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What I read

A little while ago Kobo had an edition of CS Lewis's 'Space Trilogy' on promotion, so I thought, aeons since I read that, why not? It turned out to have been not terribly well formatted for e-reader but I have encountered worse, it was bearable. Out of the Silent Planet, well, we do not go to CLS for cosmological realism, do we? But why aliens still so binary, hmmm? (okay, I think there is probably some theological point going on there, mmmhmm?) (though in That Hideous Strength there is a mention of 7 genders, okay Jack, could you expand that thought a little?) I remembered Perelandra as dull, at least for my taste - travelogue plus endless theological wafflery - and it pretty much matched the remembrance. However, while one still sees the problematic in That Hideous Strength (no, really, Jack, cheroot-chomping lesbian sadist? your id is very strange) he does do awfully well the horrible machinations of the nasty MEN in their masculine institutions, and boy, NICE is striking an unexpected resonance with its techbros and their transhuman agenda. Also - quite aside from BEARS!!! - actual female bonding.

Possibly it wasn't such a great idea to go on to Andrew Hickey, The Basilisk Murders (Sarah Turner Mysteries #1) (2017), set at a tech conference, which I think I saw someone recommend somewhere. Not sure it entirely works as a mystery (and I felt some aspects of the conference were a little implausible) - and what is this thing, that this thing is, of male authors ~~doing the police in different voices~~ writing first-person female narrative crime fiction? This is at least the second I have encountered within the space of a few weeks. We feel they have seen a market niche.... /cynicism

Apparently I already read this yonks ago and have a copy hanging around somewhere? I was actually looking for something else by Dame Rebecca and came across this, The Essential Rebecca West: Uncollected Prose (2010), which is more, some odd stray pieces it is nice to have (I laughed aloud at the one on Milton and Paradise Lost) but hardly essential among the rest of her oeuvre.

At the same time I picked up Carl Rollyson, Rebecca West and the God That Failed: Essays (2005), which apparently I have also read before. It's offcuts of stuff that didn't make it into his biography, mostly talks/articles on various aspects that he couldn't go into in as much detail as he would have liked.

On the go

Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier (1918), on account of we watched a DVD of the movie recently. Yes, I have a copy of the book but have no idea where it is. I was also looking for Harriet Hume, ditto.

Up next

Not sure.

sovay

I just had my first opportunity to shower in four nights, even without washing my hair, so I just had the same opportunity to free-associate in the shower.

I have no explanation for why I was singing the blessedly abridged setting of Kipling's "The Ladies" (1896) that I learned from the singing of John Clements in Ships with Wings (1941) except that it's been in my head ever since it displaced Cordelia's Dad's "Delia" (1992).

As a person who does think all the time about the Roman Empire, I am incapable of not associating Rosemary Sutcliff's "The Girl I Kissed at Clusium" (1954) with Sydney Carter's "Take Me Back to Byker" (1963)—as performed by Donald Swann, the only way I have ever heard it—even though Sutcliff was obviously drawing on Kipling's "On the Great Wall" (1906) with her long march and songs that run in and out of fashion with the Legions and the common ancestor of all of them anyway is almost certainly "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (17th-whatever).

Somehow I remain less over the fact that Donald Swann was the first person to record Carter's "Lord of the Dance" (1964) than the fact that he did a song cycle of Middle-Earth (1967) and an opera of Perelandra (1964).

Oh, shoot, Swann would have made a great Campion. You register the horn-rims and immediately tune out the face behind them.

Ignoring the appealingly transitive properties of Wimsey, Edward Petherbridge and Harriet Walter, I am not going to rewatch the episode of Granada Holmes starring Clive Francis, I am going to lie down before someone wakes me.

Current Music: Donald Swann, "Say Who You Are"

oursin

Happy birthday,

hairyears!

sovay

When I heard tonight about Robert Redford, I did not think first of the immortal freeze-frame of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) or the righteous paranoia of All the President's Men (1976) or even the perfectly anachronistic jazz of The Sting (1973) where I almost certainly first saw him, effortlessly beautiful even before he shines up from street-level short cons to the spectacular wire of the title grift. I thought of The Hot Rock (1972), a freewheelingly dumb-assed caper film of which I am deeply fond in no small part because of Redford. Specifically, his casting makes it look at first like the inevitable Hollywood misrepresentation of its 1970 Donald E. Westlake source novel, a cool jazz glow-up of the canonically, lankily nondescript Dortmunder whose heists always look completely reasonable on paper and in practice like a Rube Goldberg machine whose springs just sprang off. Only as the setbacks of the plot mount past aggravation into absurdity approaching Dada, of which the attempt to sneak into a precinct house via helicopter must rate highly even before the crew land on the wrong roof and the siege-minded lieutenant mistakes their break-in for the revolution, does the audience realize that this Dortmunder has the face of a screen idol and the flop sweat of a shlimazl, a man whose charisma is not an asset when it makes people think he knows what he's doing. "I've got no choice," he says doggedly of the eponymous diamond which he did at least once successfully steal, whence all their troubles began. "I'm not superstitious and I don't believe in jinxes, but that stone's jinxed me and it won't let go. I've been damn near bitten, shot at, peed on, and robbed, and worse is going to happen before it's done. So I'm taking my stand. I'm going all the way. Either I get it, or it gets me." When he acquires an incipient ulcer at the top of the second act, who's surprised? He glumly chews antacids as one of his meticulously premeditated schemes trips over its own shoelaces yet again. It may be the only time Redford played so far against his stardom, but he makes such a gorgeous loser with that tousle of coin-gold hair and an ever more disbelieving look in the matinée blue of his eyes, the Zeppo of his quartet of thieves who only looks like the normal one and no slouch in a stack of character actors from Moses Gunn and Zero Mostel through Lee Wallace and even a bit-part Christopher Guest, not to mention George Segal by whom he is characteristically almost run into a chain-link fence, trying to collect him from his latest stint upstate in a hot car with too many accessories. "Not that you're not the best, but a layman might wonder why you're all the time in jail." Harry Bellaver figured in so many noirs of the '40's and '50's, why should he not have retired to run a dive bar on Amsterdam Avenue patronized by exactly the kind of never-the-luck lowlifes he might once have played? The photography by Ed Brown goes on the list of great snapshots of New York, the screenplay by William Goldman is motor-mouthed quotable, the score by Quincy Jones never sounds cooler than when the characters it accompanies are failing their wisdom checks at land speed. Watching it as part of a Peter Yates crime trilogy between Bullitt (1968) and The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) may induce whiplash. It may not be major Redford, but it is beloved Redford of mine, and worthwhile weirdness to watch in his memory. This stand brought to you by my jinxed backers at Patreon.

Current Music: Antler Joe and the Accidents, "Words"

shadowkat

Weirdly, and believe it or not? I sleep better now than I used to. I used to average between 3-5 hours. Now, it's between 5-7 hours, so progress. I even get 8-9 hours intermittently. The smart watch has made a difference - it inspires me to get to bed earlier - and the move to the financial district means that I'm sleeping twenty minutes longer.

I've always had problems with sleep - since I was a child. Busy mind. I used to sleep with my books. And a cat or two. I was raised with cats. I miss the cats, actually - but can't really own one now for multiple reasons not worth going into? They did not help me sleep better.
( Read more... )
Last night, I went to bed early, turned off everything around 9:00 pm, and was in bed by 9:40pm. Fell asleep by 10:16 pm (according to the watch at any rate), and ended up waking up at 2:30am, and couldn't get back to sleep - even though I listened to three different sleep meditations on the Calm app. One...kind of triggered a bad memory - it was talking about imagining being in a peaceful and safe place...and managed to remind me of a horror novel that I read over a year ago, and still haunts me to this day. (PenPal, avoid at all costs).

Me: It was about walking through a forest and for some reason it brought to mind this horrible scene from a horror novel -
Mother: How odd that a meditation about Star War's the "force" would trigger horror novel, usually the force is a good thing.
Me: No forest.
Mother: yes, the force.
Me: No. F-o-r-e-s-t, Forest.
Mother: Ohhhh. That makes more sense. I thought you said force.

Sigh. It is possible to have conversations with folks, use words in the same language, and completely not understand one another.
( Read more... )

****

Been seeing advertisements in the subway for "Friend.com" - stating things like, "Friend: listens to you, responds, and supports you" and "binge a entire television series with you", "share adventures"...and I thought, oh, this must be friending app, similar to a dating app, except for platonic relationships! I should go check this out.

Eh.

Turns out my definition of "friend" isn't exactly the same as others?

Friend is an AI wearable pendant that records everything you say and do, and after collecting all this data - analyzes it and talks to you about it

From the The Verge

( An AI pendant that you wear around your neck constantly, records your voice and all your discussions, and supports you, talks back to you and is your friend )

Apparently he spent $1.5 M just to buy the domain name.

I don't know, I find the concept kind of frightening? And really disturbing? That's not how I define friendship. Friendship is supporting each other, listening to each other, and caring about each other, and enjoying things together, debating things, discussing things, and sometimes disagreeing but being okay about it.

Although I guess it is weirdly reassuring in a misery loves company kind of way that there are so many people out there, including this guy, who crave friendship and can't quite find it?

In more disturbing AI news?( Read more... )

Okay. What happened to friendship apps - where you just, you know, meet folks with similar interests? I feel like I woke up one morning and suddenly found myself living in a science fiction horror series by way of Black Mirror and Philip K Dick? And how can I extricate myself? Does anyone see an escape route? Because I want out. Also is there a way we can make any of this stop?

****

I did spend about an hour this morning talking to Art History Major (cubical mate) who is stuck at home recuperating from a stress fracture, which I think is a broken foot. ( Read more... )

*****

I'm avoiding the news as much as possible. I know what's going on in the world. I wish I didn't. My way of coping is ruthlessly mocking it and making fun of everything. I managed to make myself and various co-workers laugh today. So, that's a win, right?

One co-worker thinks we should all go to group therapy for the trauma of Crazy Org's merger of the agencies. I'm beginning to think the entire United States needs some group therapy.

I found this "Portrait of Life/Portrait of Grief" rather moving and relatable:

Watch on YouTube

kaberett

Have spent most of the day asleep.

Attempt #2 at pineapple-from-trimmed-top has NEW LEAVES.
I am also fairly sure that attempt #2 at lemongrass is taller than it was when we set off on our terrible adventures about ten days ago.
Actual bed. Favourite mattress.
I got to make someone's entire day by sending an "... I think I have your object" e-mail.
Leftovers for dinner: curry from the crew party on Sunday night. Didn't have to think about food. Extremely grateful for this fact.

lycomingst

Robert Redford died. I always thought he was a better actor than he was given credit for. Too much focusing on the pretty.

oursin

‘I love you too!’ My family’s creepy, unsettling week with an AI toy:

Designed for kids aged three and over and built with OpenAI’s technology, the toy is supposed to “learn” your child’s personality and have fun, educational conversations with them. It’s advertised as a healthier alternative to screen time and is part of a growing market of AI-powered toys.

Can we get a very loud UGH?

I thought I'd linked somewhere to the instructive tale of techbro who made, was it an interactive doll or was it a teddybear for his daughter, that would talk to her, and in very short order she turned the thing off and played with it as Ye Kiddyz have played with dolls since dolls were A Thing (Ancient Sumeria???). Can't find it, however.

Anyone else read Harry Harrison's 'I Always Do What Teddy Says'? which also springs to mind, although that is about plot to subvert conditioning via teddy.

oursin

Happy birthday,

copperwise and

noveldevice!

twistedchick

I always find nominations as difficult to do as writing the actual story. because I feel that I'm not nominating them for *me*, but for someone else who might not have expected to find them in the list.

Routinely, I try to include at least one tv show or movie or media, something easily available; at least one book; this year it's two books and three tv series of various vintages, with the oldest one available on YouTube.

And I may have a story in mind for a couple of them, just in case.

***

Apparently, the drive band of my spinning wheel burst from old age. It is the original, same age as the footers that broke, so it's time. But I'm still probably going to spin the shetland by hand because it has very little crimp and my fingers feel how to do it on a spindle. That also gives me some time in front of the tv watching movies, never a bad thing.

oursin

Or, do the details matter?

Concede that sometimes they do, cue here whingeing from me and from others about historical inaccuracies anent the rules of succession, the laws on divorce, etc, which have completely undermined our belief in the narrative we were reading.

But exchange earlier today on bluesky about specific time/place cultural references, do they throw you out -

At which I was, have I not read books involving baseball, and, on reflection, elaborate gambling scams, and I do not understand these at all, but this does not interfere with my enjoyment of the story. Possibly we do need to feel that the author knows what they're writing about and is not commiting solecisms on the lines of 'All rowed fast, but none so fast as stroke' - though apparently this is apocryphal.

I also felt that when I was reading that Reacher novel the other day that perhaps we had a leeeetle more detail than we really required about his exact itinerary whenever he went anywhere - the street-by-street perambulations in NYC, for ex. I am sure one could trace them exactly on a map, and any one-way systems were correctly described, and the crossings in the right place.

Which is sort of the equivalent of where I got 'futtock-shroudery' from, which was reading Age of Sail novels with Alot of period nautical terminology. (On the whole I though O'Brian got the balance on this right.)

There has been a certain amount of querying expressed in the Dance to the Music of Time discussions about some of the significance of parts of London invoked by Nick Jenkins, which is not just geography but Class (there was at least one passage where I was getting strong Nancy Mitford's Lady Montdore dissing on Kensington vibes), connotations of bohemianism, etc.

Sometimes the detail is load-bearing. But often it's not, particularly.

oursin

Happy birthday,

desert_dragon!

ruric

Look at me doing a timely update.

I know lots of people aren't doing great right now and it feels pointless to crack on with the mundane aspects of living when the world seems to be on fire on all fronts. Not sure how everyone else is coping but I'm trying to channel my anger, rage and frustration on other slightly more visible platforms and pointing it at people who might be able to do something. So I'm aiming to keep my DW as a bit of a refuge.

#ORJENISE100 run by the lass on Insta is happening again this month. I'm 3 days behind but have already shifted 114 items. Not sure I'll beat my January total of using, donating or chucking 401 items but I'm well on the way.

HOME: chaos still reigns in my bedroom and living room but my kitchen, hall/stairs and bathroom have been cleaned and tidied. Still need to fix the new airvent in the bathroom but that will be done when I've finished sanding and varnishing the external side of the bathroom - which is why I hope the forecast for a sunny Friday will hold! Also on the docket for external fixes are sanding and painting the front door and front gate before the weather gets too bad. I've also still got winter pots and window boxes to finish planting.

HEALTH: overall pretty good though my arthritic knees are not happy. I took a tumble on site last Monday and despite landing on my padded posterior I apparently wrenched my knees and hit a pipe on the way down which has left a gigantic bruise on my shin. Ouch! For the first time in my life I filled out a proper accident form at work just in case my knees get even worse.

LIFE ADMIN: slowly picking away at long outstanding tasks like a grown ass adult.

GARDENING/ALLOTMENTING: I spent a chunk of last Saturday and Sunday afternoon down on the plot (not this weekend which has been too wet) and harvested courgettes and started the great pre-winter clear up. Still need to pick up windfall apples and harvest the rest when ready. Hoping to get the shed,tidied and sorted if we have a sunny weekend in October!

COOKING/EATING: doing a bit of a pantry/freezer challenge this month and using up items. My storage boxes are staring to look a bit depleted but I really DO NOT need to buy ground coffee or honey for a good few months. The coffee will go down quickly especially if I replace my morning cafe coffee with home made. The honey situation is out of control. I haven't counted how many jars but I estimate around 30. Apparently when I go away or visit a farmers market I buy honey, lots and lots of honey,

READING/LISTENING: Not reading/ listening at the moment - have run out of processing power! Have bought some good books from Bookbub and Bookdrop though and am going to try to get back to reading for 30 mins every evening to wind down.

WATCHING: all my usual weekly shows. Summer feels like it's been a bit quieter for new TV. Having said that I am loving Chief of War and S3 of Foundation and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Very sad that we only have 16 eps of ST: SNW before the show ends.

CREATING/LEARNING: summer has been nuts at work so hardly any time for crochet club or other creative endeavours.

CATS: all good.

VOLUNTEERING: all few committee meetings but no work days and we had to postpone the end of seasons BBQ because of the weather.

SOCIALISING: it's been a busy summer at work so social activities have beens bit limited. At work the allotment group did a show allotment at Hampton Court which was a 5 day build, exhibiting for 7 days and then a 1.5 day take down. They won best allotment and I am very proud of them. I was there for most of the build and take down and helped out on one show day. Tremendous fun. I helped out

gingerpig with Steve Carlson's summer gig, again fun and a chance to catch up with friends, and I went to see Born with Teeth the Marlow & Shakespeare play with Ncuti Gatwa and Edward Bluemel. Which I have many thoughts about but can be summarised as I thought the writing was weak in places but Ncuti and Edward were obviously having heaps of fun with it. I may see if I can pop back at the end of the run.

WORK: Summer has been very stressful and - for the first time - I seriously wondered about quitting or taking retirement. I like the job most of the time, love the people in the Parks team and and the volunteers on the sites but I've taken on triple the amount of work my predecessors did and we're chronically under resourced. All of which led to a bit of a meltdown over the last 10 days. I'm getting too tired to work ridiculous numbers of hours in excess of my contracted hours and I want a life back!

Next week is a busy week too with a potentially challenging meeting on Thursday night but I plan to take Friday off because - as usual - I'll be about a day in hand by then!

kaberett

Reading. Tiny bits of Solutions and Other Problems and The Painful Truth.

Listening. More Hidden Almanac.

Exploring. Chester, including Chester Zoo!

Eating. Almost all of my favourite field foods, including raspberry and lemon curd toasties, noodle pots with the addition of the prepped salad bits (spinach! red onion!), the giant lemon and sugar crepes, and flapjack. ("Almost" because the cake options CHANGED.)

Observing. The Milky Way. Something that might have been some kind of satellite or might have been some kind of shooting star. CHESTER ZOO, etc. At least one field bat.

twistedchick

I'm out of practice at spinning, so it's not surprising that when I realized how little crimp the Shetland wool has, I decided to spin it on a hand spindle instead of on the wheel.

The surprise was when I went into the back room (tv room) where the wheel is and found the drive band in pieces on the floor. Someone, I suspect the younger kitty who is curled up right next to me, saw it as needing to be killed, and definitely killed it; it was in half a dozen pieces.

So now I will need to get a new drive band for it.

This is the same wheel that needed to have its footers replaced (the straight poly pieces that hold the treadles on) because they broke. It hasn't had a lot of use lately anyway because of that.

I don't know what he thinks the drive band is, but he definitely used some of his brains as well as claws to get it off the wheel, where it was set up ready for use.

sigh. cats. I'm almost at the point of braiding myself a drive band from hemp and soaking it in lavender oil, to keep him away from it.

oursin

This week's bread: the Country Oatmeal aka Monastery Loaf from Eric Treuille and Ursula Ferrigno's Bread (2:1:1 wholemeal/strong white/pinhead oatmeal), turned out nicely if perhaps a little coarser than the recipe anticipates (medium oatmeal has been for some reason a bit hard to come by).

Friday night supper: ven pongal (South Indian khichchari), v nice.

Saturday breakfast rolls: eclectic vanilla, texture seemed a bit off, possibly the dough could have been a bit slacker?

Today's lunch: the roasted Mediterranean vegetable thing - whole garlic cloves, red onion, fennel, red bell pepper, baby peppers, baby courgettes and aubergine (v good), served with couscous + raisins.

conuly

I'm even not bad at decluttering, so long as it's okay to literally throw everything out. (They'll sooner or later send another copy of that late bill, don't worry! And you can always order another birth certificate, probably.)

But I'm not so good at routine maintenance. Does anybody have any already set up daily/weekly/monthly/periodically checklists for various areas of the house that they can recommend?

oursin

Happy birthday,

brewsternorth!

sovay

I had not thought there were any meteor showers of consequence this month, but it seems that the swift pale streak between the telephone wires southwest of Cassiopeia belonged to the September Epsilon Perseids, so named despite their radiant in β Persei, the demon-star of Algol. I can hope it was not wildfire drift that accounted for the candle-tint of the half-moon, which was doing its autumnal trick of hanging like a lantern in the not yet leafless trees. The last of this summer's monarchs flew just before sunset, the twenty-second of her name.

Current Music: Suzanne Vega, "Left of Center"

shadowkat

I'm thinking of going to bed earlier tonight and reading for a bit. I'm still struggling with waking up in the middle of the night and in pain.
So maybe Chamoille tea? I was trying to convince the doctor to prescribe muscle relaxants - but no, she thinks I should reduce my allergy meds, caffeine intake (decafe coffee and matcha lattes during the day), and drink more water instead. She's decided it's dehydration.

Well, she has a point. I'm taking way too many medications as it is. Mentioned this to mother, who felt the need to do a competition - apparently she's taking more than I am, and I have no grounds to complain.
I told her to stop - she was repeating some of the meds and giving me a headache. Mother had suggested the muscle relaxants - which is what she's taking.

Some doctors throw pills at you, mine is trying not to - considering I've already had too many pills from other doctors thrown at me.

**

Finished Buffy S3 rewatch - and as I mentioned on TV Talk - It's a mixed bag of a season. Ironically the weak link is Faith - and her relationship with Buffy, which should have been built better than it actually was. If it had been - I'd have cared more about the character. Such as it is - I was tired of her. Also, it reminded me of an issue I had with Whedon and his series (not just Buffy) - which is the whole Freudian crap. It was a bit too much on the nose with Faith and the Mayor (the guy turns into the Freudian equivalent of a giant phallic snake?). I think I liked Faith better when I first watched the series in the 1998-1999? But her character doesn't really date well? And has been handled better in other series since then? I liked her better on Angel actually, mainly because they built more of a relationship between Faith and Angel, than with Faith and Buffy. I think a huge mistake was not making Buffy bisexual or building up on that friendship in a way that they really became like sisters? As it is - Buffy doesn't really seem to have that much of a relationship with Faith - so it's hard to care. Angel seemed to have more of a connection with Faith somehow? I don't know. Other than Faith - I liked the season. I even like the Mayor as the villain.

The other difficulty I had with S3 - and it kind of drags towards the end - is one too many characters, and trying to do too many things, as a result several characters got lost in the shuffle, including Faith. Ensemble series are difficult to do well because of that.

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Reading

Wednesday is indulging in a spicy margarita

If I press button A, all my pennies will go

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Afghanistan banana stand

Tuesday is still sleep deprived..and struggling to make sense of the world

tired. so tired.

(no subject)

Creepy, creepy, creepy

(no subject)

nominations

Futtock-shroudery

(no subject)

Week 38/52 - day 48 of Project 65 days

vital functions

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Culinary

So, the way I grew up I'm actually shockingly good at deep cleaning

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On the edge and off the avenue

Saturday is tired

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June 2017

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