Off the Cliff

Sat, 25 Mar 2023 02:03:34 GMT

I was having a very nice dream about the four dragon kings who turned up for what I think was a cheese-tasting somewhere, with intimations that the other guests were maybe not human either, but I had to get up for a chiro appointment so all that remains are the bare facts and a vague impression that I was Gouen the Black Dragon.

This does not excuse the piggery of today, which included a Macdo delivery and chocolate, but at least I got my 30 minutes of biking in.

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Sun, 12 Jan 2020 01:16:08 GMT

Browsing being the mindless activity it is, I can't say what led me to Versaille fanvids of Louis and Philippe on Youtube, but oh boy is it idtastic buracon clearly created just for me. (Emotional vibes are all Goukou/ Goushou with loyal neurotic Philippe confronting stony unresponsive Louis.) Except.. except... the hair. I can't be having with the hair. Too flat on top; spoils everything. Besides that neither actor is exactly swoon worthy on my swoon-o-meter. Maybe if there was a bit more height to the hair.

But I shan't be watching it anyway because one of the vids had a shot of corpses, including children, hung upside down by the ankles, so very nope nope nope.

House disgorges one of its long lost treasures, the brush attachment to the vacuum cleaner. It was sitting on the study table a foot from the computer all along, but shielded by Johnson Spot Blindness.

Woke yesterday to a For Sale sign on the next door lawn. Rather than wait for the spring feeding frenzy, bro-tachi are tapping the winter slump market. Evidently a wise move: bro had 15 messages on his phone by midday yesterday just from that alone. The showing was supposed to be tomorrow but people were tramping in and out all today, in bucketing rain. So much for what the local paper calls a lacklustre housing market. I of course have been in a state of gloom ever since. Hope it's a nice couple with children who will want a big back yard and not want to put the dividing fence back.

Bro-tachi were off looking at apartments this aft in soulless 70s structures, one bedroom because there are no two-bedroom to be had. Serious downsizing is going to happen there. Me, I think it'd be nice if I won one of this weekend's big ass lotteries and we could all stay put, bar a little renovating.

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Sunday night dumps

Mon, 11 Nov 2019 02:36:53 GMT

An insomniac night saw me finishing The Secret Chapter with its intriguing backstory hints about the dragon kings (and may I hope that reincarnated winged serpent at the end is a Chekov's gun?) And very nice too. Except that now I'm left with my library books which are nowhere as genial as the Library.

A choice between St. James' nasty supernatural doings at a boarding school ( The Broken Girls), Setterfield's very gothic The Thirteenth Tale, and the random violence and impenetrable internecine politics of Glen Cook's The Black Company. The grimdark of the latter never registered when I read it nearly 35 years ago, and I must say it's a lot more bearable than the looming suspense of the other two.

Though in my current mood- vaguely malaise-y before a storm front blows in, vaguely anxious about mobility next week in the aftermath of same- I probably should be reading something cheerful and mangaish instead. Or relentlessly nonfic, like The Pursuit of the Millennium.

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Stout Cortez

Tue, 27 Aug 2019 03:17:05 GMT

Random twitter thread over at Nora J's leads me to the Skyrim sound track, with its theme song in Dragonish. I shall never game, not with these elbows and wrists, but oh what earwormy music:

Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin naal ok zin los vahriin,
Wahdein vokul mahfaeraak ast vaal
Ahrk fin norok paal graan
fodnust vok zin dro zaan
Dovahkiin fah hin kogaan mu draal!

(Now how does one embed youtube videos when everything plays in the app and the app has no url?)

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Varia, and Thursday reading

Fri, 26 Apr 2019 02:06:22 GMT

I konmari'd my tops and t-shirt drawer the other day. Not sure if this will stick. It looks nice enough, but the refolding and rerolling when you pick a top that clashes with your trousers is a pain.

It's possible that tonight I won't have to turn the heat on, but I'll still have to bundle up well. As ever, temps are set to drop again the next five days, and some lucky folk will get snow.

Accomplished one item on my feet-dragging list. Took bike to store and asked about tune-ups. "Leave it today and you'll have it back in a week." Yes, well.Next step: check out new bikes. Foot-dragging on this is a luxury. In the past I've always had to buy a new bike because the old one was stolen. Maybe being bikeless for a week will give the same impetus.
( Reading )

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Weekend at last

Sun, 14 Oct 2018 02:09:20 GMT

Very achy at work yesterday, went to get muscle relaxants from backpack, muscle relaxants weren't in any of the compartments. Could have sworn I had half a pack's worth left, but they weren't anywhere in my house either. This morning I reached into backpack to check for something and the first thing my hand touched was half a pack's worth of Robaxacet. I hate my bag of holding so much.

In a happier mood, last night was devoted to atmospheric dreaming. In one I was at a tony wine tasting laid on for my father by my godmother at the old-fashioned law office where he used to work, all walnut panelling and brass fittings and discreet lighting. (His real office was in a sterile 60s office building lit by fluorescents.) My brother was there too, but I had a feeling we'd kind of crashed the event. I wasn't supposed to, of course, but I opened one of the bottles, which is to say I sliced it in half down the middle and remarked in surprise to John that there was no core or pit in the centre- it was all yellow wine right through.

An earlier dream was about doing cleanup at the daycare, which wasn't the daycare but a second floor open-concept loft-like space with wooden walls. I was trying to get the last kid to go home with his parents (kid is the son of our local trans activists) but he kept on talking as is, in fact, his wont.

And in between was a sexual dream about the two oldest dragon brothers who sort-of kind-of kept morphing into Papuwa's Magic and Servis. I'm happy to encounter either set of brothers again in my dreams, and more than happy to have an erotic dream at all, because that just doesn't happen in the post-hormonal state.

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Was domestic

Mon, 04 Dec 2017 02:19:44 GMT

Dishes, laundry, cooking- those chicken thighs on special that were best before today. Reminded of chicken in tarragon by someone's chance post (though her version had cherry tomatoes ugh) I did the classic Pierre Franey recipe with shallots, butter, tarragon, and white wine. To which I added mustard and it was yummy yummy. Used Franey's quantities which were for a whole chicken and was left with lashings of sauce as a result, so steamed three large carrots, added them to the dish, and then ate them all.

And that will be dinner for the next two if not three days.

Early December sometimes does a harkback to November, and so did today, beginning with one of our rare fogs, the chance sight of which is more likely to make a Torontonian think something's on fire. Took me back to 1962 when fog stopped the final game of the Grey Cup, back in the days when football was played in an open stadium down by the lake. "The fog was thick enough that fans could not see the action on the field, receivers lost sight of the ball after it left the quarterbacks' hand, and punt returners could not find punts until they hit the ground."

But it lifted in short order and the day became milky blue sky and mild sun and a hazy horizon, a very English kind of afternoon. Walked to the local cafe and finished The Lost Plot, whose Dragons Behaving Badly left me missing my own dragons a little bit, even if mine behave badly for quite different reasons.

And in theory tomorrow is a day off and 10C, so we will see what that brings.

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Merrily merrily merrily merrily / Life is like my dreams

Mon, 15 May 2017 22:39:59 GMT

Of course people my age dream about toilets as a subconscious nudge to wake up already, but I wonder why my subconscious tends to make them padded Louis XV jobbies, nice enough as chairs but useless for elimination purposes. Maybe it's the 'frustration' aspect that almost automatically goes with the 'toilet' part. Last night's dream, though, lacked the usual trope of 'looking for a toilet in Japan that isn't occupied and is usable.' I was in a Canadian and very probably Torontonian (going by its international denizens) mall or large restaurant. The Louis XV toilets were all lined up against the far wall, cheek by jowl and in full view of everyone: mostly occupied by people chatting with the stranger beside them while they relieved themselves. 'Oh yes,' I thought as I took my seat beside a 30-ish Italian guy, 'they have to be like this because of the unisex bathroom law.'

There were dragon kings involved earlier on, or in a separate dream, forgotten except for a vague fancy that it was about Gouen and sex.

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Cosplay opportunity missed

Sun, 14 May 2017 12:14:32 GMT

Went to take my lens out last night. Eye looked odd in the mirror. Closer inspection showed the quondam white was now a deep Dragon King red. Subconjunctival hemorrhage, it's called- don't click if close-ups of staring red eyeballs icks you- benign but very disconcerting.

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I woke last night to the sound of thunder

Fri, 23 Oct 2015 01:09:05 GMT

Actually, I went to sleep last night to the sound of thunder, another of those unseasonable storms we've had lately. What I woke to was the fragments of a vaguely erotic dream about the dragon kings, which was who the protagonists of the earlier, unremembered part of the dream had turned into. All that remains is the picture of Gouen (or possibly Goujun) standing very still on a night porch in a failed attempt to evade his oldest brother who was searching for him because Reasons. This still made me very happy for most of the morning until reality reasserted itself.

My mother was able to lose books in her bed- also lighters, cigarette packages, hair brushes, bed jackets, and you name it. I've now done the same. The book I was reading last night in the sideroom bed has simply vanished. I suppose it must have slipped down one side and slid underneath the platform, but I can't see it at all. No matter: wasn't an enthralling mystery after all. Started An Artist of the Floating World instead, hawkeyed looking for the hints that the unreliable narrator is unreliable.

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Tue, 04 Aug 2015 13:41:08 GMT

So telophase has created a random prompt generator focusing on fantasy art. If I had a brain I would at once grab that prompt "Your picture is of a dragon with a gift to give, wearing soft boots."

...except I think I already included it in the current unending WIP.

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