Update for 3/17/2019

Experimental literature

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My goal in this project is to create a list of experimental works and links to other such lists. I’m basing the organization on a collection of scholarly essays, The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature. I got a bit done last week, trying out a method of collecting works by scanning the index so I can correlate the entries to the table of contents.

This is the last week for this project, so I’ll need to put a lot more time in. Fortunately my evenings are freer this week. I’ll also need to settle on my methods for the rest of the work as well as a deliverable I can live with for now. I have a feeling I’ll come back to this project in future months to improve it.

I’ve been listening to Arvo Pärt while I work. He’s my main go-to music for experimental literature.

Spirituality

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This year my Lent activity is listening to the audio of the Message version of the Bible. Last week I got through the first third, Genesis-2 Kings (well, almost–I had to finish 2 Kings the next day).

I’ll wait till I’m done with the whole thing to post my thoughts, but so far I’d say it’s a good choice of audio Bible, a decent performance and mostly a very listenable paraphrase. The exercise is also bringing up a lot of my issues with the Bible, which is helpful.

Movies

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Tuesday I saw Captain Marvel with my geek meetup. I liked it about as well as I’ve liked all the other MCU movies. I knew nothing about the character going in, so the movie version is now my head canon. I especially liked the friendship between Carol and Maria and all the time we got to spend with Nick Fury. Then there was Captain Marvel’s burst of self-discovery near the end. And the mid-end-credits scene.

House of Leaves has put me in the mood for more weird fiction, so Saturday I watched Annihilation, which had been on my mind since I saw the trailer last year. I’d listened to the novels a few years ago, and they confused me enough that I was really looking forward to seeing a filmmaker’s interpretation. I was not disappointed. It was satisfyingly eerie and a much more straightforward variation on the plot, though it had its own mysteries to ponder. I might have to add the soundtrack to my dark ambient collection.

People

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It seems I’ve been a little more social lately. I’ve had lunch with a friend from church a couple of times in the past month, one of which was Tuesday. It turns out his son posts music transcriptions and original compositions on MuseScore.com, which is where I’ve been putting my exercises, so that was kind of motivating.

It was nice to see my geek meetup Tuesday night. I hadn’t been to any events in a while, and I ended up having a good conversation with the former organizer about happenings in the world of church.

And I’ve joined another board game group run by a coworker, this one in the evening once a month. Jeremy and I went to it on Friday. I won Bärenpark and came in last in Queendomino. I like it when the domains of my life mix, so it was fun to introduce my church friend to my work friend.