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I just became aware of and watched Conner O'Malley's youtube mockumentary about the making of a rap album. Everyone in the comments is on the same fucking page:

"This perfectly captures the dread of hanging out with dangerously stupid scumbags in the 2000s"

"This like many other of Connor’s works feels mathematically engineered to elicit dread from anyone raised in the suburban Midwest from 2001-2012"

"The thing that's truly remarkable about this to me, is that it 100% genuinely feels like it was made in 2009."

"The way the stink of defeat hangs over these guys is absolutely brutal. You just know from the very first frame they're not going to make an album. They're not going to make a goddamn thing."

"Citizen Kane for guys who got caught by their stepdad hitting the gravity bong in the shed"

"This makes me not miss getting stoned with friends from high school I thought I did miss but now remember I don’t"

"Nostalgia antidote."

There's just this collective moan of recognition at what it was like to be a fucking loser in 2009. Luckily I only skirted this kind of existence for a short bit, but I knew people like the people in this movie, and oh my god. It reminds me of the writing advice that a true transcription of spoken dialogue would be unreadable, that you have to find ways to make it into a heightened version of natural dialogue that actually *feels* more realistic than a transcription of an actual conversation. It's horrifying, and the laughs it pulled from me felt like electric shocks.

That and Joe Pera Talks With You are probably my top two tv/movie finds this year.

I saw Godspeed live for the fourth time this weekend (#5 will be this fall) and it was a soul-scrubbing experience as always. I also brought my partner for the first time, who has just recently come around on them. It was fun to hear his impressions because most of his concert experiences have been EDM, where it's a very light, fun, party atmosphere. Godspeed shows are not that. A Godspeed show is like standing outside in a hurricane. The sound is so huge that it feels like it could hold you upright. The band doesn't address the audience. They barely even look at the audience. And while Boston concertgoers are notoriously stoic, I've never seen a crowd fall into a trance quite the way theirs do.

It's a shame, because Blaise Bailey Finnegan III is just an incandescently beautiful song, but the person in the field recording is so obnoxious to me that I only listen to it pretty rarely. But it kicked like a mule live. I feel really lucky that I got to hear it, because they don't play it super often.

And I actually ran into a high school friend there, who I hadn't seen or talked to for 15 years. He was one of those people who was so incredibly smart that that's mostly what people noticed about him, and it really overshadowed how fucking cool he was on top of that. And he's thriving! He's a lefty economics professor at a major university! He and another long-lost friend and I are going to see if we can fully catch up next time we're all in town. Sometimes I'm just so struck with pride at how many of the people I've cared about are out there doing incredible things. And I can't even really regret that I was wearing my "I only pretend to listen to Hildegard von Bingen to get pussy" t-shirt when he spotted me in the crowd, because I really have not changed that much since high school. Except, I hope, I'm less of a shithead now.

I never really thought of myself as a beach person, because it was always unhappy vacations with my family, expensive parking, hot, brutal sun, crowds, sand sticking to my wet skin, etc. Not my scene at all. When we moved to Rhode Island, I'd take like, one overcast day in October and go down to one of the big beaches and sit and watch the waves for a few hours, and that was nice.

But going to check on this osprey on this little spit of tucked away shoreline (in the middle of an HOA community that *aggressively* doesn't want people to know that there's public access) has kind of changed my relationship to it. It's close, I can stop by for 15 minutes in between other errands. It's quiet. I'm getting to know the cast of characters: the two osprey, the flock of brants that hung out there in spring before continuing their migration, the eastern cottontails, the catbird pair in the woods. Sometimes Ellie comes with me and wades in the shallows. It feels more like a real environment, and less of a commercial destination.

We finally bought a ladder after *checks watch* 4+ years of home ownership, so now I can finally hang the bat house at an appropriate height, and cut down some of the overhanging vines and branches that are constantly caking our cars in plant matter. Big day!

And I also ripped out the poison ivy that was growing on the retaining wall between neighbor's yard and our driveway... wore thick dishwashing gloves and long sleeves, then everything went straight into the laundry and a cool shower for me, so fingers crossed I didn't get got.

I was hoping to arrange a little bee/insect watering station in a glass pie pan today, thinking I'd get some river rocks and colored glass beads to make it accessible and appealing. But the aquarium rocks/marbles I was looking at were like, $7 for a tiny little bag. Fuck that, I'll find some rocks.

My New Jersey Tea and Red Columbine seedlings should be arriving this week, which is exciting, I'll stick those in the ground as soon as they get here. Milkweed is thriving as always, and the smooth hydrangea is settling right in, but I am not feeling optimistic about the stuff I planted from seed. Who knows, maybe it'll pop up next year long after I've given up hope entirely.

Two of my best friends from college visited this weekend, and both of them are waaay better-read than I am and also horrible enablers, so I ended up with a fresh TBR stack.

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel Way late to the party on this one, but I'm really enjoying it so far. Mantel is so good at sketching out characters with strong, deft, economical lines, the prose is just a delight. I was warned that the beginning was a little slow but even then I felt like it moved right along.

Kairos, by Jenny Erpenbeck This was a gift from one of my friends, and not one I would have picked off a shelf, but I can see why she chose it for me: story of a chaotic affair taking place in East Berlin around the time of collapse of the DDR. Should be cool!

Hellions, by Julia Elliott Short story collection, also a gift from friend, apparently mixing Southern Gothic, horror, fairy tale elements, and a million other ingredients. I was impressed with this interview with the author, starting with "Reading The Lottery by Shirley Jackson and The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka in high school stirred an early awareness that the distinction between “literary” and “genre” fiction was bogus and that 'literary realism' was never going to be my thing."

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell This author was (probably still is?) a professor at my college and this was her debut novel that came out while I was there. I never read it but always meant to. Story of a young teenage girl who grew up on her family's roadside alligator farm attraction, who goes on a quasi-mystical swamp journey of initiation in the midst of a family crisis? Or that's my vague understanding, anyway. Found it in a used bookstore and picked it up.

Stolen Focus, by Johann Hari Another rec from a friend which finally arrived at my local bookstore this week. If I'm gonna continue writing, gardening, osprey watching, reading, and still have room for other hobbies in the future I gotta be able to focus!

And finally, two little zines about mushrooms and woodlouse, which will both be sent off to new homes soon!

Current Mood: calm

I feel like the past year or two has just been an explosion of new interests. Which is great! The bad part is that I hate that stage where I'm juuuust becoming aware of everything I don't know. With birds I'm starting to get a handle on the most common ones. I know my local crew of brants, and the herons and egrets. I know a catbird because they're my favorites, and the usual suspects at my urban birdfeeder. Don't ask me about gulls or warblers. I think I saw a fish crow once but it was based purely on vibes. At the very least, I can usually look up a bird I don't know.

Plants are a whole other story. Every time I'm out walking the dog my internal monologue is a chain of "what the fuck is that? What the fuck is THAT? That can't be native." And sometimes I stop to take a picture to upload on inaturalist later, but a lot of the time I have to just sit with the mystery. I'm lurking on the native plant gardening subreddit and kind of working backwards from the frequently discussed friends and foes, so now I can tell buckthorn from virginia creeper. I have more familiarity with the things I've (tried to) plant myself, kinda. I'm aware that this initial loss of "plant blindness" is pretty par for the course and I have to be patient, but man.

Busy morning! Did the AIDS Walk with my coworkers this morning (which was nice but quite shrimpy, basically a one mile walk around the perimeter of a park), then checked on one of my osprey nests, then stopped in at the library and put volume 2 of Berserk on hold, got some lunch stuff from the grocery store..... took a nap. Mowed the lawn, which I don't like doing this early, but if I let it get too thick and long my dinky little electric mower can't handle it. I was thinking of taking my seeds out of the freezer and planting them, but I think I'm gonna give them another week.

I'm thinking about taking a break from correspondence until I can finish this fic chapter, which is coming up on 3 months since the last update, yikes. If I really buckle down I could probably get it done in a week, I hope.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: "Ru Ana Te Whenua" by Alien Weaponry

I've checked on my osprey nests twice now and so far only one of them seems to be occupied. But I'm still very happy with my choices, it's much better to visit two pretty coastal spots, versus a parking lot off the highway. The southern nest has an active pair (and I think I saw a third adult osprey in the area too, which is supposedly rare!), and as a bonus there's always a big flock of brants out on the water.

The northern nest has been empty so far, but I get to watch the redwing blackbirds doing their thing in the surrounding marsh, and it's always so nice to smell the salty mud and look for crabs. There are two trailcams set up in the area, I'd really love to know who put them there and what they're watching for.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: "Twin Flames," Lustmord

I've started and deleted probably five posts here, and I'm realizing how much fourteen years on tumblr trained me to avoid personal disclosure. I think on tumblr I got very good at communicating the general flavor of who I am through the collage of curated reblogs and additional tags, but no exact thoughts or feelings that someone could piss on the poor about. And now it's very hard to actually compose and post sentences and words without thinking either "well this could be misinterpreted in xyz ways" or "who cares?"

Anyway! I like writing fucked up fanfiction about twisty, complex characters. I'm currently reading The Once and Future King by T.H. White, the Berserk manga, and rereading one of my favorite epic longfics from the golden age of Kylux. I like looking at birds (and occasionally identifying them). I like native plant gardening, a new interest this year. I'm old enough to have been on livejournal but never was, so there might be a bit of a learning curve here.

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: "The Devil's Walk" album by Apparat