Strong Verbs Are Just Better

Music: Since I last made a listening update, quite a bit, actually.

Grace Petrie's Connectivity album, from which I particular enjoy this track:



The (hopefully conscious?!) irony of following this up with 'The Last Man On Earth' is just... *chef's kiss*.

Plus: Ryan Cassata's "Shine" and Muriel Buckley's "Driving in the Dark", both queer sort-of-country music (Cassata leaning pop, Buckley leaning into "Americana"). Both good, neither arresting.

Also I bought and am enjoying The Who's "Who's Next" remastered edition.

On a completely different tack, last night I discovered Winslow, a cat belonging to a singer-burlesquist named Kate Nyx. Winslow is a very good cat, and has released a track with his mama:



Finally, this, which I am saving for when I need to teach the importance of remembering that editorial punctuation can be restricting interpretation:



Podcasts: So many podcasts.

Vaugely Historical:

My current deep binge is The Loremen, with Alasdair Becket-King (comedian who does some good one-man bits on Twitter/YouTube, really long flaming red hair; I recommend his recent sponsored skit playing Dugeons and Dragons with An Actual Dragon) and some other guy, plus guests. Each Loreman takes turns telling the other folkloric and/or just weird tales from "Days of Yore". I cannot possibly recount the fabulous things I have learned, but this morning, I ran late to meet shadowspar because I was distracted by the tale of Gef the Talking Mongoose, a guest episode of Manx lore in honour of Pierre Novellie, also a commedian, from the island of Man. I enjoyed the obviously-false tale of Brother Jucundus with Amy Gledhill, although I was disappointed that no one noticed his name was a complete giveaway to the falsity. And I actually count the episode on The London Monster as 18th-c cultural research.

Forgotten Australia on Australia's First UFO wave

The Slightly Foxed episode on the Weiner Holocaust Library

Literary/Arty/Cultural

The Slightly Foxed podcast: I enjoyed the episodes on Sybille Bedfod, Angela Carter, Graphic Novels, as well as the Weiner Holocaust Library episode I linked above.

'Footnoting History''s episode on Ivanhoe and medievalist nostalgia

Gender Reveal episodes with several authors and media-makers: particularly notable were Jackie Ess (author of 'Daryl' - she talks about writing from the perspective of a cis man, the ways in which her POV character doesn't, actually, have an uncomplicated gender, writing things that trans readers might be uncomfortable with or cis readers weaponise... good stuff); Zachary Drucker, who I had only heard of before as the producer of Trans Parent and who I think I had assumed was a trans GUY (she is not), and who recently made a mini-series called "The Lady and the Dale" about a (real-life) trans woman con artist in the 70s, again, making some artistic choices other trans people might really not like; and Yeonsoo Julian Kim, who is kickstarting a game (with Choiceofgames not with choiceofgames, that was another project) called "Women Are Werewolves", in which you roleplay a nonbinary person in a family of strictly-gender-bound werewolf lineage. I loved the way Kim talks about making painful art - about using storytelling games to offer players a chance to walk through difficult, challenging, issues - either ones directly affecting them, or ones adjacent; or indeed challenges unfamiliar, as a way to develop understanding.

Discursive, Personal Narrative/interviews, Specific Topics:

A lot of other Gender Reveal Episodes. I enjoed the episode with Chase Strangio (trans lawyer for the ACLU); the guy who does Hola Papi whose name I forget right now; some general Q&A episodes (this one was particularly good and Relevant To My Interests); Carta Monir; and Callie Wright, who used to do a queer atheism podcast and now does a queer narrative-based type podcast.

The said Callie Wright's Queersplaining episode with Dallas Hawthorne, on the queer community attitude to masculinity (which Dallas, and apparently Callie (?) understand to be positioned as the WORST thing - something that is not rewarded but seen as outside the queer community, specifically. That's... I have been bugged by some takes on masculinity - gave up on Food4Thot, for instance, because the mix of cis men and trans people who aren't transmasc all sat around talking about how masculinity is bad and even the cis men want to disinvest from it. But I've also liked, say Dejan Jotanovic's take, which boils down to "What is non-toxic masculinty? No clue, because we don't have such a thing under the current cultural wossname". Dallas Hawthorne would NOT like that take, but might be... right, actually, that it's very reductive (and white-centred, now that I think about it). Still. Listening to a transfemme sit down and talk with a trans guy and apparently both kinda... take it as read that masculinity is shunned in the queer community sure was whiplash-inducing off the back of recent Twitter Discourses.

K Andersen's podcast Lost Spaces, an oral history of now-closed queer nightlife. I randomly picked an episode with the artist known variously as Regina Gently/Gentleman Reg about his career shift from bartender and indie folk artist to drag persona and dance music-maker, via the Toronto bar The Beaver. Delightful.

The ABC Australia podcast series "innies and outies", from which I picked and enjoyed one on Coming out in regional Australia

Several more episodes of Two Bi Guys, of which the recent season finale with ABilly S Jones-Hennin and Chris Hennin-Jones was a stand-out.

A few episodes of the BBC podcast NB: My non-binary life, which is honestly a bit shallow but also, like a message from the deep past when the BBC wasn't EXCLUSIVELY a terf-propaganda machine.

A couple more Productivity Alchemy - I particularly enjoyed Scalzi's most recent appearance.

Verbal Shitposting: I listened to a bunch of episods of "Kevin and Ursula Eat Cheap" and then abruptly hit maximum intake for that particular group/style of geeks verbally shitposting.

Podcast Fiction:

I've started on Rusty Quill Gaming, having finally realised that it's not high fantasy or alt-medieval, it's alt-19th c. Enjoying it so far.

I listened to precisely two more episodes of the Magnus Archives, slowly edging back into series 3.

Fully up-to-date on Unwell, enjoying Wes' character arc very much

Megan Arkenberg, The Crowgirl, in Nightmare Magazine. I do not normally read horror but I REALLY like Megan Arkenberg, and it was worth it.

Also Megan Arkenberg, The Oracle and the Sea, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Loved it.

I'm still keeping up with daily swiss news in FR/DE, supplemented by Aus news in DE and occasional German-german "langsam" news podcasts.

This has been: a summary of much podcast consumed.