This morning I was moved to re-watch this 2017 Lindsay Ellis video about the history of successfully mocking Nazis. Still good.
CW for the video: lots of clips of dated, transgressive comedy with various slurs (n-word is bleeped, others are not). Clips are discussed from a critical/progressive perspective.
I started reading Doppelganger by Naomi Klein for the discussion of disinformation, but I stayed because it’s secretly a great analysis of horror movies and books.
I would have read this much sooner if I had known it was going to involve exploring doubles and imposters in scary stories all the way back past Freud, to fairy changelings, golems, and theology about the duality of soul and body.
Most horror movie analysis I’ve read picks one theme (racism, feminism, imperialism, or whatever) and looks at all the ways that has been expressed in horror.
It’s a fun change to read a book that picks one image (the double) and looks at all the horrifying themes it can express
I’m busting out last fall’s dried hawthorn berries for a project today, and realizing that I cracked them before drying. Fun!
It’s my first time trying this method. Hopefully they will steep faster than intact berries, so they work better in herbal tea blends.
Posting these linden (Tilia cordata) blossoms mostly to prove that not all of my herbalism projects smell weird. These famously smell like a hug.
One of my apocalypse mental health coping strategies is choosing silly or celebratory versions of emergency supplies. (Some of my emergency water is carbonated.)
Seeing so many happy people at the new Banfield Park public swimming platform during the heat warning today pushed that same button — it’s a party version of a public cooling station. Big fan.
My favourite heatwave / climate change picture book is this one, where one night it is so hot that the moon melts.
It has everything: apartment-dwellers helping each other, a grandma with good ideas, climate refugees (from the moon), environmental restoration, and an ending that is cute and encouraging, or maybe “icy and sweet”.
Gonna go make popsicles and work on my neighbourhood extreme weather prep. Sending courage to my fellow west coasters.
My runner-up favourite heatwave / climate change picture book is this one, where a family is trying to get to the lake but their car keeps breaking down.
A baby is taken seriously as a person with valid ideas, a dad does all the parenting, it’s a solid right-to-repair story, and the car is correctly portrayed as unglamorous and annoying. But the noises it makes are a lot of fun to read.