★★★ Crumbs of packing foam swirled on the ground like loose snow. Pigeons blasted away from their roosting spot, low and straight, clattering barely above head height. The sky was a winter sky again, a scleral white. Enough sun came thorough to flash on a penny as a man stooped to pick it up from the sidewalk. The clouds kept thinning till the white was blue and then the blue deepened. The wind raised tears and the sun glittered in them.

Is it time to be less cynical?

An important thing to remember in these troubled times is to disregard anyone who tells you there is only one way to be, and to constantly question why they are telling you that. When someone tells you not to protest against a certain issue because it will not resonate with the public and there are more important issues to fight for, ask yourself if what they are really trying to tell you is that you should actually be protesting for the thing they are advocating. When someone tells you that you should ignore certain actions because they are just theater and “everyone” knows that they don’t have any significance, ask yourself who “everyone” is and what kind of company that person thinks he is including himself in when he makes that statement. When someone tells you that demonstrations will only antagonize the people who support an immoral law and you are better off relying on the system to resolve things, ask yourself why you shouldn’t tell them to go fuck themselves, and then when the answer is “no reason,” tell them to go fuck themselves.

That said, Leah Finnegan of Leah Letter, which one cultural commentator has called “the best bit of opt-in dyspepsia available these days,” offers this.

How should a person be in the age of Trump? When everything is bad, it’s not mentally helpful to think that the bad things are even worse than they appear. Cynicism can be the lye to the grease of neoliberalism, but under schizophrenic despots with fascist tendencies, it doesn’t effectively function as an antidote to the absurd, dangerous, or terrifying…. The director Errol Morris tweeted yesterday: “I’m disappointed in myself. I like to think of myself as a cynical person. But it turns out I’m wrong. I care deeply and am horrified.” My mode of coping with the world must change because there is no other option.

You are still allowed to be cynical — frankly, who could stop you? — but it is not a bad idea to think about some of the things said here. You are certainly capable of toggling back and forth between cynicism and sincerity as necessary. Both are going to be very important over the next few years.

What is going on?

The Nevada City Beer Diaries

Many Americans will look upon the weekend of January 21–23 as our first under a brutally stupid and unattractive fascist president. But for me — even though I spent Friday going “Oh, shit, oh shit” and Saturday the 21st at the Women’s March in Sacramento — it will always be the weekend I rediscovered my Cuisinart.

My Cuisinart has been under my sink since Thanksgiving 2015, when I made truffle-cheese scalloped potatoes. They were amazing, and it would have taken a really long time and probably been impossible to slice them as thin and perfectly at the food processor did. But after that, I just decided that the thing was a pain. Every time I saw a recipe with the words “food processor” I would be like, “Ugh, I am not walking all the way over to the cabinet under the sink and bending all the way over and getting that thing out and rinsing that thing with hot water and drying it off.”

Well I am here to tell you that Cuisinarts are not a pain. They are amazing. I will never ignore my Cuisinart again. Actually that is bullshit. I have no doubt that I will at some point in the not-too-distant future decide that my Cuisinart sucks, just the way I was like “pink pussy hats are stupid” and then jumped up and down like a 10-year-old girl when someone gave me one and didn’t take it off for 36 hours, and also the way a few years ago I was like “I will never cook again, cooking is for chumps,” and am now Nevada County’s Premier Dungeons and Dragons Caterer.

Now, I hate fantasy. I hate it to the point where I have never seen The Princess Bride. (“You will love it!!!” — I promise you, I won’t.) As a child, I was beside myself when the Pevensie children left the cozy and delightful confines of their nursery for the nonsense of Narnia. So how did I become a D&D caterer? If you’re starting to suspect it has something to do with a man, all right, guilty as charged! My boyfriend Tor loves D&D. He leads a game almost every Sunday. I tried playing, but as I suspected, it was crushingly boring. I realize not all people find fantasy boring. I am not saying Fantasy Is Boring. It is just Boring To Me. I just can’t picture things that don’t actually exist, and when I try, my mind produces static.

So, I did what any normal person would do if their boyfriend played D&D all day Sunday: I decided to collect enough money to cover the cost of the food and cook and clean while listening to classics in realist fiction. I have only been doing this for a month, and have been listening to British actress Juliet Stevenson reading Middlemarch the entire time. I am almost done. (Next on my list: Alan Rickman reading The Return of the Native.) I would also like to point out that half the D&D players are women. I don’t think I could make food for free for that many dudes. So far I have made meatloaf, pot roast, pork shoulder and, most recently, chicken thighs. I always make potatoes. Potatoes are fascism-fighting food.

I don’t know when I have had a string of hours in my life more delightful than those I spent two Sundays afternoons ago with the Cook’s Illustrated “MEATS” edition, spread open on the kitchen table dotted with oil-soaked mint and cilantro, making elaborate but deceptively simple dipping sauces in my Cuisinart as I listened to Juliet Stevenson’s expressive — at times a bit too expressive— narration. Every once in a while a D&D player in the adjoining dining room would ask a question like “Did you say cyborg or sideboard?” (the answer was actually sideboard) or “How many rations do we have left?” or “Hey, how come no one ever buys the rowboat?” I was happy to be sort of a part of things and sort of apart. I felt mildly proud of my boyfriend, kind of like in between how I might feel if he were elected to Congress and how I might feel if he were a dog who got along with all the other dogs at the park.

Outside rain fell and it turned to heavy, thick snow. I made chicken thighs, and, to go on them, a minty shallot sauce and some other sauce with pumpkin seeds and cilantro. I realized, feeling stupid, that the only difference between people who make dipping sauces and people who never do is the willingness to crouch down and get the Cuisinart out from under the sink.

Cook’s Illustrated is so dorky and serious about everything: “We tested this recipe 1000 times and even made it one time on a space station to see if that change in atmosphere allowed the cheese melt more evenly.” I am pretty sure everyone in that office loved the shit out of Hillary Clinton. They are all about “doing your homework.” Still, I feel like their recipes are only so-so at times. The chicken thighs were fine, but I have made better chicken thighs acting on instinct. Also, they told me to microwave a poblano pepper, then roast it in foil, then peel it. It was like trying to peel a piece of paper. Also, the stupid pepper didn’t need to be peeled. It was fine. No one gets extra points for working harder, Cook’s Illustrated. Haven’t you been reading the news?

I also made roasted potatoes and a salad. I made the salad dressing — olive oil, apple cider vinegar, garlic, dried mustard — in the Cuisinart. Did I mention that I love that thing?

Part of the deal of my being the D&D caterer is that the dish has to have relevance to the game. It is pretty loose. It is not like this bonkers-in-a-good-way lady, “The Bardic Chef.” My boyfriend and I simply have a little confab before the meal where he tells me things like, “We just killed a swamp buffalo, so you could make a stew and call it “swamp buffalo stew” or “they just harvested some wild apples so you can make something with apples.” This week he told me that there were these things called Forest Chickens floating around fictional D&D town of No Regrets, so when I served the meal I was like, this is Forest Chicken, these are the vegetables that came from Hans’s garden (Hans is the gate guard of No Regrets). I am not sure how much this performance registers with the players, but at least we have a protocol. After the last week in America I think everyone can agree that protocol is important. It also feels wonderfully cozy, which is fucking sad.

People generally bring their own drinks to D&D. But as I was cooking I realized that I really had to go out and get a growler of Emerald Pool IPA at Three Forks, a restaurant in Nevada City. This is the perfect beer. It is the Darn Tough socks, the Davines Conditioner, the American Apparel tank top of beer. I haven’t been drinking wine lately because, like you, I have been in an “Oh, whatever, fuck it!” mood. The kind of mood where you just want to chug beer and don’t care at all if you’re getting really fat.

And this is the beer to chug. It’s creamy but just a little sharp, aromatic but not overpowering. For the last few weeks, nothing in the world has tasted as good as this beer. Let me rephrase this — for the last few weeks, nothing in the world has tasted good but this beer. It takes you into fantastical almost unreal realms appropriate to D&D but it is also rich and grounding, just the thing to drink while listening to that scene toward the end of Middlemarch, the one between Will Ladislaw and Rosamond Lydgate, where, in my opinion, he is not very nice to her.

Gotcha.

Here’s something I’ve been noticing the past ten days: I only want to click on devastatingly heartbreaking links. As this new presidency lurches forward like a rusty mine cart in a tunnel to the earth’s molten core, you’d think maybe I’d be more interested in content from Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary or something—stuff that’s light and life-affirming—but no. I even feel a little offended seeing things in my feed that aren’t cataclysmic in nature. How dare someone tweet about parking, or Instagram their Crunchwrap Supreme, during a time like this?

Apparently, though, I am not a freak. At least according to University of Michigan political science professor and social researcher Stuart Soroka, who studies how our brains respond to news content. According to him, we as a species might be “neurologically or physiologically predisposed” to focus on negative information:

It is evolutionarily advantageous to prioritise negative information… because the potential costs of negative information far outweigh the potential benefits of positive information.

So basically, your animal brain is always worried about dying, and negative information is quite likely the information that will contain clues about potential bodily dangers, so your brain stars all of those messages in its inbox. “Hm, seems bad,” it says, marking Steve Bannon’s face as unread. “Better hang onto this in case it tries to kill me later.”

Our findings suggest that negative network news content, in comparison with positive news content, tends to increase both arousal and attentiveness. In contrast, positive news content has an imperceptible impact on the physiological measures we focus on. Indeed, physiologically speaking, a positive news story is not very different from the gray screen we show participants between news stories.

In addition to seeking out that negative news, we’re also hard-wired to focus better on negative things whether we want to or not. Even people who claim to prefer positive news respond more to negative headlines in a controlled study, like this one Soroka ran with Marc Trussler at McGill University. Subjects were given a menu of links to click on and told to select an article to read all the way through—the tone of the pieces ranged from negative to positive. Subjects thought they were being tested for how their eyes behaved while they were reading, and that the topics covered in the articles didn’t matter, but scientists were actually monitoring which links got chosen from the menu most often:

Participants often chose stories with a negative tone — corruption, set-backs, hypocrisy and so on — rather than neutral or positive stories. People who were more interested in current affairs and politics were particularly likely to choose the bad news. And yet when asked, these people said they preferred good news. On average, they said that the media was too focussed on negative stories.

In other words, positive news is great, but because of those aforementioned concerns re: imminent danger, our brains don’t really get worked up about the good stuff long-term. Our brains with good news are like cartoon eight year olds getting a birthday card with nothing inside—thanks sincerely, but, ya know… on to the next present.

In lab experiments, flash the word “cancer”, “bomb” or “war” up at someone and they can hit a button in response quicker than if that word is “baby”, “smile” or “fun” (despite these pleasant words being slightly more common). We are also able to recognise negative words faster than positive words, and even tell that a word is going to be unpleasant before we can tell exactly what the word is going to be.

Basically: we’re horny for conflict. We can lie and say we’re not, we can seek out posi content until our fingers bleed, but at the end of the day, our neurological system is still quite invested in our continued non-perishing. So if there’s something negative within reach, it’s going to catch our eye, even when we don’t want it to.

I won’t say the words “self care” to you because I respect you too much, but the solution when you feel too inundated with bad information appears to be simply cutting off the flow of information for a second. If you catch yourself feeling stressed, water your plants. Take our the trash. Stare deeply into your pores in the mirror. Whatever gets you off. That little bit of a punctuation mark ends up being a fulfilling vacation from new data for your brain. Plus moving always bumps you up a few points mood-wise (and I’m not even talking exercise, I’m talking like… reaching for a plate in your cabinet).

It’s normal to be interested in the bad things on our screens, it turns out. We should just also maybe light a candle or something while we’re at it.

And other answers to unsolicited questions

“I am currently watching C-SPAN. Is this what my life is going to be like for the next four years? Protesting and writing to my representatives? What happened to my life?” — Not Usually Very Political Pete

I seriously doubt whether we’ll have constitutional crises every damned weekend going forward. Steve Bannon, Trump’s Senior Counselor who resembles a worn-out barcalounger that’s been left out in the rain to be eaten by raccoons, probably wants you to get tired of protesting and just accept the approaching White Supremacist-Leninist-Nihilist wave that’s piggybacking on Trump’s populist nonsense. They’re trying to overwhelm you with stupidity so you’ll feel overwhelmed, dispirited, like things are hopeless. Either the Trump people are geniuses who are slowly consolidating power to take over the entire American government or they’re morons who have no idea what they’re doing. Those two things can apparently look exactly the same.

One guy is predicting an American Reichstag Fire in the coming weeks. So, you might as well protest while you still can. You may wish you’d marched and called more representatives down the road. Lady Gaga will probably do some political thing that’s insane and amusing during Half Time at the Super Bowl and we’ll have tanks rolling down the streets of the major cities in time for the morning drive times.

The thing is, the President is incredibly sensitive. He apparently is really bummed out by his press coverage. Protests make him moody. His people can barely get through a typical news conference without bursting into tears. The White House sounds like it’s about as toxic a workplace as The Mad Men Show’s Grabass HQ.

Also, the President never really wanted to be President. He wanted to be treated like the President. But the guy does not like to read. And now his desk is just a giant pile of boring papers. He watches CNN because he gets bored during the day. Imagine that. Watching CNN to be entertained. That’s pretty bored.

Being President is a ton of work! You have to be some kind of work nerd to want to be President. Or, apparently, a person with a hole inside them that’s so large it can never be filled by anything but rancor.

The Administration is hitting every brown note on the xylophone. Today, LGBTQ people. Tomorrow, they will probably ban blonde old ladies in pant suits. Later in the week they will jail all cats. Everything you probably care about will be taken away from you and America will seem like the Romulan Empire for a while. We’re going to act like a country of frightened, selfish cowards for a while. Elections do have consequences and nothing is going to save us from the coming stupidity. Remind yourself this the next time you hear the “Candidate X and Candidate Y are practically the same” canard. There’s a huge difference between Coke and Pepsi. And you may not taste it until months later! Choose carefully! One may kill you and deport your friends!

But how are you going to get through all of this? I mean, that’s what’s most important. You. And your pals. Everyone’s just been pouting, stirring their drinks in a fog for the past few weeks. Politics is not a sport. You don’t have to check the scoreboard every few minutes to see if your team is winning. In this case it’s: HUMANITY vs. ASSHOLES. And the only winner so far is the maker of boxes that can be torn apart and made into protest signs.

So, yeah, they’re going to try to tire you out. Trump is going to fire the Acting Attorney General one night and wipe his ass with the Declaration of Independence the next. They’re going to try to make you throw up your arms and just give up. Never watch the news again and disappear into Netflix forever. That is definitely one way to go.

I don’t think Trump and his pals are going to last very long at this rate. Kellyanne hasn’t slept in in months. Jared Kushner’s lost 7 pounds. They’re suffering, people. But none more than the Hate Pumpkin at the top. It’s fun to be Pretend President. And it’s really difficult to be Real President. Especially when you’re Psychologically Not Up for the Job.

We may have to contact our reps. And show up with signs. And watch C-SPAN. Just not when they’re taking calls. Change the channel when they’re taking calls. You will be drawn directly into a K-Hole of nonsense. Save yourself. And also me. Somehow. Please.

I’m in awe of the bravery of Acting Attorney General Sally Yates. She stood up for what is right and was quickly fired by the jerks. I love America because of people like her. People who will do what’s right no matter what the cost. I would someday like to be like her. When I grow up. Possibly by next week when I turn 44.

Jim Behrle lives in Jersey City, NJ and works at a bookstore.

Episode Six: Powerlifting with Casey Johnston

Hello and welcome back to semi-regular installments of the Awl’s podcast! We’ll be exploring our guests’ answers to the question, “What’s Your Other Thing?” The idea is basically that people do their best writing and talking and research on subjects they care deeply about, and for many of us, that’s not our actual day jobs. This is the reigning philosophy behind most of the Awl’s recurring columns: dorky enthusiasms. Whether it’s listening to classical music, tasting wine, reviewing fancy candles, or lifting heavy weights. Our first guest this season is Casey Johnston, A.K.A. A Swole Woman. Her Other Thing is: powerlifting. Hope you enjoy!

More Tales From the Alt-Fright

Illustrations by Jason Novak

Once there was a man with a fine old coat that he wore everywhere he went. It had been handed down over many years in his village, and though it had grown a little frayed and faded with age it still protected him from the cold and kept him safe from the elements. Almost everyone agreed that it was the best coat you could wear, and many wished they had a coat just like it.

Now one day all the men from the town took one of their regular trips into the city. They passed through all the shops in the market, they changed money at the bank, and they generally took care of all the business they had come for. They were about to leave when they crossed the path of a wealthy merchant and his retinue.

The wealthy merchant eyed the man’s coat covetously. A bloated and unkempt member of his retinue whispered something in his ear.

“Say there,” said the wealthy merchant, “that coat has seen better days. Perhaps you should let me try it on. I am a wealthy merchant, and I know many things. I will make your coat better. See these loose buttons? I will make sure they don’t hang slack anymore. See this ripped lining? I will repair it so that you never see a tear.”

The man was nervous and unsure. To begin with, the buttons were not loose at all, and the lining seemed fine to him. Also, there seemed something untrustworthy about the wealthy merchant and his retinue. He consulted with his townsmen to see what he should do.

“Say no,” said the butcher. “The wealthy merchant is dangerous. I don’t think he is right in the head, either. See how unsteady on his feet he is. See how he keeps admiring himself in his hand mirror.”

“Say no,” said the baker. “I have heard that the wealthy merchant isn’t even all that wealthy, and what money he has comes from unsavory practices. He will surely steal the coins from your pockets and use them to enrich himself and his family.”

“Say no,” said the silversmith. “I don’t trust the men who congregate around him. That rumpled fellow with the red face and the shifty eyes seems dangerous and full of anger. Also, I have heard it whispered that the manager of money he has with him there secretly paid the local oaf to batter our town’s recorder of deeds.”

The man was prepared to politely decline the wealthy merchant’s request, when another member of his party spoke up.

“Say yes,” said the ploughman, who had grown jealous of the coat and worried that when it was next passed on it would not go to someone like him. “The wealthy merchant has a great deal of money, and surely he must be very wise to have accumulated such wealth. Only he can fix your coat.”

Before the man could protest that his coat did not need mending, the trader spoke up. “I also believe you should let him wear it. Why not take a chance?” Now the trader did not think that the wealthy merchant would really repair the coat, but he was fairly certain that while the wealthy merchant was wearing it money would fall out of the pockets which he, the trader, could grab.

So against the greater part of his judgment — against the far greater part of his judgment — the man handed his coat to the wealthy merchant, who smiled as if he had never been more pleased with himself and put it on. He immediately tore all the buttons from the coat and dug them into the ground with his heel. Then he tore out the lining and ripped it into little pieces in front of the group.

“He is ruining my coat,” shouted the man.

“Give him a chance,” said the trader. “He is only doing what he said he would do.”

“But he broke all the buttons and rent the lining asunder.”

“I’m sure he has his reasons and besides,” said the ploughman, “I didn’t see that and I don’t believe it when you tell me he did.”

The man returned to his home in anguish and despair. What could he do to get his coat back? And would it still be worth having when he got it? Even if he were able to wear it again, everyone would know that the wealthy merchant had worn it and they would never look at it the same way again. It had been tainted and stained. The man cried out in grief.

“The wealthy merchant got that coat fair and square,” yelled the ploughman, who had been passing by, through the window. “Stop being such a baby about it.”

The man spent several days in shock. He could not eat or sleep. His every moment was consumed with concern for his coat and worry over how he might take possession of it once more. Finally, he went to the wisest man in town, the doctor, and asked for advice.

“Now that the wealthy merchant has the coat I am not supposed to give you any aid,” said the doctor, “but let me tell you this: The only ones who can save you now are the women of the town. Go ask them for help.”

So the man went to find the women, but they were already gone. They didn’t want the wealthy merchant to have the coat either so they had taken it on themselves to get the coat back. And the moral of the story is that men are idiots and eventually they wind up needing the women to bail them out from the doltish things they do.

THE END
(for now)

How are you dealing with the night terrors?

What do you do when you wake in the dark and you can’t get yourself back to bed? When your mind is worrying about a million things, most of which you know you cannot resolve on your own? When the fears that used to be trivial and easily dismissed are now existential and entrenched? I feel like many of us are finding ourselves in this situation these days, so maybe it is best to share techniques for self-soothing before we all go crazy from lack of sleep. Here is what I do: I imagine a scenario where the aliens have decided that we represent too much of a danger to our planet and the universe, so they show up in their spaceships and turn us all into plants and animals. Mostly bees, actually, it seems like there’s a real need for more of them. I lie there trying to picture what the world looks like without us around, and I have to tell you, before I know it I am fast asleep, the troubles of the world far from my mind for a few hours. I think it’s pretty clear by now that human evolution was a big mistake for Earth. But that’s just me! I am open to suggestions. What works for you?

In the meantime, you’re probably still a little groggy. Here’s something energetic that should give you a bit of a boost. Enjoy.

★★★★A streaked and silvery uncertain sky resolved to blue at the zenith. Something in the rigging of a stoplight and signpost creaked. The cold was chomping at the ankles in their thin socks. Children went out to spend their energy in the sunshine and came back with piles of corroded pennies from a dry fountain.