The Checkout Counter #43

to my RSS readers: a few people let me know that my RSS feed was broken, so hopefully it's fixed now! please reach out to ayu@sweetfish.site if there are still any issues. thank you!

we're halfway through the year already…! my june was filled with good meals, movies about people desperate for connection, and impassioned manifestos.

hope you're able to keep to comfortable temperatures, wherever you are. until next time!

Film

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (偶然と想像), 2021¹
Anthology, drama, romance. Three stories of three women and their unconventional romantic encounters.

Fallen Leaves (Kuolleet lehdet), 2023²
Romance, comedy, drama. A supermarket employee and a sandblaster meet at a karaoke bar. Soon after, they both fall in love and lose their jobs.

Thief, 1981³
Thriller, crime, drama. An expert safecracker agrees to lead one last diamond heist to ensure his future of an ordinary family life.

A Poet (Un poeta), 2025⁴
Drama, comedy. An aging and increasingly irrelevant poet finds purpose by nurturing the writing skills of a teenage girl.

My Sunshine (ぼくのお日さま), 2024⁵
Drama. A figure skating coach trains two of his young students to ice dance, and the three form a short-lived bond.

Music

Eivät enkelitkään ilman siipiä lennä, Maustetytöt⁶
Pop

Games

10,000 rooms you could call home
Simulation. Traverse temporary floor plans and soundscapes.

Anthropeum
Daily game. Guess where and when each artifact was made.

Articles & essays

Manifestos for the Future, Hans Ulrich Obrist⁷

On prioritizing play, Matthew Prebeg and Mercedes Torrendell⁸

Blogs

making interactive fiction for e-readers with tweeul8r, adam le doux

Nurturing games, Laura Michet

I styled my web feed (while I still can), Pearbosc

Why Not Manifest?, Em Reed

Caper in the Castro thoughts, Michael Klamerus

Painting with Light, John Coulthart

Around the web

India Street Lettering

Spore dispersal
Portal to interesting websites

Postcard Log⁹

Web design as architecture¹⁰

Manifesto Jam 2026¹¹

Liminal spaces shrine

Zine Imposer
Upload a PDF and get a print-ready booklet

Current Rothko
A painting for the day

Heikki's Garden of Flowers
Archive of historical and contemporary pictorial letterpress works

Storied Colors
One color and its story every day

Notes

1. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
i was feeling pretty neutral about this until once again, the last story in the anthology. what a lovely tale of coincidence and memory and play, with a speculative fiction twist. a computer virus so widespread it makes everyone go back to using mail and telegrams is a fun storytelling device.

2. Fallen Leaves
i've only seen one other movie from this director and i'm very keen to seek out more. the anachronistic production design and deliberately stilted acting are just my cup of tea, and they're done in a way that's completely unromantic and unsentimental. woman who steals from work and guy who drinks on the job, what a couple. a perfect movie dog, too.

3. Thief
wow! every frame is just dripping with style and mood. how enthralling to watch experts at work and artfully use huge pieces of equipment. thermal lances are very cool.
i wouldn't have been surprised if james caan started quoting marx towards the end there. i can easily imagine him saying "labor is entitled to all it creates" then whipping his gun out and blasting a bunch of guys. what a picture.

4. A Poet
the kind of movie that makes me want to grab the screen and say "noooo" out of secondhand embarrassment. agonizing and funny and so clearly reflective of arts industries around the world. it's kind of like if tár was good (sorry!). loved cecile's review.

5. My Sunshine
beautifully composed shots and production design! feels very quaint and nearly saccharine, until the reality of bigotry comes crashing down upon everyone. the stylish end credits were much appreciated.

6. Eivät enkelitkään ilman siipiä lennä
checked this album out after hearing a certain needle drop in fallen leaves. good tunes!

7. Manifestos for the Future
For one thing is certain: without some kind of a manifesto, we cannot write alternatives that are more than vague utopias; without a manifesto, we cannot conceive the future.
[...] What interests me about the manifesto is that it’s a defunct format. It belongs to the early twentieth century and its atmosphere of political and aesthetic upheaval. The bombast and aggression, the half-apocalyptic, half-utopian thrust, the earnestness—all the manifesto’s rhetorical devices seem anachronistic now. For that very reason it’s compelling, in the way a broken bicycle wheel was for Duchamp. Things that don’t work have great potential.
lots of great ideas to chew on here. very much an inspiration for my manifesto jam entries.

8. On prioritizing play
A lot of narratives about technology assume that we either control the machines or the machines control us. But the reality is that technology is so interwoven into our lives, our culture, our values, our power structures, that everything about technology reflects us right back. They are intimate extensions of us.

9. Postcard Log
so wonderful :) the total miles traveled is a nice touch. i should try out postcrossing too…

10. Web design as architecture
another point of inspiration for my manifesto jam entries.

11. Manifesto Jam 2026
a whopping 333 entries for the third manifesto jam…most auspicious. i submitted two entries and have ideas for many more after parsing everyone else's. what a refreshing and rejuvenating exercise! i hope to write an actual blog post about this since i have many thoughts, but in the meantime here are some of my favorite entries of the ones i've read: SHUT UP ABOUT HOW MUCH YOU HATE MAKING GAMES, EXPAND THE POSSIBILITY SPACE, TEXT FETISHIST: AN AUTOPSY, Against Gratitude, Untimely Art Manifesto, i’ll start making games again as soon as somebody gets this boot off my fucking neck, antisense manifesto, THE RETURN OF THE Notecard Mini-festos, secret horses manifesto, and Steal, and Be Stolen From!.
okay i listed 10 and that's probably enough…but of course i could keep going. check out the 333 entries for yourself and skim them, parse them, save them as PDFs. impassioned declarations by independent gamemakers and writers and artists aren't scary, i promise.

as always, you can leave a comment on any checkout counter post. thanks for reading!

oops! i made another manifesto and it's a ripoff of a classic. you can download the PDF and such on the itch page.

i have so many new thoughts and ideas thanks to manifesto jam, it's very exciting. future blog post on the mind, perhaps…

i made a zine about art and the web for this year's manifesto jam and you can read it here!

there are still three days to submit to the jam and it's been so enriching to read the entries. come join in!

The Checkout Counter #42

happy june! may had such perfect weather—don't think i ever really appreciated it until now. how fortunate to be able to enjoy a stroll around town every day.

thanks for reading and until next time 😎

Film

Central Station (Central do Brasil), 1998
Drama. A retired school teacher helps a boy on his journey to find the father he never knew.

Children of Men, 2006¹
Scifi, thriller, action. In 2027, when an infertility crisis leaves human civilization on the brink of collapse, a former activist helps an immigrant woman escape the totalitarian police state of Britain.

Y Tu Mamá También, 2001²
Romance, drama. After graduating high school, two teenage boys and a married woman embark on a summer roadtrip.

Sorry to Bother You, 2018³
Scifi, comedy. When his underpaid telemarketer coworkers go on strike, Cassius Green lands a coveted promotion and gets thrust into the nightmarish, corporate world of Power Callers.

Real Women Have Curves, 2002⁴
Drama, comedy. Ana's dreams of going to college clash with her mother's traditionalist expectations.

Children of Heaven, 1997 (بچه‌های آسمان)
Drama. A brother and sister share a single pair of shoes.

Moonstruck, 1987⁵
Romance, comedy, drama. As Loretta falls for her fiancé's estranged brother, she soon learns that she isn't the only one in her family with a secret romance.

Music

Strange Weather, Louie Zong
Funk, jazz

You Must Believe in Spring, Bill Evans
Jazz

Our Roots Run Deep, Dominique Fils-Aimé
Soul, R&B

Articles & essays

Museum of the Home, Gabrielle de la Puente⁶

Invisible Services, Jonny Bunning

From My to Me, Olia Lialina⁷

Blogs

I rode the first train out of Union Station that went to the new D Line stations!, Laura Michet

Let's Make Some Umeshu, Noah Chan⁸

Games

Cursor Camp
Browser game. A summer camp for your cursor.

smilejam entries⁹
Entries to a small and simple game jam.

Around the web

Empty Screenings
Find empty to near-empty AMC Theater screenings near you

The Wikipedia article for types of meals¹⁰

crouton2.net¹¹

555-MILF-TAR
Video

TransitRuns
Global database of transit speedrunning

Modern Illustration Archive

Internet Pattern Book

TURBOPHONE 2026
Art game archive

Notes

1. Children of Men
rewatch. i last saw this at a very impressionable age nearly twenty years ago, which is wild considering how much of the imagery i remember. it sure left an impression!
revisiting this movie in 2026, just a year before it's set, feels so visceral and makes me acutely aware of being in the present. this is the kind of filmmaking that makes me leap out of my seat and yell how the hell did they do that, how on earth was this made, etc. the long takes have been discussed and dissected to death but they really are that good! it's infuriatingly good.
what isn't as talked about is that this movie is also really fucking funny in places, in spite of everything. people are still going to be funny when the world's ending.
i could go on and on and on but this review really puts it best: it "activates my fight or flight response more than a movie should be capable of doing and leaves me lying awake at night with the restless urge to make the world a better place. What more could I possibly ask from a movie?"

2. Y Tu Mamá También
coincidentally watched this on mother's day and had no idea the title was a "your mom" joke until they said it in the movie. got em.
all i knew about this before going in was that it's the horny threesome roadtrip movie, so naturally i was heartbroken by the ending. the universal ache of sharing such special experiences with people you'll never see again...!

3. Sorry to Bother You
soo fun. and real and scary. lakeith stanfield is very charming. i do wonder about an alternate version of this story where the more overt scifi bit is pared down and cassius's selling out/his friends' union organizing remains the focal point.
looking forward to i love boosters and everything else boots riley conjures up next!

4. Real Women Have Curves
i'm usually averse to high school coming-of-age dramas so this was a breath of fresh air. the specificity of ana's story and the loving way los angeles is shot makes this simple narrative really work. america ferrera is such a star.

5. Moonstruck
i'm always so fascinated by how italian americans are portrayed in hollywood lol. the constant cooking and eating, the chaotic family gatherings around dinner tables, the melodrama. very much a shared experience across immigrant american communities.
cher is so stunningly hot with gray-streaked hair i was aghast when she got rid of it in the makeover scene. so it goes.

6. Museum of the Home
nice to be able to put the odd, temporary feeling of apartment living into words. i keep an old, extra suitcase and sturdy cardboard box around because i know i'll have to move eventually—and of course "eventually" could mean several months to a decade.

7. From My to Me
"Making links being the node was the duty, the reason or an excuse to be online. You are maybe not an expert in anything, you are not a fan of anybody, but you can provide links to others and that’s a noble role."

8. Let's Make Some Umeshu
and its sequel, let's make some ichigoshu

9. smilejam entries
lots of plano games here and wow i love how they look and feel—it's like shrinking to the size of an ant and traversing a handmade zine. so many wonderful works that made me smile :)
some of my favorite entries include: split diopter, Mountain Vege Hunter Assistant, the old view from the bedroom window as seen through my social studies textbook, Canon EOS 20D, Train Stop Game, HIEI, and Philadelphia Simulator.

10. The Wikipedia article for types of meals
i've been trying to snack more (and like, actually sit down for a deliberate Snack Time instead of grabbing whatever's in the pantry and eating while working) so this led me to thinking about mealtimes and how they're conceptualized around the world

11. crouton2.net
is there a crouton3.net? only one way to find out

as always, you can leave a comment on any checkout counter post. thanks for reading!

thanks!