#479

There was a conceptual moment in which I wasn't sure what I would get at when I approached the text field today, so I determined that I might warm up with my most favored of fallbacks, a list. Perhaps, I thought to myself, two or even three lists might fit the bill. I think things like that because I am a pervert and a sadist and I love to make you pay for my free content.

Anyway, when I actually did start writing, the topic burst from the back of my skull and fruited, drawing nutrients from my husk with a barbaric, starveling swiftness. But, hey. Listen.

Guess what.

You're still getting the lists, baby. Strap the fuck in. That other shit will be here tomorrow.

even more fucking video games bought (I have run out of money)

Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster Collection

INSIDE

books I didn't tell you I bought or picked up off the ground because I was doing a thing, whatever

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson

Wise Blood/The Violent Bear it Away/The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor (I went to the used bookstore specifically to give them my copy of The Violent Bear it Away I mentioned so I could knock a buck off owning this instead)

Ways of Seeing by John Berger

Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question & The Gift of Death & Literature in Secret by Jacques Derrida (literally the same translator and everything else as my old copy of The Gift of Death, but [presumably] improved, plus of course Literature in Secret. The timing was perfect; I have lent out my old copy of The Gift of Death and need not worry that it may never return)

The Golden Pot and Other Tales by E.T.A. Hoffman, transl. Ritchie Robertson

Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon

Synthedroid Saviors by Mark Lindquist (I am a little loth to record this, since from this self-published treatise on himself on the back of his book here apparently the guy lives in my town, may be completely insufferable, and could conceivably be weird about this. Whatever though; you make something and leave it around, people find it and make an opinion. That's how art usually works and it is certainly how this stupid blog works; anybody can say whatever they want about this heaped pile of whatever I have toiled on to no profit and think whatever they want about me on that basis. This is the bargain that we strike as creators, is what I am saying, one with God and the Devil both)

Hospital Series by Amelia Rosselli

The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change by Randall Collins (can you tell that he is a Harvard man? Can you tell that Harvard published this, more specifically, the Belknapp Press of Harvard University Press, Boston Massachussets, London England? I tease beacause I am literally pumped to see what this horsehit is all about)

On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint by Maggie Nelson

Magical Writing in Salasaca: Literacy and Power in Highland Ecuador by Peter Wogan

The Water Street Reader by Various (this was made by anarchists and they filled it with whatever the fuck they wanted apparently--I kept it because it contains at least one bell hooks essay, so we'll just see what else this curation packs. They obviously spent real money on it, so I suspect them to be adherents to a breed of anarchism which, hm. Anarchists with straight, white, even teeth and a unified aesthetics of tattoo; indeed, a kind of uniform in which beanies and Dockers feature prominently. This is a hypocrisy I have witnessed for so long that I am inured to its bullshit. I just get what nutrition I can and move on)

Selected Stories by Lu Hsun

IMAGINE: What America Could Be in the 21st Century by Various, edited by Maryanne Williamson (honestly don't know what I'm in for here, but I got it because basically it looks like none of these visions came to pass, zero. These authors seem as though they are optimistic, enlightened, freethinking beatificants, and what actually happened is now we live stuffed up into the leaking asshole of a rotting carcass that does not know it is dead. I thought this lozenge of completely misspent hope and vigor might be good for a laugh so bitter I could easily die from it)

it's not over yet! I fucking told you! movies I have watched since last I spoke on it

New to me:

Heretic (in theaters, brilliant, loved every minute basically)

Rewatch:

Batman Returns

Batman Forever

Batman and Robin

Jurassic Park

Honorable Television Mention: The Penguin

*

The movie list is fairly anemic because of all the screen time video games take up. Didn't feel like dragging myself into a theater for all that other new shit I was talking about; I'll get to it when I get to it, like everything else. Also Ezra and I have been watching Gotham, though it may be more explicative to say that we are exposing ourselves to the show and enduring actual mutilations at its hands in exchange for the crisp, delicious slices of powerful characterization and storytelling layered through this brutal, senseless pulping and mulching of the setting and the great majority of its inhabitants. The Riddler is thus far the only character to have gotten through this thing mostly unscathed, but we have like, two whole seasons left.

It's not that I don't like it. It's that apparently only a few of the writers and producers like me. Or were allowed to try to manifest that affection.

*

So many obsessions whirl and tumble in my brain that plenty I care deeply about may not have been revealed even in five years and damn near five hundred posts. I'd like to concentrate more on more exhaustive coverage--I mean, I mentioned recently that I am weird about Batman, and you can see I am cruising througha fresh Batman phase even now, but I realized that you, dear reader, basically would have had no idea about that before then. But I'm a nutcase about fucking Batman! Read that last sentence however you want. 

Something has to change. I need to focus around here. 

Tomorrow, we shall look at Spongebob Squarepants--specifically, Band Geeks.

--JL