, “I prefer not to,” obviously. There is also, for the boldly human, “I like sex and have feelings,” which all this time later only makes me slightly embarrassed. In a good way.

Tonight on my way home from work I got into this car on the F...

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:46:00 -0500

Tonight on my way home from work I got into this car on the F train and I was the only person in it. It has been awhile since that happened. I walked from one end to the other, not knowing what else I could do to celebrate. Then I took a bunch of pictures with my phone and sat snuggled into the little two-person seat at one end. Those seats are my favorite.

I like that instagram only exists on your phone, really. Commitment to a bit. But this also means that to put this photo on my blog, I copy the URL to it onto my phone’s “clipboard” (as it were), paste it into a Note, then squint at it on my phone as I type it out, character by character, into my browser. This is like the grandma version of doing the internet, I know. There is probably a better way. But I don’t like “sharing” it from the app, when they stick in that little accusatory “(sent via instagram)” or whatever it is they do. DAMN THE MAN!

So we found out that Sugar is Cheryl Strayed, and as Erica...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:27:00 -0500

So we found out that Sugar is Cheryl Strayed, and as Erica recounts, I knew this in an instant awhile back when I read one of her (incredible, I might add) Cheryl Strayed essays, sitting in a cafe reading on my phone a bit that Erica had excerpted on her blog, assuming as I read, before I got to the attribution part of the Tumblr quote post, that I was reading a Sugar column. Then I saw the name: “Cheryl Strayed.” Then I fiercely googled. Then I emailed Erica. Then I DMed Stephen Elliott and he told me, “Sshhh.” Then I started doing little weekly dances in the kitchen asking Dustin if they had the galley of her book in at McNally yet and finally they did and I read it over Thanksgiving and fell so in love with it. I got to the great good reader place I haven’t been back to since. You know it when you find it. I wrote this in Tumblr back around Thanksgiving then decided it would be weird to publish before her book was out but now it will be out so soon and we can all get excited! So here is my little burst of enthusiasm that has been sitting in my drafts for months:

—-

I finally got this book in my hands Tuesday night — the night before my mom and sister got here to stay with us for Thanksgiving. Two days before we made dinner for my family and his family and my sister’s funny little dog.

The first night I read it I cried. “But you cry over everything,” maybe you’re saying. No. I mean CRIED. Audible crying! Dustin apologized for getting me this book, this book I begged for him to get me a copy of the galley of for weeks (Cheryl Strayed tweeted about the galleys being out so they are probably out can you get one do you have any etc etc).

Every night since Tuesday I stayed up after my family went to bed in the other “room” (semi-subdivided area of our railroad apartment), exhausted, but reading any of this I could and telling my mom all about it in the morning.

My family left at 5 this morning. We saw them off then went back to sleep, woke up at 11, and I stayed in bed until 3 in the afternoon and finished it.

This will be big! I think you aren’t supposed to blog about books or review them or what have you until they’re out. This makes sense. What use is my recommendation now? If I said something bad, the book is not out there to defend itself. But I am not saying anything bad! I am not a bookseller or a book reviewer! I am the girlfriend of the bookseller. Do not tell the sales rep who left a little note on the cover: “Give this to Sam or Dustin.”

Sorry Sam! Sorry everyone! I got the ARC and I am powerless. I did not deserve it. I am not going to review this book. That is not my job and also I love it too much to do anything but cheer for it. I will just say, over and over, IT IS SO GOOD AND I BASICALLY READ IT ALL THE WAY THROUGH. It is a book you read and want to push onto other people. I read a lot of books and I think that is the best feeling, of spending the rest of the day swimming in it and trying to choose just one person to heave it onto next, to place in their arms and hope they hug it to their chest.

I think I will give it to my mom for Christmas. I have a growing list of people I will demand to read it next.

You can pre-order it now.

towirr: I made a thing. I dunno if you can see this, but the...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:06:11 -0500

towirr:

I made a thing.

I dunno if you can see this, but the nipples have tiny hearts on them.