Nearly May? You're kidding
Woah, been a little while! Life has been absolutely hectic; I’ve been working on my thesis and just plain working all week every week, and catching up on chores, grocery shopping, or “relaxing” on the weekend (which usually consists of seeing friends or going to a political rally or something). But I have found the time to do a little bit of hobby indulgence here and there.
I’ve recently discovered an adrenaline-seeking love of rollercoasters, which I’d never been on before this year and now actually really enjoy, even though waiting in line absolutely sucks. I’ve also had a great run of live music recently: I saw the Mountain Goats (finally! finally!) and Everything Everything (again, and even better), which was super awesome. The Mountain Goats are my favourite band of all time (or at the very least, John is my favourite lyricist of all time).
Other fun activities I’ve been up to include going to see Milo Edwards’ ‘best of’ comedy set, which was very funny, and seeing some movies at the cinema (including Project Hail Mary and Night of the Creeps). I haven’t had much time for lots of movie-seeing, so I’m hoping to have some more time over winter break to do that… but I’m not optimistic.
MUSICAL MOMENT
I’ve genuinely been so busy that I haven’t been discovering all that much new music, but I have bought some vinyl records recently, including Quest Master’s The Twelve Temples. I’ve also found a bunch at second hand stores, including a King Arthur opera, which is pretty cool. Plus I’ve got a bunch of singles off Ebay!
Aside from that, I got a tape of Transylvanian Nightmare recently, which is a super underrated EP from the Mexican speed metal band Phantom. You can get it here if you like fast guitar and vampires. FM Skyline also recently released a new album called Magical Thinking, which is quite good.
I’ve been having a lot of trouble listening to Deadly Avenger’s album I am Godzilla, You Are Japan. It’s not on Deezer, and it doesn’t seem available digitally on Bandcamp… in fact, on Deadly Avenger’s own Bandcamp page, it’s listed for purchase at 999 GBP. I ended up downloading it to my phone through YouTube (well, through NewPipe). Hopefully it gets added to Deezer sometime. I’d like to support the artist, but not that much!
FILM & TELEVISION
In terms of watching the tube at home, we’ve recently started rewatching The Wachowski’s Sense8 (so good!) and Dungeon Meshi, which I really love, although I still haven’t read the manga… I have the whole thing on my Kindle, which I jailbroke a while ago, but still haven’t used. Sads.
I was a bit ill earlier this week, so I watched the first season of Black Books, which is still relatively funny for someone with my sense of humour. I do think that Graham Linehan’s early tendency towards conservatism does come through at points, though it’s nowhere near as awful as his later turn. But I’m also really impressed by the show’s ability to have a coherent A plot, B plot, and sometimes also C plot, in the span of 25 minutes. And of course, I’ve been watching very select parts of Star Trek: The Next Generation for my thesis.
We recently downloaded Tubi, after me holding out for a long time because it’s owned by Fox, but I have to admit, it does have some cool and weird stuff on there. We watched Exhibit A (2007), which is one of the better found footage films I’ve seen, and also The Call of Cthulhu (2005), which has a really awesome stop-motion Cthulhu and is also a modern silent film!
Shamelessly plugging my own Letterboxd.
LITERATURE CORNER
I literally haven’t been reading anything for fun, unfortunately. I picked up an academic book about Stargate from the university library a while ago, ostensibly for recreation, but ended up thinking about my thesis a lot anyway. In any case, I’m still reading, so I don’t feel like my brain is melting from lack of use… just starving for fun sci-fi adventures.
You can follow me on StoryGraph here, by the way!
Like a miracle, I’ve finally finished Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance. It’s taken me quite a while, but overall I don’t think it was that hard of a game in terms of combat or anything. It’s more that initially, without a game guide, I was constantly running into locked doors, and didn’t understand how to get around. If this is you, get a game guide. It’s not worth screwing with it and getting frustrated!
Aside from that, I recently went to a laser tag place that has a giant room of arcade machines on the lower floor, and just wasted time there before I went to see Everything Everything. Honestly, I half didn’t want to leave. It was really cool. Although, I did basically just play Sonic the Hedgehog the whole time.
I’ve also been playing Cuphead with my partner, which is… going fine… I’m remembering why I’ve always given up on it in the past. But I’ve gotten farther than I ever have before, which is encouraging!
What else has been going on? Not much, I guess. I’ve been thinking a lot about science fiction as a genre. I’ve been working on my Honours thesis, which I nearly have a draft first chapter for. I bought a new pair of shoes that I’m breaking in, and I got some fancy earplugs to stop getting overstimulated all the time. The weeks are busy, and they go quick. Variety is the spice of life, I guess.
That's all I have to say, I think.