23 June 2022

After my last post's little moment, I logged off for a while and stuck to just chatting to friends. Had a few appointments with various charities/agencies to make sure I wasn't going off the deep end too much too. I did end up geting my hands on a now very beloved IBM Thinkpad x60 - it's going to be upgraded into my prime writing machine (it's already very stickered) as well as make some progress on my Morphological Freedom & Gender essay and my Alien review.

The weather has been swealtering so I've had more than a few beach days & swims to try and cool off too.

13 June 2022

Unlucky 13 - glad it's not a Friday. Another cafe day. I live in a port town and there's a cruise ship in so the streets and cafes are filled with sunburnt tourists and screaming toddlers. Sometimes the screaming toddlers are also fully grown men. It's not great.

Spent yesterday evening ruminating on how persecutory delusions with regards to surveillance are getting less and less outlandish or even delusionary. The panopticon of the state really would look into everyone's homes if it was given the chance, all under the illusion of counter terrorism of course. It's almost sickening how hard it is now to have an anonymous footprint online, between trackers across sites and government nosing. Google would sell the data out from under me to the must unscrupulous of parties if it thought it could get away with it. Oh wait. It does already!

Aside from that little breakdown, making progress with The Monstrous Feminine by Barbara Creed which has been nicely thought provoking so far – the parts on schizophrenia being at once mannish and easily assimilated into "female hysteria" in the introduction have provided particular food for thought.

12 June 2022

Spent the day hanging out in local cafes again - it's just easier to get work done out and about I think. I've been reading Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto by Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Frazer and it's been pretty interesting so far. Most of the theory is fairly obvious considering how much theory I read for fun, but it's definitely going to be my new recommendation for people entering feminist theory so the problems with girlboss/liberal/capitalist-integrated feminism is understood and recognised early to avoid falling intro the trap.

Outisde of that I've been working through some fiction and updating various calendars with the next few months worth of events, which is boring but necessary. Between that and ruminating on some social things it's made my day very busy! One of my latest big thoughts is realising the reason I dislike instant communication (discord, facebook messenger, etc) so much compared to emails/letters is it allows for less of the spammy link sharing with no conversation around it. Maybe it makes me a bit of an old man in my vibes, but I do prefer less frequent but longer form communication over quick instant communication (with the exception of with my partner, though, since we are very attached haha).

11 June 2022

The much anticipated e-reader arrived yesterday and my poor laptop has been put to work with calibre converting and uploading all of my books and pdfs. It's not the best PDF reader I must admit but it's workable for places I can't usually bring my laptop. I'm pretty happy with it too since it's green - my most preferred colour (if the website themeing wasn't obvious).

Isn't it a cute little thing? It's allegedly got a battery that lasts 6 weeks on a charge so I'm sure it'll get put to the use during an upcoming trip.
In other news and places, the .online URL & supporter status of this blog seems to have upticked the traffick. That and sending it to every person I know also seemed to have helped - I can't help it though! I'm so proud of what I've managed to cobble together via sadgrl.online's tutorials and my own graphic design stuff.

All of this has kickstarted my desire to dig into some of the reading materials I've accumulated. I'm starting on Reimagining the Gargoyle: Psychoanalytic Notes on Alien by Harvey R. Greenberg, M . D . It's quite nicely written compared to some other texts I've read previously, less talk of "womb like ducts" which has been a welcome relief. It's a very easy reading out of the film and I'd like to find some things that don't just overly focus on the inherent intimacy of a space ship.
I'm likely to going to update this entry throughout the day since I'm haunting my favourite radical cafe, and I'm sure I'll have lots of thoughts on the texts I'm going through.

The Company's materialism has infected the heart, corroded relationships almost beyond redress, struck hurt-fully at the center of individual, group, and family identity.

After finishing Reimagining the Gargoyle: Psychoanalyitc Notes on Alien I think I'm a little in love, this has been such a good read and is certainly going to end up central to my reading while I construct this essay out of feminist theory and anti-capitalism.

9 June 2022

Well! Hasn't even more happened since my last post. Most of my days have been spent quite in a blur so I cannot really give a full account of where I've been while I have neglected this site. Unfortunately poor health means I haven't been my most lucid either, though a lot of my projects are still in progress so I don't need to worry about restarting all of that. The most annoying part of the last few months is my previous e-reader was very lovingly stepped on by my dog, causing a crack in the body. It also doesn't feel much like holding a charge anymore, so I'll be gently laying it to rest when my new one arrives at the end of the week.
I'm keen to start reading one of the specific books I've found on it when it does arrive, From Transgender to Transhuman: A Manifesto On the Freedom Of Form. I've been musing a lot lately on morphological freedom needing to be more written about within trans gender theory and I'm hoping this will be a useful book for that.
23:32
Celebration! I now have a custom domain - .online! Tough choice between that and .gay, honestly.

3 April 2022

Lots has happened since Feb and now - most me catching COVID-19 and being completely exhausted ever since.

17 Feb 2022

Goals for today include reading and catching up on things!

16 Feb 2022

Lots of offline stress today, so not much to post. A friend has loaned me some books on sci-fi - Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction edited by Mark Bould and China Miéville, SF:UK - How British Science Fiction Changed The World by Daniel O'Brien & another that's name escapes me right now. The one who's name is escaping me has a small essay on Alien & some other films in the same vein which I'm keen to dig into!

15 Feb 2022

Printmaking day, so most of a day offline. Looking to start on the Cyborg Manifesto tonight – gifted as a PDF by a friend. I figure starting with manifestos from various folks is the easiest way to get to grips with the basics, even if I know a fair amount anyway. Back to basics and all that. Tonight is the bi-weekly prison abolition study group so it's unlikely I'm going to be able to read it as soon and as quickly as I want, but I'm interested in the intersection of those kinds of politics with cyberpunk – especially considering how often cyberpunk replicates the hierarchies of the now in the far future. It’s something I don’t find believable, not with how much happens in the now. I guess it’s easier to write a gritty high tech/low life story when there are heavily militarised police.

Still thinking about morphological freedom and how many non-binary and trans folks make jokes about shapeshifting or changing their appearance to be something in/unhuman. It feels too personal to essay out without getting into my own feelings, but it would be interesting to see what other trans folks think about the subject? Maybe even a subject that veers into alterhumanism.

14 Feb 2022

Valentines Day!

Not a lot of time at the computer today, trainride to the nearest big city to see some friends and get some bits for offline-related activities. Thinking up a crafty essay on the shortcomings of the cypherpunks wrt to being truly radical vs replicating existing hierarchy and powerstructures. Their manifesto strikes a chord as something I can an want to be online, but the wider reading really leaves me sad :(.

Ordered another USB tonight - mostly for making fileswapping easier for my larger books/music stuff, my hard drive is great but I always get worried I'm going to overwhelm it with passing it back and forth. Also been thinking more on the smallweb as a concept and hoping I can, somehow, start reinvesting myself in it. I've been trying to get back into a different neocities from a while ago so I can set that up as a complete hub (vs this, which is mostly project-focussed).

Speaking of projects! Recieved an email back from someone I reached out too for reading material/a syllabus! Very exciting, I'm keen to dig into it once I rehydrate after my trip and grab some food. A related note is the train ride gave me a lot of time to think about the intersections of various commuinities and the concept of morphological freedom (the main one that came to mind being the furry subculture, sheerly because of the diversity of forms found there. Granted, most of them are constrained by a species, but people create their own chimeras and mashups all the time). It could be an idea for something in the future to write about. I should start writing vs just...having ideas. I have finally found a good playlist to write too though.

13 Feb 2022

Sorting out most of the website still. Lots of filler text and all other kinds of useless things. I need to find a good way to host images to share here too, under a different link on the home page. I have a manifesto linked I strongly agree with. Might also try and find a way to host some of my cyberpunk research up, maybe via protonmail's new drive? Idk.

Really enjoying trying to get into the hyperpersonal web of small sites (smallweb is the name that's been bandied around the most, and the one I think is the best) & emails vs social media. It's too stressful and immediate to do things over on that side of the web. I maintain a presence but generally try to divest.