dswdiane

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260424.html

Sunlit arms of a

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260424.html

Okay, so, general update then some happier HR stuff. NZ now has about 16 days of onshore diesel left and there's nothing in the news about it. The official govt fuel update page says no worries, prices will just be a bit higher next few weeks, no need to ration. Surendran says we only have stocks and some diesel incoming on two ships as we're outbidding poorer nations, which is causing other countries in our fuel supply chain around the Asian-Pacific rim to side-eye us as they've all imposed restrictions on their own populations, being collectivist cultures. So NZ is looking like a selfish, short-sighted, individualistic nation, which is just great, if we ever need their help. Fucking National government dickheads.

I mailordered a bunch of things on the basis of why not while I still can, and am now faced with needing to tidy and reorganise my spare room and garage to store stuff. Ugh. I'm too physically lazy to be a survivalist.
Maybe I can hire a boy scout? Do boy scouts still exist? I also need the boy scout to change bulbs in my kitchen as I don't think I'm safe on a stepstool any more. Rats. I got my second shingles vax and over the next two weeks will get a flu shot and covid booster.

Lots of rain and thunderstorms recently but still many nice days, although temps have dropped so definitely autumnal. The liquidamber trees are bronzing up - the main tree that reliably has autumn colours here in the subtropics. I'm going to revamp a couple of my wheeliebeds and plant kale and spinach, also pansies are available, so yay. Potted colour for interesting times.

On the HR front, have been arting, and posted another podfic. Lots of fiddling!
Ilya and Friend - portrait of a contemplative Ilya with rabbit (kind of for Easter)
cut to the feeling - podfic of Charlotte_Stant's wonderful fic
Collectors Items - picked up 4 art pinch hits for the ICE OUT donations challenge. This one is hollanov in Topps card format.
Everyone's Issue - for ICE OUT. A mental health poster format with Shane and Ilya.
Best t-shirt ever - Scott/Kip, domestic fluff, for ICE OUT.
I got you something - Troy/Harris and the NY Pride pin for ICE OUT
podfic of Torture Me (With All I've Wanted) - excellent fic by toomuchplor (teenage Shane/Ilya bonding on a long bus ride)

HR recs:
(I've lost track of who reccd what so some of these will already have been reccd by friends.)
Retirement, apparently by cheryl123
Hilarious romp of crack taken seriously. Post retirement from hockey, Shane and Ilya end up in VERY different reality tv shows, with iconic results.
Knock on Wood by McShrug
Hot as hell fic in which "just the tip" becomes part of Shane's superstitious pregame playoffs ritual.
Is this thing on? by arustyspork
I saw this ask on tumblr - someone suggested a post-retirement fic where Shane and Svetlana have a hockey podcast together. Arustyspork took up the baton, and it's marvellous! They have a segment called "why Ilya Rozanov owes me money" in which guests relate terrible/funny things Ilya did to them. They won't let Ilya himself come on the show and it drives him crazy!
i carry your heart by corvidcordelia
A complete AU where they're competing literary fiction writers having rivalrous sex in a retelling of the show. CC adds in mocked-up covers for their bestsellers and extremely real-feeling & pretentious rave critic reviews, plus quotes from Cummings and Austen. Brilliantly done. As usual, Svetlana and Rose (their literary agents) do some emotional heavy lifting.

And, new to me HR writers that I'm now reading everything of:
ghoulien
Cheryl123sing
HH_Arrow

Okay, enough for now! Today was supposed to be a writing day, ha.
Hugs to you all!

senmut

Colorful image that says 3weeks4dreamwidth friending meme

jadelennox

I hope Nael, currently age 16-ish, is doing very well, and still writing delightful poems about tigers.

adafrog posting in

fandom_checkin

This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Friday to midnight on Saturday (8pm Eastern Time).

Poll #34516 Daily poll

This poll is closed.
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 20

How are you doing?

I am okay
11 (55.0%)

I am not okay, but don't need help right now
9 (45.0%)

I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)

How many other humans are you living with?

I am living single
10 (50.0%)

One other person
7 (35.0%)

More than one other person
3 (15.0%)

Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.

princessofgeeks

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grrlpup

crocheted dog amigurumi, light brown and medium brown with embroidery-thread nose. The dog is a bit lumpy and haphazard, and sits on a sunny windowsill.

This is Oscar the dog, whom I finished making last night. Oscar’s kit was a Christmas 2024 present. Oscar has been sitting around in pieces on the dining room table for a long time; the crocheting of Oscar seems like a distant memory. It’s the sewing I just finished up.

I crocheted an ear in the wrong color, so decided one leg could be a different color than designated in the pattern as well, and it would all come out right.

I hadn’t crocheted since maybe age 9, so I was pleased to learn the basics again (in an age of free online videos made for left-handers). Will I make another amigurumi? I’m enamored of the backpack charms I’ve seen in Portland and Japan, so maybe an onion charm, in honor of Harriet the Spy.

This post originates at everyday though not every day. Comments welcome here or there.

sartorias

There's been a situation that has been making life stressful for the past year, and yesterday the stress doubled. My way of dealing with this kind of cosmic ass kick is to bury myself in writing, where I feel I have a pretence at control. I only say this because I might not be as responsive to posts as usual, and if anyone even notices a dearth of commentary from me (very small chance I realize) it's not you, it's me. Not gone, just coping and scribbling away.

thisbluespirittumblr_feed

https://thisbluespirit.tumblr.com/post/814796027364360192

fanfeifour:

Visiting an abandoned temple of bird worship

https://thisbluespirit.tumblr.com/post/814796027364360192

james

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tozka

1. I am currently on an island, the Isle of Wight.

2. Today I finished reading We Bought an Island, which I LOVED. It's a memoir of two sisters who bought an island off the Cornwall coast in the 1960s and turned it into (basically) an artists' retreat. This book is focused on them finding the island and moving in, and all the people they meet. It genuinely made me laugh out loud several times, to the point where it's coming home with me because I know I'll want to reread it later. Luckily I have the small pocket-sized paperback version; if I have to I can just put it in my coat pocket.

I desperately want to read the sequel, which talks about their life on the island after moving in, but I may have to resign myself to reading the PDF on Archive.org as the local used bookshop doesn't have a copy. I can always order one on eBay if I want to later, too.

3. While looking for Tales From Our Cornish Island (that's the sequel) at the local used bookshop, I found a different book about living on an island: Herm, Our Island Home, which I of course bought. This one is about a family (6 kids, 2 parents) living on an island 3 miles from Guernsey in the Channel Islands, around the same time period as the sisters on their island, actually.

4. I enjoy reading about people on islands, and I enjoy visiting islands. If I were going to live on an island, I'd prefer a larger one. But then I've never been enamored with small-town life, tbh. I prefer mid-sized places.

5. I re-watched Muppet Treasure Island the other day and then read Robert Louis Stevenson's fascinating Wikipedia page; I'd no idea that he'd written travel memoirs, nor spent the last years of his life writing from and about Samoa (an island nation).

6. Other islands I've been to: the UK (of course), Madeira Island, São Miguel Island, Barbados, Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, Manhattan Island.

7. Private artificial islands creep me out, especially when they're populated by billionaires. Public artificial islands are, I suppose, fine.

8. I just found this Wikipedia list of fictional islands and it's made me think back to how many of my favorite books as a kid were set on islands, or involved islands, most of them only lightly inhabited. They do make for interesting story settings...

9. "Let's all go to Gullah Gullah Island!"

musesfool

Does anyone know where I can get a Trinity Santos icon? [eta: icon acquired!]

*

Always need some Dorianne Laux during poetry month, so here's today's poem:

Prayer
by Dorianne Laux

Sweet Jesus, let her save you, let her take
your hands and hold them to her breasts,
slip the sandals from your feet, lay your body down
on sheets beaten clean against the fountain stones.
Let her rest her dark head on your chest,
let her tongue lift the hairs like a sword tip
parting the reeds, let her lips burnish
your neck, let your eyes be wet with pleasure.
Let her keep you from that other life, as a mother
keeps a child from the brick lip of a well,
though the rope and bucket shine and clang,
though the water's hidden silk and mystery call.
Let her patter soothe you and her passions
distract you, let her show you the light
storming the windows of her kitchen, peaches
in a wooden bowl, a square of blue cloth
she has sewn to her skirt to cover the tear.
What could be more holy than the curve of her back
as she sits, her hands opening a plum.
What could be more sacred than her eyes,
fierce and complicated as the truth, your life
rising behind them, your name on her lips.
Stay there, in her bare house, the black pots
hung from pegs, bread braided and glazed
on the table, a clay jug of violet wine.
There is the daily sacrament of rasp and chisel,
another chair to be made, shelves to be hewn
cleanly and even and carefully joined
to the sun-scrubbed walls, a sharp knife
for carving odd chunks of wood into small toys
for the children. Oh Jesus, close your eyes
and listen to it, the air is alive with bird calls
and bees, the dry rustle of palm leaves,
her distracted song as she washes her feet.
Let your death be quiet and ordinary.
Either life you choose will end in her arms

*

Current Mood: thoughtful

petra

The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill + ... well really I would take just about any fictional or fictionalized city, so that's why I feel comfortable floating it as a possibility for Yuletide.

The original inspiration was "The Pushcart War set in Gotham City." I would take just about any year setting. The OG era. The social media version, complete with vigilantes with pea pin shooters.

jadelennox suggests that Alfred and General Anna are old besties, and I concur.

But, in the grand tradition of my Yuletide requests, typing this up makes me realize how much I want this story in any fictionalized 'verse of which I am sufficiently knowledgeable.

The Rivers of London take sides! You know Lady Ty is for the truckers.

Mountie under suspicion! Benton Fraser seen with pea-tack shooter! Claims it is reusable straw. Is Big Red Green?

Mélusine + trucks. Not necessarily including our protags from canon; the city is sufficiently a character to count for my purposes.

The Slow Horses investigate the pea-tack problem with their usual bumbling flair.

The Pushcart War was part of what spurred the Earth of the Expanse to implement UBI. Eh? Ehhhhh?

Manchester in 1973 is not maybe the best place, but London in 1981? Give me the Alex Drake peapin saga.

Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler III vs. trucks? :D If Palpatine can find time to reproduce, so can Throat.

Current Mood: inspired
Current Music: Life is like a hurricane / Here in Duckburg

rachelmanija

A science fiction novella about aliens, communication, and certain dark topics which are spoilery to mention. Though if you read the blurb for this book, it very strongly implies those topics and the specific shocking twist that involves them. It reminded me of China Mieville's Embassytown, though the latter benefited from its longer length.

Ro's species, along with some others, can jump into the minds of Star Eaters, the mysterious species that alone can mine the mineral that enables space travel. Ro is told that doing so is the only way to study them, and while jumping into their bodies extinguishes their minds, they are extremely long-lived beings and their minds definitely come back, so Ro is only doing the equivalent of causing a day-long blackout. The Star Eaters were apparently once enslaved, but now work voluntarily; communication with them is difficult and puzzling. Once you jump in, you're stuck for the rest of your life, but Ro is such a curious and skilled linguist that he's willing to give up everything to understand this oddly mysterious race. (I guess the possessing being's mind is supposed to only live for its species's normal lifespan? This is not explained.)

If you've read much science fiction, or many books in general, you have probably already figured out what's really going on. In fact it's so obvious that it seems strange that it takes the characters so long to do so, but of course no one knows exactly what story they're in.

Everything involving alien communication is great. But the plot is so predictable and grim that I didn't enjoy the book much.

( Read more... )

prisca posting in

fic_promptly

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settiai

Watch on YouTube

I've gotta admit, I'm really excited about this movie. Also? Considering all of the drama that's been going on the last few years in regards to its release, the very obvious shade they throw at Warner Bros. in the trailer made me cackle.