on earth there is donkey meat
Hi friends! Thanks for signing up for the first issue of my newsletter, you're now instantly almost as cool as I am, plus you can hold that superiority over everyone else's heads for the rest of your life. So proud of you! Please forward this to all your friends so that a) they're informed of your new status and b) so they know they need to subscribe for issue two and then in turn hold that over everyone else they know. Yay hooray!
To start things off, here's some good news: my absolute favorite book of 2007, my pal Austin Grossman's Soon I Will Be Invincible, is getting what is definitely not a sequel but is apparently set in the same universe; the new book is called Fight Me and comes out next month. Bad news: that's only in the UK cause it has yet to be picked up by a US publisher. Rude! Anyway, turns out the easiest way to buy ebooks published in another country is through Kobo, so here's how to do that and here's the Kobo UK listing for Fight Me.
Austin's been posting about the book over on Instagram, so here's the latest post which totally did not personally attack me in any way whatsoever what are you even talking about stop looking at me like that okay:
I will happily read any and all stories about crows—because how can you not stan a bird that is so serious about both friends and nemeses that it'll tell its entire community about you and pass that information down through the generations—so I quite enjoyed this recent New Yorker story about Parisian crows and their grudge against their biggest advocate.
I'd never in my life considered eating donkey meat until watching blondieinchina's video of traveling to China's donkey burger central, Heinan province, to decide for herself which of the two donkey burger styles reigns supreme. Turns out donkey meat is so exquisite that there's even a famous saying about it
天上龙肉，地上驴肉
In Heaven there is Dragon Meat, and
On Earth there is Donkey Meat
meaning it's the best meat you will ever taste during your mortal life. So naturally I immediately went to check where I could get one in NYC! Turns out both the sale or possession of horse meat for human consumption is illegal in New York state—but not in New Jersey, so if I can find a restaurant that serves donkey burgers over there I'll cross state borders and let you know in a future newsletter.
For the ladies: finally, a heart rate chest strap that works with your sports bra instead of making you so uncomfortable you want to back to bed to rot instead. If only it wasn't more expensive than most at a hundred and fifty bucks (fucking pink tax!) and you didn't need a Garmin watch in order to view real-time data instead of it just working on their phone app. I'm a cyclist with a non-Garmin computer on my road bike and just use the iPhone Strava app on my commuter so I'm never buying this, but YMMV.
Last but not least: in honor of today's full solar eclipse on the East Coast, here's Bonnie Tyler a.ka. the singer of the official theme song of all eclipses ever, explaining the science behind them using the iconic UK snack called Jaffa Cakes:
Enjoy the earworm till I give you a new one on Friday!
Okay fine, one more eclipse link: check out these spiffy vintage eclipse glasses from 1932. They sold for 10 cents then, the equivalent of $2.10 in 2024—a steal compared to the $6 to $10 they were going for in bodegas and on the street today. Thanks, Obama!
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