Well, the Katherine Addison Cemeteries of Amalo re-read continued: I managed to access Lora Selezh and on to The Witness for the Dead, The Grief of Stones and The Tomb of Dragons (the latter was the one where I first began experiencing weird lagging effects on the ereader).
On the go
Seem to have several things currently on the go.
Still dipping in to Diary at the Centre of the Earth, which is becoming compelling, especially as so much of it is set not quite in my neighbourhood but very close and has allusions to things like busroutes familiar to me.
Started Ursula K Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven (1971), which have been meaning to do since discovering the movie is online available and wishing to refresh my memory. Do have a copy but it is a) somewhere inaccessible and b) 1970s paperback probably in disintegrating condition so shelled out for (v reasonable) ebook. Not very far in yet - wow it's a bit generic c. 1970 nearish future dystopia! - do we need so much futtock-shroudery from Haber about his dream-machine? (feel that this may have been editor thinking this was Necessary Exposition?).
Also have started Dorothy Richardson, Pointed Roofs (Pilgrimage #1) (1915), for online reading group, which after various struggles have given in and am reading via Kindle app on tablet because stutter mode is NOT what one wants with Richardson's prose. Do have 1970sish Virago edition somewhere in the book maelstrom but disinclined to the turmoil of trying to locate.
Up next
That seems like enough to be going on with but I am in expectation of Christmas books.
1. Work load at dayjob has been low this week; we got out at noon yesterday, and today I can log off at 12:30 pm. We are then off through January 2 for winter break (yay, academia). I had a couple of small things I was able to resolve this morning, go me!
2. I did not send out Xmas cards this year, but I appreciate every one I received. I hope to be back to it next year.
3. I am thawing out a chuck roast to cook later this week, probably Friday. My tamarind-sauce-flavored vegetable soup from Sunday, which includes silken tofu, grape tomatoes, carrot, potato, and green beans, is very delicious, especially with a couple tablespoons of congee dumped in. Last night, I finished off my bag of post-surgery chicken nuggets and baked sliced golden potatoes at 425 degrees F with olive oil and salt.
4. I have been listening to a ton of Xmas music, so at least I am somewhat in the holiday spirit. I did not have energy to pull out my ornament tree and dress it up, but we have a smaller one downstairs so I moved it from the corner onto the dining room table--the ornaments were still on it from last year! We have some cards propped around the base, and I have more on the little desk in the guest room. I didn't use my usual space in the back room because it would block my DVD screen, which I need for the Blake's 7 watchalong and possibly even some Shakespeare.
5. I have tentative plans for Xmas afternoon with local friends. I want to get started on my fancy wooden turtle puzzle (which I have had for several years), and also to do some mending of clothing. I especially want to try needle-felting a hole in a very old black cashmere cardigan (commercially knitted); I was wearing it when I broke my elbow years ago, so couldn't wash it for weeks, and it got a moth hole under one arm before I was healed up. I am not sure if the hole is too big for felting. We shall see. I have washed it after its long storage!
It's hard for me to figure out how to even start this post, because I was just presented with this picture:
...and I didn't really ask any more questions before reading the manga. Bonus impact for stumbling on it in Japanese because the "kept pet" implied in the verb is delicious, and obviously plays with the K-9/"police dog" title.
Anyway, meet Oboro on the left - he's great - and Ren on the right - she's great. The art is beautiful, and everyone is very pretty.
About the world
Some people have special abilities, most of which are not well understood. Only one thing is known for sure: these abilities manifest after someone commits a crime. For example, the criminal from the first chapter is an arsonist and can control/become fire. (Somewhat unrelated, but this is pretty fun coming in from the BNHA world because it's like a universe in which only bad guys get a quirk.) Here, these abilities are called "sins," haha. In the Japanese, it's simply the kanji for crime with "sin" written in katakana beside it.
This seems pretty simplistic at first glance, but that slowly changes as we drill deeper into the worldbuilding and learn the nuances of these abilities and how they manifest. The implications are deeply fucked up, with often devastating consequences that I'm totally here for as my heart gets shattered again and again.
The story premise
Our plucky detective Ren is selected to join Division 9, a newly created division that pairs a detective with a sin user in order to fight fire with fire -- what could possibly go wrong?! I love her. She kicks so much ass.
TOGETHER THEY FIGHT CRIME! More specifically, crime related to sin users. But they also get their asses kicked and handed over to them quite a bit, haha.
Bonus scythe, for fellow appreciators of the Rule of Cool
I'm going to cross-post this in a couple of places soon, in the meantime I'm all ears for feedback/typos/suggestions!! I already failed at making this short though orz
I think I'm starting to get it out of my system. Maybe. Not at all eyeing the manga volumes for a reread. This will be fine. I'm fine. We're cool. Oversight | K-9 | Fujimaru Jin/Hizuki Ren/Kagari Yukito/Oboro Yuushirou | 1.4k words | rated T
Summary: Ren has never questioned where Oboro lives, until now.
It's December Days time again. This year, I have decided that I'm going to talk about skills and applications thereof, if for no other reason than because I am prone to both the fixed mindset and the downplaying of any skills that I might have obtained as not "real" skills because they do not fit some form of ideal.
I just cleaned off the kitchen counter and put the last bowl/spatulas in the sink to soak (the dishwasher is already running, and all the cupcakes are cooked and 4 out of 5 frostings are made (I just finished the strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream) - tomorrow I will make the ganache and possibly also a whipped ganache (I've never done it with butter in it - does that make it more buttercream-ish?) just to change things up a bit.
Today, I baked the strawberry (doubled to make 80), apple cider (60), and funfetti (doubled to make 80) cupcakes - there could have been more funfetti, but not enough to fill a whole pan, so I didn't bother. I added cinnamon bits from King Arthur to the apple cider ones and dipped them in maple cinnamon sugar, which is a change, one that hopefully people will like.
I also discovered that the cupcake carriers I've had sitting in a box under a chair in my living room for a few months are the wrong size (they are for standard-sized cupcakes) so I only have 10 mini ones and I need 13, so I will use the some foil lasagna pans for my brother and sister and one of the kids - they'll get a few more cupcakes out of it, since the carriers hold 2 dozen but the 9 x 13" tray fits about 30. *hands* I'm just glad I still have a pack of them left to use; otherwise, I'd have been up a creek.
Tomorrow is Pipe-a-palooza 7: The Pipening! (yeah, it's kind of shocking to me I've been doing cupcakes for 7 years now - I started in 2019 - but I like it more than the chocolates [and it's also less time-consuming than the chocolates were] and I can't do ice creams anymore due to logistics, though they remain my all-time favorite of the homemade Christmas gifts I've done over the years.) Wish me luck! It's always the hardest part for me. Hopefully I will remember to take pictures to share afterwards.
Whoops, I started this entry an hour ago and got distracted by stuff like packing my overnight bag and refilling my water bottle etc. so I'm just gonna hit post now and work up the energy to go wash my hair.
Because I am a nerd — no, really — every time I watch Monsters, Inc. I think about the biology and physiology of its monsters. As in, I very strongly believe that all the different monsters in the film are the same species, rather than separate species of monsters who have all decided to live together in harmony (a la Zootopia). I hypothesize the monster DNA does not strongly code for morphology, and so you get this wide range of body shapes, limb numbers, squish levels, etc, and just because the parents look one way doesn’t mean their offspring look similarly. You never know what you’re going to get until it comes out. So, like apples and dogs, every monster, as a phenotype, is a complete surprise.
Have I thought about this too much? Yes. Yes, I have. But if I have, it’s because Monsters, Inc. has encouraged me to do so. The filmmakers at Pixar, whose fourth film this was, went out of their way to build out a monster world so detailed and complete, and so full of little grace notes, details and Easter eggs, that one can’t help but follow their lead and build it out a little more in one’s head. Thus, the intriguing nature of monster DNA, and how it is (in my head canon, anyway) why you see so many weird and wonderful monster designs in this film.
The story you will know, especially if you were a kid at any point in the 21st century (or had a kid at any point in this time). The monsters under your bed exist, and they are using you for responsible renewable energy! Turns out that the screams of children are an extremely efficient source of clean power (this is not explained, nor should it be). The monster world has become equally efficient at scaring the ever-living crap out of kids, through a corps of professional scarers, who lurk and roar and flash their teeth and fangs and what have you. These scarers are not just municipal workers but the sports stars of the monster world, with other monsters having posters and trading cards of them.
This premise, I will note, could be played for absolute “R”-rated terror, and has been, several times — not necessarily an entire power plant apparatus, but surely the idea of horrifying creatures feeding off the fear of children. But as we all know, life is easy, comedy is hard. The real expert mode is taking this terrifying premise and wringing laughs out of it.
Monsters, Inc. does it by, essentially, being a workplace comedy. The monsters aren’t monsters when they’re off the clock — well, they are monsters, but they’re not scary. They’re just getting through their day like everyone else. Our two protagonists, James P. Sullivan (John Goodman) and Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) are your typical Mutt n’ Jeff pairing and workplace partners; Sully, who is big and blue and can roar with the best of them, is a champion scarer, and Mike is his sidekick and support staff, keeping him in shape and making sure they meet their scare quota and then some. Mike and Sully have great chemistry and it’s easy to overlook that they’re the reason you have to put a pee sheet on your kid’s bed.
The film also flips the script: Yes, the monsters’ job is to scare kids, but the fact is, the monsters are flat-out terrified of children — like a toxic game of tag, if one of the kids touches you, you could die. Even a sock brought back into the monster world is cause for a biological detoxification regimen not seen this side of a chemical spill. So naturally a toddler named Boo slips into the monster world and follows Mike and Sully home, and from there — well, things get squirrely. There is also some workplace espionage, and a subplot with Mike trying to get a girlfriend, and tales of energy extraction gone too far, but you hopefully get the point, which is that the filmmakers decided that the terror aspects of the film were the least interesting things to follow up on.
I love all of this. Also, it shouldn’t be a surprise — this is a Pixar film, and it is rated “G,” so the chance that this movie would go Full Thing were never exactly high to begin with. But anyone who has ever read my work knows that what I’m fascinated with is the mundane in the fantastic. Yes, it’s nice you’re a James Bond villain, but how are you making that work financially and logistically? Sure, there are 300-foot monsters that stomp about, but what is their actual ecology? And so on and so forth. It’s no great trick to make a monster. It is a trick to make a monster city where there is a logical reason for monsters to do what they’re famous for doing, and where doing that thing leads to very human complications.
The folks at Pixar are with me on this, overengineering their monster city with gags and bits and sly asides (the fanciest restaurant in town called Harryhausen’s? Chef’s kiss. The tribute to the Chuck Jones – Michael Maltese classic animated short “Feed the Kitty”? Two chef’s kisses! Two!), and giving us characters whose monstrous nature is a source of comedy. Having Sully voiced by John Goodman, an Actual Human Teddy Bear, is inspired, especially for his scenes with Boo. Meanwhile, Mike Wazowski is a literal ball of anxiety, and Billy Crystal has never been better cast. I would watch an entire movie of Mike and Sully just riffing, a fact which informs Monsters University, the movie’s sequel (well, prequel), which is not as good as the original but that hardly matters because we get more time with these two.
Monsters, Inc., is probably no one’s pick for the best film Pixar has ever made (that’s probably Toy Story 2, maybe Wall-E, with Coco being the dark horse candidate), but as I noted before, this series isn’t about the best movies, it’s about the movies I can settle in and rewatch over and over. Of all the Pixar films, Monsters, Inc., is this for me. You probably won’t weep watching this, like you might with those other Pixar films I mentioned. This one is thoroughly low-stakes. But low stakes is okay! I love looking at it, and keep wanting to be able to look around corners and go into shops and see how all the monsters are going ahead and living their lives.
There’s a whole world here I want to explore, and many things I want to speculate about. I want to tell the monsters my theory about their DNA. I’m sure that will go over super well.
An all-new Bundle featuring the Old Gods of Appalachia Roleplaying Game, the tabletop game of eldritch horror from Monte Cook Games based on Steve Shell and Cam Collins' Old Gods of Appalachia anthology podcast.
If I get all the ideas out of my head, then I'll be able to write a mini-promo post for the fandom that doesn't just consist of a couple of screenshots with me pointing and screeching, right?
...Right?! 😨
Looking great | K-9 | Fujimaru Jin/Hizuki Ren/Kagari Yukito/Oboro Yuushirou | 1.6k words | rated T
Summary: After an incident, it's decided that it would be better for the four of them to stay in Akihabara during the investigation.
Title: a cold welcome Fandom: identity v Rating: G Notes: this is my very first time participating. i apologize if i do something wrong! AO3 Link:A Cold Welcome
A few months (?) ago, Discord updated on my computer and promptly stopped working. [It would technically launch, but the program window was just a blank rectangle.) Subsequent updates (which happen pretty much every time I relaunch my browser) installed cheerfully enough and made no difference. I grumpily chalked it up to not having updated my OS in ages (I'm very resistant, but usually enough things eventually get creaky or stop working that I give in and get scruloose to update the system), and since Discord was still working on my phone, I figured that was that for the foreseeable future.
Then a couple of days ago, I let Discord install its newest update...and suddenly everything worked again. o_o I certainly wasn't going to complain, but it surprised me enough that I mentioned it to Kas on the weekend, and having just dealt with some Discord shenaniganry himself, he had an answer: Discord has decided it doesn't play nicely with some VPN locations, and I had happened to change my location setting to one it liked.
I mostly lurk on Discord, but there are a couple where I make tentative attempts at being social, and my dislike of typing more than a sentence or two at a time on my phone meant I was even quieter than usual for a while there, so this is a good development. But also, WTF, Discord. Did I forget to mention the new-to-me Christmas ice cream here? It looks like I did.
A local ice creamery (Dee Dee's) does Advent calendars, which I had largely forgotten about until I saw mention of it on Bluesky, at which point I was safe from ordering one (too late!), but it got me to look at their seasonal flavors. Next thing I knew, I was asking scruloose to stop at a local-groceries shop that carries their ice creams, because I had to know what the chicken bones* flavor was like.( more about that, plus a cheese stash )
Had not been seeing these lately, but over the past few days have been spotting several out of the back windows.
Which is one cheering thing among various niggles and peeves -
Yesterday I was informed that my order from Boots was being delivered, and then got two texts saying they had tried to deliver it but no-one answered. WOT. There was somebody here all the time.
Also a text that my other package (fresh yeast via eBay) had been delivered (this comes through the letterbox) - no sign of this so presume it has gone to the wrong door, and so far nobody has come round to pop it through ours.*
However, at least the Boots parcel turned up today: address label had street number blurred so reasons for mistaking, usual postperson recognised name, possibly yesterday was a seasonal worker?
Other annoyance: Kobo ereader running very sluggish - though this does not seem to apply across all books, which is weird?? Anyway, I connected to wifi in order to update the software, as possibly bearing on the matter, and dash it, it synced a whole load of things I had already downloaded and I have been obliged to clean up the duplicates.
I am, though, grateful that Christmas grocery orders have been nothing missing and no substitutions except for 1 thing which was not at all critical. Also oops, the pudding I ordered was rather smaller than I anticipated, but I feel one can have too much Xmas pud, and there are mince pies, brandy butter, etc.
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oursin) wrote2025-12-24 03:51 pm
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