E.M. White, load-bearing grad student

@emwhite

Pen name. Writing and reviewing dark and challenging fiction; would write more if life weren't so dark and challenging. Also a magpie for fine stories and essays, a snob about coffee and tea (unless desperate), a wiki and map wanderer, and a cat steward.

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Bluesky

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E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· 14d

At this rate, that whole preaching-on-planes phenomenon is gonna turn into a Life of Brian situation with competing prophets and everything. And their captive audiences still won't have enough legroom or good snacks.

Photo of cast members from Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) with five different bedraggled men, most in robes of different colors (and much less robes), all simultaneously preaching over a sick person. Imagine the latter as an already exhausted commercial airline passenger, if you will.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· 21d

A screenshot of a post by someone named Adriana:

"Haha you just did an ad hominem" yeah bro this isn't a debate I just do not respect you or your perspective

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· 23d

Shopping in the 2020s:

A deliberately decontextualized snippet from an online shopping update email (guess which store):

Dear Customer,
We have good news! LACK is back in

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· 29d

Got four neat-looking novellas in the mail yesterday. Too bad I'll never find out what the title of one of them is

Four novellas from Brackenbury Books spread out on a coffee table, but the title of one is half obscured by the butt of a black cat.

Full titles:
What Rough Beast? by Bryn Hammond
The Hunt of a Thousand Leagues by Dariel R.A. Quiogue
Suplex & Sorcery by June Orchid Parker
[The Bar]barian [at] Dream's End by Steve Hugh Westenra

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· Jul 9

The Execution of Lady Jane Grey. Marvelous "lighting" and sharp contrasts for effect. Exceptionally emotive faces painted on. More than that, it exemplifies, to me, the natural end point of the violent bullshit inherent in political conflict and in our political instincts.

The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (Paum Delaroche, 1833, oil painting). One Lady Jane Grey is to be executed just days after being hastily proclaimed Queen of England. She wears the white of innocence and a blindfold, and a sort of false stage lighting in the piece highlights her (and those who mourn her most) in a not-quite-realistic, semi-cinematic sort of way. And boy, does her company mourn. Her wetnurse and another attendant are wholly, emotively despondent. The Tower of London lieutenant who guides her towards the executioner's block isn't exactly doing so eagerly. The executioner himself looks on with pity, clearly not wanting to be there.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· Jul 4

19. Both Will Arnett and Michael Cera are Canadians, making Arrested Development, what, up to 20% Canadian? Regardless of what one thinks of either actor as a person, they're both undeniably nature-made for these roles.

A banner ad-sort of thing for Arrested Development, featuring Michael Cera (one of the top 0.1% most awkward people on this overheating Earth) and Will Arnett (a fundamentally convincing sleazebag) among other cast members.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· Jul 4

18. Sandra Oh, for those who didn't already know, was born in Ontario. Can't say I'm a Grey's Anatomy watcher, but she's been in plenty of other stuff, of course

Sandra Oh and Keanu Reeves in a still from some movie called Good Fortune (2025), standing about with the cheapest looking fake wings attached to their backs. Oh well, at least these two are fun to watch.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· Jul 4

Back to actors, 17. Michael J. Fox is of Canadian make, and, well, isn't there something characteristically Canadian about a movie depicting a wartime attack on Washington, DC (Mars Attacks)?

A still from Mars Attacks (1996) in which a news anchor for "GNN" (Michael J. Fox in sunglasses) stands in ass-middle-of-nowhere desert as he covers an alien-greeting event, complete with American flag colors and a "WELCOME to EARTH" banner in the background.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· Jul 4

In the spirit of continuing to post (increasingly dubious?) Canadian media until either I or the rest of you get sick of it, 16. A detour to music: Godspeed You! Black Emperor are a Montreal-based act, making this little graphic I found with their lyrics that much more timely:

A graphic of the American flag, but the starry blue has the words "In our America" in place of stars, and the stripes are lined with the following lyrics:

The car is on fire /
And there's no driver at the wheel /
And the sewers are all muddied /
With a thousand lonely suicides /
And a dark wind blows /
The government is corrupt /
And we're on so many drugs /
With the radio on and the curtains drawn /
We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine /
And the machine is bleeding to death /
The sun has fallen down /
And the billboards are all leering /
And the flags are all dead at the top of their poles

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· Jul 3

15. John Candy was indeed Canadian, so how about I give y'all whiplash after Farewell My Concubine by dropping Planes, Trains, and Automobiles in here?

Steve Martin and John Candy's characters, the former in business dress and a peacoat and the latter in really puffy winter wear, both sit around and check their watches (or, well, Martin's character has a watch to look at; Candy's character is simply aping him).

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· Jul 3

Perhaps stretching the definition of ©Canadian content™, I'll throw in a bunch of Canadian actors, what the hell. 14. Leslie Cheung, to my knowledge, was briefly a Canadian resident and possibly during the filming of Farewell My Concubine, thus an excuse to drop one of my favorite films in here.

A still from Farewell My Concubine, in Cheng Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) in the most striking possible costume plays the concubine. Cheng Dieyi faces his counterpart Duan Xiaolou (Fengyi Zhang) mid-performance, but isn't quite looking at him, their faces somewhat backlit. They way they're partially turned away from their audience makes the moment they're sharing feel rather intimate given that, well, they're performing in front of a bunch of people.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· Jul 3

11. Not my usual genre, but: The Great Canadian Baking Show (totally not an act of IP espionage against the Brits) is lovely. The bakers aren't petty-competitive with each other, so each episode is essentially a corny joke every 15 minutes and loads of footage of virtuosos doing what the love.

The Great Canadian Baking Show contestants (Vincent, Aimee, Steve) stand holding hands as they wait for the judges to announce their fates. Notably, they don't look like they're being forced to act nice for the camera; season 5 was chock full of moments with the contestants being really decent to each other.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· Jul 3

My phone has evidently decided it's not uploading images to Bluesky anymore, so with some delay, here's my spread of NESS paperbacks I own. (Still posting Canlit here for the Canlit/Canadian media thread.)

Issues 1-7 of NESS in a spread/two stacks. The burgundy-ish table runner beneath them (though much cat-tarnished) nicely complements the warm hues of the cover art of issue #4.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· Jun 25

Incredible. They 100 percent did the meme

Screenshot of a conversation: user Kingfisher (or something, the full username is cut off) replies to somebody with "I believe you are missing the joke here."

[Redacted] replies to that, "In jokes are virtue signals - used often by the far right.

"No I didn't get your 'joke'."

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· Jun 17

A 15h or 16th century painting of a Mongol archer wearing a blue deel and riding a black horse. A speech bubble has been shopped into the image so that the rider is saying the quoted skeet.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· Jun 9

They grow up so fast. I had my phone on my desk just now for some work music, and this particular cat of ours stepped on the screen, opening an ad for Young Drivers of Canada.

Doudou (Theodora), a glossy black house panther with yellowish eyes and big ears, stands on a wooden floor and meows at the photographer.

Screenshot of the ad she opened on my phone. Young Drivers of Canada wants to know my preferred location, presumably so they can take my advanced cat up on her interest in driving lessons.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· Jun 5

Right

Screenshot of a post in which somebody writes "when the race war is happening and I gotta kill tony hawk" and they've used the meme image of shedding a tear while pointing a pistol at somebody

Then (the real, officia) Tony Hawk replies "I appreciate the hesitation though"

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· Jun 3

A rock-solid take by @doriandawes.bsky.social on the impulse to call any game that is less than hyperrealistic or whatever a "nostalgic throwback":

Screenshot from the linked post:

'This isn’t true. We value artistic techniques and processes as tools in an artist’s kit for expression.

'For some reason though, we can’t talk about games in the same way. If someone builds a game with a low-polygon aesthetic, eschewing realism for style, then inevitably it will be marketed or described with the words “retro nostalgic throwback.” This has become a boring and thought-terminating cliche. It is to games what “a profound meditation on grief and loss” is to literature.'

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· May 29

Right.

Photo of a fridge magnet from the city of Golden, BC showing "Canada's national bird." It is, of course, a mosquito.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· May 29

Wow, yeah, I think I would be over and done with this life if Ibn Khaldun recorded my worst nickname for posterity.

Alfonso IX, King of León and Galicia (1188-1230), was a fairly successful ruler in the northern part of Iberia, managing to stay on the throne for 42 years. However, the North African scholar Ibn Khaldun noted that he was called Baboso or the Slobberer because he would foam at the mouth whenever he got upset.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· May 29

I mean, we can't ignore the influence of the source material, can we

Screenshot of a post by @RachaelAtWork:

Star Trek TNG episodes are called like 'Explosion' and the episode is about a big explosion. TOS episodes are called 'What yonder soul doth go hence...a brother??' and are about an omnipotent space frog who makes everyone take their clothes off.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· May 23

A photo in which a ginger cat appears to be holding up a smartphone and giving the screen a rather forlorn look.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· May 23

Hideo Nakata pulled horror cinematography forcibly in a new direction with Ringu/The Ring. Shortly before this, however, he directed Joyu-rei 女優霊 (confusingly titled Don't Look Up in English). It'd probably bore to tears one who watches it expecting Ringu-type terrors, but I think it's delightful.

Movie poster for Joyu-rei 女優霊, featuring a woman with black hair in a white gown. The top half of her face is cut off in the shot, lending her some vaguely tropey mysteriousness.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· May 21

Well, this just ruined my summer

Excerpt from the article in the quoted skeet:

Beer makes you attractive

Drinking beer has also been linked to attracting mosquitoes, because it raises body temperature, increases the amount of exhaled CO2 and changes skin odor, according to several studies.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· May 12

It seems that all of us here who are into books have given some thought to how long our TBR lists have become. But do any of y'all feel like you're *falling behind* on your TBR? Because I just paid for shipping for a bundle of four novellas (guess which ones), and boy am I feeling behind now.

A piece of spooky art by Romana Dubina featuring parading skeletons in a gloomy and swampy forest, crows flying all about, and giant, mossy-looking skeletons lumbering in from the background seemingly to join their procession.

However, it's been captioned as follows:
* a skeleton (with a crow perched on its skull) that sits as if spectating: me watching my TBR surpass my capacity to rein it in whatsoever (my fault)
* the parading skeletons: the books at the top of my TBR
* some nearby, regular-sized skeletons: the books further down my TBR
* some piled up bones in the dirt: some entirely forgotten books rotting in the depths of my TBR
* the giant skeletons in the background: the shipment of novellas to shortly join my TBR

Link to the original piece: https://img2.reactor.cc/pics/post/RomanDubina-artist-Fantasy-art-8767096.jpeg

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· May 10

Memory unlocked

A picture of avocados, one of them sliced open to expose the pit and lain next to several smaller slices of avocado, being all picturesque and such.

It's captioned "I wish I could go out with you tonight but I have two avocads that will be ripe from 6:00-6:15PM."

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· May 10

The decontextualized comic panel of Dr. Manhattan (nude with substantial cake and everything) blowing some sucker up. It's been captioned to match the OP in which somebody writes "Okies ;w; / Sorry..." and the promptly gets blocked for it.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· May 10

Aaand now I'm reading about what other features can be made possible this way, and wow, amazing to see this particular combination of true 2010s YouTube energy and true poster's energy.

From a blog post on modding one's YouTube app, an advertised feature saying it's possible to return the fully functional Dislike button to YT, including "real dislike numbers" and additionally a "like/dislike ratio."

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· May 8

Happy Friday! May is shaping up to be a month of rejections (or better news??) for me

A list of story submission wait times verus how long on average/how long (estimated) the respective markets take to reply to submissions. Some of these are really languishing (or being carefully considered??) at the 100+ day mark. The one that's broken 600 days is probably sitting in an unused inbox.

E.M. White, load-bearing grad student@emwhite· May 6

Aaand a cursory search suggests he's a gloomy fellow with a Lovecraft fixation.