I like French, comics, books, podcasts, (board and roleplaying) games, biking, and trains. I try to stay organized and in good (physical and mental) shape.
Moi, j'aime le français, les BD, les livres, les podcasts, les jeux (de plateau et de rôle), le cyclisme, et les trains. Je fais de mon mieux de rester organisé et en forme (physiquement et mentalement).
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some brief notes on the theme song to The NeverEnding Story
I have vague recollections of watching The NeverEnding Story as a child, but they are vague. I was young (nine at the oldest, but probably younger), it was at someone else’s house, and it was only once, so it didn’t leave much of an impression on me. My next substantive encounter with that movie—or, more accurately, its theme song—was the ending gag in this Homestar Runner cartoon, where the title character sings “the never ending sooooodaaaaaa” to the tune of the movie’s theme song.
📚 bookblog: When the Moon Hits Your Eye (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
This book reminds me of Hervé Le Tellier’s L’Anomalie, which feels insulting and maybe even heretical. L’Anomalie is a Prix Goncourt-winning, highbrow, Oulipo novel; this is by a guy who writes Star Trek parodies and kaiju books. L’Anomalie is relatively restrained in its conceit, with an impossible “duplicate” plane landing three months after the original one; this has the moon turn into cheese for a lunar cycle.
Yet, both books are powerful in their exploration of how the world responds when something ridiculous and clearly impossible happens.
🎙️ radioblog: Star Wars: The Original Radio Drama (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
I think I got this in an NPR Humble Bundle, and I’ve been meaning to relisten to it for a while. It’s a real mix of good and bad: Thanks to John Williams and Ben Burtt, it’s got some great audio to work with; however, it does a lot of awkward “tell since we can’t show.” It sometimes feels like it’s reaching to fill in an extra four hours, but also it maybe demonstrates that Star Wars could maybe be a miniseries with some better writing?
📚 bookblog: Star Trek: Boldly Go, Volume 1 (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
I’m in a grumpy mood this morning, so I might be a little harsh here, but nothing’s really standing out. There are some interesting things here (Spock resisting the Borg! Minor Wrath of Khan cameo!), but I think there are continuity errors, and even if there aren’t, it’s just not super interesting.
Jacques Ellul's technique and Brian Daley's Alderaan
I recently finished an audiobook of Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Society and have been finding other things to listen to now that I don’t have mid-twentieth century French philosophical reflections on technique to think through anymore. Last night, I began (re)listening to the National Public Radio Star Wars radio drama—adapted by Brian Daley—while cleaning up the kitchen, and I continued listening on the way in to work today. The radio drama is interesting in so many ways!
📚 bookblog: Star Trek: Deviations (❤️❤️🖤🖤🖤)
I kind of thought this was dumb. There’s an interesting idea in there, and maybe I would have liked it as something shorter in an anthology, but I didn’t enjoy it in the form it took.
📚 bookblog: Star Trek: Waypoint, Special #1 (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
Once again, anthologies are fun. I almost didn’t read this, because it felt weird to read and review a single issue of a comic, but I’m glad I did! Q meets Decker who’s wrestling with what it means (along with Ilia and V’Ger) to be an all-powerful being! There’s a funny and great story about Data’s cat! Ezri Dax consults with past symbiont hosts in a way that makes it seem more interesting than DS9 ever did!
📚 bookblog: Star Trek: Waypoint, issues 1-6 (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
Anthology collections are fun, and this is no exception! Some stories are better than others, but short stories spanning Trek time and characters make for a good read.
🎙️ radioblog: Only You Can Save Mankind (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
This was a very interesting subversion of stories like The Last Starfighter, where a young “chosen one” is called to save not their own people but another, not through violence but through peace. It wasn’t perfectly done, but it was a compelling story and invoked the then-contemporary Gulf War in all the right ways.
🎙️ radioblog: Night Watch (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
I had an awful experience with the last Sam Vimes adaptation, so I wasn’t sure about this—especially since it is one of the longer adaptations in the collection I have. I think the key is the adapter, though, because Robin Brooks’s shows have been my favorites, and this one was quite good.
I really got why people like Sam Vimes stories, I appreciated nods to Discworld continuity even if I didn’t understand them, and I am a real sucker for “time travelling into your own past” stories.
📚 bookblog: Queen & Country, Definitive Edition Volume 04 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
And thus ends my Queen & Country reread! I remember being disappointed by the final volume when I first read it, and I’m glad that it held up better this time around. I also appreciated some of the technical details that came up in the supplemental materials. There is so much that goes into comics that I just don’t notice!
🔗 linkblog: How ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ rewrote the indie movie marketing playbook
Word of mouth and website games are exactly what got me to watch Napoleon Dynamite.
📚 bookblog: The Primate Directive (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
This ended in a confusing rush that spoiled all the fun that I was having, but up until that point it was great. Not high art by many means, but exactly the sort of thing two comics companies should do as a crossover so long as they had the licenses to make it happen.
📚 bookblog: Star Trek 2011-2016, Volume 13 (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
I have more Star Trek IDW comics to read, but I’ve completed this whole series! It ended on a good note, with a tribute to Leonard Nimoy and then some semi-fourth-wall breaking explorations of what it means for there to be two timelines in “main” Star Trek canon.
📚 bookblog: Star Trek 2011-2016, Volume 12 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
I have a lot of complaints about this volume, not least making Khan look like Benedict Cumberbatch. It also has some of the stronger stories of this series, so I’m trying to give it some benefit of the doubt.
📚 bookblog: Star Trek 2011-2016, Volume 11 (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
Another day, another TPB’s worth of Star Trek comics. Not terrible, but not keeping my attention either.
📚 bookblog: Queen & Country, Definitive Edition, Volume 03 (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
Finishing this up tonight, I appreciated reading through the sample script and other supplementary materials included at the end of the book. I have the horrible habit of consuming media without any technical appreciation for how it is made. I write for a living, so I have some appreciation for what writing fiction must be like, but I have zero understanding of film (or at least very little), and it occurred to me while reading this script that I read a lot of comics without really understanding the creative process there.
📚 bookblog: Star Trek 2011-2016, Volume 10 (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
It’s probably unfair to get pickier about these comics over time, because this is the kind of story I would have liked to see when I first began reading through, but now it’s boring compared to some of the more interesting arcs. Alas.
📚 bookblog: Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Volume 2 (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
This picks up near the end with some interesting ethical dilemmas (though it’s not clear how much of a dilemma they actually are), but it feels like the interesting premise of the first volume has kind of run out of steam. I’m still considering picking up the third volume (and I wonder if I’ve been too harsh on this one), but I can’t say it’s kept my attention as much as I’d hoped.
📚 bookblog: Star Trek 2011-2016, Volume 9 (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
Now this is how a comic book company uses a Star Trek license: Using a universe-hopping Q to take the Kelvinverse Enterprise to a bad future Deep Space Nine setting for plenty of extradimensional being nonsense and fanservice. Keiko O’Brien is a starship captain! Q merges with one of the Prophets! It’s not high art, but it’s exactly what I want from the medium.
🔗 linkblog: The future of search isn’t Google — and it’s $10 a month
I have been meaning for months to embrace Kagi, and this is pushing me further over that edge.
📚 bookblog: Star Trek 2011-2016, Volume 8 (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
There is one really good story in here and one okay one, but I finally found the limits of my impatient with Star Trek and/or comics nonsense, and it was a Star Wars-like “let’s take a character who barely appears on screen and explain why they are the most important person in the world” story smack in the middle of the volume. Not going to stop reading the series, but it’s definitely slowing me down.
bike cowardice and bike infrastructure
I ran some errands yesterday morning, visiting two stores and a library that were all relatively close to where I live. I regularly bike a much longer distance to get to work and back, so by any right, I should have done the same for these small errands. If there had been some bike racks at the shopping center where two of the errands were, I almost certainly would have done so, but faced with the (relatively minor) inconvenience of not having anywhere to lock my bike while in a grocery store or optician’s office, I took the coward’s route and drove.
📚 bookblog: Star Trek 2011-2016, Volume 7 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Lots of comic book nonsense mixed with Star Trek nonsense, but it’s still a fun read, and that’s what I care about right now.
📚 bookblog: Star Trek 2011-2016, Volume 6 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Some interesting original stories in here, even if the pon farr one obviously riffs on TOS material (I even admit that it does an interesting job of considering the alternate continuity’s implications for that storyline). Some of the art was weird, but I’m used to that at this point.
🎙️ radioblog: Small Gods (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
Okay, I finally listened to one of these that convinced me how good Discworld can be. This is a clever, expert skewering of what religion so often is—but holds out hope for what religion can be. I ought to read the original book, because I imagine I’d be copying a lot of passages down.