Audio equipment, stationery ephemera, and books about them…
Recently in discussion with various pen/stationery/watch folks, I have talked about my concept of the phases of a hobby—collecting hobbies in particular. While terms like the “acquisition” phases seem to be well trod, and I have heard a lot of people talking about the “consolidation”—or as recently called it, the “refinement”— phase, I recently stumbled upon what I think is the third and final phase: “Endgame.” Or may less chillingly called, the “Satisfaction” phase. Continue reading “The Three Phases of a Hobby”→
RADWIMPS is a Japanese band I first became familiar with via their music for Makoto Shinkai’s beautiful anime film Your Name, and whose music I will forever associate with my final months in Virginia—a time of my life that will forever stir up complex and uncertain emotions. And while the exact memories and images of places accumulated in my ten months at the College of William & Mary have already begun to fade as I settle into my new life in Memphis, the music of RADWIMPS will always yank me back to the sidewalks and streets of Williamsburg, VA.
The music of the group is a mélange of styles, ranging from hip-hop to rock, but the majority of their music would fall into what I would squarely call pop. And catchy, sensible pop at that. So it was that shortly after falling into the world of Shinkai and Your Name, I quickly downloaded all the albums and EPs that I could and put them on repeat. Which is to say that I had listened to most of their catalog prior to moving to Memphis, and which is why I find it curious that it was not until after I had moved that I had the experience of being stopped in my tracks by the song “Weekly Shonen Jump.” Continue reading “Dreaming of a Future: RADWIMPS’ “Weekly Shonen Jump””→
In less than a month, a big part of my childhood and teenage years will be returning to comic book shops across the world. After a too long, three year hiatus, the Fantastic Four will be back and with it a big part of my love of my first and abiding hobby.
The adventures of Reed, Sue, Johnny, Ben, and the other extended members of the First Family (both blood related and not), were not the first comic book I ever read, but it was the one that captured my attention and imagination. The reasons for this are numerous: the crazy sci-fi adventures across time and space that were quite different from the standard supervillain of the month punch-ups that I had read before, the more relatable problems of a family of adventurers and the group dynamics that came with it, and a cast of characters that felt both relatable and real (well, as real as unstable molecules clad superheroes can be).
It is established canon that each of the FF’s individual powers is somehow reflective of their personalities: a woman who feels invisible in a patriarchal society (though who also turns out to be the most powerful of them all…a wonderful twist added by writers in the 1980s), a flame powered hot-headed youth, a rock-solid friend who would stop a bus for you, and the greatest mind on the planet who is constantly reaching and stretching his imagination to ever greater heights. But deeper than that, I also saw something of myself and my life in each of the member of the Fantastic Four, both aspirational and how I felt about and viewed myself.
Perhaps it came while struggling to get through the final arc of Agents of SHIELD season 4, or perhaps it was in the depths of Iron Fist with Defenders and Punisher looming in my cue. Or maybe it was the realization that I was buried under a mountain of anime and other TV shows I wanted to watch on Funimation, Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix. Or maybe it was all the videos piling up in my YouTube “Watch Later” playlist. Or maybe it was all the other things I knew I wanted to do in my life with research and writing and the realization that there were only so many hours in the day. Somewhere in all of that, in between all of the content that I felt like I had to consume to stay relevant in “the discussion” and what I increasingly felt like I wanted to do, that I had a moment of clarity and started deleting things from my various playlists, cues, and checklists. Continue reading “FOMO NOMO: Or How I Learned to Stop Trying to Keep Up With Everything”→
As part of my day-to-day job in Norlin Library Special Collections and Archives at CU Boulder, I work as a member of the Stainforth Library of Women Writers digital humanities project (the site is in the process of being migrated to a new platform, so please excuse our mess). Simply put, we are taking a handwritten catalog of the library of Francis John Stainforth (we will hopefully be updating and expanding the Wikipedia entry soon) and transcribing it into a searchable database.
Why? Because his library is one of the most complete records of poetry and drama (and some prose) by women and includes writings from the 16th to the 19th century. There is a whole lot more we want to do with the project and the data we create from the catalog database, but for the past two or so years, we have been simply focused on the task of transcribing the catalog and editing the data. And we are almost ready to release our first data set to the public. Continue reading “Stainforth Was a Nerd, and So am I”→
