#nick of the woods

[demi-shoggoth]

2023 Reading Log, pt 6

I have read a lot less this year than in the last couple of years. I'm not going to beat my previous record of 129 books, that's for sure. But I feel like I've hit a decent stride of quality over quantity with this batch (also, one of them is over 600 pages long)

26. The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters, edited by Jeffery Andrew Weinstock. For anyone who is remotely interested in either monsters or literature, this book is a must-read. Yes, I know it’s an A-Z encyclopedia format and is more than 600 pages long. You can skip around, or read it in chunks. This book is the perfect tool for thinking with monsters, and is an excellent reference tool for using monsters intelligently in a project, or just as a collection of “oh, I should check that out”. It’s not perfect. All kaiju are lumped together under “Godzilla”, which barely gets two pages. Pokemon gets a single, very dismissive, paragraph. On the other hand, the entry for Harry Potter is ridiculously long and very fannish, and the “HP Lovecraft, Monsters in” article ignores Lovecraft’s racism entirely (because it’s written by ST Joshi, who else?). My biggest complaint is the lack of a general Mad Scientist entry—mad scientists are the monster of the 20th century, and both psychopaths and witches get generic entries as well as specific examples. My two biggest highlights are “Women, Monstrous”, which is a college level course in institutional misogyny and how it has been celebrated by some authors and subverted by others; and "Nick of the Woods", which is possibly the most influential American novel that has been almost entirely forgotten in the modern era. You can draw a direct line from Nick of the Woods to everything from Marvel movies to Wounded Knee.

27. Tasting History by Max Miller, with Ann Volkwein. “Tasting History with Max Miller” is one of my favorite YouTube series, and the book of the show doesn’t disappoint. It’s beautiful, with color photos of the food and images of historical characters and events. Most of the recipes come from existing episodes, and so the stories therein are familiar, but not told identically, and there are some that have new lore to go with old recipes. Or lore covered in the show, but a different recipe because the one that was made for the video wasn’t very good. Also, my copy is signed! Max Miller came to a local book fair, so I got to hear a book talk and then get my copy signed afterwards. And that was… two months ago? My reading really has slowed down!

28. Birds: Myth, Lore and Legend by Rachel Warren Chadd and Marianne Taylor. This book collects legendry about birds from around the world, and compares the stories that different cultures tell about the same animal with the animal’s actual ecology and behavior. A fair amount of the stories were new to me, which I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting the science to be as well! For example, the book talks about a paper that suggests that lyrebird foraging is important for reducing wildfires, as they help to break up mats of eucalyptus leaves and encourage decomposition. Also, as can probably be expected in a book about birds, there’s a lot of very nice photography.

29. The Cat’s Meow by Jonathan Losos. Losos is an evolutionary biologist (he’s the guy doing all of the studies with convergent evolution in Caribbean lizards) who got the domestic cat bug, and this is his book about the evolution of domestic cats. It’s written in a very readable style and goes into quite a bit of depth on how we know what we know. So individual scientists and breeders are profiled for topics like, which population of wildcats do domestic cats descend from? How does the behavior of feral cats in the Australian Outback differ from feral cats in rural Georgia? How is a new breed developed from a single individual? Losos also shares plenty of anecdotes about his own cats, as any loving cat owner would, and shares his “million dollar idea” with the reader. Saber toothed housecats, bred for both long canine teeth and a calm, indoor-friendly disposition.

30. Iberian Monsters by Javier Prado. This was a birthday present from my girlfriend @abominationimperatrix. The book is an illustrated collection of Iberian bogeys specifically—monsters designed to scare children into doing X or avoiding Y. At least half of the monsters in here are altogether new to me, and each entry often discusses multiple related monsters, with the “headliner” getting a full page illustration. Three things that jumped out to me. 1) How many parallels there are between the monsters of Spain and the monsters in Spanish colonies, like Latin America and the Philippines. I mean, that’s logical, but since I knew less about Spain’s monsters, I didn’t see the connections. 2) The large number of monsters that are based on historical individuals. Mostly soldiers and bandits, but also a watchmaker and an anti-fascist writer. 3) The story that scared me the most as a little kid was “Tailypo”… and there’s a variant in here that’s even worse. You know, for kids!

[floristmatt]

🙏🏼

[egophiliac]

HELLOOOO HAVE YOU SEEN LILIA'S DORM CARD YETTTT

personally, what made me most gleeful about the update news is that the part 2 description implies that they forgot to invite Malleus to Lilia's farewell party. god yes rub that salt into the wound, Monday can't come soon enough

[hrhprincegalitzine]

Nicholas Galitzine in The Watcher in the Woods (2017)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Alex Kaplan at MMFA:

Multiple far-right figures and social media users — including white nationalists — have praised Project 2025, a comprehensive transition plan organized by right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation to guide a future Republican presidential administration toward staffing extremists and implementing a far-reaching right-wing agenda. Among the plan’s contributors is Richard Hanania, who was revealed last year as an anonymous author of white supremacist content online and who has continued to appear on white nationalist programs. [...]

Project 2025 contributor Richard Hanania, whom JD Vance previously called a “friend,” anonymously wrote online for white nationalist sites — and continued to associate with white nationalists after his activity was discovered

On July 29, USA Today reported that some contributors of Project 2025 have a “trail of racist writings, activity,” including Richard Hanania, who previously spent years contributing to white nationalist sites using a pseudonym. The article also named failed Virginia GOP Senate candidate Corey Stewart, who told a crowd in 2017 that he was proud to stand next to a Confederate flag. According to USA Today, at least three contributors have also pushed the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, including Michael Anton, a former senior national security official in the Trump administration. [USA Today, 7/29/24]

Multiple far-right influencers, including white nationalist Richard Hanania, have given praise to Heritage’s Project 2025 by calling it “the best personnel database.”

[w3bkinz-t0yb0x]

yo gabba gabba guest appearances

[fitbearcatcher]

Nick Pulos showing his undercover erection

[floristmatt]

things nick says

[aprill-99]

I love the characters whose perceptions of their own powers and abilities and personalities are all completely fucked by their own context.

Prince Zuko for example: The guy goes around like “wow is me. I am such a failure of a Fire Bender” for three whole seasons of television.

Babe, no. It’s just that the only 3 people on the entire planet who are better at it than you all live in your house.

Obi-Wan Kenobi only thinks he’s a less powerful Jedi because his constant companions are essentially the demigod descendants of an Eldritch Horror running the galaxy. Everyone knows else, including the Eldritch Horror Spawn, think you’re in the top 10 to ever live.

I could go on, but the main point is that I live for the moments when a character who is constantly down on themselves off-handed mentions something the other characters know to be near impossible and have their Elle Woods moment when questioned.

“What, like it’s hard?”

Yes, yes my guys, gals, and non-binary folk. Yes it is hard.

You’ve just trained yourself to think that you had to succeed at everything right up to the lines of the impossible and perfect because you spent a lifetime watching very particular people calmly go skipping right over it.

You are now hyper-competent and should maybe look in to getting some therapy before we all inevitably turn to you to survive the on-coming End of Days.

[what-is-going-on-im-confused]

wanted to reread radio silence but didn't have a bookmark so I spent three hours making one :3

[d-criss-news]

officialbroadwayworld: If you could sing show tunes with any artist, who would it be? From @ladygaga to Meryl Streep, watch these Broadway stars answer the question at @elsiefest!

[datshitrandom]

Darren Criss + friends | 6/30 days idol challenge

[glimeres]

Joanna Gleason and the Original Broadway Cast of Into The Woods in the recording studio, 1987 Phoography by Nick Sangiamo

[citizenscreen]

Natalie Wood, Dennis Hopper and Nick Adams making dinner in 1965.

[a-vicious-faithless-angel]

Da mechaaaaa [and a few other things] <3