this past month has been a lot for me, usually in the best way; and i'm sure i'll try and make something out of it soon at my shark exhibit—but the cost incurred here from classes taking so much of my time left only three reviews, no crumb, and a finished book that i haven't yet had time to review. at least i have things to look forward to making—even if it'll be a minute before i get to them in full—and those two reviews that i did manage to make were worthwhile for me.

something i'm sure i'll mention in a crumb at some point is that i kind of don't mind that this is almost a cave, just a retreat that offers me something with essentially no tangible reward outside of the fun of it, the enjoyment i get out of arranging my thoughts and making something out of them. maybe that's enough, so long as i'm able to support myself in a positive way outside of it. but it will always be the escape that i go to, because there's too many things i want to see life in, and shout into that cave. it's so much fun to sometimes.

but that's besides the point (: i want to talk about what i got to this past month~!

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books

early on in the month i bought with xmas gift cards the first volumes of spy x family and the orange complete collection, just because manga—as much as it kinda feels like cheat reading—is a really enjoyable outlet at the moment for me, combining art with what i feel like are simple but really endearing narratives. i already finished that spy x family volume, and am now trying to figure out what the best way to not have to pay to read the rest of it~ but i think it might be a minute before orange since i've finally started reading the death note all-in-one bible...

it's kind of silly, and i hope it isn't just as gross as i've been told it can be (in terms of it basically being an incel-ish kind of story), but i'm at chapter 8 of 109 and the set-ups and small plot push has been interesting so far...

besides those, i finished & reviewed stung with love by sappho, finished the utopia of rules by david graeber (which is what i hope to review and talk about formally soon), and i started both the metamorphosis by franz kafka (in part for a class, in part because it's been high on by reading list for a minute) and the tao te ching by laozi (...lao tzu? idk which is 'more correct').

and i hope that once the metamorphosis is done in what i hope to be very shortly, i can finally get to stoner by john williams as the next fiction novel i read :)

games

i don't need to say anything more about how this site right now really is just music and movies... games and tv shows are really just tangentially included at the moment because i hope they can be commented on better in the future.

but i did buy balatro and have spent so much time enjoying collecting as much as i can in it; the fusion of a poker roguelike is insane as a concept but it clicked so well for me, and i can't help but think it might be the next game i talk about formally :>

i also played the first chapter of pikmin 1 (thank you dolphin for having an android emulator, even though i have a gamecube controller and an adapter for my computer...), and started again both dirt rally 2.0 and stardew valley. i haven't really returned at all to pikmin unfortunately since early january, but i like having stardew as an option to just dive back into every once in a while; it's relaxing in a unique way, that other 'calm' games i think often fail at capturing well.

and i bought darkwood and signalis on steam just last week, since both feel the closest right now to games that can capture my attention once i dip my toes in, and can be things i really enjoy experiencing.

i also played gta 4 for like ten minutes one day, but i realized that it's not clicking for me atm~

movies

i may have only gotten around to reviewing dallas buyers club for this month, but i'm pretty such i watched more movies this month than other month before in my life :D not to say they were all good—in fact there were as many disappointing ones as there were utterly fantastic ones—but seeing so much was fun in and of itself.

swordfish, dallas buyers club, and reservoir dogs were probably the three that fell the most short of what i wanted them to achieve (though i didn't really have high hopes for that first one); given the review of the second and the lack of 'real movie' to the first, i'll only add for now that reservoir dogs was to me just soo uncomfortably dour in presentation. there were glimmers of a kind of amateur brilliance to it, and there are scenes that still stick in my mind, but it really was pretty petulant for a good duration of its runtime... and at least dallas had the excuse of being a 'period drama' for certain vocabulary choices.

nosferatu, a rewatch of nope after two years, and cabaret all blew me away the most; the first, as much as i think it may end up turning out to be recency bias, was still so beautiful and intuitively arranged... and the ending scene explodes out with everything that it restrained itself with beforehand. and i fear i'll wait on saying anything on the other two; they deserve rewatches the most, and i want to collect my very scattered, venerable thoughts of them both~

django unchained on rewatch is, even if given my life experiences i can't say anything about its portrayals of race in a way that doesn't feel at least a little presumptive (as i think you could easily say about tarantino as well), the brutal vengeance plotline of someone so deserving of it is always instantly captivating to me.

three of the four remaining movies i watched in january were all compelling in their own way; kubo and the two strings and the substance i fear felt just a bit too 'of' themselves and regimented, but they still crafted really good narratives out of their themes—and my god the amount of artistic effort and beauty in the first, and the 'more blood' metal scene in the second are insane highlights. and then the third was i'm thinking of ending things; i came in thinking it was of a completely different mode than it turned out to be, and it was painfully slow in the perfect way for what it was trying to say... the way it thematically articulated itself and relationships and life goals was a lot to take in, but it achieved that look-in rly rly well.

and twilight is... twilight. i don't know whether it's the worst good movie or the best bad movie... maybe it's just in its own universe. please watch the contrapoints video that's 'about it' but kinda partially by name only.

music

as is typical, here's the list of actually everything i listened to in january, but below are the little thoughts on what stuck out to me most (and of what i can remember in full honesty). i hope that at some point this becomes less necessary, and i can talk on broader themes once i can more quickly get my thoughts out there about all the albums i listen to... but there's soo many most of the time, so i fear this will be a good place for them for the time being~

• jrjrjr – jane remover
• what a fucking start to the year. i am enamored with everything she does at this point; it's so well-crafted, genuinely perfectly mixed, and all the style shifts she commits herself to hit with the tact and skill of someone who's worked their entire life for that one song. it happens nearly every time with what she does. read more →
• selected ambient works volume ii – aphex twin
• the story i've been told, that these were just scraps 'thrown together' for the sake of label needs makes it instantly more fascinating and kind of an incredible outlier. like a few other albums i listened to in january, what it does goes on for a long time, and it probably falters a bit bcoz of that, that there's so little that feels distinct from the rest without tons of listening intent. but it captures an indescribable, transient feeling that i can't really ascertain with words.
• xo tour llif3 – lil uzi vert
• even if i know very little about them and their music besides a few from the album this was on, this song really was instantly classic; it's been years since i had listened to it, and revisiting it felt like reconnecting with someone that you lost to time. i'm sure it's in part because it came out right as high school was starting for me, and i can't not play into that trope—but the vocal effect and stunning instrumental and cloying theme of pain and loss all come together in such a bittersweet way...
• cats in the cold – mage tears
• bedroom pop but actually done well; it's such a fraught balance of a genre, and the title track immediately shows that it has plenty to say, instrumentally and vocally~ beautiful stuff, even if it does play on similar notes for most of its runtime
• did you know that there's a tunnel under ocean blvd – lana del rey
• i don't think lana del rey means much to me anymore; nfr! will always be a bit special to me, but the length and repetitious themes here just don't really connect well any longer... and it doesn't help that i think her abilities are all very particular, enough that the few blinds spots she may have peek through more so than i think they should to me
• mother earth's plantasia – mort garson
• i wish this still came off as revelatory as it used to be to me; now it's simply a pretty good ambient / moog album that was an interesting quirk of its time, instead of some timeless act of experimentation and unique talent
• p.o.p – marina satti
• absolute insanity, almost too much; 'aegean islands folk music' as a genre tag is something i'd never seen before, and the mix of that, deconstructed club and art pop is wild as hell—and as much as i don't come back to it much at this point, as a whole, from start to finish, it's such a fun ride
• re:wired – kuru
• digicore might only be known (directly) to me through jane remover and 2hollis right now, but this really broad collection of it hit something special; it's not too much of anything, which would otherwise be a major fault, but the instrumental mix and the amount of thrill that comes through keeps it feeling so consistently fun and engaging~ need to listen to all the stuff released thru deadair :)
• s/t – rage against the machine
• similar thoughts as with plantasia; it used to mean so much more to me, and its best moments are still earth-shattering and catchy as hell, but there's a special piece that has waned and gone for me with its articulation... i hope evil empire comes together as well or better once i get around to it
• malandreo conceptual – weed420
• like a few others here, a lot of what's on here only 'makes sense' in context of the whole experience—and in that way it feels a lot like some of arca's earlier works of deconstructed club & glitch music; it requires a lot, but at the same time this is so utterly explosive in a disgusting, messy kind of way and i love it so much :>
• blush – pva
• wow big surprise, an album that fuses modern sounds with ebm hits really well for me... unravel and transit are blood-pumping and utterly incredible, and i love how, even if the instrumentals do a lot of heavy lifting, it almost never feels like it's lacking in the drive to make them mean something through its runtime
• top ten most epic fish of all time – sintel
• this is like if mother earth's plantasia was made specifically for me
• my back was a bridge for you to cross – anohni and the johnsons
• most painful album to listen to this month; scapegoat is heart-breaking and such a touching articulation of being beat down by the world so unjustly—though i need to come back again soon to see if it reaches some higher point of beauty in and drive through that pain later
• eusexua – fka twigs
• yea this shit is incredible
  no more words (for now)
• jane_remover_remixes.zip – jane remover
• it's weird listening to what sounds like a prequel or early version to her grave robbing album as leroy; it plays much more like a 'real' dj set, and in that way i think it offers something differently than her leroy projects, and i love it for how freewheeling and overly sugary and fun it all is... well, at least up until the end~
• i just don't wanna name it anything with "beach" in the title – laura les
• god i wish i actually enjoyed this :,( i can hear so much of what makes her such a good artist, and a lead part of what makes 100 gecs work, but the way it's arranged, articulated... everything just felt so lacking comparatively. it's painful to say this, genuinely—because there's so many deeper feelings winding through it that i know she would go on to say in so many interesting ways down the line... just not here :<
• internet brainrot – tdstr
• first dariacore / hyperflip (whatever) album i've heard so far that doesn't just feel like it's copying jane for attention :O also it's fucking hilarious most of the time (:
• the first glass beach album – glass beach
• this is like if panic! at the disco wasn't so unlikable and actually had interesting song topics—like it's actually done soo well; classic j fucking dies, but what an intriguing death it was~

i'm happy a listened to a good amount more than i did in december, but i've realized there's always one artistic medium that suffers a bit in amount if i increase one of the others; i read and watched more movies this month, so i think i got to less than i had wished for. but i already have a lot i want to get to that came out this year, and i always love getting around to new stuff~ and now that i have (mostly) everything sorted as i want it on my computer, i can get around to more with more intent soon :)

tv shows

i guess this is the medium that fell through the most; i finished house season 8 (and so the whole show) along with adventure time season 3, but that's about all. i'm still watching season 4 at the moment, and i'm loving it now that it's finally developing towards the plot points i've heard so much praise for, but it does feel like a cop-out show to be the only one i'm watching. there's nothing else on my radar (or close enough to notice right now), but i hope something sticks out soon. both daria and nana slowed down to a crawl, where it's like an episode every week and a half, so something's gotta break soon x.x

i still feel i can write something about atlanta, but i'm conflicted with how to write about any tv show. should be on seasons? or the entire show? what if it's unfinished? how do i even rate the whole show? how would the ratings for specific seasons matter in their contexts?

i'll just keep watching adventure time for now (:

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i'm glad these are still some fun for me, but i hope that i get to work on a few other minor additions to this site that i've had floating around in my head for a minute now. the core is all set, like i think i mentioned last month, so i think it'd be good to expand it out a bit, and make some more pretty stuff out of what i've made to work with~

i'll talk to you again in a month

ilysm <3

written 1 feb 2025