yesterday, my friend celebrated their birthday with a 'book crawl', where we hopped from independent bookshop to independent bookshop across Brunswick and the city - five in total! - conveniently starting at one with a cafe around lunchtime (and planning to end at one with a wine bar in the evening, but it was closed for a private event... </3)
anyway, it was TONNES of fun, but I wasn't really looking for anything in particular, and the first one we went to was all fiction (particularly, as one friend put it, "booktok personified"...), so I thought, oh, I'll be so good today, I'll probably only buy one thing at most...
I proceeded to buy at least one book at the next four shops XD BUT look at this haul, I'm so so so excited about iiittttttt
(I'm particularly excited about the Baldwin essays because, since becoming a team leader at work, I have a lot more free time sitting around in foyers, so I've been meaning to buy a tiny book I can fit in my work bag and leave there, and this will actually be perfect! and Penguin's published a whole series of essays like this at $6 each, so when I finish it, I can just go and get another uvu)
also, I finally went to Amplify, which is a bookstore that only stocks books by people of colour, and has such a fantastic selection, especially of Aboriginal authors!! I had a real hard time choosing just one book to buy, with the shortlist including a beautiful volume of African folklore (which, thank god, my friend bought, so I get to borrow it off her one day <3), one about the Aboriginal community and colonisation specifically just in the Hawkesbury River area (with chapters that covered about five years each, so you know it's going to be in-depth! :D), and an absolutely enormous tome on the history of blackface...
(though it did also demonstrate the importance of intersectionality and the pitfalls of purely identity-based value judgements, because I also spotted Fukuyama's The End of History there, which... yeah, I guess one can't deny he's a person of colour... but it doesn't exactly fit the sort of revolutionary tone of the rest of the shop XD)
holy shit, though, it's been a long time since I went book browsing like this, and when the fuck did books get so universally expensive??? I know everything's more expensive now, I'm not expecting them to be 15-20 bucks anymore, but most ordinary books were 30-35 dollars!! the only normal-sized book in here under that was Revolutionary Yiddishland, which was still 25! what the helly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(on a much more personal note... my friends almost universally bought a lot of fantasy/fiction, with a smattering of psychology/self-help/memoir in there. which is. [sigh] fine. it's fine. I'm not ashamed of my taste or choices, but I know they're different, and normally that's fine. but it did come in the same day that [a] I asked if anyone would be interested in getting Runescape to play with me, because they've been having these Stardew Valley nights, which I don't play, but I've gotten back into RS because I've had a bit more free time than usual, and I thought it'd be fun to play with a friend... and not a single person responded; and [b] over the course of the day, I realised from snippets of other people's conversations that a friend I was previously very close to is having some major relationship trouble/drama that I knew absolutely nothing about... which is fine, I get it, you can't just text everyone you know when you're going through something, it's nothing personal, etc, and we've both been crazy busy for the last few months so we haven't been catching up as much, and I missed the last big group thing, etc, etc...
but still. that distinct feeling where everyone else in the friend group seems to know about something but no one's told you? I get that enough in my other friend group, where most of them all work[ed] together and see each other frequently, and I constantly feel behind on the news. sucks to have it happen here as well, especially with a friend who I got very close to very quickly, and then feel like we've drifted ever since we both got busier and she got romantic partners........... orz I know it's not on purpose, and we've even talked about it before, but hey. it still sucks. and it made the feeling of weirdness with the book selections just that bit sharper.)
check the garden after the snow and heavy rain of the past week
collapse my old keyboard and post photos in various places to try to get rid of it
plant the amaryllis I got for Christmas
assemble and set up the new CD player/digital radio with awesome speakers I got for Christmas and play a CD I burned in 2004 - hello again physical media, bye bye spotify and adverts
hang a painting on the wall
cook shepherd's pie and roast parsnips and have with red cabbage and a G&T
And now I am going to do the washing up and clean the kitchen before settling down with the new episode of The Night Manager at 9pm along with tea and banana bread.
Yes, this day has not progressed my giant stacks of marking or helped me lose weight and give up sugar which I desperately need to do. But, you honour, consider this: it's January and I've been ill for three weeks and only just now starting to feel better.
This is random but on a more positive note than I have been, yesterday I got new pens that I’m obsessed with. I had gotten metallic ones before that would theoretically be more fun but they don’t write nearly as smoothly. These aren’t metallic but there are some bright colors and they write so smoothly.
Both jackals and correlate to death, albeit one more benevolent/neutral than the other.
Infinite/zero is a harbinger of death and obstruction.
Both have tools of judgement.
Infinite's tool of judgement is the power of the gem.
Side note, I find it interesting how its located in his chest. He's straying further away from something recognizable and transitioning into host/vessel for the ruby that is taking over the place only his heart should be.
Anubis' scale of justice that weighs hearts with a feather.
Both devices decide what world/realiy, spiritual or perception/realm the person will earn.
I remember I made this first comparison in this reply.
"...In the sweet end, the Jackal would be there like an omen, looming as a shadow in the doorway and picking up the pieces as the ancients before him did. He'd put him in jars for safe keeping before sequestering him away for his own afterlife. There, he would feed him illusions that do not adhere to reality."
Actually practising with a small mic/recording device for potential podficcing adventures some day in the future but oh my fucking god it is SO awkward lmaooooo. It honestly feels like my old days in drama when I was overcoming awkwardness and shyness and also learning how to control my voice volume so it’d carry during performances without sounding dumb. Also the sound of my voice and accent is probably not the best for this but OH WELL.
Let's be real here, Rangiku isn't the strongest, when it comes to the fukutaichous she's average at best when it comes to power level, and that's okay but she has this air about her that commands respect. Sure, she's got some seniority when it comes to some of the fukutaichous but beyond that there is this essence about Rangiku that just gets me.
She has that "fake it until you make it" vibe about her, again not the strongest, but she's got some tactical knowledge and strengths. And if that doesn't work she's not above using her feminine charms to her advantage.
But you wanna know what her true ace up her sleeve is? Those she surrounds herself with.
First it was Gin. While nothing is truly ever given canonly, their relationship had to be one of the worst kept secrets in Soul Society. Passed off as merely "childhood friends" but please, tell me you can't see Rangiku being disrespected by someone and they just look up to see Gin looming in the shadows, finger dragging across his throat with that wicked grin on his features. And it goes from "how lazy are you Matsumoto" to "you know what how about I just file this paperwork for you?"
And then there's Toshiro. Someone insulting his fukutaichou? Absolutely not, the only one who can do that is him. The area around them just dropping twenty degrees but Rangiku is so use to it that she doesn't notice but the rude jerk certainly does.
And if you think Rangiku doesn't realize this, she does, but she'll gladly act obvious to keep up the rouse.
