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Odin's Music Video, Articles, Musings, and More!

This week: a folk song cover, lots of writing about films, and hints about my new novel!

Katie and I released a new folk song cover this week! It’s been a long time since we put the last one online, so this was a lot of fun.

With the last nine weeks of sciatica pain, I have had precisely zero energy for working on more MLIS videos. A shame, since there’s lots to chat about regarding my little program.

But, the sciatica has been consistently improving, largely due to a daily Pilates regime and strength training. Working out while in excruciating pain is… interesting… but I’m proud of how possible it is.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that your mental state informs what is, or is not, possible far more than your physical condition. When in pain, I can give up, feel hopeless. And that crumbling makes everything feel impossible. The other flip of the coin reveals a version of me that’s in pain, but still taking joy in life… It’s too easy to give into feelings of despair, or apathy—but that’s not what life’s about. Life is about bettering oneself. So, while I try to hold a lot of compassion for the pain I go through, I’m also proud of myself for carrying on.

Writing

Lately, this has been very evident in my novel writing! The novella I finished last year was a really fun exercise, and I’ve been extending it and fleshing it out into something new and unique. Part of a massive science fiction universe that I’ve had in my mind for years.

The first glimmers of this universe came during my first year of undergrad, but I put the science fiction story aside to focus on other projects during my graduate degree. Returning to science fiction has been a blast because I really feel like I’m able to just write for me, and not for anyone else.

I haven’t mentioned this novel at length before, so it feels strange to break the silence about it now, but also good. My current draft goal is an 80k minimum by the end of May. The novel should be short, sweet, and fun. I’d like to have it polished enough to start sending to agents by late summer.

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Articles

A couple of weeks ago I made “top writer” slot in movies on Medium, and this week my article “The Best Film The Year You Were Born! (1931–1971): From the Silents to Gen-X, experience our history in film” made the Medium editors’ cut to be pushed to audiences across the platform. Probably because of these indicators, I slipped toward some more cinema-related content this week, following up on last week’s exploration of how to create the best home theater.

I Don’t like Modern Sci-Fi, So Here’s What I’m Excited For

Modern TV gets it wrong more often than not, but I’m always optimistic something unique will slip through.

Odin’s Insights into 2001: A Space Odyssey

What does the Kubrickian masterpiece tell us about the future we inhabit?

Otherwise, this week was relatively quiet on the writing front for me. It was technically the MLIS program’s spring break, so I indulged in rewatching Andromeda Ascendant with Katie (her firs time seeing it!) and working on my novel.

One more point in the movie category this week was seeing John Wick 4 in the cinema. I don’t go to see movies much anymore, but going to a 12:30pm showing on a weekday might be my new favorite time: only three people aside from myself and the friend I went with—and my friend, plus the two people in front of us, all wore masks! <3

I got a massive kick out of the latest action extravaganza from Keanu Reeves, which sees him get pummeled in incredibly implausible ways which, nevertheless, make you feel a grand sense of catharsis. John Wick is like watching all of life’s hardships dialed up to 11, and seeing him (though beaten and weary) overcome them is extremely rewarding.

The cinema fan in me had a great time with the superb cinematography as well—from ingenious camera tricks, to complex set designs, to gorgeous lighting, it wove together a cyberpunk fairytale vibe that was really superb.

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From the web

Wes Anderson is one of my favorite modern filmmakers, with work that constantly touches the melancholically profound side of life. I love ensemble casts, too, and Wes always assembles the best of these for his films. I’m very excited to see what his upcoming film holds for us.

Tan, teal and aliens – has Wes Anderson really made a sci-fi movie?

Amanda Palmer, one of my favorite musicians, passed this along on social media this week. I’m not into Ren’s style of music on the whole, though he has some superb lyrics. But the same thing that struck Amanda about this piece is what gets to me, too: the acting. It feels like a theatre piece, and it makes me want to finally visit the Edinburgh Fringe all the more if that’s where I can go to see more cutting-edge work.

Now, obviously we’ve had some larger news this week with Trump’s Indictment, but that’s flashy news, so I won’t go into that. Instead, let me draw your attention to this CNN article about some great news from Texas (of all places), where a “federal judge… ruled that at least 12 books removed from public libraries by Llano County officials, many because of their LGBTQ and racial content, must be placed back onto shelves within 24 hours.”

Book banning is a super serious problem right now, one that goes hand-in-hand with issues like rollbacks on gender rights, criminalization of abortions, and all the rest. The more wins like this we can muster, the better. My internship with the national nonprofit EveryLibrary was focused on helping them set up Fight for the First, dedicated to defending your first amendment rights from attack. Check them out and sign some petitions today!

Also, in a piece of cool technology news, a new study shows that using solar panels on farms cools the panels down, which improves their efficiency. I won’t get into the global disaster of monocrop farms, or how globalization will lead to massive famine in poorer countries over the next two decades due to climate change… That’s a different sort of story.

Finally, the RESTRICT Act is basically the Patriot Act on steroids. Basically, it’s billed as a law to stop TikTok from being used to send your private data to Chinese intelligence agencies. But, what it really does, is give the hyper-conservatives in our own government the platform they need to build our own “Great Internet Firewall.” It’s bad policy, it’s bad governing, it’s bad business… and it’s idiotic.

China doesn’t need to harvest your data through TikTok, they can just go and buy your data from any of the same data brokers that our own government uses to circumvent legal restrictions on domestic espionage.

Seriously, this needs to be stopped, and more than stopped, it needs to be curb-stomped into absurdity.

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