Bread and Bread

1. a species of orthorexics Yesterday morning a I read a New Yorker article about the Paleo lifestyle —while eating a big bowl of cereal, naturally—and for a second I contemplated trying it. But being a pseudo-vegan Paleo person would mean I could pretty much only eat avocados and things derived from coconuts. Not the worst sentence in the world, but still limiting. Then the article—in its charming New Yorker wisdom—pointed out that Paleo, while healthy, is not really designed for a world with six billion people in it, because oats can feed more humans than mastodons can, and what is really appealing about this diet is the rules. Food rules exist in every culture and are at least as old as agriculture itself, meaning we’re hardwired to be hunter-gatherers, but also to be neurotics. I was like, Touché, New Yorker. Rise of the Planet of the Office Drones. I could feel myself looking around for some food rules to jump start my sagging-if-still- mostly -healthy non-Pale...

I’ve never been addicted to any substances, unless you count food, in which case I’ve been in a shaky kind of recovery for thirteen years. But without belittling actual chemical dependence, I think I have an addictive personality. AK is the opposite—she can go to bed at a different time every night, and her only bad habits have more to do with a lack of good habits. I, on the other hand, can practically feel my brain latch onto a thing—whether it’s a substance or a behavior or a thought—and go, Hey, this could be a good one! Let’s definitely eat ALL the potato chips. Let’s definitely Google ONE MORE DISEASE. The simultaneous feeling of surrender and control is intoxicating. Literally, if I understand how serotonin and dopamine work, which I quite possibly do not. The past four years have been dramatic, and sometimes it takes me by surprise. Who me? The kid who lived in the same house for eighteen years and whose parents watched TV from exactly 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. every night? Ot...

When I was in grad school we did some reading about the theory of the carnivalesque, which basically says that people in power let the peasants get a little crazy now and then to blow off steam and prevent a real revolution. Back in the day, that meant villages would host carnivals where the king would dress up as a commoner and commoners could parade around like kings. The next day they would return to their regularly scheduled program of oppression and plague. Without going into spoiler-level detail, I think this is the idea behind Snowpiercer , Joon-ho Bong’s thriller about a train car loaded with the few survivors of a failed global warming fix that has left Earth frozen and uninhabitable. As you might imagine, things on the train are a little tense. Especially because the “tail car” passengers live in filth and poverty, while the folks at the front of the train spend their time going to raves and knitting in orange groves. The government mouthpiece for the train’s mysterious lea...

Happy 4 th , y’all! What I have learned so far from my morning spent dodging the heat and internetting in bed is that “#merica”/“#murica” is a thing. Blink and you’ll miss a meme. At the risk of being un-‘merican, one of my favorite books these past months was by a New Zealander. But don’t worry, I’ll eat some freedom fries to make up for it. My May and June reading log:   Cover of Wake. The book is as good as the cover. Wake by Elizabeth Knox: One of the strangest and most human stories I've read in a while, this novel starts out like a zombie book (why are the residents of this New Zealand spa town gnawing each other's faces off??) and takes a turn for the existential. Elizabeth Knox is a genius at manipulating point of view, creating a story with a relaxed pace that is somehow also full of twists. The invisible monster wreaking havoc on the survivors of the initial massacre literally feeds off human misery, which is basically how evil wor...