1/16/23

 What have I been watching?: Welcome to Chippendale's

It's the final book post for 2022's books. 

• To Shake the Sleeping Self -- Jedidiah Jenkins

I rated this one 7.5/10. This book was about a guy, a lawyer, who decides to leave his job and his life as he knows it to bikepack from Oregon to Patagonia (tip of South America). For most of the trip, he is accompanied by a male friend. He and his friend have different styles--his friend is fairly unprepared, underpacked, under financed. This causes some tension between them as they go on. 

I really liked the wanderlust aspect of this book. They are living out of bags on their bikes and making their way across multiple countries on their bikes powered by themselves. This allows them to intimately experience their environments and be immersed in the scenery. They alternate between camping and staying in hotels depending on where they find themselves and how they're feeling. It was a very cool adventurous, seize the day sort of vibe. 

The only thing (and unfortunately it was a pretty prominent thing) was the very persistent religious themes and rhetoric throughout this book. The author and main character is Christian and that is a huge part of his life. It comes up pretty frequently as he is discussing his experience. I am not religious and didn't enjoy the persistent religious ponderings.

• The Guest List - Lucy Foley

A modern mystery. The setting of this book is pretty cool--a small island in Great Britain home to a historic little manor turned event venue. The island is also accompanied by its own little cemetery plot and creepy swamp. It's a quiet, dreary, rainy place, which sets the perfect creepy vibe for the story. A wedding is being hosted at the island and tensions are running high among and between both the guests and event staff.

I've said it once and I'll say it a million more times: mysteries are not my favorite and I tend to be wary of them. Nevertheless, I thought this was decent. There were twists I didn't see coming, interweaving threads lingering beneath the surface that didn't reveal themselves until the end. I didn't know how things would end up. I rated this one 8/10.

• Everything I Know About Love -- Dolly Alderton

I adored this memoir, and I rated it 9.5/10. It was funny, honest, and genuine. It was real. Here are some quotes I found noteworthy:

"I've watched it time and again--a woman always slots into a man's life better than he slots into hers. She will be the one who spends the most time at his flat, she will be the one who makes friends with all his friends and their girlfriends. She will be the one who sends his mother a bunch of flowers on her birthday. Women don't like this rigamarole any more than men do, but they're better at it--they just get on with it."

"A week into my big New York adventure, I realized that places are kingdoms of memories and relationships; that the landscape is only ever a reflection of how you feel inside."

"I was more honest; I told people when I was upset or offended or angry and valued the sense of calm that came with integrity, paid with the small price of an uncomfortable conversation."

• The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle -- Stuart Turton

This was a fabulous mystery. It feels like it can hardly just be described as a mystery, though. There was murder, there was blackmail, there was suicide (or was there?), a ticking clock, a stranger in a plague mask. It was giving The Good Place, it was giving Groundhog Day, it was giving Clue, it was giving Happy Death Day. Set again in a somewhat remote historic castle/manor, our main character finds himself unwittingly placed as a pawn in a sick sort of race against time to solve a murder. He has only so many opportunities to do so and must figure out how best to use his time before he runs out of it. As time goes on, he must re-evaluate who is friend and who is foe. I rated this 8/10. If there is one thing this book wasn't, it's simple. It was a complex story with so many interwoven layers across characters and across time. A bit difficult to keep up with at times.

• Want Me -- Tracy Clark-Flory

I didn't like this memoir as much as I thought I would. I couldn't shake this sense of hypocrisy from this author. She was a sex author, writing regular columns about sex and giving sex advice, all the while faking her own orgasms for years and years. She made her career off of sex advice but wasn't being truthful with herself or with her partners about her sex life, and that came across as so disingenuous to me. Something about that really bothered me. I guess this book was all about that journey. I think the author could have been a bit more explicit in acknowledging her hypocrisy, though. I just didn't find myself resonating with her at all. I gave this 6.5/10.

Despite not loving the author, I did find parts of the book valuable and took down some quotes:

"It would be many more years before I had any inkling of how white women in particular use hip-hop to cast off the strictures of 'pure, chaste' femininity, as the author Brittney Cooper argues, and just how profoundly race and class factor into constructions of innocence. 'The ability to take on and peel off the parts of Black culture that you like at will is exactly what is meant by the term "white privilege," she writes.'"

"My mom had recently told me, 'Many women confuse fear with attraction.'"

"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them."

"As John Berger famously wrote in Ways of Seeing, 'Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.'"

• Beheld -- Tarashea Nesbit

This didn't do it for me. I was so drawn to the gorgeous book cover, and I ended up much preferring the cover to the book's contents. I didn't really take anything away from this, and I rated it 5.5/10.

• Flowers for Algernon -- Daniel Keyes

I read this in middle school, I believe, and decided to read it again for the first time since. I recalled it being good and remembered the gist of the plot. But I'm so glad I decided to read it again, despite knowing generally how it would end. It is an emotional and thought-provoking book. I highly recommend that everyone read it. I rated it 9/10. It's hard to describe the substance of the story without giving away critical things. Basically, the main character is mentally challenged and becomes a participant in an experimental study in which he is the first human participant. The experiment is in some ways successful but in other ways very damaging. We read about the experiment's effects on the main character's life through his own journaling. A super cool aspect of the book is how the main character's writing, vocabulary, and grammar change throughout the course of the book.

Here are some quotes I took away:

"I say it, because you have no gratitude or understanding of the situation. After all, you are indebted to these people if not to us--in more ways than one." "Since when is a guinea pig supposed to be grateful?" I shouted. "I've served your purposes, and now I'm trying to work out your mistakes, so how the hell does that make me indebted to anyone?"

"The problem, dear professor, is that you wanted someone who could be made intelligent but still be kept in a cage and displayed when necessary to reap the honors you seek. The bitch is that I'm a person."

"He asked me dd I have any friends or relatives and I said no I dont have any. I told him I had a friend called Algernon once but he was a mouse and we use to run races together."

• Cultish - The Language of Fanatacism -- Amanda Montell

This was a cool read. I learned a lot from it and rated it 9.5/10. I learned about Jonestown and a lot of other American cults I hadn't heard of before. I learned that there were very few survivors from Jonestown because the cult members were essentially sequestered and forced to kill themselves. There was one cult in which all the members lived together in a large house and they were all found dead in their bunk beds following a mass suicide. If I recall correctly, they were all dressed in matching clothes and thought they were going to ascend together to some other realm. This kind of stuff is so intriguing and captivating. It's like all the true crime podcasts I listen to. Some of the content is creepy and devastating, but you still find yourself so drawn to it.

In addition to talking about some well-known, typical cults, the author also discusses some other trends, hobbies, and pastimes that are cult-like.

Here are some quotes:

"Commodifying the language of Eastern and Indigenous spiritual practices for an elitist white audience while erasing and shutting out their originators might not seem 'culty'--it might just seem commonplace, which is exactly the problem."

"In June 2020, Greg Glassman shot off a series of racist emails and tweets (in one, he responded to a post about racism s a public health crisis with 'It's FLOYD-19'), prompting white CrossFitters to finally start coming around to what many Black folks had known for decades: The place was not really 'for everyone.' And the linguistic red flags had always been there. By glorifying the police in the names of its Hero WoDs, CrossFit had been telling on itself all along."

"But while MLMs talk a lot of smack about corporate America and corporate America thinks of MLMs as a scammy joke, they are ultimately both derived from the same Protestant capitalist theory."

"To this day, unemployed women, especially those living in blue-collar towns, continue to make up the majority of MLM recruits."

"Amway's two deeply conservative founders were Jay Van Andel and Rich DeVos, who died in 2004 and 2018, respectively. That second name should sound familiar. The DeVoses are a Michigan-based family of politically influential billionaires; Rich was the father-in-law of Donald Trump's secretary of education, Betsy. With a personal net worth of over $5 billion, Rich DeVos served as the finance chair of the Republican National Committee, was BFFs with Gerald FOrd, secured special Amway tax breaks for hundreds of millions of dollars, and funneled prodigious sums into Republican presidential candidates' coffers. Amway funded the campaigns of Ronald Reagan, both George Bushes, and, naturally, the most direct-sales-friendly president of all time, Donald Trump."

"The term 'gaslight' originates from a 1938 British play of the same name, in which an abusive husband convinces his wife she's gone mad. He does this in part by dimming the gaslight in their house and insisting that she's delusional every time she points out the change."

• There There -- Tommy Orange

I had no expectations of this book and didn't know what it was about. I discovered that it was very well-written, eloquent, and emotional. I rated it 9.5/10. The story was told from the perspective of various different Native characters who at first don't appear to have any connection apart from being Native. As the story goes on, it turns out that they are not totally random, unconnected individuals. The book gave me a little bit of insight into being Native in modern America. I found it a little bit difficult to keep track of who was who since the perspective regularly switched characters, but it was worth it. Here are some quotes:

"As for your mom's side, as for your whiteness, there's too much and not enough there to know what to do with. You're from a people who took and took and took and took. And from a people taken. You were both and neither. When you took baths, you'd stare at your brown arms against your white legs in the water and wonder what they were doing together on the same body, in the same bathtub."

"Roosevelt said, 'I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.' 'Damn, TS. That's messed up. I only heard the one about the big stick.'"

"We know the sound of the freeway better than we do rivers, the howl of distant trains better than wolf howls, we know the smell of gas and freshly wet concrete and burned rubber better than we do the smell of cedar or sage or even fry bread--which isn't traditional, like reservations aren't traditional, but nothing is original, everything coms from something that came before, which was one nothing. Everything is new and doomed. We ride buses, trains, and cars across, over, and under concrete plains. Being Indian has never been about returning to the land. The land is everywhere or nowhere."

"Our heads were on the penny first, of course, the Indian cent, and then on the buffalo nickel, both before we could even vote as a people--which, like the truth of what happened in history all over the world, and like all that spilled blood from slaughter, are now out of circulation."

• Unbroken -- Laura Hillenbrand

I read this over the course of, gosh, literally several months because my partner and I took turns reading it out loud to each other on car rides, while cooking in the kitchen, etc. Reading a book out loud takes forever and is exhausting. He had wanted to read this book and so I said okay, I'll read it to you. I ultimately had to renew the e-book loan like three times because it took so long to finish reading it out loud. 

As I think I've mentioned before, reading a book out loud rather than in your head really exposes the writing. Everything is laid out bare--every word articulated. When you read in your head, in contrast, you are able to omit what your brain interprets as unnecessary things. Maybe this allows you to not only read faster, but also to enjoy what you are reading more. Maybe our brains just have a way they like to read and they alter the writing to accord with that. Anyways, this book really dragged on and my brain wasn't really able to omit was it interpreted as unnecessary words and whatnot. The story, based on a real man's experience as an Olympic athlete (track), American soldier, and prisoner of war in Japan, was very interesting. From it I learned a lot about the horrors of being a prisoner of war under Japanese control. They were starved, regularly beaten brutally, tormented both physically and mentally, were left to succumb to treatable diseases, and were worked essentially to death.

• Heart Berries -- Terese Marie Mailhot

I regrettably did not care for this memoir much at all, and I rated it 5/10. I found it very difficult to understand. The writing style was so obscure, like poetry, that I couldn't understand the story very well. It was just so abstract, too much so for my liking. I honestly could barely even tell you what this book was about. I'm sure there was much of value in it, but I unfortunately was unable to see it.

I took down one quote:

"When I gained the faculty to speak my story, I realized I had given men too much."

• Wordslut -- Amanda Montell

This was my second Amanda Montell book of this batch of books. Another lovely piece of nonfiction. I rated this one 9/10. Here's some cool bits I saved:

"It's a dialect of sorts, which one can drop into or camp up whenever the situation calls for it. This is called 'code switching,' and sexuality aside it's actually something almost all English speakers do. Most of us speak more than one dialect of English, which we might learn from our ethnic community, the geographic region where we grow up, or a new region we transplant to (think of, say, a native Texan living in Los Angeles who speaks Standard English around Californians, but drops into their hometown accent the second they're around other Texans). Consciously or unconsciously, we all adjust our codes depending on the context of the conversation."

"In recent history, acts of verbal dominance have gotten worse, not better. A 2017 study analyzing Supreme Court oral argument transcripts from 1990, 2002, and 2015 determined that as more female justices were added to the bench, interruptions of women did not improve but escalated. Using the logic that more female justices would normalize female power, you might expect the opposite result. 'Interruptions are attempts at dominance . . . so the more powerful a woman becomes, the less often she should be interrupted,' the researchers wrote. Instead, they found that in 1990, when Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was the only woman on the bench, 35.7 percent of overall interruptions were aimed at her (which, out of nine justices, was already a high percentage); twelve years later, after Ruth Bader Ginsburg was added, 45.3 percent were directed at the two female justices; and in 2015, with three women on the bench (Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan), 65.9 percent of all court interruptions on the court were aimed at female justices."

"In the Dominican Republic, there happens to be a high incidence of a rare genetic intersex condition called 5-ARD. Babies with 5-ARD are born with what appear to be female genitalia, but at puberty, their bodies--from their faces to their nether regions--start to masculinize, and by adulthood, they look like hairy, barrel-chested men. In Dominican culture, people with 5-ARD are labeled guevedoces, which literally means 'penis at twelve.' In this community, people with 5-ARD are raised as girls, but after puberty, they are considered men for the rest of their lives, and they often take on new, masculine names."

"All the while, some people still use the word gender when what they really want to talk about is sex--like when pregnant parents reveal the 'gender' of their unborn babies. (My theory is that some Egnlish speakers continue to do this simply because prudish Westerners are too afraid to say the word sex out loud)."

"In the 1990s . . . a gender theorist at UC Berkeley named Judith Butler . . . came up with a theory called gender performativity, which essentially says that gender isn't something you are, it's something you do."

• The Butcher and the Wren -- Aaina Urquhart

This book was authored by a co-host of one of my favorite true crime podcasts. I thought it was a pretty decent crime thriller, and I rated it 7.5/10. The book is set in New Orleans and features a medical examiner who is called upon to help solve the case of what turns out to be a serial killer in New Orleans. The serial killer leaves clues at the scenes of his crimes and the medical examiner and police are always figuring them out just a moment too late. It turns out the medical examiner has a secret history of her own. The book was concluded in a way that makes me think a sequel will follow.

• Book Lovers -- Emily Henry

This was a cute and funny rom-com. Parts of this book truly made me chuckle out loud, so that's something. It's a feel-good read and it made me smile. Of course it was quite cheesy as well at times, but that's to be expected. The main character is a publicist for authors and she helps coordinate between them and their publishers. She takes a trip with her sister to the small town that inspired the setting of one of her client-author's books. The small town turns out to not be quite as dreamy and picturesque as the book portrayed it. Nevertheless, aspects of it draw them in and they integrate themselves nicely into the community. I rated it 7.5/10.

• The Paris Apartment -- Lucy Foley

My final book of 2022 was The Paris Apartment. This is another mystery/thriller, and I enjoyed it, although it featured a lot of typical-cliff hanger type language. In this story, a somewhat estranged sister shows up at her brother's apartment in Paris for a rather impromptu visit. She is surprised, however, to find him absent, despite having informed her just earlier that he was expecting her. With nowhere else to go and with few others in the world apart from her brother, she sticks around and starts investigating the other residents of the apartment building. I rated this one 8/10.

1/8/2023

 What have I been watching?: Welcome to Chippendale's

What have I been listening to?: Crime Junkie podcast

The last month or so has brought with it some unfortunate circumstances. First, I discovered one evening last month that my recently adopted cat, Columbus, (adopted in September, I believe) had swallowed several inch-long pieces of rubber. We had been resting together on the couch for several hours watching TV. When I got up to get ready for bed, I saw that he had at some point earlier in the evening thrown up behind the couch. He has never thrown up with me before. There were three of these inch-long rubber pieces in his vomit. I knew exactly where they had come from. Roughly a week early, I had used my air fryer and then rinsed out the drawer and the flat grate that sits inside the drawer, then I left those pieces drying on the countertop on the dish rack. I left at some point, and when I came back to the apartment some hours later, I saw the grate and realized that the four rubber pieces that had been attached to each of the four sides of the grate were gone. I shook my head in disbelief. Columbus has a terribly persistent pattern of getting up on the counters and fucking with stuff. He has destroyed some of my plants, ripped up paper towels, gotten into baked goods, knocked bowls off the shelf to hit the counter and floor and shatter. I assumed at the time that he had ripped those rubber pieces off and played with them or stashed them somewhere. It never occurred to me that he would have swallowed them--like I say, they were large and cumbersome rubber pieces. 

When I saw them in his vomit roughly a week later, I was absolutely horrified. There were three there, and I had every reason to think that he had also swallowed a fourth, which was MIA. He must have been attracted to the oil/grease residue on the air fryer pieces. The next day, I took Columbus to the vet. I had been on the fence about doing so because his behavior was totally normal apart from having thrown up. I was holding out hope that he would throw up or poop out the remaining fourth piece of rubber. He was still eating, drinking, behaving normally. But my sister in law and a coworker who owns cats suggested I bring him in to get an X-ray just to be sure. 

When I brought him in, I was taken aback and scared when they told me he had a fever. I had no idea. This confirmed for them that he needed to get an x-ray to see if the fourth rubber piece was inside his belly, potentially blocking stuff off. Indeed, the veterinarian pointed out a more opaque spot on the x-ray that she was confident was the rubber piece. She sadly informed me that in light of his fever and the presence of the piece that Columbus hadn't passed, he would need emergency surgery to remove it. She said that Columbus was extremely unlikely to be able to pass the fourth rubber piece. Since he had thrown the other three up, the fourth would have come with the others if it could. But since it hadn't, that meant it was stuck. I told the veterinarian I would need to know the cost. She gave me a moment alone and I called my mom and sister-in-law (all cat owners), and then my partner, in tears. I sobbed as I told them that Columbus would need emergency surgery, that they would need to cut him open. I was devastated that I had only had him in my care for a matter of months, and he was already forced to go under the knife because of events that happened on my watch.

They brought me the itemized cost sheet in a bit later. Columbus would get an abdominal exploratory surgery, as well as a full intestinal exploration. He would remain overnight at the vet on an IV and would need various different drugs. There was also the matter of the cost of the x-rays used to confirm that the rubber piece was, indeed, inside him. I applied for a CareCredit card (for veterinary costs) on the computer in the veterinary office while Columbus was prepped for surgery. It would allow me to spread out the payments for the surgery and related costs over the course of twelve months, interest free.

I felt like I didn't have much of a choice. I couldn't let his life end here. There was no question about that. He is only five years old. He had been in my home for only three and a half months at the time of this incident. I felt guilty that this had occurred during this terribly brief period on my watch, but at the same time was infuriated because it wasn't as if I left a ton of shit out around my apartment for him to get into--how could I have expected that he would pull pieces off of a literal appliance? How was I supposed to have prevented this? 

Had Columbus been older, perhaps I would have concluded that it was not rational to undertake this effort at this expense. But he has a lot of life yet to life, and he is my family, and so I authorized the surgery. Half of the amount was charged to the CareCredit card at that time, and the remaining half would be charged the following day when I picked him up.

The vet tech asked if I wanted to see Columbus again before I left. I was very emotional and upset and said I would just see him tomorrow when I picked him up. They had given me no indication that there was any likelihood of the surgery going wrong or any risk of him not getting through it. 

Later that night at around 8 P.M., the vet called me. She said that the surgery was completed and that it had gone well. They had removed the rubber piece and had also looked through the entirety of his intestinal track to see if he had swallowed any other foreign objects. They found a piece of string but nothing else. He was sewn up and would remain at the vet's office overnight for recovery. They would ensure that he could eat and drink and then I would be able to pick him up.

The next day I worked from home so that I could be available at any point to go pick up Columbus. I picked him up around 3 or 4 in the afternoon. He was very groggy, still on pain killers from his surgery. People had warned me that following his surgery, he might be irritable, nauseous, and not want to eat. I brought Columbus home and when he got out of his cardboard carrying box, he was wobbly and disoriented. The sight of him would have been comical to anyone else but was heartbreaking to me. His belly had been mostly shaved, and he had a strip of bare skin around one of his legs as well, where his IV had been. It was like a bald bracelet, about an inch and a half thick. He had a cone on and I watched him weakly flop around on the ground trying to figure out how to orient himself with his cone.

Luckily, Columbus didn't refuse to eat. He was as ready to eat as always, which I was very happy for. He has always been very food motivated (which presumably is what got us into this mess in the first place). He ate and drank normally and used the bathroom. The night I brought him home, I folded down my futon and made my bed there. Usually, I sleep in my own room, obviously, and Columbus isn't allowed in there. I wanted to have at least some part of my apartment cat-free. But I didn't feel good about leaving him alone all night, so we spent the night together in the living room. I was overjoyed that he cuddled and slept with me for almost the entire night. I remember laying with him in the living room, a little sleepover for us of sorts, and I thought that it was a notable night, one that I would remember. 

Weeks have passed now, and Columbus is fully recovered. He has gone back to his active, naughty self. He has gone back to being a very vocal meower, a trait that he had seemed to abandon during his recovery. He continues to jump up on the counters in spite of my persistent efforts at spraying him in the face with water. I put aluminum foils on the countertops for about a week, which did seem to deter him, but once I removed the foil he went back to jumping up more regularly. I'm not trying to have foil on my counters permanently, so I'm not sure what to do. Columbus's belly has grown a small amount of hair back and his surgical wound appears to be healing well. Life goes on as it did before.

My biggest fear is that Columbus will swallow another foreign object. It could happen at any time. After I left him for surgery, I looked around my apartment and resolved myself to putting away every unnecessary object. Nothing on the countertops, everything in cabinets. But I really don't have much stuff out. I clean and organize constantly, it's who I am as a person. I don't like clutter and mess. I put the toaster up in the cabinet, and told myself I would wash and put away the dishes right away, leaving nothing overnight on the counter. I have not been as consistent with that as I should be. 

The problem is that it is hard to know what he will get into. Yesterday I got out my iron and ironing spray and set them on the table in preparation for ironing something. I went to the apartment gym in the meantime, coming back up an hour later. He had chewed on the cord of the iron and the rubber band that was securing it in a bunch. No item is safe, which makes it impossible for me to prepare for any and every scenario. I am doing the best I can, but I fear that one day he will swallow something else and be unable to throw it up. I don't know if I will be able to rationally finance another surgery. All I can do is enjoy the time we have together and do my best to make my apartment a safe environment for him. I love him and cherish him and we should have years and years and years left together. I hope dearly that that will be the case.

Columbus's emergency was not the only unfortunate circumstance that fell upon me at the end of 2022. On Christmas eve eve, I believe it was, I left work early at around 2 P.M. to go home and get my things together to go with Jacob (my partner) to his parents' for the holidays. I park for work everyday in downtown Milwaukee in a parking garage about a block from the federal courthouse. I swipe my work parking pass to get in and out. I have a steering wheel lock for my Kia, but I never have it on in a parking garage, because I did not think anyone would try to steal a car out of a parking garage, because they would either have to bust through the barrier at the exit or use a different parking ticket to get out or something. I thought my Kia was only vulnerable to theft on the street or in a surface lot. I was wrong.

I approached my car from the stairwell and first noticed that my headlights were on, lighting up the cement garage wall. Had I left them on since this morning? No, I don't think so. I got closer. My passenger side front window was broken in. Thick blue glass shards covered the front interior of the car and piled up on the passenger seat. Sitting on top of the glass on the seat was a black screwdriver. I was stunned. I opened my trunk and looked in the back seat, where I had a camping tent (~$200) and sleeping bag (~$100). Neither had been removed. In fact, nothing appeared to have been removed. Whoever did this actually left me with more belongings--the screw driver-- than I had started with. 

I was so occupied with determining whether anything had been stolen that I at first didn't even realize that my ignition and steering wheel column were ripped apart. The exterior plastic was pulled open, revealing metal and wire and cords and the red light that lights up the ignition. The metal was dented and broken. Someone had tried to steal my car, but had left it where it sat. Did they get spooked by someone passing by? Did they merely fail? 

I called 911 and was informed I needed to call the non-emergency number. I did so, and was informed the next available officer would be on their way. They could not give me an estimated time frame in which that would occur. I waited. I called my mother on the phone, sobbing. Why were all of these horrible things happening to me, I cried. I couldn't handle all of this, I couldn't afford all of this. I had only been working about four and a half months. I wasn't anywhere near financially stable yet. I was devastated. I called my partner and informed him the same.

It was a blustering, snowy day. A dangerous blizzard had been forecasted to begin that evening. The garage was not entirely closed--you could look over the half cement wall out onto the street below. I shook with cold as I waited. I had been told I needed to remain here with the car for when the officer arrived.

After roughly a half hour had passed, I called 911 and said that I had called the non-emergency line as instructed but that no one had come yet to assist me and that I couldn't continue standing out with my car indefinitely. They told me they would re-report it or whatever and someone would come soon. About ten minutes later, an officer arrived, finding me shivering with cold in the stairwell.

He was very kind and helpful. He apologized several times that this had happened to me, which I appreciated even though he bore no fault in the situation whatsoever. He made a police report and gave me all the information I would need to convey to my insurance. He had me get in the car to see if I could start it to drive it home. He took the screwdriver into evidence to see if they could get a print off of it, but indicated that it would be unlikely. He told me he would also look into whether the garage had operational cameras. I greatly appreciated his kindness and empathy.

I was able to drive the vehicle home. I live only five minutes' drive from the federal courthouse, so I didn't have to spend too long inside my busted up car with the ripped up ignition, fucked up steering, and busted out window. My partner came to Milwaukee and picked me up and we went to his parents' for Christmas as planned, bringing Columbus with us.

On the day after Christmas, we returned to Milwaukee. Jacob parked in front of my apartment building and we went to sleep like normal. We were awakened around midnight. Jacob's mother was calling. "Your car was stolen," she told him. "The police called me, they are trying to get ahold of you." Jacob had an incoming call. "It's them, " he said. He answered and it was indeed the police. They informed him that his vehicle, a Hyundai, had been stolen off the street in front of the apartment. I listed close to his ear in disbelief. Was this a nightmare? There was no way this was happening a mere four days after my own vehicle was targeted for theft. Jacob had parked on the street near my building on and off for six months without issue.

The police had seen his vehicle, as well as an individual in another, driving in tandem somewhere in South Milwaukee. Whether the police were prompted to investigate this because of erratic driving or due to having spotted the busted out window, we don't know. In any event, the police turned on their lights and went to pull over the individuals. The other individual, driving a different stolen vehicle, sped off and eventually, apparently, crashed somewhere up ahead. The individual driving Jacob's Hyundai pulled over and cooperated. He was arrested and placed in the back of the squad car. It was at this time that we were called. The officer asked if we could come to the scene to pick up the vehicle. We weren't sure what to do, since now neither of us had a vehicle. We took a Lyft to the scene anyways because if we had allowed them to tow Jacob's car to a lot, we would have had to pay to get it out.

We arrived on the scene and the squad car's lights were still flashing. The streets were otherwise quite and calm. The officer told us that usually these car thefts are perpetrated by juveniles who learn how to steal these cars online or from TikTok. Usually, since they are minors, the worst that happens to them is that they go to juvie, then get out, then go back to stealing cars. They don't do it because they need to--they aren't starving, aren't homeless. They do it for fun. They do it because they are on Christmas break away from school and just want to fuck up some cars. They can steal the cars with nothing more than a USB thing and a screwdriver. They break in the window, then steal the car and drive it with abandon until they wreck it or ruin it. They occasionally steal some shit from it, then they leave it there and move on. Again, this is typically done by minors. But this time, the officer told us, the individual was 18 years old, and so perhaps he would be prosecuted and something would actually come of it. The officer confirmed with Jacob expressly that Jacob had, quote, "not given anyone permission to steal his car." Jacob confirmed that he had not given anyone permission to steal his car, an oxymoron if I've ever heard one. The officer then asked if Jacob would be willing to assist with prosecution, in the event that that occurred. Jacob said he would.

Jacob's interior was worse than mine. The individual had rummaged through everything, the glove compartment and the console, ripped everything out, scattered papers and items on the car floor. His skateboard and some CDs were missing. The ignition and steering wheel column were ripped up just like mine. The rear view mirror had been removed from the inside of the windshield and was nowhere in sight. The windshield mounted phone holder was removed and on the floor.

While we were speaking with the officer, a Milwaukee police department van pulled up next to the squad car and another officer exited. The individual who had been caught stealing Jacob's car was removed from the squad car and transferred into the van. I stared at him, hands behind his back in cuffs, as he was removed from the squad car. He had a hoodie on over his head and wore Croc-like shoes with socks. He looked very casual. I couldn't see his face. I hated him. I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself. He had destroyed my partner's vehicle all for an hour or two of "fun." I wanted to yell at him and flip him off. But I remained silent, in shock.

We were able to drive the vehicle, just like I had been able to drive mine, although Jacob noticed right away that it was running poorly, he could tell that it had been driven recklessly. Since we couldn't well leave it back on the street for the rest on the night and I didn't have anymore spots in the garage, he dropped me off and made his way back home to Wauwautosa. It was hard to get back to sleep, but eventually I did.

Obviously in hindsight there are things that we should have done differently. I knew that Kias and Hyundais were targeted for theft in big cities, and particularly in Milwaukee. I had gone to a police station during my first month here and gotten a free steering wheel lock for precisely that reason. But like I said, I didn't know that someone would try to break a vehicle out of a closed garage, so I didn't have it on at the time of the attempted theft. And in hindsight, when Jacob parked his car at my apartment the day we returned from Christmas weekend, we should have gone into the garage, removed the steering wheel lock from my car, and put it on his. But it all happened so fast. We were dealing with and caring for Columbus at the time, as well. He was still recovering from his surgery and taking several meds a day. I was preoccupied. We had never put a steering wheel lock on Jacob's car in front of my apartment, and he had parked there overnight dozens and dozens of times. 

Insurance will hopefully handle everything and I won't end up paying too much out of pocket. I dropped my car off a few days later at the Kia dealership in Wauwautosa to get an estimate for insurance. That was last week, and they still haven't done the estimate yet. They are inundated with broken-into Kias. I was informed it would take 2-3 weeks to 2-3 months to get everything done.

After I dropped off my Kia in Wauwautosa, I saw Jacob later that night. I was withdrawn and sad. Eventually, when I was on the phone with my mom, I broke down. I couldn't stop thinking about how I had worked all through school in fast food to pay for that car. I bought it myself and paid off every cent of it myself. I was 18 when I purchased it for roughly $11,000. I had kept it clean and in relatively good shape. I vacuumed and carpet-cleaned the fabric interior and never got in an accident. Over the course of eight years, I kept it in almost as good of shape as the day I acquired it. And all the effort I had put into maintaining its value and taking care of it had been shat all over. Shat all over by someone who just wanted to ride a car into the ground and abandon it and then maybe find another one and do it again. Without regard for anyone else. I cried thinking about the thought of potentially having to purchase a new vehicle in the event that mine was deemed totaled. I couldn't take on a new car payment, I cried. I had gone in the red with my finances for Columbus's surgery. I couldn't handle this too.

I am still figuring out how to adjust things to accommodate for these circumstances. I have considered moving somewhere cheaper, although I am very happy in my apartment and have everything I need and want here. It would be a tremendous hassle to move. I had assumed, when I moved here, that I would stay here for the full term of my clerkship, two years at least. But I think I had this perhaps unrealistic vision of what my life as a lawyer would be like. I thought everything would be easier, that I wouldn't struggle for money. Lawyers live in nice, new, apartments, I thought. So I will too. In hindsight, I should have selected a simpler and cheaper apartment in order to put more towards savings. 

I knew, abstractly, before Columbus had his veterinary emergency, that when you get a pet, you run the risk of incurring a horrifically expense procedure. It is not something you expect, but you have to be able to accept it if the time comes. That is the price of having a living creature in your home. They are not stuffed animals. They are beings and if you accept one into your home, you are signing on to unexpected circumstances associated with their life. I knew that abstractly, but I didn't expect it to happen so soon into my pet ownership. I wasn't ready for it. But perhaps I never would have felt ready for it. 

The same is true for the car thefts. I knew that Kias and Hyundais were stolen at disproportionately high rates in Milwaukee. Thefts of Kias had gone up something like over 100% over the last year. But I thought for the most part I was careful, locking it when on the street or in surface lots in Milwaukee. But it wasn't enough. I have learned that if you have a Kia or a Hyundai in Milwaukee and you don't have a steering wheel lock on it at every moment it is parked, it is not a matter of if your car will be stolen, it is a matter of when. Let this be a warning to anyone in Milwaukee or a similarly large city with a key ignition Kia or Hyundai. It will happen to you unless you make sure that it doesn't.

Jacob and I went to my parents' in Rice Lake over New Years for my family's Christmas celebration. Jacob was able to drive us in his new Mazda CX-30. Even before his car was stolen, Jacob had been planning on purchasing a vehicle. While we were at his parents' the weekend before it happened, Jacob had actually gotten reauthorized for a loan and had test driven some Mazdas at the dealership. He knew what he wanted and was planning to go get it the week we returned. His car was stolen in the interim, which put a wrinkle in things. 

Nevertheless, Jacob was able to get the Mazda he wanted and is very happy with it. It felt very foreign and alien-like our first times driving it. It is a 2020 premium model. He said it felt too fancy and like he didn't deserve it. But he has worked hard, lived simply, and saved well. Now he has his preferred, reliable, less-stealable vehicle to show for it. 

I, on the other hand, am temporarily driving one of my parents' vehicles. They have graciously decided to share a vehicle during these couple of months while mine is in the shop. Since the estimate hasn't been done yet, I don't know whether my car will end up being fixed or deemed totalled. I honestly don't know what I want to happen. If it is deemed totalled, I would need to find a new car and that would add a hefty monthly payment to the monthly payment I've incurred for Columbus's vet bills. If the car gets fixed, I would be glad to have my vehicle back, but I imagine the value will drop in light of these events. It is out of my hands for the time being.

Anyways, those are the unfortunate happenings from the end of 2022. It is now 2023 and I am confident that the year is already looking up. Jacob and I are enjoying our time together. I continue to enjoy my work at the federal courthouse as a judicial clerk. We look forward to the nice-weather months' return so we can cycle outside, play tennis and pickleball, camp, and enjoy the sun. 

Until next time.

1/6/2023

 I have been slacking, so I have a lengthy book post for you. 2022's reads continued:

• Trespassing Across America -- One Man's Epic Never-Done Before (and Sort of Illegal) Hike Across the Heartland -- Ken Ilgunas 

Okay, it's been a long, long time since I read this, but even if I wrote this post last month, I would still say that this left no lasting impression on me. I am really drawn to the wanderlust-esque books, but this one wasn't particularly noteworthy to me. Usually I'm a sucker for that kind of book. The premise here is that the guy decides to go on this backpacking trek across America, with the catch that he intends to go straight through private property as well (including expansive fields with roaming animals). His biggest fear in doing so is encountering a particularly gun-happy private land owner who doesn't take kindly to trespassers. Nevertheless, he embarks on the trip anyways and for the most part encounters very friendly folks across the country. I rated this book 5/10.

• White Oleander -- Janet Fitch

This book was stunning. One of my favorites of 2022. I consider it a feminist novel. I described it on my Instagram story as "dark, but rich." The female protagonist has a complicated relationship with her mother, who commits a violent act against an ex-boyfriend, resulting in her imprisonment. This sends the main character, the daughter, into the foster system. I imagine the daughter resents her mother for this, for engaging in such a crime knowing that if caught, it would leave the daughter homeless and at the mercy of the system. Much of her mother's, and her own, turmoil stems from their relationships with men. Indeed, the main character gets involved (or perhaps better stated, preyed upon) by a foster father in one of the homes in which she is placed. This enrages the foster mother, who then takes it out on the main character.

A common theme in this book is male entitlement and privilege, which of course I always love to see acknowledged. I found the writing very compelling. I rated this book 10/10. Here are some quotes I noted:

    "If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way."

    "Why not? Because I was tired of men. Hanging in doorways, standing too close, their smell of beer or fifteen-year-old whiskey. Men who didn't come to the emergency room with you, men who left on Christmas Eve. Men who slammed the security gates, who made you love them and then changed their minds. Forests of boys, their ragged shrubs full of eyes following you, grabbing your breasts, waving their money, eyes already knocking you down, taking what they felt was theirs."

    "Women always put men first. That's how everything got so screwed up."

    "He stumbled away, and in a moment we heard him kick the front door. 'You fucking cunt. You won't get away with this. You can't do this to me.' She threw open the front door then, and stood there in her white kimono, his blood on her knife. 'You don't know what I can do,' she said softly."

    "'Men,' she said. 'No matter how unappealing, each of them imagines he is somehow worthy.'" 

• The Vegetarian -- Han Kang

I don't know what the fuck this was. I rated it 3/10. It was apparently one of the 10 Best Books according to the New York Times's 2016 book review. I hated it. I found it utterly incomprehensible. I thought I would find something of value in it because it is, in part, about a despondent wife who defies her husband by refusing to eat meat, and I am a vegetarian who can get on board with that. But it gets really fucking strange and sexual and exploitative. If there were underlying messages and themes that I was supposed to be inferring from this bizarre narrative, I was unable to find them. 

• Everything I Never Told You -- Celeste Ng

This was a bit cheesy. I realized this only after reading part of this book aloud to my brother. Reading it in your mind, you can kind of skip around some of the cheesy bits and interpret it according to your liking. Like when you get used to reading in your head a lot, you end up not actually actively reading every single word--you read a few words and get the gist of things and move on, subconsciously. So the cheesiness slides under the radar. But reading it aloud puts it all out there, bare. My brother actually told me to please stop, or read something else, because he found it so cheesy. This book left no meaningful impression on me. I rated this 5.5/10.

• All That She Carried -- Tiya Miles

This was a wonderful and informative piece of non-fiction. It is a mix of both general historical information, plus information specific to a lineage of Black women in slavery. Much of the information about these specific women is unrecorded, which is kind of the point of the book--to draw attention to the complete lack of documentation in history about huge populations of people. Some of the only sources from which information about these individuals can be drawn are the ledgers and business/financial records of slave owners and slave traders. They are literally only recorded in history as property. The only reason that tangible records of their existence in this world exist are because people tracked their finances--the purchase and sale of slaves.

This book is based on a satchel that has wording sewn on it, detailing the contents that had been placed into it by a mother for her daughter in preparation of their separation. It was passed down from mother to daughter and eventually was unearthed and placed into a museum. I rated this book 9.5/10. Here are some quotes I pulled from the book because they taught me things:

    "Because states like Louisiana and Alabama forbade the sale of individual children under ten, many more children than seems credible were listed as ten to twelve years of age in slave traders' business records."

    "The number of enslaved migrants who made it from the depths of the cotton and sugar frontiers all the way to the free states probably numbered under a thousand during all the years of slavery. That amounts to one-tenth of 1 percent of all forced migrants."

    "Of course the word 'pecan,' like so many other American words in English, derives from a Native language (in the Algonquian linguistic family) and reveals a substrata of cultural exchange over centuries. Indigenous people used the term pakan for 'hard-shelled nut.' French settlers learned the word from Natchez people in Mississippi in the 1700s and spelled it pacanes. From this we take our 'pecan,' which is pronounced differently in the South and the North, depending on which syllable is emphasized."

    "Jacobs was so distraught that her infant son existed as movable property with no surname to speak of that she prayed for the newborn's premature death. But when her son actually became ill, she desperately sought a reprieve from God, begging for the child to be spared. 'Alas what mockery it is for a slave mother to try to pray back her dying child to life!' Jacobs bemoaned. 'Death is better than slavery.'"

    "Charleston is the only American city that required slaveholders to purchase badges. These badges, meant to be worn visibly on the body, displayed an enslaved person's occupation and announced the master's permission for that person to be mobile for the named work and even to live in a separate, independent household while carrying out the work."

• Missoula -- Jon Krakauer

This was one of my favorite Jon Krakauer books so far. I definitely liked it better than the one about fundamentalist Mormonism, even though I find that topic very interesting. This one was just easier for me to follow, whereas the one about Mormonism involved so many different players, so to speak, that I struggled to keep track of who was doing what and at what time period. 

I rated this book 10/10. This one was about the high prevalence of rapes on a college campus in Missoula, Montana. It describes the stories of several women who experienced rape and sexual assault on or near campus and details how the University handled the situations. The University's football team bore a disproportionate number of these alleged offenders. The book also allowed a look into the administrative procedures implemented by the University as compared with legal proceedings brought by actual prosecutors for the state of Montana. The two proceedings involve different standards of proof and different rights. 

The subject matter of this book was, expectedly, graphic. However, it was well-written and told the stories well from the victims' perspectives. 

• Nowhere for Very Long -- Brianna Madia

This was a novel about a woman who buys a van and renovates it to live out of it and go on adventures in the American southwest. She has several dogs and they live with her in the van. I honestly don't remember a ton of details about it except for that at one point she and her husband actually ran over their own dog with the van while they were driving and the dogs were running outside along the van. I can't remember if they themselves or someone they know put up a GoFundMe or something like that to raise money for veterinary care for the dog. The dog survived after extensive surgical intervention. The weird part was that the fundraising for the dog's vet bills didn't disclose that it was the dog's owners themselves who actually ran over the dog. The GoFundMe just kind of generally described that the dog was hit by a car, which makes it sound like someone else did it. So that was a bit icky and weird, and the author acknowledged that too and seemed to feel not good about it. Anyways, that's the part about it that stuck out most in my mind. I rated it 7/10.

• Nothing to See Here -- Kevin Wilson

I read this after seeing some references to it online. It was really bizarre lol but it was cute and kind of heartwarming. As the cover art indicates (although I didn't realize it when I read it), the story involves children who randomly set ablaze. They are kind of misfits in the view of their rich family (politician father and politician's wife step-mother). Shunned and not really a part of the family. The main character is hired as a nanny of sorts for the kids, although she doesn't know at first what she's getting into. She ends up taking quite a liking to the children and they help each other grow. It was a cute read, and I rated it 8/10. A quote I liked from this book is: "A lot of times when I think I'm being self-sufficient, I'm really just learning to live without the things that I need."

• I'm Glad my Mom Died -- Jennette McCurdy

This is a new memoir by former iCarly star Jennette McCurdy. It was really interesting and I rated it 9.5/10. This memoir tells us of Jennette's childhood and upbringing and unhealthy relationship with her mother. Her mother aspired for Jennette to become an actress, and so she did. Something interesting that I learned was that Jennette was born into a Mormon family and church was a big part of her childhood. She liked getting out of the house to go to church, in part because her mother was a bit of a hoarder and the house was just in rough shape. I also found Jennette's first description of what she later learned to be OCD symptoms really interesting. She thought at first that the impulses/rituals she felt compelled to do had to do with her religion. 

A big portion of the book revolves around how Jennette's mother fostered an eating disorder in Jennette. Her mother taught her horrific eating habits and ideas about food and body image. Her mother was just overbearing and controlling in general. She made Jennette feel guilty for growing up and growing apart. This book was worth reading and gave an interesting look at the lives of child actors and what they go through.

• The People in the Trees -- Hanya Yanagihara

This is the second book by this author that I have read. The first one I read is called A Little Life. It is a very long, very trauma-filled, very sad book. It has a lot of triggering topics. This book, The People in the Trees, was similar in some respects, but was mostly distinct from A Little Life. A Little Life is more domestic, more relationship-based. The People in the Trees is more exotic, mystifying, foreign. 

I think the author's writing is great, but the topics she repeatedly selects for her books is interesting, to say the least. This book was at times very unsettling and just made me uncomfortable. The same was true for A Little Life. I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing. I think it is a mark of good authorship to be able to describe a scenario in such a way that evokes such a response in the reader--like my stomach would literally be twisting with anxiety and discomfort at times in this book. It felt perverse to be reading some of the things I was reading.

The setting of this book was very interesting to me. The story (which is based on real events, by the way, which makes the book all the more horrifying) is set in the South Pacific. The main character, a man, travels there with a couple other individuals for research purposes. That component of the story is super interesting. The descriptions of the environment, the flora and fauna, the temperature and the weather, really took me back to my time in Fiji. The story takes place in the jungle as well as in a village on the island. The characters survive in the jungle on common fruit and sleep on the jungle floor. They are guided by local men who navigate and translate for them. The characters end up making a very promising discovery that has huge implications for the medical field and the the concept of aging. This discovery changes the island and its people and culture in ways that can never be reversed. 

The book touches on themes of pedophilia. And at first, for most of the book, it really does just "touch upon" it rather than delving deeply into it. But it does become a more explicit and prominent component of the story as things develop. It forces us to address the concept of cultural relativism versus universalism. This part of the story, the pedophilia aspect, is also based on the real-life man on whom this story is based. 

I didn't end up rating this book because although I thought it was extremely interesting and well-written, it didn't feel right to highly rate a book that didn't condemn pedophilia. It's not to say that the author is condoning pedophilia with the book, she is just writing from the perspective of characters who condone it. Still, its an unsettling topic and one that I didn't feel comfortable attaching a high book rating to. This is the only book from the entire year of 2022 that I did not rate.

 

• In Cold Blood -- Truman Capote

I didn't realize when I checked this book out that it was really old. It was written in 1965 and it showed. Some of the language was pretty antiquated and it just felt like from a different era. That was exacerbated by the fact that the book is set in a rural, small-town, agriculture-based area. It also used the occasional slur.

This was a mystery, but due to its age it was unlike the modern mysteries that I am used to seeing promoted these days. The modern ones seem to pander to the genre a bit, ending chapters with cliche cliff-hangers and generic copy and paste phrases. This isn't to say that I preferred this older mystery to new ones, however. I found the book a little dry and it didn't leave much of an impression on me. But I like true crime as a general matter, so this was okay. I rated it 6/10.