Conversations With Josh It was a rainy day today – it held off for the Grand Final. Josh needed me to pick him up and drive him to our Kang’s Chinese meal today. At Kangs’, over the usual terriyaki chicken, he told me he’d performed at the Herd Grand Final Eve open mic, and it went really well. He was particularly pleased with his singing and garnered some praise for his performance. He also did a cover of The Boomtown Rats’ I Don’t Like Mondays with his mate Isak on piano, which went down a treat. It was apparently a big boisterous crowd too. I wish I was there, but I was consoling my sister that night.
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Did some Twittering and decided to unfollow one called Women Being Awful. It initiated some good discussions around relationships and marriage, but there was always a hint of misogyny about it. It was always targeting women on Only Fans and slut-shaming and criticising larger women. I was sick of it. It had to go. On the positive side, I did retweet a couple of posts I thought were fun. One, by Krown City King, posed the idea of a reality show where ‘boomers apply for jobs using all their own outdated advice and compete to see who lasts longer’. It brought up some interesting discussion around boomers versus the other generations. Lots of snark, lots of resentment and even some enlightenment. I’m a (late) boomer, but without the privileges (ie, don’t own a house). Should I be celebrated, pitied or scorned? The other retweet was just a fun clip from Nature Is Amazing featuring a horse being led around by a very small dog. Super cute! |
Watched half of the Evangelion 3.33 bluray. I’ve decided not to rewatch the first two films (however much I would enjoy that), since I feel I have a pretty good bead on them. This will be my third time around with the third film and it’s starting to make a little more sense. The story takes up 14 years after the second film and MC Shinji-kun, who has just woken up from some hibernation after being rescued by Asuka, is at first totally clueless about what’s going on. Turns out the Earth is totally devastated by the Near Third Impact (a global holocaust) that Shinji inadvertently set off when he saved Rei in the second film, and NERV is at war with the new faction led by Misato that has broken away from them. NERV has just stolen Shinji back thanks to a seemingly revived Rei. That’s a pretty amazing setup. Because of the complications of the plot this really is a film that rewards multiple viewings. The confidence in Director and Writer Hideaki Anno’s storytelling is off the charts. It’s a matter of jump in and enjoy getting lost in the ride.
Watched second half of Evangelion 3.33. Talk about a reset! Back at NERV, Shinji is introduced to Kaworu, an enigmatic youth with whom he must pilot the latest EVA (it’s a double plug model) on the mission to reclaim the Spears of Longinus. The scene where they play a piano duet, and thus become attuned to each other, is a dazzling display of sight and sound. The mission finale sees Shinji making yet another blunder, and being traumatized by what happens to Kaworu, who fixes it in his stead. As he, Rei and Asuka head off across the post Near Third Impact wasteland at the end, one wonders if he will ever recover. This was a solid film in the series, and understanding it more, I upped my rating on Letterboxd from three and half to four stars.
Watched the first half of Evangelion 3.0+111, the fourth and final Evangelion film. Loved that whole sequence with Shinji, Asuka and Rei in the Third town that they encounter after their walk across the Third Impact wasteland. Had that ‘let the healing begin’ energy and I was there for it, even though I knew it would end badly for poor Rei. This prompts a recovered Shinji to take to ship on the Wunder when it arrives to take Asuka away for the final showdown with NERV. So many great details here. I especially loved the way Rei’s blank personality begins to fill with humanity as the townsfolk befriend her and help her become whole. Makes her demise all the more shattering (yet oddly satisfying).
Watched the second half of Evangelion 3.0+111. It’s such an epic second half, where the crew of the Wunder take on the might of Gendo’s Nerv organisation and its attempt at bringing off the Fourth Impact. Unfortunately, I got pretty sleepy towards the end and could barely concentrate on what was going on – and it’s so damn complex and confusing. So, I’ll give the last part another go tomorrow, when hopefully I’m more coherent.
Watched the last quarter of Evangelion 3.0+111 again to try and bring some closure to the experience. So much of that finale is crazy as batshit, but I love it. What the hell is Gendo’s plan REALLY? He wants to join with his dead wife, but he doesn’t know where she is. Turns out some part of her is with his son Shinji, but he doesn’t find this out until the end. And what’s with that giant head of Rei that sprouts out of the Eve creature? That seems to be the catalyst to causing the Fourth Impact, and it’s up to Misato flying solo in the Wunder to puncture it and thus save the world. I think! It doesn’t really matter in the end, because the whole thing’s such a glorious spectacle. And, man, I love that ending at the train station where Mari comes to Shinji and they run out of the entrance to the strains of Hikaru Utada’s One Last Kiss. The image becomes a real-life image of an actual railway station shot from above and we watch Shinji and Mari run off to some kind of happiness. Damn, that song always kills me. The four films, especially this last one, are glorious. I don’t care what anyone else says. I will love them forever.
Finished my Weird Fiction display and put it up at my local library. A pretty basic display. I should have added some weird imagery around the margins, like spiders and eyeballs and more ravens. But I’m fairly new at this. I put far more work into the poster than the display, which was done in a couple of minutes during a work shift. The whole point of these things is to get patrons being intrigued by them and taking the books off the shelves. Your success is measured by how much you have to keep topping the books up. It’s still early days for this display, but I suspect I won’t get many takers. I’m hoping Kate Bush will lure them in. Maybe I should have just included a big poster of young Kate in her leotard? Watched some Youtube, including latest Jeongyeon Inspector interviewing Han, a member of Stray Kidz. Made for a fun older sister/younger brother dynamic, especially with them playing with a truth toy. As commentors said, they were very comfortable together. Also watched more of that Surviving Mars tips series. I need more ideas for my Russian scenario. Had a patron, a girl, who didn’t know the meaning of the word suburb. She asked, ‘is that the place where I live?’ This may be a generational thing. I’ve noticed some uncertainty with others of that age when I asked them for their suburb during membership sign-up. It’s weird. |
I’m giving them a rest after this. It seems every new album I buy gets a go-round on all my various playing formats before I deem them ready for initial retirement. Often the first format is internet streaming via Spotify or Youtube (usually before I’ve bought the album – testing whether it’s worth buying). Then I buy the album and listen to it variously in my car and then my two sound systems at home, including through speakers and headphones. I like to hear it in different venues to bring out all its sonic potentialities – and by that stage I’m reasonably familiar with the tracks. |
Read more Tarot stuff. The Tarot Directory bit on Major Arcana card The Chariot. Steering a middle path through conflict, as represented by two horses. Also read a chapter of Discovering Yourself Through Tarot. It was the Court Card Quiz, and I took it. Turns out I’m an Intuitive Type, the King of Cups. Though I also scored high on the Sensation Type, the King of Pentacles. These are both the Perceiving//Gathering Data functions. This makes sense to me. Like, this whole site is about the way I perceive pop culture. It’s probably my number one activity in life: consuming pop culture. There’s also a part of me that does the Judging/Processing Data function, where I try to be critical and creative (the Archive section has a lot of examples of my efforts there). So, yeah, I try to be balanced, but I’m definitely more part of the passive, receiving, female function. Interesting Quiz. Some of the questions were pretty tricky just working out what they meant and how I was supposed to respond to them. I mean, how do your respond to the question ‘Do you possess wisdom?’ Then there were others where I knew exactly how to respond, like ‘Do you have difficulty understanding money?’ Hell yes! ‘Are you creative?’ I try to be – I like to think so.
Read more Tarot. The Directory Major Arcana this time was Judgement, represented by a man or woman holding a sword in the right hand and scales in the left. Its main elements are balance, wisdom and fairness. It’s striking to me how much of this has been appropriated by mainstream society. It’s basically the symbol of the legal profession.
I’m still intrigued and enthralled by what I’m finding in the Discovering Yourself Through Tarot book. I’m working my way through a chapter called the Function Block Spread. The explanation for how to do this didn’t make much sense to me, but the stuff after it about integrating the so-called weak functions did. For example, if you’re a Thinking type, how do you integrate your opposite Feeling function? Some suggestions are to read poetry, appreciate art in a gallery, keep a journal of your feelings, take up painting, get in touch with your inner child by going to Disneyland. The basic idea is learn to express your feelings. This makes complete sense to me. The chapter continues on in like fashion for the other functions of Feeling, Intuition and Sensation. I focused on the one about integrating the thinking function, since I seem to be the Intuitive type, and therefore need to develop my Thinking Function. It’s something that I know I’m weak on, but I do tackle it from time to time. This was drawn out in some of the suggestions, such as learning a foreign language, writing a book, studying numerology or the I Ching, and playing chess or computer games. I’ve had a go at all these things and found them stimulating though challenging. I need to continue doing so. I’m loving this book!
Started reading Inuyasha Volume 2. The Thunder Brothers episode starts it off. This was such an unnecessary purchase, but I just had to do it. What sparked my interest was flicking through it and noticing differences between the anime and the manga. I live for these little details, these little alterations. And I just want to experience the story in another format. I’ll be a Rumiko fan until I die. I looked at an article about the Moora Moora commune in Healesville in the Grass Roots Magazine while at work today. I know Sharni, one of my colleagues, lives there, and sure enough, she was in the group photo on the cover. I visited the place a long time ago when they had an open day. It’s an interesting place: lots of mud brick homes and a real community feel, as you’d expect. I also met an old acquaintance while there, Cam, from Friends of the Earth, and he invited me to visit the commune he belongs to. I didn’t go, but I sometime wonder what might have been if I had and I’d been invited to join. My life would have taken a huge tangent from where it subsequently went, I’m sure. Naked group dancing on the Summer Solstice, for one! (Yes, that’s apparently one of the things they did.) I still daydream about that – living in a commune. |
Speaking of which…On Twitter I rediscovered a nice Twice post I hadn’t seen for ages. It’s the one of member Chaeyoung holding a flower and proposing in English to various members of staff. I think it was from 2022 when they were doing the Between 1 & 2 album. Chaengy seems to say ‘Would you berry me?’ instead of ‘Would you marry me?’ Her accent is so cute. The staff all refuse her! Of course, there can only be one possible answer for Onces. Yes! I imagine berrying Chaeyoung means getting to feed her strawberries for the rest of your life. Not a bad way to go. I made a rare response to a tweet on Twitter today. It was by Yeowo’s Lover, who asked ‘Where are my fellow Beyond the Horizon enthusiasts at? This is my favourite song on the Dive album, so I replied YES. Makes me proud to be a Once. Which it does, and I’ve said it before.
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