Yellow Flags

Box-Beds

I love getting to lie down in an MRI with my little ear plugs in and the thrum of the magnet (except for the part where I'm always afraid I have some secret piece of metal hiding somewhere in my body), so the much more socially acceptable (to have in your bedroom anyway) box-bed is a recurring thing I think about - #bedgoals for real. I started thinking again about how much I love them because I learned about the related Dutch bed closet (bedstede). In my ideal house, I'd have two bedrooms - one that's a screened-in porch with a ceiling fan for summer hot-sleeping and one with either a box-bed or bed closet for cozier times.

The Dinkus

A thing I didn't know had a name until recently, but of course it does (and what a delightful name) - the line of three spaced asterisks or bullets used to separate one text section from another (not as hard or as formal as a chapter break, but clearly signaling a change of time or scenery) is called a dinkus. I was looking for a dinkus for this site and decided to go with the classic for now. Also, I keep pointing at them and saying "Dinkus!" to myself when I see one in books, like the Leo DiCaprio pointing at the TV meme.

Sound Design in Conclave

I saw Conclave a few weeks back and it's visuals and sound design, particularly the latter, have stayed on my mind. If it doesn't win Best Sound at the Oscars, I may rage (not really, but I'll definitely roll my eyes). Hollywood Reporter has a great interview with Ben Baird, the sound designer of the movie. The last film I thought really nailed sound was Anatomy of a Fall and this movie went the opposite way - it was in a lot of ways a really "noisy" film, but with such immaculate care taken in all the choices that the sound very much added to its atmosphere, emotions, and tone, rather than being a distraction (or, worse, being forgettable).

Planning

I did a 30-day writing challenge last month (writing for 1 hour every day in November) and wanted a way to track myself/keep accountability, so decided to get myself a planner. I've also started trying to actually do things with my life instead of just sitting around in my free time, so I figured it'd also help me keep track of my events, appointments, activities, whatever. I'm working this year on being more high-maintenance. I always knew I was, but the world often seems to value being easy going and "Cool With Whatever(TM)," so I suppressed my Very Specific Needs for a very long time. Anyway, I've been on a hunt for The Perfect Planner (for me) for a couple months now, in hopes of choosing one before 2025 starts. Most have too much damn stuff in them - I really only want a page for every day to write down the couple of things I do every day/anything unique I'm going to do that day and a "done" list for other random tasks I accomplish in a day. A generic habit tracker would also be nice. I keep a wall calendar for monthly overview stuff, so don't even really need that. I even toyed around with creating a custom one, but even the custom ones weren't custom enough. I eventually designed my dream one with my very basic graphic design skills, but let's be real, I'm too cheap to get it custom printed.

Because I needed SOMETHING for November, I quickly bought this undated planner from Ban.do and it's pretty damn near perfect. My only real complaint is the ring binding, which I hate having to navigate when I'm writing towards it. When I run through that one, I'm probably going to switch to this one, because I love the layout, it's customizable enough for me to have everything I want, it's cheap, and I can buy it at the local stationery shop that I love. It's relatively no frills, but I think I can make it cool. This much more expensive one also has a killer layout, and I'm thinking hard about it. It's undated, so I can run through one of the cheaper luddite ones maybe and then see if I want an upgrade? idk idk.

Nosferatu (1922)

I saw Nosferatu with live musical accompaniment this week, and it was a real feast for the eyes. The shaded black and white made all my neurons light up and wiggle around. I found a lovingly screencapped version, in the original German, over here and spent some time scrolling through frames this morning. Mostly I wanted to see the "werewolf" again. Also hoping to catch one of the showings where it's synced up to Radiohead sometime next October. I also likely will not be able to restrain myself from watching Shadow of the Vampire again soon.

Music

Listened to "Waiting for You" by Charly Bliss and got sucked back into listening to the whole album twice. For about the fiftieth time since it came out.

The Perfect Jacket

I've been trying and failing to buy a shirt jacket (or if you're of the portmanteau persuasion, a shacket) for three years. As usual when I try to participate in a trend, I have an idea of the perfect version of whatever clothing item it is and then can't find anything like what's in my head out here in the real world. This year I was determined, so spent a few afternoons scraping around for one that was close enough (trying not to let the perfect be the enemy of the great). This one from Brixton ended up being what I ordered. Here are several more that look great but I couldn't quite commit to hitting the "add to cart" button. I wanted rich fall tones and/or primary colors, which was surprisingly hard to find this year. Oh, and as usual I'm allergic to spending more than $100 on any one item of clothing, but I broke my rule because of how much I like that Brixton coat.

A Book Club for Your Ears

One of my favorite podcast genres is "people you think are funny and/or smart talk about a movie/book/TV show." The universe has seen fit to give me a double dose of pleasure, because Shelved by Genre is doing a unit on one my favorite authors, Mercedes Lackey (specifically The Last Herald Mage trilogy). I've read most of the Valdemar books at least twice and damn if I ain't back in and ready to reread at least seven more of them.