#Weeknotes S02 E18

This process might take a licking, but it keeps on ticking. 18 of these in 2020, huh? I actually didn’t think I could keep this up longer than 6 to 8 weeks. Anyway, this week I felt like I had just a little bit more brain capacity than I’ve had during the quarantine times. So, here we are! Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way first…

FEEDING MY HEAD
I knocked out a few more pages of RUST: A MEMOIR OF STEEL AND GRIT by Eliese Collette Goldbach and of course got distracted by a shiny thing of a non-fiction writing how-to anthology edited by Lee Gutkind, KEEP IT REAL. Okay, more than distracted; I’m about halfway through it.

FEEDING MY EARS
I heard about this a few day after the fact but once I heard it, I swear my mental fog started lifting this week: the Free Nationals doing their first on NPR Tiny Desk Concert since appearing in 2016 with Anderson .Paak and the release of their self-titled debut album, which of course I immediately got! Check it out and do yourself a favor — don’t skip ahead to the Anderson .Paak tune. You’ll be cheating yourself, trust me.

ROTTING MY BRAIN
I totally missed the boat on the anime PARANOIA AGENT when it made the rounds on Adult Swim in 2005. It’s back now and… well, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing when I saw the first episode last week. But I’m hooked now. When they call this a “psychological thriller” believe it — it really is a fucking psychological head trip of a thriller. There’s a reason this shit is on at 1:00 am.

CORONAVIRUS JOURNAL
Ugh, I hate using that term, but let’s just call this section what it is…

This year’s 4th Street Fantasy convention is postponed until next year, which I’m sure was a difficult decision for the organizers but the correct one, all things considered. It was the one and only con I’d planned on attending this year, even before the plague came upon us. They’ve offered to roll registration fees forward for 2021, which I took them up on. Also, this would’ve been the first weekend of the local annual Friends of the Library Book Sale, and yesterday would have been Free Comic Book Day. My attendance to either has been sporadic in recent years, but boy it really makes a difference when the choice not to go isn’t yours.

Aside from the impact on the social/SFFH part of my life, my adjustments to the new remote work world order have crystallized finally. Thanks to various webapps, I’m able to conduct 99% of my worklife in Ubuntu using Firefox (and a couple of official and non-official Linux versions of a couple of standalone apps) and, as usual, the rest of my life in Chrome. It’s a good enough demarcation line.

When I had no clue what I was going to be putting up for this week’s Weeknotes, I started a write-up of my work-at-home gear and workflow. But maybe that’s for another time. I will mention a new addition that finally arrived this week. It’s on the right…

I maintain this new USB mixer is not a coronavirus hobby purchase, because (a) I’ve been thinking about getting this exact model ever since I recorded readings for the ‘zine LAKESIDE CIRCUS and (b) I’ve been wanting better audio for my Zoom calls. Okay, maybe that does make me a little bit of a tool, but a different kind of tool than people who decide to start a podcast while in quarantine (which, if you believe the social medias, makes you a huge tool).

And you know what, if maybe a year or ago, I started the very beginnings of a rough idea of a sketch of what a very short monthly podcast might could possibly look like… still not a coronavirus hobby purchase!

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK

That’s all I’ve got this week. Stay well, wash your hands, and if you really, truly, in good faith don’t think going outside is going to endanger you or the vulnerable in your community, wear a fucking mask at least, huh?

Even better though, stay inside. Really.