lunabee34

1. Y'all, kids are fucking weird. Adorable, but fucking weird.

Yesterday, Fiona found a little chunk of wood on our walk, started calling it Eliza, and then proceeded to play with it for hours, talking to it as if it was sentient and generally being an A+ adorable weirdo.

Eliza now resides on the front porch with the rocks and snail shells she magpies up.

This is not even a cool looking piece of wood. It's not even a piece of tree branch or anything. It is the most nondescript little hunk of plywood.

*dies*

2. Season three of Westworld ended several weeks ago, and I keep forgetting to type up my extremely positive reactions. No more!

( spoilers for all of season three of Westworld )

1. Ever since we moved here, I've seen little mounds of earth here and there in the yard like crawfish make, but I thought they must be something else although I didn't know what. My grandparents' property on the Gulf Coast had crawfish, but they were close to the Gulf, and I just assumed it couldn't be crawfish where we live now.

Several months ago (gah, more like many months ago the way time is flying LOL), the people who own the lots across the street had them mostly cleared; they were heavily wooded and difficult to see into. Once they were cleared, I could see that they are swampy, marshy land. I've already posted that now that I'm out walking every day, I realized that what I thought was water in the ditches from January and February's excessive rain is actually a series of streams; the water is constantly flowing. It has a million tadpoles in it, turtles (Josh saw one yesterday, but alas the rest of us missed it), minnows!, and as of yesterday--CRAWFISH!!! There's an expanse of the stream with a ton of teensy baby ones crawling all over the bottom. Mystery solved!

2.

The Poems of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I've never read Doctor Zhivago or seen a film version of it, so I think these poems lose a lot in being removed from their original context. Many of them are religious in content; they're fine, but none of them really speak to me.

The real draw of this volume is the beautiful sepia toned drawings throughout; I don't know much about art, but they look to me as if they were drawn with a fountain pen in sepia ink.



View all my reviews

3. ( spoilers for Westworld )

1. ( homeschooling day 3 )

2. Josh's new laptop arrived yesterday, and he immediately began working on getting his classes online; he'd been getting stuff together on paper before then. Not only did we need the second laptop just for logistical purposes (two people cannot both work full time on the same laptop) but also because ever since our institution went to that multi-factor authentication thing where you have to get a text to sign into your email and other university accounts, we can't toggle between accounts on the same device. If he logs into his stuff on my laptop, it won't let me log into mine without trying about a billion times and getting a million text messages. It really was not going to work for what we need to do, and we are very lucky to be able to afford to afford another laptop on short notice. So that's sorted.

3. I have everything up for my class except the lectures. I am so proud of myself. I figured out how to record audio announcements using this headset I got for a video meeting like two years ago and never used again, and I figured out how to record video lectures using my webcam. So tomorrow, I'm going to record those and get them up, and then everything will be done for my courses. Whew!

4. Emma is reading The Great Gatsby for her Honors English class, so I decided to read along with her. The last time I read it was, I believe, in grad school first year, so 2001. Before that, I'd only read it once in 8th grade. I'm also slogging through this horrible collection of Corso poetry; I liked the other collection well enough, but this one is nigh unreadable (to me).

5. I was so stoked about the Westworld premiere. I was really worried it wouldn't be as good transplanted into a new environment, but it exceeded expectations.

( spoilers )

6. executrix sent me a box of books. Yay!!

1. We decided Emma is old enough to watch Deadpool. She loved it, naturally. I had forgotten how hard this movie hits me in the feels; for what is ostensibly a couple of hours of crude humor, it makes me sniffle an awful lot.

2. ( Luke Cage )

3. ( Westworld )

4. Emma and I went to see Love, Simon. We both loved it. It was a very sweet movie. There was an obligatory "this is a film about teenagers, so we must include one scene with alcohol" moment, but I really liked that it wasn't about teens being rebellious or getting into trouble.

The author of the book it's based on is apparently from Atlanta, so a couple of days before we saw the movie, I listened to an interview she gave on a Georgia Public Broadcasting program (On Second Thought) that bothered me. The host asked her a question that I think was about how she might change the book or something, and she answered that she probably wouldn't have written it at all because she's been listening and learning and devoting herself to supporting voices from within the community. Which, I mean, I haven't read the book; I know that when people from outside write about a group, they often fuck shit up. And maybe she did. Maybe the book is offensive in some way (if it is, it doesn't show up in the movie). But her response made me think she's been dogpiled on the internet about this book, and it made me sad that now she thinks she shouldn't have even written it. Also, if she mentioned once that she knows that everyone doesn't have a positive coming out experience, she mentioned it at least four times in a fairly short interview. So clearly, she's been criticized that Simon's parents and friends are accepting which blows my mind. While clearly not everyone's experience, many people do have positive coming out experiences. IDK It bothered me.

1. I got my annual evaluation today. Exceeds expectations in teaching and service; meets expectations in scholarship. I am pleasantly surprised by the latter; I fully expected to get needs work. It's really gratifying that the efforts I'm making to transition from a position that didn't require scholarship to one that does are being acknowledged.

2. ( Lucifer reviews )


3. ( Gotham review )

4. ( spoilery thoughts upon Westworld rewatch )

5.

Authority by Jeff VanderMeer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I didn't think it was possible, and yet this book is even better than the first installment. It contains more dialogue, action and character work than the first; it's a song with words as opposed to the orchestral piece of the first novel.

Authority is from the perspective of a newly introduced character, Control, who's come to take charge of The Southern Reach after the psychologist, now revealed to have been the SR Director, doesn't return from the 12th expedition. Control is an outsider; he knows very little about the SR or Area X or what's really going on, and the reader learns the truth with growing horror alongside Control. A great deal of what we think we know from book 1 gets subverted or changed in some way in this sequel; our understanding of the psychologist in particular deepens.

Control learns that the border has always been a conceit; that Area X has never been bound by that invisible line and that it has been changing the people who work at SR for years now.

In addition, a doppelganger of the biologist, Ghost Bird, has returned to the real world as have doppelgangers of the other expedition members minus the psychologist. Control eventually ends up with Ghost Bird on a far northern coast looking into a rift Ghost Bird has created that leads back into Area X. Far south behind them, the facade of a border has come down at the SR, and the world is changing quickly as Area X advances. The novel ends with the two of them jumping into the portal.

I don't think I do this novel any justice with my review. It's just fantastic both on its own and as a continuation of/commentary on the first. Highly, highly recommend.



View all my reviews

( SPOILERS )

This episode was awesome, but the next one is the crowning glory. I'll type up my chicken scratch on it later today.

( SPOILERS )

We've actually watched through episode 8, so comments up to that point welcome, but please no spoilers for the ending.

before I start taking notes on this week's new episodes. :)

1. We watched the second episode of Westworld which I liked even better than the first (don't spoil me if you've watched farther than that, please). ( spoilers )