The Case Of The Energy B̶a̶l̶l̶s̶ Blobs
Lil Nuts With Al #1
It's 4:44 am. Make 4 wishes. I'm up1 because Robert our dog was freaking the fuck out around midnight about some noise outside and refused to go back to sleep. He was trembling like a battery operated plush toy and licking our faces, so I decided to be a Man and go sleep on the couch with Robert so Lauren could sleep in peace.
Weirdly, I slept well? Like I had all my dreams and my nose wasn't stuffy. Does this mean we're going to become one of those families with two bedrooms for the parents? I hope not. Cuddles are too good. BUT it does mean that I might be treated as a mini martyr today and allowed to take a nap early in the day for my sacrifices. Is it bad that I got excited about that fact as soon as I woke up? I don't think so.
This post is a few random things I’ve been thinking about. We'll call it LIL NUTS WITH AL #1. The origin of Lil Nut by the way, in case you are not familiar, is in the video below. I highly recommend you watch, sound on.
As always, please demand that your friends and family subscribe to this newsletter or I will reveal what you did that one night in college which, while legal, was really weird.
The Case Of The Energy B̶a̶l̶l̶s̶ Blobs
In yet another shocking installment of "Oh My God I Am Becoming Like My Parents", I found myself putting latex gloves on before making energy balls in the kitchen last night. Like some kind of medical doctor! My parents do that too, so they can keep their hands clean and just pull off the gloves once they're done. I always saw them doing it and thought 'ugh, this makes no sense - what's wrong with making a mess!" And now? Now I have become that which I most feared - a guy who hates a mess.
To be fair, these energy balls were a disaster and the latex gloves saved me, sort of. For this week's edition (I try to make them every week now), I went with dates, oatmeal, peanut butter, flax seed, protein powder, acacia fiber, and chocolate chips. I threw it all into a food processor and “pulsed” - my fav word on any kitchen appliance - and had my paste ready to go to turn into balls. But then I got cocky, thought I was invincible, the Julia Child of the energy ball game, and so I threw in a banana in there last minute. Hubris. The whole paste became a wet gloppy mess. It was too sticky to do anything with, and it was sticking to everything: the counters, the salt shaker, the drawer handles, and the fridge door handle.
While trying to clean off the goo from the food processor I cut my finger on the sharp blade thing that does the ‘pulsing’. The latex glove didn’t protect me there, and now I was bleeding pretty seriously and so I am sure some of my blood got into the energy balls too.
As you can see, I pretty quickly stopped trying to even roll them into balls because (a) they were too sticky and (b) I was bleeding and everything sort of hurt. So they ended up being energy blobs.
So yes, while I did wear the latex gloves like my parents, I can assure you that they would have never constructed something as monstrous and appalling as these. I guess this is my version of rebelling against my parents and frankly? It tastes delicious.
If A Critic Didn’t Like Something, Did It Even Exist?
I just finished a book I didn’t love and had an instinct to check the reviews for that book to see if I was ‘right’. This is a weird instinct and one I would prefer not to have. Because it means my opinion matters only when it agrees with the agreed upon opinion of the smartie pants who write about books for a living. What do they know? I mean, it is their job but what if they loved the book? Does that mean I was wrong? No. But in my mind it would.
We’re at peak content and also at peak conversation re: content. And if your opinions don’t agree with what the conversation is saying, my mind tells me, you’re a fucking idiot. So I didn’t look it up. I refused
Until a few hours later, when I did look it up and, just as I feared, everyone loved the book. There was a big ol' piece in The New Yorker about it and how great it was. And it made me...mad? But I didn't really change my opinion, I don't think. And that, my friends, is progress.
The book, by the way, was Sea Of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. My dislike of it might have come partly from hearing Mandel on Ezra Klein’s podcast where they sort of ruined the plot. Or maybe I just didn’t like it. Maybe that’s okay!
Roe V Wade
This Roe v Wade shit is depressing. Is it yet another sign of the end of America's place in the world as the shining city on the hill, full of liberal and democratic values that put people's choices above, well, I don't even know what to call it. Minority rule masquerading as fundamentalist religious beliefs? Or is this finally the moment that wakes the country up and sends us moving back toward something that makes sense? Honestly I can't see that happening unless America is the boat in the Suez canal and is sorta stuck here for like 50+ years until we can fix this thing. One glimmer of optimism I enjoyed was in the Embedded newsletter in a piece from Kate Lindsay called “What is online feminism now?”
Feminism for viral consumption was always flawed and reductive. I’m angrier at capitalism than I am at men. Many women with the means will be able to secure a safe abortion post-Roe (but not always, and not in an ideal situation).
The alternative to all this might look like a collection of smaller digital communities that inspire you. I saw that in a video from Dylan Mulvaney, a TikTok creator documenting her transition, and who talks about entering womanhood during this particularly fraught moment.
“If I’ve learned anything about girlhood, it’s about taking care of each other,” she says, explaining her empathy for women losing the right to abortions, despite the fact that she's not able to get pregnant herself. “I’m seeing this parallel between transness and a woman’s right to choose, because ultimately we’re all just trying to get permission over our bodies to do what we see fit.”
Looking at it that way, I didn’t feel fractured or isolated at all. Rather than flattening feminism, the new internet has broadened it. My feminism may not be exactly your feminism. True feminism can’t fit in a viral tweet or on a tote bag, and we’ve never had more digital resources to do it justice.
Alright, that’s it for this week. I’m working on a couple bigger pieces that I’ll hopefully have for y’all next week.
I loved seeing some comments for my last post - keep those coming. I send every single one to my parents so they know I’m doing okay.
I started writing this at 4:44a. I know that its now much later than that, because that’s how time works.