The universe is made of mouths. Not circles or loops or any other illusions of organization, of control. Just many hungry, gaping maws demanding flesh and blood, promising peace in exchange for a paltry sum of pain. A clear message. At least, clear for those who can read in between the stars like my Mama. They believe it’s empty out there. Mama would say, dark eyes on the darkening sky. We spent most nights together beneath the stars, awaiting their […]
Tonight, wind batters the brittle panes of my hovel’s weary windows. Had they been skin instead of glass, they’d no doubt be bruised. This high in the mountains, the winds are wicked. They drag drifts of snow with them, freezing the air till it’s very touch is painful. On nights like these, it feels like the dark is trying to rip and tear its way inside. Even the ferociously flickering flame in our lone hearth is not enough to protect […]
Swamp surrounds the village for as far the eye can see. The soggy soil of our secluded homeland is little more than sponge, sopping up so much water even the slightest of us must strap strings stretched across stiff wooden slats to our feet or else risk being swallowed whole by the sludge. Too many have become meals, preserved in the muck for unsuspecting outsiders to stumble across on a daring jaunt to our far-flung wastes. It’s why we’re the […]
They die. If you tell the truth. Sometimes slowly, sometimes on the spot. It depends on the truth being told and it’s weight. The heavier it is, the faster it flattens bone into fragment, pulverizes pulse into a bloody pulp. The first time it happened was on the morning news, live. The camera panned across a generic studio audience to the show’s co-anchors, your typical man and woman duo. The man was tailored tight into his fancy suit, grin taut […]
They come. They always do. The sea brings them to me. Swallows them up and swishes them from cheek to cheek before spitting them just shy of my shore. The only haven in sight for miles. Mama used to say with a smile. Any port in a storm, my little minnow. I didn’t understand, at the time, why she smiled so widely nor why it prickled me so. There was an…edge, to her grin. Something cutting in its curl. Sharp. […]
(Check out my thoughts on season 1 here~)*As usual, some spoilers ahead…Usually, every series has seasons that are decidedly better than others. For example, I think it would be hard to argue that season 2 of Arrow (2012-2020) was not a head above the rest or that season 3 of Legend of Korra (2012-2014) did not bounce back hard from the epic failure of its almost unmentionable prior season. It seems to be the natural course of television. When it comes […]
*As always, some spoilers ahead~Now, I’d like to state for the record that I’ve never been especially afraid of dogs. I’ve always maintained a healthy respect for them and the predators they once were for sure. When it comes to large dogs, I’ve always been cautious of getting too close, of letting them pounce on me. As a little girl, I did have some terrible recurring visions of a large dog knocking me to the ground, scratching or biting my […]
*As always, some spoilers ahead….I was not planning on writing a review for this movie. I wasn’t planning on watching this movie. While I love true crime, I don’t usually love any adaptations of it (Mindhunters clearly excluded). I find most media adaptations of true crime to be either wildly inaccurate or to miss “the point” entirely. While I do enjoy the mental exercise of exploring a serial killer’s mindset or ethos, I find that most media adaptions do not […]
Halloween (1978) is a pillar of the horror genre, the slasher flick that paved the ways for such predecessors as Friday the 13th (1980) and Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). In many ways, Halloween is the blueprint for the quintessential slasher flick. Teenage promiscuity, inattentive authority figures, a “blank-slate” of a killer on the loose, bloodshed and gore, an ambiguously ominous ending…. It’s everything you could want in an 80’s slasher flicker. Though not well-received at the time of its […]
*Some spoilers ahead (I mean, the movie came out in 1999 though so….)Though I’ve been aware of the cult classic The Blair Witch Project (1999) for some time, it was only recently that I finally sat down to watch it. Going into the movie, I knew about several of the theories surrounding it’s plot as well as the movie’s acclaim as one of the most prominent works of so-called “found footage” film. (Though not the first work as that honor […]
*Some spoilers ahead (To be fair though the show did come out in 2013 so….)The Hannibal (2013) TV series is one I come back to time and time again. I find it gripping and compelling in ways that I don’t often feel with most media. I’m tempted to say that it helps that the show has a strong source material to draw from, Red Dragon (2000) and Silence of the Lambs (2002) being remarkable works of fiction in their own […]
Featured Image credits to Serkan for making such a cool custom gif! Hey~ So, I made it to the end of the semester. More, I somehow made it to the end of my graduate program!!!! I’m going to have my M.A. in like two weeks??? I mean, I have to wait for the actual degree to be mailed to me but the ceremony of it all is happening in two weeks!!!! It has not exactly been smooth sailing. But, I managed not […]
Hey~ So, suffice to say, this weekend has been a bit overwhelming for me. I’ve spent most of it getting my final touches together for my thesis presentation at Research Days on Tuesday. This weekend was one of the first I’ve had totally off in a while so I got a lot of time to focus on these last-minute-but-very-important things. There’s never enough time for anything, is there? Anyway, as far as my research for the field guide goes, I’m still […]
Hey~ How’s Cairo? Hot? Mild? Does it ever get sandy in the city? I’ve always wondered…. Anyway, I’m getting off topic. It happens. I hear you’re working on projects about digital literacy? So have we! …Well, kind of. We’re each researching a problem associated with the Internet and increasing digitization of daily life. The focus of my research is social curation in online spaces. Specifically, I’m looking at how social curation in online spaces affects our emotional engagement IRL. I wrote […]
Hey~ Hope everyone had a nice week. I’ve been pretty stressed this past week myself. It’s crunch time for my thesis project and I’m feeling the pressure. I’m trying not to take it out on unsuspecting folk but please excuse me if I do. I’m cranky and I need a twenty-thousand hour nap. Anyway, this week we began the treacherous trek into the world of Twitter bots. Honestly, I love bots and designing them is a lot of fun. Certain changes to Twitter’s […]
