Reading

Pool!!

Finally should be going today. FB has been just.. making me hate people... People that I thought I liked, lately. Too many people actively talking about Medicare cuts: and all it makes me think is either:" you really do want me to die, don't you?" And or "you really are pro slavery.". It's basically in between there, and just an actuality of what people are perpetuating into reality. I'm in full blown "I'm not listening" mode, snoozing or unfriending people that even try to suggest that these kind of cuts make any sense to even suggest should be real.

As much as I talk about origami, Asian studies, and my own health problems: I'm also a licensed healthcare worker myself. More than 2 years experience working serious ailments: and I just don't know what is wrong with the stupid smart people. Who are the stupid smart people? The people with healthy bodies who are basically just fascist and believe in medical slavery over disabled people: caste system society. I'm just done.

Current Mood: excited

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BTS IS BACK

So … BTS did a liveshow recently (when they video stream casual conversation for fans, responding to questions viewers type into the chat and such) and announced that they’ll have a studio album coming out in spring 2026, accompanied by a world tour. It’ll be their first world tour in 7 years! First there was the pandemic (which led to the cancelation of 2020’s scheduled Map of the Soul tour, for which I had tickets), and then they went into the military. They hadn’t even done a live show with all of them together since September 2022. (The first member of the group joined the military at the end of 2022, and the last member was just discharged less than 2 weeks ago.) They were all emotional about being all together again after so long.

There’s been some confusion among muggles (lol, non-ARMYs) about whether BTS have broken up, since they’ve all been doing solo work over the past couple of years and not group projects. But the group never broke up. The entire time that they’ve been doing solo work, they’ve been describing and defining themselves as members of BTS. The group was just not able to be working together for logistical reasons, as all members joined the military at various times, so it was a great opportunity to explore their own independent music.

All the members of BTS have different musical and performance interests, which can only be expressed so much while performing as a group. Their management company has always encouraged them to pursue their own individual projects if they wanted to, but their schedule with BTS was so taxing that most of them really didn’t have the time/energy to do side projects.

They staggered the dates when each of them entered the military, so that the ones who went in later had time to do solo projects before joining up, while the first ones to join had time after they were discharged. So, for example, Yoongi/Suga did a solo tour before he joined the military in September 2023 (he was just discharged a week or two ago). Hobi/j-hope did the reverse, joining the military earlier (in April 2023) and doing a solo tour at the start of this year after his discharge. There was a period of only a few months when all seven members were in the military, because they scheduled it so that the rest of the time there was always at least one of them out, making music.

Each of them, while they were free but other members were in the military, took this time when BTS as a whole was separated as an opportunity to each pursue their specific passions. One member, for example, really likes jazz, and so he produced a bunch of very jazz-influenced music. Another had always wanted to have time to improve his piano skills, and so worked on that and added more piano playing to his solo performances. One went full on into mainstream hip-hop. A few of them wrote deeply introspective albums about their personal emotional struggles. All seven of them had a chance to really explore their own personal musical interests as individuals who make up BTS.

But now they’ve all completed their mandatory military service and are starting up group projects again. One member (Jin) will be in the U.S. throughout the latter half of this month on his solo tour, so that’s apparently when a lot of work will be done on the album, since during the liveshow they specified they’d be following him to the U.S. to work on it.

There’s also a live album that will be released in just a couple of weeks. It’ll be their first group album release since June 2022’s anthology “Proof.”

It’s an exciting time to be BTS ARMY! Now that they've announced a tour in spring 2026, I have more motivation than ever to save money! The tickets I bought more than 5 years ago were more than $300 each, so who knows how much they'll cost now! (TicketMaster is such a scam.) Plus airfare and such...

Current Mood: busy

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Thanks to a donation from

fuzzyred, you can now read the rest of "In the Heart of the Hidden Garden." Lawrence gives Stan a tour of two more buildings and two more gardens -- and then explains why.

Current Music: Marmozets, "Major System Error"

You think one plus seven seven seven makes two

I was so transfixed by the Bittersweets' "Hurtin' Kind" (1967) that I sat in the car in front of my house listening until it was done. The 1965 original is solid, stoner-flavored garage rock with its keyboard stomp and harmonica wail, but the all-female cover has that guitar line like a Shepard tone, the ghostly descant in the vocals, the singer's voice falling off at the end of every verse: it sounds like an out-of-body experience of heartbreak. The outro comes on like a prelude to Patti Smith.

If I had a nickel for every time I heard two songs about mental unwellness within the same couple of hours, actually I'd be swimming in nickels, but I appreciated the contrast of the slow-rolling dread-flashover of Doechii's "Anxiety" (2025) with Marmozets' "Major System Error" (2017) just crashing in at gale force panic attack. Hat-tip to

rushthatspeaks for the former. I must say that I am missing my extinct music blogs much less now that I spend so much time in the car with college radio on.

"Who'll Stand with Us?" (2025) is the most Billy Bragg-like song I have heard from the Dropkick Murphys and a little horrifically timely.

Non-musically, I think I might explode. The curse tablets are not cutting it.

Current Mood: busy

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Birdfeeding

Today is mostly sunny and warm.

I fed the birds. I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches. Robins are foraging in the short grass that my partner Doug mowed yesterday in the house yard.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 7/2/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 7/2/25 -- I took some pictures around the yard.

EDIT 7/2/25 -- I watered the old picnic table, new picnic table, and telephone pole gardens.

Fireflies are out. Cicadas are singing.

EDIT 7/2/25 -- I watered the septic garden.

I've seen a bat over the south lot, which also got mowed today.

As it is getting dark, I am done for the night.

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deeply personal

Batrick’s Storage Unit of DOOM

I can’t get the pictures to load on Imgur, but I do have pics of Bat’s 10’x25’ storage unit, packed chin-high with decaying cardboard boxes and trash bags full of a mish-mash of possessions packed, at the last minute, in no logical order. How did Bat come to be in possession of a full storage unit of DOOM? Some of that is AuDHD executive dysfunction, and some of it is life circumstances being hard for someone with those disabilities to navigate. You may have seen the ADHD aphorism “DOOM” ie. “Don’t Organize, Only Move”? Well, you’ll be seeing it a lot in this post.

I will tell the sad tale behind a ( Read more... )
Wow, long post is long.

３２等分折り紙を完成しました！

初めての事です。
とても楽しかったです。
I might try to put up some origami pictures sometime.

Today, so far it is rainy.. supposedly it won't be as bad in the afternoon, but I doubt we are going to the pool today, so sad. Looks like probably tomorrow. We do have some fun plans for the day though, so it doesn't look *that* bad.

Last night, i was up late using the internet, it was pretty alright.

I have ice on my feet, really just wanting that to fix itself up, have been doing alright taking it easy, though it is a little boring.

Terrible problems about. Ergh. BB.

Getting ready to depart for the day, still a little tired.

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What We're Watching Wednesday: Batman Beyond

Artie and I had such a great time watching Young Justice together – largely because of its mind control storylines – that, a couple of months ago, I decided to show them an episode of another DC superhero series that I remembered loving for similar reasons: Batman Beyond’s “Spellbound.” They seemed to like it, so we agreed to start the series from the beginning, and are now finished with Season 1. I always enjoy hearing Artie’s media criticism, even – sometimes especially – when they’re criticizing media that has nostalgic value for me. We’ve already had some chewy conversations about how this show addresses gender, among other topics (I can appreciate a high school plotline in which The Real Supervillain Is Toxic Masculinity, which could apply to both “Golem” and “The Winning Edge”), and groaned about how much the cars on the show resemble Cybertrucks.

But, in a twist which will surprise absolutely nobody, “Spellbound” remains my favorite episode of the first season. Not all storylines in Batman Beyond take the Buffy the Vampire Slayer route of exploring adolescent drama through the fantastical, but some of them do, and I think this episode is among the ones that does it best… although, it must be said, I might be biased. In both this Tumblr post and this Tuesday Top Five list, I talked about the formative impact of a story in which teenagers were mentally manipulated by an adult whom they should have been able to trust. I can blame this episode, partially if not entirely, for the grip that this narrative premise had on my imagination from my own teenage years – when I deeply resented authority figures’ attempts to get inside my head – to the present day.

Ira Billings, a.k.a. Spellbinder, isn’t dangerous only because he has access to science fiction technology that traps people in illusions of giant bugs. He’s dangerous because he works in a high school and has positioned himself as someone whom young people can trust with their secrets, and someone whose authority and insights other adults trust in turn. The opening sequence, in which he lures a teenage girl to the edge of a cliff, is scary. The subsequent scene, in which he tells the police that Chelsea fabricated that encounter for attention, is scarier.

Spellbinder does return in future episodes, but he’s no longer the school counselor, and I told Artie recently that I wish previous episodes had given us a glimpse of his civilian identity – perhaps even as a somewhat sympathetic figure – before we saw him in costume. We talked about how he might have approached various teens who made Questionable Decisions in earlier episodes, and then I asked, “Am I going to have to write a Five Things fic [featuring different students’ sessions with Dr. Billings]?” and Artie said “HELL YEAH” and I admitted that I did not have “return to Batman Beyond fanfic” on my 2025 Bingo card. The last time I wrote about any of these characters, I didn’t even know that “fanfic” was a term that existed. At least, if I pursue this story idea, there’s a chance that more than two people will read it… but I might be tempted to pursue it even without that possibility.

Current Mood: busy

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news,
science

Problem-Solving

New study backs up 'sleeping on it,' suggesting naps promote creative problem-solving

All groups improved in the dot-sorting test after their nap, but 85.7% of those who achieved the first deeper sleep phase — called N2 sleep — had the breakthrough.

Current Mood: busy

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recurring posts

Hard Things

Life is full of things which are hard or tedious or otherwise unpleasant that need doing anyhow. They help make the world go 'round, they improve skills, and they boost your sense of self-respect. But doing them still kinda sucks. It's all the more difficult to do those things when nobody appreciates it. Happily, blogging allows us to share our accomplishments and pat each other on the back.

What are some of the hard things you've done recently? What are some hard things you haven't gotten to yet, but need to do? Is there anything your online friends could do to make your hard things a little easier?

Current Mood: busy

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Whales

Killer whales attempt to feed people in first-ever sightings: 'Represents altruism'

Among their own whale circles, they have long shared their prey with one another, but in a new study, recorded over the course of the last two decades, wild orcas were spotted trying to share their food with human beings.

These wild whales, on 34 occasions, across four oceans, were documented approaching humans on their own, dropping a fresh kill in front of the people, and waiting for a response.

The polite thing to do is accept it, and if you have anything suitable, swap something back. Cetaceans love the hell out of human item drops. A sturdy beach toy should go over well. Treat this as a first-contact situation; be cautious but aware that you are dealing with a sophont of another species.

Current Mood: busy

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Moment of Silence: Jimmy Swaggart

Sinful televangelist Jimmy Swaggart has passed away.

... I just kinda want to pass Lucifer a big bag of popcorn and a big shaker of Mexican spice blend. He's gonna need it.

Current Mood: busy

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food,
recipe

Today's Smoothie

Today we made a smoothie with:

1 cup orange juice
1 cup Brown Cow vanilla yogurt
1 banana
1/2 cup Great Value Mixed Fruit (pineapple, sliced strawberries, mango, peaches)
1/2 cup ice

The result is slightly thick, a pale peach color, with a nice orange-tropical flavor -- almost reminds me of a dreamsicle. It'd be good with some coconut; there's another tropical mix with that but it's not what we have at the moment.

(no subject)

Today has been a day of cramps, grocery shopping, more cramps, talking to people on the phone, learning to debone a chicken, and having figured out when to do class work to get ahead of schedule without getting a headache from the overhead fan throwing flickering shadows over everything when the sunshine is coming in the clerestory window.

Let’s hope that works out tomorrow.

Current Mood: busy

Entry tags:

activism,
holiday

Disability Pride Month

July is Disability Pride Month.

These are some of my characters with disabilities. Series with disabled main characters include Clay of Life, the Draft Dawgs thread in Arts and Crafts America, Daughters of the Apocalypse, Frankenstein's Family, Monster House, The Moon Door, P.I.E., and Walking the Beat. Polychrome Heroics has a bunch, but they are scattered around various threads; some are ordinary disabilities while others relate to superpowers. You can ask for more disabled characters in any relevant prompt call. Today's Poetry Fishbowl theme is "Weaponized Incompetence and Malicious Compliance."

( Read more... )

Current Music: Les Cowboys Fringants, "Marine marchande"

J'm'installe sur le rivage pour te voir mon gros gars t'éloigner vers le large

Rabbit, rabbit! I had to go for my annual physical this afternoon, but I stopped by Porter Square Books afterward to collect a book for my mother and look what was part of their summer sea-display:

I had wanted to write about so many queer films for June, but the month disappeared. Fortunately before we ran out of the formal observance of Pride,

rushthatspeaks and I made it to Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Querelle (1982) at the Coolidge. It was adapted from the 1947 novel by Jean Genet, but I have never seen anything onscreen that more resembled the novels of Chip Delany. Meant in sincere compliment, it is one of the sweatiest films I have ever seen. It looks like it smells like a porno theater. Its antihero is straight out of Tom of Finland with his sailor's tight, tight white trousers and muscular cleavage revealed by the barest excuse for an A-shirt, his boyish, chiseled, louche face under his insolently cocked bachi in the sullen, enticing haze that never varies from the sodium-smoke of just after sunset or just before dawn, a perpetual cruising hour. The sea-wall of its fantasized Brest is studded with stone phalli, anatomically complete with slit and balls. All graffiti in town is dicks. The chanteuse of the dive bar sings Wilde like Dietrich, but some of the construction workers with their buff hard hats are playing video games while the naval lieutenant who pines for Querelle records his poetically criminal obsessions into a portable tape recorder. The bare-chested, leather-vested cop at the bar actually is a cop outside of it, where he looks just as fetishistic in his fedora and black leather trenchcoat. Every interaction between men looks like a negotiation or a seduction whether it is one or not, although on some level it always is, regardless of the no-homo excuses manufactured to allow their bodies to meet. Constantly, metaphysically, literally, this movie fucks. Its hothouse, bathhouse sexuality must have come in just under the cutting wire of AIDS. I have no idea what it would offer a viewer with no sexual or aesthetic interest in men except its philosophy, although as my husband notes the philosophy is actually quite good, deconstructing its hard masc signifiers as much as it gets off on them, dissolving in and out of the words and ultimately the life of Genet; the theatricality of its interlocked sets and swelteringly flamboyant lighting would look entirely natural on the stage. It quotes Plutarch and stages a hand job that without a glimpse of cock would have caused mass apoplexies in the Breen office. (Send it back in time, please.) It was my introduction to Fassbinder and if I had seen it as an adolescent, I imagine it would have had much the same effect as Tanith Lee. It was introduced by the series programmer wearing leather in its honor and a T-shirt for Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising (1963). It made a superb date movie.

Current Mood: accomplished

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Sunshine Revival Challenge #1: Light

Sunshine Revival Challenge #1: Light

Journaling Prompt: Light up your journal with activity this month. Talk about your goals for July or for the second half of 2025.

Creative Prompt: Shine a light on your own creativity. Create anything you want (an image, an icon, a story, a poem, or a craft) and share it with your community.. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

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Current Mood: busy

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Poem: "The Pleasure of Escaping the Responsibility"

This is today's freebie. It was inspired by a prompt from

torc87. It also fills the "I tried being reasonable. I didn't like it." square in my 7-1-25 card for the Western Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the series One God's Story of Mid-Life Crisis.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

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Birdfeeding

Today is mostly sunny and warm, nicer than it has been recently.

I fed the birds. I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, plus a pair of cardinals that flew away when I went outside.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 7/1/25 -- I refilled the hopper feeder.

EDIT 7/1/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 7/1/25 -- I watered the old picnic table and the patio plants. Despite recent rains, things were wilting. :/

EDIT 7/1/25 -- I watered the new picnic table and septic garden.

I've seen a grackle and a robin.

I picked a 'Chocolate Sprinkles' tomato.

EDIT 7/1/25 -- I watered the telephone pole garden and seedlings in the savanna.

Fireflies are coming out.

I am done for the night.

Current Mood: creative

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Poetry Fishbowl Open!

The Poetry Fishbowl is now CLOSED. Thank you for your time and attention. Please keep an eye on this page as I am still writing.

Starting now, the Poetry Fishbowl is open! Today's theme is "Weaponized Incompetence and Malicious Compliance!" I will be checking this page periodically throughout the day. When people make suggestions, I'll pick some and weave them together into a poem ... and then another ... and so on. I'm hoping to get a lot of ideas and a lot of poems.

I'll be soliciting ideas for activists, rebels, traitors, exes, abuse survivors, refugees, runaway youth, slaves or other captives, slavers, housemates, siblings, parents, teachers, clergy, leaders, bosses, employees, superheroes, supervillains, teammates, alien or fantasy species, failure analysts, ethicists, other people who get into untenable situations, protesting, dragging your feet, breaking things, causing problems because you were told to, planning, throwing in the towel, escaping, running like someone left the gate open, adventuring, hitchhiking, quitting school, divorcing, disowning, betraying, teaching, leaving your comfort zone, discovering things, conducting experiments, observation changing experiments, troubleshooting, improvising, adapting, cleaning up messes, cooperating, bartering, taking over in an emergency, saving the day, discovering yourself, studying others, testing boundaries, coming of age, learning what you can (and can't) do, sharing, preparing for the worst, expecting the unexpected, fixing what's broke, upsetting the status quo, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, recovering from setbacks, returning home, slave ships, slave quarters, abusive homes, trails, sailing ships, campervans or RVs, distant lands, the forest primeval, prehistory, liminal zones, schools, residential school-concentration camps, homeless shelters, hotels, churches, sharehouses, campfires, laboratories, supervillain lairs, nonhuman accommodations and adaptations, stores, starships, alien planets, magical lands, foreign dimensions, other places where the intolerable happens, unhappy relationships, crappy jobs, educational abuse, responsibility without authority is abuse, protest rallies, slavery or captivity, locks or chains, travel mishaps, sudden surprises, the buck stops here, trial and error, intercultural entanglements, asking for help and getting it, enemies to friends/lovers, interdimensional travel, lab conditions are not field conditions, superpower manifestation, the end of where your framework actually applies, ethics, innovation, problems that can't be solved by hitting, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.

Currently eligible bingo card(s) for donors wishing to sponsor a square:

Western Bingo Card 7-1-25

Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

Weaponized incompetence has two modes:
* One is shirking a fair share of work by pretending to be bad at it: for instance, copper-digging men who try to con women into doing all the emotional labor. (Take care to distinguish this from people who don't know how to do things because they were never taught, or people who are genuinely bad at a category of thing.)
* The other is a form of activism, and indeed, one of the leading forms of resistance in slavery: doing work slowly, sloppily, breaking tools, playing dumb, etc. It's exactly how black people got a reputation for being stupid and lazy, because their ancestors were unwilling to be exploited and fought back in subtle ways.

Malicious compliance is following an order to the letter, expecting that to cause problems. It is a form of protest most often used when pointing out a flaw or proposing a better solution would be ignored or even punished.

Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

An Army of One is developing its own neurovariant culture after rebelling against the Galactic Arms.

The Bear Tunnels introduces modern principles to people in the past, touching on slavery and rebellion.

Not Quite Kansas includes demons, who are masters of malicious compliance.

The Ocracies has a wide variety of countries crammed together, each with a totally different government. Sometimes people leave their homeland to find something they like better.

One God's Story of Mid-Life Crisis follows Shaeth as he works on becoming the God of Drunks after quitting as the God of Evili.

Peculiar Obligations mixes Quakers and pirates, among other things. It's another setting where people strive against slavery.

Polychrome Heroics has ordinary humans, supernaries, blue-plate specials, superheroes, supervillains, primal and animal soups all trying to get along and figure out how to make a functional society. The supervillains are the most likely to practice weaponized incompetence and malicious compliance. Among the more relevant threads are Danso and Family, Dr. Infanta, Fortressa, Iron Horses, Shiv, and Trichromatic Attachments.

Or you can ask for something new.

Linkbacks reveal a verse of any open linkback poem.

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