agonyaunt | Member Posts

In twenty minutes, I'm signing on to an interview prep webinar for the alternative teaching certification program I'm pursuing. Hopefully it'll give me good things to work towards ahead of my interview next week.

I keep reading up on what program alumni say its major cons are. Luckily all of them so far seem to be the obvious pitfalls of getting your certification in one summer instead of over a few years of university and student teaching. I badly want to get a proper degree long-term, but, well, I can't afford to take on more student debt at present, and with my fiance's job on the rocks due to his bosses' ongoing divorce, we could really use a second, more stable salary in this household. I hope that my previous experiences will help with the lesson planning side, and the more substitute teaching I do, the more practice I'll get with classroom management. If I actually get in to the program, I'll have a mentor during my first few years. That ought to help.

In the meantime, I'm reading a lot of library books about classroom management and related disciplines. If anyone has any beloved parenting or teaching books with useful perspectives on establishing routines and setting meaningful consequences, I'd appreciate recs!

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: Graceland - Paul Simon

gremdark

What did this week need more of? Who said, "Giant messes that aren't your fault that no one else is going to clean up?"

Scene: the height of medium-city rush hour. We live at a fairly busy intersection just off the highway, so cars are whizzing by. A truck pulls up to pick up the recycling for the first time since the big ice storm at the end of January. Three or four weeks' worth of accumulated recycling.

Suddenly we hear an enormous crash, punctuated by the distinctive sound of breaking glass.

Near as I could tell from my peek out the window, something went wrong with the mechanical arm that lifts the cans up to be dumped into the truck. Our can was stuck halfway up for a bit, and the poor driver had to trigger some kind of manual release to get it out. He scooped up 75% of the fallen debris by hand, then moved on down the street, where a similar issue happened with our neighbor's can. Luckily, the driver was able to release it before more than a few pieces of cardboard spilled out. At that point, he seemed to give up on finishing out the rest of the route, and I can't blame him. Rush hour traffic was making everything about the scenario worse. The truck sped off, leaving our recycling cans and a massive heap of trash in the middle of the street.

During the ice storm, my fiance got really into collage. For the last few weeks, he's been bringing home all kinds of bits and pieces from work and generating lots and lots of teeny tiny paper scraps. Those scraps were all over the street now, mixed in with flattened soda cans and jagged bits of broken glass. We threw on pants and went out with a broom and dustpan to make the situation slightly less miserable.

The road in front of our house still looks like Oscar the Grouch threw a temper tantrum, but at least the glass, metal, and plastic is swept up. We got as much of the paper as we could, and I'm telling myself it's better than nothing. Sobbing, wailing, shrieking, etc.

At least our roommate is picking up pizza for dinner, so I don't have to think about cooking when I get out of my webinar.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Simple Song - The Shins

oursin

"Hate brings views": Confessions of a London fake news TikToker:

London is being used as the backdrop for inaccurate viral videos that reach enormous audiences around the world by playing into the worst stereotypes about the capital.

This was an investigation into one man who was doing this thing:

Last summer, the man says, he found himself sitting in his car, analysing trends on TikTok. His day job was conducting viewings for an estate agency but he was trying to come up with an idea for a viral video account that could be run as a money-making side-hustle.
“I was thinking of unique videos I can do for people,” he says on the tape.
That’s when he had a brainwave: “Hate brings views.”
At that time protests outside asylum hotels were spreading across the country. The man says he noticed “far-right people” were among the most engaged on TikTok. They were easy to rile up: “They hate such videos of illegal migrants. I was like, why not?”
....
The TikToker appears to have no concept of the potential real-world impact of his uploads, instead considering everything in terms of view counts and pieces of content.

So he made fake videos about immigrants being housed in prime properties, to which he had access through his job.

He had originally found he could make money through posting videos on TikTok but 'TikTok immediately deleted his account because he was just stealing other people’s videos and reposting them'.

There seems to be just a total disconnect going on in the guy's mind (or he's just ethically vacuous) and generally he does not appear the sharpest blade in the drawer:

Despite fostering online hatred, the man recorded.... insists he doesn’t personally share the views expressed on his TikTok account. Instead, he suggests his fake anti-migrant house tour videos were just a way to game the algorithm, build an audience, and hopefully make money.

He's also

baffled. He can’t understand how London Centric traced his anonymous hate-filled London TikTok account back to his employer by geolocating the wheelie bins in his videos.
“I thought no one’s gonna notice that,” he says. “Why would someone?”

As if people aren't doing this sort of thing all the time.

boxofdelights

As always, the first thing that hit me was the smell of thousands of herbs and flowers, a dry, green, enticing smell that got into my lungs and soothed the world away, mortal peril forgotten. A warm light bathed the place, shining from several living octopus-like creatures tangled in the ceiling beams. Rows and rows of hundreds of little tins and jars lined the walls, all of them labeled in Laemura's spidery handwriting: Apple Mint Innocence. Lavender Regret. Smoky Cinnamon Vengeance. Doomed Foreknowledge With Toasted Walnut And Sage.

from The Last Hour Between Worlds, by Melissa Caruso

cimorene

I really wish we could be trying one new recipe a week right now, but we have not yet recovered from winter sufficiently to prepare even familiar quick recipes all the days that we have planned.

It did get warmer, though. Not all the way up to freezing, but it's no longer quite so miserable indoors. A winter cold snap always makes it harder to obtain firewood. Hopefully that will end as well. But I got a splinter in my right thumb the other day when trying to feed the fire, so I am inclined to avoid that. It's too tiny and nearly invisible to get out and mostly not painful, but its presence infuriates me.

princessofgeeks

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Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Mozart: Symphony No. 40

summerstorm

As of today, and since this weekend, I am caught up on two whole currently airing shows -- 9-1-1 and The Pitt -- and I can't begin to describe what a big deal this is to me. I don't think this has happened at all in the past decade, possibly since 2013. I've always had this... wall keeping me from watching things as they aired, like I was scared of what would happen and wanted spoilers first, but then I wouldn't go back and watch anyway? See: Stranger Things, of which the last episode I saw was 4.07.

The thing is, I would always choose things that I knew wouldn't make feel any feelings at all. I've watched so many Blood on the Clocktower streams. I still do, because it's fun! But the fact that I was able to catch up on 9-1-1 specifically is like, wow, did I make a new neural pathway? Am I really capable of overcoming the restrictions my brain saddles me with? Holy shit.

Anyway, they've both been fun. Hopefully they continue to be fun, and I can ignore spec nonsense on tumblr before it ruins my enjoyment.

pauraque

In the 32nd century, Captain Lorq Von Ray assembles a ragtag crew for a dangerous—some would say crazy—mission to harvest the superheavy element illyrion from a dying star. If they succeed, it would threaten tech megacorp Red-Shift's economic stranglehold on interstellar travel, inaugurating a new era of opportunity for struggling outer colonies. But Captain Von Ray's motives aren't just political, they're also personal, as flashbacks reveal his long history with the psychologically twisted brother-and-sister heirs to the Red-Shift fortune.

I really enjoyed this. The space opera plot is an effective backdrop for some nicely nuanced character work and social commentary. Money and class are still driving forces in this future, and people are shaped by that as much as they are by advancing technology and the cultural changes that have come with it. Besides the Captain and the Reds, the other focal characters are two crew members from Earth, one an emotionally guarded Romani kid who's gone against his people's prohibition on cybernetic implants to access job opportunities in space, and the other a socially awkward Harvard grad who has tens of thousands of notes for a novel (an ancient, dead art form) but hasn't yet written a single page. I love the development of their tentative friendship; it feels very honest about how hard it is to relate across cultural divides, and also very affectionate towards both characters. It's like the author is rooting for them even though he can't truthfully make it easy.

The worldbuilding really worked for me. There are enough surprising details and curious asides to make the galaxy feel lived-in and realistically messy, but not so many that it feels scattered. Delany has a very visual prose style and can convey exactly what he sees in his mind's eye, whether it's the unfurling sail of a glittering space yacht or the uneasy twitch of a character's cheek, and that adds to the vivid atmosphere.

I also appreciated the subtle exploration of disability in the context of a society where many things can be medically "fixed" that can't be in our own world. The author knows that this in itself would not "fix" people's attitudes about their own embodiment and others', and that elimination of bodily differences is not a utopian impulse. Characters are allowed to have complex feelings about their physical abilities—the ones they're born with, the ones they've lost, and the ones they've gained through technology—and aren't required to fully explain themselves just because other people want to know.

Criticisms? I think the book has too many characters; some of the less foregrounded crew members don't get much attention and it might have been better to drop a couple so we could spend more time with the rest. The role of female characters is particularly limited, and when they do appear, sometimes their boobs are mentioned for no reason. (I am of course aware that Delany is gay. Perhaps he was subconsciously influenced by what he was reading from other writers at the time.) Other than that, this was a good read.

Content note: A character's pet is harmed, but recovers.

js_thrill

Today's song is Pure Gold

Watch on YouTube

I enjoyed this song, but the thing that most caught my attention relates to the annotations. "Don't touch the door" was taken from a readout on the Twilight Zone pinball machine. The annotations go into a bit of detail about the machine and Darnielle's time playing it, but what I think is most impressive to me about this track is how Darnielle took his affection for/fixation on that aspect of a Twilight Zone pinball machine and used it as a seed for lyrics to a song that is not about pinball at all. In some cases, his songs have been directly about what inspired them, but here, we get a compelling partial narrative attached to this phrase that must have been stuck in his head for some time.

Current Music: Pure Gold — The Mountain Goats

lirazel

Non-explicit discussion of the Epstein files below:

( on the erasure of patriarchy, etc. )

princessofgeeks

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Current Mood: indescribable

oursin

Happy birthday,

lenores_raven and

lindra!

gremdark

Because I'm having trouble falling asleep (definitely work jitters, sigh) and sometimes internalizing the good in the world helps. So:

Boyfriend's redownloaded Bumble and has been talking to a couple people, most notably Emerald, who has met up with us to play Magic once and is coming over for dinner on Saturday. I'm making chicken tortilla soup, which is always a winner. She's a sweetheart, and I look forward to getting to know her better. Next order of business is softening her up enough to get my grubby paws on her tumblr url. I always say that the best way to tell whether a prospective friend is a keeper is to put them in a room with my stoic and silent fiance and see if they recognize how lovely and befriendable he is in spite of his retiring nature. So we shall see.

I mailed a care package to my dear friend Robin, whose birthday was Sunday. She's in grad school for accounting in Michigan after taking several years off to recover from a pair of strokes. I'm SO proud of her, and I was glad for the excuse to send her something nice. She loves foxes, so the package was fox-themed. Stickers, two necklaces (one handmade, one store bought) an art card, and a lemon candle that came in a nice box. She seemed very happy to receive it, so I think I'll try to repeat the trick after spring break even if all my finances can support at that time is a nice handwritten note.

I've officially progressed to the first interview phase for the alternative teacher's certification program I'm applying to. The internet says that that puts me in the top 50% of applicants. My fate isn't yet assured, but I'm closer! Tomorrow night, I have a webinar where they'll talk through what the interview will look like. The interview itself is next week (eek!) and will be about two hours long. The interviewer sent me a nice email after I booked my time, which feels optimistic. He mentioned that he's interested to hear about my study abroad experience, so I'll see if I can dig up my notes from that time. I also need two recommendation forms filed by this upcoming Monday. I've got my former thesis advisor and an ex boss working on them. Tomorrow I'll shoot them polite emails thanking them and making sue they haven't forgotten.

One of my favorite people in the entire universe is my neighbor, who I've known for almost a decade now. The other day I wandered into a little antique shop while waiting for a hair appointment and found a shelf of vintage cinema books. I spotted one about All About Eve, his favorite movie, and nabbed it. This afternoon, my neighbor came over for movie and writing time and brought the book along to read. Apparently he's really enjoying it, so that's a win. He's starting a new job next week, but we made plans for me to cook him dinner next Saturday. I need to riffle through my cookbooks and pick out a good recipe for it.

This morning when I woke up, the cat had worked my bedroom door open and curled up at the foot of my bed. He stayed there until I got up and spent the day following me around and sitting in my lap whenever I sat. He's the first cat I've ever lived with, and it's nice to be friends with him.

I have now tried to embed an image of the cat three different times. I am confident I can figure this out in the long run, but right now I need to sleep. So here's a description.

He's a hair overweight for an adult male cat, but the vet assures us that he's mostly just muscular. When she first saw him, she exclaimed, "Oh! A cream-colored cat!" Like most people who live with cats, I'm pretty sure he's the best and most attractive one. His eyes are on the green side of olive, and his chest and the very tips of his paws are white. His stripes are very faint, most evident on the hindquarters and tail.

As I type this, he's loafing at the foot of my bed. In five minutes, once this is posted and I've gotten under the covers, he'll pace the hallway, scratch at each of our bedroom doors, and meow plaintively for ten to fifteen minutes before giving up and sleeping on the living room couch. Sometimes, for variety, he climbs into one of the dining room chairs, pulls the nearest tablecloth corner into it, and nests in an irritatingly decadent fashion. He'll meow at my door about twenty minutes before my first alarm goes off at six a.m. Then, when I stagger out of bed, he'll follow me into the kitchen and hover while I eat breakfast.

He's surely not dissimilar from most cats, but I have a sample size of one and I dote on the lad.

Current Mood: sleepy

dine

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gremdark

It's been a while since I've felt the urge to post on the internet diary-style, but I'm processing something this week.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been substitute teaching in our local public school district. It's the first thing resembling a full-time job that I've held since before I got so sick in 2019, and I'm hoping it'll give me a sense of whether the alternative certification program I'm pursuing is the right fit for me.
The adjustment period has been significant, but not unmanageable. I've taught before, but that was one-on-one pandemic teaching. Managing a 25 kid classroom is a different beast altogether. Still, I thought I was doing okay before Friday.
On Friday, a student called me a faggot. Shouted it out to the whole class, in fact. I think I would have shrugged that one off by itself, but other students used similarly homophobic and transphobic language towards me throughout the rest of that day. I taught five classes at that school. This happened in three of them. One student called me a "birl," which is not a word I'd realized had made it to this side of 1995. But there you go.
I'm visibly queer in the southern United States in 2026. I've been called slurs before. Not since I was eleven years old myself have children that small used hate speech towards me. It bothers me to know that eleven year olds in my neighborhood have that language on standby, that its use feels normal to them.
I'd like to think I covered it well in the moment, keeping my head high and taking down names and details for their regular teacher to punish. But that night, and in the days that followed, it felt like I was carrying a lead weight on my shoulders. It's taken days for the exhaustion to diminish.
Logically, I know that it's normal for that sort of language to wound. That's the point of its use. I know I'm not weak for feeling its impact. At the same time, it's hard not to reproach myself for not having a "thicker skin."
Tomorrow and Friday, I'm subbing for a G/T teacher who runs small group pullout classes at a K-5 elementary school. I'm hoping it'll be a good mental reset. But we shall see.

Current Mood: drained
Current Music: Get Out and Stay Out - 9 to 5

landofnowhere

Alien Clay, Adrian Tchaikovsky. That sure was an Adrian Tchaikovsky novel! It succesfully did what it did but I've read enough Tchaikovsky that I didn't feel like it really stood out.

Chroniques du Pays des Mères, Élisabeth Vonarburg. Still having to resist from reading ahead of book club pace, but also this past week I went and reread/skimmed everything I'd already read to help keep track of all the plot/worldbuilding details. Our protagonist has just left home for the first time and I'm curious to know what comes next.

Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: An Introvert's Year of Living Dangerously, by Jessica Pan. Saw this recommended as a self-help book, and thought I'd try it. It's very readable -- the author is the sort of shy introvert that I can easily relate to, and I appreciated that her writing voice was very confident in discussing her anxiety. This sort of self-help memoir is a bit odd in that she's trying to position herself as an everywoman, but reading between the lines it's clear that she wasn't just working to break out her shell so she could make more friends and overcome anxiety, but also so that she could write a book based on it; which seems like it has advanages both in motivation and in getting access to expert professionals to provide advice.

To Ride a Rising Storm, Moniquill Blackgoose. Sequel to To Shape a Dragon's Breath. At heart these are school stories, and even when they're not at school the focus is still on the characters and relationships, with a lot of social commentary about colonialism in an AU North America, with the political plot and the dragons and alchemy, while present, being less of the focus. I liked the new characters here, in particular the Jewish ones. (This AU, instead of "Jewish", uses a different word with Slavic etymology; I'm aware there's a related word in Russian that's an offensive slur; I wasn't bothered but some people migh be. Anyway AU Judaism does not seem to have any noticeable differences from our world.) This book ended on a rather abrupt cliffhanger, so now I can't wait for the next one.

petrea_mitchell

One African Worldcon initiative ends, another begins...

adafrog

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paperghost

I haven't been posting here lately :(

Harmonycon starts... on the 13th... I'm kind of stressed out because while I don't spent that much money at cons, it's mainly Uber I worry about since I didn't get a hotel room. And my paycheck is really really mid since I missed work during the storm. I plan on attending all 3 days, but I ran into a last minute issue with Sunday because I realized too late (read: last night) that the closing ceremony is at 3-4PM. That is SUPER early and if I theoretically Uber over at 10-11AM, I won't be there very long. But I specifically requested the 15th and 16th off from work because I wanted to try attending all 3 days, so I'm just wondering... What do I even do on the 15th? Not only is 4PM too early to go home, but 4-6PM is peak rush hour traffic so going home will be expensive and take a long time. But I do not live near that part of Dallas so I don't know what's walking distance...? I can walk a few miles on foot but man I have no idea.

My potential "escape route" for Sunday is someone who is at Sonic Expo that I added on Discord is doing a "spinoff" event after the con at 7PM, I could probably follow his group and go there... but otherwise I'm just winging Sunday. Just because the convention ends at 4PM doesn't mean I'll get kicked out of the hotel lol. There should be some stuff going on. My sister's boyfriend will let me know if he works that day too because otherwise I offered for us to do something in Dallas if he's off after 4PM.

Also, I'm off tomorrow before the con. Here's my checklist:
- Haircut
- Pack itabag and extra tote
- Check my tub near my computer for MLP stuff I want to bring or give away
???
Profit

redbird

January was rereading, and not much of that: Paladin of Souls, by Lois McMaster Bujold, and Sorcery and Cecilia by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer: the latter was a read-aloud, with Cattitude and Adrian switching off depending on which character the letter was from.

I also bounced off a couple of rereads, and read news and other articles online.

Just finished:

Grown Wise, by Celia Lake: another of her Albion historical romances, set in a fantasy Britain with a middle-sized community of people who use or are aware of magic. This one is set a couple of years after World War II, and people are dealing with both individual loss and trauma, and the war's effects on the land. I enjoyed this, but I don't know whether it would be confusing as a starting point. (It's the first in a new series of these books, which might help.)

js_thrill

Got behind by a day again. Yesterday's song was Whole Wide World

Watch on YouTube

Whole Wide World is the more appealing of the two songs to me, but they are both slower more pensive pieces. Darnielle notes that Wrong! was released on a "weird" 6 song cassette originally, and that he likes weird releases, but only if they are organically weird. This attitude towards weirdness reminded me of Susan Sontag's "Notes On Camp"; particularly this line:

18. One must distinguish between naïve and deliberate Camp. Pure Camp is always naive. Camp which knows itself to be Camp ("camping") is usually less satistying.

It's one part of that piece that has stuck with me for a long time, because it concisely captures why certain works are more appealing to me even though they are worse works; the attitude of the author towards the work is important. Authenticity is important.

The title of the first song reminds me of a better known song with the same name, which shares no other features with Darnielle's song. I do like the Wreckless Eric track, though, even as the name collision is mostly a distraction from reflecting on Mountain Goats music.

Current Music: Wrong! — The Mountain Goats

kaberett

a shelf fungus at the base of a tree, shading from brown in the centre via rich orange to pale yellow at the edge

a clump of purple crocuses, nestled between tree roots

a clump of snowdrops, with the green tips of the inner petals clearly visible

(Which last I took in part because A only discovered last week that many snowdrops have decorative green bits on their frilly inner noses, courtesy of a waist-high planter outside one of our local pubs!)

princessofgeeks

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conuly

How much do you love me, a million bushels?
Oh, a lot more than that, Oh, a lot more.

And tomorrow maybe only half a bushel?
Tomorrow maybe not even a half a bushel.

And is this your heart arithmetic?
This is the way the wind measures the weather.

************

Link

minoanmiss

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conuly

What the hell sort of question is that? Of course I'd pay up! I have money, pride, and my teeth, and of the three, I can least afford to lose the last. Wouldn't almost anybody submit to the shakedown? That's how protection rackets work, after all - everybody does the same math and comes to the same conclusion as I just did.

(Of course, the context was "I think this company was rude to me over the phone, therefore I decided to live without hot water and heating because I have my principles" so, you know, I guess we have different approaches to life?)

*****************

( Read more... )

petra

CanCon, for the uninitiated in the ways of Canadian media, is Canadian Content, a percentage of which is mandated in Canada in much the same way Animaniacs used to have edutainment chunks, and for much the same reason -- the betterment of the public.

Noncon CanCon is when you're trying to avoid all mentions of That Show and it still crosses your social media feeds.

Dubcon CanCon is when it's Hudson Williams doing a photoshoot.

I am not going to throw a CanCon Consent Fest because I feel obligated to read everything people submit for fests I run and a) I don't wanna have to read fic for the gay hockey show and b) Noncon generally moves me in the direction of the back button. But if someone else throws a fest, I will write dubcon for at least two of my Canadian fandoms.

Current Mood: silly
Current Music: Dubcon dubstep -- when someone is listening without headphones

oursin

What I read

Finished Cakes and Ale, which is partly that early C20th litfic convention of a first-person narrator who just happens be around to hear a lot about the actual protags and the plot or at critical moments of same, but actually complicates it with Ashenden knowing that Rosie is not actually dead as everyone else supposes. Not sure the ending really worked.

I then, having got into an Edwardian/Georgian novelist rhythm, went 'ah! time for some Arnold Bennett! the one about the hotel', except I picked up The Grand Babylon Hotel (1902), which is 1900s thriller hijinx mode with European royalty shenanigans, false identities, etc etc (though I was wondering whether it might adapt into a screwball comedy movie?), and wasn't actually the one I'd read many years ago that I was thinking of.

Which was Imperial Palace (1930), which struck me as, although lacking the highspeed thriller plot element, remarkably like D Francis in its fascination for infrastructure (in this case, running a luxury hotel in London) and competence porn. The running-the-hotel bits and the trials posed for the new supervising housekeeper are, perhaps, at least these days, more interesting than the bits involving Hotel Manager and Rich Man's Daughter Gracie. To give her (and actually, Bennett as author) her due, she is not, whereas she would be in a lot of novels by his contemporaries, an unmitigated bitch (Aldous Huxley's Lucy Tantamount) or a tragic bitch (Michael Arlen's Iris Storm), she has some good points and was a competent racing driver, but she is still annoyingly entitled and egocentric.

I took a break from this because I suddenly had a whim to re-read Mary Renault, The King Must Die (1958) for the first time in absolute yonks. You know, Mary, the sexism and misogyny is not entirely just being Accurate for Period, is it, hmmmm? There is some great stuff in there, but.

On the go

Imperial Palace is very long, and still on the go.

Up next

I think I am up for some Agatha Christie, seriously.

princessofgeeks

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Current Mood: nostalgic

princessofgeeks

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cereta

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dine

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daryl_wor

Watched this again tonight. Saw it in the theater prior to seeing 2001 which confused my chap... I was single digits at the time, so 2001 wasn't something I'd "get". Nor did I understand much when I finally saw 2001. 2010... kids could understand more.

2010: it wasn't the lay-on-the-floor-while-dropping-acid-movie ^_^

Current Mood: amused
Current Location: Memory Lane
Current Music: Once Upon a December - Anastasia (Piano Cover)

watersword

This might be the first time that Jo Walton's reading list did not result in a half-dozen new library holds, so I unfroze some existing holds and headed over to rivkat's to catch up on her notes on books. Results: several new holds, as expected and intended. I feel much better.

I fought my way past Amtrak's terrible 2FA and did not have to deal with Julie, which definitely counts as dodging the boss battle, but now I am getting errors when I try to buy my Dessa ticket, and in conclusion, computers were a mistake.

The gherkin is asleep on my chest (tiny tiny tiny snores) and allegedly it is going to go above 0° C for the first time in days, possibly weeks, tomorrow.

azurelunatic

Yellface (spayed, *16) decided to sit on me last night. Thorn came in and snuggled me. Yellface sniffed their hand politely as we held hands. The first time she'd ever encountered Thorn's hand without some cranky meowing. (Right now Yellface will sniff and rub her face on an extended finger, but will say things about it.)

Many minutes of stillness later, Thorn said something.

Yellface suddenly took notice of an alien hand near her territory, stood up, and gave a snake-strike grazing bite to the nearest hand, followed by a swat.

My hand, naturally.

I uninvited her from the bed and found an alcohol wipe. She broke skin but didn't draw blood. Today only the deepest scrape is visible, if you're looking for it.

Oh, cat.

pauraque

This is the first part of my book club notes on The Black Fantastic: 20 Afrofuturist Stories. I appreciated the editor's introduction, which highlights connections between the oppressive realities of the past and present to the spark of Black speculative imagination—how can things be different, and whose ideas will shape the future? He's written a nonfiction book on this topic, Speculative Blackness, which I would be interested to check out.

Interesting to note that this collection places the stories in chronological order of first publication. We've had a number of conversations about how editors arrange stories in anthologies (similar themes together? most significant stories first and last?) and this is the first time I've seen this approach. It was mentioned that some books the group read before I joined did this as well, but those were more historical overviews that spanned a longer period of time, while these stories are all from the last 25 years. Perhaps the intention is to suggest a new history still being written.

There was also some discussion of the physical book itself having a good design and high quality paper and feeling nice to hold in the hand, to which I could add nothing because I have the ebook.

"Herbal" by Nalo Hopkinson (2002)

( An elephant suddenly appears in a woman's apartment. )

"All That Touches the Air" by An Owomoyela (2011)

( A human colony exists in uneasy equilibrium with aliens who can parasitize and control people's bodies. )

"Bludgeon" by Thaddeus Howze (2013)

( Conquering aliens are persuaded to wager the fate of Earth on a game of baseball. )

"A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i" by Alaya Dawn Johnson (2014)

( In a world dominated by vampires, a human woman collaborates with them to save herself. )

wychwood

Candle update: my candle parcel sat in the depot for ten days and then they emailed me to say that I was being refunded. At no point did anyone say anything about trying to deliver it. Also, they don't re-send undelivered parcels and the sale is over so I can't re-order without paying a bunch more money. I did burn the candle my dad gave me, but it was horribly sooty (black snot!! it was like being in London before the congestion charge, only worse!). On the other hand, it also burned super fast (maybe eight hours total time for a candle that looked like it ought to do more like thirty), so it was over fast. Now I'm back to the IKEA tea lights.

Sunday night I went to see Florence + the Machine, and that was fabulous. I wasn't, like, super hyped up by it, but it was deeply engrossing somehow; the gig went by really fast, and her music is just so good. She didn't do either of the songs I was really hoping for ("You Can Have It All" and "Kraken") but everything she did do was great. The stage show was great. And the mixing wasn't terrible - like, pop gigs always seem to be mixed so that you can feel the bass in every individual bone in your body but also can't hear the lyrics, and that was absolutely a problem for the opening act (Paris Paloma) who seemed cool and might be good except I couldn't actually hear her. But Florence was mostly audible. Of course, with a voice like that she has an advantage...

I had Monday off to recover after the late night (concert finish: about 22:45; reached car park around 23:00; left car park around 23:45... always so great) but was back at work today. On Friday I finally finished a horrible task I'd been putting off, so now I'm trying to catch up with the eight million other things I'd been ignoring; I managed to empty my inbox, but only by moving everything into a new set of folders so that I only have to confront one set of them at a time. Also deleted a lot of duplicates (emails from earlier in a chain, etc), things relating to the Horrible Task, and so on, so the many folders only have about 80 emails left instead of the 150 I started the morning with. Then I realised that there's a whole new Horrible Task with a tight timeline, so that's going to be fun for tomorrow.

But I did achieve some small household tasks, cleared out a few personal emails, and only ignored reality to lie in bed with a book a little bit this evening. Maybe I'll even manage the washing up before I go to sleep, it could happen.

kaberett

I actually made this as a protein to go with Meera Sodha's winter pilau, after An End Of Breakfast Dal went really well and for the purposes of using up the chaat masala I made for The Ongoing Cook All The Book Project, freely adapted from a number of recipes (which were The First Few Search Results when I prodded the internet). A is sufficiently convinced that I provide notes herewith in service of being able to repeat it in future.

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zdenka

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Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Rossini, Ermione: Anime sventurate

princessofgeeks

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Current Mood: cheerful

aflaminghalo

Added some kettlebell swings everyday this year, and it's really making me aware of just how much of my arse is missing from my brains map of my body. Like, i *knew*, but now I really, really *know*.

aflaminghalo

Have finally done the adult thing and put a timer on my phone's browser. I only have a few apps on my phone, nothing fun, and use firefox for everything else (my first attempt at making my phone less distracting, and clearly didn't work as well as I'd like), so I've put the timer on it and got to watch in horror as it turned ash grey and locked me out and had to wait til 5 to get on the big computer to play on the internet.

And I know I can just override it, but I'm trying.

I just... I'm very aware of myself as little more than an eye. I scroll sm, I scroll tumblr, I read the paper. Sometimes I comment on reddit. I just... comment. I don't connect. I've never been very good at that, but lately, I'm really feeling it.
And I hate discord, which means fandom is pretty much dead to me as something other than a solo game. I post my little story, I get a like, maybe a comment. I say thank you and that's it. I have people on some of the sites that I picked up in fandoms 20 years ago. I can't imagine how I could do that these days.

A big part of trying to get back into a blogging habit, is just trying to make the internet something I do again. Force myself to attempt to communicate in something other than likes. Even if it's just to myself.

daryl_wor

I am thinking about ways to enhance this relationship again....

maybe that's a good sign... maybe

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Location: Memory Lane
Current Music: Once Upon a December - Anastasia (Piano Cover)

pensnest

I have acquired a rather splendid scarlet T-shirt which bears the following legend:

THINGS WE DID:
Built this city; shot the Sheriff

THINGS WE DIDN'T DO:
Start the fire; shoot the Deputy

THINGS WE WANT TO DO:
Break free; know what love is

THINGS WE WILL DO:
Rock you, Anything for love

THINGS WE WON'T DO:
That.

I should like to make a feminine version. Can you help? I want phrases sung by women, in whatever context. Any suggestions for any of the categories will be considered gratefully, and I will amend this post accordingly, though bear in mind that I am old-fashioned and may not recognise them all!

THINGS WE DID:

THINGS WE DIDN'T DO:

THINGS WE WANT TO DO:
Zig a zig Ah
be loved by you
danced with somebody
have fun
build a snowman

THINGS WE WILL DO:
survive!
come out of the kitchen
always love you

THINGS WE WON'T DO:
be seen and not heard

THINGS WE CAN'T DO:
say no

THINGS WE NEED:
a hero

Interesting how different these are from the bloke version! Thanks for contributions so far, and I would be delighted to have some more.

oursin

I was going to say 'double whammy' but in fact the general checkup and hygienist session both went off without any undue issues.

Going down the road to get to the Tube there was some kind of filming going on round about the parade of shops opposite the playing field - I did not linger as it was entirely chokka with mysterious vehicles and equipment.

Dentist, as stated, could not find anything wrong but has recommended some Extra Speshul Toothpaste, which normally you have to have a prescription for but they were able to sell me a couple of tubes.... not literally under the counter.

New hygienist, and as is the wont of hygienists, they have their own way of doing things - I was not expecting the whooshy water thing so early in the game - and also they find something that no other hygienist has noted that one should be doing, in this case involving a rare and unusual kind of toothbrush (which I have managed to source via eBay).

I was intending combining this jaunt with a couple of errands in Camden Town.

May I say I was deeply unimpressed with what Rymans has to offer in the way of seasonal cards, I thought they would have a far large selection. Managed to find something, but, grump.

Buying something from the pharmacy counter in Boots was stuck behind somebody apparently stocking up possibly for an expedition into the wilderness.

The threatened rain did indeed come on as I emerged from Boots, I had hoped that my weather app was looking on the gloomy side.

minoanmiss

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Current Mood: tired

princessofgeeks

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Current Mood: geeky

conuly

( Cut for poop )

**************

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minoanmiss

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Current Mood: contemplative

hindsightseeing

A bit late on this one, I think, but for those who may not have heard about it:
The spambots messing around with AO3 are, once again, upping their game.

The longer this goes on, the more grateful I am that, when I went scorched earth on my old AO3 account and made my new one, the default comment settings was 'Archive Users Only' and I never bothered to change it. I suspect this is probably why I've thus far remained spam-free.

I keep thinking I should probably bite the bullet and lock down all my stuff like most others are doing... but I'd like to avoid that for as long as possible. When you're basically the only one still writing for a thing, you want to keep as much of the joy for that thing as public as possible, you know?

Current Mood: pessimistic

Profile

Agony Aunt

February 2026

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
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15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28

Page Summary

gremdark - (no subject)
gremdark - Trashsplosion!
oursin - Does this qualify as banality of evil?
boxofdelights - The Last Hour Between Worlds
cimorene - Blanket tent limbo
princessofgeeks - New Heated Rivalry fic: "How to Jump Off a Burning Bridge"
summerstorm - (no subject)
pauraque - Nova by Samuel R. Delany (1968)
js_thrill - This Year 365 songs: February 12th
lirazel - i feel weary this morning
princessofgeeks - sobbing
oursin - (no subject)
gremdark - Five Happy Things
dine - I'm tired of the high road - can we go low now?
gremdark - Misadventures in Substitute Teaching
landofnowhere - wednesday books are empathic
petrea_mitchell - SMOF News, volume 5, issue 25
adafrog - Wednesday Feb 11
paperghost - Harmonycon...soon
redbird - Wednesday reading
js_thrill - This Year 365 songs: February 10th and 11th
kaberett - [picspam] from yesterday's trudge in the rain
princessofgeeks - Montreal question
conuly - How Much? by Carl Sandburg
minoanmiss - Mental DNR list
conuly - "Would you give money to a bully to keep him from beating you up every day?"
petra - CanCon in the age of Heated Rivalry
oursin - Wednesday is still not sleeping very well
princessofgeeks - So fun....
princessofgeeks - Heated Rivalry rec: CWs
cereta - Oh, yeah
dine - you can't spell families without lies
daryl_wor - The OTHER movie
watersword - (no subject)
azurelunatic - Grouchy, territorial kitten*
pauraque - The Black Fantastic: 20 Afrofuturist Stories, ed. andré m. carrington (2025) [part 1]
wychwood - dug a hole in the garden and buried a scream
kaberett - [food] chickpea chaat
zdenka - Six degrees of Friedrich Wilhelms
princessofgeeks - Heated Rivalry rec
aflaminghalo - (no subject)
aflaminghalo - (no subject)
daryl_wor - Good Sign?
pensnest - i enjoy being a girl
oursin - Dental double date
minoanmiss - Three from the news
princessofgeeks - Another rewatch thought--Heated Rivalry
conuly - As always, I hate having my period
minoanmiss - If—
hindsightseeing - Here we go again.

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