Jaded with walruses
14/5/26 14:41![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oursinHonestly, have we become entirely blase about walruses frolicking in British territorial waters? Because this was the first I had heard about Magnus, who has been making quite the tour of Scotland for the past month before wafting off to Noroway o'er the faem: Magnus the wandering walrus leaves Scotland for Norway.
Goo-goo-ja-{YAWN}.
***
However, much more excitement over Choughs reappear at Tintagel Castle in Cornwall after decades of absence:
Choughs are considered Cornwall’s “national bird” and feature in its coat of arms but vanished as a resident from the far south-west of the UK in the early 1970s, largely because of the decline of their grazed clifftop habitat.
Their disappearance was keenly felt across Cornwall but particularly, perhaps, in and around Tintagel because of the bird’s connections to the legend of King Arthur.
Is this A Sign for Cornish Nationalism? Or does it precurse The Return of Arthur?
***
The bridge itself is a floating patch of nature reserve; its contents were excavated and transplanted from the heathland on either side. Heather, the tough wiry shrub that defines heathland, is already springing up in purples and yellows above the A3’s roar, supporting the area’s insects and reptiles.
“They can feed here, get cover, they can bask, they can breed,” says Herd. Ground-nesting birds, such as nightjars, woodlarks and Dartford warblers, will also benefit from the newly connected landscape.
***
But alas, Camden Highline, London’s answer to New York park, is scrapped. Though it's not entirely clear whether the completed stretch will remain?
One stretch of the Highline has been completed as part of the Coal Drops Yard development, involving a bridge across the Regent’s canal from the Camley Street nature reserve that transforms into a landscaped walkway popular with office workers and tourists.
even if the full Camden Town to King's Cross plan is defunct?
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(no subject)
13/5/26 21:35flemmingsGot to the last story in 100 Demons 30-whatever, which involves a funeral and a buncha words/ kanji that I wot not of. The Wordtank has the kanji but not the vocab. So I hauled out my gigantic Hadamitzky and Spahn kanji dictionary which had the vocab-- mostly food names as it happens-- but OMG how did we ever manage with paper dictionaries? Granted that my arms and hands are weaker than in my 40s, still-- how cumbersome, how time-consuming, what an unmitigated pain it is, flipping through those pages. And I can clearly remember me, newly in Tokyo, painstakingly attempting to read about Ōoka Echizen and his period vocabulary with the help of H&S. Wordtanks are better and online dictionaries may be best, but of course the upstairs tablet won't do Japanese input and the phone's input is nearly as aggravating as H&S.
This volume ends on a cliffhanger oh woe. Also in the atogaki she points out that she's been drawing this manga for 30 years so Ritsu, that fifth year university student, is now 46.
Otherwise I finished Emilie and the Hollow World and am now on Platform Decay and Amal El-Mohtar's TheRiver Has Roots, which isn't quite what I want just now, but must read because other people are waiting for it. What I want is more 100 Demons but that isn't haveable, sorry.
This volume ends on a cliffhanger oh woe. Also in the atogaki she points out that she's been drawing this manga for 30 years so Ritsu, that fifth year university student, is now 46.
Otherwise I finished Emilie and the Hollow World and am now on Platform Decay and Amal El-Mohtar's TheRiver Has Roots, which isn't quite what I want just now, but must read because other people are waiting for it. What I want is more 100 Demons but that isn't haveable, sorry.
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music: Walking Song by McGarrigle Sisters
13/5/26 18:28jesse_the_kThis is our song for me and MyGuy. When we met in 1977, we both lived right on Lake Mendota. We walked everywhere — fortunately, Madison is a lovely city for strolling.
Listen on YouTube or ( stream it here )
The cool thing is we actually did talk about all the things in these lyrics
Wouldn’t it be nice to walk together
Baring our souls while wearing out the leather
We could talk shop, harmonize a song
Wouldn’t it be nice to walk along
I’ll show you houses of architectural renown
Some are still standing, some have fallen down
Farm houses buried under Canada’s snow
Spanish villas on the Boulevards of Mexico
And I’ll learn to tell the ash from the oak
And if you don’t know I won’t make no joke
We’ll climb to the top to view the world from above
Or carve our initials in the trunk like teenagers in love
And when we get hungry we’ll stop to eat
Gotta think of our stomachs and rest our feet
If we get thirsty we’ll have a drink or two
In a mountain top bar with a mountain top view
And when we get tired we’ll stop to rest
And if you still want to talk you can bare your breast
If it’s Winter and cold we’ll take a rooming-house room
If it’s Summer and warm we’ll sleep under the moon
And we’ll talk about the sports we played
‘Bout the time you got busted or the time I got laid
We’ll talk blood and how we were bred
Talk about the folks both living and dead
This song like this walk I find hard to end
Be my lover or be my friend
In sneakers or boots or regulation shoes
Walking beside you I’ll never get the walking blues.
https://www.mcgarrigles.com/music/dancer-with-bruised-knees/walking-song
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Wednesday got caught in a pelting hailstorm
13/5/26 19:54oursinWhat I read
Finished Platform Decay
Read Jonathan Coe, Bournville (2022), which was a Kobo deal, and I have been vaguely interested in reading something by him since coming across his really rather good intro to that archetypal Sad Girl Novel, Dusty Answer. However, was rather meh and tempted at points to give up on this family saga from VE Day to Covid told as vignettes at various Memorable Dates in History of C20th Britain.
There was a certain amount of picking things up and reading a bit and thinking, no, at least, not now, if ever.
Re-read Sally Smith, A Case of Life and Limb (The Trials of Gabriel Ward, #2) (2025), as there is another one forthcoming shortly.
Kobo deals turned up a new Simon R Green, For Better or Murder (Holy Terrors Mystery #4), alas, this was pretty much phoning it in.
Muriel Spark, The Hothouse by the East River (1973), which is a very very weird novella, absurdist, grotesque, is it about something that happened when they were working for Secret Organisation with German POWs in War and is that why the unheimlich frisson (turns out, no).
After that I just wanted the perhaps too simple and predictable pleasures of Robert B Parker, Silent Night (Spenser #41.5) (2013, unfinished at his death, completed by his agent Helen Brann).
On the go
Persuasion, which I began somewhat behindhand of the daily chapter group read on bluesky.
Up next
Well, there's that new Literary Review, but apart from that.
Am being irked by certain writers whose new ebooks are pretty 2x or more what they used to be. (I might have gone for this I suppose had I not been a bit underwhelmed by some recent offerings.)
(no subject)
12/5/26 18:06flemmingsWhen I woke up this morning my air purifier was making an appalling racket. Except it wasn't the air purifier but the bar fridge, whose motor was in its dying throes one more time. But last time it did this there was no death rattle, so I think now it must truly be foutu. The rattle stopped when I turned it off and then back on, but the fridge definitely wasn't cooling anything. So now I must get my breakfast from downstairs again. I try to tell myself that I did this on an unoperated knee five years ago, but I was also a good twenty pounds lighter five years ago. Oh well. Shall be doing All The Exercises before breakfast again and hope that works.
Bar fridges don't cost that much but hiring people to carry the old one down and the new one up does. Next door's owner did it last time but I haven't seen him in several years and don't quite feel like relying on the kindness of strangers. I went off and booked me a massage to help with the owies instead.
Then took my shoes over to the repair place. He says he can mend the fraying back heel as well so I said OK, then it turns out it costs $80 just for that and 120 for the resoling. With tax that comes to the cost of a new pair. I hesitated for a second but ultimately decided that no, I didn't want to give more money to the Trump-supporting founder of New Balance-- mend the damned things and hope they last another ten years. In the meantime I'm wearing my older pair of boat shoes, which are slightly too narrow even if they're boats, but feel like they actually give me more stability when standing on uneven ground. If true, I might even get some of those vines out of the hedge, which I can't reach from SND's side.
Bar fridges don't cost that much but hiring people to carry the old one down and the new one up does. Next door's owner did it last time but I haven't seen him in several years and don't quite feel like relying on the kindness of strangers. I went off and booked me a massage to help with the owies instead.
Then took my shoes over to the repair place. He says he can mend the fraying back heel as well so I said OK, then it turns out it costs $80 just for that and 120 for the resoling. With tax that comes to the cost of a new pair. I hesitated for a second but ultimately decided that no, I didn't want to give more money to the Trump-supporting founder of New Balance-- mend the damned things and hope they last another ten years. In the meantime I'm wearing my older pair of boat shoes, which are slightly too narrow even if they're boats, but feel like they actually give me more stability when standing on uneven ground. If true, I might even get some of those vines out of the hedge, which I can't reach from SND's side.
Tags:
/stares into the camera like i'm on the office
12/5/26 15:22waterswordPolyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS), previously named polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), affects one in eight women. However, the term PCOS is inaccurate, implying pathological ovarian cysts, obscuring diverse endocrine and metabolic features, and contributing to delayed diagnosis, fragmented care, and stigma, while curtailing research and policy framing. Building on an international mandate for change, we outline an unprecedented, rigorous, multistep global consensus process for the name change. Funding and governance were established with engagement of 56 leading academic, clinical, and patient organisations. Using iterative global surveys (with responses from 14 360 people with PCOS and multidisciplinary health professionals from all world regions), modified Delphi methods, nominal group technique workshops, and marketing and implementation analyses, we identified principles prioritising scientific accuracy, clarity, stigma avoidance, cultural appropriateness, and implementation feasibility. An accurate new name was prioritised over retaining the PCOS acronym or a generic name. Implementation approaches prioritised evolution rather than transformation. Preferred terms were polyendocrine, metabolic, and ovarian, reflecting the condition's multisystem pathophysiology, and polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome was the consensus new name. Accuracy was improved by omitting cysts and by capturing endocrine, metabolic, and ovarian dysfunction. A co-designed global implementation strategy, including a transition period, education, and alignment with health systems and disease classification, is under way.
Teede, H. J., Khomami, M. B., Morman, R., Laven, J. S. E., Joham, A. E., Costello, M. F., … Piltonen, T. (n.d.). Polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, the new name for polycystic ovary syndrome: a multistep global consensus process. The Lancet. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(26)00717-8
oursin(Mix and shake that metaphor and pour it over ice and serve it up with a wee paper umbrella!)
Somebody today on Another Site was mourning the Old Days on LJ which made me think of:
All the various Old Days in my life on and offline which were by their nature transient -
- but that transient didn't mean that they didn't have lasting effects/influence.
(I will spare dr rdrz accounts of various short-lived initiatives I encountered among the archives and in the course of Mi Researchez which nonetheless echoed down the years.)
Also that even had things not fallen out the way things did with LJ (hiss, boo, etc) by now it would almost certainly not be the same experience as it was in the 00s - people would have come, people would have gone, our interests and energies would have changed....
So we would probably be nostalgically regetting the glory days before [whenever].
Hugo novellas, part 1 (of presumably 2)
12/5/26 09:01cahnHi happy somewhat delayed Hugo season!
I have been flirting with the novels but I guess my attention span these days is novella-sized, so that's all I've managed to get through so far.
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom) - On a starship where the inhabitants manage the long travel by recording their minds and swapping out bodies, a detective wakes up in another body and must investigate a murder, not just of a body but also of minds... I liked it! It wasn't super deep, and I was a bit side-eying the nod towards a potential ship at the end given what we know, but there was a lot of fun worldbuilding and yarn (knitting is both a character point and a minor plot point). I loved Ruthie and John, my faves.
The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK) - A fairy tale where Celia, the youngest of the Grand Duke Veris' three children, deals with the aftermath of the summer war with the magical faerie-like summerlings and the fallout in her own family while navigating her own heritage.
I really really liked this one, actually. I just think Novik matches up very well with what I want, thematically, and of course her writing is great. There was one character I was like, well, this is obviously the most interesting character, and was pleased that the author was not uninterested.
What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher (Nightfire; Titan UK) - I always like Kingfisher's writing but I think I can get a tiny bit tired of it? So I read the first of these, What Moves the Dead, a couple of years ago and enjoyed it a lot but then didn't feel like I needed to read any more in this series. Then I read this one and I enjoyed it but felt like I'd already kind of read it? Alex Easton, the narrator of these books, is a sworn soldier (with ka/kan pronouns) in the fictional country of Gallacia. Ka helps investigate odd horror-ish events... so, yeah, that was the plot of both of them. This one is set in the US. I guess the difference is that
I have been flirting with the novels but I guess my attention span these days is novella-sized, so that's all I've managed to get through so far.
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom) - On a starship where the inhabitants manage the long travel by recording their minds and swapping out bodies, a detective wakes up in another body and must investigate a murder, not just of a body but also of minds... I liked it! It wasn't super deep, and I was a bit side-eying the nod towards a potential ship at the end given what we know, but there was a lot of fun worldbuilding and yarn (knitting is both a character point and a minor plot point). I loved Ruthie and John, my faves.
The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK) - A fairy tale where Celia, the youngest of the Grand Duke Veris' three children, deals with the aftermath of the summer war with the magical faerie-like summerlings and the fallout in her own family while navigating her own heritage.
I really really liked this one, actually. I just think Novik matches up very well with what I want, thematically, and of course her writing is great. There was one character I was like, well, this is obviously the most interesting character, and was pleased that the author was not uninterested.
Spoilers!
I am of course talking about Veris here. From Argent's POV he seems like a run-of-the-mill homophobe, but even though Celia kind of thinks so too, she also sees that he actually doesn't particularly care about the gay thing, he just cares very very much about having to be very very careful as he has had to be his whole life (in other ways). So I really liked that characterization which I thought was quite interesting (much more interesting than if he had just been a regular homophobe), and I loved that he came back at the end and was able to redeem himself a bit. And then of course the recurring theme of "let's save everyone, not just the people we love," which I always adore, and also I absolutely positively adored how the whole family figured themselves out and came together. I am SUCH a sucker for that. I really loved how Novik had such empathy for each one of them, and understood that sometimes people can be jerks (and in fact each of them behaves badly at one point or another) but it doesn't mean that's the entirety of their character.What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher (Nightfire; Titan UK) - I always like Kingfisher's writing but I think I can get a tiny bit tired of it? So I read the first of these, What Moves the Dead, a couple of years ago and enjoyed it a lot but then didn't feel like I needed to read any more in this series. Then I read this one and I enjoyed it but felt like I'd already kind of read it? Alex Easton, the narrator of these books, is a sworn soldier (with ka/kan pronouns) in the fictional country of Gallacia. Ka helps investigate odd horror-ish events... so, yeah, that was the plot of both of them. This one is set in the US. I guess the difference is that
Spoilers for both books
in the first book they destroyed the fungus, and in this book, they saved the organism, yay! In both books it was very clear that Kingfisher's sympathy was with the non-human character, so it was nice for it to end well for it here.Tags:
rydra_wongIn my defence, most of 2026 so far has been spent dealing with incapacitating levels of fatigue, which might finally be getting better (and that needs to be a separate post).
But the major problem is that I wanted to re-read Cascade, the first book in the trilogy, before starting Blight.
And while I loved Cascade -- here is my rave from way back when -- it produces an overwhelming sense of dread in me, even more than it did so on first read, because it captures, with remarkable precision and effectiveness, the sense of living in a liberal democracy that is teetering on the edge of ceasing to be one, and the stomach-dropping sensation when things begin moving unspeakably fast.
It's a very good book, but -- you see the problem.
Anyway, in recent weeks I finally got myself to re-read Cascade, and then I tore through Blight in a few days. Weirdly, I found it a much less difficult read because it's (both politically and environmentally) a post-apocalyptic novel, in which some kind of fightback is beginning.
Anyway it's fucking fantastic, without any of the common middle-book-of-a-trilogy doldrums. A really spectacular and unique mixture of wild magic, cosmic horror, and organizing for revolution, the last written with gritty specificity. The author is dead and all that, I don't know what's firsthand knowledge and what's research, but this is a book that (for example) writes with deep credibility about what it feels like to be in a crowd being tear-gassed.
As well as being a very good book, it also feels it's maybe a psychologically useful book to read right now.
I would like to do a proper write-up but I still have no idea what my energy's going to be doing day to day, so in the meantime here's a hype post, and if you want a review here'sjames_davis_nicoll's:
https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/land-of-hope
ETA: Also it's on the Aurora Award shortlist for Best Novel:
https://www.csffa.ca/awards-information/current-ballot/
Ob!disclaimer that the author is an internet acquaintance, but I do in fact love the book.
But the major problem is that I wanted to re-read Cascade, the first book in the trilogy, before starting Blight.
And while I loved Cascade -- here is my rave from way back when -- it produces an overwhelming sense of dread in me, even more than it did so on first read, because it captures, with remarkable precision and effectiveness, the sense of living in a liberal democracy that is teetering on the edge of ceasing to be one, and the stomach-dropping sensation when things begin moving unspeakably fast.
It's a very good book, but -- you see the problem.
Anyway, in recent weeks I finally got myself to re-read Cascade, and then I tore through Blight in a few days. Weirdly, I found it a much less difficult read because it's (both politically and environmentally) a post-apocalyptic novel, in which some kind of fightback is beginning.
Anyway it's fucking fantastic, without any of the common middle-book-of-a-trilogy doldrums. A really spectacular and unique mixture of wild magic, cosmic horror, and organizing for revolution, the last written with gritty specificity. The author is dead and all that, I don't know what's firsthand knowledge and what's research, but this is a book that (for example) writes with deep credibility about what it feels like to be in a crowd being tear-gassed.
As well as being a very good book, it also feels it's maybe a psychologically useful book to read right now.
I would like to do a proper write-up but I still have no idea what my energy's going to be doing day to day, so in the meantime here's a hype post, and if you want a review here's
james_davis_nicoll's:https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/land-of-hope
ETA: Also it's on the Aurora Award shortlist for Best Novel:
https://www.csffa.ca/awards-information/current-ballot/
Ob!disclaimer that the author is an internet acquaintance, but I do in fact love the book.
Tags:
Hadestown (2nd US tour)
11/5/26 21:06cahnI have been really bad this year at getting out to see things, but I saw a couple of things! I'll talk about the first one here: hamsterwoman inspired me and I got to see Hadestown on tour! (The same cast she saw, even, although I didn't realize this until afterwards.) It was only here for two weeknights, clearly as a pit stop in between the two major metropolitan areas we live between. The theater was packed. The only empty spots I saw in the entire house were, hilariously, right in front of us (and must have been people who didn't show up for some reason, as the seats were definitely sold). I didn't buy tickets early enough and they were sold out when I first looked, but fortunately some opened up day of -- I wouldn't normally buy orchestra section for a show I didn't already know I'd love, but that's what I get for not planning ahead. But it turns out I did love it enough that I enjoyed the orchestra section tickets immensely, so it all turned out well.
The singers were all just extremely, extremely good, both as singers and as dancers (well, I guess Hades and Persephone didn't really dance a ton, but Eurydice in particular had a lot of parts where she had to combine with the ensemble), and really imprinted on me. To the extent where I went back and listened to the Broadway recording and was like "okay, sure, yeah, these are the same songs, but that's not MY cast." They were just really really almost scarily professional -- I really can't believe the Broadway cast is any better -- it was hard to believe that we were getting this kind of quality of cast. SO good.
Nickolaus Colón as Hades was THE standout performance of the night in a cast full of excellence. Seriously it was worth seeing it for him alone. The Persephone, Namisa Mdlalose Bizana, was also an excellent singer whose strength matched Colón's (a weak dancer, but as I said before she didn't have to do that much of it). I thought it was a great choice to have the really strong singers be the "gods" -- it really added something to it.
Eurydice (...I think we must have seen an understudy? The site says Hawa Kamara but I'm pretty sure that's not who we saw) and Orpheus (Jose Contreras) were also good but their voices were more sort of good in the way I expected them to be good, kind of. Orpheus, unfortunately, had the flaw (at least that night) that sometimes his top notes (he has a lot of falsetto notes, which is a bit weird?) were flat, and those were inevitably the notes where the song was supposed to be borderline-magic, and it unfortunately always threw me out of those bits because I'd be like "...but he's flat, augh!" The Fates (Gia Keddy, Miriam Navarrete, Jayna Wescoatt) were quite excellent -- both as singers and as an ensemble of three (as they basically did all their parts together, as one would expect). The Hermes (Rudy Foster) was also excellent. So were the ensemble. They were just all super super good.
The orchestra accompaniment was seated on-stage (it was a rather crowded stage at times) and I need to mention the pianist and the trombonist who both sometimes seemed to be participating in the action -- especially the trombonist, who occasionally got up from his seat and played his trombone mingling with the other actors, which was amazing. (I told D at intermission, "No one told me that the trombonist was the hero of this show!") I was especially watching him because now I have a kiddo who plays trombone, and he was using at least a couple of different mutes to make his trombone make a variety of sounds (A.'s trombone teacher showed us some of these at one point, for fun), and also sometimes he doubled as the xylophone player, which I thought was interesting!
I tend to operate one of two different ways with musicals. Either I go in knowing nothing or I go in having basically memorized the soundtrack. This was the former: I went in not knowing anything except that it was an AU retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice, and I'd picked up from osmosis there were trains, and I'd listened to a few of the songs beforehand to make sure I liked them well enough. The pros are that I get to be continuously surprised by the real thing, and the cons are that there are lots of spots where I just don't catch the words, because I have fairly poor speech processing. This was one where I think it was a good choice to go in knowing nothing, because there are so many parts where the music and the visuals work together so well that I think the effect would have been blunted if I'd known the music really well going in. (Hamilton is one where I think it was better to know the soundtrack ahead of time, as I don't think I'd have been able to make out the vast majority of the words otherwise.)
( Vague spoilers if you're like me and have never watched it before )
I think this is a show that I admire more than that I'm fannish about. It's kind of interesting -- it's almost like it's so polished that there aren't any weird cracks or rough edges to hang a fannish hat on, so to speak. So I didn't feel the desire to see it again the next day (not that I would have, but I've absolutely been to theater events where I was like "okay, I would be very strongly tempted go to see this again tomorrow if I could spare the time") but if the tour comes back next year I'd almost definitely go if Colón were still in it, and even if not I'd strongly consider going.
hamsterwoman inspired me and I got to see Hadestown on tour! (The same cast she saw, even, although I didn't realize this until afterwards.) It was only here for two weeknights, clearly as a pit stop in between the two major metropolitan areas we live between. The theater was packed. The only empty spots I saw in the entire house were, hilariously, right in front of us (and must have been people who didn't show up for some reason, as the seats were definitely sold). I didn't buy tickets early enough and they were sold out when I first looked, but fortunately some opened up day of -- I wouldn't normally buy orchestra section for a show I didn't already know I'd love, but that's what I get for not planning ahead. But it turns out I did love it enough that I enjoyed the orchestra section tickets immensely, so it all turned out well.The singers were all just extremely, extremely good, both as singers and as dancers (well, I guess Hades and Persephone didn't really dance a ton, but Eurydice in particular had a lot of parts where she had to combine with the ensemble), and really imprinted on me. To the extent where I went back and listened to the Broadway recording and was like "okay, sure, yeah, these are the same songs, but that's not MY cast." They were just really really almost scarily professional -- I really can't believe the Broadway cast is any better -- it was hard to believe that we were getting this kind of quality of cast. SO good.
Nickolaus Colón as Hades was THE standout performance of the night in a cast full of excellence. Seriously it was worth seeing it for him alone. The Persephone, Namisa Mdlalose Bizana, was also an excellent singer whose strength matched Colón's (a weak dancer, but as I said before she didn't have to do that much of it). I thought it was a great choice to have the really strong singers be the "gods" -- it really added something to it.
Eurydice (...I think we must have seen an understudy? The site says Hawa Kamara but I'm pretty sure that's not who we saw) and Orpheus (Jose Contreras) were also good but their voices were more sort of good in the way I expected them to be good, kind of. Orpheus, unfortunately, had the flaw (at least that night) that sometimes his top notes (he has a lot of falsetto notes, which is a bit weird?) were flat, and those were inevitably the notes where the song was supposed to be borderline-magic, and it unfortunately always threw me out of those bits because I'd be like "...but he's flat, augh!" The Fates (Gia Keddy, Miriam Navarrete, Jayna Wescoatt) were quite excellent -- both as singers and as an ensemble of three (as they basically did all their parts together, as one would expect). The Hermes (Rudy Foster) was also excellent. So were the ensemble. They were just all super super good.
The orchestra accompaniment was seated on-stage (it was a rather crowded stage at times) and I need to mention the pianist and the trombonist who both sometimes seemed to be participating in the action -- especially the trombonist, who occasionally got up from his seat and played his trombone mingling with the other actors, which was amazing. (I told D at intermission, "No one told me that the trombonist was the hero of this show!") I was especially watching him because now I have a kiddo who plays trombone, and he was using at least a couple of different mutes to make his trombone make a variety of sounds (A.'s trombone teacher showed us some of these at one point, for fun), and also sometimes he doubled as the xylophone player, which I thought was interesting!
I tend to operate one of two different ways with musicals. Either I go in knowing nothing or I go in having basically memorized the soundtrack. This was the former: I went in not knowing anything except that it was an AU retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice, and I'd picked up from osmosis there were trains, and I'd listened to a few of the songs beforehand to make sure I liked them well enough. The pros are that I get to be continuously surprised by the real thing, and the cons are that there are lots of spots where I just don't catch the words, because I have fairly poor speech processing. This was one where I think it was a good choice to go in knowing nothing, because there are so many parts where the music and the visuals work together so well that I think the effect would have been blunted if I'd known the music really well going in. (Hamilton is one where I think it was better to know the soundtrack ahead of time, as I don't think I'd have been able to make out the vast majority of the words otherwise.)
( Vague spoilers if you're like me and have never watched it before )
I think this is a show that I admire more than that I'm fannish about. It's kind of interesting -- it's almost like it's so polished that there aren't any weird cracks or rough edges to hang a fannish hat on, so to speak. So I didn't feel the desire to see it again the next day (not that I would have, but I've absolutely been to theater events where I was like "okay, I would be very strongly tempted go to see this again tomorrow if I could spare the time") but if the tour comes back next year I'd almost definitely go if Colón were still in it, and even if not I'd strongly consider going.
Tags:
(no subject)
11/5/26 22:51flemmingsEventually got myself downstairs this morning after virtuously exercising for half an hour and doing 2.5 Squaredle games, at which I remembered Oh yeah I was going to take my shoes in to be resoled. But having learned to be cautious, I googled John's Shoe Repair and of course it's closed Mondays. So I did a white wash instead. Which turned into a pink wash because I thought washing coloureds in cold wouldn't make them bleed and there was this pair of red pants that I will never fit into that I intended to launder and donate. I don't actually mind the bleed-- underwear and socks, who cares?-- because I also washed a new off-white t-shirt, and a pale pink shirt will show the dirt much less. Or the food, rather, because what stains my shirts is things dropping from the chopsticks I can no longer manage with my arthritic hands. I was tempted by this clothing brand since it seems much thinner than the other t-shirts I have, the ones that can only be worn in a very narrow window of temperatures ie between 17 and 19C. Anything more and even tank tops start to be too thick.
Hung the laundry that wasn't socks and underwear on the line and then left it there. Tomorrow will be equally as blowy and dry as today so if it gets damp overnight it will be dry by tomorrow afternoon.
Finished Emilie and the Hollow World which was well enough, though I couldn't figure out how the hollow world works. Also I suspect that Martha Wells is like Mary Renault in that she does first person infinitely better than third. Her third person narrative style reads tapwater to me, whereas no one can mistake Murderbot's voice for anyone but Murderbot.
Had another stab at making potato croquettes. This time I sauted the onions until they caramelised which definitely helps the flavour, but only chopped the potato, my elbows and my blender not being up to grating. So I had to cook the potatoes a bit along with the caramelised onion, and when steaming in water didn't work, dumped the remainder of a bottle of Pepsi into the mix, just to add to the sweetness. Then blended the mixture which wouldn't blend until I added more liquid which then made it into soup. Flour and egg helped but this is still not optimal. Presumably I need a proper food processor but frankly it's not worth it. Potatoes and oil are not supposed to be in my diet anyway, even if it's olive oil.
Hung the laundry that wasn't socks and underwear on the line and then left it there. Tomorrow will be equally as blowy and dry as today so if it gets damp overnight it will be dry by tomorrow afternoon.
Finished Emilie and the Hollow World which was well enough, though I couldn't figure out how the hollow world works. Also I suspect that Martha Wells is like Mary Renault in that she does first person infinitely better than third. Her third person narrative style reads tapwater to me, whereas no one can mistake Murderbot's voice for anyone but Murderbot.
Had another stab at making potato croquettes. This time I sauted the onions until they caramelised which definitely helps the flavour, but only chopped the potato, my elbows and my blender not being up to grating. So I had to cook the potatoes a bit along with the caramelised onion, and when steaming in water didn't work, dumped the remainder of a bottle of Pepsi into the mix, just to add to the sweetness. Then blended the mixture which wouldn't blend until I added more liquid which then made it into soup. Flour and egg helped but this is still not optimal. Presumably I need a proper food processor but frankly it's not worth it. Potatoes and oil are not supposed to be in my diet anyway, even if it's olive oil.
Tags:
- food,
- mbot,
- reading_26,
- rl_26
Well, minuses and pluses I suppose
11/5/26 19:30oursinHaving spent a fair amount of time last week finally doing some prep for forthcoming talk on condomz - well, at least pulling together existing visuals from former presentations and digging up a few fresh items to create suitable slides - get message that advance bookings are being very laggardly (apparently a problem with event programme generally?) and they may have to cancel.
SIGH, though I feel this is not lost work and may very well come in useful at some time.
And of course they may not have to cancel, bookings may pick up I suppose.
In rather more cheery news, a little while ago I bopped off an enquiry to The Academic Press with which I published The Co-authored Volume, since I have not heard from them for many a year, and in spite of the fact that lo, 'tis over twenty years now since it burst upon the world, it is still in print. (And still getting cited, yay.)
And I must say their website was a bit of a nightmare to navigate and I ended up sending a plaintive message to a very generic enquiry email as I could not find any other relevant one to apply to.
Behold, I have heard from an Accounts person that they sent a cheque to Former Workplace in 2020 (hah!) which was never cashed, surprise - what between lockdown and the various staff upheavals I was not at all astonished to hear this - but they have now sent me a statement of the royalties accruing (a very modest sum) and asking for my bank details.
Which is better than a bat in the eye with a burnt stick, do admit.
(I am not sure whether the royalties match up to the amounts earned for the same work via the Authors' Licensing and Copyright Society over the same period, but I am not sure that I am massively motivated to check.)
larryhammerFor Poetry Monday, with a cut for length:
Howl Under a Blue Light Filtered Moon, Elden Locke
(Dedicated to Allen Ginsberg)
I saw the best minds of my generation scrolling themselves to death,
starved for meaning, lit by the blue glow of a thousand screens,
dragged through the feed at 3 A.M. looking for something real.
Angels of burnout, prophets of anxiety,
wired into coffee and code and self-diagnosis,
naked in their rooms, refreshing the apocalypse for updates.
Who texted their prayers into the void and got an emoji in return,
who built their gods out of hashtags and dopamine,
who confessed their sins to algorithms that sold them better ones.
Who wandered suburbia in eternal leases,
tethered to Wi-Fi, dreaming of the open road but afraid of gas prices,
who howled under fluorescent lights of office towers
as their dreams were formatted into PowerPoints.
Who made love to ghosts through pixelated glass,
mouths pressed to screens, hearts buffering,
and cried out for human touch in the language of memes.
( Who believed in justice and were met with comment sections )
Source. Relevant Ginsberg.
---L.
Subject quote from Everything She Wants, Wham!.
Howl Under a Blue Light Filtered Moon, Elden Locke
(Dedicated to Allen Ginsberg)
I saw the best minds of my generation scrolling themselves to death,
starved for meaning, lit by the blue glow of a thousand screens,
dragged through the feed at 3 A.M. looking for something real.
Angels of burnout, prophets of anxiety,
wired into coffee and code and self-diagnosis,
naked in their rooms, refreshing the apocalypse for updates.
Who texted their prayers into the void and got an emoji in return,
who built their gods out of hashtags and dopamine,
who confessed their sins to algorithms that sold them better ones.
Who wandered suburbia in eternal leases,
tethered to Wi-Fi, dreaming of the open road but afraid of gas prices,
who howled under fluorescent lights of office towers
as their dreams were formatted into PowerPoints.
Who made love to ghosts through pixelated glass,
mouths pressed to screens, hearts buffering,
and cried out for human touch in the language of memes.
( Who believed in justice and were met with comment sections )
Source. Relevant Ginsberg.
---L.
Subject quote from Everything She Wants, Wham!.
(no subject)
10/5/26 20:04flemmingsThe thing about lying in of a morning, quite apart from 'if I get up I will hurt', is that it takes me forever to get to sleep at night: which is very frustrating, the more so in that I no longer have stories to tell myself while lying awake and sleepless in the dark. But in the morning I need only close my eyes again to slip back into the shallows of sleep, usually to dream that I'm looking at my clock to see the time, but never mind. If I like I can go easily into deep sleep and have those realistic resleep dreams that will often stay with me once really awake. This morning's was of my friend B gone back to being a director instead of a lawyer, who'd been hired to do motion capture for some film, something he admitted he'd never done before. But he wanted me for one part, to do the motion bit and speak the lines, not sure if I'd be right for the part. With reason: it was a 10 year old Black boy. But there I was at the studio at night, far out on some subway or railway line, and his wife had made goodies for the cast which was nice, and there were two babies and their mothers who were also there for the film. But then I was trying to get home and trains were cancelled and I couldn't get the timetable and it was a frustration dream after all, so I woke up instead.
I put a Robaxacet heat patch on my back, went up to Loblaws and got some pseudo-Bailey's, had a glass, and then tackled the front yard. Cut down twigs and vines and bits of hedge and scooped up a lot of dead leaves from last year. Came in, had some more booze and ibuprofen, went back and put it all in a garden waste bag. I trust the exercise will balance the calories. There's more to be done but my back hates me doing it. If the left side is feeling no pain because of the heat, the right side will start to spasm. This is annoying.
Meanwhile Ima-sensei is getting into some dark and heavy subjects. We've already had Grandma tricked into wearing a cursed kimono, not to mention being badgered by her two oldest daughters to sell the house and land and divide the proceeds up among her children. This in spite of a formal quit-claim (I believe is what the Japanese means) signed by all of them when their father died giving up all rights to the place and glad to do so onaccounta the bogles that infest it. Presumably they now think that if the house is demolished the bogles will disappear. The bogles are emphatic that they'll do nothing of the sort. Building a house on a burying ground has nothing on building a bunch of manshons on Kagyuu's kekkai in the back garden. But the aunts are being seriously interfering all through this book. Like telling Ritsu he can't be a grad student, he must take the job offer from the seriously sketchy real estate cum Shinto priesthood firm he gets involved in in the first story. Are we menopausal or what?
Then in the third story, the second son one never hears about has cancer and is undergoing chemo and keeps dreaming of the youngest son, the one who drowned as a boy, calling to him. I still ration myself with this but boy do I want to forge ahead.
I put a Robaxacet heat patch on my back, went up to Loblaws and got some pseudo-Bailey's, had a glass, and then tackled the front yard. Cut down twigs and vines and bits of hedge and scooped up a lot of dead leaves from last year. Came in, had some more booze and ibuprofen, went back and put it all in a garden waste bag. I trust the exercise will balance the calories. There's more to be done but my back hates me doing it. If the left side is feeling no pain because of the heat, the right side will start to spasm. This is annoying.
Meanwhile Ima-sensei is getting into some dark and heavy subjects. We've already had Grandma tricked into wearing a cursed kimono, not to mention being badgered by her two oldest daughters to sell the house and land and divide the proceeds up among her children. This in spite of a formal quit-claim (I believe is what the Japanese means) signed by all of them when their father died giving up all rights to the place and glad to do so onaccounta the bogles that infest it. Presumably they now think that if the house is demolished the bogles will disappear. The bogles are emphatic that they'll do nothing of the sort. Building a house on a burying ground has nothing on building a bunch of manshons on Kagyuu's kekkai in the back garden. But the aunts are being seriously interfering all through this book. Like telling Ritsu he can't be a grad student, he must take the job offer from the seriously sketchy real estate cum Shinto priesthood firm he gets involved in in the first story. Are we menopausal or what?
Then in the third story, the second son one never hears about has cancer and is undergoing chemo and keeps dreaming of the youngest son, the one who drowned as a boy, calling to him. I still ration myself with this but boy do I want to forge ahead.
Culinary
10/5/26 20:14oursinThis week's bread: a Standen loaf, 4:1 strong brown/buckwheat flour, honey, Rayner's barleymalt extract, turned out nicely.
Saturday breakfast rolls: the ones more or less after James Beard's mother's raisin bread, more or less 50/50% Marriages Light Spelt Flour (end of bag) and Golden Wholegrain Flour, turned out quite well.
Today's lunch: as there were potatoes left from last week, made a gratin provencale sorta, served with slowcooked purple sprouting broccoli (this really needed even longer slow-cooking, was still fairly al dente) and padron peppers.
(no subject)
9/5/26 20:33flemmingsNot much happening here. Finished the Butterfly book, started on Emilie, all I want to read is 100 Demons which is the best it's been in years, and I ought to ration it but ohhh I want to read more. Requires much use of the Wordtank of course.
Went out to the local greasy spoon and had their mixed grill breakfast which is as much pig as anyone needs: bacon ham and sossidge. Told them to hold the home fries and was thus spared indigestion. Will probably be eating rice and beans for a while to balance. Does pig count as red meat? No matter: it counts as pig and must be rationed. Tomorrow being our Mother's Day there will be no restaurants or cafés available, so I eat out while I can.
Cherry blossoms are almost all gone now, scattered over four different back yards because yesterday the wind was from the north and today it was from the south. Sayonara, sakura.
Went out to the local greasy spoon and had their mixed grill breakfast which is as much pig as anyone needs: bacon ham and sossidge. Told them to hold the home fries and was thus spared indigestion. Will probably be eating rice and beans for a while to balance. Does pig count as red meat? No matter: it counts as pig and must be rationed. Tomorrow being our Mother's Day there will be no restaurants or cafés available, so I eat out while I can.
Cherry blossoms are almost all gone now, scattered over four different back yards because yesterday the wind was from the north and today it was from the south. Sayonara, sakura.
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