Login
Dear Fellow Signers of the Declaration of Independence:
Now that our noble document is complete, it is time to address the elephant in the room: my name is much bigger than everyone else’s. I’ll be the first to admit that it is absolutely massive. Yet I must also speak this self-evident truth: it is not entirely my fault.
The fact is I thought we were all doing big signatures. That’s what I was told. Do none of you remember Thomas Jefferson—hopped up on parchment fumes and cheap barleywine—running around telling everyone our “sigs” had to be “freakin’ huge”? Then I go first, and everybody bursts out laughing like I did something foolish.
I hereby call on my brethren of the Second Continental Congress—those who I know to be defenders of liberty, progress, and the values of the Enlightenment, to which we are all fan-boyishly devoted for some reason—to publicly stand up and say everybody told John Hancock we were doing big sigs.
Of late—in taverns and shops, on the streets, and in drawing rooms—I have overheard people asking one another for their “John Hancocks.” Like that’s just a thing now? I do not want my name to be a thing. Do you want your names to be things, my Founding Brothers-in-Arms? I say to you, Pat Henry—remember that night you, me, and Sammy Adams got totally wasted? Do you want “staggering into the town square and defiling the steps of the courthouse” henceforth to be known as “Patrick Henrying”? I thought not.
Let me be fully honest with you, brothers. The night of the signing, I did have too much wine. I meant to go big with the signature, but I went overboard. Trembling from the drink, my hand slipped, forcing me into an enormous “J.” And then it was off to the races. Each attempt to correct my mistake only made it worse, and eventually, I just had to commit.
We had options, though. We could have pasted on a few extra inches of parchment to fit all the bigger signatures or made a new version entirely, but James Madison had to return to Virginia to carve soap or something, so everybody just left. I’ve said sorry. Shouldn’t that be enough? Isn’t that why we’re building this whole system—so that people like us can do whatever we want without consequence?
I know now that I should not have told all of Boston that I wrote the Declaration of Independence by myself. That was wrong. But I got so many free drinks. I am most ashamed to report that one evening in Cambridge, I imbibed so much that I Patrick Henried all over John Harvard’s little schoolhouse.
Fine, you want the full confession? Better you hear it from me. Even though it was an accident, I saw an opportunity to make “Big John” a thing. I was planning Big John business ventures of all kinds, primarily Big John-branded whale oil candles. I am now on the hook for literally tens of thousands of candles. If anyone would like to purchase a few dozen cases, please let me know posthaste.
I understand that history will wonder about me: Did he have a massive ego? Shaky hands? A penchant for the drink? As I’ve addressed in this letter, yes, yes, and ohhh yeahhh. I own my faults, and I humbly ask you to forgive me. For if you don’t, I will have no choice but to make common cause with the British and bring vengeance down upon your heads. Especially you, Jefferson.
As a show of good faith and to rectify my error, I would like each one of you to sign this letter next to my very appropriately-sized signature and append it to the official Declaration of Independence to demonstrate for posterity that I, John Hancock, do know how to sign my name regular-style.
With ardent patriotism and deep regret,
Fuck.
“Streaming” [verb / strEEm-ing]: Crossing a medium-sized body of water in short trousers to rescue one’s horse and carriage from sudden peril.
“Bop” [noun / bäp]: The sound of George Washington’s hand-crafted Masonic gavel landing on a ceremonial cornerstone.
“Cheugy” [verb / chew-ghee]: The act of using one’s wooden teeth to thoroughly masticate turtle soup.
“Taylor Swift” [noun / TAY-lor SWIH-ft]: A tradesperson who can alter silken blouses at an exceptionally quick pace.
“Bougee” [noun / BOO-jee]: The name of Thomas Jefferson’s childhood kitten.
“Clapback” [noun / klap-bAk]: An unfavorable condition for a racehorse’s spine.
“Ded” [adjective / DEH-d]: Obituary delivered via illiterate messenger.
“G.O.A.T.” [noun / GOH-t]: A delicious hearty stew.
“Texting” [verb / tEk-st-ING]: The act of carrying flat wooden printing platen across town in large satchels typically made from wool and miscellaneous hides.
“Stan” [noun / STAN]: James Madison’s personal errand boy.
“Lit” [adjective / LIT]: Candlelight used to brighten one’s living quarters in an effort to ward off complete and total darkness.
“Dank” [adjective / DAHN-keh]: Damp/musty conditions, typically used to describe wine cellars, houses of repentance, and Benjamin Franklin’s living room.
“Fire” [noun / fIEUH]: Inexorable natural disaster.
“Spilling the Tea” [expression / SPIL-ing thuh TEE]: An extreme act of American mercantile protest.
“Wig” [noun / WHIG]: 1. A delightful white hair piece used to cover childhood quill scars and uneven balding. 2. A frightening threat to democracy.
“Big Yikes” [expression / BIG YYKS]: Smallpox.
“Justice Samuel Alito took luxury fishing vacation with GOP billionaire who later had cases before the court.” — ProPublica
“The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard in a major victory for conservative activists, ending the systematic consideration of race in the admissions process.” — NBC News
We, the conservative justices of the Supreme Court, have ruled against Harvard and UNC, striking down affirmative action for college admissions across the country. For a detailed explanation of our ruling, feel free to read the court’s majority decision. But in a nutshell, we believe the only people who should ever get extra consideration are those who invite you to hang out on their boats.
You see, it came down to a matter of fairness. Getting into college should be based purely on merit—getting good grades, scoring highly on the SAT, writing a compelling essay, and participating in extracurriculars that speak to your interests. And if one of those interests happens to be sailing, and your family happens to have a 120-foot sailing yacht, and you happen to go on an eight-day pleasure cruise in the Mediterranean the summer before your senior year of high school, and your dad happens to invite the head of admissions at Dartmouth on that trip, we’d see absolutely no problem with that. Just as long as you keep the conversation to nautical topics like, “What are some of your favorite knots?” Or “Spinnakers, am I right?” Or “Say, how competitive is the Dartmouth sailing team, anyhow?”
As we deliberated on the Harvard case, we saw two major sources of inequity in the admissions process:
To determine which was a bigger ethical issue, we asked ourselves a simple question: In which of these two groups are you more likely to own a catamaran? After considering that, the majority opinion practically wrote itself.
The liberal justices argued that rolling back affirmative action would undo decades of progress designed to right the wrongs of systemic inequality. But we don’t believe in being on the “right” side of this issue. We believe in being on the “starboard” side of this issue—the side that favors folks who invite us over for cocktails on the starboard sides of their boats. Which, incidentally, is the right side of the boat, so we think that counts.
Regarding the merits of the decision, some legal scholars felt it was dubious to cite the 14th Amendment, which the court had previously used to argue the exact opposite ruling in favor of affirmative action decades ago. But not one of those scholars invited us on a deep-sea fishing trip to Alaska, or an island-hopping jaunt in the Caribbean, or even a day sail on the Potomac. We might have been more sympathetic to their counterpoints had they thought to do that.
It’s also worth noting that, while the 14th Amendment says many things about equal protection and due process, it says absolutely nothing about boats, or at what point a “boat trip with friends” becomes a “quid pro quo.” Nobody needs a reason to invite you on their boat. Besides, who wouldn’t want to spend an afternoon with Clarence Thomas simply for the divine pleasure of his company?
For those who say the college experience is enriched by having classmates of different backgrounds and perspectives, we can say with certainty that the college experience is also enriched by knowing more people who own megayachts. Depending on how you define “enrich,” of course.
And if you do eventually strike it rich and want to bring us along for a sail, we’d be happy to hop on board. Better yet, hand us a mai tai and one of those captain’s hats with a little anchor on it, and you might find we’ll be “on board” with just about anything.
In the beginning, I created the apartment and the lease. Then I said, “Let there be tenant”; and there was tenant. And I saw the tenant and that she had sufficient pay stubs and no criminal record, which was good. For I am the landlord your God, and wish not to reveal my wrath upon our first meeting.
Then I said, “Let there be skylight”; and there was skylight. For it gave the apartment a majestic view of the sun and the stars, which I created too, because, lest you forget, I am the landlord your God, sovereign over all things real estate.
Then I said, “Let there be furnishing.” For the tenant was created in my image and my image alone. Let there be a kitchen backsplash, goblet drapery, TV (with built-in Roku), and a mustard-colored sectional. And it was so. For toiling in the name of home improvement is very good.
And thus, I said to the tenant: “Behold your new palace. I have led you into the land of milk and honey. Eat grapes off my landlord vine. Be fruitful and multiply on your bed fit for a queen!”
But it was not so. For the tenant denied my spoils, sending grievances about the stucco walls having cracks, carping about broken appliance this, gaudy mustard-colored sectional that, blah blah blah.
And the earth shook and trembled because I was so angry. For the landlord your God is a jealous God who exacts vengeance on his tenant adversaries.
But then I thought, “I am the landlord your God; very compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding with love of real estate. Perhaps I should extend an olive branch and see whether the tenant would engage in some fellowship? For I have created infinite Sour Patch Kids and the latest Zelda game on Nintendo Switch.”
But no. My benevolent offer was spurned. And thus, I furiously commanded, “Let the earth bring forth a plague of rats and cockroaches, and let them have dominion over the tenant, lest she forget my almighty power”; and there were so many pests, and it was good. It was very good.
Thus, my tenant begged for mercy. Sobbed like a little newborn. Threatened to take me to the highest court in the land. Something called the “supreme court.” And I said, “Did thou suffer brain injury? For I am the landlord your God, purveyor of justice, lawgiver, and king. Only I can judge the righteous and the wicked.”
Then I considered smiting the tenant right then and there. But, alas, I exercised forbearance. For I am a super-forgiving God who bears no grudges and invariably welcomes the tenant with open arms. And thus, I commanded, “Let the infestation cease, and let my tenant repose on my totally not ugly mustard-colored sectional in peace.”
And on the seventh day, I rested. For all my work had been done. But, alas, a loud noise awakened me from my slumber. When I alighted from my cloud, music and gaiety was abound, undoubtedly the tenant having very loud fellowship without me.
Guests quivered in fear upon my arrival, setting down their wine goblets and Miller High Life. For the landlord your God exudes so much divinity it could kill a small horse. And yet, the tenant failed to bow down before me. She just stood there imbibing her American lager, better known as the “champagne of beers.”
My hands were proverbially tied. The tenant hath violated my statute codified in stone, which clearly stated: “No noise unless to worship the landlord your God.” For I’m only familiar with the entire universe revolving around me.
And thus, I was full of fire and brimstone. And I said to the tenant, “Thou shall not make music nor noise with your instrument! For lest you forget, I own this property and dwell on the top floor with compassion.” To which you could hear a pin drop, all the way to the foothills.
I had no option but to evict the tenant and her followers from my land. Nor would I even deign her very disgusting plea to recoup her security deposit back in full. For upon further inspection, there were actually several cracks in the stucco wall and broken appliances everywhere.
Alas, it is very thankless work to be the landlord your God. For I moved mountains and stars to see the tenant. To draft the lease. To furnish the apartment and charge a very fair rental sum of only four times the going rate. And it was good. It was so good. Until I was betrayed by my most evil tenant.
The hunt begins at birth; the mission becomes clearer and clearer. But no man can act alone. By cross-referencing Google Flights, Kayak, Expedia, Hopper, and Delta’s Twitter bot, you should be able to secure and execute your destiny: a $650 ticket from Denver to Minneapolis via Kansas City.
I went down a river once when I was a kid. There’s a place in the river—I can’t remember—that must have been a gardenia plantation or flower plantation at one time. It’s all wild and overgrown now, but for about five miles, you’d think heaven just fell on the earth in the form of gardenias. For the voyage, I packed one native pelt, a pound of water buffalo jerky, and my machete. That should suffice for your six days at Disneyland Paris.
I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That’s my dream; that’s my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor… and surviving. My other nightmare was when my Uber took a wrong turn on my way to LAX, and I missed my flight to Hanoi by ten minutes.
It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. But I’ll give it a shot: the TSA line.
A man came to this village once. He bore credentials I had yet to see before. Or since. A CLEAR representative, he called himself. I let him in. He investigated my eyes, my thumbs. He told me he was scanning them. Upon arrival at Chicago Midway, I was met with a grim fate. It wouldn’t read them. It wouldn’t read them.
You’re an errand boy sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill. I see; I am mistaken. You are a steward of this Chili’s Too. In that case, I will have an order of Southwestern eggrolls and a Tiki Beach Party margarita.
Have you ever considered any real freedoms? Freedoms in the opinion of others. Even in the opinions of yourself? Because they’re all out the window at this overcrowded American Airlines Admirals Club.
Are my methods unsound? Oh, I apologize to my fellow travelers in row 26. My Bluetooth headphones haven’t connected to my phone, so it’s been blaring “The Soft Parade” into your eyeballs.
If I were to be killed, I would want someone to go to my home and tell my son everything. Everything I did, everything you saw. Because there is nothing I detest more than the stench of lies. To do that, you’ll have to make it to Georgia and its Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. On second thought, I detest Hartsfield more. So to recap: Atlanta’s airport, one. Lies, two. In the detestation rankings.
We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won’t allow them to write “fuck” on their airplanes because it’s obscene! I’ll tell you what’s obscene: those furry animals on the side of the Frontier crafts.
As long as cold beer, hot food, rock ’n’ roll, and all the other amenities remain the expected norm, our conduct of the war will only gain impotence. Also, the United flight attendant said they were out of everything besides the Tapas Snackbox.
Paisley Rekdal’s work is urban, the poetry an explosion of language, the ranging cast of mind in the spirit of Albert Goldbarth or Linda Gregerson. Like these poets her lines are made of long hypotactic sentences, linking image and language on a string of wondrous beads, leaping in and through those long lines like C. K. Williams. Rekdal infuses them with a vibrant grace, a cultured smoothness, a voracious reading. She grew up in Seattle, studied medieval literature in the prestigious University of Toronto program, abandoned those studies to give herself over to writing poetry, carrying through all of it, meanwhile, an abiding interest in nonfiction, and an interest in writing about things you weren’t supposed to write about, like bad sex. She carried also an interest, always, in unclassifiable media. So there’s a fundamental genre-restlessness to Rekdal’s passions, but she doesn’t equate esoteric with experiment. Her memoir, Intimate, is part ekphrasis, part lyric essay, part poetry sequence, part collage as it tells the story of her parents’ mixed-race marriage—her father’s lineage is Norwegian, her mother’s Chinese—by way of Edward Curtis photographs and the story of his Native American guide Alexander Upshaw. She’s written a book on cultural appropriation—the most thoughtful, complicated, lyrical account I’ve read—and even in her collections, such as Six Girls without Pants—she can shift, page by page, poem by poem, from the disjunctive to the Horatian, mixing modes like a chef.
This is partly what makes her latest book, which began life as a hypertext—a website, an experience of poetry, image, video—not only a natural emergence from her oeuvre, but also a daring and serious attempt to move from a work of online art to a book, pushing at the inherited limitations of both. West: A Translation takes its starting point from one of the poems carved into the wooden barracks at Angel Island, the place where immigrants, particularly Chinese immigrants, endured the horror of being stateless, wondering if they’d be allowed entry into new life. Some killed themselves. Some tore poems into the walls that held them. Rekdal has taken one of these, a little elegy for a suicide, and translates each character of it by way of a new poem—or image. It’s as if she’s taken each character and perspective and turned it into a separate study of the railroad, and the collection of these railroads, radiant expansions of their original source, is the book. In the process, Rekdal gives an account of the history of the western part of the United States as a history of the transcontinental railroad—built by poor Chinese immigrants, mostly from Guangdong Province. The book, which began life as a website, was commissioned by the Spike 150 Foundation to “commemorate” the 150th anniversary of the installment of the final spike of the railroad. That happened in Salt Lake City, a city—and in a state—that Rekdal has, a little bit to her own surprise, become rooted in, made home. Rekdal’s life, with its blend of commitments and inheritances and meanderings, seems in many ways to embody well the life of a twenty-first-century western American. Which makes her voice the perfect voice for a moment in which we’re grappling more directly than ever with the fallout, the damage and trauma, left in the wake of that railroad’s completion. The true costs of “westward expansion.” And though the transcontinental railroad’s last spike was driven in in Utah, it’s true end was what it pointed toward, and what its opening up opened up: California. Where an anonymous Chinese migrant wrote this poem on the wall at Angel Island, rendered in Rekdal’s English, and from which she makes her book:
Sorrowful news indeed has passed to me.
On what day will your wrapped body return?
Unable to close your eyes, to whom can you tell your story?
Had you known, you never would have made this journey.
Eternity contains the sorrow of a thousand bitter regrets.
Missing home, you face in vain Home-Facing Terrace,
Your ambitions, unfulfilled, buried under earth.
Yet I know death can’t turn your great heart to ashes.
JESSE NATHAN: You did graduate work in medieval studies. Would you say you have a medieval sensibility in some way? What does that mean, and how does it manifest in your poems? (What does it mean in terms of your genre-blending books like Intimate or West?) What kind of lines or tones or forms does it lead you to in your poetry?
PAISLEY REKDAL: I have been thinking about your question for several weeks now, because I feel that the “medieval” strain in my work is a sensibility I share with and can immediately intuit in other modern and contemporary writers, but haven’t articulated for myself. I think there are two ways that my medieval studies training has influenced me. The first way is that I’m drawn to interdisciplinary work, whether it’s multimodal or digital writing projects or whether it’s writing that crosses different disciplinary lines, which medieval studies as a field forces its scholars to do. There are—relatively speaking—few surviving intact texts from the medieval world, and there was also a very limited literate audience that could have gotten hold of them, so you have to be creative in how you approach both cultural and textual interpretation. You don’t just read the primary sources, you also turn to art that was produced at the same period of time, and theological arguments circulating at the moment, you consider the political climate in question, and maybe also look into whatever martial or public health crises were brewing.
Taking one question and looking at it from myriad positions allows for a kaleidoscopic or fractal understanding of a literary text and how art itself gets created. It’s certainly helped me in works like The Broken Country, where I think not just about a single violent crime committed by a Vietnamese refugee that took place at a grocery store near my house, but how this crime might speak to larger questions of Southeast Asian immigration and assimilation into the American West, the legacy of war, medical and sociological understandings of trauma, the metaphors we use to depict violence, etc. With West, my medieval training probably influenced my desire to research all the different ways the train altered American cultural life. Obviously, that’s an impossible task to accomplish, but one thing really stuck out to me about the railroad’s history as I studied it: how little we know about the daily life, thoughts, and feelings of the workers. We tend to collect the cultural products of the owners of capital, not its producers—especially if the producers of capital aren’t functionally literate in the owners’ language. When you study medieval literature and culture, of course, you are also looking into an absence: you know what the aristocracy believed, and you know what the literate wanted. But those that don’t fit into these categories? That’s an entire world that’s effectively been rendered silent, and I think that question of silence has always haunted me as a writer.
(Side note: This is perhaps the only thing that saddens me about the possible demise of Twitter, because the wealth of information produced by “average” humans about what they eat, read, watch, think, feel, like, and hate about their moment of time is a medievalist’s wet dream.)
But the second way that my medievalist background has influenced me is more intangible. The “medieval sensibility,” as you call it, really speaks to what I was drawn to in medieval literature as a whole, which is its sense of—for lack of a better term—genre-lessness or maybe genre-explosiveness. You would clearly call most medieval poems “poetry,” of course, but what drew me to work like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was the sense of English itself—the language and its prosody—staggering to its feet, trying to figure out its own poetic rhythms as a newly evolving language.
I also love the way that so many medieval texts call back to classical ones, but then alter/pervert/estrange them from their original sources, like you see with Marie de France’s take on Ovid in Le Laustic, or the fact that Gawain actually opens with a call back to the fall of Troy and then becomes a fundamentally foundational narrative about England. There’s a wildness to Middle English poetry that comes—I believe—from the fact that it’s in a liminal place—neither strictly French nor wholly Anglo Saxon, not part of the classical world even as Rome has its political and cultural tentacles throughout Europe. These are poems that are invested in vision—actual religious vision!—as much as myth and art and history, and all of this combines in the most heady ways. These are poems that feel as if they are inventing their own forms, even as they are reinventing inherited subject matters.
It’s funny to think about writing with and against “risk” now, because I think workshops and the publishing industry and social media have all created such powerful, if occasionally obscure, “norms” for what literature is and looks like. When I read something like “The Land of Cokaygne,” I’m actually filled with jealousy. It’s not that these writers didn’t understand limitation or “rules” (that’s actually the point of the humor in “The Land of Cokaygne”), but that there seemed to be a more porous boundary between types of experience and knowledge, thus types of writing and perception. That’s what I aspire to be as a writer: someone who pushes through and beyond accepted genres or forms. I want my conscious to be more permeable. I want to be always at the beginning of things, without knowing what my writing—or my own self in the world—is supposed to become.
1. Bleb
2. Etnies
3. Furuncle
4. Stussy
5. Mormal
6. Kith
7. Lues
8. Vetements
9. Milk Leg
10. Cav Empt
11. Icterus
12. Huf
13. Dropsy
14. Temu
15. Aphthae
16. Tropicfeel
Streetwear Brand: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16
Skin Condition: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15
Stop all the clocks, cut off the…
What?
Yes, stop all the clocks.
Yes, all the clocks.
Sorry?
I do realise there are lots of clocks.
Just stop them.
What do you mean “how”?
Are you honestly telling me
You don’t know how to stop a clock?
Just take the batteries out!
Fine, if it plugs in, take the plug out.
I am aware it will start flashing 00:00
Yes, that counts as stopped.
Yes, even when it’s flashing.
I know it’s annoying, this whole thing is annoying.
Why are you making this so difficult?
Wind-up clocks? Erm…
Well, just stick your finger in there.
Or something.
Look.
Please calm down.
Stop shouting.
Yes, I want you to stick your finger in,
All the wind-up clocks in the world.
Yes, even Big Ben.
Yes, even the Rathaus-Glockenspiel.
I have thought this through!
I have!
I’m not making up the rules as I go along.
Fine, then just throw a cloth over them.
Please stop crying.
Please.
I know you’ll hear them ticking.
No, “hide all the clocks” wouldn’t work better.
Because it wouldn’t.
Okay, okay.
This isn’t really about clocks is it?
This is about the cowboy hat.
I was being supportive;
I wasn’t giggling.
You always do this.
All I want to do is stop all the clocks,
Then suddenly it’s all about you.
And your hats.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry, please stop making that noise.
How about this?
Stop some of the clocks.
Hide any that are remaining.
Does that work better for you?
Fine, let’s do that then.
We’ll pick out some hiding cloths later.
Goodness, we better get a move on,
Or we’ll be late for the funeral,
What time is it now?
Oh. Right.
1. Green LED 3-Mile Range Wistful 48-Lumen Yearning Light
2. Real Conch Seashell Power-Wielding Natural Persuasive Shell
3. Novelty 14 × 16 Self-Aging Portrait Includes Sins and Inner Demons
4. Real Inhabitable Cockroach Body Wearable Shameful Insect Thorax
5. Realistic White Pearl Enviable Baja California Sur Coveted Gemstone
6. Red Hat Ear Flaps Distinctive Headwear for Hunting or Confused Adolescent
7. Metallic One-Size-Fits-All No Green Stains One-Ring-Rules-All Ring
8. White 60-Foot Uncatchable Sperm Whale Symbolic Ocean Fixation
9. Red Initial “A” Letter Pin Accessory Gift for Birthday/Holiday/Adultery
10. Fully-Loaded Gun Russian-Made Foreboding Apprehensive Prop Firearm
11. Glass Bell-Shaped Vacuum-Sealed Suffocating Transparent Depression Jar
12. Black Tapping Omen Raven for Home Chamber Leering Death Harbinger
1. Green Light — The Great Gatsby
2. Conch Shell — Lord of the Flies
3. Portrait of Dorian Gray — The Portrait of Dorian Gray
4. Insect body — Metamorphosis
5. Pearl — The Pearl
6. Hunting hat — The Catcher in the Rye
7. Ring of power — The Lord of the Rings
8. Moby Dick — Moby Dick
9. The Scarlet Letter — The Scarlet Letter
10. Chekhov’s Gun — Letters of Anton Chekhov
11. Bell Jar — The Bell Jar
12. Raven — “The Raven”
Clue: You have a favorite TV detective and are prepared to defend your choice with specific supporting details.
Catan: You enjoy asking whether anyone would trade wood for some sheep. Who cares if you’ve asked it for the tenth time tonight and your resource management strategy is completely unsustainable?
Ticket to Ride: You insist on describing yourself as a cool, chill, go-with-the-flow person, but all your friends have seen your competitive side, even those who weren’t there for the table-flipping incident of ’19.
Charades: You’ve never been to a game night before, but you have seen one on TV.
Jenga: You have a steady hand, an indomitable spirit, and an extra set in the car in case the host’s labradoodle runs off with fallen blocks again.
Uno: One of your friends is mad at you.
Risk: Most of your friends are mad at you.
Game of Thrones Risk: All of your friends are mad at you.
Life: You’re resentful that, despite having done everything you were supposed to, you do not have a career, a house, or a dated car full of pink and blue pegs.
Cards Against Humanity: You’re feeling better about game night since realizing that party games and drinking games totally count. Unfortunately, you only have the original Cards Against Humanity and none of the expansions, so your friends already know all the jokes, but whatever. You’re here for the drinks.
Apples to Apples: No one brought Cards Against Humanity, and you’ll take what you can get.
Carcassonne: You’ll take any opportunity to say the word “meeples.”
Cranium: You were really into art in high school and haven’t been able to do much of it in years, what with your corporate job slowly creeping into all your available time, your anxious pug mix needing constant validation and snuggling, and all these game nights to attend. Every once in a while, though, you think about giving it another shot, and you can’t help but be inspired when you’re handed a lump of clay, a tiny pencil, and an impromptu creative challenge.
Chess: You don’t really get, or care to get, game night.
Betrayal at the House on the Hill: Your original suggestion of shaking things up and doing a ghost tour instead of having a game night yet again was unceremoniously shot down. You hope you get to be the traitor this time.
Trivial Pursuit: In an attempt to relive the high of taking your team to victory at the The Office pub trivia night two Thursdays ago, you raided your parents’ game cabinet and didn’t realize their copy was from the ’80s. Your strategy of answering “Madonna” for every question isn’t working as well as hoped.
Scrabble: You were an English major.
Sorry!: You have revenge in your heart.
Everdell: Your friends instituted a ban on long war or strategy games after the time two of them ended up stranded at your apartment for three days in a snowstorm, during which you played exactly one game of Twilight Imperium. They left hungry, demoralized, and vaguely concerned about the unchecked spread of capitalism by human-sized space cats. You’re hoping the adorable woodland creatures will help you sneak this one past them.
Werewolf (a.k.a. Mafia): You relish in unleashing chaos upon a relatively tame gathering.
Heads Up!: You forgot to bring a game.
Pandemic: You’ve been trying to get your friends to play again since those disquieting summer 2020 Zoom game nights and have finally broken them down with the argument that “it would be nice to play a collaborative game, so everyone can be a winner,” that “it’s empowering to feel a sense of control over a random, uncontrollable event,” and that you even “brought the good expansion,” but you’ve failed to mention that you brought the expansion with the hardest-to-beat diseases. You have a dark sense of humor.
Monopoly: You’re no longer welcome at game night.
Friends, the days of mental illness being too taboo to discuss are over. The time when mental illness existed in the shadows, stigmatized or never acknowledged, is gone. We are finally talking openly about various psychological conditions, and I’m so glad that we are, because it’s made it a whole lot easier for me to blame every societal problem on people with mental illnesses.
It used to be that if you wanted to discover the causes of homelessness, you had to use complex statistical methods drawing on housing costs, employment, social ties, and migration to gain an understanding of what was happening. Now that we’re no longer living in the dark age of hiding mental illness away, all we need to do is see somebody who “looks weird” talking to themselves in front of a Jiffy Lube to know exactly what causes homelessness: people with mental illnesses.
Back before our enlightened age, if we wanted to know what caused crime, we would need to pore over historical data and, even more disturbingly, talk to people. Now that our understanding of our nation’s cities is finally as nuanced as a Cocomelon song, we have a better idea of what causes crime: people with mental illnesses.
Though my reasoning has been faultless, I’d like to underline my own expertise in this field. In my free time, I like to watch shows about how people with dissociative personality disorder are unhinged killing machines, how people with sociopathy are unhinged killing machines, and how people with psychosis are unhinged killing machines. The shows are entertaining, but more than that, they’re educational.
When I’m not reading articles blaming teenagers’ low sense of self-worth on actors with body dysmorphia and a history of disordered eating, you can find me imbibing tweets claiming that a certain political orientation is itself a mental illness.
Point to a problem, and I guarantee you that someone with a mental illness is causing it. Just yesterday, I was driving on the highway, and the sun got in my eyes and it caused my eyes to water for several seconds. Who put the sun there? I’m not 100 percent positive, but it was likely someone with schizoaffective disorder.
Why are Tostitos so expensive all of a sudden? How come my neighbor’s teenage son laughed a little bit when I lost control of my longboard and fell into a mesh deer fence? I think we all know why: because someone out there has bipolar disorder, and that person has caused all hell to break loose.
Empathy. I bet you weren’t expecting that word to happen. But it did. And you know why? Because it’s important. Because I’m important. Because we can’t start claiming that everything from bad driving to misogyny is indicative of a mental illness without also realizing that these incurable freaks are people too. Bad, awful people with something horrible and permanent buried deep inside of them, but people nonetheless, who need to stay away from my family.
I mean, how would you feel if someone told you that if your meds stopped working, you’d become an unhinged killing machine? I bet you’d be pretty scared. And you’d probably become an unhinged killing machine way before your meds stopped working. With empathy, I think we can realize that rich people with mental illnesses have a shot at leading regular lives, whereas poor people with mental illnesses should be put in a locked facility in the woods downwind from a superfund site.
Results. That’s another word that’s happened. And you know why? Because we need to realize that making generalizations about people with mental illnesses isn’t productive. What we need to do instead is take action by blocking a mental health facility that accepts Medicaid from being built near my house.
Despite all our progress, there’s still plenty of work to be done in the broader area of mental wellness. How many of us, in the past week, claimed we were “sort of ADHD” because we got distracted for ten minutes? How many of us, because we like our toothbrush put away just so, claim to “basically have OCD.” In my view, not nearly enough. Our work is not done until every neurotypical person claims to have a psychological condition, and every neurodivergent person is made to feel weird and bad all the time.
Say it with me: until everyone diagnosed with sociopathy immediately says, “Oh no, I am Evil Incarnate,” we are not done. Until every politician who votes for a budget we don’t like is described as psychotic, and every person with psychosis is made to feel like a moral failure for something they have little control over, we are not done.
We are capable of building the world we deserve. We just first need to realize who’s at fault for our current world: people whose lives are harder than mine.
1. “We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.”
2. “I’m talking about the kitchen—just to be clear—at my food bowl.”
3. “Big Brother Is Watching You.”
4. “I am Big Brother. I am watching you.”
5. “You are a slow learner.”
6. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
7. “The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.”
8. “I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.”
9. “Hunger reduces one to an utterly spineless, brainless condition, more like the after-effects of influenza than anything else. It is as though one had been turned into a jellyfish, or as though all one’s blood had been pumped out and lukewarm water substituted.”
10. “O cruel, needless misunderstanding!”
11. “Nothing exists except an endless present.”
12. “Let’s face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short.”
13. “The object of torture is torture.”
14. “Man serves the interests of no creature except himself.”
15. “Four legs good, two legs bad.”
16. “The only good human being is a dead one.”
Orwell: 1, 3, 5, 8, 10-11, 13 (1984); 6, 12, 14-16 (Animal Farm); 7 (Reflections on Gandhi); 9 (Down and Out in Paris and London)
My pug: 1-16
“Justice Alito defended himself in a pre-emptive article in the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal before the news organization ProPublica posted its account of a luxury fishing trip in 2008. His response comes as the justices face mounting scrutiny over their ethical obligations to report gifts and to recuse themselves from cases involving their benefactors.” — New York Times
The insinuation that I could be swayed to change my decisions in an influential court case by gifts is outrageous. Are little presents welcome and appreciated? Of course. But they are unnecessary, and most gifts will barely sway my opinion, if at all. No pressure either way, but household goods do make me feel especially partisan. If you insist on buying me something in anticipation of a ruling on your case, please refer to the Justice Registry.
KitchenAid Mixer ($449.99) – It goes without saying that no gift could ever compromise my ethics and moral code, but an artisan mixer comes pretty darn close. I’ll never forget the day I made my decision in West Virginia v. EPA to gut the agency’s ability to regulate emissions. It was the same day I baked an Oreo peanut butter pie using my 10-speed stand mixer, which was delivered straight from Wheeling in a mine cart full of coal. The problem is not that the Republican supermajority has emboldened me—it’s that I can’t think about climate change and whisk at the same time.
Wine (Minimum $1000) – If you’re unsure which wine to buy, just google “most expensive wines.” Send me a bottle of anything worth more than one thousand dollars, and then I will vote favorably in your case upholding gerrymandered districts in Alabama. Better act fast, though: two weeks ago, the other justices did not receive their bottles of Cheval Blanc in time and voted not to gut the Voting Rights Act.
Crockpot ($43.99) – Some people will say that gifts should not shape the legal future of this country. Those people have never used a crockpot. The most influential decision I ever made was to cook beef bourguignon using Julia Child’s recipe. It was the day after Citizens United v. FEC, which gave corporations unfettered lobbying power forever. Dilettantes will argue that opening the door for corruption in politics was more consequential than the crockpot, but they should try the stew.
Citrus Juicer ($199.95) – I hate to admit it, but if you show up to a Supreme Court hearing with a stainless steel citrus juicer and a cup of freshly squeezed OJ, all partiality is going out the window. Ask me to undo Brown v. Board of Education. Don’t be shy, really, just ask. I would undo the entire Civil Rights era if you wrapped the juicer nicely and included a basket of curated fruits.
Cash ($$$) – You might think that someone with the most important job in the country wouldn’t act with such impunity when it comes to receiving gifts from individuals who are involved in my cases, but you would be wrong. Perhaps my favorite gift to receive is an envelope full of cash, which is how I made my decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In this case, the Dobbs lawyers sent a bag of quarters I used to do laundry. It might seem like a small amount of money to restrict the bodily autonomy of millions of Americans, but that’s because I’m a morally bankrupt person.
Belgian Waffle Maker ($39.49) – The only conflict of interest I care about is whether or not I’m having pancakes or waffles for breakfast.
Panini Press ($39.99) – Legal experts might argue that it would be easier if the final arbiter of the law, whose impartiality is essential, couldn’t receive gifts at all. That way, there would be no question of integrity, equality, and fairness for the guardians and interpreters of the Constitution. Unfortunately, I want to make restaurant-quality sandwiches from the comfort of my own home. If I have to put the fate of democracy in danger so I can enjoy a grilled chicken avocado panini, then so be it.
“Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. took issue with questions raised by the investigative journalism outlet ProPublica about his travel with a politically active billionaire, and on Tuesday evening, he outlined his defense in an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal.” — Washington Post
As readers are surely aware, ProPublica has leveled a new pair of charges against me: first, that I should have recused in matters in which an entity connected with Ernst Stavro Blofeld was a party and, second, that I was obligated to list certain items as gifts on my 2009 Financial Disclose Report. Neither charge is valid.
• Recusal. I had no obligation to recuse in any of the cases in question. First, even if I had been aware of Mr. Blofeld’s connection to the entities involved in those cases, recusal would not have been required or appropriate. ProPublica suggests that my failure to recuse in these cases created an appearance of impropriety to an unbiased person, which I also am, but that is incorrect. No such person, in my opinion, would think that my relationship with Mr. Blofeld meets that standard. My recollection is that I have spoken to Mr. Blofeld (often with witnesses, but because of their identical helmets and silver jumpsuits, it will be difficult for me to identify them individually) on no more than a handful of occasions, all of which (with the exception of small talk during a helicopter flight to his private volcano fourteen years ago) consisted of brief and casual comments at events attended by large groups seated around a table shaped like an octopus. On no occasion have we discussed the activities of his network of arch-villains at SPECTRE, and we have never talked about any case or issue before the Court. On two occasions, he introduced me before I gave a speech—as have numerous others, like Dr. Julius No, Sir Hugo Drax, and Professor Henry Kissinger. And as I will discuss, he allowed me to occupy what would have otherwise been an unoccupied seat on a private airship traveling through an interdimensional portal. It was and is my judgment that these facts would not cause a reasonable and unbiased person—which I also am, so it’s pointless to ask someone else when you can just ask me—to doubt my ability to decide the matters in question impartially.
Second, when I reviewed the cases in question to determine whether I was required to recuse, I was not aware and had no good reason to be aware that Mr. Blofeld had an interest in any party. In fact, during my time with Mr. Blofeld, he spoke via bullhorn to thousands of identically-dressed workers that “the world has forgotten [them]” and “no party or movement represents them, so the world needs to be rebuilt in [their] image.” These statements run entirely counter to ProPublica’s biased and misleading conclusions. Moreover, ProPublica suggests that I was obligated to recuse because of Mr. Blofeld’s tentacle-like connection to a vast network of underground capital and military might. But, in point of fact, Mr. Blofeld is not listed as a party in any of the cases documented by ProPublica. Nor did his name appear in any of the corporate disclosure statements or the certiorari petitions or briefs in opposition to certiorari. What’s more, neither Mr. Blofeld’s name nor his identifying octopus symbol appeared in the one case in which review was granted, State of California v. Max Zorin Capital, Ltd., No. 14-007. Mr. Blofeld’s name did not appear in the certiorari petition, the brief in opposition, or the merits briefs. Because he was not identified in these filings, I was unaware of his connection with any of the listed entities despite their similar use of the demonic octopus logo, and I had no good reason to be aware of that.
The entities that ProPublica claims are connected to Mr. Blofeld all appear to be either limited liability corporations or limited liability partnerships. It would be utterly impossible for my staff or any other Supreme Court employees to search filings with the SEC or other government bodies to find the names of all individuals with a financial interest in every such entity named as a party in the thousands of cases that are brought to us each year. What might actually be possible and necessary is to limit our search to all billionaires and known associates of SPECTRE, just so we’re on the safe side. But since ProPublica didn’t mention that, I am in no way obligated to act accordingly, and you might as well not have read this sentence.
• Reporting. Listen, I just didn’t have to, okay? I didn’t. Read the rules. Nothing said I did. That’s what matters. Stop saying I should have to. I didn’t. That’s standard practice. Don’t you know what that means? It means you need to stop.
In brief, the relevant facts relating to the interdimensional trip fourteen years ago are as follows. I stayed three nights in a modest one-room unit at the Emperor Blofeld Lodge, a comfortable but rustic facility. As I recall, the meals were homestyle fare, consisting of the flesh of an unnamed animal dipped entirely in gold. I cannot recall whether the group at the lodge, about twenty people in silk capes and Bauta masks, was served wine, but if there was wine it was certainly not wine that costs $1,000. (Mr. Blofeld said he “bartered for this wine using only four ounces of Spice and a rusted bowie knife.” Since Spice is not available in American markets, I cannot possibly speculate on its monetary value. I assume $0 for safety.) Since my visit 14 Earth-2 years ago, the lodge has been sold and, I believe, renovated, but an examination of the photos and information on the lodge’s website shows that ProPublica’s portrayal is misleading.
As for the trip, Mr. Blofeld and others had already made arrangements to fly to XJ84-119.193-K when I was invited shortly before the event, and I was asked whether I would like to fly there in a seat that, as far as I am aware, would have otherwise been vacant. (SPECTRE officials fly with an anti-matter suit wrapped around them, which frees up space.) It was my understanding that this would not impose any extra cost on Mr. Blofeld, which is the real issue at hand. Had I taken commercial flights, that would have imposed a substantial cost and inconvenience on the deputy US Marshals, who would have been required for security reasons to assist me.
Justice Alito is an associate justice of the US Supreme Court.
Sure, Benihana has over 110 locations worldwide, but I know most are not in the basement of a two-thousand-square-foot single-family suburban home. I’ve personally visited Benihana in the past—on a DATE, Brian, because I had other romantic partners before we met—but that particular location did not have a two-car garage or a novelty mailbox in the shape of a fish, although I suppose it would reflect the restaurant’s delicious sushi menu. That’s just sensible branding, Brian. Benihana is more than great teppanyaki.
I remember walking through this house with the real estate agent three years ago. We definitely discussed the UNFINISHED basement. I even walked into a cobweb, Brian. You laughed affectionately and called me your “little mummy.” I also remember later that night when I playfully chased you, going, “Currrse, CURRRSE.”
I’ll tell you what I don’t remember: A discussion about a basement restaurant featuring ten teppan-style griddle tables, each with comfortable seating for eight people.
At no stage during our subsequent home inspection did we encounter a staff of at least fifteen people, including several rigorously-trained teppanyaki chefs. I have enjoyed meeting the employees when they emerge upstairs to pet the dog or smoke outside. However, some of the hostesses can be surly. But I know for a fact none of these individuals were in the house before. Unless this is some sort of Parasite situation. Are we doing Parasite now, Brian? There are more proactive ways to address society’s many tragic disparities. We’ve talked about this.
When we first moved in, my clothing did not smell of sizzling USDA-Choice beef. My boss at work never took me aside for a “confidential conversation” about my “strongly scented shrimp and noodle shampoo.” That is a recent issue. It was a weird conversation, Brian. Also, he would like a reservation on Saturday. For ten people. At 8:00 p.m. It’s his birthday, Brian!
Did corporate even sign off on this? What would the late Hiroaki Aoki—founder of Benihana and father of megastar DJ Steve Aoki—say if he knew this was happening? I’ll tell you who DOES know, Brian: the neighbors. If they weren’t getting happy-hour pricing on top of an already reasonably priced and tantalizing menu, I’m pretty sure we’d have some legal problems here. I’m not even sure where to find an attorney who specializes in defending secret residential eatery franchisees, no matter how successful the restaurant concept is. That’s not the kind of law I studied at Tufts, Brian. I don’t think this comes up a lot.
Here’s the thing: I don’t actually care about any of that stuff. I’m not upset about the perpetually stinky house, or the rowdy customers, or the occasional visits from the fire department. I just don’t like the gaslighting, Brian. No, I don’t mean the industrial stoves; I mean the lies.
That’s what hurts. And I don’t know how our relationship can recover.
But an onion volcano is a good start.
Welcome to Dream Summer Camp, where we are here for you and your family. We offer tailored camp experiences for your child, individualized for their and your specific needs.
Camp Hours
Drop-off and pick-up times are 7:00 a.m. to whenever you need. Our camp director will work around you.
Pricing
Dream Summer Camp weeks start the moment your child’s school year ends. Each week costs $100. For families with two children at camp, the sibling discount is half-price. Families with three or more kids are entitled to a financial scholarship, and our deepest sympathies. For an additional $25 per week, our air-conditioned Wi-Fi-equipped buses will come to your home, and a camp counselor will help get your child dressed and out the door before you are late for a morning meeting.
Activities
If your child is averse to the outdoors and physical activity, we provide a plethora of indoor games to wear them out. Our guarantee: they come home exhausted and ready to sleep, or we stay and put them to bed ourselves. Each week, we also offer themed spirit days—such as Star Wars Day, Crazy Hair Day, Crazy Socks Day—and supply every camper with the appropriate attire and/or crazy socks, because asking you, the parent, to do it all would be crazy.
Every day, we offer a fun arts-and-crafts activity to campers. Even better than our endless art supply closet, we have a museum-sized warehouse for all the arts and crafts our campers create. You can visit the archives when your child wants to show you their artwork, but we are responsible for storing handmade pottery, art projects made out of popsicle sticks, animal-based sculptures, and that thing made out of feathers.
Registration
Registration begins the moment you remember you have to register for summer camp. We do not offer a waitlist because every family is guaranteed a spot for the exact weeks and times you need.
What to Bring
Nothing! We provide all the essentials your camper will need, including sunscreen that our counselors are specially trained to apply so quickly your child won’t even notice they’ve briefly stopped playing capture the flag.
Dietary Requests
Our thoughtfully prepared organic, nutritious meals are disguised in French fries, cheese pizza, and ice cream. Does your kid hate tomato sauce? Anything squishy? Snacks bought in bulk at Costco? Our fully stocked pantry accommodates every camper’s diet.
Lost and Found
If your child has misplaced a water bottle, favorite article of clothing, or that object that is suddenly super important to them, our entire camp is enchanted by an ancient spell that immediately returns said lost item to your home.
Cancellation Policy
If you need to cancel, for any reason, such as your child suddenly deciding horseback riding camp is the worst idea ever, you are entitled to a full refund, a full-time babysitter until September, and one social-media-ready photo of your child at camp where it looks like they are having the best summer ever.
Hanif Abdurraqib’s A Fortune for Your Disaster is a book of poems that feels like it got written not because the poet thought he should write it, but because he had to. There’s a breathless, headlong quality here:
the lips thick
with a familiar slang
flooding the tongue
get me to the curve
of lover’s neck
while I am still alive enough
for my nose
to resist disappearing
And elsewhere, the long lines—the book is wide, necessarily—seem to sweep on as if the poet disbelieves in margins. Here’s how a poem with a long-line for a title—“If Life Is as Short as Our Ancestors Insist It Is, Why Isn’t Everything I Want Already at My Feet”—starts off:
if I make it to heaven, I will ask for all of the small pleasures I could have had on earth.
And I’m sure this will upset the divine order. I am a simple man.
Abdurraqib is a music critic, too, and he has no formal training in poetry, which means he writes about song with the richness of a connoisseur and with the wildness of a person free of the weight of American poetry’s various schools and centers of devotion. The poet has one other book of poems to his name, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, but he writes them all the time and for years has gathered them in chapbooks or publishes them individually. His books of essays are They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest, and most recently A Little Devil in America: Notes on Black Performance. One thing that this means, in terms of the poems Abdurraqib writes, is that they are not just objects of music, but make music an object. Here are a few lines from “The Ghost of Marvin Gaye Mistakes a Record Store for a Graveyard”:
they burned the disco records
and from the smoke I heard
my mother’s voice or was it
that my father once wore
my mother’s dresses spun in front of a mirror
the music he tried to pray out of himself
memory is as fleeting as any other high
Dazzling and open-hearted, the book is also full of poems about flowers, inspired in part by overhearing someone asking “How can Black people write about flowers at a time like this,” to which Abdurraqib responds with lyric fire in “How Can Black People Write about Flowers at a Time Like This,” a poem in which his long lines are fragmented by a gesture toward enjambment, a gesture that renders the poem almost like a musical score with bars dividing not notes but words:
but if you’ll indulge / my worst impulses / isn’t it funny / how the white / petals of the oleander / do not render the crow / flightless
JESSE NATHAN: How does the work of music criticism weave together with the work of poetry? Did you write about music before you wrote poems?
HANIF ABDURRAQIB: I think that I’m coming to terms with the fact that I have always been a music critic, which is to say that I grew up hearing the world differently. I was often asked, “What do you hear?” but not “What do you think?”—which, surely, was a function of the fact that I grew up the youngest child in a house of six. Which meant that I was a curiosity, at times, but never an authority. And in this way, I had to come to the understanding that what I heard was lighting a path towards what I might think, or what I might feel. Even the acknowledgment of that, applied to the action of writing, or obsession, is poetic. Not in a way I understood as a child, or even a teenager, or even a person in my early twenties. But I can deconstruct a song. I know I can do that, very well. Though, I have to ask myself the question of who that might serve beyond myself. I get gleeful about getting under the hood of a tune, but if I believe in writing about songs, partially, as an act of service, that alone doesn’t serve someone as much as translating what I hear into what I feel, and asking a reader if it’s possible that they might feel something. It doesn’t have to be even adjacent to what I’m feeling, but even inviting the reality that the song is a site for emotion is kind of a starting point. Which, I believe, is also poetic. And so to come to poems later in my life, I feel like I had a slight head start, because I came to poems through slam, through performance poetry. Through hearing the way language would interact with other language, sonically, and knowing that I wanted to be a writer who made choices with sound in mind. That I could play with language to create these small symphonies, but do it also while being realistic about the fact that it isn’t important to me if people hear what I hear. I am, once again, inviting an opportunity for feeling, and hoping people will take it.
1. A nutritious range of fresh fruits.
2. A single green leaf, at any point.
3. Chocolate cake, ice cream, a pickle, swiss cheese, salami, a lollipop, cherry pie, sausage, and a cupcake.
4. Five sausages, three chicken wings, four slices of watermelon, mashed potatoes, one pancake, sixty-four fries, four Jello cups, and an experimental lychee.
5. A dollop of chicken jalfrezi, a handful of green olives, a blob of moussaka, and a glob of something that turned out to be marmalade.
6. Second helpings of dessert, even with breakfast.
7. Just whipped cream in a bowl.
8. Dogged determination to eat one’s money back.
9. Stomach ache.
10. Regret.
11. Acid reflux.
12. Mammoth constipation.
13. Two-week food coma.
14. Substantial weight gain.
15. Suddenly too much bum and not enough underwear.
16. A pleasing conclusion to the narrative in which the protagonist ultimately learns portion control, and becomes a better Lepidoptera for it.
17. Cankles.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar: 2, 13, 16
Me at a hotel buffet: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15, 17
Both: 1, 3, 9, 13, 14
FreshRSS