Potatoes of Mass Destruction
If you want to exact vengeance on someone, you don't need to hire a hitman. What you need to do is find yourself some rotting potatoes at the supermarket (Albertson's does a great job of this, I swear it's like a prepared food they sell), and leave one in every room, every closet, every bed in the house of the person whose life you want to destroy.
Rotting potatoes squirt out this putrid corpse juice that looks like Coca-Cola that's been left out in a glass for a week. That stuff is gold so don't waste it. Really rub it into pillows, the armpits of jackets, gussets of undies, chair cushions – wherever you know the stench will seep into fibers and hold for eternity. And that's it. Wait a few weeks and drive by. You'll see the house burned down and the resident getting arrested for insurance fraud. Voila. Vengeance complete.
Jenny, this one's for you. I got you girl.
I've noticed stuff that usually never goes bad is going bad. Like potatoes and onions. I can't tell you how many onions I've chucked recently because they've gone moldy. Onions! Sometimes, I carefully peel away the topmost layers and just rinse them because what's a little black mold if you're cooking the hell out of something? It's fine. I mean, maybe don't put it in the salsa, but we'll live. But also, it's the end of days so who cares.
Albertson's has the worst onions known to man, but it's the closest to my house. Stater Bros. has the best onions, but in this heat I'd rather not be driving the milk around for five extra minutes. And, no, I don't have one of those freezer bags in the trunk of my car that keeps everything cold. That's not the area of my life in which I'm well put together. (Although it should be, since this is all clearly very important to me.)
Trader Joe's has great potatoes. Smaller, and in a storage-friendly brown paper bag with a little window you can inspect them through. I always stick my nose in there and take a whiff to make sure I'm not bringing a dirty diaper home. But Trader Joe's is also far, and lately I've wanted to beat people (again) with those cinnamon brooms for their in-store behavior.
Let me tell you something. If you're a first-timer at Trader Joe's, or better yet on a date, don't come on Sunday from 2 - 7 pm. In fact, you should be banned from the store. There should be a grocery IQ test where you get assigned a color – green, yellow, or red hibiscus – and only greens can come any time of the day because they know what they're doing. If you have children under the age of 12, you're automatically yellow and below. Sorry, but if your kid runs face first into my buttcrack while I'm leaning over to get my frozen garlic naan, you're getting a black card. Only one trip a month allowed at 7:30 am on a Wednesday.
(I think I accidentally pulled a Mrs. Robinson and flirted with the checkout boy about chocolate covered pretzels yesterday. Green cards get to do that.)
I know what you're wondering. What's in this IQ test? A lot of things, Sharon. For example, can you demonstrate that you can successfully complete a Rockford-style J-turn between the yogurts and produce island? Do you have the fortitude to resist joining the dad pool forming at the sampling hut, thereby blocking my access to new products? Can you move in order in the frozen aisle because you have a functioning frontal lobe and know where everything is based on the three thousand times you've been there before? Or are you dawdling?
Feel free to make other suggestions. I didn't even mention the spices-beauty-vitamins and noodles-sauces-canned food aisle, also known as the Corridor of Idiots, because I usually skip it altogether. Unless I need some canned jackfruit, in which case I'll punk some college kids' asses to get to it. Gochujang? More like gochuWHAM.
I'm kidding about everything of course. Because any day I can drive myself to the grocery store without a bomb falling on my car or me getting raped, any time I can linger behind some idiot in the frozen section and feel my cortisol level palpably rise, any time I can bring home food to enjoy is a blessed day, and a reminder of just how fortunate I am.
A few things I've enjoyed lately...
I might lose a few people by sharing this, but I don't care. I'm not an absolutist. I think everyone needs to be talking to everyone, and that's ultimately how we're going to save our democracy. Fascists want you talking to nobody. They want to silo you in your fears, keep you in a state of shock and bewilderment, and want you to disengage. Theo Von has an enormous youth male audience and I've been dipping in for a long time to keep my finger on the pulse. This was a fabulous, hilarious conversation that made me feel hopeful.
Old episodes of Nigella Lawson's early 2000s food show, Nigella Bites. I remember thinking these were unhinged then. Everything about this show is a delight. The over-the-top doodled jazz theme, the random clips of her out drinking with friends or luxuriating in the tub surrounded by sixty Diptyque candles, the insane close-ups of her smoky eye, and most importantly the shots of her realistically messy closet, pantry, and library. It's so refreshing in the era of overproduced, sanitized food shows without a turmeric stain in sight. Nigella has a great sense of color, and a hands-on, low-fuss, gadget-minimal kitchen technique I admire. Sensuality is the most meaningful inefficiency in the art of cooking.
mandy brown
I rely on my friend Mandy to land the planes of delusion we're all flying around in and ground us in reality by continuously reframing the issues of our time. From her recent Reading Note, An Addiction...
So we talk about how AI will kill us, and it seems like we’re doing something, but then ever more terrible news emerges and the talk carries on. Meanwhile, all of the potential horrors ascribed to a future AI are in fact real and present today, but have been (are being) enacted by humans. We need not contemplate how an AI could infiltrate an organization and turn it to its own ends when—today—we have chatbots encouraging people to commit suicide. We need not speculate about AI taking all of our jobs when—today!—the same humans peddling AI are also laying people off right and left. We need not prophesy a future in which a rogue AI murders people en masse when—today!—we have humans making the choice to fire missiles at schoolchildren. Talk of a god-like AI that needs to be constrained projects our present fears into a hypothetical future, one that can only be addressed with more talk; meanwhile, we neglect our obligations to name and prosecute war crimes that have already happened. Casting AI as the monster-to-come obfuscates the monsters already in our midst.
Sui generis cookbooks like White Trash Cooking and Princess Pamela's Soul Food Cookbook. I've been meditating on food books as anthropological artifacts. All cookbooks fall into this category in varying degrees, but I'm obsessed with examples that resist the "platform determinism" of the modern day cookbook. And beyond that, books about food that demonstrate the idea of "oppositional consciousness," the consciousness that often starts in subcultures like churches, kitchen tables, and friend groups, where oppressed people, often women of color, can name what's happening to them before any visible movement forms.
Finally, a reflection. A friend of mine recently nudged me about being hard on men. It's true, I've been taking increasingly frequent jabs at men collectively in a way that might make good men feel invisible and sidelined. A lot of my readers and friends are wonderful men, and I just want to go on the record and say that I love you and we need you.
Having said that, I think more good men need to speak up and take action on behalf of women, and the unbelievable amount of violence we endure everywhere all the time. If you want to feel seen and heard as a good man, say something, do something, show us you care.
I took what my friend said to heart because I care. What stuck with me afterward though is how much caring women already shoulder. They outnumber men in care-centered professions and caregiving roles at home, and quietly labor to enable the freedoms men disproportionately enjoy in a world built by men to keep men safe and comfortable.
It both sickens and infuriates me that I feel lucky for never having been assaulted on a college campus, at work, or in my home.
So forgive me if sometimes my unlocalized, seething rage spills into my writing and work. Good Men, I love you, but you need to do more than exist.
No spam, no sharing to third party. Only you and me.
