"...in effect, you must paint what you see, and not what you know to be there. Because what we see and what is there are not always the same thing. I suppose it is important to learn that." [loc. 2026]
My initial mini-review is here: I reread the novel for this full review and can confirm that it is still an utter delight.
Titus Pilcrow is a colourman, a maker and supplier of paints and colours for artists. As the novel opens, he is in despair, because his landlord (also his ex) is evicting him. By a stroke of fortune, ( spoilers below )
In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like.
Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.
The intent of these posts is to chat and have some fun and, sure, vent a little as required. Reasoned debate is fine, as always, but if you have to ask if something is going over the line, think carefully before posting please.
Normal board rules about conduct and behaviour still apply, of course.
The world situation is the world situation. If you're following the news, you know it as much as I do, if you're not, then there are better sources than scans_daily. But please, no doomscrolling, for your own sake.
Artemis II arrived safely back to Earth, though apparently Mission Contgrol chose not to all put on ape masks
And speaking of rats doing improbable things (without the charm of the above) POTUS47 managed a remarkable week even by his usual, unbelieveably low, standards. Trying to save face when his chaotic Iran War went horrendously badly, to the extent he's now blockading a blockade that only exists because he set in motion the events which caused it in the first place. Milirary historians will be documenting this one for years.
Suffice it to say that when you manage to post an AI image so offensive that your own Christian Nationalist supporters come out on the side of the POPE in an argument (even momentarily), you HAVE to know you've buggered things up.
If you’ve ever watched a hurricane stall on a weather map and became worried, you’re picking up on something scientists are increasingly concerned about.
A new study suggests that rapid ocean warming isn’t just making tropical cyclones dump more rain.
It may also be slowing some of them down while they’re still in their tropical phase, which is basically the worst combo if you’re on the coast or anywhere downstream.
Reading a few people on my f-list who always have interesting things to say about writing, I was moved to reread Dorothy Bryant’s Writing a Novel (I always want to call her Dorothy Allison, who is another person altogether). Not all of it works for me, but I find it interesting and sometimes motivating. For today “Remember that detailed planning is of great value, but only if you understand that it does not work. By that I mean you cannot expect your careful planning to solve in advance many of the problems you will run into while writing, nor help you avoid making changes you must make. It is through the writing itself that you learn what you are trying to write. You write some of it, and it’s not quite right, but the process of writing sets deep forces in motion. (That’s why if you miss a day you feel as if getting started again is like moving mountains.) These deep forces shift you to a new place, slightly closer to what you can write. Day by day, as you write, everything keeps shifting and changing under your hands. The plan helps in this process, but only if you are ready to deviate from it as you begin to see your direction more clearly.”
From my favorite singer, not a song this time but a game livestream (from last summer sometime). Unlike Liu Chang, Jiang Dunhao does not do livestreams on the regular (“I never know what to say”), so this is a bit of an exception. He’s playing a game called inZoi? which seems to be a kind of slice-of-life? in a city where they speak an annoyingly random language? and makes himself an avatar wearing one of his own typical striped shirts (with a lot of cute little “Nope!”s in English when he doesn’t like the options presented). It’s not all that exciting to watch, but like Liu Chang’s game livestreams, excellent for listening practice, since his narration reflects what’s happening on screen, plus the style of the game means there are a lot of everyday words coming up. (The first thing he does is go to the karaoke box on the game map, where he is somewhat appalled to find that his avatar sings really badly.) (okay, I lied, here’s a song too, even though I think I’ve already posted this one: 掉了, just because it blows my mind every time.)
For work reasons, I came across this list of large cardinal properties (I don’t even know what cardinals are, other than cardinal-versus-ordinal, not counting the religious ones and the red birds) and found it extremely delightful. I know for math people, including those on my f-list, it must make actual sense, but I just like the existence of worldly cardinals, weakly and strongly inaccessible cardinals (need to apply this categorization to the local authorities, utilities companies, etc.), unfoldable cardinals, shrewd cardinals, almost and totally ineffable cardinals, ethereal cardinals, subtle cardinals, remarkable cardinals, almost high jump cardinals, super almost huge cardinals, and so on.
Antonia Forest fans may be amused to note that there’s a kid called Juki at the Saturday juku; also another boy called Mokuren, a very pretty name which means “magnolia” (I haven’t seen the characters but presumably it’s 木蓮, although these days you never know). Some of the modern kira-kira names I find too much, as in the previous post, but at least it’s more interesting than everyone being named Hiroshi or Daisuke or Keiko or Miyuki (depending on the generation).
Still working my way through the Chinese edition of The People at No. 1 Siwei Street; the dialogue is very cute in Chinese. Seriously confusing myself because there’s a character who is mostly just called the landlady, 房东, but because I know there’s a landlady character, I keep looking at 大家 and wanting to read it that way (“landlord/-lady” in Japanese, “everyone” in Chinese). Also I can’t believe I now know how to say both “pillowfriend” and “fuckbuddy” in Chinese (床伴 and 炮友, if anyone cares); clearly I have made some fundamental mistake somewhere in my self-guided Chinese education. More silly Chinese: People online using on-the-spot loan words written in hanzi, like 哦莫 (Korean “omo,” kind of “oy vey”) or 摩西摩西 (Japanese “moshi-moshi,” telephone hello doubling as “hey you, wake up there”). When I need spare names for original Chinese characters (I mean, people, not letters) I have a secret weapon: searching for chorus or orchestra rosters in Chinese. The former usually separates members by voice part and the latter often comes with photos, making it easy both ways to check name gender, and there are lots and lots of names to mix-and-match first and last. Also interested that Western orchestra instruments seem to have multiple translations: for the contrabass I’ve mostly seen 低音提琴, low violin, but also 倍大提琴 which is literally “double bass” (or “double cello,” anyway). Also the 法国号, French horn, which also goes by 圆号, round horn; the cor anglais seems to be literally the 英国管 as well. The harp is 竖琴, vertical-stringed-instrument (琴 is the word for “zither” but can refer to anything with strings, the violin family as above is various 提琴s and even rock guitarists and bass players will refer casually to their axes as 琴 as well). Timpani are 定音鼓, fixed-tone drums.
Visit to Arima, a hot spring spa with centuries of history as a tourist destination (possibly millennia; the original hot spring visitors were gods, if you follow the local legend). Lots of cherry blossoms, because it’s in the mountains and they bloom later; steep hills everywhere (my knees are not in good shape right now and the hills were a challenge; does anybody have any good exercise ideas that are easy on the knees?); the “Jealousy Spring” said to puff out steam whenever a beautiful woman walks by; a local train using rolling stock from sixty years ago; soda-water senbei, which you’re supposed to eat within five seconds (literally) after they come off the griddle, because the first bite is chewy and after that they get crisp (they taste like old-fashioned fortune cookies); and of course the hot springs, notable for their copper-colored water, like bathing in a mud puddle but actually very clean and soothing (see here, not where we stayed but the photos are nice). (No wonder I’ve read at least one murder mystery in which the Arima waters are used to conceal an exsanguinated victim.)
Photos: Way too many cherry blossoms, mostly from Arima; I still maintain that they’re not my favorite flowers, but they sure are photogenic. Two cats: Koron-chan with an elegant little halo, and an offended stray at a safe distance. Some maples: the red leaves are not actually painted on the wall, they just look like it. Message on a mailbox that cracked me up. A bounty of kumquats going to waste because they’re growing on the train side of the railway fence, meaning nobody can pick them (I suppose the railway company could, but logistically it wouldn’t be easy). An alleyway in Arima and a temple entrance which looks like it’s off in the mountains somewhere but is actually right in the middle of my large city.
Count me among the noon risers who stumble, dazed and bad-haired, from the nest midday, pecking the crazed dirt for half-torn moth, pear’s white core, severed worm. I’ve never been one to trill at chink of dawn, to hop, skip, chirrup before full sun. I’m better at picking over crumbs, stitching a quilt from what’s left, remaindered, given up for gone. Better at betting the careless will miss the best. Count me among the nightbirds who sip starlight, a guitar’s fading strains. Find me where moondust swirls in streetlamp glow and stray dogs sleep. What clings to the bone is most sweet.
.... What you you meeeean they take off their sweaters at the last home game to give out to fans? For some of them, that's the last time in navy blue. That's the last time they are taking off those sweaters, and they do it on the ice?
Do all teams do this 'sweater off their backs' ceremony, or do the the Kraken just like to make things extra painful?
NecroMunchicon: Unspeakable Snacks and Terrifying Treats from the Lore of HP Lovecraft, by Mike Slater:
This is the second book in the NecroNomNomNom series … this is a series, which is astonishing, but more power to Slater, who created the single best themed cookbook I know about and now has two more cookbooks along the same lines. I do think the original book was the best. What seems to have happened is enough feedback along the lines of, Fun, but could you tone down the weird phrasing of the recipes? And unfortunately not enough feedback along the lines of No, no! I love the weird phrasing! Therefore, NecroMunchicon is the second-best themed cookbook I know about, but not as excellent as the first book.
Here is what a themed cookbook along these lines needs in order to really measure up, which Slater’s cookbooks have in spades and nobody else has pulled off (so far as I know):
An intellectual property that is fun to use. Lovecraft counts, because the reader of the cookbook does not need to be a Lovecraft fan or have more than a glancing familiarity with Lovecraft’s stories to enjoy this book. The lore is super fun even if you can’t spell Cthulhu without looking it up and know almost nothing except there are lots of tentacles and people go insane a lot, which is pretty much my level. I mean, I’m not really all that keen on horror, but of all horror subgenres, Lovecraftian is the sort I like least. But the idea of Lovecraftian horror works extremely well as a theme, so that’s the thing that counts here.
An author who will play with the lore a lot, not just a teeny bit. I have a fair number of themed cookbooks, and mostly they aren’t that great because there just isn’t enough cool stuff in them to justify calling them “themed.” Offhand, I’d estimate that Slater includes about three times more words in creating Themed Lore than in Recipes. Diary entries, letters, lost manuscripts, fragments of rituals, lots of stuff. The vision statement of the Nyarlath-on-Tap Premium Catering Service, fake magazine articles, transcripts from secret interviews, on and on. This stuff takes up at least as much space as the recipes.
Artwork in keeping with the theme. This is important for a fantasy or other IP-themed cookbook, imo. The presentation of the NecroNomNomNom books is top-notch.
Recipes that are really in keeping with the theme, not just sort of connected if you squint sideways. Slater has some normal recipes here – I mean, recipes a normal person could make without dyeing spaghetti green and piling it into a skull, for example – but then he does in fact dye spaghetti green and pile it into a skull. This is BY NO MEANS the weirdest thing he does, either. I’ll tell you about one of the most amazingly weird recipes in a second, but first, here is a recipe that just demonstrates the fourth criterion for a really great themed cookbook –
The recipes are written in a style that reflects the theme. Here is where the original NecroNomNomNom outdoes this newer one, the NecroMuchicon. Still, the latter book has its moments, as in this recipe I’m going to share with you here. This is not a recipe I’d actually make myself, or not as written. I dislike coffee in basically all forms. But it’s fun to read, which is the actual point. Though I’m keeping the weird bits of the recipe, commentary is mine, plus I’m going to summarize and simplify. This doesn’t interfere because the recipe itself is written normally; only the headings are funny.
The Gateau and the Key Lime
Iä! Choc-Sothoth! Trifle not with this caffeinated trifle!
What Lurks Between
6 key limes
14 oz condensed milk
1 C heavy cream
4 oz cream cheese
1 Tbsp sugar
The Gate
2 to 2½ C strong black coffee
24 oz rectangular chocolate cookies (I would bet you could cheat on the shape and use ordinary chocolate wafer cookies, but up to you if you feel that daring)
Dark Matter
6 oz dark chocolate
2 Tbsp butter
Topology of the Universe
½ C white chocolate (I guess it means chips or you wouldn’t measure it with a cop measure)
4-5 drops fat-soluble purple food dye. I don’t know if fat-soluble is an uncommon quality for food coloring, actually. I bet you could mix red and blue if that’s what you had handy. However, I looked at Amazon, and if you search for fat-soluble food dye, what you get is oil-based food coloring, which sounds like the same thing and is a real category that exists. If you find this intriguing and want to read about the difference between oil-based food coloring and normal food coloring, here is a post that will explain this. Now I know something new about baking!
Green frosting pencil. I can’t see why you couldn’t just make regular frosting with powdered sugar and a bit of butter and enough water to make it the right consistency, then pipe it normally. The quick way to make a piping bag is to take a very generous rectangle of plastic wrap, double it over to make a square of plastic wrap, prick a hole in the middle with a fine-bladed knife, scoop your frosting onto the square, gather up the corners, and there you go, you can pipe your frosting as you wish. This is so easy and convenient that I rarely bother to get my official piping bags and tips out of the cabinet.
The Summoning
Zest and juice the limes. Combine the lime zest and juice, condensed milk, cream, cream cheese, and sugar. Whisk until smooth and thick. Chill. You’re going to need to divide this into four layers plus frost the sides of the cake, so keep this in mind as you layer the gateau.
Pour the coffee into a bowl. Dunk the cookies in the coffee for 2-3 seconds, let drip for a second, and lay a foundation layer of cookies in an 8×14 tray or casserole dish or some reasonable equivalent. Spoon a little coffee over this layer of cookies, so I don’t know why you’d bother draining them, actually. Spoon three or four big spoonfuls of the lime cream over this foundation layer of cookies. Repeat layers three more times, four layers total of cookies and four layers of lime cream. Use the rest of the lime cream to frost the sides of the cake. Chill 2 hours or more.
Melt the dark chocolate with the butter, and I am here to tell you that although you can fuss around with double boilers if that really makes you happy, you can also just melt the chocolate with the butter in the microwave. Fears that the chocolate will seize up are highly overrated. This can happen, I guess, but in fact I’ve never once had this happen, and I’ve melted quite a lot of chocolate in the microwave in my time. Also, dark chocolate is less likely to seize up than chocolate with more sugar and/or milk chocolate, which may be why I never have problems with that. If you’re nervous about it, microwave in short bursts of thirty seconds. If you feel more sanguine, then go for a minute to start with. Or, fine, whatever, use a double boiler if you really want to. Either way, stir until smooth. Now spread over the chilled gateau. Edges too. Chill again.
Melt the white chocolate. This is somewhat touchier than dark chocolate, but I’d just use the microwave, honestly. Add the food coloring to the melted white chocolate. Got that far? All right, drizzle spotchily over the gateau. Judging from the picture, you want it runny enough to “reproduce the chaotic topology of the universe,” meaning swooshes and splotches, like a really messy spiderweb produced by an drunken spider. I’m just saying, this is what comes to mind for me. Chill for two hours.
Pipe a Yog-Sothoth sigil atop the gateau with the green frosting pencil or the green frosting you made and piled onto your handy instant piping bag.
And you know what? This looks easy and neat and I don’t see any reason I can’t make it and just leave out the coffee. It’s essentially an icebox cake – which is made by layering wafer cookies of any kind with a cream filling of any kind, including straight-up whipped cream. Just layer chocolate wafer cookies and whipped cream, chill overnight, and that’s a super fast version of this type of gateau.
Here’s the final note from the actual cookbook:
With each layer, density changes. Time disappears. Chaos!
And if that doesn’t sound inviting, I don’t know what will.
Now, I will just tell you briefly about the recipe that gets my vote for “least likely for readers to make.”
This is: your very own absinthe gummies, molded into the shape of Cthulhoid monsters. Once again, I had to look up how to spell that. Ingredients: gelatin – so far, so good – a vitamin B2 tablet, and is that normally included in gummies? I have no idea. This post here suggests not, so what is it for? Google, why would you addB2 to homemade gummies? OH, it makes them glow under blacklight! Well, that’s wild. More normal ingredients: Sugar. Green food coloring. ½ C absinthe. Molds in whatever shape, possibly including these weird little trilobite-esque gummies pictured in the book.
Here’s an excerpt from the associated lore: “Our ultraviolet torches reveal camouflaged creatures clinging to the walls. They resemble land-bound cephalopods. They move slow but hold on like the Devil. They glow brightly under the lamps in a color that defies description. … Jamie said my eyes were glowing. I laughed. He and Fred tried to drag me with them, but I have grown stronger. I shall not leave this place. I msut find the many-armed shadow gods. I shall live forever in K’n-Yan. Like those who mind-speak with me now, I have no further use for this device. It steals my voice, but it cannot hear my mind-brothers.”
So there you go, that’s why the B2 and these gummies would therefore be best if you also had ultraviolet (blacklight) torches handy. Raise your hand if you happen to have UV torches available? Right, so that’s one more reason I think these gummies are not likely to be actually made by a lot of people. But here this recipe is! Admirably dedicated of the author!
It's an independent bookstore specifically for romance novels.
I took a look while I was downtown. It's nice; a little small, but a decent selection given the space, and they do have room to expand the selection by switching up the layout a bit. Everything is divided up by subgenre (contemporary, sports, dark, etc).
Also, they do carry M/M and F/F romance, so there is that. It's mixed in with everything else, rather than having its own section; you'll have to look in the Sports section for your Heated Rivalry and so on. I kind of enjoy that, but I kind of don't; on the one hand, filing it by subgenre treats it the same as everything else. On the other hand, it makes browsing a little less efficient if I know that I want something gay but don't have any other parameters in mind.
I picked up a F/F regency while I was there; Ladies in Hating by Alexandra Vasti. Not sure if it'll be any good, but the premise sounds fun (the protagonists are rival authors of gothic fiction).
I'm a little unsure whether this place will actually be successful; Fort Mac is small, and I don't know if we have the base to sustain a regular indie bookstore, let alone one with a specific genre focus. But I hope it'll do well.
I agree with this post that the human body was not designed to know what the worst person in the world is doing every fifteen minutes, but it was not possible for me to avoid hearing that the man in the White House shared AI slop of himself as Jesus healing the sick for Pascha. It was much nicer to discover that Aimee Mann circa 'Til Tuesday belonged so clearly to the elusive Bowie–Swinton species. She could have starred in Liquid Sky (1982).
Current Music:The Mountain Goats, "Training Montage"
The overwhelming defeat of Viktor Orbán in Hungary feels like a ray of light in the darkness of current political reality. For Hungarians, it's an earthquake that signals the potential return of representative democracy. It's a shift for the rest of Europe, too. And over here, it's a most satisfying rebuke for our own less intelligent and more unstable version of Orbán. (It's also the latest kick in the goolies for Couchfuck McGee*; where he goes, defeat follows. Readers, I am enjoying this particular morsel of schadenfreude pie)
There's no denying that the winners in Hungary are center-right, which could eventually be problematic, at least from my point of view. And people should remember that Orbán rose to power as a pro-democracy, anti-Russian firebrand, only to turn into what he ended up being - a corrupt authoritarian in league with a would-be resurgent Russian Empire. Democracies take hard work, and they should never be based on unthinking approval of heroes, or those who would like to be heroes.
In a bit of a reminder of that here, as well as less a glimmer of hope than a reminder that there are still vast differences between the two major American political parities, we've watched a Democratic congressman, Eric Swalwell, brought low by accusations of sexual coercion and outright assault, and his own party's own insistence that he exit the California gubernatorial race and then his House seat, while GOP House members remained silent about even worse sexual accusations of one of their own, Texas House Rep. Tony Gonzales. It's a reminder to me that whatever the Democratic Party's mountain of faults, it still stands heads and shoulders above the other party.
On the whole, I'll take glimmers of hope whenever and wherever I can find them.
*Yes, it's crude; yes it's using a ridiculous Internet meme to defame the sitting U.S. vice-president. I regret nothing.
First Day Jitters By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams Part 1 of 1, complete Word count (story only): 1193 [Morning of Thursday, 9 November of 2017]
:: Jules starts working at the Embassy, hoping to straighten out the mess of the physical files. Part of the “Lodestar” arc, set in the Polychrome Heroics universe. ::
:: Pay special attention: There’s a bit of discussion about biometric data, blood, tissue, or organ donation, but it’s all no-pressure conversation loosely connected to Thalassian security procedures. ::
At ten minutes to seven, Jules stopped at the gates to the Thalassian embassy. The guard beamed, his dark skin blending into the deep shadows, despite the weak sunlight and the honey-gold sheen of dawn still clinging to the world. “You don’t look like it’s an emergency,” the guard joked.
Jules shook his head. “Nosir. I’ve got a job that starts today, and I expected to need extra time for the security check and the briefing.” ( Read more... )
I decided to lose a bit of weight after discovering I'd put on 15 pounds over the winter. Not great. It was starting to trigger my plantar fasciitis, and I noticed some heat rashes in some rather intimite locations. Ahem.
So! After giving it some thought, I decided I'd start counting calories. I'm a very sedate individual, so after some consultation I decided to limit my calories between 1800 and 2000 a day.
So far, so good. If I can lose about ten more pounds I'll be happy.
In other news, I had a very nice young lady tell me I had 'sweet eyes' the other day. It was very nice and gave me a tiny ego boost, as I do occasionally get compliments on my eyes.
At about 6:30 PM this evening (01:29:11 UTC according to https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000sptw/executive), we had a 5.7 earthquake centered near Silver Springs and roughly 25 km southeast of my house. I definitely felt it. The whole house shook for maybe 5-10 seconds. I did not take cover. By the time I stood up to consider it, the shaking stopped.
I went out to check on Lisa in her trailer. She had been getting ready for bed. She said, "What the hell was that?" as it felt like it does out there when we get a very high wind effect. The fact that the trailer sits on shock absorbers may have amplified the effect.
No harm done. Nothing fell off shelves. Nothing broke or fell over.
I've been near some ~6.0 quakes in the past, but I'm not sure I've been this close to one of this size before.
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