Weekly reading/watching meme
As previously noted, I'm going to start doing this on Mondays.
What are you reading/watching now?
Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet: the follow-up to Marguerite Yourcenar's The Crown and the Lyre in an impromptu graduate course I seem to have devised for myself. XD; There is also a link to be drawn between Carson's remarks on oral versus literate mindsets and some of Ruskin's writings (see below) exemplifying the latter. I'm at the literate/visual extreme -- while I technically have no problem with oral comprehension, the bald truth is that I have to see English written down in order to meta-process it: I can hear a song a thousand times but not be impacted emotionally by the lyrics until I google them. Sometimes, when this is important, I resort to visualizing the text in my mind as someone speaks. The "breath of life/consciousness" paradigm Carson describes strikes me as exotic to the point of alien, and it's a credit to Carson (who can't have spent much more of her childhood pre-literate than I did) that she lays the idea out in logically comprehensible fashion.
EDIT -- I totally forgot because this is an e-book: "Supervert," Perversity Think Tank (download can be found at the link, knock yourselves out, perfectly work-safe unless someone is reading closely over your shoulder). I'm nearly done with it. The nature of the work is not dissimilar to Carson's, if you ask me: but that's a whole other graduate course.
What did you just finish reading/watching?
Books/comics:
Movies/TV:
** This is like saying, I mean -- who was the Ur-journalist? Ernest Hemingway? Hunter S. Thompson? The one died alcoholic, the other shot himself. Ruskin died insane and very likely a virgin (though not never-married, notoriously -- like Charles Dodgson, he was asexual-ish and romantically inclined to young girls).
*** I've never really wanted to travel back in time: hygiene was dodgy and I'd have to be a con artist at best, or risk the ol' stake-and-burn at worst. What I fantasize about is bringing people forward, selectively. When I read the Brontë sisters' letters I say to them, in my mind, with a pang: you girls don't belong there. You ought to be here. You would love the Internet. (The Van Gogh episode of Doctor Who made me cry buckets.)
Ruskin would not love the Internet, but he would love Etsy; and the cleaned-up Sistine Chapel ceiling would blow his mind.
+ The Marvel comics I'm reading now also seem ineffably... more female-friendly? I mean, I'm only following 4-5 series, granted. But I don't get that sense of pervasive male gaze, which is saying something. Kate Bishop and Carol Danvers fight in sensible outfits. And there are adorable chibi variant covers. XD; Even the ads seem less chauvinistic.
++ I mean, Teddy. Teddy is I think space emperor twice over on top of being the perfect emotionally supportive boyfriend? When it comes time to give the Kree and the Skrull their joint heir, I expect absolutely no one will learn from Wanda's mistakes.
+++ There was this terrible Asian horror movie a few years ago, Silk, in which a team of scientists invent a physical Menger sponge material and use it to trap a ghost. A real waste of a great premise. XD;
I have figured out how to add the footer on a crosspost! Go me! /rollsalot (Original post is here: http://petronia.dreamwidth.org/51651.html)
What are you reading/watching now?
Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet: the follow-up to Marguerite Yourcenar's The Crown and the Lyre in an impromptu graduate course I seem to have devised for myself. XD; There is also a link to be drawn between Carson's remarks on oral versus literate mindsets and some of Ruskin's writings (see below) exemplifying the latter. I'm at the literate/visual extreme -- while I technically have no problem with oral comprehension, the bald truth is that I have to see English written down in order to meta-process it: I can hear a song a thousand times but not be impacted emotionally by the lyrics until I google them. Sometimes, when this is important, I resort to visualizing the text in my mind as someone speaks. The "breath of life/consciousness" paradigm Carson describes strikes me as exotic to the point of alien, and it's a credit to Carson (who can't have spent much more of her childhood pre-literate than I did) that she lays the idea out in logically comprehensible fashion.
EDIT -- I totally forgot because this is an e-book: "Supervert," Perversity Think Tank (download can be found at the link, knock yourselves out, perfectly work-safe unless someone is reading closely over your shoulder). I'm nearly done with it. The nature of the work is not dissimilar to Carson's, if you ask me: but that's a whole other graduate course.
What did you just finish reading/watching?
Books/comics:
- Jeremy Bentham, On Torture: finally got through this. See notes on movies below.
- John Ruskin, On Genius: a collection of quotes, essentially. I've never actually read Ruskin, weird considering how long this dude and his opinions have loomed over my consciousness (I'm kind of a Pre-Raphaelite stan). I mean, objectively everyone should probably read Ruskin? He was the Ur-privileged white male critic. He could well have been the Ur-Victorian. He embodied everything good and bad wrapped up in those two statements.** Sometimes he is so spot on, still, and sometimes you want to scream FUCKKKKYOUUUUUU at him over the intervening century and a half. And then drag him forward in time.***
- Hawkeye (2012) #1, 3-6: still missing issue 2. Wrote a post about this and, uh, Pantone colour trends here.
- Young Avengers, uhh... the first series, a few individual issues after that, then Children's Crusade. Re-read, of course; I have a better idea now of what I'm missing, continuity-wise, though it's really Journey into Mystery that I have to read before I can start the current series. XD; Also, I read the letters pages re Billy and Teddy's relationship, because I roll hardcore. Haaaaaa. It's kind of interesting, going back to these comics (not books; the actual single issues) from 2005, because I am An Old who thinks of 2005 as being an eyeblink ago but it was eight years?+ And clearly, eight years ago the fact of the relationship was untried enough that the artist couldn't show them doing anything, apart from some fairly subtle body language. In Children's Crusade there are makeouts. But also... it's interesting how this stuff reflects the status quo of the political debate? Assuming it's not 100% intentional. Being An Old, I remember how fictional portrayals of gay relationships were All Beautifully Tragic All The Time, not to mention We're Not Gay We Just Love Each Other, and now that gay marriage is on the table you have these adorable teen couples who are clearly shoujo manga-style, 1950s-married endgame, like Kurt/Blaine and Billy/Teddy.++ I won't complain about the obvious limitations of this; I feel sure it will pass. In the meantime, if you're a true-OTPer type, enjoy the historical moment. XD;
- New Avengers (2012) #3-4: with regard to note 3 below, it has not escaped me that there are no women in the Illuminati, and yes, I do think this is one of their problems. (In-story, I mean.)
Movies/TV:
- The Gatekeepers: in practice, my Bentham reading was bookended by this and Zero Dark Thirty, which I couldn't have planned better if I were actually taking a course. Worth watching even if you don't have a good sense of why the Middle East is a mess. Worth watching, if frivolity is permitted, just to see someone do the Alex Guinness-as-George-Smiley I-am-bespectacled-and-mild-mannered-until-holy-shit-I-am-not thing in real life, which is as scary as it sounds.
- Lost in Thailand: the Chinese mega-hit comedy from last year. My parents brought over a dodgy camrip DVD, which of course h0rked on the last 20 minutes. It was all right XD; slick and intriguing in the beginning, the script having the good sense to keep the audience guessing for as long as it can. But you know, that sort of Lost in Translation gambit of the foreign country serving as exotic and alienating backdrop. The Chinese don't think they can be colonialist, so don't realize it when they are (this week's theme?).
- Samurai Champloo, ep.1-6: it was on Netflix, I was eating dinner. I watched this series so long ago I've completely forgotten large chunks of it. Still some of the best anime fight scenes ever, though.
- Chaos & Order: an art film at the Technological Arts Society. The amount of time I've spent at the SAT over the years is kind of amazing; to the point where I hope it is my taxes financing the thing. I'd be getting my money's worth. Among other venues, the SAT comprises a 360-degree dome-shaped overhead projection screen used for multimedia art. Sometimes it's a club night, sometimes you lie down on air mattresses and watch the movie (popular arrrt hipster date night). Chaos & Order is basically 40 minutes of CG math visualizations set to techno music; like an extremely elaborate screensaver. This sounds ridiculous but looks awesome. It starts with a mesh cube and ends with a Menger sponge,+++ and in between there is stuff I know and a great deal of stuff I do not know, such as "iterative function system: fractal flame" and "reaction-diffusion system: Turing model." The latter I recognize simply as the way mold spots spread on a Petri dish, and the former looks like nothing I've seen on Earth. This may be a good time to mention that I am freaked out by 3D fractals. My eye is very insistently aware that it is registering an impossibility. I side-eye Romanesco broccoli at the farmer's market, so you can imagine how I felt about this 360-degree high-definition movie zooming its audience into the gaping maw of infinity Mandelbox. XD;
** This is like saying, I mean -- who was the Ur-journalist? Ernest Hemingway? Hunter S. Thompson? The one died alcoholic, the other shot himself. Ruskin died insane and very likely a virgin (though not never-married, notoriously -- like Charles Dodgson, he was asexual-ish and romantically inclined to young girls).
*** I've never really wanted to travel back in time: hygiene was dodgy and I'd have to be a con artist at best, or risk the ol' stake-and-burn at worst. What I fantasize about is bringing people forward, selectively. When I read the Brontë sisters' letters I say to them, in my mind, with a pang: you girls don't belong there. You ought to be here. You would love the Internet. (The Van Gogh episode of Doctor Who made me cry buckets.)
Ruskin would not love the Internet, but he would love Etsy; and the cleaned-up Sistine Chapel ceiling would blow his mind.
+ The Marvel comics I'm reading now also seem ineffably... more female-friendly? I mean, I'm only following 4-5 series, granted. But I don't get that sense of pervasive male gaze, which is saying something. Kate Bishop and Carol Danvers fight in sensible outfits. And there are adorable chibi variant covers. XD; Even the ads seem less chauvinistic.
++ I mean, Teddy. Teddy is I think space emperor twice over on top of being the perfect emotionally supportive boyfriend? When it comes time to give the Kree and the Skrull their joint heir, I expect absolutely no one will learn from Wanda's mistakes.
+++ There was this terrible Asian horror movie a few years ago, Silk, in which a team of scientists invent a physical Menger sponge material and use it to trap a ghost. A real waste of a great premise. XD;
I have figured out how to add the footer on a crosspost! Go me! /rollsalot (Original post is here: http://petronia.dreamwidth.org/51651.html)