Recent theater
Jun. 10th, 2025 06:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troisoiseauxAlso saw The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical at the Signature Theater, having finally wised up to the fact that if a new musical is being produced in DC it's probably on its way to Broadway, so I might as well see it now. (Cheaper tickets! Potential bragging rights!) This is exactly what it says on the tin - a rock musical by Joe Iconis about writer Hunter S. Thompson, father of Gonzo journalism in the 1960s-70s - and certainly timely; to lean into the inevitable Hamilton comparisons, Hunter...'s Burr is Richard Nixon as a so-sleezy-it's-camp psychopomp haunting Thompson's final hours as he runs through his life story, and the parallels to, you know, that other guy are about as subtle as a bonk to the head. Very meta, overall: as it goes on, the other characters begin to confront Thompson over his version of events and demand to speak for themselves. There was a frequent use of puppets, including a peacock, a baby that could make a fight the man! fist and flip the bird, and a giant Nixon head. (Yes, in addition to the actor playing Nixon. It was a whole thing.) I enjoyed this a lot!! But the one downside of seeing a show so early in the pipeline is that I've had random snippets of lyrics and melodies floating around in my head for days and there's no cast recording to listen to. (ETA: There is an official trailer, though!)
sat up very straight at around this time last night and went "... oh"
Jun. 10th, 2025 11:29 pmkaberettTwo things:
I keep (especially post-surgery, cotemporal with relearning how to walk) finding more small ways that how I've been doing my various physio exercises isn't quite right. This is a good thing! Isn't it fascinating to be learning more about embodiment and how my body works and how I can best deploy my various muscles!
Up until the hypermobility clinic, all the physio I was ever prescribed made me worse, not better.
It abruptly dawned on me, all at once, that the subtlety of the changes I'm making with adjusting how I'm shifting my weight around and so on and so forth? Are almost certainly not actually externally visible. Like, yes, people not understanding hypermobility and problems with it was also Definitely A Problem, but -- the part where I'm still, mm, not necessarily fixing things but certainly developing them, finding places where even with What The Hypermobility Clinic Told Me To Do I wasn't getting quite right... well, the hypermobility specialists clearly went "eh, good enough", and in terms of the effects on my ability to Things I think they were clearly demonstrably provable correct, but -- yeah, okay, sudden understanding of some of just how difficult it would have been to correct some of this stuff.
(I'm very sure that all my various epiphanies will turn out to be about things that still aren't quite right, that I can still refine further -- I'm having an extended phase of that with Pilates right now -- but this is a good thing, actually. It's really nice to have such clear evidence that I'm getting to know and understand myself better.)
rick rat
Jun. 10th, 2025 05:20 pmpaperghost
(source) (I'll host this myself on Filegarden later, it won't load for me right now.)
Not sure if this is common knowledge, but the precursor to Chuck E. Cheese was Rick Rat. His costume was purchased by Nolan Bushnell (yes, that one) under the impression it was a coyote, until he saw the tail... I don't think the costume was ever used outside of some photos like this one, though. I always wonder if someone still has it somewhere, or if it was destroyed :( I know some super fans have the animatronics that were almost thrown away.
EDIT: I found another photo I never seen before.
(source)
Rick Rat was bought in 1976, and Chuck E. Cheese was established in 1977, but this photo was taken in 1975. Makes me wonder what he was used for before getting bought by Bushnell. I wish I could've met Rick Rat :(
dispossessed, aside-thrust, chucked down
Jun. 10th, 2025 06:31 pmwychwoodIn the meantime, there's plenty of tasks that need to be done before we go live, and I'm only avoiding some of them... some tasks are just freakishly intimidating and I can never tell why; half of them only take ten minutes once you actually face them.
The buses took a long time to recover after COVID - there was a phase where it felt like I was waiting 25 minutes every time I caught a bus - but the last year or so things have been much more reliable. Of course, sometimes that doesn't work in my favour, like how my bus home from church reliably arrives three minutes too late for me to catch the bus that stops by my house instead of having to walk ten minutes home. But the other day I was waiting for a bus which was twelve minutes away when I got to the stop... five minutes later it was thirteen minutes away... seven minutes after that it was fourteen minutes away... after that I stopped checking, because I was a little bit afraid of what might happen, and walked home instead.
Mum's started chemo now, and is doing OK-ish. I'm going over to see them on Sunday for Fathers' Day, possibly along with my brother and his tribe, but we'll see. Ticking along!
and TWO! 
have a bless day!
Things I could use
Jun. 10th, 2025 02:10 pmmetawidgetAs promised, here are a few things that I'd put to good use if you aren't using them:
- Muffin tin(s)
- Mixing bowl
- Small plates (bread/side plate sized)
- Saucepan (small or medium)
- Pitcher (1.5 L or so)
- Chef's knife
- Comforter for queen-sized bed
Please don't go to too much trouble — these are less-urgent things that I'll get if they aren't floating around my local friends, but I'm hoping I can help you clear things out and round out the house for the kids and me!
The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach (2019)
Jun. 10th, 2025 01:13 pmpauraqueIn this first book of a planned fantasy trilogy (of which two books have so far been released), we're introduced to the city of Hainak, a seaport that's just been through a political revolution, as well as an alchemical-biological magitech revolution. Our main character is Yat, a naive cop who wants to be a hero, but instead she's just been demoted for being queer. As her life crumbles into a haze of drugs and disillusionment, she stumbles into the doings of a secret faction, gets murdered, and finds herself resurrected with new powers that allow her to manipulate life force with her mind, all of which gives her a very different perspective on what a hero is and what she actually wants to fight for.
So... I really wanted to like this. I did enjoy the Māori-inspired worldbuilding and the author's vivid visual imagination, filling the city with a profusion of bizarre wonders as well as a strong sense of place. I also liked a lot of the characters and cared what happened to them. But ultimately I found the book didn't have enough structure to hold together.
It's being marketed as akin to Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb series, and I think that comparison pinpoints the problem. Many aspects of the book do seem similar—there's magic with body horror, fantasy with sci-fi, loads of queerness... as well as byzantine political intrigue, misdirections about characters' identities, conversations that don't specify what's being discussed, and long monologues from unidentified speakers. But the reason all the confusing stuff works when Muir does it is that she does eventually provide enough information for you to fit all the pieces together, and on re-reading you discover that all the things that initially confused you actually make complete sense and Muir had a plan all along. And maybe Stronach also has a plan in her head, but if so it didn't make it onto the page. The book ends in a muddle of events that seem superficially dramatic but don't actually explain that much or draw the needed connections between the disparate plot elements.
The part of the book that's presented the most clearly is Yat's journey of realizing that the police only protect the powerful and serve the status quo, so if she wants to be a hero to the downtrodden then being a cop isn't the way to do it. Which would be a perfectly reasonable character arc, except that Yat's backstory is that she was an orphan living on the streets and she saw firsthand on a daily basis what cops are like, so why is her story about her "realizing" something she already knows? I guess she's supposed to be in deep denial, but it just didn't make any sense to me.
Some reviews I read had also led me to believe that the book has a lot more pirate content than it actually does. I mean, it does have pirates! But I felt cheated that we didn't spend more time with them, both because pirates are awesome and because the backstory of these specific pirates was super intriguing but criminally underexplained. I often felt like the book was barely intersecting the outskirts of a way more interesting story centered on the pirate captain and her crew, and wondered why they weren't the main characters.
Anyway, I think there was a lot of potential here but it didn't cohere enough for me to want to continue with the series. Too bad.
meme time: favorite characters by color
Jun. 10th, 2025 09:49 amalthea_valaraI gave a thought of branching out to other Final Fantasy games but no, I could fill the grid only with folks from Final Fantasy XIV, so I did so.
( cut to spare your reading pages, but also: some light character spoilers through Endwalker patches )
This is one of my longstanding grouches and you are all probably used to it
Jun. 10th, 2025 03:13 pmoursinMy attention, as they say, was drawn to this: Why Have So Many Books by Women Been Lost to History?
The question itself is reasonable, I guess, but what is downright WEIRD is they actually namecheck Persephone Press's acts of rediscovery -
- and one of the first books in their own endeavour is one that PP did early on and being Persephone is STILL IN PRINT.
And one of the others has been repeatedly reprinted as a significant work including by Pandora Press.
Do we think there is a) not checking this sort of thing b) erasure of feminist publishing foremothers?
Okay I pointed out that even Virago were not actually digging up Entirely Forgotten Works (ahem ahem South Riding never out of print and paid for a lot of gels to get to Somerville).
However, this did lead me to look up certain rare faves of mine, and lo and behold, British Library Women Writers have actually just reprinted, all praise to them, GB Stern's The Woman in the Hall, 1939 and never republished. Yay. This to my mind is one of her top works.
Also remark here that Furrowed Middlebrow are bringing back works that have genuinely been hard to get hold of, like the non-Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons, and the early Margery Sharps, and so on. (Though Greyladies had already done Noel Streatfeild as Susan Scarlett.)
Confess I am waiting for the Big Publishing Rediscovery of EBC Jones. Would also not mind maybe some attention to Violet Hunt (unfortunately her life was perhaps so dramatic it has outshone her work? gosh the Wikipedia entry is a bit thin.)
tired and writing
Jun. 10th, 2025 09:47 amtielanBut it's lunchtime now, I have (mostly) survived the morning after a long weekend ("King's Birthday" long weekend), and I think I might end up skipping hockey training tonight because my knee has been feeling a bit weird the last couple of weeks and maybe I should go to the physio and get it checked out?
IDK. Maybe see how it holds up this weekend? We're already down one player that we're probably going to need...
--
I think I'm going to sign up for
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
iddyiddybangbang because I have a lot of exceedingly iddish stories that aren't going to get finished otherwise. I don't know if the creativity will come back, but I figure I should at least give it a go...Now, the question of which story. Unfortunately most of the stories that I feel I want to finish and the ones that are half-done already. (Is the WIP Big Bang running this year? Anyone know?)
I know that I won't get many readers, I know that it's going to be something that not many people are going to read. I just want to get a few ideas out there.
--
Finished my 'the women sort out the MCU Civil War' fic.
The Civilian Peace (7073 words) by tielan
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Helen Cho & Jane Foster & Maria Hill & Pepper Potts
Characters: Helen Cho, Pepper Potts, Maria Hill, Jane Foster, Okoye (Marvel), T'Challa (Marvel), Avengers Team Members (Marvel), James "Bucky" Barnes
Additional Tags: Not Canon Compliant with Movie: Captain America: Civil War (2016)
Summary: What does it mean to be human, anyway?
Have a plan for the Psy-Changeling universe, it's gotten a little more complex.
--
Editing on the novel is going slowly; I just feel like it's boring and terrible and ugh. Which it might very well be. Are more dramatic things needed at this point? IDEK.
Writing on the new story is going to need at least one screen, preferably two. And a lot of editing. More ugh.
Weekly proof of life (belated again): sentimentality, reading habits, household things...
Jun. 9th, 2025 04:10 pmumadoshiIt was also Claudia's birthday, of course, and I always think of her on their birthday. Oh, my darling baby cat.
*The oldest was Jenny, the cat of my childhood who was still with my parents for years after I moved out. She made it to nineteen, most of that time in rock-solid health, and never really forgave me for moving to Toronto and thus straight-up vanishing from her life for months at a time.
Reading: I finished reading Jennifer 8 Lee's The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, which remained an interesting read right through, and read Adrian Tchaikovsky's City of Last Chances, which I think is only the second thing of his I've read? (Elder Race is the other one I'm sure of.) Having finished it, I'm in a position that's annoyingly familiar, where I liked the book quite a bit and am curious about what happens next, but am not sure I cared enough that I'll ever actually get around to picking up the sequel.
(The thing where I've almost entirely been reading books I own for years now doesn't really help, where I've often picked up the first book of a trilogy of series or whatever on sale in ebook because I've heard it's good, and then am not sure I'm invested enough to pay full price on the next one when I own literally hundreds of yet-unread books. Feh.)
Watching:
scruloose and I are up to date on Murderbot and have seen the first episode of Kingdom season 2.In the case of the former, I'm skeptical about the nqqvgvba bs n punenpgre jub qbrfa'g nccrne va gur obbxf ng nyy--juvpu V'z abg vaureragyl ntnvafg, tvira gung gur fubj vf pyrneyl vgf bja guvat, naq V'z thrffvat fur'f gurer gb pbairl fbzrguvat gung jbhyq'ir orra gevpxl gb qb gur fnzr jnl va guvf sbezng nf va gur abiryyn. Ohg fur'f
Working: Thank goodness the manga I'm working right now is (as usual) a fairly easy rewrite and not a tight deadline, because scrounging the mental energy for freelance work has been frustratingly hard recently. I'm almost halfway through my draft and have about a week and a half left with it, so it's fine, but. :/
Weathering/Householding: We've had a lot of gray days and some high-ish temperatures combined with humidity (which I hate), and the air quality, while not remotely as bad as it is in a lot of places, has been fluctuating significantly...and the AC function of the heat pumps is essentially nonfunctional. >.< This is crappy timing, given how much of the time over the last several days has required having the windows closed (and the air purifiers running for good measure, although they don't address some of the nastiness from wildfire smoke). And for bonus fun, while the heat pumps are still under warranty, the company we bought them from went under a few months ago, which complicates things. (I think possibly the main person died. :/)
That said,
scruloose made a bunch of calls today and we have reason to hope that someone can come in and take a look at them soon, if that particular company has the parts in stock. And while it's been uncomfortably warm inside some of the time because of this, at least it's not full summer yet. Hopefully we can get things dealt with by the time summer heat arrives in earnest.And on a purely pleasant note, a couple nights ago we were in a phase of "somehow the air quality is fine outside right now, so we can just open the windows and run fans" while it was pleasantly cool and raining atmospherically and the wind was doing a wonderful job of wafting the smell of the lilacs into the living room.
The Witch Roads, by Kate Elliott
Jun. 9th, 2025 01:35 pmmrissaReview copy provided by the publisher.
This is the first book in a duology, and it's the kind of duology that's really one book split into two volumes. The end of this book is merely the stopping point of this book, not in any way an ending. If that bothers you, wait around until the other half is out.
Honestly I can't tell you why I didn't love this book. I wanted to love this book. It's a secondary world fantasy where one of the central relationships of the book is an aunt and nephew, and that kind of non-standard central relationship is absolutely up my alley. It's a fantasy world where magical environmental contamination is a major threat, which is also of great interest to me. Sensitive yet matter-of-fact handling of trans characters, check. Worldbuilding that deviates from standard, check. And there wasn't anything that made me roll my eyes or say ugh! It was just fine! But for me, at least, it was just fine. Honestly if this is your sort of thing I kind of wish you'd read it and tell me what you think might have been going on here, or if it's just...that some books and some people are ships passing in the night.
To-read pile, 2025, May
Jun. 9th, 2025 07:31 pmrmc28Books on pre-order:
- Queen Demon (Rising World 2) by Martha Wells (7 Oct 2025)
Books acquired in May:
- and read:
- Copper Script by KJ Charles
- Red Boar's Baby by Lauren Esker
- and unread:
- The Wrath & The Dawn by Renée Ahdieh [3]
- The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan [3]
- Kidnap on the California Comet by M.G. Leonard & Sam Sedgman [3]
- Betrayal (Trinity 1) by Fiona McIntosh [3]
Borrowed books read in May:
- The Good Thieves by Katherine Rundell
- One Christmas Wish by Katherine Rundell
- You Have a Match by Emma Lord [2][6]
I continue to not read much (by my standards). I did not manage to read any of the physical books I had out of the library until they needed to be returned, and I've got several half-finished books in progress. (Oh, and in writing this I've realised I already have the Renée Ahdieh book in ebook, and haven't read it there either!)
[1] Pre-order
[2] Audiobook
[3] Physical book
[4] Crowdfunding
[5] Goodbye read
[6] Cambridgeshire Reads/Listens
[7] FaRoFeb / FaRoCation / Bookmas / HRBC
[8] Prime Reading / Kindle Unlimited
Birdsong of Shaker Way by Ann-Margaret Lim
Jun. 11th, 2025 01:06 pmconulywhen you wake, you hear birds
in the garden, in the yard. Birds
up and down, ushering in one more day
in all the houses on Shaker Way. Birds
on telephone lines, light posts. Birds
twit, twittering on trees
hailing fellow birds
with a nod of beak—gray kingbird;
top-hatted, streamertail
tuxedoed, doctor bird—
busy-bodied hummingbird
tucking in, out, of pink, red ixoras
punch-drunk in love. Birds
preening for, chatting up other birds—
the oriole, the grass quit, in mid-song
on the lawn, in a dance of birds
an all-day-long conference of bird;
red-headed woodpecker
—drummer boy, or girl bird
in this daily symphony of birds
—an orchestra on Shaker Way
in serenade of each perfect day with birds—
from the very first mockingbird
heralding, in solo warble
one more day, filled with birds—
brightened, lightened, trilled by birds:
precious, diamond-throated
sweet song, miracle-toting birds
the-gift-of-day-is-here birds.
Bird, bird, bird. Hello bird.
You lift me up bird.
You sing the day beautiful, bird.
Link
and... TWO!
...a-a-a-a-a-nd, have a bless'd day!
Last week was very mixed
Jun. 9th, 2025 05:06 pmoursinLast week was the one where there was PANIC over whether I would have new supply of prescription drug; credit card issues including FRAUD; and also bizarre phonecall from the musculo-skeletal people about scheduling an appointment which suggested they hadn't looked at my record or are very very confused about what my next session is actually for.
HOWEVER
Though I began writing a review on Wednesday, did a paragraph, and felt totally blank about where it was going from there, I returned to it the following day and lo and behold wrote enough to be considered an actual review, though have been tinkering and polishing since then. But is essentially DONE.
And in the realm of reviewing have received 3 books for essay review, have another one published this month coming sometime, and today heard that my offer to review for Yet Another Venue has been accepted, where can they send the book?
While in other not quite past it news, for many years I was heavily involved in a rather niche archival survey, which is no longer being hosted in its previous useful if rather outdated form but as a spreadsheet (I would say no use to man nor beast but it does have some value I suppose). But there is talk of reviving and updating it (yay) and I have been invited to a meeting to discuss this. Fortunately I can attend virtually rather than at ungodly hour of morning in distant reaches of West London.
Also professional org of which I am A (jolly good?) Fellow is doing a survey and has invited me to attend a virtual Focus Group.
Oh yes, and it looks as though a nerdy letter about Rebecca West I wrote to the Literary Review is likely to get published.
Trying to rapidly finish Prodigy, on Season 2
Jun. 10th, 2025 08:38 amconulyAnyway, Rok's friend in her tragic backstory was clearly no more able to leave that situation than she was and though I can see there's too much plot for that to happen in canon I really hope they could rescue him.
Speaking of tragic backstories, I cannot believe a. that Dal tried to say his was the worst and b. his version of being "the worst" absolutely skips past the part where ( Read more... ) But seriously, dude, you grew up as a slave on a mine full of child slaves. It's not a situation people get into because their life was just so great beforehand. If everything was hunky-dory, none of you would've been targeted in the first damn place. You all have a terrible backstory, you don't need to prove it!
Moving on, Murf continues to also be the best, but ffs, can somebody get him an AAC? Or a whiteboard, at least? Teach him sign language? This is a solved problem even in the real world, surely Starfleet can figure it out!
Nothing to say about Jankom, he's just there. *shrug* And I feel kinda ditto about Zero, tbh. I mean, I like them, but....
Ma'Jel, between her cool hair and her increasingly consternated expression as the turbolift got more and more crowded, is clearly not one of the most unemotional Vulcans out there. (I don't care what Vulcans say, the opposite of "logical" is not "emotional", it's just "illogical".) I feel like she and our darling T'Lyn would have a lot to talk about.
The adults on the ship - this show is clearly trying to walk a fine line between keeping them competent and allowing the kids to run circles around them. I'm not sure it always works, but I appreciate the effort, and also I appreciate how they were careful to make it clear that the adults, whether they're being strict or a bit Too Much, are only acting the way they do because they're sympathetic. (Frankly, all the kids could stand to appreciate their new situation a bit more - except Rok, she already gets it - but I understand why they're struggling a bit.)
( Gets a bit spoilery )
( Ugh, the news )
This is the overall driving/car situation in our household:
Jun. 9th, 2025 03:08 pmcimoreneOn the other hand, we have to have the car now for when we do need to leave town (buses into Kaarina and Turku from here are a pain; the regional 24h veterinary ER is on the other side of Turku, so we definitely did drive there at like 3 am one time when Snookums had a seizure).
I used to kind of enjoy driving, and I drove frequently aged 16-21, but only automatic transmissions.
waxjism had an old car when I first moved here, but it was stick shift and I couldn't drive it and she couldn't teach me. We eventually got rid of it, and I never swapped my US driver's licence for a Finnish one (you can when it it hasn't expired yet). Wax, who has never liked driving, has been urging me to learn to drive and get a license since we moved here and got the car.
Well, apparently, because I have at one time had a driver's licence from another country it's impossible to apply online for a learning-to-drive permit like everyone else can; I have to go in person to the office in Turku. I guess I'm doing that this week.
on the bus
Jun. 8th, 2025 11:10 pmadrian_turtleI had several quick and pleasant interactions with strangers on the trolley and and at the bus stop with strangers who liked my hat. I believe they appreciated my idea of sewing a progress pride ribbon over the hatband, or perhaps meant to express solidarity. It was even possible they recognized the low crown and broad brim makes it the most flattering hat I've ever owned. In any case, I wasn't expecting an unpleasant interaction on the bus.
Stranger: Why are you wearing a mask?
Adrian: I'm being cautious.
Stranger: Why are you wearing a mask? Nobody else is wearing a mask!
Adrian: I'm being cautious. I had a bad case of Covid and I really don't want to get it again.
Stranger: Nobody else is wearing a mask! There is no Covid. You can't have Covid. What are you doing wearing a mask?
I stopped talking. There's no point trying to reason with nonsense. A few minutes later a nice person offered me a seat.
In retrospect, I wish I had told him "I'm a weirdo. I dress like a weirdo. You had better get used to people who dress like weirdos pretty quickly, because this bus is going to Cambridge."
the blattlach were mediocre, but the blintzes were good
Jun. 8th, 2025 11:17 pmjadelennoxFor reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I made a GF variant of Emma Goldman's blintz recipe this morning. (It's because for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I happened to have farmer cheese in the house.)
When I went looking for something snappy to turn my blintzes into a post, the first quotation on wikiquote is from a newspaper report after her arrest:
I feel sure that the police are helping us more than I could do in ten years. They are making more anarchists than the most prominent people connected with the anarchist cause could make in ten years. If they will only continue I shall be very grateful; they will save me lots of work.
Anyway I am not an anarchist by any measure whatsoever, but I have generally found reading Emma Goldman to be informative and fulfilling (My Disillusionment in Russia is gutwrenching and honestly I think keyboard warriors should read it). Her wikiquote page is so chock full of evergreen statements that I can't even cherrypick anything else to quote. But how about this one?
The very proclaimers of "America first" have long before this betrayed the fundamental principles of real Americanism...the other truly great Americans who aimed to make of this country a haven of refuge, who hoped that all the disinherited and oppressed people in coming to these shores would give character, quality and meaning to the country.
You can make blintzes vegan, too, if you use banana instead of the egg and flip the blattlach very gently. That can be potato or blueberry blintzes, although I've seen a recipe for blintzes with cashew cheese.
In conclusion, blintzes! Mine had strawberries.
Well, I read the news
Jun. 9th, 2025 08:33 pmconulyRecent reading
Jun. 8th, 2025 08:17 pmtroisoiseauxsabotabby: a novel about about two adult sisters, who are Michif/Métis on their dad's side (this is important), grappling with the public exposure of their estranged mother's false claims of Indigenous ancestry, which she's used to build a career as an artist. I feel like most of the novels I've read tackling race-faking for profit/clout/??? in academia/the arts are biting satires - R.F. Kuang's Yellowface, Elaine Hsieh Chou's Disorientation - and even Louise Erdrich's The Sentence uses supernatural elements to express the violence of white people appropriating Indigenous identity; this one feels... subtler, maybe? It's very much grounded in the family drama of two sisters being betrayed and disappointed yet again by a self-absorbed mother who's betrayed and disappointed them over and over for as long as they can remember, this time playing out with a Greek chorus of op-eds and Twitter takes on a scandal now so weirdly familiar that Vermette tends to reference them obliquely rather than in detail. Really good; I especially liked how distinct the two sisters' voices were, as alternating POV characters. Read With a Bare Bodkin by Cyril Hare, which fell short of Hare's Tragedy at Law, imo, but honestly, what wouldn't? This one had some fun concepts— set against the backdrop of a minor government agency housed in some sprawling pile for the duration of WWII, the plot kicks off with a conversation about how one of the civil servants is a mystery novelist on the side and everyone going "oooh wouldn't this office be a great setting for a murder mystery?", so it's got quite a crossover of tropes— and also the distinction of being one of the few mysteries where the author pulls a "clearly signaling something as A Clue by having the main character realize that some detail is Significant" and I actually immediately twigged to the discrepancy being hinted at and remembered where to cross-reference the detail earlier in the book, although, to be fair, this was not exactly subtly dropped, either in context or by the author to the reader.
Neurodivergent reward cycle
Jun. 8th, 2025 07:33 pmpetraCase in point: I performed recently after preparing for 5 months.
My mother said, "It went well! That must feel good."
Me: "..."
It didn't. It never really does, not unless someone else gives me external validation.
Whenever I do something hard, my brain's response is, "Well, I did it, so how hard could it have been?"
This applies to excelling academically (which I have done frequently), excelling at my job (which I have done on occasion), every type of performance I've ever undertaken (and there have been a lot), every form of art/craft I've ever done (writing, knitting, crocheting, etc.), and helping friends.
Mostly I just feel relief that it's over, and my brain isn't going to give me the constant round of "You should work on [thing]!" anymore. Nah, the shoulds will switch to something else, but at least it'll be new at first.
boring knee update
Jun. 8th, 2025 07:23 pmredbirdI can do more things standing up, and walking around the apartment is easier. However, I seem to have been leaning too much on the other leg, because my left knee started to hurt earlier. Not badly, but enough that I am putting the cane aside for the moment.
update Monday, 6/9: my knees feel mostly OK today. I am still being careful about walking a lot or standing too long. I just got the mail, figuring the two steps down to the mailboxes would be a useful check of how I'm doing. It was doable, but did hurt a little; I'm glad I decided not to go out. (The sidewalk is down another half dozen stairs, which are a bit more difficult than the ones inside, but the main thing is that this way I only had to climb back up two stairs.)
I heard from the GI doctor's office this morning, and have an appointment Friday at 10:30, which will be telemedicine. I hope my knees will be feeling a lot better by then, but if she had wanted to see me in person, I would have called a lyft and taken the quad cane with me just in case.
vital functions is struggling with time management and up way past curfew
Jun. 8th, 2025 11:57 pmkaberettReading. FINISHED:
- Furiously Happy, Jenny Lawson. I can see why people like her! I have also remembered why I wound up unsubscribing from her blog. Very interesting proof of concept in re audiobooks, though.
- Prophet, Helen MacDonald and Sin Blaché. Very enjoyable reread in which many things landed differently, in service of...
- a word you've never understood, rydra_wong. EXACTLY the post-canon follow-up I wanted but would have absolutely failed to articulate. Have already tried to lure one more person into reading the book so I can then make them go read the fic. Now I just selfishly want Even More Of It.
- Pain is really strange, Steve Haines. Reread for the purpose of making notes, this time. Sparked at least one useful thought. Following up references is a work in progress.
- How to cook... Desserts, Leiths Cookery School. Read all the way through for the purposes of EYB indexing first pass! Go me.
STARTED:
- Adventures in Stationery, James Ward. Borrowed from library on a whim for low-brain non-fiction.
Writing. First pass through indexing a cookbook on EYB!
Some Actual Notes re pain for The Book, including (and I am very proud of myself for this) actually writing down my questions alongside the bare "here's what it contained".
Watching. Murderbot S01E01. I am dubious but expecting to keep watching. If you encourage me I might say more when it is not past curfew.
Cooking. ... apparently I have not managed Much Of Note this week.
Eating. POTATOES at the ALLOTMENT courtesy of ALLOTMENT FRIENDS. Also finished my choi sum and had my first AMAZING broad beans and nibbled kohlrabi speculatively, all on Tuesday.
Today I have nibbled: a cherry; the first few redcurrants; a pod's worth of Kelvedon Wonder peas; half a tiny tomato.
Making & mending. Made some progress on A's left glove. Realised, belatedly, that I'd done the same thing with picking up stitches unevenly along the two sides of the palm. Ripped back most of the way to where I started from and Sulked. BUT HEY I've remembered the pattern and where I'd stowed all the bits for it!
Growing. See Eating for my biggest excitements. Sugar Magnolia (purple sugar-snap pea) now setting pods; my main intention with it this year (given that I planted a whole packet of seeds and have wound up with ...fewer plants than that) is just to get myself sorted with a significantly larger number of seeds for next year, but hey, maybe they'll all be super productive and I'll actually get to eat some too.
Stockings now at the plot to go onto the cherry tomorrow, hopefully.
Tomatoes planted out when tiny not doing so great (i.e. have mostly disappeared). Tomatoes planted out when larger Actually Flowering. Desperately need to stake the lot of them.
Tiny single solitary surviving oca has started to Go.
V grumpy about how poorly the squash I got started A While Ago have coped with getting put outside given that they are in biodegradable fibre pots so I'm not even disturbing their roots. Getting the rest of them in the ground AND THEN SOWING MORE very much also high on tomorrow's priority list. (And the beans, augh.)
Observing. Met a neighbour!
Culinary
Jun. 8th, 2025 07:20 pmoursinThis week's bread: a loaf of Dove's Farm Organic Seedhouse Bread Flour, v nice.
Friday night supper: penne with a sauce of sauce of Peppadew roasted red peppers in brine drained, whizzed in blender and gently heated while pasta cooking.
Saturday breakfast rolls: basic buttermilk (as buttermilk reaching its bb date), 3:1 strong white/rye flour, turned out nicely.
Today's lunch: panfried seabass fillets in samphire sauce, served with cauliflower florets roasted in pumpkin seed oil with cumin seeds, padron peppers (as we have noted on previous occasions, these had not been picked as young and tender as they might be), and sticky rice with lime leaves.
aaaaand...
have a bless'd day!
just loosen your belt two inches
Jun. 8th, 2025 01:34 pmpensnestWhy the big breakfast? Beast is off—just now, in fact—for a concert this afternoon, so he won't need to be fed until the nice people who invited his chorus ply them with cake.
* I like to eat 'rotational', ie mouthfuls by turns, but make sure to save a tasty morsel for the last bite. Beast eats in a columnar style, devouring what's on his plate from least favourite to tastiest by eating all of each ingredient before moving on to the next. I suppose a case could also be made for eating in the same way but starting with the favourite.
Which way do you eat a plateful?
random
Jun. 8th, 2025 03:15 ampaperghostI realized fandom was one reason I wanted to use this account again, but I didn't. I just am too disconnected from modern fandom culture and things like shipping and fanfiction. I do want to maybe headcanon / feels post or cross-post shitposts from Discord servers/Tumblr but...
Art too. I haven't posted art here in a year. I don't want to be those types to abandon things because it's "too hard" but man I am really not used to both modern web and how quiet "old school" stuff is in comparison. I've been neglecting looking at my reading page because I've been so skittish in general. I've been talking to people again last month, but since November and private events around then I've been so distrusting and angry at people now.
The Shelves
Jun. 7th, 2025 09:20 pmazurelunaticIt's too close to bedtime to start on repair plating the 8 foot boards to the 2 foot boards, probably.
some joys of the day
Jun. 7th, 2025 11:57 pmkaberett- goslings! (Canadian; one still very yellow and fluffy, several more rather larger.)
- SNAILS. so many excellent snails. we went out on a couple of stupid little walks and saw MANY snails.
- ate the last of my birthday cake, with discounted raspberries courtesy of one of said stupid little walks. <3
- the post brought Several more books for me (two pain-related, ...some cookery) and I am very pleased with them. particularly looking forward to warm bread and honey cake, though given that I've still not actually read Salt Fat Acid Heat I don't rate my chances of getting to it any time soon...
- current borrowed-on-a-whim-from-the-library book: Adventures in Stationery, James Ward. First chapter was paperclips; current chapter is a whistlestop tour of The History Of The Pen, including a much more loving biography of the BIC Cristal than I am normally exposed to via fountain pen fandom!
(extra)ship stuff
Jun. 7th, 2025 03:17 pmdaryl_worAnd that is just what Eliza did.” Helped me Mum, so I put that out there. So there we have it! Go to the source? And ye shall find!
(no subject)
Jun. 7th, 2025 05:11 pmwaterswordOver the course of about six hours this week, the weather went from "pleasant warm early-summer" to "holy bananas, it is hot and sticky high summer" and I was not emotionally prepared for it. But I am promised thunderstorms today, and I got cucumbers at the farmer's market, and will finish swapping out the cozy linens for the crisp ones, and all of that will help.
JFC what is it about Greeks?
Jun. 8th, 2025 08:49 amconulyMost of these people, if prompted, will tell you what language they read it in. Three times now, I've had to ask twice because they refused to answer the question in a useful way, and every time that person has been Greek.
I thought it was a little funny the second time, but three times is the start of a worrying pattern, especially as it's not at all the most popular not-English language posted there. Maybe there's something going badly wrong with their school system?
(And, sidenote, even if you're certain it was translated from English you still ought to tell us the language it was written in. At least in theory this can help us weed out false positives, although I may be expecting too much of fellow commenters to that subreddit.)
( Read more... )
"On antidepressants, ambivalence, and uncertainty"
Jun. 7th, 2025 03:41 pmpaperghostThe Medication Life and the Moral Career
On antidepressants, ambivalence, and uncertainty
That said, for those of us who take SSRIs and other psychiatric drugs, there is a more nebulous issue that also deserves attention—namely, the forces of confusion, fear, and inertia that keep us gobbling these pills for decades.
Patients start taking medication because they are suffering. In that state, even a slim shot at relief seems like a smart bet. But that’s when the confusion starts. “Are the drugs helping?” isn’t necessarily an easy question to answer. Some patients know that their lives have improved. They feel lighter, sharper, more capable day to day. But for many others, perhaps the majority, improvement is devilishly hard to measure. Moods shift. Anxiety fluctuates. Sadness waxes and wanes. Circumstances change.
To understand what the medication is doing, for good and for bad, often requires a deep dive into the murk of subjective experience, where everything is in flux and the variables seem infinite. “Are you feeling better?” the psychiatrist asks. “I think so,” you answer. “I’m not entirely sure. It feels like maybe I am.” And if you do feel notably better, is the medication the cause? Or is it a placebo effect? Is it the work you’re doing in psychotherapy? Is it the fact that you’re eating better and exercising more? Who could say for sure?
The answer is that no one can. Not the academic researchers, not the psychiatrists, not the federal regulators, and certainly not the pharmaceutical companies. Yet once you get it into your mind that you may need your pills to feel all right, it can seem almost impossible to stop taking them. Why run the risk? Why open yourself up to the withdrawal symptoms, to the resurgence of your anxiety, to another depressive episode? What’s the big deal? It’s just a pill. Just take it and move on.
In this way, years can pass, years in which you wonder what your life would be like without the drugs—whether you would feel more brightly; whether you would have more creative thoughts and more intense sensations; whether your orgasms would be stronger; whether you would know better who and what you are; whether you would have a more intimate, unadulterated sense of your own capabilities, your own resilience, your unique consciousness. The damage here is harder to measure even than the long-term efficacy of SSRIs, for it isn’t an empirical question; it’s a moral one. And it gnaws at many of us, even as, for the umpteenth time, we trudge to the pharmacy to refill our prescriptions.
