Miscellanea

I'm not pleased that it's been a month since I last posted, and the posts I have in the works are, well, still in the works, so here are some links and such, just like a traditional weblog might offer.

-Carpenter Brut is one of my favorite musical acts as of late, and always makes good videos. Turbo Killer is great example of why that is. Foxy dames made even more so by the glowing inverted crosses on their foreheads, weird dudes sporting gas masks or shotguns, sweet cars, cruciform spacecraft, and a general air of glorious trashiness- if that ain't good viewing, I don't know what is. Carpenter Brut's other videos are worth your time, too.

-I missed 2016's annual literary festival in Macau, the Rota das Letras, but reading about it online introduced me to the poet Matilde Campilho. A native of Portugal who spent a few years in Brazil and as a result has acquired, from what I can tell from some of the interviews with her I've listened to, a Carioca accent when she needs it, I've found myself intrigued by her work. As someone who's studied Portuguese with teachers from Brazil and Portugal, I've tried to find the sweet spot between the two accents (which, like English, are really groups of numerous regional accents), so it's cool to actually hear a native speaker of Portuguese do the same and do a good job of it.

-If you're interested in leftist politics (the real kind, not those of the Democratic party here in the States), Jacobin magazine is an accessible start. The graphic design is eye-catching as hell, too. There's also Salvage, edited by China Mieville (among others). Unsurprisingly, it's a denser read, but no less rewarding for it. "Bleak is the new red."

-This may be the last night of the year we can have a fire or turn on the heat here in Houston. (Observation; no hyperlink provided.)

-If Internet history and pre-WWW protocols (which, alas, I mostly missed upon my initial visits to the World Wide Web back in '96 or so, but which I utilize now) are your thing, make sure your browser is gopher-capable and visit Floodgap's gopher server, which serves as a clearing-house of modern gopher activity.

And on that note, I'm out. This corpse is tired. Boa noite, amigos: I'm gonna listen to Carbon Based Lifeforms' "Photosynthesis", reminisce about my buddy Pete's first post-college digs up in Dallas and the gloriously pre-2001 tech crash nature thereof, and call it a night.

It feels good to just write shit again. I need to do it more often.