Quentin's Weeknotes 12/08/18-12/14/18

This week:

• I finally finished reading all 110 stories of Ann and Jeff Vandermeer's anthology "The Weird." My verdict is that it was absolutely fascinating and worth it for anyone with a passing interesting in the history and global scope of weird science fiction and fantasy. At 1100+ double-columned pages, it was quite a journey to get through, and I didn't love everything in it, but I appreciated getting exposed to fantastic writers outside of the standard familiar American canon.
• I didn't watch George H.W. Bush's funeral, but I did read Matt Taibbi's excoriating profile of Bush's pettiness, cynicism and violence. Growing up in the 80s, I have distant memories of Ronald Reagan's presidency, but my memory of Bush's presidency is tarred by the Gulf War, which utterly terrified me at age 10, and for which Bush never really paid any price. It was nice to see someone pop the bubble of hagiography and rose-colored glasses.

My Yearnotes for 2018

In which I list, in no particular order, things I experienced, worked on or enjoyed this year.

• I read 37 books. Of these, 19 were written/edited by or primarily by women--a ratio I tried very hard this year to equalize after years of not being conscious of it. The most inspiring or memorable of these were
  
  • W.E.B. Du Bois's Black Reconstruction, a daunting but delightfully rewarding classic of revisionist history of the post-Civil War US;
  • Saga by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples, a graphic novel (of which I read volumes 8,  9 and 10 this year) that feels so simultaneously human and strange, and gives me that wonderful thrill of reading something modern that I know will be someday considered a classic;
  • The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, a gloriously written, righteously angry genre-defying time-travel serial killer novel about the violence that men do to women, which I read during the Kavanaugh hearings and;
  • The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, a monumentally large edited volume of weird fiction that has already spurred me to purchase books by Bruno Schulz and Reza Negarestani both of whom I first encountered here.

• I wrote a piece of fiction (something I hadn't done in decades) and submitted it for publiciation to an upcoming anthology. It was not accepted, but the process of getting it together inspired me to write more fiction. I'm now working on a novel that I will hopefully finish next year. If you want to read the story (which is about two boys who fight a monster with a machine named for a Dead Boys song), drop me a line and I'll send you a copy.
• I try to buy music from artists I like, rather than accepting Spotify's greasy embrace. This year, I bought albums by Refused, Gastr Del Sol, The Monkees, Allo' Darlin, The Hotelier, Preoccupations, Open Mike Eagle, Liberteer, Low, Diarrhea Planet, The Pop Group, and Stick in the Wheel.
• I watched a bunch of movies and TV shows. The ones that have stuck with me included:
  • A Dark Song, a subtly-shaded character study of a woman trying (and failing) to cope with tragedy masquerading as a horror movie.
  • Hereditary, a horror movie masquerading as a subtly shaded character study of a woman trying (and failing) to cope with tragedy.
  • Annihilation, a film where the movie was different enough from the (wonderful) book to make me not care that it was an adaptation, and whose last 30 minutes was perhaps one of the weirdest pieces of cinema released by a major studio since 2001.
  • Mohawk, a supernatural action movie set in colonial New York, with Indigenous protagonists and featuring Indigenous actors.
  • The Endless, a triumphantly strange film by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, who know something about weird cinema.
  • Black Panther, a little comic-book movie with simplistic politics that you probably didn't hear about.
  • Queer Eye, a make-over show that as Laurie Penny so incisivley noted, broadly sketches "the rampaging crisis of American Masculinity."
  • Hotel Transylvania 3, which honestly wasn't that great, but which I watched at the Unadilla Drive-in with my wife and son. The experience, which was a first for him, was delightful.
  • I also watched Beware of Mr. Baker, GLOW, Green Room, I am Not Your Negro, Beauty and the Beast (2017),  Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, A Quiet Place, Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, Neal Brennan: 3 Mics, Dear White People, The Place Beyond the Pines,  Ralph Breaks the Internet, Incredibles 2, The Ritual, Marie Antoinette, Frances Ha and The Hateful Eight.
• I lost close to 30 lbs this year, started exercising again, and cut off all my hair.
• I got a lot done at the Yager Museum and Hartwick College
  
  • I co-curated and helped install an exhibit on the history of African-Americans at Hartwick College.
  • I put together, or helped put together new programs at the Yager Museum including a Summer 'Crafternoons' for kids, an Indigenous Speakers series, and a film screening of a documentary about James Baldwin.
  • I co-taught a new class on Collectors and Collecting, part of which involved teaching wikipedia, something I had always wanted to do but never found the right moment for.
  • I gave a dozen-odd guided tours of the Museum to individuals and groups from around the country.
• I organized a conference session at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology on the Archaeology of American Conservatism. I also reviewed two articles and book proposal in archaeology, and co-authored a draft of an article for an upcoming archaeological compendium.
• I installed Ubuntu Linux on my laptop and have made an effort to use less proprietary software.
• I got off twitter, and pared down my other social media presences, moving more of my on-line life here. 
• I attended my father-in-law's funeral.
• I helped register students to vote in New York, and assisted my local county Democratic Party in GOTV efforts during the election.
• I listened to some good podcasts, of which my favorite episodes included:
  • Why is This Happening? with Chris Hayes from July 24th in which he interviews Giorgio Angellini, a documentarian making a cinematic history of housing in America.
  • Pseudopod's 3 part reading of the astonishingly creepy Laird Barron story Mysterium Tremendum by the equally astonishing Jon Padgett.
  • WTF w/ Marc Maron from March 29th, with an exhaustive and historically fascinating interview with They Might Be Giants. An honorable mention goes to the August 9th interview with Chris O'Dowd, which might be the funniest podcast episode I listened to this year.
  • Earl Hustle from April 25th, on the challenges of trying to be a parent while incarcerated, which brought me to tears. Honestly, the whole of Ear Hustle is the most honest, painful, politically infuriating, funny, sad and human piece of media that I encountered in this year of record-breaking prison strikes.

• Finally, if all goes as expected, sometime in the next two weeks I will be welcoming a daughter into the world. I remain in awe of and love with my wife's strength, humor, and fierce intelligence through this whole process, as the rest of our lives have alternatively woven or crashed into it. Likewise, my son's genuine enthusiasm for and curiousity about this new person joining our family has been both a relief and a wonderous inspiriation. These remain the best gifts that 2018 has given me.

Quentin's Weeknotes 11/17/18-11/23/118

This Week

• I read Cory Doctorow's short, creepy story "Sole and Despotic Dominion" published on Reason.com. It's quick and worth your time, as it focuses on the increasing atempts of companies to limit "interoperability to manufacturer approved items".
• I read "Three Feet from God: An Oral History of Nirvana 'Unplugged'". These kinds of oral histories are catnip for me, and particularly so since 'Unplugged' remains one of my favorite records of all time. That album did what Nirvana did best-siphon the most interesting and wonderful aspects of American independent music and underground culture into the brains of teenagers like me who would have otherwise never heard it. I still remember when Ryan Phelan, Ben Franklin and I sat around the television and watched a VHS copy of the performance that Phelan had taped off the TV. The gasp and wide-eyes at the final words of "Where did you sleep last night?" remains one of the most haunting and powerful things I have ever witnessed.
• I listened to Ana Marie Cox and Rebecca Traister's searing post-election commentary on the With Friends Like These Podcast. They mainly take aim at the hedging by (mainly male) figures in the mainstream media that the recent election was not a "Blue Wave." They argue that this ignores the largely unpaid and unheralded labor of millions of women who worked to make it happen, the significant structural disadvantages that the Democratic party faced, and the ways in which such language will embolden an already regressive administration to become even moreso. They also put such hedging in the context of other attempts to diminish the productivity of women's fury, a subject about which Traister has recently written a book.
• I read this reminder that one of the biggest barriers to the Democratic party enacting progressive policies is the head of the Democratic party in the US Senate.
• I read this amazing story documenting the life and career of Harry LaForme, the first Indigenous Appellate Judge in Canada. Judge LaForme's life mirrors the moder history of Canadian First Nations people and other Indigenous people. He was born on a the Mississaugas of the New Credit reserve (where I used to work in the Consultation and Accommodation office, for his brother Mark, who is quoted in the story), but left at a young age due to economic opportunities and to avoid local racism. He figured out that law was a route in which contemporary Indigenous rights would be fought, and took every opportunity he could get to travel that route. And he discovered the limits to that route, when, despite every appearance that he would be appointed to Canada's Supreme court, he was denied for a combination of political and unwritten reasons. It was a powerful and frustrating story of opportunity and the limits that long-term racism and colonization put even on brilliant and committed people.

Quentin's Weeknotes 11/10/18-11/16/18

This week:

• I read with great joy that both the soon-to-be New York State democratic legislature, and the soon-to-be democratically controlled US congress are starting their agendas with voter reform. New York State election law is particularly archaic and anti-democratic, and I hope that the signs on the horizon will lead to greater turnout and engagement.
• I read this creepy, unsettling story about a family in Westfield, New Jersey that received a series of mysterious, strange, and ultimately threatening letters. It's bordering on urban-legend territory, with its bizarre poetry, strange historical connections (both Silence of the Lambs, and the band Sha Na Na make an appearance) and the way in which it ultimately refracts to broader social processes like housing the housing market, concepts of privacy, and neighborhood tension.
• I read this guide to decolonizing Thanksgiving in schools. Turkey day has never been one of my favorite holidays--I'm not partial to the traditional food, and as I've gotten older and more aware, the ways in which it undergirds some nasty pieces of American nationalism has bothered me more and more. This guide has lots of great on-line and brick-and-mortar resources for thinking differently about Thanksgiving, and I found some fascinating stuff in here, including letters to send to schools, books for kids, and more.
• I read this long and detailed interview with Ralph Bakshi about his attempt to make an animated version of the Lord of the Rings in the 1970s. It's a crazy story about a movie that's famously interesting but kind of confusing (the movie ends halfway through the trilogy), and both aspects come through in this interview. There's Mick Jagger, Spanish Communists, Hollywood horsetrading, and more.
• I listened to Marc Maron's interviews with John Cleese and Eric Idle, of Monty Python fame. Maron's deep search for humanity underneath celebrity and artistry was in rare form here, as he discussed with both men the experience of growing up during the reconstruction of Britain after WWII, the radical free-form nature of the 1960s era BBC, and how comedy promotes and grows the human spirit.

Quentin's Weeknotes 11/3/18-11/9/18

This week:

• I read volume 9 of Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples' brilliant and poignant graphic novel "Saga". The only question I have is whether we'll see Ponk Konk again...
• Just in time for election day, I finished political scientist David Faris' new book "It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics". Faris argues that the Republican party has spent the last two and a half decades waging a war of procedure on government--rather than running and governing based on a political philosophy, they have exploited ambiguities in the constitution and law, as well as previous reliance on governmental 'norms' to entrench conservative governance throughout Washington D.C. Faris' prescriptions to combat this are quite bold, and include no-brainer policies like a national holiday on election day, and statehood for the 4 million US citizens who live in Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. However, he also advocates for more radical inteventions, including splitting up electoral behemoth California into 7 states, and packing the US Supreme court with additional jurists, as well as retiring existing jurists after a period of service on the court.
• I voted in NY-19, a tight race where the newcomer Antonio Delgado ultimately prevailed. I also drove a van from Hartwick to take students to the polls, and helped the Otsego County Democratic Party with last minute Get-out-the-vote efforts.