Beauty and the Beast - Durham, NC: Food, Swag, Family!

Sunday, September 7th, 2025 09:59 pm
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[personal profile] taz_39
**DISCLAIMER** The views and opinions expressed in this post are my own, and do not reflect the views or opinions of my employer.
DO NOT RESHARE ANY PART OF THIS POST WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION. Thank you.**

This post covers the weekend.

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FRIDAY

I woke up still feeling like crap but without body aches, so perhaps that's improvement, idk. Took a Covid test, why not, and it came back negative. I'll take another on Saturday so I can make sure I don't have it before seeing my Aunt.

I'd wanted to explore Duke University this week but decided it would be better to focus on recovering. So instead, here are reviews of the foods I picked up at misc Durham groceries:

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  • 365 Maple Almond Butter Granola: 9/10 Very good. Tastes a lot like the homemade stuff I've baked before. Strong maple flavor, would be nice with almond milk or on yogurt.
  • Rogue Maple Brown Sugar Beef Jerky: 7/10 I liked this a lot, especially how some of the sugar crystallizes on the jerky and gives it little crunchy sweet texture :) But it was more sweet than salty, and kind of one-note...I felt like it was missing something. Maybe a small amount of coarse cracked black pepper?
  • Chewy Banana Bites: 9/10 I bought these only because there were no ripe bananas at any of the stores. But hey, they taste great, love the chewy texture, and it's pretty much just soft-dried bananas. Honestly for travel purposes I'd buy 'em again. Also, they are ugly-looking (brown) but don't let that put you off, they're delicious.
  • Mush Pumpkin Pie Overnight Oats: 7/10 Tasted just like pumpkin pie filling mixed with cooked oats. And that would have been lovely except there's pureed dates in here, and I can feel them slicing the inside of my mouth like little fiberglass shards. This is a personal preference, I HATE the texture of pureed dates. If it weren't for that I'd definitely eat these again because it tasted like dessert for breakfast.
  • Good Culture Pumpkin Spice Cottage Cheese: 9/10 For some reason I didn't realize there'd be pumpkin puree in the bottom, that was a pleasant surprise! Really nice seasonal option, and lower in sugar than the fruit-puree flavors. I really liked it and would eat it again.
And, the bagels from Everything Bagel:
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  • Seaweed Bagel: 7/10 I already kinda reviewed this in a previous post. The bagel itself was awesome, grassy and briny just like nori. I'd love to try it with lox. I gave it 7/10 because there was way too much everything seasoning, I felt it was overly salty and onion-y, drowning out the bagel flavor. Personal preference. Still a really good bagel.
  • Spiced Fig Bagel: 8/10 It looked pretty boring on the outside, but when I cut it open there were huge chunks of juicy fig! A nice surprise. This one would be bangin' with some cinnamon swirl/honey walnut cream cheese, or with peanut butter. Not overly sweet, in fact the dough itself was surprisingly salty (I didn't care for that very much tbh.) Overall a great bagel flavor!
  • Pecan French Toast Bagel: 8/10 Delicious! Crunchy pecans inside a buttery spiced dough. This one would be so good toasted and with melted salted butter. Even plain I really enjoyed it.
There's that.
Other things that I accomplished on Friday:

  • Laundry
  • Walking to Everything Bagel for a Pretzel Bagel and a Blackened Lime Sea Salt Bagel for the weekend
  • Working on my will (it's not morbid, it's being realistic and considerate.)
  • Finally booking my layoff rental car (Greensboro to Orlando) and flight (Orlando to Michigan post-layoff) and the Candlelight flights (San Antonio to Orlando and back)
  • Lunch
  • Walking to an empanada place for 1/4 chicken for the weekend (ran low on protein)
  • Trying to watch Swan Princess and losing interest after all of the dialogue was sung lol
So as you can see I am still feeling well enough to do this-and-that.

After dinner I walked to the theater a bit early so I could swap black sweaters out of my trunk and spend some time warming up without exposing others to my germs. Additionally, I swung by Company Management because I heard that there were custom-designed posters up for grabs! They were laid out nicely with small packing tubes for storage.
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(I am sneaking one to my Aunt. Ssssssh!)

A little before showtime, Aaron (Assistant CM) came by with our pay stubs and some new All Access badges for us! It seems that some folks' badges have been wearing out or breaking so they're replacing all of them. The "old badge" was the same size as a credit card with a laminated finish. These are about 1/2-size larger, with an iridescent finish. Oooo, shiny!
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The show went all right, our MD accidentally ate something with eggs in it (he's got an allergy) so one of our Assistant MDs filled in and did a great job. I made more mistakes than usual and was displeased with myself about it, but there will always be nights like this as long as you're human.

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SATURDAY


Two shows. After breakfast I took the Do Not Disturb hanger off, and very soon housekeeping came by to refresh my room. I only get my room refreshed if we stay in a city for more than a week; for one thing, you don't change your sheets and towels every single day at home, do you? And for another, I am good at keeping my living space clean.

After lunch I went to the theater a bit early again to warm up. This cold-virus-thing is easing up, thankfully, so I should be ok to spend time with my aunt on Sunday as long as she's comfortable being around me.

First show was pretty good, no complaints. Audience was a bit subdued but each city is different. Between shows the usual thing of eating dinner at the hotel: white rice, tofu, toasted edamame, low sodium V8. Second show was also good, though our MD sat out again and the secondary assistant MD had a turn conducting. He did a great job.

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SUNDAY

I didn't sleep well due to congestion and the pesky "female thing" that come around once a month.
My cold feels worse today, like it's trying to escape into my chest and sinuses making those feel irritated and stuffy. Upper respiratory issues make it hard to play the trombone, but they're still better than stomach issues by far so I'll buckle down and get through it with nose-blowing and without further complaint. 

My Aunt, uncle, and two cousins came to the matinee. I was nervous and made more mistakes than usual, but thankfully unless you're a musician (or so discerning that you can pick out the live musicians underneath the wall of sound that is keycomp) you would never know any mistakes had been made :p 

I went to meet my Aunt in the lobby and she ran to hug me. She'd felt emotional at the downbeat of the show...and down in my spot in the pit, I'd been thinking about what it might feel like for her, and getting a little emotional myself! The best way to explain it is that she's been here for a huge part of my life-journey that has led to this point. She saw me graduate high school and then college, and I lived with her while working retail in New Jersey and struggling to get started as a musician. She's essentially watched me stubbornly plugging away to become a musician since the very beginning. And now she gets to see me do a Disney Broadway show. We both get emotional. 

I've said this before but my Aunt has been one of the most supportive, strong, and influential people in my life. I would not be here doing this wonderful show if she hadn't encouraged and supported me. I am SO GLAD that she could see the show, and am always so thankful for her support and love. I am lucky to have such an awesome Aunt!! 

We met my uncle and cousins out at the sidewalk, and together walked over to Luna Rotisserie and Empanada where we shared a really nice meal. They had lots of tempting stuff on the menu, but most of us wanted to try the empanadas or the rotisserie (it's in their name, right?)

I got one pork and one chicken empanada with a side salad.
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It was very good, I really liked the seasonings in the fillings and on the salad. Honestly the empanadas weren't mind-blowing, but they were well made and flavorful with lovely flaky golden crusts and I'd happily get them again. My uncle and cousin seemed to like their rotisserie chicken well enough. We talked about this and that, mostly the show of course. Incidentally several members of the orchestra had reserved a table further down so we got to wave at each other as we ate! 

Too soon we'd finished eating and it was time for us to part ways. We walked back to the garage and I gave everyone a hug. My Aunt is gonna come and kidnap me tomorrow morning! We don't have a show on Monday so I'll stay overnight with her and she'll deposit me back in Durham on Tuesday afternoon.

I still had the evening show to do. My chest was feeling stuffy again, and this made it feel like I couldn't get a full breath (I probably could, it was just the sensation that I couldn't if that makes sense.) I got through the show and everything was fine, but between this and the jaw pain last week I am getting really damn tired of something always interfering with my ability to play to the best of my ability. This had better be the last health gremlin for a while!!!

In closing, enjoy this photo of one of the venue parking staff. 
She is dressed as Lumiere! (Her hat has a candle flame on top too, you just can't see it past her lovely smiling face!)
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Monday:
A day with my Aunt! No idea what we're doing but it doesn't much matter, just enjoying each others' company!

Tuesday: A partial day with my Aunt, hopefully grocery shopping, and a show in the evening.

GreenAlder of Flourish

Sunday, September 7th, 2025 07:51 pm
[personal profile] ismo
Okay, I give up. I'm just sick today. I'm not as tough as I used to be. I used to go to work feeling like this. I'd just be like, "How bad can it be, I'll take Advil or something, all I have to do is eight hours, then I get my paycheck and I need that money." Of course, it's that kind of attitude that led to me passed out on the old brown couch for three days, hallucinating with fever and in too much pain to swallow anything but imported Polish black currant juice from the Big 10 Party Store on the corner. So maybe it's just as well I'm not trying to do that any more. I don't actually learn any life lessons. I just get too tired.

I put on some clothes and we sat in the back yard for awhile. Did I mention that the back yard was the feature Aquinas loved best? "Back yard! Back yaaaard!" he shouted ecstatically, running up to the top end of the slope and then hurtling down again. My next door neighbor has a massive thicket of goldenrod at the back of his yard, and they're just coming in to bloom. The incandescent afternoon light in the goldenrod reminded me that, in Detroit, sunset time is already before 8 pm, and won't extend past 8 again until April 3 next year. Here in the west, the sun still lingers for a few minutes past 8, but soon it will slip away. I'll be living for April now.

Castoff, by Brandon Crilly

Sunday, September 7th, 2025 02:14 pm
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[personal profile] mrissa
 

Review copy provided by the publisher. Also the author is a friend, as you will find out if you read to the end and see that I am in the acknowledgments for the honestly light and easy work of being Brandon's pal.

Good news for those of you who wait until a series is complete to read it: this is the second book in a duology! So you can just pick up Catalyst and Castoff and read them together, if you haven't yet. I'm going to try not to spoiler the first book too much, which is going to leave me vague, because this is definitely my favorite kind of sequel: the kind where the consequences follow on hard and fast from the first book. Happily for those with shaky memories, there's a quick summary at the beginning of this one.

So there are airships! There are strange vast somewhat personified forces! There are people working out their relationships in the face of personal and social change! It's that lovely kind of fantasy novel that almost might be a science fiction novel in its concern with human interactions with truly alien intelligences. I love that kind. I want more of that basically always. And if it can come with airship adventures alongside the ponderings of the nature of intelligence and caring about others, even better. Very glad this is about to make it out into the world so I can talk to more people about these books.

Trek rec

Sunday, September 7th, 2025 03:42 pm
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[personal profile] kathleen_dailey
I'm aware that my taste in fic can be a bit outré, and that the kind of off-centre stories (and characters) that I like aren't for everyone. But for those who are searching for something different from the current brand of Trekfic, [archiveofourown.org profile] nonelvis's "The Satchel" offers a very welcome change.

To say too much about this clever and well-written 2,000-word story would be to spoil all the fun. I'll just note that the author causes Pelia and Jett Reno to enter into some shady shenanigans--and posits a believable and in-character explanation for Reno's connection with Starfleet. Recommended reading.

Culinary

Sunday, September 7th, 2025 07:05 pm
oursin: Frontispiece from C17th household manual (Accomplisht Lady)
[personal profile] oursin

Bread held from last week held out for several days, and then there were leftover rolls.

Friday night supper: (as previously mentioned) sardegnera, with Milano and Napoli salami.

Saturday breakfast rolls: adaptable soft rolls recipe. 70/30 strong white/wholemeal flour, dried cranberries, maple syrup, turned out nicely.

Today's lunch: I'd actually ordered lamb ribs, got lamb cutlets as a substitution, did with them much the same: marinated overnight in olive oil + white wine with crushed garlic, salt, 5-pepper blend, thyme and rosemary, today sauteed chopped onion in oil and briefly browned the drained cutlets, poured on the marinade, heated up and then covered and put into a very moderate oven for 2 and a half hours - very nice; served with sticky rice in coconut milk with lime leaves, white-braised tenderstem broccoli tips, extra fine green beans and red bell pepper, and stirfried tat soi.

Three Eight One, by Aliya Whiteley

Sunday, September 7th, 2025 04:03 pm
[syndicated profile] fromtheheartofeurope_feed

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

Second paragraph of third of the sections of “The Dance of the Horned Road”:

Apart from Fairly. Alone, scared.

This won the BSFA Award for Best Novel this year, beating the poem Calypso, by Oliver K. Langmead, and the novel Rabbit in the Moon, by Fiona Moore; Adrian Tchaikovsky withdrew Alien Clay from consideration. Apart from Alien Clay, none of them got a lot of Hugo nominations in Best Novel, which is what I was concentrating on at the time (Calypso did make the Hugo ballot for Best Poem, and got my vote), so I was really taken by surprise; I had not heard much buzz about it.

Having bought it and got around to reading it on the 24-hour ferry from Rosslare to Dunkirk, I was really surprised by how inventive a novel it is. In my mind, fairly or unfairly, the BSFA tends to go for safer choices. This is a narrative of blocks of 381 words (I did not count, but I bet there are 381 of them), describing the heroic journey of a young woman called Fairly across a world that is very different from ours (though we’re told it’s 2024). At the same time (so to speak) starting in the year 2314, another young woman, Rowena Savalas, is reading Fairly’s story, “The Dance of the Horned Road” and adding footnotes to it over a period of decades, so that we have not so much a story-in-a-story as a short-story-slightly-outside-a-much-longer-story.

We therefore have an inventive way of exploring two different worlds. Fairly’s quest / odyssey takes her through shattered communities and even into outer space, while steadily being pursued by the Breathing Man and handling the chas, which seem to be intelligent pigs also used as currency. Rowena joins us in observing this from centuries in the future, and explaining the awkward parts of her own world’s approach to history and life.

My one point of dissatisfaction is that the long footnotes are not always rendered correctly on the Kindle reader, which in pop up view will only show the first paragraph of the note without indicating that there is more. I was about half way through before I realised that this was a problem, and had to go back and reread the previous notes. With that in mind, you can get Three Eight One here.

The only remaining novel to have won the Tiptree/Otherwise, BSFA and/or Clarke Awards is Annie Bot by Sierra Greer, this year’s Clarke winner. Once I have read it, I’m going to take up a new project: reading books by all of the Nobel laureates in literature who were not white men.

The best known books set in each country: Senegal

Sunday, September 7th, 2025 02:07 pm
[syndicated profile] fromtheheartofeurope_feed

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Senegal. 

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

TitleAuthorGoodreads
raters
LibraryThing
owners
So Long a LetterMariama Bâ11,7411,413
Three Strong WomenMarie NDiaye 4,230688
God’s Bits of WoodOusmane Sembène 3,076733
Redemption in IndigoKaren Lord 2,944382
Beyond the Door of No ReturnDavid Diop1,890161
XalaOusmane Sembène1,018191
Pure MenMohamed Mbougar Sarr2,64050
Scarlet SongMariama Bâ965130

So Long a Letter is an epistolary novel whose narrator is a recently bereaved widow; it reflects on the situation of women in West African Muslim communities in the wake of colonialism. At 90 pages, it is very short. Like most of the above list, it was first published in French, as Une si longue lettre.

It’s interesting to see the list so dominated by Senegalese writers (with one Barbadian), and also interesting that this week’s winner is so far ahead of the field, with more raters/owners on either system than the next two combined.

The English translation of Pure Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr has not yet been published (which perhaps explains its rather low LibraryThing score) but is apparently on the way.

I disqualified a dozen books. Some of these are set in various countries (or mainly in the USA or UK) with Senegal getting a bigger or smaller look-in along the way; this applies to Swing Time, by Zadie Smith; How the Word Is Passed, by Clint Smith; The Shadow of the Sun, by Ryszard Kapuściński; The Message, by Ta-Nehisi Coates; Travels with Herodotus, by Ryszard Kapuściński again; The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, by Issa Rae; Sahara, by Michael Palin; and China’s Second Continent, by Howard W. French.

Others, however, are very directly addressing the Senegalese emigrant experience, and while I made a judgement that less than 50% in each case is set in Senegal, I may be wrong. Those were At Night All Blood is Black, by David Diop; The Most Secret Memory of Men, by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr; Ambiguous Adventure, by Cheikh Hamidou Kane; and The Belly of the Atlantic, by Fatou Diome.

Away from Africa for the next few weeks, with Romania, Guatemala, the Netherlands and Ecuador.

Asia: India | China | Indonesia | Pakistan | Bangladesh (revised) | Russia | Japan | Philippines (revised) | Vietnam | Iran | Türkiye | Thailand | Myanmar | South Korea | Iraq | Afghanistan | Yemen | Uzbekistan | Malaysia | Saudi Arabia | Nepal | North Korea | Syria | Sri Lanka | Taiwan | Kazakhstan
Americas: USA | Brazil (revised) | Mexico | Colombia | Argentina | Canada | Peru | Venezuela
Africa: Nigeria | Ethiopia (revised) | Egypt | DR Congo | Tanzania | South Africa | Kenya | Sudan | Uganda | Algeria | Morocco | Angola | Mozambique | Ghana | Madagascar | Côte d’Ivoire | Cameroon | Niger | Mali | Burkina Faso | Malawi | Chad | Somalia | Senegal
Europe: Russia | Türkiye | Germany | France | UK | Italy | Spain | Poland | Ukraine
Oceania: Australia

Proximal Causes

Sunday, September 7th, 2025 09:18 am
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[personal profile] mallorys_camera
Dreamed I was in magic school, taking an exam.

The first question on the exam was absolutely incomprehensible: You were supposed to figure out the nature of a quality floating around a girl from the absence of other qualities floating around her sister. A very strange mathematical equation with odd coefficients floating in space, & I could not solve it!

Go on to the next question, I told myself. Forget the math! Do the language problems! You'll get all the language problems right!

But I would not let that first question go! I kept trying & trying to solve it!

Two girls who were also taking the test began talking & laughing in loud voices.

Stop talking! I yelled at them. You're breaking my concentration!

One of the girls began to cry. She was kind of an amalgamation of the two girls who represent careless youth at its prettiest to me right now, A________ & H_____ (though A________ must be close to 40 these days, come to think of it.)

I finished the exam an hour early, sniffed the crying girl. And it's unfair to just make me sit here doing nothing

Fine, I said. Don't.

And slammed my exam book shut. Hurled it at the proctor.

I'm not doing this shit anymore, I announced.

And began to stalk off.

Knowing full well the proctor would come after me!

Because everyone thought I was so immensely talented.

###

In other news, did 1,500 words of Remuneration and 2,000 words on the Work in Progress (when it flows, it flows), and somehow managed to fuck up my left knee. Who knows how? I did tromp—in between rain storms—and tromping was effortless. But my left knee and my left soleus are sore today—

This is the worst thing about being old. Things hurt without proximal cause!

###

Also, Ichabod texted me just after I went to bed. Venting! he said. We'd talked on the phone earlier in the day as he was driving up to San Francisco on the way to judge some local law schools' Battle of the Mock Court.

So, I locked my keys in my car!

Triple A had had to open his car for him.

I was seized with anxiety: When you're in the type of mood where you lock your keys in your car, you're also in the mood when you get into an automobile accident, and I kept picturing Ichabod lying in a ditch somewhere near Morgan Hill.

Maternity!

Not for the faint of heart.

(no subject)

Sunday, September 7th, 2025 12:31 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] valancy_jane!

what should [personal profile] wychwood read next?

Sunday, September 7th, 2025 11:15 am
wychwood: Joe Kennedy Sr demanding to know baby Ted's ambitions (gen - unambitious baby Ted)
[personal profile] wychwood
I have inventoried my to-read pile and am slightly horrified to find that it contains 98 books (39 non-fic and 59 fiction, which is interesting because I thought it was mostly non-fic! But in fact it's just that the average non-fic book is much larger so the fiction takes up less space). The fiction is about half SFF. I'm not going to make a poll of the whole lot, because I'd be here forever, but I have picked some categories:

Poll #33582 what should wychwood read next
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 9


Which loan book should I start next?

View Answers

Acts and Omissions - Catherine Fox
1 (11.1%)

Cavedweller - Dorothy Allison
2 (22.2%)

Data Structures and Algorithms - Alfred Aho, John Hopcroft, Jeffrey Ullman
2 (22.2%)

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Stuart Turton
4 (44.4%)

Which detective story should I start next?

View Answers

Aunty Lee’s Chilled Revenge - Ovidia Yu
5 (62.5%)

In the Shadow of Agatha Christie - ed Leslie S Klinger
1 (12.5%)

Land of Shadows - Rachel Howzell Hall
0 (0.0%)

Murder in Williamstown - Kerry Greenwood
0 (0.0%)

Night Train to Memphis - Elizabeth Peters
1 (12.5%)

The Chemistry of Death - Simon Beckett
1 (12.5%)

Which non-fic book should I start next?

View Answers

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat - Samin Nosrat
3 (33.3%)

Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries - Kate Mosse
2 (22.2%)

Black Tights: Women, Sport and Sexuality - Laura Robinson
0 (0.0%)

The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense - Suzanne Haden Elgin
3 (33.3%)

The Augustinians from the French Revolution to Modern Times - J Gavigan
1 (11.1%)

Carrying the Fire - Michael Collins
0 (0.0%)



The bedside pile is down to four books, including the ongoing Oxford History of England project and the current SFRG book, so it is time to build it up again!

The Ring and Spoon

Sunday, September 7th, 2025 06:24 am
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[personal profile] smokingboot
6 am. Waking dream.


'Come and eat,' he said. It's been a very long time. He is not as I remember him, bright with that cold sunshine of early spring, a smiling face. Then his hair and his eyes were both light as glass, and his skin shone. He was nimble, a sapling youth, and his smile was clever too clever, mischievous. Long ago, he got me out of a trap, and only asked in return that I did not forget him. I never did, quite.

Now his hair is not close cropped or tied back as it was then, but loose. His narrow face is older, chiselled, unshaven, around his shoulders a thick cloak of fur. We are in some kind of cave, and a pot of something is bubbling. He dips a ladle into it, and poors stew into a bowl, handing it to me.

'You should eat,' he says.

I notice that movement is hard for me, look down to see what seems like stone or crystals around my waist.
'These must break,' he says, pointing at them. At the same time, I notice the Dagaz rune on the wall in red ochre. Dagaz, D equivalent in old norse, first letter of my name, associated with daylight by rune readers. But in real life, sitting at my PC, I don't think the sun has risen yet. God I am tired. That's the letrozole or age or both I think. It saves your life, but there's a price. Three more years of it they say, maybe more but who knows? He sits and waits for me, though he gestures towards a stick. Maybe I will need that in time to come, but it doesn't look like it's mine. It is ornately carved, a wizard's staff rather than a walking stick.

The messages that flow towards me are inventions arising in my head. I am making a story, so no, do not make the story. Let advice or warnings or anything just come and go, see what happens. There's more painted on these walls. He smiles when he sees me take note of that, and he pats the stone beside him as if it were a chair. I think I was meant to go sit. Now, having stopped seeking the message I look around the cave. It is vast, lit by fires, though I do not see the faces. Soot is in the walls and the smoke curles out towards the entrance, which is much further up than we are. It is cold outside.

'Time to tear away,' he says, and gestures to the stew I am not eating. Confused, I have nothing to eat it with. He has this belt with - what is it called? a chateleine set? From it he unhooks and passes me a little metal spoon. I smile, start to say words of thanks but don't recognise the language coming out of my mouth, so I just bow my head to him instead. I use the spoon and eat the stew, which doesn't taste, so I am not as deeep in this as I might be. he's got a ring he wants to give me, I see him hold it in his hand even as I am working out how to wash the spoon after using it.

We are both waiting.

He shakes his hair, long and beautiful now, and he holds the ring.

Not saying anything til I have finished the stew, I am not hungry. But I do have water, a waterbottle, and I wash the spoon with it, nice and clean, then hold it in the flame tips just a minute, then he offers me some herbs and I crush them. Faint the smell but it's more distinct than the the taste of the stew. I rub the herbs along the spoon, a slight almost antiseptic smell, and then I wash the spoon again and hold it over the fire to dry it. When it is done, I hand it back to him.

I'm not hungry, I'm not thirsty, I don't need sleep.

'That's right,' he smiles, 'you don't need any of these things.'

And the vision is gone.

Peacock of Flourish

Saturday, September 6th, 2025 07:55 pm
[personal profile] ismo
The reason I feel so wretched lately could be that I have a cold. Or some sort of respiratory virus. My nemesis! I squandered another 8-dollar test to make sure it wasn't covid. It wasn't--not really a surprise, because I don't feel THAT bad. But it's good to be certain. So today I really haven't done ANYTHING. We still had leftovers, so no problem with dinner. The Sparrowhawk went to the store for the few things we needed. We are both in a mood where we don't really want to go out and face reality or see people. It's lurking time.

The temperature has dropped dramatically, and it is chilly at night, so I got out the down comforter again. The Sparrowhawk says he's sleeping very well with it. I'm still longing to get outside, but I just wasn't up for it. Strawberry Star texted me to say she forgot to tell me that the pow-wow was today, and asked if I wanted to go with her. Normally, I would have said yes, but not now. She understood because her husband also has a cold. I RSVP'd "no" to a baby shower tomorrow, then ordered them a gift. The Evite said 39 people were planning to go. I don't think I'll be missed!

It's far too early to think about Christmas, but I say that every year. And then, by the time it IS time to think about Christmas, I'm running around wailing "I'm not ready!" So I'm trying to change my ways. Even though it is only September, if I see anything that I think someone might like, I just order it. I'm hoping that by the time Christmas rolls around, I will have a small stash of potential gifts. Maybe not perfection, but at least something. Shopping online, perhaps unfortunately, is something that anyone can do, even with an unpleasant cold.

And there's this all-night garage and the 7-Eleven

Saturday, September 6th, 2025 07:48 pm
sovay: (Jonathan & Dr. Einstein)
[personal profile] sovay
For reasons as yet unknown to medical science, although I am doing my best to get medical science to find them out, I am in the acutely worst shape I have been in since the summer of 2023 and it is devouring all of my time. Have some links.

1. In music still in situ on my computer, I have had the Punters' "Jim Harris" (1997) since 2005 when I believe it to have been one of the fruits of a now-deceased music community on LJ. It is not a variant on Child 243; it was contemporarily written by Peter Leonard of Isle Valen about a local schooner fender-bender in 1934. I discovered last year that it's got a Roud number and I have never gotten over the way its last verse turns from traditionally recounted maritime mini-disaster to Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi:

It's all right when the wheel is going up, but when she turns for to go down
You all might meet with the same sad fate as Jim Harris in Paradise Sound


The folk tradition being what it is, this song is naturally the only thing I know abour its eponymous captain, which is rough.

2. I should not have read this article about the Instagram filter valley of the current rejuvenative craze for deep-plane face-lifts no matter what because one of the reasons I have trouble being read as younger than my age is that I have worked very hard to reach this one, but toward the end of the piece I hit an anonymously quoted surgeon, "When you look at someone else with an elite face-lift . . . all you should be thinking is, How did you age better than me? The goal is you want to look genetically dominant to other people," and at the notion that eugenics should be aspirationally mixed with ageism, I just wanted that surgeon to be operated upon by Dr. Einstein after an all-night open-bar horror marathon. I felt better after dialing up the grainily inimitable footage of Pamela Blair's "Dance: Ten; Looks: Three" (1975).

3. Thanks to listening to Arthur Askey, I became curious about the origins of the musical have-a-banana phrase which diffused decades ago from music hall into general pop culture and apparently the best guess is a Rocky Horror-style audience improvisation that has now endured as a meme for more than a century. Good for it.

I just want to sleep and read books and write about movies. Who's even asking for a small fortune?

I was bored

Saturday, September 6th, 2025 02:04 pm
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
So I rolled up a bunch of Icons characters. Mostly boring, but this one is at least mildly amusing.

Doctor* Shawinigan**

Read more... )

Inferno, by Gary Russell and John Ridgway

Saturday, September 6th, 2025 04:09 pm
[syndicated profile] fromtheheartofeurope_feed

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

Second frame of third page:

This is a nice idea from Cutaway Comics: what happened in the parallel universe of Inferno? How did Britain get to a state where it was ruled as a military regime by a dictator who looks just like the founder of the BBC’s Visual Effects Department?

This short comic, which I picked up at Gallifrey One earlier this year, has the answers. It’s a somewhat complex plot – Churchill allies with Oswald Mosley, who betrays and assassinates him, and then rules first in alliance with Germany and then against, before being in turn betrayed by the new leader. Meanwhile over in China, a Professor Keller is doing something odd with a mind-bending machine… It’s a well put together romp, though in our timeline Oswald Mosley would have been addressed as “Sir Oswald”, not “Baronet” (obviously a point of divergence there). But a resource-hungry country needs the potential power unleashed by Professor Stalmann…

Good stuff and you can get Inferno here (along with a DVD of extras which I didn’t get at Gallifrey).

Straying thoughts

Saturday, September 6th, 2025 05:04 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin

Kafka, thou shouldst be living at this hour? Non-smoker fined £433 for dropping cigarette butt in Manchester: Steve Jones was hundreds of miles away in Maidstone arranging family funeral at time of alleged offence:

He told the council it was a case of mistaken identity and he had not dropped any litter, but the prosecution went ahead regardless in his absence, and he received a collection order in the post for £433, which included a fine and costs. In July, he was sent a pack of evidence by Manchester city council, including a letter that said: “You have been charged with an offence of dropping litter”, and that a single justice procedure notice had been issued by the local authority in March.
....
Jones contacted the council to explain their error, and his email correspondence with council officers “went back and forth and back and forth for ages”, he said, “and then they had to go and find the guy’s camera evidence and that took a few days, and then eventually they realised that it wasn’t me”.... Jones said he initially struggled to get the council to provide a written apology, but had thought the matter was closed after he received an email apologising for the “administrative error”. However, Jones then received a further letter in the post, dated 28 August, saying he had been convicted and fined. “I just find it incredible that I’ve been convicted in my absence,” he said. ‘“I mean, that sounds really serious.”

***

Noted rather far down in this piece on new owners forcing a traditionally nudist resort to 'go textile' (infaaaamy) there is a mention of a homicide on the property.

Which evoked in me the question, has there ever been a murder mystery set in a nudist resort? I have read ones involving all sorts of weird cults, and the occasional health spa, but I don't think actual naturism has featured.

Which led to the further question, which fictional shamus would you pick to strip off and boldly go to investigate in such a circumstance?

***

Talking of textiles, this is rather lovely: A secret garden’: National Theatre turns roof into riot of colour with dye plants. Textile artists are reshaping how the theatre makes its costumes with the aim of replacing harsh synthetic dyes

I'm slightly raising my eyebrows at the whole 'luvverly nachral dyes' thing though (as opposed to those narsty post-aniline synthetics that cause 'dyer's nose') is that I've read at least one murder mystery in which dying featured, though I think it might have been the mordants employed to set the colours rather than the actual dyes themselves which were dangerous.

[syndicated profile] fromtheheartofeurope_feed

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

I recently enjoyed reading Michel Barnier’s My Secret Brexit Diary, and will review it here soon. The English translation by Robin Mackay is generally very fluent, but there is a bizarre glitch in one anecdote which is worth exploring in detail. (Apologies in advance – I am not immediately translating all of the original French and German texts below, but I am giving the gist, and the official English translation of Barnier’s book is part of the story.)

Barnier quotes the German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s supposed account of his first meeting with French leader General Charles de Gaulle (as relayed by a later French President, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing), with de Gaulle thinking that his German was better than it really was:

De Gaulle croyait qu’il parlait allemand. Je ne le connaissais pas, a raconté Adenauer, et la première fois, de Gaulle m’invite à venir le voir à Colombey-les-Deux-Églises. J’étais inquiet de son accueil et de ce premier contact. Une voiture vint me chercher à l’aéroport militaire le plus proche et nous nous rapprochions de Colombey. À un moment, nous avons aperçu une grande silhouette vêtue d’un grand manteau accompagnée d’un militaire. Le chauffeur me prévint que c’était de Gaulle, venant à notre rencontre sur la route. Et mes premiers mots pour le saluer furent en allemand : “ Wie gehen Sie ? ” Interloqué, il me répondit : “ Zu Fuss ! ” Et après cela, nous avons décidé de faire appel à un interprète.

Now, this anecdote is confused in Barnier’s telling, above, because “il” and “je” swap places at the end – for reasons that I will explain, Adenauer would certainly not have said “Wie gehen Sie?” to de Gaulle. If Adenauer is the narrator, the last three sentences should surely have been,

Et ses premiers mots pour me saluer furent en allemand : “ Wie gehen Sie ? ” Interloqué, je lui répondit : “ Zu Fuss ! ” Et après cela, nous avons décidé de faire appel à un interprète.

Der Spiegel reported the story that way round in 1979 (in German), also quoting Giscard d’Estaing (who was born in Koblenz and spoke German well, and must have told this story many times in both languages):

Als Konrad Adenauer im Jahre 1958 den französischen Ministerpräsidenten Charles de Gaulle in dessen lothringischem Wohnsitz-Dörfchen Colombey-les-deux-Èglises besuchte — es war die erste Begegnung der beiden -, begrüsste ihn der Gastgeber auf deutsch: »Wie gehen Sie?« Adenauer antwortete: »Zu Fuss.«

I will now explain the actual joke. Supposedly, de Gaulle translated the stock French phrase for “How are you?”, “Comment allez-vous?” directly into German, “Wie gehen Sie?” – literally, “How are you going?” – and Adenauer, having got out of his car, replied in puzzlement “On foot!!”

The correct formal German for “How are you” is “Wie geht es Ihnen?” – literally, “How is it going for you?” Given that this is one of the first phrases that a student learns in German, it’s a bit improbable that anyone would make that mistake, and it’s also improbable that Adenauer would have misunderstood de Gaulle’s meaning even if the mistake was made.

In any case, Adenauer spoke French fluently (there is plenty of video evidence of him and de Gaulle nattering away to each other in 1958 and at later meetings) and from the protocol point of view it’s usual for the visitor to be the one who makes the effort to speak in the host’s language, not the other way around.

Having said all that, the English translation of Barnier’s memoir, by Robin Mackay, preserves Barnier’s mistake about who said what, but alters the German part of the exchange to make even less sense:

‘De Gaulle believed that he could speak German’, Adenauer recounted. ‘I didn’t know him, and for our first meeting de Gaulle invited me to come and see him at Colombey-les-Deux-Églises. I was worried about this first encounter with him and what kind of welcome I would get. A car came to pick me up at the nearest military airport and soon we were approaching Colombey. At a certain point we saw a tall figure in a big coat accompanied by a soldier. The driver warned me that it was de Gaulle, coming to meet us on the road. And my first words of greeting to him were in German: “Wie geht es Ihnen?” Somewhat flustered, he replied: “Zu Fuss!” After that, we decided to get an interpreter.’

This version has Adenauer greeting de Gaulle, entirely correctly from the linguistic point of view, with “Wie geht es Ihnen?” – literally “How is it going for you?” – changing the German from the original Barnier text (and from the 1989 account in Der Spiegel). De Gaulle allegedly replies to this entirely correctly framed question, incorrectly, with “Zu Fuss!” – “On foot!” Really, this response does not answer the question as reported here, whereas at least in Barnier’s original version it does.

And really really, if de Gaulle had ever studied any German at all, he would have learned the correct reply, “Sehr gut, danke!”, long before he learned “Zu Fuss!”

And really really really, a German leader would not speak in German to greet the head of the French government, in the latter’s French countryside home, the first time they met each other, so soon after a brutal war and occupation by the Nazis. Anyway etiquette would require de Gaulle, as host, to speak first and greet his visitor.

In fact the official video of the 1958 meeting (here at 42s) shows a perfectly comfortable and relaxed exchange, with de Gaulle, aged 67, striding from his front door to greet Adenauer as soon as the latter gets out of his car. I think you can literally see Adenauer, who was 82, making the mental shift to speak French.

Even the details of the story are fictional; de Gaulle was not wearing a big coat and not accompanied by a soldier, and the conversation took place right outside his house, not on the road. The only correct point, judging from the video of the meeting (which in fairness would not have been readily available to Giscard and his audience in 1979), is that de Gaulle was the first to speak – and Barnier’s version gets that wrong too. I think we can be pretty certain that when de Gaulle spoke to Adenauer, he spoke in French.

So my suspicion, for what it is worth, is that Giscard d’Estaing made the story up out of whole cloth, to impress upon his German hosts in 1979 that he could speak to them (and also, understand them) much better than his predecessor; and Barnier unintentionally garbled the anecdote in his book; and Barnier’s English translator, trying to correct Barnier’s German and not spotting Barnier’s real mistake about the order of the speakers, garbled it further.

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