Erin O'Riordan writes smart, whimsical erotica. Her erotic romance novel trilogy, Pagan Spirits, is now available. With her husband, she also writes crime novels. Visit her home page at ko-fi.com.
30. "What's the Frequency, Kenneth? Live at the Palace 1999" - R.E.M.
29. "20%" Hans Zimmer - instrumental, from the Rush soundtrack, went onto my Daniel Brühl playlist
28. "Come As You Are" Nirvana
27. "II Most Wanted" Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus - this was my favorite song on Cowboy Carter
26. "Red Wine Supernova" Chappell Roan
25. "One Night In Bangkok (US club remix)" - Murray Head
24. "Ralph Wiggum" - Bloodhound Gang
23. "Wicked Game (Live, Acoustic)" Stone Sour - Destiel playlist
22. "Fake ID" Riton, Kah-lo - I first heard this one when Tit Elingtin had Sirius XM satellite radio in his car and we listened to the Chill channel the first time we drove down to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to visit my cousin's son. That was Memorial Day Weekend this year.
Riton is a dj from the UK; Kah-lo is the Nigerian-born American singer
9. "Until You Come Back to Me (That's What I'm Gonna Do)" - Aretha Franklin. As I heard on a plane on Monday, June 12, 1995.
10. "My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors" - Moxy Fruvous
11. "Runaway Crush" by Stella Soleil [Part of a really long journal entry written on Thursday, July 29, 2021] Super deep dive into a Disney program here, but to return to Baron Zemo for a moment, someone on Tumblr translated the title of a book that Zemo is seen reading while on a plane with Sam and Bucky, the Falcon and the Winter Solder. The book is in German; the English translation is How to Say No to the One You Love: Demarcation and Devotion in the Erotic Relationship. Well, that is a weird book for Zemo, a widower who has been in prison for the last few years, to be reading. Apparently one shot shows where he is in the book, and he's reading a chapter called "Same Sex Fantasies in Heterosexuals."
Um, does Zemo think that the best approach to manipulating Bucky is to try to seduce him? Now that Bucky can't be manipulated with code words anymore? Or does he have a different love interest in mind? Or is he just genuinely attracted to Bucky? But you can't trust him because he's a master manipulator.
So, uh, yeah, I'm still a little hung up on Captain America and the Winter Soldier. And now we wait until November 24 for the Hawkeye series starring Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop.
"Oh my god, Erin, you can't just sit around with a hardbound journal writing about poetry and media all day."
Oh, but can't I, though?
This is an excerpt from "Some Infinite Thing:"
"choosing to listen to you die through the telephone while thinking about fucking strange men, in strange places, running my tongue along their bodies like some desperate, wintered animal to the salt lick, pupils to the peripheral, always the exit, the exit, the exit."
[Note: "wintered animal" might be a typo. A Freudian slip. The text might actually read "wounded animal."]
Juxtaposition of death and sexual imagery to highlight the contrasts between life and death: a poetic technique as old as time. But the salt lick imagery is what's appealing to me. I've had salt and salt licks stuck in my head like a meme or earworm lately, for a number of reasons:
1. Possibly back on July 13th, I heard an episode of the podcast Cult or Just Weird. The episode was about Throwawaylien - that is a Reddit (online messaging board) user's name which is a play on "throw away" and "alien." Throwawaylien claims he gets abducted by aliens once every 7 years. His story is wild, but the one detail that sticks in my brain is that, he says, the aliens always give him a gift of salt when they return him, apparently because they recognize that we need electrolytes to live.
too long/didn't read: Salt is the typical gift given to humans by space aliens.
2. There's this on Tumblr by a native speaker of the Russian language about Daniel Brühl's bad Russian pronunciation in Captain America: Civil War. The original poster (op) says when Brühl, as Baron Zemo, says Bucky's trigger word "soldier," which is "soldat" in Russian, he sounds like he's either saying it in baby talk or asking Bucky "want some salt?" Apparently he's saying the L in "soldat" in a very German way and not the correct Russian way.
So now I think "want some salt?" is either something aliens say when they return you from abduction or a thing you say to your kidnapped mind-controlled supersoldier to get him to comply.
3. This one's a much looser connection because it's a misheard song lyric, but I recently rediscovered the Stella Soleil song "Runaway Crush." Ugh, such a great song. According to online lyrics aggregators, the proper lyrics of a certain line are, "I'm kissing the soft of your skin/It's like a runaway sin." But I always mishear "soft of your skin" as "salt of your skin."
So...that's a rather random collection of salt images....
Yep, that's what goes on inside my mind: Poetry, salt, and horniness.
