squid party 07: happy pride you
end mammal supremacy
Happy pride and happy gemini season, everyone!! This is the time to run yourself into the ground so that when winter arrives, you welcome the long, lonely nights like an old frenemy. Who’s with me? Let’s schedule some back-to-back-to-back plans!
squid feature
You have all heard about gay dolphins, but have you heard about bisexual squids??? Most likely not! That’s because of the vertebrate lobby. Here at squidstack, we are putting in the work to change that.
Octopoteuthis deletron have glowing, detachable arms, and they are using them to fly the rainbow flag! They live in the Pacific Ocean at depths of 1,200 ft - 2,600 ft, and they grow up to 9.4 in long (ie. slightly longer than my foot)!
Because there are actually not many squid in the sea, O. deletron shoot their shot at any and all passing by O. deletron. They literally propel packets of sperm at them. The sperm then gets embedded into the receiving squid’s skin. If the receiving squid has eggs to fertilize, they will do it at their leisure (cephalopods modeling reproductive freedom, as always). If the recipient has no eggs though, they just wander around with glowing sperm on their bodies forever.
I acknowledge that throwing sperm at anyone you see isn’t really the same thing as human sexuality, and it is also not consensual. But also this squid is kind of bi, and that’s a victory for all of us!!
books
The people did not really like On Such A Full Sea. They shared that the long chunks of text without paragraph breaks and lack of dialogue made it hard to follow. W*ll and I both listened to this novel as an audiobook and loved it though. Consensus? Seems like you should listen to it instead of reading it unless your attention span is thriving (unlikely in 2023).
Reading Woman of Light was like floating down a lazy river, meandering through the 1860s so-called New Mexico to depression era Denver. It’s like sitting by the fire and listening to someone’s aunt tell the story of their family—engaging but not quite the same as being there. As the graph shows, there were a lot of snakes, very few nuns, and a non-linear plot line that takes a little bit to get used to. It was nice to read but not the best thing ever.
squid advisor 🐙
Chicken nuggets: Fully cooked!! Chicken! Patties!!!! Whenever you feel sad, whenever you are hungry, tired, wet, cold, chicken nuggets can help you. Just 1.5 minutes in microwave and you have yourself a complete meal. ALSO!!! If you put tonkatsu sauce on them, they become low quality, tiny chicken katsu. You can put them over rice or put them on bread to make katsu don or katsu sando.
DQ churro dip WITH CRUNCH COAT?: Did you know you can actually have it all? This hot tip comes courtesy of squid partier Er*n. I didn’t believe her at first (sorry 🫢). Mixing dip and crunch coat seemed…not peanut allergy safe. But then someone said, “if I had a peanut allergy, I’d stay very far away from DQ.” Good point. Combo dip/coat is crunchy, snappy, waxy, and a little bit weird looking. It keeps you guessing! Try it out next time and let me know what you think.
AYCE Sushi at Kyoto: at $40 per person (including tax and tip), Kyoto is an unbeatable deal. If you go to any other sushi place, you’ll easily spend that on 3 rolls. You eat the rolls, you leave a little hungry, you say, “well, I guess that’s just sushi.” At Kyoto, your $40 gets you as much fish as you can eat.
Their menu includes ~10 types of sushi/sashimi/handrolls, over 20 different types of rolls, an entire menu of hot food—fried rice, tempura, udon etc—and they have 3 subtly different types of ice cream for dessert!! At Kyoto, I always leave feeling very sleepy, a little bit sick (from overindulgence), and totally satisfied. Next time you go, try the sushi pizza. It’s not what you think it is.
Samsung fridges: bad. Samsung is being sued for making shoddy fridges. If someone in your life is thinking of buying a Samsung (or LG), save yourself the headache and skip it. Some guy said Maytag and Fridigaire were the way to go.
Okay, Netflix top 10 list—you got me! A week ago, I was lost, but now I am found…by this CW show, based on a true story, created by a (white?) woman who also wrote an episode or two of You.
At first, it struck me as yet another show peddling the American dream. The show tells the (semi-true) story of Spencer James, a talented teen from a Black neighborhood who moves to Beverly Hills to build a brighter future with talent, hard work, and heart. Kind of like The Blind Side (for which Sandra Bullock unfortunately won an Oscar), but in LA. Now that I’m 30 hours in, I can confirm that I was right but that it’s also so much more!
My favorite part of the show is how nicely the main characters treat each other. Yeah, there are a lot of soapy themes (like, who cheated, whose baby is that, are you my father). Sure, there are major plot lines that start abruptly and end even more abruptly. But there are also many heartwarming moments where teenagers share their truths, learn for their mistakes, and support each other through hard times (addiction, depression, police violence, racism (a little bit)). It is heartwarming to see these 28 year olds playing 17 year olds be so kind, thoughtful, and generous.
I would recommend All American if you want an uplifting sports story, and you need a show with 72 hours of content (ie. 5 seasons, 16 episodes per season, 45-minute episodes).
…Yellowjackets has gone off the deep end. I don’t think it’s “jumped the shark,” but it is a pretty different show than I thought it was going to be. It is bizarro land. The upside-down. Totally fucked. My only question at the end of season 2 is why now? How did these ladies make it 25 years before things started going bananas? Also the writing was kind of bad in episodes ~5-7. I will be tuning into season 3 but without the same fervor and sense of wonder.
This is the newsletter I didn't know I needed in my life. It gives me clarity and pure joy. I also have so many questions for the author, but that's another post in another time and maybe another universe. They'll get it....