Hip pain

COMIC COVER OF THE WEEK

By Jorge Fornes. Luv a white-space cov.

SONGS OF THE WEEK

Both Korean. One very 1990s indie, the other contemporary K-pop.

"What Is Love" by Loosen Door - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooM8W4LyVtY

"Only Cry In The Rain" by Chuu - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhoZ_BYqp0I

BEST FILM I SAW IN THE PAST WEEK

You bewdy, Liverpool!

As an LFC fan since the '80s (my cousins got me into them after returning here from the UK), there have been plenty of highs. That doesn't make winning a premiership any less of an achievement. Well done to Arne Slot and the boyz!

Medicined

Got my annual flu vaccination. Before me, a family of five were obviously getting their shots. Heard crying from behind the GP's door. "That'll be the youngest lad," I thought. Then cheering and clapping. When the door opened and the family exited, said kid was happily clutching a packet of lollies.

Went to the supermarket on the way home. In the carpark, an older gent with a long white beard walked over, gesticulating. Was he gonna have a go at me for wearing a mask? Quite the opposite! He merely wanted to recommend using antiseptic surface spray on the hands as superior to sanitiser gel. I thanked him for the (rather extreme) tip.

Rewatching: Ken Burns' magnificent 1990 "Civil War" docoseries for the third time.

Same, same

Was at the grog shop with Mum. In front of us was a bloke about my age, also accompanied by his elderly mother. They were bickering about little things just the way we do. I distinctly heard him say, "You're the only one who drinks that!" Am still smiling about it. Some things are universal.

Coolness

COMIC COVER OF THE WEEK

By Dave Johnson. Playfully nostalgic.

SONG OF THE WEEK

"Somebody New" by Tunde Adebimpe. Off-the-wall (and into-the-disco) brilliance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_ilbTU5zGQ

Happy Easter!

Had my first buttered hot-cross buns of the holiday period for breakfast. There's a rocky-road chocolate rabbit chillin' in the fridge, ready for Sunday. On the religious front, I recommend the latest episode of history podcast "The Ancients", about the mysterious and problematic (for The Church) figure of John The Baptist. Fascinating stuff.

Religion, conspiracy and belief in the world of Indiana Jones

...would be a decent thesis if I had the time to write it.

Am too, ahem, busy smashing Season 10 of "Landscape Artist Of The Year" (strong field!), S10 & 11 of "Digging For Britain", rasslin' (NXT Stand & Deliver and WrestleMania 41 this long weekend!). Korean cooking shows, "Black Doves" (silly), footy matches and game playthroughs on YT.

Such is liff.

Flunky in the regal's shadow

COMIC COVER OF THE WEEK

By Bruno Redondo. Classy AF.

SONGS OF THE WEEK

"Neo Samurai" - World Order (Japan). Genki Sudo remains da man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FK6Tz2Rd2M

"DragulAPT" - DJ Cummerbund (US). Actual genius, and the mashup keeps evolving throughout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McOtbbyU8Qs

"Don't Happy, Be Worry" - Hilltop Hoods (Oz). Fast-forward about 55 seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7-F3_xDxqM

Dumb shiz I have done, Part 4378

Attempted to cut my shower time in half by simultaneously washing with a small bar of soap in each hand. The reason it doesn't work is that you really have to concentrate - and thus end up going much slower. Nice try, Addster.

Sorcerers, gladiators, spooks

Book 8 done, Book 9 begun. "Sign Of Chaos" built to a corker of a cliffhanger. Compensated for the nonsense opening set in Lewis Carroll Land. I dislike extended scenes of drug trips, fever dreams or mind control in fiction. Lazy writing that generally makes for tedious reading.

In other news... Congratulations to Australia's Alexander "The Great" Volkanovski on regaining his UFC Featherweight Title at UFC 314 in Miami today! 36 years young - and dangerous!

Oh, and how twistingly, suspensefully good was S4 of "Slow Horses" [Apple TV]??? Finally got around to it and had to stop myself bingeing the whole season in a night. Made it last two, haha.

Heinz memes beanz

When I returned to university in the early 2010s, there were a lot of wacky uni-related Facebook groups. I recall one where peeps could declare their attraction to beautiful strangers, e.g. "The girl in the red dress who sat at the front of the ECON102 lecture yesterday - will you have coffee with me?" There was another filled with surreptitious snaps of fellow students sporting the Jerry Seinfeld combo of button-up shirt, jeans and white sneakers. It's quite possible I unknowingly appeared in that group! My favourite of these online hangouts contained memes about campus life. They tended to follow familiar patterns, but I found them fun and they provided an "old guy" with insights into the minds of his younger classmates. I even made some of my own, which were well received.

In the years since, I've crafted the odd meme for posting on social media (when I did social media). If you've never made one yourself, I recommend it as a creative exercise of a different type. There are websites where you can just fill in the text, which is what I used to do. Otherwise, good ol' Word and Paint are the only tools you need. Additional examples of my handiwork can be seen below. Thinking about the UNSW net community of yore dredges up a memory of an exchange on the anime-club forum I still find amusing. Member A accused Member B of "crushing their dream" through repeated criticisms. Member B's reply: "But what if MY dream is to crush your dream?" 

He shoots...he scores!

When you finish a 500-page comics compendium (ta, PG) in a single sitting, that says something about the quality of the storytelling. According to the library information, Jeff Lemire's "Essex County" saga concerns: 1. Farm life, 2. Family Drama, 3. Hockey, and 4. Graphic Novels. To those, I would add the specific emotions of loyalty, betrayal, loneliness and regret. It's moving and plenty sad. Hockey here means ice hockey. This was one of those pop-cultural things - like the recent Mark Carney and Mike Myers humorous political vid - which remind me how central said sport is to the Canadian experience. One day, I'll have to watch those comedy shows DL raves about, "Letterkenny" and "Shoresy".

"I know you've got gum!"

COMIC COVER OF THE WEEK

By Doaly. Endless anger... Yeah, that's The Hulk.

SONG OF THE WEEK

Honestly, there were three songs I gave multiple spins over the past seven days: "Yada" by Fatoumata Diawara (Mali via France), "Come Over" by Le Sserafim (South Korea) and "Gum" by Joalin (Finland). In a less competitive week, I may've paid more attention to "Loline" by Kiwi legends The Bats. Won't even mention the beaut older tracks I also just discovered.

"Yada" has an unstoppable beat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB9vm8KegrI

Despite being an ad for Android, "Come Over" is pure earworm. Skip the remixes. OK, maybe not the bossa nova one. Original - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_uqieM8VGM

"Gum" I've possibly listened to the most. A flavour that lasts - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmFqw0Z_BTg

Onya, Tillies!

2-0 this time.

The latest episode of "The Book Review Podcast" is excellent. Host Gilbert Cruz interviews writer Colum McCann about his new novel "Twist". Lots of fascinating background info about undersea cables and their likely role in a future global war, along with a refreshingly thoughtful discussion of the power of literature.

Wish they all could be California rolls

I always do the ABC's pre-election "Where do you fall?" survey. I'm normally closer in alignment to the policies of the Greens than this. I guess it depends what they ask and how I interpret/answer it on a given day...

Zine there, done that

My city's annual writers festival always features something zine-related. This year, there was a panel, a how-to workshop and a zine market. I checked out the market. There were only four zinesters selling their wares when I arrived. They were friendly, though, as were all of the festival staff I encountered. The contents of two of the tables weren't for me - well made, but above my cuteness limit. I bought a zine containing six tiny games printed on plastic "credit cards" by six different Australian creators. The seller threw in a game card they said I'd need. Also grabbed an arts mag based in The Gong. That came with a shiny sticker which doesn't look shiny in my photo. Enjoyed reading both purchases when I got home. It was worth going to learn that Newcastle Library boasts an extensive zine collection! I had no idea!

Bricks, food, tools, wine, cloth, beer and pretzels

While the Matildas were playing South Korea (1-0 our way, yay!), I was playing a boardgame with the gang. Specifically, "Concordia", a mostly peaceful game of economic expansion in the ancient world. We used the Roman Italy side of the board. It was a close one! At the end, only about 20 points separated the five of us. I didn't win. I usually don't. But I was keen to play again and modify my strategies - the sign of a fab b/g.

Excerpt from a book review in the latest "SFX"

I've been pondering this on and off since I read it. It's made me think about many things to do with manipulating output, including Eno and Schmidt's Oblique Strategies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies

Hard to find a cooler uni motto than this ->

Nuke Uni's is "I look ahead". When I was there, the party-hearty Engineering Fraternity used a modified version for their logo: "I look dead".

As a mature-age student at UNSW, I never bothered learning the motto. I remember my mate RS once asking me what it was, to which I jokingly replied, " 'Same shit, different day'." (In reality, it's "Knowledge by heart, hand and mind".)

Bogus slogans bring to mind those college-style T-shirts for nonexistent institutions... "Toothickfor University", "School Of Hard Knocks", "Whatsamatta U", "Beach Bum College", etc.

Hard to find a cooler example than this ->

Current listening on my walks

This stuff is catnip to me! (In a similar linguistic-archaeological vein, I recommend "The Keys Of Egypt" by Lesley & Roy Adkins, which my buddy CM and I both dug - geddit? - back in the early '00s.)

Publisher's blurb:

It was one of history’s great vanishing acts.

Around 3,400 BCE—as humans were gathering in complex urban settlements—a scribe in the mud-walled city-state of Uruk picked up a reed stylus to press tiny symbols into clay. For three millennia, wedge shape cuneiform script would record the military conquests, scientific discoveries, and epic literature of the great Mesopotamian kingdoms of Sumer, Assyria, and Babylon and of Persia’s mighty Achaemenid Empire, along with precious minutiae about everyday life in the cradle of civilization. And then…the meaning of the characters was lost.

London, 1857. In an era obsessed with human progress, mysterious palaces emerging from the desert sands had captured the Victorian public’s imagination. Yet Europe’s best philologists struggled to decipher the bizarre inscriptions excavators were digging up.

Enter a swashbuckling archaeologist, a suave British military officer turned diplomat, and a cloistered Irish rector, all vying for glory in a race to decipher this script that would enable them to peek farther back into human history than ever before.

From the ruins of Persepolis to lawless outposts of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, The Mesopotamian Riddle whisks you on a wild adventure through the golden age of archaeology in an epic quest to understand our past.

Heart Strings XIV

Marina Diamandis (formerly billed as Marina And The Diamonds, now MARINA) in the clip for "Cupid's Girl".

"Diana Hunting" by Guillaume Seignac.

Frost Archer Ashe ("League Of Legends") statue.

Olympic archery champ Chang Hyejin for "Vogue" magazine. Love this image.

Her fellow South Korean Myboo_cosplay as an elf archer. An original creation, I believe.

Greyhound bus service advert from 1946.

I looked through the pics from the previous 13 H/S posts again - a damn fine collection. Shame I don't use tags. Youse will have to go digging. Or not.

Neckbeard's ghost

COMIC COVER OF THE WEEK 

By Jae Lee. Stylishly cute, yet totally effed up. Which is obviously appropriate to the subject matter...

SONG OF THE WEEK

"Gun Powder" by Arabian Alien. No newies grabbing me so far this week. Instead, a month-old track to which I keep returning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJEhb6xTTqw