#76: The Body Issue (kinda)

Actual updates

All the snow is gone. It’s a normal time of the year for all the snow to be gone, but nonetheless: all the snow is gone.

So. I am not a “throwing up” kind of a person. I don’t puke. Not just that I don’t usually get the kind of sick that leads to vomiting, but that even when I’m feeling queasy, there isn’t usually a result. But there was a result the other day.

It was a Friday evening. We were watching a movie. I was drinking a cup of tea, as I normally do; it was one of the two kinds I’ve been drinking for days, although it is a particularly strong kind and when I have strong tea on an empty stomach it CAN make me feel lightheaded and sometimes nauseous. But it’s been very rare to cause anything to actually happen, and anyway I didn’t have an empty stomach. I had eaten lunch, I had eaten dinner, I had snacked a little here and there as is my wont. Nonetheless, I started feeling really iffy.

I thought “Perhaps I would like to throw up,” and went off to the bathroom, where I did not throw up. Okay, this is just going to be normal, then, and I’ll feel dodgy and then it will pass and we’ll all go on with our lives. No. Wrong. Incorrect. I did not feel better, and then, after awhile, abruptly felt worse, much worse, and I knew it was Time. And boy, was it! This was one of your classic food poisoning style scenarios, which meant I was about to have a bad time but at least not for a long time. The only thing food poisoning has going for it is that once you’ve emptied out the tanks, you’re okay. Now, it did take two rounds to empty the aforementioned tanks, and one of them was at 3:30 in the morning, and I didn’t sleep in between (or much afterwards), so I still felt pretty wretched the next day BUT at least it was not the kind of wretchedness where I had to know the exact number of paces to the nearest bathroom at all times.

But the biggest problem was that this happened on a Friday night. By the time Monday rolled around, I was fine! Unfair, unreasonable, unrealistic!!

Oh! You know what else is unreasonable and all the rest of it? This stupid little instagram post I saw a couple weeks ago. No, but ok, stay with me.

So, on the face of it, it looks like your typical influencer text carousel: simple, uncontroversial thoughts presented as a big revelation. This time, the revelation is that being Not Like Other Girls for the approval of boys, in school, is dumb and a betrayal of yourself. Okay! So far so fine. Throwing other girls under the bus to make boys think you’re cool is dipshit behavior, but many of us were dipshits as teenagers, so this will resonate with a lot of people.

But then it took a turn. It said that actually, ladies, you DO like - specifically - Taylor Swift and the color pink! You’re just fooling yourself that you don’t! And then the words “You can’t just not be a girl, you ARE a girl.” Give in. Give in. You’re a girl. You can’t just not be a girl. 

The TERFiness of it leaps out (intentional or not, I’m not sure; I didn’t go read more of the poster’s content to see what their whole deal was, but they’re marinated in the same sauce, at the least), and that’s of course the first thing that hits the reader over the head, but the more subtle “of course you like these things that have been culturally assigned to girls, whether you do or not” and, even worse, if you don’t like those things (or, of course, if you SAY you don’t, because deep down, you do), you’re only doing that to put down other women. It’s unfathomable that women should not be a monolith! There’s one path, and you can’t step off it!

But that’s not true, is it.

Neither of it is true, if you want to think about it that way. Women aren’t a monolith, and you can absolutely be one without liking all the same things that some girl online says you have to, but furthermore: yes the hell you CAN “just not be a girl.” If it’s not for you, you can stop! The “if it sucks, hit da bricks” meme is true for gender too!

Is this a lot to pull out of some IG post by some “Content Creator” type whose name I can’t even remember? Sure. Maybe she didn’t even mean it this way. But it landed like a cannonball, and anyway this is my newsletter and I can go deep on whatever bullshit I want.

What am I reading

I’m reading a book about axe murder! Whack Job: A History of Axe Murder, by Rachel McCarthy James, specifically, and up until we reach the modern portion of the book, it’s really not very lurid at all (well, the one I’m reading about right now is very lurid, but that’s beside the point). In fact, the author takes pains to make this clear: the idea we have today about this being a special and specially horrific kind of murder - worse than shooting someone or even stabbing them with a different type of blade - and done particularly by a certain type of a person, the Axe Murderer, is a recent invention. But people have been killing each other with axes for millenia.

Your mind may have gone immediately to warfare, and that’s certainly represented, but consider the executioner; this book spends some time in the Tower of London talking about people locked up there who got a good death (quick, precise, done by a professional with a sharp axe) versus people who didn’t (none of those things) and who merited which one. We also travel to China to meet an emperor’s wife who, unlike her fellow wives, was buried with several axes. We even go as far back as Otzi the Ice Man, who was found with an axe of his own nearby. The fact is that before industrialization, axes and their ilk were a normal household tool that was always handy, and while today the idea of someone killing someone else with an axe would call for prior planning and a desire to do a certain amount of damage, back in the day it would be more like someone grabbing a kitchen knife in the heat of the moment. But boy did it move newspapers when it evolved into its current form!

But the funniest thing about this book is something that didn’t even happen. Last month, I was supposed to have jury duty.¹ It wound up getting cancelled because it fell on the same day of the big snowstorm, but before that happened, I was thinking about what to take with me to sit and wait in the waiting room all day. I was reading something else, and thought I might wind up finishing it before the day was over. So, I thought, I’d better grab the next book on my pile to have as a back-up. And that next book was… this one. Can you imagine.

Some links

This sounds like my nightmare. Imagine being told you’re going to die soon - and then you don’t. What Happens When You Don’t Die on Time?

This is a real “what?” of a headline and there’s a LOT going on in here. But to me the most interesting part is that this is the first I’m hearing about this egg. It was a thing in the 90s! I was a person in the 90s! A massive egg covered in jewels, with mechanical moving parts, would have CAPTIVATED me in the 90s! Where was this information when I needed it? My Dad Made the Biggest Jeweled Egg in the World. The Obsession Would Destroy His Marriage, Family, and Fortune

Of course, we all want to be the kind of person who stays sharp as they age, and the world is full of all sorts of brain exercise games and tools to help you try - but it might not be entirely in your hands.² I actually wanted a little more from this article; it ends really abruptly, and I felt like there was more to be said on this subject. Super-Agers’ Brains Have a Special Ability, New Study Suggests

The answer is not contained within, but please enjoy some examples of the genre. Why Are Hotel Corridor Carpets So Ugly?

Anyone who knows me knows I do not share this affliction, but it’s not all that rare, it turns out, and it sounds awful: I Can’t Burp: A Gassy Medical Mystery

There’s something to this, I think. I mean, sure, the days of my youth were superior to the days of my old age because I didn’t have responsibilities or a job or a human child I had to keep alive and out of trouble, other than myself, but also, the days of my youth sucked! I had a real bad time! It might have been worsened by the existence of modern devices, but it also might have been improved in terms of finding community and friendship. The Rise of the Techno-Pastoral

This show sounds like it was almost amazing. How NBC’s Supertrain Went Off the Rails

That’s cool. I’m 43 and I’ve had 3 mental breakdowns this week. I wonder what I’ll have had 3 of by the time I’m 98, should I be so lucky as to live that long (probably won’t be facelifts, though, my face is of little concern to me). I’m 98 and I’ve Had 3 Facelifts

This is interesting, although so far a very small experiment (two people only). Brain implants in general are wild as hell - they sound like The Future, but they’re also the kind of thing that horrible billionaires love, and what’s stopping a brain implant from being used remotely against you? But on the other hand, if it’s the best way for someone to communicate, then surely they should be able to have it if they want it. Oh, and of course there’s an AI at the heart of it, so all their texts will be in the format “it’s not just x—it’s y.” An Experimental Brain Implant Allows People with Paralysis to Type Their Thoughts with Their Minds

I am going to say the most west-coast-pilled thing ever right now: it always seems completely weird to me to fly to anywhere in Asia (other than the Middle East, I guess) by going over the Atlantic. Connecting flights in Dubai? Why?³  How the Iran War is Reconfiguring the World’s Flight Map

Alright. I’m a yapper by nature and by trade, and I understand what this article is driving at - it’s okay to make small talk with the person ringing you up at the corner store! Be sensible and don’t hold up the line but it’s ok to say a couple words! Human connection is important! BUT one thing she never mentions is what I would say is the most common reason for being hesitant to talk to strangers, and a very good reason it is: most people, particularly female-presenting people, have dozens of stories of Some Guy feeling entitled to a conversation with them, regardless of how many “leave me alone” signals they were giving off, both subtly and overtly. It is clear that not everyone understands this! Some folks feel like it’s their right to interrupt you reading your book or, hell, scrolling on your phone, because they think their wish to talk to you overrides your wish to do whatever you’re already doing. And not wanting to be that kind of a person is a very good reason to leave people alone! There’s nuance to be had here, and I wish this article provided some of it, because their point isn’t bad - it’s just incomplete. The Stranger Secret: How to Talk to Anyone - And Why You Should

This is such a beautiful and heartfelt and deeply considered story. Rattlesnakes are misunderstood and fascinating creatures, and this author decided to welcome them rather than murder them⁴ . This might be the “if you only read one link” story this month. Rattlesnakes at My Door

Lest any Americans feel like this country is currently being uniquely racist and xenophobic about immigration, here’s a story about Poland and Belarus facing off across the one old-growth forest left in Europe about migrants trying to move through it. The Migrants in the Ancient Forest

This is about being struck by lightning, and one of the things they touch upon is how unlikely it is for someone to be struck multiple times, despite a lot of the people who have been struck reporting that they have been struck repeatedly. But earlier in the article, they mention that the odds are different in different places and for different people. For instance, my dad knows or knew a guy who has been struck by lightning more than once; they know each other through mountaineering. Obviously, hanging around on the tops of mountains is a higher risk for getting hit by lightning than sitting at a desk doing a laptop job! It’s still unlikely to happen at all, but it’s way less unlikely that that guy is the one to be hit repeatedly. What 100 Million Volts Do to the Body and Mind

This is about answering machines, but it’s also about grief. After the Beep

I have now learned two things: one, fancy cars are shipped from place to place rather a lot, and two, those shipments are apparently extremely vulnerable to theft - but not in the “highway robbery” sense! Instead, the crooks basically social-engineer people into signing on with fake transportation companies and then they just drive off with the loot. The Curious Case of the Disappearing Lamborghinis

Not now, nuclear tomb!! Cracks Appear in Pacific Nuclear Tomb as Sea Levels Rise

NOT NOW, MYSTERIOUS CYLINDER!! Mysterious Large Steel Cylinder Suddenly Emerges from the Ground in Japan

Tunes I’ve been listening to lately

Bow bow bow:

From a perfect album:

And this one is from an album that we were given, unprompted, at a show (possibly an air guitar show back in the national touring era?). It’s a rock opera about a love triangle in space, kind of? But also about snack foods? Anyway, this song is the best one on it, I’m pretty sure.

This month’s top 5: Wikipedia tabs I have open and why

To be clear, these are just 5 of the tabs I have open.

1. Ethel Caterham: currently the oldest living person in the world. Hap is very obsessed with how old everyone is, and particularly the oldest people. So we needed to learn about her a bit.

2. Vera West: when we were watching the Universal monster movies, she was credited for “Gowns” for all but the most recent ones. So, naturally, I had to go find out what her deal was.

3. VY Canis Majoris: (maybe) the largest known star. Another Hap special. Bonus: if you go to this page you will get jumpscared by a portrait a little ways down the page.

4. List of Awards and Nominations Received by Ralph Fiennes: we were watching The Bone Temple, which he is in, and at one point he is naked. So, before I made a remark about seeing an Oscar-winning wiener, I had to go check if it (and the rest of him) had actually won an Oscar. It hasn’t, by the way.

5. Indian Ocean Geoid Low: this is crazy and I got here via a series of links that I can’t remember anymore; did you know there’s a GRAVITATIONAL ANOMALY in the Indian Ocean?? The sea level within it is lower! What the hell?!

I’ll be back next month if there’s still a world to be back in! Which seems increasingly dubious by the day! Brief respites, but then back into the hell of it all. But assuming there is and I am, we’ll revisit the whole “being sick” thing and specifically how it interfaces with Body Thoughts. Thoughts! I’m riddled with ‘em!

1  funny story, just afterwards i got another jury duty summons, for a federal type of court, which would have involved being on call for a 3-week period. i got out of that one because are you serious, but: wow

2  this is good, actually. i hate HATE the obsession with being responsible for every disease that afflicts us, it’s essentially purity culture for health and if you don’t do whatever the latest rules say you should, you deserve whatever’s coming to you. get out of here with that

3  i mean, i’ve seen a map before. i know why.

4  she does kind of show her millenial flag in how she names the ones that live near her house, though