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pigeonflavouredcake · 9 months

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I gave myself permission to get some new books for new year's day but that's it that's all I'm giving myself. I was really bad my book ban last year so I'm trying again this year.

My book buying ban starts now on the 1st of January 2024.

My TBR is 49 books long here's the list:

Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Doors of Eden

Aiden Thomas - Cemetery Boys

Alexandria Bellefleur - The Fiancée Farce

Alice Feeney - Sometimes I Lie

Alison Rumfitt - Tell Me I'm Worthless

Alo Johnston - Am I Trans Enough

Bram Stoker - Dracula

Cordelia Fine - Delusions of Gender

Cordelia Fine - Testosterone Rex

David Attenborough - Living Planet (audio book)

Euripedes - The Bacchae and Other Plays

George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty Four

Hannah Kaner - The Fallen Gods Trilogy #1: Godkiller

Isaac Fellman - Dead Collections

J.B. MacKinnon - The Day The World Stops Shopping

Jaimie Raines - The T in LGBT

Jeanette Purkis - The Guide To Good Mental Health on the Autism Spectrum

Jen Beagin - Big Swiss

Jennie Kermode - Growing Older as a Trans and/or nonbinary person

Jon Krauker - Under the Banner of Heaven

Julia Lynn Rubin - Primal Animals

Juno Dawson - Her Majesty’s Royal Coven

K. Patrick - Mrs. S

Kalynn Bayron - You’re Not Supposed To Die Tonight

Lily Lindon - My Own Worst Enemy

Liz Gloyn - Tracking Classical Monsters on Popular Culture

Malinda Lo - A Line in The Dark

Mark Lawrence - The Library Trilogy #1: The Book That Wouldn’t Burn

Marie Cardno - How to Get a Girlfriend (When You’re a Terrifying Monster)

Mary Shelley - Frankenstein

Maude Ventura - My Husband

Max Adams - The Wisdom of Trees

Megan Abbot - Give Me Your Hand

Mona Awad - Bunny

Naoya Matsumoto - Kaiju No. 8 Vol 8

Ottessa Moshfegh - My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Paul Tremblay - The Cabin an The End of the World

Peter Corbin - Three Jacobean Witchcraft Plays

R.W. Wallace - Beyond The Grave

Reni Eddo-Lodge - Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

Robin Wall Kimmerer - Braiding Sweetgrass

Sarah Waters - Fingersmith

Sayaka Murata - Earthlings

Sven Holm - Termush

Talia Jager - Without Hesitation

Tamsyn Muir - The Locked Tomb #3: Nona the Ninth

Veronique Altglas - From Yoga to Kabbalah

Walter Stephens - Demon Lovers

William Peter Blatty - The Exorcist

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mysterymirrors · 12 days

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Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: NWOT Vintage Patagonia Men's Performance Twill Jeans - Olive - 31x30.

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ear-worthy · 1 year

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Baggage Drop Podcast: Strengthening Our Mental Fitness

May is mental health awareness month, and before you roll your eyes at these designated months, remember that mental health is a critical factor in a healthy and vibrant society. After all, these continuous mass shootings are instigated by people with mental health issues and easy access to guns. The access to guns part is for another column, but it is also a critical part of a well-functioning and safe society.

There is a relatively new organization called Wondermind, which bills itself as the world's first mental health ecosystem. Wondermind combines easy-to-understand articles with proven techniques, replacing jargon and judgment with expert-backed tips for healthier habits.

According to Wondermind, "It takes more than an inspirational quote to really change your mindset. But showing up for your mental health shouldn’t be expensive, inaccessible, or time-consuming. Even if you’re lucky enough to see a therapist, making time for your mind in between sessions can go a long way. That’s what we’re here for—to give you easy, doable ways to put your mental fitness first every day."

I do salute the Wondermind's focus on mental fitness. So many podcasts and books dangle the key to lifelong happiness as if happiness was a permanent state of being that, once achieved, is a continuous condition.

Instead, Wondermind focuses on the concept of mental fitness, which, like physical fitness, requires constant, even daily, exercise.

For the month of May, Wondermind has released a new podcast called Baggage Drop. The allusion in the title is releasing our emotional baggage via a baggage drop. Nicely done, people.

Hosted by experts from Wondermind’s Advisory Committee — Dr. Jessica Stern, Dr. Ryan Howes, Alo Johnston LMFT, and Dr. Nina Polyné — Baggage Drop delivers repeatable and powerful mental fitness tools to help rewire your mindset for personal impact. The podcast parks itself at the intersection of healthy habits, mindset adjustments, and busy schedules.

To be clear, with the sad lack of a mental health support system in our nation, Baggage Drop focuses on a self-help system. Given by the paucity of a true mental health infrastructure, helping yourself, instead of waiting for help that probably will never arrive, is as good a solution as possible for healing and self-repair.

New episodes land every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday during the month of May. True to its promise, Wondermind limits the episodes to about ten minutes in length.

I listened to week one with Dr. Jessica Stern and felt empowered and focused on improving my mental fitness. In the first episode, Dr. Stern -- an excellent podcast host who combines prescriptive knowledge with vocal enthusiasm -- discusses neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to prune and replace unhelpful habits. The image used -- and a cool one at that -- is The Why: Finding Your North Star.

In episode two, Dr. Stern guides listeners through the steps to overcome mental roadblocks and create small, more manageable goals. The call-ins from listeners (Wondermind community) via Instagram are a nice touch and add a sense of "we are all in this together" camaraderie. Moreover, the music that continues throughout the episode has a thumping, syncopated beat that matches the upbeat and prescriptive nature of the show.

One question that Dr. Stern asks listeners multiple times during her three episodes is: "What's working and what's not working in my daily life?"

It's a deceptively simple, even childlike question that cuts through all the psychological red tape we use to overcomplicate and even delay our mental repair and maintenance efforts.

Baggage Drop is a well-thought-out, carefully constructed, and user-friendly psychology podcast that offers listeners actionable steps they can take to achieve greater mental fitness.

Have you seen or heard about some of the people out there? Karens, mass shooters, political extremists, and self-righteous fascists.

Listening to the Baggage Drop podcast may only be a drop in the bucket on the journey to greater societal mental well-being, but it's a damn good start.

#podcast #mental health #psychology

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fromtheringapron · 5 years

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In Praise of the Old SummerSlam Theme

I’m not a huge fan of summer. For as much as it’s regarded as a time of fun and leisure, I personally find it to be an incredibly exhausting season. It’s a time of excessive sweating, oppressive heat strangling you into a half-conscious stupor, and turning up the air conditioning so loudly that you can’t hear what you’re watching on TV. And, really, let’s not forget all of that sunshine. It’s sun that gets right up in your face, turns grass into straw, and can make a minute feel like an eternity.

There are moments, however, where can I get in the spirt of the season. I attended Boston Pride last month and while I can certainly dish at length on the corporate pink washing of that occasion, I did experience fleeting moments of summertime bliss. I felt a comforting breeze walking down the streets of Boston, surrounded by a crowd of people like me, soaking in the moment to be ourselves without fear. And that’s when, in my head, I heard it: the metallic screams of the old SummerSlam theme.

Perhaps in a time where Flo Rida soundtracks literally every WWE pay-per-view, some newer wrestling fans may be a little confused as to what I’m talking about. There was a time in WWE history where pay-per-views didn’t have a different theme song from a popular artist every year. Instead, Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, Survivor Series, and, yes, SummerSlam all had one distinctive theme used every year. The theme in question soundtracked every SummerSlam from 1990 to 1994. It stopped being used in the mid ‘90s but, my god, I’m so happy we live in a world where it exists at all.

First and foremost, the song works so well because, in all likelihood, the man behind it was Jim Johnston, a legit musical genius. Johnston has such a talent for perfectly capturing the spirit of the wrestlers and pay-per-view events through music. Better yet, he’s done it all without putting the spotlight on himself. The concept of pay-per-view and entrance themes was in its infancy when he came aboard the WWE in the mid ‘80s and he single-handedly changed the game. Before Johnston, wrestlers would enter the arena to songs from popular acts like Queen and Michael Jackson. But after Johnston, people thought of the wrestler first before the artist. It marked such a monumental shift in how wrestling was presented and perceived by the audience.

It should be noted the first two SummerSlams had a different theme, which would become more synonymous with the Royal Rumble. It was a wise move to swap it out, as the bells and synths in that song have more of a chilly, wintery feel befitting the January classic. By 1990, however, the perennial song of the summer had been crafted and the wrestling world was never the same. Compared to the themes used for the other pay-per-views at the theme, the SummerSlam theme has a much more distinctively metal sound. The guitar riffs literally sound like a giant sword cutting through steel. In another life, it could’ve been produced by Dokken, who were no strangers to soundtracking campy pop culture.

Sonically, the theme achieves two things, the first of them being that it actually gets you hyped for SummerSlam and makes you want to buy the pay-per-view. It conjures up the imagery of thousands of fans lining up in front of the arena on a hot, sunny day in August. You can picture them cheering and flocking to the merchandise stands. You can imagine them going bananas in the stands when the pay-per-view goes on the air. You want to be a part of that crowd. Really, it makes you hyped up for any sort of summertime event in general. I wouldn’t mind if it were used to hype up my wedding, no hyperbole.

Secondly, the theme successfully captures the sound of summer. Often times summer is usually presented to us musically in the form of something you’d hear in your average episode of SpongeBob Squarepants. At its worst, it sounds like “Kokomo” by The Beach Boys. But, come on, when does it honestly sound like that in our daily lives? For every relaxing day at the beach, there are several more throughout the season where you’re dealing with unbearable heat, whether it be at work or stuck in traffic. Tensions can run high, and this theme keeps them simmering. It sounds like steam rising from freshly laid pavement. At its most extreme, it sounds like the sun has finally crash-landed on Earth and we’re all running around with our bodies on fire.

It speaks to the true power of this song that it can pop up in my head at any time, whether it be at Boston Pride or even just thinking about the summer ahead. That’s what’s so great about these old pay-per-view themes⏤they’re so evergreen, like Hallmark cards you can use every year. They definitely contain sounds you could only get from a particular era in music, but they could still soundtrack a WWE pay-per-view now. At the least, this is still a better suited theme for SummerSlam than something like “Cool for the Summer” by Demi Lovato (though I do love a song about bisexual experimentation soundtracking Brock Lesnar vs. The Undertaker). Summer is still a long haul of a time, but this theme does what all good music can do⏤make your pain a bit more tolerable. It’s the aloe to your sunburn.

Without further ado, listen to this absolute banger of a tune here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bwV1-Gzw3o

#summerslam #wwe #music #wwe network

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secretradiobrooklyn · 4 years

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That Gingerbread Feeling | 12.19 & 12.25.20

Secret Radio | 12.19 & 12.25.20 | Hear it here.

That Gingerbread Feeling edition

1. Irving Berlin - “Snow”

I really enjoy picturing Rosemary Clooney beelining for a snowbank with a bottle of shampoo in one hand, blissfully mashing clumps of snow into her hair.

2. Christie Laume - “La musique et la danse”

The payoff holler in this song is like hearing an unknown animal call from the palm trees over there.

3. Gedou - live 1975

This is a straight-up holdover from the last broadcast. We were delighted to discover Gedou’s Japanese glam rock glory — especially in the context of the videos, where you can see how extremely unlike their world they are. In this one, a crowd of excited teens watches and claps along, and you can tell that they’re the rockers of their peers — they all sport variations on early rock pompadours. Gedou, however, has blown right past that style and is going full-orchid Spiders from Mars. They appear to be loving the shit out of every second onstage, and it’s completely infectious. This take also has a killer lead-in to a great live “Scent,” the song of theirs we played last week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdAP9ud-uEQ

4. Mannequin Men - “Private School”

I would like to shout out the rich music life of Chicago’s rock world, specifically from 2002-2008 but extending in both directions on the calendar. I feel truly fortunate to have been in Bound Stems, on Flameshovel Records, for most of those years. James and Jesse worked from an office above the Empty Bottle, sharing the space with a young Riot Act Media, and that label was the center of so much great music. Paige and I both especially loved Mannequin Men’s “Fresh Rot” album — I always think of me and Paige in the Stems band van on Milwaukee Ave, headed gradually northwest toward Midwest Buy and Sell aka the best amp shop in Chicago, with “Private School” cranked, watching the train pass the other way, feeling like the city went on forever.

5. Ed Blaszczyk, Rock Band Himself - “Hully Gully Neurasthenique” from “The Quirky Lost Tapes 1993-1995”

Born Bad Records is the hottest of spots. I don’t know anything about this guy but I am under his control.

- Five minutes of a pink oyster mushroom playing modular synthesizer

A sincere thank you to Kevin Vlack for introducing us to the mesmerizing thoughtwaves of a pink oyster mushroom, as expressed by a wickedly set-up synth. By any objective measure it sounds random and unmusical, but my subjective experience is that it is incredibly smooth and welcoming to hear. It feels almost like an aural massage or something. I feel an autonomic response to it. In any case, we both immediately listened to it a bunch, and it only gets more appealing.

6. William Onyeabor - “Hypertension”

We still haven’t seen “Who Is William Onyeabor?,” so all I know about him is that his rhythmic approach is always totally absorbing. The cascading phrase that happens throughout the song feels like water being poured out of a jug. I especially dig how they split the vocalist between “hyper” and “tension,” kind of not unlike The Fall.

7. Renato Carosone - “Tu Vuó Fa’ l’Americano”

You want to be American — in Italian. Fun is being poked. It gets so surprisingly intense in the instrumental middle passage!

“Whiskey soda rock & roll”

8. Star Feminine Band - “Rew Be Me”

Another return performance from last week! Star Feminine Band’s new album is so freakin awesome. “Rew Be Me”’s rhythms are so fascinating on every instrument. Also, they’re made by girls between ages 11 and 17. This song is so many songs in one!

9. Ros Serey Sothea - “Kom Kung Twer Evey (Don’t Be Mad)” - “Cambodian Rocks”

More jaw-dropping ’60s Cambodian rock full of epic melodies and major-league parts from every member of the band — above all Ros Sereysothea, who was pronounced the “Queen with the Golden Voice” by the King of Cambodia.

Like every musician of her generation in her country, she was killed in the Khmer Rouge genocide.

10. Lohento Eskill et T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo - “Mireille”

11. Mohamed Mazouni - “Ecoutes moi camarade”

A scenario that we’re just starting to consider is Algiers, which was a French territory in North Africa with as many Europeans as Africans. Before and after the revolution in 1962, Algerians are expanding the definition of French citizenship. An intoxicating version of the two cultures having equal input on the song’s palette and reference points.

- The pink oyster mushroom

12. The Fall - “Free Range”

This 7” came from a visit to a record shop in London that had an entire wall of Fall albums and singles and I just goggled at it. Kind of picked this one at random and it hits just so hard. For some reason this song sometimes reminds me of Self-Help Seminar, good friends from Seattle who we played with from early on. Harvey Danger did a version of their song “Heroine with an E.”

13. Les Poppys - “Non non rien n’a changé”

A pretty large chorus of garçons just kind of beautifully swarming around, I don’t really know where to put this song in my head. I love the “Hey Joe” style bassline in the finale passage so much!

14. Mahmood - “Soldi”

This is driving around Cambridgeshire to London, again and again, listening to this music and shouting “Fregherai!” This trip’s soundtrack was exclusively the 2019 candidates for Eurovision’s top prize. This was Italy’s contender. It was considered controversial, I was told, because they’re drawing on a musician who is speaking in Italian and describing the world from a minority’s experience in Italy. That’s pretty bold to use as your country’s champion — I thought that was pretty cool.

15. John Williams - “Home Alone Main Title”

Merry Christmas! We time-traveled in this moment up to and through Christmas. It was a quietly wonderful Christmas, I must say, and included viewing “Home Alone” for the first time in decades. “Feeling that gingerbread feeling” indeed. We’re thankful for so much this year even in the middle of all this giant mess.

16. The Fall - “Jingle Bell Rock”

My preferred Santa voice.

17. Lithics - “Hands”

Sure do like this band more than ever. “Tower of Age” has been nothing but awesome so far.

18. Samba Negra - “Long Life Africa” - “La Locura de Machuca”

Happy holidays to Ryan, who just got this album! Analog Africa is one of the flat-out most amazing record labels on Earth, and they put out this album this year. The cover art is insane, and the music is — also insane. This is the setup: “One night in 1975, a successful tax lawyer named Rafael Machuca had his mind blown in Barranquilla’s ‘Plaza de los Musicos’. Overnight he went from a high-ranking position in the Columbian revenue authority to visionary production guru of the newly formed record label that bore his name, Discos Machuca, and for the next six years he devoted his life to releasing some of the strangest, most experimental Afro Psychedelia Cumbia and Champeta ever produced.”

I mean, right?!

19. Meridian Brothers - “Salsa Caliente: Versión Aumentada”

This came to us via Francis Bebey, in the big ol’ stream. I definitely see the relationship. That’s what I’ve been really appreciating recently, how musicians from all over the globe seemed to be in musical communication with each other in the ’70s. There was such a wild explosion of music happening worldwide, influencing each other in a way that must have been at least partially psychic.

20. The Little Rabbits - “Yeah”

I got this CD in an armful of albums from Harvey Danger’s French distributor. I put this one on and was just… it was fascinating. This song is a definite high point, but the whole album is a complete jam. It’s clear to me (though I’ve never done a lick of study on this) that the Little Rabbits worked with Beck on “Odelay,” because you can hear whole passages of music that you associate with Beck songs stitched inside this album. I always want to know more about what happened there and I never

21. Orlando Julius & the Afro Sounders - “Alo Mi Alo (Parts 1 & 2)”

Another example of that international ’70s kismet! This horn passage reminds us strongly of Adriano Celentano’s “Prisencolinensinainciusol,” written in faux-English for a French audience in 1972. This song was written somewhere between 1969-72, in Nigeria!

I also love how the song has this sort of geologic dynamic going, where instead of bouncing between parts, it changes flavor gradually over the course of many minutes, until it ends far from where it began — not unlike a film.

- Bug Chaser - “Christmas Van”

We miss Bug Chaser, St. Louis lords and legends. We played some magic shows on the City Museum rooftop with them, and danced our faces off at their shows all over town. If you lived in St. Louis in the last ten years, I hope you went to Bug Chaser shows, because they were the realest of deals.

22. Half Japanese - “Swept Away”

I hadn’t revisited Half Japanese in a long time, for no good reason at all. It’s part of what I have loved about Yo La Tengo and Daniel Johnston and Jonathan Richman and what I love about Jad Fair, so giant and so sincere all at once.

23. Thomas Roebers & Floris Leeuwenberg - excerpt, “FOLI (There is no movement without rhythm)”

Speaking of sincerity, this is an excerpt from a 10-minute movie called “FOLI.” I don’t know how it came to be made, but this section in the middle immediately grabbed me and feels super African and somehow refracted through a Western lens as well

24. Ayalew Mesfin - “Zebeder (Mesmerizing)”

The thing about Mesfin is that his band seems to set up the song in a Western tempo and pattern, and then Mesfin lays an Ethiopian melodic count across the top of the phrases they play, creating a third pattern from the intertwining. It creates a sense of the exotic and the familiar at the same time, which sparks into a dreamlike feeling, where you remember something you know you never experienced. I feel like that opens up some capacity to appreciate his melody’s deeply human quality.

- “Tuneup #1” from “Rent” / Glenn Miller - “Moonlight Serenade”

25. Ella Fitzgerald - “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?”

Consider this an invitation! Send us a message however we normally talk and we’ll send a link. Or not! In any case: here’s to making it through 2020 (chin chin), and here’s to a productive, restorative 2021 (chin chin)

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nyx-b-log · 2 years

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Am I Trans Enough? by Alo Johnston

thanks to netgalley for the arc!

read: oct 2022

rating: 4*

summary:

see title ;) more seriously, a self-help text written by a therapist for people who are experiencing doubt in and of their transness.

opinion:

this is a really affirming read! or at least it was to me.

to some extent i think this is the kind of book which each reader will get varying mileage out of depending on what they relate to and what they need. cishet people might struggle (but i still believe it could be useful for them! you never know what gender is lurking, plus allyship!), but people who have a more complex relationship with gender will (i believe) find parts that they relate to, if not the whole thing.

the book itself covers a variety of potential trans and nonbinary experiences and historical context, and tho i bounced off the first half (with the exception of the exploration of the strange feeling of trying new pronouns which made me feel a lot better about a fear i'd been diminishing) the second half felt much more practiceable. towards the end there's three separate chapters, one each on being a trans man, woman, and nonbinary.

(the author also acknowledges that this doesn't and can't cover all potential identities and experiences. how you feel about that is up to you.)

and, of course, the gist of the book is that yes, yes you are trans enough.

the chapters themselves are very short, a couple of pages each, and any longer ones are broken up with sub-sections, so it's very easy to read. plus, if anything comes up that you really need to sit and think about for a while - and like me, you have a base need to finish chapters before putting the book down - you can!

but, bear in mind, i don’t technically identify myself as trans (though i use multiple pronouns), so this was more of an interesting reading exercise, with a few hopes that maybe some of those minor niggling doubts were more universal than i'd initially thought. (surprising literally no one, they were).

however, as a person relatively newly playing with gender, i did feel very affirmed and reassured by both the writing style and the content.

it's also, for anyone concerned, open and accepting of detransition as an option, and supports more fluid experiences of gender. (low bar, i know, but appreciated.)

my only critiques with it are that it seems to try and cover too much at once, and ends up covering a lot of stuff in a very light way. this, coupled with the lack of activities makes it feel like a sort of superficial book. to put it another way, i feel like my knowledge around trans doubt has changed, but i'm not entirely sure how to approach feeling different around my own doubt.

not unhelpful tho! and the long list of resources and notes in the back are greatly appreciated!

but still, i think i was hoping for a bit more depth.

on the whole, i enjoyed this book and found it useful! would recommend to anyone early in their gender journey, or perhaps looking for a little insight into other gender identities.

#books #reading #bookblr #am i trans enough?#book review #alo johnston #lgbtq+#see my reading thread for more #but this covers pretty much everything #it did take me a while to get into it #and i think i may have read it a bit too quickly and not taken in some of the stuff i should have done #but ah well #i'm glad i got to read it!#for those curious the release date is 21 feb 2023

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