Nooks & Crannies #5 · 8:52pm Mar 8th, 2016
It's that time of the week again, isn't it?
Welcome to Nooks & Crannies numero cinco, damas y caballeros! Before any of you ask, that will be the only Spanish part of the entire segment. Pandering and profit start with the same letter, after all.
Anyways, bullocks aside, here's the start of the not-so-quick fix:
The Pick Of The News
Let's start with the hot topic of last week: the Movie Grammy's
So, the Oscars kicked off a week ago, when I was supposed to be working on this and put this out instead of jabbing a pink, cute and fluffy suppository up your Australian dark stars. Anyways, Chris Rock began the show by addressing the elephant in the room, resulting in one full of laughs and such. Mad Max was the biggest winner of the night, bagging 6 awards mostly on the technical side, which is no surprise there. Best Picture, however, went to this film called Spotlight, beating out other major contenders such as The Revenant, Mad Max and The Martian, among others. Quite an underdog win, if you ask me.
Oh, and Leo finally won! Who would've known!
Anyways, onto more serious pills.
- In France, a dentist has appeared in court for mutilating over a hundred patients. Dubbed by the French media as the 'Butcher', Jacobus Marinus van Nierop is facing charges for "wilful violence causing mutilation and permanent injury." His lawyer claimed that he knew what he did was wrong and was undergoing some psychological problems.
- Tennis player Maria Sharapova has failed a drug test at the Australian Tennis Open and is facing a ban from the sport, which is big news for her since she's the highest-paid female athlete in the sports world. The drug was called meldonium, though Sharapova admitted that she was prescribed with it by her family doctor underneath a different name (mildronate) to deal with hereditary diabetes and was not aware that they were the same thing. We'll see how that pans out sooner or later, I guess.
- Lastly, a tourist have found debris that was believed to be from the missing plane MH370, which disappeared two years ago. The party responsible for the search had confirmed that it was from the plane. Hopefully, we'll be one step closer into closing this mystery for good.
So that's it for the news. Now, moving on:
My Little Study
Oh look! More ponywords!
MLP Hospice was, as the author himself had said it in the story's description, a work of moral philosophy. It outlines the relationships between a pony and Rarity, drawing inspiration from the album, Hospice by The Antlers. To be honest, that's the most accurate way of putting it; I had tried to summarize this before typing this section out without trying to spoil it, but it's pretty not to, so I guess we'll just go to the main study.
Hospice is told in first-person, with a narrator that is as flawed as any character would be, perhaps more than most. He is a character who bears an obsessive love for Rarity, so much so that he does things that could be pretty unimaginable. Being in first person, we hear his thoughts. We hear his sympathies, his deep-seated fears and deeply-rooted anger. We see the world of Hospice through his eyes and we learn more about him and his relationship with Rarity as time progresses. His love for Rarity is a selfish one and we see that desperation build as the eventual end comes ever closer. When we hear his words, it's hard not to sympathize with him, even though he thinks and does some pretty nasty stuff throughout the course of the story. He's a biased character, one we may find hard to agree with, but it's that part which really makes the story shine.
The tone of the story is what amazes me. There's a sense of maturity in the writing, stemming from a poignant style that was coupled with heavy subject matters. Not many stories on the site do this, especially with such great level of detail. We have an idea of how each character is like, at least in the biased view of the narrator. The story also follows a non-linear path, which is a tactic easy to execute but hard to execute well. You may ruin the mood of the story just from what information you give with each chapter, but I can say for certain Cudpug did a spectacular job at it.
Do have a read at this story if you crave for something above the usual fluff and puff. Be mindful that the paragraphs are huge, so you may lose attention of some stuff along the way, but when you'll get to the end, I can guarantee that you'll have been through one hell of a gratifying journey.
Updates
So, yeah, updates!
Last week, I went through a tremendous Writer's Block, which even stopped me from churning out this Nooks & Crannies. Suffice to say, I got over that and the delayed chapter for Mamihlapinatapai managed to get out. Both Entry #7 and Entry #8 are going to be tough ones, with heavier stuff being thrown into the mix and Melody, Mr. Atelier and Pierce really coming into play, so be ready!
I somehow got a little spark for Worlds. Would probably get that out sooner or later. Just to let you guys reading that know, all the chapters of Worlds from here on out will be long. Like, terribly long, which is why it's taking a while to get it out. This next one will introduce a few important characters into the story, so yeah, be on the lookout!
As for the other stuff, I can't say for sure as of yet. Most likely there will be something out for the end of March, maybe for Perhaps Death and Lovely Days, but I'm not making any promises yet. My real life plans would be kickstarting around this time, so we shall see.
That's it for updates! Last but not least...
Music Of The Week
Malibu
Anderson Paak
Album, released on January 15th, 2016R&B, Hip-Hop, Funk
First album of 2016 that I really loved, aside from David Bowie's Blackstar.
Malibu was an album that will have you dancing even though you're not the dancing type. Similar to one of our previous funky entries, Black Messiah from Nooks & Crannies #1, this is an album raised with tender soul layered in an exquisite set of beats. Anderson Paak is the main voice of this album, sometimes crooning for love and attention, other times jabbing with sharp lyrics punctuated in quick beats. You want something to listen to on a gloomy day? Here's the funkiest thing for you!
Stand-out tracks: Pretty much everything. Seriously, just listen to it!
That's it for this weeks Nooks & Crannies! Please feel free to share what opinions you might have! Who knows, we might start up an interesting discussion because of it!
See you next Tuesday / Wednesday! 
