Hello, friends and enemies. I hope we are all staying as sane as possible in these wild times. I myself am feeling a little nuts but I’m hanging in there. I’m trying to stay offline and read my books and talk to my friends. I hope you are all doing the same.
I know a lot of people get to my posts through social media, but as we know social media is crumbling and a lot of people are not using it as much. So, I’d like to remind you that you can subscribe to my blog here. You’ll get every post in your inbox as an email. You can even reply to it and it will come straight to me!
Current Events
It hasn’t even been two weeks of Trump round two and everything feels insane. There’s a pervasive sense of unreality that I think is probably very similar to what people in the USSR felt. Rules are changing, it’s about to be very hard to buy anything (including food) thanks to these tariffs, and we have no idea what kind of kleptocratic bullshit the administration is going to do next. I was commenting to my friend that we were planning a trip to Costco before their teamsters went on strike (averted at the last minute, by the way) and I was like, wow, what a Soviet-ass statement. I fear that the era of getting everything we want when we want it is coming to an end. I’ve got two books on the top of my reading list to help me think about this topic: Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation and Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956. I’ll let you know what I learn.
I am trying to avoid the news, not completely but enough to keep me sane. I know we need to know what’s going on but I don’t think the palace intrigue and propaganda press announcements and minuta are going to help me. I spent Trump’s first term on Twitter non-stop and, in retrospect, that was not a great choice. Unfortunately, since I work as a federal contractor, a lot of news is coming directly. They are sending notices about the executive orders Trump is issuing and the resultant policy changes to my work email. They keep saying that these messages are “legitimate and can be trusted,” which … if you have to announce that about yourself, I think you know you’ve already lost. It’s a little scary and I’m hoping my program doesn’t get canceled. I’m just glad I’m not a full federal employee because then I’d be losing all my work towards my pension and benefits if I got laid off (as it is, I just have to hope the stock market doesn’t crash and take my 401(k) with it … -desperate laughter-). There are also much bigger problems beyond one small program that supports the Affordable Care Act, like the fact that Elon now has “access to sensitive Treasury data including Social Security and Medicare customer payment systems.” For all the bad stuff that is happening, this could be seriously terrible. This is all the government’s money. I’m sure there’s no connection, but Elon did spend $44 billion buying twitter, which came from a combination of personal funds, money from investors, Qatar, and a Saudi prince. Apparently, it’s not enough to be the richest guy in the world, he also has to make sure no one else has any money at all. I hope he drops dead.
Books and Other Words
The Crescent Moon Tearoom by Stacy Sivinski is about three magical sisters—triplets, in fact—who run a tea house in late 19th century Chicago. The girls bake nice treats and read their customers’ tea leaves, making it a very popular stop for the ladies of Chicago. The story is about the tension of discovering yourself and what you want even if that’s not what you thought your life was going to be, which of course is heightened by having identical sisters who thought they would all be together all the time. The story is cute but it’s working overtime to be “cozy” to the point that it borders on saccharine. The prose didn’t really do it for me, either. The author fell back onto the same imagery a lot (so many references to the scent of marigold and the “candy-striped” circus tent, and feeling sensations all the way down to one’s toes) and, as an editor, I unfortunately notice these things. I do appreciate that there’s a circus in this book, though it’s not the main event. One of the sisters falls for a handsome performer whose personality seems to just be trapeze artist with “inky black curls” (his job is just trapeze). But I suppose who among us would be immune to an empty-headed and attractive trapeze performer who listens to our problems? So, while I love witches and circuses and often appreciate a tale of sisterly relationships, this book was just okay in my opinion.
This is a rare post featuring just one book. I’ve been reading a lot of Don Quijote, but it’s going to be a while before I finish it. I’m about three-quarters through a quite good fantasy book, but you’ll have to wait for next time to hear about it!
Meanwhile, on the internet:
- what the fuck are we doing anymore via the late review. Thoughts on the state of social media and journalism and writing, and how things are now terrifying and making us all insane.
- The Social Media Sea Change via Culture Study. More thoughts on social media but more practical with musings on how it feels to be on social media less.
- Historians Politely Remind Nation To Check What’s Happened In Past Before Making Any Big Decisions via The Onion. This headline speaks for itself.
- If you were rich, would you fold laundry? via Inner Workings. From the article, “An ideal is emerging for me, a triad of types of work: The work you do to get paid, the life maintenance tasks like laundry, and the creative things you do for you. The economy-oriented work, the basic needs work, and the soul work, each of which brings something different to a full life. Three legs that create a solid foundation. I think the benefits of the paid work and the creative work are more obvious, but I would argue the maintenance work also has benefits. The role of these tasks in this triad is to anchor me to the world. They remind me how life is sustained. They remind me to value such work at the level it should be valued.”
Now That’s What I Call Shower Drama vol. 8
Regular readers are well acquainted with our ongoing shower saga (original saga: 1, 2, 3. extended saga: 1, 2, 3, 4). Because apparently nothing can be easy, it continued this week. We were originally slated to start last Thursday—we signed a contract for the work in October but had been waiting for all the materials to arrive and then the holidays to end—but they had to push it back slightly and I was told they would tentatively start on Monday. On Sunday night, I texted the project manager to ask what was going on and he said he’d been furloughed and didn’t know. I kind of assumed the work would be further delayed since no one had confirmed with me, but in fact people showed up bright and early on Monday morning to rip out the shower. It was Wednesday before I got ahold of anyone at the construction company to find out what was going on. We have a new project manager who wanted to come over and “talk through” the project. I was very cross when he said he needed to check if they had all the materials and that the job started “earlier than [I] expected.” There’s a huge difference between that and people showing up without letting me know that they were for sure coming. I still am not certain when someone is next planning to come over and continue working on this shit, which means we’ve had a full week without using this bathroom because people can’t fucking communicate. Fortunately we have a second bathroom, but that’s where we keep the cat’s litter box so it’s not like I want to leave my toothbrush in there! I am having a bad time!
Doing Stuff
After the election, one of the things I wrote was “Pick one cause to put your effort into. There will be many things that need attention (I mean, there already are!) in the coming years. Pick one thing in your community that you want to support and volunteer for that.” I may have discovered my thing. Yesterday I went to volunteer orientation at the Lavender Library, Sacramento’s queer library and archive. It’s completely run by volunteers, and people can go there to read, check out books, or participate in community programs. I think it’s really cool and I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing this sooner. All the volunteers work the circulation desk to keep the library open, and there is the option of joining committees and doing other activities to keep the library going. I may finally put my masters in library and information science to use, some ten years later.
Abby invited me to see comedian Maria Bamford with her. I went in knowing nothing about Bamford, just trusting Abby’s taste, and it was so hilarious. I mean, she opened with a bit where she rolls on the ground and says “I’m doing my job … I’m clocking in to work.” Yeah, that’s how it feels to work lately. I’m rolling on the ground. I am a worm. None of this makes sense but I’m here to put on my little show and get paid. It was good to just laugh for an hour and a half and be in a group where everyone is just as mad about how much everything sucks. Both Bamford and her opener hit us with a few comments about how much everything is insane and the crowd was like WOO YEAH. We’re all feeling it. We are not alone in this. So yeah, go out and laugh and be reminded that you are not an island.
Pump up the (Monster) Jam
A monster truck rally is probably one of the last places you’d expect to find me; yet, I went to one last weekend. My “niece” (biologically speaking: my friend Mandy’s kid. spiritually speaking: my niece) has been talking about monster trucks and how much she wants to see them for a while so we womaned up and took her to see Monster Jam! My niece had a great time but we were kind of bored by the whole thing. It’s just … big trucks? I don’t know. I’m not in the target demographic, I guess. I was surprised to notice that the primary audience is children, and probably autistic children, if I’m any judge of such things. The crowd mostly consisted of families with young kids. At the venue, they were selling ear protection in the form of headphones shaped like monster truck tires that light up, and little constellations of LED lights dotted the arena.
I found it fairly boring that the show was each car coming out, doing a trick, then ceding the floor to the next one. I was expecting a race, or perhaps a battle of some sort? It turns out the trucks do not fight. In between these stunts, there was a lot of commentary, which I found kind of grating. I felt like only one of the drivers, the woman piloting the shark-themed Megalodon, really understood the assignment. She seemed to get the cartoonish nature of the whole affair and really played up to the crowd. In contrast, the lady driving the Scooby Doo truck looked kind of dead behind the eyes. Lady, it’s a truck shaped like a dog and the tail wags. Get into it! Anyway, I’ve now seen for myself the kind of thing that could only be popular in America.
Nostalgia!!
In an effort to stay off the internet, I’ve been playing a lot of original Super Nintendo games over the last couple weeks. I signed up for Nintendo Online on the Switch (sidebar: why is everything a fucking subscription now? A rant for another day) so I could play old games. I actually still have my old Super Nintendo, but there’s no way to hook it up to a modern TV. I have been delighted to realize I still remember where all the secrets are in Super Mario 3. That shit is just in my brain for life. When I was a kid, there was a year when we got a subscription to Nintendo Power magazine and at the time they included a guidebook to Super Mario All-Stars (consisting of Mario games one through three plus Lost Levels) that showed the layout of each level and what was in it. I absolutely revered this book. “Cheating!” some might say. Well, we didn’t have YouTube back then so this was one of the few ways to really learn everything in the game. The other day I searched online to see if anyone had preserved it, and of course someone has! It’s in the Internet Archive. Thank you to whoever put this online for me to enjoy.
The Passamackey Mystery
I am encountering lots of new terms as I read Don Quijote and there are about a billion footnotes in the Spanish edition to explain the archaic usage of many words (I passed lucky footnote number 1,000 this week). Surprisingly, my friends reading in English are also finding some unfamiliar words. Lito brought up the word “passamackey,” which appears in the John Rutherford translation and apparently literally nowhere else on the internet, in our group chat. The text reads “… all the Turkish sailors and soldiers were convinced that they were going to be attacked there, and had their close and their passamackeys, or shoes, ready to flee over land without waiting for the assault.” We could tell from context that it’s a type of shoe but we had no idea where this word came from. I checked the Spanish version to see if we could figure it out, but the it wasn’t a whole lot more useful, it uses the word “pasamaques,” which suggests that the translator merely anglicized the word and called it a day. The Spanish version did have a helpful footnote explaining that passamaques are a type of sandal. I had to dig deep on the internet to get more information, but I eventually found a document called Notas etimológicas a “El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha”, dated 1899, in Wikisource (thank you Wikipedia). It explains that the term comes from the Turkish word بشامق or baxámac, which is a type of sandal that “even Turkish emperors used.” Lito also confirmed with a Turkish friend that the modern word is paşmak, formerly written as başmak (Turkish during the Ottoman empire was written in the Arabic script, which does not have a p, so it would have been written with a b instead. This is why the word appears to change from başmak to paşmak), which means shoe, although the word originally referred to a palace, as that is where they were worn. This was hard-won knowledge so I am writing it down for the next poor soul who is trying to figure out where the hell this word came from. You’re welcome!
Kitchen Witchery
I’ve been cooking normal stuff and I’m still trying new tofu recipes. I revisited the orange tofu and broccoli, which I previously mentioned came out terribly, and used the Panda Express-branded orange sauce that they sell at the grocery store. This was a good choice. It tastes good and the result is a very easy meal, since you just roast the tofu and broccoli together in the oven then apply the sauce. On Friday night, I tried the kung pao tofu recipe from Bean by Bean and we loved it. I was pleasantly surprised by how good this recipe is. It’s a great time to find more tofu recipes to love considering the cost of groceries (laugh/cry)! Finally, it’s been cold, so I made stew and biscuits! I use the recipe from How to Cook Everything as a starting point, but I use the slow cooker and add some extra stuff for flavor like a packet of Lipton onion soup.
Cat Therapy
Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves. Fritz has truly been serving lately.
