HI SWEETIES!
It’s February! Can you believe it? I can. Because I understand how time works.
No offence, but I’ve already finished my second book for the year and watched 16 movies. Excuse the bragging. Or don’t :)
Despite your feelings on the matter, let’s get into the SWEETIE Weekly.
🍑 SWEETIE RATES 🍑
Organising your life within an inch of itself
I don’t have the best organisational skills. Or concentration skills. Or follow-through. Or short-term memory. Or an ability to do one thing at a time. BUT… That’s showbiz, baby.
To navigate this horrorshow of a brain, I have become very familiar with utilising an array of administrative tools to organise my mind. This is a long-winded way of saying that I make spreadsheets and lists and Google Slide presentations for fun. And it IS fun. I mean it. It tickles the functional part of my brain that is usually too busy blasting The Potion by Ludacris to actually focus.
I decided I needed to get better at making a variety of vegetables instead of sticking with the same ones, so I made a spinning wheel to decide the Vegetable of the Week. When I have my winner, I choose a suite of recipes I’ve never made before and test my mettle with the star vegetable.
What’s it going to be? I just don’t know! Last week it was white potato, this past week it was chickpea. Next week? Could be something cruciferous. Could be a legume! All hail the wheel.
But it doesn’t stop there, I’ve also concocted a colour-coded spreadsheet to determine which restaurants I want to visit. Columns contain information on pricing, cuisine, location and there’s space for general notes. This idea I stole from my friend Amy, who is the most organised person I have ever met. You need to steal IP from your friends. I’m always saying this.
I also have an annual spreadsheet in which I document each clothing purchase I make per month, and then faithfully make note of the price, the category of clothing, whether it was full price or on sale, if it needed to be tailored, if anything needed to be returned, all fun and relaxing things to think about.
Finally, my pièce de résistance, at the beginning of 2023 I made a Google Slides presentation that has a specific theme for each month of this year and a list of things to achieve.
I also make to-do lists for my days off and put recreational enjoyment down as tasks to be ticked off. It’s psychotic. It is dark-sided. Yet, rigid organisation is the only way I will survive.
I am chill. I am normal. I didn’t choose to be this way. I am a Capricorn.
Masked Singer (US) reveals
Ok, full disclosure, I do not watch The Masked Singer. Why? Well, mostly because it looks like shit to be completely honest with you.
TMS fills me with the same ennui I get when I’m watching old movies and realise all the pets on the screen are long-dead. It looks like a kind of dystopian show-within-a-show that harkens the final days of a bloated culture. It is much too bright and much too loud, like Cocolmelon for conservative Gen X’ers.
Anyway, if you watch it, good for you! If you’re not as enmeshed TMS world as many, many millions are, the premise is this:
The original Masked Singer aired in South Korea. Thanks to the series’ explosive popularity, localised versions spawned in 56 other countries. For its inaugural season in Australia in 2019, Lindsay Lohan was hired as a judge and had literally no idea who any of the Australian celebrities were, which gifted viewers with her greatest acting challenge since Liz & Dick.
Despite my ire, they keep hooking me in with their most out-of-pocket celebrity reveals. The US version is particularly adept at casting — even when it comes to the judges. While they don’t have Lindsay, the US panel sees anti-vax early adopter Jenny McCarthy Wahlberg sitting next to literal (ex) doctor, Ken Jeong. The panel is rounded out by pro-lifer Nicole Scherzinger and Robin Thicke of Paula fame.
The celebrities they manage to cast on this thing astounds me. I would give a toe to sit in on the meetings where one can only assume they get wine drunk and throw out the names of f-list celebs to approach.
But the reveals… that’s where the magic is.
Tell me that you can watch this and feel normal afterward.
You can’t. I just helped you damage a crucial neural pathway and I am not sorry.
Why is Mickey Rourke here, acting like he doesn’t know that he is in public, let alone on television? Does he even know that there are cameras pointed on him?
Why is this happening? What kind of world have we found ourselves in?
This one from The Masked Dancer (??), of all the reveals in the Masked Universe, is so mind-bendingly WRONG on all levels that I can’t even make a smarmy comment about it. I think I almost burst a blood vessel the first time I saw this.
Yes, that is the Elizabeth Smart.
Anyway, here is who I would cast on the next season of the US Masked Singer:
Dick Van Dyke
Osama Bin Laden’s goth son
Kamala Harris
Aaron Sorkin
Mary Cosby of RHOLSC
Hilaria Baldwin (how do you say “cucumber?”)
Noam Chomsky
Patti LuPone
Vincent Gallo
Trisha Paytas
Guinness
Yum! Kind of like if they made a chocolate into a soup into a beer. If you think that doesn’t make sense……. Ur wrong.
👎 SWEETIE HATES 👎
“How you spend your days is how you spend your life”
Were you aware of this? I wasn’t. I heard this on TikTok of all places, in a video I can no longer locate, but the originator of the phrase appears to be Annie Dillard. This has me shook to my core. No piece of advice has ever simultaneously affirmed and terrified me to the extent that this has.
A lot of people hate truisms, sure, but me? I j’adore a tidy little saying you can print onto a tea towel, and this one hits just right. The phrase often strikes me when I’m doom-scrolling and numbing myself to the world through endless content. Really, truly, I wonder, is this how you want to spend your life? The answer is frequently “Jesus Christ, not even a little bit.”
Why is it that the most obvious things are always the most difficult to accept? The realisation of this has shone a spotlight on my most wasteful and trite habits.
Thanks, I hate it!
Taking care of plants
I would argue that, in a very literal sense, keeping a houseplant alive is more stressful than going through a breakup, moving house, or having a gallbladder removed. Maybe even all three combined. Nothing says YOU ARE A FAILURE quite like having a plant die in your care.
Tired of it. I can’t take this anymore. The millennial industrial complex with its expectation to be a ~plant daddy~ and have a thriving collection of ferns is too much. Team fake plant.
The sneaker wedge comeback
Remember these bad boys? As soon as I saw this shoe style in the Adidas x Gucci collab, I knew we, as a culture, were in for a world of hurt.
Much like peplum tops and bootcut jeans, the sneaker wedge has strong rumblings of making a comeback. It’s only a matter of time before they hit Zara and people you once loved and respected show up to brunch, heck, maybe even to the office, stomping around in these abominations.
Steel yourself now. Prepare your cellar with plenty of dehydrated food sources. I can’t stop it. Neither can you. We are helpless in the face of a clunky, chunky shoe.
Love ya!
Also consider this a reminder to call your parents. Don’t say I never do anything for you xx