rikibeth

"I know that there are people who think that this is odd. They take their comfort other ways -- from liquor or from God. Now sometimes prayer can call me or a drink helps get me through, But nothing is so healing as the days I spend with you." -- from "My Thousand Closest Friends" (1991) by Naomi Pardue

cupcake_goth

I have a bunch of stuff I want to or should be posting about, but. Busy. (And I need to write a new, but short, GCS column TOMORROW, JILLIAN, so I can post it on Tuesday.)

So anyway, here, have some photos from today's "working on projects" day with Thea:

Dear Steampunks,

The Victorian Goths are TAKING BACK THE TOP HATS.

kore

Watch on YouTube

The Source feat. Candi Staton (Now Voyager mix 2006)

yhlee

I asked Machineries of Tarot what my prognosis was for writing today using the Vidona spread:

Deuce of Gears
A cog in the machine. Pawn of powers beyond your control.

AUGGGGGGGGGGGGH

(Yes, Jedao was being snarkastic when he chose it for his emblem.)

Also, I love my catten but...she's not very bright? She likes to sit on the ping pong table and will remain sprawled on it when the Dragon and I start up a game. The ball hits her in the leg, she remains sprawled. It took the next ball hitting her in the snout for her to skitter-kitter off the table. *facepalm*

That's not the part where she's not very bright. The part where she's not very bright is that she was on the ping pong table during a game yesterday and got hit in the snout by a ball then, causing her to skitter-kitter off the table. You would think she'd figure out that ping pong game in progress = don't sprawl on the table waiting to be hit in the snout?

Back to work...

Current Mood: amused

yhlee

( Read more... )

kore

As Susan Tschudi, marriage and family therapist and author of Loving Someone with Attention Deficit Disorder, would explain to me....ADHD is basically an allergy to boredom.

....ahahaha this is EXACTLY how I have been describing myself most of my life ("low boredom threshold," "I need a book going to calm down and think," "allergic to boredom," "if I get bored I will get in trouble"). Haha! //cries

(Yeah the treating the ADD thing has kind of gone by the wayside because I was on Vyvanse!, and Vyvanse! was motherfucking expensive and seemed to peter out, and they were also all hassling me about my blood pressure ((which is FINE)) and then a later doc terrified me about being overweight and taking stimulants and heart failure. sigh. I dunno. It also seemed to kind of set off my hypomania. On the other hand I've been napping every three hours again so....)

Current Music: Tragically Hip - Cordelia

yhlee

From Facebook.

Four things, etc. ( Read more... )

Back to work...

Current Mood: busy

nancylebov

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gnpCqsXE8g

Ex-KGB guy lecturing about subversion in 1983.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Bezmenov

The beginning is ... amusing. He claims that the Soviet Union is immune to subversion because it's closed off from outside influences. It might also be amusing that he claims religion is the only thing which holds a society together, but fails to notice that the USSR tried to weaken religion.

However, his claims that it's possible to take a society down by amplifying its internal disruptive influences might be true.

The part that catches my attention is that cultivating no-compromise attitudes among people is very destructive. And that if you're looking to punish the other guy rather than get a good solution for the both of you, you're heading for trouble.

Unfortunately, it takes two to cooperate.

I'm wondering whether the world is worse than it needs to be, not so much because people are personally rotten as because there are organizations encouraging bad behavior for reasons which have nothing to do with the self-interest of the obvious culprits.

I suggest that malice is not adorable. Even if it's from people you agree with against people you don't trust. And that tear-it-all-downism might actually be bad for you.

There's a challenge here because hunting for negative foreign influence can also be a destructive force.

I'm not sure what the answer is. Look for people of good will. Don't make things worse.

Crossposts: https://nancylebov.livejournal.com/665415.html

dglenn

"Don't push that button! Jesus, Ron!
Don't push that button! Or we're gone.
I know you hate the 'Russkies,' and wish they'd go away,
But dodging falling A-bombs would just ruin our whole day!
Don't push that button! Jesus, Ron!
Don't push that button! Or we're gone.
A war would be the worst thing our world had yet endured.
Destruction would be mutu'lly assured."
-- from "H
e Asked
a Question" by Roger Clendening II (to the tune of Duane Elms' "Don't Push That Button")

yhlee

( spoilers )

It's funny--I adore this show but declined to request it for Yuletide. Besides it being a highly jossable canon, what I really want is bona fide philosophy neepery, and I'm pretty sure 99% of the fandom wants to write about relationships. There's plenty of shipfic I would read for this fandom, but I really really want philosophy neepery. And, I mean, 2.5 was basically my Platonic ideal in terms of episode content.

Current Mood: pleased

jbsegal

Baitcon XXVIII
Subtitle TBD

Will Be Held:
Friday, June 29th - Monday, July 2d, 2018*
at the Mountain Campground of the Abode of the Message.

*Yes, we know Firefly starts the next day. We're sorry. These things happen, as there aren't nearly enough weekends in the summer.

Also: Sorry for the delay in this announcement.

Crossposts: https://jbsegal.livejournal.com/301379.html

vatine

Reread.

Approximately the Nth book in McGuire's Toby Daye series. Still a pleasant read. Probably start earlier in the series.

brithistorian

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dglenn

"Oh, take your time don't live too fast.
Troubles will come and they will pass.
Go find a woman you'll find love
And don't forget son there is someone up above.
And be a simple kind of man
Be something you love and understand [...]"
-- from "Simple Man", written by Ronnie Van Zant (b. 1948
-01-15,
d. 1977-10-20) and Gary Rossington (b. 1951-12-04)

yhlee

Because today has been a Day for uninteresting reasons, I present to you a song that makes me happy: Anne Murray's "I Just Fall in Love Again" [Youtube].

(I'm Texan. I grew up on country, okay? ^_^)

Feel free to link to Youtube versions of songs that make you happy! I expect yours are less mushy than mine. ^_^

Current Mood: hopeful

recessional

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hawkwing_lb

Most of the time, I'm sufficiently busy that updating the log of books read falls off my radar. But! I want to!

I am going to forget items, I'm sure.

Books 2017: 157-181

157. Jim C. Hines, Terminal Alliance. DAW, 2017.

Read for review for Locus. Fun.

158. Elizabeth Bear, The Stone in the Skull. Tor, 2017.

Read for column. Extraordinary fantasy.

159-160. Elizabeth Bonesteel, Remnants of Trust and Breach of Containment. HarperCollins, 2016 and 2017.

Read for column. Space opera. Okay, I guess.

161. Sarah Gailey, Taste of Marrow. Tor.com Publishing, 2017.

Read for review for Locus and for column. Novella. Hippos.

162. John Crowley, Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruins of Ymr. Saga, 2017.

Read for review. Baffling.

163. Ausma Zehanat Khan, The Bloodprint. HarperCollins, 2017.

Read for review. Epic fantasy. Meh.

164. Julie Tizard, The Road to Wings. Bold Strokes Books, 2017.

F/F fighter pilot romance. Meh.

165. Melissa Brayden, Eyes Like Those. Bold Strokes Books, 2017.

F/F workplace romance. Meh.

166. Jaycie Morrison, Heart's Orders. Bold Strokes Books, 2017.

F/F historical American WWII women's army corps romance. Meh.

167. Sophia Kell Hagin, Omnipotence Enough. Bold Strokes Books, 2017.

F/F near-future SF romance.

168. Fonda Lee, Jade City. Orbit, 2017.

Read for review. Really good fantasy.

169. K.B. Wagers, Beyond the Empire. Orbit, 2017.

Read for review. Space opera trilogy conclusion.

170. R.E. Stearns, Barbary Station. Saga, 2017.

Read for review. Really good science fiction with pirates and murderous AI.

171. Melissa Caruso, The Tethered Mage. Orbit, 2017.

Read for review. Really good fantasy.

172. K.J. Charles, Think of England. Ebook, 2014.

M/M romance. Sad boys in love. Historical.

173. K.J. Charles, The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal. Ebook, 2015.

Linked stories about sad boys in love. Historical fantasy.

174. K.J. Charles, An Unsuitable Heir. Ebook, 2017.

Historical romance between a man and a genderqueer person. Good.

175. K. Arsenault Rivera, The Tiger's Daughter. Tor, 2017.

Read for review. Excellent epic fantasy debut. Includes epic romance between women.

176. Rose Lerner, Courtney Milan, and Alyssa Cole, Hamilton's Battalion. Ebook, 2017.

Three romance novellas set around the American revolutionary war. The first two, a heterosexual romance and a M/M romance, are excellent; the third romance is F/F and is entirely meh.

177. Leena Likitalo, Sisters of the Crescent Empress. Tor.com Publishing, 2017.

Sequel to The Five Daughters of the Moon. Read for review. Meh.

178. Tade Thompson, The Murders of Molly Southborne. Tor.com Publishing, 2017.

Read for review. Strange and peculiar and compelling novella.

179. Nnedi Okorafor, Binti: The Night Masquerade. Tor.com Publishing, 2017.

Read for review. Concluding Binti novella. Pretty good.

nonfiction.

180. Shihab al-Din al-Nuwayri, The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition: A Compendium of Knowledge from the Classical Islamic World. Penguin Classics. London & New York, 2016. Translated and abridged by Elias Muhanna.

This is Serious Abridgement, one slender Penguin volume for a 33-volume medieval Arabic encyclopaedia. This abridgement and translation gives a flavour of what the original might possibly contain, and makes me deeply regret the lack of proper complete translations of more medieval Arabic literature.

It is really enjoyable, though.

181. Michael Maas (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005.

Cambridge Companions aren't really designed to be read cover-to-cover, but I did. Eventually. It is a quite comprehensive companion, to be fair. An introduction to many things. Worth perusing.

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: home
Current Music: Moana soundtrack

brithistorian

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dglenn

"Despite everything, no one can dictate who you are to other people." -- Prince (Prince Rogers Nelson, b. 1958-06-07, d. 2016-04-21)

immlass

Books:
- Dice Tales: Essays on Roleplaying Games and Storytelling, by Marie Brennan. Useful essays that were pretty clearly adapted from blog posts but make a good introduction to narrativist-inflected roleplaying of the tabletop sort. I'm not crazy about all of her fiction but her writing here is solid.

Movies/TV:
- none

Music:
- Blancmange, Happy Families, Blanc Tapes edition. Really enjoyed this and particularly the live renditions of the various songs which showed the sorts of rearrangements they were doing outside the studio. The 12" remixes were good but I'd heard them before. Not so crazy about the demos, though they show you what solid engineering and production can do for a song.

Current Music: Silence is golden.

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rikibeth

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The Good Place: further S2 musings (spoilers)

A thief blinded on the job has to steal for life

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BC 28: The Date Announcement!

2017 - #98, "Once Broken Faith", Seanan McGuire

Je suis un citoyen du monde.

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Books 2017: a long time passes between updates

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