suddenly outback steakhouse makes sense

The other day, I FaceTimed with a dear friend: She was wearing a renaissance halo headpiece, drinking a margarita, and worried about losing her business.

Another friend hosts a nightly cooking show, complete with theme song and credits, that broadcasts to only 10 people. He and his wife do it six days a week, including on their wedding anniversary: They’re just making dinner to an audience of their parents and some friends, but, every night I tune in, and over the weeks, it’s gone from novelty to lifeline for a number of us who watch.

that thing where you read a random quote and decide it's a metaphor for the state of the world

I had a giant freak-out yesterday afternoon. And then I watched The Wailing (2016) with my mom in the evening.

Tautology

I think my brain might be freshly broken in ways I don’t yet understand. I think this in part because I can’t stop listening to Cardi B scream about coronavirus. In the three weeks since Cardi posted the clip on Instagram, I’ve probably accounted for an outsize share of its nearly 28 million views, and I find myself wanting to sing-yell in reply.

“Corona-viiiiii-rus!” She dips into a double-knee bend. “CORONA-VIIIIII-RUS!”

Dog Days

Like a lot of you, my husband Chris and I recently decided now would be a great time to foster a dog. We’re trapped at home, our muscles are atrophying and our community is in peril. We wanted to help. Each day is the same struggle against boredom and helplessness, and taking in a very good boy seemed like a self-care silver bullet. “I need a baby, H.I., they got more than they can handle!” I shouted at Chris all day, channeling my inner Raising Arizona. It worked out; my need for a foster dog and my city's need for me fed into each other, an ouroboros of problem and solution. And so one week ago and after the LA Animal Services approved our application, we drove to the shelter to pick up the answer to all life’s problems.

I call this cocktail The Quarantine

I started out quarantine not feeling like drinking much, but at this point the day shading into evening is also peak Anxiety Hour. One night I wanted a cocktail but we were out of bourbon, a situation since remedied, but had plenty of cognac (made of grapes instead of corn mash!). Also we had Punt e Mes vermouth, so I mixed them together and added a dash of orange bitters. It was surprisingly good!

This drink is called The Quarantine because after you have one you don't feel like leaving the house. Turns out it's a riff on a Metropole or Vieux Carré, but only cognac and proportionally less vermouth. I like having less vermouth for that stronger, Manhattan-but-not-cough-syrupy flavor. Punt e Mes is also a little less saccharine than other brands of vermouth, I think. Classy!

Recipe: 

2 parts Cognac
1 part Sweet Vermouth (Punt e Mes for preference)
5 shakes orange bitters
Orange peel (or clementine peel if you've sanitized your oranges and can't use the skin)

Mix the cognac and sweet vermouth together with ice in a cocktail shaker. Add bitters and stir more. Pour into a glass, probably with the ice. Squeeze the orange peel and throw it in. Wash your hands before drinking.

DMs

Still from Ingrid Goes West, 2017

I've sent a grotesque amount of Instagram DMs in the past week. I used to be kind of picky about watching people's Insta stories. Partially because I found out way too late in the stories game that people SEE who LOOKS at their junk. When someone told me this it RATTLED me to my core because since I was in high school I've had an obsession with guy friend's girlfriends.

The House that Purell Built

Tormentedly Untainted, 2019 by Chloe Wise (detail) 

Back when I lived in Brooklyn and it was safe to go into other people’s homes, I spent a year working as a landscaper. It was good, hard work and I was very bad at it, although I tried. Most days my boss and coworker and I would stuff the company’s Toyota Echo with shovels and rakes and leaking bags of cement or mulch, or else we’d carefully fill the hatchback with moist containers of myrtle, creeping jenny, and clematis and be out in Ditmas or Park Slope, laying slate, trimming the perennials. Each day I’d get filthy and mis-gendered. I loved it. 

Briefly Reviewed: National Coronavirus Information Design on Twitter

I can't think of another occasion where literally every country on the planet has cause to publicly report the same grim information, every single day. The Olympics come close, I guess.

At first I only followed the UK and Scottish virus tweets, but after seeing a tweet from Kuwait with a wildly different design, I wondered what other countries were doing. What can I say? Coronavirus intersects with everything we do and everything we're interested in – and in my case, it's information design.

So, let's take a spin around the globe:

Turnstiles or Literature from the Periphery

I have been listening to Billy Joel’s 1976 album, Turnstiles, on repeat. It’s the ultimate normie album, written for a caricatured America that includes just two cities of note. But Billy Joel, the king of normies, is also the king of mourning normalcy. The perfect quarantine soundtrack for those of us toggling between political anger and fully automated luxury autofiction.

I listen, and I cry. The piano man isn’t playing for anyone now. You will not have dinner with your lost love at an Italian restaurant. (Neither of these songs are on Turnstiles but you get the point.)

 So I wrote a mini essay for each song on Turnstiles:

Don't look under the bed!

Last night, it happened: I really lost it. 

I was just so tired, and a little drunk again, a little drunk for the eighth night in a row at least, and I'd Zoomed with my family and I'd FaceTimed with Ashley and Lizzie and then it was still not even 9 PM. I cracked, and I looked under the bed. 

I'll tell you what I found: a postcard from a French restaurant in Soho. I've been there only once. I went there for dinner with my ex-boyfriend in November 2018, on a Friday night, after I'd gotten back from an afternoon on Staten Island, interviewing people who hang up Christmas lights on fancy houses. He liked to get drunk but usually with other boys, and I remember that night because he got very drunk with just me.

Here's what I did with the postcard: I taped it to my refrigerator.

A Personal Message From Adrian Hon, Indoor Voices Blogger

Dear Indoor Voices Reader,

In these uncertain times, I wanted to reach out to you personally about what I am doing here at this Kottke-approved Quarantine Group Blog to support you and your browsing plans. As the situation around novel coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to evolve, I am doing everything I can to ensure your continued supply of quarantine takes.

Professional Formatting

I will convey the seriousness of this situation by eschewing frivolous gifs obtained illegally via Google Image Search and instead use our corporate logo (centred) above a professional white background. All text will remain black and unadorned of emojis.

What Should You Do Tonight? Mar. 27

Weekend edition! See the tag for more suggestions.

Celebrate Mariah Carey

Today is Mariah Carey's "life anniversary" (not birthday, as per her instructions) and you should listen to her music before bed. "Underneath The Stars" is a perfectly written song. So is "Honey." Most of her catalogue and 19 #1s, too. — Myles Tanzer 

Learn How to Tie Your Shoes

Ok so something not a lot of people know about me is I'm pretty bad at tying my shoes!!! I had really bad fine motor skills as a child so I never really developed the muscle memory to...tie knots correctly. Instead of going out and having fun like people did in the days of yore, I'm going to spend all weekend watching YouTube videos on knot-tying until my brain oozes out of my ears! — Sophie Kemp

Brits in Greece

Tonight, you should watch The Durrells in Corfu, a charming, unexpectedly modern family sitcom set in Greece in in the 1930s. It's the real-life story of the Durrell family, who fled the dreary southern coast of England and moved to Corfu just because, and the resulting four season adventure is bright, witty and surprisingly familiar, as the titular family feels like one you know all too well. It's available on PBS Passport and Amazon Prime, and it's a fun adventure to leave your home where you live and spend all of your time and see the world with new friends. — Nick Andersen

Express Gratitude

Lately, my husband and I have begun sharing what we're grateful for before dinner each night. Expressing gratitude is something that can really help tune our heads to what is positive, especially amidst this endless torrent of tragedy. Our moods affect our immune systems, so taking care of our spirits in whatever ways we can is an additional method of staying vigilant during these times. — Sandy Allen

Attend the Theatre

Just because every theater on Broadway is closed doesn't mean you can't take in a show. Thanks to the YouTube channel TastySurrealBowl (the Joseph Papp of our times?), the 1984 PBS recording of Sam Shepard's Pulitzer-finalist play True West is available to stream in its entirety. Taking place in the desert 40 miles east of LA, the production stars Gary Sinise and John Malkovich as estranged brothers housesitting for their mother. Sinise plays the hack screenwriter, Malkovich the loose-canon house burglar, naturally. But over a couple long days and nights with nothing but their mother's booze and each other's company, the oppressive emptiness of the desert starts to get to the pair (“those are the most monotonous fuckin' crickets I ever heard in my life," Malkovich growls to himself) and slowly the brothers switch places, the vagrant selling a script, the screenwriter stealing every toaster oven in the neighborhood. Full of madness and claustrophobia and Malkovich whipping pieces of toast at Sinise's head, it's a perfect show for these times. In the words of a sloshed Sinise, “This isn't champagne anymore. We went through the champagne a long time ago. This is serious stuff. The days of champagne are long gone.” — Natalie Beach

Watch Instagram Cooking Videos

But specifically this Korean cooking channel. Going down the page and reading the captions of the video freeze frames is the only kind of poetry my brain can handle at the moment. — Clare Mao

Crispy red onion
sizzle~
do u want~?
kiya.. Hit by a car..
Eat me quickly
very easy ^^
very very easy ^^

Dystopian City Movies

American cinema uses New York as a vehicle for the aspirations or anxieties present in an era, and in our current moment, the city is the epicenter of the Coronavirus outbreak, a proxy for the country's fears. Aude and I have embarked on a movie marathon to see how filmmakers used the concerns present in American society to create dystopian visions for the future or alternative visions of the present. There's a comfort in knowing that their depictions of the years 1997 or 2022 look nothing like our current reality and what we are fixated on now will pass. We have expanded the concept to include how other cities are used in a similar fashion. Films include: "Soylent Green", "Escape from New York", "The Warriors", "Logan's Run" (Washington DC), "12 Monkeys" (Baltimore / Philadelphia), "Bladerunner" (LA), "They Live" (LA), and "Brazil" (London) — Michael Crommett

Italian Cinema

Open a heavy red wine you have been saving for a special occasion. This is the special occasion. Let it breathe. Rent La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty) by Paolo Sorrentino through Criterion or Amazon Prime. Watch it on the largest screen you own, with the volume as high as you can put it without being a dick to your neighbors. Sit back, drink the wine, and weep as prolifically as you can. — Jennifer Schaffer

Farmers Markets 

I'm heading to the McGoldrick Park farmers market in Greenpoint on Sunday. The fish guy, pickle people and Orwashers bread will definitely be there every week until Down to Earth Markets suspends. — Jenn de la Vega

there should be lifestyle anarchy

Whether it's a form of emotional mediation or self-denial, I've found myself trying to do what's often been advised in this prolonged state of social isolation, which is to stick to a routine and time-table as if we were under normal conditions. You know, things like "dress up even though you're not leaving your house," or "keep your regular meetings," or "adhere to social graces, like saying hello," or "eat a normal breakfast like eggs and not, say, candy." Because, I'm told, structure is helpful when the days mash and bleed together to a point of lost definition like smashed potatoes.

(Tangentially, I heard this very same piece of advice was given to Will Smith as he prepared for his role on I Am Legend, which I'm not sure whether is underrated as a Will Smith, but is definitely underrated as a Dog Movie. It's certainly better than Balto, which is bullshit.)

Oh, So You Have a Second Home?

“I used the last of the miso paste... how irresponsible of me,” I said, to the extended family—aunts, uncles, colleagues, grandparents, TAs, partners, and gurus—gathered before me in our vacation home in a farflung part of Maine.

Raising awareness, now more than ever!

H.P. Lovecraft and his cat, whose name you should Google

Do you ever get a phrase stuck in your head? Like it just repeats over and over and over, and even though there's no sound inside your brainpan it's still somehow there? That happens to me a lot. More lately, to be honest, probably because I'm not speaking as much as I normally do.

Anyway, there are two that have been tormenting me during my waking hours, lately: "now more than ever," which is a shitty sentiment even at the best times — let's be honest, it's nearly always used to whip up jingoistic furor in service of some atrocity — and "raising awareness," which is emptier than hell itself. (All those demons and lost souls are here.)

How to Cut Your Hair

Haircuts at home are easy and fun. Just follow these simple instructions and whatever kind of haircut you want will be yours in no time!

Every Day That's Boring Is Good

At least that's what I try to keep telling myself: If nothing is happening then you're lucky. If a day isn't dramatic, if your main problem is what to cook or watch or play, then that's amazing. Boredom and mundanity are blessings. If tomorrow is the same as today, even better. 

The photo is two squares of sunlight from the front door of our building shining into the hallway. To see it I had to be walking outside at the exact right moment of the afternoon, which I never would have otherwise.

What Should You Do Tonight? Mar. 25

Suggestions from our contributors to keep yourself busy at home / on the internet / socially distanced outside tonight or any other night. More suggestions on the tag. 

Watch Midwest TV

A very good television show to consume during these times is Joe Pera Talks With You (YouTube TV, Hulu, etc). Hard to describe this program. It's about a mild-mannered chorus teacher from the Upper Peninsula. The episodes are short. They are weird and they are lovely and they are extremely funny. There's a big wallop of poignancy that sneaks up on you, especially if you finish the latest, second season. Jo Firestone is excellent in it. There are some truly excellent kid performances too (especially the kid from Antarctica). Joe Pera Talks With You speaks directly to questions like whether and how to respond to the imminent collapse of society and how to survive overwhelming personal catastrophe. The narrative of the second season revolves around the growing of a bean arch. I had already planned on growing a bean arch this year before I watched it. So while not inspired by Joe Pera, but in concert with, I will grow a bean arch this summer, thinking back fondly to watching those episodes last winter, during the beforetimes. – Sandy Allen

Take Vampire Walks

I like going outside at 2:00 AM for my "daily" walk when no one else is around, wearing a hoodie, and pretending to be some sort of invulnerable night creature. I highly recommend this to others. How often do you get to prowl around your city in pitch blackness and *not* expect to be mugged/killed blah blah? Lockdown Vampirism is fab. — Alex Marraccini 

Play a Strategy Game

Before our current blessed epoch of Animal Crossing, there was Into the Breach (Switch, Steam). What makes this sci-fi turn-based strategy game so unusual is that there is absolutely no luck involved – it's always possible to 100% every single level, even if it seems hopeless at the start. Like chess, the game is completely deterministic and its rules are pretty simple; unlike chess, you only have to look a couple of turns in the future so the branching tree of possibilities is kept very much under control. I can't remember the last time I had so much fun just staring at my computer screen for ten minutes constructing the perfect set of moves in my mind, then seeing it all unfold according to plan in just ten seconds. — Adrian Hon

What are you doing tonight? Send us suggestions at indoorvoicesblog@gmail.com

Post-Plague Anxiety

Instagram of hospital window, April 1, 2014.

Six years ago this week, I got into a really bad bicycle accident. I spent 8 days in a hospital in Sunset Park largely unable to get out of bed due to two broken bones and a tube in my chest cavity keeping my lung inflated. I've thought a lot about that recently. Prior to COVID19, it was the the closest I'd been to a quarantine. I saw my mom and often my sister every day, and maybe one person would come to visit me for 10-20 minutes a day. Otherwise, I spent the day in bed, looking out one tiny window, generally just waiting for it to be over.

My fish died last week

I know this kind of thing isn't supposed to be a big deal, not like human death, or even dog death. But it's not like I haven't had other "bigger" deaths, and she was special. She was with me for 2.5 years, and alive who knows how long before that. It was bad timing, as she was my quarantine company, but there was never going to be a good time.

Her name was Fern and she was a blue betta. She was named after two great women, Fern from Charlotte's Web, and Fern, the ficus in Hannah Montana ("she's a ficus named Fern!"). I got her as a break-up fish, at a time when I really needed something to care for. She ended up being a relationship fish, when I found a person for that.

Have You Seen the Semenal* Movie "Michael" Yet?

In the late '90s, something special came down from the heavens. I refer not to the Eucharistic Miracle of Buenos Aires, but rather the Nora Ephron film, "Michael," which stars John Travolta as a fat angel who wears overalls without a shirt, chain smokes and smells like cookies when he's horny.

Signs & Portents: Smintheus, God of Plague

I've been reading The Iliad out loud in a nightly Zoom session with friends, which I recommend as a great distraction — it's the definition of epic action and as an oral poem it's not that hard to follow. But early on in book one I encountered a reference to Smintheus, the god of plague.

See, Chryses, a Trojan priest of Apollo, has his daughter abducted by King Agamemnon, Achilles, and the rest of the Achaean army. Chryses goes to the Achaean camp to try to ransom his daughter back, but Agamemnon refuses. So Chryses calls on Apollo to wreck the Achaeans in revenge, which, of course, he does. The rain of Apollo's arrows killing Acheaen troops is compared to plague (or maybe vice versa, depending on your mythological beliefs). 

Smintheus is apparently one of Apollo's many names. It comes from the word for mice, which are associated with prophecy I guess but also seem pretty relevant as far as plagues? Or is that just rats.

So, I was wondering, is our problem that we've upset Apollo, just like Agamemnon? The ancient Greek solution was to sacrifice 100 bulls in a big circle and burn their leg-bones wrapped in fat. Could be worth a try.

The Good Instagram Hunk

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Damon Bell (@damonbell) on Mar 13, 2020 at 12:32pm PDT

Before this all started, I decided to get in shape for the millionth time. I committed to a schedule of lifting weights at the gym three times a week, cutting all my weekly carbs to essentially zero, and being sober for a few months. It worked! I lost a bit of weight and felt a lot stronger than I once was. Then suddenly, I couldn't go to the gym anymore because of the germs. Now, I have to workout in the house which is less fun. (I absolutely hate running so that is not an option for me.) Enter: The Good Instagram Hunk.

Don't kiss your phone!

I've been listening to "Kiss Me Thru the Phone" at least once per hour, and I've also been watching the music video. Don't kiss your phone, it's dirty! The boy in that video who is not Soulja Boy has a notched eyebrow, which I think all boys should be trying in quarantine.

Relatedly, the tall boy I have been dating for three weeks needs a haircut, and it's going to fall to me to give it to him. Can you believe that? That's too Instagram poem even for me. That's literally a Regina Spektor song.

Saturday night we were sitting in my room reading a Vice article about the best way to respond to nudes, because neither of us had ever received one (or we were lying) and neither of us had ever sent one (or we were lying). The advice was hysterically bad. It was like, "Don't say you look heavy," and Don't use the tongue emoji. "Boys, send a photo back but not of your dick"—I'm paraphrasing—"Try one of your hip bone or your fingers." It was cracking me up. No one has any idea what they're doing! The tall boy took a photo of his fingers while we were sitting there and showed it to me. I laughed some more and said "hot." Boys were also supposed to text "FUCK," and that was the only approved verbal response.

Creating a TikTok a day keeps the anxiety at bay

I first started making TikToks when I started feeling a tickle in my throat two weeks ago.

At a friend's insistence, I downloaded the app back in January, but didn't start feeding the algorithm with my attention until I randomly tried to look up a TikTok I'd seen on Tumblr (yes, I'm still on Tumblr). I scrolled past the celebrities in favor of random teens making hilarious and intricate videos, especially ones about coronavirus — the sound effects, the editing, the visual and voice distortions, the nihilism! I wanted to try making my own. Just to see what the tools are like, I told myself.

I had a sore throat for a few days and was already working from home. I made the first TikTok on a whim about the Inevitable Man at Q&As who has "more of a comment than a question" and posted it to Instagram and Twitter. (My TikTok profile is private and I have zero desire to become TikTok famous.) Friends found it funny, so the next day I made one about the impending doom of COVID-19 coming to the States: the lack of accurate testing, the lack of social safety net, and the unforgiving work culture. Sometimes you just need some dark humor to get you through dark times.

Quitting smoking during a pandemic

The first thing I wanted when all hell broke loose was a cigarette.

Parliament, to be specific. I don't like the discoloration that comes from smoking unfiltered cigarettes, the yellow residue left between your forefinger and middle finger that doesn't seem to ever scrub off. A cigarette lit by a tiny black Bic lighter. Only black. Maybe white if the bodega is out of black lighters and I forgot to grab mine from the living room table. Only monochromatic shades. Smoking is just as much an aesthetic for me as it is an activity that keeps my anxiety at bay.

I love smoking. I love it so fucking much. But when shit hit the fan and coronavirus spread across Europe and hit the United States, I figured it was probably a good idea to give up something that wreaks havoc on my ability to breathe. The coronavirus is a respiratory illness. I want to continue breathing. Smoking will eventually kill me, but at least it wouldn't be in the next month. That's how I thought of it, anyway.

So I quit.

What Should You Do Tonight? Mar. 24

Suggestions from our contributors to keep yourself busy at home / on the internet / socially distanced outside tonight or any other night. More suggestions on the tag. 

Watch a 90-Minute Movie on YouTube

Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows is available in its entirety on YouTube. It is the perfect quarantine movie. It is 90 minutes long, the platonic ideal of a time commitment. The film itself is unbelievably prismatic, nearly psychedelic—snow so bright that it looks purple, trees buoyant and verdant as a Bob Ross painting, lipstick in exemplary shades of red. Even on the ancient, gigantic tv set in my childhood basement, it is superficially gorgeous in a way that renders actual, lived experience comparatively dull. The plot is ideally low effort, droll and sensationalistic—Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson share deep kisses and breathlessly discuss different species of trees. There are undercurrents of the prison that is posh suburbia, but they're all shot far too beautifully to be rendered existentially depressing. Pairs well with: two expired Ativan (if not available, a melatonin pill or glass of red wine will do), a newfound appreciation for the trappings of domesticity. A good chaser? Todd Haynes' brilliant queer send-up of 1950s melodrama, Far From Heaven. — Arielle Gordon

Prepare to Bird

Social distance birding. Download the free Merlin Bird ID and eBird apps from your app store & make an account. Sit at your apartment window and count how many birds of each type you see in eBird (if you have binoculars or a camera with a Big Lens this helps). When you're tired of birding you can submit your checklist and help bird scientists around the world! — Kate Wagner

Start an Infinite TV Show

Watch Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the series premier Captain Picard and his crew are asked to prove that humans have evolved beyond their violent past and deserve the right to explore the galaxy. People demonstrating compassion and generosity in the face of the unknown: it's not not relevant to our current moment. Plus, Riker is hot and ... so is Data? And with seven network seasons, you're not going to run out of episodes anytime soon. — Miranda Popkey

Drink New Kinds of Booze

I think everyone should drink a Modelo Chelada. they're very nice and refreshing and you can get them at any bodega, and they come in three flavors!! the concept of a canned michelada may seem gross but they're actually very nice :) the only downside is they only sell them as tallboys so you really have to commit. they will not get you drunk, which is also kinda nice. — Gaby Del Valle

Play Animal Crossing

The sense of community you've been missing from walking around your neighborhood and seeing your friends and frenemies alike? These pastel furries have it. Give Tom Nook his blood money and join the party. For me, Animal Crossing is the most soothing facsimile of day-to-day life imaginable. You have chores, a mortgage, social obligations, but you're going about all of them in this gently acoustic microcosm where your most pressing task is, like, catching a butterfly for your pink poodle pal that came to town. Many of the villagers are recurring characters with distinct personalities, and it's easy to develop favorites and feel like there is an actual social fabric to this virtual snowglobe. You can also visit your IRL friends' towns online, which is a particular blessing in a time when even taking a walk with a friend in meatspace feels fraught. AC also proceeds in real-time with weekly/seasonal events which feels more valuable than ever for carving up the monotony of self-isolation days. You can also make toast now. What more could you want? — Angeline Rodriguez

What I'm doing tonight: Working my ass out of Tom Nook's debt on Animal Crossing come find me on my island. — Nick Quah

Take a Hot Shower

My recommendation is to take a hot shower. We can do many things to make ourselves feel better, or to take a break from our brains (or screens, or the news), but none are better than a hot shower. Tend to your body. Then open a window. — Molly McArdle

What are you doing tonight? Send us suggestions at indoorvoicesblog@gmail.com

Social Gatherings that I Am Actively Fantasizing About Right Now

1. Dinner with friends
2. Museum visit
3. My wedding

What kind of help do small businesses need?

I own an ice cream shop in Massachusetts, and as you can imagine, the current conditions are not ideal for selling ice cream. In fact, like most small businesses, we're pretty boned! In MA, we currently have the option to be open for delivery and take out, but last weekend, I made the decision to close the shop. I couldn't reasonably scream at people to stay home while making the staff show up and begging strangers to come buy ice cream. Our overhead is far lower than most restaurants, so we might have been able to eke by on delivery and take out. The big concern for me is because of the seasons in Boston, we're only profitable 6 months a year, +/- breakeven 2 months, and then we go ahead and lose tons of cash the other four months. All this to say, it's complicated!

I spent the last week thinking about what small businesses and hospitality industry employees need right now, and really I think these ideas can be implemented across the entire economy. Ultimately it comes down to putting money into small businesses so we can keep paying our bills. How will we pay for it? We don't need to pay for it because money is imaginary. Go ahead and mint the coin already. I don't know if any of these are feasible, but some must be.

Wife Under Quarantine

Somewhat unexpectedly and not too long ago, I became a wife. I always assumed that if I ever did get married it would be at age 70 for tax purposes, or one day in a fit of mania I’d tie the knot with my dog and ruin marriage equality for everyone. But matrimony seemed unlikely. I was too independent/stubborn/unattractive/disdainful of men/busy to even consider wifeliness.

Color your hands with the paint of your washing

I have no attention span, no memory for song lyrics, and negative talent at singing, so the whole "hum happy birthday" while you wash your hands thing doesn't really work for me. What does work is this video of surgical hand-washing technique.

Correct technique to wash your hands for proper disinfection. #CoronavirusOutbreakindia #CoronaVirusUpdate #COVID #CoronaVirusUpdate pic.twitter.com/1WeDwlCaF6

— Harjinder Singh Kukreja (@SinghLions) March 19, 2020

Okay but seriously why are there still so many emails?

I get emails. A lot of them! Mostly because I work at a blog (not this one) and people want me to put their stuff on there. And because I have the brain disease that I think I might actually receive an important, timely missive there, I have push notifications turned on. I know. It's a real mess. I'm trying.

Pro Strats for Demolishing Your Stack of New Yorkers

Thanks to an endlessly-shared tweet, we all now know that Isaac Newton won a Nobel Prize during a plague. Well, we're not Isaac Newton. Most of us would do well to read his Wikipedia entry, let alone forever changing the course of humanity's understanding of the physical world.

In this time of quarantine and never-ending distracting, we must set our sights lower: working our way through our stacks of New Yorker issues. Here are some pro strats I've learned from reading, conservatively speaking, 20 million words of that shit over the last decade.

The Outside World

I still take walks with my baby daughter every afternoon, even though people seem to think you’re not supposed to leave your house anymore. Even under the shelter in place Cuomo swears isn’t a shelter in place, you can still go outside. “Who can leave their house now?!” I saw someone tweet incredulously to a children’s book author I once did cocaine with. I took it as a question about the rules, but could also be about volition.

What Should You Do Tonight? Mar. 23

Suggestions from our contributors to keep yourself busy at home / on the internet / socially distanced outside tonight or any other night. More suggestions on the tag. 

Magazine Collage!!!

If you're watching [whatever] and want to stay off your phone, I've found collaging to be a great way to give my hands and extra brain space something to do. Sifting through a stack of old Us Weekly's cutting out silly nonsense as I watch silly nonsense is the most calming activity I know about right now. I haven't gotten very far but one thing I'm making is a psycho 25 Things You Don't Know About Me (an Us Weekly regular feature) in a composition notebook with a whole range of celeb answers, like "I love changing diapers. I should clarify: baby diapers, not adult diapers!" and "I took a sleep test and discovered I'm narcoleptic." Glue's ordered but not yet arrived. — Meredith Haggerty 

Videos of Tiny Worlds

I cannot stop watching terrarium-building and aquarium maintenance videos. Why stress about the Outside(tm) when you could get overly-invested in the well-being of a micro-ecosystem instead? Oh, to be a shrimplet flitting amongst the duckweed roots... — Kait Sanchez

Construction Project

Here's some food for thought: Lincoln Logs. Named after president Abe "Logs" Lincoln, these logs are a surefire way to keep you busy. It also a great way to test the waters if you want to pivot to a career in urban planning. Build Paris out of logs. A waterpark. This is a great activity if you are alone, or if you have one or two people to play with, such as a brother or a childhood pet. I don't know your life. — Sophie Kemp

Cook Peppers

Consider making "Infinity Green Peppers", a super simple recipe depicted in this super cute video by my old buddies Lullatone in Nagoya, Japan (who are mostly musicians; check out the rest of their Youtube for good tunes and music tutorials/experiments). "You only need: 5 green bell peppers, 1 teaspoon of sesame seed oil, 1 teaspoon of Chinese chicken stock, a pinch of salt, and a sprinkle of white sesame seeds." — Samantha Culp

Quarantine, to the tune of Jolene by Dolly Parton

I saw Matt Haughey do a verse of Covid to the music of Jolene and thought Jolene could be reworked as a pro-quarantine ditty. I doubt I'm the first.

Quarantine, Quarantine, Quarantine, Quarantine
I'm begging of you please just heed this plan
Quarantine, Quarantine, Quarantine, Quarantine
Please don't go out just because you can

Your boredom is beyond compare
With endless naps and unwashed hair
With pallid skin and eyes of glassy sheen
You while away the death of spring
Your voice is soft and full of pain
And I cannot compete with you
Quarantine

;[ where is normal ];

Goya's The Dog

For the last 2.5 years, I have been in therapy for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the main, unstated, point of which seems to have been to get me back to "normal" — normal responses to normal situations. Not to fear everything all the time.

When you're mentally ill, what that really means is your brain is maladjusted to a societally agreed-upon normal. What's the opposite of maladjusted? I, through therapy, was trying to make my brain... good-adjusted.

The problem is that things are no longer normal for me, anyone. There's no center to adjust to.

Transplant Shock 🌱

I heard a metaphor on a gardening podcast this weekend, a metaphor for the times. Which is this: When you're raising seedlings, and you transplant them from their first homes to their second (whether bigger pots or the garden), they will, invariably, die. Or at least: they'll look dead. They'll droop, fall over. If you're a new gardener, you'll be like oh wow I 100% murdered them. But this is called Transplant Shock. As the gardening podcast explained: The little plants are basically traumatized. It takes them a moment, but with some water, some sunlight and a little time, they will start to stand themselves back up.

more beauty tips

These are products I've used off and on for years, but today I used them in an almost-militant attempt to agree with myself that I do live in a body and I do want it to feel and look a certain way right now, despite many days of feeling to the contrary and I'm sure many more to come. 

- Clairol Root Touch-Ups. It's subtle enough that it blends in with most new growth. My color is 5R; when I was younger I went for a much more dramatic red, but now it's muted enough that I almost forget it isn't real, even though it's been 15 years. 

- Essie Gel Couture. I used to bite my nails, and this helped a lot. It lasts a really long time, much longer than any other drugstore polish I've ever used. Now not biting my nails feels like a civic duty! 

- Sally Hansen Spa Wax. This one is a lie; I didn't use it today (I did shave — a brag), but I used to a lot. It heats up in the microwave and does a decent job. It once came in a lavender scent, which appears to be discontinued, and always made me feel like a fancy lady, like I wasn't systematically ripping out follicles using something I'd just nuked in my kitchen. 

- Get in touch with your usual nail salon, or haircutter, or waxer, if you can, and Venmo or PayPal them the money you'd normally spend on an appointment, if you can.

When the Posting Stops, You'll Know They're Dead

Social media has revolutionized information-sharing and, more specifically, the ubiquity of
communication and connectivity between humans. Facebook has become a way to
stay in touch with extended family, Twitter for following the general discourse, Instagram for a
more visual look into one’s life, and so on. This connectivity—the ability to be everywhere and
nowhere at the same time, to be alone yet engaged with the entire world—has been
technology’s greatest achievement, but it has also revealed that online communication, amidst a global pandemic, has a precarious backstop.

When the posting stops, you’ll know they’re dead.

this is the only emoji I use now

🥴

It signifies everything: disorientation, fear, delirium, nausea, uncertainty, stir craziness, embarrassment, humility, looking at the Dow Jones, feeling attracted to certain authoritative New York politicians against your better judgment, the meaningless void of time into which we are all hurtling at unprecedented speed, etc.

I will say, I prefer it best in its WhatsApp iteration. Feels truest in spirit.

Also what is up with Samsung

Sound off in the comments with *your* special quarantine emoji!!!! 🥴🥴🥴

“First thing to say is, plague’s in the fucking camp.” Second thing to say is, Deadwood is the pandemic content you should be watching.

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"it's probably spring" by leonard cohen

Here is a great poem that I have a lot of affection for this time every year, written by Leonard Cohen in 1967 and remembered by me since I first read it in like 2009 March after March:

So-and-so is sick of all the shit but doesn’t feel that bad today because it’s probably Spring. the laundry in the sunshine tells the obscene family story of power and love but it doesn’t matter because it’s probably Spring. Jack is fat and jane is twisted from the Plague. But you don’t have to choose today because it’s probably Spring. You’re nothing like the pilot, nothing like the matador, you’re nothing like the one I waited for,

Isolation cycles to rinse, repeat, remix

I feel fine. I am healthy. I am ok. This will all pass.

a beauty tip

On certain mornings I've been mixing sunscreen into my body lotion. Not the fancy, scentless kind that I wear on my face every day in order to feel virtuous, nor the less fancy but equally scentless sort that I use on my exposed limbs when I go outside and remember that I'm supposed to do that, but the thick, gloppy, coconut-Lacroix-smelling stuff that we keep stray bottles of in beach bags with sand still at the bottom.

One day last summer I left my house with no destination; I wound up taking the subway to Brighton Beach, where I bought a slutty, complicated bathing suit for $11 and a beach towel and a bottle of sunscreen for I think the same amount. I ate tiny Uzbek dumplings and read a library book, and Brendan biked down to meet me. This smell, usually so clumsy, reminds me that summer does come, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Finally, I can let myself go!

Today in the shower, as I reached for the shampoo, my hand brushed against my cotton candy pink razor. It's the first time I've touched it in days. Shaving in the middle of a pandemic? I feel like I'm putting a pretty pot of flowers outside of a burning building. I feel like I'm polishing a car the engine has just fallen out of. I feel like the string quartet playing farewell songs on the Titanic, from the movie Titanic, probably.

What Should You Do Tonight? Vol. 1

All the bars are closed. Cities are facing stricter quarantine by next week, if not over the weekend. Speaking of, the weekend feels no different than the week! But you have more time to kill. So what should you do at home? Our contributors have some suggestions.

Do Back Exercises

This is a video of a weirdly buff older Asian man doing some simple back exercises. I don't think/know if it will fix scoliosis (seems like a big thing to promise) but it makes my back feel better after being hunched over at my weird makeshift WFH setup (laptop stacked on top of 5 books I will never read, including Obama's Dreams from my Father; Larissa's Apple keyboard; a gaming mouse my Capricorn bf gifted me close enough to Valentine's Day that I've started saying it was for Valentine's Day) for 6-8 hours every day. And it's easy to do. And also this man is kind of hot. — Clare Mao

Ma'am this is a music streaming app

I love information and safety. I don't think opening Spotify should prompt me to visit the CDC website.

Today I emailed my agent:

hi!! so glad to hear you made it out of the city. my parents wanted me to come home, but i felt like it was too late, and now i am a little bit regretting the choice—they have ROOMS and WOODS. oh well. i'm just working a lot and facetiming a lot and writing a little on Kyle Chayka's new blog, which has been fun. also really on track for that Modern Love column!! aforementioned tall boy is currently the only person I am seeing in the flesh. he's really so tall 

hope you and the fam have some good books and puzzles for now. we will all be out and about in New York together again someday!! 

Originally I wrote "soon" but then I changed it to "someday," not because I'm losing hope and perspective, but only because I think "soon" is a business email word and I wanted our correspondence to be more intimate than that.

One time I had to promise to cut back to only three exclamation points per month in order to get a raise.

It was sort of a joke, but not really!!!!!!

Is every day secretly the same day?

I'm thinking now of that quote from Pinky and the Brain:

Pinky: Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight? 

Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky — try to take over the world!

The cartoon I barely remember, and when I thought very hard about it my memory of the show got hazier, like a receding tide. It felt like I dreamed the whole thing until Google jogged (replaced?) my memory. I can still picture the titular lab rats, though. Pure white, and very good at failure.

It might be the perfect time to start watching Steven Universe

Apologies to my fellow Crystal Gems, but I suspect there are a lot of readers who may have heard that Steven Universe is one of those cartoons that adults like too and is worth checking out. (Seasons 1-4 are available on Hulu, later episodes are on the Cartoon Network app with a cable login, just be ready for a lot of toy and cereal commercials.)

SU may be singularly well-suited to the moment. There’s a ton of it (Steven Universe: Future is 14 episodes in, so there are currently 174 episodes and a movie), but it’s bite-sized, colorful, and often light in tone.

I’ve re-watched the show so much that it’s deeply meaningful to me and most of the old episodes are a real comfort. But objectively I think it’s really interesting if you like animation, graphic novels or sci-fi in general. I’m a cartoonist and I’ve written about the show, and recently I’ve coached a few friends in how and why to start watching. So here’s the best context I can give you about the show before you decide to watch or not:

Kids Are Cool Unless They're Home While You're Trying to Work

I work mostly from home already, so the big change for me this week is having my family home as well. My daughter is almost 7. Her school was canceled last Thursday and will be closed for at least three weeks, though I expect the closure will last way longer. My son is 4. We kept him home this week and his school is closing on Monday.

You need to work, and if you have a partner, they might need to work, too. If you've got young kids, they're going to need nourishing activities or at least some attention sometimes. This is kind of like the, "Fast, good, cheap, pick two" exercise, because obviously, in our case, both parent's can't work, while also giving attention to the children. One good thing is I own an ice cream shop and we're closed so I've been far less busy and we can prioritize my partner's work schedule. One bad thing is I own an ice cream shop and we're closed so I don't have an income. Another bad thing is I'm used to being mostly alone in the house most of the week and that's not happening anymore, but that's another post. I'm grateful my family is healthy, my partner's job is letting her work from home, and we're extremely lucky we CAN manage through this while keeping the kids home.

I Don't Know How to Count Sheep

It's a very weird time, in general. It's a very weird time to be unemployed, and it's a very weird time to be quarantined with my relatively new husband in a one-bedroom apartment. When I had a job, there would be month-long periods where I struggled to quiet my mind enough to fall asleep. Some nights I'd plug my phone in across the room. Some nights I'd give up and unlock it, making a list of the ideas I'd had for work in my notes app at 3:30 AM.

i guess words mean things

It's funny how words or phrases will enter and exit our daily vocabulary in ways we’d never expect. Nowadays everyone is suddenly an amateur epidemiologist, talking about ‘respiratory droplets’ and ‘flattening the curve.’ But the biggest change I’ve felt has been around a pretty simple word: ‘home’.

Tokyo Built a Stupidly Good Coronavirus Website, and It's Open Source

A few days ago I went through a familiar cycle of “damn, I wish I could do something useful”, to “oh hey, I’m a programmer, maybe that’s useful”, and finally “well all my ideas have already been built by people smarter than me, I’ll go back to watching Bob’s Burgers.”

At the same time, I found the source code for the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s Covid-19 Task Force website. And as it happens, coders working for the city bureaucrats went out of their way to open-source their work! It’s available under the well known MIT Licence, which effectively means you can do anything you want with their code. Due to that, the site has been forked (copied), to run the corona virus info websites for at least 15 other major Japanese cities. Each city’s fork is connected to their local coronavirus statistics and announcement pages to give relevant information. including Osaka, Nara, Hokkaido, Hiroshima, and Kyoto.

Queer Prepper: Hugelkultur Solves All My Problems!!

W O W okay so yesterday I learned about something called Hugelkultur and now omfuckinggod I'm obsessed with Hugelkultur!!

Hugelkutur is some European-type-language for 'hill culture'. From what the internet's told me about Hugelkultur over the last 12 hours, the idea is: You pile up logs and other yard debris like lawn clippings and leaves, and you just leave it, and it magically turns into a raised super nutrient-rich garden bed! You can make them in little hills or traditional rows or even undulating snaky shapes!

PLANT CHICAGO / CREATIVE COMMONS via

So ~fanciful~! Like if Hobbits gardened (do Hobbits garden?) they'd definitely build Hugelkultur. Given the thoroughly helpless feeling I have — contemplating both the pandemic and the collapse of our economy — Hugelkultur does solve a few of the problems I can try to tackle right now!!

Self-Soothing with the Yazeed Essa Trial

I got into watching trials by way of true crime. Once you've watched Forensic Files and Cold Case Files all the way through, and segued into YouTube's hours of actual police interrogations, you're gonna discover you can also watch entire trials. Every mind-numbing, paint-drying minute.

There's a dedicated worldwide community of virtual trial watchers, all hooked on the Law & Crime Channel's live feed. And it was during a lull in one of these forgettable cases that someone in chat mentioned the Yazeed Essa trial and I promptly Googled it and began watching.

Last night I had a panic attack and you'll never guess what helped me get through it

You know what causes coughing and shortness of breath? COVID-19. Also the asthma I've had since I was a child, seasonal spring allergies, and probably the psychosomatic awareness that now is not a great time to cough.

My Feelings About the Last ~48 Hours, As Told By This Episode of Terrace House

some coronavirus songs to lose your mind to

A random song from a random Spotify playlist is always blaring through my Alexa because, well, I hate silence. Last night, I came across an Instagram story from an old friend about Covid-19 tracks on Spotify. Quarantine has apparently nourished people's creative energies, and as someone in a creative rut, I'm happy for them! DJ Snake literally made a remix from Cardi B's coronavirus "shit is getting real" video, and by my estimates, there might be hundreds of Spotify tracks with the words "Covid-19" or "coronavirus" in the title. I even found some random artist under the stage name "Coronavirus," who released a nine-track "Covid-19" album and a 16-track "Pandemic" album.

Since the quiet was deeply depressing me, I made a playlist solely of these pandemic-produced songs called "wash ur hands".

Jenn's Bean Diaries, #2

Cohabitating with this can of black beans role-playing as garbanzo beans was getting to me.

I realized that this can was my Wilson.

Meet Banzo.

Where to begin...

My job requires sending a lot of emails out everyday, as I’m sure many jobs do. Often it’s talking to people I’ve emailed before but never met in person. These are people I probably will never meet in person. Still, there’s a semblance of a connection between us—the need to practice certain colloquial pleasantries you wouldn’t otherwise do if the email were to someone you’ve never conversed with before. (Which isn’t to say the pleasantries aren’t genuine! I truly hope these people are doing well!) But I’m also now at a loss for how best to begin emails while also admitting that something extremely large and uncanny is afoot.

One Long Day

An email from Workday:

You currently have active ancillary benefits that are missing a beneficiary. A beneficiary is the person(s) or entity(ies) that will receive this benefit in the event of your passing or dismemberment.

Consider work. Consider DAY. Consider the meaning of (s) and (ies) in such close proximity. Sighs.