white_collar | Member Posts

Today I thought I should update DW as I've been MIA for a couple of months only to find my last entry was 2 February.

Apparently I have been reading but not really posting or commenting. Put it down to the fact that when things are pants I direct my rage via other more pulic platforms and have spent a lot of time over the last few months signing all the petitions, sending money when I can to places where I think it might have the most effect and writing increasingly pissed off letters to my MPs and councillors.

For my own sanity I think I need to have one online space which strives for a sense of normality and that's going to be DW. Everything else is over on my Twitter, Threads and Insta accounts.

In a brief catch up what I have I been doing since February? Working and possibly doing so excessively from March through to last week as (a) spring/summer are my busy seasons and (b) there's a lot of change going on. At one point I was about 100+ hours in-hand with flexi time (it's a lot less now). I've spent some time on the allotment, less time in the garden and the flat is still chaos.

On the plus side I am getting to grips with the flat after 5 months of ignoring or stepping over or around things, the allotment doesn't look too bad and I have a plan to whip the garden into shape this month.

I've got two weeks booked off (15 August to 1 September) and the plan is to sort out the allotment, garden and do some maintenance on the flat. I also plan to go to Wales the last week of the month.

I'm also looking negotiate working remotely for some chunks of time over the autumn/winter season - possibly the last two weeks in October, the last week in November and first week of December and a week to 10 days in January, February and March.

Fingers crossed it all happens!

glinda

At the start of last month, I wrote a piece on Brass Banding (the radio series, but also the wider concept) and along the way went down a bit of a rabbit hole listening to the back catalogue of it’s presenter Hannah Peel. The album that I’m writing about today - and that has been on heavy rotation all month - fit that theme admirably as it’s a symphonic piece written for analogue synthesisers and brass band. It’s also absolutely glorious.

Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia is a seven movement work describing an imagined journey by - and I’m just going to quote the press release here - “an unknown, elderly, pioneering, electronic musical stargazer and her lifelong dream to leave her terraced home in the mining town of Barnsley, South Yorkshire, to see Cassiopeia for herself”. Apparently inspired by the quote that “we have a hundred billion neurons in our brains, as many as there are stars in the sky”. In my research adventures looking into the origins and inspirations for the album, I read a review that described it as being like a team up between the Flaming Lips and the Brighouse and Rastrick Band, and that really does hit the nail on the head. (While last month’s album made me feel that I’d have loved it substantially more if I’d encountered it twenty years ago, this is an album that I love now and yet still dearly want to press onto my seventeen year old self because it would blow her mind.) It’s a symphony for analogue synth and brass band - Tubular Brass to give them their due - and achieves that rare thing of balancing both in a way that shows affection and respect for both elements while combining and pushing them into something greater than a sum of their parts.

As I’ve often noted in my Tectonics reviews, even when writing for orchestra, electronic and modern classical composers lean heavily on strings and percussion and often ignore the more experimental potential of the brass section - if they even know what to do with it in the first place, sometimes they miss it out entirely. One of my favourite things about Public Service Broadcasting’s oeuvre is that they know what to do with a brass section - to the extent that when they do live shows, if there’s any non-electric instruments it’s usually a bit of brass. (The do love a wee wind trio of trumpet, trombone and saxophone.) But that’s generally the exception rather than the rule, it’s rare to get something that really explores the joys of brass and syths working together to build a greater whole. It’s incredibly cinematic, music fit for wider screen vistas or a planetarium show. The electronics are dreamy and gorgeous, but it’s the beautifully layered brass that really opens us up to the scale of what’s being depicted. It’s also a piece composed by someone who loves brass band music in it’s own right, who understands how epic and transporting brass - specifically this was written for a colliery brass band rather than an orchestra section, it’s a very specific sound - can be while being at the same time such a grounding and physically solid presence. There’s a gorgeous solo - is it a flugel horn or a cornet I puzzled for ages, the reason I couldn’t identify it is became it is in fact a synth! - in the second movement - Sunrise Through The Dusty Nebula - a segment that evokes both a brass band playing in a village hall, dust motes dancing in shafts of sunlight from high windows, and cinematic shots from the window of the ISS of the sun rising over the Earth amid the darkness of space. This is music for lying in the grass on a pitch black night in the middle of nowhere watching the stars wheel overhead.

The run time is just shy of thirty seven minutes, and if no-one uses it as the soundtrack to a short science-fiction film - ideally animated, perhaps heavy on the homage to both Wallace & Gromit and the works of Raymond Briggs and Oliver Postgate - then they’re missing a trick. (Now I want to use it to re-score A Grand Day Out…)

Mood contemplative

dine

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dine

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dine

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eustacia_vye28

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halfshellvenus

HalfshellHusband is off getting his pacemaker replaced, which means he's outlived it! Cause for celebration. It's there mainly as a defibrillator, since he had a blackout about 10 years ago that we've never known the cause of. Probably low blood pressure, but better safe than sorry.

Our son finished taking the California Bar Exam yesterday. Boy, is he glad to be through with that. Ideally forever, though we won't know until early November. But for now... massive brain purge! And sleeping. So much sleeping.

Now I'm trying to plan a vacation for August for the 3 of us, before our son starts work in September. Running into some resistance from The Boy, because he's reluctant to leave the cat with a sitter for very long. Which I don't think is ideal, either, but this will be his last hurrah, and the cat will survive. Even with the enticement of Hawaii, it'll be an uphill battle. \o?

For my Idol story this week, I used a fairytale setting with the chance to skewer some of the weirdnesses fairy tales always seem to contain. In particular, there was a reference to Froggie Went A' Courtin', which I know as a song but it's older than that. Obviously, Bob Dylan's version is not the one I'm familiar with, but the lyrics match. Can't remember the original context, though. I know we had a record album that had some children's songs on it, so it might have been on there? The only one I definitely remember was along the lines of "Marisu, Marisu, cook some pierogies." Have I mentioned lately how repetitive children's songs tend to be?

About to go biking on another hot day. There was a reprieve last week (highs only in the low to upper 80s!), but it came with a lot of wind. This week? I'm grateful for the days that are ONLY in the low 90s. Summer in Sacramento--ugh.

dine

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dine

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china_shop

Pandemic life
I would like to go for a swim today, but the outdoor pool doesn't open till October, boo.

Previous poll review
I really enjoyed everyone's answers to the Youtube poll, thank you! I'd been thinking that I mostly use it for a) tv and movie trailers, b) specific music I'm looking for or that people have linked to, and c) how-tos (especially technical things, now that the search engines are useless, but also random stuff like how to fold dumplings). But the discussion reminded me I also watch essays, usually about story, writing, or film, in particular:

HelloFutureMe,

heyjameshurst,

everyframeapainting,

EllenBrock, and so on. And occasionally talk shows, exercise things (yoga, zumba), and other random things. I have my history disabled so I won't spend my whole life algorithm surfing.

In the poll, 48% of respondents said music, 44% said other, and 24% said "instructional videos - practical" and "dramas and tv". Ten percent of respondents don't use Youtube. In ticky-boxes, squishable fur-creatures (46%) came second to hugs (70%). Thank you for your votes and comments!

Reading
Audio: System Collapse (Murderbot) by Martha Wells, read by Kevin R. Free. I enjoyed this, not quite as much as Network Effect but well enough (and it might hit better on a re-read, like Network Effect did for me). I really appreciate that the series is grappling with wider existential issues, rather than opting for "Murderbot is super special" exceptionalism. And the middle section of Saving The World Through [Spoiler] was very fun.

Audio: Waiting for the Flood by Alexis Hall, read by Will Watt. This is a gorgeously written (and brilliantly narrated) m/m & m/m romance -- very close POVs, lovely similes. The perfect-partner wish fulfillment is almost at magic realism levels, and I found the transition from POV1 to POV2 a bit jarring, but I had been wondering how there could still be six hours left at that point, so something had to happen. My fannish brain wanted it to all come together more at the end -- poly, or friend group -- but how it actually played out was more realistic. The gestalt felt kind of genre-breaking: some very romance-novel elements, elevated by the observational detail and dreamy pacing, and complicated by the unorthodox structure. In minor characters, I loved Marius' mother so much.

Continuing on with Meditations for Mortals (thought-provoking and compassionate; the one-short-chapter-a-day really does feel meditative, and I suspect I'll go right back to the beginning once I've finished) and Guardian (just a few weeks to go in the readalong).

I found Carbonel by Barbara Sleigh in a neighbourhood tiny library yesterday, so probably that sometime soon. I haven't read it since I was a kid, and somehow I own the sequel but not the original. Talking cats ftw!

Kdramas/Cdramas
Continuing Nothing But Love and enjoying it tremendously. Both the leads have such a huge amount of heart, and the theme song's chorus ("you will be loved, you will be loved") really is the theme of the whole show. The found-family vibe is slowly coming together.

Other TV
The Secret Genius of Modern Life hosted by Hannah Fry s02e02 -- about the history of the vacuum cleaner; very close to being a puff piece (suck piece?) about Dyson.

The first episode of Tribe hosted by Bruce Parry (UK documentary series), where he goes to stay with remote tribes and lives with them for a few weeks, taking part in their daily life. It has what I'm assuming are the usual implicit tensions of this kind of anthropology (risks veering into voyeurism), especially when there's a camera crew involved. Parry can't actually sink into the experience fully because he has to keep breaking scene to narrate to camera. But was still really interesting.

Dead Ahead -- an Aotearoa NZ answer to the Ghosts franchise. A Māori family return from living in London to inherit the family home and find themselves haunted by dead relatives (kēhua). It's pretty great and also bilingual, with a fair amount of subtitled reo Māori. (Note to self: rewatch if/when you finally get around to starting to learn te reo.) One short season, which argh, does not resolve the central question. More of a drama than a sitcom.

North of North -- more indigenous TV, this time in the Canadian arctic. We've seen three episodes now, and it's delightful. The main character is lovely and charismatic, and it's made us laugh really hard a few times. Fresh and surprising.

More Bluey -- how is this show so adorable? How am I so intractibly earwormed with Bingo's "poor little bug on the wall, ding jing" song?

Tetris (2023 movie) -- this was unexpectedly excellent! It's a biographical thriller about trying to secure the distribution rights to Tetris. Set during the cold war, with a Ted Lasso-like main character. (I may only think that because of the moustache, lol.) A flawed but likeable main character, anyway. It contains corporate intrigue, corrupt and backstabbing magnates (Robert Maxwell played by Roger Allam of Cabin Pressure fame), and naive Westerners heading to the USSR and landing themselves in hot water in multiple hapless ways. Playful, funny, energetic, tense, and based on a true story. (On Apple+.)

Fandom
Multiple modding things happening at once. I can do this!

And ooh,

fan_writers already has 150+ subscribers. \o/

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses (the last couple of episodes haven't really landed for me; I like the technical ones), Letters from an American (US politics), Gone By Lunchtime (local political pundits; their discussion of the RSB made me want a lawyer or two to butt in).

Writing/making things
Lots of false starts. Apparently I'm still restocking the well or whatever.

Life/health/mental state things
My arms are such a mess, gah. Other than that, things are okay!

Food
I made Crispy Sesame Tofu last night, and it was amazing. Like the lemon chicken recipe, it contains 4 tablespoons of sugar; totally worth it. The tofu crisped really well, too. Last week I made nuoc cham (the dipping sauce that often comes with Vietnamese summer rolls; fish sauce, lime juice, sugar, water, garlic, chillis) for the first time, and it was delicious. Conclusion: sugar is the answer to everything.

Today I'm going to make chicken dumplings to re-stock my freezer.

Link dump
Korean practice post | Current earworm (from Bluey) | Cow Cuddling & Highland cow experience (UK) | The Four Types of Novel Writers by

EllenBrock (Youtube, revisiting) | 9 Mistakes You're Probably Making in the First 10 Pages by

alyssamatesic (Youtube) | Louis Baker - R A I N B O W (Youtube, music). (So much youtube, hi.)

Good things
Guardian. Local TV shows. Cat! Cooking new things. An inbox full of fannishness. Audiobooks.

Poll #33442 Your name

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 48

View Respondents

When you give your name over the phone, you often / habitually

View Answers

spell it out, unprompted
35 (72.9%)

exaggerate the pronunciation to reflect the spelling
7 (14.6%)

offer an explanation or additional information
13 (27.1%)

other
5 (10.4%)

ticky-box full of being gentle with yourself
34 (70.8%)

ticky-box of a taxonomy of dandelion-wishes
15 (31.2%)

ticky-box of sugar in everything
12 (25.0%)

ticky-box full of waiting patiently, fiddling your bag strap
12 (25.0%)

ticky-box of three enchanted owl feathers that can draw forth the dawn
26 (54.2%)

ticky-box full of hugs
37 (77.1%)

dine

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glinda

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dine

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dine

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halfshellvenus

Cursecraft
Idol Wheel of Chaos | Week 5 | 1605 words
Toi toi toi (warding off bad luck)

x-x-x-x-x

Helga McTwittle was a hag, and proud of it. She kept her hair long and stringy, and she rubbed toads on her face to enhance her warts. She kept her fingernails gray and ragged, and she honed her screeches and cackles with the diligence of a singer practicing her scales.

She wasn't as powerful as her former schoolmate, the Evil Queen, but that was all right. Helga had a good business doling out curses and enchantments for money.

She lived in a house made of cookies and candy, which she used to entice little children. Once she had them, Helga made them clean her house. Then she laid a forgetting spell on them before releasing them back into the forest. It required more effort than most hags would find reasonable, but Helga hated housework, and little children were able to get to the small spaces that Helga (who frequently sampled her own house) could not.

She once tried to change a rat into a tiny person for cleaning purposes, but she wound up with a large rat with human hands, which was disgusting even to Helga.

( Read more... )

If you enjoyed this story, please vote for it along with any of your other favorites here.

donutsweeper

Whelp, got swallowed by Battleship as usual. The teams have been hilariously/horribly poorly determined/set up this year with one steamrolling away, clearing boards usually 24-48 (or more) ahead of anyone else, two teams pretty much neck and neck and then the last team days behind them. When team placements were announced I assumed the front-running team would lead due to who was on it (the majority were on the team that blitzed through most of the game last year) but had no idea it'd be this bad or uneven. Oh well. By focusing on only my team's chats and trying to write the best/most interesting things I can write I am still mostly enjoying myself.

It's fruit themed this year and my team is Grape and each team has its own emoji of the yellow blob blorbo thing hugging the team's fruit and the grape team got very silly and after a poll named ours glorbo and tons of people were drawing it so I decided to immortalized it in crochet even if I couldn't put it in the collection so behold .... Glorbo the Glorbnificent! (Glorbo + a rough pattern for making it)

Since my last post the h/c exchange authors were revealed. I wrote:

Embers Seeking Flame. Untamed fic, 4,208 words. Summary: Lan Sizhui did not often find himself reminiscing on the past. It was what it was. Or was it? (LSZ&WWX fic, rated G)

Reaching That Inevitable Horizon. The First Shot fic, 1162 words. Summary: No matter how much Zheng Bei wishes it wasn't the case, there is only one way this can, and ever could, end. (JXH/ZB, spoilers for drama's end, T rated, see warnings)

It's interesting, because I usually write in past tense but every so often a fic just *needs* to be in the present tense to get a better feel for the tension and action. Reaching That Inevitable Horizon would have read and felt very differently if it hadn't been in present (as would my long Under the Skin fic, Gently Toward a New Bright Morn). The immediacy and sense of pace required them to be present tense.

Oh! And once h/c revealed I passed the 500 work mark on AO3! (yes, I could have passed that ages ago if I'd actually put all my drabbles up there from pre-ao3 days or if I combined my EAD birthday sock with donutsweeper's stuff but whatever, still, 500!)

Have a bunch of

recthething recs! (MDZS/Untamed fic and tumblr art for DMBJ, Great Mouse Detective, Old Guard, SPN, Under the Skin, and WoH)

MDZS/Untamed fic rec:
- A Change of State by Toshokanin (36k, squidgeworld fic, not AO3)
Summary Snippet: senior citizen LQR whose nephews have gone off to college and jobs, leaving him alone in the house where he raised them. (delightful story where LQR wanders into the bookstore where WWX works and discovers BL manga (which happens to be volume 1 of the story of Hanguang-jun and Yiling-laozu) and the friendship that grows between the two while they read/discuss the books)

tumblr art recs:

DMBJ/Lost Tomb
- 🕶️🌸 (Gorgeous Heihua- Hei Xiazi/Xiao Hua- art)

The Great Mouse Detective
- Mouse Detective Again (Some adorable doodles)
- a domestic Toby moment (Very cute Toby, Dawson and Basil moment)

The Old Guard
- Quick ipad sketch while watching old guard2 (spoiler free sketch of Andy)

Supernatural
- my favorite part was doing the book (Dean in 'Faith', gorgeous)

Under the Skin
- Craft time an Under the Skin dangling paper dolls tutorial with template you can DL and print out to make (these are darling!)

Word of Honor
- For your consideration. Princess Bride/Word of Honor AU (perfect and utterly hilarious comic)