Fennel & Dill 26
The bay this week was thankfully cooler than the past month. My body was thankful for the heat respite, and Snorri was cuddlier as a result. This week felt long, after having Juneteenth off last week, but next Friday we observe Independence Day, so it’s another short week. I can’t say I’m looking forward to the even more ubiquitous fireworks, but hopefully the cops will finally run out.
I spent a lot of time watching tv this week, and enjoying good Japanese Whiskey. Hopefully you had some fun things to occupy your time as well. Oh, and I also spent an inordinate amount of time trying to fix my bike chain and rear derailleur—bike shops have 10 day waits, so needs must. I turns out I’ve forgotten most of my bike mechanic skills.
What skills have you forgotten/tried to learn?
Links
- Two more comics to start us off: Gideon Falls, which is pretty damn creepy, and Adventureman, which fortunately seems to be about a woman. The comics world is finally reckoning with predation and abusive men, which hopefully means even more great people will be able to produce content instead. Comics, other than distribution, seem to be ideally suited for quarantine creation, and it would be rad to see a new set of voices show up in print soon.
- Speaking of fancy whiskey, before this quarantine Chinese and American customers were swiftly burning through the stocks of all the greatest bottles. I’ve heard from friends in Japan that it’s not even possible to buy a lot of great whiskeys there unless you know someone at the distillery. Production is likely ramping-up to meet demand, but it might be 5 or more years before we see the results. I plan to still enjoy Japanese whiskey then too. My favorite remains Nikka Coffey Grain, except when I’m in Japan and can consistently get this 17 year delight.
- I dove headlong into a new tv show from HBO Europe this week: Beforeigners, which was as fun and silly as the name. Ostensibly, it’s a detective show, but the primary conceit is that folks keep popping up in the ocean from ancient Norse villages. I learned about a lot of strange rituals and characters from Snorri’s book Heimskringkla. I also love that Vikings called Jesus, “the white christ”. Showing up in a new country and saying “this is your new religion” is a total dick move, in my opinion. I wonder if any sci-fi about this exists, wherein aliens pop down to earth to convert everyone to worship space Hubbard?
- This is the third time I’ve brought up alcohol in this email, but this one is about drinking less. I think I’m likely drinking more than usual, but maybe that just balances out everyone else who apparently can only drink at bars.
- On Friday night, I was waxing rhapsodic about the magazine Giant Robot (RIP), and then decided to check out what they’d blogged about since shutting down their print run. This piece by Eric Nakamura about his dad, Bob, returning to the internment camp he was forced into by xenophobic and racist white Americans during WWII was sad and beautiful.
Well, it’s time for me to return to my world of tv amateur bike wrenching, and funding cool non-profits. I hope you are also watching the new season of Dark, and enjoying the summer wherever you are reading this. Stay safe and keep fighting, space cowgirls~