Welcome back to Congrats, You Played Yourself, a newsletter celebrating the mistakes we make and encouraging you not to take yourself seriously. Life’s too damn short to keep yourself up at night remembering that the first time you flew after a year at home you told the Delta airlines check-in lady, “You too!” after she said to have a good flight.
I’m calling this the soft *re-launch* of this here newsletter: it’s been a while, and it’s hot as tits out there, so we’re dipping our toes back into the water of your inbox with a lil links post to keep your weekend cool, light, and most of all, fun. Maybe a little dumb. Step in below.
Say hello to your new favorite space on the internet, the NPR Joy Generator. With an inviting, “Click for joy!” you too can forget the woes of your sink filled with dishes and forgetting how to put on a pair of jeans with this easy escape that explains some of the most joyous things us simpletons enjoy: from cute animals to ASMR to anticipation.
Researchers at the University of Leeds showed 30-minute montages of cute animal videos to stressed university students and found their blood pressure, heart rate and anxiety dropped.
So if your boss is wondering why you have Animal Planet’s “Too Cute!” on your TV during meetings, you can tell them it’s prescribed by a doctor. Here’s something to get you started.
Welcome to Cara Delevingne’s home, aka the home of your dreams when you were 12 — or if you’re me, 29. A few of the incredible and absolutely necessary features:
pinball machine (!)
multiple secret passageways (!!)
Razor scooters for getting from your bedroom to the kitchen (!!!)
ball pit (!!!!)
trampolines (!!!!!)
A few other can’t-miss quotes from her AD Tour:
Not the hero we wanted, but the hero we deserved.
“If you can, everyone needs to have a ball pit in the near vicinity, no matter what age you are. The meaning I have from this house is you just never grow up. Always try to maintain a childlike innocence or joy or need for fun.”
While we’re here — Da Baddest, Bretman Rock’s home tour in Hawai’i. His home is dope, but I’m mostly here for the one-liners, like this:
“Without motherf*cking turtles, we wouldn’t have turtles.”
And these:
Bringing some big Bestie Girl Summer energy everywhere I go now.
No one:
Me, an extrovert who is overexcited and under-stimulated after 18 months of quarantine, showing up to literally any social event this summer:
The world isn’t cake anymore (thank jesus), so y’all can catch me making spongecakes every morning this summer, knowing full well it doesn’t have to look like anything for me to eat it. Also, one of the sections in this NYT Cooking Guide is called, “Mind Your Meringue”, which I’ll be saving as the title to my explosive memoir about eating cake every day for breakfast.
The New York Times routinely gives me joy with the platform experience on their website (tell me you work in digital marketing without telling me you work in digital marketing). Example A: this deep dive into the poem One Art by Elizabeth Bishop.
Happy 4th of July weekend, friends. This is me, cheering you on for getting out there and being your bad self.
With that, I’ll end on this note from Cara:
Make me proud,
Juj