Stuff I’m doing.
Stuff I’m thinking about.
Stuff I’ve seen online and feel is worth sharing.
more info
Thanks to some help from Laura’s muscles we started spreading the mature compost onto the beds today. It looks great. I hate having chronic fatigue but it does mean my compost has time to really mature well.
A figure from the 80s UK small press scene (of whom I’m rather jealous as he was basically adopted as a kid by some of my favourite cartoonists) who has returned with his anthology Ugly Mug. I have ordered the latest issue and will report back.
Was reminded recently of Ed Pinsent’s Sound Projector radio show which has been running on Resonance FM for 20 years now and is a fantastic collection of the very odd and weird in sound and, occasionally, music. Latest shows on Mixcloud, older ones on Internet Archive.
I stopped seeking new music about a decade back, in hindsight because after years of vigorous activity I probably had enough music for one lifetime and there were other things to seek out. I also stopped going to gigs due to what turned out to be autistic sensory overload (the performances were fine - everything else was unbearable). But music continues to be an important part of my environment and I noticed I’d had a few new-ish albums on rotation recently.
Nothing particularly revolutionary, entirely by men my age or older, but it is what it is.
(I don’t know how to link to music these days. Music artist websites continue to be goddamn awful pieces of shit and I’m reluctant to link to one of the streaming sites over another, so go old school and copy/paste these into the search bar of your choice.)
When explaining the English language I generally say the common stuff is Germanic with some Norse, while the posh stuff is French, because of the Normans. Turns out there’s a movement to discard the Norman influence and establish a modern English as it might have evolved from Anglo-Saxon speech. As an intellectual game it seems a lot of fun (though I do have concerns about any attempts at “purity”).
A solid history, starting with the Norman invasion, through the industrial revolution and Thatcherism, to explain the continued dominance of the south east. I learned a lot.
A nice, meaty but very accessible interview. I always find Butler clear and to the point.
(via)
Where does the British public stand on transgender rights in 2024/25?
A frankly terrifying survey from YouGov that clearly illustrates how relentless anti-trans propaganda has made the wider public way more hostile than they were a decade ago. Well done everyone.
Molly Soda interviews an artist mining early Flickr
I was a very early adopter of Flickr and the people and communities there were very important to me and my photography. So when I hear about a young artist fascinated by when she finds when she searches the site around the date of her birth, I feel old, and weirded out that it was really 20-odd years ago, but mostly I think it’s cool that what we left there was interesting enough. Like me discovering punk singles in the 90s.
Seth’s Dominion and the Realm of an Artist’s Interest
Seth’s cardboard city, not made for public consumption, was exhibited in Paris last year as part of a big show of original comic art. It kinda didn’t fit, which is really interesting, says Tiffany Babb.
(Really wish I’d seen this…)
Found myself shouting “nasal hair is not a joke” up the stairs to my wife. #middleagedmanproblemsarerealproblems
My Libro.fm subscription is proving very fruitful. After a couple of heavy history books I plumped for Lucy Sante’s autobiography of her gender transition in her 60s. I’d very much enjoyed Sante’s portrait of New York in the 80s featured in the Beastie Boys book and this had come highly recommended by someone on my feed. It’s beautifully written, bringing out the fear and uncertainty of not fitting in and knowing something is clearly wrong but not wanting to accept the inevitable. 10/10.
A particularly resonant strip by Jules Feiffer.
via this collective reminiscence. And while I’m here, I’ve realised since his death that two of my favourite cartoonists, Kyle Baker and Glenn Dakin, owe a lot to his influence. Can’t believe I hadn’t noticed before.
A review of Distant Ruptures a collection of work by Fort Thunder alumni CF
Noise is a culture that dissolves distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow, rooted in both Stockhausen and the sound of power tools, but is basically antagonistic to all things middlebrow and brunch-friendly, such as book clubs. Repeated exposure to loud antagonistic performances can render them rote or ritualistic, but I believe the ideal initial reaction is one of confusion, of what is even happening.
Pondering watching Queer soon and am thinking of when I saw Naked Lunch in the cinema as a teenager. I knew nothing about Burroughs but had seen some Cronenberg horror on BBC2’s Moviedrome and knew Peter Weller from Robocop so it seemed a safe bet. Blew my mind and changed everything. I wonder if kids who know Guadagnino from his films with Timmy Chalamet and recognise James Bond will take a punt and have a similar experience with this.
The Making of David Lynch’s The Angriest Dog in the World
One of the regular features was a comic strip called The Angriest Dog in the World. It was comprised of four panels, hand-drawn by Lynch at one time. It featured a growling dog tethered outside a home, with his owner unseen except for captions that drifted out a window. Lynch had submitted the art a few years before I arrived. Every week he called in the captions by telephone. They varied each strip, but the art stayed the same.
(via)
Our shed blew over in the storm so the allotment community rallied round to help us get it back up again. I was expecting a ship of fools, blind leading the blind farce but it all came together very professionally.
RIP Jules Feiffer. Not unexpected but still a jolt. Feels like the end of an era. What a man, what a life, what a body of work.
Got an email from a relative who hasn’t disabled the auto-sig in their Yahoo mail (no shade, people shouldn’t have to work that shit out) which someone in branding has decided should read “Search, organise, conquer”.
Conquer?
Y’all OK there Yahoo?
RIP David Lynch. I vividly remember renting Wild at Heart as a teenager and nothing ever being the same again.
Compost Culture: An Introductory Film
A nice video about Birmingham’s community composting project which I was involved with before long-Covid took me off the board. This features the three-bay structures I designed and co-built last year and it’s quite emotional seeing them in use.
I see The Jesus Lizard are touring a new album (first in 26 years) so I checked it out and, yes, it’s very good indeed.
New Folding Ideas video essay on dinosaur footprint fossils and the creationist industry that emerged around them. Excellent as always.
I’ve never gotten to sleep easily but the last year of long-covid chronic fatigue has made my nights a real struggle. Not only am I exhausted but not sleepy (because I’m not able to actually do anything tiring) but my ability to control my autistic brain is severely compromised so it spirals as I lie staring into the darkness for hours.
One solution I’ve found is to listen to audio shows that are just interesting enough to hold my attention but monotonous enough to send me to sleep. Men with low voices talking about history are perfect, for example.
So here’s my current go-to sources to sooth the trauma of the wee hours.
All of these are ad-free or have the adverts read in the same voice and style as the rest of the show, so they don’t jolt you awake.
Desert Oracle Radio - I wish I could remember where I came across this. It feels like it just appeared on my phone like magic. Ken Layne rambles quite coherently and passionately about life in the Mojave Desert for half an hour. It’s unique and entrancing and is one of the shows I listen to to fall asleep and then again the next day because I fell asleep and missed the end.
Revolutions - I was recommended this as a good introduction to the history of the Russian Revolution, and it really is a thorough deep dive into how is came to be presented in very accessible episodes. But it’s also wonderfully soporific and has saved me on numerous occasions. He’s currently doing a fictional account of a 23rd century Martian revolution in exactly the same manner and format as his factual historical ones, which is a lot of fun.
Weird Studies - this is often too interesting for me to switch off, but sometimes the subject isn’t quite in my wheelhouse and just becomes another “men talking about stuff” show and sends me right off. Perfect.
Also of note: The Fall of Civilisations, Crash Course Pods: The Universe.
The steady extraction of BBC audio production from the constraints of broadcast radio has produced some subtly interesting formats that are much more in tune with my nocturnal needs. Here’s some useful stuff I’ve found.
Dream Time with Zakia reminds me of the late night radio of my youth while being quite distinct and modern, with a slight tinge of something 1970s. The music is broadly in the weird/jazz/global end of ambient (except when it’s not) selected by someone who’s done their time exploring the dusty corners of record shops. It helps that Zakia’s voice is Bob-Harris-level whispering in your ear maintaining a chilled vibe.
BBC Radio 3 Unwind answers the question, what if you stripped all the intellectual content away from Radio 3 and dumped the remains at a mindfulness seminar. Sounds terrible, but it’s actually perfect for my needs. My go-to is the awful sounding Mindful Mix which has no presenter and is like listening to classical music on shuffle. Nothing too challenging, nothing too jarring, but not cheesy or bland.
In Our Time, being a bunch of academics talking about their speciality to Melvin Bragg, seems like a no-brainer as a sleep aid, but one has to be careful as it can be a little too interesting. Also a podcast, of course.
Books on tape, as we used to call them, are tricky for this purpose as I don’t really want to fall asleep to them - I want to listen to them properly. But I also want to fall asleep and sometimes it’s worth sacrificing a chapter and rewinding it later. I get a book a month with my Libro.fm subscription and have found Werner Herzog’s reading his memoir Every Man for Himself and God against All to be perfect at brain soothing.
I keep hunting and welcome suggestions.
