kangeiko

Some of the spelling may be off. A petition to the Chancery Court of England, from the late 1400s:
( Long paragraph, no punctuation of any kind )

hannah

This afternoon, I heard someone proudly talking about how they're featured in every chapter of their psychiatrist's upcoming book.

It's a book about living with and recovering from eating disorders.

I'm not sure what she was trying to communicate, or why she wanted to talk about it with a relative stranger in the room. It reminded me a little of a conversation a while back where someone else at the table was trying to impress and shock the group by crowing about how she was in such a bad place in college, she had to take mandatory therapy sessions.

At that dinner, I said, "Who hasn't?"

At the gym today, I didn't ask a thing.

At that dinner, she doubled down on trying to explain her therapy had been mandatory - "Yeah, who hasn't?" I said again, casually, having been there myself and taking a certain sense of pleasure in deflating a moment by reminding someone that while their experiences might not be universal, neither are they unique or unprecedented.

At the gym today, the person was talking about the therapists and doctors she sees on a regular basis, and at multiple points her trainer asked her to slow down because she was talking too fast for him to understand, and I had the wicked thought of asking about a speech therapist, and said nothing, only asking her for the author's name. I didn't find out about the book's subject matter until I got back to my apartment, so to go from hearing someone attempt a flex about simply being in their psychiatrist's upcoming book to a book on eating disorders added the additional dimension to have me wonder about it with a greater level of specificity.

I keep wondering if she was talking like that because she's so proud of her accomplishments, just as I keep wondering why she's announcing that.

Current Mood: confused
Current Music: nothing now

musesfool

My nephew Victor entered Mayor Mamdani's lottery for the 300 seats at City Hall for today's Knicks parade, and he won! So he and Trish got to sit through the ceremony and see everything from relatively close up! They said it was awesome. I watched but did not see them in the crowd. I enjoyed it. There were so many high points - Mamdani's speech, Brunson's speech, seeing Alvarado and KAT, who are local and really understand what this means to the city, dancing to Alicia Keys! Mariska Hargitay! Her and Brunson's mutual admiration society is so cute! A fitting end to a magical post-season.

*

Current Music: New York State of Mind - Billy Joel

cyberghostface posting in

scans_daily

John Byrne is returning to the X-Men for a new project called ‘ X-Men: Elsewhen’. Byrne describes it as possibly being his final work.

“The stories begin at a turning point that occurred late in Byrne’s original run. In the comics as published, Jean Grey sacrificed her life to save the universe while fighting off the possession of an entity known as the Dark Phoenix. Then editor-in-chief Jim Shooter ordered Jean be killed, a decision that rubbed the artist as wrongheaded and would lead to his exit a few months later. Byrne’s new stories diverge, with her surviving the experience.”

More info here.

pauraque

Jan Morris (1926-2020) was a Welsh writer known primarily for histories and travelogues published both before and after her gender transition in the late 1960s. In her time she traveled just about everywhere in the world; as a journalist she accompanied the Mount Everest expedition of 1953, waiting at a camp at 22,000 feet elevation to be the first to report that Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary had reached the summit.

Hav is one of her few published pieces of fiction, a travelogue of an imagined visit to an invented country. Morris placed her fictional land on a tiny peninsula jutting off Anatolia, and made it a crossroads where all the peoples and powers of the Mediterranean and beyond have come and left their mark through conquest and trade, and have continued to leverage its unique political position for their own gain. This omnibus edition includes the 1985 novel Last Letters from Hav and its sequel, 2006's Hav of the Myrmidons, which imagines a return visit to see how Hav has changed two decades on and where it sits in the post-9/11 world.

Apparently when Last Letters from Hav was first published, there was a bit of a "War of the Worlds" situation where many readers completely missed that it was fiction and ran right out to try to book a flight to Hav. I can understand how this happened, not just because Morris was known for nonfiction and before the internet people couldn't easily look these things up, but also because the book is so totally convincing as a depiction of a real place. Its episodic narrative gathers threads of all the real places Morris had been to and weaves them together elaborately but naturally into a multicultural knot—Turkish and Greek, British and Chinese, Christian and Muslim—that feels like it could have been, even though it never was.

The book doesn't make sweeping changes to real-world history to accommodate Hav's existence, but it makes tweaks and adjustments here and there to slip Hav in as an influence on all kinds of things. Morris creates connections everywhere (it's a common belief that Hav was the site of ancient Troy) and it seems that almost every interesting figure in history visited Hav at some point. Freud's stay in Hav as a young man inspired some of his later important works, and of course when Hemingway departed he took with him some of Hav's famous polydactyl cats. Sometimes Morris quotes passages about Hav from real writers' works, and in 1985, unless you had that exact book on the shelf, could you be sure that quote wasn't in there? I think some of them might even be real quotations that she has cleverly recontextualized to sound like they're about Hav, and with such forthright authoritativeness that you want to believe her.

( cut for length )

sholio

Writing up a few books I've read over the last few months and never wrote about. (There will be a separate post for the nonfiction. Probably. Eventually.)

Out Law by Jim Butcher - This is a Dresden Files novella set during or perhaps shortly after Twelve Months that came out in May. It took me a while to read it because the summary looked like it featured Marcone heavily and I ... really do not like Marcone AT ALL. (I know this is a very minority opinion among Dresden Files readers.) However, it turns out that he appears for a couple pages in the beginning to set up the plot, and is otherwise Sir Not Appearing In This Book. And I really enjoyed it!

Spoilers/reactions: ( Under here )

Emmett Hardy series by Chris Kelsey (books 1-6) - This is a noir-flavored series of mystery/crime/police procedurals set in small-town Oklahoma in the 1960s and 1970s that I inhaled over the course of the spring.

More about that: ( Under the cut, no specific spoilers )

The Inheritance by Ilona Andrews - This is "Ilona Andrews does portal fantasy." The first 2/3 or so of the book was GREAT. And then the ending was staggeringly disappointing. So all in all, I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about it.

Spoilers proceed: ( Under here )

morbane posting in

jukebox_fest

We currently have 4 pinch hits due on 2 July.

The requirements for a work are:
For fic: 1,000+ words. Treats may be shorter.

For podfic: 500-5,000 words, provided both in text and in a recording. Treats may be shorter or longer; OR a recording of an existing fanwork that is based on a song or music video, that is 1,000+ words long, and where permission has been given for the work to be recorded.

For art: at least 1 piece of original hand-drawn or digital art. These works should be complete, checked for unintended marks or lines, and at an appropriate resolution. Please don't draw on lined paper or take a photograph of your artwork that includes background objects. Manips, collages, and similar graphics may not be used to complete an assignment but may be given as treats if the recipient welcomes them.

Works may not be generated or shaped by AI. If you have questions about that, please speak with moderators.

( Pinch hit #1 - fic - Jupiter Drive - Loreen (Song), LOVE ME HARD - Jerry Heil (Music Video), Neon Lights - Loreen (Song) )

Jupiter Drive - Loreen (Song) | Listen | Lyrics
LOVE ME HARD - Jerry Heil (Music Video) | Listen | Lyrics
Neon Lights - Loreen (Song) | Listen | Lyrics

( Pinch hit #2 - fic - The Questions Still Entertain Me - Hussalonia (Song), He's My Man - Luvcat (Song), Nowhere Man - The Beatles (Song) )

The Questions Still Entertain Me - Hussalonia (Song) | Listen | Lyrics
He's My Man - Luvcat (Song) | Listen | Lyrics
Nowhere Man - The Beatles (Song) | Listen | Lyrics

( Pinch hit #8 - fic, podfic - The Gambler - Kenny Rogers (Song), The Mummers' Dance - Loreena McKennit (Song), All Souls Night - Loreena McKennitt (Song), Podficcer's Choice of Fandom, Magic to Do (Pippin) - Stephen Schwartz (Song), Queen of Spades - Styx (Song), 9 to 5 - Dolly Parton (Song), Killer Queen - Queen (Song) )

The Gambler - Kenny Rogers (Song) | Listen | Lyrics
The Mummers' Dance - Loreena McKennit (Song) | Listen | Lyrics
All Souls Night - Loreena McKennitt (Song) | Listen | Lyrics
Magic to Do (Pippin) - Stephen Schwartz (Song) | Listen | Lyrics
Queen of Spades - Styx (Song) | Listen | Lyrics
9 to 5 - Dolly Parton (Song) | Listen | Lyrics
Killer Queen - Queen (Song) | Listen | Lyrics

gelliaclodiana

Over the last couple of weeks I have read the first three Locked Tomb books! And enjoyed them greatly. It sort of took me a while to get into Gideon the Ninth, but then I started Harrow the Ninth and was just completely overcome by whatever the hell was going on there. (I mean, but the end it became a lot clearer, but oh, Harrow!) And then the same with Nona ~~The Ninth~~, where things get that much more painful for everyone.

One thing I really love, which I had not considered as an upside to stories about necromancy, is that characters get to have their great death scenes and then come back again! But I also have some questions. ( under the cut )

As an aside, the worldbuilding here seems to me (not a Catholic) to be very very Catholic. Lots of god being embodied, lots of body-and-blood, lots of resurrection-and-life stuff. I guess that's possibly just generically Christian but then there's all the incense and the ritual and the death nuns...

I am now rereading GtN and looking forward to all the lab sequences, now that I know who everyone is.

On a RL note, we have heat again! I realize that for most people having the furnace out of operation in the summer is not a big deal but this is San Francisco and we have this thing called June Gloom. The gas pipe to my house had to be moved as part of the rebuilding-the-stairs process and it has been a bit touch and go getting everything working again. Yesterday evening we had nothing, because the builders jostled the new pipe and the automatic cut-off was triggered (this might only be a thing in earthquake country, but basically the gas line has an automatic shutoff if it senses motion) and the contractor and plumber had to come out late to fix it.

prisca posting in

fic_promptly

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tozka

Happy Thursday! The grass pollen is really trying to get me this week so I'm hiding inside with the windows closed and air con cranked.

Here's some links!

Art

Amazing collage art by Lynne Perrella!

Northwest Troll sculptures by Danish environmental artist Thomas Dambo

Anticapitalist design case studies collected by Prof. Matthew Wizinsky who wrote a book called Design after Capitalism

Tech

How to Buy Ethical and Eco-Friendly Electronics from Wired, last updated March 2026. It smells a little of affiliate link stink, but the early parts about how to pick devices that can/will last longer, fixing them, buying secondhand, etc is good advice.

Sigil Séance Against Space Billionaires = tech x witchcraft!

An interesting alternative to organizing RSS feeds besides alphabetically or by topic.

Books

Newly released from Project Gutenberg:

An Island Garden by Celia Thaxter (with illustrations!). This caught my eye because I'm reading Elizabeth and Her German Garden which came out around the same time
A Calendar of Dinners, with 615 Recipes by Marion Harris Neil. I think this is actually a promo cookbooks from Crisco, but this one is VERY detailed. And there's vegetarian dishes, too!

RSS Feeds

A few recent blogs added to my feed reader:

Farms on my Bookshelf (RSS) -- a book blog focused on memoirs of people who "got away from it all" aka left the city to start farms, or what have you
A1 Mail Art Archive (RSS) -- old school mail art exchanges
A Hundred Years Ago (RSS) -- food blog focused on recipes from a hundred years ago!

<- last link post | link library | all link posts ->

cyberghostface posting in

scans_daily

( Scans under the cut... )

ninetydegrees posting in

fandomcalendar

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sholio

whumpex revealed this week and I loved my gift!

Strategic Alliances (Babylon 5, Londo & G'Kar & Na'Toth, 2900 wds, post-canon)
One of my requests was for Londo and Na'Toth interacting, maybe teaming up if something happened to G'Kar, and this satisfied that craving very nicely.

I picked up a pinch hit for Whumpex as well as my assignment, so I have a couple of things in the collection.

I also wrote a pinch hit for Casefic (done, not revealed) and I have my Id Pro Quo assignment. There are a few different exchanges currently or soon to be in nominations, including Multifandom Tropefest and Just Married, but I really need to not sign up for anything new in the near future; I'm enjoying doing exchanges again, but I want July to be mostly recharge time.

I finished my Dungeon Crawler Carl reread, and now I'm going back and rereading particular chapters for clues and other lore. I don't know if I'd say I'm having fandom feelings about it (for one thing, the state of most of the fanfic is dire) but I'm really enjoying it. I'm into it enough that I ended up backing Matt Dinniman's Patreon because I don't want to wait until the next book comes out to read new chapters.

settiai

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Current Mood: shocked

hannah

He was on his way out of the building, so I only had time to ask Johnny Knoxville two questions.

First, to whether he's got any plans on releasing a collection of his writings: he's been talking to people he knows about it, so while it's not a definitive answer, the possibility remains open.

Second, to what Muppet adaptation of classic literature he'd like to star in: Wuthering Heights. He didn't say what role he'd take, but there's few that wouldn't be worth full ticket price.

The Museum of the Moving Image screened Jackass: Best and Last, and I signed up for a seat and got in. As is true with every Jackass movie, it's best seen in a packed theater where everyone's laughing hard enough to hurt and having the time of their lives. The Q&A after had Knoxville say gravity was his medium. Jeff Tremaine and Spike Jonze spoke also, about musical cues and levels of trust and pranks played when the cameras weren't rolling. Afterwards, there was wine and cheese and little sandwiches, and just enough time for me to ask Johnny Knoxville two questions before leaving for the night.

I also had a moment to ask Tremaine if he planned on producing more documentaries and found he's working on one right now and that he deeply enjoys doing those. I told him I was sure the world would open itself up to him, then excused myself when some other people came up for selfies. Me, I didn't bother with pictures. I have the ticket stub and my answers as mementos, and they're more than enough to make me happy.

Current Mood: touched
Current Music: Make Your Own Kind Of Music - Cass Elliot

morbane posting in

fandomcalendar

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beatrice_otter

It has long been difficult to get healthcare in Gaza and the West Bank, and that has only gotten worse in the last few years. And the more complicated or specialized your need, the harder it is to get in Gaza. Cancer treatments and so many other treatments are often difficult if not impossible to get in Gaza.

So when Palestinians need advanced healthcare, they turn to the East Jerusalem Hospital Network. This has been the case for many decades, with the Palestinian Authority working to ensure access and funding for treatment in the EJHN. This hospital network always runs at a major financial deficit because most Palestinians can't pay, or can only pay a fraction of the cost of their care. The US government has given this hospital system money to make up the difference for the last 15 years--and this has had bipartisan support in congress.

As they're putting together the 2027 budget and voting on it, it would be really helpful if people in congress knew their constituents cared about Palestinian Healthcare.

The ELCA has a handy widget to email your congresspeople. Yes, the ELCA is a Christian group, but you can delete the word "Christian" from the letter you send. Please modify the letter so it looks like you put time into it; this makes it more likely to be counted by your congress people.

settiai

The next three episodes of The Legend of Vox Machina dropped today, and I actually managed to watch them the day they were released this time.

( Spoilers for 4x07 under the cut. )

( Spoilers for 4x08 under the cut. )

( Spoilers for 4x09 under the cut. )

Current Mood: surprised

veronyxk84 posting in

su_herald

BUFFY: Kathy's evil. I'm an evil fighter. It's simple... I'm gonna have to kill her.
WILLOW: You have to kill her? Don't you think you could just switch rooms, or something?
BUFFY: Well I would, but it's not just me in danger from Kathy. Look.
WILLOW: Toenails?
BUFFY: Evil toenails. I took them off the floor last night when she was in the bathroom. She thought I was asleep.
WILLOW: Good thinking, 'cause in the middle of the night those toenails could have attacked you and left little half-moon marks all over your body.
BUFFY: Don't be ridiculous. The point is I measured them before I fell asleep and again this morning, and they grew. After they were cut! That's a demon thing, she has to be eliminated.

~~BtVS 4x02 “Living Conditions”~~

The Sunnydale Herald is looking for at least one new editor. Contributing to the Herald is a great way to get your Buffy on! Find out more here.