Welcome to the Miscellaneum!
I’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time, though I’m still working through exactly what to include here. And I’m (apparently) notorious for starting web writing projects. But like anything digital, I hope you’ll join me in considering this letter a work in progress, and I do appreciate your willingness to play along.
Case in point:
When I first hatched this plan, I thought I’d send new editions out every Friday. For uninteresting reasons, that’s going to change. Starting on June 23, Miscellaneum will be sent on Mondays.
Sweet dreams are made of this:
Surprisingly, I don’t believe that writing this first issue will be the strangest thing I’ll do this week. Today I pick up an apparatus for a home sleep study, heading down the road to Breathing-in-my-sleepville. My physician claims I have a “fleshy palate” that is likely causing my apnea.
Hold up. Did you stop to snicker or make a joke about my Fleshy Palate? I’ll wait.
Got it out of your palate-shaming system? Good.
Anyway, all I’ve been told is that my head will be measured and that I’ll wear some device while I sleep Friday night to monitor just how badly I sleep and how often I stop breathing. Then I’ll get another machine that will make my wife stop hating the “sounds” I make while I “sleep.”
Science!
Here’s what I’ve been feeding my brain this week.
Watching
Mostly sports this week, between the NBA and NHL Finals. BOR-ING.
As I mentioned Thursday evening, I’m really troubled by the idea that other (non-Chicagoans) might have felt about the Nineties Bulls the way I feel about the Twenty-teens Heat. Even if it’s true, I don’t want to know about it because the Heat drive me crazy. (Truthfully I’m just mad that OKC didn’t make it through.)
And don’t get me started about how much better it is to be watching playoffs on a nice big new TV.
Reading
I’ve been fighting my way through the last part of Christopher Priest’s otherwise entertaining The Adjacent this week. I can tell that Priest, ever the illusionist, is walking me through a deft trick, but I can’t quite follow his hands. I suppose that’s the point.
Started George Packer’s The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America too. I’ve been reading quite a bit more history lately (J tells me it’s part of the process of turning into a middle-class forty-year-old), and it’s particularly fascinating to examine more recent events with a more objective eye. Unsure just how objective Packer is, but the profiles he’s selected so far are thought-provoking.
Listening
I’m still giving a lot of attention to the newest St. Vincent album, which I missed when it first came out due to grief-haze.
And of course my man Bob Mould just released Beauty and Ruin, so I’ve been putting that through it’s paces. Of course, nobody warned me that it’s largely about Mould dealing with the death of his father so it feels a little close at times…but also cathartic in the way that much of Bob’s best work is. That’s right, I call him Bob. We’re close like that.
Enough affiliate links for one week. Have a great weekend!
Talk to you soon.
Mike