Status:
Felt pretty good, and the weather was gorgeous, so a pottering day with an Easter holidays visit from bits of Fi’s family. Possibly did too much as I have a bit of tinnitus and brain fog this evening but fingers crossed. At least the weather is bobbins tomorrow for a crash.
Had a email from Matt about this blog which was lovely. I don’t have a huge readership here, maybe enough to fill the small room of a small pub, which is how I like it, but without the usual attention-economy feedback metrics (which I don’t want) it does sometimes feel like shouting into the void. It helps that my main motivation for doing this is to learn how to write sustainably again so it doesn’t really matter if no-one is reading, but ultimately I have always written for an audience and find that, for whatever reason, writing a private journal just doesn’t happen. So it was good to get some feedback! (This is not a cry out for feedback!)
Like many of you I was relieved when armageddon was postponed at midnight last night. It was a strange day watching that deadline approach, but then everything about this war with Iran has been strangely unreal. Clearly not for those not the ground, of course, but I’m starting to get a more nuanced understanding of Baudrillard’s The Gulf War Did Not Take Place which maybe could be applied to the Trump era.
Anyway, one should not invoke Baudrillard when on the cusp of a chronic fatigue crash. G’night.
Reading:
- ‘We can’t increase prices any more’: UK hospitality firms hit by cost triple blow — Before I took medical leave, figuring out Loaf budget was my responsibility (and yes, probably contributed to my taking medical leave) so I identify with all of this. Fact is, until 2020 the financial weather for hospitality businesses was pretty steady and reliable, and then it went haywire. There will be exceptions, and I am by no means a financial expert, but I would advise those who enjoy indie cafes and restaurants and the like to expect lower quality, higher prices and eventually closed businesses. None of it is sustainable on the old model.
- Don’t fall for WSJ’s ‘normal gay’ whitewashing of queer life — I’m fascinated by the distinction between gay and queer, in that you can be gay but not queer. I often wonder about being queer but not gay (cf bell hooks, Tilda Swinton) and then start getting a bit lost and aware I’m in danger of embarrassing myself and offending others, so I stick with “weird” as my label of choice.
- Quick, shallow, and over-confident — A look at the legacy of the business books of the 1990s on our current political culture that “discourages deep thinking and values novelty above substance, fetishising approaches that are simplistic and en vogue”. Listeners of If Books Could Kill will be familiar with the genre which I remember well from my time working in bookshops in the City of London.
- 17776 — A piece of hypertext fiction which I missed when it came out in 1997 and was intrigued by when it popped up in my feeds this week. Apparently it’s about football, so I may well bail, but the first couple of chapters have been pretty good.
- Mystery of odd flashes documented in sky before first ever satellite was launched gets even odder
Watching:
- The Sunshine Recorder (7:47) — I have a sense that I knew what this was already but not in any useful way. Would love to use the burn marks as musical notation and see what the weather back then sounded like.
Listening:
- Empire: Arab-Israeli Conflict pt 1: From Suez To The PLO – Focusses on the state of the Arab world, which was not a homogenous block but fractured along ideological lines.
Books on the go:
🎧 Finding Albion by Zakia Sewell [#######---] 75% (+13)
📖 Stone Junction by Jim Dodge [########--] 80% (+4)