Darth Vader and I are finishing off the Thanksgiving babka with some cherry Coke.

Chocolate babka on a plate in front of a glass with a picture of Darth Vader on it.

💻 Recently my less-than-alma mater asked, “Remember the 90s at Carolina?

I didn’t get there until 1999 so I had different things in my metaphorical Carolina Jeep.

📺🍿🎄 By the way, time travel is a whole subgenre of holiday made-for-TV movie. See:

📺🍿🎄 I was watching Hulu’s A Christmas Frequency and everything was going great but then it shattered my suspension of disbelief by having one guy give another guy an expense report, printed on paper.

🍿 Saw Wish. A story full of good ideas. Music nice but not as memorable as, say, Encanto. Chris Pine is, of course, a delight. Full of beautifully casual representation.

📝 Jami Attenberg in today’s Craft Talk newsletter:

it’s important to write the things you can write.

Today in Year of Making, LEGO set 40658, Millennium Falcon Holiday Diorama.

A LEGO set. In the Millennium Falcon, Chewbacca, Rey, Finn, BB-8, and a Porg celebrate Life Day with a tree, hanging lights, and some kind of cooked fowl with a carrot.

Anybody know if there are vampire stories, in any medium, that address the question of neuroplasticity? I feel like an animated corpse shouldn’t have it, but it seems like it’d be useful to help you make the most of your potentially very long life.

Finished reading: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado 📚

A bunch of excellent and chilling stories. Horror and make it literary. Uncertainty that is maddening but then that’s kind of the point.

I just want to be able to feel grief in my heart and also sleep. It doesn’t seem like a lot to ask but my body disagrees.

It’s never too late to start a year of making, so here I am starting my Year of Making 2023 on November 20. This is the Goldberry shawl, designed by Michele DuNaier in Lion Brand TruBoo in the Goldenrod colorway. The pattern contains many delightful Lord of the Rings references.

A golden-colored crocheted shawl, still in progress, sits on top of a printed pattern. To the right of it are a crochet hook and black pen.

Want to read: Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found by Frances Larson 📚

Want to read: Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey 📚

If you’re in North Carolina and interested in having natural organic reduction (aka human composting) available as a funeral option, please consider using this form letter I built with resistbot to contact your NC legislators.

Want to read: Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner by Judy Melinek 📚

🔖💬 “Your death matters. You can choose something that will reflect the values and beliefs that you held in your life, and translate them into your death. What you choose to do, is your final act, your final gesture on this earth.” Sarah Chavez, The Order of the Good Death

Want to read: Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel by Loren Rhoads 📚

Want to read: Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin by Megan Rosenbloom 📚

Want to read: The Victorian Book of the Dead by Chris Woodyard 📚

Want to read: A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death by Chris Woodyard 📚

Want to read: Good Grief: Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter by E.B. Bartels 📚

Want to read: The Anatomical Venus by Joanna Ebenstein 📚

Want to read: The Morbid Anatomy Anthology by Joanna Ebenstein 📚

Want to read: Cabarets of Death: Death, Dance and Dining in Early Twentieth-Century Paris by Mel Gordon 📚

🔖📚🎭 Read Why We Should Celebrate the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio (Literary Hub).