The Checkout Counter #29
March 2025
The Invention of Prehistory
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Cornell Lab Bird Cams
my march felt long—it started with a bout of what i think was norovirus (don't ever get this), interspersed with several apartment tour dreams (nightmares?), and ended with what i hope is the end of my month-long apartment search (just waiting on that final email…). i saw the blood moon eclipse, i'm seeing flowering trees blooming now. i like seeing seasons change.
Film
  • The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 1969scary! i didn't know anything about this movie (aside from the fact that maggie smith won her first oscar because of it), so when its very mild and conventional premise turned dark i was pleasantly/uncomfortably surprised. the unorthodox schoolteacher, beloved by students and despised by administration, is turned on its head to reveal the manipulation and egotism underneath.
    Drama. A young schoolteacher forgoes the traditional curriculum and selects a group of impressionable girls to take under her wing.
  • Nosferatu, 2024i thought the first act was so mesmerizing and saturated with atmosphere that the rest of the movie felt diminishing in comparison, unfortunately. a sweaty, sickly guy running around a crumbling castle and trembling like a leaf is riveting, what can i say.

    i definitely prefer eggers' more intimate films (the witch, the lighthouse [maybe that's why i like the first act of nosferatu so much; there's a claustrophobia that these all share]), but i'm happy that he can do seemingly any historical drama he wants. i'm seated for whatever he does next!
    Horror, fantasy. A creature from Ellen Hutter's past pursues her.
Books
  • The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins, Stefanos Geroulanosincredibly thorough and varied information is packed into this dense read, all the while being surprisingly readable. i can imagine how the premise of this book would be off-putting to anthropologists or archaeologists, as it describes how these sciences are used to justify racist and colonial violence, and it also proposes that we will never get a true, impartial vision of prehistoric times. as a layman, though, i enjoyed it quite a bit.

    there are connections drawn in here that i would have never considered before: how the 19th century concurrence of accelerated colonialism and the explosion of interest in paleontology informs the colonial, exotic quality of early dinosaur illustrations; how the metric by which a culture is widely considered to be "civilized" or "barbaric" changed forever after the two world wars; how the human tailbone is like a ruin, a piece of the past that still stands today. fascinating stuff!
    Nonfiction, history. Details how ideas of prehistory and prehistoric people often say more about the contemporary moment than what actually happened back then, and how perceptions of prehistoric times have changed and affect the present day.
Articles & essays
Music
Games
  • mattstark's itch games
    Minimalist scene builders and puzzles
  • CSS Puzzle Box 2.0, Blackle Mori
    Puzzle made entirely in CSS
  • TimeGuessr
    Wordle-like, guessing when photographs were taken
  • Orisinal, Ferry Halimoh my god, orisinal is back. i think these were the very first browser games i played, ever, in my life. the background music of the frog game will be forever stuck in my head.
    60+ wonderful browser games
Around the web
← February 2025
April 2025 →
Comment Form is loading comments...