Oregon Trip, Day 1

Jun. 4th, 2025 12:23 pm
yourlibrarian: Merlin sleeps (MERL-SleepingMerlin-adsullatta)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian
1) Just returned from a road trip from Portland to L.A. Almost had a hitch at the very start when it turned out my partner couldn't take me to pick up the car until 12:30 and the pickup had been scheduled for noon. I figured, not a big deal, right, to move it to 1 PM? Tried doing so with the 800 number since I couldn't seem to alter the reservation (and the local office usually can't be reached). I was told that if the car wasn't picked up by soon after 12 it would no longer be available. That sounded ridiculous, so I went to the office in person. Yup, no problem at all to move it to 1 PM. They told me I couldn't prepay for the pickup since it had to be tied to a specific vehicle.

I then asked if I could add the pre-paid fuel and tolls since the Chicago dropoff meant it wouldn't even cost me much more than if I did it myself. No but I could do that online. In fact, I couldn't. I was never offered the option.

Despite all this had no trouble with the pickup on the day, nor the drive up other than rain all the way. And I did rather like the light that would flash if someone was coming up on my left or right side to alert me to possible blind spots. The other thing was that as soon as I'd sat in the rental the service agent let me know to ignore the constantly signaling "maintenance warning" light. They had just gotten it back from the dealership and nothing could be found wrong with the car. Read more... )

The flight was definitely unfun. I had a middle seat and was very tired from a poor night's sleep followed by a 3 hour drive. I tried resting for an hour but gave up and watched Wicked on the in flight panels. I thought it was fine, certainly big budget, some nice dance routines and performances. I was surprised to realize it was only Pt. 1 of the story. I guess it was a good spot to end it to get the audience back in for the sequel. Read more... )

2) It took me a while but I did catch up on Pillowfort posts. Here at Dreamwidth though one can't scroll back longer than 2 weeks, which was skip=350. So there may be posts from from the 21st I can't see.

That said I'm having to skim through a lot because it's a ton of posts and I have things to catch up on now that I'm home again. More on that later.

3) Yesterday was unpacking, laundry, and refrigerator triage before today's weekly shop. I thought I was shockingly tired yesterday given that Monday night I had the most sleep since before the trip and the general stress was over. I even wondered if I was coming down with something but I feel ok today too, just...tired.

4) One nice bit post-trip is that I still had some of K's curry pretzels which she gifted M and me with. People love them so much she was urged to make it a side hustle but she said she didn't have the time for that, and preferred getting to relax rather than have a second job when she came home. She made some to order for Christmas sales a few years ago and said she didn't want to go through that twice.

5) Usually my partner complains that he never has time to watch his TV stuff because he has so little viewing time, and when he does have it we watch things together. My being away is clearly helpful on this front as he's looking forward to some of our joint viewing again 😉

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runpunkrun: combat boot, pizza, camo pants = punk  (punk rock girl)
[personal profile] runpunkrun
Photograph with added text: Female Relationships, at Fancake. Four old Nepalese women sit together on a low brick wall, their feet dangling, most of them barefoot, their shoes kicked off below them. They're dressed in loose patterned fabrics in various shades of red and the mood is relaxed.
[community profile] fancake's theme for June is Female Relationships! That's any kind of relationship with any kind of female—cis, trans, alligator priestess, whatever you got! We already have recs in Star Trek Reboot, Mo Dao Zu Shi/Chen Qing Ling, a stop animation film featuring Barbie dolls and a Cher song (yes, it's as amazing as it sounds), Ghosts (US), and King Falls AM.

If you have any questions about this theme, or the comm, come talk to me!

Mom

Jun. 4th, 2025 08:10 am
k2daisy: (Default)
[personal profile] k2daisy
My mom's 79th birthday is Friday. Last year, my sister Kate and I posted daily memories and photos on Facebook about Mom every day between Mother's Day and her birthday. Then we did another round from then to Father's Day for Dad. I am so glad we did that; they loved reading them and remembering, and of course in hindsight I am so grateful I had the chance to tell my parents, in detail, their impact on me and my admiration and love for them. They both knew how much I loved them before they died.

June is going to be a rough month. Mom's birthday is the 6th, Father's Day is in a few weeks, and their anniversary is the 17th. This was always a month with lots of cards and gifts and celebrations. Now the events we are preparing for are: house closing on June 9, the estate probate ending sometime soon, and their memorial/water burial July 19-20. Quite the difference.

I start therapy today. The grief is pretty overwhelming, so I could use the help. This time it was through my PCP and insurance so it's not Janet. I had an assessment with the new therapist a few weeks ago, and I liked her. I think she will have some good tools for me to learn.

I did a long drive a couple of weeks ago -- took my parents' ashes to my sister in Connecticut, and attended my 35th college reunion. Those were the main purposes of my trip but I also had a nice reunion with my grade-school friends, and spent a few days with my sister and her family. Plus lots of driving by myself there and back. It was a good trip, I guess. Emotional. But it was a relief to hand off their ashes for a while. It didn't feel like it was all totally on my shoulders as much.

After the socializing portion of my trip was over, I was immediately felled by the flu/virus. Took it easy driving the 3 days home, and then collapsed at home for about a week. Today is the first day I almost feel normal again. I have barely left the house in days. Even took some naps! My husband and I were commenting that I haven't been that knocked down in years, probably since I had cancer and was undergoing the radiation treatments. I think my body realized my brain was not going to give us a break and just stop for a minute, so it forced the issue. I could not really do anything, and so that's what I did. It was a needed respite.

Anyway. I had been re-sharing the Mom posts on FB but honestly it was too hard. I know Kate saw them everyday in her memories too, so the people who needed to see them the most did. I keep forgetting Mom and Dad won't chime in anymore with their comments on my posts. I miss that a lot. I know Kate does too.

This is so fucking hard.

Something to distract you

Jun. 4th, 2025 02:59 pm
selenak: (VanGogh - Lefaym)
[personal profile] selenak
I think now I must have read all the published work of the estimable Ms Tesh. In reverse order, as she published these two novel(la)s first, and once more demonstrating her bandwidth, being different yet again from both Some Desperate Glory and The Incandescent. (Not solely because in this duology, the two main characters are male, though there are very memorable female supporting characters.) What it reminded me of was fanfiction to some earlier canon, though I could not say which canon, in the way it focused on the central m/m romance. Which isn't to say said romance - which is thoroughly charming - is all it has going for itself, by far not. The books do a wonderful job with its vaguely 19th century AU England which has Wild Men in the woods, dryads, some (not many) fairies, folklore-studying researchers and female vampire hunters. In all her books, Tesh proves she can create beings that feel guinely different, not like humans in costumes, be they demons or aliens or fae, and the while the heart of the duology is in the romance between stoic and brawny Wild Man Tobias Finch and geeky and cheerful gentleman scholar Henry Silver, it's by far not the only interesting relationship going on. There's also Henry's mother, Mrs. Silver the enterprising non-nonsense slayer hunter, with the way she and Tobias come to relate to each other being a welcome surprise, in the first novel Tobias' creepy ex of centuries past and in the second Maud Linderhurst, who is something spoilery ).

One can nitpick (for example, it's not clear to me what the difference between what Bramble the Dyrad is by the end of the duology and what the fairy servant is, to put it as unspoilery as possible), but nothing that takes away from this thoroughly enjoyable duology of stories. And given the daily news horror, they were very welcome distractions indeed.

Speaking of entertaining distractions: Sirens on Netflix is a five episodes miniseries based on a play, both written by Molly Brown Metzler,), which strikes me as unusual (plays usually ending up as movies), though some googling after watching the series which brought me to reviews of the originial play (titled Elemeno Pea), I found the review descriptions of the play made it clear there were enough differences for the play now to feel like a first draft. The miniseries stars Meghann Fahy, Milly Alcock and Julianne Moore, and a lot of gorgeous costumes. (Also Kevin Bacon as Julianne Moore's husband.) At first I thought it would be another entry in the "eat the rich" genre, but no, not really. The premise: Our heroine and central character is Devon (Fahy), who is overwhelmed with work, an alcoholic father in the early stages of dementia, and her own past alcoholism (she's barely six months sober), and when after an SOS all she gets from younger sister Simone is an basket full of fruits, she impulsviely goes to the island for the superrich where Simone now works as PA for Michaela (Moore) to have it out with her sister. However, once she's there her anger is soon distracted by the fact Michaela/Kiki (as Simone is allowed to call her) comes across like a cult leader to her, and Simone's relationship with her boss has zero boundaries. The general narrative tone of the entire miniseries is black comedy, though as the Michaela and the audience discover both Simone and Devon have horroundous backstory trauma in their childhood and youth, said backstory trauma isn't played for laughs. The three main performances are terrific, with Julianne Moore having a ball coming across as intensely charismatic and creepy without technically doing anything wrong (so you get both why Devon is weirded out and why Simone seems to worship her), while Milly Alcock, whom I had previously only seen as young Rhaenyra in House of Dragon, also excells both as Simone in Devoted Lieutenant mode and with what's underneath showing up more and more. Meghann Fahy I hadn't seen in anything previously but she's wonderful here, no matter whether chewing someone out or trying to hold it together while things around her get ever more bizarre. Of the supporting cast, the most standout is Felix Solis as Jose, the house manager and general factotum. The fact that the staff hates Simone (who hands down Michaela's orders and is therefore loathed as the taskmaster) is a running gag through the series and gets an ironic pay off at the end, though again, this is not another entry in the "eat the rich" genre. Most of all it strikes me as a comedy of manners, and of course the setting - the island which in the play is Martha's Vineyard but in the miniseries has a fictional name - allows for some great landscaping in addition to everyone dressed up gorgeously. All in all, not something that will change your life, but immensely entertaining to watch, and everyone's fates at the end feel narratively earned.

Smoke, Season 1 [2025]

Jun. 3rd, 2025 10:42 pm
myrmidon: ([tv;] hashtag clout.)
[personal profile] myrmidon posting in [community profile] fandom_icons
Smoke, Season 1 (301-306)
[ taron egerton ]


[ here @ [community profile] axisandallies ]

The Age of Lead (Due South)

Jun. 3rd, 2025 07:43 pm
[syndicated profile] polyrecsdaily_feed
The Age of Lead (Due South):

The Age of Lead, by Nos. shrift: “This is the scariest place I’ve ever been, Fraser,” he told me one bright morning. “I feel like anything could happen here.”

rachelmanija: (Books: old)
[personal profile] rachelmanija


A historical children's novel by a Ukrainian-Canadian author, based on Ukrainian teenagers and children forced into slavery during WWII. After watching her neighbors and finally her family getting dragged off by the Nazis, Lida, a Christian Ukrainian girl, is kidnapped along with her younger sister. They're immediately separated and Lida is sent to a horrendous work camp. She's skilled at sewing, which keeps her useful and so alive for a while. But then the Nazis need bombs more than uniforms...

This book is an impressive feat of walking the line between being honest and straightforward about how terrible conditions are while not being too overwhelming for children to read. Lida and the other girls endure and try to support each other. Lida gives a Jewish girl her crucifix necklace to help hide her identity, and an older girl advises Lida to lie about her age so she isn't killed immediately for being too young to work. The German seamstress Lida works with (an employee, not a prisoner) is occasionally casually kind to her, but also gets a gift of looted clothing from a probably murdered French woman, and gets Lida to meticulously remove the woman's stitched-in initials and re-sew them with her own. A Hungarian political prisoner, who gets better soup than the Ukrainians, advises Lida to say she's Polish, as that will improve her her food. Later, Lida muses, It seemed that just as there were different soups, there were different ways of being killed, depending on your nationality.

Read more... )

The book is interesting as a depiction of an aspect of WWII that isn't written about much, a compelling read, and a moving story about some people trying to keep hope and caring - and rebellion - alive when others are being as bad as humans can get. It's part of a trio of books involving overlapping characters, but stands completely on its own.

The afterword says that Skrypuch based the book on her interviews with a survivor.
runpunkrun: Dana Scully reading Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' in the style of a poster you'd find in your school library, text: Read. (reading)
[personal profile] runpunkrun
Miserable teenage lesbian makes bad dating (and life) choices while her best friend looks miserable about it: A Graphic Novel.

I didn't love all the bad choices and self-induced misery, but I did enjoy how effortlessly queer this is, and the ebb and flow of the friend group. I also loved how on target the fortune teller's advice was, but that Freddy was just too deep in her own bullshit to understand it. The greyscale art is modern and expressive, with a lot of movement and delightful pink highlights. A good read, and the ending improves on the beginning.

Also the cover is just so good.

Contains: infidelity; unplanned pregnancy; abortion.

TV Talk: On the Sly

Jun. 3rd, 2025 09:23 am
yourlibrarian: Sneaky-misty_writes (SPN-Sneaky-misty_writes)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian posting in [community profile] tv_talk

Laptop-TV combo with DVDs on top and smartphone on the desk



Do you regularly watch any shows you wouldn't like to admit to other people? If so, no need to specify what the show(s) is, but what makes you reluctant to have that known? And if you don't, have you encountered this with anyone else?

Unbreakable Players (Sports Night)

Jun. 2nd, 2025 07:31 pm
[syndicated profile] polyrecsdaily_feed
Unbreakable Players (Sports Night):

Unbreakable Players, by Punk. shrift: This story makes me smile. Cartoon characters, dust, and foosball. Delightful banter.

musesfool: orange slices (orange you glad)
[personal profile] musesfool
Work was nuts today, especially since I was out on Friday and some of my cow-orkers apparently just waited around for me to come back instead of sending an email themselves. Plus I had 2 committee meetings (unusual - we try not to do that unless we absolutely can't avoid it) but luckily 1 only lasted 15 minutes, so I was able to knock out the minutes in about a similar amount of time. *g*

Yesterday I roasted some ears of corn, and ate 2 for lunch and then scraped the other 3 into a big bowl and the added some crumbled up bacon, 2 pints of really beautiful grape tomatoes, some little pearls of fresh mozzarella, a sliced vidalia onion, and some salt and pepper, oregano, basil, rosemary, and thyme, and dressed it all with some balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Delicious! I will make some orzo to add to it for lunch over the next couple of days and I am looking forward to it.

I also finally hit upon a good way to cook hotdogs without a grill - in the broiler. I don't eat them very often but a couple times during the summer I get a craving, so when they go on sale, I sometimes snag a pack and some soft, cheap buns to eat with them. Of course, since I have the palate of a 5-year-old, I still prefer ketchup on my hotdogs, but since I live alone, there's no one here to judge me. *g*

*The Dodgers, not the Mets. Sigh.

***

Treats for Pinch Hitters

Jun. 2nd, 2025 06:46 pm
longficmod: Photo of a woman tying a running shoe (Default)
[personal profile] longficmod posting in [community profile] fandom5k
We're grateful to all our pinch hitters! 5,000 words or 5 pages is a big commitment without any guarantee of a gift in return.

A number of people are writing pinch hits but didn’t sign up for the exchange, and we’d like to give them the opportunity to leave prompts for treats. Treats for pinch hitters go in the same location as treats for anyone else, in the main collection.

If you picked up a pinch hit, aren’t signed up for the exchange, and would appreciate treats, please leave your AO3 name in a comment here along with the fandoms you’re interested in. You can specify characters/relationships, fic or comics, genres, prompts, and DNWs--as much detail as you'd like. Linking to past letters is also fine.
extrapenguin: Picture of the Horsehead Nebula, with the horse wearing a hat and the text "MOD". (ssmod)
[personal profile] extrapenguin posting in [community profile] space_swap
For vidders and podficcers here from elsewhere: Space Swap is a multimedia fanworks exchange for all fandoms related to space. We currently allow gift works to be fanfiction, fanart, podfic, fanvids, or interactive fiction.

This is also an event where works must be made by humans, not AI. Currently, the rules simply state that
"AI" works produced using a large language model (such as ChatGPT) or "art generators" (such as Midjourney) are prohibited.


I plan on adding a line that states that works must be produced by the person signing up. Additionally, I want to ban usage of any and all generative AI (so pressing "create vid" on a hypothetical VidGPT is not allowed, for instance). However, as "AI" is the new, trendy way of saying "computer program", and it's possible that e.g. someone's word processor has a spell checker that's built on AI for AI hype reasons, I don't think I can actually blanket ban AI with satisfactory results. Thus, my questions:

1) If I phrase the ban as "By participating, you guarantee that the works produced are made by you alone. Usage of generative AI (for instance, ChatGPT or DALL-E) is strictly prohibited", will people understand this?
2) Are there any other ethical issues related to AI in vidding/podficcing that you would like an official ruling on? I know vidding communities are discussing things like the ethics of AI-based scene extension; I would like to hear about any such discussions going on in the podfic community and also any community consensuses that might have been reached, in addition to discussion and debate.

MCM: Brian Cox

Jun. 2nd, 2025 01:30 pm

Of endings in many a universe

Jun. 2nd, 2025 10:16 am
selenak: (Thirteen by Fueschgast)
[personal profile] selenak
This in fannish and rl political matters was not a good past week, but what is anymore, one is tempted to ask. But it wasn't universally bleak, either.

Wheel of Time cancelled: a pity. I was only so so about it in the first season, grew to like it in the second, and was impressed by the third. Where it had felt like starting out on a generic fantasy pattern (heroes called to quest, evil dark overlords and minions wrecking the land), it had truly become its own unique thing. Yes, I could still read the books, but I osmosed that many of the things I liked best about the tv version are in fact different to the books (for example, unless I osmosed wrongly, Rand is the clear main character in the books, while if there is any lead on tv, it's Moraine, Liandrin is a simple Evil McEvil villainess in the book where in the tv version she has backstory and complicated feelings, and "more complicated" is true for other villains as well, Moraine's sister Alvaere (spelling?), wonderfully played by Lindsay Duncan, only exists as a name in the books and her relationship with Moraine not at all, and the books have only same sex subtext where the show has main text, etc.). I wanted to follow this specific version of the tale, and now I won't be able to.

(Also, I'm reminded of how annoying I always found back in the day and sometimes years later when B5 and DS9 were played out against each other; I loved both, and refused to play that game, and interaction with other fans was tricky if you wanted discussions of one only to to come across rants about the other. It's not that I love Rings of Power, but I do like it, and if it was difficult already to come across interesting meta, now there will be additional bile blaming it on a note of "why wasn't this cancelled instead".)

The Mouse channel put up Captain America: Brave New World on its streaming service. I hadn't bothered to see it in the cinema after getting only discouraging noises, and while sometimes I come across media loathed by most which I love or at least like, this wasn't the case here. It had some elements I liked, but simply wasn't very good. I do wonder whether Captain America: The Winter Soldier is for the MCU what Star Trek: Wrath of Khan was for decades for the ST franchise - to wit, the movie most of fandom adores and loves best and which subsequently gets imitated over and over to the detriment of the results because they don't succeed in creating something of equal value and the repeated tropes get less convincing the more they're repeated. In the MCU case, subsequent attempts to combine 70s style political thriller with the superhero formula included the dreadful Secret Invasion which everyone seems to silently agree never to have happened since it's been ignored by the rest of the franchise, and Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which was decidedly mixed in quality and result (though definitely better than Secret Invasion). Some short observations why despite having good actors and some good ideas, Brave New World just didn't stick the landing (imo, as always) in its attempt to recreate Winter Soldier: are spoilery. )


Doctor Who ?.08: Reality War: Which felt at times like RTD throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks, at times like (great) trolling, and at times was surprisingly touching giving everything else. Spoilery comments await )


***

Peter David the writer died. Back in the 1990s, I loved reading most of his Star Trek novels, especially but by no means exclusively Imzadi and Q-Squared. (I haven't reread them in decades by now, and have no idea whether they would still hold up, but I remember the reading pleasure they gave me, and how they long before the internet provided me with online fanfic showed how a story can enhance and deepen characterisation as given by a tv show.) On the B5 side of things, he contributed two episodes, including Soul Mates in season 2, which is still one of my all time favourites, and in it he created who is definitely my favourite one episode only on Babylon 5 character, Timov. (His B5 books were more of a mixed affair, but this is not the place to repeat my problems with the Centauri trilogy and its (lack of) worldbuilding.) If a writer is able to gift you with characters that remain with you for the rest of your life, that is more than many of us will ever achieve, so, hail and farewell, Peter David.

The Reality War - Doctor Who Icons

Jun. 2nd, 2025 12:20 pm
magnavox_23: Jodie Whittaker is jumping in the air with the tardis in the background (DW_Jodie_jumping)
[personal profile] magnavox_23 posting in [community profile] fandom_icons
Under a cut for *spoilers*

cut cut cut... )

Check out the rest here. <3 

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