Weekend Things S01E04
Carnaval San Francisco is great fun — here are some of my photos from last weekend. The parade sets up right outside our front gate, and watching the pre-game preparation is as much fun as the thing itself.
The Frog and Toad books were among my very favorites; I credit them with inspiring my life-long love of crossing out items on a to-do list, among other things. The Atlantic and the New Yorker have both published short articles this week about Arnold Lobel and these wonderful, quiet characters. The New Yorker notes that Arnold Lobel was gay, and that the first Frog and Toad book was published four years before he came out to his family. He died of AIDS when he was just 54.
The snarkiness of this Guardian article about “smart vagina technology” irritated me deeply, starting with the headline — the word “techies” is as much of a trigger for me as “hipsters”. It’s easyo to poke fun at the idea of bluetooth tampons, but that’s technology: many things that are central to our lives now emerged from unrelated and probably insane-seeming experiments decades ago.
Keeping an eye on your reproductive health is fucking important and I bet anybody who’s gone through the stress of fertility problems would be thrilled to see some upgrades on the ‘pee on a stick’ method of ovulation-tracking, for example. The development of these clumsy first products has every chance of unearthing techniques and materials that contribute to real progress.
P.S. In the United States, where tampons are largely sold with applicators, those that aren’t are known as “digital tampons”.
On the subject of tampons, here is McSweeney’s response to Bud’s summer beer campaign.
A woman read this statement aloud in court to the man who sexually assaulted her. It’s a powerful piece of writing, describing the impact of both the assault itself and the subsequent trial. Everybody should read it all the way to the end.
Lastly you said, I want to show people that one night of drinking can ruin a life.
A life, one life, yours, you forgot about mine. Let me rephrase for you, I want to show people that one night of drinking can ruin two lives. You and me. You are the cause, I am the effect. You have dragged me through this hell with you, dipped me back into that night again and again. You knocked down both our towers, I collapsed at the same time you did. If you think I was spared, came out unscathed, that today I ride off into sunset, while you suffer the greatest blow, you are mistaken. Nobody wins. We have all been devastated, we have all been trying to find some meaning in all of this suffering. Your damage was concrete; stripped of titles, degrees, enrollment. My damage was internal, unseen, I carry it with me. You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today.
If you’re a homesick Melbournian, you should, or perhaps shouldn’t, download the Melbourne Tram Simulator.
The Tribune Publishing Company has hilariously rebranded itself “Tronc”. Tronc. Seriously. Just say it to yourself a few times. And then look at the logo.
The first episode of NPR’s new Code Switch podcast, Can We Talk About Whiteness, was very good. My family probably did a better-than-average job of making sure I was aware of my privilege (it was at least something we discussed), but ‘whiteness’ was not a thing I thought about in much depth until I came to America. I hope I am learning.
