disneydream06 | Network

My federal tax refund arrived. Thank you, past me, for so generously over paying! Washington state has no state income tax as of right now so I'm all done for the year. Nice.

Today is the public Food and Beverage meeting. The blush is off the rose here. It's just old ladies bitching about the same shit over and over again. Half want a dining room dress code that makes them dress up for dinner and half do not and it will never happen so shut the fuck up. There are 3 women who do nothing but bitch about salt. The Food & Beverage director says they use a modest amount of salt in cooking. These three women was zero salt used (cause why have flavor?). So they bitch every month and the response is always the same. What is the grade of beef used? This question is asked and answered every month. In fact, all of the questions asked and answered every month are the same.

So, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Ha!

I'd really like to make my Goodwill trip today and I could do both but tomorrow's better for Goodwill.

I'm just cranky for no reason. And Biggie needs attention.

On my way back from the pool this morning, I spied this hilarious camouflage. I don't know these people. They moved in about a year ago with a teeny tiny adorable puppy.

soemand

Last night's post-supper "outside time" was all fun and games until the kiddo made a move. We were busy scouting a snow-free yard full of puddles when she dropped the request: she wanted to go sledding.

In the logic-defying brain of a three-year-old, snow is totally optional. She was convinced that grass sledding is a top-tier spring sport. We just stood there-no heart to explain the physics of a muddy lawn to someone who sees a luge track where we see a swamp.

pauraque

This Flash game by Argentine developer Daniel Benmergui presents a scene with a woman in a rowboat looking up at a man sitting on the moon. As the player you can snap photos of different portions of the scene and move them around, leading to different resolutions of the scenario.

*Is this some sort of romantic game that I'm too aro to understand?*

I do remember this game making the rounds in the late 2000s and being held up as evidence on the pro side of the burgeoning "can video games be art?" debate. Personally I have always found this debate tedious and misguided, proving nothing except that "art" is a poorly defined term which is used to arbitrarily judge elements of culture as worthy or unworthy. So that's probably why I never clicked any of the links to I Wish I Were the Moon.

Coming to it now, my strongest impression is that it doesn't demonstrate anything about art, but it does demonstrate (yet again) that I am extremely aromantic. The game is supposed to be a representation of a love triangle; I do know that. But it makes my brain do the thing that it's been doing my entire life, which is to interpret romantic scenarios that I don't understand as anything other than what they are intended to be. (My brain does this especially with songs, which tend to be worded vaguely enough that it's easy to do. This breakup song could be about a friendship turning sour! This passionate love ballad could be about any kind of love and it doesn't even have to be about a person! It could be about a city or a fandom or a celestial body!!)

So what is the moon in this game? It's something the man loves which is separating him from the woman in the rowboat. Who says it has to be a person? It could be his career or his faith or his family or just about anything! I guess you could argue that one of the essential qualities of art is that it's open to interpretation, but let's not and say we did.

The 2008 version of I Wish I Were the Moon is playable in a Flash emulator here. In 2022 the developer also offered a free remaster on his itch.io page here, but I have to say I think it lacks some of the charm of the original.

mount_oregano

Electromagnetic Assault by Bruce Landay

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you like futuristic military techno-thrillers, you’ll probably like this book.
Do I need to say more? Let’s consider the many varieties of book reviews including consumer, preview, sponsored, literary, professional, and academic.
In this case I’m a reader (or consumer, if you prefer that term, which I don’t). This is a preview because the book will be released April 7 (although you can pre-order it). It’s almost sponsored because I know Bruce and critiqued earlier versions of the opening chapters, and he sent me a free copy of the final book, but I’m writing this review because I want to give my honest opinion.
Tips on how to write a review usually recommend writing a summary of the book. To my thinking, this habit largely results from an unexamined hangover from middle school book reports when you had to summarize a book to prove to the teacher that you actually read it, no matter how tedious your summary was (and is). We’re adults now, and we have all the tedium we need. You can just read the book blurb, which is blissfully brief.
A critical assessment is also recommended for a review. In this Electromagnetic Assault, bullets fly around and things blow up a lot. For this reason, I found the battle that takes place in my old neighborhood in Milwaukee especially entertaining. There are endless plot twists, as befits a book of this type. To say more would spoil your fun. So much for my summary and assessment.
The reviewer is also advised to mention relevant information about the author. Bruce is a former Air Force officer. You will notice the expertise.
More broadly, I think there three types of book reviews:
• The first is for readers who haven’t read the book but wonder if they want to. That’s what we’re doing here.
• The second is for readers who aren’t going to read the book but want a useful, thoughtful summary from a professional so they can feel like they’ve read the book. The review provides a lengthy non-tedious analysis. You can often read these in upscale magazines and academic settings, which is not where we are now.
• The third kind of review subjects the novel to literary criticism regarding its writing style and thematic development. I think the very short chapters add to the velocity of the book, which is an appropriate attribute for a thriller. To discuss its literary merits further, we would both need to have read the book, and so far only one of us has.
To conclude, I believe Electromagnetic Assault is a worthy addition to its sub-genre. Enough said.

View all my reviews

mific

The good old hockey game!

On YT here

OMG, great editing!

larryhammer

A few more musical links:

Funk covers of Linkin Park hits. The happy kind of funk. (via YT sidebar)

Tiny Puppet Sound spins up a 1-hour set of French house in a Korean workplace breakroom. Puppet DJ = joy. (via)

Tycho’s Burning Man sunrise mix for 2025: Joie de Vivre. Hopeful like the sunrise. (via following Tycho)

(Meanwhile, I’m glad to see that Krill Waves Radio is still putting out the chill.)

---L.

Subject quote from Been Undone, Peter Gabriel.

james_davis_nicoll

I lead an active life so I am sure I have the physique of a 64 year and 11 month-old.

james_davis_nicoll

Nobody is sure who the enemy is, where they come from, or what their goals are. Still, they are the enemy and it’s up to the United Earth Surface and the Allied Orbital Forces Command to show the enemy what’s what.

The Proposal by Myung-Hoon Bae

shirebound

Happy Birthday,

lavendertook! I hope you and your kitties are celebrating today. Much love! ♥

rebeccmeister

I've reached that stage of the semester where it feels like I do little else besides teaching and sleeping exhaustedly.

I generally don't use the living room for much, aside from sometimes playing with George or for sitting down in a chair momentarily while grinding coffee beans in the morning. On Monday morning, when I walked over to the living room, I noticed a new source of flashing light (ugh, video short so I can't embed):

https://youtube.com/shorts/wNbGotTv_wc?si=5Ot627re8zZF9cGX

That is one of the monitors in

scrottie's office. He has been in California since November. It wasn't doing that the day before. Maybe the recent power outage caused this? Regardless, I dug out the key to his office door and went in to turn off this monitor again. The cats were briefly entertained by the opportunity to poke around in a space they haven't been in lately.

Speaking of possessed electronics, this darn document reader in the classroom where I teach REFUSES to behave.

https://youtube.com/shorts/XOfzN8CHTN4?si=KyggBAjMfkk1zSPB

I keep having to record videos of it because apparently our IT folks can't reproduce the issue. Their most recent hypothesis has been that something about the OS on my computer is causing interference when I have my computer plugged into the HDMI input. But in this instance, my computer is totally unplugged from the system. So.

A silver lining to my inability to function in the evenings is that George likes to come and snuggle. I've been putting on birdwatching videos for him, but decided last night to try out a cat documentary instead.

The cat documentary did manage to hold his attention for a good 20 minutes before he heard some noise and decided he needed to run off.

calimac

As a small boy I ate cold cereal for breakfast. I liked sugary treats like Frosted Flakes and Cocoa Puffs, but some cereals like Cap'n Crunch I found over-sugared and would not eat. I also wouldn't touch anything with marshmallow bits in it, so no Lucky Charms.

I ate these dry. At the age of 9 I started finding the taste of milk to be sour and spoiled - I had probably developed a slight allergy - so I simply stopped using it.

As an adult my tastes changed to more boring cereals, like Special K and Product 19. I never much cared for corn flakes, though.

On special occasions, or when eating out for breakfast, I'd go for an omelet or scrambled eggs and sausage. But whatever the breakfast, I never ate very much in the mornings, preferring a large early lunch.

Eventually health reasons led me to give up cereals and I turned to fruit. For a long time this was apples, and I developed a taste for tart but crisp and sweet apples, like Fujis and Braeburns. Occasionally I'd spell these with pears.

But after a while I started finding apples too heavy to eat. I tried other fruits. I liked kiwis, and they're supposed to be good for you, so for a while I ate that. But I found, to my surprise, that while a kiwi as a special treat is great, as a regular diet they quickly palled. I eventually settled on a can of mandarin orange slices. No peeling or tearing up, simple to eat.

That worked fine until I started having trouble swallowing. Oranges would not chew up into mush that I could get down. When I was in the hospital and they put me on a liquid diet, I was surprised to find for breakfast cream of wheat. Did that count as liquid? But I could get it down.

On coming home, I settled on packets of instant cream of wheat. B. has a little kettle that boils water in a jiffy, and a small measuring cup used only for water, so I can fix it easy with a little salt substitute and a lot of margarine added. My dietician approves; she wants the fats and the calories in my otherwise meager diet.

The first time I stopped in at the grocers to buy some more cream of wheat, I discovered to my delight that there was also instant grits. I'm a northerner but I've always had a taste for southern US food, and I love grits. They're basically cream of wheat except with corn (maize). So now I alternate between the two, finishing one box of packets before turning to the other.

And that's my breakfast these days.

poliphilo

I dreamed I was watching a movie scripted by J.K. Rowling starring John Lennon. Lennon- who wasn't really Lennon but an AI approximation that looked more like Daniel Radcliffe- was a conscientious British police officer who was being hauled in to be disciplined after insisting on arresting an American woman who was so highly connected as to be above the law. While he waited to be seen- and probably sacked- a small, rat-like alien creature was squirming on the floor and throwing a knife at him. He threw it back and hit it twice. The third time he lost patience and leant down and sliced its head off.

In the dream that followed I was working in a hospital where all the staff wore bright pink uniforms. We weren't supposed to sit in the windows in case the sight of men in pink offended outsiders but we did anyway. "Look" I said to my co-workers, pointing through the window, "All the men out there are also wearing pink- (and they were- all shades of pink- and nothing else)- "and there's a man in pink who doesn't have a head...."

ysabetwordsmith

Everyone needs contact comfort sometimes. Not everyone has ample opportunities for this in facetime. So here is a chance for a cuddle party in cyberspace. Virtual cuddling can help people feel better.

We have a cuddle room that comes with fort cushions, fort frames, sheets for draping, and a weighted blanket. A nest full of colorful egg pillows sits in one corner. There is a basket of grooming brushes, hairbrushes, and styling combs. A bin holds textured pillows. There is a big basket of craft supplies along with art markers, coloring pages, and blank paper. The kitchen has a popcorn machine. Labels are available to mark dietary needs, recipe ingredients, and level of spiciness. Here is the bathroom, open to everyone. There is a lawn tent and an outdoor hot tub. Bathers should post a sign for nude or clothed activity. Come snuggle up!

Current Mood: busy

myrmidon posting in

icons

Dune: Part Three (2026)
[ teaser trailer ]

[ here @

axisandallies ]

ysabetwordsmith

This is today's freebie, inspired by a prompt from LJ user My_partner_doug.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

austin_dern

Sunday we had the time and chance to visit bunnyhugger's parents. Not for any special occasion, past that we hadn't seen them in a while and the next obvious time to visit, early April, will also have us busy with egg-dyeing. So it was a good chance to visit and talk with them and we were totally ready to bring board games except. You know how I mentioned the weather Friday was extremely windy to the point of being dangerous driving? The weather Sunday as extremely windy to the point of driving being annoying, but not actively hazardous. But they were warning about thunderstorms rolling in over the evening and our choices would be either to leave early enough we missed them or late enough that they passed. Given that I had to be up at 7 am, leaving early seemed the less bad course.

Still, there would be time for some pleasant ordinary stuff, like finding out just what had gone wrong with the iPad bunnyhugger's mother was using to read electronic books. (The system had logged her out and she didn't know how to tell that.) And they have a new induction stove, paid for by some federal program for energy efficiency that also saw them get a heat pump for the house. The heat pump we didn't see so much of except that the house was at 74 degrees which, even granting that the outside was at 70 degrees, seems like a lot. But I'll sometimes set my car that high while driving, if it's cold out, so I'm hardly a thermal innocent.

One side effect of the new stove is that they were very anxious to explain just how it would work should I make tea (which, somehow, it ends up I didn't). It turns out to be that you turn the dial, and use the induction-friendly tea kettle, which isn't really different from the old process. I think they're just anxious; they said they hadn't made anything with it yet, although they'd only got the new stove/oven two days before.

The other side effect is they offered us first dibs on all their old, induction-hostile, cookware, which, sure, we can use some new pots and pans. Also one of those big spaghetti pots with the built-in strainer which is going to change everything. Mostly pasta, and in small ways.

Her father, having sworn off weird impulsive eBay purchasing obsessions, has what are allegedly foghorns. When I got the chance to confirm I heard this right it turned out there was controversy about whether he had a legitimate foghorn. He demonstrated and it sounded, really, more like scooting the stool backwards in shop class, but I guess there are circumstances that might be a useful noise?

We set out so very early, and missed all but light sprinklings of rain getting home, when we discovered bunnyhugger had left her favorite travel mug with her parents. It'll be safe.

So on in to Dutch Wonderland. Hey, remember when I said I was going to be sharing fewer photographs so I could pick the better and more interesting ones instead of sharing five views of the same Tilt-a-Whirl ride sign? Me neither.

You enter the park through the castle building and on the side is this event space, where we saw what looked like the mascot performers doing a pep rally.

Right? You'd only be doing a Simon Says sort of thing to get everyone in synch at the start of a walkaround shift, right?

Duke the Dragon is the mascot we're most interested in, of course, but they have a knight and a princess and royals and all and, most recently, Merlin.

Clock tower as we enter. Note that it had the time correct.

And here's Duke, getting a picture with some kid! This is three parks in a row we've seen the mascots for!

So we got a picture with Duke and learned that actually, he was going in so somehow what we saw in the event room was the end of their shift? But they were taking spot photos while that lasted.

Trivia: Vanguard I had the highest apogee of any International Geophysical Year satellite. Source: Project Vanguard: The NASA History, Constance McLaughlin Green, Milton Lomask. NASA SP-4202.

Currently Reading: The Book on the Bookshelf, Henry Petroski.

PS: What's Going On In Judge Parker? Who arrested Randy Parker and what for? December 2025 - March 2026 in one of the last two comic strip plot recaps still touching the long-ago distant past year of 2025.

przed

Since I took my vids site down years ago and then had my vidding machine crash on me, my vids have been spread scattershot in various places. A few on YouTube. A few on the Internet Archive. Most MIA. But I was poking around the basement and finally found the disk backups of a lot of them, so I'm going to start putting them back online and up on AO3.

First two show the fully crazy range of my vidding: wacky hijinks to existential dread.

The wacky hijinks part is on display in the first one:

Pop a Boner

A multifandom vid using every instance of male nudity I could get my grubby little paws on.

The song is from the Zero Patience soundtrack. (Zero Patience is a Canadian musical about the alleged first AIDS patient. It's funny and uplifting and fuelled by furious outrage. You should watch it.)

And for existential dread, have a little Withnail and I:

The Fear

The song is by Pulp, and I used every moment of dread and depression in Withmail & I. (Withnail is a really funny movie with a high angst quotient, and I chose the angst over the humour for this one.)

This is the vid I'm possibly most proud of, and I'd feared it was lost forever, so I was so happy to find it in my disk backups.

asakiyume

It's been more than a week since I posted! Part of that's just life being busy; part is that

osprey_archer is here!

Today we went to Bright Water Bog, swung on a swing, ate some cranberries, and saw ice forming. It was sunny, but a cold wind was blowing, and a few flurries of snow came down.

(We also went to the Smith College Botanical Gardens, but this is a drive-by post! So there's only the one photo.)

troisoiseaux

Read The Stranger by Albert Camus and spent the entire time thinking about the Ben Affleck smoking meme, or perhaps a little cartoon man smoking a cigarette and muttering bah in a French accent, which is to say I had a deeply unserious reading experience. I found this book to be surprisingly (darkly) funny, because the main character/narrator, Meursault, just floats through life— including his own trial and forthcoming execution for murder— by responding to everyone and everything with abrupt and odd statements about how nothing matters, actually. Promotion at work? It's all the same to him; nothing matters. His girlfriend wants to get married? Sure, if she wants to; it's not like anything matters. The blurb describes this as the "story of an ordinary man who unwittingly gets drawn into a senseless murder on a sundrenched Algerian beach," which led me to expect that Meursault would be an accessory to murder, or perhaps framed for a crime he didn't commit— especially as, early on, a shady acquaintance has him (Meursault) write a threatening letter to his (the acquaintance's) ex— but no?? He literally just shoots a random guy multiple times at close range for no reason?? Because Life Is Absurd And Nothing Matters, Actually????

In a rare (and only very, very loosely book-adjacent) movie update, I saw The Bride! (2026, dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal) last weekend and it was SO much fun. It is not a particularly coherent movie— it does feel like a sort of Frankenstein's monster in itself, cobbled from about three different premises ("what if Bride of Frankenstein was Bonnie & Clyde?"; "Frankenstein 2: Mary's Revenge, A Feminist Retelling", etc.)— but as a fan of campy horror and classic Hollywood I felt incredibly catered to. I also watched National Theatre's Ncuti Gatwa-led The Importance of Being Earnest, which is in fact as absolutely delightful as it looks. (It's available on YouTube through tomorrow, the 18th, and streaming on National Theatre at Home after that.)

Current Music: The Man I Killed - NOFX

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disneydream06

March 2026

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Page Summary

susandennis - The tax Man payeth
soemand - 🛷
pauraque - I Wish I Were the Moon (2008/2022)
mount_oregano - Goodreads review: Electromagnetic Assault by Bruce Landay
mific - Hilarious HR vid
larryhammer - “like a wire on a spool i keep on unrolling / a single thread that seems to unwind and unwind”
james_davis_nicoll - 65
james_davis_nicoll - The Proposal by Myung-Hoon Bae
andrewducker - Interesting Links for 18-03-2026
shirebound - It's a birthday!
rebeccmeister - Ghosts in the machine [status, cats]
calimac - breakfast
poliphilo - Headlessness
ysabetwordsmith - Cuddle Party
myrmidon in icons - Dune: Part Three [2026]
ysabetwordsmith - Poem: "Who Once Knew Better Words"
austin_dern - The Salad's in the Bowl, the Rice Is on the Stove
przed - Vids Resurrected!
asakiyume - quick hello-I'm-alive post
troisoiseaux - Weekly reading (etc.)

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