Give yourself a break.

Did you watch the thing last night? You did? Listen: I know you are living with guilt and shame. I know you’ve done bad things — we all have. We’ve all done things we can never forget and can never truly make amends for. We walk around with sadness and regret and we search out punishment because it’s the only thing we can do to show ourselves how sorry we are. I want you to take this to heart, okay? Nothing you have done is so terrible that you deserve to subject yourself to anything like what happened last night. I am not saying you should forgive yourself completely, but do not let your misguided sense of repentance force you to endure that kind of punishment again. No one is that much of a monster.

Okay, now that we’ve cleared that up, here’s some moody music for a gray day. Enjoy.

★★ It was not cold enough to put the parka on while rushing too late for the train for the flight arriving too early. The low brown haze that had been over New Jersey from the Manhattan window was still there from New Jersey proper. Shades of tan rippled through the marshes as the seed heads on the grass changed position relative to the train. Certainly by the return to Manhattan, with children and luggage, the temperature was out of parka range. A change of coat later, it was the thick warm socks that were too much. A rat and its shadow moved through a blue patch of daylight in the express track bed. By evening, the temperature had crept up again till the light wool felt as excessive as stormproof insulation had felt at lunchtime.

A Listicle Without Commentary

30. Buttermilk Ranch Dressing

29. Cape Cod Potato Chips

28. Harissa

27. Stale beer

26. Chinese-style hot mustard

25. Mirepoix

24. Beef Bourguignon

23. Sichuan spicy cucumber salad

22. Gougères

21. Mushroom risotto

20. Leek tart

19. Balsamic cippolini

18. Taco seasoning

17. San Gennaro sausage and pepper

16. Fresh sourdough bread

15. Curry rice

14. Smoked ham

13. Parmesan crisps

12. Buffalo sauce

11. Chick-fil-a

10. Seared pork chop

9. Popeyes biscuits

8. Toasted sesame oil

7. Soft pretzel

6. Frying bacon

5. McDonald’s French fries

4. Roast chicken

3. White truffle shavings over fresh pasta

2. Corn dog

1. Sautéed shallots

A request

Here’s the thing: We think you’re terrific, and really smart, and we’re very impressed by how well-read you are. Your ability to reference both the great works of antiquity and up-to-the-minute pop performances clearly marks you out as someone who has his finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist and can seamlessly integrate it with the larger cultural conversation to demonstrate a flawless fluency in all forms of expression up and down the historical chain. No one doubts just how much you know and how adept you are at adapting that knowledge into a perspicacious evaluation of what we’re searching for in these troubled times. But do us a favor, please: Stop talking about Walter Benjamin so much.

We get it: Walter Benjamin was an incredibly impressive figure. It’s hard to appreciate, even now, just how far-seeing he was, how relevant his insights are to today. No one is arguing that. We could sit here all day and talk about how the themes of “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” resonate down to this very moment and still be able to continue the conversation into next week. But that doesn’t mean we want to. Or need to. For the thousandth time. As if we had never heard about it before. From you or someone exactly like you.

Look, you’re a great kid. You’re remarkably articulate in the language of theory that we have decided signifies profundity in our era, particularly when you apply it to something seemingly unable to support such interpretation, like a Beyonce birth announcement or a sophisticated soap opera set in the Sixties. Really, you’re amazing at it. We can tell you did all the work. And we know it’s a lot to get through — even Berliner Kindheit um 1900 makes reading Judith Butler seem like reading Judy Blume. We’re very clear: Walter Benjamin was a genius, and you want us all to know that (and know that you know that). But give it a rest already, okay? Jürgen Habermas is still with us. Why don’t you let him have a little time in the sun? Thank you.

Talking about singing with Christine Friar and Kevin Nguyen.

No matter who you are or where you live or what you look like or how old you are, you probably have a strong opinion about karaoke. What’s your go-to song? Mine is “Goodnight, I’m Going To Bed, Please Don’t Make A Big Thing Of Me Leaving, I’ll Venmo You Tomorrow.”

[WATCH THIS SPACE FOR A SOUNDCLOUD LINK IF AND WHEN THE INTERNET EVER COMES BACK]

Amazon S3 is down. You might not know what it is, but if more-or-less anything you use on the internet isn’t working correctly, that’s why

 — @_alastair

Related, some suggestions:

Sing This Not That

Let the healing begin, patriots!

The health care crisis in the United States is not the result of too few Americans enjoying access to health insurance, but too many. After all, the long Obamacare nightmare from which we will soon (Congress willing) awake has only served to undermine America’s native moxie. Did our Pilgrim and pioneer forebears race screaming to an insurance rep every time Johnny was concussed by a rambunctious plow horse or little Ellie was savaged by wolverines? They did not! They took matters into their own capable hands. In light of their example — and as elected officials bravely work to repeal the Affordable Care Act, effectively freeing millions of Americans from the Nanny State’s shackles — let us recall some sensible remedies to common ailments that were familiar to Americans long before elitist fads like x-rays, preventive care and affordable antibiotics turned us all into milksops.

The Trouble: The Marthambles, a.k.a, Sailor’s Lament, or Isaac’s Pillory
The Treatment: Blanch four pussy willow catkins in brine. While concoction cools, make a rosary of yew-berries. Loop rosary thrice around right wrist. Mix briny catkins with gunpowder. Load musket. Face south. Fire. Repeat at other cardinal compass points.

The Trouble: Ear Overkill
The Treatment: Place affected ear flat against top of nearest stone wall during fife and drum muster. If both ears are affected, cup one and then the other, quickly alternating between the two, using a tin beaker cooled in the nearest stream. Do not stand on one foot nor on both feet during treatment but have both feet in motion, without appearing to dance, throughout.

The Trouble: Davey’s Slow Toe
The Treatment: Apply moist heat to the leaner flank of the family’s second-best cow. Pray for a whirlwind.

The Trouble: Sinner’s Rhubarb
The Treatment: In early stage, tuck mint sprigs behind patient’s eyelids in order to distract him (or, less commonly, her) from pendulous groin buboes. If symptoms intensify, or laughter grows sardonic, place two fox pups beneath an upside-down canoe, sit the patient three furlongs from least-righteous neighbor’s barn and orally administer heroic doses of powdered cochineal via oak and deerskin bellows.

The Trouble: Bowel Monkeys
The Treatment: Avoid wheat, barley, and rye. And monkeys.

The Trouble: Cranial Wereshadows
The Treatment: Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection nor be cynical about love. For in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings, for many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Also, apply a leech behind each ear.

The Trouble: Abigail’s Woe, a.k.a, Jacob’s Shame
The Treatment: A dozen raw oysters, a half-gallon of hard cider, and a fiddle played soft and low. Rare but serious side effects include extended appearances by the beast with two backs and sudden-onset dry-humping.

The Trouble: Freethinker’s Palsy
The Treatment: Heat a kettle of salt water to boiling. Pour one imperial pint of scalding water into an iron funnel, plugged at the spout with a parson’s kerchief. Drip water into sufferer’s throat until imagination is becalmed, or blessed oblivion drowns him.

The Trouble: Horse-and-Goat Mouth
The Treatment: Powder of one dried bog onion — also known as Jack-in-the-pulpit, Jane-in-the-dungeon, Marvin-in-the-sarcophagus, and Indian turnip — liberally sprinkled on oat cake. Bury oat cake in graveyard when wind is from the west. Apologize to horse and goat.

The Trouble: Moon Fever
The Treatment: Before attempting treatment, confirm diagnosis, as Moon Fever closely resembles and is often mistaken for the far more noxious malady, Falstaff’s Gullet. If clearly the former, dunk the village’s eldest maiden in the deepest part of the parish’s smallest pond. Repeat until fever lifts. If the former, entrap village’s oldest bachelor for one night beneath wealthiest citizen’s porch. Note: If wealthiest citizen is also village’s oldest bachelor, raze village and rebuild exact replica 30 miles due north.

The Trouble: Goode and Plentye
The Treatment: Adhere to community’s creed: Feed a cold, starve a Papist.

The Trouble: The Red Tenders, a.k.a, Beelzebub’s Handmaiden and, in the marshes of eastern Rhode Island, a Sucking Chest Wound
The Treatment: Obtain three large sheets of birch bark. Secure each to each with catamount sinew. Brace with baleen. Arc sheets above silver gimbals in which unscented candles burn for three days and one night. Disengage sinew and baleen from bark. Join sheets of bark together once again, using wax from hand-dipped candle to seal at seams. Use resulting structure as a shroud; Beelzebub’s Handmaiden is a remorseless, deathly bitch.

Laissez les etc.

If you can’t be in New Orleans for Mardi Gras today you can at least get pretty drunk wherever you are and pretend. Here is some music to get you started; you will have to provide the alcohol. Enjoy!

And, as we do every year here, we remind you to not be alarmed tomorrow when you see people walking around with ash smeared across their foreheads. It’s a thing.

★★★★ The wind-buffeted night gave onto a clear, light-blue morning. It was cold out again, as if nothing had happened. A stroller held a quilted baby bag that may or may not have held a baby under all the padding. A man had set up peacefully and inconspicuously in the corner of the ATM vestibule with his bags. Walking was easy enough to do. The slender clouds out the window looked like the same clouds all day long, right till they changed color and the sun went down.

There are some interesting sounds happening here.

This one’s from the latest installment of Superpitcher’s Golden Ravedays project, and if you can get past the, ah, unusual nature of “primal animal poetry all the way from forests long forgotten” you will find several things to potentially enjoy. Or not. It’s 5 PM on a Monday, though, what have you got to lose? Good luck.

On the semiotics of menswear.

When Umberto Eco died a year ago last week, the field of semiotics lost a mind that didn’t shy away from fully expositing on whatever pop culture curiosity gripped his attention. Or, in the case of his 1976 essay “Lumbar Thought,” the jeans that literally had him by the balls. This gift (or compulsion) earned him loyal readers outside of academia, and the scorn of others like Ian Thomson who called Eco’s bestseller The Name of the Rose a “baggage of arcane erudition … designed to flatter the average reader’s’ intelligence.”

On the anniversary of his death, I’ll remember Eco for his contribution to the menswear genre. “Lumbar Thought’”s thesis, that “syntactic structures of fashions also influence our view of the world” seems tailored to men’s streetwear, in which the double entendre of ‘fit’ (both ‘outfit’ and relationship to body) pervades. The essay frankly concludes, “A garment that squeezes the testicles makes a man think differently.”

I spent an evening tracing the origin of ‘fit’ as shorthand for outfit, and I like to think Eco would approve of this activity. On 12-year-old reddit, ‘fit’ appears three years ago. LurkersFC asks in r/malefashion, “Where do you draw the line between dope fit and cosplay?” (He really was a lurker, it’s the only post that the redditor ever made.) On Twitter, the first major streetwear blog to employ ‘fit’ was Hypebeast on May 29th, 2009 with a tweet about the new Budweiser x Supreme collection. Hypebeast had joined Twitter just nine days prior. In contrast, Complex– which joined Twitter in February 2008– did not have its FUF (First Use of Fit) until 2011 when Terrell Owens “[rocked] an unforgivable ‘fit at Sundance.” And Four Pins, tonally best described as an anime character that’s into clothes and also about to drop a mixtape, had its FUF in 2014– two years into its Twitter presence. Trust me, they are making up for lost time now.

This is what you need to complete your Budweiser x Supreme fit this summer… http://bit.ly/SDsB5 @eugenekan

 — @HYPEBEAST

Online arbiter of slang Urban Dictionary has had ‘fit’ on the books since 1999, the year of its founding. Meanwhile, the editors of The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (Routledge, 2005) credit two white academics with recording the usage—David Claerbaut, author of Black Jargon in White America (1972) and Connie Eble, a UNC professor who mined her students for campus lingo and is best known for propagating “shit happens.” But the oldest usage of ‘fit’ I could find, and the most illuminating, is in Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang (1998) where it’s traced to African-Americans in the 1950s- 60s: “a suit of clothes, esp. a well-cut garment.”

Eco would have had a field day with the whole concept of rating someone’s fit. When it came to denim, he was chiefly concerned with its effect on his “interior-ness.” The shape of the pants, and the way they constricted his movement, changed the way Eco carried himself. “I lived for my jeans, and as a result I assumed the exterior behavior of one who wears jeans. In any case, I assumed a demeanor.” This led Eco to empathize with any woman “enslaved chiefly because the clothing counseled for her forced her psychologically to live for the exterior.”

So, where do you draw the line between dope fit and cosplay? Is any article of clothing that requires a certain “demeanor” therefore inauthentic to one’s true self, or is forced posture the very nature of clothes? “A human race that has learned to move about in shoes has oriented its thought differently from the way it would have done if the race had gone barefoot,” writes Eco. Before, we were callused barbarians; now, we are thin-soled ones. “I guess when we get down to it, everything we wear is a costume of some sort,” one redditor replied to LurkersFC. To invite outside critique of one’s style is to allow intrusion into the constructed self—but to interrogate one’s own style? Well, that’s just good semiotics.

So what does Four Pins have in common with “Lumbar Thought?” Heteroconsciousness. No really, it’s the word Eco uses to describe his preoccupation with “the relationship between me and my pants, and the relationship between my pants and me and the society we lived in” anytime he puts them on. It’s a sneakerhead’s Vagina Monologues. Four decades ago, Eco perfectly captured the interior/exterior division that fuels so much of men’s street style today. You can sleep on someone else’s fit, but you can’t sleep on your own.

Daisy Alioto’s work has appeared in Travel + Leisure, Wallpaper* and Curbed.