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Pillowfest Ends

1) My partner injured yet another finger playing baseball last weekend and had to go to the emergency room. Luckily it was not broken, just dislocated. Since then we have gotten 3 phone calls from the hospital group asking for a survey response.

This is particularly irritating because this group has been buying up hospitals, clinics and medical practices in the area, and is currently the only emergency room in town and provider of certain services.

So what is the point of the survey? What choice to we have? How will any response actually do anything to improve care?

2) I've been warming to High Potential, and recently Keith Carradine guest starred. I knew I recognized him as soon as he appeared, but I couldn't place him. Instead I kept wondering why he made me think of Joel Kinnaman in For All Mankind. For sure they could play relatives.

3) I have not been reading any fic for the better part of a year now. Some months back I read about 4 or 5 that had probably been downloaded over a year earlier, but I haven't been doing offline reading for the first time in a very long time. And when it happened before it was because I didn't have access to material, whereas now I have dozens of commercial books and even more fic.

(I say "nothing" though this doesn't count the random drabble or ficlet someone recs.) ( Read more... )

4) The thing that really stood out to me about Amazon announcing they're discontinuing service to 2012 and earlier Kindles was to think that there's not many electronics that are still running after 15 years. ( Read more... )

5) The Pillowfort Anniversary festivities have ended and it was fun. Many (not even all!) of the activities could be summed up with the bingo card. ( Read more... )

I'd love to see someone else take this on in a few years' time.

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Superman Unlimited #12: Red Herring Reunion

( Read more, )

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poetry

Poetry: The Hero's Journey, by Tony Hoagland

( The Hero's Journey, by Tony Hoagland )

Current Mood: dorky

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Wednesday Reading Meme

What I Just Finished Reading

Nothing! My big accomplishment is having the energy to put together a Book Club for the 616 Discord. It consists of two comics about the Avengers doing their taxes.

What I'm Reading Now

Comics Wednesday!

( Ultimate Wolverine #16 )

What I'm Reading Next

Not sure yet; it's hard to tell how much brain I will have at any given time, as I am currently getting two or three days between migraines. In baseball non-fiction reading, I am partway through Billy Bean's autobiography but I don't know what fiction to try reading. Probably I should just go for some more tropey m/m romance or something.

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Absolute Batman #19

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Fandom-dropping progress, April 15 report

Down to 939 fandoms total. (Only 26 currently have any tags to wrangle.)

I’m keeping up the pace of “shedding about 100 per month.” Still working on the second A-to-Z sweep, just finished with the P’s.

Also, still chipping away at recruiting “wranglers who aren’t over-the-limit” to pick up unwrangled Religion/Mythology/Folklore fandoms. I’m doing a little basic research on each one first. Someone with the right cultural/research background will always be better at spotting subtle inaccuracies, but for the fandoms that don’t get a wrangler like that, at least I can request fixes for anything really glaring.

Latest win: figuring out that this Ukranian “Folk Tale” fandom needs a rename, because all the fic is actually for the adorable 2024 cartoon Pravda & Kryvda. (11-minute pilot, free on Youtube.) Ukranian folklore-inspired with angel/demon vibes (I’m 0% surprised the artist has also done Good Omens fanart), extremely f/f shippy, has a fascinating “they were created around the same time but now there’s an overt age gap” dynamic…yeah, okay, I’m subscribing.

AMT updates: With the Madoka subtags approved, I went ahead and made the new Fake News tree request last week. (Basically the draft proposal I shared in February, with some slight tweaks.) Still no response to the behind-the-scenes question I mentioned in March…so yeah, I’m going forward on the premise of “if it’s that unimportant, it won’t be a roadblock.”

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Reader Rabbit (1984) · Writer Rabbit (1986)

As a kid I never played any of The Learning Company's dozens of Reader Rabbit games, so today we'll be correcting this surprising gap in my edutainment knowledge.

zorealis suggested the first game in the series, 1984's Reader Rabbit, aka Reader Rabbit and the Fabulous Word Factory. The alternate title sounds suspiciously Oompa-Loompaish to me, so fingers crossed that we will not meet with any gruesome poetic justice.

The game's menu offers nine options: Sorter, Labeler, Word Train, and six different Matchup Games. In Sorter you get a series of words, and you have to decide whether each one matches a given letter in either the first, second, or third position. If it matches, you move it over to the side, but if it doesn't you throw it in the garbage. (This obviously predates the 1990s eco-tainment craze, or else we'd be recycling.)

player chooses to save the word cod or throw it away

player chooses to save the word cod or throw it away

( More on Reader Rabbit )

Reader Rabbit was wildly popular and led to a slew of sequels and spinoffs. I had never heard of 1986's Writer Rabbit until

delphi brought it to my attention. Now, I'm not saying that playing this game will make you as good of a writer as

delphi is... but I'm not not saying that.

While Reader Rabbit offers a solid but fairly staid selection of spelling exercises, Writer Rabbit is far more wacky. After punching out from a week of back-breaking labor at the Word Factory, it's time to attend Writer Rabbit's Sentence Party and cut loose with a mix of games mashing up sentence diagramming and Mad Libs. In the Ice Cream Game, you are given a phrase and have to identify it as either WHO, WHAT, DID WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, or HOW.

game asks what part of a sentence the phrase 'with style' is

game asks what part of a sentence the phrase 'with style' is

( More on Writer Rabbit )

You can play Reader Rabbit and Writer Rabbit on the Internet Archive, for the finest in lapine-themed edutainment. Did anyone else play a game from this series? There are a million of them!

Current Music: The Grownup Noise, "See You in the Hall"

I might fail math if you don't move your shoulder

Today I have slept less than three hours for the second day in a row and the afternoon just clouded over. Have a couple of links.

1. I can't tell if the BLO's Daughter of the Regiment will be queer enough for its invocation of Deborah Sampson, but then I was distracted by discovering Alex Myers. I blame it on plague that I missed the queer Arthuriana of The Story of Silence (2020).

2. I had an excuse to link Bradley Kincaid's "The Two Sisters" (1928), the oldest version of the ballad I have heard recorded as opposed to seen written down. I used to sing its bleaker descendant by Roger Wilson. Tom Waits does a pretty straight one.

3. Hen Ogledd's "The Loch Ness Monster's Song" (2020) is a setting of Edwin Morgan. It may be the most zaum thing I have encountered since Victory Over the Sun (1913).

For the first time in this apartment, there was an Interloper Cat. Collared and silver-tagged, on the doorless back porch, a substantial ginger and white presence had seated itself in one of the windows with its evident object of a robin in the other. It stared directly through the back door. Hestia was wild. The bird was motionless. I did not let her out and the next time I looked, both bird and interloper had gone.

Trails

I got out to one of our local trails late last week.

This one is an old state park that has been partially developed. It's a fun but small trail that has a variety of habitats for wildlife.

It goes around this drainage pond, which attracts many birds and waterfowl.

Then it passes the condo development, eventually leading to a bike path along the bay.
You can see one of the condos on the right.

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Dreadnought, by April Daniels

Danny is a 15-year-old closeted trans girl in a world where superheroes are real. She's across town from her home and her transphobic abusive father, hiding in an alley and painting her toenails with polish bought in a shop as far from her home as she can manage, when America's strongest superhero, Dreadnought, gets in a fight with a supervillain, crashes at her feet, and passes on his powers to her, since she's the only one there to receive them, before dying.

His powers automatically reshape her body into her mental ideal. So now she's physically a very pretty, very strong girl with superpowers... who now has to explain this to her abusive transphobic parents, everyone at her school, and the local superheroes, one of whom is a TERF. Not to mention that the supervillain who killed Dreadnought is still out there...

This is basically exactly what it sounds like: a superhero origin story for persecuted trans teenagers. It's very earnest and has absolutely no subtext. My favorite parts were the bits where Danny gets her gender affirmed by new friends and a sympathetic superhero, which are genuinely very sweet, and when Danny finally proclaims herself the new Dreadnought, which is a great stand up and cheer moment . But overall, I'm too old to be its ideal reader.

Content notes: A LOT of transphobia and transphobic slurs.

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Musical Interlude: Old Favorites from Altan and Tracy Chapman

Watch on YouTube

"Green Grow the Rushes" (not to be confused with "Green Grow the Rushes O," a different Irish song!) is a song I heard at my cousin's house as a kid and remembered only pieces of and spent many years trying to find! I had figured out that it was Altan but it took a while to find which album the song was on.

Tracy Chapman is a classic of course. "For My Lover" is one of the first songs of hers I remember listening to (though it may not actually have been the first), on a friend's Walkman on the bus on a school trip.

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rl: meme

Let's build a team of adventurers!

Question for anyone to ponder:

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, movie version, played with larger than life literary persons of the 19th century dealing with a threat just at the turn of the century to the 20th.

What persons, literary or real that have been mythologized, would have been a good 20th century team to deal with a more nefarious Y2K plot?

Discord has offered Egg Shen (Big Trouble in Little China), Sarah Connor (Terminator franchise), and Hiro Protagonist (Snow Crash).

I offered the mythologized Jimmy Hoffa as either recruiter or villain, not both as M was in the movie.

Looking forward to your ideas. Let's build a team of adventurers!

ETA: as I have been hit by rules lawyers elsewhere: person must feasibly be able to exist/be established to exist on Earth of the late 20th century within their canon.

BBQ Mushroom Pizza

BBQ Mushroom Pizza
Makes one 12" pizza

Ingredients

6 oz. mixed mushrooms, cut or torn into large pieces (about 3½ cups)
2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
1 lb. store-bought pizza dough, room temperature
⅓ cup (or more) barbecue sauce
6 oz. fresh mozzarella, torn (about 1 cup)
2 oz. smoked Gouda, coarsely grated (about ½ cup)
½ small red onion, thinly sliced
Kosher salt, freshly ground pepper
Crushed red pepper flakes and cilantro leaves (for serving)

Preparation

Step 1 - Place a rack in upper third of oven and preheat to 475°.
Drizzle 6 oz. mixed mushrooms, cut or torn into large pieces (about 3½ cups), with extra-virgin olive oil in a large bowl; toss to coat. Set aside.
Step 2 - Swirl 2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil in a 12" cast-iron skillet to coat bottom and ½" up sides. Place 1 lb. store-bought pizza dough, room temperature, in pan; lift, stretch, and press dough so it fills pan. If dough shrinks from edges, cover with a kitchen towel and let rest 10 minutes before stretching again.
Step 3 - Bake just until crust is starting to set but hasn’t taken on any color, about 5 minutes. Carefully remove skillet from oven and spread ⅓ cup barbecue sauce over entire surface of crust. Top with 6 oz. fresh mozzarella, torn (about 1 cup), and 2 oz. smoked Gouda, coarsely grated (about ½ cup), followed by ½ small red onion, thinly sliced, and reserved mushrooms. Season with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper.
Step 4 - Return skillet to oven and continue to bake until crust is golden brown underneath, cheese is melted, and mushrooms are golden, 16–20 minutes longer.
Step 5 - Heat broiler. Broil pizza until mushrooms are browned and crispy and cheese is browned in spots and bubbling, about 2 minutes. (Begin checking after 1 minute.)
Step 6 - Drizzle more barbecue sauce over pizza if desired. Top with crushed red pepper flakes and cilantro leaves.

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Meet the Absolute Robin's - Absolute Batman #19

How to kill my interest in Absolute Robin's in one panel

I confess I've only been glancing at the Absolute Batman title, it's just.. not to my tastes. If you're enjoying it, then more power to you, but not for me.

However, me also being me, I was interested to see what they'd do with the concept of Robin.

So how does the latest issue introduce the concept? With one panel they poured cold water over me.

( Oh no... not HIM )

(no subject)

Bar I was going to watch the Torrent at is closed tonight, looks like they are doing some repainting and stuff?

Got home and saw both CJ in net and also 4 goals allowed. Ugh, CJ gets a start and gets lit up? Despair...

Turns out, no! Poor Shroeds was having a terrible night. She got pulled. CJ, non-binary icon, gave a perfect performance in their first chance in net for Seattle. A flawless performance did not save the them from elimination tonight. Both Seattle teams are out.

The highs and lows of Seattle hockey

But CJ kept the net on lock every second they were in!

FFA DW Post #2464 - Pasta Apocalypse: the Nonnas Remix

Aunt Agnes vs an Italian Nonna would be a fight to watch from a safe distance.
Ganymede ought to do.

Meme does get a lot funnier if you imagine it's all a bunch of Italian grannies fighting and talking about smut.

... Nonnies do fight over the minutia of canon details the same way nonnas will fight over what nuance of a recipe is better.

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Chronicles of Pern: First Fall - The Dolphins' Bell

So last time, we read the first story in the Chronicles of Pern. In it, we see the initial survey of Pern. Not a lot happened and the characters were more interesting concepts than fully developed, but it wasn't bad.

Let's see what "The Dolphins' Bell" gives us.

( We haven't seen Dolphins much yet, though there will be a book about them. Hopefully better than Renegades of Pern... )

45 Multi-fandom icons

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45 Multi-fandom icons

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little_mermaid ♥

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Current Music: Hen Ogledd, "End of the rhythm"

One boundary makes another

My father's birthday will be formally observed the next time my niece is in town, but for the day itself my mother and I baked him the chicken and leek pie which we had adapted from its recipe the two days prior that the filling can be stored in the refrigerator to deepen in flavor like a stew and a strawberry shortcake which I am currently proud of decorating with a painted marzipan man o' war after the mosaic in Leonardo Morales y Pedroso's 1930 Casa de Mark A. Pollack y Carmen Casuso. Even after I chilled the marzipan, the heat and humidity tangled the tentacles authentically.

I did not expect to receive an unbirthday present of Hen Ogledd's Discombobulated (2026), which I have been listening to since I got home and discovered the equally unexpected postcard awaiting me from

mrissa. The inner CD sleeve includes among its notes, "The painting on the front cover is called 'It's not darkness that falls, it's light', and now lies scattered in pieces across the globe. It was chopped into 34 segments and distributed as gifts to friends and family." I flashed inevitably on Wittgenstein's Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough (1931/1948).

Think how after Schubert's death his brother cut certain of Schubert's scores into small pieces and gave to his favorite pupils these pieces of a few bars each. As a sign of piety this action is just as comprehensible to us as the other one of keeping the scores undisturbed and accessible to no-one. And if Schubert's brother had burned the scores we could still understand this as a sign of piety.