Saturday Morning Brain Drain [6/6/20]

6/6/20 Elliecoo 27

You can tell that this week’s Brain Drain leans toward escapist fare. Let this be your moment away from inequity, pandemic, casual cruelty, and leadership insanity.

What I watched: Queer Eye, new season five just out. The show is mostly just sweet; with so much meanness in the world, this show’s focus on kindness is a respite. Sure, they are not curing cancer or finding world peace, but they make a tangible difference in the lives of those persons featured each episode.

What I read: I started re-reading the Jim Butcher Dresden Files series. It’s about the misadventures of Harry Dresden, a professional wizard in Chicago. It has been twenty years since the first novel, Storm Front, was published as a paperback. Books 16 and 17 are due out this year, in July and September; I’m looking forward to them, as he’s not published in the series since 2014-2015.

What I listened to: Freedom Fry, Me and Bonnie, from Rio Grande. “Walking through the garden, we were tripping on the flowers, we tripped on the flowers, we tripped all along”.

How about you? What have you been watching, reading, or listening to?

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About Elliecoo 534 Articles
Four dogs, one partner. The dogs win.

27 Comments

  1. what i watched…uhh…well…i watched cars again the other day…i dont care what anyone says..thats a good pixar movie… think a bit later ill go watch the replacements again


    i just need easy happy fluff to watch at the moment

    reading the expanse again..currently on book 5…for at least the 5th time…i should be utterly bored of them by now…but im not
    ill skip the listening today….dont feel like just picking something out of me playlist…today is a no day

    • Oh good! Somebody else who needs some weekend happy fluff. I kind of feel guilty that I am not angry and appalled all the time, but the status of the world and the US in particular just gets overwhelming.

      • thats why i need the happy fluff…seriously… i dont think i could hack heavy viewing on top of the news cycle right now…
        just give me my damn fluff so i can follow the news without tearing my hair out and going full hulk smash on my computer

  2. Recently finished watching seasons 1-6 of Mom on DVD. Season 7 is still on the air, but thanks to working from home I can stay up and watch it. If you haven’t seen the show, it is hilarious.

    Recently read an interesting story about the myth of Robert E Lee. Spoiler alert: he was a fucking shitbag.

    https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee?utm_source=pocket-newtab

    Recently broke out my favorite Buckwheat Zydeco album: Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire

  3. I’ll probably read the next Dresden Files book, but hesitantly.

    Butcher was suspiciously quiet during that whole Hugos “puppy” scene, and it’s caused me to rethink some lines and scenes from the books that stood out to me as possibly questionable at the time.

    Have you tried Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series? I really like it, and feel like it has some superficial similarities to the Dresden Files. The main character is a changeling (half human, half faerie) Private Investigator living in San Francisco. Bit of a smartass, gets in over her head, and collects a weird assembly of friends and allies (and enemies…) on the way.

    • I have not read that series, although I enjoyed the wayward children series. With 13 books in the October Day, there will be time to feel like I know the characters and their world. There – added to wish list!

    • …reminds me a little of these?

      …not your heavy duty literature or anything but quite fun & also with the half-elf thing

      …the ones I think I remember seeming a bit more like the Dresden stuff were maybe these, though

      [ETA: did not know amazon links did that embed thing…not sure that’s quite the quiet suggestion I intended?]

      • No sure what the Box King thinks of the Amazon embeds, but they took me to the read a few pages part. That was handy. I now own the first Sandman Slim, and note that there are a million books in the series. I justify my bad book habit by working from home even when not in a pandemic. Figure it can’t be worse than a few coffees/lunches/transit costs per week?

        • …I justify mine on the basis I read a lot when I’m too tired to give a good book it’s due…so it may help at times to switch your brain off

          …hope you enjoy them, anyway

  4. I was late in replying to those who graciously commented because I spent the morning in the kitchen. (Keitel sous cheffed.) Spicy snicker doodles, strawberry sauces, roasted spicy veggies and chicken for fajitas (keep carnivore foods away from mine), yummy crab corn bisque chowder, and shrimp al frequent. Soon time for cocktails.

  6. I’m all about the happy fluff this weekend.

    Last night I started S9 of The Great British Baking Show. Watching nice people baking beautiful food is a pleasant way to pass the time.

    I’m still reading Barkskins, it’s 700 pages and my focus isn’t great these days. It will probably take me a while.

    I’m listening to the new Steve Earle – Ghosts of West Virginia. It’s the music from the play Coal Country, about the Upper Big Branch mine explosion. The one Don Blankenship went to jail for, not the one where Sec of Commerce Wilbur Ross fucked the people of WV.

    I scrubbed my patio this morning, hosed off all the furniture and rug. As soon as everything is dry I’ll set it back up and commence weekending.

  8. Listening to some of Tall Paul’s music this past week. He’s local, and he’s GOOD. A good dude, too.

    This was the first song of his I heard a few years ago;

    And I’ve been a fan ever since. He’s a good artist, and he’s a good dude, too;

    He and his buddies caught a bunch of WI kids out looting/causing trouble the other night….

    So they called the kids’ moms. One of the moms store into her son by phone, before coming in to Mpls to pick their asses up. The twitter thread was pretty comical, in what was a long night, over here, watching for fires.💖

  9. The happy fluff? Detailing the wife’s Mazda3. Who knew one person could spill so much coffee. Speaking of automobiles, is Deadsplinter planning on taking on Jalop’s readers once herb is done with them, or is Oppo going to assume that role?

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