estirose | Network

Thanks to the YouTube algorithm actually paying attention, as well as petra, please enjoy this snappy video with on-screen handwritten captions:

( Jeangu Macrooy - Independent Girls & Nasty Evil Gays )

stonepicnicking_okapi

The prompt is 'time.'

At 10:13, be kind. Smile at the FedEx man,
the one from the day before yesterday,
and greet him like that friend you never see.

At 9:12, contemplate some art. Look at Whistler’s fireworks, bookmark
The Gentle Art of Making Enemies,
indulge in a longing to sink bare toes in grass
but make do with fondly remembering
a butterfly.

At 3:09, kindly tell past regret and future dread
to fuck off. Take a nap.

At 2:17, wipe the toilet seat.
Put that thing back where it belongs. Practice
until perfect. Once more. Again.

At 12:04, make that joke, the one about the Virgin Mary,
and swallow a crust of fossilized cringe.

At 12:31, listen to the Koto Song,
contemplate the precise moment of death,
and eat some gummy worms, in that order.

At 9:01, be great. At everything.
And wear it on your sleeve.

stonepicnicking_okapi

how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (i) by River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

In 1973, my grandfather made a five-mile swim from Shenzhen Bay to Hong Kong, across shark-filled waters guarded by the People’s Liberation Army. He was part of an exodus of hundreds of thousands who fled from Guangdong as refugees of the Cultural Revolution.

you had to know the currents, & the sun
stay shallow to keep warm in the waters.
you had to believe you could do it
& not be afraid to die.

stay shallow to keep warm in the waters
dream of banyan roots aglow
i was not afraid of dying
even as tides surged my blued lips.
( Read more... )

Notes:
爺爺 — yeh yeh, Cantonese for paternal grandfather
hing dai — 兄弟, Cantonese for brother or close friend
嬤嬤 — mah mah, Cantonese for paternal grandmother

oursin

Today I went for a physio appointment.

(This one was for a whole different area, yay, and a different person, and I think went quite well.)

But anyway, I walked back a slightly different way, taking me along the parade of shops on the main drag towards the Tube station, and then the parade of shops round the corner from where I reside.

And okay, there were the boutique independent coffee shops, and assorted eateries of varied ethnicities, and a rather interesting-looking poncey delicatessen I had not checked before with some rather fascinating vinegars in the window (you were temptaaaaation), and the usual things like estate agents, dry cleaners, newsagents, pharmacy, etc.

Also:

Several yoga/Pilates studios, can there really be that much of a demand??? Maybe they offer different styles, but even so.

And there are two picture-framers within half a mile of one another, what are the odds, eh? This seems to me so very niche an enterprise I was wondering if 'picture-framing' is actually a front for something else.

I have also, slightly to my horror, discovered that the florist/fruit & veg shop where I bought the aubergines the other week, is run by a 'mumtrepreneur'. What fresh hell is this.

ysabetwordsmith

duckprintspress will be launching a new project tomorrow. The swag release is on their Dreamwidth blog.

Scholarly Pursuits: A Queer Cozy Academia Anthology
A collection of 22 delightfully queer, charmingly cozy stories that put a fluffy LGBTQIA+ spin on the dark academia genre.

For reference, "cozy academia" seems to lean toward "light academia" in mood, but doesn't necessarily exclude the deeper colors of "dark academia," and is basically the "comfy/cozy" aesthetic or subgenre with an academic setting. So if you want queer romance and culture without the gaybashing and other stress of local-America, this is probably an excellent bet. And if you are going to romanticize something, there are a lot worse things to admire than academia, which has long been a refuge for queers, nerds, and freaks of all flavors.

As a bonus, this is exactly the kind of content that lots of people want not to exist, so buy a queer book and poke a bigot in the eye! If you know of librarians defending queer books, tip them to this campaign.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is sweltering again, 86°F with a heat index of 98°F. :P So I have to break up yard tasks into smaller sections.

I fed the birds. I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.

EDIT 7/24/25 -- I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 7/24/25 -- I refilled birdfeeders.

.

Current Mood: busy

conuly

Wrestling legend Hulk Hogan dies at 71

anais_pf posting in

thefridayfive

This week's questions were suggested by

stauros.

What is...

1. one place you volunteer (or would like to)? Why?

2. one book you'd like to see made into a movie? Why?

3. one creature (living, extinct, or mythical) you'd like for a pet? Why?

4. one place on Earth you'd like to visit? Why?

5. one talent or skill you'd like to develop? Why?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!

petra

Watch on YouTube

If Jeangu Macrooy gets two new fans today, one of them is me. If they get 1000 new fans today, I hope some are them are because

buggery linked me to this video and I passed it on.

It's an earworm.

Current Mood: it's a bop
Current Music: Dancing in their pink parades

rachelmanija

A solid, well-written, and generally engaging book about migraine and cluster headaches. The author suffers from the latter, with suffer being the operative word - cluster headaches are called "suicide headaches" because people with them are known to kill themselves because of the intractable, excruciating pain.

The first-person account was the best part of the book: what it's like to have cluster headaches, how you're driven to hoard medication because you're not allowed to have enough (which leads doctors to view you with suspicion as a drug-seeker - NO SHIT you seek painkillers when you're in pain!), how you cling to any doctor who will take you seriously, and the psychology of chronic pain generally.

(In Zeller's case, he wasn't seeking opiods or anything that could get him high, but a medication that does nothing to anyone but stop cluster headaches if you have one. But his doctor didn't believe that he actually got them as often as he did, and his insurance company didn't want to pay out for his medication, so he was forced to hoard and ration his medication for no good reason, and then looked at with suspicion when he asked for more.)

The book gets a bit into the weeds in terms of the biological mechanism of cluster and migraine headaches, which is not yet known, and the reasons why there's little research or funding devoted to them. But overall, a good book that will make people with chronic headaches, or any chronic pain, feel seen.

cimorene

I just realized that all my most favorite savory foods are based on lemon or lime. Also all the cocktails I've liked (though I don't try many because I'm not big on them). I also love every lime or lemon dessert I've had mostly, but they're not my favorites (my most favorite desserts are apple- or coffee-based). It's just weird that it took me so long to notice that.

volkameria

Playing: Wish I could say anything more than Uma Musume but... it's Uma Musume. It's so much fun, I love raising my girls and getting them to be the best they can be! The designs are so cute, and the universe they've made is ridiculous and sweet in the best of ways. I've hit a wall with raising Symboli Rudolf though - I'm getting RNG screwed to a comical degree which makes it hard to keep raising her, but there's no way to cancel a career when it's tanking badly from what I can tell.

Reading: I finished The Children's Blizzard the other day - deeply harrowing and enlightening. Learned just as much about weather pattern formation as I did history and how to avoid dying in blizzards that go below 50 degrees F! Still working my way through Winter of Ice and Iron but think I might drop that - the rest of the house is getting into Mistborn and I don't want to be left behind, haha.

Watching: Hubby bought a year's subscription to DropoutTV so we've been watching that now that we've finished Season 6 of Dr. Who. It's hilarious, 10/10, best 50 bucks you'll spend. also sam reich is cute.

Listening: Mostly listening to music lately, but I am almost done with the Zer0es audiobook. I would have dropped this if it was a physical book, but the narrator does such a phenomenal job reading these lines, even the cheesy or very-male-author-y ones!

Writing: I wrote 2k of my IddyBang project, then... promptly ignored it. Oops. Need to go back and do some more writing. Maybe writing The Scene will inspire me more? I'm a bit stuck on how to get Takumi and Francis from awkwardly flirting with each other in an ice cream parlor to running for their lives from monsters. Maybe one of the monsters will come crashing through the window.

( Personal stuff (religion mentions) )

Gotta dash and continue doing all the things! Hope you guys are having a fantastic week and you've got something fun planned for the weekend!

glitteryv posting in

recthething

Every Thursday, we have a community post, just like this one, where you can drop a rec or five in the comments.

This works great if you only have one rec and don't want to make a whole post for it, or if you don't have a DW account, or if you're shy. ;)

(But don't forget: you can deffo make posts of your own seven days a week. ;D!)

So what cool fics/podfics/fanart/fanvids/fancrafts/other kinds of fanworks have we discovered this week? Drop it in the comments below. Anon comment is enabled.

BTW, AI fanworks are not eligible for reccing at recthething. If you aware that a fanwork is AI-generated, please do not rec it here.

pauamma posting in

dw_dev

It's time for another question thread!

The rules:

- You may ask any dev-related question you have in a comment. (It doesn't even need to be about Dreamwidth, although if it involves a language/library/framework/database Dreamwidth doesn't use, you will probably get answers pointing that out and suggesting a better place to ask.)
- You may also answer any question, using the guidelines given in To Answer, Or Not To Answer and in this comment thread.

lea_hazel

I'm working on an early draft of my

justmarriedexchange fic, while still also working on my multi-chapter Palia WIP. This is in between drafts of a still-secret origfic project. I had toyed with the idea of submitting to IFComp (despite my first foray being, uh, less than ideal), but the truth is, I have plenty on my plate, right now.

In reading news, ( I am still reading. )

I've also been rewatching Spy x Family on Netflix, and I went back and watched Code: White, too. Weirdly, the dub for that seems to have different voice actors. Netflix doesn't have that big of a library, and sometimes I'm tempted to reactivate my Crunchyroll account.

Current Mood: hot

galadhir

Maybe I should make a note of what I read, so they don't all blur into one.

Recently (in the last two weeks):

The Masquerades of Spring, by Ben Aaronovitch
A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking, by T.Kingfisher
Nettle and Bone, by T. Kingfisher
Rose/House by Arkady Martine
Grandmother's Secrets by Rosina-Fawzia al Rawi

(1) is a novella in the Rivers of London series about Isaac Newton's line of British official government wizards. Starring Thomas Nightingale in a rare trip abroad to visit 1920s New York and hunt down the maker of an enchanted saxophone.

Very Bertie Wooster dancing the Charleston in a gay club, and it's the novella that reveals Nightingale to be asexual. A rare win for the aces :)

(2) is a children's book in which a young wizard whose only gift is for working with dough is forced to find out exactly what she can do with it when her kingdom is in peril.

It's very well written - the plot escalates smoothly and it keeps you reading without being too busy or hectic. The prose is powerful but doesn't intrude. I enjoyed it but didn't really connect emotionally.

(3) follows a slow and unworldly (third, spare, novice nun) princess as she makes/finds allies in a quest to rescue her sister from the sister's husband. He is the prince of a neighbouring, much more powerful kingdom, and having murdered their elder sister is now abusing the middle sister.

I enjoyed this one much more for its blend of realistic dynastic politics and weird wizardly powers. I liked the characters more too, and they combined with the excellent workmanship of the author in a way I almost had feels about. (Not quite - my feels don't get engaged much any more, sadly.)

(4) A dead man turns up inside a hermetically sealed house run by a powerful AI, and a detective goes inside the house to try to solve the murder. This turns out to be a mistake. I enjoyed Arkady Martine's Teixcalaan series (A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace) so I thought I might enjoy this too.

I am finding it haunting, and I appreciate her attempts to construct intelligences that are not human, but this one feels a bit like there is no plot, just an experience. And it's not a particularly pleasant experience. Rose House is not a particularly likeable character, even if its murder was in self defense. (Or was it?)

(5) A non-fiction book, partially a treatise on the origin of belly dancing and partially an autobiography.

I appreciated this as coming from within the culture where raqs sharqi originated, and it is a beautiful memoir of the author growing up with the dance. It was interesting to think of it as a private, indoors thing done by the women of the household chiefly for each other

spikedluv

I had a chiropractic appointment this morning. I hit Price Chopper and the Pharmacy while I was downtown and got in a walk around the park. I paid a short visit to mom on my way to visit my aunt. (A day early, but I am planning ahead in case I need to spend most of the day with mom tomorrow, post-procedure.)

I did a load of laundry (washed and dried), hand-washed dishes, baked chicken for the dogs’ meals, changed kitty litter, took the dogs for a walk, and paid a couple of bills online.

I took a nap and started the next Lily Adler book.

Temps started out at 49.8(F) (it was amusing to watch the temps bounce from 49.8 to 50.0 and back again, though I was not amused by such low morning temps; this is freaking fall weather) and reached 87.4. It got warm enough that we turned the AC back on in the bedroom. I do appreciate having AC when the temps get high, but I enjoyed the nights when we could just leave the windows open to sleep.

( Have some photos I took today on the walk with the dogs: )

Mom Update:

Mom had the procedure to put the port in today. ( more back here )