Thursday, 31 March 2022

Scarlett Thomas - "The seed collectors"

Got to half way and decided to stop reading. The story is ambling along too slowly, the seed pods only sometimes referred to, while instead multiple chapters or at least parts describe the same people, eg the sad and drunk Brony, being sad and drunk, without providing more clues about their character.



Fleur thinks about the story of the two celibate monks who come to a flooded piece of road. There is a beautiful woman there, and so one of the monks lifts her and carries her past the flood, The other one can't believe he has done this, and sulks for miles. Eventually, he confronts his friend and asks him why he did it. His friend simply replied, 'I put her down several miles ago but you, my brother, seem still to be carrying her.'


Imagine that one day you decide that you need to multitask more, and therefore while doing something boring like cleaning your teeth you will add some other boring thing like doing your daily calf raises, where you stand up on your toes first on one leg and then on the other for say 25 reps on each side x2. This you think of as a good use of time. In fact, for these two minutes of every morning it eels as if you have enslaved time, you have got one over on it. You are winning the war against it. In fact, you get so used to doing your calf raises while cleaning your teeth that you now can't clean your teeth without automatically going up onto first one leg, then another. The mere buzz of your electric toothbrush gets your calf muscles quivering. You are Pavlov's dog. But this is a good thing, because you are cheating time. Or so you think. Imagine that the act of cleaning your teeth while doing your calf raises becomes so automatic and unconscious that you can now do a third thing as well, further demonstrating your mastery over time. Perhaps, as well as doing your teeth and your calf raises you imagine what you'd do if you won a million pound on the Lottery. Perhaps you write a To Do list in your head. A letter to someone from long ago... How aware are you now of the calf raises? How many have you done? Does it matter that this action, like so much else in your life, has now become so unconscious you don't even know you are doing it? What other things did you begin doing long ago, long before the calf raises, that you do not feel or even know about any more? Who were you, before you forgot?

Rome - "Secret Sons of Europe"

hints of Nick Cave, but also Blixa Bargeld, music driven forward by constant staccato chords

Monday, 14 March 2022

The Batman, Turning Red, Fast & Furious 9, the Legend of Vox Machina

The Batman - good, enjoyed the score a lot, Robert Patterson is OK

Turning Red, new Pixar. Enjoyable but it misses the magic I feel watching "Inside" or "Toy Story"

The Fast & Furious 9 - terrible

The Legend of Vox Machina - anime, as if made by fratboys, but still somewhat enjoyable

Monday, 7 March 2022

I could care less (xkcd)

https://xkcd.com/1576/

unrelated words (etymologically not related)

https://theweek.com/articles/541713/15-pairs-words-that-seem-etymologically-related-but-arent

The Legend of Vox Machina

A bit silly but fun anime about a troupe trying to defeat dragons and the such.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Friday, 18 February 2022

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director's Cut

Definitely enjoyed this.

Loved how the cutscenes were still 10-yo blurry, and yet amazing lighting. 

The game has the common 2010's 3D lighting thing where eg people's teeth look really crazy.

But kept thinking about the game when not playing and figuring out how to do things.

Choices are not super wide, but there's a healthy variety available.

Some cutscenes are really good.  Good Bladerunner vibes.

Factorio - Sandstorm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgfwwqwxdxY


amazing

Copshop

really enjoyable film about a police station under siege

throwback to 70s grime action gore. Need to find more done by Joe Carnahan, who is killed the next Quentin Tarantino (I probably fucked that quote up)

Sunday, 13 February 2022

Ghostbusters:Afterlife

snored through bits, don't really care for it.

The Tourist

Series about a man waking up from a car crash in Australia and not remembering his past.

The Hunt

Nice bit-gory film about 12 "deplorables" being hunted by rich people

Monday, 7 February 2022

Nightmare Alley

Bradley Cooper, Guillermo del Toro

Good stuff.
mix between Jericho and ... some other dust-bowl film or book
Mechanique?


Sunday, 6 February 2022

Annie Louisa Swynnerton - paintings

Painting when it wasn't really "done" for women to do so. 

Painted people honest


From Hollie McNish' book "Slug"; Annie was apparently one of only a few painters to paint real depictions of working-class wome looking genuinely pissed off and bored with their work and childcare chores, at a time when the majority of the art wold preferred rosy-cheeked romanticisations of back-broken labourors. Annie also beautifully emphasised women's wrinkles in almost all of the paintings, which wasn't very fashionable in the late nineteeth and early twentieth centuries in which she worked, especially in portraits of women


https://artuk.org/discover/stories/annie-swynnerton-artist-and-activist

Teake Zuidema - Pittsburgh, under a bridge

wonderful photos

https://www.teakezuidema.com/225470310/four-mile-run-pittsburgh

Marcus Hamblett - "Nocturne" (and others)

Intriguing instrumental guitar play, perhaps a bit nervous at times.


Bob Dylan - "False Prophet" – wonderful blues-y almost parlando

Sunday, 30 January 2022

David Shrigley - "Don'ts"

A drier cousin of Baz Luhrman's "The Sunscreen song"


From BBC6's amazing Cillian Murphy.

Undercover

Nederlands-Vlaamse serie op Netflix over undercover agenten bij een van de grootste xtc labs in Belgie.

Soms moeilijk te verstaan!