C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 31

Picoreview: The Greatest Showman

Picoreview: The Greatest Showman: I am conflicted about The Greatest Showman.

I wanted to love it unconditionally. I went in prepared to. Unfortunately, I ended up liking it conditionally, perhaps because I grew up doing musical theatre and I have Far Too Many (Entirely Correct) opinions about what makes a musical work, and The Greatest Showman…missed a lot of them. I felt like it’s a musical by people who don’t fully understand how musicals work (which, given that the music was written by th...

gym post: i did the thing!

I…have been complaining bitterly on Twitter, and somewhat less bitterly here, about the buses in Drogheda. To summarize: they suck. They are either late or early and when they’re late it can be “I’ve been standing here in the cold for 70 minutes” late and if they’re early it can be “I got to the bus stop on time and never even saw the damn thing,” so it’s EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to get to the gym by relying on it. Like, I tried to go to the gym 3 times last week, and only made it once, because of...

January To-Done

January was an excrutiatingly busy month and I don’t actually know how I got this all done, but somehow I did. I:

– submitted a manuscript to three publishers
– submitted a proposal to a publisher
– wrote & delivered an Old Races short story for and delivered a novella to the patreon crew
– wrote a 2 page book proposal
– wrote a grant application, including a 12 page book proposal
– wrote a 10 page book synopsis/proposal
– hashed out a film synopsis (still needs work)
– got halfway thru a dis...

Marvel Movie Marathon: Thor

Marvel Movie Marathon: Thor: This is really a pretty straight-up enjoyable movie.

Given my recently-discussed inherent level of dubiousness regarding Iron Man, you will perhaps be surprised to hear that the character I absolutely thought they *could not* make work in a cinematic universe was Thor. I thought—honestly, I *still* think—that introducing gods into a superhero world was asking too much from the audience, and the fact that they went to a mild degree of trouble to ensure everybody th...

100 Days of Spanish

I have completed 100 days of Spanish.

I’m quite proud of that. On the other hand, for probably the last month or even more, I’ve really been retreading the same territory. One of the… problems? Duolingo has, or I have, is that it reasonably wants you to keep your vocabulary going. It wants to strengthen your previous lessons. Which you know, makes sense.

So the problem that I’m having is that I’m basically not spending enough time — certainly not as much time as it wants me to – studying. I...

Marvel Movie Marathon: Iron Man 2

Marvel Movie Marathon: Iron Man 2: I saw most of IM2 again a couple years ago and I thought it had held up a *lot* better than expected. My memory of it was that it really wasn’t very good, which is borne up by the fact that basically everybody seems to think it really wasn’t very good, but…actually, it’s pretty good.

It does, yes, have the problem of following very similar beats to the original film in terms of the Whiplash storyline, which ends with him in a giant mech just like Stane ended...

getting closer to the perfect scheduling app

My friend Chrysoula (you should read her books) notified me a couple weeks ago about this to-do/scheduling app she’d found, that she thought seemed like it had many of the features I’ve been looking for in a scheduling app. It’s called SkedPal, and it’s…it’s pretty good, guys.

It uses time blocking, which I’m…getting the hang of… :) …and it’s pretty flexible, in that you can plug a bunch of projects in and it arranges them into your work time block (or whatever you assign it to). You can teac...

Today was hard.

Today was hard. It would have been my mom’s 69th birthday, her second since her death. This year was actually harder than last year, possibly because my entire friends list was overwhelmed with tributes and sorrow over Ursula Le Guin’s death, and, as someone said, grief stacks. It’s also that I miss her terribly, every day, and it’s just been…hard.

Since it’s her birthday and everything, I thought I’d mention the dance scholarship fund we set up in her name. Our goal now is $4000, an addition...

picture post: blue hair & disney & birthdays, oh my

I’ve been threatening for many years to dye my hair blue. Last week I picked up a bottle of temporary hair dye. I had hopes it would stick mostly to the grey, of which I have plenty:

although I had been totally unable to find anything on the internet which suggested it might. After some dithering, I applied it:

To my delight, it in fact did a pretty damn fine job of sticking to the grey without blueing the rest of it up much:

Also to my delight and relief, it does appear to be temporary....

Recent Reads: Strong Female Protagonist Vols 1 & 2

Recent Reads: Strong Female Protagonist (Vols 1 & 2)

I got volume 2 of SFP for Christmas, which totally surprised me, even though months ago (perhaps longer) Ted had said to me, “SFP Kickstarter! Should I? It won’t be out until December!” and I said, “Oh, yes! It can be a nice Christmas present for me!” And it was! A very surprising one! :)

I re-read the first one leading up to v2, as it had been a while. One of the things I enjoy about sort of…early career comics? is watching the art style d...