Weekend Catch Up

Tansi nitotemwak! It’s been awhile. Between trying to get over the forever plague my kids brought me and the Spring/Summer semester start, I haven’t been particularly good at keeping the Catch Up going. I’ve been trying to rest so that I can feel more human-ish soon. I haven’t forgotten about you at all, in fact I’ve been thinking about you during my absence. There’s just been a lot of behind the scenes nonsense raining down on me in an unrelenting manner, and it makes writing for me hard.
I think this is the eye of the current storm, so I better make use of this brief reprieve.

What I've Been Watching

I found The Second Best Hospital in The Galaxy while wandering through Amazon’s offerings. The art style is really neat, the cast is phenomenal, and by having anthropomorphic character design means less hideous adult cartoon feel. The overall vibe of the series so far is similar to Tuca and Bertie with a generous amount of monsterfucking Grey’s Anatomy genre mashing. It’s funny and self aware, and while it’s not high art, it’s more than good enough (to me) to watch a few episodes. I really enjoy Sleech’s arc as well as how unapologetic The Second Best Hospital in The Galaxy is about explaining how it’s world(s) work or anything outside of the hospital.

We got back into The Unsleeping City and I adore how terrible Cody ‘Night Angel’ is. The Unsleeping City is my favourite setting within Dimension 20 and I’m happy they did a second season of it. We haven’t quite gotten to this part yet but it’s close I think. I am also loving how the in world version of Amazon is clearly the antagonist of the season.

Who would have guessed this is the Catch Up where wrestling suddenly makes it's appearance? This Smarty Pants episode had the amazing Jess presenting to us how Wrestling is Drag. I really enjoyed this, her presentation was so well done, and clever.

What I've Been Reading

There’s a bunch of links I hid away like a squirrel, and rather than just unleash all of what I’ve been reading, I picked a few. Maybe next Catch Up I’ll add some of the ones that didn’t make the cut and do that for a couple of weeks.

If you want to keep the books coming, well, keeping buying them and/or checking them out at your local library.

This is about the American experience mostly-but Lincoln Michel’s Yes, People Do Buy Books substack article is a rebuttal to one of the many publishing discourses lately. People buy a lot of books, more than what is actually tracked Michel claims, especially since ebooks aren’t really tracked and seem to be increasing all of the time. It seems completely wild yet incredibly believable to me, that the discourse of no one is buying books seems to be well, it’s more nuanced than what can be shown on a tiktok, or a reel, or skeet, and maybe it’s not as super dire as some publishing houses would have people believe.

I saw Brandy Jensen’s piece The Polycrisis Why can’t we stop talking about nonmonogamy? somewhere else first. I can’t remember where, it’s been a long couple of weeks. This is a shockingly kind and nuanced introspection on polyamory, alternating between Jensen’s experiences, and the sudden wealth of discussions, social media content, and memoirs about it. Jensen gives a really excellent run down I guess what would be the history or genealogy of non-monogamy in the States, which was kind of neat to me. I really enjoyed this part: It can therefore be maddening when some polyamorists insist that a day job making surveillance technology does not preclude them from considering themselves politically radical, as long as they spend their weekends having orgies. In spite of wanting to bully the polyam nerds, I did agree with Jensen’s ending: Perhaps it will always remain too earnest, too unbearably uncool, to admit you might that pleasure and care and devotion can exist in abundance. I believe it.

Aubrey Hirsch does brilliant comics about political or feminist topics, and The Fight For No Fault Divorce is great. Generally, Canada lags behind the States a few years in cultural changes but time doesn’t feel real anymore. This is a good warning and reminder for us too, how important no fault divorce is to people.

The Rock expressed his rage against Cody and his “crybaby” fans getting in the way of what should have been the biggest WrestleMania main event of all time, and it’s easy to read this as a projection of his real life frustration.

I never really got into wrestling ever. I’m still not into it too much to be honest. However, I love hearing people who really enjoy it talk or write or even make shows about it (I loved Glow) because their affection and passion is infectious. Dylan Roth does a magnificent job in his piece WrestleMania and the Cure to Recursive Mythology at Reactor in weaving together how wrestling is similar to comic writing and kind of Shakespearean (which I am surprised at), that this article delights me. When people boo at stuff, it’s fascinating for a variety of reasons, but the amount of times fans booing clearly thought out storylines is amazing. Just how Roth frames this as a future vs past thing is amazing, this is a wild education in wrestling.

It’s a strange feeling: when you see the entire life you’ve built slip through your fingers in an instant. Like the ground under you breaking. Like dying in slow motion. Is it possible to hold onto your sense of self when everything around you falls apart?

Angela Liu’s You Will Be You Again is a beautiful and horrifying short story about intergenerational trauma, generational immigrant trauma, family, and the medical complex in what can only be described as capitalist hellscape. You Will Be You Again has a lot of death in it as forewarning. At times I felt uncomfortable in reading it however I think it's really well written, and it's just incredibly good.

Small Mammal Update

One of my friend’s moved and I was lucky enough to get a lot of plants from them. It’s been while since I’ve had plants that the cats (not all of them, Zorya is a fearful sweetie and would never) would attempt a salad bar situation however Yaga is cunning, and Delphine thinks she is baby. After I verbally reprimanded Yaga for trying to steal some green snacks, she had the audacity to eat and dig up a pine tree seedling as some kind of warning.
I do not take threats, and the small water bottle is ready to be deployed should she attempt more sabotage.
Delphine on the other hand, is kind of I don’t want to say stupid but she makes bad life choices in eating my plants. The last time I had a monstera she would absolutely nibble at it, and then show me show something had bothered her. She did it a lot. She did not take to constructive criticism about why eating plants that hurt our faces is bad (she also tried to eat a cactus). So for her, it’s straight up small water bottle until we can get some mats or I guess bird spikes.
What I hope happens is the novelty of the plants wear off, and both of them begin making better life choices. Until then, it’s the battle of the plants.

What I've Been Working

I told my therapist that I would finish a bunch of my drafts before the next time I see them, so in the near future there should be links here to what I've done.
Other than that, I've just been working on grad school stuff and getting less sick.