official announcement

Neil Gaiman is writing S3 of Good Omens.

It’s still going to be 30 months before we see another episode but at least if the two leads don’t die and we don’t get smacked by an asteroid we should do okay.

complaints, kudos, complaints, lists

Nothing to complain of regarding Alex. Some mornings he wants to cuddle, other mornings he wants to go downstairs. Dropped him off in time for school, thought about going to Lordco because one of the Echo’s wiper blades flung itself off and lodged itself so firmly under the other wiper blade that I could still use it but it stuck to the car. This is the kind of luck I always get issued; sloppy but welcome.

Weather seasonal, rainy, not too cold.

Later this morning I have to go to Thornebridge, roust the wasband and tell him his girlfriend’s been admitted to hospital in Seattle after taking the wrong medication for a cold. She has a history of absolutely horrific, interpersonally damaging and completely avoidable meltdowns, usually thanks to hospitals ignoring her when she provides them with a list of what she reacts to. Everyone is calling COVID a cold now I see. I am not saying I hope Janice ups and dies, after all, I wrote “Invective” for her and I always have a soft spot for anyone who provides me with the impulse to compose, I just fail to see why I have to be all tenderhearted about the woman who brazenly busted up a marriage that I didn’t – as it turns out – want to stay in. Alan’s role in all of that got called out very close to the beginning of the end by Glenn, so HI GLENN THE SHIT CONTINUES BUD, same planet different day. So I acknowledge that I’m …. conflicted …. possibly hypocritical …. definitely snarky. Fuck it, have to go to Thornebridge. Nobody OF COURSE can raise Paul on the phone and I’m closest. I told him to go to Strong because memory care is a seamless transition, but the sisters put him in Thornebridge and those of us close to the problem get to watch him decompensate expensively. I loved that man far more than I can say and I wrote songs and poems and stories for him and now I’m wild with what a sting love has at the far end of that long tail.

almost 100 reads on the last story and ten kudos. Only one comment, sigh, but it was a beaut and I shared it with mOm.

This morning I on the downlow shared my distaste for an extremely popular sf/sff novel by agreeing with a poster “so polarizing I don’t have a public opinion about it’ so that’s as subtle as you get. After all, Canadian authors are supposed to close ranks – LOL: define Canadian, I’ll wait.

Jeff TOUCHED the dryer and it started working. Kiss pOp for me mother, he obviously passed the gift down. I’ll probably break it again when I go to load it up in a minute.

Must empty dishwasher.

89 hits 11 kudos 3 bookmarks

Mammogram results clear. Under a week to get results, awesome.

Quite pleased with the reader reaction to ‘Guy d’Angelique’ on AO3 and even more pleased that I’m adult enough to stop obsessively checking. ABSOLUTELY NO COMMENTS tho sigh.

Tonight we dine at Qwhite Spot with the fam. John and Ruth; Paul, Alex, Katie, possibly Dax, me and Jeff and the instigator is Keith (WHO VOLUNTEERED TO DRIVE JOHN AND RUTH TO THE AIRPORT and then bring the Echo back how do I deserve such a kindly child). He’s in an incredibly good mood these days, surrounded by Ben’s HORDE of friends who are all…. Keith’s age and a lot of them are neurodivergent bronies so…. He’s also thinking of making a run for the grandparents and sadly I have something happening on the 25th so I probably won’t be joining him.

Jeff and I have DELIBERATELY not posted anything about how godawful the ferry part of the trip to Bowen Island was so believe me when I say that the signage and guidance SUCKS GREYHOUND BUS STATION MEN’S ROOM MOPS.

West Kelowna fire may destroy the recently built 75 million dollar water treatment plant, the single biggest ticket item ever in Kelowna. The city’s been fighting with BC Hydro over how teetery the power infrastructure is, coming into town, for years now and the upshot is that if the fire comes through it may literally be months before the power’s restored and that means that chunks of Kelowna may end up like Lytton. Abandoned. No water, no power, no businesses, no jobs, no homes.

Michael Sheen talking about what a joy David Tennant is to work with is giving me life today. Their families had babies at the same time and their youngests are besties see my heart eyes, I’ve got heart eyes. Now to channel heart eyes into TB.

Yay, there will be more Miss Scarlet and the Duke!

LOL I lied, 91 hits 12 kudos.

graphomania has stopped

I went for a walk with Jeff, finished “Guy d’Angelique” and posted it – it already has two hits, lol, I do have subscribers so they would have gotten a push email when I posted. It topped 12000 words and it’s DONE like the relief is unspeakable. MAYBE EVEN INEFFABLE. Anyway you can’t see it if you don’t have an account because I don’t want my shit scraped for AIs.

I’m going to drink tea and cry about something else now (I cried so much writing that but mostly because I’m still processing the end of GOmens2 and writing a story IN ANOTHER FANDOM was my styptic against all those fucking cuts). No I will not really cry, I think I’ll eat salad instead.

Recently learned that Al and Jen BINGEWATCHED Twisted Metal after we recommended it and so Jeff and I are smirking at each other every time we think of that.

533 words yesterday

Very hot yesterday, but it’s supposed to not go over 30 for the rest of the week.

Very apprehensive about Ryker care. I do be like that tho. It will be fine, same as last time.

I’m reading about 50 year olds becoming unhoused and asking where they sign up for free housing. As far as I can tell an entire cohort of Canadians paid no more attention to politics than was required to sort of take in the promises and denunciations at election time. When it comes to the instantiations of politics, they’re living in a spun sugar world which is abrumptly getting the ol’ firehose of climate driven events. But I thought welfare bums get errything for free they will cry. What chumps oh well.

However, I’m going to stay cheerful as long as we’re all together on this side and the ac works.

Oh Jaysus I just thought of the title of the next one in the series thank you Dave. Also you said it could all be converted quite nicely to a screenplay and you’re right. That means I have to go back into the completed project and chop it into 13 minute segments with stingers teasers and very high stakes. So to write that new title down I slipped away from writing this, wrote 244 words on the Guy d’Angelique fanfic and forgot to write the new title down. Leaving briefly to fix that, okay I wrote it down but I’m now up to a thousand words on the fanfic. Honestly I’m just going to drag the characters to a hotel room and get them sweaty, I haven’t got all day for conversation!! I have to get back to TB and get the next instalment out to my emotional support editors.

Heavy sigh. It’s a good thing I’ve got Scrivener to keep all this shit straight. Scrivener is what took me from being a writer to being someone who can complete long form multiarc fiction. It is THE BOMB. It is simple to use on the daily with a depth of features that’s abyssal.

Ha ha I EYEBALLED IT Jensen Ackles IS the same size, almost exactly, as Errol Flynn. Same height, weight and shoe size. This is important to the fanfic. This is the level of research I do. I don’t want you to be impressed, I just think it’s hilarious that I PULLED AN ARCHETYPAL HERO ACTOR out of the pile and went yup he’s the same size and shape as Jensen Ackles and THEN I DID THE RESEARCH. Because I wouldn’t want to put it in the fucking fanfic if it wasn’t true. Because facts make light and light makes atmosphere, & suppositions make assholes like me make easily avoided mistakes.

Damn the coffee was good this morning. Must …. have …. more. So I did and now I ~~just deleted the toilet joke I was about to make, so I’ll tell Jeff instead.~~

Do I sound giddy? I’m in writing mode.

I just found a cartoon that completely describes Brad and Omar and I was going to send it to mOm but here it is. From Foxes in Love on Tumblr

I was going to but then

I was going to talk about the death toll in Hawai’i. From the fires. Fanned by a storm. I was going to talk about the death toll of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, which has been horrific, but I decided not to. I thought about reporting on the death toll of migrants drowned in the Mediterranean, which was considerable this past week, but I thought not.

Instead I’m going to comment on how, when Suzanne’s washed the kitchen rugs, Buster finds a moment and scoots a metre and a half across one, because as far as he’s concerned, we just washed his toilet rag. If mOm had known, crocheting that sucker, that it was going to be kitty toilet paper, she might have frowned, but kept going, cause that’s what we do, is keep going.

I have had coffee, and made tea for iced tea, and in about five hours someone’s going to flatten my breasts into machine readable tortillas and I’m going to feel sorry for myself.

I am rewatching S2 Good Omens with Jeff and trying not to squee at my favourite bits.

Michael Sheen, who plays Aziraphale (he was named by Terry Pratchett so it’s not a real hebrew angel name but it either means raphael’s strength or the helper in alt-hebrew) understands that some of the character’s hand gestures correspond to autistic stimming and actually tweeted “God bless the happy flappers” which given that I’ve stimmed (and been mocked for it) my whole life it was like being pushed into a chair when you’re about to faint.

David Tennant, who plays Crowley (more on that in a minute) has been known to sport non-binary and trans persons supporting merch and has a non-binary child (apparently part of his blended horde (any more than two is a horde, sorry) of offspring with Georgia Tennant.) Angels in the Gaiman-Pratchett-verse don’t ascribe to the sexual binary. So essentially both lead characters are non-binary but present male. Usually. So this global icon has been seen wearing ‘LEAVE TRANS KIDS ALONE YOU ABSOLUTE FREAKS’ Tshirts and the response of the exceptionally trans-hating UK press has been livid. LOL die mad ya salty beeches.

He had to wear dark glasses and contact lenses for the entire shoot and apparently was caught running into walls during takes since he couldn’t see what the hell he was doing. This makes his acting even more next level to me. I enjoyed Michael Sheen but it’s Tennant I can’t take my eyes off.

As in 2019, the fandom’s going insane. It’s also rescued me. There’s a fan theory about season 3 (if it ever happens) that put my feathers back in place, and it has to do with how Crowley…. isn’t who he says he is, or indeed who anyone says or thinks he is. The evidence was all gone through in a tumblr post and I am convinced. Therefore as sad as I am about the final scene in S2 I have decided to psychically crawl from my bed of pain into the toilet of relief, and possibly later visit the fire of collations.

Dr. Jen Gunter’s latest newsletter says that

20% of all Ayurvedic medicine sold in the US and Canada is contaminated with lead.

Jaysus and his lady mother and his poor poppa. Mercury too, apparently. Ha ha, little joke for a friend. But yes, mercury. So

As Dr. Gunter remarked If 20% of all the creamed corn in the US and Canada was contaminated with lead, that would probably lead to public health action of some kind. My take is what is preventing this stuff from being banned is (checks notes) fear of accusations of racism and anti-religious (anti-Hindu) sentiment and a heftic dose of CAPITALISM CURES ALL I guess. However, putting lead OR allowing lead into the manufacturing process of supplements ‘medicine’ SPECIFICALLY sold for the use of pregnant women is a failure on the part of every link in the supply chain.

Herewith my comments on Bluesky, a Social Media platform established by the guy who started twitter. He stole a metric crapstack of twitter’s old employees, but elongated muskrate dood that hisself by firing them all.

bsky creeping up on half a million users!!

fun place – trans people welcome; still issues (which no one is trying to hide but the company needs a kick) for PoCs and Indigenous – you can autoblock terfs, antivaxxers and bad political actors with one click and the list keeps growing but you’re already subscribed, isn’t that amazing? autoblock lists on social media are the fucking BOMB

I see Russian, Ukrainian (once mistook the two, had to abject the apology fuck me that was bad) and Turkish in my feed. It’s overwhelmingly an English speaking place.

not enough aziracrow content <—- (written or drawn, mostly drawn, so I guess I’m sticking with tumblr for now LOL and I’m there under my real name which REALLY makes me stand out extra LOL although to be fair writers which I am use their real names)

Not enough weather and disaster on-the-ground content (twitter’s shining star)

YOU WILL GET ‘NOTES’ if you DON’T ALT YA PICS – this is a fantastic norm for a social media site. “Hello, I love you, won’t you please alt your pic!” (Provide a description for people who can’t see).

extremely thirsty (current slang for horny), much nood, no gifs yet (DAMNATION PEOPLE GET ON IT), no DMs (direct messages) and you can’t chain ‘skeets’ which I call bleats because it’s not gun related. Also sheep look like clouds in a Bluesky, the name of the app!!! Adult content asks if you want to see it. Thank you! sometimes I want to see (I am just as prurient as the next chump, thanks) and mostly I don’t care. The last thing I looked at was a man’s back. It was muscular and full of tattoos and while it didn’t make my day it did make me smile.

The MAIN GOAL is to curate your experience so asshats can’t get at you by blocking IMMEDIATELY. No discourse, just block. In consequence it’s almost entirely free of interruptions by asshats and when they do get through you just block them once with neither guilt nor backward glance. Lovely. No asshats, all genders, no huhu.

I have put the second letter on Keith’s embroidered apron.

Only wrote 31 words yesterday. I will lie fallow for a few days, try to get back at it on Monday.

chamomilegeode-deactivated20221 on tumblr five days ago said:

did you know that, besides the apple of knowledge and the pomegranate of life, there’s another mystic fruit, one that grants you a sense of purpose?

yeah, it’s the raisin d’être

conversation on tumblr – this kind of shit happens every day on tumblr so I’m sharing it because of how it illustrates and supports the hive mind in a super creative and positive way

person 1

Please retire the “we are made of stardust” phrase I am so tired of it

person 2

Stars are made of flesh

Person 1

I change my mind bring back the original phrase

person 1

If I remember correctly, elements heavier than iron are only created when a star dies.

This is interesting because 1) it places a lower bound on when life can evolve, and when life is most likely to evolve, assuming any of a number of certain chemical compositions are necessary and 2) it means that a significant portion of the matter around us was forged by the death of a star.

Stars, when they die, can create new elements and I think that’s cool as fuck.

Person 1

I looked it up, actually it’s like this:

Helium and Hydrogen were created by the Big Bang.

Elements from Helium up to Iron are created by stars through nuclear fusion during their lifetimes (In a process called Stellar Nucleosynthesis)

And elements heavier than iron cannot be created except by Supernova Nucleosynthesis, by the collapse and death of a star, and elements from silicon through iron still are mainly created by Supernova Nucleosynthesis, since stars big enough to create them by fusion in life are pretty rare

The stardust makes you alive! It’s neat.

Person 4

This! Yes!

Okay, so, this is a thing we actually know a bit about.

While what you’ve brought up is the leading theory, and has been for a good while, there are some inconsistencies — particularly with the far end of the stable elements and the radioactive elements. The amounts produced in Supernova Nucleosynthesis would be far too low to actually account for the amounts seen in the universe.

So, how were they created?

The best theory we have is collisions between neutron stars.

When two neutron stars collide, they produce a supernova with the required energy density to create those ultraheavy elements, which means that not only are you made of stardust, if this theory is correct, you are made of stardust that was released when two of the most violent, extreme objects in the universe collided, possibly billions of years ago, hundreds of millions of lightyears away.

Person 1

You are the wreckage of a violent multi-star pileup

ai yi

walked down to the weed store, lord but I’m in poor shape, even downhill was tough, and coming back uphill involved me planting my ass on every bit of furniture between here and there at least once.

Procured a poopsi at the donair place across the street from the weed store and after finishing it managed to make it home. I was dressed entirely in black so let’s just say the sun’s still doing their job.

ordered thai- nom

I am now in a parasocial relationship with an actor NOT IN HIS ROLE but in his role as HUCKSTER for the role. (David Tennant, as Crowley in Good Omens.) This is perilous layers of unproductive meta (I use it in the sense of people walking in and among and beside the artistic ideas which are being represented by an engrammatical ‘story’ as players, production staff, writers, relatives of the writers of the original text, media reporting on the fixed form of the engrammatical ‘story’, people creating paintings and gifsets and fan edits and AO3 stories and beadwork and t-shirts which reflect their emotions and experience, the feeling of reaching across and through an artwork and just holding hands with someone and crying, just crying, because you feel seen and loved, and then wearing them while they stream about the engrammatical ‘story’ because it’s something precious and fleeting and needs to be shared), as I will demonstrate,

as I’ve already BEEN through this with Misha Collins as Castiel, so I’m shoving the idea out of my mind like a warbler who’s twigged to the cuckoo’s egg. Not very successfully. These things happen.

Whether this newfound tendresse, or the caution it will hopefully engender as I heave it from my sensorium with many a psychic grunt and wail, will inform the longing I hope to continuously expose as a feature of Totally Boned (as you may not know, the longest of my current projects and the one which, despite itself, continues to show signs of actually being … worth charging money for.)

Anyway, the pattern-seeking in art across disciplines – the meta’s an outgrowth of this. I mean, as a cultural phenomenon it has all the appearance of some weird variant of an anxiety attack, or as more likely on second consideration, a cultural displacement behaviour for the ever trending anxiety that is our daily portion. Sad to say this is the shit my ADD brain was made for. I don’t worry about what I’ve got in my head, all I’m concerned for is that the useful items appear in the order in which they are needed, at least with respect to my creative life; I’ve never known to have truly seen whether I can do that in my personal life. It seems to me that there was a time, but I ain’t got the hormones to do that no more; ‘most everything has shrunk, my field of vision most of all. “The air gets thinner but the view gets better,” as Ingmar Bergman once remarked. In my case I’m looking through a smaller aperture. I can’t control my mood, or, necessarily, my energy level, so writing is hard some days and not others. Multi-thousand word days SOUND good, but I burn glucose and brain chemicals like a fucking thermal lance while I’m doing it and feel like hell for literally days afterwards so I now am writing to an upper limit of 750 words a day for my health. I know that sounds funny, regrettably I care not with great lots of uncaringness, parcelled out for your convenience. My hypocrisies and vices are what they are; we’re living on borrowed time, all of us, and the reason I’m angry I didn’t get a resolution in this Season 2 of Good Omens is that I think society is about to break in half and then get ground to powder

so I’ll never get one. Logistics of war, of plague, of planetary threats unknown.

On the other hand, in a basement in Pasadena, a cabal of high school students, queer studies professors, elderly film directors, amateur set decorators and body double actors are depending on one young non-binary person to carry the weight of successfully using AI to create an entire film to ‘fix’ the notorious last season of a long running TV horror-comedy. Let those who ponder the meta, who enter the liminal space of the meta with the breath of a prayer, take warning, for that, my fellow lunatics, is a project with a much better chance of seeing daylight before the apocalypse really bites than S3 of Good Omens. We who have faith have faith for a reason. In other words, I’m making fun of it, but I have to; if I can’t mock what I believe in, I’m a victim, not a collaborator with an idea. And this whole Pasadena thing I made up on the spot, because it would be a great idea for a Destiel fanfic and I needed to make a note of it.

no way

There was absolutely no way I would permit another sleepless night, expecially since Jeff and I are supposed to breakfast with Keith and Alex this morning. I whacked myself with ten milligrams and slept like a cat until 5 am. YAY, MULTIPLE EVENTS OF YAY! Jeff, however, is not in the most tip top shape so it’s still an open guess whether he’ll be able to join us. (I’ll let him not provide the details.) Keith’s going to call us when he’s levered Alex into the car.

Yesterday, 3500 words on Handyman Special, day before 2500 words, 250 so far today. Absolutely none of the last ten or so destiel stories I posted had explicit sex in them and this one is basically a sea bed of hand-wavy plot hosting a tsunami of schmoopy porn, and honestly I have ZERO clue where the hell any of this comes from. But at least I am not repeating, in describing the hella hot consensual sex, any of the most commonly used expressions OR anything I’ve previously written, and by god that’s an accomplishment even if none of you horrified old coots will give me my due as an ahem mistress of the genre.

from Fanlore:

Schmoop is used to describe fanfic with a very sweet romance between two characters. Some fans see schmoop as a further escalation of fluff.

Fluff is often used in fandom to characterize any pleasant, feel-good work. It is sometimes described as the opposite of angst.

None of this is preventing me from chipping away at Totally Boned.

not a peep

Didn’t hear a peep out of anyone at the Junction yesterday. Fine, I was probably not in good enough shape to be useful and they had other plans.

Somebody was busy last night; fewer stories because these are the long ones.

Brain is adequate this morning but nothing better. SO MANY FOOD WORDS on the NY Times Wordle these days, it’s been food words for a week now, bagel and ramen etc. I’m out of some Rx in a few days and as usual don’t have a Doc appt until after I run out. I don’t imagine it will be a problem, pharmacists have been known to save the day.

SCHNITZEL last night, also this morning. I left a tiny little piece as a snack for later. The greek salad was very good too. I’m finding the ‘not eating anything solid after about 5 pm’ diet is working fine.

I think I made very fine coffee this am. I am enjoying it.

lost my mind

obviously someone stayed up ALL NIGHT reading my fics. Well, there are more to come so that’s nice.

I tried to help Paul with something yesterday and all I managed to do was upset him, Jeff, and myself, and Katie called to ask what the hell happened, and I feel SO USELESS AND CLUELESS but Lois is here and I hope it all gets straightened out. I lost my cheese and someone who’s blameless suffered. I am assuming it will all get straightened out but I imagine both my kids think I’m an asshole right now. I did apologize most fervently to Paul but it was probably too little too late.

I was feeling very sorry for myself and then I found out that some kind whistleblower just dumped 100 Gb of Tesla crash data. My response. Yes it’s supposed to be disturbing.

it’s been an age since I got a comment

This is everything to me. My attention to detail got someone’s attention. I MUST SPEAK TRUTH ABOUT DETROIT IRON OR RECEIVE THE DISAPPROBATION OF MY FATHER.

Ain’t lyin….

I loved so much about this story, but the thing I held closest to my heart was: Finally! Someone who realizes you couldn’t get air conditioning or a tape deck stock in a 67 impala.

Lovely walk with Paul yesterday, followed by distributing treats from Cobbs Bread and some sorting of his clothes. He asked me to help with the family photographs and then refused to let me help…. it was weird but okay. Ryker was A FREAKING MESS I am pretty sure he has allergies, he ran like a snottap the entire time I was there, and was seconds from crying the entire time, but I did interact with him when he wasn’t crying and stopped him from hucking his slippers downstairs.

How did I have a lovely walk with Paul? I didn’t talk, except to respond to him kindly and truthfully. And we sat and listened to birdsong for a good half hour, in companionable silence. I didn’t give him much help with sorting but it was some.

Brain is not good this morning. Wordle in 3. Scotoma dragons for an hour.

The Guyanese-descent gent I follow on twitter said something about how if you think brown people can’t be racist you haven’t met his extended family. SO I COMMENTED. Perhaps I should not have. (mOm remember how I have Richie IMMEDIATELY comment sotto voce as to the ethnicity of a Black man he meets – including how long he’s been in Canada? when I was living in Toronto with my first husband it AMAZED ME how many Black people I met had very distinct and not always pleasant or pleasantly phrased opinions about where other people from the Terrible African Enslavement Diaspora were from and what kinds of personal behaviour, style of dress etc. we could expect from them…. stuff that made my little white middle class mind EXPLOOOOOODE) So my response to my Guyanese twitter ami was that of course brown people can be racist! BUT THEY WON’T BE WITHOUT COLONIALISM. The very distinct layercake of Guyanese life with the Amerindians (their term not mine, it’s racist TWO DIFFERENT WAYS and of course they should be spoken of by Indigenous nationality, language or cultural bonds) at the bottom and the descendants of the Black enslaved persons next up and then the Desi and Desi-blend folks (white people exist as tourists in Guyana, less than .5% are white AND THE CHINESE PEOPLE ARE LUMPED IN DEMOGRAPHICALLY WITH THE WHITE PEOPLE, CHEW ON THAT FOR A WHILE (I mean imagine it in Vancouver LOLOL)) resulted specifically from slavery and importation of guest workers and the distinct modern assignment of racial opprobrium flows from that.

As for Guyanese people, in my observations of the Caribbean hierarchy they: “Think they’re better than everyone else because they cling to decades-rotten colonial forms and ceremonies, drink way too much, fucking suck at cricket, and dress like bums.” Get a Bahamian to comment on Jamaicans some time, it’s like dropping Mentos in a Coke bottle. Believe it or not apart from the drinking too much I’ve heard all of these (re Guyanese) comments in person, and the drinking comment is based on the demonstrable fact that Guyana and Suriname (its neighbour and colonial sibling thanks to the Dutch) have much higher alcoholism and binge drinking rates than any of the closest Caribbean countries, and the alcoholism is supported by the unbelievably cheap and plentiful rum from the sugar cane plantations …. that came with colonialism. So no matter which end of the drunkard’s walk that is my approach to ranting you grab WE ARE GOING TO END UP AT COLONIALISM.

If asked to comment as to why 35 percent of Russian men have a drinking problem – the worst stat on earth for alcohol currently – I think I’m going to splay my hands and smile. Traumatized people self-medicate, amiright. Also, to be entirely fair, Canada’s alcoholism rate is higher – by 3 % – than Guyana’s. Just Saying. Also if you want an example of sexual dimorphism, the difference in the alcoholism rate in Russia between men and women is so huge it looks like a typo. Source worldpopulationreview

list is getting ticked

Happy St. Sitha (Zita) Day, patron saint of domestic work, domestic workers, and lost keys. Here she is from a church wall in Norfolk UK.

Laundry is done and I’ll go back to folding it when I’ve finished posting. No Lumosity yet, wordle in three (the word made me laugh out loud because it is NOT a word I personally am associated with, like, at all). Five kudos from one person on AO3 last night… I mean woman did you SLEEP that was like 50K words LOL…. Almonds are in the oven for toasting and the timer is set to explode (finally have a LOUD kitchen timer) in an hour. I have started selecting my clothes to be packed. I’ve been practicing my instruments every day, I keep starting on and then refusing to write down any of the gags for a standup routine (part of it involving a ‘tactical ukulele’ which describes the second uke Mike bought me), I wrote 899 words yesterday on the fic and about 40 on TB. Dejunking has slowed but not stopped. Played Original Green Tetris on the Tetris website yesterday and I have to say I prefer newer versions LOL. I’ve booked my next flu/covid shots with the pharmacy.

I send a special family hug to Leo and Linda this am (they are always sharing pictures of their family in the background with me and it helps me stay connected to their fam and I really appreciate it) and a big long rocking hug for Dave, who is mourning his kitty and will be for a while. He still has Pippin, but Mookie was a real character.

Here’s a list of free websites that are apparently useful from boing boing dot com this morning. I’ve only had a good look at witeboard and untools but intend to explore more:

Just in case anyone is thinking of me, please don’t get me anything for Mother’s Day that doesn’t involve tasty food I didn’t cook.

Still very much enjoying Medium and we’ve started The Diplomat and are LOVING it. But it’s (ratchet ratchet ratchet sound in the background) berloddy tense.

Off to Paul’s today

Going to help with packing and take us for a walk.

Wordle in 5, 1646 words on ‘The Instructor’ yesterday, with none expected today because of my errands. Lumosity one top score the rest abysmal dreck. I made myself coffee and toasted a sourdough muffin. I’m pretty well used to not keeping cream in the house any more, sigh; my liver has thanked me.

Bakhmut’s still under siege. Putin visited military headquarters in Kherson and Zelenskyy visited the front in Avdiivka.

China’s mediated the first progress in the Yemen war in years; Saudi Arabia and Iran may reopen embassies. Given that 60% of Yemeni deaths since 2015 are directly attributable to the war (via food insecurity and zero health care) and that a million people there have been affected by the cholera epidemic the faster peace comes the better and I don’t care who brokers it.

There’s a yummy beef and tomato and onions mix for wraps in the fridge and also a very nice lentil tofu stew. Sounds bland, but with turmeric, ginger, half a lime, cumin, black pepper, cayenne and plenty garlic it’s anything but. The tofu got cooked in a spice mix but it all ended up incorporated in the stew and it is quite yummy. A bit salty for the diet because for all the veggie ingredients leading one to think it’s vegan, I cooked it in chicken stock (I didn’t want it going bad in the fridge).

Twitter is being really weird and gross and they just took the bans off dead-naming trans people (using what they were named at birth rather than their chosen name for transition) and it’s OPEN SEASON on trans people in a way that was obvious enough before but is now a tidal wave of bigoted speech. Trust trans people to know their own gender enough that you do not need to question them about it.

seven percent of parents regret having children.

one percent of trans people regret transitioning.

IT’S A VERY SUCCESSFUL SOCIO-MEDICAL PROCEDURE, quit second guessing trans people and spending all your chocolate coin attention on the ‘poor parents’ who have been ‘cheated’ of the ‘child they were meant to have’ BLEUCH I hate people who think like that NONE OF US FUCKING GET THE KID WE WANT we get the kid we get and whining about it is rude to everyone and makes you look like a gurning nithing. (gur-ning nye-ðing aka a facepulling poltroon)

I slept GREAT but not ENOUGH so I imagine I’ll be napping this afternoon.

So tempted to write Elizabeth Holmes in jail and mock the living shit out of her but better people have more claim to my time LOL. She honestly believed that people like her can’t go to jail well just ask Martha Stewart she did five months and is still proclaiming her innocence.

did NOT make wordle this morning

That was sad. I mean I was actually upset for a moment. Two top fives in Lumosity, 1189 words on the fanfic. Coffee has been consumed, the day has begun.

Confirmed that we’ll be at Barry and Jackie’s overnight after Jim’s memorial. It conflicts with a Bahá’í festival but that’s just our luck – everything always happens on the same day.

SCORE! the weed joint had Trainwreck. I named a fanfic after the strain before I’d even gotten to try it but the weed sommeliers were not lying – absolute gem of a strain – calm blissful body buzz and zero anxiety.

Today I’m going to try to do health oriented things, get some letters in the mail, call a couple of friends, do some more sorting for the yard sale – matters of that nature. I can be upset or I can try to make progress and they don’t usually go together.

Charge your devices! Natural and infrastructure disasters are always only a tick of the clock away!

DeSantis threatening to build ‘another theme park’ to compete with Disney is extremely funny since as far as I know the only two documents he has any interest in are the Bible and the Constitution and neither of them have any fuckin’ IP. What’s he gonna do, ask Veggie Tales to put up the money?

Today’s Trotsky Tuesday guest is Alexander Berkman, who for a long while was Emma Goldman’s sweetie.

better today

Although my Lumosity scores tanked. I mean really, do I have a brain at all. Wordle in 5. 281 words yesterday on TB.

I don’t spend much time talking about it on my blog, but my despair and anger over the reproductive health situation in the US is immense, and I don’t really think the republicans WANT to tank the US birth rate even more, but I think that’s what’s going to happen. It all smacks of religiosity and panic and eugenics, and I find it horrifying. Anyway, so many young women instead of using birth control will be using a gun instead – self-reports of women under 30 going for bilateral salpingectomies are skyrocketing on social media. Women are sharing the names of US doctors who will perform this no questions asked without consulting spouses…. Can’t force birth on a woman in that situation, unless you’re kidnapping her and implanting the fetuses of wealthy men, which I suppose is the next step for these fucking assholes. I’m long out of the game, but I ask you to spare a thought for the women of reproductive age in the family who are feeling all this socio-legal grinding on the pillars of their lives with more dread than I.

I don’t spend much time talking about it on my blog, but I’m still getting the occasional kudo on AO3 even though I locked down my account so it’s only available to members.

Had a really productive and helpful conversation on the phone with Keith yesterday.

I am going to drink some coffee and try to get a little more cheerful and fold my laundry.

Apparently Putin’s so desperate for actionable intelligence that he’s authorized hacking into Ukrainian coffee shops’ security cameras. Eye…. roll….