The Garfield Game That Never Was

There's a Garfield game for the Atari 2600. Or rather, there's a prototype. The game was never released, in the end. A sad fate for what amounts to quite a beautiful almost-game. I wish Garfield (the game) was real. But I will accept this gorgeous ghost. This pretty shadow.

Garfield himself is rendered and animated beautifully. You start out atop a garden fence, and may traverse in a sprightly way across its surface. Above float enticing burgers, which careen through the air towards Garfield's gaping maw. Yum.

Garfield under a beautiful starry sky.

Since this is a prototype, there is actually no way to avoid the burgers. Garfield doesn't need to do a thing - they'll always hit him and be absorbed. Wonderful. 

Other screens have Garfield avoiding projectiles, or weird enemies, or Odie, and then you'll see something out of a warped dream - several Odies in a row to hop over. Things like that. Fantastical, slightly wrong landscapes. Once you traverse enough screens, Garfield will soon perish. There are, indeed, ill-coded, unformed dangers he cannot really go past. 

But for a while, there is bliss. Garfield is in an endless zone of pleasure, consuming and continuing. As we all must. 

An Assortment of Books to Read

You may have noticed that my last post was a frightening TWO WEEKS ago - that's right, I took a big break. This was partly to give myself more time for writing my beautiful and lucrative YouTube videos, but also because I was getting a bit tired out by writing posts every day (or almost every day). A woman must rest, after all.

But now I must present you with my beautiful reading plans. I just reached the exciting milestone of 31 books read so far in 2026, which makes this year my second biggest reading year of all time (after 2016's incredible 53), and this only makes me more excited about all the books I'm going to read in the second half of the year.

A beautiful book stack by clumsy.words on Instagram.

I keep thinking about categories of books I want to read more of, topics I want to read about more extensively, and so here are some of the book groupings I've come up with for future reads. Each category contains four enticing books.

1. SEAFARING / NASTY AWFUL TERRIBLE SEA

Scary!

Right now I'm reading a non-fiction book about a crazy shipwreck called 'The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder' by David Grann. This is my second recent horrible 1700s sea type book, after the incredible 'The Zorg' by Siddarth Kara. I think I might be becoming a sea freak (or indeed, very interested in the worst and most perilous human nasties - The Zorg was a chilling slavery story).  

In any case, I'd like to read more sea-adjacent stories. In 'The Wager', David Grann offers lots of interesting linguistic connections - 'under the weather' came from the practice of putting sick sailors below deck. Literally under, and away from, the weather. Cool. Here are my coveted sea reads:

• Moby Dick - Hermann Melville
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas - Jules Verne
• The Odyssey - Homer
• Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard - Joseph Conrad
  
  

2. BLACK AUTHORS

I love this picture of Octavia Butler.

I've been really wanting to focus on black authors, but in particular there are a few notable black authors I'm really excited to read (or, in the case of James Baldwin, read more of). These are very famous picks, which goes to show that I'm not well-read when it comes to work from black writers. It'll be great to change that.

• Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler
• Jazz - Toni Morrison
• Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin 
• White Teeth - Zadie Smith
  
  

3. ROMANTASY

Oh God... oh fuck.

This crunchy new genre smash has intrigued me for a while. I've heard so much talk about it, so much weird and nasty dismissal of it as a low genre for idiot women, and indeed some sort of disgusting hideous perversion (always funny to hear this coming from men, the world's primo consumers of the seedy, violent productions of the global human trafficking industry). I suspect that romantasy books broadly won't be for me, but I'd like to gain a certain amount of familiarity with them.

So these are a few to read:

• A Court of Thorns and Roses - Sarah J. Maas
• Bride - Ali Hazelwood
• Fourth Wing - Rebecca Yarros 
• The Knight and the Moth - Rachel Gillig 
   

4. POETRY

Whitman, looking sexy.

Finally, I'd like to expand my knowledge of some classic poets, so:

• Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
• The Waste Land and other Poems - T.S. Eliot
• Songs of Innocence and of Experience - William Blake
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

***

Please wish me great luck and pleasure. Perhaps I shall, one day, rank the books on this list. 

Cannonballs, Crucifixes, and Medieval Women

15 Oes of St. Bridget, 15th Century, Netherlands.

I saw some BOULETS ANGLAIS (English cannonballs) in a heap underneath a church this week and I thought, of course, "lovely balls". Something about them displayed sort of chaotically alongside architectural bits and pieces spoke to me - did these particular balls kill people? Did they knock down any parts of this building? There's something very modern-feeling about this display. I like it.

The balls.

Also, in the back (this is Boulogne-sur-mer's crypt, under its Notre Dame), there is this powerful, desolate display of the three crosses of Golgotha. It really evokes an empty battlefield, and has quite a resonant appearance because it comes at the end point of an ornately decorated and structured crypt, emptying out into buried rubble. The emotional reality of three simple crosses on the little hill of rubble is beautifully staged, The emptiness evokes the severity of the torture of those three crucified men.

While Christianity necessarily has made an icon of Christ on the cross, it's really arresting to look at crucifixion at large, to think about crucifixion as it was more broadly, a common punishment employed by the Romans. Including the two men crucified either side of Jesus here takes that iconography, the crucified Jesus, and sort of brings it back into the realm of the simple reality of extreme cruelty. Those other men can never merge with their crosses the way Jesus does. He is a symbol, they are men.

Today I started reading the Penguin Little Black Classic How to be a Medieval Woman by Margery Kempe - this is a sequence of extracts from the larger book of her life - The Book of Margery Kempe - an early example of an autobiography (perhaps the first in English), although it was transcribed by a clergyman because Margery herself couldn't write. Her religious world is very interesting, especially concerning her view of her existence as a wife and mother (she appears to, possibly, experience post-partum psychosis, and begs her husband to stop having sex with her - providing this request with a godly motivation, although it obviously comes from both the deep anguish of constant pregnancy AND a lack of desire for her husband). It's very interesting reading about the religious justifications she has for her own wishes and desires. Jesus Christ becomes a sort of figure of leverage for her, her only real recourse, only her vibrant religiosity also really irritates everyone around her and causes a lot of problems for her (they get upset with her for loudly crying, which she does constantly).

It's pretty amazing (and very sad, but also at times quite funny) to read this memoir of a fourteenth century woman, and I might have to break out the full text. She's an icon.

No dogs may worship in this church.

It's interesting, but also curiously impenetrable, to learn about history prior to a certain point. The inextricable presence of religion in shaping people's lives in the medieval period is pretty alien from a modern perspective. It's hard to imagine being around in the fourteenth century. It's hard to grasp what people are talking about when they refer to all the devils they've been seeing. Their ways of seeing the world are often pretty challenging to parse. And yet, when Margery Kempe tells her husband that she'd rather "have eaten and drunk the ooze and muck in the gutter than consent to intercourse", she's as vibrant and present as any person from any time ever could be.

Love her. 

Cute Little Elephants

Beautiful Thai elephant lamp, 15th-16th century, via Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

This afternoon I saw a post by John McCafferty - a simple, beautiful sculpture of an elephant from 10th century Iran:

The elephant in question, via Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Something about those perfect hollow circles for eyes captivated me, and I thought - today is an elephant day. So here are some elephants. Please enjoy them. Happy elephant day. 

You have been noticed by the ceramic elephant.

I'm always so delighted by sculpture across the ages. You'll see some meticulously crafted, impeccable form and it'll be a thousand years old and from India or China or Wigan or Kuwait or Romania, and you'll think - these people were all just like me. They thought elephants looked cool. That's so real and true.

Elephant and its mahout, 11th century, via Louvre.

I really like the elephant lamp at the top of this post, with a blissful baldie perched atop the elephant's neck. Look how utterly satisfied he is. That's the right way to be if you are a little bald man. Fully nude, smiling with simple pleasure on top of an elephant. Isn't this every bald man's dream?

Get me on the elephant.

There are countless carved elephants to enjoy. Many come from Northern Thailand, something of a feature of Sawankhalok pottery and earthenware. They had an elephant boon. Good for them.

White elephant of Denmark (1822), Jacques-Evrard Bapst, via Louvre.

Very good elephants.

I Hate the New Descendants Movie

Disney released their latest addition to the Descendants franchise on Friday - Descendants: Wicked Wonderland - and so naturally, I watched that thing. This is the fifth Descendants movie, and it follows Descendants: The Rise of Red to expand the spin-off world that started there. The further we go into the incoherent, faraway land of desperately added characters, the funnier, arguably, it gets.

My favourite character, ugly Awkwafina cat.

I'm a devotee of these movies at this point, and so when this one opened on a deeply ugly multicoloured cat who is 1. the nasty daughter of the Cheshire Cat (okay, awesome), and 2. voiced by Awkwafina, I was screaming with joy and anticipation.

The Mad Hatter's son is here!

Each of these movies has the unenviable task of giving us a new hokey villain, and in this one it's the Mad Hatter, whose name is Maddox Hatter, obviously. The film opens with its best song, which is all about how weird it is that the events of the previous film (time travel alteration shenanigans) made our protagonists' mothers different. Red, the daughter of the previously evil Queen of Hearts (played by Rita Ora, who I'm happy to see anywhere outside of her notorious Primark line), suddenly has a new younger sister named Pink, who will be one of many pointless characters with nothing to do in this accursed movie, and Chloe, the daughter of Cinderella and Charming, now has a boring mother (?!).

The song sets up, seemingly, for a plot about dealing with the bizarre repercussions of the imperfect way they saved their little world. And it seems fun! How will they fit in to their altered social lives? How will they adjust to the stranger-fication of their respective mothers? Will Red punch and kick her new pink sister? But tragically, the movie utterly casts out this teased presence of a fun plot for a highly dull traipse through Wonderland with a few dull extra characters (the gently gothic son of the Mad Hatter, the stand-offish daughter of Captain Hook, the idiotic Smee twins, and Luis, the empty son of Encanto's Luisa Madrigal).

Confusing.

There was a deep incoherence to The Rise of Red, but as is to be expected, it gets even more nonsensical here. The plot goes in the incredibly uninspired direction of dealing with the vague friction between the HKs (Hero Kids) and VKs (Villain Kids) once more, but the crux of the conflict lies in a forced argument between Red and Chloe. It seems that the children of the Descendants universe are destined to be forever haunted by their lineage. There is no real transcendence of the culture (that is, being of villain or hero stock, genetically or whatever) they are born into. Time and time again, they return to the zone of disconnection. Perhaps their acceptance of each other can only be fickle. A Hero Kid must once again be wounded by nothing.

One funny thing about this movie is that Maddox Hatter basically doesn't do anything. What on Earth he wants is impossible to figure out, but his trapping of poor Rita Ora, which serves as the catalyst for the entire film, consists of like, vaguely putting some vines in front of her. He's trapping her in her castle, I suppose, but to what end I'm not sure, and it looks so fake. She's just standing behind a plant. It really doesn't look like she's trapped. The Mad Hatter does not feel like a genuine threat, he just feels like an annoying trickster. Can we have some peril, please?

Luis Madrigal is also a funny addition. He exists purely to be a sexy boyfriend for Red - they sing a romantic duet together - but he is pointless. Does he have any thoughts? Doubtful.

Two queens just cheesing.

Anyway, the kids travel through Wonderland, encounter some weird set pieces left for them by Mr. Hatter that they navigate in song, they learn the eternal lesson that VKs are fine, and they rescue the impotent queen(s) after an interlude where one of the hero characters tries a bit of villainy. All is solved, and all is boring. 

The saddest thing about this movie may well be the dullness of its songs, but it is a particular tragedy that the very first one is the greatest, partly because of the more involved, interesting, coherent sort of narrative it teases. All of the best ideas presented in the movie are rapidly abandoned. We don't learn anything about the Mad Hatter or his son, or indeed the Cheshire Cat's crazy daughter, who exists just to do a little bit of taunting. Really, if you can't think of anything for the hideous multi-coloured CGI Awkwafina cat to do, maybe you shouldn't make the movie.

Me watching this movie.

I enjoyed some of the more fun nonsense of this movie, as I always must, and the insanely saturated colour palette, but it was undeniably stinky. I can't wait for the next one.

Two bright pink women out of five.

★★☆☆☆

Which Spice Girl is the Most Evil?

Let's get to the bottom of an important question today. We all know that the Spice Girls can be placed on a relative spectrum of evil, yet the public has long been afraid to do so, frightened of the retaliation that may arrive if the most evil Spice Girl was to get wind of our talk. But I am not afraid. I am fearless. So today I will reveal the truth about the evil levels of each Spice Girl.

First, we must talk about the baby.

BABY SPICE

Baby Spice is the very picture of innocence. A cute little angel who would never push you over or steal money from you, or so it seems. You might think, "ah, here's the culprit! Baby Spice, by design, must be the most evil spice. I cannot be tricked by the veneer of sweetness." Well, that, dear reader, is it's own trick. Baby Spice is, basically, not evil. But she's not really a pillar of innocence either. No, as it turns out, she is a normal woman of mixed morality. She is dead centre on the spectrum. A evil rating of two. She is not our enemy.

★★☆☆☆

 

SCARY SPICE

Scary Spice might seem evil, for the simple reason that evil is a concept often associated with scary. But scary can come without evil, and here it does. Scary Spice is only one rung up on the evil ladder. She is barely evil at all.

★☆☆☆☆ 

 

GINGER SPICE

Ginger Spice has a strong dark energy within. There is a jittery, uncontrollable evil in her that any of us can readily see. It was clear when she performed 'Bag It Up' at the Brit Awards in the year 2000, emerging from gigantic splayed legs - here is a devil, of sorts. But she is, factually, not the most evil Spice Girl. She's a mere four out of five on the evil scale.

★★★★☆ 

 

POSH SPICE

Posh Spice has an apparent crust of evil coating the outside of her like a thin exoskeleton, but on the inside she is malleable, like the stuffing of a cheap bear. She is a three on the evil scale. 

★★★☆☆ 

 

SPORTY SPICE

Sporty Spice is quite an unassuming Spice. That duet with Bryan Adams was good, and any sort of rage within must surely directed into the sports of it all. But therein lies the rub - Sporty Spice is excellent at masking her dark ways. She comes across as very normal. Perhaps she might do a flip, but otherwise she sinks into the world like a vapour. This, I'm sorry to tell you, is a sure-fire sign of mega evil. 

★★★★★ 

 

The thing is - and maybe this will shock you - her evil just isn't so bad. She is, yes, a veritable five on the evil scale, but she simply deserves that. She's right to be evil. The evil of the Spices is distributed in just the way it ought to be.

***

And so, we have come to know the truth. But don't let it control you, or lead you to a place of fear. The evil is contained, for now, in just the way it must be - in the hands of the sportiest Spice.

A Gorgeous Vampire Film: The Addiction (1995)

The Addiction (1995) is a very interesting movie. It's a super stylish vampire story shot in black and white, and it's concerned with the uncontrollable, searing pain of grief and the hideous tendrils of addiction. The pain of it all is palpable, and made all the more direct through its protagonist's low-level suppression of that pain. Underneath all that, though, is its incredible beauty.

The film achieves this insane, perfect film-noir style. The shadows intrude, always, and its characters and rooms are bathed in such stark, sinister light. It's quite remarkable to watch a film and be so struck by its visual style. There is an unstoppable, great pleasure in looking at this movie, and it plays with that in interesting ways when it shows you disgusting, horrible things - not just the viscera of vampiric activities, but also footage of real atrocities and scattered, still victims. It is a confronting movie, and it uses its intense, gorgeous visual style to put forth that confrontation. We live in a world of real horror, says the movie - what does that mean for our dark myths, our imagined, evil creatures?

I'll let these stills speak for themselves, for now.

Three hospital beds out of five. 

★★★☆☆