Reading

Current Mood: restless

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Let's blame the change of season for today's restlessness and this disjointed post

When it took forever to fall asleep last night, my brain's hamster wheel of choice was all household things--puttering and cleaning products and other such exciting stuff. I'm feeling fidgety and restless about home-related things, and I choose to blame the arrival of meteorological autumn (which TBH I usually forget is a thing, even though those seasonal dates are easier to pin down than the solstices and equinoxes). We often sort of melt into autumn here, but this year everything's taken a beating from lack of rain, so I've read several people talking about some leaves already coming down. :/

This morning I did manage to do some small puttery things that needed doing, but most things require input from both of us and

scruloose's mind and energy are currently elsewhere (long-overdue reno project). Also, y'know, I have a rewrite due in less than two weeks that I'm having real trouble focusing on; both that and the general restlessness are presumably not being helped by inevitable mild worry about Jinksy having dental extractions (also long-overdue) tomorrow.

(I'm reminding myself that any surfaces we can declutter before the fall crunch starts at Dayjob will be a significant help for my brain while that's going on. Here's hoping we can manage some of that.)

I won't think it's properly autumn until equinox anyway, but I do think maybe I'm ready for it.

东极岛 Dongji Rescue

Last night I saw 东极岛 Dongji Rescue (IMDB | MyDramaList), Zhu Yilong's new film.

It's based on a historical episode from World War 2 (the sinking of the Lisbon Maru), though it's heavily fictionalised and in no way historically accurate. *g*

(There's a 2024 documentary on the real event, which I'd love to see if anyone knows where to find it!)

Anyway, Dongji Rescue is a really well done, effective film! ( spoilers below the cut )

Also, watching this movie was a very multilingual experience - the film itself has Chinese, Japanese and English dialogue all aplenty (which you don't see nearly enough of, IMO!), handling the language barriers really well - and then we had German subtitles on top of that. *g* They were good, too, and not as distracting as I might have expected. Since I've generally watched Chinese media with English subtitles, and also learned what Chinese I have with English-language material, all my Chinese is routed through English, and it's usually somewhat disorienting to watch something with German subtitles instead. But the multilingual mix of this film somehow balanced that out, and I didn't have an issue. Though I was happy to have the Chinese subtitles as well as they helped me follow along the Chinese dialogue where I could!

Current Music: KITTENS COME! IN A CAN!

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A bit about sleep, but primarily about peaches, plus a long-ago happening in Toronto

I don't usually have too much trouble falling asleep these years (thanks mainly to a low dose of amitriptyline), although it's never as easy as it seems like it should be, going by frequent evening sleepiness. (No, I still have not sent feelers out about restarting attempts at trying CPAP. >.< I think I'm a bit resistant because as long as I don't try it, there's the hope that it'll help when I do, but what if I do and it doesn't? *sighs*) But last night involved lying awake for well over two hours because my brain would not stop. Ugh.

Firm reminder to self: that used to be the norm. And at least there's no Dayjob today.

We didn't go to the wee local market this weekend, because when we were out with a car on Friday we were able to stop by the stall for a produce place ("place") I love, even though this was only our second time there. It's produce from a variety of farms down in the Valley, and they usually have a lot of different things, but for us it's not super feasible to get to without driving, even though it's not that far.

We came home with a pint of blueberries and three quarts of peaches, encompassing four peach varieties! ( cut in case you DGAF about peaches )

Back when we lived in Toronto (over twenty years ago now--what even?), of course, we had access to Ontario peaches, which are a glory upon the earth. And because my exposure to popular music (or, y'know, an awful lot of music generally) was even worse then than it is now, a couple decades later, I didn't actually know the "millions of peaches" song other than the "millions of peaches, peaches for me; millions of peaches, peaches for free" bit. Like. At all. But I would go around singing that bit in sheer joy over peaches, and sometimes about other things that I loved. No context.

(The classic example of that last bit is the time or three I was singing about "millions of Quake-chans", because a] the original Quake is one of my lifetime favorite games {am I still ridiculously annoyed both that the name/"franchise" has had absolutely nothing to do with the original game beyond the fucking game engine AND how bad Quake II was? Yes} and b] I had mostly left behind my early-anime-fangirl habit of using fragments of Japanese, but was still blithely appending "-chan" now and then for fun.)

Anyway, the point of this ramble is that (if I'm remembering correctly at this distance) one time Em was visiting and I merrily sang out "millions of kittens" etc. (this was before

scruloose and I were married, but we were already in it for the long haul, and at this point I had zero reason to think I would ever be able to have cats again because of their allergies), and when I finished the scrap of the song I knew and stopped, she quite reasonably belted out "KITTENS COME! IN A CAN!", which I had no way of predicting, and I probably didn't literally hit the floor in horror, but it came close.

Then she and

scruloose had to explain WTF had just happened and talk me down a bit, I think. ^^;

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!event

Guardian Bonus Bingo September Prompts

A new month is upon us and that means it’s time for new bonus bingo prompts!

September (G) Prompts:

Hands | Midnight | Good Fortune

You only need to create for one of these prompts to earn a fill for this month, though you’re welcome to create more if you feel so inspired.

Are you new to the fest or have you missed some of the previous prompts? No worries! We love having new people join in and you can post any missed fills in our November grace period month.

While the fest account is located on Tumblr, you don't have to be a Tumblr user to participate or to earn a badge at the end of the fest. (Filling one prompt per month over five months is what matters for earning the badge, not where you post your fills.)

Friendly Fest Reminders:

This is a low-stress fest. The point is to create fan works and have fun.
All modes of creation are accepted!
All ratings, all ships, rpf, Weilan derivatives, and even works based on other Priest novels are accepted. Please tag accordingly.
Three prompts per month instead of one. This is to give people more options. You only need to create for one prompt to earn a fill. (You are, however, welcome to complete or combine all of them if you’d like.)
Prompts are inspiration only – follow them as strictly or as loosely as you’d like
No min/max content requirements.
No works created using generative AI

About/FAQ - Contains full fest info

AO3 Collection - You may also post in other places (tumblr, Dreamwidth, etc.)

If you @ our tumblr account, we’ll happily reblog your fill.

Let us know if you have any questions. We are so excited to see what you'll create in August!

Fest Prompt Master List:

June (B): Chase | Door Key | Respite

July (I): Cake | Reconciliation | Emergency

August (N): Incoming Call | Free Space | Festival

September (G): Hands | Midnight | Good Fortune

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Cabin Pressure and Star Trek? More likely than you think!

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: dorky

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notable quotables

hyounpark has recently started watching the 2022 revival of Quantum Leap, and tonight's episode? Revisited the World Series quake. As somebody who lived through that? ROFL, pedantry ahoy!

Me: "Hi Candlestick! ... wait, happy hour during Game 3 of the Bay Bridge Series? GET UNDER A SOLID DOORWAY NOW."
Me: "WHAT THE HELL YOU WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO SEE THE FERRY BUILDING FROM THERE IN 1989, NOT EVEN WITH THE FREEWAY COLLAPSE."
Me: "You can't get across the Bay in the time you have! The bridge is down, BART is down, that utility tunnel is at least FIVE MILES LONG, and even when you come up on the Oakland side you still have to get through the entire-ass Port of Oakland. And you're playing a white family, highly unlikely they would have lived in West Oakland at the time, so now you have at least another two miles of running to get anywhere where the apartments look like that and you could plausibly have none or very few Black neighbors, and OH WAIT YOU'D HAVE TO CROSS THE CYPRESS STRUCTURE TO DO THAT, which also fell down in the quake! Your 90 minutes are up, tick tick BOOM."

hyounpark: "Watching this ep with you is WAY more entertaining than watching it by myself would have been!"
Me: "And this didn't even account for going back to their new apartment in SF at least two miles in the wrong direction, RUNNING UPHILL, to look for the kid!"

*

The Strategist interviewed Sally Jessy Raphael a few weeks ago on some of her favorite things, and I feel seen.

"Let me explain. The first thing people say when they see me is, “Oh my God, you’re so short.” This is terrible. I am slightly under five feet. This means that if I go to buy grown-up clothes in the store, everything is too long. Everything. Every skirt, every pair of jeans, it doesn’t matter what I pay or where I shop. So, I have pinking shears. Everything I own, I pink with the pinking shears. It doesn’t make sense for me to go to Kohl’s and buy $9 jeans and then send them to be hemmed for $30. In New York, that’s what it costs to hem. So I gave up on having anybody hem them. And I’m having trouble threading my sewing machine. So pinking shears do everything."

I mean, not that I own a pair of pinking shears, but I'm always on the lookout for jeans that are short enough for me off the rack. Usually, they end up being some form of slim-to-straight fit cropped style, but the best pair of jeans I ever had was a flared sort of baby bellbottom style that I got at a clothing swap like 15 years ago. They didn't last terribly long (got holes on the inner thighs within a couple of years), but I loved the hell out of those jeans - they were button-fly (look, I bought my first pair of jeans with my allowance from the Gap in the early 90s and that's what I imprinted on), they had embroidered cuffs, they flared out below MY knee height just enough to balance my curvy hips better than any pair of then-trendy skinnies ever did, and I wore them at least twice a week while I owned them except in summer.

They were my holy grail of jeans, and I've been looking for anything like them ever since. I've tried on jeans from probably every American mass-market brand in the interim, but no. At this point, I own two pairs of Levi's Wedgie Straights because they are not "cropped" and come in a 26" inseam (so the knees hit where they're supposed to), and are suitable for the times when I just need plain old jeans that don't stand out. They are reliable. But they don't feel like ~me~ the same way these old jeans did.

I know the real answer is that I just need to buy a sewing machine and learn how to make my own jeans, but. Sigh.

Girl Genius for Monday, September 01, 2025

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20250901

The Girl Genius comic for Monday, September 01, 2025 has been posted.

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20250901

Entry tags:

cdrama,
cooking

Don't be afraid of the stars

I'm at the penultimate episode of Coroner's Diary and there are simply too many cinnamon rolls of the kind who die tragically. I am on melodramatic tenterhooks for the second, third and fourth couples. If it all goes too pear-shaped I am watching A Dream Within A Dream again.

In other news my copy of Hetty McKinnon's latest, Linger, has arrived. Coronation cauliflower and chickpeas is calling to me.

Code deploy happening shortly

Per the dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

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A month of Kidd Pirates [One Piece] Sketches - August

Fandom: One Piece
Author/Artist: Mekachu04
Title: July Punk Aibou Sketches
Pairing: Eustass Kidd & Killer
Rating: teen? it varies from gen/all audience to teen
Word Count: art
Highlight for Warnings: *some implied death/violence but nothing graphic. all are unfinished sketches so clothes might not all be there. *
Disclaimer: Kidd, Killer, the Kidd Pirates and other characters belong to the world of One Piece by Eiichiro Oda. I'm just playing in the sandbox
AN: I'm trying to draw something everyday. So most of these are drawn at about 3-5am in about an hour or two at work during the down time.

started a 50 sentence challenge toward the end of the month with a sketch for each sentance

( thumbnails linking to each day under cut )

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Media roundup, August

Metal from Heaven, by August Clarke:

In an industrializing fantasy setting with a horribly oppressed labor class, a lesbian highwaywoman seeks her revenge. Reading this was roughly like being hit over the head, so much was happening. It was quite satisfying and the whole hung together, but it picked up and abandoned complete genres as it went. I'm not sure its politics fully held together, but it sure was a ride.

Where the Axe is Buried, by Ray Nayler:

A revolution brews in a world where the West is ruled by AI Prime Ministers and the Federation is ruled by the President, who maintains his grip on power by transferring his mind to new bodies. Very meaty, though no individual idea was especially novel, it was put together in a satisfying way. I liked solving the puzzle of who was pulling the strings and the larger plot, but despite its ostensible focus on systems, it is very much a Great Man type of story. Really enjoyed!

The City in Glass, by Nghi Vo:

The story of a demon who loves a city, told over centuries. A beautiful read, but not too much substance. Well, it was still satisfying as a story of grief and moving on, but because of how brief each described snapshot is, it felt less substantial than it ought to have? I enjoyed this, but found it forgettable.

Semiosis, by Sue Burke:

Pacifist colonists escape the war and ecological disaster on Earth for a distant planet, and the story of the colony and the alien life they encounter is told by one character per generation for seven generations. The science is pretty bad and not consistent: if no Earth plants/animals can survive, why are humans the exception? Why not try to bring some samples over? And then after all the detail about how the biochemistry is different... it's similar enough that they are largely affected by drugs the same way. I also wish it dug more into the difficulties of pacifism or how specific culture is (the prohibition on eating the dead is not universal even on Earth...). Basically, while the story itself was satisfying and I really enjoyed the conceit of the generations passing, I wish it were more than it was.
PS: If you're worried about reproduction on the new planet and only have frozen ova/sperm for reproductive technology, why not have way more woman colonists in gen one?
Spoiler CW: there was two paragraphs of on screen rape that came out of nowhere

Gauguin (game): A sudoku like game that I enjoyed for being a bit tricky to figure out. I was searching for puzzle-y games to play while nursing, and went through several similar type games (Tents and Trees, Star Battle) for being too easy... I wanted to like Cosmic Express or Mini Metro for this, but they require too much movement during gameplay. Games like Two Dots and Candy Crush get a little too same-y since they aren't solvable the same way, and games like Rummikub and Azul are too solvable when played against the computer. Basically, I'm too picky, and I fear the end result of this is that I really need to get into Tsumego...

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type: fanworks round-up

August fanworks round-up post!

This is the fanworks round-up post for August! Please link in the comments to any Guardian (or related fandoms) fanworks you created or enjoyed last month.

all kinds of fanworks are welcome – fic, art, vids, picspams, etc. - including those made for exchanges and events
new chapters of WIPs count
meta or discussion posts, too
whether or not you've already linked these in a post of their own, we still want them here!

If you're linking to fanworks you didn't create yourself, please clearly mark these "REC", so there's no confusion about authorship/creatorship.

(And please still do link your fanworks, meta, etc. separately, in their own post, at any time!)

So ... what Guardian and related fandoms works did you create or enjoy in August?

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rl-thingslearned

Things learned in August

August was... pretty much a bust. I didn't write down anything until this week. I could remember ten things by the end, better than nothing. I also learned a lot of work-related things that I had to leave out of the list anyway.

( 10 things, some history, some Wu Lei-related things )

And while I'm at it, a youtube channel I found this month that does fun science experiments: https://www.youtube.com/@JaDroppingScience - I have learned a few things from it so far, but I guess pointing you to the channel makes more sense than reiterating everything I've learned from them. :D

Mississippi site block, plus a small restriction on Tennessee new accounts

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

...hi.

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tv: the middleman

Media signal boosts

Two wildly different media signal boosts:

--The Murderbot & More Humble Bundle is available for almost two more weeks! (I already have all but one ebook in there, so I'm not pouncing personally, but it's a great collection!)

--Via a couple of people, Javier Grillo-Marxuach recently shared on Bluesky that The Middleman is now streaming on Archive.org. (This is probably my definitive answer to the classic "what canceled show would you revive if you could?" question, although at this point it's not really "revive" so much as "magically keep from being canceled in the first place so it could've just carried on". This show deserved so much more--or at the bare minimum, to have had its season 1 finale actually filmed, while in this timeline 12/13 episodes were filmed. Like. Come ON, studios.)

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Haunted Toilet — Best Craigslist Post This Decade

Free Toilet – Haunted. Slightly Used. You’ve Been Warned.

Posted 7-Aug-2025 from the north side of Madison

In a dark room, a standard toilet seems to glow white

( click for pic )

Do you have guts of steel, a strong back, and a questionable sense of judgment? Then boy, do I have the throne for you.

As Paul Harvey intoned, the rest of the story…

I’m giving away a toilet. Not just any toilet. A porcelain enigma, a mystical butt-bucket, a vessel forged in the deepest depths of a cursed Home Depot clearance aisle.

It flushes with the fury of Poseidon’s trident and occasionally emits sounds that suggest it’s trying to communicate in Morse code. It once screamed. Not like the pipes—like a person.

The backstory? This toilet was installed in my guest bathroom, affectionately known as “The Chamber of Screams.” Three guests used it. Two of them have since moved to Canada without explanation, and the third refuses to make eye contact with me at barbecues.

What you need to know:

Flushes. Sometimes violently.

Bowl glows faintly during thunderstorms.

Came with a bidet. Now it just hisses and sprays randomly like a venomous snake.

Every full moon, the tank fills with glitter. Unclear why.

One Yelp review from a plumber simply said “no.”

I just want it out of my house. You must pick it up yourself and sign a waiver that I am not responsible if it follows you home.

NO SCAMMERS. NO WITCHES. NO EXORCISTS (already tried). Serious inquiries only.

If you’re brave enough to sit upon the throne and live to tell the tale, contact me ASAP.

archived version

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Weekly proof of life: reading, A1C, and weather

Reading:

scruloose and I finished listening to Rogue Protocol! Here's hoping future installments listened to via Hoopla don't have the weird audio glitches that this one did. I think we're probably going to go with chronological order rather than publication order, and if so, I think that gives us two more novellas before the novel. I suspect I'll lean toward not having an audiobook on the go during the fall crunch at Dayjob, but hopefully we can get at least one novella in before that starts up.

I finished These Burning Stars (Bethany Jacobs) and found it more engrossing than I'd expected at first, but I don't feel a need to rush out and read the second book. (Given how this book was constructed, my guess is that the second will be a fairly different experience? But I don't actually know that.) I also read Stephen Graham Jones' Mongrels, which I liked; there are some things I'm still a bit fuzzy on in terms of the backstory/worldbuilding, but it feels likely that that was a deliberate choice.

Current fiction: The Future of Another Timeline, which I think is my first Annalee Newitz book.

Non-fiction: I've been doing some more cookbook reading, and I'm still reading Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World, and I've now also got Goblin Mode: How to Get Cozy, Embrace Imperfection, and Thrive in the Muck (McKayla Coyle) on the go. Given that my non-fiction intake is generally quite low, this is...well, a whole lot. I'm not getting the feeling that I'll actually take much away from Goblin Mode, but it's kinda fun, so I'm pressing on with it.

Meat-puppetry: I got my first A1C test since April, and got a 5.8 result. (After a 5.9 in April and a 5.8 in December.)

I don't know what was different about how the test was administered (it was even the same person who did my last one, I'm 99% sure), but that was a couple of days ago and my fingertip still hurts a bit (it's improving steadily, so I don't think anything is wrong-wrong) and was very faintly bruised. O_o Dunno what's up with that, but hopefully it increases the odds that next time I'll remember to ask them to use the side of a finger, not the pad. I need that!

Weathering: The province overall is still too dry. Our region got a very respectable rainfall early last week (? It's a bit of a blur), but the area with a major wildfire got almost nothing from that weather system. What we got was nowhere near enough to properly refill the water reservoirs, and Halifax Water reports that they've noticed very little change in water consumption since they started asked residents to voluntarily conserve water (I've seen multiple people mention seeing their neighbors out watering their fucking lawns), so it's possible mandatory restrictions will be rolled out. (Unless something's changed drastically overnight; I haven't checked Bluesky yet today, which is where I get nearly all of my local info.) People are allowed in the woods again in this area, though.

>.< Naturally, it appears that golf courses are officially exempt from the "STOP WATERING YOUR GRASS" requests.

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dear author letters

FIAB 2025 letter

TBA

Dear FIAB creator(s)

Dear

ficinabox creator(s),

thank you so much for creating a gift for me! I'll be absolutely thrilled about anything you can create about the relationships or worldbuilding themes I requested. Here are all my request details and prompts, as well as general preferences/likes etc.!

My AO3 account is

Trobadora, and it's set to welcome treats.

General Preferences

( Likes & Dislikes/DNWs )

Fandoms, relationships, worldbuilding

In somewhat alphabetical order:

Jump directly to:

Christabel/Grimm crossover: Christabel/Geraldine in Grimm
Grimm: Nick/Renard/Juliette, Worldbuilding
镇魂 | Guardian (TV): Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, Ya Qing/Zhu Hong, Worldbuilding
Grimm/Guardian (TV) crossovers: various combinations of Shen Wei, Zhao Yunlan, Ya Qing, Sean Renard, Juliette Silverton, Nick Burkhardt
Nantucket Trilogy - S.M. Stirling: Kashtiliash & Raupasha
Once Upon a Time in Wonderland: Anastasia/Jabberwocky
Sherlock (BBC): Sherlock Holmes/Jim Moriarty
山河令 | Word of Honor: Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu, Worldbuilding

( Christabel/Grimm crossover: Christabel/Geraldine in Grimm )

( Grimm: Nick/Renard/Juliette, Worldbuilding )

( 镇魂 | Guardian (TV): Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, Ya Qing/Zhu Hong, Shen Wei & Ya Qing, Worldbuilding )

( Grimm/Guardian crossovers: various combinations of Shen Wei, Zhao Yunlan, Ya Qing, Sean Renard, Juliette Silverton, Nick Burkhardt )

( Nantucket Trilogy - S.M. Stirling: Kashtiliash & Raupasha )

( Once Upon a Time in Wonderland: Anastasia/Jabberwocky )

( Sherlock (BBC): Sherlock Holmes/Jim Moriarty )

( 山河令 | Word of Honor: Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu, Worldbuilding )