Our lady of perpetual stew

i'm up to stuff! i'm doing things (sometimes)

Stewing

You may know me as “the girl who runs that gimmick account Depths of Wikipedia.” Well, I’m here to tell you that last month I started cooking a perpetual stew and suddenly every part of my life suddenly felt more exciting. It’s been going for 38 days now. Have I been “over-stew-ing” it? Maybe. But it’s Stew York City and anything is possible here. You can print posters and post online and buy the domain perpetualstew.club and New York Magazine will call you "Our Lady of Perpetual Stew" and the Washington Post will quote you saying “what are we if not perpetual stews, hot sacks of organs contained by layers of flimsy flesh?” The whole thing is silly. It’s very, very stupid. But I’ve met a lot of people, which is my favorite part. My second favorite part is putting daily updates on the website!

June 7, 2023: I've got a potato leek simmering in the Crockpot and it feels like the first day of the rest of my life

June 8, 2023: "No YOU live in a society. I live in a Crockpot" - my stew. 

June 9, 2023: I've added lentils and carrots, now, which drown out the potato leek from two days ago. As I ate, I contemplated my "Stew of Theseus" dilemma

June 10, 2023: All the people who say it's not "stew season" (a term I emphatically reject) haven't woken up on a Saturday morning in June to such hearty aromas wafting through their apartment.

(and 34 more)

My biggest inspiration is “A Month Without a Fork,” a site where Darius Kazemi wrote disarmingly passionate daily logs about a fork-free month, extolling the virtues of a fork-free lifestyle with just enough diligence to make you think wait, is this guy serious? Like, he quoted an 11th century Venetian clergyman who wrote “God in his wisdom has provided man with natural forks—his fingers” and spent three paragraphs debating whether he could eat peanut butter cookies with a cross-hatched pattern.

I’ll probably stop stewing soon, but it will have been a good run. I wrote more about it on the stew website.

Things to click that will make you remember, if only for a brief moment, that the world is interesting and rather huge

George Santos or Barbie? Who (supposedly) had this job? from the Pulitzer-winning Buzzfeed News (RIP). David Lynch cooks quinoa. Extensive Wiktionary list of synonyms for “wow.” A man who witnessed Lincoln's assassination appeared on the TV game show "I've Got a Secret" in 1956 when he was 95 and the  7 min clip is on Youtube. You can get a replica of slam-dunking skeleton shirts worn by the 1992 Lithuanian Olympic basketball team and the site is amazing. Really funny long read in The Guardian about the guy in charge of Durex condoms. 200k unique “get well soon” messages scraped from Gofundme. Joke book from the fifth century!

Non-stew updates

I’m going to a bunch of different cities in the US this fall for Wikipedia-themed comedy shows. You can get tickets if you want. I’m very excited ᶦ'ᵐ ᵃᶜᵗᵘᵃˡˡʸ ⁿᵉʳᵛᵒᵘˢ. But I’m trying to say “yup” to life. These days I’ve been writing a book, playing a lot of two-person poker with my boyfriend, and aimlessly walking around the neighborhood sipping smoothies. I’m pretty happy, I think. A couple weeks ago I was on Lateral, Tom Scott’s trivia podcast, which was really fun. Trying to say yup, yup, yup.

Hope you’ve been having a good summer. Tell me what you’ve been up to, anonymous email friend! Tell me everything. Your pets and your parents and the books you’re reading and your fears and secrets and mother’s maiden name and the street you grew up on. Oh, and let me know if you have any delicious meatless recipes that don’t heat up the house (for when I’m not eating stew). Then we can stare into each other’s eyes and recite our social security numbers!

Anyway, thanks for reading. It’s fun to hear from you all.

Love,

Annie