rachelmanija | Reading

* A Heated Rivalry, an m/m romance about rival hockey players is becoming a TV show. It's going to be on Crave, so IDK if it'll be available in the US. Hockey based romance is huge, but not something I've read at all. I am kinda curious to check out the book since it's getting a show, but I am also drowning under my TBR list.

* The reveal trailer for Resident Evil 9 looks amazing.

I did the Mt Hood Railroad. It doesn't go all the way to Mt Hood, but climbs into the foothills of it and gets to about 500 ft elevation. Get get let off between a fruit orchard and winery.

We also get views of Hood:

And Adams:

It was cute and I like being able to get out and do these excursion trains. They are so couples focused it used to be impossible to even buy a single ticket for a lot of them. That's part of why I've gone from never having done any to having done a bunch recently.

My assigned seat was at a booth with a couple and the conductor asked if he could re-seat me to spare me how awkward that was, but I'd booked an upgraded ticket for the bar car and didn't want to be moved to coach. Then he swung by later to 'just check on me'.

Also, the previous night at that beer patio, I only stayed so long because it was all couples. Hood River is vacation spot that caters heavily to queer travelers. The town's logo is a rainbow heart. A beer in a place like that after a hike, that should be as good as it gets for me, but also I'm just there alone, surrounded by couples. It gets pretty wearying.

I make to make the best of it and I'm doing real cool things, but being solo was just especially wearying on this trip. I opted out of doing the wine tasting out in the vineyard because that was just going to be like intensely coupley.

As it turns out, what goes on with my hand is that it's going to have arthritis, but with any luck on the same glacial timeline as the kind that runs in my family, and in the meantime I have been referred back to OT. Maybe there will be more paraffin.

My parents as an unnecessary gift for taking care of the plants while they were out of town—mostly watering a lot of things in pots and digging the black swallow-wort out of the irises—gave me Eddie Muller's Dark City Dames: The Women Who Defined Film Noir (2001/2025), which not only fits the theme of this year's Noir City: Boston, but contains such useful gems as:

One of the most common, if wrong-headed, criticisms of film noir is that it relegates women to simplistic archetypes, making them Pollyannas or femmes fatales, drippy good girls or sinister sexpots. People who believe this nonsense have never seen a noir starring Ella Raines.

Ella Raines is indeed all that and a drum solo on top, but she is not a unique occurrence and I can only hope that people who have not been paying attention to Karen Burroughs Hannsberry or Imogen Sara Smith will listen to the Czar of Noir when he writes about its complicated women, because I am never going to have the platform to get this fact through people's heads and I am never going to let up on it, either.

Anyway, I learned a new vocabulary word.

Current Music: Lucy Dacus, "Most Wanted Man"

Better muzzle, nostrils OK but not the eye-like nostrils from day 1, can't get my eyes the same size (maybe I should use a template or a bottle cap). The prompt asked for facial expressions, I went with "funny expression", expecting it to be easier. Not sure how to fill in the nostrils and ears. Black? Brown? Pink?

I realize that there is very little actual good news these days, but here are some things that make me not hate everything a little less.

Boston Consulting Group CEO apologizes to employees because their own employees gave them shit about partnering with Israel to run food/aid distribution instead of the normal process of distributing aid via UNRWA or the UN - BCG leadership came under fire from staff who said: "Collaborating with a state actor in the midst of a military campaign that has killed tens of thousands of civilians, under the guise of humanitarian aid, is morally indefensible"
People keep asking the only Muslim candidate (Mira Nair's son) for mayor of NYC if he supports Israel's right to exist, and he keeps saying he believes in its right to exist as a state with equal rights and this is making everyone crazy.
I got mixed up - I didn't realize there were more people out there trying to break the siege - this one is made of Middle Easterners, and I hope they stay alive. You can track the one Greta Thunberg is on here.
Anti-ICE protests unfolding in LA. Chickenshit stuff here.
I hate him for other things, but Newsom threatening to withhold CA's tax money since Trump wants to defund CA? Good.
Congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh advocating for healthcare for everyone. And refusing to call Musk into the Democratic Party. Unlike Ro Khanna.
Sen Chris Van Hollen continuing to advocate for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, after it's being confirmed that he's being brought back to the US to get criminally indicted.
I don't care about this other than it being funny but Trump selling his Tesla. And also Trump threatening to look into the government contracts. Yeah, Biden should have done it.

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politics

A while back,

lirazel posted about a bad book about an interesting topic -- Conspiracy Theories About Lemuria -- which apparently got most of its information from a scholarly text called The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories by Sumathi Ramaswamy.

Great! I said. I bet the library has that book, I'll read it instead of the bad one! which now I have done.

For those unfamiliar, for a while the idea of sunken land-bridges joining various existing landmasses was very popular in 19th century geology; Lemuria got its name because it was supposed to explain why there are lemurs in Madagascar and India but not anywhere else. Various other land-bridges were also theorized but Lemuria's the only one that got famous thanks to the catchy name getting picked up by various weird occultists (most notably Helena Blavatasky) and incorporated into their variably incomprehensible Theories of Human Origins, Past Paradises, Etc.

As is not unexpected, this book is a much more dense, scholarly, and theory-driven tome than the bad pop history that

lirazel read. What was unexpected for me is that the author's scholarly interests focus on a.) cartography and b.) Tamil language and cultural politics, and so what she's most interested in doing is tracing how the concept of a Lemurian continent went from being an outdated geographic supposition to a weird Western occult fringe belief to an extremely mainstream, government-supported historical narrative in Tamil-speaking polities, where Lost Lemuria has become associated with the legendary drowned Tamil homeland of Tamilnāṭu and thus the premise for a claim that not only is the Lemurian continent the source of human origins but that specifically the Tamil language is the source language for humanity.

Not the book I expected to be reading! but I'm not at all mad about how things turned out! the prose is so dry that it was definite work to wade through but the rewards were real; the author has another whole book about Tamil language politics and part of me knows I am not really theory-brained enough for it at this time but the other part is tempted.

Also I did as well come out with a few snippets of the Weird Nonsense that I thought I was going in for! My favorite anecdote involves a woman named Gertrude Norris Meeker who wrote to the U.S. government in the 1950s claiming to be the Governor-General of Atlantis and Lemuria, ascertaining her sovereign right to this nonexistent territory, to which the State Department's Special Advisor on Geography had to write back like "we do not think that is true; this place does not exist." Eventually Gertrude Meeker got a congressman involved who also nobly wrote to the government on behalf of his constituent: "Mrs. Meeker understands that by renouncing her citizenship she could become Queen of these islands, but as a citizen she can rule as governor-general. [...] She states that she is getting ready to do some leasing for development work on some of these islands." And again the State Department was patiently like "we do not think that is true, as this place does not exist." Subsequently they seem to have developed a "Lemuria and Atlantis are not real" form letter which I hope and trust is still being used today.

Three sisters with abusive parents turn into three sisters with murdered parents and the police believing that one of them did it. Fast-forward a few years and Emma, now pregnant, returns to her childhood home with her husband and a lot of questions.

I didn't like this one as much as I liked Marshall's other books but it still was a good read. The description of their horrible childhood was bleak and claustrophobic, the way they lost each other after the murder very fitting. I also liked how they didn't really have an easy time with each other when they reunited, distrustful and yet loyal to each other in a strange way.

It's a pretty good and interesting take on three very different sisters dealing with abuse and the aftermath of a murder and I was happy with the ending. Also, the way they were so very different and what kept them trapped and how they freed themselves (or didn't) really worked.

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fandom: books

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Current Mood: amused

The Mets lost a game yesterday they should have won, but I guess it doesn't matter that much because they took the season series from the Dodgers, which means if they are both divisional winners and meet in the NLCS in October, the Mets will have home field advantage. I mean, it would have been nice for them to win on a day when both Atlanta and Philly lost, but I guess you can't have everything.

Anyway, staying up for the previous games in the series (they were out in LA) caught up with me and I couldn't keep my eyes open last night, so I ended up going right to bed at 8:30. It wasn't even fully dark yet! But I slept through till 4:15, got up to use the bathroom, and then slept through again till my alarm went off at 8:15, so I guess I really needed it. I had a lot of dreams, but the one that stuck with me was something where I was already in the hospital visiting someone, and the doctor was like, "we need to talk about your appendix, it needs to come out!" And I was like, "that's news to me since I haven't had an appendix since 1976!" (truth!) And she was like, "what?" and I was like, "what?" and then the dream moved on - I don't remember anything else.

There's really not a whole lot else going on. Work is busy - our CFO keeps trying to steal me away from my boss, but like, there's nothing in Finance for me to do? My main job is board support, and that belongs either in legal or the CEO's office, so...*hands* I guess if something ever happened to my position I might consider trying to transfer, but I just don't see how that would work. No one is indispensable, but no one else in this organization does what I do (and frankly, no one else wants to). If a new CEO comes in and has different ideas, that could be a problem, but I'm trying not to think about that too much. There are closer threats to my job right now. *gestures at everything*

*

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Dreams - Fleetwood Mac

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Notes on the first 4 prakim of Tractate Oaths, of which two of them were not about oaths at all.

( Read more... )

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daf yomi

The Maid and the Crocodile, Jordan Ifueko, 2024 YA. I liked this a lot. Charming characters, enjoyable voice, some great moments, the exact right amount of story for the space. I couldn't remember much about Raybearer except that I had really liked it (this is in the same world) but Ifueko did a good job of filling in who the overlapping characters were and anything else you needed to know. ( Read more... ) I still have three more Lodestar nominees to read but this is definitely a strong contender.

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After a few distinctly less than summery days, today has been quite sunny.

Okay, I think I've had some of these before.... maybe.
Summer Nights

Watch on YouTube

The downside: Summertime Blues:

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Not sure if Summer Wine is for drinking then, or made then, with sinister summer herbs:

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Obligatory Lovin' Spoonful

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Kinks chilling on a Lazy Sunny Afternoon:

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Carole King another one wanting it to be over:

Watch on YouTube

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The Ministry of Time, Kaliane Bradley, 2024 novel. My first problem with this book was that I couldn't buy into the premise; the set-up as given did not feel like a way anyone would go about doing what they were ostensibly doing, nor did that thing even make sense to me, so it seemed like something else must be going on, and I was not very interested in plodding along waiting for a reveal. My second problem was a turn towards romance where I was put off by the ship. In the end the whole thing felt muddled and contrived - Bradley's interest was clearly in this one historical blorbo, to use the fannish term (possibly literally a fannish blorbo if the genesis of this book was in Terror fandom) and she knew what beats she wanted in the story about them and had tried to assemble a plot that would give them to her. But to me some of them felt arbitrary and under-motivated and the whole thing didn't quite hang together.

I do get to rank Hugo novels now, though. ( Read more... )

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My cousin Jill's Year of Adventure suggestion for me was to take a couple of hours volunteering together to plant some trees with Great River Greening. So, we signed up for a shift, and last Saturday on a beautiful sunny day, the two of us, along with her partner Jack, met in a park in Brooklyn Center.

The volunteer coordinators had the process down to a well-rehearsed presentation, and we three ended up planting three trees in all in the two-hour time slot. The first two were straightforward enough, and third, a Catalpa, had evidently been in the pot too long. The tap root had pushed through the hole in the bottom and grown large enough to embed itself into the plastic. It took a twenty minutes struggle to get it out of the pot.

It was hot by the time we finished up, and I'd exerted myself enough during the struggle with the stubborn tree to be glad to drink down the water I'd brought and sit in the shade a bit. But we enjoyed ourselves, and there are now three new trees in a park in Brooklyn Center, thanks to our efforts. Afterward, we drove to Jack and Jill's house for lunch, where I admired their extensive gardens and patio under the beautiful spreading oak tree.

A day well spent in the outdoors.

Image description: Lower center: head and shoulders of two women and a man, wearing hats, smiling at the camera. Center: The same three people are planting a tree. Overlaid over the tree are the words "Great River Greening."

Tree Planting

22 Tree Planting

Click on the links to see the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

Current Mood: pleased

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I essayed

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19) Stephen King once said that his muse is a man who lives in the basement. Do you have a muse?

A changing one. Basically the character I'm obsessed with at the time of writing.

The rest of the questions are here.

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fandom: meme/polls

I know I owe a bunch of comments/replies, sorry, I will get to them; I have spent all my time this week (including time I should have been working... took a nontrivial amount of vacation time this week) on the following:

- looking around at schools for A in case his school gets utterly consumed by the drama (yep, third teacher did leave, now we are screwed unless the Head can find someone really quickly, which to be fair he is working SUPER hard at), unfortunately all my friends who have kids at the local public school were like "if it were ten years ago we'd recommend it, but now we are telling you not to go there"

- talking (and TALKING) to people who are affected by the drama, or who are not directly affected but still angry about the drama, or who are in some cases causing the drama. There is some mean girl stuff going on and it is like, uh, we are all in our 40's and 50's, this is STUPID?? I have been on the phone A LOT this week, to the extent that E has to write a poem for Spanish about a member of her family and told me she was thinking about writing about her mom and how she was on the phone all the time.

- helping E with her final papers/projects in English and Media Arts; for the latter she sometimes needs someone to say things like "if you are making a commercial you probably need a script for it" and for the former she needs someone to be more like, "so... your thesis is made up of two sentences that seem unrelated, and also the way you're structuring this with all your lemma examples and then all your other lemma examples does not really flow very well, and also you begin several sentences in a row with 'This shows'" (some of these are the limits of approaching a paper like a proof, I guess)

Her teacher lets them rewrite after grading multiple times but does not give them any comments on their draft except for the ungraded rough draft, which means that E is on Rewrite #3 and counting, we have worked on drafts every night this week except last night, as her teacher has not graded #3 yet, which I am hoping is a good sign but might just mean that her teacher is tired of her turning in rewrites

(I do like that her teacher is a bit harsh on grading but lets them rewrite -- Rewrite #3 is quite a bit better than her original graded paper, and I think she's learned a LOT about writing a literary analysis paper, admittedly quite a bit more than I knew at her age. But more feedback would have been really nice, and then maybe she could have done fewer rewrites.)

She also has another final project in English with involves writing and illustrating a kid's story about racism, only using animals or objects or shapes instead of people. Of course when "shapes" were mentioned E jumped at that option. Her story is really sweet and involves tessellations of triangles, squares, and hexagons, but she is definitely a "tell not show" kid and also is having trouble with the part of the assignment that directs them to use descriptive language, which just goes to show you that she is legitimately D's and my kid.

In conclusion: ugh, drama. The only good things about all the drama:

- I may actually finish the crochet blanket for E that I've been working on for uh two years but have been making lots of progress on during all these phone calls? (Also getting lots of time to work on it during tutoring E, but at least that has other good things about it besides the blanket.)

- man I appreciate the other non-dramatic parts of my life a LOT more now! Including DW and all of my non-dramatic friends (the vast majority of them!) but I've also been thinking a lot of my church which is my other big social structure. There was one day where I just looked at my phone texts I'd gotten that day and half of them were school-related and were all drama, and the other half were from my church and things like "Hey, can you play piano for us?" and "I haven't forgotten about the D&D group we were talking about with E!" <-- dude and wife had a BABY last week -- and my favorite, this sweet older lady that we are friends with texting me that she went to her eye appointment and they said everything was great, and she was just happy about that. That totally brightened my day <3 And this morning they had the "morning seminary" party (these kids go to 7am scripture study five days a week -- E does it 3 days a week) and these people just give SO much <3

(edited bc cannot do math)

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personal

Somehow our house looks more chaotic and full of half-filled bags and boxes as we prepare for a week long vacation to the northwoods. ONE WEEK! You'd think we were packing to move out!

The thing about the place we're headed is that the closest town with a grocery store is twenty minutes down the Gunflint Trail. I mean, I will drive twenty minutes to a store around here. Maybe because we're surrounded by TREES, twenty minutes away feels so much further when we're up north. Half of what we're bringing is food. Almost none of which will be returning with us.

Despite all this, I'm really looking forwrard to the vacation. There is limited wireless, but I usually get up early and make the hike to the Lodge with my computer and spend an hour or so making sure I'm not missing out on any earth-shattering news. So, I'm still reachable, just... only once a day. I'm going to try to post pictures and such--you know, actually keep up with this blog for once!

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Next up for Pride Month media, I read Made in Korea, a graphic novel about an android called Jesse who is purchased by a childless couple to be their daughter. Both the author Jeremy Holt and the illustrator George Schall are nonbinary (they/them).

I had mixed feelings about this one. On the positive side, I really liked how the themes of identity and coming to know oneself were explored. Jesse's story is at least partly a metaphor for transnational adoption (Holt is an adoptee) and also resonates with more general feelings about not being the child your parents expected and needing to grow out of their narrative about you. Gender identity is directly addressed, which I love to see in an android story! It bugs me when androids uncritically accept a binary gender role based on the anatomy they're built with, even when the story digs into their personhood and free will in other ways. This book does not assume that an android built to look anatomically female is a girl, nor does it assume that if androids existed they would all be built with binary anatomy!

The major aspect that did not work for me was the plot element of ( a school shooting. (cut for content) )

So there was a lot that I liked, but also a pretty big section of the narrative that seemed totally out of place and mishandled. I don't regret reading the book and I think some aspects will stick with me in a good way, I just wish it had kept the focus on its strengths.

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Wearing: Denim shorts, blue tank top, and a button-down shirt printed with foxes.
Reading: I finished Immaculate Conception by Ling Ling Huang. It has elements of horror and sci-fi, like her first book, but that one seemed to lean more into the former while this one leaned more into the latter. And although there were very satisfying amounts of Mind Stuff in Immaculate Conception, and I think it did a good job of examining the art industry and dysfunctional friendships, I think that I still liked Natural Beauty more.
Writing: Still, alas, between projects!
Planning: I'm spending a couple of days with my parents, and we'll hopefully pick strawberries with my sister and cousins.

What about you?

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nevanna life

A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance

(no subject)

Overly Complicated Gorge Trip: Day 3 - The Other Train

Finally, time to write the book on you

NATG XV prompt 3

things that are positive

(no subject)

"No One Can Know" by Kate Alice Marshall

Gigglesome vocabulary

it's only me who wants to wrap around your dreams

[Daf Yomi] Maseches Shevuos perek 1-4

The Maid and the Crocodile

Nostalgic Music Party!

The Ministry of Time

2025 52 Card Project: Week 22: Tree Planting

Alignment vs. Metaphysics

Meme Friday

(no subject)

Packing AGAIN

Made in Korea by Jeremy Holt (2022)

Thank Blog It's Friday

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