Library Haul

I’m back in the United States which means I’ve checked out an inappropriate amount of books and movies from the library.

Here’s what they are:

Books:

• White Negroes: When Cornrows were in Vogue… and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation, Lauren Michele Jackson
• Women who Run with Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, Clarissa Pinkola Estes
• Fantastic Women: 18 Tales of the Surreal and Sublime from Tin House
• Forty Stories, Donald Barthelme
• In the Gloaming: Stories, Alice Elliott Dark
• The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations, Toni Morrison
• A Village in a Valley, Beverley Nichols

 

Movies:

• Pick of the Litter
• Becoming Astrid
• Cold War
• Good Manners
• Land of Mine
• Room 237
• Maria by Callas
• Mandy
• Night Comes On
• Shadow (the one from last year)
• You Were Never Really Here
• Miss Hokusai
• Prospect
• November
• L’Amant Double

Links 6/4

Due to a weekend-trip hiatus (NYC was great, thanks), this links post is a bit later than usual.  Coincidentally, many of these links seem to have a bit of an LGBTQ theme.
Happy Pride!

Let’s get the smell stuff out of the way first:

• Auklets are a bird species in which males demonstrate fitness not only by very fancy and sexy crests, but seemingly also by emitting a strong tangerine scent, research finds.
• Study finds that activation of a certain smell receptor speeds the progression of prostate cancer, suggesting new treatment methods via blocking of the receptor.
• Department stores reevaluate traditional beauty and fragrance marketing techniques as the beauty industry changes.

All the feels:

• One of the best things about the cultural shift toward acceptance of LGBTQ lifestyles (beyond thousands of people being able to live their truth) is the uptick in adorable stories like this.
• This animated short made me cry.
• If babies wrote travel reviews, too funny.

Film thoughts:

• You may have hard of the Post-Western- are we living in the age of the Post-Hero?
• DC vs Marvel action scenes (and why Marvel’s are so much better). Despite not being a fan of either company, I thought this was a very interesting analysis.
• The Power of the Vampire Myth
• Why Solo isn’t doing as well as previous Star Wars films.

Current events:

• A comedy bit about Mamoudou Gassama, France’s immigrant hero (but mostly about the French).
• Meghan Markle, Prince Harry, and my own interracial relationship.

Odds and Ends:

• The ‘twink’ controversy: Why can’t black men be twinks? and Can men be objectified? A response to the ‘twink’ controversy.
• Mental health is a journey: five lessons learned from treatment.
• How to get ride of clutter
• Two lovely children’s books: Prince and Knight and Julian is a Mermaid.
• Oh no.

Words words words

Happy February!

I’ve been having a weirdly emotional week- and I say weirdly because there’s not really much going on that should be causing me to be such a mess- which has resulted in posting being essentially nil.

In the interest of actually putting something up with a minimum of effort, here’s an update of my list of words. Bonus points if you can pick out the ones inspired by my moodiness!

• ineffable
• porpoise
• chamois: I knew this was a leather but apparently it’s also a cute goat. I hope the two aren’t related but they probably are.
• mildew
• mope
• tenacity
• veracity
• morose
• scallop
• marabou: Another word that I think of as being a clothing material term (one that makes me think of retro boudoirs and peignoirs and wearing heeled slippers around the house) but that is also/was originally an animal term (i.e. the marabou stork)

 

• malin: cunning, clever, malignant
• tournesol: sunflower
• pépin: seed
• néréides: fifty sea nymph daughters of Nereus, the old man of the sea, in Greek mythology. Also a jewelry brand. Also a family of clam worm. (Do not google image).
• fourre-tout: catch-all

Names I Shouldn’t Name Babies

I guess I just need more cats…

I have a long list (Okay, if I’m being brutally honest here I have Excel spreadsheets) of my favorite baby names, because onomastics and naming has been one of my obscure interests since middle school.
Collecting names that long, you end up with some pretty odd favorites. So I thought I would post a list of names even I would hesitate to saddle a child with (a lot of the names I enjoy would I think set off red flags for others- Edwidge, Ludovica, Odysseo, Faisal- and yes, I did choose those names because they’re some of the hardest to get behind) but this list is for the really out there, or otherwise unacceptable.

Friday Fun Links 4/21

Converting these to a weekly (rather than monthly) installment was the right idea.

Because there’s a lot of cool things that I want to talk about, but I also don’t want to inundate anyone.
Firstly, the big cool thing that’s happening in my life: my last ballroom dance show is today, probably my last one ever since I don’t really anticipate continuing with it after college.  I’m really excited (especially because I have a lot of very sweet family members and friends who have decided to come!), not so nervous (although maybe I should be!), and I’ll post with links to videos once they’re up (and if I don’t mess up in a very embarrassing way- but maybe even if I do).

I kind of swing wildly back and forth between treating myself and being absolutely austere and weirdly self-denying. I’m trying to find a nice middle road while simultaneously training myself out of excessive stress- by buying myself a nice little treat every time I get through something that made me anxious or was a ‘big deal’ (like a job interview, a big test, a deadline, or, you know, a ballroom show).  Should I write a list at some point of my mini self-gifts? I’m planning on it.

I also have succeeded in dragging a close friend down the fragrance rabbi hole (well, he’s made his first order from Surrender to Chance, so celebration might be a bit premature- but I think not 😉 ). But more on that later.

Flower Boys

We give girls flower names all the time but boys are really rarely named after botanical things- particular botanical things as frilly and fecund as flowers.  Even though when you get down to it, flowers have both lady-parts and man-parts.

Not that I’m advocating naming your young boy something like Candytuft. Don’t name a girl Candytuft either.  Or Ranunculus.

Candytuft and Ranunculus aside, I think there are profound unplumbed depths in flower names. Especially for boys and especially in English, because I don’t know about where you are, but America is very annoyingly anti-feminine.
Flower names can be both sensitive and strong, so in the interest of equal opportunity naming, here are some of my favorites that I think would suit little boys (and eventually men and granddads) to a tee.