Salutations, my quarantined friends.
What’s up? Read anything juicy lately? Found a home workout that doesn’t make you want to lie on the floor and end it all? Listened to a fresh podcast on a stale topic? I’d love to know, I too, am in furious pursuit of distraction.
You could send suggestions, if you are feeling generous, in a comment on substack, or dm them on Instagram to @zackcitybish. I am particularly interested in salacious items on killer whales in captivity. It’s been a strange week.
I am writing from my soft office, the artisté formerly known as my bed. I’ve been guzzling morsels of clickbait to help me through this sedentary time. Most of them recommend getting out of bed everyday. I formally rebuke that advice and grant you permission to join me, should you wish, in a horizontal uprising on Zoom.
Showering is also a suggestion–– not a command. Like wearing face masks in public. That aggressive hyperlink just broke the founding rule of my own newsletter which is to NOT talk about the cruelest-mistress-of-all-time.
A quest for meaning
In my most manic fever dream (too soon?) this space is a salve for your metaphorical wounds. Finding normalcy in a pandemic, when there is an invisible assailant lurking on every doorknob, is a big fat spiral. So I’ve been hunting for indulgence. Scouring the internet for content that makes me feel like I won’t live the rest of my life in a zorb ball.
Despite the hyperbole, I am terrified by the state-of-the-world. I’m finding it hard to dream beyond a week. Everything feels pointless. Like there’s no meaning to be found or relished. Remember when we could process the consequences of humanity before word vomiting?
Jia Tolentino explored the sinister impact of late-stage capitalism through the rise of athleisure and hustle culture in Always Be Optimizing. She cited research from the 19th century and her piece was well considered. Forward thinking, with historical benchmarks for the penultimate assertion that our system “magnifies and diminishes you every day.” Britney Spears explained that eloquently.
I point out that her piece is well considered because I am trying to describe what I have lost. I once had the space to ponder the ramifications of our constructed world, as if watching a large snowball roll down a just-out-of-focus slope. I could look at the evidence, deliver a judgment and avert my eyes. I had a choice before, but alas, that is gone. We’re in an avalanche! That we made! Baby, it’s coming! If not now, then soon, and it is too violent to shun.
Such fun we had before
There’s no time to pause and reflect, but my vocation implores me to try. The cogs in my brain whir desperately, digesting bleak information, hoping to shit out an essay that proves the mental acrobatics were worth the contortion, that strife and sickness add up to something larger than the panic keeping us home.
Was that miserable? I apologize, this is supposed to salve you, not rub salt in the wound. I want to say: I am scared, and I am taking this seriously. Hopefully, you are too. It means that we care. Perhaps that’s the meaning I can derive from staring at the walls and fantasizing about….getting on the subway (?!) hugging a person (?!??!?!?!) I am trying to remember, and renegotiate, a world worth returning to.
I can’t stay scared and serious forever. There is no looking away. I’m on the slope in front of a cascading wall of snow. In the spirit of ‘normalcy’, I pledge to IGNORE EVERYTHING AND HAVE A GOOD TIME by writing this newsletter, for a few hours each week.
Salves for your sorrows
To read…
The book that accompanied me through a prolonged period of staying in bed.
My Year Of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh
Penguin Random House
The essay that made me want to write essays.
The Fourth State of Matter, Jo Ann Beard
The New Yorker
A think piece that made me…think.
Celebrity Culture is Burning, Amanda Hess
New York Times
To watch…
Julia Gillard’s parliament speech on misogyny in Australian politics.
This incredible argument between Ramona Singer and Bethenney Frankel from the Real Housewives of New York City.
Your venus card reading by Lune Innate, for April 2020.
Kimberly Foster discussing texturism, beauty standards, and black hair.
Unorthodox on Netflix.
To listen…
The High Low with Dolly Alderton and Pandora Sykes: a weekly pop culture podcast.
Dolly Parton’s America: a semi anthropological NPR segment dissecting the Dollyverse & celebrity politics.
Future Nostalgia: Dua Lipa’s forward-looking pop record.
To move…
Sweat, but make it nurturing with a Dynamic Vinyasa at Humming Puppy NYC.
Dance like no one’s watching (because no one is watching, you are quarantined) with a 10 min Britney Spears dance class.
Lie on the floor in a fetal position and breathe mindfully with Adrienne in a Tension Relief pranayama class.
Internet Free-dive For Your Pleasure
In which I find garbage on the web.
Free diving is the breathless exploration of underwater crevices. The thrill of danger and control. Discovering uncharted territory. I am an online freediver, I hold my breath and plunge into spaces I don’t understand.
This week, I found a new frontier: sorority mansion tours. Some highlights from the Chi Omega house at the University of Oregon: framed photos of terminally ill children, multiple living rooms, a grandfather clock, a coffee bar, a TV room, a sun porch, communal showers with leg shelves for easy shaving.
I have a lot of questions. Why is there so much storage space allocated for crafts? Do they wipe with pipe cleaners instead of toilet paper? And why are sorority girls so... blatantly homogenous?
Turns out the rushing process is like, insanely, outrageously rigged. A dossier from an anonymous recruitment chair at a sorority in Michigan revealed the dehumanising protocol.
Picture this: you are rushing a sorority, under the impression that you will meet a bunch of friendly strangers who do not know you prior to this meeting, and they will select you to join their egalitarian haven because of your winning charisma.
According to the dossier, that is NOT how it goes. There is a preemptive assessment round where pledges are found on social media, and given an external pre-score based on the following criteria:
1. Is she naturally pretty?
2. Does she look like your current sisters?
3. Is she trendy?
4. Would you want to see her in your letters?
This score is logged & kept for all successful applicants. If you’re a 10, you’ll be listed as such for your tenure. If you’re a 3, the same applies. This is entirely based on your Facebook or Instagram account.
The recruitment chairs then invite their current sisters to a mandatory “Coffee Date” under the guise of building morale. It’s another round of auditions, to create another ranking based 70% on the pre-score, and 30% on demonstrated enthusiasm and understanding of the ‘process’. When it’s time to meet the new pledge class, the star recruitment sisters are strategically placed in one room, the flops are put in another. The recruitment chair keeps track of placements, and guides the hottest pledges to the hottest sisters to make the hottest cohort.
Most of the pledges have been rejected by their external pre-score before they waltz through the oak doors, sit under the grandfather clock, and wonder which closet holds all the pipe cleaners.
2020, huh? Maybe this is the year of realizing things. Whoever said sorority girls are stupid, clearly has not examined the recruitment process, because it requires a forensic level of tabulating the world’s most subjective and meaningless data.
Deeper Diving
Does anyone remember Gawker? Probably the best online media outlet of all time. Made bankrupt by a billionaire with a hate boner for an exposé they wrote about him. Sounds like an episode of Succession, but it’s real life, and you know what? Succession is real life.
Anywhomst, in 2013, Gawker published an email that the president of Delta Gamma (University of Maryland) graciously sent to her beloved sorority sisters after a mixer. Here’s an excerpt, the full missive is a treat.
“For those of you that have your heads stuck under rocks, which apparently is the majority of this chapter, we have been FUCKING UP in terms of night time events and general social interactions with Sigma Nu. I've been getting texts on texts about people LITERALLY being so fucking AWKWARD and so fucking BORING.”
The gushing declaration of love is ended with the following:
“And for those of you who are offended at this email, I would apologize but I really don't give a fuck. Go fuck yourself.”
I think that’s how I’ll sign off my newsletter. If you’re LITERALLY so fucking AWKWARD and BORING please do not read my work.
(but pls do share it)