"And it feels like we're living in that split-second of a car crash..."
A little cooler this time today than it was this time yesterday. Currently, it's 93˚F, with a heat index. The highest I personally saw the heat index go today was 102˚F. Regardless, dangerously hot. And sunny, no sign of the reliable late-afternoon storms that were with us for a while.
I actually slept last night, more than seven hours. Exhaustion finally put its foot down.
I did not write today. I have an idea I may try to begin tomorrow. I talked with Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press about Vile Affection. I sent Gerlyn Lance, the SubPress production manager the author's photo for Cambrian Tales.
I listened to more of the audiobook version of The Ape's Wife and Other Stories – an excellent reading of "Tall Bodies," a serviceable reading of "As Red As Red," quite a good take of "Hydraguros," and a passable go at "Slouching Towards the House of Glass Coffins." By the way, I would add to something I said yesterday about "The Collier's Venus (1898)." Lots of people like this story more than I ever have, so I often give it short shrift, which it likely does not deserve. For example, I did not include it in Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea, and one of the few complaints that Gary Wolfe had (in his Locus review of the collection) was that I did not.
I got some work done of the Pleistocene stuff.
The afternoon's comfort film was David Leitch's Atomic Blonde (2017), one of the films I keep in regular rotation in my afternoon matinees. It features what I am quite certain is one of the best – if not the best – and most visceral fight scenes of the last decade (that amazing bit on the stairs).
Last night, we began watching Apple TV+'s See, which is actually, in my opinion, very good. I saw today that critics really, really hate it, but fuck them. It's the first thing Jason Momoa has done since Game of Thrones that's worth a shit. The world building is top notch, and the visuals are just gorgeous. The subject is all too timely. And Sylvia Hoeks is at least as terrifying here as she was in Blade Runner 2049. Only one complaint. Just one. I really wish they were not trying to pass British Columbia off as Appalachia. These two mountain chains have produced such disparate landscapes I would think that it would not take some who – like me – had spent most of their life in the Appalachia to see the folly. But that is my one complaint.
Things have gotten very, very scary here in Alabama – again. All the same reasons, and I'm trying not to think too much about it. Kathryn and I do what we can to keep ourselves safe and, knowing better, hope against hope that other people will do the right thing. Here, read this very good essay that Drew sent me, "Novelty Means Severity: The Key To the Pandemic," by Dylan H. Morris, a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA. This is what we need people to understand.
The platypus says hi, by the way.
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
2:12 p.m.
I actually slept last night, more than seven hours. Exhaustion finally put its foot down.
I did not write today. I have an idea I may try to begin tomorrow. I talked with Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press about Vile Affection. I sent Gerlyn Lance, the SubPress production manager the author's photo for Cambrian Tales.
I listened to more of the audiobook version of The Ape's Wife and Other Stories – an excellent reading of "Tall Bodies," a serviceable reading of "As Red As Red," quite a good take of "Hydraguros," and a passable go at "Slouching Towards the House of Glass Coffins." By the way, I would add to something I said yesterday about "The Collier's Venus (1898)." Lots of people like this story more than I ever have, so I often give it short shrift, which it likely does not deserve. For example, I did not include it in Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea, and one of the few complaints that Gary Wolfe had (in his Locus review of the collection) was that I did not.
I got some work done of the Pleistocene stuff.
The afternoon's comfort film was David Leitch's Atomic Blonde (2017), one of the films I keep in regular rotation in my afternoon matinees. It features what I am quite certain is one of the best – if not the best – and most visceral fight scenes of the last decade (that amazing bit on the stairs).
Last night, we began watching Apple TV+'s See, which is actually, in my opinion, very good. I saw today that critics really, really hate it, but fuck them. It's the first thing Jason Momoa has done since Game of Thrones that's worth a shit. The world building is top notch, and the visuals are just gorgeous. The subject is all too timely. And Sylvia Hoeks is at least as terrifying here as she was in Blade Runner 2049. Only one complaint. Just one. I really wish they were not trying to pass British Columbia off as Appalachia. These two mountain chains have produced such disparate landscapes I would think that it would not take some who – like me – had spent most of their life in the Appalachia to see the folly. But that is my one complaint.
Things have gotten very, very scary here in Alabama – again. All the same reasons, and I'm trying not to think too much about it. Kathryn and I do what we can to keep ourselves safe and, knowing better, hope against hope that other people will do the right thing. Here, read this very good essay that Drew sent me, "Novelty Means Severity: The Key To the Pandemic," by Dylan H. Morris, a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA. This is what we need people to understand.
The platypus says hi, by the way.
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
2:12 p.m.