3/23/17

i'm thankful to have finished parable of the talents, which i thought was going to be longer and then ended quite suddenly. i'm thankful (slight spoilers for the rest of the paragraph) that the interesting ambiguity over the earthseed religion, between lauren's portrayal of it and then the frame narrative where her daughter provides her more cynical perspective, continues on to the end. i'm thankful that octavia butler resists the easy and obvious resolution that many writers (probably me included) would have chosen for the characters and pushes to something harder and truer. i'm thankful that i don't know what i will read next, that i may dip back into portraits or another nonfiction book for a while but might also read exit west, which i've heard is great.

i'm thankful for the japanese episodes of terrace house: aloha state we are watching over the VPN that d set up. i'm thankful for how good the japanese soundtrack is and how it takes an amazing show to another level. i'm thankful for a recent episode which featured sublime's "santeria" (which i deeply loved as an adolescent and is still lodged in me) as an intro song, taylor swift's "new romantics" as the theme (i'm thankful also for the melancholy piano cover of the song they use elsewhere), sharon van etten's "our love" over a scene of two people starting to connect with each other, and the yeah yeah yeahs' "heads will roll" over a manic conversation where a character confessed her love for someone else. i'm thankful that in the most recent episode we watched they used "our love" (which i think is a perfect song) again over a long and quiet and incredibly intimate scene of two people newly in love lying on a couch and snuggling, him holding his phone over the two of them so that they can look at funny things on the internet, her head nuzzled against his chest, the glow of the phone hanging on their faces.

i'm thankful that d and i are going out for korean barbecue tonight at the korean restaurant on the other side of town that does it so well. i'm thankful to remember early on in our relationship when i came home to my apartment and she surprised me by having set up an indoor electric grill and all the fixings for samgyeopsal, which i hadn't eaten since i lived in korea. i'm thankful for how wonderful that meal was, and how moving. i'm thankful that tonight we will get bulgogi and kalbi and perhaps some soup in hot stone bowls. i'm thankful that though i don't normally like going out in the evening in the middle of the week (or to be honest, ever really at all), i will be looking forward to this all day long.

i'm thankful, even though i don't like jimmy fallon, for this incredible segment on his show in which keri russell and 2 chainz play a guessing game against aaron paul and gucci mane. i'm thankful to see these wonderful people together in the same place. i'm thankful for this bit of doggerel (i'm thankful for the word doggerel), which i thought was a spot-on parody of phillip larkin but was actually written by phillip larkin. i'm thankful always for jia tolentino. i'm thankful for this weird mushroom and this sad pillow. i'm thankful for this new video game, which sounds cool as hell. i'm thankful for images you can't unsee.