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Devin

@fishdick.bsky.social

580 followers 1.5K following 780 posts

Recovering chef, newly re-located to Chicago (now accepting offers of employment)cat-haver, poker, music, travel, books, famous West Virginians.

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Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 23h

I can't speak for, well, anyone really, but the owners of the very small restaurant group for whom I work have been very understanding and supportive of everyone affected. Some of them are immigrants themselves and none have come across as particularly shitty people.

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 23h

Me too!

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 23h

The chef can't make a schedule, because we just don't know who can show up that day. 2-4 callouts everyday because there's too much ICE activity in the neighborhoods.

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 23h

I know that reads like a dispatch from the Civil War, but, well, it kinda is.

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 23h

I am working in a restaurant and everyone is scared. We've lost 4 or 5 to ICE. People are afraid to come to work during daylight hours, so they get to work 5 or 6 hours early and sleep in the dry storage until their shift starts. People are sleeping here at night.

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 1d

Respect for a VP? From a former Clinton staffer? Come on, man. Dude's been shitting on VP's since 92.

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 2d

I mean, I bought it anyway, but it only cost $6 instead of $26. THANK YOU I ADORE LYDIA DAVIS.

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 2d

What's wrong with this world is every woman I've ever been attracted to, according to the talking reanimated rat corpse on the TV.

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 2d

I don't know which one of you underlined a half-dozen essays in this book I found at Myopic today, but THANKS. You probably saved me $20.

Picture of random underlining in a Lydia Davis essays

Picrure of ESSAYS ONE, by Lydia Davis.

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 3d

The comic who wrote the article took a couple hundred grand to perform for, and say nice things about, a brutal totalitarian dictatorship! It's not even in the same realm as collecting a paycheck from a shifty caterer dude wtf.

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 3d

You know, these comedians are being criticized for their lack of courage and moral clarity, and your argument seems to be "But have you considered that I, too, have little courage or moral clarity?"

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 3d

Dude, I don't know what you do for a living, but taking money from a dictator to launder a dictator's reputation is line in the sand I can pretty safely stay on the right side of.

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 3d

Do you think it could be the brutality repressive regime that is signing the checks he cashed to play the festival?

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 3d

What is preventing regular citizens from receiving an outside voice, I wonder.

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 3d

Jesus fucking Christ you people can't even be courageous in your fucking fantasies. Just casting about looking for reasons to grab a hypothetical bag in a hypothetical scenario.

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 3d

The audience is anyone who can afford a ticket to the Trump Comedy Festival Where Nobody Can Say Anything Bad About Obviously Bad Things Trump Has Said And Done

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 3d

Trump is signing the check and with that huge check comes a NDA that says that you, a comedian, cannot say anything Trump considers disparaging of Trump. Trump has final say over the comedy you do. Do you still do it?

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 3d

Deej, I'm a Cubs fan. You can't POSSIBLY hate them more than I do.

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 3d

You can't judge a player by the things they do well.

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 3d

hahaha lol what

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 3d

It should be neither surprising nor rare, but I am always unreasonably pleased when a favorite writer is a fan of another favorite writer.

Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 3d

Near Flesh by Katherine Dunn, best known for Geek Love, is a wonderful posthumous collection (her first). This feels like a cohesive and high-quality selection to me, not just something cobbled together to put out another book. More thoughts in the alt text.

A blurry hand against a gray backdrop forms the cover design, with Near Flesh in yellow on top along with Katherine Dunn in yellow too. With STORIES and AUTHOR OF GEEK LOVE in black text...

As for further thoughts...there's a wonderful adult sensibility to the stories and a helpful matter-of-fact brutality, for lack of a better word. A story about roosters and chickens and a kind of miscommunication about their fate doesn't shy away from the cause-and-effect. A story about a woman stuck down a well has the lived-in quality of believing Dunn herself was once stuck down a well, with a surprising ending. The story first published in the New Yorker, "The Resident Poet," even seems to poke fun at the New Yorker in how, first of all, in its tale of a student having an affair with a professor, it feels like cliche NYer content. But then the kind of cold-blooded, unsentimental depiction of a weekend trip and the unflinching depiction of both characters elevates it into another realm entirely. Very original.

Another story from the POV of a high school student explores the school's fascination with a new arrival. When the narrator finally gets to see the new student's house and finds it bereft of furniture, there's a practical reason for this, but also it oddly creates the space for the actual colorful story of the new student's life later. If Dunn had filled the house with detail, somehow the later tale told by the student would not have been quite as impactful. Which is another way of saying that Dunn's clarity and concision is matched by a real understanding of *space* and how to use it.

None of these stories have any extraneous scenes or moments. Each exists and succeeds in how Dunn manages to envelop you in the moment and hold you there, across so many different narrators from various socio-economic classes.

Highly recommended. And if you like the short stories of Joy Williams and Ottessa Moshfegh, you will definitely like Dunn's fiction.

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 4d

Honestly that reply is more than enough to get me to read his books.

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 4d

I don't think he's been widely translated into English, has he?

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 5d

He's just a reservist, he's gotta get back to his day job of hanging from twine behind a deli counter.

Devin @fishdick.bsky.social · 5d

How hard would it be to say "oh shit they don't want gays in the army but apparently a mustachioed mortadella can join the Texas National Guard".