How many △ do you see? ( The Void , 2016) One of the prompts on Prismatic Wasteland's blogging list is: " the scariest monster you can imagine that has 2 arms, 2 legs, and no magic abilities ". As…

I’ve always been a fan of musical styles that are formed when people from different traditions interact. I’m sceptical that any musical tradition is ‘pure’ in that way, because people have alwayse…

Been having a stressful time lately. These are things I’ve read or seen lately and have had thoughts about (if short). Just need to exorcise. Primetime (2026) by Lance Oppenheim Was okay. Robert…

[1978] I can never go past a disco track with extravagant sumptuous strings Classic bit of funky disco obviously inspired by Isaac Hayes' Shaft . Can you dig it?

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T t's quite a striking cover this week, don't you think? Totally black-and-white except for the flesh tones on Hirschfeld's caricature of Jackie Gleason.* Even the famed TV Guide logo has been…

Google has released its annual popular Halloween costume list, based on search records. A mix of horror media, current pop culture and... "disco Scooby-Doo?" Source

Revisiting Twilight recently has been a bit of a slog. It can be a slow series and, especially when you near the final movies, sometimes it feels like very little happens at all. As a teenager my…

Some impressive miniature aircraft work in this film supervised by A. Arnold Gillespie along with Donald Jahraus. There are a number of crash sequences and shots of wings shearing off that fracture…

A new girl, Enid, comes to Miss Cackle's school for witches, and Mildred is put in charge of her. However, Enid is a troublemaker. Children's book.

Frequently Played 🔗I tend to listen to the same songs or albums on repeat that are evocative of how I’m feeling or what’s going on with me. Here is what I’m currently listening to…

Thinking of Ernie Kovacs, who ranks, along with a few silent movie greats, atop my list of favorite comedians. Am especially thinking of Kovacs' very catchy ditty Hot Cakes And Sausage , which is on…

Natalie: so? I drank some. Charlie: ew. Natalie: What's so gross about it? Charlie: It's like a sauce. It's like drinking maple syrup. Natalie: What's weird about drinking syrup?…

tl;dr: a rules-light game of playing creatures of Slavic myth, an interesting lens, something different to the usual adventurers. Potvory is a tabletop adventure role-playing game which offers "a new…

Hi, so I’m gonna keep updating about once a week until the pilot release date for you to keep in touch with what I’m working on. Right now the last things on my list are to finish the…

My review of “The Shining”.

One of my book clubs will be starting Milton's _Paradise Lost_ soon. Preparing for that reading, I learned that there are actually two different versions of _Paradise Lost_: the “original” 1667…

👎 Doesn't get the green light This collection contains three novellas: the titular Raise The Red Lantern , Nineteen Thirty-four Escapes , and Opium Family . The latter two describe family histories,…

I have many relatives who will almost certainly refuse to watch this film because it presents a reality they are unwilling to confront. Yet for anyone who values the truth over comforting dogma, the…

I admit I haven’t kept with pop culture, especially music. Someone sent me the follow. The choreography is…insane. ▶ I had never heard of them, but this might be my next rabbit hole.

I think the car chase in One Battle After Another may have rekindled my love of film. And it only took me a year to actually watch it… Odd weekend which has ended up with me watching four hours of…

Borne out of the very first instance of corporate reputation-washing, the Standard Oil-produced 20-LP series "Our Nation's Heritage", a progressive history of America that never quite made those Big…

Today in 1965, at EMI Studios (now known as Abbey Road Studios), The Beatles recorded "Day Tripper." It has always been one of my favourite Beatles songs. John Lennon wrote the music and the majority…

I collect excerpts from novels when it happens to be about bathing or bathrooms. You’ve got to have a hobby, but really this is why. From In Milton Lumky Territory by Philip K. Dick: The roar…

In an effort to cure my YouTube problem once and for all, lately I have retreated to what appears to be my ‘happy place’. Movies from the 1970s and 80s. I spent my formative years in the 1980s and…

I once had a girl, Or should I shay she once had me. She showed me her room, Isn't it good? Norwegian wood. She asked me to shtay And she told me to shit anywhere. So I looked around And I noticed…

Want to be in photos like these or buy prints? Send me an email . I’m no longer on Instagram , so if you message me there, I won’t see it. You can also drop me a line on Signal , Mastodon , or…

Daisy Edgar-Jones and George McKay are the best things in a plain-Jane adaptation -- but that's good enough.

Finished reading: Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel 📚 ★★★★ Literary Fiction Ebook Own Emily St. John Mandel never disappoints. This is a fairly fast read with a twisting timeline that spans space…

It's Arnold K's classic survival horror funnel 🐑—now with my house rules, suggestions, and modifications. Runnable in 3-4 hours as a spooky one-shot. 🎃

One of my favourite comics artists working today is Woshibai (Tumblr) , based in Shanghai. I can't remember where I first came across his drawings, but I have been following his Tumblr for a very…

New to the ongoing blog series called STQK "Would you like to know more ?" Disclaimer : Episodes 11-15 will be using an oracle system I am developing for solo players; you can see it in action here.…

Squire Trevenyan (Peter Cushing), a magistrate in 18th century Cornwall becomes entangled with a dangerous gang of shipwreckers led by the brutal Black John (Bernard Lee). In attempting to stop the…

THE STORY: Wayne Schofield is planning a house party for his friends at his estate in Wilmington, Delaware. But business takes precedence and he heads to Philadephia leaving his friends to set up and…

I finally got to see Sting live. Most artists of his vintage would tour with a bigger band and have other players cover much of their instrumental parts. Not Sting! Three-piece band, all the amazing…

A Garden Of Spheres by Linnea Sterte is one of the best things I have read all year, and I've had a pretty good year of reading things. It is my favorite ever graphic novel. It is a near wordless…

I am absolutely useless at promoting myself. I'm even worse at talking about my writing and those 10 books I've published so far. Last weekend, I had a customer in...

A podcast named Designed in California: Expertly-told stories about the 50-year history of Apple and the world it created, from Jason Snell and Myke Hurley. We cover the entire range of the last…

Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant, 1885, is the tale of a young man "making good"; although the good is very much in the way-of-the-world rather than moral sense. He achieves this mostly by the graces of…

Recently, Goodreads announced that not only were they adding the much sought-after feature of half-stars, but also 0.25 stars, so you can effectively now rate all your books out of twenty. This seems…

The Eternal Edge

I can still remember buying my first BMX Bandits record, 1993's Kylie's Got A Crush On Us , from Impulse Records in Motherwell. I bought the 7-inch and CD single. I was already aware of the band…

Opus 6: The Taming of the Shrew

I just stumbled upon the movie The Marching Band, and loved how the characters explore themes of social class, chance, opportunity, and culture in quiet and moving ways.The movie is the story of two…

Soft by Jane Mai adapted from the novel by Sheridan Le Fanu Peow 1872, adapted 2015, reprinted 2024 Jane Mai's Soft is a graphic novel adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla , set in Hong Kong in…

lessons on labor, feminism, and colonization

The kingdom of heaven is like a wardrobe door. Its presence is simple, humble, and ignored. Once seen, once opened, it leads to unimaginable beauty and unexpected depth. There are temptations which…

To coincide with the release of Fatherland , I wrote about 10 Great Black-and-White Films of the 2020s for BFI online. You can read the piece here .

This is the first time that I’ve read a Sherlock Holmes novel. I’d seen several film and TV adaptations over the years, but they never particularly grabbed me. I thought I’d give one of the books a…

Learning about Taiwan's history through period dramas.