(no subject)

Jun. 18th, 2025 07:55 pm
thawrecka: (Bleach - fighting is better back to back)
[personal profile] thawrecka
Throwing a curveball into 2025 by getting back into Bleach.

Skim reading the last arc and all my old feelings are coming back like 'there are plot holes you could drive a truck through and I could write fic about them' and 'Mayuri is very annoying'.

My main feeling is that when people complained about the ending arc because of the pairings or whatever, instead of the sexism and transphobia, they were complaining about the wrong things. I could not care less who Ichigo gets with (and I feel Ichigo also doesn't care that much 😂) but I would have liked fewer scenes where women have to be naked during a fight, you know? ...though on the other hand, as a Renji/Rukia shipper I did win.
musesfool: !!!! from Middleman (!!!!)
[personal profile] musesfool
I swear, sometimes I think my oven is some kind of black hole or something, because sometimes the laws of physics seem to weirdly not apply. Yesterday, as planned, I made teriyaki meatballs. Because I don't understand how the recipe author got 28 meatballs out of 16 oz of ground meat, I had 32 oz of ground chicken, from which I made 28 ping pong ball sized meatballs. I baked 16 meatballs on one tray at 400°F for 20 minutes. It was the only tray in the oven. FOURTEEN out of the 16 were at least at 170°F when I took them out of the oven (generally I aim for 165° for fully cooked ground chicken) and checked with my instant read thermometer. TWO were at 143°F. They weren't even next to each other! Just 2 random meatballs that somehow didn't cook to the same temperature as EVERY OTHER meatball on the same tray in the same oven. I mean, I know ovens can have hot spots, so does my oven somehow have cool spots? Less hot spots? I mean, what the actual fuck???

*

Mighty Jill Off (2008)

Jun. 15th, 2025 02:45 pm
pauraque: bird flying over the trans flag (trans pride)
[personal profile] pauraque
Returning to Pride Month media, I played Mighty Jill Off by Anna Anthropy. If you're looking for a precision platformer made by a trans woman and you've already beaten Celeste, fear not, for this game also exists!

pixel girl in a gimp suit avoids spiky hazards

The setup is that Jill has to earn the right to lick her domme's boots by platforming her way up a creepy tower past various obstacles such as fire and spikes and deadly skull-spiders. The kinky content is only in the framing cutscenes, but it does make you spend the entire game thinking about the D/s dynamics between game developers and players, which I believe is the point. You keep hitting the spikes and dying, grr! But you keep trying again and again because you have to prove your worth, or maybe you just crave punishment. When you try to exit the game it asks if you really want to safeword. Good times.

The game is short—I didn't check the time, but I think I spent maybe an hour on it—and the platforming is not actually that hard. (Certainly not as hard as Celeste.) There are a lot of checkpoints. Make sure you note the controls before you start, though: pressing jump again in the air stops the jump early, and hitting the jump key repeatedly makes you slow-fall. You have to spam the key aggressively for long stretches to get through some parts, which can be physically uncomfortable, but again I am sure that's on purpose.

(I guess a lot of people learned of this game because Jill is an unlockable character in Super Meat Boy, which I have never played, but I'm told it's good. It's not currently on my wishlist, but maybe if one of the devs comes out as trans I'll consider it.)

Mighty Jill Off is free on itch.io. If you have trouble running it, check the comments there for compatibility tips!
umadoshi: (Leverage OT3 01 (teaotter))
[personal profile] umadoshi
Eating: This weekend is [personal profile] scruloose's and my anniversary (year 22 is a go!), so last night we ordered Chinese roast duck and crispy pork belly and had half of it, with the rest set for supper tonight. Sous vide reheating works so well. This future is a complete nightmare in so many ways, but we sure do have cool kitchen technology. (Kitchen technology that spies on you, talks to the internet, and/or demands proof of your humanity is excluded from this praise.)

Reading: Two novels last week: Chuck Tingle's Camp Damascus and Alix E. Harrow's Starling House. I parasocially adore Chuck Tingle as a person, but this was my first time reading any of his work, and it's very possible it'll be my only time, as I just plain didn't click with this one. I had a better time with Starling House (and it too was my first book by its author), but also didn't really bond.

I'm currently about halfway through Adrian Tchaikovsky's Service Model, and can definitely see why it gets compared to Murderbot from some angles, although the vibe is wildly different and I can't say I would've made the comparison myself. (Ginny noted approvingly that anything people dare compare to her beloved Murderbot has a high bar to reach, and she feels it's fair in this case.) But then, whatever the things are that make a book really click/resonate for me, they don't seem to have any connection to the things that make people draw comparisons. Too nebulous, I guess. Anyway, this is an interesting read so far.

Watching: Murderbot, of course. I liked last week's episode a lot. Besides that, [personal profile] scruloose and I saw ep. 2x02 of Kingdom [disambiguation: the historical Korean zombie show] and, for a change of pace, got back to watching the original Leverage.

Some of you may dimly recall that in the days before covid, there were a few years there where we and Ginny and Kas would go to [personal profile] wildpear -and-family's place and watch TV on Sunday nights. We got through a couple of shows that way, and started in on Leverage, which I'd seen up to about halfway (?) through season 4 and then somehow wandered off from despite loving it, and otherwise only saw a couple of later episodes, including the series finale; Ginny had seen and adored the entire thing, and I think Kas was in the same camp as [personal profile] scruloose and [personal profile] wildpear and her then-partner and hadn't seen it.

We made it to...well, roughly halfway through season 4. [personal profile] wildpear's kidling, Pumpkin, was old enough by then to want in on what we were watching, so they sat in for TV night, just in time for "The Grave Danger Job", which freaked them out really, really badly (fair! That episode is brutal!). My mental timeline here is very fuzzy on how long that was before covid arrived, but it wasn't too big a gap, and all in all, that was the end of our group watch. And I still basically hadn't seen past somewhere in season 4 (plus the finale). I watched the first few episodes of season 1 of Leverage: Redemption when that came out, and with that, too, I wandered off and kept meaning to get back to it.

But last week, [personal profile] scruloose and I took the DVDs off the shelf and got back to it. We have now seen "The Boiler Room Job" (which I'm confident I'd seen before, but I wonder if I'll know for sure when I hit new-to-me episodes?). Hopefully this time I'll actually see it all through properly. In theory, at some point we'll get to have cognitive dissonance over Noah Wyle, which will be funny since Leverage: Redemption was where we first saw him but now my association with him is 95% The Pitt.

gotta love the kids keeping score

Jun. 14th, 2025 07:27 pm
musesfool: a loaf of bread (staff of life)
[personal profile] musesfool
I knew it was coming, but I'm still sad about Chris Kreider getting traded to the Ducks. He's been my favorite since Lundqvist retired, not just because I liked his play but also because I thought it was unlikely he'd get traded. *hands* After this past season, I understand blowing it all up, but it's still sad. He definitely had some signature moments in a Rangers uni, and I will miss him.

In other news, this morning, I made this baked oatmeal and it's good, but probably needs a little more cinnamon? Or maybe some allspice? Hmm... It'll be nice for breakfast over the next few days. Next weekend I'll make banana bread since I now have a bunch of bananas, since i needed one for this recipe. (It was either applesauce or bananas, and I'm more likely to eat/use the bananas, so...)

And then this afternoon, I made this pizza dough, which turned out well, but took a full hour to double in size, despite what the recipe says, so dinner was later than planned. I topped it with some mozzarella and this white sauce. it was good! (Pictures here.)

Tomorrow, I'll be making teriyaki chicken meatballs for lunch for the week. Right now, every surface in my kitchen is covered in drying dishes, which is the real annoyance of the dishwasher not working.

*

Naruto: Fest no Jutsu 2025

Jun. 13th, 2025 09:18 pm
gerard_way_is_sexah: (Default)
[personal profile] gerard_way_is_sexah posting in [community profile] fandomcalendar
Description: Do you have a Naruto fanfiction you'd love to read, but just can't seem to find? A familiar trope, ship, or character you can't get enough of? A piece of fanart you want to see come to life? Are you a fan creator who wants fresh inspiration and a fun, low-stakes challenge? The r/NarutoFanfiction Discord server is hosting a fest/prompt meme for Naruto fanworks - and we would love for you to join! Naruto fans of all ages (13+) are welcome to cheerlead, submit ideas for fanworks they'd like to see, and create fanworks for others. Fic minimums for filling a prompt are 500 words and art minimums are a finished piece. 

Prompting Period: Now-June 20

Works due & revealed: September 10

Creators revealed: September 17

An AO3 account is required for participation, and joining the r/NarutoFanfiction Discord server is highly recommended. By joining the server, you can participate in conversations about the event, make suggestions for this and future server events, and contact the moderators directly. For full event rules and for more information on how a fest/prompt meme works, please check the AO3 collection profile. If you don't wish to join the server, but still wish to participate and ask questions about the event, you may e-mail gerardwayissexah@gmail.com as well.

Links: 
AO3 Collection Profile (signup and view submitted prompts)
Discord Server Join Link (never expires)

Naruto: NejiTen Month 2025

Jun. 13th, 2025 08:50 pm
gerard_way_is_sexah: (Default)
[personal profile] gerard_way_is_sexah posting in [community profile] fandomcalendar
Description: NejiTen Month is a monthlong event for fans of the romantic pairing between Neji Hyuga/Hyuga Neji and Tenten. Fanart, fanfiction, moodboards, podfics, edits, and other kinds of fanworks are welcome! Prompts posted to Tumblr are just for inspiration - feel free to disregard, complete out of order, or combine however you please. There are no minimums for either the amount of effort put into a work, or the number of works you post for the event. It's all welcome! 
Schedule: Post works to Tumblr and/or Archive of Our Own (AO3) July 1-July 31st.
Posting: Tag works on Tumblr with #nejitenmonth2025 in the first five tags so the mod can reblog everything. Please tag on AO3 with NejiTen Month 2025 or something similar. The AO3 collection is also an option.
Links:
Tumblr Blog
Full Event Rules
AO3 Collection

NejiTen Month event calendar with prompts
umadoshi: (Yotsuba&! curious (ohsnap_icons))
[personal profile] umadoshi
After making calls on Monday, [personal profile] scruloose found a heat pump-servicing company that would do the repair etc. under our warranty from the manufacturer. A service tech turned up on Wednesday (!) at the time he said he'd be here (!) and assessed the situation, sourced the required parts locally (all three units needed their coils replaced, which the manufacturer apparently says was a known issue with models from that year that has now been fixed, so this theoretically shouldn't recur), and came back first thing yesterday morning to actually do the repair (and replace a noisy fan in the exterior unit). Labor and parts=all covered. Things seem to be working fine now. *knocks wood* It was a bizarrely good experience.

The cats were unsurprisingly unimpressed about being corralled in the bedroom repeatedly (both to keep them underfoot and to minimize their covid exposure as much as possible, in addition to all the purifiers running and [personal profile] scruloose rigging the airflow so that the bedroom was pressurized and the tech wearing an N95 mask the entire time), but were mostly polite about it and appreciated the treats they got afterwards.

I just went poking around in the Kobo listings for Adrian Tchaikovsky ebooks, and stumbled over the fact that there's an ebook (Terrible Worlds: Revolutions) collecting his three Terrible Worlds novellas, none of which I've read and one of which is on my wishlist. The collected volume is going for $7.99 Canadian. The individual novellas go for $10.99 each. [EDIT: Regular prices, in all cases.] I don't have a specific way in mind that I think this should be handled, but surely there are better ways to price/label/offer ebooks.

The poking around came after the ebook for Tchaikovsky's Service Model, which Ginny just read and liked, turned up on the on-sale list this morning, so this is also a PSA about that. (At least for the Canadian Kobo site.)

wednesday reads and things

Jun. 11th, 2025 07:16 pm
isis: (boromir)
[personal profile] isis
What I've recently finished reading:

Heartstone by C. J. Sansom, the fifth Shardlake book. Looking back at my reviews, I think the author must have got his feet under him better as he went on, or else he just shifted to things more to my taste, because I had said the fourth was my favorite so far, but I think I liked this one even better! This story is set mostly distant from court intrigue, though it comes in at the end; Matthew is given a legal case by Queen Catherine Parr, and it intertwines with his own interest in the situation that led to Ellen Fettiplace's commitment to Bedlam. I'm not going to mention my favorite thing about this book, because it is a spoiler, but - this book contains one of my favorite things. :-) Also I like the way the various plots and sub-plots wind around each other: the legal case, Ellen's history, Barak's relationship with his wife Tamasin (complicated by her pregnancy), Matthew's problematic new steward. Okay, I lied, this book contains two of my favorite things, and the other one is a fascinating and detailed endnote about the real historical events that this book is built around. I loved this in Bernard Cornwell's Last Kingdom books, and I love it here.

The Maid and the Crocodile by Jordan Ifueko, which is related to the Raybearer series, and which several people in my circle read and enjoyed, so I got it from the library despite my having been disappointed in the series. And as the other reviews said, it was rather heavy-handed issuefic (so was the Raybearer series), but also had clever worldbuilding, charming characters and, I thought, better pacing than the series. (Also was in past rather than present tense, which I prefer.) However, will someone please tell Ifueko that "monotone" is NOT A SPEECH VERB DAMN IT?!?!

What I'm watching now:

We've got three episodes left to go of Andor S2, and gosh isn't it ironic to be watching

Spoiler you can probably guess if you have seen the showa manufactured riot as pretext for government crackdown while a riot is being manufactured as pretext for government crackdown
I did read the interview with the showrunner about how no, he wasn't inspired by current events (that is, recent events, obviously the show was written well before current events!) but it's definitely inspired by historical fascist governments and fights against them, and wow, we are just proving that what goes around comes around, that human foibles are universal, etc etc, but still, holy shit, right? Yeah.

But as I have said before, this is the wonderful thing about SF, that it can recast real issues in ways that make them easier to understand than when you are right in the middle of them argh.
musesfool: being hung over is like winning the lottery, except they pay you in regret! (paid in regret)
[personal profile] musesfool
ZOMG what a day!!!

I was in a training this morning when around 10:30 am, my internet went out and didn't come back in 30 seconds the way it usually does. And my cable was out also. But Spectrum said there was no outage in my area, so it was a me problem. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And so I was in the middle of texting with a Spectrum chatbot (or maybe it was a real person?) when the cleaning ladies showed up but the bell wasn't working and then they called me and I didn't respond because I was in the middle of chatting with Spectrum (doing all the things I had already done, i.e., unplugging and re-plugging in the modem and router) with no success, but luckily I realized who was calling so I went and opened the door and they began their work and I went back to chatting with Spectrum.

The CSR/bot told me they would schedule the next open appointment and I was like sure, while thinking, "am I going to have to into the office for my meetings tomorrow? I need to be here when the tech comes but it probably won't be until Friday or Monday?" and then they texted me the appointment and it was for TODAY at NOON so of course I was like, YES, I WILL. TAKE IT. And then he showed up at 11:55 am!!! And told me there was a major outage in my area, so it was unlikely that he could do anything, but I was getting texts saying that the outage should be fixed by 1 pm. No, we mean 1:30 pm. No, we mean 2 pm. (It came back for me around 1 pm.) And finally at 4:05 pm a text saying the outage was over.

Meanwhile, yesterday, we were supposed to be sending materials out for a meeting tomorrow, but I hadn't received them by 5 pm yesterday, and I hadn't received them by 9 am this morning, and while I was in training and then offline, my boss was poking the CFO who was like, "we don't have them, should we cancel?" so my boss was texting me like, "We should cancel!!!" and I was like, that's fine but we can't reschedule for next week since the board members are not available, and then the board meeting is the week after, so we would need to get approval by unanimous written consent. But then the CFO is like, "I'm calling you!" and I'm like, "I have no internet, I can't get into any files, please don't!" But she was already calling, so I spoke with her and she was like, "We got the documents! I'm reviewing them! I will let you know when it's ok to send!" and I was like ok.

A little while after that, my service had returned and I discovered another committee member had sent out an invite to a meeting on Friday with incorrect information while trying to accept the correct invite for Friday's meeting? I don't even know, but it didn't replace the correct invite on anyone's calendars, so I just declined it. Then she emailed saying she was now getting all these RSVPs and I was like, "can you cancel it? It shouldn't affect the correct invitation, which I will then forward to you." So she cancelled it, but it looked to other people like the meeting was cancelled, even though the correct invitation remained on their calendars. So I had to send a teams message internally and an email externally to explain to everyone that the meeting was not cancelled, it was just a technological glitch of some sort. Idek.

I ate breakfast after the cable guy left, so I didn't eat lunch, and at around 3:30 I was like, "the CFO still hasn't given me the go-ahead to send this out - they are going to complain about getting a complicated set of documents less than 24 hours ahead of the meeting!" to my boss and then the email telling me the materials were good to go dropped into my inbox, so I was able to send them out.

Then while I was trying to catch up on email, a nasty looking bee (hornet? wasp?) started hovering around my window, and as you may recall, I had problems with them somehow getting into my apartment last summer, so I immediately slammed down the window and put the AC on, even though it was comfortable enough with the fan with the window open. I appreciate bees, but not in my living room! Especially not ones that look mean.

And then I read that Brian Wilson died. And Sly Stone died earlier this week. And I thought that was sad. #legends only #RIP

*
pauraque: Guybrush writing in his journal adrift on the sea in a bumper car (monkey island adrift)
[personal profile] pauraque
I learned a few days ago that the Latin American Games Showcase is happening this week. This is very relevant to my interests, so I downloaded some demos. Too many demos, really, so I'm going to break my thoughts into two posts.

⭐ I want to play this.
❓ Maybe someday if it's on sale or if issues are fixed by release.
🚫 Not for me.

⚒️ Unreleased/early access.


⭐⚒️ Oscuro: Blossom's Glow (puzzle platformer - Hongoneon, Costa Rica )

⭐⚒️ PancitoMerge (Suika-like puzzle - Fáyer, Mexico )

I Did Not Buy This Ticket (surreal horror visual novel - Tiago Rech, Brazil )

Adore (creature-collecting ARPG - Cadabra Games, Brazil )

❓⚒️ Beacon of Neyda - Ghost Creative Studio, Uruguay )

🚫 The End is Nahual (variety puzzles - Third World Productions, Mexico )

🚫 Alexandria IV (sci-fi visual novel - J.M. Beraldo, Brazil )

🚫 Dreamcore ('liminal space' walking sim - Montraluz, Argentina )

(no subject)

Jun. 11th, 2025 06:15 pm
thawrecka: (Default)
[personal profile] thawrecka
After my last post, I managed to watch another one and a half movies on the weekend - the half because I needed to go to the bathroom partway through Bring Her Back, and when I realised all I'd left in the cinema was my raspberry fanta, decided the movie was so boring I didn't need to go back.

我去了电影院。看了电影。吃了爆米花。

So far this year I've watched movies from Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Spain, Thailand, UK, USA and Vietnam. I'd like to add more countries to that list!

in a moment close to now

Jun. 10th, 2025 06:16 pm
musesfool: Michael from the Good Place, facepalming in existential horror (oh no here's a lower place)
[personal profile] musesfool
ugh how is it only tuesday???

*
pauraque: bird flying over the trans flag (trans pride)
[personal profile] pauraque
Note: Stronach came out as trans after this book was published, so earlier reviews may misgender her, as does the cover bio.

In 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.
delphi: An illustrated crow kicks a little ball of snow with a contemplative expression. (Default)
[personal profile] delphi
Fandom 50 #20

Untitled Ouizzy Neighbor AU by [tumblr.com profile] derekstilinski
Fandom: Our Flag Means Death
Relationship: Frenchie/Izzy Hands
Medium: Gifset
Length: 3 gifs
Rating: SFW
My Bookmark Tags: romance, happy ending, getting together, constructed reality, au: modern, domesticity, nature

Description:
In the first gif, Izzy wanders out into a field and happens upon Frenchie, who's sitting alone and obviously having a bad time alone with his thoughts. In the second, the two men are each in their houses, looking out the window at each other's places. In the third, they've finally come together, Frenchie handing a wary Izzy a cup of tea.

I am such a sucker for constructed reality graphics and vids, and all the ways a little tactical harnessing of the Kuleshov effect can bring us the crossovers, AUs, and visual adaptations we crave. I've got a few from this same creator to rec, but I'm starting with this Neighbor AU that imagines a modern day Frenchie and Izzy living next door to each other in the country and catching each other's eye.

First off, I just love how it's put together, from the progression of running into each other by chance, then scoping out each other from their houses, to finally coming together for tea. But I also love how the choice of sources colours the story being told here. I'm pretty sure the Con O'Neill clips are from Vengeance Is Mine and the Joel Fry ones are from In the Earth. These are both harrowing movies where the actual characters are going through some awful things. I appreciate how those scenes get recontextualized here into something cozier that nonetheless paints a picture of both characters having gone through some rough times.

You can easily imagine that this modern Frenchie has just as many terrible things locked up in that little box in his head as his 18th century counterpart had, and that this Izzy has just been through an emotionally and/or physically traumatic breakup with Ed, and now here they are, a little bruised and cautious but finding some potential comfort and love in their own backyard.
musesfool: "We'll sleep later! Time for cake!" (time for cake!)
[personal profile] musesfool
I made this black cocoa loaf cake yesterday, and followed it exactly as written despite some skepticism, which turned out to be warranted, because the middle of the loaf collapsed as it cooled. Even as I was measuring out 1 TBSP of baking powder(!!!), I was like, this seems excessive, but maybe it's because the cocoa is so alkalinized??? So I might cut that back slightly to 1.5 or 2 tsps if I make it again, which I might, because the flavor is good, despite all that baking powder. I didn't bother with the ganache since I don't have room in the fridge for the cake. But it would also disguise that kind of collapse, so if I were serving it to other people I probably would make it.

It's been gray and cool since last night, but it hasn't rained yet, so I've been able to keep the windows open. I did have to use the AC a couple times last week, especially to sleep, and I'll put it on again when necessary, but it was nice just using the fan last night.

Anyway, work remains busy, the world is on fire, but the Mets stay winning! Gotta take the little joys while you can...

*
umadoshi: (kittens - on windowsill)
[personal profile] umadoshi
Cat Herding: Our beloved Jinksy!bear turned twelve on Saturday. Twelve! He's (by a margin of a good few years) the second-oldest cat I've ever had, and continues to be just the sweetest, softest boy. May he be with us in good health for years to come.

It 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: [personal profile] 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 naablvat, naq V'yy cebonoyl xrrc svaqvat ure naablvat jurgure fur vf va snpg freivat jung V pheeragyl guvax vf ure cebonoyr shapgvba (rarzl ntrag znfdhrenqvat nf nyyl) be fbzrguvat zber vagrerfgvat. [ROT13] Guess we'll find out soon!

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, [personal profile] 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.

(no subject)

Jun. 8th, 2025 06:39 pm
thawrecka: (Cross & Yagari)
[personal profile] thawrecka
I've now watched to the end of episode 26 of Blossom. I could finish it this weekend, if I so choose. I appreciated that they made the terrible stepmother more complicated, sympathic and interesting (though no less terrible). I feel like the main male character is kind of terrible, and actually only kept in check by the female lead, though I'm probably not supposed to feel that way 🤣 But I find them kind of cute and appeallingly functional. Whenever he admires her strategies I'm charmed by it.

I went to see Detective Kien: The Headless Horror (2025) -- a Vietnamese somewhat supernatural historical detective thriller -- at a cinema one suburb over last night. The film was fine, basically about as 3 out of 5 stars as you can get. I liked it well enough. It's sufficient to the job. I was neither wowed nor put off. A lot of the detecting is about getting gossipy landed gentry to spill all the beans, so it's not on the Sherlock-y end of the scale (which I appreciate, tbh). I appreciated the flirtation between the two main characters was a flirtation between people who are not young. There's a subplot with arranged marriage drama with face-slapping and a whole thing with people hallucinating (or maybe not) a monster. Nice outfits and hairstyles; I don't know enough about Vietnam to say whether or not they're historically accurate, but they're visually appealing, and they signalled things like class status & etc. at a glance. I suspect this film is funnier if you speak Vietnamese, given moments when people laughed. There was a bit where red dirt was a clue, and the characters instantly assumed it was dirt that got blood soaked into it, but because I grew up in a place where the dirt everywhere is red I was surprised.

What I didn't like was people coming in late and walking in front of the subtitles. This always drives me crazy! And there were people using their phones during the movie. I guess this is often how the movie-going experience is now (though it depends on the film, I think? If it's an art film aimed at older audiences I don't often have this issue), but it's very annoying.

Also, the particular Hoyts I went to see this at renovated so that buying food and picking up food seem to be in completely different areas now and it was weirdly unclear which you're supposed to do first. That and it being at a shopping centre at night, so I missed my tram when I got out in the rainy dark, and then had to wait 20 minutes for an uber... I don't regret going out to see the film (even if it was just fine, I still feel enriched by leaving the house and seeing a new thing, and it's nice to add another country to my list of 2025 films), even if I was beset by annoyances.
musesfool: a glass of iced coffee with milk (nectar of the gods)
[personal profile] musesfool
I used decaf to make coffee granita last night, and I had it for dessert this evening along with a dollop of homemade whipped cream, and it seems to have worked out all right - no late evening side effects of caffeine that I can feel. And I think it's better later in the day as a treat than as my morning coffee, because I eat it so quickly and also it's sweet. I don't put any sugar in my regular coffee, but granita requires it so it doesn't freeze solid. I used vanilla sugar but can't really detect the vanilla (or, rather, differentiate it from the vanilla in the whipped cream).

Also, they were on sale, so I bought a pack of paper plates and they made cleanup after cooking so easy that I remembered why I used to use them regularly back before I had a dishwasher. My plan to replace my dead dishwasher is to try the 4th of July sales - Friend L is going to join me at the store to see if the model I want (Bosch) actually fits in the space I've got (and if it goes on sale - it did not for Memorial Day, that I saw, but maybe I don't need the more expensive/top-of-the-line model? It's just that it has something that will allegedly turn the machine off if it senses a leak, which seems like a good thing to have, especially when you live in an apartment above other people and are responsible if any leakage causes damages below you). Anyway, July is a three-paycheck month, which gives me some leeway for paying most of it off ASAP and not increasing my credit card debt any more than I have to.

*
isis: (squid etching)
[personal profile] isis
Paul Krugman talks with Ada Palmer about her new (nonfiction) book Inventing the Renaissance. I came at this from the Krugman side (he's a Nobel-winning economist who used to write for the NYT, and I subscribe to his substack) but I figured some of you would be interested from the Palmer side (I never got into Terra Ignota, though). I found it really interesting! I read the transcript, but there's a link to the video conversation as well.

Speaking of Nobelists, a v. v. srs study found that countries with greater per capita chocolate consumption produce more Nobel laureates - so eating chocolate makes you smarter, right? :-)

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