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Hello, people in my computer

I'm coming live to you immediately post-grade-release for my final semester of university (and I'm very happy with how things turned out). Funnily enough, the university messed up the initial release, so we all got grades from the previous semster again... even people who graduated last semester! It's all fixed now though.

Last digest, I talked about cubital tunnel and my photos on 110 film. Well, similar outcomes: the cubital tunnel died down, but I think it's probably going to flare back up in the next few weeks, because I'll be working from home over the holiday period. Unfortunately, my desk situation isn't ergonomically-ideal, and I'm not sure exactly how to fix it.

Somewhat similarly, my 110 format photos didn't really turn out all that well. The light situation is horrible, but I can't find any flash attachments for the camera, so next time I'm shooting inside (even if it seems 'well-lit'), I'm going to try using my phone flash at the same time. Most of the photos truly turned out fully grey, but some of them were salvageable, and even nice.

Now I've got my regular Pentax back in action, I've got a few rolls of black and white film to go through that I bought discounted from Lomography, so we'll see how that goes!

MUSICAL MOMENT

I got new speakers for my room recently, so now I can listen to my CDs with better left/right distribution while I'm lying on my bed. It's not exactly 'surround sound', but it's better than before. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do with my other CD player (keep it, move it, give it away). It doesn't have a line out, so I don't think I can connect it to the speakers. We'll see what happens there.

Aside from that, I don't have much of a music update. Deezer released my music of the year summary, but it's only accurate for the last few months, so my top artist and album is Faetooth's Labyrinthine. Great album, by the way! Wish I could get a CD, but shipping is crazy expensive from the US at the moment.

I also re-listened to Death of a Bachelor by Panic! at the Disco recently, and I was impressed by how bad it was. I used to love that album as a teenager, but it didn't age well at all. Mostly boring, but there are a few songs that aren't too bad. I reviewed it on my Record Club, which I've started using as an alternative to Musicboard, but I'm honestly not sure which I prefer.

FILM & TELEVISION

Great month for movies! Last weekend I attended the International Film Festival in my city, which was a lot of fun. I'd especially recommend Endless Cookie if you're a fan of animation, creative non-fiction... or psychedelics.

My partner and I had booked one movie for Sunday night, and had a lovely leisurely dinner, went up to the cinema, and realised I'd taken us to the wrong place. Whoops! Luckily we managed to make it to the other cinema in time.

Aside from that, I've also made a list of every Georges Melies film, which I'm allegedly going to watch through completely... I've made progress, but it does get a little repetitive here and there. No offence, Georges.

Shamelessly plugging my own Letterboxd.

LITERATURE CORNER

So, I kind of gave up on Wuthering Heights. It's not bad, but I really hate having to look at family trees to understand what's going on in a story. It's a problem with huge fantasy novels as well. I just don't remember who that person is, how they relate to this other person, and why I should care!

Instead, I read some short stories by Bram Stoker (some were good, others not), and then the excellent horror anthology Out There Screaming, curated by Jordan Peele. I really enjoyed it. People of StoryGraph and on Goodreads were complaining about it not being 'horror' enough, or equating that with not being 'scary' enough, which I disagree with on multiple levels. Some of the stories were pretty spooky, but more importantly, whether something is 'scary' is so subjective! Doesn't make much sense to me. Plenty of people also said that the best stories were in the first half, or the second half - so clearly people aren't agreed on that either. I liked stories throughout it, and there were none that I regretted reading or felt were a waste of time, which is impressive for a short story collection. I recommend picking up a copy if you like horror, but especially if you're looking for new black authors to try out.

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

Hmmm... what else? Despite my weird elbow situation, I've been playing Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance on my Gameboy Advance, which has actually been really awesome now that I'm using a game guide and don't run into locked doors every five minutes.

On Halloween, we went to the cinema to watch - of course - Halloween (1978), which was better than I remembered. This Friday I'm going to the Japanese film festival for a double feature, so that should be a lot of fun.

I've also been trying to think of more ways to "goth up" my home decor, in more authentic and DIY ways than just buying bat-shaped lamps on the internet. I recently got a bunch of old lace doilies from Etsy, and I'm going to dye those black and use them for shelf decorations... hopefully that will spruce things up a little. Or, spruce them down?

That's all for today I think. Not as many pictures as usual, please forgive me! If I can just hold on a little longer, soon I'll have time to take more photos and play more games and RELAX! Just have to finish writing about films about religion and how they create 'breathing room'... don't ask.