what i'm reading:
Why Boredom Is Interesting
Though similar in many ways, interest and enjoyment are distinct: Interest requires cognitive resources to make sense of complex situations, whereas enjoyment results from simple, familiar things that have been rewarding in the past. So something can be interesting but not enjoyable (e.g., a Holocaust documentary) or enjoyable but not interesting (e.g., mindless cell-phone games).
“Why Boredom Is Interesting.” - Erin C. Westgate
Westgate was cited in this article about people having spiritual awakenings and delusions of grandeur induced by ChatGPT.
what i'm listening to:
"You've Had Me Everywhere" - Of Montreal
A few years ago I bought two Xiu Xiu albums (Girl With A Basket of Fruit and Ignore Grief) from Polyvinyl and they offered to throw in a mystery CD for $1. Sending me UR FUN feels like a very pointed statement to me by whoever was fulfilling my order, like: loosen up, edgelord.
what i'm watching:
Rukus (2018)
We were so packed I could feel the twitching of the thigh of the person seated next to me at room party, an apartment-turned-gallery brimming with some 30-odd critters cross-legged on the floor or cuddling on the mattress. We sat like this for the duration of the film screening, the feature presentation Rukus preempted by two shorts: "The Trade" and "FERAL AUDACITY!!!"— all wildly different movies, but sharing a common Furry lineage, like breeds of dogs incomparable in all qualities but still somehow identifiable as a common genus.
By the time Rukus comes on, the sun is setting and room party is sinking into blue. Rainbow LEDs gently cycle in the hallway beside the flat-screen. I overhear someone say, "I watch Rukus when I need to make myself cry," and someone hits play.
Rukus doesn't lie when you wish it would lie. It's a black comedy, a tragedy, and a time capsule that was never buried. It gets its wires crossed and crosses lines: lines of propriety, lines of fact and fiction, today and yesterday, love and hate.
Talking about why making Rukus took a decade, Brett Hanover said it had to change as he changed, grow as he grew. The process of maturation is evident in the film's frankness, its willingness to show its chief subjects' rough sides and struggles. Rukus— the person— echoes again and again in crummy camcorder footage shared with Hanover as part of a school assignment. We see them checking themself out in the mirror, smoking in the back of a car, looking happy. That these shots repeat are an indication that this is how Hanover would like to remember Rukus, but no one makes a feature-length film about placid, untroubled memories.
Hanover tries to embody Rukus's fictional universe, their magnum opus of pen-and-paper sketches posted to FurAffinity and storylines dumped in AIM chats, but it doesn't work. Things fall apart. The story is incomplete, and it will never resolve. This is part of the struggle we watch Hanover work through in the film. After a person is gone, we have to struggle to accept that we'll never know what it was all about. Rukus seems to accept this, and resolves instead to give Rukus's world a worthy send-off.
Watch Rukus on the Internet Archive
something i liked:
room party at Bunker Project
room party was really fucking awesome. Seeing this pittypongo piece in person is amazing. It's huge. It's gorgeous. I've got an outsidewolves risograph waiting to be framed. I got to shake hands with paul peng. It was a great time.
I've spent years lurking on these furry artists, quietly ♥️-ing their work. The art at this show leans weird in a way I really cling to. I'm so happy this even exists, and that I was able to go.
I've sunk myself into a psychosocial debt and the only way to dig my way out of it is to spend as much of my life as possible around transgender furries.
something i hated:
smoking cessation hypnosis scam
I begrudgingly admit I like seeing Pennsylvania from the highway. I like the mountains and the depressing little towns. I like the adult video stores and nudie bars encrusting US-22 W. I like scanning through the Christian and Country stations to see if I can still get a whiff of WXPN. I like the enormous custom-made Trump banners and the yard signs begging him to bring coal mining back to Centralia.
I like it because it's desperate and melancholy, and I hate it because it's a death machine.
On a station playing 70s/80s hits I heard an ad (probably after "Lovergirl" by Teena Marie) that was something like... "I can't believe how easy it was to quit!" It went on and on like that, "no cravings", "no weight gain", then the guy came in with the buried lede: it's a hypnosis seminar, happening at a conference at a chain hotel in Nowhere, Pennsylvania.
It's just a guy with a website selling desperate boomers on hypnosis to cure their addictions. In terms of grifts currently running in this country it's insignificant, but it's so insidious that there's a parasite for every ailment.
a picture:
A painting by patrick totally and a papercutting by focus being shown at room party
next week...
the kansas episode