Dunkeld and Birnam, Scotland

Earlier this month we went on vacation to Scotland! It was great to be back there, I really enjoy that every time there’s a change in my life I have to go to Scotland. Our plan was to go up to the Highlands for some rest first for about a week, and then to Edinburgh (which will be a future post). We took the train to Dunkeld and Birnam and stayed in a cute place there, it was really lovely!

Now Dunkeld and Birnam are technically two different towns, but they are connected by a short bridge so it doesn’t really matter. Over in Birnam there are less things for sure, but it’s still very cute. The main attraction is Birnam Arts with the Beatrix Potter experience. The story is that Ms. Potter spent her summers in Birnam when she was young, and her experiences with the wildlife there led to her writing all of these children’s stories. She also met the naturalist Charles MacIntosh there, and he is buried in a nearby cemetery. There’s a theory that his likeness is Mr. MacGregor in Peter Rabbit which is extremely adorable. Past the church, there’s the last tree from Birnam Wood, a medieval forest featured in the Shakespeare play “Macbeth”. It’s about 400-500 years old! Very cool to see, the tree itself is huge and well worth the visit. Other than that, there’s some cute cafes and coffee shops. We really liked the Birnam Wood Café and Birnam Books personally.

Over the bridge in Dunkeld, there’s a little more going on. Most restaurants and hotels are over here. There’s also the Dunkeld Cathedral which is super historic but in disrepair right now. They were collecting money in a few ways but also by holding free music concerts all summer which was so fun! We caught a Scottish folk music performance and a classical saxophone performance. There was a cute knit shop, a fish and chips place, a tea shop, a bakery, a clootie dumpling place (a baked treat), and more! We spent most days doing the 15 minute walk into town and then figuring out where we hadn’t eaten yet.

Just outside of town there are many trails for hiking and biking, we only did one. It’s the Hermitage walk and it’s known for not being too difficult so it’s relatively accessible for kids and older people. It was cool though to be out in the wilderness, so nice to get to see the woods and some wildlife.

So that was our trip to the Highlands! It was a lot of fun and really nice that it was on a train route for us. I would love to go back sometime for another relaxing vacation.

This Is Beautiful: Living in a City

 Whoopsie doopsie, I meant to post this yesterday but hey I'm just back from vacation (more on that in later posts for sure). I've been living in Raleigh for a little over a week now and I have to say that I'm actually really liking it. There's so much stuff nearby, I can take a quick bus ride to work, and I can finally find things that were nowhere out in my random Midwest college town. Also the food's really good, that has me pleased.

My main complaints are of course the heat (I'm dying, please cool off soon) and lack of like a tram or subway system. The buses aren't bad, so far, but it is hard having to drive everywhere. Everyone drives also so the parking isn't horrible that I've seen so far, but I just can't stand driving.

It feels so nice being back in a city. I think this won't be perfect, but it'll be really nice for a few years.

“Bury Your Gays” by Chuck Tingle

I first heard about this book from The Ace Couple podcast, they reviewed it for its representation of an aromantic and asexual character and looked on it extremely favorably. So it was on my radar, but I didn’t get around to picking it up until Mr. Tingle himself came through town and redid his Bury Your Gays tour at our local library. At that event, I finally got my hands on the book. And this was really a delightful read, I’m so glad the starts aligned to make this happen.

The book follows Misha, a writer in Hollywood known for excellent scripts of queer horror. Misha has an Oscar nomination for his latest short film about a mouse, and has a season finale of his TV show coming up. Unfortunately, the tv show follows two agents who Misha wants to make queer and happy, but the executives say that they’ll make more money if they are queer and dead. Misha is pondering how to pull this off when odd things start happening to him. Seems like several of his horror monsters are coming to life and following him around.

Things are terrifying until he follows one of the tv executives back to a remote studio location. There he plans to break in, until the tv executive runs out and drives off, then Misha ends up witnessing his murder. He heads back to the studio, breaks in, and learns that scientists there are working on nanobots that can be assembled using AI into anyone the entertainment company has the rights to. Living, dead, or fictional, doesn’t matter they can remake them and have them act like themselves. All to make more money. Misha agrees to kill off his characters, but now the algorithm wants him dead. He barely makes it through the Oscars, but makes a speech about the importance of queer joy and changes the algorithm. Now everyone wants queer happiness with as little conflict as possible, and Misha is still feeling throttled.

Meanwhile his best friend Tara is aroace and works in IT. She develops a plan where they go and confront the nanobots and she uploads a virus into the backdoor of the program, killing them all off. Everywhere in Hollywood, people turn to ash. Misha writes the ending to the tv show he wants, and the terrifying fictional monsters stop appearing.

The aroace representation is really a highlight of this book. You wouldn’t get this from my summary, but Tara is a major character throughout the book. She’s targeted by the first monster along with Misha and has equal stakes in their rescue. She also is constantly telling him to turn off his phone around the company so that they don’t get his data. The ending is pulled off because 1. The company doesn’t have her data and 2. There’s no asexual representation, so the AI has no idea what she’ll do. It’s a great way to have a wonderful character in the book and utilize her sexuality as part of the plot.

In general though, the book does a great job upending tropes regarding queer individuals, not just the ace community. It’s title comes directly from the idea that gay characters cannot be happy in film and tv, they have to be killed off. Misha gets to directly upend that with his tv show. Misha himself also gets to live and not be killed off in a fake suicide backstage at the Oscars. After changing everything to queer joy, the new executive is a walking gay stereotype and called out as such. As Tingle himself is a queer writer, I have to imagine that this is pretty autobiographical which is also cool to think about.

I really enjoyed this book in general, and also specifically for its representation. Horror isn’t really my cup of tea so I might not have looked into it otherwise, but I’m so glad I did. I should get around to some of Tingle’s other horror works, there are so many of them after all!

“Hunger: A Memoir of ‘My’ Body” by Roxane Gay

I have been a rather casual fan of Gay’s work for a while, I read Bad Feminist back in 2020 or so but I always like her essays online. I finally picked up this book after she happened to be speaking on campus and mentioned that this was being turned into a movie as well. I knew of this book, but since my main exposure was her essays it just never popped up for me. I’m glad I finally picked it up!

The book is in a format that is very easy to read, most of the chapters are only a few pages and it feels much more like a series of short essays or reflections than a narrative. But there is an underlying story of how Gay was raped as an adolescent and from there turned to eating as a way to protect herself. From there the book is primarily about what it is like going through the world in such a large body, what she struggles with, and how she is trying to heal.

Lately I have been almost obsessed with books that manage to talk about healing and the realities about it. It isn’t pretty or neat or linear. And she talks quite a bit about her process here and how wonky it is and the intersectionalities with being a large, Black woman. It gets driven home for me in a chapter where she talks about how she had to break herself in another way (her ankle) in order to realize how much she had and how much she had to live for. I think that’s such a nice way of getting at it that you just have to hit the right breakage in order to put yourself back together.

The other aspect I really appreciated was her brief discussion about the body positive movement. I am nowhere near her size, but I think talking about how she doesn’t feel there’s a place for her there since she doesn’t totally love her body resonates a lot. I also don’t love my body but want to, and I want to, more importantly, respect it and treat it well.

I am looking forward to trying to find the movie version as this seems like a difficult book to put together on screen. Gay seemed really enthused by it at the event and that is always a good sign. And I really should read more of her works. It just about always hits and captures the nuances of feminism and the like that you don’t see much elsewhere.

This Is Beautiful: The Odyssey

 Not a hot take by any means, but Christopher Nolan's film "The Odyssey" is extremely well done. I went to see it earlier this week with a friend and it really did not feel like its runtime. A major standout for me was the music, whoever composed that score had an impeccable sense and control of the tension. The music was really a part of the whole experience instead of something laid on top of it. The best example I have is that Odysseus's bow string is a chord and part of the music whenever he is fighting or hunting and that is used to really great effect. 

The film can feel a little preachy at times with all the talk of Zeus' law (treat strangers with kindness) and how it has been broken. But I think it works for a modern audience, it both makes it feel rather timely and humanizes the characters. Odysseus knows that he messed up during the war and is able to talk about that to Penelope towards the end.

The performances were amazing and the visuals were fantastic. I'm so glad I managed to catch this film in theaters!

“The Bloody Chamber and other stories” by Angela Carter

This is a collection of short stories based on fantasy or folk tales. Some are really short, only a page, while others are much longer. There’s one based on Beauty and the Beast, a Puss in Boots, and Red Riding Hood among others.

I have a soft spot for retellings of familiar tales that get more of a modern twist, especially those written by women, so I did largely enjoy this work. Most of the protagonists are female, and a lot of them manage to get happy endings! Especially in “The Bloody Chamber,” the main character is about to be beheaded by her serial killing husband when her mother comes for her and shoots him in the head. It’s very satisfying.

I will also say though that there’s a bit too much… sex? For my tastes. It’s fine for the stories where it makes sense, and it’s really funny in Puss in Boots, but almost every story has a girl taking off her clothes at some point. Which like, I get it for a few stories and there’s a bunch that deal with the human/animal divide so that’s all good. But then the Little Red Riding Hood one mentions the wolf’s huge junk multiple times and she gets naked at the end and it just feels like we used this up previously.

So this was fun, it’s a quick read, but it gets a little repetitive. I still had a great time though, which is all I want from a book like this.

This Is Beautiful: Staying Put

 Alright my past post was on Toronto, but now I'm reversing course here. I'm so glad I get to stay at home for the next two weeks and work part-time. I need a break from doing things and I think that this is going to be great! I'm a few days into a course that I'm teaching in the mornings this week and next and so far it's pretty chill and I'm liking it a lot. Hopefully this is just the recharge that I need.