The Health Concern continues as I wait for callbacks, and I’m still hoping it won’t turn into a full-blown Health Scare. Searching for resources without healthcare takes a chunk out of your days (and things get delayed when you have a deadline or two), so I haven’t been able to get to all the topics I want to write about but, Kittehs Willing, I’ll be back very soon. Many thanks to everyone who has reached out with support and the names of places I can consult. I’m also working on a gigantic update, covering the last, ah, four years.
Every weekday, I post–on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn–an essay (sometimes more than one) from my archive, along with new work published that week. I realised it might make sense to compile these links at the end of every week, so that readers who missed them at the time can catch up. Here’s an archive of these posts.
You’re welcome to follow me on any of those social media platforms, but please note that I’m no longer accepting new friend requests on FB unless I’ve met you and know you personally. You can, however, still follow me there without us directly “friending” each other.
Here’s a list of what I posted over the last week.
My shittiest essay (I can never, ever post this without some kind of a pun): “Why Is America Turning to Shit?” I wrote this for the now departed The Awl, and it’s one of my very favourite essays. It is actually about shit, I mean, real shit, faeces, and the role(s) it plays in our lives. Many thanks to Choire Sicha, who commissioned and edited it.
Another one of my faves, “Bourgeois Feminist Bullshit,” in Current Affairs.
“On Salman Rushdie,” from 2022, still relevant (his memoir is now out).
“‘Cat Person’ Will Never Die.” About that short story from the New Yorker.
My review of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World without Rape, one of those everlastingly clueless “feminist” texts.
In other news:
Larry Gilman wrote this utterly beautiful essay in Current Affairs, about the Voyager probes, with this beautiful sentence that needs to be immortalised on t-shirts and by sending it into space somehow: “They exemplify our ability to love the universe as an artwork, not a dead resource to be processed into profit and garbage.”
I don’t know if you can watch this outside of Facebook or not, but this woman’s excellent defense of Ursula (who is, frankly, the only reason to watch The Little Mermaid), is priceless and wonderful.
Lady Gaga has blithely admitted to being sick with Covid during five of her live concerts of her Chromatica Ball tour. Because, infection, death, debilitating illnesses, hahaha, why not? Yes, I will be writing about this.
And on Twitter, Maureen Laroche gave us this excellent anecdote, and may the anonymous French moderator live long and prosper and be an example to all moderators everywhere:
Image: Nicolas De Staël – Le Phare (Antibes) [Lighthouse (Antibes)], 1954. Oil on canvas, 23 5/8 x 31 7/8 in. (60 x 81 cm).