not here much! find me @/voraciousbrain everywhere else and keep your eyes peeled for ADULT FIELDTRIP, launching soon. in the meantime, you can get my book in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audio book, narrated by yours truly 💘
once when I was catastrophically depressed, I put my dirty dishes out in the rain (??????) and discovered the next day that all of my silverware had been stolen by an enormous raccoon who does not fear me
once at work, a man asked if I was training to bartend. I said no & he told me I was lazy. his girlfriend sighed & said "oh he says stuff like that to me all the time" so I looked her dead in the eye and said "he fucking shouldn't" and that's how you break up a couple
sea shanties are popular right now because behavioral synchrony feels really, really good to humans and many of us have been social distancing for months and deprived of this, thanks for coming to my ted talk
and like, this was in early 2020? when I was deep into writing my book and freelancing and raising my kid and working my weekend job, which was literally washing dishes? and this fucking monster comes into my work and calls me LAZY???? sir I am going to ruin your life
This has been a hard year, so as we move into the next, I'd like introduce you to Lioconcha hieroglyphica, a little venus clam that appears to be covered in runes. It speaks to me, as I am also little clam who is covered in important ritual markings. I love you, rune clam.
@sunnyguacamole
hah! see, this is a great point. honestly how could I be mad about it? sometimes I find a spoon in the yard and just think.......yeah....... I do love that raccoon
@moore3ac
oh I absolutely did. I let the sink get Depression Bad and was like well.....big storm coming tonight, let's see about mother nature and these dishes
I have a chapter on behavioral synchrony in my forthcoming book about pain on purpose! Polar plunges, Russian bath houses, ballet classes, oh my! It's coming out in Sept from
@public_affairs
, sign-up here for an email when it goes on pre-order:
little word of advice: if you fill a dehydrator with carolina reaper peppers, it will emit a cloud of bear mace in your kitchen, and you will have to go outside for longer than you'd think
greetings from Belt Buckle, Tennessee, where I will be spending the next several days reporting on the Big Dog Backyard Ultra, a race that DOESNT END UNTIL EVERYONE QUITS
the guy who won last year? 283 miles, or from Saturday morning until Tuesday
@lostblackboy
okay but hear me out: sometimes you can take a scared feral demon and turn them into a doofy puppycat and it's the best feeling in the world
the health department refused to test my partner for monkeypox because they hadn't had a very specific kind of gay sex in the last 60 days
like, they went in with weeping blisters on their hands and feet and a nurse decided they weren't the right kind of gay to get tested
the most beautiful tweet I've ever seen? the one that I hold in my heart, that I'll carry with me forever? the one that changed the tenor of my rumination, the sharpness of my prose? the tweet I will murmur into your ear as we cling to each other, adrift in the unforgiving sea?
sometimes when I'm having a panic attack, my partner will press their entire body down onto me like a human weighted blanket, a little move I like to call "putting the ghost back in the house"
once when I was catastrophically depressed, I put my dirty dishes out in the rain (??????) and discovered the next day that all of my silverware had been stolen by an enormous raccoon who does not fear me
I am having what is, without question, the worst day of the year so far, and that's counting days filled with surgery and covid and dental crises and UTIs and a ruptured ovarian cyst. please send the good stuff you got, I am WHITE-KNUCKLING IT
here's a kitten to start:
@lucyswope
oh totally, there are many cool and appealing things about sea shanties! very catchy, aiming for maximum participation with a low bar of entry, fun as hell
reminder: please don't do the "uses they/them pronouns" transphobe dog whistle when you write about my book
listen, my book isn't about gender. and no one points out the pronouns of cis people. so there is no need to pointedly note my gender during a review, just be cool man
[CONFUSING AMOUNTS OF EXCITED NOISE]
MY BOOK EXISTS!!! What a journey this has been! What a journey this is going to be! "Hurts So Good" comes out Sept 14 🥰
is there anything more satisfying than having a feral cat decide that they live with you and then spending years slowly and calmly spoiling said cat until you become a beloved butler to a tiny predator named larry hotdogs
every time I make the
@bettinamak
tofu, my partner runs into the kitchen like a cartoon basset hound and yells "CRISPY EGG 420!!!!!!!!!!" before stealing fried tofu that is still too hot to eat
my partner loves to suggest ways to make baseball more fun and while yes, lmao, I just keep coming back to the fact that sometimes baseball is supposed to be awful. the unpleasantness is built in to make the spare moments of elation more potent
I'll post a little bit more in this thread to wrap up, but first I want to pack up my gear and load out and in thr dark rain and drive to a hotel and take a very long, very hot shower.
60 HOURS OF RUNNING YALL.
I am absolute elated to finally show everyone the incredible cover art for my first book, HURTS SO GOOD, out in September!
Designed by Pete Garceau, who did a beautiful job and listened to my dogged insistence that we make the pointe shoes look worn. Jacket of my DREAMS, baby 🥰
In the last decade, I've gotten divorced TWICE, survived a physically and emotionally abusive marriage, recovered from an eating disorder, had a baby, started a career as a journalist, sold a book, and come out as queer.
24 to 34 and wholly unrepentant 🙃
yesterday I learned that 100% of my kid's kindergarten class learned to count by tens perfectly because every time they sang the 10's song, the class guinea pig (Frannie) would stand on her hind legs and squeak alpng, so the kids wanted to sing it all the time 😭
I should note that this reporting trip is for my book about pain!
"Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose" is about how humans choose to engage with pain, covering everyone from chiliheads to monks to well, ultrarunners. It's gonna be wild.
warning: exercise chat ahead
Back in August, after a lifetime of not doing it, I started running. I set a goal to be able to go out and casually run 5 miles in under an hour.
4 months and 160 miles later, I fucking did it! 5 miles in 50 mins and my little pony legs feel so GOOD
imagine: I'm fully nude and taking a kitchen bath while holding court with the door-to-door religion salesmen I've invited into my breakfast nook. while exiting the tub, I slip on the stone tile and crack my skull, dying in front of the besuited duo, cementing a bond between them
"For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we can still barely endure,
and while we stand in wonder it coolly disdains
to destroy us. Every Angel is terrifying." (Rilke)
outside in the yard this morning, I said to my partner "you know, not for lack of trying, but I've never in my life found a four-leaf clover." Then I looked down, and right at my feet:
I can hardly believe my eyes, but my beloved, strange, obsessively researched, wildly intimate book about pain is in The New Yorker! I burst into tears when I found out, just fully knocked to the ground by the news 😭🥰😭🥰😭🥰😭🥰😭🥰
The existence of ultrarunners makes more sense when you learn about persistence hunting, wherein humans EXHAUST THEIR PREY TO DEATH by calmly, relentlessly chasing it to the point of collapse
Most mammals have to pant to cool off. Humans don't. Humans can hunt antelope on foot.
Larry would like to formally register her displeasure at not being allowed access to her outdoor catio today. The air quality is bad, and her lungs are made of popsicle sticks and glue, but no matter; she is unrelenting in her resentment.
My partner's father died yesterday and this pandemic has been handled so poorly that I cannot be there, cannot hug my beloved, cannot be present with his grief. I'm sealed away with my kid in our high-risk house while grief floods around us, untouched and pummeling the door.
I do NOT want to go for a run today but if I don't my brain STOPS WORKING and seeing as my mental health is an all-but-dissolved diaphanous tether to a cruel and uncaring reality, I must put this industrial sports bra on and go trundle through the mud like an insolent pony