Pathos Soils Everything

                                                                                                                                           For Eric.

In Robin Schulman’s Eat The City, she gives a fascinating account of the ins-and-outs of food production in NYC. My favorite anecdote is about the time the bodies of bees, and their honey turned, red due to getting into maraschino cherry syrup, and red dye no. 40 in it. My friend, Eric, called this the stuff of horror movies.

My friend Eric says a lot of things, and if you know him you know that this is a good thing. Consider the following exchange. This was following a discussion on the Book Parties I have. Eric, a voracious reader, always wants book recommendations, and I promised a blog post for him on that.

The conditions, clearly: What is Vital/Worth Reading, From My List of 2017, and Based on Nothing More Than My Personal Determination. Cuteness warning, #bookselfies with #souphound to follow.

Here’s the deal about Eric The Reader. He can be picky. That’s putting it gently, he has high standards. He needs books to have formidable, intellectual standards, to push current narrative forms, to stay away from pathos (sentimental, feely-ing, emotions o noes!!!!.... unless it’s Dear Sugar), and a book must keep all the promises it suggests at the beginning.

My recommendations to Eric often fly in the face of the things he likes, because I think I can change him. Sometimes it works (see above example of Dear Sugar. Eric likes Dear Sugar, Eric likes Dear Sugar! (Of course he does, he has a soul!)). Sometimes it doesn't (think Buffering by H. Hart. Boo. I love that book.).

This post isn't just for him, or for that type of reader alone. But these are the highest of the high standards. Take these suggestions seriously!

There have been many “reading lists for surviving 2017” circulating, I can’t do better than those. This is based on “even the pickiest readers should read them based on nothing more than my sheer personal determination.” So, dear Eric, these were the best of the best of my 2016.

1. A Little Life. Hanya Yanagihara (#5)

2.       The Flame Alphabet. Ben Marcus (#12)

3. Gold Fame Citrus. Clare Vaye Watkins (#20)
4. Welcome To Braggsville. T. Geronimo Jackson (#22)

5.       Shadow Tag. Louise Erdrich (#109)

6.       The Heart Goes Last. Margaret Atwood (#133)

7. Salvage The Bones. Jesmyn Ward (#138)
8. Zone One. Colson Whitehead (#146)
9. I’m Supposed to Protect You From All This. Nadja Spiegelman (#147)
10. The Sellout. Paul Beatty (#152)

Books I’m pretty sure Eric The Reader will automatically love:

The Flame Alphabet. Ben Marcus (#12)

Gold Fame Citrus. Clare Vaye Watkins (#20)

Welcome To Braggsville. T. Geronimo Jackson (#22)

The Heart Goes Last. Margaret Atwood (#133)

Zone One. Colson Whitehead (#146)

The Sellout. Paul Beatty (#152)

Why? They all have formidable intellectual standards, push current narrative forms, they stay the heck away from pathos, and they keep all the promises they suggest at the beginning.  

Books I think Eric should read anyway and he is likely to resist me on:

              A Little Life. Hanya Yanagihara (#5)

              Shadow Tag. Louise Erdrich (#109)

              Salvage The Bones. Jesmyn Ward (#138)

I’m Supposed to Protect You From All This. Nadja Spiegelman (#147)

Why? The pathos. These books abosultly maintain high intellectual standards, push formal boundaries and take themselves very seriously. They also break your heart. No promises to put it back together. So maybe these four books are actually my suggestions of survival-books for 2017.

Eric, my dear, you have a kind soul, and a warm heart. You aren’t a toxic-masculinity-unfeeling-hardass. Yet, you know you aren’t drawn to the stories where Love is a character, or a major plot device. Which is why I think, out of my sheer determination, I posit that you read the last 4 here before the other 6. Sheer Determination!

In conclusion, here’s the painting we made at the last book party—a palimpsest of the book list of 2017. Everyone should have book parties! Wish you could have been there! Love you man.

For the first 100 in the reading list of 2016:

http://storiesofsoil.blogspot.com/2016/08/dirty-books-iii.html 

Follow Eric on Twitter @LinkTheorist

Follow the cuteness of #bookselfies with #souphound @FarmsWatson

The other 59 books that followed the first 100 of 2016:

1.     An Untamed State. Roxane Gay

2.     Dept. of Speculation. Jenny Offill

3.     A Spot of Bother. Mark Haddon

4.     We Have Always lived in the Castle

5.     Heavy. The Obesity Crisis in Cultural Context. Helene Shugart

6.     The Post Birthday World. Lionel Shriver

7.     This I Believe II.

8.     Bait and Switch. Barbara Ehrenreich

9.     Shadow Tag. Louise Erdrich

10.  Spark Joy. Marie Kondo.

11.  The Dirt Cure. Maya Shetreat-Klein

12.  Vinegar Girl. Anne Tyler

13.  Secondhand World. Katherine Min

14.  Heartburn. Nora Ephron

15.  The Taming of The Shrew. Shakespeare.

16.  Luka and the Fire of Life. Salman Rushdie

17.  Love Loss and What We Ate. Padma Lakshimi

18.  The Rum Diary. Hunter S. Thompson

19.  Women. Charles Bukowski

20.  I, Etcetera. Susan Sontag

21.  Family Matters. Rohinton Mistry

22.  The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Housin Hamid

23.  Sous Chef. Micheal Gibney

24.  The Giver. Lois Lowry

25.  Go Ask Alice. Anonymous

26.  The Body in The Library. Agatha Christie

27.  The Red House. Mark Haddon

28.  Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty. Ramona Ausubel

29.  The Mandibles: A Family 2029-2047. Lionel Shriver

30.  The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy. Douglas Adams

31.  Dear Mr. M. Herman Koch

32.  Little Nothing. Marisa Sliver

33.  The Heart Goes Last. Margaret Atwood

34.  After The Plague. T. C. Boyle

35.  The Cat’s Table. Michael Ondaatje

36.  Eat Pray Love Made Me Do it.

37.  An Artist Of The Floating World. Kazuo Ishiguro

38.  Salvage The Bones. Jesmyn Ward

39.  An Arsonist’s Guide to Writer’s Homes in New England. Brock Clarke

40.  The Underground Railroad. Colson Whitehead

41.  Truth, Justice, and the American Whote

42.  We Should All Be Feminists. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

43.  Tenth of December. George Saunders.

44.  A Room of One’s Own. Virginia Woolf

45.  Trans: a Memoir. Juliet Jacques

46.  Zone One. Colson Whitehead

47.  I’m Supposed to Protect You From All This. Nadja Spiegelman

48.  Nutshell. Ian McEwan

49.  Buffering. Hannah Hart

50.  Troubling Love. Elena Farrante

51.  The Wonder. Emma Donoghue

52.  The Sellout. Paul Beatty

53.  Hag-Seed. Margaret Atwood

54.  The Fire This Time. Ed. Jesmyn Ward

55.  The Days of Abandonment. Elena Ferrante

56.  Toots in Solitude. John Yount

57.  Flash Fiction. Ed. James Thomas

58.  Lady Chatterly’s Lover. D. H. Lawrence

59.  House of Leaves. Mark Z. Danielewski

             

"Hearts and Minds" (aka 100 postcards I'll be sending to washington)

March 15^th, The Ides of March. The thing that happened to Caesar. I’ve always kinda liked Shakespeare’s version of events. Probably mostly because it’s where we get the origin of the proverb “winning hearts and minds.”

Observe, in Marc Anthony’s declaration to Brutus:

              O masters, if I were disposed to stir  
              Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,  
              I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong,  
              Who, you all know, are honourable men:
              I will not do them wrong; I rather choose 
              To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you,  
              Than I will wrong such honourable men.   (lines 121-127)

 This passage notes that the act of using rhetoric-as-oration to appeal to pathos (hearts) and logos (minds) is dishonorable, and wrong.  In Shakespeare’s sense, swaying “both hearts and minds” would be an act of betrayal for Marc Anthony that he would rather wrong himself than commit an out-ward Bad.

Friends and strangers have asked why I let the blog rest for so long. Why haven’t I been writing? I’ve been reading, refilling myself with something that the rage needs to sustain itself. A time for reading hibernation, maybe. And after rereading some Shakespeare, I read about this:

https://www.theidesoftrump.com/#theidesoftrump

 "On March 15th, 2017 each of us will mail the White House a postcard that publicly expresses our vocal opposition to the new president. And we, in vast numbers, from all corners of the world, will overwhelm Washington."

March 15^th, The Ides of March. That date has a particular protest associated with it this year: The Ides of Trump. No, it is not a day for stabbing politicians. NO THREATS OF VIOLENCE. It’s time to set a new record of “fan mail.”

 On March 15, send the white house a postcard, or more than one. Read the rules here:

https://www.theidesoftrump.com/#theidesoftrump

Right now hearts and minds are being stirred to mutiny and rage in multiple and polarized ways other than described by Shakespeare.

I’m not okay with the rage being sprayed on walls. I’m not okay with a big rage-wall going up down south. I’m not okay with white-rage that uses refugees as its scapegoat. I’m not okay with rage being used as a weapon against information and education. I’m not okay with the rage the current regime is using to mobilize its policies.

My heart fills with bile every time I hear about the next horrible thing. It fills with mud when I sit down to write, because writing about the things that are important are both matters of honor and difficult in stirring yourself out of that mud once you get in.

My dad’s death left me with a bunch of weird collections. One of which was a vault of post-cards. I’ve carried them around for a decade, some of you have been sent one or two across the years.

This year, 100 of them will make their own march to Pennsylvania avenue. Join them as they fulfill the purpose they’ve been waiting for.  I’ll return to regular blogging about stories and soil soon, I promise.

Dirt: Cure or Love Story?

Found this dirty little gem in the *NEW* section of the library's offerings. (Gem means book, not dog.) This is one of the most ambitious books I have ever read. Maya Shetreat-Klein, MD undertakes a massive project in The Dirt Cure (2016).

In 332 pages, we review all the environmental, supply-chain, attitudes and ethos, additives, media-influences, family and cultural pressures, recipes, menus, kitchen layouts, camping, shopping, thinking and issues of emotional landscapes..... (breathe).... that result in our ruined gut-bacteria, cause headaches, allergies, and behavioral, neurological, hormonal, mental, emotional, endocrine/pancreatic, and cardio-vascular problems.

Beginning with a quote from Albert Einstein, we move to the revised "you are what your food eats," which points us to our first philosopher/foodie, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (3, 6). Then comes more.

Marcel Proust, Hippocrates, John Muir, Ralph Waldo Emerson, (John Muir again, then Albert Einstein, again), A reference to PETA with "Chapter Ten: Meet Your Meat," Henry David Thoreau, Wendell Berry, Rachel Carson (20, 61, 131, 159, 167, 169, 181, 233, 271, 297). Everyone from the bookshelf above, minus Beowulf there on the bottom. Ambitious.

If your home/office bookshelves look like mine, you are likely not the target audience for this book. But if a diet of take-out and soda makes you feel gross and you legitimately don't know why, or if you are more familiar with literary pigoons (from Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake), than their real-life facsimiles, then this intense book is a good intro of all the things!

(Yes, those are Beanie Baby Pigoons. Limited mash-up edition, 2004-ish. My dad made them for me after my first conference presentation. Believe it or not, my presentation was on Oryx and Crake. It all started there, I suppose.)

If you see some repeats on my bookshelves and yours, I'd point you instead to the documentary "Dirt! A Love Story!" [That one is more about dirt, and not, well, everything. Even though dirt is everything.]

Or I'd point you to Helene A. Shugart's Heavy (2016). Heavy takes us through the stories about obesity that we've naturalized. The thing about those naturalized stories, though, is they aren't just about obesity, they're about eating in our rhetorical situation in general. They explain what's going on in The Dirt Cure. But more on this later.

If you've read Heavy, then the place to point you is back to Das Kapital. Light summer reading, and trust me on this: NO ONE will bug you if you have your nose in that while you're at the coffee shop. The Dirt Cure? You will make friends. I speak from experience.

 
Read on, comrades, read on. Yes, that is a piggy bank. A Pigarx!

Dirty Books III

It's that time of year again. We've hit the 100 book mark. Time for a Party!

 Many gems, and as usual it is tough to narrow down a slice of them for this. So I'll let Caleb help (#99 Dirt Candy, Amanda Cohen & Ryan Dunlavey). Top Ten Dirty-Tweety Dog Books of 2016!

10. Another Person's Poison. Matthew Smith (#100)

9. Blue Angel. Francine Prose (#7)

8. The Psychology of Overeating. Kima Cargill (#88)

7. Beasts of No Nation. Uzodinma Iweala (#75)

6. Between The World and Me. Ta-Nahisi Coates (#27)

5. The Flame Alphabet. Ben Marcus (#12)

4. Drinking with Men. Rosie Shaap (98)

3. The Size of The Universe. Joseph Cardinale (#87)

2. Everything, Everything. Nicola Yoon (#94)

1. Drop City. T.C. Boyle (#77)

Book #6, Randall Horton's  2006 poetry collection, The Definition of Place, is where I found #souphound: "...pain gnawing my stomach like a tick/ sucking blood on a lazy soup hound" ("Memory: Elvie Three Months After Rosetta's Funeral, 1954," p. 53).

A soup hound is a beggar, staring up at that soup pot waiting for something, with those big puppy eyes that they developed in their quest to domesticate us to their needs. Caleb is my souphound. You can find him on twitter as #souphound, with pictures of what I've read, a #bookselfie.

Something started happening. Those big puppy eyes, and that scruffy scruff scruff started getting some attention. First, a single like, #7 Francine Prose's Blue Angel. A dream of a book for anyone who has ever run a writing classroom. And all the nightmares!

Then two likes, Kima Cargill's (#88) The Psychology of Overeating. Souphound is not convinced by the argument about neoliberalism being related to overeating (he blames the parents, read: me). I am, however, convinced. He and I don't always agree on readings of contemporary capitalist formations.

Then three, Italo Calvino's (#91) Marcovaldo. Calvino's Invisible Cities is my soul-mate of a book. This one is pretty damn good, too.

We got some retweets. Uzodinma Iweala's (#75) Beasts of No Nation. A hard read. Have not yet watched the Film. Don't know if I want to.

Fellow readers commented on the books. Jeet Thayil's (#93) Narcopolis. I loved this book, too. It was The God of Small Things meets A Fine Balance. Caleb seems to have squished himself into proper languid position for reading this one.  

Part of me wanted to believe it was simply out of a love for the books. But the biggest part of me knew that it was that face, those souphound eyes. The way his posture told the story of the of the stories. Ta-Nahisi Coates, (#27) Between The World and Me.

It started to grow. I looked at the analytics. Hundreds of people were seeing these tweets. Ben Marcus' (#12) The Flame Alphabet, one of the most challenging post-apocalyptic parables I've ever encountered.

A publisher (Alabama Press) responded *and* retweeted a post with my furbabe. Joseph Cardinale's (#87) The Size of The Universe. In this home, we're happy to endorse all we read with adorable dogness!

Authors started responding. Nicola Yoon's (#94) Everything, Everything. OMG authors are checking out my adorable souphound--my everything, my reason for being brave in the outdoors, for reading The Little Prince with a full heart. (This paragraph makes more sense if you've read Yoon's book.)

Perhaps the croutons on the soup floated along when T.C. Boyle, (#77) Drop City, got into it with a souphound tweet:

I was humbled that such a well known author would take the time to tweet back about dogishness, and reading. And he did it again! (after I mentioned something about Caleb liking Neruda (#85: The Lost Poems).

So, from this sample set of the twitter-love for #souphound #bookselfies, I know this. Everyone loves adorable pictures of dogs with books. Or at least a lot of readers, and the writers I'm drawn to, are ones that like souphounds. Like Rosie Schaap (#98 Drinking With Men):

And Matthew Smith (#100 Another Person's Poison):

Set let us debunk the myth that readers and writers are mostly cat people.... Or let us continue the myth that Caleb is part cat. Or both. Caleb is lovely, and so are these books. 

The 100 Book Party happens soon, I promise. PM me if you want an invite. I also always welcome suggestions for my continuing reading list. If you want to see more #souphound #bookselfies let me know. Caleb's been making noises about putting out a calendar. What a ham.

But for now, he's got tired eyes from reading. Let's let him sleep. Total Book List Follows below. (or you can find it on Pinterest).

1. all about love. bell hooks*
2. Press Yourself Against a Mirror. Janelle Adsit+
3. Coyote At The Kitchen Door. Stephen DeStefano~
4. City of Thieves. David Benioff*
5. A Little Life. Hanya Yanagihara*
6. The Definition of Place. Randall Horton
7. Blue Angel. Francine Prose*
8. The Best American Comics 2015. ed Jonathan Lethem*
9. Pitch Dark Anarchy. Randall Horton
10. Fear of Dying. Erica Jong.~
11. The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Marie Kondo+
12. The Flame Alphabet. Ben Marcus
13. The Making of Home. Judith Flanders*
14. The Road. Cormic McCarthy~
15. The Master and Margarita. Mikhail Bulgakov>
16. Selected Shorts: Food Fictions*
17. Everything I Never Told You. Celeste Ng*
18. This is a Book. Dimitri Martin*
19. Mycophilia. Eugenia Bone*
20. Gold Fame Citrus. Clare Vaye Watkins*
21. Welcome To Braggsville. T. Geronimo Jackson*
22. The Hunger Games. Susanne Collins~
23. On Chesil Beach. Ian McEwan*
24. The Grownup. Gillian Flynn*
25. Missing Mom. Joyce Carol Oates~
26. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights. Salman Rushdie*
27. Between The World and Me. Ta-Nehisi Coates*
28. A Great Idea At The Time. Alex Beam.~
29. Go Set a Watchman. Harper Lee+
30. Illness as Metaphor, and AIDS and its Metaphors. Susan Sontag~
31. Slice Harvester. Colin Atrophy Hagendorf *
32. Moral Disorder. Margaret Atwood*
33. Twilight. Stephanie Meyer~
34. The Curious Case of The Dog In The Night-Time. Mark Haddon~
35. Gold Boy, Emerald Girl. Yiyun Li~
36. Delicious! Ruth Reichl*
37. Flight Behavior. Barbara Kingsolver*
38. The Remains of The Day. Kazuo Ishiguro ~
39. Open City. Teju Cole
40. The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck. Sarah Knight*
41. Sleep Donation. Karen Russell
42. The Vanishers. Heidi Julavits*
43. Buffalo Noir. eds Ed Park & Brigid Hughes*
44. The Hottest State. Ethan Hawke~
45. Little Bee. Chris Cleave*
46. Foxfire. Joyce Carol Oates~
47. Prodigal Summer. Barbara Kingsolver*
48. A Hologram For the King. Dave Eggers*
49. Election. Tom Perrotta*
50. Looking For Alaska. John Green*
51. Where'd You Go, Bernadette. Maria Semple*
52. Anansi Boys. Neil Gaiman
53. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. Aimee Bender*
54. The Lime Twig. John Hawkes+
55. Horrorstor. Grady Hendrix~
56. Farewell My Subaru. Doug Fine~
57. Beet. Roger Rosenblatt~
58. Ready Player One. Ernest Cline*
59. Delicious Foods. James Hannaham*
60. Brain on Fire. Susannah Cahalan~
61. The Colossus of New York. Colson Whitehead
62. Honeymoon. Patrick Modiano
63. So You've Been Publically Shamed. Jon Ronson*
64. Bartleby The Scrivener. Herman Melville~
65. Incendiary. Chris Cleave
66. Get a Life. Nadine Gordimer~
67. Anagrams. Lorrie Moore~
68. So Much For That. Lionel Shriver~
69. A Tale For The Time Being. Ruth Ozeki*
70. The Vegetarian. Han Kang*
71. Not Dark Yet. Berit Ellingsen*
72. Good Girl. Mary Kubica*
73. Succulent Wild Woman. Sark>
74. The Night Circus. Erin Morgenstern*
75. Beasts of No Nation. Uzodinma Iweala *
76. How We Write. ed S.C.A.
77. Drop City. T. C. Boyle~
78. The Bone Clocks. David Mitchell*
79. Chester 5000. Jess Fink *
80. We Can Fix It. Jess Fink*
81. Every Day Is For The Thief. Teju Cole~
82. Caucasia. Danzy Senna~
83. In Food We Trust. Courtney Thomas*
84. In America. Susan Sontag~
85. The Lost Neruda Poems. Trans Forrest Gander*
86. The News: A User's Manual. Alain de Botton*
87. The Size of The Universe. Joseph Cardinale~
88. The Psychology of Overeating. Kima Cargill
89. The Professor is In. Karen Kelsky*
90. How Starbucks Saved My Life: a son of privilege learns to live.... Michael Gates Gill~
91. Marcovaldo, or Seasons in The City. Italio Calvino~
92. A Gate At The Stairs. Lorrie Moore ~
93. Narcopolis. Jeet Thayil~
94. Everything, Everything. Nicola Yoon*
95. Pandora's Lunchbox. Melaine Warner*
96. Men We Reaped. Jesmyn Ward*
97. Writers Gone Wild. Bill Peschel>
98. Drinking with Men. Rosie Shaap~
99. Dirt Candy. Amanda Cohen & Ryan Dunlavey>
100. Another Person's Poison. Matthew Smith*

50* borrowed from the Library

31 ~ purchased from the Library book sale

4+ gifts

4> lent from friends

11 other. Wow. Is my math right?

LIBRARIES ARE IMPORTANT. SUPPORT THEM.

CSAs and Their S(p)oils

I woke up late today, exhausted and buzzy from an intense seminar about Teaching Food Systems at Columbia University the past couple days (post to follow soon). Like too many of us, the first thing I did was check my email.

Among the others was the weekly email newsletter from my CSA, Fox Creek Farm . Paragraph two worried me:

"In this newsletter we elaborate a bit more on the consequences of the third-party produce delivery services like Field Goods for our farm. It’s getting harder and harder for us to find CSA members. As a result, there’s a lot of pressure on the economic viability of the farm. More details about this in the attached newsletter, as well as a plea for help."

Well, crap. I had just finished writing the section in my dissertation about CSAs being in trouble, but
I didn't actually want to think about it happening to *my* CSA.

So I followed the link to the newsletter.

Here is why they need help:

They link up to the recent NYT article, "When Community Supported Agriculture is Not What It Seems."

So the immediate answer here is to ask this community of readers, would you consider a, pro-rated, CSA for the rest of the season?

I can say, for myself, half a share over-feeds me for the week. I can only imagine what to do with a full share! I've been freezing a lot. I haven't taken advantage of the opportunity to visit the farm yet, but I think that's in order.

These blog posts have been pulling in between 150-200 readers a week, 50-75 of which are of American readers. I would guess that of those American readers, most of them are people I actually know. I don't know.

So if you're "local" (more on that word later) please spread the news, spread this post around, think about getting a share. Click here for info on getting a share.  Send me a message if you have any questions about any of this.



And p.s. the 100 book party is Friday, August 5th. Get ready.

netflix and "dirt! a love story"

I'm sick. Not enough brain power to do proper brain things, but I can reflect on Netflix. While watching "Food Inc." for the millionth time.

As a part of prep for my dissertation defense I've been using the hot, slow afternoons (too hot to weed, and brain needs a break from morning writing) to watch the food documentaries on Netflix. All of them. And the ones from my library. (including "dirt! a love story." Library, not Netflix)

Many of them are based on books. Many of them are based on Michael Pollan's books. "In Defense of Food," "Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation," "The Botany of Desire."

Others just have cameos with Pollan (the Hitchcock of our food systems murder mysteries) like "King Corn," "Food Patriots," and "Food Inc.," (both in Film and Book).

Other Book/Films, like "Fast Food Nation," turn into narrative films. I've fallen down that rabbit hole, too. And that has how-many-degrees of bacon to "Super Size Me."

Surprises from this enterprise: "Crafting a Nation." The story of craft beer redefining local national space. "Somm," and "Somm 2": The story of hardworking wine bros (mostly) that use rhetoric of the political left and right to define attitudes towards oaking or not.

Not surprises, but still shocking: * "Soul Food Junkies"- a good reminder about how pissed we should be about the exclusion of the history of race in food movements. Elijah Muhammed vs. Michael Pollan.

* "Bite Size"- aside from using kids as metonymic figures for whole racial groups, the shaming of over-weight kids is not self-reflexive. If you send your child to a weight-loss school, never NEVER EVER emphasize how it better work because you cashed out your IRA for it.

What are ones I have watched so you don't have to? That's tough to say. The only one that rubbed me in such a wrong was "Foodies." Synopsis: watching food bloggers eat, take pictures, travel, have experiences, emphasize their importance... yet not sense of what their blogs are like, or actually do. They weren't likable enough to look them up.

So, as I drink my beet smoothies while watching, there are trends to notice. They are highly pedagogical. They teach viewers about undecipherable food rules, choices, and food chains. They (mostly) end with gestures towards "this is what you can do to make a change." They show kids learning about tomatoes and growing things.

[beet smoothie: 1/4 roasted beet, 1/4 c frozen blueberries, 1/4 c yogurt, 1/4 c milk (of any kind). Add maple syrup and cinnamon to cover up the taste of beets and spike your blood sugar in ways all these documentaries warn against. Blend. Drink quickly so you can't taste the beets.]


Other things I've noticed: Watching 15+, and adding 30+ to my queue, Netflix no longer recommends interesting things like "Indie Gay/Lesbian Rom-Coms," "Classic Apocalyptic Dramas," or "Dark Comedies Featuring a Strong Canine Lead." I've hacked my logarithm.

Now I only see recommendations for documentaries. "How To Survive a Plague" is amazing, as is "Planet Earth." But it's going to take some time before Netflix shows me anything fiction-heavy again. A very different experience from the AFI 100 Binge.

dirty movies

Also, go home thermometer, you're drunk.