Happy Earth Day!

Apr. 22nd, 2025 10:13 pm
wyld_dandelyon: (let's go!)
[personal profile] wyld_dandelyon
I've been under the weather. This time I managed to get Bronchitis just from the end of the winter heating season (unless a friend with a congestive heart condition was actually sick, and not just coughing because of the heart condition). But I think this was coming on earlier, and the med regime my former allergist suggested was keeping my lungs and sinuses a lot clearer than in the past, but not enough for my body to clear out the infection.

Well, I came to this conclusion Friday, with (among other things) singing at the Eurofilk showing me I was unusually short of breath for singing; I already had an appointment with my newish primary doc who I really like on Monday, and when I tried to call the allergist last month to set up an appointment, there was no answer or answering machine on his number, or on the alternate number I found on Google. I did find an article about him listing him as 81 years old, and I'm not sure how long ago that was written, so I'm assuming he died or retired. So, I waited out the weekend and got tireder and tireder, and shorter and shorter of breath.

Happily, she was willing to prescribe antibiotics and steroids (if I'd gotten antibiotics on Friday, that might have been enough), unhappily, when they figured out that the only way they could give me the meds the doc thought most appropriate that didn't have corn in it (kids' liquid, again), it turned out that the pharmacy couldn't fill it until today. It was too late to try to talk the doc into prescribing something different, as the clinic was closed.

So today I woke up way too early, and was NOT falling asleep again (my body does insist on waking when I really need meds, which freaked out my RN mother when I was first sick enough to always be awake when she came in to wake me up to take them). This was handy in that I was able to deal with a bank overdraft for my grown-up kid (she's still using the account I got her when she went to Denmark in 4th grade so I could easily transfer money to her if there was an unexpected need, so, being awake I saw the text notification) (Her birthday is later this month, so an early birthday gift was perfectly reasonable).

And then I had food and called the pharmacy, because I WANTED those meds before the rest of the day's errands, which included getting My Angel to her PT appointment, mailing a thing (in a post office, since there seems to be no more drop-off boxes outside our regular post office any more--WTF, government?--and going to pick up meds at a different pharmacy too.

The strip mall the post office was in had one of the closing JoAnne Fabrics, which had almost no fabric left, and not much of anything else either. I did find some things to buy, including two substantially marked down big bags designed to hold a sewing machine and sewing stuff, but which I plan to use one of for author stuff (books, display, etc.) on the assumption that I'll do signings at cons again, and the other for acrylic paints, brushes, and the like since my current bag and plastic bin plan isn't working out as well as I'd like, and because having that stuff on wheels will be very convenient.

I also got some beads, wire, a thimble and multitool, sewing machine needles, an ironing pad to put on a table, some tape, a couple of pillow forms for planned gifting, and, surprisingly, a basket of tumbled stones to put in the fishtank. Sadly, the heavy-duty dolly they had pictured in the front as available had already been sold. I looked at the jewelry making stuff, thought about the heavy duty crimper and some of those beads, but I haven't been making jewelry lately and can use the hemostats I use for holding autoharp strings to crimp things, so I left those behind. I did also get some very discounted project boards, so if we decide to go to one or more protests, we can take signs.

And I took photos of our daffodils in the middle of all that.

I am cheered by all the photos of protests I'm seeing, and by how badly Elon's car company is doing. It gives me hope. Keep contacting your elected officials, we've got to wear them down until they stand up to our very cruel and foolish leader.

Now I am going to hit post and go watch Rachel show all those pictures of the signs again, and do Duolinguo, so I don't miss a day, and fall in bed. Maybe I'll manage to post Daffodil pics tomorrow.
milo_r: gif from a retro looking anime of a pair of hands typing on a 90s keyboard (Default)
[personal profile] milo_r

I know we're all joking about the curse finally lifting but it's the only "modern" social media site I get genuine enjoyment out of. And for all that I prasie dreamwidth and mastodon to every fandom person I meet, there's a kind of visual fandom experience that only tumlblr is- I can't even say "optimized for," as tumblr is not optimized for anything. Mostly gif gazing. TikTok is for videos and Instagram is for carousels. Fanartists will migrate to even more inhospitable lands but I have survived that before. But where will I go to have narrative parallels highlighted via gifset juxtaposition? Where will I be graced with the sight of my blorbo covered in blood like I am graced by a freshly bloomed flower on my morning walk? Are you telling me I'll have to rewatch my shows??? Unthinkable.

(Not that I think tumblr doesn't have the addictive and enshittified social media features. I've looked up by an hour-long tumblr session with the same kind of malaise tiktok scrolling gives me, but overall the good has always outweighed the bad.)
larryhammer: a wisp of colored smoke, label: "softly and suddenly vanished away" (disappeared)
[personal profile] larryhammer
I totally forgot to post this yesterday, which is possibly indicative of … something. So here, have it for Poetry Tuesday instead:

what if a much of a which of a wind, e. e. cummings

what if a much of a which of a wind
gives truth to the summer’s lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry?
Blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend:blow space to time)
—when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man

what if a keen of a lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of thing
and stifles forests in white ago?
Blow hope to terror;blow seeing to blind
(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)
—whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,
it’s they shall cry hello to the spring

what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
Blow soon to never and never to twice
(blow life to isn’t:blow death to was)
—all nothing’s only our hugest home;
the most who die,the more we live

---L.

Subject quote from On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble, A. E. Housman.

Happy 2778 to all who celebrate!

Apr. 19th, 2025 07:58 pm
dhampyresa: (Default)
[personal profile] dhampyresa
AUC, babyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

If I did I would

Apr. 19th, 2025 09:42 am
adore: (galentine)
[personal profile] adore
Technically it's Saturday where I live, but I assume it's Friday in some part of the world 🤷🏻‍♀️ this is also my first time answering [community profile] thefridayfive questions despite not having a partner except in my dreams 💭

1. Who was your first crush?
The Professor from Powerpuff Girls. I may have daddy issues 🤷🏻‍♀️ I also experienced my first turnoff/ick through Cartoon Network when I saw Johnny Bravo and thought he was the sort of guy I want to avoid 😆

2. Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
An introvert because I need regular socialising but I also need to recover after socialising. A certain amount of socialising with people I like energises me. Socialising with people I don't really click with drains me no matter the duration.

3. What is your favorite non-sexual thing you like to do with the love of your life?
Going by my favourite k-drama tropes, I like (or fantasise about) being taken care of while I'm on my period. I once wrote a fic about that actually.

4. What is one quirky habit your partner does that either annoys you or makes you grin?
My imaginary boyfriend gets baseline jealous of my k-pop boys 😆

5. Do you believe in monogamous relationships?
It's an individual preference. I believe sometimes it's an intellectual and emotional choice, because you're a relationship anarchist or not, while other times it's your sexuality and just the way you are, polyamorous or not.

(Frantz) Fanon

Apr. 19th, 2025 12:40 am
dhampyresa: Paris coat of arms: Gules, on waves of the sea in base a ship in full sail Argent, a chief Azure semé-de-lys Or (fluctuat nec mergitur)
[personal profile] dhampyresa
To be clear: The movie is simply titled "Fanon". It's just that that's also a word and I wanted this entry title to be not confusing.

I just saw this 2025 movie by Jean-Claude Barny. It's only come out in very few French theaters (for... some... reason...) but I hope it ends up getting a wider/international release.

It's really good! It covers Fanon's life from 1953 to his death in 1961. It's mostly about his work as part of the pro-Algerian independance resistance and anticolonialism/antiracism activism rather than his work as a psychiatrist. I didn't know he was so hands-on with the resistance.

Fanon's social status as a Black French citizen is really interesting, because the film makes the very deliberate to only show scenes in North Africa. Fanon is a Black man, which makes him a victim of anti-Black racism, but the main form of racism he lives within is racism directed towards people of Maghrebi/North African origin[1]. He's a Black man but he is also a French citizen, which gives him rights and protections many of his friends don't have -- he doesn't have to obey a curfew and can't get arrested by the army, for two relevant examples.

[1] Tbh this is the main form I see racism in France take -- this isn't to say there are no other forms of racism in France, simply that the biggest racialised minority in France is people of North African descent.

I was wary of Josie, his wife, taking a completely passive role in the story. She never becomes an active character but she is still a person in her own right. I liked the scene where she quotes back more of the poem he was quoting back at Ramdane while Fanon is like ._.

One thing that really stuck out to be was how the French army was filmed. They were filmed like... Well, like Germans. As in, like how the German army is filmed in WW2 films. I don't know how else to put it? Maybe it's the thudding of the boots or the crispness of the uniforms or something but it was noticeable.


Besides the obvious warning for racism, both anti-Black and anti-North African (including one use of a slur directed at each), I should also point out that there is a somewhat graphic surgery scene at one point, an onscreen strangulation and at least two occasions of people being shot, as well as implied/offscreen torture, murder and bombings.
larryhammer: animation of the kanji for four seasonal birds fading into each other in endless cycle (Japanese poetry)
[personal profile] larryhammer
So. :scuffs floor: Yeah. This is late. Over a decade late.

See, back when I was translating classical Japanese, I got a dozen poems into book XI of the Kokinshu before life pivoted me into learning Chinese. (Parenthood brings changes.) Which means I never got around to compiling those fragments—leaving them orphans not on my index of Japanese translations. So purely for the bookkeeping, here they are. Full disclosure: except for one wording tweak, these are unrevised reposts from the original posts. That said, without double-checking my understanding of the originals, I’m as happy as I ever am with the texts.

A little bit of love goes a long, long way )

Index of Japanese translations

---L.

En vérité, je vous le dis

Apr. 18th, 2025 01:17 am
dhampyresa: (Default)
[personal profile] dhampyresa
There are only two seasons in a year: soup season and salad season.

(no subject)

Apr. 16th, 2025 08:54 pm
echan: rainbow arch supernova remnant (Default)
[personal profile] echan
I keep thinking about a quote I read once, about how to sculpt stone: you hold in your mind the final shape, and cut away the parts that don't belong. Vidding often feels like that -- not so much the cutting away, but the need to hold in the front of your mind the final result you're working towards. Even more when it's unclear or uncertain, you have to know the general shape, the feel of it, to guide you.

I joked at work that half my brain is taken up by a particular project, and sadly it's funny because it's true. The project is in an odd area, adjacent to things I normally work with but with zero actual overlap. All this new info crammed into my head during six months of planning, then used daily during a year of dev time, and now still needed another couple months at least for this final phase before I can forget it all.

This will end. Eventually. (It has to.)
larryhammer: Chinese character for poetry, red on white background, translation in pale grey (Chinese poetry)
[personal profile] larryhammer
Books 869-872 of Complete Tang Poems is 谐谑, xiéxuè, banter/repartee—IOW, poems of humor and mockery. Do I want to dive deep into this? Yes—yes, I do. Duh. But for now, instead, here’s translations of a random handful that caught my eye.

I have even less standing to do this than I did the ghost poems. I can tell I’m missing wordplay and am even weaker on cultural context—and indeed, I failed to get anywhere with more than half the poems I tried. IOW, don’t make much of how three of the four are one specific genre—these were the easiest to make sense of, and Chinese humor ranges well beyond these examples.

Still, these few were fun.




In Praise of the Hedgehog, Li or Zhu Zhenbai
Walking, he seems a shifting pin-cushion,
At rest, he’s curled like a chestnut-burr.
He can’t be bullied like us big folks:
Who dares to casually punch the guy?

There’s three more where that came from, including two more praising animals )

Yyyyeah, there’s reasons why I didn’t do more of these. Much harder to understand, let alone render well, than even the ghost poems and children’s rhymes.

Index of Chinese translations

Subject quote from Catwings, Ursula K. Le Guin.

new season for [personal profile] ghislaine

Apr. 15th, 2025 01:32 pm
ghislaine: easter (easter)
[personal profile] ghislaine
IMG_2728.jpg After a restful hiatus, I feel ready to stir and get back to activities like photography and blogging. 

This last weekend, we went to Nacogdoches, my birthday request. I don’t remember going to that town since I was a small child with my grandparents. Nacogdoches was a peaceful, friendly place, simply a beautiful town to see in the spring. Now that I am out of grad school, I am compiling a list of long-weekend/short-trip places. 

Nathan took the photo above of me in Lufkin. Lufkin had a more industrial feel than Nacogdoches and a scenic square.
weekend in NAC )
larryhammer: Chinese character for poetry, red on white background, translation in pale grey (Chinese poetry)
[personal profile] larryhammer
For Poetry Monday, another short poem from another language, this time with my translation:

Inscribed in the Temple of Mulan, Du Mu

I bend my bow in battle, serving as a man—
Within my dreams, as formerly, I paint my brows.
I often long for home, yet raise my cup at banquets.
Upon Fuyundui’s shrine, I pray to Wang Zhaojun.

题木兰庙
弯弓征战作男儿,
梦里曾经与画眉。
几度思归还把酒,
拂云堆上祝明妃。

Yes, this is the Mulan you all know, and yes, a temple to her—southern China has many Mt. Mulans, literally “magnolia mountain,” and when her legend spread in the 5th and 6th centuries, those with Daoist temple complexes started dedicating one of their temples to her worship. (One in Wuhan, founded before 700, can still be visited.) Du Mu (803-852) was a late Tang poet from the same Du clan as Du Fu, though they weren’t closely related. According to his biographies, this temple was near the Hubei-Henan border.

The speaker is Mulan during her army service on the northern steppes. Fuyundui is a pass near Baotou, Inner Mongolia, on the north bank of the Ordos Loop of the Yellow River, where Xiongnu and other steppe nomads would pray before raiding south into Han lands—just as Mulan wants to return south herself. Wang Zhaojun was sent by Han Emperor Yuan (so a few centuries before Mulan’s supposed time) to make a diplomatic marriage to the Chanyu of the Xiongnu Empire, and after his death was not allowed to return—making her another woman who went north in service of the empire and longed to go home. A lot of resonance in just one line.

Index of Chinese translations

---L.

Subject quote from Ticket to Ride, The Beatles.

Absent of mercy

Apr. 14th, 2025 04:50 am
viridian5: (Tot (blush))
[personal profile] viridian5
Started a new Encanto gen fic that right now is 1,660 words that are 98% chunks of dialogue, and not all in its final order yet, just me throwing down what's already available in my head. Marvel at how my writing brain works.

I do have a summary though: Read more... )

Logo love!

Apr. 14th, 2025 10:20 am
adore: (cathartic reads)
[personal profile] adore
I've written 40k words of Project Fang! In celebration of this milestone, I treated myself and bought my author logo! I would've had to get an author logo eventually and I'm happy to tick that off the to-do list. I'm spacing out the purchases for authorial purposes, such as the book cover design, formatting software, etc. so I would've bought the logo at some point. But it feels good to do it as a reward or celebratory gift to myself.

Here's my logo! It's a pink watercolour key with my author name, Mynah Clement, and my tagline: 'Hopeful, relationship-driven fantasy books.'

I love it! I wanted my logo to have pink and purple in it, and initially I wanted butterflies, a bit like Stephanie Burgis's logo. But this one with the watercolour key is not similar to another one I saw or took inspiration from, so it feels truly mine. It's a premade logo, so it was affordable for me. The key reminds me of how things click into place as I keep writing even if they didn't before, so it's like a charm, warding off writer's block. The tagline is the best way I can think of to describe my books, and my approach to writing them. So there was some tweaking of the sample version of the logo's text placements to make it fit.
viridian5: (This big!)
[personal profile] viridian5
kl_8913I did a major, massive posting of window displays: Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Kleinfeld. You can see them at my Flickr. I find the heads on the mannequins at the Prada windows at Saks Fifth Avenue really unsettling....

+++

One thing this current round of a lot of people on my Circle doing those top 100 lists tells me is that I don't have many books in common! I thought there'd be more, but no.

+++

A month later, the Mager site at All Faiths Cemetery is still a disaster, but I personally pulled the branches off of Irving's statue.



Child angel statue lying amidst the tree branches but no longer under them.

For reference, this is what Irving looked like at the beginning of March:



I e-mailed the cemetery's "contact us" account about Irving, asking them to please respectfully put the statue and this child's gravestone upright again, attaching the photo of the whole site and the photo of the statue and gravestone. I haven't received an answer yet, but I hope my one e-mail saying Irving is important to me and I'm periodically returning to look at him make them more likely to take care of this.

+++

I borrowed Gary Numan's Splinter (Songs of a Broken Mind) album from the library and really enjoyed it. If you liked his Savage (Songs from a Broken World), you'll probably enjoy Splinter, since their sound is in the same vein.

The branches of the Queens Library have taken down the plexiglass barriers around the librarian desks that went up during COVID. End of an era.

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