thank you notes 10/23

i'm thankful that a friend asked me during a video chat on friday if d and i wanted to hang out irl this weekend and am thankful that after checkingw ith d i said yes. i'm thankful that i was apprehensive, as i always am before social situations, but am thankful that it was of course lots of fun and we had good conversations about work, relationships, art, cats, and the internet (the important topics). i'm thankful that we all ate from a communal bowl of halloween candy that d and i bought (i'm thankful for the mega-sized halloween candy assortment, which is one of my most favorite examples of american excess). 

i'm thankful that our friend feels comfortable talking to d and i about their recent thoughts and actions regarding their gender presentation and am thankful that they really appreciated the bag of excess cosmetics and nail polish d gave them. i'm thankful they shared their impressive technical skills and knowledge regarding an arcane topic that we are interested in. i'm thankful for the neat notes that d took in ink in her notebook. i'm thankful because i feel a kinship with them i included them when making a statement about "our generation" and then clarified self-consciously "i am including you in that even though you are much younger than we are."

i'm thankful that we had a great time but am also thankful that eventually our friend left and we were alone in the peace of our house again. i'm thankful to have turned off the ceiling fan because it's not necessary anymore. i'm thankful that there is a great neighborhood chinese restaurant where i ordered barbecued pig intestines, because i like to try interesting things. i'm thankful to say something gross and to spin out this sentence a bit to give you a chance to get away from this sentence and skip to the next paragraph if you don't want to read something gross and last chance okay when i was eating my first bite of the intestines, there was this very striking note that i can only describe as tasting what i assume from the smell that shit might taste like. i'm thankful that the other bites of it that i had didn't really taste like that (and were very good) but am thankful for the unique mental experience of having that in my mind as i ate, which is not something i think i'll choose to repeat but which i'm glad to have had once. 

i'm thankful for the first two episodes of the new season of black mirror, which were painfully bleak but powerful experiences. i'm thankful after the one yesterday, about a too real form of augmented reality, that we had an episode of the great british bakeoff to watch to come down from the bummer. i'm thankful for selasi's incredible floral piping skills. i'm thankful for this article about the complexities of simulating eyes in video games. i'm thankful for the brief shot in the last episode of westworld demonstrating a droid's eyeball being fabricated. i'm thankful that a new episode of westworld is on tonight. i'm thankful to have access to my parents' hbo go account (and am thankful that we gave them access to our netflix account). i'm thankful that they taught us about the ps4 hbo go app, which is much better than the old computer and HDMI cable solution we were using. i'm thankful for moments when my parents can teach me something new about technology, which i know makes them feel happy as well.

i'm thankful for this review of the new bridget jones book from molly young, which uses a metaphorical oreo first as a dig ("Comparing her with the great diarists of fiction — Humbert Humbert, Cassandra Mortmain — is like comparing an Oreo to a gâteau de mille feuilles") and then as a kind of compliment ("The newest of the Bridget Jones chronicles is, like all of Helen Fielding’s novels, well paced and well crafted, as symmetrical and solidly constructed as an Oreo, after all"). i'm thankful for the beautiful video that kanye made for kim for her birthday. i'm thankful for the mission to save vanishing internet art. i'm thankful for this essay exploring how the "idealized audience is a thing you forever create and that creates you at the same time." i'm thankful to have realized that in two weeks, i will have been sending these notes for a year.