What I'm Thankful For

I do like things, thank you

I’m not too cool to admit that I'm thankful to get to write books

Obviously, none of these are sponsored or whatever.

My girl and the little piglet she’s growing and my family and friends. Self-explanatory but essential. I am frequently getting in a mess but I’m helped so often by people who love me.

Thanksgiving. No commercialism or materialism. No overt religiosity. No stress about getting the right presents. No pressure to find a cool party like with Halloween. The weather of late fall, the natural rhythms of harvest and feast before the winter, the pleasure of a holiday devoted to the concept of being grateful. The football, the family, the food. The after-meal nap. The wonderfully laidback nature of the whole affair. My favorite holiday.

The New York Times games app. Yes, it’s true. I am that which I mock; I am a bourgie coastal elite stereotype. For I love the NYT games app. It’s a daily delight. My favorite game is Strands, a kind of leveled-up word search, but I like almost all of them. Perhaps a little too much; I have a habit of getting lost in a crossword when I should be doing something else. My wife is into the games too and every day we gab about the puzzles, maybe complain about a dumb Connections category, share how many words we needed for the day’s Wordle. Call me a brownstone liberal, baby, this app is delightful.

Bonjesta. It’s an anti-nausea pregnancy drug with the essential additional effect of causing sleepiness; pregnancy insomnia is very real. The drug’s safety for a growing fetus has been well established. If you/your partner gets pregnant, just go ahead and ask for a Bonjesta prescription right away.

Maria Bamford’s Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult. I’ve always read a lot of books related to mental illness, and with work on my next book now fully underway, I’m reading even more. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve legitimately read Girl, Interrupted like ten times. And yet I also find reading people’s first-person experiences of mental illness to be kind of a scary business, destabilizing, a little challenging. Someday I’ll be able to articulate my feelings on the odd sense of possessiveness that many of us have about our disorders - there’s a reason that group therapy so often feels like a competitive sport - but that’s for another day. For now I just want to say that I really enjoyed the standup comedian Maria Bamford’s book Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult. It is indeed very funny, as you’d expect, and it’s insightful about the fundamental absurdities of having a mental illness, how we treat them, and our various neuroses about how our illnesses appear to other people. At times it’s quite raw, as they inevitably say in regards to this kind of book, but Bamford’s tone and self-deprecation ensure that the various intense moments never feel like theatrics. She really takes you inside her very particular struggles with intrusive thoughts and compulsions in a way that demonstrates how serious they can be, even though she’s never serious herself. This is actually a great choice for someone looking to read their first book about mental illness; Bamford is an inviting and effective guide.

The Link to Windows application. A simple, free, bundled app to connect an (Android) phone to a (Windows) computer, it does everything you might want it to. 80% of the time I’m using it to text without picking up my phone, but file transfer and copy & pasting between devices is handy too. Just a nice little shot of “does just what it’s supposed to.”

Sheil Kapadia on The Ringer’s football coverage. I had never heard of Kapadia until recently, but I’ve quickly grown to look forward to his appearances on The Ringer’s podcast network and his columns on their website. He’s clearly very knowledgeable, but more importantly he seems like a mensch and is a pleasure to listen to. A lot of people in football media are trying to pull off a charming regular-guyness, but with most of them there’s a fundamental insincerity to the whole thing. Kapadia’s simple friendliness shines through in every appearance.

Desktop computers. Stay tuned for an essay on this theme. Speaking of which….

My Elgato Stream Deck Pro (as a non-streamer). Elgato’s line of Stream Decks are, obviously pitched at people who stream - that is, people who play video games for a public audience on Twitch or YouTube. But as someone who doesn’t stream, I’ve found that the Stream Deck Pro is a very handy and practical addition to my desktop setup all the same. These are, effectively, macro pads, which means that they add extra buttons, knobs, and touchscreens to your interface. Yes, it’s true that there’s nothing that you simply can’t do with a mouse and keyboard that you can do with such a device, but the point here is ease and accessibility. It’s all about setting up macros (key press combinations) and assigning useful functions. For example, I will often put on something to listen to while playing a full-screen computer game, and the Elgato allows me to change the volume of what I’m listening to (or any other source) independently, or to play or pause, without having to click out of the game, which can be ponderous and annoying. It took some doing but I was able to figure out how to control my monitor’s brightness with one of the dials, meaning that I don’t have to reach behind for the little nipple device, press it in, access the appropriate menu, and change it from there. It’s really a cool little device that allows for a lot of convenience.

ENDON. Only the heavy and the avant garde can save us from total pop hegemony. Nice when you have both in one package.

Bernie Sanders. Longtime readers will know that, while Bernie is as close as I get to someone in my broad political circle who holds actual influence, I’m not a Bernie Sanders fanboy. I have been critical of him in the past for kowtowing to the Democratic line too often and for failing to really utilize his unique position to carve out a new space in American politics. I have enraged many a lefty by pointing out that the commies who said he would end up as a sheepdog - that is, that when all was said and done, he would act as a force pushing disaffected leftists back towards voting for Democrats - were proven right. (I mean, objectively, that’s the role he’s played, as a kind of whip for Democratic votes from the leftmost flank of the party.) But I still have a great deal of respect for his vision and integrity, and I join the many people who have seen him as the only link to sanity in the contemporary American political experience. He’s in the twilight of his career, and I will miss him.

Melona ice pops. I use that term, ice pop, with some reservations; there’s nothing icy about a Melona. What’s so amazing about Melona bars is their incredible creaminess, even after a month in the fridge. I don’t go for popsicles at all anymore, thanks to that awful icy texture they almost all suffer from. (The thought of biting into one makes my teeth hurt.) Besides, the sickeningly sweet popsicle taste isn’t what I’m looking for. But Melona bars are remarkably milky and, in the fashion of East Asian treats (they come from South Korea) they are never overbearingly sweet. There’s a ton of good flavors, but you can’t beat the original, melon, though mango, banana, and pistachio come close. These were once hard to find, but now they sell them at Costco.

Suavecito. Still the best cat, going on thirteen years old. A galactic pain in the ass, deeply aloof, prone to biting. Biting me, his master! All part of the full Suavi experience. He’s really gotten attached to Ami lately, which I wouldn’t have predicted given his general nature. All in all, A+.

Psychiatric medication. The prominent position that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has taken in the Trump transition is a symbol of a broader left-right tendency that rejects many aspects of modern medicine. And within that world there’s always been a prominent anti-psychiatry element, one which has been distressingly effective; all kinds of people, often with no particular knowledge of the subject, feel comfortable declaring all psychiatric medications to be poisons. But in fact those medications have saved my life, as they have millions of others. The side effects are terrible, but that just shows that we need better drugs. I am grateful that I have been able to rebuild my life and take part in a (more or less) normal adult existence thanks to the miracles of modern neuropharmacology.

Substack. I shudder to put this here because there’s still a lot of discourse going on. It’s getting a bit better; I think the Casey Newton-style grandstanding - which, let’s be perfectly clear, has almost nothing to do with Substack and everything to do with a certain kind of person’s weakening grip on written commentary - has less purchase than it used to. But it’s still the case that praising Substack leaves me feeling like I need to define exactly what I do and don’t mean and who I’m not in league with and blah blah blah. I’ve written about that before; I may write about it again. Today I just want to say that I like the CMS and I’m grateful for how seamless the Stripe integration is and I appreciate that this has all enabled me to make my living just as a writer. No matter what the usual suspects say, Substack has dramatically expanded the number of people making money as writers and deepened the engagement of a lot of passionate and talented amateurs, and for that I’m grateful. At some point the “own your turf” people have to recognize that the vast majority just aren’t going to roll their own platforms and services, and to insist that they do is simply to insist that a lot of voices aren’t heard anywhere.

Empire Records. It’s not so much that Empire Records is a bad movie I love, although I love it and I can’t in good conscience call it a good movie. Rather than calling it a bad movie, I’d say that it’s barely a movie. So much of what movies are supposed to do, on a basic level, are barely performed here. It does broadly wave at some conventional movie types and tropes - this is, more or less, one of those “one crazy night” teen movies, although it includes the preceding night and mostly takes place at night. But nothing is consummated, nothing is followed through with. Characters are introduced roughshod and in bulk. The character played by Coyote Shivers - I have seen this movie several dozen times and I’m not sure I could tell you a single character’s name, other than Warren, whose name is a joke - that character wanders into the movie in a way that’s so indifferent to basic movie sense, it makes you feel like there must be a scene you missed. Liv Tyler’s character is revealed to have a stimulant addiction in one scene, a point referenced in the next, then never referred to again. Just absolutely and completely dropped, for convenience’s sake. Another character announces “I got into art school!” literally in the last five minutes of the movie, despite the concept of him wanting to go to art school never having been established at any point. If you read plot synopses they generally say that the story is about saving Empire Records with one big party, but said party is only introduced with about 20 minutes left and even then is performed in a desultory manner. But that’s OK. This is, obviously, a pure nostalgia play for me, 90s teen that I was, and the whole thing is just a hang, obsessed with music and out for a good time. I adore it.

CeraVe Acne Control Cleanser. Back acne is simultaneously one of the most trivial side effects of lithium and one of the most aggravating. It’s painful, it’s unsightly, and it bleeds, ruining shirts and sheets. This stuff works for me. It’s a nice little weapon in my own personal war of attrition.

All of you. It’s cheesy, it’s sappy, it’s corny, but it’s true: my supporters here enable me to live the life I’ve always wanted to live, and I am never less than amazed and utterly grateful that you have decided to read my work and support it financially. Thank you.

See you all next week. Happy Thanksgiving.