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Wazzuppppppp?!

Hello, world wide web. I missed the entire month of August, so here's a quick update as we get into September!

What have I been up to? Well, firstly, I've started using my film camera quite a bit again. Unfortunately, this has revealed an issue with the camera itself, wherein the mirror does not descend properly... apparently it is a very common problem, often involving a little plastic gear that has snapped inside. Thankfully, I've found someone to repair it, so that should be back in action sometime soon. In the meantime, here's a photo from the roll of film that I did get developed quite a while ago!

A photograph of an old friend's cat. I can't remember her name.

I also bought another camera last night, because it was too tempting not to. I've been receiving emails from Retrospekt for the longest time, alternately tempted by landline phones and CD players, alarm clocks and Polaroids... now that I've finally bought something from them, I'm very excited for it to arrive!

The camera I bought is this, a fixed-focus 110 format film camera from the 1980's. I probably overpaid a bit, looking at the Ebay listings for similar items, but to be honest, I'm glad to have it looked over and guaranteed to work properly.

Shooting on film again has been really nice, if a little expensive, I guess. My last roll of film (due to the camera issue) may have been fully exposed to light trying to get it out, so it might be totally screwed, but I still paid for it to get sent off anyway. Oh well, whatever!

MUSICAL MOMENT

Unfortunately, I still haven't tried printing on a CD with my new printer, mostly because I just haven't had time to figure out exactly what I would print on it. But soon! I do have a playlist I'd like a physical copy of: my 'dance sequence' playlist, which has a bunch of goth-y but somewhat upbeat music on it.

I haven't really been listening to all that much new music, to be totally honest, but tonight I'm going to a Sabaton concert, so that should be a lot of fun. I've never been in a crowd that I'm quite this nervous about, though. I guess we'll see what the vibes are like.

FILM & TELEVISION

I've been watching plenty of movies for class lately, the most recent of which was First Reformed (2017), a film about a priest who becomes radicalised by the suicide of an environmental activist. This was goregously shot, brilliantly acted, but very depressing. I found it to be a very sensitive and real portrayal of religion, and relatable in a lot of ways, which is somewhat worrying. I've been thinking about the concept of terrorism, jihadism, conviction, activism... 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter', you know the drill. Not that I'm thinking about committing any crimes or anything, I'm just thinking about the concept a lot lately. Is that strange? I don't think so, given the world we're living in.

On a lighter note, I also recently watched Go (1999), which was a brilliantly funny comedy-of-errors type film; these are my favourite kind of movies to watch. One of my ultimate comfort films is Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), which I guess I should be a little ashamed of loving so much, but I'm past caring. It's hilarious, it looks great, and the soundtrack is amazing. Go isn't quite that good, but it comes pretty close.

Shamelessly plugging my own Letterboxd.

LITERATURE CORNER

You may be happy to know that I did, in fact, finish reading William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, which was surprisingly fairly good, along with Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted, which was hard to stomach but I did manage. Was it worth it? Yeah, I think so, but it's not an easy book to recommend.

I also read Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C. Clarke, which I found rather unpolished and not nearly as good as his later work. Obviously, that was to be expected, but wow, the protagonist was so arrogant and irritating, and nothing that he did ever truly came back to bite him. I haven't read Gregory Benford's follow-up, which is also in my copy (Beyond the Fall of Night), because I just couldn't cope with the thought of reading any more of it at the time. But I'm sure I'll get around to it eventually.

Lastly, I did also just finish Universal Harvester by one of my favourite writers, John Darnielle (of the Mountain Goats). I'm more fond of him as a songwriter, I suppose, but his fiction is really interesting. I didn't enjoy this novel quite as much as his more recent Devil House, but it was still pretty good. Now I'm going to try and move on to Raymond Chandler's The Lady in the Lake, because I deserve a silly little detective noir now and again.

You can follow me on StoryGraph here, by the way!

What else has been happening? I'm about to start a two-week internship at a major news outlet, so that's kind of exciting (and kind of scary). I've been using university equipment to film interviews with other trans people for an assessment I'm doing, and that's actually been really nice. I bought a bunch of sci-fi magazines, mostly Star Trek related, as well as a bunch of Trek novels (again... I think I've got about twelve, now, and I've only read two). My sister had another baby. I got another tattoo (of the moon with the rocket in its eye, from Méliès' 1902 film).

Haven't been playing many games, which is a bit of a shame, although I did recently buy Stray. That's been quite cute and fun, but gaming doesn't really relax me, so I think I tend to gravitate towards other things in my time off. I do want to try and finish Marathon: Durandal, though.

We've finally started getting around to decorating our stairwell properly, which involves putting up framed prints that are predominantly blue and yellow. I don't know why we decided on this colour scheme, but it was probably my suggestion. I just think it will look cute.

Vintage Sonic advertisements, my Strange Days LaserDisc, our first edition Charlie Brown books, my boyfriend's tarot cards, and a Papyrus print from the museum.

Right, that's it. I don't know what else to say, except that in two weeks I'll hopefully have a better understanding of what I want my future to look like. See you after I'm disillusioned with the state of journalism. I have to go mow the lawn.