Reading

(no subject)

It's been a week. Working from home again. Funny, the guy that does a few of my reports offered to do them today so I could just hang out at home. It was nice of him to offer...sweet. I do enjoy working with these people, even the new girl. Good people, even if they ar not good business people.

Over the weekend I went to a craft show in Ipswich. It's small, but it inspires me. It also is some sort of validation for me and the things I make.

This weekend is the white shark and whale expedition. 8 AM to 4 PM on the water. It's supposed to be cold. hard to think about packing winter gear when yesterday was 100 degrees yesterday.

Dad bought me my birthday gift. A 50 inch TV. He wanted to get a bigger one, but I told him that my space is too small. It's a steaming TV like the one in my bedroom. I just have to hook it up and try and put my existing services on it. I have Prime, Netflix, Apple , Brit Box. I will use birthday money to donate to PBS and get their streaming too.

My sister is coming homeland I have a few days off. I am not sure what to do with her and her partner. They want to do things, but they always leave at high traffic times and it's really not a vacation for me to spend time in traffic with people who are mad about traffic.

Current Location: Yon Bonny, Bonny road
Current Music: Thomas the rhymer

Hello

Per request:
Name you would like to go by: Verdelet

-Present path or tradition: Traditionalist Witchcraft, NECTW flavor, mainly, been simmering in that Cauldron for half a century or so.

-Interests: easier to point you to my user info.

-Age (not mandatory): old enough to no longer give a damn?

-Brief Bio: Green Vine, daughter of Qayin. Bearer of Lantern and Keys. Fifty years in the cauldron and still simmering. Tradition-rooted, bullshit-resistant, and usually correct.

“Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.” – Terry Pratchett.

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April 21 - Belfast

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The Anonymous Letters of C Forestier by Felicia Davin

The Anonymous Letters of C Forestier (bought via itch.io before the censorship scandal, but it's also available at other retailers) by Felicia Davin (The Gardener's Hand) was a lot of fun! It's Book 3 of the French Letters, an epistolary story mixing 19th-century fantasy and queer romance (with some erotic content).

Each volume focuses on different characters, but they know one another and the plot is related, so I recommend reading them in order. There's also some nice humour here and there.

This tome has major f/nb between a bisexual woman and a genderfluid protagonist. New characters include an aromantic woman and a minor trans female character, old ones an nb/nb pairing and an f/f (gnc)/m triad.

Online Event

Tomorrow (Wednesday the 30th) Summer of Science Fiction & Fantasy: Martha Wells in conversation with Kate Elliott

July 30 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm PT Register at this link:

https://www.clarionwest.org/event/summer-of-science-fiction-fantasy-martha-wells-in-conversation-with-kate-elliott/

It's free!

Current Mood: a little grumpy
Current Music: Yes, "Heart of the Sunrise"

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Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 206

We are now approaching the end of the fourth year of these open posts. When I first posted a tentative hypothesis on the course of the Covid phenomenon, I had no idea that discussion on the subject would still be necessary all these years later, much less that it would turn into so lively, complex, and troubling a conversation. Still, here we are. Crude death rates and other measures of collapsing public health are anomalously high in many countries, but nobody in authority wants to talk about the inadequately tested experimental Covid injections that are the most likely cause; ~~public health authorities~~ government shills for the pharmaceutical industry are still trying to push through laws that will allow them to force vaccinations on anyone they want; public trust in science is collapsing; and the story continues to unfold.

So it's time for another open post. The rules have been slightly expanded due to a recent discussion here:

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry and its government enablers are causing injury and death on a massive scale. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.

2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its wholly owned politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here.

3. If you plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue.

4. If you plan on making off topic comments, please go away. This is an open post for discussion of the Covid epidemic, the vaccines, drugs, policies, and other measures that supposedly treat it, and other topics directly relevant to those things. It is not a place for general discussion of unrelated topics. Nor is it a place to ask for medical advice; giving such advice, unless you're a licensed health care provider, legally counts as practicing medicine without a license and is a crime in the US. Don't even go there.

5. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. Also, please don't drag in current quarrels about sex, race, religions, etc. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules.

6. Please don't just post bare links without explanation. A sentence or two telling readers what's on the other side of the link is a reasonable courtesy, and if you don't include it, your attempted post will be deleted.

7. Please don't post LLM ("AI") generated text. This is a place for human beings to talk to other human beings, not for the regurgitation of machine-generated text. Also, please don't discuss large language models (the technology popularly and inaccurately called "artificial intelligence" these days) except as they bear directly on the Covid phenomenon. Here again, my finger is hovering over the delete button.

Please also note that nothing posted here should be construed as medical advice, which neither I nor the commentariat (excepting those who are licensed medical providers) are qualified to give. Please take your medical questions to the licensed professional provider of your choice.

With that said, the floor is open for discussion.

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Book 39 - Camilla Gibb "Mouthing The Words"

Camilla Gibb "Mouthing The Words" (Vintage)

Mouthing the Words is a powerfully engaging and highly readable novel about growing up in a dysfuctional family.

Thelma is five when the story opens. The family live in a village called Little Slaughter where they are ostracized as outsiders by the neighbours. Thelma's mother, Corinna, a former model, wants little to do with her daughter and relegates her "to the realm of the rather inconvenient", preferring to shower affection on her younger brother, the result of an affair with an Edinburgh solicitor.

Thelma is sexually abused by her alcholic father, Douglas, and made to play games of naughty secretaries and bosses. Unable to communicate this terrible secret to anyone outside the family, Thelma invents three invisible friends each representing an aspect of herself, who help her to cope. She longs, in vain, for another adult to adopt her.

The family move to Canada where things worsen, her parents eventually separating. There is a friendship with the hippyish family next door, and an all too brief period of happiness when her mother takes a Punjabi student as a lover, the first adult who really reaches out to the love-starved Thelma.

Thelma is institutionalised with anorexia - starvation is the only way she can physically prevent herself from becoming an adult woman, but recovers to win a scholarship to Oxford to study law. Although she proves to be a brilliant student, she rapidly descends into serious mental illness and self-mutilation.

Gibb is able to portray a descent into madness better than almost any other author I've come across (with perhaps the exception of Bessie Head in Maru) and her depiction of the psychological effects of abuse is extremely convincing. And we're right there to cheer on Thelma's slow journey to reclaim herself, and to be able to own her own words.

Sounds like a misery read? Far from it. The material is dark, but Gibbs has a lightness of touch and a humour (some parts are extremely funny!) that pulls the book back from being heartbreakingly sad

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April 20 - Northern Ireland

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travel

What's arch-d been up to?

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korean practice

Korean practice

Here's the new Korean practice post! As usual now, it's an open chat.

You can write about whatever you want. If you're uninspired, tell us the story of what you're currently watching/reading/playing...
You can talk to one another.
You can also correct one another. Or just indicate "No corrections, please" in your comment if you prefer.

화이팅! <3

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: George Winston, "Road"

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Magic Monday

Yes, Magic Monday's getting a late start today; after a very long four days, I fell asleep on the sofa well before midnight and had just enough presence of mind to stagger off to bed some hours later. Still, better late than never, and it's time to launch a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism, and with certain exceptions noted below, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note: Any question or comment received after that point will not get an answer, and in fact will not be put through. If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 341,928th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.3 of The Magic Monday FAQ here.

Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says. And further: I've decided that questions about getting goodies from spirits are also permanently off topic here. The point of occultism is to develop your own capacities, not to try to bully or wheedle other beings into doing things for you. I've discussed this in a post on my blog.

(The image? I've finished the sequence of my published books; while I decide what I want to do next, I have some memes to share.)

Buy Me A Coffee

Ko-Fi

I've had several people ask about tipping me for answers here, and though I certainly don't require that I won't turn it down. You can use either of the links above to access my online tip jar; Buymeacoffee is good for small tips, Ko-Fi is better for larger ones. (I used to use PayPal but they developed an allergy to free speech, so I've developed an allergy to them.) If you're interested in political and economic astrology, or simply prefer to use a subscription service to support your favorite authors, you can find my Patreon page here and my SubscribeStar page here.

I've also had quite a few people over the years ask me where they should buy my books, and here's the answer. Bookshop.org is an alternative online bookstore that supports local bookstores and authors, which a certain gargantuan corporation doesn't, and I have a shop there, which you can check out here. Please consider patronizing it if you'd like to purchase any of my books online.

And don't forget to look up your Pangalactic New Age Soul Signature at CosmicOom.com.

~~With that said, have at it.~~

***This Magic Monday is now closed, and no further comments will be put through. See you next week!***

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Therapy-adjacent post

Self-care today: read poetry, knee-elbow touches and spider-crawls, and taking to

rens_sanctuary.

I pissed off a friend this morning, and I am not sure how, and that’s always a lovely feeling, right? /s And one of the people I want to complain to and process with is being annoyingly still dead. Goddamnit, Bat. Get your ass back here and haunt me like a real ghost, so I don’t look like a mad person with all this talking to myself.

*sighs forever*

Do you ever want to like, cosplay as your dead friends? I want to put on Bat’s amazingly ditzy Karen-sona who needs to speak to your manager and call Visa about Steam. I just. Do you ever want to like wander around a grocery store being a goofball, swordfighting with found objects, and leaving “For Rectal Use Only” stickers on things? Just occasionally let the part of you that that one person brought out back into the world?

Right now I want the world to miss Bat the way I do, even though that’s 1., not possible; B., seriously petty and fucked up; and on the third hand, not everyone even has a blog to complain and emotionally process on. Get those feelings on the page where you can process that shit, I say.

Personal updates for July.

- I attended a showing of The Matrix Experience In Shared Reality at Cosm Theater, aka The Fancy Planetarium. This was an amazing idea by the way, I'm not knocking it. I feel like someone said "hey, let's show movies in a Planetarium, but it's like a fancy Alamo Draft House, and you can order food and alcoholic beverages," and trust me it's awesome. And The Matrix Experience was amazing and if you have access and the funds, you should totally go. I drank the Red Pill!

[A picture of a red-colored beverage in a tumbler, with the caption "Bourbon, Campari, Sweet Vermouth, Orange Juice, Lemon Juice, And Simple Syrup."]

- I'm going to California in a week to visit my sister! Yay! And so I have justification to beg our parents to maybe move there from the Hate State we are currently living in. "It's totally awesome, you should move there! I should move there!"

- Andre and Lazlo are back! And they moved into a mansion! My favorite Youtube Home Improvement show is back, hooray!

- I've spent entirely too long writing and revising articles about 20-year-old witch drama on my website, and now it's time for Skyrim!

Current Mood.

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Book 38 - Francos King "Frozen Music"

Francos King "Frozen Music" (Arena Arrow)

A fairly simple little novella looking at India before and after independence. Rupert, recently divorced, is travelling around with his elderly father Philip and the latter's new wife, Kirsti, who is Rupert's age. They want to visit the grave of Philip's mother, who died during an earlier family trip to India in the 1930s, when Rupert was still a child. And of course it all leads to a lot of readjusting of perspectives and revising of memories.

It's really more an expanded short story than a compressed novel, and King uses the extra space to sketch in minor characters like the group's Indian driver, Rajiv, and the hotel manager Mr Solomon, whose father had worked for Rupert's uncle. Slight, but very nicely done.

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Sunshine Revival Challenge #7

One more post before vacation.

Challenge #7

The Ferris Wheel

Journaling: Life in fandom goes through ups and downs. Reminisce about the "wild ride" of your time in fandom or in other online communities.

The net wasn’t around when I was a teenager, but if it had, I’m sure I would have written fanfiction. Because even if I didn’t write them down, I did long and elaborate stories about The Lord of the Rings in my head. First merely adding a female companion to the fellowship, but after I read Silmarillion I made up more independent characters and adventures. I’m sorry I never did write them down, but I still have some of the synopsis for them.

I ventured online for the first time in early 1999. My son was a newborn, and one sleepless night I did a search for Dorothy L. Sayers and found a mailgroup that had just decided on a read.through of all her books. It was my first online community, and we had so much fun. Now, 26 years later, I´m still in contact with some of them. At some point we decided to write a round robin to create Harriet Vane’s fictitious detective novel Death 'Twixt Wind and Water, as it has a fair amount of clues to reconstruct. It was great fun, and the first time I wrote fiction in English. This mailgroup also introduced the concept of fanfiction to me, as some members also wrote Harry Potter fic.

For a couple of years I read fanfiction now and then, but never considered writing it. That changed when I happened to see a promo shot of Jason Isaacs as Captain Hook in Peter Pan in 2003. Peter Pan was one of my childhood favourites, and this picture triggered me into writing. For about 2 years I wrote feverishly, and wrote some really dark fanfic. And wrote myself into dealing with some trauma from my teens. To cut a rather long process very short, writing fanfic helped me heal in a way I had not foreseen, and was instrumental in shedding a depression I had lived in for years.

I didn’t write much between 2005-2013, even if I did write from time to time. I divorced, and juggling work and being a single mother gave me little time and energy for it. Even when life settled down I had got out of the habit to write, but in 2013 there was a sudden death in my family. It was a terrible and traumatic experience, and it triggered me into another feverish writing spell. I had just re-watched Doctor Who, from the First Doctor and onwards, and I started writing Whofic.

Once again I found writing very therapeutic, but after the first rush of writing I realised something I never consciously realised before. I love writing. It’s good for my well=being, regardless if I write a blogpost or a fic. Up until early 2022 I wrote steadily, exploring a number of fandoms and ships. Then I had a creative freeze when the war in Ukraine happened. I couldn’t do anything creative at all for a long time, and only got back to writing on a regular basis earlier this year. It feels good to be back!

As of now I have 123 fics on AO3 in 26 fandoms. 94 of those one-shots. I mostly write het, with a preference for strong and competent female characters and morally ambiguous male ones. I just checked, the ratio looks like this, F/M (80 fics), Gen (33), F/F (7), M/M (5), Multi (5). All my fics are in a historical and/or fantastical fandom. As a history nerd I spend a lot of time researching history when I write.

My fanfics can be found here.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Yes, "Roundabout"

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Frugal Friday

Welcome back to Frugal Friday! This is a weekly forum post to encourage people to share tips on saving money, especially but not only by doing stuff yourself. A new post will be going up every Friday, and will remain active until the next one goes up. Contributions will be moderated, of course, and I have some simple rules to offer, which may change further as we proceed.

Rule #1:  this is a place for polite, friendly conversations about how to save money in difficult times. It's not a place to post news, views, rants, or emotional outbursts about the reasons why the times are difficult and saving money is necessary. Nor is it a place to use a money saving tip to smuggle in news, views, etc. I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.

Rule #2:  this is not a place for you to sell goods or services, period. Here again, I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.

Rule #3:  please give your tip a heading that explains briefly what it's about.  Homemade Chicken Soup, Garden Containers, Cheap Attic Insulation, and Vinegar Cleans Windows are good examples of headings. That way people can find the things that are relevant for them. If you don't put a heading on your tip it will be deleted.

Rule #4: don't post anything that would amount to advocating criminal activity. Any such suggestions will not be put through.

Rule #5: don't post LLM ("AI") generated content, and don't bring up the subject unless you're running a homemade LLM program on your own homebuilt, steam-powered server farm.

With that said, have at it!

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books,
reading

What I have been reading, (almost) July edition

As I'm going on my 4-week vacation tomorrow I know I won’t post much during that time. So here’s July’s books for most of the month, and the rest will be included for August. My goal this month was to actually finish some of the thirteen books I have started, but not finished. This is how it went.

The Empty Grave by Jonathan Stroud. The last of the Lockwood & Co series. I found it enjoyable, and the series ended with a satisfying conclusion. The reality of Marissa Fitts was more horrifying than I thought. But I also feel the ending opened for a sequel, with various things Lucy indicated that she had done since the grand finale, and also because we never found out Skull’s identity and why he was such a powerful ghost. But as this book was published in 2017, it doesn’t seem very likely it will come.

Det ockulta sekelskiftet (The Occult Turn of the Century) by Per Faxneld. How occultism influenced a number of Swedish artists in the late 19/early 20th century. Super interesting, and not something I knew anything about. Which is surprising as I’ve studied art history and consider myself pretty well-read on. But I think the idea that esoterism was influential to some of our more well-known artists has been seen as something embarrassing.

Of course I couldn’t abstain from not starting any new books, so I also read Stone and Sky by Ben Aaronovitch, the latest Rivers of London novel. I found it enjoyable, but not remarkable. Though I always like the inclusion of Abigail and the talking foxes.

Never Flinch by Stephen King. A return to Holly Gibney and her PI agency Finders Keepers. This time we have not one murderous person, but two. One that wants to kill a popular feminist, another who kills as revenge for a man who has been murdered in prison before it’s revealed he was wrongfully imprisoned. I like Holly as a character, but I kept putting this book down and then forgetting about it, so it’s safe to say it didn’t grab me.

And that’s it, so far for July.

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(no subject)

The new cat tower is being used. There is contention and Snow is a bit of a bully. He chases Festis every time she tries to use it. Last night there was an argument and they both fell off as they tried to commit murder on each other.

I moved the older tower in alongside the new one. It’s rather rickety but it provides a view of the back yard where everything is happening. I’m hoping the cats can peacefully coexist if each has a seat at the window.

I play a computer game called “June’s Journey” and about a week ago I started getting a message that there was a ‘security threat’ and it wouldn’t open. Inquieres told me that I wasn’t the only one. It was a new update they did and their website said that they didn’t support Chrome. Well, you have for the last 6/7 years. I don’t know anything about IT but cutting your customer base seems that you’re going in the wrong direction. I miss my game. Once in a survey I did for them I asked if they got their servers at a garage sale. Things have always been chancy with them.

I finished “Agents of Shield”. Whedon is a jerk but he and his family (blood and artistic) turn out good series. I’m going to miss the gang. Coulson is immortal, as it should be.

There is going to be a brief interlude before starting my next set of dvds as I want to rewatch Ghosts (UK) for writing purposes.

I’m getting bored of summer. And there’s still August to get through.

(no subject)

Trying the work from at home thing again. Im afraid if I don't I could loose the privilege. Happy it is not humid. I don't have decent a/c where my computer set up is so while it is 85 it is still comfortable for me. The boss is on vacation so today I am taking an easy day.

I spent lunch on the deck and then walked the garden...it's not that big, but I like to dead head the Day Lilies
as a way to relax. .

Next week is Lobster week. The big 6-0. Im looking forward to it. My 40s were fun. I met a lot of new people and did fun things. My 50s saw loss, grief, and stress. I am looking forward to closing the 50s door.

Fantastic Four

Fantastic Four was a lot of fun. It's not an origin story, despite the title.

I'm not big on this team, but I appreciated that there was a very strong focus on the fact that they're scientists, not just superheroes.

There are 2 mid/post-credits scenes.