thedarlingone | Reading

The First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn is an account of a few days in the lives of prisoners in Stalinist Russia, in a "special prison" that houses scientists and engineers who have been set to work on technical projects for the government. (The title is a reference to Dante's Inferno, which divides Hell into circles of increasing severity; the special prisoners, who get better treatment than in the regular prisons and the labour camps, are in the most comfortable outermost circle, but they're still in Hell.)

It's a story about arbitrary cruelty and deprivation, but it's also a story about human connection and friendship and unexpected kindnesses. There are obstacles and also reasons to carry on despite the obstacles.
( Read more... )

pedanther

To echo a review I gave recently to another three-hour movie, I mostly don't regret spending the time watching the Delaporte-de La Patellière film version of The Count of Monte Cristo, but it's mainly because if I hadn't I'd have always wondered what I'd missed.

The movie is like the mansion that this version of the Count inhabits: large and elaborately decorated, but hollow and echoing and surprisingly empty of real people. Despite the running time, and the jettisoning of large portions of the novel, parts of the plot feel rushed and missing out on connective tissue that would give it emotional heft. ( Read more... )

sovay

Current events currenting as they are, I appreciated reading about Gertrude Berg and hearing the news from Spaceballs: The Sweatshirt.

spatch came home with T-shirt swag for the latest Wes Anderson film and it is almost parodically minimalist with its screen-print of Air Korda.

I enjoyed Agatha Christie's Ordeal by Innocence (1958) so much that I am mildly horrified to discover that of the one film and three television adaptations to date, none appears to be simultaneously faithful to the novel and good. It doesn't push its interrogation of the amateur detective as far as Sayers or Tey, but it does care about what the question of justice looks like when the first fruits of a well-intended posthumous exoneration are neither closure not catharsis but instant rupture down all the fault lines of resentment, distrust, disappointment, and malice that the open-and-shut obviousness of the original investigation glossed over. Was justice even the spur to begin with, or just a belated alibi's anxious sense of guilt? The plot wraps up like its dramatis personae all had somewhere else to be, but until then it hangs out much longer in its misgivings than many of Christie's puzzles. Some of its ideas about adoption and heredity have worn much less well than its premise, but I liked the scientist explaining that his work in geophysics is too technical to afford him to be absent-minded.

In all the studio-diorama aesthetic of the video for Nation of Language's "Inept Apollo" (2025), the shot of the Tektronix 2205 made it for me. I grew up with a 2465.

Current Music: Nation of Language, "Inept Apollo"

bookblather

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soc_puppet posting in

queerly_beloved

Another week, another Thursday...

Do you have a rec for this week? Just reply to this post with something queer or queer-adjacent (such as, soap made by a queer person that isn't necessarily queer themed) that you'd, well, recommend. Self-recs are welcome, as are recs for fandom-related content!

Or have you tried something that's been recced here? Do you have your own report to share about it? I'd love to hear about it!

sophia_sol

one

thinking about how as a kid I found zoos super boring - and I think my problem was that, at least at that time, the expected mode of engagement with zoos was to stare at animals and be amazed at how interesting/cute/different they look?

for me, learning context is what makes an animal compelling! eg: I did a project on temperate rainforests in grade 6, and learned about banana slugs as part of the ecosystem. and subsequently loved them, even though I hadn't cared about slugs previously! if I'd been shown a real live banana slug after having done that project, I would have been fascinated to just watch it, because I would understand what I was seeing, and know what to look for in its behaviour and appearance to connect with the things I knew about it!

if the zoos I visited in my youth had done more to contextualise my understanding of what I was seeing, I think I could have had a good time. but instead I was presented with a few fun facts and the opportunity to see the animals, the end. and so I found them the height of boredom.

fun facts are useless to me! WHY are they fun! what makes this fact relevant! what caused things to be this way!!

(I had a similar problem with most museums. except dinosaur museums, to which I came with my own contextual knowledge, and thus could appreciate and enjoy the things on display, even when the display didn't provide much information itself)

two

oh!!! there's a plugin for joplin that allows android app users to see wordcount! and also to see line numbers, to make it easier to orient yourself within a long note! I love this

three

several podcasts I follow do reviews of older SFF novels (either occasionally or as their whole thing), and it has me thinking again about a type of story I think used to be more common in western genre fiction, and it's one I rather miss.

The type I mean: a narrative which is checking in on a specific place or people-group at different points in its long-term history, where the overarching narrative project is on a scale of eras while telling smaller personal stories within that history.

Sometimes it's done within the context of a single book, like in A Canticle for Leibowitz. Sometimes it's between books over the length of a series, like in the Dragonriders of Pern series¹. Either way, you get to see the cycles of history, the way that things which seem urgent and current at one point become historicised and mythologised, and become the ancient context for the new urgent current events, whether the people involved realise it or not. I love this shit! I love context. I love seeing how things connect. I love how the very notion of history becomes one of the major characters in the narrative!

From what I see, the modern western sff genre has become more interested in more immediate stories. Which have their benefits too, and which are really wonderful in their own way! And there's plenty about these older stories that I do not miss at all.

Maybe there are authors out there writing era-spanning sff today, and I just haven't come across them because there are other aspects of what those authors focus on that are super not to my tastes, or because the book is a small indie publishing situation that doesn't have good word-of-mouth, or something else like that....these are definitely possible! But I do miss getting invested in this kind of story. It's fun!

¹I won't say that all the books I once loved that do this thing were GOOD books

four

the names people choose - for themselves, their kids, their pets - is soooo interesting to me! but especially kids' names, tbh.

modern western culture places so much emphasis on the importance of the choice you make about your baby's name (compared to, say, the late middle ages, when half of all people in england were named one of the same few names) and since there's so much cultural weight on the choice, and it is by its nature a very public choice, you can tell a lot from the decisions people make!

what were their priorities, their influences, their values? what kind of naming community are they in, and how much does it fall in line with the rest of their country? so many factors go into each choice!

every time someone I know has a new kid, I'm always SO eager to find out the name...and then, if possible, get the story behind why they chose it! It's always so interesting!

five

recently I was out birding with some folks who have never been birding before, and one of them commented that they were delighted to discover from me that an important part of birding is complimenting every bird you see

and it's TRUE. it is an important part of birding! telling the birds what a great job they're doing, how cute/handsome/gorgeous they are, etc is something I am ALWAYS doing. instinctively and automatically. and I am so pleased to be modelling this attitude to others! :D

xandromedovna posting in

fic_rush

Who's ready to Rush?!

sovay

I got home to find the day's mail had brought my contributor's copy of Not One of Us #83, containing my poem "Below Surface." It is a poem of empire; I wrote it at the start of the third week in January after shouting, "I ran out of curse tablets!" It bears about as much relation to the realities of the Emperors who died at Eboracum as the medieval Welsh legends of Constantius and I see no reason that should impair its efficacy. The issue it belongs to is gone, showcasing the elusive fiction and poetry of Steve Toase, Christian Fiachra Stevens, J. M. Vesper, Vincent Bae, and more. John and Flo Stanton contribute interior art as well as the reliable spirit photography of their front and back covers. You might as well pick up a copy before it disappears.

I photographed some ghost windows. I bought myself some white chocolate peanut butter cups.

selkie's gift of tinned mackerel with lemon did not survive the night.

Current Music: Billy Bragg, "A Pict Song"

sovay

Under the circumstances, I had different weird dreams than I would have expected: writing a poem, watching some incredibly threadbare film noir with no waking equivalent, hearing a performance from a musical theater star ditto. I am beginning to think the pop culture of my dreams actually is the hell of a good video store next door, leavened in the last few nights by dreams of re-reading real-life authors currently in storage like P.C. Hodgell or Joan D. Vinge. I remain physically fried, news at nowhen. At least the rain seems to have kept off the neighborly leafblowing which perforated so much of yesterday. The news continues to feel like stupidly lethal cosplay, which I remember from the last round of this administration, which doesn't make me hate it less.

Current Music: The Lumineers, "Same Old Song"

fred_mouse

Today (Tuesday)

second day of uni - more focused. Met two other PhD students, and a said hello to another who didn't actually talk to me, so I'm not sure if they are staff or student (we are in a locked office space, because of research reasons, which is quite nostalgic. The card scanner makes the same beep as the ones at the Telethon Institute did)
I'm kind of keeping up with other parts of my life, but not in any way that makes it look like I have my shit together. The lounge has a teetering mound of clean washing, there is a pile of stuff on the bed I need to sort before I can go to sleep (by which I think I mean 'dump back on the floor'). I've taken some of the necessities in to the new office, and tomorrow I'll organise a locked cubby for keeping things in, which means I can bring any books in that make sense.

Yesterday

Didn't quite make it to bed before 11pm last night, but it was close. Awoke naturally at 6:50am, which meant that I could relax for a little bit and laze about until the alarm went off. I didn't, in the end, getting up after about 2 minutes, and getting in the shower.
Past me had a work day morning packing checklist, which was greatly appreciated this morning, as there were a couple of things that I would otherwise have forgotten. There are a couple of items that I've managed to misplace, and maybe I'll have time to sort them tonight, but I'm not optimistic about that. I was enough slow getting ready that I missed the 7:45am bus, so artisanat dropped me at the train station. Youngest gave me two options for public transport from there--either the circle route (longer, relies on Leach Hwy not being clogged), or train to Canning Bridge and either the 100 or 101 bus. I did the latter, and once I found the right stand at the interchange, got the first bus that came past.
Good meeting with supervisors, I have ideas of what is to come. I spent more time sorting out logging in to things than I had allowed for, including a trek to the library IT help desk, where it turned out that what I was assuming was one problem turned out to be four separate issues, one of which was solved by changing my password in Outlook. I also went and asked questions of the Library Helpdesk person, who gave me a personalised tour of all the things on the Library Webpage that might be of use to me, and pointed at things to follow up.

Sunday

Went boating on the river with buggs_jenny, their partner P, and their parents (G, K). This was a somewhat last minute invite, they organised for there to be a kayak for me to use, and I had a lot of fun. I hadn't allowed for the timing of how it would all fit together with the fact that it was a recorder group Sunday so it was a bit of a rush to head off and I didn't help with the clean up. I now have to work out how to get involved and go more often (this is not an every weekend thing; I could at best do the off weeks from recorder) given that the car we are looking to sell is the one with the roof racks, but I can't get our kayak on to it on my own. Although, having said that, it is some years since I've moved that kayak and I have no idea how heavy it is relative to my current strength--it is possible that all the shoulder work that I've been doing would be enough.
Recorder with G and ariaflame; L has injured their shoulder and P isn't yet back from visiting their sibling in the eastern states. G is now calling us the A minors; I gather this is a joke that is related to the name of another group they are in. We worked through several trios that I'm not sure that aria has seen before, with some swapping around of parts so that they were sight-reading the easier of the C recorder parts (ie. soprano or tenor).
Dinner with chaosmanor. One of those weeks where it turns out that we have gone through the veggie stash much faster than usual, and I under measured the amount of cabbage to cut to fill the gap for the stir fry. Fortunately, chaosmanor wasn't all that hungry, artisanat was out dancing and got dinner there, and Youngest and Eldest are able to raid the fridge if they are still hungry. And I had had one serve of each of the options at afternoon tea at recorder - G had made two things, and aria had brought one, and I have no ability to resist that kind of temptation. Particularly when G had made a serving specifically for me, because they had made a Bakewell tart (which is similar to the version I make but didn't have coconut in, which might mean that I've conflated two recipes) but had realised at the last minute that their pastry wasn't GF, and had cooked a generous serve in a ramekin.

sovay

It would be neither entirely fair nor completely accurate to say that the second season of Andor (2022–25) holocausted too close to the sun for my tolerance, but it got a lot closer than I had thought was possible.

( Nervous, tired, desensitized. )

tl;dr we will be returning to the series once I cool down and the news out of L.A. and D.C. could stop being quite so bleeding-edge at any second. I should decompress with some queer film.

Current Music: Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory, "Idiot Box"

viridian5

HBO has a 3-episode documentary series called The Mortician. Episode 1 has some horrifying events and you think you know the basic shape of how things will get worse and who's involved. Episode 2? Mwahahaha. Surprise! I'm curious to see how the final episode goes.

Otherwise, I'm enjoying today's birthday gifts: a top, 3 CDs (Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism and Plans, and Jack's Mannequin's The Glass Passenger) and this keychain.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: "A Lack of Color" by Death Cab for Cutie

sovay

Apparently our particulate pollution levels are officially unhealthy for sensitive groups, which explains not only the light brass tint to the afternoon but the rather massive asthma attack I had instead of sleeping for the entire morning. The day before, I couldn't enjoy the rain because it came with a headache so skull-crunching, I actually sort of passed out from it at a terrible hour to the rest of my schedule. I was under non-joking doctor's orders to rest up this weekend and it has not vaguely happened. I keep being light-headed, ear-ringing, unfocusable. My brain feels like a flickering commodity and I don't like worrying about false flags.

Current Music: Clover County, "Ultraviolet"

pedanther

I've been experimenting with my journal entries in the last week or two, ( Read more... )

We had a family get-together for the public holiday, ( Read more... )

The board game club had another of their long public holiday sessions ( Read more... )

I had a doctor's appointment this week: a routine thing, not because anything was wrong with me. ( The next bit involves injections )

I don't think I've mentioned in one of these posts that I've started reading Solzhenitsyn: ( Read more... )

( Movies current - Ocean - and upcoming - including ) Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein. The latter had the tagline "Only monsters play god", which is staking out a position in the "'Frankenstein' is not the name of the monster" discourse that I respect.

I finished playing through The Beekeeper's Picnic. ( Read more... )

I got to Parkrun only slightly late this week: ( Read more... )

I've had several experiences this week where I was reading someone's description of their experiences with ADHD and thinking that it sounded worryingly familiar. ( Read more... )

I was yesterday years old when I learned that "Womble" is an actual real surname that actual people really have. (Apparently, it's derived from the Yorkshire town of Wombwell.) The context was somebody mentioning a law firm called Womble Bond Dickinson; the relevant founding partner was apparently called B. S. Womble, which is one of the most made-up-sounding real names I've encountered in recent memory. (His full name was "Bunyan Snipes Womble", which sounds like a law firm all by itself.)

pedanther

#17: Read a book with a title that starts with the same letter as the last name of the previous book's author.

First attempt: Jirel of Joiry by C.L. Moore, a collection of sword & sorcery stories that were first published in Weird Tales in the 1930s alongside the likes of Conan the Barbarian, but have the historical distinction of being written by a woman and having a female protagonist. (The first story has one of those openings where it spends a couple of pages describing a heroic armoured figure before the helmet comes off and everyone, presumably including the original readers, is surprised she's a woman.)( Read more... )

Second attempt: John Brown: Queen Victoria's Highland Servant by Raymond Lamont-Brown. ( Read more... )

Third attempt, for the sake of moving things along, was Chris Van Allsburg's Jumanji, which is a lot shorter and less complicated than the movie it inspired, but still fun. I appreciated the turn it took at the end.

#18: Read a book in the same genre as the previous book.

Taking the genre as "short, plentifully illustrated children's book featuring animals", I opted for The Animals Noah Forgot by the Australian poet Banjo Paterson, which also counts for the June prompt in the Buzzword challenge (a word in the title related to remembering or forgetting). ( Read more... )

fred_mouse

working on Eldest's 21st quilt (yes, it is very overdue). Worked out what is needed, what I have, how the colours are going to be picked for the sections that I'm adding (because the original had a large square of white in the top left corner, so I've started the pattern at the third row, and have to add two rows at the bottom).
today's goal was to identify pieces for four blocks (of the remaining 24), stretch goal to sew them, extra stretch goal to finish assembling that strip (combining rows 5/6 into a single piece). I stalled out at identifying what fabric was suitable for the current set of blocks -- there are so many pieces!
Old Shanghai for the traditional post-con Wednesday gathering. There was some lamentation at the lack of pancakes, and conclusion that the last Pancake place had closed a decade ago.

fred_mouse

With the dramatic change in how I spend my weeks upon me, I'm revisiting Habitica to see what needs doing. I did a bit of a tweak last week, working through my habits list and deciding what was good. I haven't posted that here, because it needed editing, and at this point it is unlikely that I will. However, what do I have in dailies, and how am I going to change it?

Daily journal - this is going just fine, and it is important to my daily process for getting things done; keep
progress at least one to-do - I haven't been making good use of the to-do list, so this has been an issue. Making it optional, possibly to delete.
Tuesdays: weekly update on annual goals - I miss this as often as I achieve it, but it is a useful reminder; keep
read things 'today' list - I haven't been doing this consistently, but it is useful when I do; keep
update the 100 days document with today's small tasks - useful reminder; making it optional
Minimum progress on current project; list of craft projects - delete; make a habit* for 'craft'. I want to keep it, I have a 67 day streak, but I just can't guarantee that I'll be doing it daily, and having it as an intermittent habit is better than beating myself up.
read a book (physical, ebook, doesn't matter) - another one with a good streak, although only 36 days, but can't continue to commit, so moving it to habits.
check notes files for anything I can progress - this is a valuable reminder; I don't want to move it to a habit, making it optional. This is because I have a long term goal of getting everything out of notes and into more sensible locations -- I use the notes app for whatever I need to record Right Now.
Delete anything out of DW inboxes -- useful reminder, but I now at least look at the inbox every day, so deleting
read three emails - useful reminder, does help a little. 53 day streak. Keeping for now, might make optional or delete if it is still too much
update email and safari tabs spreadsheet - the spreadsheet was working as a motivation for while, but now it isn't. I still have it open, and maybe I'll update, but this isn't important. Delete
read at least one page of a drawing book (optional) - I've kind of abandoned this at the moment. I might take the drawing journal to uni with me, and take it places on my lunch break, but I want that to be more relaxed. Delete.
blog post (optional) -- I don't think that aiming to post daily is a good idea going forward. While I wasn't working/studying, it kept me focused on what I was doing, but I'll have other things for that. Delete.

That leaves 7 daily activities, of which journal, reading the to do list and checking emails are required. My notes suggested adding a zotero related task, but I think I'm going to put that in habits instead.

* The advantage of moving things to habits is that on days that I do a lot of whatever, I can tick them off multiple times.

sovay

For the seventy-first yahrzeit of Alan Turing, I have been listening to selections from the galaxy-brained fusion of Michael Vegas Mussmann and Payton Millet's Alan Turing and the Queen of the Night (2025) as well as the glitterqueer mad science of Kele Fleming's "Turing Test" (2024). Every year I discover new art in his memory, like Frank Duffy's A lion for Alan Turing (2023). Lately I treasure it like spite. The best would be countries doing better by their queer and trans living than their honored and unnecessary dead.

Current Music: Kele Fleming, "Turing Test"

fred_mouse

I really haven't been putting much effort into tracking things here; my last post about it was 10th of May. At that point I had finished 2 projects of the 10 I'm hoping for, and made good progress on three. I've not finished anything else since, but I have made good progress on some

Previous good progress

towel rail - has not been progressed. I need a day a) without rain and b) that I have multiple hours available and c) (most importantly) that I remember this needs doing
door mat(s) - I've used up all the existing 'yarn' and I have half a rag rug. Every time I am surprised by how much 'yarn' it takes. I need to work out where I stashed the rest of the strips while we had a houseguest, and assemble more.
Teach myself to draw - this has stalled. I keep misplacing my drawing book or the sketch book I'm using, or the pencil. I need to get a better process.

Progressed since

pink / white / brown crochet blanket -- crochet finished, sewing in the ends. I think I'm half done on the ends?
brown / green knit -- this gets 4-6 rows roughly every second Thursday (when we game online) plus I've sat and worked on it while listening to podcasts.
T's jumper - a handful of rows. I need to make sure to do this every second day at least
blue / white virus blanket - I've finished the first of the two balls I had left, now on to the last one. It is just shy of 70cm square, and I'm on the 13th repeat of the pattern. I suspect this is the last repeat, based on available yarn. Hopefully I have enough to finish.
Eldest's quilt - I have laid it out, I have worked out what is needed to finish it. I have made and joined four blocks and worked out that I was doing something different from the book, and now those are going to be the front of a cushion, just as soon as they aren't attached to the quilt any more (basically, I'm adding 1/2" to each so the finished size is 9.5" rather than 9", but hadn't noted that down anywhere).
Knitting for Kitties - using up a couple of balls of yarn; the green one is done, and we have handed three squares over to purrdence

I'm reasonably happy with this progress. It is possible that either the knitting for kitties or the virus blanket will be finished next, because those are relatively portable. The former lives in my handbag; the latter is going to go in my uni bag (it is possible I will mostly stop carrying the handbag, because it doesn't fit a lunch or a laptop)

sovay

As it turns out, what goes on with my hand is that it's going to have arthritis, but with any luck on the same glacial timeline as the kind that runs in my family, and in the meantime I have been referred back to OT. Maybe there will be more paraffin.

My parents as an unnecessary gift for taking care of the plants while they were out of town—mostly watering a lot of things in pots and digging the black swallow-wort out of the irises—gave me Eddie Muller's Dark City Dames: The Women Who Defined Film Noir (2001/2025), which not only fits the theme of this year's Noir City: Boston, but contains such useful gems as:

One of the most common, if wrong-headed, criticisms of film noir is that it relegates women to simplistic archetypes, making them Pollyannas or femmes fatales, drippy good girls or sinister sexpots. People who believe this nonsense have never seen a noir starring Ella Raines.

Ella Raines is indeed all that and a drum solo on top, but she is not a unique occurrence and I can only hope that people who have not been paying attention to Karen Burroughs Hannsberry or Imogen Sara Smith will listen to the Czar of Noir when he writes about its complicated women, because I am never going to have the platform to get this fact through people's heads and I am never going to let up on it, either.

Anyway, I learned a new vocabulary word.

Current Music: Lucy Dacus, "Most Wanted Man"

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thedarlingone

June 2025

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Page Summary

pedanther - The First Circle
pedanther - The Count of Monte Cristo (2024)
sovay - Wish they'd drop the knife in the peep-show parking lot
bookblather - fridayfive
soc_puppet in queerly_beloved - Thursday Recs
sophia_sol - 5 things: being bored at zoos, joplin plugins, an older sff book style, names, complimenting birds
xandromedovna in fic_rush - Round 151 Is Open!
sovay - And then we shall dance on your graves
sovay - I'll never see my mom's guitar again
fred_mouse - Daily notes
sovay - All that skin against the glass
viridian5 - And try to tell the difference / Between shooting stars and satellites
sovay - I stay quiet, but I'm seeing ultraviolet
pedanther - Week in review: Week to 7 June
pedanther - Book Chain, weeks 12 & 13
fred_mouse - [backdated] daily notes
fred_mouse - Habitica
sovay - It's morphogenesis
fred_mouse - [100 days] Craft project update
sovay - Finally, time to write the book on you

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