I went for a walk at the end of the day, down to the Bay at China Beach, here in San Francisco, and I encountered two microphone installations toward the end of the road. There’s a lot of construction going on, both domestic and municipal, and these boxes appear to be either seismic or noise monitoring setups. Maybe both. The company employed to do the monitoring is Integrated Geotechnical Solutions, Inc. (more at igs-inc.com). I stood at both sites, contemplating aloud what they might be, fully aware I was doing so with microphones in plain sight, but also wondering if the mics were even concerned with signals audible to human ears. One of the boxes employs solar power. The power source of the other was unclear. I have a tiny little noise monitor, called the AudioMoth, and these seem to be sort of like large, industrial versions of that. I hope to learn more.
At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I find knowing I’ll revisit my posts to be a positive and mellowing influence on my social media activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.
▰ If you really want your neighborhood to feel quiet, have it host three-day music festivals two weekends in a row. The Monday after is eerily still.
▰ It’s funny the library is all “be quiet” ’cause this rattly old book cart a librarian is pushing across the floor is loud as heck
▰ They say that writing about music is like dancing about architecture — but what does that mean for architraves?
▰ Trying a new format on Instagram. I’m generally not into sharing without adding some sort of context, even a grace note, so this treatment may wither on the vine, or evolve. We’ll see.
▰ Me watching TV before bed: Hey, I’m halfway through the second episode of Alien: Earth and maybe this isn’t good to watch before bed. Hey, there’s a new Tyler, the Creator video, “Sugar on My Tongue,” so I’ll watch that. Hey, what’s up with that knife? …
▰ Annoying: accounts that list all their photo gear.
Also annoying: accounts that list none of their photo gear, so I have to email them to ask.
▰ I’ve spent much of my adult life trying to remember it’s Harriet Walter not Harriet Walker, and then she plays a character named Walker on Silo, and I’m trying to sort out if this will aid or hurt my attempts to keep it straight.
▰ Books read this week: I finished the four most recent (that is, in English translation) volumes of Masakazu Ishiguro’s Heavenly Delusion (through v7), and I’m pretty hooked. The 8th should be out by the end of the year. ▰ I finished volumes 2 through 4 of Kazuo Umezz’s My Name Is Shingo, with one more to go … before I have to wait until the 6th/final volume comes out. ▰ I read Will McPhail’s In. (yes, there’s a period in the title), about a young urban professional suffering from anhedonia, in one sitting. I especially appreciated how different pages used not just the structure of the panels but the overall amount and shape of the white margins differently. ▰ I read Erik Svetoft’ Spa, about the dark — in a supernatural sense — goings-on at the titular location. ▰ I’ve been looking forward to DC’s Absolute series coming out as collected volumes. I read the first two, Absolute Batman (from writer Scott Snyder and illustrator Nick Dragotta) and Absolute Wonder Woman (from writer Kelly Thompson and illustrator Hayden Sherman). I’m not sure I entirely get the point of the Absolute books. They’re reboots of famous characters, so sort of like the classic Elseworlds titles, but somehow distinct from that line (aside from being ongoing, how exactly is unclear). The “Absolute” Batman, for example, isn’t rich, but since O.G. Bruce Wayne’s playboy persona was a cover, the difference from an ethical perspective isn’t as stark as it might seem — at least not so far. Now, the Wonder Woman volume, on the other hand, was really something. I’ve never, in the past, been very interested in the character, and her story here seems much richer than the isolationist myth of the classic version. In contrast, Absolute Wonder Woman was sent, as a child, to the underworld, where she was raised by Circe. I’ll say this: Sherman has immediately become one of my favorite comics illustrators. I’ll be digging into his back catalog immediately. The guy puts in the work. Every page, every frame, is rich with detail, and every line with texture. (There’s also a side story illustrated by Mattia de Iulis, and some chibi strips drawn by Dustin Nguyen.)
I’ve been on something of a manga bender lately, and so I share this one panel from Masakazu Ishiguro’s very enjoyable series Heavenly Delusion. There a light echo of Akira Toriyama’s work in Ishiguro’s, a gentle roundness to some of the technology, as in this depiction of a portable tape recorder.
