tuesday again 4/2/2024
in which i try to clean two different boxes with varying success
new people: hello! the tuesdaypost is a weekly roundup of stuff i've been listening, reading, watching, playing, and making. it is NOT a recommendation series, although i sometimes dabble in critique. when im firing on all cylinders i ask "what is the core concept of this? does it succeed in what i think it's trying to do and what it says it's doing?is it well-made but i dislike it/beautiful but not for me? why? what parts Really Work?"
if you are into purity culture, yelling at other people about the problematic media they consume, or are under 18 i am going to have very little patience for you.
listening
now that i live in houston i am legally obliged to loop the new beyonce album 24/7. there is absolutely truly nobody fucking doing it like her. every song is a multimedia art piece. goddamn do i miss the album as a tool to convey a specific concept/listening order/flow. sometimes (chappell roan most recently comes to mind, although it does feel unfair to compare anyone to beyonce) every individual song is pretty good but the listening experience if you sit down and listen all the way through the album is unpleasant and choppy. not so here. NEVER here.
my favorite like Dance Number is YA YA (it samples nancy sinatra's boots! and the beach boys' good vibrations! wildly different tones despite coming out a year apart!)
the one that goes on four different character/tone playlists is BODYGUARD.
great early roundup of influences, samples, and collaborators. delighted to see five fingers for marseilles listed, a rocky but underrated south african neo-western free on tubi rn for americans
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reading
also very texas-relevant with the recent pornhub lawsuits! pornhub and sex tech (among other things) have been samantha cole's beat for almost ten years. i trust her to report sensitively and not for like. shock clicks
this site has a free paywall (sign up with your email for a link to the full article) so bots have a harder time scraping articles: this is a journalist-founded site with only the four founders running it and writing articles. while annoying i do think this is a reasonable measure
The platform still has problems, but after years of critical reporting and a litany of legal and reputational consequences, Pornhub is now more heavily moderated than any other porn platform, and most major social media platforms, for that matter. A growing list of age verification laws has put Pornhub in a position where it is compelled to block access to its site in seven states and counting. In theory, these laws are designed to prevent children from being able to access pornography online. In reality, what is going to happen is that children are going to end up on pornographic sites that don’t care what the law says, and where some of the most harmful content that exists online is actively promoted to them.
she's also got a new limited series podcast with CBC about the rise and fall of pornhub, which was fascinating and kept me company during an extremely early morning drive
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watching
i'm lukewarm about this one but i spend a lot of time getting there, much like this movie
ive been watching a lot of frankly dogshit thrillers, which has made me wonder: what's the deal with supervillans? where did they come from? and thence arrived at the prototypical film Dr Mabuse the Gambler (1922, dir. Lang). the four and a half hour cut on Kanopy is two normal-length movies superglued together, which makes sense as a streaming product but it is sort of a terrifying runtime and took me three days to get through.
sometimes, as we know, i get a real bee in my bonnet about visiting the early versions of things. dr mabuse is the blueprint for every james bond and mission impossible villain, or really any shadowy supervillain with power over [INDUSTRY] or [THE MARKET]. it is a four and a half hour long cat and mouse game through lavish, eccentric sets between mabuse and prosecutor wenk. it has some trouble sustaining itself bc it is four and a half hours long but does deliver on the cat and mouse aspects. this letterboxed review has interesting things to say about the political climate of 1922 germany and how lang subverts the formula of the pulp serial.
really the film opens with mabuse yelling at his cocaine-addicted assistant, but the film properly gets going with mabuse's henchmen stealing a trade agreement (nothing really carbon dates a movie more than a missing trade agreement. vanishingly few post-early-30s movies have missing trade agreements as plot points) and then he crashes the stock market. for fun and profit.
however. i think every time you see an evil man who is a banker or stockbroker or generally uses money as power you have to interrogate whether it's antisemitic. the answer here is "maybe" but i'm not sure if intent matters when contemporary nazi critics were eager to hold mabuse up as "this is the typical jewish criminal". (sorry about the link directly to wikipedia, it's been touch finding online sources for this section). mabuse is not specifically jewish, but there are certainly elements of stereotype. i am still not good at being presented with "this movie has a shadowy behind the scenes figure manipulating the government and all the money ever" and going "hey wait a minute".
after that tremendous glaring caveat, for which i read more contemporary reviews and reviews in general than i ever read for movies in these posts, is it good? eh. a contemporary VARIETY review remarked (and i largely agree)
The direction of Fritz Lang has moments – but Lang somewhat negates his good technical effects by twenty forty-word captions of a ludicrous unconciseness.
the night scenes are particularly well done, and imo are better than many modern night scenes--other contemporary reviews remarked
In this film the techniques of the film camera (Carl Hoffmann’s brilliant photography) are brought to perfection. The problem of how to film lit-up streets at night has been solved for the first time. It is unbelievably impressive to see the glaring lights of speeding cars flash through the night or the rapid passing of an elevated train of the initially blurred, then gradually focussed glimpse through a pair of opera glasses on to the variety stage, the nuances of light and shade—these things alone prove the value of film documentary.
look at this shit! filmed from within the cars! in 1922!!!
this film asks you to believe hypnotism is real and really effective, so i don't think it's that big of a leap when it asks you to believe in ghosts. i don't understand that quibble from contemporary viewers. there are several on screen suicides with like. specific methods. which is not currently regarded as good filmmaking practice. im curious to know what contemporary audiences thought but couldn't immediately turn anything up, and wading through masters’ theses on cinematic suicide is a little beyond my current mental health.
if i were a more content-minded woman this would turn into a clickbait video essay about the antisemitic origins of every supervillan. however i am unqualified and untalented at video editing and i'm sure there are forty theses on this already. this movie is a hard sell to anyone jewish or employed. it is also a stunning example of cutting-edge film technology and part of the genesis of the modern supervillan. Fritz Lang films tend to fall in the category of “movies i am happy to see once and feel no need to revisit”.
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playing
playing what is effectively the same game three times back to back (breath of the wild, tears of the kingdom, genshin impact) has sort of burned me out on open world games with a focus on battle skill progression and stumbling across little puzzles in the overworld. i have to get itch.io up and running on this pc and find the most linear jankiest possible one-sitting indie thing. or several of them. i might try the solo ttrpg Gentleman Bandit i seem to have acquired in one of the giant charity bundles
brief breath of the wild update bc i don't want to pull screenshots off my switch: i have gotten to the boss fight for the gerudo and goron regions, have not completed them bc my focus in this game is NOT hearts, and am in the middle of the zora temple. despite the quality of life improvements and new regions in totk i think i prefer botw: progression is a bit easier, there are fewer mmo-style hub quests and repeatable quests. things like the stable photos are cute but very repetitive, so are the sign bracing puzzles, and the sky crystal quests for sky shrines feel VERY samey. also dislike how the CLEAR OUT: [REGION] quests with the monster suppression squads reset at the blood moon.
anyway! to genshin! there was an exceptionally fun little event with a surprisingly involved management sim tacked onto the game??? you make and sell potions fulfilling different requirements, and can eventually stock travelling merchants all over the continent. the actual act of making the potions was this block-filling 1010! style thing (screenshot from polygon)
the new region, a port town and tea-growing area called Chenyu Vale, is maybe the prettiest one in the game so far? it's the one that feels the most picturesque and Designed, like this is one huge mansion garden studded with follies. they also added background chatter and noise in the cities and towns, which really startled me and makes them feels much more lived in! this is a fun trick to avoid putting in a thousand NPCs and making everyone's framerate crash. the less stuff in your game, the less shit can go wrong.
also pulled for and got chiyori, a geo-aligned seamstress (and sometime spy???) swordswoman who has what i can only call domme voice
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making
ok now we'll talk about boxes. i was rearranging my kitchen, as unemployed women are known to do, and noticed this recipe box i picked up back in mass was disgusting. the finish is starting to fail but it was genuinely grody and last summer i packed my kitchen in a blind panic inside an hour and did not have time to address it. i have never seen a recipe box at an estate sale before or since and it made me desperately sad.
it was full of a lot of stuff.
i went at it with a somewhat inadvisable combination of things: wood soap didn't budge it, so i dampened a paper towel in vinegar and wiped it down in the vain hope it would do something. the thing that worked, and would be inadvisable for anything veneered or less densely textured, was baking soda paste and the scrubby side of a sponge. it still smells Very musty even after 48h of loose baking soda inside with several changes, but that might be partly the recipe cards' fault. i would like to refinish this at some point but i don't have polyurethane on hand and the fun little project budget is empty until further notice/i get a job.
the hinge did rust a bit despite my best efforts but that has since been lightly steel wooled and oiled. a well loved object! it's possible the lady who died just fucking sucked and that's why literally her entire estate including many other things families usually keep was on sale, but i would like to think perhaps she simply had no other family? a well loved/used object even if all the recipes are for semi-horrifying fifties new england recipes.
the other box, pre-acids but post-washing: this topp trading card box with seven episode one packets of cards was intact with the original seal. i have verified it was not worth much more than the $5 i paid for it with the trading card obsessed man in my best friend's husband's friendgroup. i bought this three months ago but the man was unavailable to open it until uhhh last week. some sort of liquid got inside it at some point and it was super corroded. i was going to store embroidery floss in here but even with all my powers (barkeepers friend. brasso.) i cannot completely remove the corrosion. it's not corroded Through but it looks bad and feels rough. so it goes. it'll probably hold the tiedown straps in my car bc that plastic bucket is rapidly failing
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You could also screenshare in a server like an art stream!
...........................inherently i hate people watching me type while I'm typing
but
..idk I actually kinda like this idea
could be a cool whump writing based server with vcs to body double while writing and do writing sprints and talk out whump ideas and stuff
very focused on the actual process of writing less than whump tropes and ocs like most of the servers are. like a writing room.
maybe threads for oc or lore dump for explanation and such, but main channels. like. just writing. med question channel. random questions channel. grammar channel. beta read channel. etc.
would anyone be interested in that if i make one? (id probably make it 18+ just for my own peace of mind and not having to mod minor major interactions I just dont have the bandwidth for that rn - could open it up later if it goes well or something)
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i am so close to finishing my replay of ff7r ive got like maybe 4-6 hours left then i can FINALLY play intermission dlc so that i can FINALLY play rebirth and then FINALLY the mental crop rotation can go back to art or writing (altho i cant promise the art wont be ff7 focused for a while longer, cloud and associates got me gripped real tight rn)
(this got really long so im putting the rest under a readmore so it doesnt make anybodys dash like 5 miles long)
id really like to keep streaming when im done playing ff7 stuff, like art streams are smth id really like to do but im sort of at a loss for what to do setup-wise. i dont have the means or desire to put together a way to stream traditional art so it would have to be digital.
i detach my screen from my keyboard to draw on the touch screen which disconnects the screen from the graphics card i think. or SOMETHING like that . the graphics card I stream with is in the base of the laptop and obs does NOT play nice with the secondary one on the monitor. which means i cant stream with the screen detached.
ive tried streaming with my computer in Drawing Mode which essentially is with the screen on backwards so that its angled toward me with the keyboard inaccessible. it's annoying to stream like that tho because i can then ONLY use the touch screen and cant type anything or use keyboard shortcuts. its manageable if im not streaming but really annoying when im streaming and have to hop between drawing program and messing around w/ obs
i have a little bluetooth keyboard that i could use to get around this but its pretty tiny and while it DOES work the problem is that im not used to how the keys are spaced and i fumble constantly. also theres a delay in the input sometimes (i bought this keyboard from the secondhand store for like 4 dollars so it came with a little wear-and-tear)
and then trying to draw with the screen on normally obvious works the best streaming-wise but the angle that the screen is at with the keyboard in the way has my wrist hurting in like. 45 minutes.
i dont really want to use my external tablets - they're pretty old at this point and ive gotten used to drawing directly on the screen , and i have no desire to get a tablet with its own screen. i imagine cintiq and cintiq-equivalent tablets are still pretty pricey, and even if i had the budget, the entire point of me getting a touch screen computer was to be able to draw on it directly and cut down the number of steps it takes to get started, to keep the adhd demons at bay.
i think the solution is probably just adapting to the tiny bluetooth keyboard . i've messed around with using switch joycons for my keyboard shortcuts and while it actually worked really well it still doesnt fix the problem of shit keyboard access if i need to google a reference pic or smth lmao. touch screen keyboards just dont do it for me i always feel clumsy when im not able to actually feel separate keys. it frankly feels even worse than my tiny bluetooth keyboard
actually one of the main hurdles for me wrt drawing digitally is that i havent figured out a screen configuration that makes pulling up reference pictures feel seamless. its very jarring and clunky to have to tab between screens and i know theres a little window you can plop ref images into in clip itself but i Still find it pretty awkward to use. i think my screen size might be the issue though, so id probably want to use my tv as a second monitor and throw the ref images up there. which DOES work , ive tried it, but the problem is that . well. it's a touchscreen computer. and the bluetooth keyboard doesnt have a trackpad, because why would you need one for a touch screen. except that. the second monitor isn't a touch screen. its my entire goddamn television. i cannot access it via touchscreen. so i have to then plug in a mouse. and then at that point i am juggling the bluetooth keyboard, the joycons for faster keyboard shortcuts, AND a mouse to access the external monitor.
that setup is honestly doable i just feel so clumsy trying to navigate it. im sure with time id acclimate to it and it would become more streamlined as i make adjustments. im getting ahead of myself tho hahah im still at least five hours out from finishing my replay of remake, and then i hear the dlc is like ~4 hours so youd probably have to make that at least 6 for me because i play video games really slowly. and then rebirth is like what. 40 hours for just story?? jesus christ i just checked howlongtobeat and its over 80 hours with sidequests. thats like double the length of remake . GOD im so excited to play it aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
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It's 2024!
Since I'm not too much in the D2 fandom I'll probably change my name again.
I do have a few things, resolutions if you please, that I'd like to share for the new year. Nothing too terrible to be honest.
I'll like to draw or sketch something at least once a week. Ive been bad in art block because Ive just been been in a stale part of my life lately. It's nothing to do with my relationships or all that. Ive just been stuck....I think drawing would help me out.
Id like to do the same with writing. It's been even longer than I wrote something. I don't personally care if it's typing on my iPad or writing in a notebook. I just wanna do it to get out of my stalemate with life.
Build a better cosplay. In February (1st to the 4th) I'll be going to Megacon in Orlando. I'm gonna try to go as Pomni (but with a twist) but besides that, I'd like to make some 2.0s of some of my other cosplays. I do have Murtagh (my DaD fursuit) I need to make more room in or make a better head of but RN I wanna focus on cosplay. I'd like to maybe try making my Tiefling/dragonborn Aryes (pronounced like Eris) or even Astarion.
I'd like to try to be more active if I can and lose some weight. Nothing too dramatic as I do have a few health issues (mental and physical) that prevent me from going absolute HAM on this one but I'll try where I can.
DRIVE. I'd like to try to get my damn car fixed so I can get my license. IM GONNA BE 30 THIS YEAR. And before anyone asks, this is actually the first time since I moved here 10 years ago that I have a stable enough car (the last one I had like 7 years ago was a dud and the people that sold it to use knew this and just wanted money). It's nothing too bad and I can fix it myself (with mom's help).
Get out of the house more. That's self explanatory. I need to stop being a shut-in.
Try new food. I love to eat but I wanna try new things too
Learn that it's ok to fail things. Something I was never taught was that it's ok to fail. There was always the big hype for me to succeed and to be good at what I do that no one ever told me it's ok to fail. It's ok that I didn't do it perfectly. It's ok that I didn't get it done. I can try again or now I know that's a bit beyond what I can do.
Take more pictures. Memories.
Enjoy life and be less depressed.
Yeah, as always there's always normal goals like 'Play better videogames' or 'go to the Beach' but those aren't really New Year's resolutions for me. They are just normal things I do everyday.
But I thought I'd just share those with everyone as well as the small update. I'll still be around and as always I'm still on Twitter (I'm not calling it X, f-u Elon) and I do streams on Twitch every now and then. Anyways, have a happy new year guys!
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💫🌹♾️💗✨ soo much gratitude.. last friday was soo much love.. i had the opportunity to see @moormother! was our first time re-connecting since we last saw each other in london during the summer right before the pandemic. was madd love to see her w/ @justmadnice @ohbliv (rva) @vitcheboulra and @elijahhall create, conjure, listen, give witness to the black experience in richmond, va, the capital of the confederacy.. i rode up from the 757 with the homie @djfairway757 and did a v brandon thing by leaving my wallet at the crib lol 😓🤦🏽♂️ it was cool tho b/c i was never once asked for id 😅🤷🏽♂️ we didn’t make there in time to be in space for the performance, but luckily was able to catch it streamed in the lobby (see 2/3) but uh yeah, after the performance, the performers had a talk with artist @the_underboobcommons that was super powerful, where they debriefed and gave reflections on the magic that had just transpired. moor mother’s comments felt specific n persynally encouraging, like little nuggets/gems, pulling from the brief convo we i had at the beginning of intermission.. seeing lots of things coming full circle ➰super appreciative i’m truly grateful to witness such a dope configuration of artists come together, sharing space engaging in rememory, sharing truths, and future dreaming, and riffing, with love and intention, in the state where i was born! left with a feeling and a new sense of temporality where i see soo many openings and possibilities in this geography, a geography which h(is)torically has overwhelmingly expressed constriction and enclosure.. hella encouraged n filled w/ love rn 🙏🏾🖤✨ (at Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU) https://www.instagram.com/p/CeoFn-vu88l/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
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