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wordy wednesday

Word: Banjax

I haven't don't one of these since April, but I've come across some new-to-me words.

Wednesday's word is...

...banjax.

1. ruin, incapacitate, or break.

I found this new-to-me word in the Inspector Rebus I just finished (Saints of the Shadow Bible).

"...Reckons we banjaxed the Saunders case to keep a good snitch on the street."

I would also like to add this saying (also new-to-me) from the same which is very Rebus.

Fair exchange is no robbery

That is definitely going to be the title of my next hard-boiled detective fic. It's great.

Entry tags:

book bingo

Book Bingo: June 2025

This bingo card was created by

kingstoken. More about the challenge here: https://kingstoken.dreamwidth.org/109837.html

LBGTQ+: Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey by Mark Derby. An interesting life. This is a long work, however, and at times was a slog just because of the length. 500+ pages.

Multiple POV: The Guest List by Lucy Foley. Of course, you can't think of a Multiple POV book when you want to, so I googled it and got this, and my library had it on audiobook. It's a modern And then there were none with everyone coming to a wedding on an island. No one is likeable. Really, they're all sort of awful. And it wasn't clever. And public school boys bullying someone to death is too cliche for me. But it held my attention enough to finish it. 10+hours. Ensemble narrator cast.

Anthology/Collection: The Hurting Kind by Ada Limón. An excellent collection of poetry by the US Poet Laureate. I listened to audio verison in her own voice, which I recommend. I included some of my favorites in an April post: https://stonepicnicking-okapi.dreamwidth.org/598098.html

Friendship: Seafire by Natalie C. Parker. This was my 'blind date' book I got at the library in February. It was a YA fantasy book of a kind of Mad Max world on the water. The main characters are young women who are captain and crew of a ship which is renegade/rogue, fighting against the warlord who controls the area. It was good. The world building was interesting. I'm not going to read the next in the series but I enjoyed it. Friendship is definitely a main theme. [I am also trying to do as many squares as I can of

garonne's 2025 Book Bingo here: https://garonne.dreamwidth.org/58219.html so I think this qualifies as G-B-3: Set at sea.]

Movie/TV-tie in: Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo. This was the first book on the 'Reading List for 4th graders' sent Minisculus' teacher, and I decided to make a Mother-Son book club. It's a sweet little book about a girl in Florida. They made a movie out of it. Winn-Dixie for unfamiliar is a grocery store chain and the girl names the stray dog (like Annie and Sandy) after the grocery store she finds it in. Minisculus, of course, reads manga and Percy Jackson. But he needs more torture in his life :) [also for G-I-1: children's book]

Things said to cats

Cat: "Me-ow!"
Me: "Me-ow! You-ow! We all ow!"

Rant

After ALL that talk yesterday about "of course we won't discharge tomorrow without labs" NO ONE ORDERED ANYTHING FOR TODAY.

Yes, I have already left voicemail with the Office of Patient Advocacy. And yes, we all know they are actually there to protect the hospital and not the patient. Still, they have power to do something.

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liveblogging project

(no subject)

( blehhhhhh )

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link soup

Link soup, from quite a range of dates

The usual mess of interesting things I've read, most of them quite out of date, in approximate order of my having read them. Brought to you by my browser crashing twice when I tried to start it after my most recent reboot.

As always, I use Export Tabs to wrangle this. And maybe my current 1,625 tab count will decrease some after I close all these?
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/export-tabs/odafagokkafdbbeojliiojjmimakacil?hl=en

Some good news from the south:
Woman who went on the lam with untreated TB is now cured | Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/07/woman-who-went-on-the-lam-with-untreated-tb-is-now-cured/

Mechanical Watch – Bartosz Ciechanowski
https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/

How a North Korean Fake IT Worker Tried to Infiltrate Us
https://blog.knowbe4.com/how-a-north-korean-fake-it-worker-tried-to-infiltrate-us

How I Got My Laser Eye Injury - Funranium Labs
https://www.funraniumlabs.com/2024/07/how-i-got-my-laser-eye-injury/

( Read more... )

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music

Psycho Chicken

Ever since the TACO acronym hit the news, I've had this Modern Talking parody running rent free in my head. So I will be genereous and share it...

Watch on YouTube

Couple Blake Lively Links

Forbes: Taylor Swift And Blake Lively: Subpoena, Spectacle And Scrutiny.
IMO, dragging Swift in just to get attention, and then pretending Lively is the one dragging Swift in is just showing off how little Baldoni's team has on the legal side.

Reminder: Lively is suing over violations of her (and her female costars') right to a safe workplace. Leave Taylor Swift out of this.

The LA Times: Blake Lively backed by advocacy groups in legal fight with Justin Baldoni over #MeToo speech law

I don't think it's being reported enough that Baldoni's team is trying to strike down the law protecting survivors of sexual violence and discrimination from defamation suits. As in, get it declared unconstitutional because suing your victims should be part of Free Speech. Holy Fake Feminism, Batman.

Here's more about the law that Lively is invoking because this is a labour issue: Legislation to Protect Survivors of Sexual Assault, Harassment, and Discrimination from Weaponized Defamation Lawsuits Signed by Governor.

Here's a Bloomburg piece about on of the "inspirations" for why California decided it needed this law [archive link]: Ex-FTC Commissioner Faces Storm of Sexual Harassment Claims.

One of the women in that case helped put together one of the amicus briefs [PDF of court document], so that the law she helped draft, intending to protect people like her, doesn't get struck down. She has now been stalked, harassed and doxxed for speaking up in support of the law, because the Lively hate train people are truly free of hinges.

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tuesday is views & news day

News & Views

1. The interview on Thursday is the big thing.

2. I have finally started actually writing my casefic for the exchange.

3. School is winding down for the boys. Their last day is 18 June.

4. I realized that the book that Minisculus and I are reading was made into a film (Because of Winn-Dixie) so I have my movie-tie in for the book bingo.

5. 13 June is FESTA day, which is the day BTS debuted (so BTS birthday). All but SUGA will be out by then.

I wish I could make this look this easy.

Watch on YouTube

Tomorrow is the day

Discharge anticipated tomorrow, unless numbers go all wonky. We are seeing slow (so slow!) steady improvement. But infinitesimal (or however that's spelt!) movement. Dr. Hematology Cover noted low folic acid and prescribed a supplement. Asked her to order a new complete iron panel, she said great idea, and that she would. Yet, when they came to draw today, it was literally only CBC. NO CMP, Mag or Phos (or iron panel). Weird.

Definitely done being here. Really wish they'd given me my favorite nurse today (who should be working) instead of someone brand new to me.

Anyway, I go sleep. Feeling annoyed about a stack of things. Hoping that's just fatigue talking.

stuff

Remember the days in ye aulde fandom when someone would just stop talking to you and you never worked out why?

Ghosting, before it became common.

--

Just put in my expense requests for the start of May.

--

Hockey training has been cancelled because we don't have a coach, and we don't have a game on Sunday (long weekend in Australia: the King's birthday). I'm trying to get people over to the local club for dinner and drinks but...it's always a bit tricksy. Just me and a couple of other women, I think.

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music monday

Music Monday: Anxiety by Doechii

I have an interview (via Zoom) at 9:30 am on Thursday!!! Thus, the song of the week is:

Watch on YouTube

Entry tags:

(no subject)

1. I absolutely adore my ridiculous children. Fiona is reading War and Peace. It's the book with the most AR points, and we kept telling her that she was probably not going to like it or understand it well, which just fueled her desire to read it more. Joke's on us, I guess, because she's moving through it a pretty fair clip, and while I'm certain that a significant amount of it is going over her head, she seems to be understanding the plot well enough (we debrief what everyone is reading over dinner every evening).

2.

A Century of Poems - TLS 100 (from the pages of the TLS, 1902-2002)

A Century of Poems - TLS 100 by The Times Literary Supplement

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, this makes clear that I do not share taste in poetry with the editors of the Times Lierary Supplement, all however many of them served for the 20th century. Lol

So many war poems, which I get given the time period, but I am not a fan of most war poetry. Also so much rhyming, way more than I'd anticipated.

I did like some of the poems, but on the whole not for me.

View all my reviews

3.

( Scholomance by Naomi Novik--major spoilers )

4.

The Best Cook in the World by Rick Bragg

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I kept finding myself in the pages of this book as I read it. My people are not mountain Southern, but some things about being Southern are universal. The backstory of poverty and wringing a living out of the land with backbreaking work in Bragg's memoir could easily describe many aspects of the backstory on both side of my family. Most especially, though, reflected here is that truth that no matter how poor my grandparents were or how stingy my parents were when I was growing up to avoid poverty we still ate well. Like Bragg, my family was almost self-sustaining in eating what we grew, caught, and raised, and we ate like kings. Still do.

View all my reviews

5.

The Man Who Thought Himself a Woman and Other Queer Nineteenth-Century Short Stories by Christopher Looby

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This collection of short stories is divided into four sections: queer places, queer genders, queer attachments, and queer things. Most of the stories in the queer things section don't seem to be queer to me (especially the Melville one where the protagonist is obsessed with his chimney and the Hartman story where a little waif girl drowns herself in the sea). Many of these stories are sad and/or violent, but a few of them are happy and hopeful--notably the Walt Whitman and the Mary Wilkins Freeman. The titular story of the book is incredibly fascinating.

View all my reviews

I have a PDF copy of this book, so if you'd like to read me, PM me and I'll email it to you.

(no subject)

The wedding finally came and has gone. The wedding itself was beautiful. The Bride and Groom charming and appreciative of all their guests. The Priest had a lovely message and shared memories from his life that pertained to the ceremony of marriage.

The bad was the total chaos of the cousin. Np surprise. I have travelled with a sword group and those road trips were simple by comparison. I have volunteered with a friend and taken a dozen developmentally and physically challenged adults on trips and it was fine. This was just so ...so...sooooo.....

Friday we left to go from Boston to Worcester to the hotel. It's only 1. hours, but no one can follow directions. I know where I am going, but no one listens. When we arrived to a restaurant for lunch I help the 96 year old to the rest room. She soiled herself. I clean her up. Sigh, but it is what it is. Do it quietly and allow her dignity. Then the cousins ask me to take stroke cousin to the rest room. She can't open doors or sit down without help. We go in and I get her situated and she tells me she needs to be changed. She wet her undergarment 6 times in the trip. She had a clean on in her bag, but nothing to put the soiled one in. She just wanted to leave it on the floor...NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo. I swear the depends weighed 6 pounds... ad I got wet. Sigh. Then we go to the table, but the chairs are too high. They tried a booth but we couldn't fit her in. They had high tops but she couldn't fit in that either. Finally someone brought out a chair from the kitchen and it worked. Sigh. Every time we stopped for food for the weekend it was the same.

At the wedding they sat me in between the 96 year old and the stroke cousin. I cut up the 96 year olds steak for her. As I ate stroke cousin pushed my plate and pushed hers towards me and said "Cut my food". No please or thank you. And when she wanted things she would poke me with her cane. She also spilled coffee on my new coat.

Today was check out day. Dad and I were ready at 8 AM...we could have been out of there at 5 AM, but spinal surgery cousin was riding with us. We left at 10 AM did not get home until 4:40 PM because of bathroom breaks and stopping for lunch...where we had the chair issues again. I think I was frothing at the mouth when I got home.

I am truly surprised lead cousin hasn't snapped yet. She deals with this all the time. While I like to think I play well with others, in the end I am not a heard animal.

Entry tags:

hockey

hockey report

Played two games yesterday, physically feeling okay - a bit achey, but that's nothing unusual.

( team ruminations, more my thoughts than anything else )

--

Anyway, the second game (team 1, A grade) was hard in terms of feeling like I was good enough for it, but...easy in terms of being more like my comfortable style of play. Also, I was able to run for most of it in spite of having played a game an hour earlier. Fitness is going well, but the chop-and-change of Team 2 is just doing me in. So much back and forth.

I missed an otherwise 'sure' goal during the game - right place, got the ball, missed the goal! Too angled, it hit the outside of the goal, not the inside. GRARGH.

Would have been a really nice one, too, dammit.

But again, cross-goal tap-ins. More of what we need to do in Team 2.

Entry tags:

my poem

My poem: #22

This week's poem prompt was a prose poem with guidelines and structure.

#22 by okapi

When I reached the edge of the desert, I saw lights, cameras, overlarge plastic containers, and ants. It was as if earth, fine and granular, had become water, and water did not exist and had to be invented, yet air persisted in whipping and cried grainy tears when its waves did not crash like they should. You told me it was nothing special, but the war against the elements, the fans, the umbrellas, the misters and de-misters, told me you lied. Couldn’t imagine? You do me an injustice. I can imagine everything. Animal, vegetable, mineral. Horrible, banal, sublime.

When I reached the edge of the desert, I saw another desert because there is no such thing as destination or arrival or satisfaction. Not for the likes of me. It was as if I were wandering purposeless forever, but at least the scratches fade. Some scars erode, and others are half-hidden by shifting dunes. You told me everything would be fine. Liar. You didn’t know. You did your best. I couldn’t imagine half a century, but there it went like precocious child star become barely legal become sexpot become vixen become MILF become grandma become the bones beneath the blooming desert rose.

When I reached the edge of the desert, I saw my pen had run out of ink and my penmanship was horrid and I was ignorant of the animals, vegetables, and minerals I should encounter. It was as if a drunken scarab beetle had crawled across the page, swerving, swearing, dropping its housekeys in a vain effort to call it a night and sleep it off in the margins. You told me not to slouch. You told me it wasn’t your fault. I couldn’t go back if I tried. The best is yet to come. Just ask the ants.

Tomorrow may be the day

Dr. IM is pretty set on tomorrow being the day I go home. I pushed back. I just don't feel well enough, even with 24/7 caregivers. I have written him a note but it's unclear if he will see it. Stuff is definitely improving but is it enough? Not sure. I am definitely not feeling well, which means the antibiotics are working. But this is rough.

Entry tags:

vital functions

vital functions

Reading. Finished: a comfort reread of your blue-eyed boys, which fit the bill excellently. Have only restrained myself from launching straight into (even if I could) make a deal with god (and for that matter the other two series) on the grounds that I need to reread Prophet (Helen MacDonald, Sin Blaché) so that I can properly appreciate rydra_wong's a word you've never understood.

You see, I read the first two paragraphs, had a lot of feelings, and promptly decided the way to Maximise Feelings would be to do the reread I didn't set off on immediately after first finishing it.

Thus far I am going "my goodness, I forgot a lot of the detail here". ( Spoilers... )

I have also listened to a little bit more of Furiously Happy (Jenny Lawson). There are definitely aspects I don't love (like, as someone who is taking an antipsychotic for non-psychosis reasons, and someone who can at this point go entire years plural without any significant episodes of even very mild psychosis, the way antipsychotics are discussed makes me... a bit twitchy), and I'm annoyed by how much more disruptive needing to reread sentences is in audio than in text (and how much more frequently I'm needing to do it), but also it turns out rather to my own surprise to be a thing I can listen to when I'm not doing anything else with my brain, provided I don't mind not really retaining any of it for longer than about five minutes.

Eating. I have been fed a slightly ludicrous amount of (more-or-less responsibly harvested) wild asparagus this week, which has been A Delight.

A Variety of other things, courtesy of having someone else doing meal prep all week. Still suspicious of Nutritional Yeast, mind.

FIRST STRAWBERRIES from the plot.

Growing. Swung by the plot this evening (courtesy of significant support from A) and in addition to STRAWBERRIES: ( Read more... )

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Sherlock Sunday: The Final Problem

And so we come to the end of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes with "The Final Problem" published in November 1893.

Here's the summary:

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson encounter the criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty. Holmes is convinced that Moriarty is the "Napoleon of crime" and is determined to bring him down. After a confrontation with Moriarty, Holmes decides to flee the country with Watson to avoid Moriarty's retaliation. They travel to the Swiss Alps, but are eventually tracked down by Moriarty. In a climactic confrontation at the Reichenbach Falls, Holmes and Moriarty struggle and both fall to their deaths in the raging waters below.

There are many alternate-canon theories about the end of Holmes. They are organized into categories in The Annotated Sherlock Holmes.

1. Moriarty is imaginary. 2. Moriarty is innocent. 3. Moriarty lives. 4. Moriarty lives. 4. Holmes is guilty. 5. Holmes killed the wrong man and 6. Faith of the fundamentalist (Holmes did die and the later resurrected Holmes is an imposter).

A page from ACD's notebook. For December he writes 'Killed Holmes.'

The great thing about canon is that you can re-read them many times and always remember or find something new.

"Did you recognize your coachman?"
"No."
"It was my brother Mycroft. It is an advantage to get about in such a case without taking a mercenary into your confidence."

So I wrote a ficlet for

vocab_drabbles about Mycroft as brougham coachman.

Title: The Brougham Driver
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (ACD)
Length: 500
Rating: Gen
Character: Mycroft Holmes, original feline character
Prompt: 149: Alterity
Note: set in "The Final Problem"
Summary: Mycroft Holmes after dropping Watson off at the station.

( Read more... )

And I absolutely love the pool scene of BBC Sherlock, especially borrowing of the banter from canon at the confrontation in 221B between Moriarty and Sherlock and the Moriarty reveal. I thought this was really, really well done. Not so much the resolution in Season 2.

Watch on YouTube

So the plan is to post irregularly through June, July, and August, focusing on The Hound of the Baskervilles and pick up with The Return of Sherlock Holmes the first Sunday in September.

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links

Links etc

Violet Affleck's essay in Yale Global Health Review links COVID denialism to climate denialism: https://yaleglobalhealthreview.com/2025/05/18/a-chronically-ill-earth-covid-organizing-as-a-model-climate-response-in-los-angeles/

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/gileads-trodelvy-with-keytruda-cuts-breast-cancer-risk-by-35-trial-2025-05-31/ “Gilead's Trodelvy, with Keytruda, cuts breast cancer risk by 35% in trial” Admittedly it is only for a specific subset of triple-negative breast cancers, but those are an aggressive and fast-moving set of cancers. So yay! Good news!

https://www.audhdflourishing.com/podcast/episode/4217e513/101-time-cannot-be-wasted - Y’all, Mattia Mauree cannot keep doing this to me - they walk into my house and then they say something that hits me where I live. I feel like I’ve been very gently murdered. It’s good for me to look at ways my life aligns with other people’s, but for serious y’all, sometimes I just cannot with all this personal growth. Anyway it’s a good podcast but if you were a parentified kid, maybe go in prepared for some light emotional manslaughter.

https://bigthink.com/smart-skills/how-curiosity-rewires-your-brain-for-change/ How Curiosity Rewires Your Brain for Change, in BigThink magazine.

The other day I got cat pics, and the fur babies are doing well. Then that reminded me to send him stuff, so today I sent Ghost some old pics of him and his friends. He’s doing okay, too, I think? I’m like 60% sure he’s no more miserable now than he was when I decided to get the divorce, anyway.