The deep sea, sandwiches, penis fencing, and more!
(Not the kind of fencing you find at Home Depot)
It’s officially summer, which means all my plans to “be chill” and “not pack my schedule full of stuff” are failing miserably. Summer in Chicago is manic; it’s the 2.5 months where we can go outside with bare skin showing and actually see our friends. That’s why last week’s Canadian smoke felt particularly insulting.
I’m also in the trenches with a new novel, racing toward an August deadline, so apologies if this particular newsletter feels a little… unhinged. All I can say is, I don’t recommend letting your subconscious write a novel during a pandemic - you’ll break your brain untangling what it was trying to say.
Anyhoo, without further ado…
5 Things I’ve Recently Liked That You Might Also Like:
Confession: I do love an unhinged novel, which is probably why I write them. Especially a genre mashup. Recently, I blew through THE LAST POLICEMAN, a police procedural that takes place as an Earth-obliterating asteroid is hurtling toward the planet. It’s great, and such a delight to see the ways that inevitable asteroid affects a murder investigation. My only beef is that I don’t love a story that portrays police as benevolent in any capacity, but I do feel the apocalyptic element helped. It’s also a series! So if you like the first one, there’s two more.
Like many of us, I’m always looking for a vehicle for tinned fish. So you can imagine my delight at discovering an open-faced Scandinavian sandwich called “snitter.” Leave it to the Scandis to make a sandwich adorably unappetizing! Anyway, you know those brick-shaped super-dense loaves of definitely-not-American rye you sometimes see at the grocery store? And you’re like, that’s way too healthy for my colon, no thank you? Well, it turns out those loaves are pre-sliced VERY thin, and made for snitter! I made mine with a scrambled egg, jalapeno-marinated mackerel, and some fried shallot. But really, the world is your snitter. Here’s a photo I took out of a cookbook. Enjoy!
I love weightlifting. You notice yourself getting way stronger, like, IMMEDIATELY. It makes me feel like the world makes sense! Lift heavy chunks of metal = get stronger. But I also know staring down the weights section of a gym and the bros therein can be super intimidating. Also, like, what are you supposed to do there? If you’re at all interested, I really like the GZCLP method - world’s worst abbreviation (and honestly, I’m not even sure what it stands for) but a super-simple way to get into weightlifting. Or if infographics aren’t your thing, I also highly recommend Casey Johnston’s newsletter AND her terrific program for beginners, Couch to Barbell. Lifting weights transformed my relationship to my body and also nothing feels quite as badass as deadlifting. I like it so much, I bought this shirt.
Guys, you really should join BeReal with me and a zillion teenagers. It’s fun and way more low-key than whatever new Twitter substitute we’re signing up for this week. Here’s the SNL video that convinced me:
The deep sea got some bad PR these past couple weeks, which is a shame because it is awesome down there. So awesome, I wrote an article for Slate about the time I visited in the famous Alvin submersible and lived to tell the tale. However, I didn’t get to mention my proudest accomplishment, which was peeing in a bottle 6000 feet under the sea, for which I received this official badge of honor and beautiful crown made of rope and netting and zip ties.
Bonus Lewd Animal Fact:
Let’s chat about penis fencing among flatworms. Flatworms are hermaphroditic, meaning they have the parts to get pregnant and to impregnate. Their mating ritual is to fence each other with their penis parts until one of them “stabs” the other and impregnates it. Sometimes the fencing can go on for an HOUR. The impregnated one then becomes the “mother” and the stabber is the “father.” But before we start talking about how red-in-tooth-and-claw nature is, in many species of flatworm, the penis-havers will continue to fence with other partners until they eventually become mothers too. Tell that to your shitty transphobic uncle at Thanksgiving.
Thanks for reading! Hope to see you next time. And hey, did you know you can review a book on a loathsome billionaire’s website even if you didn’t buy the book from that website? Just a lil unrelated life hack for ya.
Nature, red in tooth and...something, at least.