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I'm assuming there's a correlation between starting to travel full-time and having other things to focus on than my own internal life, but maybe also there's some aging thing happening? As my brain changes, so too do my dreams? Not sure.
Sooooo, since I can make polls and I'm nosy AF, here's one for y'all to answer:
( Under here )
Feel free to share this around with friends so they can vote, too. It's anonymous, though you do have to be registered on DW to vote.
And if you have tips for remembering your dreams, please share them in the comments!
1 - take action
it doesn't have to be big or meaningful, just deliberate, like deep breathing or washing the dishes. it's okay to choose to be a witness if you have that capacity (and choice). it's also beneficial to recognize what you can control and what you can't. "just because you can't do everything doesn't mean you can't do anything."
2 - be persistent
little things are always valuable, and their effect grows every time they're repeated. maybe it doesn't mean much today, but after you've done it for a hundred days, you'll be different and that matters. "meditation is like walking in a mist. you may not feel anything, but if you keep it up, eventually you'll get wet."
extra note: number of repetitions can have a bigger impact than total volume. doing something for a short time over and over again may produce more change than doing something for a long time once. "if someone receives a single rose every day for 12 days, surely it has more impact than receiving a dozen roses once."
3 - practice gratitude
write down the good things, no matter how small. the point is to shift focus from what you can't do or have, to what you can or do. "what you give your attention to grows."
the other video said "balance doesn't happen by itself." And I was like, "well it does, that's the nature of equilibrium, it's just not necessarily the balance you want." so keep moving. that's how we figure out, not just how to create a balanced state, but how to maintain it.
...also, these were originally language-learning tips. I find them broadly relevant. "the way you do anything is the way you do everything."
Yes, they are. Thanks for dropping by and expressing your sympathy/empathy.
My comment on the link to The History Guy remembers Charles Darwin and chocolate for Valentines Day at Instagram.
Indeed!
My comment on CNBC explains 'How America Got Hooked On Cars,' a driving update.
Thanks to Steve in Manhattan for linking to this entry at Mike's Blog Roundup on Crooks and Liars and welcome to his readers who came here from that link. Also, welcome to my international readers from Germany, Brazil, Singapore, Bangladesh, China, Vietnam, France, the United Kingdom, India, and the rest of the planet. Looks like you're checking in on the mood here in the U.S. May my blog be the right place for you!
That's it. I wasn't very chatty last month.
I took the SuperChinese placement test, and here is how I interpreted my results.
Pronunciation: good
Vocabulary: okay
Reading speed: okay
Grammar: poor, very poor
A basic level of grammar is necessary to make sentences that communicate meaning, and I think I got that far and then stopped paying attention, or focused on other things, like comprehension. If I can use SuperChinese to improve my grammar, I'm in. I want to share abstract stories, not only communicate about tangible experiences.
It's funny that speaking practice is both so encouraging and so humbling: my sentences are certainly understandable (yay!) but they aren't correct (...yeah).
I put on the 1989 The Little Mermaid movie because I wanted to see which version they had up, because there's been multiple restorations over the years. Good news: the picture is clean, with none of those uneven lines and truncated transitions, so I assume it's from the latest Blu-Ray release about... six years ago? Definitely not the one before that. Bad news: the audio mix is terrible!
This is a movie I know SO well, so I could tell pretty quick there's something very strange going on with the audio balance between dialogue, music and sounds effects (eg. water sounds, background noises). Some noises are too loud, some are too soft, and the worst is when the music is not on the same level as the singing. It's almost a Christopher Nolan movie here! I wanted to double-check that it's not my device or speakers, so I put on my personal DVD of the movie, and that sounds perfectly fine on my PC speakers. I poked around a bit online and it's not really clear what the problem is. One possibility is that the version on D+ is optimized for TV with surround sound, so it sounds weird on a PC. I can't double-check this, though.
Then I checked out the Little Mermaid TV series and, oh boy. Some episodes are in the wrong order, despite the platform listing each episode's original release date right there. The video has been cropped from the original 4:3 to 16:9, losing that extra detail (and making it feel squished, as this is also media I know very well). Best yet, the pilot episode is missing entirely, and the only thing I could find about it is some speculation that it's too scary for children, as it does open with a group of whalers attacking an orca pod. (Which is totally something they would do, considering the edits that D+ has done to other movies like A Parent Trap and Splash.)
I guess all of this just serves to remind that streaming is not owning, and to keep your own copies before they become lost media. :/
Whatever the horrors that Iran's theocracy has visited upon its own people - and they are horrors, as the grieving survivors of at least 7,000 Iranians killed by the regime in the past few months can attest, and the relatives of untold thousands killed in the years since 1979 - people in Iran will put that aside and stand against what we've done to them in the past 36 or so hours.
Your family may break your bones, bruise your mind, or force you down into heartbreak. You may hate your mother or your brother for what they've done to you. You may dream of revenge.
But when the neighborhood bully comes and strikes them down, injured or dead, then turns to you with a smile and says, "You're welcome," and expects you to go to your knees and thank him for that violence? You may well jump on the bastard's back and close your fingers around his neck, or hook them into his eyes, because they were your weight to bear, your sorrow to work through.
Didn't we learn this when we "freed" Iraq?
Apparently not.
This world is breaking down and it's my country's fault and I hate it. I'm sorry
I read 11 books in January and they were mostly graphic novels and things that came off library hold in this time due to me trying and failing to read The Brothers Karamazov. I have extended my library hold on the Garnett translation Three Times. I’m still less than 50% through. I keep cycling between the translation and the original because the Russian language has evolved less since the 1800s than English has so sometimes Garnett’s Victorian English is harder to read than the original, but then the original has a lot of words I don’t know either (mostly to do with the church stuff). It’s harddddd but I want to stick with it because I’ve already given up on it on two previous attempts and I can’t let my Russian-American complex get to me!
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Hm. I don’t think Murakami is for me. I read Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World when I was in high school and the only thing I remember about that one is his obsession with the girl’s earlobes, so I thought I’d try something else of his and. I just don’t think the lesbian-confession scene was necessary, first of all. It was easy to read though, and compelling even though the main character was annoying.
Solanin and Solanin Epilogue by Inio Asano
I don’t remember what the impetus was for me to read all of Solanin now but I ended up staying up late to finish it in one sitting because Oh My God, Inio Asano is a genius and no WONDER late-2000s webcomics were like this if they were all reading this then. I can see its influence on Scott Pilgrim and Octopus Pie. This might’ve changed my life if I’d read it in high school, it already kinda changed my life now. I want to make something that makes people feel like this. I finished reading it past 1 in the morning and I just wanted to run laps screaming, somehow? Crazy work, Asano-sensei! If I ever meet him I will cry. I knew it was going to be good because of how people talk about it (and because I’ve read other Asano comics), but I didn’t know it was going to be THAT good, even twenty years after it first came out!! Aaaa!!!
Strange Pictures by Uketsu
Gimmicky, but some of the twists did get me, even though most of the mysteries and solutions required me to suspend a lot of disbelief that more than one person in this world would ever think of that. And a quick read! I put a hold on the sequel.
Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts by Matt Bell
Got it from the library and liked it enough to consider buying it. Helped me revise my draft. The craft advice was really practical, and the draft ideas were interesting and new to me.
On Her Terms by Amy Spalding
Finally, a genuinely unconventional F/F romance! The lead is in her mid-thirties, bisexual, and just ended her first and only long-term relationship with a man. There’s a stupid fake dating scheme that doesn’t need to happen, a destination wedding to a town an hour away, and a happy ending without marriage and kids, thank god. The lead’s brother and friends were kind of annoying, though. I think I liked the first book in the series better? I skipped the middle book by accident and then refused to check it out even though it’s ready to borrow on Libby because I am still fighting for my life against The Karamazovs.
The Pervert by Remy Boydell, Michelle Perez
I liked it... I liked the art. I remember a lot of people were talking about this book when it was new. I think it still hits now. It would be cool to see Boydell and Perez in conversation with Torrey Peters. I do want to see more of Boydell’s work, the watercolors here are so delicate and evocative... I kinda want to do a watercolor comic...
The Demon of Beausoleil by Mari Costa
Thirst Trap by Grainne O’Hare
I liked it! Funny, reminded me of Derry Girls because it’s a group of female friends in Northern Ireland. It was funny how one was gay one was bi and one was straight, and they all had relationship problems going on. I enjoyed reading it.
Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas
Dark Academia but with a literary-sounding narrative voice that reminded me of Prep or Elif Batuman’s autofiction. Thoughtful worldbuilding, good sentences. Kind of wish Catherine House was real and I could’ve gone to school there. Pretty good, honestly, but probably would’ve benefited from more literary marketing instead of the dark academia-style cover it’s got going on right now. I was not expecting it to be as good as it was based on that cover, sorry.
I Want To Hold Aono-kun So Badly I Could Die, Volume 13 by Umi Shiina
Got the notification this book was out and dropped everything to read it. One More Volume in English remains... MAN. I have written about Aono-kun previously here. It’s still great! Goddamn!! I love comics!!!
Liquid: A Love Story by Mariam Rahmani
Grabbed this from the new releases table at the library right before The Big Snowstorm in case we lost power and I was bored, lol. Read most of it while snowed in. Sets up a lot of interesting things and then goes with the boring ending... Kind of funny at times, mostly just made me feel bad for the narrator. As always, I liked the diaspora stuff because #relatable. The dude was kind of boring. I think I liked it more than I was bored by it. The jokes helped.
My girlfriend and I have started playing Z. A. T. O//I Love The World and Everything In It and it’s good so far. Namedropped my beloved A Hundred Years Ago Ahead <3. On Ferry’s tumblr she mentioned she was originally inspired by Sorokin’s short story падеж, so I read it and was relieved the final conception of the story changed to not be inspired by that, and then I read another Sorokin short story to confirm that Sorokin is Not My Thing. Very gross, grim, visceral. My mother was right when she said he was мрачный.
Mostly a good reading month, save for my Karamazov struggles. I’ll get to the end of that thing eventually!
Personal Project Update: I am about halfway through my next First Chapter Study, approaching it a little differently than the first two. Hopefully I’ll be done and ready to report on it next week!
Oh also also I wrote a sports anime listicle for The Beat because a managing editor pitched it in the Slack and I was like “this is my pitch, it was made for me.” Read it here.
I finally watched Heated Rivalry (EXTREMELY impressed by Connor Storrie’s accent in Russian, he sounds better than some Russian-American kids I’ve known growing up here!) and I have read some interesting articles that summarize the constant treadmill of fujo discourse Heated Rivalry accidentally pulled forward into the mainstream. This one’s by noted BL Scholar Thomas Baudinette, this one is about queer readings of shonen manga. Interesting stuff!
Thanks for reading!
I was at the section where Grace needed to get the screwdriver. I will note, I was pretty low on health at this point, and things weren't going great. XD Now, I had already moved the cart in and been chased around by The Girl twice, and apparently that meant the little hideaway structure was supposed to have disappeared. It hadn't, though, so I think that's where things were getting confused.
( Instructions on the puzzle... )
( Level discussion and spoilers... )
( Grace theory, continued... )
( Lots of thoughts and spoilers below... )
A Room Above A Shop by Anthony Shapland
This debut novel tells a story about two unnamed Welsh men, called M and B, who fall in love during the 1980s. The book focuses on their experience of staying closeted and hiding their relationship from the others in their small Welsh town. Outwardly, they take the appearance of a shop owner and his live-in apprentice. Shapland’s prose is sparse and atmospheric, which along with the indirect way of addressing characters and glancing, in-the-know references to Welsh history, make for an extremely stylized read which has been recognized with awards and in reviews. It’s a short, quick book, and so I would recommend it broadly—not because I think it’s generally palatable, but because it’s an easy dose to take.
( Read more... )
The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis
The Rules of Attraction starts midsentence. I knew this, but forgot, and flipped back and forth in my eBook to confirm that I hadn’t skipped a page. Later, reading Wikipedia, I learned that many readers over the years have also treated this as a mistake in the printing—a shared experience. The book continues chaotically from there.
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The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
This was my third Maugham, a choice made by happenstance once I realized that I would have many 20-30 minute rides on the Tokyo Metro with not much to do but read or think. The Painted Veil was on my phone, short, and I’d forgotten any summary of it. Let me attempt one now: Kitty Fane is an Englishwoman displaced to Tching-Yen (fictional Hong Kong) by her marriage to Walter Fane, a bacteriologist working under the colonial government. She is unhappy in her marriage, which she chose because of the impending date of her younger sister’s own to a wealthier man, and in the two years since her move she’s begun an affair with the older, handsome Assistant Colonial Secretary, Charlie Townsend. Walter discovers this affair, and the aftermath of this discovery is the meat of the book, in which the Fanes face a cholera epidemic and Kitty, now disillusioned with Charlie and in a remote outpost with more limited company, completes a transition from frivolity to self-actualization.
( Read more... )
Two DNFs:
- Providence by Craig Willse A professor at a small liberal arts college in Ohio (modeled significantly after my own undergrad!) becomes obsessed with a mysterious and dangerous student. Willse writes a convincing and funny take on the elite rural midwestern SLAC, and an unconvincing take on why an English professor with a tenure-track appointment would ruin life and career for a nineteen year old boy.
- George Passant by C. P. Snow Small-town politicking in exurban 1920s England. The opening incident is a fascinatingly direct tale of homosexual attraction ruining a man’s reputation, but after that Snow’s writing loses focus, and his blank-slate narrator fails to persuade me to attend to any of the actors in this slow-moving drama.
K2: Life and Death on the World’s Most Dangerous Mountain by Ed Viesturs with David Roberts
Ed Viesturs is an American mountaineer famous for climbing all fourteen mountains taller than 8000m, and in this book he takes on K2, the second tallest of those after Everest. He explores the history of climbing on K2 through the stories of a half-dozen notable expeditions on the mountain, looking at the challenges, failures, and mistakes in each of those years. Viesturs refrains from defining success as a complete ascent of the mountain, though of course that figures—he takes the more interesting approach of discussing teamwork, technique, and technical feats by the climbers. Though somewhat jargon-y, it’s still easy to follow the action in the book, and between Viesturs’ appreciation for the emotions of mountaineering and Roberts’ presumable editing and writing contributions, the book flew by.
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I haven't finished my Grade 1 Chinese textbooks, but in my defense I added math, so it's four textbooks per grade instead of two. They're really fun. I remember that reading them the first time is how I learned the word for "equals". (In that I still remember it, rather than just seeing it and forgetting it, which is apparently what I did with "greater than" and "less than".)
I've been in the 75fluent discord a bit, and a lot of people are using the SuperChinese app. I looked back through the scores of Chinese learning apps I've tried, and that's not one of them, so I feel like I should check it out. (My Chinese learning app knowledge is now, after just a few years, completely outdated. That's pretty neat.)
2024 was the year it got easier to listen, and 2025 was the year it got easier to write. Dare I decide that 2026 will be the year it gets easier to speak?
Last night I saw a video about how, when reading a book, the first chapter is the hardest and it gets immediately easier after that. So I started reading the first Chinese book I found in my kindle library that was A) new to me, and B) not a graded reader. (I love graded readers, but after you've read hundreds of them, they're a bit repetitive. By design, of course.) It seems to be about good study habits for high schoolers. I don't remember how this is in my library, but the first chapter was pretty interesting, so I assume that's why.)
I did not diamond paint except to start the irises, but I did photograph a bunch of legos, make some graphics, and handwrite some cool zines for
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beagoldfish. Plus wrote stories for chenqing_100! I also sowed a bunch of seeds in containers now covered by snow, and looked at enough of my tubers to determine that 1) the dahlias look largely viable, and 2) there was probably some layering of cold in my canna storage, because the ones in the top box are trying to sprout while the ones in the bottom box are soundly asleep. (That's reasonable; they were by the back door where the floor is pretty cold, but the pipes above the floor run warm for the dog's comfort.)