Media Diet – July 2023

July has been a fairly productive month as far as media goes. I decided earlier in the month that I wanted to start watching all the Studio Ghibli movies in chronological order.

So this month I watched three movies, all of them Studio Ghibli movies. I started with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and then I watched Laputa: Castle in the Sky and ended the month with Grave of the Fireflies. All of these were excellent movies in their own right. Grave of the Fireflies especially is one of the saddest movies I’ve ever watched. I will be continuing my watching of Studio Ghibli movies over the next month.

I read two books, the first was Sister Outsider which is a series of essays and speeches by the Black lesbian feminist Audre Lorde. I enjoyed the book a great deal and every bit of writing imparted some wisdom and knowledge that will enhance my understanding of the world going forward.

I also read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, one of those rare books that I finished in one sitting. Partially because it is quite short but also because it is quite good. I am still processing the themes of the book but in short I think it also imparted some wisdom that will help me down the road.

I played and finished one video game, Cloudpunk, It is an adventure game set in a gorgeously realized cyberpunk setting, a city called Nivalis. I very much enjoyed my playthrough of the game. The game leaned into cyberpunk genre tropes at certain points with its characters and themes but it was never overdone. I am very much looking forward to the developer’s next game Nivalis.

That’s all from me this month, see y’all next month!

Some Quotes from Sister Outsider

This past week I have been reading Sister Outsider, a collection of Audre Lorde’s essays, papers and speeches. Every bit of writing in this collection is worth reading. Lorde’s writing remains applicable and useful to our current struggles and I found myself wishing that I had read her words earlier in my life. Better late than never I suppose.

While I was reading this book, I used my Kobo ebook reader’s annotation function to highlight and save a few choice quotes that I thought were particularly important.

Continue reading “Some Quotes from Sister Outsider”

Media Diet – June 2023

This month there was a good variety of media. I started off the month with reading Laura Kate Dale’s book Who Hunts The Whale which is a satirical novel about the video games industry. It was quite effective at making me both laugh and cry.

I am also watching a dystopian sci-fi TV show called Silo. It took a few episodes for the show to really get going but when it eventually did, it got very interesting.

I watched another movie in the theatre, this time it was Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse. Quite possibly the best animated movie I’ve ever seen. It was a delightful experience from start to finish. Worth watching in a movie theatre if you can.

I watched an anime series, the first season of The Witch from Mercury. This show is a show set in a wholly new Mobile Suite Gundam universe disconnected from the rest of the franchise. It was a enjoyable watch even if in typical Gundam fashion it is a little heavy handed with its messaging in some places. It’s always cool to see mechs fight.

At the end of the month, I watched the first season of Star Trek Strange New Worlds. I see why people have been singing the praises of this show and I also enjoyed it. Between Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks there is a good variety of Trek TV out right now.

That’s all from me this month, see y’all next month!

Media Diet – May 2023

May started off a hot mess with me playing the thoroughly mediocre Redfall. Redfall just might be the worst game I’ve had the displeasure of actually playing in a long long time. But hey, at least I only had to pay for a month of Xbox Games Pass to play it and wasn’t one of those poor souls who bought the game full price.

It improved a bit from there, I watched the second season of The Legend of Vox Machina which I think was kind of “eh”. I am not entirely sure I’ll watch the third season whenever that comes out. Probably because I’ll forget about the show’s existence by the time the third season comes out.

I also watched a movie with some folks on a Discord server I’m on: The Menu (2022) which was a decent time. Made better by Anya Taylor-Joy’s presence. Whew lord.

The rest of the month has been devoured by me playing the newly released Zelda game, Tears of the Kingdom. The open world sicko in me is enjoying the open world aspect of the game. A lot of my criticisms of the previous game BOTW still apply to this game and in those ways, the game can still be annoying to play. A 7/10 game as JSS put it.

That’s all from me this month, see y’all next month!

The Live Hip-Hop Album

This is a republishing of a post I wrote for my now defunct music newsletter. Substack sucks so the post is here now.

Recently I was talking about the concept of the live hip-hop album on Mastodon and since that thread was followers-only I want to elaborate here on what favourites are in that specific genre. To clarify, when I mean “live hip-hop album” I mean a recording of a hip-hop album performed live in concert or with a live band and instrumentation.

So here they are!

Continue reading “The Live Hip-Hop Album”