Hello, friends and enemies. I have spent the last few months waging war on the moths that have taken up residence in our pantry because it’s always fucking something. We noticed them a little while ago and then realized they were emanating from an area near my bread machine (gross). We bought moth traps and that seemed to solve the problem. Unfortunately, we were then hit with a second generation of moths, so I’ve had to go wild on cleaning the pantry. The only thing saving me from declaring pantry bankruptcy is that most of my ingredients were already stored in airtight containers, but the moths had wormed their way into things like bags of nuts secured with a twist tie or a half-used bar of chocolate for cooking (why do moths want chocolate??). In the last two weeks I vacuumed and wiped down all the pantry shelves, fully cleaned out the pantry, and made sure everything is in a sealed container. We already get ants regularly so it doesn’t really hurt to tighten up the pantry situation but it is annoying. If anyone is looking for a recommendation, I’m using some of these Home Edit containers and I have a lot of ProKeeper bins for my flours, sugars, etc.
On the topic of house drama, our shower saga continues (original saga: 1, 2, 3. extended saga: 1, 2, 3). We signed a contract last weekend for work on getting our shower remodeled (again). In looking back through my old posts to link for background, I see I wrote in December 2019, “I look forward to never remodeling a shower again.” Oh, how young I was. How naive! The good news is our new contractor has things like a schedule and a project manager so this should all go more smoothly than the last time. I hope these words won’t come back to haunt me.
Unrelated to all that, I finally caved in and joined Blue Sky, a twitter replacement. What ultimately swayed me is that someone has created a feed of all the gift links to various publications that people share. If you want to follow me there you can find me @linzmatic.
Current Events
Unfortunately, I am once again being forced to comment on current events because everything is too weird and stupid and sad to ignore it.
First, the big story: Israel is directly attacking Iran now, and not just anywhere in Iran, but the capital Tehran, among other locations. Israel “also launched simultaneous strikes on Iraq and Syria, ostensibly targeting Iran-linked interests.” Even though Israel escalated hostilities a year ago in response to Hamas taking hostages from a concert, it’s clear that the “getting the hostages back” is only a pretext. Al-Jazeera reported this month that “Israeli forces had killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar,” but “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war is ‘not over’ and pledged that Israeli forces would operate in Gaza for ‘years to come’.” Israel has no plans to stop and they’re able to continue because, at a conservative estimate, the U.S. has provided them with over $22 billion in the last year. This is our money that should be going to improving lives here, but no, we are paying for war in countries that have nothing to do with us (just kidding I know they have oil. laugh/cry).
The other story on my mind is that rich people are killing the free press. Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of Amazon and the Washington Post, stopped the Post’s editorial board from running their endorsement of Kamala Harris. The LA Times unfortunately made the same move, with their billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, “block[ing] thee editorial board’s plans to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president.” The Times’ editorials editor resigned in protest. There’s a lot that’s shitty and annoying about this, but what sticks out to me is these rich media owners are doing this in anticipation of a Trump administration that would retaliate against them. There is nothing preventing them from endorsing Harris, but they are scared of theoretical consequences if Trump wins. Amazon doesn’t want to lose lucrative federal contracts for cloud services and the like. As Parker Molloy wrote on the subject yesterday, “These instances suggest a media landscape increasingly hesitant to challenge power—a dangerous precedent in any democracy. When the press begins to police itself out of fear, it relinquishes its role as a watchdog and becomes complicit in undermining democratic norms.” It’s not looking good for the good old U S of A! Anyway, the Washington Post’s humor columnist endorsed Harris because we live in the stupidest version of this world.
That said, the election will be here in less than two weeks. I’ve got voter guides in English and Spanish. My non-professional opinion is that anyone who is thinking about voting for Trump should just sit this one out, but unfortunately I can’t stop anyone from being an idiot.
Books and Other Words
Those of us who enjoy pseudo-historical (or fantasy I guess but it’s not really magic? It’s just another pre-industrial kind of world) m/m romance are eating good these days. In my last post, I mentioned Yield Under Great Persuasion, which falls into this category. This week it’s Freya Marske’s new book, Swordcrossed. I’ve loved Marke’s other books and of course enjoyed this one too. It’s billed as a much lower-stakes story. There’s no big magic, end-of-the-world stuff, just a guy trying to get married to save his family’s fortunes and falling for his fencing instructor instead. Whoops! It could happen to any of us, honestly. It’s a fun book, there is intrigue, mystery, and a highly ADHD-coded fencing instructor. It was a good read!
Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism by Joanne Limburg is in conversation with historical women who may have been autistic. In a way, it reminded me of Femina, in that it is offering a close read on women of the past. The book is a collection of four “letters” (essays, really) that serve as memoir and commentary on autism, feminism, and disability. There are a lot of poignant observations here on being weird, which Limburg notes “is not the same as conscious rebellion or resistance, though it may come to inform it,” and especially being weird as a woman. One such example, “The whole point of the work that goes into the presentation of girlhood and then womanhood is to erase itself, and by doing it incompetently we are drawing attention to it, and to the unruly animal body.” Ouch, Joanne. I related to a lot of the author’s experiences about being weird and not performing girlhood or womanhood correctly. She tells a story about sitting at the adults’ table at a dinner party and thinking she really won at socializing correclty, only to go home and have her mother tear into her “for taking up so much attention.” Like, beat for beat that happened to me with my step-mom on my ass for not asking enough questions of other people during a dinner. That’s something that always shocks me reading other people’s (especially other women’s) accounts of autism. I grew up thinking I was the only broken weirdo like me on this Earth and yet I’m reading these stories and seeing that tons of women have felt the same and had eerily similar experiences. It’s criminal that we all feel this way while there’s such a sisterhood there, just out of reach. Limburg’s work bridges some of that gap for us here in the present and attempts to reach into the past to offer our spiritual ancestors the same.
Meanwhile, on the internet:
- BrucePac Recalls Ready-To-Eat Meat and Poultry Products Due to Possible Listeria Contamination via USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service. This is a public service announcement. There is a huge recall on ready-to-eat meat and poultry associated with this company called BrucePak. You may wish to avoid this growing list of products that may be contaminated with listeria. There is also a recall on frozen waffles and pancakes. Maybe just cook for yourself for a little while.
- How to find helpful content in a sea of made-for-Google BS via HouseFresh. I appreciated this guide on the current best methods for figuring out which websites are useful and which ones are full of SEO and AI slop. I consider myself fairly savvy on such topics but I did learn some new things here.
- How Google is Killing Bloggers and Small Publishers – And Why via Just Pack. This is on the same topic as the previous article but from a different perspective. Google spent years encouraging bloggers to write and structure content in a certain way, and is now using all the information it gathered to provide abbreviated explanations directly in the search results instead of sending people to websites—and that’s ruining small sites. The internet sucks now!
- Who Gets Shipped and Why? via The Pudding. I thought this article on fanfiction and shipping (the concept of deciding in your own mind which of the characters in a work should be a couple. For example, imagining that Star Trek’s Kirk and Spock [“Spirk”] are a couple) was really interesting. The authors run the numbers on some of the most popular ships in fanfiction, noting that they are overwhelmingly gay male pairings. They posit that many popular shows and books are lacking in-depth portrayals of women, so women fans ship male characters. It also opens a fandom space for women and the queer community in a unique way.
- White House announces first California marine sanctuary managed by Indigenous peoples via The LA Times. A coastal area between San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara is now under the administrative auspices of the Chumash Indians. From the article, “The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is responsible for managing the preserve, but Indigenous tribes will directly advise the agency. The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians, which has territory overlapping with the sanctuary and is the only federally recognized Chumash tribe, has been designated as NOAA’s key Indigenous partner.” Pretty cool!
TV and Music
Kirk and I have been watching The Silo on Apple TV. Our timing was good because the second season is coming in a few weeks. We were discussing that this is basically a cop/mystery show, which we don’t normally care for, but it’s in a science fiction context, so that makes it interesting. I don’t need to see cops in the real world! How dull! Show me cops locked in a gigantic, silo-shaped fallout shelter (I assume?) who are running against the surveillance state. We have also been yelling at the show demanding to see more of the logistics. How do all those people live underground? Show us the farms, you cowards! Show us the air filtration system! So yeah, it’s a good show.
Rampant Anti-Consumerism
I came across some suggestions for getting rid of some of the junk that Windows 10 and 11 saddle us with. I swear every tech company is committed to making full-on surveillance machines. It makes me mad. We pay for this shit. We shouldn’t have to deal with the crap too. I downloaded two free programs from O&O Sfotware: ShutUp and AppBuster. ShutUp gives you a way to turn off some of the most offensive Windows features and AppBuster makes it possible to remove some of the built-in programs that you don’t need. It takes five minutes and works great! The other thing I did, which admittedly requires a little bit of computering skill, is disabled the Bing search that Windows gratuitously includes in the Start menu. I do not need or want this. The instructions made it very simple and now I don’t have Windows suggesting random garbage to me all the time.
Languages
Yes, I am still translating things on Wikipedia and it brings me joy to share what I’ve translated so here we go. I’m chipping away at all the articles linked in the LGBT literature of Mexico article that I translated into English a few months ago. After translating the page for the author Luis González de Alba into English, I had to do the page on his book Los días y los años. I showed that to Ana and she suggested I translated the article on the Olimpia Batallion, which was involved in suppressing Mexico’s 1968 student protests. I might take on some more articles in this subject because it’s important and interesting, if rather heavy. Then, I doubled back to my gay authors and translated the page on Wenceslao Bruciaga, who has some books with very interesting names like Un amigo para la orgía del fin del mundo (A Friend for the Orgy at the End of the World). I mean, that’s a good title. I’m intrigued.
Corporeal Form
I am delighted to report that I finally found a good primary care doctor. She was actually helpful and even said it was a good thing that I read up on my ailments and come prepared to my appointments. This is an extremely welcome change of pace after being told many stupid things like that I shouldn’t rely on “Dr. Google” (first of all, I don’t even use google anymore). I wrote this part of the blog on Thursday, then spent half of Friday having an absolute FIT because I got a letter from Kaiser saying my doctor is moving into an administrative job so she can’t be my doctor anymore and I have been reassigned “for my convenience.” I concluded that my life is apparently a joke. However, there is a happy ending. I emailed my doctor to ask if she could recommend someone I should see instead of her and she said she could stay with her as long as I’m okay with reduced availability. Totally fine. Thank god because I fear I could not endure another round of trial and error looking for someone who won’t tell me that the reason I’m hot all the time is that I’m fat (spoiler: it was perimenopause).
My new doctor confirmed that I am hypermobile—something I wrote about last month—and said it does sound like the problems I’m describing are dysautonomia. This was really validating news because I know something is wrong with me and that really did sound like the thing. You may recall that a few months ago I was fairly convinced I had POTS. While I probably don’t have that specifically, it is a form of dysautonomia, so I was on the right track.
Dysautonomia is an umbrella term for disorders in which the autonomic nervous system (the part of the nervous system running the organs) is out of whack. Symptoms include things like fatigue, nausea, shortness of breath, and a variety of other things. I think this is something I’ve always had but it has been intensifying lately. The doctor suggested that perimenopause, which also wreaks havoc on the body in many little-understood ways, could be having an unwholesome reaction with the dysautonomia. Unfortunately, the only things I can really do about it are eat more salt (yes, more), wear compression socks (side bar: I’m liking the Apolla socks), and maybe take to my fainting couch regularly, I don’t know. I’m only half-joking about the fainting couch. I’m not fainting but I am definitely experiencing “orthostatic intolerance,” which is the body just kinda having a hard time standing up. Blood is not getting where it needs to go when I’m standing! It wants to relax in my feet, which is not very useful (this is where the compression socks come in). I’ve always noticed that blood pools in my hands when I’m out for a walk or doing things (my personal term for this phenomenon is “sausage fingers”), so it is makes sense and I am not surprised to learn that the same thing is happening in my feet.
Dysautonomia and hypermobility and autism are all connected! I’m going slightly insane with the number of ailments apparently correlated to hypermobility. Hypermobile people are more likely to have carpal tunnel! I’m just like … free will doesn’t exist and the choices I make barely matter. It’s fine!
Kitchen Witchery
Last weekend, my friend Lemon and I hosted another food-themed party—the sequel to the Souper Bowl and the Dip n Dip—dumplings of the world! Everyone was invited to make some kind of dumpling. Is a pop tart a dumpling? Ravioli? That is for the individual cook to decide. It was a nice time having people hang out and eating good food. One great thing about being an adult is that I can get my friends together for any reason I want. That reason can be eating dumplings. I made a cheese and vegetable pasty from the Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant cookbook (one of the books I got from my late mother-in-law’s collection). I thought they were quite good! The recipe has turnips in them and I am not sure that I have ever bought or cooked a turnip before. Behold, the humble turnip!
Unrelated to dumplings I tried the carne en su jugo (“meat in its juice”) recipe from The Bean Book. Kirk remarked that it was very good but then said “it’s just steak and bacon.” It’s steak and bacon in a chili sauce over beans so yes, there’s no reason it would be bad.
Cat Therapy
We got Fritz his expensive prescription food and thankfully he is not the kind of cat to be very fussy about dry food (however, he has zero interest in the wet stuff). We also got him a fancy water fountain for him to drink out of but this little idiot is scared of the spooky moving water. I’ve been keeping his regular bowl filled just in case and I’m glad I did because he would probably be completely dehydrated right now. For those following his litter box saga, we did finally get him to poop in the box. In fact, he’s done it two days in a row now. I don’t know if the food is helping or if it’s our campaign of telling him he’s a wonderful and handsome boy every time he gets near the box. In any case, it’s progress. We need him to figure this out again because it’s very annoying.
Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves.
