Every Ghost Story is a Love Story

A supposedly Gone Girl I'll never be again.

October 19th, 2022

This is what Sammy and I are working with today, so you know it’s spooky season here in northern New England:

It’s spooky season in the tabs too, so let this image sweep you into Massachusetts native and “horrible snob about how other regions look during October”1 Eliza Brooke’s extended investigation into the difference between “spooky” and “scary” for Dirt.

I’ve always found solace in the way that spookiness invites us to personally identify with the unearthly — to become the thing that would otherwise scare us. When we dress up in ghastly costumes and put up ghoulish decorations, we’re finding a way to embody and engineer the concept of death. By making it our own, the idea becomes a lot less frightening. 

You may initially think this will just be a slightly twee personal essay, but it goes places. Stick around for the part about Denmark’s “Recreational Fear Lab” which is somehow not a Lars von Trier movie premise.

Lyz Lenz also has a ghost story today, about the (apparently) elder Millennial ghost who loved bacon.

Even though I don’t believe the Geiger counter (Crass! Low rent! A ghost would never!), I was half hoping for something. I want to hear from ghosts. I want to be one of those people who can hear whispers from the past. I want to be one of those people who is sensitive and intuitive. Who a ghost would look at and say, “I trust that woman to tell her why I am still here.” They have never done this. And every year that goes by and a ghost doesn’t talk to me, I’m worried that I may never be sensitive or intuitive. I may never know the secrets of the past. I'm turning 40. It could be too late.

And Slate sent Imogen West-Knights on a “Gone Girl” themed Danube river cruise with Gillian Flynn and around sixty five other passengers, only some of whom realized in advance they were going on a “Gone Girl” themed cruise. Within are the answers to such questions as: does anyone get murdered? (No.) Not even for pretend? (No.) How much can you drink in seven days if it’s all pre-paid and you are really dedicated? (A lot.) What do you do in Josef Fritzl’s Austrian torture basement? (Look at gruesome pictures of dead women, I guess????) Why is Gillian Flynn doing this? (“Why in the world would I not do that? Are you kidding me?”) And why is anyone else doing this? (Answer not found.) It’s a worthwhile entry in the supposedly grand tradition of cruises the author will never go on again.

The Salad Dressing Discourse

You may have recently seen a puzzling reference to salad dressing on social media, such as:

Possibly you’ve been seeing this sort of thing for a couple days, and hoped it would just go away before you had to find out what it was about. A very human desire! But it keeps not going away, so as a public service (and because it doesn’t seem like Ryan is going to do it) here’s the yes/yes/no on the salad dressing.

This is, regrettably, yet another another development in the “Don’t Worry, Darling” Celebrity Mess Extended Universe, so get caught up on that if you’re not already. Monday The Daily Mail published a story they sourced by (my educated guess is) paying Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis’s ex-nanny a lot of money for texts that make the stars look like a self-absorbed careerist bimbo and a self-absorbed drunken whiner, respectively, neither of whom appear to care very much about their children. I am extremely reluctant to judge anyone’s life, relationship, or approach to parenting based on texts selected by one ex-employee with a grudge and the world’s least ethical tabloid, so who knows what the truth is. You won’t ever find it in The Daily Mail. But the story seemed bizarrely focused on one particular anecdote:

Two days later, Wilde infuriated Sudeikis by preparing a salad for Styles with her 'special dressing' in the family kitchen – leaving him ranting furiously at her and filming the encounter, before he tried to prevent her leaving by lying under the car.

The nanny explained: 'The night she left with her salad, Jason had chased after her, videotaping her in the house….

The nanny added: 'Jason told me: 'She made this salad and she made her special dressing and she's leaving with her salad to have dinner with [Harry].' 

'I said, what salad dressing? He said: 'She has a special salad dressing she makes for us and she's taken it to have it with him now'. I don't know what was in it. 

The word “salad” appears ten times in the story. This is not an isolated reference. Olivia’s special salad dressing seems to be the one thing Sudeikis cares about the most in the world, and now we know the sad punch line: that it’s just mustard, red wine vinegar and olive oil, which is about the most basic vinaigrette recipe anyone could have.

That’s it! Now you can understand all the salad dressing tweets, and probably find some of them funny. Have we improved the world here today? No. But have we had some fun, and learned a little? Also no.

Grimes and M.I.A. in conversation for Paper magazine. These two people are both idiots. Instead of reading this, you should hit your head against a fire hydrant until you black out.

Kiwi Korner: It’s been a while since we went “down under, mate” as they say in New Zealand. Here’s some extremely niche Kiwi arts funding drama from Today in Tabs Aotearoa stringer Sam Brooks. “Shakespeare is not cancelled. The Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand continues to exist.” Noice.

Today in ¯\_(ツ)_/¯: “FBI Raids Star ABC News Producer [James Gordon Meek]’s Home… His colleagues say they haven’t seen him since.” Weird story. I bet there’s more to this.

Finally: Blind robot legs run medium-fast without falling over. Sure, but what’s it gonna do if it catches me? Teeter at me?

Today’s Song: BT (feat M. Doughty), “Never Gonna Come Back Down”

Kids Puzzle Corner: Can you find the dog in this picture?

If you found him, celebrate by buying a t-shirt!

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