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august 2025

what I've been working on

  • I started grad school! I'm studying for a Masters in Library and Information Sciences through a distance learning program. There's a lot of reading to do, but so far it hasn't been too difficult, and all of my professors and classmates are very thoughtful people who bring a lot to our class discussions. So far, so good!
  • I've been Spotify-dependent for the past few years and I'm over it. I feel ashamed to admit it, but I hadn't realized Spotify/Daniel Ek's involvement in the military-industrial complex until recently, and that's obviously something I don't want to support. Of lesser importance, I've also been feeling frustrated by things like their permissiveness around AI-generated music which has flooded the platform (I haven't personally encountered it yet but it makes me not want to risk using Spotify's music discovery tools), allowing bands/labels to pay them to push their music onto your homepage, and the way that they've kind of flattened music taste in a way that I don't feel fully able to describe and I'm sure others have written about more eloquently. I've decided to start moving away from music streaming altogether, and I'm saving up money for a digital audio player (the Hiby R3 Pro II, specifically), which will be my gift to myself this Christmas. In the meantime, I'm working on ripping my CD collection (I'm currently patting myself on the back for keeping my physical media lol) and finding my other favorite music through other means. I'm excited by the idea of re-introducing "friction" into the way I discover and curate music (focusing more on recommendations from real people, listening through entire albums more often, truly considering whether I like something enough to go through the trouble of downloading it instead of just saving everything that I find halfway decent, and so on).
  • I'm a total crochet newbie and I just made my first non-granny square project! It's a simple, small cross-body bag. I definitely messed up with how I positioned the straps, but I think that's something I can fix. I'm just happy I made something usable.
  • The Mold Collective is officially going to be tabling at this year's Portland Zine Symposium!!!! Each of us wants to have at least three zines to sell by then. I've already got 2 ready for printing, and this month I've been working on a third one, all about sigils & chaos magic. I'm nearly done with it, and I'm really happy with how it's turning out.
  • This last one isn't so much my thing as it is my boyfriend's, but... we have three tanks of snails and shrimp right now. My boyfriend is obsessed with them! I love listening to him talk all about the proper care of aquatic plants and critters. The two of us have been pretty stressed out this year due to various current events which have a negative impact on us, and the sound of the water filters and the snail's slow movements have been very soothing.

Watching

Movies & TV

X-Files season 2
Technically my bf and I are almost done with season 2, we haven't watched the last few episodes yet. But I'm still really enjoying this show. This season started off with an intense story arc and has calmed back down into fun, monster-of-the-week type stuff in the aftermath, which I appreciate.
South Park: The End of Obesity and South Park (Not Suitable for Children) dir. Trey Parker
OK, I know this is a bit of an outlier for me, I promise I'm not about to sit here and try to convince you that South Park is good or anything. I liked it in middle school because, let's be real, it's pretty much made for edgy pre-teens (which I unfortunately was, and this show wasn't even the worst thing I was watching lmao). I stopped keeping up with the show around 2016 because I just wasn't in the mood to laugh about Donald Trump being president, in fact, I felt like part of how he was able to sneak into office was because nobody took the threat of his campaign seriously and was too busy making fun of his orange skin and fake hair to really mobilize against him... well, that's a topic for another time. Point is, I hadn't been keeping up with the franchise and while my sister-in-law and I were looking for something to watch, I saw that there was a whole bunch of new-ish SP movies which I was surprised to see, and so we decided to put them on. Are these the pinnacle of comedic writing and storytelling? No. But did they make me laugh quite a lot? Yes. I'm a simple guy. Randy's OnlyFans arc is fucking hilarious to me. What can I say?
The People's Joker dir. Vera Drew
This is one of those movies that's just so fun, heartfelt, ambitious, and relentlessly creative that I feel like it's kind of impossible to have a bad time with it. It's a bit rough around the edges in terms of the script and some of the performances, but the fast pace, the distinctly queer sense of humor, and the punk-rock anarchy of it all easily carried me through. I think this would make for a fascinating double feature alongside I Saw the TV Glow, as both movies, in their own way, explore the unique and complicated relationships between trans adolescence, dissociation, escapism, fiction, fandom, and nostalgia... has anyone written that paper yet?? If not, somebody get on that!
Parasite dir. Bong Joon Ho (rewatch)
Can't believe the last time I watched this was with my friends in February 2020... we had no idea what was coming... Anyway, yeah, this still holds up. The tension isn't as strong when you already know what's going to happen, as is to be expected, but otherwise I think it's safe to say that everything I liked about this the first time still holds true.
Nope dir. Jordan Peele (rewatch)
I truly believe this is one of the best alien movies out there. The creature's design is just so good!!! And the use of sound to evoke dread, the utilization of landscape and sky as the alien's hunting grounds, the lovable characters who lighten up the terror with just the right amount of humor, and the tightly wound thematic doubling (even tripling?) that happens around the concepts of spectacle, human hubris, and predation... I think my only complaint is that I still don't fully understand all of the characters' motivations to put themselves in the dangerous situation that they're in. I'm usually not one to nitpick at characters' decision-making in horror movies (there would be no story if they didn't let themselves fall into danger!), but in this case it feels like Peele was really trying to bend over backwards to create understandable reasons for each character to remain involved when they have multiple opportunities to simply leave the situation, and I just never fully bought it. That doesn't get in the way of the rest of my enjoyment, though, it's just something I noticed more on this watch.

YouTube Videos

Added to Watchlist

reading

Books

The White Book by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith
I appreciate Kang's artistry of forming a novel out of suggestions, approaching a greater whole through a dispersed series of vignettes. This is one of those books that I respect but which has not left a lasting impression on me. It's so sparse that at times it felt like I hadn't even read anything.
The Honditsch Cross by Ingeborg Bachmann, translated by Tess Lewis
I was so excited to read this early novella from an author I greatly adore. (Her novel Malina had a huge impact on me and continues to inspire me). She apparently wrote this when she was 18 years old! While this work clearly pre-dates her more ambitious experimentation with language that characterizes Malina and her poetry, it's still a solid, concise piece of historical fiction. Here and there, it contains descriptive language that foreshadows the kind of writing Bachmann would go on to develop. It's one of those works that is considerably more interesting in context - a novel about the follies of war and blind patriotism written by a teenager who refused to join the Nazi youth despite pressure from her peers. I'm glad I got the chance to read it. (Thank you S. for procuring it for me!)
Hilma af Klint: A Biography by Julia Voss, translated by Anne Posten
Hilma af Klint has been one of my favorite artists for many years at this point, and I'm happy to say that this is a great, comprehensive biography which does justice to her life and legacy, but most of all, her vision. I hadn't realized the extent of af Klint's radical ideas, and it was fascinating to learn about the way she perceived things. Voss also very clearly loves af Klint's art on a deep level - she's not just writing about af Klint as a historical figure, and she's also not taking everything at face value (as I've occasionally seen in other artist biographies I've attempted to read). You may or may not already know about this artist and her work, but if you're interested in early abstraction, Swedish art history, spiritualism in art, or feminist art history, this may be of interest to you. It's pretty straightforward in writing style and approach, but fortunately I find Hilma af Klint to be interesting enough that I remained engaged nonetheless.

Other stuff

*denotes the readings I found particularly interesting/good

Listening

Skylarking by XTC
OK, I've learned my lesson about reading too deeply into things on Rate Your Music. I feel like I'm going crazy! I thought this album was pretty good for the most part, a quirky psychedelic pop project that is mostly enjoyable with a couple of really hard skips in it... but lo and behold, every opinion I have about this album seems to be a hot take. For instance, my favorite tracks ("Dear God" and "Dying") seem to be considered the worst on the album, while the tracks I couldn't stand ("Grass" and "Ballet for a Rainy Day") seem to be pretty widely loved... I'm not even sure I should be talking about this album because I'm not even confident I listened to the same thing as everyone else at this point lmao
How to Destroy Angels (EP) by How to Destroy Angels
HtDD is the post-industrial side project of Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails. This EP starts and ends with two bangers ("The Space in Between" and "A Drowning"), but everything between those two tracks kind of just feels like background noise. It's pleasant enough to have on while you're doing something else, but that's about it.
HYPERYOUTH by Joey Valence & Brae
If you're a fan of early 2000s hip hop, nerdcore, and/or sounds in the lineage of Beastie Boys, and you haven't given JVB a chance yet, please give them a listen! Join the Hooligang!!! They bring those aforementioned sounds into the modern era with updated sensibilities that fuse to form something new and unique. I love them so much. I personally prefer their previous two albums (Punk Tactics and No Hands), but still really enjoyed this newest one. If Punk Tactics was something of a love letter to punk sensibilities, HYPERYOUTH is an album-length ode (perhaps even danceable eulogy?) to 2000s club, dance, and pop music. Both lyrically and sonically, JVB kind of actually weave an understated story here, one about fearing what happens when you grow up - when you leave the dance floor, so to speak. Drenched in 2000s and even 2010s nostalgia (the entire album is punctuated with samples of dialogue from the Adventure Time character BMO, lyrical references to countless pop classics, and, oh yeah, there's a full on Rebecca Black feature in here) as well as nostalgia for a time when everyone just wanted to let loose and dance, a time which may have only been a fantasy all along, the album's fun tiptoes around pockets of deep sadness, culminating in, of course, "Have to Cry," and then lightening up again for the last couple of tracks. There's a handful of songs in here that fail to differentiate themselves in any interesting way, but there's not really any skips, and I enjoyed this album from beginning to end. Some of my favorite tracks are "Bust Down," "See U Dance," "Live Right," and "Have to Cry."
Private Music by Deftones
NEW DEFTONES ALBUM, RAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I actually did not let myself listen to any of the singles released before the full album came out because I wanted to experience it all in one go, and boy, I'm glad I did that. Getting to hear "my mind is a mountain" for the very first time as the opening to the rest of this album was just awesome. As always, they're the masters of alternative metal that is somehow simultaneously crushing and dreamy, bodily and transportive. Guh, I just love them. This album seems to be returning a bit to their White Pony/Saturday Night Wrist days, and while on first listen I don't think it quite recaptures the lightning-in-a-bottle that was those albums, it was still phenomenal, and I get the feeling that this album will only hit harder and harder with consecutive listens and spending more time with some of the individual songs. Favorite tracks: "my mind is a mountain," "infinite source," "milk of the madonna," and "cut hands."
Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division
Technically a re-listen, but I've really been feeling this album lately (perhaps because I am really begging for autumn to begin here in the PNW right now...) and it had actually been quite a long time since I last listened to it from beginning to end. I'm not the first person to say this, but this album is perfect. No skips, will forever be a classic. Favorite tracks: "Disorder," "New Dawn Fades," "Shadowplay," and "Interzone."

Added to TBR

commonplace

From The Honditsch Cross by Ingeborg Bachmann

"The wild ducks flew away, the reeds shook under the murderous fire of bullets. Crazed steps staggered, ran, raced into the damp meadows, fled into the reeds. The soft muck gurgled, air bubbles came welling up, and the next step was swallowed by the black, swampy maw."

"It lay calm and blue in the warm afternoon sun, mercilessly engulfing man after man. Over the water dragonflies played, gnats danced, while little spiders swam with wheeling legs."

"First I will attempt to understand the flowers of the earth; I will take the plants that grow on land as my starting point. Then, with the same care, I will study what lives in the waters of the earth. Then the blue ether with its myriad creatures will be the subject of my study, and finally I will penetrate the forest, exploring the silent mosses, the trees, and the many animals that inhabit the cool, dark undergrowth." - from the journals of Hilma af Klint

"'I love you' will become a litany
for the ruined street" - Nima Hasan, "Old Song"

From "Messy Archives and Materials That Matter" by Suzanne Bost

“Think about the import of the shelves that hold your books and your notes. Think about how your organizational system facilitates thoughts and creates connections. Think about the time you spend in your care (or, perhaps, walking, if you have none) and how your body in motion produces ideas in dialogue with the sites you pass and the sensations of the passing. Think about all the associations one could generate from this enigmatic collection of prayers/wishes.”

“Perhaps the most important things to be gained from these visual documents are the experience of disorientation and the process of determining how to handle them, making up new ways of reading, getting lost in the maze. This is not to say that these documents cannot be treated as conventional artifactual evidence, but their matter also teaches us how to do otherwise.”

“I am not autonomous in my access to information or the ways in which I produce knowledge from the archive. The technologies I use for information gathering […] enhance and limit the formation of my knowledge just as do my splitting headache, the light in the reading room, and the presence or absence of others around me. Instead of fighting these forces as nuisances, we might better understand them as the mechanisms that underlie and shape anything we feel we know. To call these forces intrusions demonizes everything outside the researcher as a corruption and creates a false ideal of making knowledge in a vacuum.”

“I’m drawn to dust as an organizing principle because of its materiality as well as its symbolic associations with dirt and marginality. Dust is, moreover, subject to continual motion and reorganization. Knowledge is like dust […], knowledge is a product of material, transcorporeal exchanges […] It is always subject to transformation, always ephemeral. […] So we are left with a mess, a constantly shifting product of material actants, human and nonhuman, coproducing knowledge in friction with each other. Dirt,, dust, and mess bear a stigma for purists, but embracing impurity facilitates the emergence of resistant knowledge.”