Category: fanfic

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.

Feast day April 27, St. Sitha patron of domestic work, workers and lost keys, winks at us 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:

  1. Witeboard: https://witeboard.com 6
  2. Blush: https://blush.design 5
  3. Carrd: https://carrd.co 7
  4. What runs: https://www.whatruns.com 7
  5. Coverr: https://coverr.co 5
  6. Flourish: https://flourish.studio 7
  7. Untools: https://untools.co 10
  8. Lumen5: https://lumen5.com 10

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….

recycling

I read on reddit that a great way to deal with paper if you don’t want to shred it (Jeff has a shredder but I have A LOT OF PAPER TO SHRED) is to turn it into papier mâché and yup, that works – I experimented with 20 year old tax returns yesterday.

Happy Easter for those who celebrate! Reread (or read, lol) my King Jesus homily if you’re in the mood.

Continue reading recycling

now that was a meal

I made the gravy (roast drippings sufficient) and the salad and the roasted potatoes; Mike made the shrimps with garlic, the three rib prime rib, the airfried brussel sprouts. Jeff and I and Mike ate ourselves into a state of pleasant repletion and I just ducked out of cleanup long enough to brag about it. Mike dry aged the roast for a week. Unbelievably tender and juicy.

superb meal, no notes. We’re lucky dogs and that was an incredible start to 2023, thank you o founder of the feast.

653 words on ‘The New Guy’.

another fine morning today

I did absolutely nothing yesterday except

one load of laundry

production of two meals, both of which involved standing and cooking, which miraculously I am now able to do after weeks of having trouble standing for any period of time

calm avoidance of invitation to Jerome’s (Mike called around 4 and I told him to drop by after if he went). I just thought my lack of social contact would turn into me autistic gabbling for hours while being worried about COVID and RSV and I couldn’t hack it

creating that L.M. Sacasas quote from yesterday using the absolute stinkpot software ‘paintbrush’ although it IS simple enough for my grandchild to use, so…

training, cuddling and brushing Buster repeatedly over the course of the day, including holding paws with him when his feets were cold (he genuinely likes holding paws with people, it’s adorable)

realizing that the balm from the bee place did actually heal the crack in my heel (I’d started bleeding, most distasteful) and now I need to reapply to the dry bits (face hands elbows etc.). It spreads well and smells lovely. Looking forward to getting more, stuff’s miraculous.

Realizing that it’s time to do Paul’s feet again. I’ll call him today and try once again to find out what he wants me to do about the car.

Checking if I have enough money to pay Suzanne, I do. However her car has been totalled thanks to this fucking weather we had last week so we may need to go get her.

continuing to produce coughs/mucus – substantially noisier than yesterday though I feel no worse, and in fact my mood continues to trend good although I had quite a crying jag yesterday evening thinking about how I’m likely to survive Buster and HOO BOY but I def. feel better today.

a complete review of Part II including copy edits and clarity edits

bringing the mail in… hey, there was mail!

Talking to Dave on the phone, and how lovely to hear his voice. He awaits word of a launch for his book. It continues to emit its own vibrations in this ever renewed universe.

posting in multiples to facebook, tumblr, twitter and dispensing goo on reddit

cheating to get the Wordle of the day after four guesses(Suzanne never cheats but she has a better starter word and doesn’t just guess, she has a system)

doing my Lumosity training, my scores have risen dramatically thank goodness

rewatching Here There Be Dragons (Expanse S2E11) which has SO MANY OF MY FAVOURITE LINES AND SCENES from that show

falling on the treats that Jeff brought back after his dental appointment with the savoir faire of a starving seagull           I M SNAKKY

taking a call from Tammy at the airport. It was an absolutely lovely conversation, she was SO sweet to me, and helpful too. That convo was everything about why I love her so much even if we slide past each other once in a while in terms of understanding – we talked about the book she gave me (about Henrietta Lacks) and the rest of the visiting she did, about what she’s going home to (she never takes ten days off so she’s expecting… a lot of emails, overflowing cat litter since the housesitter won’t have done it etc.) and she told me about the last hour of Banshees of Inisherin after I told her that brO and I bailed on it and you know what??? I’m not sorry we did; as much as I ADORE the two principal actors it was just too fucked up for me. Colin Farrell can do shit with his eyebrows that funambulists drool over.

Calling Rex Murphy a ‘harrumphosaurus’ on various social media platforms. I mean I could call it a day just with that one comment, I M JEENYOUS

Emailing my mOm a picture of a parrot perched on a bird identification book and looking with interest at a picture of a conspecific.

This morning I’ve done my Lumosity, cheated once again on Wordle (I should just stop doing it, it’s morally hazardous), mentally congratulated the Ukrainian forces for fending off every single fucking rocket the Russkys sent toward Kyiv yesterday, made coffee and consumed it, made peppermint tea for Jeff, shuffled stuff in the kitchen and started thinking about eggs and toast (again) for brekky. It’s easy and the cast iron pan’s perfectly seasoned now; how I love hearing the snap of eggs in butter on a nice hot stovetop.

I’m thinking of ordering more no-drip undies today. I don’t have much planned, but do I really have to? Do I?

 

 

 

walkies

Jeff frowns, swings closed

Jeff and I went for a little walk in the gorgeous sunshine yesterday afternoon. Jeff said that he should go for a walk and I said, “I’m going to stagger up the stairs, stagger up the hill to the park and stagger back again,” and he thought I was joking; he joined me after watching me put my shoes on. This is the same park at the start of the pandemic; the logo has all washed off that hoodie but the hoodie remains.

I missed the DD celebration yesterday. I am not sad, I don’t feel sad. I am somewhat immobilized though.

Russians out of Kherson. They’re starting to put anti tank cement blocks on their side of the border, which triggered Finnish Twitter to do a most pointed and technical takedown of how insanely useless it all was. (Altho the discussion was in Finnish you can translate tweets on the fly and man the Finns were just shaking their heads, it was wonderful. There were also comments that since it WAS useless, some oligarch musta got paid for it, ten times what it’s all worth. Lovely.)

Supposedly the new washer will come in the downstairs back door around 11 am today. No movement on the tree, not that I’d expect it on Sunday.

 

by aquilegiaformosa on tumblr
guys we’re not being cringe to keep out the twitter users. we’re being cringe to keep out the ALGORITHMS, the CAPITALISTS, the INFLUENCERS. twitter users are welcome as long as they agree this site is UNMARKETABLE

In other words become ungovernable by being someone you can’t make money from…. by being cringe. You know who’s cringe ? autistic people, by virtue of the intensity of their many hobby horses.

I prefer to be ungovernable by having my own website, that nobody ever looks at, but which will be invaluable to my family after I’m dead. That’s how things work. It’s the longitudinal and continuous energy of it, not the content, necessarily.

Worked on yet another fanfic, “Special Deputy on the Run” yesterday.  I’ve poked into the file for Part II but I think I added 36 words.

The amount of shit kicking Zibethicus (my name for Elon, means muskrat) has taken on the internet is amazing. In a few short weeks he’s scorched his fortune, facing a lawsuit for over 50 billion dollars from a former investor choked that he essentially stole shares from Tesla, received the brickbats of the commentariat and been held up as a model of everything not to do in business. Every time he says so much as boo on twitter hundreds of thousands of people tell him he’s a fucking idiot; it’s glorious, but not enough to get a twitter account.

Continuing counts in the US election still trend Biden’s way. They didn’t poll people who never voted LOL__  so many pundits have tender buttskin hanging out on this that another public spirited activity on twitter these days is going through the pundits’s last two weeks of salty prognostications and retweeting it, saying things like THIS AGED LIKE MILK or DO YOU SUPPOSE YOU WILL EVER BE RIGHT ABOUT ANYTHING EXCEPT AS THE SPECTRUM FOR YOUR POLITICS etc etc.

It is GLORIOUS and marvellous in our eyes. The night show hosts are having a field day.

Mitch McConnell, easily one of the most corrupt and disgusting politicians in American history, is not Senate GOP Leader any more, and rumblings are someone is going to grab his 15 year old perch in the Senate. The people who are candidates in replacing him aren’t as likely to be as competent at either whipping votes or stealing anything they can reach.

We are about six episodes into Farscape. Every episode is weirder than the next. Truly bizarre show.

Virtually every pediatric ICU in the country is at double capacity. There are so many sick children that you cannot buy children’s aspirin in this country right now.

Spoke to Tammy on the phone the other day, she called. She confirmed that she’s coming at Christmas and I’m seeing her on Boxing Day.

 

the latest fic

is about a bunch of heading for middle aged guys in a cover band, their rehearsals and romances….

and the first song our two heroes rehearse is “Addicted to Love” which of COURSE is a cover band song given that it was a number 1 hit in 1985.

And it was playing on the Muzak in the store this morning so I started to laugh.

I am easily amused.

The return of the catfather

Buster was waiting on the back stairs for Jeff upon his return, which made for a pleasant moment. Jeff has recovered from the grab bag of indignities that ferry travel subjects him to. Before his arrival I managed to get all the food containers and compostable trash dealt with so the kitchen wasn’t armpit high in trash.

Continue reading The return of the catfather