New Grimes track! I reluctantly listened to this - while I'm chomping at the bit for the album and can't help but listen to every new track she drops, I'd really like to preserve the album experience. That said, I'm glad I hit play this one time (abstaining after until release day) because this is a fantastic track.
**
Finished Gideon the Ninth. Fantastic - four solid stars on Goodreads. Next up, Autumn Christian's Girl Like A Bomb, which I'm only a few pages into so far but am totally fascinated by. Sex has never been something I've shied away from in fiction, probably because so many of my favorite formative authors utilize it so well. It is a part of life, after all, and Irvine Welsh, Bret Easton Ellis, and Chuck Palahniuk - to name a few - all write it very well. However, if you look at the common denominator there - all men - you'll probably see what I see, namely the fact that it's pretty one-sided. Christian's book starts off with sex and carries on much the same for the first chapter. It's about a girl's mission to lose her virginity and the strange power she experiences in doing so. Not sure if this power is a metaphor or something extraordinary yet, but then, that's the gotta see of the book, so far, and it's nice to see sex from the female perspective.
Because Girl Like A Bomb is a shorter book, and because I needed some inspiration and Warren Ellis is always raw inspiration, I also bought and downloaded Dead Pig Collector, the novella I picked up a signed copy of earlier in the year but can't bring myself to actually handle in order to read. It was only $.99 on Kindle, so a second, digital copy is hardly extravagant. And of course, within two pages, I'm fascinated and anxious and inspired, all at once.
There are a couple Ellis novels or novellas I've been meaning to read for a few years now, and one I plan to re-read fairly soon, but I figure I'll space them out a bit. The man has a lot of comics I still need to get to as well. The very definition of prolific.
**
My only day off this week due to the on-call schedule, K and I blitzed through a good half-dozen episodes of Veronica Mars season 3 yesterday. Man! I remembered three as being the weakest season, but honestly, just past the half-way mark and I'm thinking it is actually the strongest. The Campus rape storyline is dark AF and I have to wonder if it helped make the show disappear during that original run, but it's the most engrossing storyline to date, and doesn't suffer from being strewn across an entire season, mixed in with the "Scooby-Doo", case of the week stories that pepper throughout. Unlike the Lilly Kane or Exploding Bus storylines, the Campus rape storyline is an omnipotent presence that nips at our casts' heels the entire length of its life, and as such, really creates an ongoing sense of anxiety that works well in a detective, beach-noir show.
We're super close to finishing season three, doing the movie and then finally getting to the new season, so my curiosity is almost at the point of being sated. I purposely know nothing about Hulu's season 4, and cannot wait to dive into it and see where all these familiar characters are in their lives, fifteen or so years later. And after that... the truth is out there. Mr. Brown and my X-Files playlist project begins...
**
Playlist:
Meg Myers - Sorry
Jenny Hval - The Practice of Love
New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too
Badly Drawn Boy - The Hour of the Bewilderbeast
Federale - No Justice
Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
The Forest Children - Kingdom Animalia
The Forest Children - Darkness Brings the Cold
Oh Baby - The Art of Sleeping Alone
Radiohead - Hail to the Thief
Radiohead - OK Computer
Dungen - Ta det lugnt
Muggs - Dust
Thievery Corporation - The Mirror Conspiracy
Twilight Singers - Twilight
Various Artists - Under Frustration Vol. 2
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
Them Are Us Too - Remain
White Hex - Gold Nights
Sleaford Mods - English Tapas
**
Card:
I had to pull a clarifying card after coming up with the Eight of Swords - so some contrary experience will challenge a pre-established idea or ideal I carry with me? Good. It's always nice to get a fresh perspective.
