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([personal profile] torachan Jun. 2nd, 2025 10:47 pm)
1. I have been meaning to sign up for Venmo because I've been encountering more and more times when something that used to be cash only now has a non-cash option but only Venmo or other online payment services. I finally got around to setting up an account yesterday and then today I found myself in an unexpected situation where it was my only option to pay! I got my hair cut this morning and the salon was having issues with their payment software and could put the actual cut itself on the card they have on file for me, but not the tip. The only option for tips other than cash was Venmo. Now, I am a regular at the salon now, so if I hadn't had Venmo set up, I could have just told them I'd tip her double next time and I'm sure it would have been fine, but this was a great opportunity to practice using the app. We've been going to the farmers market a lot lately and most stalls do take credit or ApplePay these days but a few are cash only or Venmo (including the rhubarb seller from this past weekend), so now I have another option there, too.

2. Jasper is such a cutie.

Event: Whumpex
Event link: [community profile] whumpex
Pinch hit link: Current Pinch Hit Post
Due date: June 9th 10PM PST

[community profile] whumpex is a whump themed multifandom exchange. You must create a fanwork that is a minimum of 500 words or a clean sketch on unlined paper if a participant has opted into art. We have 1 new returning pinch hit and both of these pinch hits are due June 9th at 10PM PST. If the 1 pinch hit requesting 3 unique fandoms is not claimed by then, we will have another delay of a week.

Rules and Guidelines

PH 10 - Noblesse (Manhwa)

PH 16 - SK8 the Infinity (Anime), Winx Club, D.Gray-man (Anime & Manga), My Little Pony Generation 4: Friendship Is Magic (Cartoon 2010), My Little Pony Generation 4: Equestria Girls (Cartoon 2013)

For more details/to claim, view the pinch hit post.
Fandom: “Dark Lady” (Cher song), Barbie
Pairings/Characters: F/M; F vs. F; Narrator/Narrator’s Partner, Narrator & Madame Fifi (with Madame Fifi/Narrator UST?), Madame Fifi/Narrator’s Partner
Rating: Teen and Up
Length: 3:24
Content Notes: Major Character Death, anti-Romani stereotyping (including the bad word), (toy) Clothing Porn, corny boomer music, dominance-jockeying, infidelity, hootchy-kootch dancing, love triangle, murder, occultism, psychic malpractice, (toy) Scenery Porn, please tell us the cat survived?
Creator Tags: cher, darklady, barbiestopmotion, stopmotion, animation, megotoys, barbie

Creator Links: (YouTube): [youtube.com profile] 74renren; (Instagram): [instagram.com profile] Warrencito

Theme: Female Relationships, Fanvid, Old Fandoms, Non-AO3 Works, Unconventional Format & Style

Summary: A stop motion tribute to the Cher hit “Dark Lady” done with vintage Barbie and Cher dolls with other special guests.



Reccer's Notes: The list of Content Notes should suffice to explain why this song was embraced by a particular sort of overwrought 70’s kid (1); Wright reimagines the cartoon music video that aired on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.

(1) Me, for example. Disclaimer: the song has become a guilty pleasure in retrospect not because of its melodramatic nature, but because of the realization that Romani probably caught a lot of grief over it.)


Fanwork Links: Dark Lady by Cher Dollmation, by Warren Wright.
Unbreakable Players (Sports Night):

Unbreakable Players, by Punk. shrift: This story makes me smile. Cartoon characters, dust, and foosball. Delightful banter.

marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
([personal profile] marycatelli posting in [community profile] books Jun. 2nd, 2025 10:55 pm)
Catburglar of the Constellations by John C. Wright

Starquest book 3. Spoilers for the earlier books ahead.

Read more... )
I'm home. I'm pretty well caught up on classwork; mostly what remains is a big group project and a final exam. And I need to finish writing the final report on my practicum. Weird to think this will all be in the rearview in three and a half weeks.

I'm still jobhunting, which remains a reliable depression trigger. Not worth talking about other than to note it's ongoing, on all counts.

Mr Tuppert has decided that what is best in life is to demand scritches/pets from the cat-mat next to the laptop spot on the table, while I'm eating and reading ye internette. Sometimes he also gets brushed, which he generally ... somewhere between tolerates and enjoys. Eventually he decides that he's had enough company and isn't it time for me to go be somewhere that's not in his space? He expresses this through the medium of lightly biting my hand. Not ideal but one works with what one has. Treats can redirect him away from being cranky, but that is not really a road I want to go down.

For now I keep sending out resumes. If I continue to get no bites by the end of the month I will have to regroup. In the meanwhile it's threatening to be early summer out there. Things as they currently are aren't so bad.
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([personal profile] rocky41_7 posting in [community profile] books Jun. 2nd, 2025 05:53 pm)
Last night I finished The Twilight Zone by Nona Fernandez, book #9 from the "Women in Translation" rec list. This book was translated from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer.
 
The Twilight Zone is a nonfiction book, part memoir, part investigative journalism piece by Fernandez, first published in 2016. It concerns Fernandez's study of and memories of growing up under the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. The author is haunted by the traumas of the regime, both those she experienced firsthand and those she heard about from others, and the book in some ways feels like an exercise in simply trying to reconcile those feelings.
 
Fernandez's book is of course very specific to the Chilean experience, and yet core parts of her incisive commentary about both the absurdity and the cruelty of autocracies rings true around the world. The exercises the regime goes through in its constant quest for self-preservation are both ridiculous and brutal, feelings Fernandez captures in her title. The surrealist sci-fi hit show of the 70s fits very well as a metaphor for the often-flailing yet eminently dangerous police state. 
 
Fernandez does an excellent job of using her prose to say things not neatly spelled out in words. I was reminded of reading The Things They Carried in high school, and how revelatory it seemed to me at the time how the author could use the style of prose to suggest a character's mental disarrangement without simply saying he was deranged. Fernandez's prose stood out to me in a similar way—how she uses the structure of her words to capture the feelings at play.
 
Equally compelling is the obviously copious amounts of research Fernandez put into her work. She portrays herself as a woman consumed by a quest to find answers about this regime, and it comes across in her work. Names, dates, places, timelines — Fernandez has clearly put in the leg work to piece together the final days of the highlighted victims of the regime as much as can be done. 
 
However, the book never comes across like a textbook. Fernandez ably weaves her research into a compelling narrative. Neither does she ever seek to blur the line between the facts and her imagination—she keeps a clean line between what she knows and what she wonders, or imagines. Nevertheless, the questions and suppositions that populate Fernandez's mind feel regrettably natural for anyone in the aggravating circumstances of a mendacious autocracy. She does an excellent job of showing how crazy-making it is to live under such a government, where you are constantly being lied to in direct contradiction of visible facts, and yet there seems to be nothing you can do but either accept the truth or taste the knuckles of the regime. 
 
I really enjoyed this read. It breezed by and I can absolutely see what a national treasure Fernandez is as a writer! I would love to see if more of her work has been translated into English; she has a wonderful voice.

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )
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([personal profile] mrissa Jun. 2nd, 2025 07:09 pm)
 

Fear, Loathing, and Transcendence in the Great American Road Trip. Friday, June 13, 4:00. Beth Cato, Marissa Lingen, Alec Marsh, Arkady Martine, Reuben Poling. Whether we like it or not, we are currently in the United States of America. The particular fantastic resonance of this country, and the continent it occupies, is often evoked by that great American literary tradition – the road novel. There’s an undeniable magic to traversing this huge landmass, with all its relatively open spaces. The brutal process of colonization that produced this country, and the unusually truncated history delineated by that process, add texture and horror to the magic of the open road.

Books like Max Gladstone’s Last Exit or Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning take the American road novel a step or ten further into the fantastic, including unflinching consideration of the bones beneath the highway. What other possibilities can fantasists encounter out on the interstate, and what can they throw in the trunk to bring along into other worlds than these?

I'm Only Happy When It Rains. Saturday, June 14, 2:00. Elizabeth Bear, Anthony W. Eichenlaub, Marissa Lingen, Arkady Martine, Caroline Stevermer. The weather’s weirder lately. Or at least out here in the regular world it is – but the weather’s been weird in fantasy for a long time now. Sometimes it tries to kill you (like in McCaffery’s Pern novels or Elizabeth Bear’s The Steles of the Sky), sometimes it makes you really miserable and then it tries to kill you (CJ Cherryh’s 40,000 in Gehenna, Bruce Sterling’s Heavy Weather), and sometimes you try to kill it and that doesn’t go so well (every story about terraforming or cloud seeding or propitiating the weather gods for mercy). Is the weather really just an excuse for an author’s indulgence in pathetic fallacy? Or can the environment become a live actor in fantasy storytelling?

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([personal profile] mrissa Jun. 2nd, 2025 06:55 pm)
 

Yukito Ayatsuji, The Labyrinth House Murders. The first of two books I read this fortnight whose ending made me actively quite angry. The ending did not work for me at all, leaning hard on two twists one of which frankly did not work for me logistically. Yuck.

Peter Beinert, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. This is a great example of a time when it's good to be aware that I am not the target audience for everything, because I think Beinert's main target audience is the overlap of his fellow Jewish people (I am not) and people who need convincing that being concerned for Jewish safety in the Middle East (and elsewhere) and being concerned for Palestinian safety in the Middle East (and elsewhere) do not have to be opposing concerns (I already believe that). It was still interesting to see how he approached this topic writing to people who are not me, and it's a very short book, but it's not any more cheerful than you might think, especially as he is willing to discuss recent deaths in this region from both/several groups in some detail.

Elizabeth Bowen, The Complete Stories of Elizabeth Bowen. It is what it says on the tin: all her stories, arranged chronologically. They are the sort of slice of life vignettes (and somewhat longer sometimes) that I don't often like, and I liked these enough to read hundreds and hundreds of pages of them. Why? I'm not sure. I think because the slicing of life was done with a firm, wry hand? I think most people would enjoy this more in small bites, and maybe I would too, but I was traveling and had limited book supply, so this is where we landed.

Chaz Brenchley, Radhika Rages at the Crater School, Chapters 25-26. Kindle. This is the end of this book, and it has an ending entirely in keeping with its genre, so it likely won't surprise you if you parcel out the reading like this, but it will satisfy inasmuch as the boarding school story can satisfy you. If you're not a boarding school story fan, this is definitely not the story for you.

Adrienne Maree Brown, Ancestors. I can verify that it's okay to read this without the two that precede it in its series because that's just what I did. You'll get all the incluing you need about what has happened (a plague, Detroit being enclosed behind a wall) and who these people are (a diverse bunch of people with intermittent super-ish powers), and their personal problems entwine satisfyingly with their science fiction problems. Also there is a bunch of sex and gender, in case you want some. Also, and importantly, there is a quite good dog.

Willa Hammitt Brown, Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood, Myth, and the American Lumberjack. This is lavishly illustrated though a bit repetitive--it's definitely for the general/casual audience. (We live in a time when a book interrogating the masculinity of lumberjacks can be for the general/casual audience. What a world.) I learned some things that apply to my own ancestors as well as more general things about the lumber camps and their later mythologization, so that was interesting.

Stephanie Burgis, How to Write Romantasy. Kindle. This only gets categorized as "books" because it was an individual ebook. What it is actually is an essay, and I picked it up because I am not fond of romantasy as a category but am fond of Steph's work and the work of a few others I know she also enjoys, and I thought I would learn more from someone doing it in a way I like and respect than from people whose work doesn't connect with me. This did turn out to be the case--there were thoughts about subgenre and relationship arc that are useful to me even as I write things that are definitely not romantasy.

A.S. Byatt, A Whistling Woman. Reread. This is the wrong end of the series, this is starting at the ending, but I still find these characters fascinating, and this is the one I could--with some joy--find used, that I was missing. (I still need a copy of the first one but I can reread the middle two any time I like.) Midcentury women struggling to lead meaningful lives, love to see it.

Antonio Carbone, Epidemic Cities. Kindle. A quite short monograph on the various handling of different plagues by different cities, probably will not be much new if you think about this topic a lot but a good intro.

Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop. Kindle. I said sarcastically to my niblings, "You'll never guess how it ends." But there's a lot that comes for the archbishop before death, wandering around the American Southwest in an era that...look, Cather doesn't have what we'd call modern consciousness of colonialism, but she has better awareness of Native people as people than I would have feared for this era.

Yu Chen and Regina Kanyu Wang, eds., The Way Spring Arrives: A Collection of Chinese Science Fiction and Fantasy in Translation from a Visionary Team of Female and Nonbinary Creators. Kindle, reread. Reread this for my book club, glad to discuss the stories in more detail with other interested people.

C.S.E. Cooney, Saint Death's Herald. Second in its series, and just as lovely in its writing and characterization and combination of whimsy and seriousness, no one else is quite like Cooney in that combination. Very happy to have this, you might be too.

Penelope Reed Doob, The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages. This contains comparisons of art/archaeology to literary portrayal in this era, which is interesting, but also you will know just from the title whether you are the audience for this book or not. It is an absolutely lovely thing that it is, but it's not some other secret thing that will surprise you. I got it off a shelf labeled "history of WHAT???," and you will know whether that shelf is your heart's home or not.

Francis Dupuis-Derland and Benjamin Pillet, eds., Anarcho-Indigenism: Conversations on Land and Freedom. A series of interviews with people who have very different relationships with this term--gave me a lot more questions than answers, which is I think a good sign in this kind of book, especially when the people being interviewed have more writings available elsewhere.

Elizabeth Fair, A Winter Away. Reread. Unfortunately I was not immediately aware that this was a reread and more or less didn't notice, because it was not particularly notable either time. Had I read this already, or was the plot and characterization that predictable? We now know the answer, but at the time either seemed plausible. (Again, traveling. Limited book supply.) It's not offensive, it's fine, it's just...gosh I hope to remember not to read it a third time.

Elizabeth Gaskell, Ruth. Kindle. This is my least favorite Gaskell novel so far. This is the sort of book that you read and think, ah yes, we had to go through this to get to where we are, but...unless you're a Gaskell superfan (which, fair, hi, hello), I feel like a book whose thesis is "maybe we should treat women who have sex like they are fellow humans rather than demons from the lowest pit of hell, at least if they're otherwise completely angelic" is--hmm, I wanted to say that it's not something most of us need any more, but I think what I would rather say is that it's unlikely to reach those who need it in quite this form these days.

Bill Hayton, A Brief History of Vietnam: Colonialism, War, and Renewal: The Story of a Nation Transformed. On the up side, this introductory history of Vietnam contains a great deal of pre-20th century stuff that sometimes gets skipped over in Anglophone histories, and it's a quick read. On the other hand, it's an entire country, you may well find yourself dissatisfied by a treatment this short, and it surely was not consistent about things like providing pronunciation or defining terms, sometimes doing so repetitively and sometimes not at all. I hope there's a better starting place for this.

Mohamed Kheir, Sleep Phase. A short dreamy novel (yes) about emerging from being a political prisoner in Egypt in this century, readjusting to life outside and its changes. Glad I read it but will not want to reread it.

David Kirby, The Baltic World, 1773-1993: Europe's Northern Periphery in an Age of Change. So on the up side, Kirby is very solid about paradigm shifts like Sweden sometimes being central Scandinavia, in political terms, and sometimes being the northwest corner of the Baltic. Unfortunately his focus of scholarship (I've read his history of Finland) and the timing of this book (basically right at the end date in the title) tipped the balance towards him being one of the people of that generation who felt the need to come up with explanations for why it was inevitable or just or...something, why it made sense for the three Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia to be conquered when Finland was not...without reference to bloody geography for heaven's sake get it together my dude if your explanation does not lean heavily on "Finland is a frozen swamp and the others less so," what are you even doing. Ahem. Okay. Anyway, it's in some ways a useful historical reference and in other ways a cautionary tale for not trying to make history more just and sensible than the world actually is. (Please note that I say "frozen swamp" with the deepest of affection.) (It's just, look, I know you all wanted to have impeccable reasons why it couldn't happen to you, but it could bloody happen to you, of course it could, that's why we had to let the entire Baltic into NATO ffs, it could happen to you any day of the week, victim blaming for your own comfort is not a reasonable worldview thank you and good day to you.) (The thing is that not a lot of people read Baltic history with no strong feelings about the Baltic, I think, and I am no counterexample.) (If more of this book had been about the Winter War, would he have...no, he's an historian of FInland, he ought to already have.) (Harumph.)

Ann LeBlanc, The Transitive Properties of Cheese. Kindle. A delightful novella about the lengths a genetically modified cheesemaking clone will go to in order to protect outer space's most perfect cheese cave. I had a good time with this.

Rose Macaulay, Told By an Idiot. Kindle. This is a family novel that follows its characters from the late Victorian period through the postwar period although since it was published in 1923, it's not very far into the postwar period. It's got her characteristic humor and observations of humanity and its foibles, and she's very explicitly talking about how The Young Generation is perpetually being credited with all sorts of new traits that have in fact been in humans the whole time. I love her, and this was a fun one for me, albeit with somewhat less plot direction than some of her others.

Charlotte McConaughy, Wild Dark Shore. This was the other book I read this fortnight with a catastrophically disappointing ending. It was going so well with climate change and botany and repairing families, but the ending upset and frankly really offended me--this is not an "I don't like sad endings" problem, this is an "I don't like what the shape of sad ending once again implies about the worth of women" problem. Not recommended despite copious botany and several seals.

Tashan Mehta, Mad Sisters of Esi. Discussed elsewhere.

Candace Robb, A Gift of Sanctuary. I managed to finish this medieval mystery novel without attaching to any of the characters even a little bit. There was a lot of "which one is he? oh right that one" going on in my head. I finished it, I left it in a rental apartment, I can't say I recommend it but it probably won't do you any harm.

Rosália Rodrigo, Beasts of Carnaval. Discussed elsewhere.

Silky Shah, Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition. Kindle. Explorations of how the carceral criminal justice system feeds the carceral immigration system, sure-handed and angry where it needs to be.

Vivian Shaw, Strange New World. The fourth full-length book, fifth story, in the Dr. Greta Van Helsing series, and this one goes to the heights of Heaven and the depths of Hell for its monster medical drama, and also to [gasp] New York. I would not start here, because there are character implications and because the previous ones are still in print, but I actually think you could. But also the previous ones are still in print.

Sujit Sivasundaram, Waves Across the South: A New History of Revolution and Empire. This was brilliantly done, pointing out that even the histories of the Age of Revolution that make an effort to include people of color are mostly still extremely focused on the Atlantic world, and things of interest were absolutely going on in the Pacific and Indian Oceans as well. Interesting, well-written, hurrah.

A.G. Slatter, The Path of Thorns. A very classically formed governess novel but with a ton of magic stuff in it. Yay, enjoyed this.

Sarah Suk, Meet Me at Blue Hour. A sweet novel about two Korean-American teens in Korea coping with the results of a memory removal clinic while one of them has a grandfather in the early stages of dementia.

Sunaura Taylor, Disabled Ecologies: Lessons from a Wounded Desert. I've read several of this genre of book, which is case study of an ecological region and the humans who live in it being ravaged by particular companies who know exactly what they're doing and attempt to lie about it. This is probably the best one I've read so far, as it has very solid grounding in both disability theory and ecology, as well as the politico-historical chops for the research, and also the personal disabled/community connection to the subject, so if you only read one in this genre, read this one. (And hey, read one in this genre sometime, maybe, huh? You might think you already know how bad it is, and I promise it's worse.)

Sienna Tristen, Hortus Animarum. Kindle. A glorious collection of botanical poems paying tribute to loves that are not necessarily sexual or romantic but are definitely queer. One of the best indices I've seen in years, for friends who are index hounds.

Mai Der Vang, Primordial. The saola, a rare bovid native to Vietnam, is Vang's central metaphor here about the Hmong refugee experience. Some of the poems about it are stunning, brave, and vivid, but the whole is rather more monofocus on the one image (the saola) than I prefer in a collection of this length.

Elizabeth von Arnim, The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight. Kindle. This is a very silly book about a German princess who runs away to live in England in a little cottage and learns to appreciate being a princess. At no point does anyone consider that she is not inherently superior to all who surround her. It's briskly written and got me through waiting for an airplane, but I can't say it was wonderful enough that I recommend it more generally.

Neon Yang, Brighter Than Scale, Swifter Than Flame. Okay, so there are books where the twist is the point, and there are books where you see the twist coming from a mile away and the journey is the point. This is definitely more in the latter camp, but unfortunately it meant that I started to find the protagonist frustrating for not also seeing the twist coming. Possibly this is because it's much harder to be in a fantasy novel than to read one. If you want a well-written sapphic knights-and-dragons story and don't much care about the plot, here you go.

 

scrubjayspeaks: Town sign for (fictional) Lake Lewisia, showing icons of mountains and a lake with the letter L (Lake Lewisia)
([personal profile] scrubjayspeaks Jun. 2nd, 2025 04:48 pm)
A new water polo team has been formed and will be hosting tryouts this weekend for those with the skills, confidence, and possibly foolishness to compete. The kelpies seem extremely, perhaps even disturbingly excited for their part on the teams, and we noticed a suspicious lack of polo mallets or balls at the hastily constructed lakeside clubhouse. We recommend anyone trying out also be scuba certified and bring an alternative source of oxygen, just in case the kelpies are excited about something else entirely.

---

LL#1259

Posted by Sarah Brown

This cat parent has had enough. For five years, Winnie the cat has lived a peaceful, well-cared-for life. Until a new roommate started bulldozing every boundary. Despite calm, repeated requests, the roommate keeps feeding Winnie treats she shouldn't have, manhandling her when she tries to escape, and overstimulating her despite clear warnings. Dismissive remarks like "she's just a cat" only add fuel to the fire, as do passive-aggressive reactions and suspicious "accidents" with personal items.

At its core, this isn't just about one cat's comfort. It's about respect. Boundaries matter, especially when it comes to the care of a living creature who can't advocate for herself.

With a trip coming up, this guardian is stuck between concern and conflict. A smart short-term plan? Make sure the cat-sitter knows Winnie's needs and keep her safely in a closed room. One final, clear message to the roommate might be necessary. Not to win her over, but to protect Winnie. No drama, just firm lines. It's not about control. It's about care.

Your inbox deserves hissterical cat content. We deliver. Weekly. Subscribe here. 

mrkinch: Erik holding fieldglasses in "Russia" (bins)
([personal profile] mrkinch Jun. 2nd, 2025 02:20 pm)
In Chris's absence, U and I walked the boardwalk up to the Lake and back, sitting for a long time at the Lake watching the Anna's Hummingbird on her nest and a Brown Creeper disappearing into a hole in the loose bark of a snag with beakful after beakful of nest material. That was great fun. And although the Nuttall's Woodpecker nest we found last week appeared to have been vacated, there was what seemed to be a family of recently fledged Downy Woodpeckers near the Lake. I don't think I've seen/heard as many Downys in one day as today. THe Chestnut-backed Chickadees were fledging, as well, and we watched on chasing their parent and begging thile beginning to find food for themselves, and right beside my head! They were too intent to bother about us. The list: )
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([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll Jun. 2nd, 2025 05:40 pm)
blood work results in. I am immune to measles, mumps, and some other stuff I didn't not. Not Hep A or B, though.

Posted by Sarah Brown

This feline fairytale started with a surprise ambush… of the adorable kind. While out on a walk, a stray kitten scaled this cat guardian like a tree and refused to be ignored, meowing at their door until they finally gave in. Since then, he's claimed the household as his own, complete with cuddles, intense eye contact, and enough charm to win over both the human and their husband.

The catch? They already have two pampered rescue cats, and adding a third could tip the balance from cozy to chaotic. To buy time, they enrolled him in a foster program with a three-month adoption deadline. If no one claims him, he officially becomes part of the family.

The heart says keep him. After all, he did climb his way in like it was destiny. But the brain says wait and see, because three cats means triple the vet bills, litter, and long-term commitment. Still, when a kitten chooses you, it's hard not to feel like the universe is trying to tell you something. For now, he's got a warm place to stay and a shot at becoming the household's third purring prince.

Your inbox deserves hissterical cat content. We deliver. Weekly. Subscribe here. 

Posted by Laurent Shinar

The work week is a bundle of worries and woes we know that rather well by now. Which is why it is just as important to bring a packed lunch to work in order to save money and manage nutrition, as it is to have a handful of hilarious cat memes on deck to make sure that your emotional needs are taken care off as well.

So while the day is still young we recommend you save this list in a tab or wherever you like to store your content, so that you can come back to it for a little nibble of tasty feline funnies that, much like your homemade lunch, will keep you satisfied and satiated for a long time to come. So put your work away for a little while, find a fun spot to curl up in and let the feline funnies roll.#

Posted by Elna McHilderson

Just because you don't speak the same language as you pet cat doesn't mean you can't communicate with them. They might not understand the utterly human things we try to communicate, like critical thought, philosophy, etc. But they can definitely catch vibes—better than some humans can! So don't ever stop trying to talk to your furry feline friend! They only meow to us humans because they know we use mouth noises to communicate. Sure, it's not in any language we know, but they're trying their best! It's the least we can do to try our best. In fact, go ahead and just meow at them all the time and see what happens. Maybe you're admitting to war crimes or maybe you're actually able to let them know that you love them more than anything ever in the entire world. But let's be honest, you're probably already doing that… 

 

The hardest thing is seeing a meme and wishing you could send it to your cat. Like, if they could read they would be LOLing along with you. Some memes are just sooooo your pet, you know? We know, we just wish our feline friends could know too… Until then, let's laugh at these memes below together! 

 

Your inbox deserves hissterical cat content. We deliver. Weekly. Subscribe here.

mrkinch: Erik holding fieldglasses in "Russia" (bins)
([personal profile] mrkinch Jun. 1st, 2025 01:56 pm)
I walked Lower Packrat not terribly early because although it's Sunday it's overcast, windy and cold so there weren't many people. There were no specially interesting birds although the list is reasonably long. The Anna's Hummingbird is still on her nest at Jewel Lake, and I heard an Olive-sided Flycatcher, which I don't always down there. The Swainson's Thrushes and Black-headed Grosbeaks were singing but not so much the Warbling Vireos, though I heard one scolding, possibly because there was a Cooper's Hawk around. The list: )

I had decided I should try Lower Packrat Trail to see whether perhaps I could do it with U tomorrow since Chris is away. And I can do it, but not sure about two days in a row right now.:(
Taken on 21 June 2024 at 20:33 US Eastern Daylight Savings Time, as I hurried up the street through the break in the rain.





My limited equipment does the scene nothing even remotely resembling justice: neither the gauzy rainbow-sherbet luminosity nor the grand theatricality of the skyscape, with the air of a vintage book illustration or a meticulously painted film backdrop. A detail I particularly like is the small dark cumulus cloud at bottom center that suggests a person astride a charging (pig? bear? huge dog?)
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([personal profile] jhetley Jun. 2nd, 2025 03:12 pm)
Crude personal insults to a bully are a reliable way to goad him into violence.
It was not a productive weekend for me--awkward, because I had great intentions of getting an initial dent into my next rewrite. I did at least make it as far as reading through the translation and making some notes, but that was very much it.

The one thing I managed was a fair bit of reading:

I finished Vivian Shaw's Strange Practice (a fun read, and I'll probably move along with the series at some point--I think I may even already have the second book--but I don't feel any urgency about it) and followed it up in rapid succession with Copper Script (KJ Charles) and Titan of the Stars (E.K. Johnston), both of which only came out last week. (Two books within a week of their shared release date probably isn't actually a record, but it's certainly not my norm.) Both were great, in very different ways. I knew Johnston had two books coming out in pretty quick succession this season (Sky on Fire releases next month) and that one of them has a planned sequel, but somehow I assumed right up to the end of this one that it was the July book. But no! It's this one! (Unless they both do.) I expect it'll be a fairly different book, and will be very interested to see how things play out.

I'm also still picking my way through The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. (Kobo thinks I'm 78% done.)

Watching: [personal profile] scruloose and I saw the S2 TLOU finale last weekend, and at some point I'll probably ask around for broad and specific spoilers for the game, and that may impact how I feel about it. (Bella Ramsey knocked it out of the park, though. What a fantastic cast all around.)

We're also up to date on Murderbot. My inability to remember any plot specifics at all from All Systems Red (given that it's the only book in the series I've read more than once) is both a bit funny and annoying.

Eating: The Zuni method of dry-brining and roasting a chicken was a success again. Unrelatedly, I got [personal profile] scruloose to pick up an extra-dark maple syrup from a local producer, and we tried and enjoyed it last weekend. (This jug doesn't explicitly say "extra-dark" or anything like that, so it's possible it's not actually the one I heard mentioned, but it is very dark and they acquired it at the store that had been named, so I'm kinda assuming.)

Growing/Weathering: The lilacs have bloomed! It was windy enough yesterday, and rainy before that, that I was a little scared all the blossoms would blow right off, but that doesn't seem to have happened. I hope I remember to actually go outside and get some to bring inside.

The Sensation lilac [see icon, although that's not a pic of ours] is in pretty dire need of pruning, poor thing. The thought of actually making a(n approximately-)dated list of when to do specific garden things has passed through my mind, and if I'm lucky I'll actually try to assemble it. I think at least the last couple of years running we've looked up when to prune lilacs and then I've been thrown by the fact that our other one is a Bloomerang and presumably follows different rules.
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