In November TOpoet.ca had many days with over 60 hits. USA tops the list with at the top of the hit list, 2nd place is Canada, with India regaining 3rd. Increases seen from Uk & Bangladesh, with Egypt & Germany coming on strong. The blog now has 364 followers (up from 298 at the start of the year). 252 Tumblr followers. Steady increase is best.
Finally finished this draft of Coal Dusters. It comes in at just under 138,000 words. Started preliminary work on Picture Perfect. You follow my progress on Tuesdays here. So far some reposts of my original NaNoWriMo posts when I was doing that first cookie dough draft back in 2014.
Finished the fascinating A Critical History and Filmography of Toho’s Godzilla Series by by David Kalat & continue to work through the recent TCM broadcast of the first generation of Godzilla films. The book is excellent not only as look at monster movies but also the racism of how USA distributors treated the films for American consumption. It is an exploration of exploitation, consumerism & bad dubbing. The films are mostly fun but some of them are idiotic, aimless, narratively senseless messes.
Speaking of surrealism in film I watched Pasolini’s amazing Teorema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ starring Terrance Stamp as the Visitor. This is one of the finest allegorical, magic realism, neo-intellectual films I have seen. Funnier than expected, tragic, spiritual & at times a narratively senseless mess. The various characters’ musings on art, capitalism, sex & self-sacrifice are sweet & are as true now as they were when the film was made. The power of sexuality is shown as both disruptive, freeing, spiritual powerful & necessary. Highly recommended for all you Avengers fans out there 🙂
December is a month where I make no real demands of my creative self. Decking the halls is enough work 🙂 I don’t resist the festive season but enter it in my own way. I will be doing some volunteer work at Women’s College Hospital as a ‘patient’ for first/second year medical students as they practice things like blood-pressure, taking medical history with real people. I love the smell of med students in the morning 🙂
Hey! Now you can give me $$$ to defray blog fees & buy coffee in Washington at 2020’s capfireslam.org – sweet,eh? paypal.me/TOpoet
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