Lucy Ellmann - Things Are Against Us

There are three forms of strike Id recommend: a housework strike, a labour strike, and a sex strike. I cant wait for the first two.

The first collection of essays from Lucy Ellmann, Things Are Against Us is everything you might expect from such a fiery writerwhich is to say, entirely unexpected.

Bold, angry, despairing and very, very funny, these essays cover everything from matriarchy to environmental catastrophe to Little House on the Prairie to Agatha Christie. Ellmann calls for a moratorium on air travel, rails against bras, and pleads for sanity in a world thatwell, a world that spent four years in the company of Donald Trump, that tremendously sick, terrible, nasty, lowly, truly pathetic, reckless, sad, weak, lazy, incompetent, third-rate, clueless, not smart, dumb as a rock, all talk, wacko, zero-chance lying liar.

Things Are Against Us is electric. Its vital. These are essays bursting with energy. Reading them feels like sticking your hand in the mains socket. Lucy Ellmann is the writer we need to guide us through these crazy times.

For Claire Lucido

All of life is pandemonium. With plague in our midst, everything feels like an emergency. Im jittery, cant tolerate the least upset. So what else is new?

In times of pestilence, my fancy turns to shticks. They seem almost innocent to me, my scruples and my scorn, now that the whole human experiment seems to be drawing to a close.

Still, lets complain.

You have to watch THINGS. THINGS are always making trouble, getting out of hand, trying to take advantage. THINGS do not have your best interests at heart. THINGS have their own agenda. THINGS care only for other THINGS. THINGS favour THINGS. THINGS indulge THINGS. THINGS prioritise THINGS. THINGS let THINGS get away with THINGS.

I speak as someone who is always losing THINGS, dropping THINGS, tripping over THINGS, breaking THINGS (even bits of my own body: bones, teeth, heart). Coming a cropper over THINGS. Okay, Im accident-prone. But still, THINGS have a lot to answer for. The obstinacy, the indifference, the incorrigibility of THINGS! The recalcitrance of THINGS. So many disobedient and unbiddable THINGS. THINGS deceive you. THINGS perplex you. THINGS run out on you. THINGS look graspable when they arent. THINGS slip out of your hand. THINGS look solid and steady when in fact theyre wobbly: you step on the THING and you tip off.

Clothing rebels against the wearer. Socks wont stay up. Scarves are strangly THINGS. Hat brims blind you at crucial moments so you miss THINGS. Buttons try not to button THINGS. Pockets hide THINGS, or all too eagerly develop holes, defeating the whole purpose of a pocket, a THING designed to be a closed space with an opening at the top or maybe the side, but never the bottom. And who in hell invented the zipper? Like the atom bomb, not a good idea. Zippers can go badly wrong. Eventually, they all give out. Scary THINGS, zips.

THINGS disappoint us. Drawers stick so you cant get THINGS out of them or into them. Machines conk out. Rugs fade. Clothes shrink. Bookshelves fall on people; they are lethal THINGS. THINGS fall off hangers, and people fall off ladders. Ladders are dangerous THINGS. THINGS dont stay put. THINGS are never the right way up. THINGS get mouldy, THINGS break, THINGS drip, THINGS make odd noises, THINGS inexplicably collapse, THINGS move around in the night! THINGS get untidy. It is so hard to keep THINGS in order.

A kind of violence is done to us by THINGS all the time, unwieldy THINGS that awkwardly escape us, trick us, creep up on us. Soap slips from your grasp in the bath and you cant find it in the dark. The soap is dissolving while you splash around singeing your hair on the candle and getting water on the floor. All the tranquillity of bathing is upset by this dopey wrestling match. You catch hold of the soap briefly, then it slides away again! Giving up on the whole THING, you attempt to get out of the bath, a tricky THING at the best of times. Now you step on the slimy soap in the bottom of the tub, which causes you to slip. You grab the shower curtain, which tears right off its rail. You land on your slippery ass in the bathtub and the momentum and curvature of the tub somehow combine to propel you right out on to the floor, where you lie, all wet and winded, seeing stars. This is a typical example of the anarchy of THINGS. The enmity of THINGS. The conspiratorial manoeuvrings of THINGS.

They may not always cause major calamities, but they suggest an underlying hostility. All Im saying is that, if THINGS can go wrong, they will. THINGS let us down. THINGS fail us. Plumbing! What could be a more intimidating THING than that? THINGS outwit you, THINGS flood your kitchen and then act all innocent. THINGS pester you, THINGS try to bring you down. And these various cumulative outrages committed by THINGS are like little crimes against us, filling us with distrust of the whole wide world, both the man-made THINGS and all its other sweet parts. The unseen rock that jolts the foot, bird shit on the head (odd that this doesnt happen more), three buses at once

Matches wont light or else they explode, sending burning particles on to your hand or clothes or eyes. Fireworks are notorious for boomeranging back onto the fuse-lighter. Rugs grab you and knock you over whenever they can. Needles prick you. They sit in the sewing box waiting patiently to prick you some day. These THINGS never give up hope of a good prick. Thimbles are merely an annoying collectors item, no help at all. Use the wrong utensil when cooking spaghetti and you get no end of trouble, a real show of resistance. The particular pillowcase you wanted to find somehow manages to hide from you, cleverly camouflaging itself amongst other pillowcases. You thought you had THINGS sorted, huh? Once you find it, the pillow tries every trick in the book to prevent itself being inserted into the appointed pillowcase. Like a wild stallion, it rears and leaps. Fitted sheets never fit. And duvet covers? Their deviltry is legendary.

THINGS fall into disarray so fast! Its not fair. Pieces of paper frequently evade control: they either pile up threateningly, disappear unexpectedly, or give you a paper cut. They like to form themselves into unfathomable wads and cascading fans. They drift to the floor and you slip on them. Unopened envelopes are accusatory THINGS that emit unremitting waves of neglect and distrust.

You fill a hot-water bottle and then cant find the stopper THING. It has impishly hidden itself. When you finally spy it, cowering idiotically behind a bunch of dirty mugs, you reach for it with one hand, your other hand still holding the boiling hot hot-water bottle. The stopper now rolls off the counter on to the floor, clever THING. In your effort to retrieve the THING, you inevitably scald yourself.

Try dropping merely a small single piece of cardboard into the recycling bag. Will it go in with no trouble? Like hell it will. It always falls outside the recycling bag and goes straight down a crack in the floorboards. This is how we begin to realise THINGS are against us. In fact, its possible THINGS really kind of hate us.

We all know about toast falling buttered side down. That is a clich of the ill will of THINGS. But either way up the toast lands is not good! Why is it any better for it to fall butter side up? Okay, the floor might not get as greasy, and you wont have to mop all the butter up. But youve still got a dirty piece of toast on your hands, your buttery hands. Out it goes. Yeast has died for nothing. What a THING, what a THING.