skygiants

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Agnes Hewes’ The Codfish Musket, third and last in her trio of boring 1930s Newbery Honor winners. I can only imagine that the committee felt that the “Rah rah MANIFEST DESTINY” message was good for the Youth, because my God these books are dull. How can books be so dull when there are so many deadly conspiracies?

But maybe it’s because Hewes is actually not great at deadly conspiracies. The best part of this book by far is the non-deadly middle, when our hero Dan Boit goes to Washington and accidentally becomes Thomas Jefferson’s secretary after he finds Jefferson’s lost notebook full of observations about when the first peas come up and the frogs start peeping.

In modern-day Newbery Honor winners, I finished Chanel Miller’s Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All, a short and charming tale in which Magnolia and her new friend Iris try to return orphaned socks from Magnolia’s parents’ laundry to their owners. In the process, they explore New York City and learn more about the denizens of their neighborhood.

I also read Susan Fletcher’s Journey of the Pale Bear, about a Norwegian boy accompanying a captured polar bear to England as a present for the king. If this sounds familiar, it’s because Fletcher wrote a related picture book, but that focuses more on the bear’s experiences, while this is more about the boy and the boy-meets-bear of it all. Who among us has not wished for a bear friend!

What I’m Reading Now

In Our Mutual Friend, Lizzie Hexam’s father has DIED. This may be a lucky escape for him, as he was about to be arrested on suspicion of murder (at the word of his wicked lying former business partner), but I’m very concerned what will become of poor Lizzie.

My suspicion that Mr. Rokesmith is in fact the dead John Harmon has only grown stronger as he has insinuated himself in the Boffin household as an unpaid secretary. What is his ultimate goal here? A more suspicious soul than Mr. Boffin might wonder who on earth would offer himself up as a secretary without pay, and consider the possibility of embezzlement, but blessed Mr. Boffin is not concerned a bit.

What I Plan to Read Next

Onward in the Newbery books! I am ten books from the end of the historical Newberies, and I intend to finish the project while Interlibrary Loan is still alive.

vass

Books
Very little progress.

Crafts
Dyed a 36x45cm piece of white 14 count aida cloth purple, for Secret Reasons. And now I know that I can get a reasonable result doing that with a large storage box and hot water, winging the quantity of Rit dye. Shenanigans may result.

Food
My parents' Christmas present to me, a new frying pan, just made it to me today. I haven't test-driven it yet, but it looks nice. And like it should heat up easier than the cast iron one my stove can't really handle, much as I love it.

Weather
Finally cooling down. Good.

Other
One of the Discord servers I'm in had a PowerPoint night. I didn't present, but I contributed a very unserious set of slides for someone else to present sight unseen. This was a heap of fun, and I recommend this form of grownup show and tell to other nerds. I am already working on my next such document.

In a different Discord, a discussion of linguistics prompted me to make a series of noises which in turn made Dorian give me a very funny look. If you would like to provoke yourself to make a series of noises that will make your cats give you funny looks, here is the chart.

vass

What if, when you went to a nonprofit/charity/etc website because you want to donate money to them, you could add ?nomarketing on the end of the link, and it would bring up a barebones version of their donation page that would JUST LET YOU MAKE A SINGLE DONATION.

It would not sign you up to their newsletter.
It would not give them permission to contact you.
It would not ask you to share their link on social media.
It would not ask you how you found them.
It would not show you a thank you letter written in the first person by a composite version of one of their clients.
It would not show you tragic and distressing photographs or descriptions of the horrible things happening to the people you HAVE ALREADY DECIDED TO GIVE MONEY TO HELP.
There would not be any animated banners or carousels.
There would be no popups.
Required fields on the form would only be information they genuinely cannot accept your money without, and they would have checked both the law on what information they actually need and their assumptions about names and titles (e.g. not everyone has a first name, not everyone has a last name, not everyone's name is short, some names have spaces or apostrophes or hyphens, not everyone belongs to one of the four genders Mr, Mrs, Miss, and Dr.)
It would not give you a menu with three choices: make your one-off donation a monthly amount, make your one-off donation a monthly amount but more money, or (deselected and in a duller colour) "keep your one-off donation" before letting you donate.
Or after you donate.
Or both.

I understand they have a job to do, but do they understand how aversive this experience is? It is the biggest thing about charitable giving that I dread, when I have enough to give. "Hi, I'd like to give you some mon-" "CAN YOU GIVE US MORE? CAN YOU GIVE IT EVERY MONTH? KIDS ARE DYING, VASS, ANIMALS ARE DYING, THE PLANET IS DYING, MOREMOREMOREMORE CAN WE TEXT YOU, CAN WE CALL YOU UP AND TELL YOU ABOUT THE DYING KIDS CAN YOU TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS TO GIVE US MONEY TOO-"

If they made it less stressful, I would not have to psych myself up to do this. And by definition this is how they are treating people who already want to help them.

rydra_wong

https://whatthetrans.com/compilation-of-protests-against-the-supreme-court/

conuly

Late in May as the light lengthens
toward summer the young goldfinches
flutter down through the day for the first time
to find themselves among fallen petals
cradling their day's colors in the day's shadows
of the garden beside the old house
after a cold spring with no rain
not a sound comes from the empty village
as I stand eating the black cherries
from the loaded branches above me
saying to myself Remember this

*******

Link

conuly

Watch on YouTube

conuly

Clicky!

Also, I meant to say re: the utilities that you are all the best and I absolutely love you :)

(Still need to call National Grid and still don't wanna.)

torachan

1. I had another work from home day. I'm about halfway caught up with my email and fully caught up with teams. Tomorrow I've got a couple meetings, so I've got to go in to the office, but I might work from home again on Thursday to finally catch up on everything.

2. When Carla was out today she stopped at Uncle Tetsu's, a Japanese cheesecake chain. They have a sakura cheesecake right now and we had some after dinner tonight and it was sooooooo good. I normally prefer New York style cheesecake to the Japanese fluffier style, but this was really good consistency and the sakura flavor was amazing.

3. I finished playing The Plucky Squire. Overall it's a pretty fun game, but it is not just a straight action adventure game. There are a bunch of (frankly not that fun) mini games for the boss fights and stuff where you have to play other styles of games and that is not what I signed up for. Like for one character's boss battles you play a Mike Tyson style boxing game, for another it's a rhythm game, and for the third it's a Puzzle Bobble type. Then there are some stealth sequences where you have to sneak past enemies who can kill you instantly if they sense you, and if they sense you there is no way to run to escape, even if you're close to a place you could get away. You're just instantly dead. And the final battle is a space shooter type. The good thing is that if you die in a boss battle you can sometimes restart partway through, not all the way at the beginning, and the stealth sequences have multiple checkpoints and you'll respawn there rather than back at the beginning. But I would still have preferred not to have that "variety" in my action adventure game. Still is a fun game, though. But if you suck at those types of games it might ruin it for you.

4. I finished editing all my Disney Japan pics, so hopefully I can get the last day's posts written up later this week.

5. Jasper is just so handsome.

torachan

When I last left off, we had just checked out the big gift shop at the Fantasy Springs hotel and were exploring the land while waiting for our return time for the Peter Pan ride.

( More DisneySea adventures! )

snickfic

- I signed up for

seasonsofdrabbles. Come join me! ~~So I have someone to write for.~~

- After my first

hurtcomfortex idea got increasingly complicated with less and less direct h/c, I now have a new idea that is directly h/c and much simpler. Which is great, because I can tell it's going to be a long 'un. (That's why the writing period for this exchange is so long, right? Because h/c takes lots of words??) So now I have 400 words, and the deadline isn't for like six weeks! Woo!

settiai

I was feeling nostalgic, so I pulled up Road Not Taken and played it for a little while earlier. It took a bit to get back into the swing of things, but I started to remember some of the hidden details and combinations after a while.

It's been ages since the last time I played, and I'd forgotten just how much I love it. It's so helpful if I want to turn off my brain for a little while. I can't believe it's been over a decade since it was first released.

Current Mood: nostalgic

labingi

Silly question but when did "exhale" become a noun? I've been seeing it everywhere in fan fic lately, everywhere an "exhale," not one fic with an "exhalation"--or a "he exhaled." I figured it was a fan fic thing.

Then I saw an "exhale" in the poem "Forgotten Portraits," on my son's AP test study list.

The dictionaries are pretty much still telling me "exhale" is a verb.

This is, of course, all my language snobbery and utterly irrelevant, but when did this happen? What memo did I miss?

oliviacirce

This is for Earth Day, but it also now makes me think about Maybe Happy Ending, which we saw in New York last week and absolutely loved. There are some parallels, although this is not (obviously) a poem about fireflies.

( I Don't Know What Will Kill Us First: The Race War or What We've Done to the Earth )

flemmings

When the weather page says 90% chance of rain at 4 p.m. one should not look at the placid grey sky and the dry sidewalk, think Guess they're wrong, and trundle over to Fiesta for crackers. Because the heavens opened as I came out and everything got soaked. That was yesterday. Today was sun and bulgogi at my tony Korean restaurant, which was twice as much rice as I wanted. I did finally ask for a fork, so if I go back I needn't worry too much because now they know. But I still spill stuff. Age sucks.

Won't talk about the piggery I indulged in over Easter which means I won't be weighing myself any time soon. But the Pour Boy restaurant sent me some elegant and manageable chopsticks with that pad thai on Sunday and I may keep them for use elsewhere.

And my tax return was delivered to the accountants in good order so I may assume it was filed in good order, though the Easter disruptions mean they haven't even cashed my cheque yet. They will, Oscar, they will.

musesfool

Today's poem:

I Have News for You

There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don't interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.

There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures unrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings

do not send their sinuous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you—
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.

--Tony Hoagland

*

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Mets vs Phillies on tv

lycomingst

Now that the water pipes at the Park are done (I believe), all the roads are being repaved. And they said, let’s start ripping things up in front of the lady’s house who HAS to go to the DMV today . Also, she’s expecting a package delivery (UPS lied about that). So I pulled out and dodged some massive machine and enormous piles of asphalt to go pay the gov’t money to buy a joke “real id”. Coming back I had to drive like a tank over clumps of asphalt.

I’m working in the back yard every day and it’s a bigger job than I thought. I’ve scaled back my expectations and am concentrating on flowers in pots. I have one tomato plant and we wish it the best, but have no high hopes. There is so much weeding to be done and I’m old and kinda lazy so I do a little bit every day. Plus the cats got out one day and now I have to watch for that. They both came back at traditional dinner time like they just drove home from the office.

The rainy season has tapered off and I’m just watching the weather and sun patterns in the yard this year. My bedroom gets a lot of afternoon sun so I’m thinking it’ll be hot in the summer. But not California hot for endless days.

I have not watched The Last of Us yet. I’m putting it off because it’s going to take an emotional toll. I dropped Acorn and they naturally added more episodes of two of my favorite shows immediately afterward, so I had to sign up again.

jjhunter

Let's take a breath for poetry. It is April, and as good a time as any for a collaborative poetry fest. Please find below a starting stanza or two of a brand new haikai (what's a haikai, you ask? Think extended haiku: alternating stanzas of 5-7-5 and 7-7). Comment with a following stanza to build on that seed. Someone (most likely me) will respond with another stanza, and so on and so forth throughout the day.
===

daffodil focus
bell song, valdrome, pheasant's eye
live stained glass glory

_

sovay

Apparently if permitted to sleep for nine hours, my brain presents me with a cheerfully escapist dream of meeting Dirk Bogarde at a film festival and then spending the rest of the afternoon perusing his library and forgoing dinner in favor of sailing, which was probably more my idea of a good time than his, but I like to think if I hadn't woken when I did, he'd have introduced me to Anthony Forwood.

Current Music: Momma, "I Want You (Fever)"

sholio

As is my usual practice, my latest book as Lauren is available for download for my DW circle for the next week or so!

Download from Bookfunnel.

The download will be up until the book goes live on Amazon on May 2.

(Technically this is Shifter Agents #6, but it's a standalone that shouldn't require any context to read.)

bloodygranuaile

I got a very, very pretty set of Jane Austen books for Christmas and determined it was finally time to move on to the second in publication order, one of the most popular and beloved romances of all time: Pride and Prejudice. I have read this at least three times, and have seen the movie adaptation many times indeed, and have even watched the BBC miniseries once despite my longstanding resentment against its having introduced the notion that Mr. Darcy wanders around in wet shirts into popular culture.

Anyway. It turns out that some parts of this book are as familiar to me as my own hands, which are the parts that got adopted pretty faithfully into the 2005 movie, and also the opening lines, of course. Other parts I had plain forgotten, most of which is just amusingly bitchy dialogue that did not make the cut among all the other bitchy dialogue when adaptations were made.

What is there really left to say about Pride and Prejudice? There are two main camps of Austen fans, which most likely have more overlap than I would like to admit: Ones who are in it for the romance, and ones who are in it for the comedy. I am firmly in the comedy camp. I get the theory that the romantic fantasy is about not having to fix a man, but telling him to go fix himself if he knows what’s good for him and actually does it, and I get why this would appeal to women who are interested in men and who have fantasies about men that navigate all sorts of stupid gender dynamics. (For me, the only remotely attractive Austen hero is Henry Tilney, who represents the fantasy of What If A Heterosexual Guy Was Nonetheless Just Fun And Normal About Stuff.)

The comedy is great. Basically everybody in this book is a little bit insane in one way or another, and most of the conflict comes from these different ways of being insane bouncing off each other. Even the very nice chill people end up in conflict due to being too nice and chill and therefore unable to navigate the dysfunctions of the people around them. An understanding of the societal norms and laws that the characters are trying to navigate will certainly help you understand, for example, why it’s out of the question for any of these dumb bitches to get jobs, but many of the core themes explored are quite timeless, like “how awkward it is when your best friend gets together with someone you can’t stand” and “being embarrassed by your family in front of someone you’d rather look good in front of.” Austen is truly a master of character work, and it is this character work that elevates what is basically a story about a bunch of repressed wealthy English people refusing to communicate about their feelings into one of the greatest love stories ever told, one that even a hard-hearted curmudgeon like me can get so pulled into that I stay up too late reading.

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Reading

Wednesday Reading Meme

Things

Daydream

UK: compilation of upcoming trans rights protests

Black Cherries by W. S. Merwin

(no subject)

There is a friending meme ongoing

Daily Happiness

2025 Disneyland Trip #23 (4/5/25) Tokyo DisneySea (Part 2)

Fandom stuff

Road Not Taken

"Exhale" as a Noun

count my hopes

(no subject)

in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha

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Haikai Fest: "'The World's Most Popular Spring Flower'"

We're the talk of the town

Red Boar's Baby

You must allow me to tell you

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April 2025

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