Recent Reading: The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso. 2024. A supernatural investigator's night off from caring for her newborn goes spectacularly off the rails as she's drawn into a horrifying and deadly game spanning multiple realities. Fast-paced, vivid, and exciting queer SF #books

Recent Reading: Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang. 2023. A failed author witnesses the death of her wildly successful friend/rival, steals her last novel, & passes it off as her own. Eviscerates social media, publishing, & white privilege. Demands to know where you draw your moral lines and why. #books

Recent Reading: The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. c. 1940. A trickster Satan and his bizarre retinue wreak chaos all over Moscow in this ludicrous and brilliant satirical novel. Seances, witchcraft, the debilitating guilt of Pontius Pilate, and an invulnerable pyromaniac cat. #books

Recent Reading: Selected Works by Cicero. Published by Penguin 1960. The breadth of topics and styles make this a weird, incoherent book. Dense legalese, aggrieved correspondence, ethical guides, and a hilarious character assassination of Anthony. Apposite reading for populist times, though. #books

Recent Reading: Out by Natsuo Kirino. 2004. A bleak crime novel in which four low-paid factory workers conspire to conceal a murder and are drawn into the Tokyo underworld. Memorable for its frank interrogation of patriarchy and the economic oppression it inflicts upon the women. #books

Recent Reading: More Than This by Patrick Ness. 2013. Part sci-fi/cyberpunk adventure, part exploration of teenage love, betrayal, and grief, part metaphysical and epistemological inquiry. Whenever I read Ness, I'm impressed by clarity with which he approaches philosophy in a YA context. #books

Today's words that I (quite unjustifiably) do not ever want to read again in any novel: cerulean, lapis lazuli, coruscating, acrid, thrum, and acerbic.

#books
#language

Currently playing: Black Mesa by Crowbar Collective. 2020. A fan-made, original developer-approved remake of sci-fi disaster FPS/puzzler Half-Life. The headcrabs are awful, the ladder mechanic's infuriating, and do not talk to me about the helicopters. Somehow, it's excellent, though. #games

Recent Reading: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. A hit woman who pursues abusive men, a precocious novelist, and an archetypal Murakami loner investigate a cult guru and multiple realities. The novel's moral ambiguity leaves the use/portrayal of male gaze and sex either harrowing or problematic. #books

Recent Reading: The Emperor's Babe by Bernardine Evaristo, 2001. A funny, sexy verse novel about a black girl growing up in Roman London. Characters mix modern English, Latin, and slang in a book with plenty to say about power structures and the immigrant experience. #books

Recent Reading: Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man. 1951. A collection of short sci-fi imaginings of where technology will take us. Prescient stuff with (what now reads as) a Fallout-like retro-future aesthetic. #books

"You can't not-be on a boat."
"I've frequently not been on boats."
"No, no, no - what you've been is not on boats."
#Perfection

A chaotic quarter of an hour in the world of remote composition. 'Wuuuuuutttt' indeed.
#music #composition #throweverythingatthewall

1/3 Remembering that time when online listening parties were keeping me relatively sane during lockdown and I wrote an (insane) book about them
#lockdown #listeningparty #dataviz #selfpublished #music #books

After many years telling anyone who'd listen what a terrible format audio cassettes are, I have to admit I've loved making these 2024 mixtapes.
#mixtape #cassette #2024playlist

Working on a mystery musical collaboration and the other side just added a note so confusing it can only be notated like this.
#composition #dissonance #collaboration

Longest of long shots, but I had this guitar stolen in Nottingham in 2012. It's a hand-painted Epiphone Les Paul Special. I painted it myself and would love to have it back. Any reshares greatly appreciated!
#stolenguitar #epiphone #lespaul #splatterpaint #handpainted #burroughs

A snippet from yesterday's bookofnumbers session. Unplanned and improvised #noisecore where the joy is in the performance and any recordings are (to me) very much a bonus.
#synth #noise #pedals #improvisation

What do these knobs do? Anything? Nothing? No idea. Anyway, it sounded great! #noisecore #pedalboardsofdoom