Content Nausea No. 22: Insufferable
Will it end this way? Will it end this way? Will the epitaph say 'insufferable'?
Welcome to the 22nd edition of Content Nausea. You can read the 21st edition right here. Thank you for being here. The welcome blog is here.
I have been thinking about this passage from a recent edition of Luke O’Neil’s Welcome To Hell World newsletter from earlier this week:
I want to be dragged to a dinner party I would prefer not to go to and sit there on someone’s stupid couch and reach a pita chip over and scrape it across the bowl of humus and say ha ha that’s wild when someone is telling me a story about whatever cute little job they have and I want to go meet a friend I haven’t seen in a while and sort of not feel like it all day but then realize half way through the visit that I love them and there’s a reason why I still know them even after all these years. Then once I’ve done all that once I’ve talked and talked I want to go home and be alone for a little while like it’s a pleasure I’ve earned not a punishment we’re all suffering through.
I do not consider myself to be a social person in terms of making a ton of plans and really making an effort to take advantage of every iota of free time by going out for dinner or drinks. Sometimes, I wish I was able to really push myself to do that, and it’s something that has been a detriment at times in my life. The idea of social distancing did not seem that intimidating to me.
But it’s thrown the community I unwittingly created for myself into a bit of a stark relief. I ordered from the sandwich shop I go to every week after seeing my therapist on Thursday. I miss the chatter with the staff every week. I walked over to my old neighborhood to see my favorite bartender right before things started shutting down. I started to have a new favorite bartender after a couple months of living in a new neighborhood.
There was much more around me than I thought.
Another good passage I read this morning in a “Quarantine Journal” entry titled “Concept of Work” from The Point:
Perhaps the same might be said of work. In a life of social isolation, perhaps there need not be a conflict between the meaning of life and a method of life. There is no ultimate fitness-model state or breakthrough podcast or bestselling novel: there is only the treatment of every hour as a serious, meaningful unit of time, in which something of worth might happen. This discipline, too, is a kind of work; it’s unmonitored by Zoom calls and newly enthusiastic work-from-home managers, and so it is tempting to give it a more romantic name. But whatever we call it, during a period of indefinite lockdown, these hours cannot be allowed to slip away, cannot be written off, because there is no known moment when we can know that they might be recovered. There is no way to know when we might be able to start making up for lost time.
I have struggled with ideas of productivity during the pandemic — especially because I am still doing my full-time job — but this entry from Apoorva Tadepalli threw things into a little more of a relief for me. I am still attempting to ground myself in something every day, and I am trying to give my time purpose, even if it is spending an hour or two (or three) deep in Madden 09.
Adding to the list of things I have watched in self-isolation:
Philadelphia Eagles at New York Giants, Week 15 of the 2010 season (Miracle at the Meadowlands II)
Green Bay Packers at Philadelphia Eagles, 2010 wild-card game
(Sandy) Alex G’s Instagram Live session
Re-living the Miracle at the Meadowlands II was fun Thursday night. I bought the game off iTunes when I was in college, and I have watched it a couple times to kill off a plane ride. Typically, I’ll watch 2008 Texas-Texas Tech or Super Bowl XLV, but that game is a ton of fun. I forgot that I was the Ravens-Saints game in Baltimore that same day with someone I am no longer friends with, and that night, I walked out of a house without a word when the Packers lost to the Patriots. I should re-watch that game next.
I also didn’t really realize that I had never watched that Packers-Eagles playoff game in its entirety. Anna and I went to D.C. that day to see Julian Lynch, Big Troubles and Wet Dream at Subterranean A, and we watched the early parts of the game at Ben’s Chili Bowl. I knew nothing about that game.
Some content from this week
Javon Hargrave talks leaving Pittsburgh for Philadelphia.
Jatavis Brown on his ‘fit’ in Philadelphia.
Hassan Ridgeway on his role.
Thrilling.
Some content I read this week
Beautiful column from Mike Sielski in The Philadelphia Inquirer about how the death of Kobe Bryant helped bring a former high school classmate back to life.
Pareene on the Democrats in The New Republic.
Samer Kalaf on the soundtrack of sirens in New York City. I live on rather busy street with a bus stop right in front of my apartment, so things have still been a little noisy for me. But the sirens are cutting through much more than they usually do. I wish I still lived somewhere I could here the El running.
What Zoom backgrounds say.
Why all products now are pods.
The Jersey Shore is bracing for a rough summer.
There is no plan for the end of the coronavirus crisis:
If the countries held up as models for how we should proceed can’t figure it out, what does it mean for the U.S., which is saddled with broken institutions and has already bungled and delayed its response at nearly every stage? Here in New York, we are about to enter our third week of sheltering in place; in San Francisco and Seattle, the social-distancing orders have been in effect even longer. Yet there is no clarity to be found from the federal or state or local level for how long these measures will last. And there is no public or concrete plan for, and little visible discussion about, what it would mean to sunset them: how and at what point and in what ways we will try to exit this temporary-but-indefinite wartimelike national bunkering almost all 330 million of us now find ourselves in. What, exactly, is the endgame here?
Gorilla vs. Bear, maybe the only blog I’m still reading from the blog era, gets a nice treatment from Texas Monthly.
Down with the celebs:
Among the social impacts of the coronavirus is its swift dismantling of the cult of celebrity. The famous are ambassadors of the meritocracy; they represent the American pursuit of wealth through talent, charm and hard work. But the dream of class mobility dissipates when society locks down, the economy stalls, the death count mounts and everyone’s future is frozen inside their own crowded apartment or palatial mansion. The difference between the two has never been more obvious. The #guillotine2020 hashtag is jumping. As grocery aisles turn bare, some have suggested that perhaps they ought to eat the rich.
I put off reading Drew Magary on not wanting to return to “normalcy” for like a week because I knew it wouldn’t make me feel good, and it did not make me feel good.
Some content I listened to this week
I will promo the 2k20.25 playlist again, and maybe next week the 042k20 playlist will be in a workable form to share.
Good playlist from Matt that I enjoyed listening to while I read this morning:
Ended up listening to Superenthusiast by Macseal a bunch this week. Some of it sounds like Weezer. “Nothing’s a Sure Thing, Shelly” was on heavy rotation in the fall, but I came back to “Irving” a bunch:
Here is a good run of singles that came out this week, especially the new Charli XCX track. The synths are so good. We are lucky people to have new Charli tracks in these times:
The same goes for Woods:
And a couple others:
Maybe self-isolation will be a good time to actually get into Phoebe Bridgers.
Some content I thought about this week
Again, this is all tweets:
Thank you for reading the 22nd edition of Content Nausea. It is appreciated.
Recite his ego
To fall through a phone
It's narrow, doubt the wire
Boiling to the bone
Press it more he won't confess
Remember cool and nodding, Jess
Mind the merchant not the buyer
Can this cord be cut, Jess?
—D.G.