Some media
I consumed some media that wasn't Minecraft lately! Some of it was entertainment, some bordered on art, I will be referring to none of it as "content." Side note, I have a lot of thoughts about Minecraft and I will write them down sometime.
Movies
The Sheep Detectives
I have come to loathe Hugh Jackman, mostly because of his associations with say, Jared and Ivanka, and how much that makes his borderline-irresistable charm seem even more surface than the average actor's. But, in his defense, he does die early in this movie. The rest of the strikes against it — mostly that there are talking animals and a few big-name actors voicing said animals — turn out to not be strikes either. This thing was fun. Delightful, even. ++
Backrooms
It was inevitable that my 13-year-old eldest would want to see it. It was less a given, though, that I would enjoy it. I think the backrooms as a concept is cool and I think Gen Z and Alpha have good instincts about horror but the one thing they can't stop doing (thanks, YouTube) is fucking Explaining Things. What's the LORE? What's Freddie Fazbear's backstory?
There are things a movie can say that aren't just worse in words, they can't be said in words. Can you write an essay on the meaning of a piece of instrumental music? Sure, but it won't convey the feeling. It's like the old quote (possibly by Steve Martin?) that "talking about music is like dancing about architecture."
But, I digress. Do I? This is relevant! Backrooms being something that came from the internet, I fully expected the YouTube-driven tendency to theorize and explain to be fully on display here. But the young director Kane Parsons has really pulled it off. The film almost stumbles into a pitfall of horror that's common but has many varied causes: blowing the ending. But it doesn't! After most of the final third threatening too much lucidity, it goes back to a dream logic that ends the film on an unnerving note. ++
Books
qntm - There Is No Anti Memetics Division (2025)
Also falling into the "it came from the internet" category, in fact the very backrooms-adjacent and super-explainy SCP Project, this was a wild ride that also surprised me. The premise is that there's a secret organization protecting us from things that literally defy understanding. Cognitohazards, creatures that make you forget them as soon as you view them, and threats so large that characters have to try to defeat them without even their own knowledge. Fun, with a lot of unexpected turns. ++
Yael Van Der Wouden - The Safekeep (2024)
There's a twist at the end of this moody, sometimes-erotic postwar drama, one that I feel like I really should've seen coming as it's almost Fight-Club-level. But even if you did see it coming, the style and the sympathetic portrayal of a harsh and difficult main character are worth it. +
Elaine Pagels - The Gnostic Gospels (1979)
This one's a classic of the genre, but it does a lot more than what I expected. It's not just about what the Nag Hammadi scrolls contain (in the decades since it was published, just reading them is a better way to learn that) or what Gnosticism means in the context of broader Christianity. It's really about the early history of the religion as a whole, and how something initially varied and full of controversies slipped into orthodoxy. +
Melissa Albert - The Hazel Wood (2018)
Every once in a while you just gotta read one of those YA adventures for misunderstood girls. It was fine. ⚬
Koji Suzuki - Ring (1991)
The first in a trilogy, the book is quite a bit different from the movie adaptation that launched the J-horror movement. It's a tense detective thriller, with the titular phone call and its death sentence providing a race against time. So the mechanics and elements are all still there, but the mood is less spooky-scary. Oddly, it works in reverse of what you might expect, with the supernatural basis being an early given, and only a jumping-off point for the case that follows. +
M. John Harrison - The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again (2020)
Speaking of which, this one does the same trick in a different way. Here, the characters inhabit a strange Lovecraftian reality that flickers and flows in and out of the normal one, but by the end it's really a "ships in the night" story. My first Harrison, and I think I'll have to try some more. I will not be moving to rural Shropshire anytime soon, though. +
Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar (1963)
I feel like I already wrote about this one, for some reason. It's brutal. I've never seen such an accurate depiction of specifically the isolating influence of depression. ++
Music
I so rarely discover new music that actually impresses me. It's not an elitist thing, it's just pure volume of consumption. Eventually if you eat all the foods, you will find it hard to find a flavor that's really new. That doesn't mean you can't enjoy new things. I've had a lot of tacos, but some tacos are just better than others.
Andrea Taeggi - Nattdett (2024)
Here's a guy from Italy who basically makes IDM on old test equipment. It has a sonic quality that is somehow hard and impactful no matter how minimal it gets; I can see how you might find that harder to achieve on a computer or normal music hardware.
Abstract Concrete - Abstract Concrete (2023)
The great Charles Hayward makes one of his occasional dips into song-oriented music in his mid-70s. It's interesting, repetitive art-rock that rarely does anything expected, which is par for the Hayward course, but it's relatively accessible at the same time. His voice is showing its age, though he seems energized by the youth of the rest of the band. Unexpectedly cheesy at times, but never stays there long as this crew are probably just too weird.
Neurosis - An Undying Love For a Burning World (2026)
It's not just that Neurosis is back, which would be enough for me. But the album is good, IMO one of their best in many many years, and worth listening to many times.