Sara Reine, Author at Egregious - Page 9 of 44

bluesky, facebook

April’s social media rambling

2024-05-04 /

Posted 4/6/24. Facebook.

I was playing with my formerly feral cat. She jumped up on the back of my chair and bit the back of my neck.

Isn’t that how cats kill prey? Did my cat just…kill me?

~

i’ve been lucky to read 2-3 books this year that i actually loved (i really struggle to find stuff that suits me) and everything i’ve read in between those books has really helped emphasize to me why i liked those 2-3

it’s always a personal taste thing, of course; there’s nothing actually wrong with the other books. i have narrow tastes/desires in books the last few years. i have to cast a wide net (or get recs from similarly aligned friends) in order to find a couple that stick to my ribs.

this year i’ve loved

BOY PARTS
THE BELL JAR (yes, my first read)
MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION

(i was REALLY in the mood for a book without a plot, so the lattermost item scratched the itch extremely well)

i didn’t love it, but i did end up liking NIGHTBITCH. the more i reflect back on it, the fonder i feel. i’m like “heh.” i love messy authentic flawed things, and that’s kinda the whole point of nightbitch. and all the books i haven’t liked at all make nightbitch stick out more, yk?

i dnf’d The Rabbit Hutch, but i might take a swing at it again later. the dialogue felt too stylized for me at the moment. i like the format enough that it might be worthwhile when i’m in a different head space.

i do not mention books where i’m like “pah!” and forcefully close them, so these are all compliments from the bottom of a deep pit of literary anhedonia.

loves/likes from previous years:

SPINNING SILVER, Naomi Novik
THE KILLING MOON, NK Jemisin
A LONG TIME DEAD, Samara Breger
THE SALT GROWS HEAVY, Cassandra Khaw
THE WORM OUROBOROUS, ER Eddison
BITTERBURN, Ann Aguirre
PARABLE OF THE SOWER, Octavia E Butler
UNDER THE PENDULUM SKY, Jeanette Ng
GARDENS OF THE MOON, Stephen Erikson
THE NOTEBOOK, Agota Kristof

i really like genre fiction written as literature, and i was hoping that moving into contemporary literature might give me more options for reading. plus i never used to read anything that isn’t sff. so i am trying to reach out a bit and generally pleased so far.

anyway, i post this in case someone on my flist has similar tastes and can recommend me something i’d like. i’m very fond of genre-as-literary, mythic and historically influenced stuff, big world building, devastating emotions, broad vocabulary, and mostly woman authors.

any recs??

~

Posted on Bluesky.

something about the title screen music for katamari damacy reloaded is so ominous

na…na na na na na na na na na na na na na na

Posted 4/7/24. Facebook.

i described the basic conceit of Hannibal to my 13yo, with the whole passionate death-spiral between Hannibal and Will Graham, and they said “So it’s basically Doofenschmirtz and Perry the Platypus from Phineas & Ferb?” and my entire life is changed

Posted 4/9/24. Facebook.

I actually finished writing a book today. It’s wild, I haven’t finished a book in a year. I’ve been doing a zillion other things.

This is Fated for Firelizards, the interactive novel I’ve been serializing on itch.io. I’m gonna finish posting it on itch and then edit a single-track novel version (Author’s Cut), so I’ll let y’all know when the Author’s Cut ebook is out. It’s NOT a Descentverse book, but kind of a fun silly thing. I think folks will enjoy it anyway.

~

The other day, my eldest came to wake up Spouse and me. They were down at the side of the bed. It looked right to have their adorable face at that level. I was petting their hair and sweet-talking them, which they tolerated like a champ.

Then they stood up…and up…and up…

And I remembered this is a 13-year-old human who is at least six feet tall, and increasingly lanky, and I just turned into the Crypt Keeper then blew away into dust.

~

Posted on Bluesky.

my vacuum-insulated cup is so bananas. i made hot hot coffee this morning and didn’t touch it, and it’s STILL HOT??? i know this is new to nobody but myself lol

it’s like friggin magic

~

I have been watching ghost photos/videos with my kid and it’s the brightest part of the day, and I’m still never sleeping again

~

hear me out: rootbeer float except it’s chocolate fudge ice cream in iced coffee

Posted on 4/10/24. Bluesky.

after watching x-men 97 i will never feel joy again

Thank god for the comic book revolving door of death or else my whOLE WEEK would be ruined

Posted 4/11/24. Facebook.

Amazing how one minute I’ll be like “omg I’m the artist of all time” and then the next minute I’m like “MY ARTS IS THE WORST, I AM GARBAGE, THROW ME IN THE COMPOST PILE”

~

Posted on Bluesky.

Nothing reminds me how long it’s been since restarting my computer as effectively as Adobe products, which will basically just fart all over my monitors until I reboot

Posted 4/12/24. Facebook.

I’m so committed to trolling my 13yo. They’re VERY pleased to be taller than me, even when I stand on my toes…so I ordered platform heel Crocs. Yep. I’m going to wear 6-inch Crocs around the house and pat them on the head.

~

I am “subscription to insoles for hip pain” years old.

~

Posted on Bluesky.

I just did a sinus nasal rinse and I think my brain came out, the pain, the burning

Posted on 4/13/24. Bluesky.

If you haven’t watched Scavenger’s Reign you’re living a hollow half-life, a shadow of humanity, unaware of the greatest adult animated show ever made

Posted on 4/14/24. Bluesky.

hoping that this analgesic will make my body feel less like shattered death, pray for me

~

From now on, I am only sexting with cuneiform.

Posted 4/15/24. Bluesky.

playing frostpunk

me + peasants: yay! we escaped the lords!
the lords: “hey can we move in with you?”
the game: WHAT A QUANDARY
me: lol die in a storm, lords
the game: …you must surely feel conflicted
me: WE DO NOT

the lords: yOu ToOk OuR EnGiNe
me: frozen dead lords say what
the lords: …what?
the game: WHAT A QUANDARY!

~

one of my friends is sending me screenshots from fallout 4, so i thought i’d grab it and try it

it’s so buggy (STILL) that i had to go do some modding to even make it wanna run. oh bethesda. <3 now i'm into mods and it's making me wanna go back to skyrim again lol ~ Downloaded a zillion mods, now to see if it’s any worse at launching than vanilla

Posted 4/16/24. Facebook.

I wish Facebook would let me hide posts but not, like…take it personally. I believe if you hide posts at all, the algorithm says “oooh this is a Bad Post somehow” and will ding the visibility of the individual or the post (depending on the overall metrics). I need a “it’s nothing personal, but don’t show me this one again” button for when it keeps bringing up someone’s really personal post 10x over three days. Like, that wasn’t any of my business the first time I saw it, but that person has every right to post it, and I just think it’s weird Facebook keeps reminding me that xyz person is having family drama with xyz family member I don’t even know!

~

My favorite gain from going fully sober and quitting cannabis? My singing voice is back, baby! Sometimes I start singing and startle myself with how full my range has become. I got so used to singing in a limited range because lower or higher octaves were so strained, and switching registers made things goOOoooOO crackLYEEYY.

Basically I had to sing like the episode of Friends where Phoebe had a cold, but I’m back to being a wee lil songbird.

The dreams are also rad. You’re not supposed to dream on cannabis (which is one reason people with PTSD love it), but I had dreams every night; they were just always a very specific kind of travel dream. Airplanes, cruise ships, trains. Very weird. But now I have a full spectrum of vivid dreams that are so wonderfully weird, I look forward to them every night. I can control them to a small degree. I usually dream about whatever I was doing right before bed. I was playing Fallout 4 last night, so I got Fallout dreams!

I really miss the act of smoking. I have a lot of really fond memories of sitting outside in nice weather and smoking up a bowl. It’s hard to explain what a sensory pleasure that is, top to bottom: breaking up nuggets (the colors, the smell, the texture), grinding them finely, scooping it into a bowl, patting it down, using the lighter to toast the edge, that first inhale of creamy white smoke…

But I figure it’s like a breakup from a romantic relationship. Of course I miss the nice things about her. I loved holding hands with her, and the smoothness of her neck, and the smell of her hair. I can’t have those things in isolation from all the things that motivated the breakup. That isn’t how life works. So I miss the smoking, and I say, “Thank you for the memories,” and then don’t do it.

~

Posted 4/16/24. Bluesky.

when i’m trying to talk myself into doing something, i call myself “self-bae” in my head

“come on, self-bae, you don’t even need to do that much”
“i know it’s hard, self-bae <3 you can do it" i know it is dorky but i used to be *really* hard on myself, so it's very healing to refer to myself like i'm my own girlfriend? my loved one? just soothing and reassuring myself ~ We dnf’d the fallout show on episode 2 on account of boredom ~

Posted 4/17/24. Bluesky.

Truly impressed and horrified by how many times my AirPods have enjoyed trips through the washing machine in my pocket

~

extremely bothered seeing how people talk about their teenaged and older kids on the internet. like, you realize you made those things, right? you know they still can’t read your mind? you know communication is hard and growing is hard and nobody magically figures things out, right?

i have some acquaintances who are not invested in having ongoing relationships with their adult kids, and i just hope they’re not unpleasantly surprised when those kids aren’t interested in having ongoing relationships with them either.

recently my sibling told me that not everybody likes their kids, especially as they get older, and it has haunted me. i wonder if that intergenerational divide is normal? if part of growing *demands* friction? am i going to wake up one day and be sick of my teenager’s shit?

~

i just love john leguizamo and dulce sloan on The Daily Show. i could watch the two of them every night forever. they’re so fucking out of pocket, it’s hilarious

leguizamo acting like biden wants him “but we’re both married men, it would be wrong *saucy gaze*”

~

playing games <<<<< playing games so heavily modded they're unrecognizable i enjoy adult mods for games, but i have to laugh at so many of the "sexy" outfits added. like people just cut random holes out and nothing looks remotely wearable (or even sexy!) and i'm like, girl, tuck your nipple into the strap, you're defying physics ~ no more agonizing over my letterboxd top 4. it changes weekly now. all movies are my favorite movies. chaos reigns.

Posted 4/18/24. Facebook.

Pulling together the “author’s cut” of my interactive novel is harder than I anticipated. I wrote *so* much material that only exists in one story track or another (meaning I have to go all over the file to see what I can possibly add), and a *lot* of text varies based upon reader choices. It’s one long personality test of a book, so…it’s a mess!

Also, the chapters read differently without the page breaks/questions/illustrations. Once it’s just text, I see so many things I want to smooth and fill out. It’s a bigger editing job than anticipated!

Fun project, though. Anything with dragons is fun.

Posted 4/19/24. Facebook.

Y’all, I had such a violent nightmare last night that I woke my spouse screaming his name in my sleep. Wtf? He thought something was wrong and got up to look for problems before realizing I was still asleep.

I couldn’t wake up, it was dreadful. There was a demon possessing my house. I couldn’t shut the doors to keep it out of my bedroom. It kept appearing as my beloved late cat, Annie, in really disturbing gory ways. I have the St Benedict’s prayer memorized (crux sacra sit mihi lux, non draco sit mihi dux, etcetera) but all the prayer and salt in my dreams wouldn’t keep the demon out.

This morning my spouse asked if he should wake me from dreams where I’m obviously distressed and the answer is OMG YES PLEASE DO.

Weirdly, I fell asleep in a great mood. Nothing is wrong! I had a beautiful nighttime walk with my family under a very bright moon. I was so chipper. But not my subconscious, apparently.

Posted 4/20/24. Facebook.

I gauged up my ears today from 2g to 0g. I thought it wouldn’t be too bad because they used to be this size, but OWCH. It’s harder to do it to oneself, bc ow.

Posted 4/21/24. Bluesky.

i was really trying to get into fallout 4, but i’m just not clicking with it. i couldn’t click with fnv either. i guess fallout shelter is the only fallout i want, lol.

i’m putting skyrim back on my computer. it’s still kinda my perfect game. which is weird! it’s the same engine as fo4!

~

i have napped twice today and i slept a lot last night and i think i could just sleep all of sunday, literally

i feel really good tbh, i walked a bunch yesterday in the sun and i think my body just wants to recharge

i walked in the evening & thought i wouldn’t need sunblock. i was wrong. i’m slightly toasty. i have found that i get sun sickness really easily; i didn’t get sun sickness yesterday, but i was probably close. if i’d been out an hour earlier, i’d be dead today. instead i’m just deliciously exhausted.

i’m not sure if sun sickness is a real thing tbh. i THINK i heard of it somewhere…it’s like where you burn, and your body has an immune response like you’re sick. i don’t have to be very burned to get some crazy flare. i really get very sick the day after even mild sunburns.

oh well, webmd calls it sun poisoning (for whatever that’s worth). after sun, i get fever+chills, nausea, exhaustion, aches, dizziness, serious dehydration. did i mention i’m basically some swooning Victorian lady who faints over everything? like a walking ghost.

(i do have two documented autoimmune conditions and god knows what else so this is pretty normal for me, tbh)

(i am a delicate hothouse flower)

OH i bet it’s also related to stretching my ears yesterday. i gauged up from 2g to 0g. i always have this weird shock response to piercings and tattoos. my poor body must have no idea what’s going on, stretching out my lobes (IT HURT) and then frolicking in the sun. “ahhh I’m dying”

~

my head aches even checking in on publishing world drama. this is why i now randomly publish stupid shit for an audience of me, myself, and i.

This isn’t about RTD, but rather gossiping authors and essays about authors who should go fuck themselves and etc.

omg just go write your friggin books and chill out.

There are extremes of “authors must always get along rainbows daisies” and “authors I disagree with should all jump off a bridge, and I disagree with everyone”

JUST GO WRITE YOUR BOOKS

Posted 4/22/24. Bluesky.

there is SUCH a difference between walking two miles when it’s mild and walking two miles when Nevada is doing its whole sunny hot thing

it was only like 80f but i’m still whooped. gonna be a heck of a summer when we get over 90-100f

i can still walk outside when it’s that hot, but i start wetting down light scarves (almost like veils) and covering myself in them, and then also taking an umbrella as portable shade. not bad when it’s also windy. wish i had a stillsuit.

Posted 4/23/24. Facebook.

It’s incredible how I can wake up and chug a half gallon of water like it’s nothing. What happens to me overnight? Do I completely desiccate??

I genuinely don’t eat that much salt, and i have an eye on my blood sugar so i can say i’m not diabetic

i’m just a Thirsty Betch

~

i told my kids to avoid internet content that seems specifically designed to make them angry (or feel other negative emotions) and it’s helped them a lot, so i am now sharing that advice with you

click away from outrage, you’ll feel better.

~

Posted on Bluesky.

It’s really incredible my husband is still married to me when I will text him live updates from the toilet, and half the time he asks what I’m doing and I’m like “…modding skyrim”

Posted on 4/24/24. Bluesky.

But why is Dev Patel SO ATTRACTIVE

Posted on 4/25/24. Bluesky.

It’s maddening how many people wanna shove AI down our throats when all datasets rely on theft. So it’s like saying, “I have no choice but to steal to promote my books 🤷🏻‍♀️ don’t blame meeee”

Just makes me realize how many people happily talk their way into ethical voids and truly do not mind being class traitors if it means they feel likelier to profit off exploitation rather than being exploited themselves

(Spoiler: it won’t protect you, it’ll eat you too)

And omfg it’s not that hard to learn how to Art, it’s completely natural to humans.

And you’re not entitled to others’ nonconsenting labor if you don’t feel like doing that learning.

Omg I really can’t talk about this I just go into constant outrage feedback loops it’s bad for my blood pressure

Posted 4/26/24. Facebook.

Yesterday I saw a trio of ravens mobbing a young hawk. The hawk was so small, I thought it was a dove at first. But doves don’t soar like that. I made out the ventral patterns when it came low enough. It was a hawk, just a baby, probably not long out of the nest.

First there was one raven chasing it, making big heavy flaps with those big black wings. Amazing how fast they can move. The little hawk couldn’t seem to flap enough to get away from it. However lighter the hawk was, the raven was clever, and it seemed to know where the hawk planned to fly next. The raven kept cutting it off.

Then came the other two, circling around to flank the hawk. You should have heard the noises. Sad, angry, fighting type noises. Squeaks and squawks.

The aerial dogfighting was amazing to watch. They covered blocks of the neighborhood as the four of them swirled around, heading north until I couldn’t see them, then reappearing south of my position.

Sometimes the hawk would fold its wings and suddenly plummet a hundred feet in midair, escaping the fog of shiny black feathers. But only ever for a moment. The ravens were too smart to lose it for long.

I don’t know how the fight ended. It’s hard to imagine the hawk won. A bird that small can’t have too much energy, and the second it touched down somewhere, those ravens would have been all over it.

There isn’t much room in the ecosystem for birds of prey. We already have quite a few, and they’re territorial. My house is part of a territory claimed by an older, larger hawk — one of the parents of the unlucky little guy. I guess this is one of the ways nature winnows down the numbers.

I couldn’t cheer for anyone. I have a soft spot for hawks, but I admire these ravens specifically (they’re around a lot), and nature is just being nature. What a stark reminder of how unfair it all can be. Let’s hope the little guy found somewhere to hide and will move further afield, away from the ravens, away from the other hawks’ territories, and find a place his own.

~

Granular edits on fiction are exhausting 😮‍💨

I’m a big picture guy. I love working with plot-level edits. I have never been good at details, like copy editing and proofreading.

But I am proofreading something now and my brain is like “no, please stop.” I’m taking breaks every chapter or so. I don’t know how anyone does this full time!

Time to level up this skill tho ⬆️

~

omg. just trucking along proofreading and discover i spelled a character’s name two different ways.

in the same sentence.

~

Posted on Bluesky.

I got to pet three (3) dogs on my walk today which is a pretty good level of dog petting, I’m satisfied

Posted on 4/27/24. Bluesky.

Bluey is an emotional assassin

~

Watching dog agility competition and feeling irrationally offended when they criticize a dog’s performance

HDU every dog is perfect

Knock over poles? PERFECT
Skip an obstacle? PERFECT
Murder the judges? PERFECT

Posted 4/28/24. Facebook.

I really thought quitting weed would eliminate my daily nap, but…nope. Two hours+ every day. And it feels like being reborn every day. ❤

Posted 4/29/24. Bluesky.

We keep getting angry letters from the school because we keep our 9yo home when he’s sick and they don’t like all the absences 🙃

His grades are excellent, he’s a gifted-and-talented kid, and he always gets sick FROM SCHOOL. What are we supposed to do here exactly?

1) I am not dragging him to a doctor every time he’s got symptoms of a head cold. Thats how you spread sicknesses further.

2) nobody masks in this unventilated-ass school.

3) even if they don’t care about disease spread, he deserves to rest when he’s sick! I’m not sending a miserable dude out.

I’d say they can suck my dick but I don’t want their snotty faces near any part of my body

~

Finally finished the Fallout show. It did pick up after the first couple episodes. I got into a vibe once we got to Ghoul and Lucy’s Fetish Funtimes. Looking forward to all the great novel-length Ghoul/Lucy & Dogmeat between-season fanfic we’re gonna get – also hoping for Maximus/Dane.

If God hates monsterfuckers then why do monsterfuckers keep winning

The whole Fallout franchise just doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t like the cynicism, I think. The 1950s retrofuturistic nostalgia, while purposeful, also just doesn’t do anything for me. I generally dislike Americana. But the actors were excellent, the story coherent, the effects decent.

Maybe we’ll get an Elder Scrolls tv show at some point????

Posted 4/30/24. Facebook.

I showed my 13yo a picture of their brother as a little baby. 13yo: “Revolting. That looks like a can of biscuits that didn’t pop all the way.”

~

13yo Moonlight and I encountered Canadian geese with fluffy yellow babies on our walk today. Aww! Right?
NO, the geese were ENRAGED. They hissed at us! We ran!
We almost got killed by dinosaurs!!!!

~

Posted on Bluesky.

Bsky threw a 20-year-old sexworker in my discovery feed and the full-body NO THANK YOU I felt was staggering

I’m like omg I’m almost twice your age!!! I could be your mum. I support your life choices but I do not want to see your life choices in the bath please

~

i watched a scary ghosts movie with my 13yo and now there are so many weird sounds in my bedroom suite

and my 13yo won’t even sleep over in my bed tonight to protect me :< the 9yo is sick and needs daddy so it's just gonna be me, the cat, and SPOOKY WEIRD NOISES IN MY BEDROOM SUITE absolutely should not watch spooky ghost movies before bed, i am too susceptible to spooky ghost stuff in a way that no other horror does to me but 13yo wanted it 🎶the things we do for love🎶 my cat is being weird and staring through the doorway

Posted 5/1/24. Facebook.

The variety in books I’ve written the last few years is pretty bananas.

I’m almost done editing Fated for Firelizards, which is incredibly lightweight (albeit brazenly didactic). It’s written in language almost as casual as my posts on here, with lots of “like” and “ish” and “you know, whatever” sort of attitude. It’s mostly supposed to get you from one sezzy scene with the dragon to another. Fun fetish content with plot made secondary. I usually put a lot of care into plot, so I feel paranoid and weird about how lightweight this one is.

But! I also am doing deep edits on Atop the Trees, Beneath the Mountains, which is plot-heavy, and then some. It aspires to be a proper fantasy doorstopper like Wheel of Time, although it’s more obscure and anarchistic like Dune. The world building is intense; sometimes the language is archaic. It’s very much a multigenerational gothic romance epic. And gay.

And I am also trying to finish a weird horror novel called “Insomniac Cafe,” which is NOTHING LIKE EITHER OF THOSE PROJECTS. It’s like Friends vs Fallout (the tv shows) done in the style of internet horror, a la The Backrooms. It’s surreal with a labyrinthine narrative and…insects. I just added 500 words of Rachel Green trapped in a septic system. It’s *gross*. I am told reading it makes everyone feel like they need a shower in Borax.

Oh, and there’s a really heartfelt small town romance called “You’ve Got Nudes” I never published. Which I’d like to do this year.

I think what this says about me is that writing like a hundred urban fantasy novels based on the same style guide, with similar tones, in the same universe, made me snap and go completely crazy and now I can’t write the same thing twice.

Posted 5/4/24. Facebook.

It’s not too hard to avoid doing specific things to your kids. “I will not traumatize them like THIS,” you thought as a child. And then you didn’t do THAT THING.

But you did other things instead. And your kids thought, “I will not traumatize my kids LIKE THIS.” They probably won’t. They will inflict their own bespoke traumas.

More important than anything, I think, is being open to listening to your kids. You can’t be perfect. You can, however, accept your kids’ feelings, listen to them, and forge real relationships based on growing. You can remain supportive instead of becoming defensive. Accept your own flaws so your offspring have room to process their hurts with you. Cuz there will be hurts.

This is just something I’ve been thinking about a lot. Just gotta keep working on it together, as a team, like my kids and I are allies, instead of in opposition to one another between generations.

It can be really hard not to flinch away from your own wounds (because kids having complaints/criticisms feels like getting stabbed sometimes) but embracing it is how you heal. I think? I’m still figuring it out.

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Sara Reine

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Murder buckets, Dr. Orangutan, and To All The Jays I’ve Smoked Before

2024-05-04 /

I have such an abusive relationship with my maidenhair fern. If any of my plants were to die forever, and I wouldn’t be even *slightly* sad, it is the maidenhair. Her name is Marion. She basically dies every 2-3 months when I water her a couple days late. Every time, I think, “This is it. This is the time she won’t come back from it.” And then she does.

Anyway, she’s dead this morning. She’ll be back in a week. Fuck that plant. We’ve been doing this for like four years now.

~

I finished editing Fated for Firelizards after a push on Friday, and I’m ready to get it off my plate. I want to do something else now. I’ve gotta work out email garbage, but then I’ll publish the ebook.

I’m all-in on Insomniac Cafe until I’m done with that. It’s been mostly done but unfinished for years. This is the year where I complete things and harvest all my efforts, after all.

Although I keep thinking “I really wanna go smoke a jay,” I can’t deny how much easier it is to get work done when I’m sober-sober. And getting sober-sober is a process of *weeks*. It’s not worth a jay. That was a crutch I felt I needed when I was dealing with a lot more traumatic shit, but the traumatic shit is processed and past, and I gotta do the rest of my life. Yanno?

~

I’m not sure how I’ve watched Voyager all the way through twice in the last couple years, yet I’m still riveted on this, my third watch. I love it so much. Episodes with the most mundane concepts, like Paris getting framed for murder in “Ex Post Facto,” are executed so brilliantly that I just love them.

I’m also rewatching Friends (at least the first season) because it’s much of the inspiration for Insomniac Cafe. I’ve finally gotten older than the Friends — quite a bit so, actually. They turn 30 on the show and I’m 36 now. But they’ve never really seemed younger than me, somehow. I think the 90s fashion and plastic surgery just made them keep coding older a while. Now I’m noticing the age gap more dramatically. They act in ways where I’m like, “Oh gosh, they’re young.” And now I am not — at least, not in the way they are.

Sometimes the aging thing bothers me more than others. I think I’m okay where I am for the moment. More emotional breakdowns to come later, I’m sure. I’m like a constant ball of existential terror.

~

Speaking of breakdowns, the NHS recognizes montelukast as a source of psychiatric problems, (The Guardian) especially in children. Montelukast has been a miracle medicine for me. And I’m not a stable human.

I am usually quite depressed — in the sense that it’s hard to do some routines, I’m usually battling “low” thoughts, I sleep a ton, I don’t have a lot of energy — but on the whole, for me, I’m doing pretty well. So I don’t think montelukast has been a problem for me. Maybe it’s because I’m not a child. It’s still surprising to see how dramatic the adverse symptoms can be for others.

~

How amazing. I’d heard before that orangutans are the most intelligent, human-like of primates, but we’ve now seen an orangutan using medicinal herbs to treat a wound. (AJE)

Scientists saw the Sumatran orangutan named Rakus pluck and chew up leaves of a medicinal plant used by people throughout Southeast Asia to treat pain and inflammation. The adult male then used his fingers to apply the plant juices to an injury on the right cheek. Afterwards, he pressed the chewed plant to cover the open wound like a makeshift bandage.

I will tell anyone who stops to listen that most primates shouldn’t be in zoos, but I especially mean this for orangutans. And this just kinda emphasizes to me that they’re sapient intelligences who should be left free to grow and develop naturally, with dignity, agency, and respect.

Over time, I become more convinced that there is no real human exceptionalism; we’re just more complex and developed than most animals. But elephants mourn, crows use tools, and whales teach each other to attack yachts. There are cultures there. Intelligence. Consciousness.

I have fairly pragmatic attitudes about human use of livestock but I really, really don’t think we respect animals the way we should.

~

WaPo talks hammerhead worms. They pop up as a subject in my gardening groups a lot, and the consensus is generally that you should kill them. Not by cutting. That just helps them multiply.

Ways to kill a hammerhead worm include:

[Y]ou can kill the hammerhead flatworm by dropping it into a container and using one of these methods:

Keeping the container in the direct sun for several hours.
Sprinkling some table salt into the container.
Squirting some hand sanitizer into the container.
Placing the container in a freezer.
Adding soapy water into the container.

Apparently hammerhead worms aren’t *quite* as toxic as my gardening groups report, but try not to touch them too much. And no licking, ya weirdo.

Squirmies and crawlies are also worthy of life and respect, but this is one of the areas where my feelings are pragmatic. Hammerhead worms are invasive in North America. They threaten native life. Drop them in a murder bucket and make it quick, please.

In other agricultural news, the EPA is talking about banning acephate, a pesticide that was banned in the EU twenty years ago. (ProPublica) Yeah, let’s do that.

~

I really enjoyed reading this article about Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron as an anti-comfort movie. Spoilers for the movie ahoy, so I won’t excerpt it, but the message resonates with me. I am still eagerly awaiting it on streaming.

~

I’m done with Airbnb et al, but I do find the property decked out like the X-Men mansion (Variety) to be pretty charming. I’d spend so much time in the danger room.

~

Lawyers, Guns, & Money talks about how white people always oppose protest movements.

Regardless of the quality of the strategy or whether this is actually going to work or whatever, none of that matters much to the key point, which is that people oppose ALL forms of protest, no matter how peaceful or how not peaceful.

I truly had no idea that supporting free speech — ESPECIALLY organized protests — was so broadly unpopular among white people (my demographic). That’s just not how I grew up! I grew up with such respect for demonstrations and consider it part of my civic duty.

At first I thought, “Well my family of five is all in favor of protests, so we break the statistic.” Then I had the depressing thought, “That just means there’s three other families of five who all don’t support them.”

~

Why are we still talking about Kristi Noem? (The Guardian) I find this confusing. South Dakota isn’t one of the more influential states in the United States, and I do expect certain rural behaviors from folks in SD — like seeing dogs in a functional way that means you can shoot them if they don’t meet your standards, however unreasonable. We have family who are “shoot the dog who misbehaved” kind of rural-leaning. It’s not uncommon, I’m afraid. Harping on the story isn’t going to change anyone’s mind.

So I get that we sentimental dog lovers had to process the story about puppy Cricket for a while. But now we’re still covering Noem’s other errors and lies when she’s a state-level politician where few Americans live. I think it’s established she’s not going to be Trump’s VP pick. Giving her attention is just, well, giving her attention. It doesn’t seem to actually boost a Democratic position versus Republicans. It seems to just make polarization worse.

Oh, maybe I just explained it for myself. Guess it could also be click-based.

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Sara Reine

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Cautiously worried about bird flu, medical advancements, and emotional support alligator

2024-05-02 /

Today I pulled my 9-year-old into my cozy rocking chair (which is super-wide) so we could play a game on my phone together. I haven’t done that in a while. In this house, we all have our own devices. I don’t really like playing games with other people anyway. But it was extremely snuggly today, and I’m always amazed at how quickly he picks things up. He notices stuff I never do. He only needed about 1-2 minutes watching the game to grasp most of the rules.

It was nice snuggling. He’s been sick, so I was limiting contact to limit my own viral load. I think I did get the bug from him a bit. I was achy and exhausted yesterday. We’re both doing better though! So I got to refill my cup on Sunshine snugs.

Meanwhile I have been spending the vast majority of my time with 13yo by going on long walks. I like it because I have a hard time listening to people talk if we are just sitting around talking. Once I start walking, I can hear and absorb everything. I *want* to hear everything they say. It’s so frustrating how normally my attention wanders. This way, we get sun, we get movement, we get a real connection.

I’ve been saying walks are like medicine, because they are. My mental health is garbage if I don’t administer that medicine each day. I’ve noticed a significant impact on my kids too, so if I see they’re not feeling good, it’s time to put on shoes and get out there.

~

I’ve been watching the whole bird flu outbreak in American dairy cows. I took a week or two off buying milk while I waited for the FDA to confirm that there’s no live virus in dairy products, and it’s looking good. (Gizmodo via Quartz) Yesterday they announced their most extensive tests showed no live virus.

That doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods, though.

Bird flu is always a potentially serious threat in part because flu strains native to birds are less familiar to the immune system of humans and other mammals. Right now, these viruses can’t transmit well between people. But the longer that H5N1 is able to linger in cows, the greater the likelihood that some strains will adapt and become better at spreading between mammals, humans included. And the right assortment of mutations could turn a bird flu virus into a deadly and fast-spreading pandemic germ.

This is my main concern at the moment. I’ve been worrying about the Next Pandemic since we still never took the kind of systemic actions we needed against the Last Pandemic (like, broad clean air initiatives). I’ve expected it would be soonish because of climate change. This one comes from dreadful agricultural practices, though. My understanding is that cows got infected because they’ve been fed chicken crap en masse. The dairy farmers hoped this would mean antibiotics and steroids in the chickens doing double duty once they enter the cows, but it actually just made an outbreak.

I’ve had lots of bird flu articles tagged in my RSS reader. A couple other recent articles are not really alarming in regards to humans: Barn cats dying when they got bird flu from raw milk (Ars Technica), and a dolphin previously getting bird flu (Gizmodo).

But Digby’s Hullaballoo noted that it’s likely there’s already a lot of bird flu in human dairy workers. We aren’t testing for it seriously yet.

~

Sorry, I know that subject is grim. But I don’t feel like we should be afraid right now — just watchful. We are little dudes on a big planet. In our society, we are little more influential than cells in a body.

Balancing the grimness of More Pandemics is the fact we are learning a lot in medicine right now. Smithsonian Mag talks about personalized melanoma vaccines. It really seems like cancer tech is moving forward in leaps and bounds.

Plus, patients in the NHS are getting a life-changing drug for sickle cell anemia. (The Guardian)

On a not-medical level, the G7 nations have agreed to (mostly?) stop using coal by 2035. (Smithsonian Mag)

It doesn’t feel like we’re moving forward, but we really are. All the good and bad stuff happens at the same time. It always has.

~

What’s more high-tech dystopia than a drone designed to cover graffiti? (also Gizmodo)

A lot of things, honestly. I’m not talking much about college protests here because I don’t have any particular insights to add, but those are incredibly dystopian.

This article on Balloon Juice has a lot more useful stuff to say than I could muster.

Students wanted to be heard, and taken seriously, and you can do that independently of the ask. And it builds trust in the adminsitration so that if you do need to go to the demonstrators about a safety concern, they are more likely to believe that you have an actual safety concern. Instead of asking them to take an encampment down, can we move you over here where you’re still visible but aren’t blocking an evacuation route. We didn’t like the encampment, but the whole point of the encampment was that we didn’t like it. Not asking them to take it down is a soft way of saying ‘we respect your decision’. Trust has to be earned, and re-earned with every generation of students.

Basically it’s a perspective from a college administrator talking about what administrators can and should be doing about the protests on a very practical level, and none of it involves cops arresting students.

~

On the bright side, that 1864 anti-abortion law in Arizona has already been repealed. (AJE)

I saw lots of coverage of the law’s passage. I kinda hope I will see coverage of its repeal too? I just think folks need to know when the really egregiously bad stuff gets kicked to the curb.

~

If Biden’s administration has its way, cannabis is getting reclassified on the federal level. (NPR)

From the perspective of someone who is generally pro-weed but cannot have a healthy relationship with it:

Anything we can do to rectify the harms of the drug war is good. We need to stop punishing people for use of herb. We especially need to get people out of prisons for cannabis-related offenses.

But there’s probably gonna be a lot of cannabis use disorder for a while as we reclaim our social memory of safe cannabis usage. I won’t be the only person who bakes herself into a stupor, discovers you can get COPD from that, and has to quit the thing. A number thrown around in recovery groups is 1/5: that is to say, 20% of people can’t have a healthy relationship with it. It’s a lot like alcohol. Some folks drink lightly — no big deal — and then there’s people like me, who can overuse anything.

I predict there will be a dramatic spike in cannabis use disorder because it’s often marketed as a wonder drug, totally harmless. Give it a decade or two to start settling down and get treated with proper respect.

~

On a lighter note, a man has lost his emotional support alligator. (The Guardian) Someone let the gator loose while the human was elsewhere.

I just really, really don’t think humans should be keeping alligators as pets on any level. I’m sorry if the dude is sad. I think the gator is probably better off freed, though.

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Sara Reine

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Movie Review: Paranormal Activity (2007) ****

2024-05-01 /

Paranormal Activity is a simple movie taking place in a Los Angeles house, where a het couple has moved after their last place burned down. They think the woman, Katie, is haunted. The man, Micah, buys a camera to document it, and his footage is the movie we see.

This is another fun found-footage horror film that wouldn’t exist without The Blair Witch Project. This one was fairly seismic on its own scale. The production company did their best to make Paranormal Activity look ambiguously real-ish in a similar way. Traditional credits are eschewed for thanking the families of the main characters, for instance. The whole thing is shot like it’s really some douchebag boyfriend intruding on his traumatized girlfriend’s progressive demon possession.

I was the exact right age for this when it came out — nineteen years old and quite similar in appearance to Katie — but I thought this was wildly boring interspersed with semi-boring (but spooky) tension. I had no interest in the daytime scenes, and I totally missed the delight of the escalation. Rewatching this now, I’m not sure how I felt that way! I’d say I was sleeping through it, but I remember every scene.

It’s actually a very competently executed movie, all things considered. The best way to watch this — like many horror movies — is in a rowdy group with Strong Opinions. That means shouting when you see the demon has broken the picture glass directly over Micah’s face, throwing things at Micah when he’s put himself in-frame, and shrieking with delight when the bed covers move. You need to feed off one another’s energy. Paranormal Activity understands that horror is a group watch activity, and it feeds into it. The quiet that descends once they arrive at a new night, encouraging you to look closely for details like shadows, is just this side of masterful low-budget film making.

Plus, watching it now feels like a time capsule to 2006. I’m sure Katie and I both were dressed entirely by Old Navy. Every one of my richer friends’ houses looks like this McMansion they movie into. It’s Western American whiteness in a nutshell. I think even the demons are pretty much to be expected — whomst among us isn’t a Catholic being chased by demons, really?

The Real Horror Is Heterosexuality, in many ways. However unsafe Katie feels being stalked by a demon that set fire to her last home — and has been following her since childhood — she also feels unsafe with Micah, who doesn’t respect her. He doesn’t listen to anything he says. He tries to use the camera to film her in intimate times. Micah’s disrespect is, in many ways, necessary to the conceit of the film; if he were not so obsessed with his camera, we would not have all this footage.

This is one of many movies where I find myself asking whether men actually like women, especially the ones they’re in relationships with. Most interactions between them are overtly hostile before the demon even ramps up its activity. The thing is, it feels authentic. I have known so many couples like Micah and Katie. It’s not a challenge to suspend disbelief.

And if there’s anything to make you feel less secure when you’re being hunted by a demon, it’s knowing that nothing you say or do will change the behavior of your companion. That he will absolutely provoke the demon with a Ouija board. He will act like his masculinity is any defense and dismiss every concern. He won’t even be convinced it’s *actually* paranormal until the last fifteen minutes. It’s got that slippery, out-of-control feeling of a nightmare.

The ending is perfect for the setup. Wholesome, one might say!

It’s not really a great movie, but it’s not trying to be. Paranormal Activity is schlocky fun. It’s good for a sleepover or Halloween watch party. Remember to bring the Ouija board! Just don’t leave it unsupervised.

(image credit: Paramount Pictures)

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Sara Reine

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Art museum, GPS jamming, and fascism as usual

2024-04-29 /

I took my Little Sunshine to the art museum this weekend. Really, my spouse took kiddo to the museum; I came along and spent some time sketching the art while Spouse chased Sunshine around the exhibits. We only spent about an hour in total. Sunshine wasn’t as impressed by the changing exhibit this time as he was last time. I get it: last time, there were some really cool resin structures, wooden sculptures, and a room with videos projected on tumbleweeds. He liked the theme on immigrant heroes too. This time, it was just a lot of old-timey sketches and paintings.

The current exhibit was pleasing to me, though. It’s a lot of art drawn & painted by a man who traveled around Nevada and California around the turn of the 20th century. It’s always really cool to see very-familiar places a centuryish earlier. Some things haven’t changed all that much, though all the towns have grown. It feels especially cool to sketch something sketched by a dude who hasn’t been around in a hundred years. I like his earlier art. I like seeing my Nevada through his eyes.

I wonder if Sunshine will grow to have any Nevada pride. He is in a particularly rebellious little place where he prefers to identify himself by his Italian heritage (which, to him, means his dad’s side of the family). He associates America with a lot of the terrible political stuff that he’s seen in his limited memory, and he doesn’t want to even be Italian-American. Apparently he deliberately misspeaks when doing the Pledge of Allegiance at school too. I recognize a lot of myself in this, of course. One of my middle school teachers shepherded the law requiring we do the pledge in school. I blame(d) it on her. And I spent my school career refusing to do the pledge on account of Free Speech.

Over time, I’ve softened to Nevada, and I have more historic context on America that makes me feel…neutral? Aggressively neutral. It’s taken quite a while to get there. It means I’m much more entertained by an exhibit sentimental to historic Nevada than the 9-year-old clone version of myself.

I loved museums at his age though. I still do! I spent so much time at the state history museum. I’m further from that one now, but I did take my kids to the kids’ science museum a lot, and I’m happy to make the art museum a frequent visit for my little guy. I love watching him grow like this.

~

I spent a while watching a lot of TV, but I’ve mostly dried up on TV shows I need to watch at the moment.

My family lost their enthusiasm for the Greatest Show Ever, Doc Martin, so I’ve taken a break from episode synopses after finishing season 1. It’s always fun rewatching the beginning of a long-running show right after I finished it. I especially can’t resist doing this with Community, where the ending has a different cast and enough years between seasons that they age quite a bit. It’s sorta sad to think that this is going to be less common from this era of television; we just don’t get very-long shows as much anymore.

Lucifer was a much more uneven rewatch. It suffered dramatically when it was cancelled the first time; the truncated season that followed was actively bad. But the other seasons, once it was picked up by Netflix, planned for the shorter seasons and did a lot better. I still find that the switch in tone from its darker, more procedural first season to a family-oriented soap opera by the end just doesn’t suit my tastes. It does have a ridiculously romantic conclusion to the show. It ends superbly and thoroughly.

I’m currently watching Fallout, although I initially gave up on episode 2. It was just so slow. Even the action scenes were slow! But after episode 3ish, the lengths of the episodes get shorter, improving the pacing, so I don’t mind it as much. I’m not fond of most characters. I think I just don’t like this specific flavor of post-apocalyptic milieu, either. It strains credulity in a way that doesn’t make me want to suspend disbelief. That said, I’ve been enjoying all the filthy Ghoul fanfic. I like Walton Goggins! But I’m not remotely attracted to him! Until he’s a disgusting rotten noseless walking corpse doing weird rope bondage and fetish stuff with the young woman avatar, I guess. Monsterlovers win again.

I’ve also been playing tons of Fallout Shelter again (a mobile game where you build and maintain a vault), so it’s kinda fun half-ignoring the show while tormenting my lil vault dwellers. I couldn’t get into any of the other Fallout games, though. The franchise just doesn’t click with me.

~

In news relevant to perhaps only my 9-year-old, legendarily litigious Nintendo went after Valve and Garry’s Mod has to remove 20 years of Nintendo-related content. (Ars Technica)

~

Estonia has to close one of its airports for a while because of GPS jamming, which might be coming from Russia. (Lawyers, Guns, & Money)

~

Here’s an interesting, in-depth essay about the aesthetics of fascism and the rise of the current fascist movement seen in media. Thanks to Simon McNeil for taking the time to write this out.

I love Umberto Eco’s Ur-Fascism essay for its clarity, and this author also appreciates it.

Fascism is largely an aesthetic position. “Even though political regimes can be overthrown, and ideologies can be criticized and disowned, behind a regime and its ideology there is always a way of thinking and feeling, a group of cultural habits, of obscure instincts and unfathomable drives,” Eco says, and these cultural habits, these obscure instincts and unfathomable drives aren’t a political program exactly, they’re not an ethic nor even an anti-ethic. Rather, as I discussed in my essay on the concept of degeneracy, much of what underpins fascism is a sense of what is beautiful and, more critically, what is ugly. The fascist is, at the root of it all, somebody with an exceptionally powerful revulsion for ugliness and a very specific set of criteria for what makes something ugly.

I appreciate anyone who tries to break down Ur-Fascism a bit because it’s a very dense essay. A lot of the best anarchist reading is challenging, which sucks, but is kind of inevitable. The reasons for arriving at an anarchist position require understanding a lot from history and philosophy. This is one of the great challenges of social reform, in my opinion: the aesthetics of fascism will always be much more accessible and easier to market.

Anyway, there’s a lot more to the post than that, so it’s worth chewing on.

~

Trump is a powerful, virile strongman who cannot possibly sit in a cold courtroom because he’s old and fragile. (Digby’s Hullaballoo) This contradictory behavior is fully in line with the Ur-Fascism essay, if you ever get around to reading it.

Also from Digby: The unions are supporting Biden.

~

Nixon was advised to start monitoring CO2 levels back in 1971. (Ars Technica) We know that didn’t happen. Are you surprised?

~

I haven’t touched on the wave of massive student protests in support of Palestine, but it’s very interesting how it gives me perspective on a lot of contemporary American history. Here’s a bit about current protests from The Guardian. AJE shares photos of historic student protests at American universities.

I grew up only hearing sympathetic narratives surrounding student protesters. Now I’m hearing all the vitriol and activist loathing that fed into brutality against those protesters in modern day. History sure is a lot more nuanced when you’re living it.

~

Unsurprisingly, Idaho is seeing a lot of emergency flights for pregnant people. (NPR)

~

The Guardian pins long COVID cases in England and Scotland to about two million people.

~

Not cool at all: Grindr shared the HIV status of its members with third-party companies. (Ars Technica) I can’t even begin to put my utter revulsion into words.

~

I’ve been keeping an eyeball on Javier Milei’s rise in Argentina since I started doing these Sara Reads the Feed posts (scroll down the post a bit). The tl;dr is that he’s a bad-haired far-right populist. Massive protests against his austerity measures have felt inevitable, so here are some photos of protests against university cuts from AJE.

~

Thank Horus that George Santos dropped his current run for office. (The Guardian) The guilty pleasure of a hilarious sassy gay Republican grifter really does belong in a sitcom, not on the government payroll.

~

Jennifer Aniston is working on a remake for 9 to 5. (Variety) I’m going to remain neutral on this for the moment. It’s not a movie that demands remaking, but the message is sadly just as relevant now, and I support women getting up to shit. I guess I’ll wait to see how it goes.

~

Warm sibling bonds in early adulthood make for better health and happiness as you age. (NPR)

~

I really consider this one of the less threatening uses of AI, since it’s so targeted and specific, but… Someone tried to frame a coworker by making an AI generated version of his voice say bad things. (Ars Technica) It’s remarkable because we’ve all seen this coming. And it requires a very low level of technological expertise to do it. Yet it’s also very easy to trace if someone isn’t tech savvy (the dude wasn’t using VPNs and whatnot), and its impacts are extremely local. The environmental damage of AI generation is much further-reaching. That’s not even considering what it does to the labor market or the quality of output it produces.

~

Smithsonian Mag talks about the marriage practices of the ancient Avar empire. This was a society where widows were generally remarried within their husband’s family — like, her husband died, so she remarried his brother.

The Avars, once a nomadic people, migrated from Central Asia to Eastern Europe in the 6th century and conquered significant territories, including parts of present-day Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. At one point, their fearsome empire almost took control of Constantinople. […]
In their analysis, the researchers discovered that Avar women had more diverse DNA backgrounds than men. They also found that while men were buried with their mothers and fathers, women’s parents were not found in the same cemeteries.

This leads the experts to believe that Avar culture practiced patrilocality, in which women leave their communities after marriage and relocate with or near their new husband’s community. The study also shows that women shared a “steppe” genetic ancestry (where the Avars originated), meaning they were likely not part of a conquered people.

~

Apparently the MCU isn’t having a hard time because it’s movies sucks, but because the kids don’t support them properly. (Variety) Yeah okay lmao.

~

The Guardian shares award-winning crab jokes. lol irl.

Also from The Guardian: Giant pandas are getting a residency at the San Diego Zoo! Americans looove it when China lets us borrow pandas. We love pandas.

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Sara Reine

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Movie Review: Moon (2009) ****

2024-04-28 /

In Moon, Sam Bell is an astronaut solely responsible for mining helium3 from the titular Moon. But after a crash checking on one of the harvesters, he discovers another version of himself.

Everything I find worth discussing in the review demands basically full spoilers. It’s a simple story. You shouldn’t read this review until you watch the movie.

Spoilers ahead!

This is a surprisingly sweet, lightweight science fiction movie about corporations, cloning, and acceptance. The lunar mining corporation cloned the one original astronaut, Sam Bell, and kept hundreds (or more) of him in stock so they’d never need to train another. Each Sam works for three years. The clones are not designed to survive beyond this point. They degrade in the last month of the contract rapidly.

Whether using clones is *actually* an effective cost-control measure isn’t clear, nor does it seem to be important. Simply digging out the facilities to store all those clones would be humongously expensive. I have to think Sam Bell was a uniquely good choice for solo work on the lunar surface; the relative ease with which he handles the surprises of the story suggest he’s way more emotionally rugged than I am. So maybe they just wanted to keep the perfect guy as long as possible.

I think it’s safe to say that’s all meant to be symbolic more than anything.

Moon doesn’t spend much time grappling with the corporate morality on-screen. That said, the distinctiveness and humanity of each clone is likely meant to imply this choice is wrong.

The director and writer, Duncan Jones, could have chosen to go somewhere a lot more psychological with this. Marital troubles due to Alpha Sam’s personality flaws are only ever touched upon. Once we’ve learned the full truth of Sam1 and Sam2’s roles in the mining operation, there isn’t much time spent processing the enormity of their limited lives. Minor clashes between Sam1 and Sam2 are resolved with some annoyance and self-struggling, but it doesn’t reach the level of real conflict. I think I’d be interested in the version of this movie where the push-and-pull between the two Sams makes them develop into a better version of Sam overall.

But that’s not the story Moon is telling. These things are placed just out of reach of the story.

Instead, it’s a cozy narrative told in a sparse environment with only one real actor ever on screen; Sam Rockwell’s charisma is effective for keeping us entertained the whole time. He does well depicting all the facets of himself. In a way, this narrow lens feels like it belongs on a stage more than it belongs on the movie screen. I can easily imagine the 00s retrofuturistic moon base as a set. Is Broadway listening to me? (No.)

The outcome is a warmly sad story to watch, though — if only because of how tenderly Sam and Gertie, the robot employed in Sam’s care, come to tend one another. Gertie’s an asset of the corporation as much as Sam. It’s complicit in gaslighting the clones throughout the course of their three-year contract. But once the veil is lifted for Sam1 and Sam2, Gertie becomes an accomplice to them, seeking to provide the best care possible: Gertie gives them answers and passwords and anything else they need to live their fullest little clone lives.

As Sam1 degrades, Sam2 goes from treating him with irritation to sweetness. He tries to keep him warm and comfortable. He seeks a way to help Sam1 get to Earth, until realizing that won’t work. Watching Sam2 try to keep a hat on Sam1, shivering from organ failure, is the most bittersweet display of compassion. Obviously each of these clones doesn’t deserve the false semi-life that has been foisted upon them, though the movie doesn’t make too much drama about it, either.

A soul seems to be implicit in the clone Sams. When Sam1 begins degrading, he hallucinates his adult daughter-on-Earth repeatedly, which is someone he could only envision if he had some kind of connectivity to his Earthbound family. Sam2 also prays when he first gets into a pod intending to escape. These are spiritual men. Knowing they were manufactured as adults doesn’t change anything.

Ultimately, the clones empower themselves to choose their own fates. Sam1 accepts the end of his contract (and life) to spare two other clones premature death; Sam2 finds his way to Earth to live a life. Travel, maybe. Meet the daughter Alpha Sam fathered on Earth.

While I find that the simplicity of the story leaves me with more question than answers, science fiction is often at its best when it leaves you thinking, and Moon is one of the best. It’s aged well in fifteen years. I think it will remain timeless in its way, and leave generations of cinemaphiles asking questions about humanity.

(image credit: Sony Pictures Classics)

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Sara Reine

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Movie Review: Love Lies Bleeding (2024) *****

2024-04-28 /

In Love Lies Bleeding, a dirtbag lesbian gym owner falls hard for a bisexual bodybuilder heading to a physique competition in Vegas. They share steroids, they fall in love, and then crime happens.

Before seeing this movie, I heard it described as genre-defying. That is nearly true. It would be fair to call this a crime movie with noir elements, too.

I posit that this is a queer wlw fantasy movie, almost exclusively. When I say fantasy, I mostly don’t mean fantasy elements (there is no Gandalf). I mean that this is a story written to please a lesbian, filmed to please a type of lesbian, depicting a lesbian story mostly through metaphor.

WLW here means woman-loving-woman, inclusive of those who are bisexual or lesbian — or the straight woman intimate with other women, which is more common than one might think. This is a broad category of human. The types of stories that speak to these humans will be as diverse and broad as the humans themselves.

I am a (sometimes) (often) wlw from the American West. I grew up a dirtbag in a small town, and I recognize this story. (Tag yourself: Are you the dirtbag enabler, the muscle mommy, or the flaky pasty one who’s always on something?)

A couple of broad lesbian stereotypes apply here. Have you heard of the U-Haul lesbian? The one where a couple of wlw meet and are instantly head-over-heels, lifelong commitment, ride-or-die? Yeah. That one. You also get the thing where wlw relationships can be extremely messy. There is the betrayal of realizing that your woman got dicked down, even though there’s nothing *technically* wrong with that.

Assumed boundaries are frequently, easily violated.

The size of wlw emotions are somehow bigger — perhaps because female socialization means that you’re likelier to have two people in contact with genuine emotion than you are in a het relationship. When things go wrong, they are very, very wrong. And when things go well, it is euphoria purer than any drug (sometimes there are also drugs).

What is a lesbian fantasy?

It’s the fantasy of men facing consequences: the man who hurts a woman you love, the man whose sperm helped bring you to this Earth, the man who is a fucking cop. It’s wishing so hard that you could kill your girlfriend’s girlfriend that you do it. It’s being able to recognize that women are tuned into the reality of pleasure more than any guy, who’s more in love with his dick. And it’s becoming so full of the love injected into you by your woman, you grow huge from it, capable of destroying anything, running away from everything, and being free.

Only in this context does Love Lies Bleeding make sense to me.

It’s a delirious, surreal piece of cinema noir that we’re lucky to have. This lens on womanly pleasure is uncommon, to say the least. You get dykes you don’t often see, and you see them well, writ with glorious artistic metaphor.

Even though I felt the energy flagged in the last minutes of the movie, I still left it thinking, “I am so happy I watched that. I really *liked* that.” I could criticize it by saying that it dropped the tension entirely, but I think what actually happens is that the climax isn’t when plot events peak, or when tension peaks, but when the women get what they needed the whole time. After that, cleaning up loose ends (including someone who seemed like a Big Villain) is just some simple housekeeping.

It’s a happy ending because we deserve a happy ending, not because it would be realistic. It’s a lesbian fantasy. Let us have it.

(image credit: Warner Bros.)

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Sara Reine

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