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haleyfury · 4 years

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August was another one of those strange months where it felt long and short at the same time! This month, I celebrated my twenty-second birthday, had more beach & pool days, finished my first semester of grad school, and read a ton of books! I had two weeks in August in between the summer and fall semesters, so I spent so, so much time reading! I think it also helped that I didn’t have a ton of new shows coming out (aside from the 3 seasons that I did binge and my weekly reality TV schedule, oops), but I was also just genuinely in the mood to read! I knew in the back of my mind that I likely won’t be able to devour 17 books a month for the rest of 2020 or until at least December, since I just started my fall semester last Monday and have a pretty big course load.

I have reviews already published and coming for 15 of 16 out of the follow books so I’m not going to be sharing my mini thoughts on them, with the exception of the books I DNF’ed.

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Anna K by Jenny Lee | 5/5 Stars

Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wien | 2.5/5

The Heir Affair (The Royal We #2) by Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan | 4.75/5

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid | 4/5

Recommended For You by Laura Silverman | 4/5 (ARC)

Regretting You by Colleen Hoover | 3.5/5

Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld | 5/5

The Book of V. by Anna Solmon | 4/5

Grown by Tiffany D. Jackson | 4.5/5 (ARC)

The Best Worst Man by Mia Sosa | 5/5

Jesus Land: A Memoir by Julia Scheeres 5/5

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones | 3.5/5

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Fix Her Up by Tessa Bailey | 2.5/5

The Life and (Medieval) Times of Kit Sweetly | 4.5/5

Punching the Air by Ibi Zoiboi and Yusef Salaam | 4/5 (ARC)

One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London | 5/5

The Knockout Queen by Rufi Thorpe | 4/5

I went on a mini romance book kick this month (right now my mood keeps alternating between adult and YA contemporary), so I decided to finally pick up the first two books in Tessa Bailey’s Hot and Hammered series. I didn’t love Fix Her Up but I really liked one if its side characters, Rosie, who is the lead female protagonist in the second book, Love Her or Lose Her. While so many of my friends in the blogging and bookstagram worlds love this series, I didn’t realize how polarized readers felt about this series until I skimmed through Goodreads… and I’m definitely on the side that just doesn’t like the series. I was so uncomfortable with some of the romance series — not because I’m not used to the steamy content, but because I just hated the lead male protagonists and their dominance. I disliked the male protagonist in Love Her or Lose Her even more than I disliked Travis in Fix Her Up. Honestly, I don’t know why this series uses ‘her’ in the titles because it’s seriously the men who need some fixing. Love Her or Lose Her is a marriage redemption romance, as high school sweethearts Rosie and Dominic are on the brink of divorce. I once again hated his pet/nickname for Rosie (let’s just take any word of endearment and add ‘girl’ after it), and I honestly should’ve DnF’d this one right after the second chapter, as Dominic tries to get Rosie to have sex with him before she leaves their house. This series unfortunately is just not the one for me.

This month, I also DNF’ed Tessa Dare’s historical romance, The Duchess Deal. I definitely do see myself picking this one up again in the future, but I’m just not in a super big romance mood right now. I think I because I read so many romance in the first half of 2020, I’m starting to get more selective of the romance books I do pick up.

Selling Sunset S3 (Netflix) – It’s official: Selling Sunset is my favorite Netflix reality show. This LA real estate docusoap just gets better and better each season, and I know it’ll be a long wait for a fourth season, but it’ll be so worth it. I found Chrishell’s perspective about her divorce so intersting, but I do wish there would have been less drama and more of Christine’s wedding in the last episode.

Glow Up S2 (Netflix) – I binge-watched Glow Up S1 in a weekend during my winter break, so it was fun doing the same thing this summer with the second season. This make up competition series also makes me want to learn how to do makeup differently, but I think I’ll just leave it to the pros.

Million Dollar Beach House S1 (Netflix) – Million Dollar Beach House is definitely trying to be the East Coast/ Hamptons version of Selling Sunset. I don’t think it’s pulled it off just yet, but just like Selling Sunset, this first season really lays the foundation for what I think would be a second season. I wasn’t a huge fan of the drama, but I loved the houses.

Other Things I Watched: Below Deck Mediterranean S5, Say Yes to the Dress S19 (TLC), The West Wing S2 (Netflix/NBC), Last Chance U S5 (Netflix), Sugar Rush: Extra Sweet (Netflix)

Reviews

TWO GREAT READS, ONE MISS: Recent Contemporary Reads Mini Reviews

LIVE LOVE ROMANCE: Contemporary Romance Mini Reviews

FAVORITE ROYAL READS: The Royal We & The Heir Affair Review

NEW ADULT FAKE DATING: The Dare (Briar U #4) Review

Books I Loved & Not So Loved: YA Mini Reviews

BEST READING MONTH OF 2020: July 2020 Wrap Up

Other Bookish Fun

Fall 2020 Most Anticipated Adult Releases

Fall 2020 Most Anticipated YA Releases

Top Five Wednesday: Dream Adaptations

Happy 22nd Birthday to Me: 22 Favorite Books, TV Shows & More

Folklore Book Tag

August 2020 TBR ft. ARC August

What did you read & watch in August? Have you read any of the books I mentioned? Share in the comments!

17 BOOKS 1 FANGIRL: August 2020 Wrap Up August was another one of those strange months where it felt long and short at the same time!

#August 2020 #August 2020 Wrap Up #August Wrap Up

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thebrushedbalcony · 6 years

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Sunday Night 8/5

I suppose I wasn't in the right headspace earlier in the day. I had gone to bed late the night before, I had had one or two small screw-ups that I could write off as not my fault. I had a full 9 hours of sleep before Saturday - and that was after a few short nights. My birthday had been the Thursday before, and I was generally in a good mood during/after. Steven smoked me out at 10, I went to Old Chicago after, and then Tessa and Hoppe came and hung out for just an hour. I suppose at this point, I had been smoking about 6 nights a week for 2 weeks (started right after I lifted my self-imposed ban on not smoking after I closed).

I guess if im going that far back I might as well take an even broader picture of whats been happening in my life recently. Its been 8 months since I moved out into this house. Eight months since I began easily removing any mental boundaries I had set in stone for myself. Drugs, Sex, language (still gonna hold onto that last one for awhile). Something I haven't nearly done enough soul-searching about is God! I'm worried I have so easily dropped an entire life that had been pointing me towards a life of bible-reading, church-attending, and being the perfect role model. Like Amanda moving in! A year ago I would have been proud to flaunt that I didn't smoke or drink or have even the slightest thought about dirty sex outside of a sanctioned marriage. Now look at me, I'm everything past Ethan liked to believe he was better than everyone else about. I guess thats a long-winded way of saying I'm a big ol' hypocrite! These are the big things I have held onto my whole life - my way of always thinking in the back of my head that I'm "better" than everyone else just a bit. And now its all gone awaaay.

I don't mourn the loss of my "innocence" or whatever tho. These were all my decisions, I thought these all out. Sure half of it was probably my hamster going into overload, but just maybe it wasn't! Some of these christian laws and rules that everyone has to follow don't seem very rooted in solid logic. But wow, maybe thats my hamster again. Spinning in overdrive to make up logical reasons for my stupid decisions. Either way, I've got no regrets! This last night is really pushing that though. Sex was fun, and I'm going to continue to have fun with it during my life. Marijuana is fun! I presume I'll still be getting high for years to come. Maybe. Last night was actual, existential pain like I've never felt before. I was able to fully slide into the victim mentality - first time in my life. But I'll get to that later. I'm not sure who these last two paragraphs are for, but I think that is a pretty good look into my head going into last night. Oh yeah - that’s what the point of all that was! Alright. Back to the story.

5 grams of weed. That’s how much I helped Josh distill. 30 bucks, if I went to a cheaper dealer. Josh was on TOP of the math, apparently the cup he just poured was one-hundred-freaking-milligrams. Josh and I didn't take that number seriously. Maybe Josh did more, in the back of his mind, but we both knew steven took like, 80mg of the stuff and didn't feel anything! And the "30mg" cookie I took a week or two ago wasn't really that bad anyway. No way this is 100mg. "These edibles ain't shit!" as I drank actually 100mg and sealed my incredibly unforunate fate. Drank it at 8:30, and I could actually feel it really fast. Like within minutes, just a small sense that something was off. In a good way of course, like cool! Getting high already.

First hour was fun. I was already kinda in a daze, having only got 6 hours of sleep the night before. Having fun, music was great and I even pulled out my phone and recorded whatever strange conversation we were having at the time. The other three were pretty hyped about a firepit, I still think its very funny Josh had lived there so many years and had no idea if there was one around still. I was inside, stuck to a chair when I recorded a bit of what was going on in my head. This must have been about 10:15:

"the house is all screwey. Its like every thing I see is instantly as distant as a sharp memory, srrange focal points and strangw perspectives. Im dreaming? Weird nostslgia molding together, in a not normal way. like an old distant life. im lazq ‰) %/"#÷ame. wow, hah This is lucid, but stuck. Its self aware lucid and is all."

It had been a bit over an hour and a half and I was practically in a dream state. Whats strange is all my other experiences with edibles is I don't notice myself getting much higher after 1.5/2 hours. I guess there was just so much weed it kept on being absorbed. Anyway, Amanda came and grabbed me as Josh and Drew were trying to get the fire started. I was having a grand old time, stumbling around and in complete awe as to how I couldn't file anything I was seeing into a clear and defined memory. It still plays out like an extremely vivid dream in my head. None of the wacky dream stuff was happening, like people I didn't know or new settings, but everything had that strange sheen and warped perspective of not really being there.

I believe it was 10:30/45 when I had to stumble away from the campfire because I had a sudden and very specific feeling that I was going to throw up. I got to my car and realized there was actually a whole lot that was going wrong. I held onto the driver's side of my car for dear life as my reality slowly splintered into anguish. I would have said pain right there, but that wouldn't be right. It wasn't really a sharp bad physical pain, I get a nice dose of that whenever a migraine hits. No this was like, being unplugged from the matrix but the only other option was death. To continue the analogy, I would try and plug myself back in but realized in horror the only thing that defined my existence was a few vague memories from my past when nothing really special happened. That’s all I was, a big ol poser in life with only a false personality given to me by my parents and my church with a few unrelated memories that I pretended tied it all together. It was like my personality and my own being was being broken down to it's pure biology - the entire person I had spent my whole life building up just being ripped away. The worst part is I was locked out of anything that had happened in my brain for the past 10 years. All the dreary foggy terrible memories were from random times when I was growing up, and none of them even had bad emotions attached to them! The horror was them being displayed to me as the only thing that made me a person. It was lifeless, cruel, something was telling me that I've never had any real life, and it was going to rip away every single lie I have told myself since I was born. And all that would be left is a broken and defeated nothing of a living being.

Now, I don't presume to get all spiritual here. That "something" was me, I mean right? I took too much drug, and it went to TOWN and the only thing they had to work with was this brain up here. I'm.... not sure where it came up with all that though. A current working thesis is that... it uncovered something? If marijuana truly only had my brain to work with, it pulled that ugly monster out of SOME deep dark corner. Now I'm sure it completely amplified and morphed this small insecurity into the terrible monster that it became, but nevertheless it was a monster of my own creation. And thats what makes it so terrifying, I was in agony and defeated by MYSELF. Well, plus a buttload of drugs. Hmm, maybe that was it. But Josh and Drew had the same amount! It could be explained away by different tolerances or different mental makeup. Either way, I crossed my boundaries like, WAY far.

Maybe I am overthinking this. I have slowly learned to deal with migraines for the past 10 years - and thats been a huge struggle to fight my body with my mind! Once it hits I can't do anything to stop it. But I've learned to accept it, I ride it out and deal with it - acknowledge that it'll get better eventually. I suppose that is the line of thinking from last night that kept me sane. I knew weed couldn't kill or maim you. You better believe I held onto that thought - that idea like it was my lifeline.

Anyway I told Amanda where the spare was, I got in my car and laid down eventually. I was glad Josh was there in the car with me for some of the time, as I mentioned earlier I knew I had no qualms putting myself in the "very bad victim" category. Normally I would feel bad Josh had to sit in the car with me for 30+ minutes, but I didn't! I was in so much bad having his slight uncomfort was almost expected. That sounds super selfish and I'm very grateful but thats how it was hah. He grabs me some water, dips inside towards the end so he didn't have to stay out there forever. Eventually I get inside, and onto the couch (around 12:10) and I somehow zoned out until 3. I remember some small conversation, someone passed me some sherbert and I think Amanda made pizza later. I knew I didn't want to sleep on the couch so I went downstairs and stole the bed in the middle of the room. Got about 6 hours, and still felt high when I woke up. And theeen I lazed around all day, took a nap and left and came here at 8.

So in conclusion. I think I might have got a bit too fanatic about the whole "hidden mental closet" thing, but maybe not. I definitely had a LOT of weed, and it definitly hit me wrong. The next few days will tell if there is anything different in how I...live? mentally? I think even now 48 hours the shock is wearing off. Even typing this it seems like a really vivid dream. I might not have even typed this if Josh hadn't mentioned that I maybe should, that these experiences can fade away. I guess i'm not surprised, my sober mind is probably busy chucking that memory into a trash bag and dragging it down to the landfill!

I guess, with my first few paragraphs being hindsight, I do have a lot of scary thoughts that I don't think about. Who am I really, what are my real boundaries, if I can throw out these big boundaries so easily, who's to say I chuck the baby out with the bathwater and give up on my personality as I've started with! Haha naa, I like what I am. There I said it, I am haappy with who I am. Maybe a bit more sex would help with the self esteem, and a bit more money would be quite welcome as well - but I'm doing alright. I've got my own house, a freaking perfect mini-studio in here, a tired but nice job, and a really awesome friend in Josh. In his parent's freaking fairy-tale house. 2/10 would bad trip again fo sho

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funnythingshere0-blog · 6 years

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Why Janelle Monae's 'Dirty Computer' Film Is a Timely New Sci-Fi Masterpiece

New Post has been published on https://funnythingshere.xyz/why-janelle-monaes-dirty-computer-film-is-a-timely-new-sci-fi-masterpiece/

Why Janelle Monae's 'Dirty Computer' Film Is a Timely New Sci-Fi Masterpiece

Janelle Monáe wasn’t made for these times – no wonder she’s always got her eye on the future. From an early age, she’s been a sci-fi/fantasy fan, grooving on The Twilight Zone and Star Wars as a kid. Yet for the 32-year-old musician and actress those genres have never been about escapism but, rather, a means to express how it feels to be an outcast. That’s partly the reason why she adopted the android persona Cindi Mayweather for her terrific early-2010s albums The ArchAndroid and The Electric Lady: She’s not role-playing so much as she’s telling us who she really is.

“I chose an android because the android to me represents ‘the other’ in our society,” she said in 2010. “I can connect to the other, because it has so many parallels to my own life – just by being a female, African-American artist in today’s music industry. … Whether you’re called weird or different, all those things we do to make people uncomfortable with themselves, I’ve always tried to break out of those boundaries.”

In her dazzling new short film Dirty Computer, tied to her forthcoming album of the same name, Monáe makes explicit how those boundaries still try to hold her down. She’s no longer an android, though — she’s a human being ready to be seen for exactly who she is. The 46-minute film is visually arresting and filled with sterling electro-pop from the upcoming record, but its dense thematic nods to sci-fi landmarks aren’t meant simply as fun spot-the-reference Easter eggs. With the revelation that Monáe has come out as pansexual in her new Rolling Stone interview — “Being a queer black woman in America,” she tells writer Brittany Spanos, “someone who has been in relationships with both men and women – I consider myself to be a free-ass motherfucker.” — it’s impossible not to view Dirty Computer as the artist’s emotional, feminist updating of the dystopian concerns that have always swirled through science fiction. But if you’re not as conversant in sci-fi tropes as Monáe is, fear not: We’re here to unpack the film’s ideas and imagery, which only underline their potency.

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Dirty Computer opens with an ominous voiceover spoken by Monáe, who coldly informs us of the bleak reality we’re about to enter. “They started calling us Computers,” she intones. “People began vanishing – and the Cleaning began. You were dirty if you looked different. You were dirty if you refused to live the way they dictated. You were dirty if you showed any form of opposition at all.”

It’s a familiar sci-fi tenet – the use of icy exposition to explain the rules of the story’s darkly futuristic world – that’s been seen in everything from Terminator 2 to A.I. Artificial Intelligence. But in Dirty Computer, it’s also a continuation of Monáe’s musical exploration of life as an outsider. A devotee of Metropolis, the 1927 Fritz Lang silent film about a society in which technology has overwhelmed humanity, Monáe has always sided with the machines. Like Blade Runner, with its sympathetic depiction of Replicants, servant-like androids that are treated as second-class citizens, Monáe’s albums see the robots as more soulful than their human counterparts.

Soon, we’re introduced to Monáe as Jane 57821, who has been taken to a facility to be “cleaned.” The antiseptic environment and the depersonalized names – people reduced to a string of numbers – recall the similarly grim outlook of Star Wars mastermind George Lucas’ first film, THX 1138, in which human beings have devolved into sterile, efficient drones devoid of emotion. But in the world of Dirty Computer, it’s not so much emotions that need to be cleaned as it is the “wrong” kinds of human feelings.

The mini-film is neatly structured around a narrative spine involving two anonymous white male workers erasing her memories, the movie occasionally cutting to those “memories,” which are individual music videos for the album’s singles. And what quickly becomes clear is that Jane has been designated for cleaning because of her verboten lesbian romance with Zen, a free-spirited beauty played by Thor: Ragnarok star Tessa Thompson.

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The clips for the Prince-esque “Make Me Feel” and the Grimes-assisted minimalist pop of “Pynk” are colorful and delightfully choreographed, but they’re even more vivid because they show happy, sexy moments from Jane and Zen’s brief love affair. It’s a heartbreaking rejiggering of the premise of the Oscar-winning sci-fi indie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which Jim Carrey undergoes an experimental procedure to have his memories of his beloved (Kate Winslet) excised, causing him to relive each memory one last time before it’s wiped away. But in Dirty Computer, that erasure is additionally tragic because it isn’t by choice, as a totalitarian society forcibly makes Jane comply with its homophobic beliefs.

Of course, the film – or, as Monáe calls it, an “emotion picture” – also heavily echoes The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s chilling 1985 novel about a conservative future society, which was adapted into a 1990 film and is now an acclaimed, Emmy-winning Hulu series starring Elisabeth Moss as an enslaved woman compelled to serve as a child-bearer for the government’s elite. That series’ examination of its society’s cruel treatment of “others” – gay people, non-Christians – reverberates through Dirty Computer‘s music videos, which defiantly celebrate nonconformity, femininity and sexuality in all its permutations. (In one memory, Jane and Zen enjoy a wistful polyamorous relationship with a man named Ché, played by Jayson Aaron.) And like with The Handmaid’s Tale, Monáe wants to make damn sure we notice the real-world parallels of this nightmare scenario: During “Pynk,” one of her backup dancers proudly sports a pair of panties with the inscription “I grab back,” a smack at the Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief Donald Trump and his sexist policies.

Dirty Computer‘s sartorial choices don’t just reference Trump – along with the movie’s production design, they also pay homage to sci-fi hallmarks. Occasionally, characters wear the iconic wide-brim, super-tall hat made famous in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s druggy, cosmic 1973 cult film The Holy Mountain, which, like Dirty Computer, deals with personal freedom and sexual liberation. The drab, smock-like outfits worn in the cleaning facility mirror the impersonal wardrobe in movies like THX 1138, which sharply contrast with Dirty Computer‘s music videos, where Monáe doesn’t just flaunt her reliably stylish fashion sense but also represents for the Afrofuturism that was the linchpin of this year’s cinematic sensation Black Panther. And the facility’s monochromatic color lighting and minimalist design hark back to the work of visual artist James Turrell, who has been an inspiration for everything from Drake’s “Hotline Bling” video to the interior of the alien vessel in Arrival.

The mystery of identity and the fluidity of reality are often twinned obsessions in sci-fi: Who are we? And is what we’re experiencing real? Movies as varied as Total Recall and The Matrix have played with these themes, but Dirty Computer delves into them with a poignancy rarely felt in the genre. As Jane’s memories are cleaned, she starts losing essential parts of herself. And it’s not just scenes of her and Zen hanging out in clubs or enjoying warm canoodles on the beach; Dirty Computer‘s lyrics are often personal manifestos about accepting oneself. In the slow-burn R&B number “I Like That,” Jane/Monáe pays tribute to her offbeat essence: “I’m always left of center/And that’s right where I belong/I’m the random minor note/You hear in major songs.” In the film, Monáe’s character is trying to assert her individuality, which makes her the enemy of a soulless regime – a common tension in dystopian sci-fi.

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But who will come out on top: the individual or the regime? In sci-fi films, the victor is usually the individual, which offers a reassuring message to viewers that we have the power to vanquish our oppressors. On occasion, though, the big, bad society ends up triumphant in these narratives. That was certainly true of Terry Gilliam’s bleakly funny 1985 film Brazil, in which a sensitive dreamer (Jonathan Pryce) believes at the end of the movie that he’s escaped from being tortured – only for the film to reveal that it was merely the man’s fantasy and that he didn’t get away at all.

Famously, that downer ending inspired angry disagreements between Gilliam and Universal executives, who demanded that the fantasy be depicted as real so that audiences assumed Pryce’s character had indeed escaped. Dirty Computer tweaks Brazil‘s controversial ending by first offering a tragic finale. Jane is shocked to discover that Zen, now freshly “cleaned” and remembering nothing about her, is working in the facility. By the time Jane is able to stir Zen’s memories, though, it’s too late: Jane is sprayed with a mist that will complete her virtual lobotomy. As the film ends, Jane is reduced to being just another bland, smiling worker, prepared to help clean other dirty computers.

Except … we realize we’ve been fooled: Jane and Zen have held onto their identities and break their lover Ché out, ultimately escaping the clutches of this repressive society. As she’s about to make her getaway, though, Jane slowly turns back to the camera as if to savor her victory. In that moment, Monáe can be heard singing on the soundtrack, notably declaring, “Love me, baby/Love me for who I am.” And then Jane/Monáe exits, a free woman.

Sure, it’s a predictable happy ending – but for Monáe, it’s packed with personal resonance. And like with so many of the great sci-fi films she worships, she’s using the genre to craft spiky political and social commentary.

“I thought science fiction was a great way of talking about the future,” Monáe once said. “It doesn’t make people feel like you’re talking about things that are happening right now, so they don’t feel like you’re talking down to them. It gives the listener a different perspective.”

On Dirty Computer, Janelle Monáe plays with the conventions and totems of dystopian sci-fi to speak her truth and promote a cultural shift toward a more inclusive and loving society – no matter what repressive government (whether real or fictional) is trying to crush that spirit. Monáe is speaking to the present, but for her, the future is now.

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