[A Pleasurable Headache] When something's good it's never gone
Updates
The short story mentioned previously (lets call it Project Greenfingers) continues to plague me. I'm trying to adhere to my own mantra here of "Trust the process". I know at some point this thing will unlock itself, probably whilst I'm halfway down a forest trail or buying toilet roll at the supermarket. But, until that moment comes, frustrations abound.
What does everyone else do when they hit these walls?
Links
The invisible addiction: is it time to give up caffeine?
A pretty decent long read in it's own right, this Guardian article is an excerpt from Michael Pollan's latest book (This Is Your Mind on Plants: Opium-Caffeine-Mescaline by Michael Pollan).
The piece tracks the cultural history of coffee in the UK, its place in everyday life as well as why we should probably all just cut back on the stuff.
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Shako in America
https://shelfdust.com/2021/06/08/shako-in-america/
A tremendous piece at ShelfDust by Tegan O'Neil on the cultural differences between American and British Comics. Tegan uses all time 2000AD favourite Shako (the only bear on the CIA Death List) as the lens to which to view these differences.
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How Twitter can ruin a life
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22543858/isabel-fall-attack-helicopter
On Isabel Fall, twitter hate mobs, and a kind of death.
"In January 2020, not long after her short story “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” was published in the online science fiction magazine Clarkesworld, Fall asked her editor to take the story down, and then checked into a psychiatric ward for thoughts of self-harm and suicide."
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Horror in the Britcom: Alan Partridge’s Nor(folk) Horror
https://www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk/television/horror-in-the-britcom-alan-partridges-norfolk-horror/
Horrified Magazine is fairly new to me, a site focusing on British horror that has some cracking posts unders its belt already. In the piece above, A.J Black explores aspects of folk horror and the weird that are present in the dark tragedy Steve Coogan's very British creation, Alan Partridge.
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The Tin Man Gets His Heart: An Oral History of ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’
https://www.theringer.com/movies/2021/6/30/22555687/terminator-2-judgement-day-t2-oral-history
Another oral history from The Ringer, this time the SFX/action juggernaut that is T2. Amazing, if only for this line from Arnie:
"Several times I read something that I had no fucking idea what he was talking about. I said, “What is polyalloy?”
Also, talking of Arnie, please do check out Pod Action Hero by friends Gav & Jamie. Long time readers will know Gav did the art for Disconnect, and Jamie is a fantastic artist in his own right. My podcast listening seems to have dropped off a cliff recently (remember commutes?), but I've watched enough movies with Gav & Jamie to know there will be laughs aplenty.
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Right, I'm off to peer through my fingers for 90 minutes, hoping against hope that England can beat one of the best Italian sides to grace a football field in years. See you in two!
Cue the John Barnes rap
