Impeccable Creatures

The other day I went to the National Museum of Nature and Science in Ueno, Tokyo. It's strange to me for this type of museum (a natural history museum) to feel so small, but it does. The moment you enter it, there's this sense of isolation and smallness. Not that it has a small collection, or a small building, really, but it just feels sort of small anyway. Maybe it's the way you walk around the museum in a spiral starting from the third floor, passing large, grainy columns. Or maybe it's just that there weren't that many people there that day. 

In any case, here are some of my favourite things from the museum.

Firstly, the bugs. The museum has some really cool insect displays, but these rows of iridescent beetles are the greatest. Look at them shine! Bugs are jewels.

Secondly, the crab displays. This section of the museum is arranged so that the beetles sit next to a colourful box of labelled shells, and the shells in turn sit next to a box of labelled, varied, and distinguished crabs. I love the very spindly one, and the one on the bottom right of that first image with a lovely paintbrush blob of rich sky blue.

What could possibly be third but the ammonites? The ammonite room was stunning, filled head to toe with big beefy ammonites, but I particularly liked this cluster. A simple, perfect pile of ancient guys.

I also thought this sundial was beautiful and cool. It was made in Korea, and you know, it's a simple fact that any sundial should also be a funny little guy. We all know this.

Next, these interesting Japanese inro pocketwatches. These were made to attach to kimonos with little toggles or netsuke (tiny, ornate sculptures that are often likened to cufflinks). I just really like the sort of boxy things that people liked to attach to a kimono.

Finally, chickens. These sweet birds are roosting on top of a clock. As they should.

An Analysis of my Spotify Wrapped, 2023

Ok girl, it's that time again. Everyone's looking at their Spotify Wrapped and saying "wow, I never could've guessed that I'd listened to Taylor Swift 67 times this year!" Exhilarating stuff. So yes, it is time to take a long and hard look at My Own Stats.

A screenshot from Wednesday Campanella's 'Maneki Neko', a song I've been listening to a lot recently.

The unsurprising truth is that I have listened to a huge amount of SHINee and SHINee member solo stuff. My favourite of the solo members' work has, happily, been Onew's album Circle. Onew has always been my favourite SHINee guy, so it makes me really happy that his solo stuff has come out on top, but it also really pleases me that I love all the other blokes' stuff enough to make it a full SHINee sweep for top artists this year (Lana Del Rey is an honorary member).

I have been particularly delighted by Key's output though, too. I love the office aesthetics of the Good & Great release, and god damn it's just such a banger. Thank you Key.

In other important stats, Lana Del Rey's National Anthem is my sweet top song. I keep thinking about how perfect the lyrics of this one are. It's addictive, it's mysterious, it's yearning. It's a modern masterpiece and very slightly and oddly nostalgic (when I am nostalgic for 2012 I must bonk myself on the head, and I do, but it happens).

"Over your body, hold you like a python."

There is also a small hint of Fujii Kaze here, who I have been listening to a lot of lately. I've been trying to listen to more Japanese artists more of the time, since it's a nice compliment to learning the language - as much Japanese media as possible at any given time. So that's one goal I will try to pursue for next year. And, by the way, a trip to Tower Records I made recently was eye-opening. Obviously Japan's music market is huge, but seeing the whole store laid out with Japanese artists I've never heard of was really exciting. I'm gonna try to get into a lot more of them.

The last note is that Spotify said "you listen to a lot of albums", and, true, I do. I love the experience of listening to an album and thinking about how the overall collection works. Sure, I listen to plenty of single tracks, but the art of the album has never relinquished it's hold on me. It's always my favourite way to listen.

Right now my favourite album is Wednesday Campanella's NEON. It's so good. My favourite song from the album is probably Maneki Neko. It speaks for itself really, but I love the specific and slightly unusual concepts that these songs go for. And this one is... very cute, and very catchy.

It's really quite good.

Wish me luck in discovering many new and powerful artists in 2024! I am going to go crazy :-)

Return of the Scan

It has been three years since I posted face scans to this blog, and a solid eleven years since I started scanning my face! Time for more, right? Time to come back and crawl on top of the scanner bed like a mole.

So here I am, and I made a little friend to accompany me. I don't think I've changed too noticeably in three years, but I think the scanner has a way of making the similarities clear. The freckles on my face that are, apparently, permanent? I didn't really know, but here they are three, five, ten years later. Same is it ever was.

One strange thing about living is that "who you are" is a pretty esoteric question. There's something grounding about making these images and cataloguing a physical reality. Change is relative, and some things about you really never change. Still, I feel the weight of change a lot. Decisions happen, whether or not you're making them.

I got rid of my scanner some time ago. It was clunky to use, I was making digital art much more, and it was one of those big printer/scanner combos. I liked the space it left behind, and I didn't miss it - for the most part.

But after a while, every so often I would think about something, "hmm, it would be great if I could scan this". And so, finally, I got a new scanner. A small one that just plugs in and runs. You press the "scan" button on the side, and you don't have to think about anything else. You can have a new glass, and an old, familiar face.

And a paper friend, made strange through the merging of light and time. Not bad.

Skeletons

 Skeletons. Here they come.

In recent months I've been enjoying the humble, pointy, knobbly form of the human skeleton. A gracious creature, no doubt. There is something delightful about it. It's like a creature all its own.

It's sort of goofy-looking, this structure of ours. I'm not sure if my favourite part is the BIG back of the skull, or the hollow, protective ribcage, or maybe the lovely pelvis.

The very first skeleton in this post is quite distinguished, and I covered him generously in gold leaf. He's shiny and stunning. But I like all the variations in style here. I liked making more and less realistic skeletons. Quick and slow skeletons. Pensive and stupid skeletons.

Because you have to imagine, don't you, that something is going on inside the mind of a skeleton. That thing is alive, despite its abject deadness. The essence of life is not so much in the living as it is in the anthropomorphic capabilities of a shape. And the skeleton is perhaps the most anthropomorphically capable shape. Because it's just a lil' fella.

Teeth out, eyes hollow. Ready to take on the world.

So, what I'm saying is, more skeletons may follow. They should.

Gratitude, or Whatever

The idea of a gratitude journal is so straightforwardly nice. List the things that make you happy. List your deepest thanks for all the coffees you had today. A transcendent and gracious act, and if you do it, you are better than everyone. You are like an angel.

I am grateful for: this guy.

It sounds a bit too direct, I think. A "gratitude journal" sounds like something a weird older relative would make you do, aged seven on a Sunday when you really, really would rather be evolving your Eevee into an Espeon. I guess maybe I'd prefer a general scrapbook or journal. One that was just like any other, except that you knew, in your own gorgeous, big mind, that it was for recording all that good stuff around you. It's a secret, and that makes anything better.

Another point is that I am a hater, and I value hating. Being thankful and enjoying stuff can certainly be fun, but babes, I need my rage. I need my fresh, searing irritation and bitter resentment. And you know, all the things between that and pure, idyllic, heavenly love and admiration and joy. Because sometimes all the great things make the bad things seem that much more unfair. We need the whole bundle. A dog caused very hot coffee to be spilled on me yesterday. And I do not forgive that dog. 

Ok fine, I forgive the dog.

Blossoms are allowed to flower in the USA.

Anyway, I suppose this is my gratitude journal, for right now. I am grateful for the ability to feel the whole steaming circus of emotions. I am especially grateful to have learned that I can be really mad for a second (e.g. aforementioned dog hot coffee incident) and then just get over it (after my aunt puts my jumper, now moist with coffee, in the wash). I am grateful for the pretty white blossoms that show up everywhere in spring, a unifying feature of all sorts of places - and one that I have used to decorate this post. Wherever you go (or at least... in many places) you will be comforted by the blossom. It belongs with you, and you belong with it. The world is with you, y'know? Familiar things remain.

I am grateful for the glimpses of what I would call my "true" look - glumpy type woman, slouchy jumper, hair up. I like the times I see myself in the mirror and think, "yeah......... that's so me". That's the platonic ideal of me. Very satisfying.

Glump woman.

Lastly, I am grateful for sleep, which I will do now.

                                                                                                 (Goodnight)

One Bag

I've been thinking a lot about hoarding lately. Both the actual serious medical condition, and more broadly the way we collect and keep so many objects in our lives. I've always been extremely interested in stuff like the (briefly very popular, but seemingly a bit less so these days) online minimalism movement. I love looking at a photo of someone's single 40L bag that they take travelling with them. I love thinking, "what if everything I own could fit into a bag like that?" and then never actually remotely reaching such a goal.

What if I only had this tote bag? Wow.

I always think there'd be such an immense freedom in that. Just me and my Big Bag. A few years ago I bought a desktop computer. And I got a yellow desk to put my monitor on. And then I got a beautiful Rode Procaster microphone and arm from a very generous friend (thank you Hayley!). And so now there's this extra corner of my room that belongs to me. An immobile beast. I love it, and I love playing games on it, and I often use it to stream - which has earned me at least $20, if not more ;-)

But still, often I think, ok, what if I got rid of that stuff? That thing will not, unfortunately, fit in my backpack.

Digital hoarding, too, is something I'm interested by. Not least because I am always running the risk of filling up my free Google Photos storage. And nothing in this world could ever make me pay for more of it. But what am I to do with all my beautiful photos and videos? Well, lately I've been making short videos with my collected footage and posting them on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, but this practice does in fact make it so that I record a lot more videos than I otherwise would. It's very satisfying though, and I get to enjoy deleting all the footage when I'm done. Perfect.

It's easy, of course, to keep a million digital files, because they essentially take up no space. But I try to stay in the habit of constantly pruning them. I love to delete. I love to kill. Pictures are so amazing, because they help you to save memories, but in some cases I really only need what's in my head.

Still, better to keep endless digital clutter than physical. I look at my chunky black backpack wistfully. I think it's a 40L bag. It's great for travelling, and I can usually easily fit everything I need in there. But everything I own? Not even close. Maybe one day.

The painting I'm looking at here is 'Hof zwischen Großstadthäusern'
(Courtyard between City Housing), by Erich Miller-Hauenfels. In Vienna's Leopold Museum.

Cool Pictures of Rocks

You guys are not ready for the cool pictures of rocks I took. But I am going to show them to you. 

Now, I have long been a cruel hater of the "pebble beach", because of the way they harm my poor, delicate feet. That shouldn't happen to a good person like me, I always thought. But it turns out that there is something called "water shoes" and now that I have discovered them I love the pebble beach. I love crouching down at the start of the waves and running my hands over the smooth, round rocks of different colours and choosing seven favourites to arrange into a pleasing arrangement. Which is exactly what I did when I was at the beach recently.

Check these out:

Ok, you're thinking, they're great rocks - BUT - what if they were also little guys? I'm really glad you asked, and I would like to now present you with my concept art of how this could look.

Rock creatures:

Wonderful creatures, don't you think? 

I will throw them directly back into the sea soon, where they belong. I wish them much luck in becoming "way more eroded".

The Great Social Media Wars of 2023

Here we are, in a landscape of digital turmoil, scrambling around like bees looking for a new hive. I’m feeling nostalgic about lots of things, like Myspace (which there is now a dupe for) and something I can’t remember the name of which was present on websites in the 90s: a lighthouse you could click on that would take you to a random website. This was the way the online world first opened up to me as a young child. Click on the lighthouse. You’ll see something new. I’m not sure if it was a webring or something slightly different, but I found the lighthouse theming quite captivating. The imagery of the guiding light at the edge of a vast, moving sea. It was perfect for what the web was, and how wide open and personal it felt.

Perhaps something a bit like this.

You can do the same sort of thing on Wikipedia, and it’s so fun! Just click on a random page, learn about Frontiers of Science (a comic strip about - you guessed it - the frontiers of science). Great! Remnants of exploration are around, but more hidden than they were. Stumbleupon was another way to discover things online, popular around 2010, but it bit the dust finally in 2018. The web had become more insular.

The internet has come to be a much more ordered, corporate space as it has evolved across the past few decades. It’s often portrayed in movies that explore it as a physical space as an uninspiring, futuristic, clinical mall (e.g. Wreck it Ralph 2, Ready Player One, The Emoji Movie). This alone speaks volumes. Oh to wander the Pinterest and Spotify and Snapchat skyscrapers. Oh to suck up the empty space.

Wreck-It Ralph 2's Amazon zone.

So the internet is in large part, a shopping zone. It’s Times Square. It’s nasty. And now we have our dedicated posting apps. Clean and white and empty (the influence of the iPhone is insurmountable), and filled with ads that feel increasingly random and esoteric, despite the grand accumulation of data to “personalize” them. Wow, I didn’t know I needed… a kind of odd graphic tee. Thank you Twitter. Thank you for serving me five thousand bra ads a day. I am ready to buy now.

Ok ok, that’s the landscape. We all know about it. The built-in creative fun of Myspace and Livejournal has been drifting away from us on a makeshift raft for a long time (although Tumblr, maintaining some relic status as the prime social media type thing for weird art girls of the past 10 to 15 years, still has some of this). Part of my personal response to this lately has been to jump into Neocities and to revive this gorgeous blog (you’re welcome). And I’d like to encourage other people to get over here and get into this kind of “personal site/blog/hub” way of posting, but it’s certainly not a one-for-one replacement for social media, and this is an essential part of the weird problem we’re facing here.

The Jonathan Richman page of my website (important).

There are some unique pros to enjoy about modern social media. Obviously one huge reason it came about was because the phone became our primary way of getting online, and our websites and blogs weren’t and still aren’t really suited for that format. There’s also so much breezy simplicity in browsing a ton of short-form content and having a feed for that. It is a shame, I think, that feeds for long form content have been starved out (I used to use Bloglovin’ a lot and now that thing is a hollowed out corpse sitting there, impossible to log into, repulsive to see), but it’s simply not a replacement for the short-form feed we’ve come to know and adore. Short form content is different, fun, wild. It is not your noodling blog post, nor your meticulously crafted HTML nightmare website with a thousand blinkies. It’s its own thing, and it needs its own home.

So here we are at the crossroads between all the new Twitter-likes, and it’s clear now, looking at them all, that Twitter was (is) monumental. It was instrumental in making the short text post a content king. It made it so we can harangue celebrities at will. It took us to new oversharing heights, and it made communicating with your online pals easier than ever. I have met, at this point, most of the people in my life via Twitter. I’ve found countless artists and Final Fantasy podcasters and Jar Jar Binks freaks on there who have inspired me a huge amount. And while I would absolutely follow their weird blogs where they post regular 1000 word posts about medieval cross sections of frogs or whatever, there is no replacing the Twitter format. We need the little posts.

So what’s it to be? Let me run through all the platform options I am currently aware of and give you my Big Thoughts on all of them. It’s hard to say which will come out on top. Maybe none of them. Maybe we’ll just use all of them forever.

Tumblr

Tumblr lives under the looming shadow of its past, and this is both a deterrent and a selling point. It’s somewhat nostalgic, and honestly I love it for a lot of complex reasons. To me, Tumblr was always sort of an art place. The people I follow there are very funny and creative. But there certainly is a culture there (and this is an issue with every Twitter alternative here - there is a certain vibe to the userbase which may or may not be to your liking).

There is a sense on Tumblr of being in some sort of secret den. It’s also always felt like more of a female-heavy place to me and I do enjoy that. The feeling of just being surrounded by feral, creative girls. It’s good. I think there are some small UI issues that linger and could go a long way, if changed, towards making Tumblr feel smoother. For example, I notice the images there being slow to load much more often than on other apps. I don’t wanna see those placeholder gradients anymore. I banish them.

Mastodon

I have a soft spot for Mastodon. There is something relaxed about it. I never personally had any onboarding problems, but I think even a small amount of unsmoothness ends up amounting to a big issue just because people will go to whatever platform offers them the easiest signup experience and integration into the app/site culture. Immediately this place gained a reputation for having USER RULES (uh oh!) and I think this will probably linger. I also have experienced some annoying technical issues, usually images not posting (which I tend to only notice when I come back hours later and see an error message). This may be more to do with Tusky (the app I use to do Mastodon posting on my phone), but it highlights another issue of complication, which is the fact that there are multiple proprietary apps to choose from - so you’re faced with another decision to make. Not necessarily a big problem for the individual user, but an issue for swathes of people who just want to download an app and join a platform swiftly.

I like the culture on Mastodon - it’s a lot of people who are interested in minute tech details, literature, old web stuff, their favourite 1993 video game, etc - but it clearly has not gripped the masses and has instead ended up as a hub for different varieties of nerd. It’s quite a relaxing place, but it feels slightly clunky and empty. It feels at once exactly like Twitter, and yet somehow also too different. For whatever reason, I rarely browse there.

Bluesky

Bluesky to me is the technical best of the bunch. It doesn’t have gif or video posting yet, nor direct messaging, but it feels solid. It has alt text. It has some good moderation options. It feels more populated than Mastodon despite being invite-only. This is essentially my favourite one at the moment, but the major downside for me is that much of the prominent userbase on there currently are not the sort of people I’m interested in following. There’s quite a lot of sexual content on there, and while a lot of people have referenced the lack of that sort of thing as a major negative for them on other apps, I personally prefer an app where you simply can’t post nudes. Not just because I don’t want to see those things (which Bluesky is currently ok at moderating via user controls), but I find it fosters a wider user culture that I don’t really like. A pervert culture. lmao

Nevertheless, I’m very interested in Bluesky, and curious to see what things will be like when the place opens up fully (it’s still invite-only at the moment). It feels like a really direct Twitter alternative (thanks in no small part, I’m sure, to a Twitter founder building it), it feels responsive, and it feels relatively alive.

Cohost

Cohost is web-only, which is a huge detriment to its use as a true social media replacement. After trying it out for a while I stopped, partly for this reason, but also because it feels the most barebones. It feels clunky and underpopulated, it doesn’t give you notifications, and it’s essentially a worse version of Tumblr. It’s cute but it doesn’t really work for me.

Threads

Ok. Threads is the new big fella in town. Meta swooped in with a pretty decently structured app. It feels a lot like Hive (which I will touch on next), and it feels a lot like Bluesky (albeit without some of the neat features there). The huge advantage of this one for me was that I could slam all my Instagram followers (and following) over onto Threads, which gives me a nice built-on audience and immediate connection to a bunch of people I already know and follow. That’s huge for the ease of onboarding. If you have an Instagram account you are almost already there.

The downside here is that it feels corporate. There’s a strange algorithmic feed which will inevitably show you some BRAND and INFLUENCER posts that feel aimless and intrusive, but it’s also filled up immediately with tons of users comparitive to other platforms. As an art poster, it was immediate for me to see my feed populated with tons of artists who already used Instagram, and this is the natural platform for them. There is a somewhat sanitised feel here, but at the same time people are not shy about bringing in their shitposting, and it’s nice to see people I have followed on Instagram and seen mainly image posts from in the past from letting loose and going textpost crazy.

Another tragedy, for me, is that because your username is linked to Instagram, I have to have an underscore in my name here. This is true violence.

I’m writing this very soon after the launch of Threads, so the excitement of something new is still pretty palpable, but so far I like the intensely populated, party feel of this one. Also, Limmy is there and his posts are golden.

Hive

Hive is most certainly done for, especially now with Threads coming in, but it was interesting how quickly art and game dev types scrambled to get onto this one. I don’t really know how it happened, I just woke up one day and everyone was on Hive. Then a little while later the whole thing shut down in response to security concerns and that was that. It was unusable for a good while, but it’s still up now and a very small amount of people are still using it. A very curious relic, and for a moment, it could’ve been something. Threads is a technically superior version of this one in any case.

＊

For now, Threads and Bluesky are the options I’m most interested in, and I’m curious to see how they evolve as time goes on. I hope that at some point we’ll settle into some stability, but whatever happens, long live posting, I suppose.

EDIT: Since writing this a few days ago, interesting things have happened on both Bluesky and Threads. Bluesky has gotten into hot water with the userbase for failing to implement preventative measures against usernames including racial slurs. Meanwhile, Threads has forced users within the EU out, blocking them from using the app even with a VPN. It seems that the Twitter-alternative world is still staunchly in its infancy, with every alternative possessing some glaring issues, whether lack of features, annoying glitches, or more complex and unwieldy user culture problems. 

It seems to me, ultimately, that we're facing a huge shift, and that perhaps none of these alternatives will be enough to replace Twitter wholesale. None of them appear to be able to reach its heights.

Reviewing Random Blogs

Since I’m in the process of returning my blog here to its former glory, I’ve been noodling around looking for other bloggers that are still busy in the grand Blogspot universe. My bloglist is full of old, abandoned blogs and a few that are too polished - the types that got a bit too much like glossy magazine editorials in the end, ones that appear to have totally lost the sense of personal documentation that I always loved so much. But it’s mostly the graves. Dead links where bloggers have let their domain names lapse are the most spooky of all. Not even a frame, no ruined archway to look through. No faded tombstone lettering, just dull yellow grass, starved.

A photo by CJ from Above the River.

So I’ve been looking at the only thing I can find that’s still going. And I have located the world of the older lady. Come with me on my journey through the random blogs of women. I will review them now. What fun we shall have.

First up is Grandma Becky L. I found her blog through the comments on a lengthy Attic24 post. 

This blog, by the way, was mentioned by a commenter recently when I asked what blogs they were still reading. And I love the look of it. The two sidebars filled with links, recent posts, and a blog award banner. Sort of quaint, and a perfect place for a long post filled with nature pics collected throughout June with text on the joys of having a nice summer and looking at some flowers and trees. Very true.

Anyway, back to Grandma Becky. My new queen.

Grandma Becky has an amazing, old school blog layout, featuring a translucent sidebar with a Blogger followers list that has long been abandoned by most blogs that made it past 2013. One thing that struck me was her background, an image of red, blue, and yellow paint (or ink) mixing together in a chaotic drip pattern. A perfect image. Formless, could be made by anyone. That’s what blogging is all about baby!

I also noticed some iconic images in her sidebar. One photo labelled “Girlfriend Fun”, and one labelled “Phil and Becky”.

That’s the kind of cute, understated, personal stuff that reminds me how special and sweet these spaces are. Good for you, Phil and Becky. I love you. I love your love.

Grandma Becky’s posts themselves are pretty straightforward logs of things she’s been doing throughout the day. Here’s some lavender I saw while I was out meeting a friend. Here’s a tea I had. Here are some socks I washed. It rained today. 

At the bottom of the page there’s a picture of “Airman Becky”. Her life is here and I’m taking a little look.

Another blog I found is called “Above the River”. This one is by CJ, a (younger) South Gloucestershire woman who has the stylistic habit of placing all of her photos at the beginning of her blog posts, with captions and commentary following. She too posts a lot of natural photos she takes, and it’s nice browsing them, textless, as if I was watching the landscape unfold in small, sweet pieces around me. These posts feel like letters from a family member, the images enclosed, but separate. It’s super interesting to me how the ordering of the two elements really impacts the feel of reading. There is an intimacy here in the slight rejection of what I think of as typical blogging convention.

The third blog I’ll talk about is “Mrs Ford’s Diary”. Now, this one hasn’t been updated since 2019, so it’s not really a blog that’s still going, but I thought it was interesting in its simplicity. The posts are short, text-only, and written in an almost pronoun-less shorthand. They convey a lot of information very quickly, and so the condensed life of the person writing is packaged into a beautiful little curio. This is quite different to a lot of blogging I’ve seen, and there is something immediately compelling about it. She has a wry way of writing. Come back, Mrs Ford, please. We need you.

After looking at some of these blogs, clicking on blogrolls and following various strange and mysterious links to strange and mysterious places, I remembered the existence of the Blogger profile, and looked at mine. Profiles are everywhere, or course, but something about seeing this one again made me think, “hmm, yeah… this is who I am”. Such a neat place to put myself, like a little white stone shrine statue.

Here I am!

And I’m here like these women, and every day could be extrapolated into a long letter to an invisible daughter. I too could have “Girlfriend Fun” on the sidebar. What a glorious opportunity. Perhaps I will.