jan 30th 2023 blog

had to travel into the city today to buy a birthday gift for my brother: a small keychain of a garchomp that he ended up liking more than i thought, which was a relief.

it's an hour long journey so i decided to make the most of it and invite a friend to go shopping with me. i bought a figurine of percy de rolo, one that has joined vex and vax beautifully on my bookshelf. i only need to buy keyleth now then i'll have every mcfarlane toys vox machina figurine so far! my friend bought fjord's mighty nein origins book, they don't get the chance to buy things often so i felt just as happy to see him buy it as i would if i bought it for myself. i'm still waiting for the mollymauk origins book myself.

we ended the day with going to the big library. it's the biggest one i think i'll ever lay eyes upon, but we stuck to one floor where the folklore books are. i made a start with looking at the books on vampires. there was quite the selection, some of them having comically 2000s-esque covers. i ended up choosing the complete book of vampires by leonard r. n. ashley. the copy was hilariously annotated by the only previous person to check it out. a section describing the pointed tongues that most vampires are featured having was annotated as "cunnilingual!" couldn't have put it better myself, really. however, i've recently found that i've exhausted pretty much all of the lore of european vampires that i've come across. the book had fairly accurate descriptions in places, but it was all stuff that i already knew. i took note to take a picture of the book, should i need to read it again for whatever reason. unfortunately, the library didn't have any books on vampires outside of the western world.

i picked up another book, tudor folk tales by david tonge. it was a book that had translated a few tudor folk tales into modern english. i've always been fascinated and even comforted by reading about the working class throughout the past. it's lovely to see historical texts comment on the deep, meaningful culture and life that us working class people live and have lived since the invention of heirarchal society. i find that often only our struggles are focused on, and more specifically in history, the poor hygeine and living conditions that people had no control over. my own personal ranting aside, the book was hilarious and excellently put into perspective the humanity of regular, working people in the past. we really haven't changed. sometimes i felt like i was reading an (admittedly, quite misogynistic at times) comedy routine from the modern day. overall, from the few chapters i read it was really enjoyable and i'm debating whether i should buy it for myself to read the rest.

that's all really, i've been wanting to use this site more so i suppose documenting my more interesting days is a good start.