I always feel like only two weeks have gone by when I come by to update the blog, and then I look at it and it has been over a month. Ugh. Then again, when I look at the metrics, no one has visited, so I guess I can't feel too bad... Finally got new Poscas, after waiting for them to lower in price and then waiting probably another month for them to be shipped. Everything is so dire - the death toll in the United States is over 100,000 people - so all I want is to make fun, bright art, because that's all I can really deal with right now. Here are some recent ones. My friend, out of the goodness of her heart, mailed me her PlayStation 3 that was just collecting dust in her apartment. As much as I wish I had a Nintendo Switch so that I could play Animal Crossing with my friends, that kind of expense wouldn't be possible for me right now, and I was really nostalgic for some of the games I'd played in my early twenties. I didn't have a video game system growing up - I didn't get an original NES until I was in high school, in the late 90's - and I don't think I owned a PlayStation until the PS2 was already out. My ex worked at Blockbuster, so I wound up with games that had been pulled out of circulation & other hand-me-downs. I think my favorite games for PlayStation were Darkstalkers 3, Pocket Fighter, Legend of Mana, Bust-A-Groove, and King of Fighters '99. I hated Final Fantasy 7 & wound up Game Genie-ing my way through Final Fantasy 8. (Final Fantasy 8 is also dreadful - four discs of bullshit - I just liked watching the Guardian Force animations.) So I got this PS3 & got Darkstalkers 3 & Pocket Fighter from the PSN Store, and I've been re-learning how to play them. Morrigan is my favorite, but I like most of the lady characters in Darkstalkers 3 (exception: Bulleta/B.B. Hood.) I recently played with Sasquatch & that was a good time - the ending is so cute. Pocket Fighter has been frustrating - it's actually kind of hard at times - I had to spend a long time in training mode learning how to do super combos. Chun-Li keeps kicking my ass. I did beat it with Tessa, though, who is really an underrated fun character! All that is to say that I only read two and a half books last week, because I've been playing video games (this includes 30 mins of Michael Jackson: The Experience as cardio). I was on the waiting list for Finna for a little while. I wound up reading it in a sitting. It's short - about 144 pages or thereabouts - and it is actually the perfect length. Two recent exes have to work together when a wormhole opens up in their workplace (which is basically an IKEA). I think that this story could have stretched to be longer, but not every story has to be a huge adventure ordeal - it was wonderful as it was. Really enjoyable.
Honestly, I don't even remember what I was thinking or what led me to read Girl, Wash Your Face. I know that it's incredibly popular out in the world. Rachel Hollis' husband also has a self-help book out - the only reason I am even remotely aware of this is because ads for it play on the new release TVs at Target. I read maybe half of her husband's book on a lunch break one night & found it kind of repetitive & very simple - Get Out of Your Own Way is mainly stories about how Rachel Hollis tells her husband to tighten up, and it hurts his feelings, and then he tightens up, and You Can Too. Girl, Wash Your Face is slightly better than that, but I did almost quit it at the beginning as I found it very odd & almost performative in a way I can't explain. It did have a few things that I wound up highlighting. I just skipped all the bits about the Bible and skimmed a bit of the parenting advice. I think I have probably read a lot of self-help books in my life, and after a while they all start to look alike. After reading both half of Get Out of Your Own Way and all of Girl, Wash Your Face, I must say that my opinion of Dave Hollis is pretty low lol. Currently I am reading Living Out Islam, which has been very interesting as many of the people interviewed in this book come from very traditional East Asian family structures and are the first generation of children that have grown up in a large city in a more Westernized country. Additionally, the countries covered include the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and South Africa, and the two that I've read about so far are South Africa and the UK, so this is another layer of unfamiliarity for me! It's been illuminating so far as the author has done a great job of finding gay, lesbian, and transgender Muslims who have different levels of religious education and different ethnic and family backgrounds. The author also states in the foreword that they didn't interview anyone who identified as bisexual and that the work can be carried forward by learning from bisexual Muslims. It's really been wonderful so far, especially as Ramadan comes to a close. Okay! I'm going to make a promise to myself to update more!
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AuthorArtist, essayist, divinity school dropout. Here for a good time, not for a long time. Archives
February 2024
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