Friday Catch Up

Since the last time we've caught up, things have been kinda weird. Time has been slightly more surreal than usual and whole bunch of bad bills have been introduced into my province's legislature. Along with that, a few communities were on evacuation alert due to forest fires being close (it's only April!), time has just felt a little unreal. However, we are carbon based lifeforms with very finite beginnings and endings. It is the season of renewal, of coming back from dormancy, of green carefully bursting through the yellow and grey, so it's not all wholly bad. Things don't have be grating forever.

I'm excited for the double feature of next week: Amon Amarth/Cannibal Corpse on Monday followed up by Talk on Saturday. After that I'm kind of unsure. Orville Peck has a double show in June, and Explosions in the Sky are coming in September, so there's hope yet.

What I'm Watching

Fallout was so good, and at some point I wanna do a rewatch. I just cannot stop being excited about how fleshed out the writers/showrunners made the world in a way that utilized various source materials and felt real. There were so many little Easter eggs in it, and of course New Vegas! I am hopefully nervous about Jacobstown, the Boomers (boo) interacting with Lucy or Maximus/Brotherhood of Steel (fight!), and maybe background Boone somewhere.

Werewolves Within popped up on a recommendations list, and while I haven't watched it yet, it looks endearing in a B horror movie way.

What I'm Reading

Chelsea Vowel is an amazing writer (if you can check out Buffalo is the New Buffalo) and I love how she incorporates Cree into her writing. To me this was a really visceral creative nonfiction piece. There's a few parts where it might be unpleasant that you can sit with, however it's really well done. I thought this part was clever, Maybe mwêstas I'll write grant applications, get approved to do some ethnographic studies over here. Some really extractive research, written in nêhiyawêwin so they don't know what we're saying about them. In general this piece reminded me the relationship I have with German bands like Electric Callboy or Lord of the Lost in that they frame themselves as being like not a place where bigots can find respite in however because they're German they kind of engage in some not quite appreciation, not quite appropriation limbo in terms of using Pan Indigenous motifs in their branding or promos. There's a whole other writing in itself about this, so I'll just leave you with what I felt was an incredibly punchy line. They were trying to apologize for never returning, for being so lonely, for being as out of place as I am.

It's always been a bad time to be a writer without a spouse/partner to subsidize writing but it feels like it's been getting worse to be one (even with a spouse) in general at an accelerated rate. David Hill muses over his writing career, the precarity of it and how it's brutal out there. He ends with what I can only hear as a Planet Earth voice over: The freelance writer is no different than any other gig worker in our fractured, dystopian modern economy. We only eat what we kill.

Another piece/interview on food in writing! For a second week in a row, here's a little something that bothers at food as a narrative device. I just think it's really neat because food is such a polarizing topic off and online, with what are traditions, what are accommodations, and the weaponization of food much in the same way care can be weaponized. Finnian Burnett is delightful in this interview, and the novel they're working on sounds pretty interesting.
I also really needed to read this bit about community (because of reasons). Community in a small town has significant value-I have many people in my life who may not share all my political views and values, but when our town flooded, people stepped up to ensure others had places to stay, food, replacement clothing and furniture. People take care of each other in practical ways....

Kody Okamoto just launched their new webcomic Keeping Time which looks really neat. It's set in the mid noughties (ugh, I hate that decade description) and I'm very thrilled about the punk, queer messiness that will probably follow. I'm also a fan of the colour scheme they've established for each protagonist so far, and the foreshadowing that way. Okamoto did a really neat interview with The Comic Book Yeti about growing up in Hawaii, what to expect from Keeping Time, and what they were inspired by.

Small Mammal Update

Potema has decided rather recently she will not eat dry kibble anymore. And because she's an elegant walking garbage can, I gave into her demands rather than allowing her to continue her rampage of eating everyone else's food and things that could only vaguely be described as edible. So yes, I may have created a mobile, semi sentient garbage can that knows what her "soup" is, and yes this has shown the other smaller mammals that I can be broken but.

There's only so much I can do or so many places to be when it's breakfast and literally everyone is screaming.

What I've Been Working On

It's tax season, and just about the Spring semester, so I've been stressed out on that. Mostly Bergamot and Bygones, and the other things I've alluded. Soon. There will be more things here other than the Catch Up.