(no subject)

Today's New York adventure was also very High Quality New York!

Today was shopping day, which means we hauled butt to Union Sq and hit up the Strand, Forbidden Planet, and Books of Wonder. I did not buy the uncorrected galley proof of Howl's Moving Castle (I didn't even ask how much it was). I also did not buy the $500 25th anniversary edition Where The Wild Things Are signed and doodled by Maurice Sendak. I *definitely* did not buy the $22,500 (yes, five digits) first edition signed and doodled one.

I did buy a copy of the Audubon field guide to Insects and Spiders, mostly because there were several copies on the shelves of the Strand for $25 bucks, and then one suspiciously identical copy that was marked at $11.50. I have not yet figured out why it was ten bucks cheaper, but I assume it's for a parallel dimension's worth of bugs, and they will all be subtlly...off.

Since we were in the area, we went to the Museum of Sex as well! That was pretty cool, although a little smaller than I was hoping. They did have a very cool punk rock exhibit going on! And there was a section on early stag films, which I was hoping would dovetail nicely with my recent obsession with The Rialto Report (site not remotely safe for work, details in footnotes¹). It actually largely predated the stuff I've been focused on, which meant I got to watch snippets of a whole bunch of super early loops --black and white silent films and every bit as filthy as we like to see today!

The effect was ruined some by some of the other patrons, who were giggling wildly and uncomfortably any time anything happened, like...a penis. You are at the Sex Museum. There is sex. Kindly _get the fuck over yourself_ or at least go be utterly immature about it over there somewhere.

Also mom and I got to bounce around in a bounce house made of boobs. It was amazing. There are photos, but you can't see them because obviously².

Post museum, we walked back to Times Square and picked up some tickets for The Play That Goes Wrong. Oh my poor sides. There's less _analysis_ to be done with this one than there is Hadestown. Suffice to say, the title is utterly accurate. I kinda want to see a "proper" staging of the Murder At Whatever Manor now, ideally done as overwroughtly as the actors would hope.

We waited outside the stage door, and probably made the casts day, as there was no one else except a couple of friends of a couple of the stars. Friendly chatting and signed playbills all around!

Now we are home again, and I am procrastinating completing my grades which are due in about ten hours. I'm sure I'll find the time to do them somehow!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: The Rialto Report is a highly academic podcast and website that collects interviews and primary source documents for the golden age of pornography, with a special focus on late 70s/early 80s NYC. It is so cool!! There is something beautiful and powerful and tragic and painful about all these stories of people living and fucking in that sweet moment after the pill but before AIDS. About half the interviews end with pictures of smiling 70 year olds, laughing somewhere far away. About half the interviews end with a drug overdose thirty years ago. It is such a _fascinating_ archive.

And yeah, it is _deeply_ not safe for work. Nothing about it is safe for work. There are full scans of smutty magazines from the eighties with big ol' tiddy spreads, and headshots of porn stars, and film stills, and backstage shots from strip clubs. It's academically awesome, it also can be some genuinely titillating stuff.

2: "Were you not just being enlightened and holier-than-thou about how well you can handle the existence of sex?" Yeah, but there's the whole point, and some people who are immature and can't handle it are my bosses and the parents of my students.

Life

Wheeeeeeeeee.

I spent basically all of today on a bus, which was DEEPLY NOT OKAY. I mean, it is what it is, but it was just so fucking exhausting to be on a bus for almost three hours longer than I was supposed to be. This is what we do to avoid paying extra money. Or fly.

Ultimately, the New York trip was a Roaring Success! I am very pleased to have gotten out there, to have spent time with mom and Barb and dad and Maia, and to have go seen lovely shows and the like. That being said, I am _extremely happy_ to be back home, curled up in bed, writing my words and watching Jeopardy on Netflix. Just...kinda mindless! I know that tomorrow I go back to the real world and work and stuff (although the seniors are gone, so work is a lot less so).

The other downside of the Bus Ride From Hell was that there was a lot of traffic...and the bus driver was not very good at The Traffic Game. When you're shitty at the traffic game, you make your passengers much more prone to carsickness. So...basically after the first hour, I was vaguely queasy the entire time. It was...yeahhh. This meant I couldn't really do anything to entertain myself --reading books makes it worse, fucking around on the phone makes it worse, traffic is non-conducive to drawing, and I'm not the kind of asshole to talk aloud on the phone while on a bus. So I dozed the entire time, mostly not actually sleeping.

I managed some actually entertaining daydreaming, but then they kept getting dragged into generalized anxiety and totally absurd fantasies about doing stuff like successfully blackmailing Jeff Bezos into donating his fortune to the ACLU or whatever. That is one of the less anxious things I thought about for a while on the bus.

It's _very hard_ to feel comfortable or sane right now, in a world that is falling down around our ears.

Anyways, I'm building up to the last few weeks of school/work, and then it is PINEWOODS!. Well no, then there's a brief visit by Alys and Pinewoods prep. At some point I need to settle down and figure out the rest of my summer --I know it will involve moving throughout August, and I wanna go visit the parents for a bit, but like..is there time to organize anything else in there? Or should I just plan on flopping around as much as possible?

Oh yeah, and also there's an AGM for the Bellsfolx, which I'm not really in charge of in any way...but the boyf is, and there's a certain extent to which I anticipate playing host-spouse.

I dunno. I'm pretty tired and babbly tonight, but that's what happens when you don't _do_ anything all day. I wish I'd had more of a chance to do _anything_ on the bus, even just some mindless gaming, but c'est la vie.

Hope y'all are well!