The Checkout Counter #25
November 2024
No Bears
Alice
Good Ghosts and Bad Fathers
the checkout counter is two years old! it's wild that i've managed to keep this up for so long—guess i'll always love to tell people about all the stuff i like.
in other news, i guested on the kritiqal care podcast—give it a listen if you'd like to hear me talk about my games and website crafting.Film
- No Bears, 2022 (خرس نیست)this film is presented in such a matter-of-fact way that it evaporated my usual skepticism of "meta" stories. the director, jafar panahi, is banned from leaving iran in our real world, and the film itself plays with the nebulous borders between documentary and fiction (while the film within the film does so, too!).
i've loved all of panahi's works that i've seen so far. incredibly innovative storytelling and filmmaking.
Drama. Banned from leaving the country, an Iranian director remotely supervises a film shot in Turkey. - Days of the Bagnold Summer, 2019rewatch. a lighthearted story set in a time that, i think, often gets overlooked in coming-of-age stories: summer vacation.
the malaise of summer is done so well here. the adversarial relationship between mother and son has a real bite—the son can be downright cruel—but it nails the balance between comedy and family drama so the film never feels overly twee or self-serious. it's funny!
Comedy, drama. A librarian and her reluctant teenage son spend the summer holiday together. - Alice (Něco z Alenky), 1988
Animation, fantasy. A haunting, almost nightmarish adaptation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, told through stop motion animation alongside live action footage.
Music
- Remnants, Ashen Altar
Electronic, dungeon synth
Books
- How Would You Like Your Mammoth?, Uta Seeburgthis has an inescapable, cloying western perspective that only gets more obvious as the book progresses. when over half of these essays are about european dishes, it's a bit silly to frame the book as generalized "world history". there was, like, one essay about indian cuisine and several about german food, lol.
still, this was a breezy and informative read—the essays from BCE–16th century CE were my favorite. it did make me a bit emotional to read about people from thousands of years ago eating grain porridge while i ate my usual breakfast of oatmeal.
Nonfiction. 12,000 years of culinary history told in 50 short essays. - Revenge, Yoko Ogawa (tr. Stephen Snyder)it was a nice surprise when i noticed that these stories are all connected, in one way or another—i don't think i've read a short story collection like this before. it became a bit of a game to see how the current story would relate to the previous one; some were much more obvious than others.
this peaked a bit early, i think, but the whole book is incredibly engaging. great and haunting!
Short fiction collection. Stories of murder and obsession, and mothers and children.
Articles & essays
- No Compromises: Inside the Minds of Today's Radicals, Lolo
- Let Down By Television, Olivia Stowell
- I HATE DISHOOM, Zarina Muhammad
- Good Ghosts and Bad Fathers:
The Story of a Haunting, a Kidnapping, and an International Incident, Helen Vogelsong-Donahue"Kids see ghosts, they say. Or they have imaginary friends. When we’re young, our beliefs aren’t yet limited, distinctions not yet made. Even those who are frightened by the idea of ghosts like hearing about them. They exist in every culture, pervade every language. The idea of an afterlife allows us to bypass the existential dread of living, to imagine our deceased loved ones in pastures among the clouds, silently but diligently guiding us along our individual journeys. Tall tales keep the dead alive, because nobody wants to feel alone in the universe: human beings need ghost stories to survive, and every story is, in some sense, a ghost story.
"Here’s mine." - Severance, Gabrielle de la Puente
- "Monet: The Restless Vision," "Paris in Ruins," and the Art of Biography, Morgan Leigh Davies
Games
- FoodGuessr
Wordle-like daily game for various dishes and where they're from - It is as if you were making love, Pippin Barr
Around the web
- Pixel Art Galaxy Generator
- Jennifer Mills Newslove this! thank you, jennifer mills.
A weekly one-page newspaper about Jennifer Mills, published by Jennifer Mills. - the songs of the 50 states
Website to showcase a song for each of the 50 states; a work in progress.
December 2024 →
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