Reading

Entry tags:

daily entertainment

Thursday DE

Shoot, posting late even though I knew what I was going to post.

What would your pup’s band name be?

I use Tuta.de for my email hosting and I've downloaded the Tuta app for my email client. It's set to not show images by default, just placeholders.

I get a lot of email from RPG sellers of various types. I get a RIDICULOUS amount of email from political organizations.

I do not always look at the Sender part of the message first, as the Tuta client uses a smaller font for the sender and other information than most senders specify for their default body text. Some of the senders use VERY LARGE text for an eye-grab at the top of their emails before going on to the regular lettering.

All of which is a roundabout way to say that for a few gloriously entertaining seconds I thought I had an email from the people at the Women's March that began with “WE ARE THE FURY OF THE STORM AND THE PITILESS WRATH OF ENDLESS WINTER.”

Yet again, the world I see out of the corner of my eye is way more entertaining than what's there when I look at it directly.

Current Mood: paying it forward
Current Music: I'm not asking for sympathy; all I'm asking for is change

Entry tags:

writing offer

US Politics: Food bank writing offer

If you donate at least $25 in cash or in-kind to a food bank at any point between now and the end of the Trump Administration, and you either share a fandom of mine and want a drabble or fannish poetry, or you want original poetry, drop me a comment, and I will write for you.

Repeat customers welcomed with open arms.

Please format your request: Fandom or Original; Drabble or Poem; Character(s) and/or Pairing if any; Optional Prompt.

For example: Sesame Street; Drabble; Cookie Monster/Cookies; Food is not a sometimes luxury.

If you didn't make the donation in US dollars, please check the exchange rate on your donation at a currency converter to confirm that it qualifies. No receipt necessary regardless of which currency you donate in; this is on the honor system.

Please publicize this post.

Once I have received and fulfilled my first request, I will edit this post to add a collection on the Archive of Our Own with what I have written.

(no subject)

Turns out you can reopen a closed Etsy shop almost any time you want as long as you make sure to back it up with an active credit card and renew all your listings. I've closed the shop, contacted the colo place to cancel my subscription, and informed the City of Boston that I am no longer in business and will not be renewing my permit this year.

Anyone interested in jewelry from me, ask me about holiday or birthday gifts instead.

Entry tags:

Stranded, by Melissa Braun

From the blurb:

One fellow camper will do whatever it takes to make it out of the Boundary Waters alive. Even if he's the only one.

A psychological thriller mixed with intense action.

Nah, just kidding! It's not a psychological thriller, it's a survival story. One of the teenage campers is a racist, a sexual harasser, and an attempted rapist, but he never tries to kill any of the others or abandons them to die or anything like that.

Yep! It's another disappointing survival book with a misleading blurb and gratuitous grossness towards teenage girls!

Teenage Emma is traumatized after failing to save her younger sister from drowning, so she gets her parents to book her into a teen wilderness survival course to take her mind off things. In a portentous scene, her father gives her a Swiss army knife. She's confused and concerned that he's giving her a weapon to take on a camping trip - does he expect her to be attacked? I was confused why she would think of a Swiss army knife as a weapon rather than a tool. If you don't even know what a Swiss army knife is, then you can't tell that it's a knife at all when it's folded. If you recognize it when folded, then you know that it is a multitool.

The early part of the book jumps around confusingly in time, to the point where I flipped back pages repeatedly to see if I'd missed something. No, it was just the author's pointless decision to start with them pitching their tents after the first day's walk, then jump back to them packing their supplies.

We get very little characterization, but that's okay: three of the seven are about to die! Two days in, a strange storm hits their camp. It's described in such a portentous way that I thought it was supernatural or man-made, but nothing ever comes of this so I guess not. Two of the campers and the guide are squashed by falling trees, then a wildfire starts. Instead of jumping in the lake, they run for their lives and get very lost.

At this point, we get some characterization. Chloe is the girl who isn't Emma. Her race is coyly not mentioned until Isaac, the creepy boy, gets racist at her about being black. Oscar is the boy who isn't creepy, so Emma naturally falls in love with him. Isaac constantly sexually harasses Emma, once tries to rape her, and is sadistic to animals. This goes on for the entire book.

Late in the book, Oscar and Isaac both fall over a cliff. Isaac dangles from a rock stub by one hand, and holds Oscar, who is suspended in mid-air, by one backpack strap. Emma and Chloe make a rope of clothing, with a key part being her bra. Isaac somehow grabs the clothes rope without falling. He's clinging to a rock stub with one hand and a backpack strap supporting another person. How does he get one hand free to grab the bra rope without falling? This is not described as it's not thought through. He grabs the rope - again, anchored by A BRA tied to a tree - and, it's not clearly described, but it seems like Emma single-handed pulls him and Oscar up. Is the bra made of bungee cord?

Emma ponders that Isaac was very brave and unselfish. People are complicated, she realizes. This is as close as the book comes to any resolution on Isaac sexually harassing and threatening her for the entire book, oh and also TRYING TO RAPE HER.

This book sucked.

Entry tags:

Today on Medical Shit I Can't Believe I Only Just Found Out About:

Proctalgia fugax and its evil cousin levator ani syndrome. ( They are not Warhammer 40k characters. They just sound like it. )

Multiversal Cards Against Humanity

This NPR article about Cards Against Humanity (the company) suing SpaceX for trespassing makes me want Cards Against Humanity, Inc., in various fictional universes.

Surely it exists in Leverage-verse, home of professional trolls. Possibly Hardison owns the company.

How scathing are the anti-Imperial cards in the Galaxy Far, Far Away? What wild schemes have they undertaken to mess with the Powers That Be?

The conflict between the ~~Kardashians~~ Cardassians and the Federation seems fruitful territory for people to have done really, really stupid things. Also, that allows for a tournament on Deep Space Nine. Is Garak really good at this game, or does he overthink it to the point where no one can follow his logic?

I would also love to see the Slow Horses playing the game, if only so they can observe that the real winner is Lamb, because they're all sinking to his level. Alternately, perhaps they could get mixed up in a corporate scheme.

As for The Expanse, clearly there are competing entities putting out propaganda packs on all sides all the way through, and they're all making political statements for Their Team.

(no subject)

Considering shutting down my Etsy store. Haven't actually made jewelry in months (mostly I've been sewing instead), haven't made a sale in months, and since the Etsy store isn't in my legal name I have to have a DBA certificate, which means I have to have a business address, and since I rent an apartment I can't actually operate the business out of the apartment due to insurance issues (I checked with the landlord). Neither Boston nor the town I live in will let a business register with a PO box as their primary address so I have to pay monthly fees at a colocation space and that's expensive. It makes no sense to keep the Etsy store existing if I'm not actually making enough jewelry to need to sell any of it off.

If anyone has an alternative to colo that means I don't have to pay more per month than I actually ever sold (I made a profit for a while some time back but the colo space upped their prices and now there's nowhere in Boston that charges a reasonable price for just having their address rather than actually using their space), let me know.

Current Mood: tired

Entry tags:

talking 'bout the weather

A smattering of small things

It was pouring rain when I woke up, and again, even if it didn't last long enough--I don't know what time it started, but it was pretty much gone by midmorning--it was appreciated. (Of course, I say that as someone working from home; one coworder who works onsite sometimes is in walking distance of the office, and walking to work today resulted in literally wringing clothing out in the kitchen sink upon arrival.)

That also meant it was dim enough at the start of my workday that turning on both strings of Hallowe'en lights in my office made actual sense! The purple/orange string around the edge of the ceiling is bright enough to be fun regardless, but the new string of ghosts around the window is backlit enough that actually turning the lights on makes little sense during the day. (And these years I spend so little evening time in my office, Dayjob crunches notwithstanding.)

I checked in on my freelance schedule yesterday and found out that things have been rearranged in a way that makes the rest of this month and November pretty light, early December a bit much (although some of the work due then can be done in November, theoretically), and January a bit of an onslaught. It should be fine! Just. Ooof. (At least January isn't a typical crunch time, although anything's possible.) This also gives me a bit more motivation to extend my vacation time after Christmas.

At some point today Pokemon Go rolled out its seasonal Hallowe'en skin, which inevitably charms me all out of proportion.

There were other things in my head this morning, but of course the Dayjob workday quietly wiped them away, so we'll call this a post.

Entry tags:

daily entertainment

Tuesday DE

Does your pup dream? If so how vivid are they?

Entry tags:

(no subject)

For our friend/former roommate M's birthday last weekend he decided to host a screening of the recent two-part Three Musketeers film adaptation, D'Artagnan and Milady.

Apparently this is the first French film adaptation in sixty years?! (which I did not know before looking at the Wikipedia just now) and I think we all had a vague conception that, being French, it was likelier to be moderately book-accurate than the run of modern English film adaptations. As it turns out this was foolish and prejudiced of us. French directors have just as much fun picking and choosing their favorite bits of The Three Musketeers and jettisoning the rest as anybody else.

That said: I think most of the changes are quite fun and interesting! Perhaps most notably, this is the most successful Milady Positive Musketeers adaptation that I've yet encountered. At least 50% of the plot changes are in service of ensuring that the Musketeers continue to see Milady as a primary antagonist while ensuring that we-the-viewers are tilting our heads like 'hmm ... but is she though ......'

Case in point: the biggest plot change is that suddenly we are very concerned about Huguenots. Athos now comes from a Protestant family and has an ardent Huguenot brother who is on the other side in La Rochelle; meanwhile the whole conflict is being escalated by Gaston of Orléans, who's the real villain of the piece. Why does Gaston of Orléans need to be the real villain of the piece? So that by comparison Cardinal Richelieu is not so bad, so that the schemes on which he's sending Milady are really not so bad, so actually --

( more Milady changes, big spoilers )

The other two biggest plot changes are also very funny to me .... one is that the creative team were like "what do Porthos and Aramis have going on with the Milady plot? Well ... nothing really. So instead we are going to give them a comic b-plot about finding which hot soldier knocked up Aramis' feisty sister. Since when does Aramis have a feisty sister SINCE NOW." ( more spoilers )

The other is that midway through movie two they slide in a new semi-historical OC (semi-historical because he's based on this guy but sixty years too early) who immediately steals the show in every possible way; he drops the best one-liners in the film, saunters casually in to save the Musketeer's asses on at least two different occasions, and is also the hottest man on the screen. To be clear I love this, big ups to the New Improved Musketeer, absolutely in the spirit of Dumas Pere. It did not at all shock me to learn that the creative team were now angling to make a TV show with this guy as the lead. I hope it succeeds because I'd watch the hell out of it.

Other notes: the costuming is very brown in the way that is clearly intended to shout "historical accuracy!" while demonstrating the exact opposite. One of the friends attendant at the party is a historical costume hobbyist and she spent the whole evening glowering at the screen muttering 'where is everyone's LACE?' And then every so often someone would show up with a plasticky lace border around their neckline and we'd all shout 'LOOK! LACE!' which strangely did not soothe her.

ON the other hand, at one point a character in a fraught chase sequence is shown actually changing horses, which so delighted the horse-knowers among us that they immediately forgave Eva Green every implausible corset lugged straight off the set of Penny Dreadful.

On the third hand: no valets. WHEN will someone make a Three Musketeers adaptation with vales?

Current Mood: impressed

Entry tags:

Belated weekly proof of life (books + tomatoes), having not been at my desk much this weekend

Reading: As of midweek, I'd read nine novels (well, eight and a novella) this month, which is very pleasing given that I usually consider that a good number for a full month, never mind just about halfway through one. (Of course, for the last few days my brain's done an about-face and decided that I'm going to be just reading a cookbook now, thanks.)

Since my last accounting, I've finished KJ Charles' All of Us Murderers (gothic murdery queer romance), Freya Marske's Cinder House (which I wish I'd realized going in--or perhaps more importantly, when I bought it at full price--is a novella, although that didn't keep me from enjoying it quite a bit), Stephen Graham Jones' The Only Good Indians (very solid, but I feel I've met my quota for books with mutilation for a while), Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle (not so much my thing, maybe [whatever that is], but I sure see why it's a classic!), and E.K. Johnston's Pretty Furious (a satisfying "~good girls~ lash back at the fucking patriarchy and its associated bullshit" read).

Now I'm reading through the aforementioned cookbook, Bee Wilson's The Secret of Cooking: Recipes for an Easier Life in the Kitchen, which swiftly made its way onto the inherently-aggravating-but-complimentary list of cookbooks bought in ebook that I now want in hard copy.

Also,

scruloose and I are...maybe a third?...of the way into Fugitive Telemetry (having decided to listen to Murderbot in chronological order rather than publication order).

Growing: In a shocking development, our Tiny Tim tomato plant (which we bought immediately before the drought turned unmistakable official, and therefore have since watered once or at most twice since putting it in) has produced a couple handfuls of ripe fruit!

scruloose reports that they're tasty! We're over halfway through October!

AWS outage

DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.

Entry tags:

daily entertainment

Monday DE: Honk shoo mimimi

Zzzzzzzzz... Zzzzzzzz... Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Mrgh. Monday.

What are your pup's sleeping habits? Can they nod off anywhere? Do they sleep lightly or like the dead? What's their bedroom or sleeping quarters like? etc.

Current Mood: verse is my vocation
Current Music: There once was a man from Verdun

Entry tags:

Kinktober 2025: Limericks of Jedi gettin' it on - index through 10/19

I have been writing and posting Star Wars limericks for Kinktober, all of which up to today's are indexed below. The main theme is Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker feat. Padmé, but there are other guests as well.

( The first 19 days of Kinktober )

Entry tags:

letter,
yuletide

Dear Yuletide Writer

Hello, Yuletide Writer!

First things first: whatever you write for me, in any of these fandoms, I will be utterly delighted. These are faves and I love them and I will love whatever I get to read. And thanks so much for writing a story in one of these fandoms. I will just be so glad to have any story for any of the requests.

Some of this letter has been duplicated from previous years, so if you've been here before, that is why things seem familiar. :)

I am open to treats!

( General stuff... )

( Likes... )

( Do Not Wants... )

( Specific fandom details... )

I hope that helped! And honestly, no pressure to fulfill any of the specific details! Anything you want to write in any of these fandoms will be great. I'm just happy to be getting a story from you.

Thanks again and have fun!

Big love,
Snax

Signs from today's protest

15,000+, probably closer to 20, on the square at Madison, WI today. 0 arrests, and the only police presence was a cluster of officers there just in case someone got lost, tripped over a curb, or got a little too rowdy in an unsafe way (which no one that we saw did).

( Amusing/thought-provoking signage back here. )

I'm a little hoarse. Comes of chanting and cheering up a storm. And now, I'm going the heck to bed.

Entry tags:

yuletide

Yuletiiiiiide!

Dear Yuletide writer – I love this fest and the spirit of rare weird shit that it embraces. It is my most favorite fannish event and I am 10000000% here for whatever you write. Below I have done some rambling about each fandom and given a handful of prompts, but honestly you should feel free to discard that stuff and write the story of your heart. I know I will love it.

( General likes, dislikes, and DNW )

Specific fandoms!

( The Reflex – Duran Duran (song) )

( Fell in Love With an Alien - The Kelly Family (Music Video) )

( The House on Trubnaya / Dom na Trubnoy (1928) )

( Several People are Typing – Calvin Kasulke )

( Wanderstop (video game) )

Current Mood: tipsy

Entry tags:

well, crud

Instead of the Brewers kicking the Dodgers' butts, they kicked our butts. Paraphrase from the original Charmed is go. Well, dang it. As I texted my sister, it was still a hell of a run. Thanks for an amazing year, boys. Now everybody stick around for 2026, please! I don't want to lose a one of this roster to a trade.

Got my

seasonsofdrabbles signup in under the wire, whew! That always intimidates me, far more than writing the actual work(s). I think it's the number of offers and requests that does it.

Tonight, there has been cursing both at the baseball game and series score, and at bluetooth keyboards and their habit of randomly unpairing from the associated laptop. Grrrrr! Pain in the backside! This one took a maneuver attempted purely on hopeful chance to sort out. Seriously, quit doing that, otherwise perfectly nice keyboard.

Tomorrow, there will be an enormous, peaceful rally. I hope our turnout, both nationally and locally, knocks June's numbers out of the park -ouch, yes, phrasing. Dang Dodgers.

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: It's just a little crush

Yuletide Letter posted

Bloody Jack Adventures - L. A. Meyer, The Expanse - James S. A. Corey, Galavant, Rivers of London - Aaronovitch, Slow Horses (TV)

I am contemplating cross-listing The Expanse TV and Slough House the books, as I have also experienced those. Thoughts, anyone in either set of fandoms?