Samantha Irby is always funny, but sometimes she also just brings you to your knees:
when i die i want to be cremated and sprinkled on the breakfasts of my enemies. or whatever works for whoever is around. last thing i ever want to do is stress my homies out from the grave. i don’t know whether or not SB had a death plan, but if he did he didn’t tell that shit to me. the last time i spoke to him i was in my dorm room at northern illinois and he had just suffered a brain-frying stroke and was describing to me these hallucinations he was having that he truly believed were real. i’m not even sure he knew who he was talking to as he described riding a bicycle through the morgue to check on the dead bodies. LOLWUT. his funeral was heavily attended by evanston’s finest assortment of drunks and degenerates, his closest friends, which means there were actual men in salvation army suits circa 1973 smoking kools and tipping out brown-bagged fifths of cheap vodka in remembrance of their fallen comrade onto the street in front of the funeral home minutes before his homegoing service. it was kind of exciting.
Joel and Tyler over at Decider gave me the Easter present of doing a Who Would You Rather on Sherlock v Watson, and I have read it…maybe eighty times?
Joel: I think this may have a lot to do with my relative lack of experience when it comes to love and relationships (It’s been almost a decade since I’ve had either), but, honestly, isn’t there something so much more exciting about a challenging relationship? Sherlock would frustrate me to no end, but that somehow would make knowing he chose me seem all the more gratifying — oh jesus god I’m reading that sentence now and woof. But in any case, my problems with John Watson are the same I have with Peeta last week. They both seem so soft, so emotionally pliable. What’s his deal professionally, anyway? How will he provide for me.
Tyler: Um, he is a WAR VETERAN.
Joel: Good for him.
Tyler: Don’t cut me off, Joel. I’m saying, he has seen some dark shit. And he can probably protect you from IEDs. What can Sherlock do? SOLVE MYSTERIES? Snooze. And trust me, I have dated some “challenging” people, and yeah, it’s all fun and games and madness and sparkles and intensity, but eventually you get tired and want someone to make a goddamn schedule for once in their lives and maybe call you when you’re planning to be out later than three in the morning and, hey, would it kill you to go out and get a job? WOULD IT, JOEL? Life is not all fun and games and hounds of Baskerville.
Roxane is recapping OUTLANDER for us now, and you may have missed it because it happened over the weekend!
Maybe my favourite all-time deleted comment (so. many. deleted. comments. on this piece):
the rolling stone investigation report
It was 8 o’clock in the morning and I had no milk for my coffee. Still half asleep I put on sweatpants and ran across the street to the Turkish deli. The clerk and I had been friendly for years. He often accepted packages on my behalf. Sometimes we cooed over his bodega cat, whose name translated to “Strong Man.” This morning, though, the conversation quickly veered from a friendly inquiry about Strong Man’s wellbeing to whether my husband and I have any children and oh-my-God, why not? “Because we don’t want to,” I said, hoping that my stern response would end the conversation. But the clerk insisted. But one must—… I have two… The third one is on its way… You should really think about it, because once you get old… and so forth. I fled the store and haven’t gone back since. Recently, when we ran out of milk again, my husband asked sweetly whether it was okay for him to get milk there. “Of course,” I said. “Go right ahead. I doubt that the clerk will ever pressure you into a conversation about why you don’t want to have children. Give my best to Strong Man.”
Saeed wrote the most amazing thing about being a writer of color in a racist world:
By the time my colleague and I managed to meet in the middle of the crowd, a poet from New York whom I hadn’t seen in months made his way toward me as well. His smile calmed me down. I’m not alone anymore, I thought. And if I’m not alone, I’m not invisible.
“You’ve grown out your hair,” the poet said, the ice in his cocktail catching light. “Now I’m going to do that racist thing where I touch your hair,” he said as he reached for my afro. His fingers tested the texture of my hair, the way you might squeeze a bath sponge. My colleague and I locked eyes; she seemed horrified but I never stopped smiling, not once. I smiled like it was an affliction because somewhere along the way I picked up the idea that when you’re a young black writer among the literary elite you can’t be both grateful and angry, or proud and humiliated — though, of course, I was.
He also introduced me to the fact that Wallace Stevens called Gwendolyn Brooks a racial slur, which is depressing as balls.
You all know of my hopeless undying love for Wolf Hall, and Vulture talked to my GIRL, Hilary Mantel:
Henry VIII did have a roving eye.
Not really.No?
You have to remember, he didn’t know that he was going to have six wives. It might sound like an obvious point to make, but he truly believed that every wife was the love of his life. I think people forget that he was initially married for 20 years. He really believed in marriage. And he was nothing like his contemporaries in the romance department.
I am watching all the Fast and the Furious movies for the first time bc of Roxane and I just don’t think it’s right that someone with eyes that blue should die. Also, DRIVE CAREFULLY GUYS.
