heliopausa

The trees were ghost-green in the water with the hard white shine of the LEDs, but

spatch photographed me in the stoplight.

WERS came out with the menacingly catchy drive of the Clash's "London Calling" (1979) while I was running an errand and it felt just a little unnecessarily Ballardian. Nothing else has happened to me particularly, but reading any kind of news feels like choking on the future. I can remember not being this sick, this poor, this pressed, which differentiates me not at all from most of the people I know. The exhaustion feels unreal and the last ten years like a sociological demonstration in the capacity of things always to be worse.

Current Music: The Clash, "London Calling"

marycatelli posting in

book_love

Right of Vengeance by Thomas Doscher

Book 7 of The Vixen War Bride Series. Spoilers for the earlier ones ahead.

( Read more... )

asakiyume

One thing I did on this trip was bring along some permanent markers and ask my friends and their kids to write or draw on my raincoat. The result is a wonderful memento that I've already had occasion to use.

Here are two of L and R's kids doing some decorating.

Two children drawing on a blue raincoat

And here's what the back of the raincoat looks like now:

blue raincoat with words and pictures on it

And one sleeve:

blue raincoat sleeve with words and pictures on it

The second-oldest of L and R's kids also gave me this, which I LOVE. I know my kids made things like this in school--I think it's a wonderful activity. This one isn't quite finished: it only goes down as far as the Department of Amazonas (equivalent of a US state), and interestingly, for places in Amazonas, she doesn't include her own town/city, Leticia. It does show Puerto Nariño, a town up the river a bit.

Mi lugar en el mundo/my place in the world (click through to Flickr to see it at a larger size--only possible with this photo; the others are sited here on DW and don't get any larger)

( and under this cut are three views of an ugly-cute handmade fish )

( Lai, the home-invading little goat )

I have maybe a couple more posts from my trip ... then it'll be back to your everyday Asakiyume.

Current Music: The Storm: The Fat Rat & Maisy Kay

moon_custafer

We watched this last night and it was just as delightfully bonkers as the trailers had promised. Bride of Frankenstein, 1930s crime film, feminist fable, ghost story, musical, the parts don’t always fit together perfectly but it doesn’t matter because it’s an exquisite-corpse about an exquisite corpse (Jesse Buckley), an escort formerly known as Ida till possession by Mary Shelley’s ghost (also Jesse Buckley) moved up the Chicago mob’s time-table on bumping her off for knowing too much.

As it happens, Frankenstein’s monster (Christian ~~Slater~~ Bale) is in town and wants Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening) to make him a mate—one trip to the potter’s field and a jolt of electricity and revitalizing fluid and our heroine is back, still intermittently channelling Mary, and ready to revolt and to dance. I love that Gyllenhaal makes one of the key scenes in the film a tribute to the Puttin’ on the Ritz number in Young Frankenstein. This is a movie that loves all its sources. It rolls around in them.

I haven’t even brought up Penélope Cruz and Peter Saarsgard as police detectives who seem to have wandered in from a completely different movie, Jeannie Berlin as Dr. Euphronius’ walking Otto Dix painting of a maid, or the monster’s fanboy crush on polio-survivor-turned-movie-star Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal). Zlatko Burić, who seems to be making a career of playing sleazebags, is appropriately vile as the mob boss Lupino, but he’s only in a couple of scenes because it’s not really about him.

Apparently this has been a box-office bomb. I hope Gyllenhaal’s directing career doesn’t suffer for it, and I hope the movie gets a cult following in the coming years with midnight screenings and the audience showing up in costume. I know I plan to watch it again.

ETA— Good soundtrack, too.

tielan

1. How often do you hear live music?

Not very often. I never have been much of one to go see bands or even concerts. A few musicals. The occasional concert by an artist I enjoy. And sometimes bands on a Saturday night down at the pub back in university days.

These days? Very rarely.

2. What was your favorite live musical performance ever?

I don't know if I remember this one with fondness so much as just it's the strongest memory I have. One night after university computer lab, a couple of the people I'm working and doing uni with say they're going to a bar in town to celebrate the 18th birthdays of a couple of the guys we work with. The two of them room together, and their birthdays are back-to-back. It's not my usual scene, but I figure I should really do more socialising with this group, so I agree to go along.

It's a dive bar. On a Wednesday night. In a university town. Kinda quiet, but there's a band on stage that's doing rock covers from the 80s. The floor is an old nylon carpet and we're not going to think about how it's slightly sticky underfoot. The lighting is dim, there's about a half-dozen of us, and after a drink or two, we're singing along with the band who takes it pretty well.

They invite the birthday boys up to sing the Eagle Rock, but somehow end up singing Hotel California. I am served a triple-rum-and-coke having admitted to the others that I don't really drink, and they think that it's hilarious to get me an excessively alcoholic drink for my 'first drink'. The 2xrum&coke is foul, and someone else ends up drinking it. I go for a wine cooler, which is sweeter and easier on my palate. We bawl songs until it's midnight and it's the birthday of the second guy, and then we keep going for another hour.

TBH, the performers weren't standout. But I remember the night the best, simply for the hanging out and the friendships.

3. Do you play an instrument, or sing?

I play piano, I learned flute and tuba, and I sing - happy birthday, at church, in the car, on the karaoke machine.

4. Have you ever performed music onstage?

Does karaoke count? But even without that, yes, I've performed at concerts and eisteddfods when I was younger. Not for three decades now, but then it might even be years since I've touched a piano.

5. Who is your favorite musician?

That's a tricky one. Modern or classical? Artist or musician? Live, recorded, without autotune?

I can't choose. I love them all - Beethoven and his Ninth, Elgar and the Engima variations, Chopin's Impromptus and the haunting notes of Tchaikovsky's opening to Swan Lake. There's Queen's Rhapsody and P!nk singing about falling into trust, there's Billy Joel crooning smooth and sweet and Deborah Harry declaring she wants that man, there's Rihanna singing about being unfaithful and Anna of Cleves rmeinding us that she's the Queen of the Castle... I remember going to see Roxette and Offspring, singing with U2 in the car - raised by wolves | stronger than fear | when I close my eyes | you disappear...

You can't make me choose. I carry it all in my heart.

sovay

The sun came out just in time to set and I caught a handful of pictures in its gold flare of light, mostly lilacs and shadows.

( Dyna oedd yr awel, hwn yw y corwynt. )

I baked cornbread tonight with dinner, which I may not have done for a year. I had wanted some for weeks. Any time things could get easier, just for the hell of it.

Current Music: Hen Ogledd, "Amser a ddengys"

flemmings

"You can schedule your meter change online." Well no, in fact, you can't. I filled in all required fields only for the interface to spit me back out for no reason. It might be that masses of people were also filling the form out but I doubt it. Because when I had recourse to "call a real human being" I was only on hold for a few minutes-- well, after the prerecorded spiel went on and on and also suggested I book online-- until a well-spoken young man came and took my details and scheduled me for next Friday. So that's done.

Did what is probably my last dark wash of the season and put it out on the line. Great drying weather today: sunny, breezy, warm. SND's basement tenant also had her laundry out on drying racks in the back yard and sat out reading on her phone, which had the virtue of keeping Oliver more or less quiet. He wss growling at something in Good Neighbour Chris' yard-- probably a squirrel-- but at least he wasn't barking at me.

Apparently stores are allowed to open on the holiday Monday now but I don't expect any of the ones near me to. Thus I stocked up at Fiesta for this and that, which should see me through till Tuesday.

purplecat

Wide flat grass and a blue sky with white clouds. A white cottage is visible on the horizon to the right. There are low hills in the far background. Two tall sharp pointed stones stand at the end of a mown grass walk. A further thin stone is visible sidways on between them and the cottage. The low remains of a further stone are beyond.

The Stones of Stenness, Orkney

chickenfeet

Excellent lunchtime recital at Metropolitan United by James Coole-Stevenson and Vlad Soviev. Lots of CanCon.

https://operaramblings.blog/2026/05/15/james-coole-stevenson-and-vlad-soloviev/

marycatelli posting in

book_love

Witch's Daughter by Sarah A. Hoyt

Book 2 of Magical Empires, but it does shift to new characters and fill you in the relevant first book knowledge. (Spoilers for the first book, though.)

( Read more... )

kaffy_r

Outlines: Threat or Menace?

Today, I took a walk to my local hipster coffee shop (any coffee shop within walking distance apparently falls under that designation, I suppose, but this was the one closest to me), armed with nothing but my phone and a yellow notepad. And in between drinking a passable cup of coffee with a reasonable amount of oatmilk and some fake sugar, wrestling with my phone, I actually got to work on an outline for the story I've already written more than 50,000 words in.

My type of outline, which is my outline. I want my outline, Nurse Ratched -

Pay no attention to that.

It doesn't look like a classic outline of any type, more like "and then this happens, and then this happens." But I did preface it by asking two questions: What are my characters' goals? And, more importantly, what is my goal? With those two questions asked and answered, I felt a little more sure of where I want the story to go.

Yes, I wrote a novel's worth of words with nary an idea of what the hell it was doing or where it was going. Moving on ....

I still have some more outlining to do, but I declare my time at the hipster coffee shop a success.

Regarding the coffee shop, I got a kick out of the fact that the music they had playing was the best of 1980s new wave. If they didn't know it was roughly 40 years old - frankly, if they did know and were being all hipster retro - all I could think was "They are such children." Heh.

And with that, it's time to retire, but not before I wish

thisbluespirit a belated happy birthday. I hope it went well.

Current Mood: cold
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: BTS "My Time"

flemmings

The notice comes that they're now replacing the defective water meters, please book a visit by our technicians by scanning this QR code. QR codes are the pits. I don't have Parkinsons but no way I can hold my hand steady enough to capture the code. Bleh. Will do it online.

Grey day feeling a lot cooler than the temps said. Am cold here in my house but hot weather is just round the corner -- Monday and Tuesday to be precise-- so I won't turn on the heat. Tomorrow might get up above 16 and if the sun shines I won't need either the jacket or the long sleeves I did today. Got the Butterfly book back to the library, got a bunch of summer clothes I will never be thin enough to wear again to the clothing depot at the Orthodox church, had marvellous salmon teriyaki at Sushi on Bloor. Teriyaki is sweet and I shouldn't eat it but it definitely makes salmon palatable. Way back in the 80s I was tested for allergies and one of the things I was intolerant of was salmon. Also rice. Which actually is true, though I think I'm less intolerant of rice when it's become a resistant starch.

sovay

Because I had to give blood at a frankly stupid hour of the morning, afterward I took

spatch to Mike & Patty's. He likes breakfast sandwiches and my mother had heard a rave of theirs on the radio. I do not like breakfast sandwiches. It's mostly because I don't like fried eggs, or even scrambled eggs unless I make them myself. Mei Mei got around my aversion by wrapping their oozily fried eggs in scallion pancakes and pesto, but for years the Double Awesome was alone of its kind and I tended to order its ham-based cousin, the Porco Rosso, when I could. I am still not designed for the majority of American breakfast foods, but it turns out that if the egg is fried hard enough and layered into a Reuben-adjacent mound of pastrami, cheddar, and a slightly mustardier relative of fry sauce on a griddled English muffin, it does count as real food by me. Rob reports favorably on the slyly named McLustin', which did not obliterate its traditional stack of fried egg, bacon, American cheese, and hash brown with its tongue-nipping sriracha ketchup. We ate while watching a swan chase a Canada goose across a reservoir like a majestically petty pocket battleship. The latest episode of Widow's Bay (2026–) scored its local points with a background issue of Agni such as fetch up secondhand anywhere within reading distance of Boston University. I picked up several issues that way myself.

Current Music: Pylon, "Boom Boom"

chickenfeet

take rimbaud is a riveting journey through the impossibility of making art under late capitalism

https://operaramblings.blog/2026/05/14/is-art-even-possible/

flemmings

Got 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.

chickenfeet

Emily Rocha and Duncan Stenhouse in the RBA

https://operaramblings.blog/2026/05/13/les-adieux-emily-and-duncan-edition/

tielan

I'm trying to organise a weekend away, first weekend in June. Only had the idea last week, sent an email out, got about a half-dozen interested people, but the price of accomodation is going to be the sticking point.

Just sent out another email to check budgets, will have to wait to hear back. I'm pretty sure at least two women, and at least one couple will come - their finances are reasonably in order. The others... I'm not sure.

Oh well, if it all collapses, I could drag a couple of friends out maybe. Just do a day trip on the Saturday instead maybe.

sovay

After more than seven months out of work, the degree to which I can afford anything above the bottom rung of Maslow has become truly minimal, but as soon as I discovered Quinquis' eor (2025), a shape-shiftingly electronic, primarily Breton-language album of mermaids and the sea, I leapt for it like it was mackerel. I heard first the all-night love-churn of "Morwreg" (2024), but the irresistible drag sirens of "Dec'h" (2025) sealed the deal.

The copy of Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld's Duck! Rabbit! (2009) which I sent my godchild for his first solstice was familially referred to for years as Baby's First Wittgenstein. I have no idea what Wittgenstein would have made of this cartoon, but I'm impressed.

I am not sure that I am much more than physically extant at the minute. I am clearing the refrigerator and the countertops. I am absorbing as much sunlight as I sleeplessly can. Yesterday kicked off with a doctor's appointment that was too early in the morning to be as unhelpful as it was and only dropped the bar from there, so this afternoon I made sure to secure a half-dozen donuts from the reliable Lyndell's and eat a jam-filled one as soon as I had finished walking home. The neighborhood smelled like alternating drifts of lilac and mulch. I have had the same headache since the weekend and am hoping it is related to the sexing of the trees. The nine o'clock advent of leafblowers to our block was inhumane.

Current Music: Quinquis, "Dec'h"

flemmings

When 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.

chickenfeet

https://operaramblings.blog/2026/05/12/jurons-de-rester-amis/

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June 2019

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Reading

And I live by the river

Right of Vengeance

raincoat, my place in the world, ugly-cute, home invader

The Bride! (2026), dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal

Friday Five

Dyna oedd ddoe a dyma yw heddiw

(no subject)

Random Neolithic Stones on a Friday

James Coole-Stevenson and Vlad Soviev in recital

Witch's Daughter

Dept. of Almost

(no subject)

What could be better? When will we know?

Is Art possible?

(no subject)

Les adieux - Emily and Duncan edition

trying to organise a weekend away

Ne 'z in ket da gorolliñ

(no subject)

Liz Upchurch, Alain Coulombe and Michael Colvin 28 years on

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June 2019

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