2020.04.08 Dispatches From the Wasteland – Entry 18

It’s so cold in here today. From hell’s cold basement I type at thee..

Greetings from my frozen hovel on the shores of the Bow.

I must be slipping in my old age or else my social media feeds are tuned TOO much because I only just learned that my favorite band of all time PHISH surprise-released a new studio album last week. It’s called Sigma Oasis and it’s excellent. I get tears in my eyes when I hear new Phish music. I am a strange boy.

Speaking of being a strange boy, I binge-watched the entirety of BEASTARS on Netflix yesterday and… I’m a furry now? I thought it was a very good show, the character designs and animation are both excellent and will likely be like nothing you’ve ever seen before. I was expecting the show to be more of a noir murder-mystery, but it’s not really. Perhaps I was connecting it in my head with BLACKSAD, but it’s really more of a high-school drama. It’s about how confusing, scary and horny everyone is in high-school… plus in this instance there’s the whole “half the students are carnivorous and the other half are like, sheeps and rabbits and whatnot” thing. It’s a good time.

I started another series today: “Ascendance of a Bookworm”. It’s a very “cozy” anime series about a girl who finds herself in a fantasy world (this is the premise of all anime now) where books are only available to the very very rich. She makes it her mission to create books for the world and the series follows her as she is cute and does cute things while bringing new technology to the primitive fantasy world she now lives in and pursues her goal of creating a bookstore. It’s extremely nice.

Currently Playing: Phish – “Sigma Oasis”
Currently Reading: WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING, Haruki Murakami

2020.04.07 Dispatches From the Wasteland – Entry 17

Finished the last energy drink I had in the fridge. Gonna be a rough go for a while.

Greetings from my hovel on the shores of the Bow.

Watched night 2 of Wrestlemania 36. What a weird show.

It’s a real feast or famine situation this year at Wrestlemania. 16 total matches (18, but I didn’t watch the preshows). I gave ratings to 14 of them (2 are not really wrestling matches, they are performance art pieces so they can’t *really* be rated as wrestling matches). Of those 14 only 3 matches met or surpassed the 3 star mark for me. Of those 3 only 1 match surpassed the 4 star mark. That’s not a great ratio for Wrestlemania, especially one with this much talent. I’m going to give my star ratings for each of the matches here, so if you don’t care about pro-wrestling I would advise you to stop reading and come back tomorrow where I’ll probably talk about something else. I will think no less of you.

NIGHT 1
Women’s Tag-Team Championship
Kabuki Warriors (Kairi Sane & Asuka) (c) VS Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross
**1/2

King Corbin VS Elias
*

RAW Women’s Championship
Becky Lynch (c) VS Shayna Baszler
**1/2

WWE Intercontinental Championship
Sami Zayn (w/ Shinsuke Nakamura & Cesaro) (c) VS Daniel Bryan (w/ Drew Gulak)
**

Triangle Ladder Match for SmackDown Tag-Team Championship
John Morrison (c) VS Jimmy Use VS Kofi Kingston
***

Kevin Owens VS Seth Rollins
***3/4

WWE Universal Championship
Goldberg (c) VS Braun Strowman
*3/4

The Boneyard
The Undertaker VS AJ Styles
(no rating, but if it had one it’d be ***** because it was the best thing WWE has done in years)

NIGHT2
NXT Women’s Championship
Rhea Ripley (c) VS Charlotte Flair
****1/2

Aleister Black VS Bobby Lashley (w/ Lana)
**

Otis Dozovic VS Dolph Ziggler (w/ Sonya Deville)
**1/4

Last Man Standing Match
Edge VS Randy Orton
ZERO stars (this was one of the worst matches I’ve ever seen)

RAW Tag-Team Championship
The Street Profits (Montez Ford & Angelo Dawkins) (c) VS Austin Theory & Angel Garza (w/ Zelina Vega)
**1/2

Fatal 5 Way Elimination Match for SmackDown Women’s Championship
Bayley (c) VS Sasha Banks VS Lacey Evans VS Tamina VS Naomi
***1/4

Firefly Fun House
Bray Wyatt VS John Cena
(again, not a match, but if you ever wanted to see John Cena in the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks? This was for you. I LOVED this.)

WWE Championship
Brock Lesnar (c) VS Drew McIntyre
*1/2

Ok. That’s it. I promise. No more wrestling talk… until I next want to talk about wrestling. See you tomorrow.

Currently Playing: Just a podcast. About wrestling. Don’t worry about it.
Currently Reading: WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING, Haruki Murakami

2020.04.06 Dispatches From the Wasteland – Entry 16

I don’t want to be typing this. I just want to go play Animal Crossing. It’s that kind of a day.

Greetings from my hovel on the shores of the Bow.

I watched Night 1 of Wrestlemania (not live, but they didn’t perform it live either). I’ve been a huge wrestling fan my whole life but in the past few years I’ve watched precious little WWE programming. I started watching less of it when New Japan Pro Wrestling stuff became easier to get ahold of and now that AEW is a going concern I am completely checked out of the current WWE product. I still know who everyone is and keep up with big news and whatnot, but I’m mostly ignorant of the product these days.

I’ve watched 35 Wrestlemanias and this one sounded like it was going to be WEIRD, so I had to watch.

For the most part? It’s just like I remember. Mostly really talented roster with just wretched booking and match layouts. Not having a crowd is weird, but I got used to it, sadly it REALLY impacted some of the matches (the ladder match in particular was hurt BAD by having noone to react. Ladder match selling and dramatic tension spots just looks stupid in silence). Of the “matches” on the show the only one actually worth seeing was Kevin Owens VS Seth Rollins, but even that one suffered from stupid booking and layout.

Then came the “Boneyard Match”. The Undertaker VS AJ Styles.

It’s been many years since the Undertaker had anything resembling a good match, and they knew that this year would be no exception so they did something different… and it ruled. Regardless of your interest in wrestling, I’d recommend checking out this match. It’s the natural next evolution in the “cinematic wrestling storytelling” of things like Matt & Jeff Hardy’s “Final Deletion” or the crazy shit DDT has been doing in Japan for years. Pretty Special.

Currently Playing: Nothing. Watching Wrestlemania 36 Night 2 to talk about tomorrow.
Currently Reading: NORWEIGAN WOOD, Haruki Murakami

2020.04.03 Dispatches From the Wasteland – Entry 15

It took me three tries to type the word “spell” today before I managed to get the letters in the right order. Trying not to take that as a sign…

Greetings from my hovel on the shores of the Bow.

I think I’m going to rewatch a bunch of RagnarRox video essays today. He’s one of my favorite YouTubers, he mostly covers video games, but his analysis’ are always very thoughtful and wide-ranging. His videos on the manga of Junji Ito and his deep dives on the Pathologic games are particular favorites.

I’d recommend this video as a good one to start with (though if you haven’t read and seen Solaris or played Silent Hill 2… well, THERE’S NEVER BEEN A BETTER TIME TO DO SO)

Currently Playing: bvdub – “Ten Times the World Lied”

Currently Reading: Nothing really. I finished some stuff and haven’t quite decided what to start next.

2020.04.02 Dispatches From the Wasteland – Entry 14

I fear the confinement is getting to the bride. From the safety of the basement this made me laugh so hard it hurt.

Greetings from my hovel on the banks of the Bow!

If you don’t follow the My Analog Journal youtube channel, I highly recommend it. Really amazing sets of music from all over the world. I think he’s got a patreon too that I’ve been meaning to check out…

WHAT ELSE. WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?…

Hoping to spend some time later this evening messing with the Korg Monologue. Yesterday was a complete write-off creativity-wise, and frankly this week has been largely consumed by work and familial obligations (the latter barely count since they’re the best) and I could do with an hour or two to just mess around making something. Even just an hour sitting in a comfier chair with a notebook and my earbuds sounds like it would be a good use of time tonight.

Currently Playing: Sonologyst – “PHANTOMS”

Currently Reading: SHIVERING SANDS: SEVEN YEARS OF STORIES, DRINKING AND THE WORLD, Warren Ellis

2020.04.01 Dispatches From the Wasteland – Entry 13

We’ve hit the baker’s dozen of wasteland dispatches! I plan to celebrate with a little extra delicious nutrient paste derived from old comic books in my rations today.

Good morning, denizens of the wasteland, from my hovel on the shores of the Bow.

Well, it was morning when I started writing that, then the day happened and it’s evening now. Good evening, denizens of the wasteland, from my hovel on the shores of the Bow.

Where did the day go? I haven’t even looked at any of my feeds yet, for all I know I’m the only one left! Well, at least I have my books… *eyeballs fall out and shatter* that–that’s not fair… that’s not fair! There was TIME now!!!

I’m a little loopy today as I had a less-than-restful sleep. I usually go to bed around 10:30 and read until ~midnight. When I got into bed last night I discovered a tiny anarchist, who had been watching Hotel Transylvania 2 before I came and carried him to his own bed, had had some kind of demented cracker party. The sheets and duvet were mostly crumbs, which I continued to find throughout the night. Just around the time I had found the last of the crumbly bastard remnants and managed to sweep them away, muttering about retro-active birth control, the aforementioned tiny anarchist returned complaining of bad dreams.

No doubt something he ate.

The remainder of my sleep was disrupted by, what can only be described as, the noisiest breathing not powered by an iron-lung in history. Also, somehow the perpetrator, despite weighing under 50lbs managed to take up more bed-space than a mature, male rhinocerous. I was finally drifting off to sleep when the younger tiny anarchist arrived, kicking open the bedroom door like he was there to take out Osama Bin Laden. Seal Team Under-Six insisted it was time to wake up, no arguments that it was in fact 4:45AM would sway him. Eventually he was bribed back to his room with a tablet (you try being a good parent with boxer briefs filled with cracker crumbs) and I was finally allowed to sleep. For almost 45 minutes before the alarm went off.

So that’s my excuse for the lack of lucidity, tomorrow is another day.

Take care of yourself and don’t eat crackers in my bed, you swine.

Currently Playing: Grove of Whispers – “Cold Moon”

Currently (Re)Reading: SHIVERING SANDS: SEVEN YEARS OF STORIES, DRINKING AND THE WORLD, Warren Ellis

2020.03.31 Dispatches From the Wasteland – Entry 12

My brain still wouldn’t stop shouting at me about the DAY business in the titles of these posts. There. Happy now, brain? Can you shut up for 5 seconds so I can think?

Greetings from my hovel on the shores of the Bow River.

Despite being at home it really feels like things are NOISY right now. I could do with a bit of quiet. Switching off most of the news feeds again for at least the rest of the day. If something important happens I know the information will get to me.

Discovered some really incredible music yesterday. In the early 80s, Ivan Coaquette & Ananka Raghel formed the experimental/electronic space-rock duo Fondation and three cassette only releases (1, 2, 3) they made have been posted to the Internet Archive and I’ve been listening to them all morning. Just outstanding stuff. One of the best things about discovering obscure music is it usually opens up a rabbit hole in which one can find many other obscure delights. I suspect I shall spend some time in this particular burrow today.

One of my oldest and dearest friends observed me idly tweeting about how I was thinking about getting my hands on some kind of synthesizer and making some ambient type music. This fine, young lad swung into action and today delivered to me (while maintaining physical distance, I said he was a good lad!) a KORG Monologue monophonic analogue synthesizer! I am so excited to start messing with this thing. Make some #loops.

Currently Playing: Fondation – “Metamorphoses”
Currently Reading: THE WEIRD AND THE EERIE, Mark Fisher

2020.03.30 Dispatches From the Wasteland – Day 11

I made a mistake in naming these damn dispatches. It’s the 11th installment, but I’ve actually been in the wasteland since the 12th so this would be day 19… Workday 11 doesn’t have the same ring though…

Greetings from my hovel on the shores of the Bow River.

Many fine purveyors of drone and ambient music (and other genres, presumably) are offering discounts on digital discographies over on bandcamp during the pandemic. Times is tough all over, but if you’ve got some cash in the budget for music I suggest having a browse over there. I have acquired many beautiful sounds to roll around in over the next few weeks (and indeed, likely months). If we’re going to remain confined to quarters, no reason we can’t fill those quarters with beautiful things, and hopefully help the makers keep making.

Spent entirely too time wrestling with my podcast website over the weekend, I think I got it working, but the thing I did that fixed my problem should not have worked! This is almost worse than the problem persisting, I have fixed a thing but have no earthly idea why what I did solved the problem. Anyway, if you’re at all inclined you can listen to the bride and myself discuss horror movies over here.

Stay sane out there, denizens of the wasteland.

Currently Playing: Alex Bober – “Invisible Forest”

Currently Reading: THE WAKE, Paul Kingsnorth

2020.03.27 Dispatches From the Wasteland – Day 10

I spent, let’s call it entirely too much time getting my podcast website/rss feed working again. My body is one gigantic stress knot and I don’t even have the option of self-medicating with liquor like the rest of you bastards. I am not to be trifled with today.

Greetings from my hovel on the shores of the Bow River basin.

The Black Polygons put out a new record today. It’s gorgeous. They previously had an album called À Travers that I have listened to a thousand times. I recommend them both.

Normally I’d post my reading roundup for the week (which I also apparently forgot to do last week) but I don’t have much to report. I finished nothing this week. I think I’m beginning to create new routines and so hopefully next week we’ll resume regularly scheduled reading activities.

Stay safe, take care of each other and see you on the far side of the weekend.

Currently Playing: Black Polygons – “Phasme”

Currently Reading: ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY, David Sedaris

2020.03.26 Dispatches From the Wasteland – Day 9

Good morning, Great Unwashed of the Wasteland!

Isolation is beginning to make me have strange ideas. At midnight I was suddenly positive that I should get a synth-rig set up and start composing ambient music. I have no prior experience in this field nor any clue how I would do it even if I had ACCESS to a synth-rig, but at midnight it was so obvious that this was definitely what I should do. Hoping I have another stupid idea soon before I start looking up keyboards online…

Finally admitted to myself that I was not in the headspace to be able to read this Olga Tokarczuk novel I’d been very very very very very slowly picking away at via audiobook. I have a shelf on my Goodreads account called “on-hiatus” for such things and FLIGHTS has been moved to it. Luckily, my hold on one of the few David Sedaris books I’ve not read ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY came in so I’m going to listen to that instead.

Speaking of listening, an old post on one of my feeds introduced me to the Holger Czukay album “Movies” and I’ve been listening to it for half my morning so far. It’s outstanding. It was recommended as a precursor to Brian Eno & David Byrne’s “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” album, so if you’re a fan of that work then this is completely worth checking out.

One other musical recommendation before I leave you today: One of my favorite ambient artists SILENCAEON released a new album yesterday and it’s FANTASTIC.

Currently Playing: Oscar Peterson Trio – “Night Train“
Currently Reading: ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY, David Sedaris