Ten Things, 2023-01

**HORSE RACE ANNOUNCING INTENSIFIES**

Here are ten things.

  1. Today is my cat Ruby's fifth adoptaversary! Over the 2017–18 winter holidays, we were half-looking at Kijiji for people looking to re-home their pets, and we stumbled upon someone nearby giving away their adorable brown long-haired tabby cat. So on a cold January day, I went for a walk with a pet carrier and brought my little girl home.
  2. I'm not a big resolution guy (see the last edition of Ten Things), but I do want to get better at writing capsule reviews on my Letterboxd.
  3. One of my favourite Nintendo 3DS games is Pocket Card Jockey, a pyramid solitaire/horse racing game from the studio behind the Pokémon games. After literal years of crowing for a port or a remaster, Tim Apple has granted my wish: Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On! drops January 20th, and might just be the killer app that gets me to subscribe to Apple Arcade.
  4. What do the Fisher-Price PXL-2000 camera, synthetic tracheae, and the AT-727 Sound Burger all have in common? They are all featured in the Museum of Failure. (via Recomendo)
  5. Two new additions to my bookshelf: The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols and the collected sonnets of William Shakespeare.
  6. Every now and again I'll fall into the wonderful, questionably-accurate, likely-maintained-by-people-half-my-age Aesthetics Wiki and try to figure out what my bag is. Long story short, I may have been stealing some Dark Academia valour with my whole “goth professor” shtick.
  7. NHL logos, Poké-fied.
  8. I made some fried rice last week and I swear I saw the face of God.
  9. 2022 cinematic catch-up, continued: the eye-popping, heart-wrenching visual feast that is Three Thousand Years of Longing, the Fincher-fied cape shit of The Batman, and what is likely to be 2022's Short Good Secret all-star, Leonor Will Never Die.
  10. “After the Fire” by Ada Limón (via Carith) 
    You ever think you could cry so hard
that there’d be nothing left in you, like
how the wind shakes a tree in a storm
until every part of it is run through with
wind? I live in the low parts now, most
days a little hazy with fever and waiting
for the water to stop shivering out of the
body. Funny thing about grief, its hold
is so bright and determined like a flame,
like something almost worth living for.

#tenthings