The Checkout Counter #31
May 2025

All the Horses of Iceland

There Will Be Blood

LaserWriter II

i'm publishing this a day earlier than i usually would, since i'll be moving 1,700 miles away next week and have a bit more packing to do! thanks, as always, for reading. see ya 🏃💨

Film

  • Shin Godzilla (シン・ゴジラ), 2016blows the more recent godzilla minus one out of the water, imo. unfortunately the version of this i watched didn't include the comically large text that indicated each character's title, so some of the satire was lost—still, it was telegraphed in other ways. godzilla's initial form as a crawling, sickly, stegosaurus-looking thing was a delightful surprise, and the designs that follow retain that pained and piteous look. definitely the most scared i've been during a godzilla picture (out of the 5 i've seen so far)—he's really scary in this one! he has to split his jaw in half to spew nuclear fire! ahh!
    Action, sci-fi, horror. A monster emerges from the ocean. The government responds.
  • There Will Be Blood, 2007always such a pleasure when i put on a movie that's widely considered to be one of the best of the century, and i find out that it's true! not only is this exceptionally crafted from every angle, it's also right up my alley with the historical setting, biblical quality, and a protagonist who just plain sucks. capitalism eating away at people's humanity is so fun on the silver screen!

    incredible dialogue throughout. the way daniel day lewis says "acro-ooooo-ss" in this clip is so fucking funny and bizarre. this is just one of, like, five scenes that i haven't stopped thinking about since. paul dano makes some truly wild noises in this, too. great stuff all around.
    Drama. Daniel Plainview and his son go from town to town in search of promising oil wells to drill. A lifelong feud is birthed when Daniel refuses to let a local preacher bless one of his newly opened wells.

Books

  • All the Horses of Iceland, Sarah Tolmiereally lovely and fable-like prose in this short read. learned quite a bit about khazaria, a place and period of history i had no idea about. magic is treated very matter-of-fact—i suppose it would have been, back then.
    Historical fiction, literary. Follows an Icelandic trader's journey along the Silk Road and the steppe horses that accompany his return home.
  • LaserWriter II, Tamara Shopsinsuch a fun and breezy read! this is interspersed with the real history of mac computers and tekserve, along with more fantastical bits where the internal parts of computers and printers talk amongst each other. also, the book has an interactive webpage (of course it does!).
    Literary, comedic. It's the 90s in New York City and Claire has gotten a job at an independent Mac repair shop, where she soon falls in love with printers.

Short fiction

Articles & essays

Blogs

Games

  • Scrandlevery quickly became my favorite daily game! some of the scran displayed here is truly diabolical—couldn't have even dreamed of such abysmal scran.
    Daily scran guessing game

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