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apairofcrepeswiththerarestape · 5 years ago

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The New York Review of The New Yorker for April 6th 2020

Hello! This week was surprisingly busy! As we move into the part of life when you have scheduled video calls with other humans so you don't feel like you live on an island which is your apartment and the laundry suddenly needs to be done and that requires a bucket and now there is less time to read The New Yorker! I apologize for the delay. Also we got Animal Crossing and it's simulacrum of the regular world is soothing, horrifying, and addictive. ANYWAY, let's talk about this issue!

COVER

I was pretty down on Chris Ware for his work last week and guess what? I THOUGHT THIS COVER WAS FINE. You probably shouldn't be handing your phone with gloves in a hospital though.

TABLES FOR TWO

Woof, this one really caused a lot of consternation in the old brain pan. Hannah Goldfield writes about the restaurants that are trying to make do with delivery in this age o tha rona. On one hand, I love restaurants and want them to stay open and for the people who work there to get paid and be able to live (as a former and hopefully future food service worker I have a bit of skin in the game), but reading about the lush meals that are being delivered/picked up makes me feel a little queasy! Like if you have the money to be ordering in all the time why not just give that money to people and learn to fucking cook something every now and then. The number of people put at risk every time these people want take out from Carbone or whatever is insane. Maybe if you love a restaurant so much just give them money and tell them to make food for people that have a little bit more need than you? I don't know, I ordered wine delivery last week so maybe I should be measuring my own neck for the guillotine.

TALK OF THE TOWN

We lead off with the traditional Trump is bad/stupid/doing terrible things articlet (this is not a typo, I'm trying to make articlet a thing), it was fine.

Next a thingee about people trying to find ways to make a cheap ventilator which was only depressing because the government paid people to try to do this and then those people had their work basically thrown in the trash. There was a whole ProPublica article about it which I just tried to google but about 6 other articles about how fudged the whole ventilator world is came out and I was too bummed.

Then a jammer about Alex Jones who is only worth attention when he's going on a strange nonsensical rant about how he's a man filled with blood or whatever. He's apparently scamming people with bs supplements to prevent the corona virus which is NOT A SURPRISE.

After that something about how people are buying guns, EVEN LIBERALS! How fudging shocking! Everybody in this little thing sounds like a moron.

Finally, something about how theaters are trying to stay open through streaming content, which is admirable. Unfortunately the performer featured in this piece plays the ukulele, hands down the worst instrument in human history. If you'd like to hear a good song played in a way that makes you go "hmmmmm, I like this song but for some reason this version is only making me angry" then the fucking uke (as it is often referred to by people who I immediately try to leave the vicinity of) is for you! Anyway, I hope that Caveat (the club featured in the thing, a place where I have not seen many people I know perform because I am lazy) stays in business but that ukulele mentioned in it is smashed against a wall or rock.

CORONA VIRUS CHRONICLES

I read this article but could not remember anything about it.

COMIC STRIP

This was fine if kind of boring. Again a cartoonist talks about how terrible they are. I swear I like comics, maybe just not New Yorker comics?

SHOUTS & MURMURS

Did not read.

ANNALS OF MEDICINE

Well this was pretty miserable to read, Eyal Press writes about the consequences of Alabama not expanding medicare funding. This article is filled with heartbreaking stories of people who lack means falling ill and dying and it pretty much seems like it was Alabama's fault. THE WORLD IS REAL COOL RIGHT NOW. This was a very good if extremely sad piece.

A REPORTER AT LARGE

This was not a real rainbow of a follow up! Rachel Aviv tells the tale of Sharon (or Sharoni) Stern, a sad person who thought they had found something in the world of Butoh dance but eventually killed herself. JESUS NEW YORKER EDITORS! CAN YOU GIVE ME A BREAK! Anyway, this story is very sad even without me really knowing what Butoh dancing really is (though someone once told me about how moving it was and then I looked up a video of it and it left no impression (even though I know many dancers I have little to know facility for speaking about it), I do remember telling that person that it looked "cool" because I think I was trying to impress them? I'm pretty sure my trenchant analysis failed that mission). The two other main people in the article, Katsura Kan (the Butoh instructor who Sharon fell under the influence of) and Tibor Stern (Sharon's dad), seem like real jerks!

LETTER FROM YANGQUAN

Did not read.

FICTION

Oh man do I love George Saunders. His ability to tell stories that illustrate the ills of our current reality by showing us ones that are slightly shifted never fail to get my brain working.The stories combined with the challenge of his linguistic tricks that somehow make the stories more emotional (rather than the usual linguistic trick reaction, which make me say "wow, what a cool linguistic trick") also blows my mind. This story is no different, though it is less weird than the usual fare. Presented as a letter from a grandparent to his grandson dated sometime in the near future, it tells the tale of a world who's apathy towards the slow slide to authoritarianism (which, uh duh, we're in the middle of right now!) went unchecked and how those who were/are not directly affected by it will allow it to continue. It made me sad!

A CRITIC AT LARGE

Elizabeth Kolbert talks about how pandemics shaped human history (this was the subhead of the article so you can probably figure that I do not have a lot to say about it). I don't remember a lot of the article but I DO remember thinking "oooooh, this is INTERESTING" while I read it, so there's that.

BOOKS

Jill Lepore Jill Lepores the hell out of life living alone during our modern emergency and it made me sad (man, this issue made me sad A LOT). Lots of sad stuff about chimpanzees in here if that's your thing (and I hope it isn't you sick FREAK).

BOOKS

Sheila Heti on the letters of Tove Jansson. I never really got into Moomin as stories but Jansson's lines were always really fantastic to look at. I always feel like a real dummy when a book of letters is reviewed because if I ever become famous a collection of my emails will consist of so many of them that read like "look at this video of Kelsey Grammer falling off a stage!" or "here's another version of this comedy bit, I changed the word fuck to fudge, what do you think?" Anyway, Tove sounds cool but I will not be reading a book of her letters.

BOOKS

Did not read.

THE THEATER

Did not read.

MUSICAL EVENTS

Did not read.

POP MUSIC

I had not heard of Yaeji (I rarely hear of good new music. I've definitely entered the age of my life where I'm mostly listening to reissues to stave off the possibility of outwardly liking something current that turns out to be ultra corny) but Hua Hsu made me interested enough to check out her record and it's pretty great so far! Thanks Hua Hsu!

THAT'S IT! A real bummer of an issue for this bummer of a time! Hopefully next week will be more fun! Probably not though! See you next weeeeeeekkkkkkkkkkk!

#the new york review of the new yorker #the new yorker #SAD #george saunders is great #dumb projects

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shiftingwitholive · 6 months ago

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Moomin Valley script

(just a heads up, this script is very unstructured.)

my name is Oliver and i’m Snufkin’s person. in the winter we travel south where its warmer, to a place which is basically what i imagine aesthetic Europe to be, where we have a little log cottage in the middle of the forest by a lake.for the rest of the year we’re in moomin valley.i have my black fluffy hair and green eyes and i wear black pants and a dark blue jumper with stars on it like the one in coraline and black boots. i play the violin and guitar and ukulele while snuffkin plays about every instrument under the sun.

moomin mama treats me like a second son,moomin papa lends me books from time to time and i teach moomin about the world and the things i read in books. me and snufkin both accept that we need space and time alone, so we will often go and do separate things or one of us will go to the moomin’s house. we communicate, and we get by without any problems.

under snuffkin’s coat is just a green-brown sweater that’s really really soft and obviously, brown trousers

because we dont have phones or anything my script is just a notebook that no one can find. i can change it through writing or just thinking.

snufkin smells like pine needles and rain and firewood in a nice way. im more of a lavender and oranges boy.

me and snufkin are only like 17-20(aprox. no actual ages) moomin is like 10-11ish (so is snorkmaiden) and the moomin parents are around their late 30s/40s, little my is probably the same age as moomin,maybe a little younger. (none of the ages are pinpointed, i like to think we are all ageless beings but for convenience i thought i would try to think of some rough ones)

heights: snufkin:5’6 me: 5’5 (dont come at me i know i’m short ok) moomin mama: 5,2 moomin papa:5’4 moomin:5’0 little my:4’8 snorkmaiden: 4’11 (i gave them all normal heights instead of little my being like 2 feet tall and snufkin being only 4 feet tall because from my perspective it made more sense)

my hair and everything will always look right and i wont look tired or too pale or icky at any point

scenarios:

one time, we were on a walk along the cliffs together and an unexpected storm came in. it was raining and we were too far from our tent, so we rushed to the moomins’ house. because it was really cold i got a bit ill. we turned up pretty late on their doorstep all wet with me sneezing and shivering. moominmama sat us down and started warming up some soup and told moomin papa to set up 2 beds upstairs. we are given some blankets and soup and moomin mama roots around for some spare clothes. (we left some over just in case) and we get changed and go up to our room, they put up 2 twin beds but we end up pushing them together and falling asleep all tangled together.

moomin mama and moomin papa peek in and are all “oh look at them” “aww” at us. the next day our clothes have dried and we eat breakfast and then moomin comes down and sees we’re here and we have to explain our night to him, then after breakfast we look outside and it’s still too stormy to go home so moomin papa lends me a book and i sit on the couch while snuffkin goes to do something upstairs with moomin.

then around mid-afternoon the sky clears and we go back to our tent and its fine, we lie and cuddle and fall asleep again.

—

when theyre explaining that numbty’s aunt is mean and sarcastic one of them pipes up with “ but oliver says he’s sarcastic, and he’s nice” and the grown ups have to explain the difference between sarcastic humor and being mean and how i can be sarcastic in a way thats a joke, but some people only do it in a mean way. which can hurt peoples feelings.

#reality shifting #shifting #desired reality #shifting community #shiftblr #reality shift #shifting script #dr scripting #moomin reality shifting

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