eating balls in the time of our ‘rona

i can now count two times in my life that i’ve made a food decision that i’ve regretted. one was sixteen years ago in viet nam. the other was last night.

the parallels are these: i was/am feeling restless in my “home”, knowing i was /am on the verge of something different, but with no clear leads as to where i was/am going. i was/am also sweating a new person every fifteen minutes.

maybe these are the conditions that make me particularly adventurous when it comes to food, or maybe it’s just my generally curious palette and commitment not to waste anything-including opportunity.

so when my rich great uncle came roaring into town gathering a caravan to go on a snake-eating excursion, i enthusiastically signed up.

my aunts warned me not to go. i should have listened.

or perhaps just asked how long the affair would be. i did not. it was l    o     n     g.

i don’t remember how long the car ride was, or how far away from home we were. i just knew that i had made a mistake when we sat down and the server went to the yard to “catch” a prospective snake for our supper. not unlike the process of bringing a live lobster to the table for a diner’s approval before it’s cooked, a giant snake was brought to our patriarch, and he sent it back because he thought we deserved bigger.

(eep).

upon receiving the nod of approval, the server returned with the right snake in one hand, and a machete in the other. its head was quickly lopped off, and its tail was still slithering because it did not yet know it was dead. somehow the heart was coaxed out of its body and into a shot glass, and cooked with the hot snake blood squeezed from the now upside-down scaly tube and mixed with some kind of liquor.

this is the first shot of honour, famed for ensuring virility. it was offered to me-i declined, as a celibate non-drinker, and added a feeling of light-headedness to my existing portfolio of nausea and regret.

the first dish was a soup of the other organs-i bit into something that burst, in the worst possible way that food can explode within your teeth.

the next thirteen (or so) dishes were each more terrible than the last, but i committed to taking the tiniest bite of each, just to say that i did. the thing about snake is that it’s an animal that is mostly skin, which is not only our largest organ, but definitely theirs-and it’s very muscular so unlike other wild meats, you cannot convince yourself that it’s chicken, or even remotely chicken-adjacent. it’s snake through and through, and you can never forget it. the only course that brought me a moment of respite was the roasted bones, because those could be fish bones.

i was chastised and “i told you so’d” when i got home, and was up all night certain that i was going to die, either from the snake dinner, or by some insect crawling into my ear and laying eggs that would hatch and eat my brain.

i am happy to report that neither of those things happened, and that last night’s episode was much less dramatic.

i am so great-full that i landed in a butcher shop last year, and was rejected from flight attendant idol. (phew!) it’s strange to be an essential worker in the time of a pandemic, but i finally feel like i’m adjusting to some of our new day-to-day realities and practices, and am glad to have a place where i learn new things every day.

years ago, when we still had a cookbook store, i actually saw my current employer do a presentation about offals. it was there that one of my most long-term adult friends expressed a gusto for eating testicles that i should’ve remembered at the time i did not share.

but yesterday was lamb day, and i was palpating a “therapy kidney” and a pair of lamb balls were pressed into my hands so on a whim, i decided that i wanted to have them for dinner.

one of my favourite butchers showed me how to clean them (split and separate them out of the membrane and bisect) and shared the recipe that he learned from his time working in the middle east (boil them a bit, season with salt and pepper, and fry-breading optional).

i still had some merguez oil from breakfast, so i decided not to fry, but to quick confit and bake and broil and serve over steamed greens.

the texture was quite smooth, but i think i looked too closely at the blood vessels and had that same uneasy feeling after the first teeny bite. perhaps i should have fried them? i don’t know.

but they are now in the compost and i’m good for the next decade and a half of radical eating.

someone else take the reins. there’s no need for me to pretend that i’m tony bourdain.

edibles in the time of the ‘rona

it’s too late for some of you, but i really cannot say enough about waiting until you are older to do drugs. i’m having the time of my life, and i know it’s because i haven’t been dulling the high by overdoing it before my brain was fully developed (25).

i’m getting these edibles from someone who is probably under 25 so it’s too late for him-he’s already so far in that he has learned how to cook the drugs so they hit just so. oh well-i am great-full to him regardless for keeping me stocked up during these strangest of times.

my weekly “therapy” has now come down to eating a quarter of a cookie, and letting it kick in while i engage in the other self-care of masturbating for hours and learning spanish by listening to podcasts that sound slightly slower when i am under the influence. i have also been meditating and colouring and napping and watching the government mental health resources for essential workers.

it has really helped me relearn compassion, which i have to put on my weekly agenda because of the lack of understanding and cooperation around the social distancing and stay at home recommendations-the trinity bellwoods debacle was especially disheartening to me, especially given the proximity of my workplace to the park, i know that i was serving some of those entitled white fuckers the very next day.

and i’m glad that nobody got hurt during the march for regis korchinski-paquet but i was mentally prepared for something to go sideways. it’s a shitty time for video-evidenced police brutality/murder, but like this delayed thunder and lightning show (at time of writing), the biggest stress seems to be when the other shoe will drop.

what comes next in this time of fake news and co-opted media blackouts?

cheap rent in the time of the ‘rona

is it worth it?

there’s nothing like a pandemic to make you question every single thing in your life. thank you?

it’s hard to believe that i’m coming up on my ninth year in this house, and like any other relationship, i’ve reached my breaking point many times before, and always found a way out.

but this year is different. maybe it’s because it’s my fourth decade of life, but i’m really just over non-functioning relationships with men from all across the gender spectrum. i have absolutely no more patience for the mind games, the control, and the casual patriarchy that men just throw around.

i was cut off by a friend who came begging back, only for him to claim that i could “take all the time i need” when i put up a boundary to his myriad of memes and pretending that just because he had apologized, that everything would go back to normal. my father told me that he sees me as an expendable chinese person and probably thinks that i started the fucking ‘rona. my landlord knocked on my door to see if i was damaging the carpet in front of my across-the-hall neighbour’s apartment-before he asked that neighbour. and then told me that i was putting on weight.

what the actual fuck?! i know that i am one of the only (if not the only) tenant in the house that has been paying rent through this (and consistently for the past nine years) and i have never contested the rent increases (though i will this year if one is even allowed), so why the hell would he want to aggravate me? he flat out told me that “it’s not about the money”-really? you’re my landlord, i’m your tenant-what else is our relationship? and you don’t care about the money? ok-watch me cancel my cheques then. i’m out here, still working, not taking cerb money, to pay your ass-because i am a good person and it’s the right thing to do. but you can’t evict us all at once, right? fuck him and these fucking white doods who live so confidently that they just don’t pay rent and don’t get kicked out or hassled.

let this be my statement of intention: i will not turn 41 in this house. here is what my dream domicile looks like:

-balcony
-big, bright kitchen with all working appliances (no gas stove)
-window in the bathroom
-proper air circulation
-small bedroom/closet
-large living area
-exposed brick
-hardwood floors
-natural light
-beauty-full artificial light + fixtures
-professional management
-centrally located
-ensuite laundry
-nooks and charm
-built-in storage
-pets allowed
-$900 (the cheap rent fairy has blessed me thus far, i see no reason why it cannot continue)
-utilities incl.

come thru, september.

last chances in the time of our ‘rona

everyone else would’ve been cancelled soooo long ago. i’ve never really felt the same “obligations” to family as folx have told me that i need to. that’s because i’ve known the infinite kindness of strangers and just “meh” everything from those (that i know of) in my bloodline. i’m pretty egalitarian that way. but there’s something in me that’s always wanted to feel like either of my parents gave a shit about me before i die. well, i’m 40 now-it’s time to give up on that. and i’m there for the last time.

i haven’t spoken to my dad for at least three years, the last time being a fight over how diabetes is not the same as cancer, and how that’s just not the way to comfort someone, to make it all about you because you can’t handle the guilt of choosing not be in your kid’s life for so long.

but as we roll into the 6-week mark (in north america) of actually acting like the ‘rona is a thing, i felt more and more compelled to reach out, because dood is over seventy, diabetic with high blood pressure, and not really prone to logic or listening to instructions. his status not only makes him super-susceptible, but also a super-spreader, so a large part of me wanted to make sure he’s not out spreading the virus if he has it.

so i email. because calling would’ve resulted in a broken something. i can’t imagine what would’ve happened if we had a real-time discussion. the medium and time (difference) buffers were necessary, but they didn’t really lesson the blow.

the last time i was home was 2016. (i was also trapped in pearson airport for over 12 hours and appalled then by how many people did not wash their hands coming out of the washroom to head onto international flights. but i’ve always been a stickler for hand-washing, i had a sticker campaign to correct the sentiment of “employees must wash hands before returning to work” to “everyone must wash hands after touching their genitals”) anyway, it was christmas, which means it was just under two months after the election, which is the first time this man was starting to talk crazy about how 45 was a good choice, and that hillary is a witch. he had nothing to say in the face of “but she’s actually qualified for the job”, and i found out that his leanings were because captain cheeto had come out guns ablaze against china.

it was also six days in the closest quarters we have ever lived in, so i was reminded of the constant tirade against china and the chinese that has always existed, but i guess i didn’t really process before i was seventeen and moved out for good. but being that close after so long really punctuated it. let it be known that this man’s doctor is chinese, he has no problems eating chinese food and shopping at chinese establishments, my mother is chinese-malaysian, and thus, his child is half. i mean, ethnically, that is not completely correct, but for the sake of the simplicity of this argument, let’s roll with it. also, he’s vietnamese, so let’s chalk up that hundo p that there is chinese colonial blood also coursing through our veins. but the chinese. the recent immigrants coming to buy up all the property and take up all the space. it snowed 12 centimetres and the city shut down. that was somehow the chinese peoples’ fault. they can’t drive. NOBODY can drive because they had no salt or winter tires, and it’s a city infrastructure problem that they are not prepared for weather, the chinese don’t make snow (yet).

anyways, at that point, he started calling me CBC (not the mothership, chinese-born canadian, which, i’m not sure i fit that demographic for, and again-these were choices that he made). but now, i see that he had to go there to divorce himself from me altogether, and that’s why he will never check up on me. he will never care if i live or die, because i’m just another expendable chinese person to him.

well. that fucking hurt. and i cried about it all day and night on wednesday. it would’ve been better if i could’ve cried with someone who could’ve hugged me.

but you know what? it really made my first day back at work better. it’s always a bit rough to come out of your home bubble to face the folks who are self-absorbed and ridiculous, but yesterday? nothing anyone could’ve said to me would’ve been as bad as that which came from the source of my own dna. besides, i now count medical professionals, other grocery and pharmacy workers, and wrasslers (florida-you’re so fucked up) as my essential service collegues, so bigups to everyone else who is also tired and strassed the fuck out over being out there.

and let me not forget that one time in the auto mall in 2004 where i felt like this guy really saw me and spoke to me honestly about my mother. i’ll take that as the one time that he cared about me. that’ll be the one. because from now on, he might as well be dead, because he’s dead to me. i’m 40. i gotta choose myself.

so if the ‘rona gets him (i refuse, as he’s directed me to “call it by its full chinese virus name”), then it does. but i have a feeling that it won’t. my dad’s like cockroaches and keith richards-he will live through anything. and that’s fine, because any secret half-siblings that i would’ve met as his funeral would’ve probably been assholes anyway. i’m giving up on finding out, because who’s going to the funeral?

peace out, fucker.

beyonce-i am world tour/visual album

is this the end of the stadium tour? if so, at least i can say that i saw prince, beyonce twice, janet, nas/lauryn,bruno, kendrick and all of the kanyes. oh, and i also witnessed the unnecessary carbon footprint of alicia keys packing eleventeen different pianos all over the world to match each outfit change. i’m sad that i never saw lizzo, outkast, or any ovo. but even the countless small venue shows seem impossible in our current reality of not gathering or touching.

i never saw this tour. i actually bought this dvd at the ex (another event that will prolly be cancelled this year) at least four years ago, and never had a way to watch it until now, because the drive on my laptop has been broken for at least that long. same with the visual album. but i have my trusty “watching machine” now, on loan from my production job (which is also on hold until at least summer) and one of the recent IG live battles made me think about the “grown woman” video, and i went looking because i thought it might be on that visual album (it is).

i wasn’t a fan of the i am…sasha fierce album. at times during this tour video, i found myself asking, “what song is this?” and checking the duration of the recording. i also admit that the sheer numbers of people in the packed stadiums in close contact, sweating and crying on each other, made me shudder, as well as all the peoples’ hands that she touched, and all the hands that touched her while she crowd surfed.

beyonce is our quintessential visual artist, and this was when she was showing a glimmer of controlling her narrative-the editing of this tour was seamless, and i feel like it was the beginning of her showing us the behind the scenes that she has been willing to show after this point. the inclusion of the fan who calls her a bitch because she didn’t see him at the gucci store, changing his face when she actually greets him, then him asking “did you record that?” and the camera commentary of “if she only knew”. but obviously she knew, and she signed off on including that. it’s also interesting when she starts complaining about how “nobody cares about my body and my well-being”, but also shows that she’s involved in every step of planning the show and tour, so conceivably-couldn’t she have made that schedule? also, why is she flying home from all over the world to see jay-z? he couldn’t take no planes nowhere? i have questions.

but overall-this is amazing. her all-female band has always been a sight to see, and a direct feminist decision. the costumes are always on point and the thierry mugler colab was no exception. kanye still knew how to stay in a lane. and like ice t said once, if you forget the lines or are tired, let the crowd sing it. only a few people can count on entire stadiums of folx to sing their songs from top to bottom, and the irony of “irreplaceable” being such a song in this case has not been lost on me. michael had just died, and her staples center date was the first event after his funeral. it makes sense that he was her hero (virgo, stand up), and also that she would (also) refer to herself as a “musician” like people had ascribed to him, and that’s always confused me, because i was under the impression that you must play at least one instrument to be a musician. but hey-we can open up the can of worms of what “freestyle” means to whom, but i’m not here to do that. (for the record-off the dome = freestyle)

which brings us to the visual album. “changed the game with that digital drop”, indeed she did. this is the one that kanye cut taylor off over, and this was the first tour that i saw. it is the one that would’ve been perfectly punctuated with a drake encore, as his feature on “mine” won the audio version of this song. it was the exact moment that i personally came around to dood-i was never a hater before, i just wasn’t personally invested. but nothing was the same came out, “too much” was the track that moved me most, and “mine” was very much in the same vein. but alas, that didn’t happen. she did fly through the stadium in a blue glittery jumpsuit a la prince on the rave until the joy fantastic album cover, and by then, we had lost him too.

the thing is, i can’t say i really liked the majority of those songs, either. (4 would’ve been the best one for me to go to to actually like all the songs, and i watched the concert video for that one so much that i considered stealing it from the library). what is different is the videos are so captivating, that i was 100% hooked regardless. i must have watched it through at some point, but doing it again retrospectively was an experience. it was the first time i saw a melina matsoukas’ credit before lemonade and insecure and queen & slim,. i recognized luke james, because star had happened. i wonder why frank ocean was not in the video and he was, but there’s gotta be a reason. the raspberry lipstick in “no angel” is everything that i want to accomplish in lipstick right now. i feel like this foreshadowed lemonade in a lot of ways, and remember the time i first heard “heaven” and cried on my kitchen floor because i knew it was about the baby she miscarried, even though she presents it as a dead friend in the video. i also don’t understand the juxtaposition of the chimamanda ngozi adichie quote on “bow down bitches”, as those seem to be two very different understandings of “feminism”, but i guess that’s par for remorse for someone who claims “i’m not just his little wife” billing her show “the mrs. carter tour“.

the lemonade tour was a specifically stadium tour, which is why toronto was one of the only canadian dates. it was the unofficial “divorce jay-z” album/tour, which was released exclusively on his streaming service so, there’s that. that was the moment that she left her father’s clutches to transfer over to her husband’s, but she’s “independent”. she’s a feminist because she’s in her panties. i’ll never forget when tali pointed out that her daughter (only one at that point, but now two daughters and a son) may grow up confused about weather, because when her parents perform together, mommy’s in panties and daddy’s wearing a snowsuit. but the show was truly something that defied gravity and expectation, there was fire and water (at the same time), and elements of lifting us out of time and reality. i remember stumbling out into the street afterwards-it was unseasonably hot for being may 25th, and the score was still in operation, so i glanced quickly at the score of the playoff game on my way home, and brushed off what i must have hallucinated (i did not-the lebrons beat us 116-78) and was riding that high for the rest of the night and saved the crush for the morning. but we made it to the ECF! and were the first team to beat cleveland in the playoffs that year (both the cavs and the warriors had swept all the way to the conference finals) and then we were the first team to beat them twice. and then, the aforementioned game happened and they closed it out two days later. (and also allegedly committed zero fouls in the entire game, but officiating is another story).

the nba is probably not coming back in any capacity that we recognize, and neither is the stadium show. church is pretty much cancelled. sports and music are essentially secular gatherings that hold that same value of witness and reflection that humans need. as someone who is fucking crumbling over the lack of human contact, i am really wondering what all of this is going to look like now? how are we going to imagine our way out of this one?

big mouth

i had heard rumblings about this show months ago, but again, it was another one that i fully took advantage of when i had the sweet streaming services of the last pet-sitting gig.

nick kroll on either (or both) trevor noah/desus and mero pushed me over the edge, and boy am i ever glad.

i love the writing, i love the voice acting, and i love that jak knight gets increasingly more jobs as the show goes on. i remember seeing him in a double bill with langston kerman years ago at jfl and to see them both do so well (and occasionally blow molly‘s back out on insecure) feels like a win for modern comics everywhere.

i happened to just be between season two and three when the zoom table read for charity happened, and i couldn’t watch it for that long a) because i felt like i was cheating on the show in case they were doing a new episode and b) other than seeing everyone laugh at maya rudolph, it was weird to see a bunch of adults do this material-i need their cartoon children avatars for the full experience. also, jordan peele was not available, and well, everything’s better with jordan peele.

i love this honest and informed look on puberty and that the hormone monsters all seem obsessed with nick trying to suck his own dick. i was going to say that someone needs to have me over to watch a new season when it drops, and then i was going to take that back because we can’t have friends over for any reason, and then i take back the take back because it might be months from now, and that might be ok again. (sigh).

family in the time of our ‘rona

sometimes, relationships get ill. other times, they were born that way.

as this pandemic rolls out, and the weeks of social distancing keep compounding, those of us who have been doing the work to heal from family-related trauma are faced with the ever-present question of, “to reach out, or not to reach out?”

to quote a dear friend last week-“i don’t want them to die, but i still don’t trust them”.

exactly. my conclusion at that point, and still (i think), is that i’ve gotten to the point where i am not reaching out just to reach out-like all of the holidaze that have been jammed down our throats. also-my phone is not broken, and neither are their arms, so i don’t have to be the one that’s always doing the reaching either.

i told the tragic story of how i narrowly had a puppy for a blink of an eye when i was a kid recently at work. i’m sure i’ve gone into it here, so there’s no need to drag that out again. the relevance of it that i’m going to pick up on here is that my cousin, with whom i have always had a complicated relationship, has also grown up thinking that the puppy was her dog.

technically, he was her mother’s dog. but i was the one that he selected initially, and she was the one that held his paw when he was put down, probably fifteen years ago now.

i found this out when i went home in 2016. that was also when i introduced her to duolingo. for four years, she has made little use of her account. imagine my surprise when lately, she has surfaced and is getting so many xp that it seems impossible that she is not cheating. the other change is her user name, which is now my dog’s name and her last name.

with full acknowledgement that i am a little bit broken (and so is my entire family, obvi) i can’t help but feel like these petty moves are her way of letting me know that she is fine, and i don’t need to contact her.

don’t worry, i won’t.

love is blind

i usually don’t watch the shows that everyone is watching. firstly, because i don’t have tv or streaming services, secondly because-“meh”. but when a show reaches many people in my circles who otherwise would have little in common, my curiosity is piqued. (i wasn’t the only one, and almost fell out of my chair when i heard luvvie ajayi refer to amber as “hobosexual”-dating because you are homeless- when recently catching up on the back episodes of her podcast).

because i was quarantined with kitties and netflix, i tucked into this ten-episode debacle and was admittedly charmed by its premise. i have never understood the “guilty pleasures” of feminists that are the dating reality shows that have been on offer up to this point-but this is different in the way that it seems more “egalitarian”. rather than one person with a bevy of admirers, it’s equal numbers (i mean, the heteronormativity has yet to be accounted for, but there’s gotta be a way), even though they are vying for the same impossible goal of proposing/getting proposed to sight unseen. i feel like there was one in between all of this when someone was behind a screen and folx would try to win their affection and the goal of every 30-minute episode was a proposal- when i was doing childcare after i had quit my long-term service job, at least 40% of my time was spent with the feminist scholar mother who was hooked on all of these shows.

in a lot of ways, this is the stuff that ‘rona dreams are made of. it’s charming to imagine a world where you can get to know someone without the distractions of outside influences like the internet, the world, and your friends and family, but especially within the context of the present where it’s now taboo to hang out in person or touch anyone, it reads like a fairy tale.

one that comes to a full crash and burn as soon as those other elements are re-introduced, and it’s a spectacle to watch everything unravel for these people once that happened. the part i don’t understand is the timeline-why does everything have to happen so quickly-only for tv? because that really ups the ante-remember it is six weeks total to “date” in the pod, propose and accept, go on a pre-honeymoon, shack up, plan a wedding, tell your family and friends, and then actually walk down the aisle (or not).

and of course, that’s a lot of leeway for things to get messy. and honestly, i’m not sure it’s “romantic” to actually “make it” through all of this-i think it’s actually healthy and self-aware to reject these stress-full circumstances. i think it’s worth mentioning that some folx feel torn about giving up their homes and their independence, while others couldn’t wait to move in and shackle their debt onto someone else. some folx were just lying to themselves the whole time (and had a seemingly inexhaustible wardrobe of dumb vests and stringed instruments), others were determined to overreact (and not deal with their internalized misogyny), some people were just immature and hilarious in their fits, and some people really read as latent serial killers. and the drinking-how can we not mention that folks were just constantly drinking their way through life? i can’t say i had a “favourite” here-i think i just disliked them equally, but not enough not to watch them stumble through.

why were jessica and mark the only ones that were slated to get married in that hotel and not that same plantation house, tho? if they ever explained that, i missed it.

the reunion episode was a thing-how did barnett get andrew wiggins’ draft day suit jacket tho? why was amber still so mad at jessica when it was her man who told her that she was his number one? why was mark still such a herb? how awkward was that non-proposal “friendship” proposal where he “went to the bottom of the pool” to get the ring back?

overall, this was a social experiment heavily bolstered by the ‘rona, and i will probably watch season two because i want to know how they are going to make it different for the next folx. but can they get john legend and chrissy tiegen to host it tho?

’80s working woman casserole

i have always believed that cooking is therapy. i recently remembered a recipe that was introduced to me by a woman that my dad had an inappropriate relationship with when i was young. there were many such women, and thus, many such lessons.

first of all-to my knowledge, my dad did not have sexual relations with this woman. he did go to university with her in japan, and when they discovered that they had both had families and ended up in vancouver together, they decided to force their children to be friends.

i have since lost touch with her kids, but we did count years that we were friends-it was just never clear whether or not our folks were actually friends, or on the forefront of frenemy lines. the reason for this is that it seemed like my dad and this woman seemed to gang up on her husband for not being the breadwinner of the family, and that was weird and confusing for us. i know that on car rides to and from their house, my dad continued to badmouth this man, who, in retrospect, was understandably insecure, but it was completely inappropriate. the woman was lovely to me, getting me questionable gifts, like a shiseido skincare kit, which would make sense now, but at the time, i was eleven.

one particular day, we were returning to her house after going on a field trip for cheap skates or skis or some other winter sport equipment, and we came into her kitchen as she was drinking a giant glass of wine and pouring a can of cream of mushroom soup into a bowl of raw chicken and putting the entire thing into the microwave.

she must have seen the look of horror on my face because she explained, “this is how you make dinner if you are busy all day earning the money to support your whole family but your husband still expects you to cook.”

i was concerned that it was not foodsafe, but both her and my father laughed that off-they were food scientists-i wasn’t even in junior high.

i don’t know if was the ‘rona or what, but i recently had a hankering for this.

so i adapted the recipe a bit-i used some very high quality chicken supremes, which i browned on the stovetop, then stirred in some onions, and then added the can of soup, covered, and let simmer for almost 45 minutes. right before the end, i threw in three generous handfuls of spinach and when that wilted, i served myself a generous helping over butternut squash and potato mash.

how’s that for a reboot of a “classic?” let me just go ahead and write that ‘2020’s working woman who is smart enough not to ever get a husband cookbook. 

queen of the south-season two

and, we are home. back to watching the one television show that i was able to borrow on dvd before the city shut down. it’s more of the same dramatic music, bad television overacting, and woman-centric bilingual cartel content that hooked me in season one.

this time, i feel like we are getting closer to the shift of the power dynamic between teresa and camila, like when we saw the tables turn between glenn close and rose bryne in damages. i’m so here for how expendable the men are, and appreciate the continued discourse around loyalty, family, and weakness.

i’m not gonna lie, i had nightmares about being forcefed beetles, and having to choose to kill my loved ones, but that might’ve be ‘rona-related stress.

i am also not confident about how the backstory snippets are introduced, and whether or not they will make sense in the end, but i’m still here for season three, whenever i can get it.

also-because i recently finished jane the virgin at the cat house, i now know for sure that justina machado was darci on the show-that was really stumping me.