Random Stuff

Re-reading Lady Midnight and I’m still gagged at how creepy it is as a book. Cutting off the hands of killers and displaying them on a candelabra? And the entire “lottery” system where people are assigned to be killers? Masterful.

I think that TSC has always had a strong horror element to it. CC just chooses when to turn up the dial. Opening city of heavenly fire with the LA institute getting attacked by the endarkened was certainly inspired. The way the circle tortures the little werewolf girl in the bane chronicles has always stuck with me. The Whitelaws getting wiped out was also crazy. In forever fallen, the pov switch from Janus to Jem was jarring. And don't even get me started on Livvy's death

Yes!!

sorry I have some kind of brain disease

every day i walk into work and my manager says “here is the rule you must enforce” and i go “got it bossman” and i spend a couple days enforcing the rule and then my manager comes up to me and says “why are you enforcing the rule? we changed the rule yesterday and didn’t tell you” and i go “ok bossman new rule it is” and then a customer comes in asking to break the new rule and i say “sorry you can’t it’s the rule” and they say “but you don’t understand the rule doesn’t apply to me” and then my manager comes out and says “they’re right the rule doesn’t apply to them” and i ask why and my manager says “it just doesn’t.” and then the next day we get rid of the rule entirely and no one remembered it existed in the first place.

dying at this sequence from @pinkydragon01 :

one of my favorite this american life segments of late is about the people who played orchestra pit for phantom of the opera on broadway and how, like, a sizeable majority of them had literally been playing the show since it opened in 1988 (on broadway. I know it opened in 86 on the west end, you random pedants, but I am specifically talking about broadway musicians) because their contracts stipulated that they'd have jobs throughout the show's entire run... but nobody anticipated that phantom would become the longest-running broadway show of all time.

I was primarily a Celtic fiddler back when I seriously played the violin, so let’s talk about sessions.

in Appalachian oldtime and bluegrass we call them jams. same principle. a whole raft of musicians with their own instrument, sitting in a circle or standing around. most of these tunes are repetitive by nature, so the main melody gets passed person to person. everyone likes to put their own spin on it when it's their turn, and keep up playing the accompaniment when it moves to someone else. there's an old joke I've heard around that scene "how many bluegrass pickers does it take to change a lightbulb? doesn't matter, as long as each of them get a turn."