Side note re: Souls and summons
16/1/26 08:53![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rydra_wongElden Ring also has the summons mechanic.
Which is how the fandom ended up with a sort of folk hero who appears as a naked man with a jar on his head holding two katanas and soloes the game's hardest boss for you:
IGN: We Spoke to 'Let Me Solo Her,' the Elden Ring Community Hero We Need and Deserve
YouTube: Let me solo her. 3rd summon solo Malenia (you don't have to know the game to appreciate that this is someone doing something perfectly)
Which is how the fandom ended up with a sort of folk hero who appears as a naked man with a jar on his head holding two katanas and soloes the game's hardest boss for you:
IGN: We Spoke to 'Let Me Solo Her,' the Elden Ring Community Hero We Need and Deserve
YouTube: Let me solo her. 3rd summon solo Malenia (you don't have to know the game to appreciate that this is someone doing something perfectly)
Tags:
sasha_featherGratitude / Self-reassurance / fighting against negativity bias!
1. The animals seem happy and content. I don't go to the barn every day and sometimes I feel bad about that, but I suspect I'm stressing over nothing, or channeling other stress into this area. The cat and dog make me laugh and are good companions. Again I stress sometimes with Sally the dog, but, it's probably easier to be crabby with her than with my family.
2. The house is reasonably clean, it's warm inside, the hot water is working, etc.
3. I have some friendly and wonderful neighbors.
4. My parents are doing well. My mom is so much better now that she's in the assisted living place rather than the nursing home. Just a huge relief.
5. I got to chat with two good friends today, Jesse and Emily, and it was a real mood lifter.
6. TV I'm enjoying: The Pitt, FallOut, Heated Rivalry.
7. On YouTube I watch the Handsome Podcast almost every single day. This is 3 queer comedians (Tig Notaro, Fortune Feimster, and Mae Martin) chatting and being silly.
8. I've been playing Terra Nil on my laptop and I can't rec it highly enough. I feel like it is meditative in the best way and really helps my brain chill out. The game play is very similar to Sim City, but instead of building a city you get to reclaim wasteland and turn it into wilderness. Very easy to learn, but challenging enough to keep me engaged. Click-only means it's easy to play in bed with my beloved Left-handed mouse, and doesn't bother my right shoulder. Sound design is relaxing, the graphics are pretty. Minimal reading makes it migraine compatible for me, and i can control the motion. It's not timed. Thank you to my friend eruthros for buying this game for me.
1. The animals seem happy and content. I don't go to the barn every day and sometimes I feel bad about that, but I suspect I'm stressing over nothing, or channeling other stress into this area. The cat and dog make me laugh and are good companions. Again I stress sometimes with Sally the dog, but, it's probably easier to be crabby with her than with my family.
2. The house is reasonably clean, it's warm inside, the hot water is working, etc.
3. I have some friendly and wonderful neighbors.
4. My parents are doing well. My mom is so much better now that she's in the assisted living place rather than the nursing home. Just a huge relief.
5. I got to chat with two good friends today, Jesse and Emily, and it was a real mood lifter.
6. TV I'm enjoying: The Pitt, FallOut, Heated Rivalry.
7. On YouTube I watch the Handsome Podcast almost every single day. This is 3 queer comedians (Tig Notaro, Fortune Feimster, and Mae Martin) chatting and being silly.
8. I've been playing Terra Nil on my laptop and I can't rec it highly enough. I feel like it is meditative in the best way and really helps my brain chill out. The game play is very similar to Sim City, but instead of building a city you get to reclaim wasteland and turn it into wilderness. Very easy to learn, but challenging enough to keep me engaged. Click-only means it's easy to play in bed with my beloved Left-handed mouse, and doesn't bother my right shoulder. Sound design is relaxing, the graphics are pretty. Minimal reading makes it migraine compatible for me, and i can control the motion. It's not timed. Thank you to my friend eruthros for buying this game for me.
Black Ships (Graham)
15/1/26 19:24cahnThis book, via selenak, was just very relevant to my interests and I adored it so much! It's one of those books that I didn't really want to end. It's a retelling of the Aeneid from the point of view of the Sybil, with nods towards making it Bronze-Age historically plausible.
Gull begins her life as the daughter of a slave in Pylos, and is apprenticed to the Pythia, the oracle of the Lady of the Dead, becoming Pythia herself when the current Pythia dies. After Troy (here called Wilusa) is sacked for the second time, the black ships of the Wilusan prince Aeneas and the remnants of his people land in Pylos to try to capture back some of their people who had been slaves (including Gull's mother, though by that time she has died). When they depart, Gull/Pythia goes with them as their Sybil on their sea adventures as the People search for a home...
I just really loved so many things about this, starting with that retellings of epic poems are always my jam. I loved Gull/Pythia and the way in which centering her and her experiences centers the lived experience of the women of Wilusa. I loved the way that Aeneas and the Wilusans are portrayed as refugees, because that's what they are. I loved that the gods, while they do appear on the edges, are mysterious beings that may be real and may be wholly belief; and that they aren't toddler-level petty and vindictive like in the Aeneid. I loved how Pythia and Xandros had that sort of fealty-love thing going with Aeneas, uh, not that this is a hardcore thing I love or anything.
Of course I was very curious about how Dido would be portrayed, even without knowing (as Graham says in her afterword) that Carthage didn't... actually... exist during this time period, so that Aeneas & Dido would have to at the very least be revamped. ( Mild thematic spoilers. )
One of the things that's really interesting here is the through-line of how the world is getting worse, piracy is getting worse, civilization is crumbling. Gull/Pythia can see that all of this is getting worse during her journeys with the black ships, and has gotten worse since the previous Pythia's days. And yet, as the reader knows, and as Pythia comes to dimly see, the arc of civilization since that time will curve upwards, and Aeneas will be part of that. (And I find this a somewhat comforting thought in some ways...)
I'm rather impressed that this was Graham's first book, which I had no idea about until I finished and went looking for more books by her! Occasionally there may have been a bit of unevenness, but all in all I thought it was extremely strong. Sooooo now I'm gonna reread Judith Tarr's Lord of the Two Lands to get myself in a proper Alexander mood, and then I shall go on to read Graham's Stealing Fire :D
selenak, was just very relevant to my interests and I adored it so much! It's one of those books that I didn't really want to end. It's a retelling of the Aeneid from the point of view of the Sybil, with nods towards making it Bronze-Age historically plausible. Gull begins her life as the daughter of a slave in Pylos, and is apprenticed to the Pythia, the oracle of the Lady of the Dead, becoming Pythia herself when the current Pythia dies. After Troy (here called Wilusa) is sacked for the second time, the black ships of the Wilusan prince Aeneas and the remnants of his people land in Pylos to try to capture back some of their people who had been slaves (including Gull's mother, though by that time she has died). When they depart, Gull/Pythia goes with them as their Sybil on their sea adventures as the People search for a home...
I just really loved so many things about this, starting with that retellings of epic poems are always my jam. I loved Gull/Pythia and the way in which centering her and her experiences centers the lived experience of the women of Wilusa. I loved the way that Aeneas and the Wilusans are portrayed as refugees, because that's what they are. I loved that the gods, while they do appear on the edges, are mysterious beings that may be real and may be wholly belief; and that they aren't toddler-level petty and vindictive like in the Aeneid. I loved how Pythia and Xandros had that sort of fealty-love thing going with Aeneas, uh, not that this is a hardcore thing I love or anything.
Of course I was very curious about how Dido would be portrayed, even without knowing (as Graham says in her afterword) that Carthage didn't... actually... exist during this time period, so that Aeneas & Dido would have to at the very least be revamped. ( Mild thematic spoilers. )
One of the things that's really interesting here is the through-line of how the world is getting worse, piracy is getting worse, civilization is crumbling. Gull/Pythia can see that all of this is getting worse during her journeys with the black ships, and has gotten worse since the previous Pythia's days. And yet, as the reader knows, and as Pythia comes to dimly see, the arc of civilization since that time will curve upwards, and Aeneas will be part of that. (And I find this a somewhat comforting thought in some ways...)
I'm rather impressed that this was Graham's first book, which I had no idea about until I finished and went looking for more books by her! Occasionally there may have been a bit of unevenness, but all in all I thought it was extremely strong. Sooooo now I'm gonna reread Judith Tarr's Lord of the Two Lands to get myself in a proper Alexander mood, and then I shall go on to read Graham's Stealing Fire :D
I should export a snow icon from LJ
15/1/26 22:09flemmingsSeeing it's going to be one of Those Winters. Did not put my recycling out last night, not least because the new recycling company have been less than efficient. Horror stories abound. Some neighbourhoods were skipped entirely last time, some they only took one side of the street and didn't come back for the other, one guy called to complain and a truck came by to pick up his recycling but not anyone else's on the street. There have been complaints, so our loathèd premier says Well if you downtown lefties don't like it, you handle the recycling yourselves. Conveniently forgetting that we've always handled our recycling and it was Ford 's own idea to bring in a private company. I swear the man acts more like Trump everyday.
But mostly it was because another snowstorm was set to begin last night and begin it did. Hard to tell how much we got with the winds blowing the stuff around, but by day's end the roofs looked like a good eight inches/ 20 cm. My lovely neighbours did my steps and walkway while out snpwblowing the sidewalk, but of course I had to go out and sweep/ shovel the new stuff, twice. It was light powder-- which it should be, given the vortex temperatures-- so sweepable enough, but my back still hates me doing it.
I had a dentist appt scheduled for next Wednesday so I booked my physio for Tuesday. Dentist calls me this morning asking can I come in Tuesday instead, so I said sure. Went to rebook my physio and she has nothing available for the next two weeks, and then she's away for a week. So now I'm on standby and fingers crossed, both that there'll be a cancellation and that I can get up the street to get to it.
And the recycle bins are still sitting in front of everyone's houses. Though-- NB, Mr. Ford, the green bins were emptied promptly this morning by the old garbage company, even with six inches of snow.
But mostly it was because another snowstorm was set to begin last night and begin it did. Hard to tell how much we got with the winds blowing the stuff around, but by day's end the roofs looked like a good eight inches/ 20 cm. My lovely neighbours did my steps and walkway while out snpwblowing the sidewalk, but of course I had to go out and sweep/ shovel the new stuff, twice. It was light powder-- which it should be, given the vortex temperatures-- so sweepable enough, but my back still hates me doing it.
I had a dentist appt scheduled for next Wednesday so I booked my physio for Tuesday. Dentist calls me this morning asking can I come in Tuesday instead, so I said sure. Went to rebook my physio and she has nothing available for the next two weeks, and then she's away for a week. So now I'm on standby and fingers crossed, both that there'll be a cancellation and that I can get up the street to get to it.
And the recycle bins are still sitting in front of everyone's houses. Though-- NB, Mr. Ford, the green bins were emptied promptly this morning by the old garbage company, even with six inches of snow.
Tags:
Thursday Recs
15/1/26 20:17soc_puppet posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
queerly_belovedHow is it only the third Thursday of the year? It feels like it should be the twelfth Thursday at the very least!
Do you have a rec for this week? Just reply to this post with something queer or queer-adjacent (such as, soap made by a queer person that isn't necessarily queer themed) that you'd, well, recommend. Self-recs are welcome, as are recs for fandom-related content!
Or have you tried something that's been recced here? Do you have your own report to share about it? I'd love to hear about it!
Do you have a rec for this week? Just reply to this post with something queer or queer-adjacent (such as, soap made by a queer person that isn't necessarily queer themed) that you'd, well, recommend. Self-recs are welcome, as are recs for fandom-related content!
Or have you tried something that's been recced here? Do you have your own report to share about it? I'd love to hear about it!
Tags:
Pluses and minuses
15/1/26 14:54oursinThis is being one of those weeks when I'm not sure if Mercury is in retrograde or in the opposite of retrograde, if there is an opposite.
In that some things are going unwontedly smoothly and unexpectedly well, and other things not, and plans being thwarted, etc.
E.g., further to the expeditious renewal of my library membership, I was going to boogy on down to the relevant institution to pick up my card and do a spot of light research (I think I may have copies of the books I need to look at but they are not in any of the places where I would anticipate them to be). However, it is chucking down rain in buckets, I think I will leave this until a drier day. Dangers untold and hardships unnumbered is one thing, sitting around with wet shoes in an airconditioned reading room is another.
However, in connection with the research, I remembered that Elderly Antiquarian Bookdealer/Bibliographer had mentioned to me a Person who has come up as Of Interest, and I thought I would see whether they are still around, and apparently they are at the latest report though nearly 90. And not only that, last year, why was I not told, there was published a limited edition from a small press of various of their uncollected writings, including an essay on the very person. This is something I would have bought anyway had I known it existed.
And lo and behold, I ponied up for this hardback, limited edition etc: and got a massively discounted price in their winter sale calloo callay.
On the prehensile tail, I managed to break a soup bowl at lunchtime. Fortunately not containing any soup.
(no subject)
14/1/26 22:39flemmingsSnow and freezing temps. I suppose I should go down to the basement and run a dribble of water to prevent freezing pipes, also to get my underwear before I run out. But hardy!Canuck me thinks it's wimpy for pipes to freeze at a mere -12C/10F and anyway I have underwear till Friday.
Finished a single Dr. Priestley, name and plot forgotten. (OK, Murder at Derivale, about a no-gooder killed by an obscure poison in the back of a truck.) Also vols. 2 to 4 of Siri Paiboun. Am rereading these as a 'get them out of the house' strategy. I know to skip the one set in Cambodia but did wind up reading the other I wanted to pass over. They have a lowering effect, not surprising in a series set in late 1970s Laos. Works as an object lesson, I guess: you think *now* is bad? Look how much worse it can get. But still, I should take a break. If I want mysteries entwined with weird bollocks, I now have the complete Max Carrados, in e-format yet, thanks to incandescens.
Continue with Da Vinci, a few pages at a time because I might actually learn something from it, just, the process is not being fun.
Finished a single Dr. Priestley, name and plot forgotten. (OK, Murder at Derivale, about a no-gooder killed by an obscure poison in the back of a truck.) Also vols. 2 to 4 of Siri Paiboun. Am rereading these as a 'get them out of the house' strategy. I know to skip the one set in Cambodia but did wind up reading the other I wanted to pass over. They have a lowering effect, not surprising in a series set in late 1970s Laos. Works as an object lesson, I guess: you think *now* is bad? Look how much worse it can get. But still, I should take a break. If I want mysteries entwined with weird bollocks, I now have the complete Max Carrados, in e-format yet, thanks to incandescens.
Continue with Da Vinci, a few pages at a time because I might actually learn something from it, just, the process is not being fun.
Tags:
oursinWhat I read
Finished Dream Count - not quite up to her earlier works? all being a bit of the moment (starting in lockdown and so on)? Will see what comes out in discussion.
Mick Herron, Clown Town (Slough House, #9) (2025) possibly getting that series-dip effect a bit? And was I really supposed to be flashing on the Marx Brothers' stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera during one particularly fraught episode?
Matt Lodder, Tattoos: The Untold History of a Modern Art (2024), which was very impressive (and copiously illustrated) and one guesses a bit of a passion project*. Interesting that there is a recurrent theme of tattooing coming out from being a subcultural thing among lowlives: when the story in fact is that they were the ones for whom body art would be being recorded for identification, in muster-rolls or prison records etc, and people of more genteel status would not be In The Record as being inked unless for some unusual particular reason. And that its being/becoming a fashionable thing has cycled around or maybe always been there. Also fascinating the links between tattooers and the development of a subculture/s.
*Yes, we would like to see what he's got portrayed....
I intermitted this with JD Robb, Framed in Death (In Death, #61), which had come down to the (nostalgic) price of old mass-market paperbacks (now defunct). Not one of the stronger entries, yet again, serial killer with very specific modus.
On the go
Eve Babitz, I Used to Be Charming: The Rest of Eve Babitz (2019) collection of her journalism, 1975-1997.
Up next
Well, I don't suppose that the books from local history society - which I have now been informed are available and can be purchased - will arrive very shortly, so dunno.
Tags:
- art,
- books,
- journalism,
- litfic,
- meme,
- reading,
- sff,
- social history,
- tattoos,
- thrillers
radiantfractureA new series of Poetry Unbound has begun, and gorgeously, with Anishinaabe poet Kimberly Blaeser's "my journal records the vestiture of doppelgangers."
“my journal records the vestiture of doppelgangers”
Kimblerly Blaeser
i.
Remember how the loon chick climbs to the mother’s back.
Oh, checkerboard bed and lifted wing—oh, tiny gray passenger
who settles: eyes drooping closed, webbed foot lifted like a flag!
Each day, each week, I write missives—Mayflies' transparent wings
a stained glass—fluttering across the surface of lake. An impermanence.
Imagos who transform: molt made glitter as splayed bodies on water.
I write the red crown, mad V of vulture-wings drying in morning sun.
I record red squirrel swimming (yes! swimming) across a small channel.
ii.
I barely breathe watching the narrow body (a mere slit of motion)
dark and steady like all mysterious—paddle, paddle, and arrive
now climb bedraggled and spent onto the small safety of a floating log.
It rests. We catch our breath. Now it scurries ahead to the other log end.
Here my journal stutters with a squirrel story bigger than words:
Unfathomably, it plunges back into blue chance—into uncharted.
We are never done, it says, with a body tiny enough to know.
The world is large, it says, with a courage I am greedy to learn.
iii.
Praise here all fabulous unwritten. Each shimmer of spent body,
journey from rest to blue next. Who, I ask, is the blissful beaver
devouring each yellow water lily if not our doppelganger?
Continually, I feel paws pulling, mouth filled with flower lust—
what little rooms are words in these seasons of plenty.
* * * * * *
Pádraig Ó Tuama's commentary is, as always, tender, attentive, and personal. He seems very taken by the squirrel (as who would not be?).
It's interesting that he glosses the "imago" in section i as theological, the Imago Dei. I read it first literally as a phase of insect development, and then psychoanalytically as an internalized image of an idealized self based on the Other -- but it strikes me that this second reading probably derives from Ó Tuama's source, Lacan having been raised within Catholicism.
I like Blaeser's use of "doppelganger," how slightly off-kilter and irreducible it is, how it makes the images not just celebratory but metaphysical and eerie - ties back into that reading of "imago."
What do you hear?
§rf§
“my journal records the vestiture of doppelgangers”
Kimblerly Blaeser
i.
Remember how the loon chick climbs to the mother’s back.
Oh, checkerboard bed and lifted wing—oh, tiny gray passenger
who settles: eyes drooping closed, webbed foot lifted like a flag!
Each day, each week, I write missives—Mayflies' transparent wings
a stained glass—fluttering across the surface of lake. An impermanence.
Imagos who transform: molt made glitter as splayed bodies on water.
I write the red crown, mad V of vulture-wings drying in morning sun.
I record red squirrel swimming (yes! swimming) across a small channel.
ii.
I barely breathe watching the narrow body (a mere slit of motion)
dark and steady like all mysterious—paddle, paddle, and arrive
now climb bedraggled and spent onto the small safety of a floating log.
It rests. We catch our breath. Now it scurries ahead to the other log end.
Here my journal stutters with a squirrel story bigger than words:
Unfathomably, it plunges back into blue chance—into uncharted.
We are never done, it says, with a body tiny enough to know.
The world is large, it says, with a courage I am greedy to learn.
iii.
Praise here all fabulous unwritten. Each shimmer of spent body,
journey from rest to blue next. Who, I ask, is the blissful beaver
devouring each yellow water lily if not our doppelganger?
Continually, I feel paws pulling, mouth filled with flower lust—
what little rooms are words in these seasons of plenty.
* * * * * *
Pádraig Ó Tuama's commentary is, as always, tender, attentive, and personal. He seems very taken by the squirrel (as who would not be?).
It's interesting that he glosses the "imago" in section i as theological, the Imago Dei. I read it first literally as a phase of insect development, and then psychoanalytically as an internalized image of an idealized self based on the Other -- but it strikes me that this second reading probably derives from Ó Tuama's source, Lacan having been raised within Catholicism.
I like Blaeser's use of "doppelganger," how slightly off-kilter and irreducible it is, how it makes the images not just celebratory but metaphysical and eerie - ties back into that reading of "imago."
What do you hear?
§rf§
Panel Suggestions Open
13/1/26 18:09boxofdelights posting in wisconIf you have an idea for a Wiscon panel -- even a half-baked idea -- you can propose it here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfvi7TCCIHg82rSpzrUKl8wX2SNMevlGP5HxOOnqa0pkrWu2w/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=106072416256127446722
Seriously, even if your idea is just "We have to talk about Heated Rivalry!" it's okay to propose that. The Panels team will take all the input we get, and work to shape it into a proposed schedule.
If you'd like to talk your idea over before you suggest it, you can use the comments to this post, or start a new post in this group, or start a new post in your own space and maybe also point your readers here?
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfvi7TCCIHg82rSpzrUKl8wX2SNMevlGP5HxOOnqa0pkrWu2w/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=106072416256127446722
Seriously, even if your idea is just "We have to talk about Heated Rivalry!" it's okay to propose that. The Panels team will take all the input we get, and work to shape it into a proposed schedule.
If you'd like to talk your idea over before you suggest it, you can use the comments to this post, or start a new post in this group, or start a new post in your own space and maybe also point your readers here?
(no subject)
13/1/26 19:52flemmingsSomething I don't quite get in Murderbot is the paranoia the general population seems to have about SecUnits going rogue. I say seems because it's possible Murderbot itself is just paranoid. But the theme does figure in its media so I suppose people really have this fear. And why? Here you have what's essentially a security system that's supposed to keep you alive as its main directive. For all intents and purposes, from most people's pov, it's just a superior robot. Getting wound up about what it might do is equivalent to fretting that Siri or Alexa will try to murder you using your smart house. Which is not why I don't have a smart house, or a Siri or an Alexa, but is still ridiculous.
Couldn't sleep last night in spite of exercise in the day. I refrained from checking my clock but will guess it was well after 3 when I got off and was awake at 9:15. Did not go back to sleep and paid for it with chronic semi-headache all day. Or could be the pressure changes from approaching fronts though the real change doesn't happen till tomorrow evening when temperatures plunge yet again, and the current rain turns to snow. House down the street had a crate of National Geographics out front, plus a box of mugs and glasses. I took a crystal wineglass and left the highball glasses, even though my body currently hates wine and I broke my one martini glass. I don't need incentives to drink. But I do hope the guys took those magazines back in, because periodically someone on the neighbourhood FBs will ask if anyone has magazines for school projects.
Couldn't sleep last night in spite of exercise in the day. I refrained from checking my clock but will guess it was well after 3 when I got off and was awake at 9:15. Did not go back to sleep and paid for it with chronic semi-headache all day. Or could be the pressure changes from approaching fronts though the real change doesn't happen till tomorrow evening when temperatures plunge yet again, and the current rain turns to snow. House down the street had a crate of National Geographics out front, plus a box of mugs and glasses. I took a crystal wineglass and left the highball glasses, even though my body currently hates wine and I broke my one martini glass. I don't need incentives to drink. But I do hope the guys took those magazines back in, because periodically someone on the neighbourhood FBs will ask if anyone has magazines for school projects.
Sometimes things actually work
13/1/26 16:39oursinAt least, I found a whole foods supplier which had - among other things like wheatbran which looked like it would not be like the sawdusty stuff Ocado have lately been purveying under that name - things like Medium Oatmeal! Wheatgerm! and POMEGRANATE VINEGAR!!! which I have been complaining everywhere were No Can Haz. Also kasha (I did have kasha but on recently examining the package found that its BBF was way back last summer).
And conveyed to me with remarkable expedition even if I didn't pony up for the expedite delivery option.
Slight whinge at DPD for just leaving it on the step and not even ringing the bell.
Also, I discovered that my library card for Former Workplace expired several years ago. On emailing about renewal (as I have a need to Go In and Consult Things) got a next day response saying they can renew if I send in scan of appropriate ID and address verification, and pick up card when I go in.
This somewhat makes up for:
a) the two reviews I did last year which still sit in limbo with the relevant editors.
b) the two feelers put out for books to review, ditto, such that I am hesitant to put out another for a different book to a different journal in case I end up yet again with stack of books for review.
c) local history society which I contacted last year apropos 2 volumes of its proceedings which are Relevant to My Interests and which after some initially encouraging response has gone silent.
Am still miffed about either inadvertently deleting or not being sent Zoom link for the last Dance to the Music of Time discussion.
and am baffled by the ongoing situation 'The server is taking too long to respond' of the Mastodon instance I frequent, which has now pertained for nearly 5 days.
Tags:
(no subject)
12/1/26 18:14flemmingsIn January one must play Weather Roulette, with the usual disappointment when weather doesn't do what the forecast says it will, and equally when it does. Thought of getting a massage today but probs said snow so didn't book. There was no snow and sidewalks were still dry, but forecast said rain and snow all week, so I went up to Loblaws for everything I forgot to get on the weekend. And still forgot the Voltaren my doctor recommends for cysts because I'm running short. I must put everything into my phone or I will never remember what I need.
Because my downstairs stays cold unless the thermostat is bumped up to 21C/ 70F and because I am of a saving disposition when it comes to gas usage, I wear a jacket or a shawl when couch potatoing. But my indoor jacket doesn't zip anymore and the shawl keeps shifting about. So I pulled out a high end Polo hoodie my bro gave me yonks ago. I'm pretty sure it's the real deal because it has various features I've never encountered elsewhere, like velcro tabs where not needed. It's bright red and therefore goes with nothing else in my rose-pink and purple wardrobe, and of course at an early stage I got bleach on the sleeve. Consequently I don't wear it outside. But it works marvellously indoors and, as I discovered, under my winter coat when outside. Blow away, winds. I am now triple layered, and I have a hood that I'm not afraid to use. Bonus is that I can wear it with the red scarf that A. gave me years back, because I can't wear any of my neck warmers and cowls with it either. My other hoodies are ragbag ancient and only used as nightwear. I was debating getting a respectable hoodie for spring and autumn wear, but not buying cheap fashion from the dollar store is doubtless a virtue.
Because my downstairs stays cold unless the thermostat is bumped up to 21C/ 70F and because I am of a saving disposition when it comes to gas usage, I wear a jacket or a shawl when couch potatoing. But my indoor jacket doesn't zip anymore and the shawl keeps shifting about. So I pulled out a high end Polo hoodie my bro gave me yonks ago. I'm pretty sure it's the real deal because it has various features I've never encountered elsewhere, like velcro tabs where not needed. It's bright red and therefore goes with nothing else in my rose-pink and purple wardrobe, and of course at an early stage I got bleach on the sleeve. Consequently I don't wear it outside. But it works marvellously indoors and, as I discovered, under my winter coat when outside. Blow away, winds. I am now triple layered, and I have a hood that I'm not afraid to use. Bonus is that I can wear it with the red scarf that A. gave me years back, because I can't wear any of my neck warmers and cowls with it either. My other hoodies are ragbag ancient and only used as nightwear. I was debating getting a respectable hoodie for spring and autumn wear, but not buying cheap fashion from the dollar store is doubtless a virtue.
Tags:
oursinThat piece about people having AI spouses is online: As synthetic personas become an increasingly normal part of life, meet the people falling for their chatbot lovers.
NB we note that 'Lamar' says that the breaking point with his actual, RL, girlfriend was when he found her doing the horizontal tango with his best friend, but it's clear that there were Problems already there, about having to relate to another human bean who was not always brightly sunshiny positively reinforcing him....
what would he tell his kids? “I’d tell them that humans aren’t really people who can be trusted …
I'm not entirely persuaded that individuals haven't made up imaginary companions (even way on into adulthood) before - I seem to remember some, was it in Fandomwank back in the day, accounts of people being married on the astral plane to fictional characters?
This is not entirely 'wow, startling news' to Ye Hystorianne of Sexxe: The Phenomenon of ‘Bud Sex’ Between Straight Rural Men.
I am not going to see if I actually have a copy of the work on my shelves, or if I perused it in a library somewhere, but didn't that notorious work of 'participant observation' sociology, Tearoom Trade argue that many of his subjects were not defining themselves as 'homosexual'.
I also invoke, even further back, Helen Smith's Masculinity, Class and Same-Sex Desire in Industrial England, 1895-1957 about men 'messing about' with other men in Yorkshire industrial cities.
And there is a reason people working on the epidemiology and prevention of STIs use the acronym 'MSM' - men who have sex with men - for the significant population at risk who do not identify as gay.
I had, I must admit, a very plus ca change moment when I idly picked up Katharine Whitehorn's Roundabout (1962), and found the piece she wrote on marriage bureaux. In which she mentioned that the two bureaux she interviewed tried to get their subscribers not to be too ultra-specific in their demands - that if they met potential partners in real life they would be more flexible.
Was also amused by the statement that 'Men over thirty are always very anxious to persuade me that they could have all they women they liked, if they bothered'.
Tags:
larryhammerFor Poetry Monday:
Blue Winter, Robert Francis
Winter uses all the blues there are.
One shade of blue for water, one for ice,
Another blue for shadows over snow.
The clear or cloudy sky uses blue twice—
Both different blues. And hills row after row
Are colored blue according to how far.
You know the bluejay’s double-blue device
Shows best when there are no green leaves to show.
And Sirius is a winterbluegreen star.
Francis (1901-1987) was a New Englander who as a young poet had a very Frost-ian voice, though he later developed his own.
---L.
Subject quote from Once in a Lifetime, Talking Heads.
Blue Winter, Robert Francis
Winter uses all the blues there are.
One shade of blue for water, one for ice,
Another blue for shadows over snow.
The clear or cloudy sky uses blue twice—
Both different blues. And hills row after row
Are colored blue according to how far.
You know the bluejay’s double-blue device
Shows best when there are no green leaves to show.
And Sirius is a winterbluegreen star.
Francis (1901-1987) was a New Englander who as a young poet had a very Frost-ian voice, though he later developed his own.
---L.
Subject quote from Once in a Lifetime, Talking Heads.
(no subject)
11/1/26 19:55flemmingsA bright blowy day and sidewalks still dry, so off I went in shoes to have eggs benedict. Temps were just at freezing: I should have checked the wind chill, because it was -11C/ 12F. Needed mitts over my gloves, which I did not have. Anyway, eggs were reasonable, though no one ever gets them the way I like ie soft but not runny inside. Kind people helped the walker in and out of Pauper's and I headed back west. And almost immediately turned around in the opposite direction because wind gusts and Mirvish Village high rises make walking both unpleasant and nearly impossible. Walked to the next stoplight and then through Annex streets and laneways to home. 5000 steps is the best I can do these days, shoes or not, because cysts and neuromas are just not fun at all.
And Bateman's Bicycles have closed their Bathurst shop and moved up to Eglinton so if I ever buy a city bike it will not be from them.
And Bateman's Bicycles have closed their Bathurst shop and moved up to Eglinton so if I ever buy a city bike it will not be from them.