R.I.P. Sam Kieth
Mar. 21st, 2026 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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scans_dailySam Kieth has passed away at the age of 63. He was the creator of Maxx and the co-creator of Sandman.
More info here.
More info here.
cyberghostface posting in scans_dailyOn concluding projects
Mar. 21st, 2026 08:03 pmrolanniWhat went before:
Also, this happened:
#
Saturday. Sunny and warm. I think. I haven't been out. In fact, I not only slept late, I lay in bed, snuggled with cats, and read my email, so I'm just now getting up and around.
Today's big plan is to make focaccia and maybe read or maybe... No, I don't think I'll write anything today. I do need to do some research but that can maybe wait. Maybe I'll finish my embroidery project and see how that turns out.
As you can see my plans are firm.
How's everybody doing today?
#
Focaccia happened. Yes, it tastes every bit as good as it looks.
#
Had a very strange experience -- I can't get into either Bank of America or Discover to get my statements for monies due in early April, which is only a problem because neither one of those entities sent me a reminder that I had a new bill, and I happened to notice that now that my head isn't filled up with BOOK.
Discover says that it's really terribly sorry but it can't complete "that operation" (which would be logging in) right now. Bank of America, ever charming, says that I phucked up my ID or my password or maybe both? And it might let me in if I give it my social security number, which, err. No.
So! I have two phone calls to make on Monday, lucky me.
In other news, I'm on what ought to be my last four meals from Cook Unity, delivered yesterday. Today, I had the shrimp grain bowl, which was...OK, I guess. I had six shrimp and got bored with them, so I chopped up the leftover ones, and I'll be having a shrimp salad sandwich for the evening meal.
Also we here in Central Maine are under an Active Weather Advisory and warned to look out for between 3 and 6 inches of snow on the overnight. Honestly, March.
And now? I'm going to go embroider.
#
So, I finished my first! ever! concept-to-finished-piece embroidery project and!
I learned some stuff.
The first thing I learned is that I made this too small, in terms of the current states of my eyesight and the steadiness of my hand. Next time, I WILL go bigger, even if it means I can't get the whole design inside the hoop at once.
I also learned -- actually, I knew this -- white-on-white is hard to read. Duh.
But! and most importantly!
I learned that it Can Be Done.
Which means I can Do It Again.
I should report that Tali and Rook joined me in the living room while I finished this up. Rook sat on my lap and didn't even try to mess the thread. He just kinda curled up and went to sleep.
#
So, that was a nice day off-ish. Tomorrow, I will start to read Kin Right, and will also plan on clearing off the top of my desk -- yes, again.
My next embroidery project is a pre-printed sampler -- that's it, just the design. So, my next step, now that's in the hoop, is to make a yarn/floss card. Which means I need to dig out the Big Bag of Floss. Later.
For right now, I'm going to pour myself a glass of wine and see about making that shrimp salad sandwich.
Everybody have a good evening. I'll check in tomorrow.
10trueloves: loss
Mar. 21st, 2026 06:32 pmsenmutAO3 Link | Distraction from Grief (200 words) by Merfilly
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Birds of Prey
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Sandra Wu-San, Dinah Lance
Additional Tags: Double Drabble, +Modern Age (1986-Present), Post-Crisis, [Birds of Prey Vol. 1 - 1999-2009]
Summary:
Move. Evaluate. Decide. Commit.
Shiva was making her work through her grief for Sensei in the way that mattered, now that they had foiled Cheshire's plan. Both of them excelled in the Arts, but the difference was being felt in every muscle, joint, and tendon as Dinah worked through the spar.
Shiva was a master, effortless in blending her many forms to always meet any rally that Dinah made, preventing Dinah from winning. Yet, Dinah also recognized that Shiva was having to rely on that blending to keep the upper hand.
In a formal, single style spar, Dinah and Shiva would likely be evenly matched.
Like this?
Dinah had to smile, a genuine one, to be pushed so far, so hard, so long.
Was that what Shiva had been waiting for? As the next move saw Dinah on the mats and Shiva pinning her, full length, hand in knife-strike pose at her throat.
"You choose life, not dwelling on death," Shiva purred, and damned if that didn't make Dinah remember other aspects of living that were worthwhile.
"Care to live a little with me, grab a hot soak, some good food?"
"Sensualist."
And yet, they moved together in that plan.
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Birds of Prey
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Sandra Wu-San, Dinah Lance
Additional Tags: Double Drabble, +Modern Age (1986-Present), Post-Crisis, [Birds of Prey Vol. 1 - 1999-2009]
Summary:
Shiva pushes, so Dinah can put it behind.
Distraction from Grief
Move. Evaluate. Decide. Commit.
Shiva was making her work through her grief for Sensei in the way that mattered, now that they had foiled Cheshire's plan. Both of them excelled in the Arts, but the difference was being felt in every muscle, joint, and tendon as Dinah worked through the spar.
Shiva was a master, effortless in blending her many forms to always meet any rally that Dinah made, preventing Dinah from winning. Yet, Dinah also recognized that Shiva was having to rely on that blending to keep the upper hand.
In a formal, single style spar, Dinah and Shiva would likely be evenly matched.
Like this?
Dinah had to smile, a genuine one, to be pushed so far, so hard, so long.
Was that what Shiva had been waiting for? As the next move saw Dinah on the mats and Shiva pinning her, full length, hand in knife-strike pose at her throat.
"You choose life, not dwelling on death," Shiva purred, and damned if that didn't make Dinah remember other aspects of living that were worthwhile.
"Care to live a little with me, grab a hot soak, some good food?"
"Sensualist."
And yet, they moved together in that plan.
Possibly my most #dadcore thought EVER
Mar. 21st, 2026 11:06 pmcosmolinguistOn a single tube train alone the other day, I saw two people in black thin-rimmed aviators and all I could thin was well now I know what I want my next pair of glasses to look like!
Never felt so much like a dad, possibly because that style always reminded me of my dad since that's what he wore when I was a little kid.
But one of these two people was a young person of ambiguous gender presentation, so I have hope that such things can become fashionable among the queers.
I'm due an eye test, and presumably new glasses, so I've been keeping an eye out for what kind of frames I might want (since the narrow rectangular thick-framed "hipster glasses" that seem to suit me best are not as readily available as they once were! the frames I have now are boring as hell, too big and too round for me even though they're not as much of either as has been popular lately).
happy equinox, etc
Mar. 21st, 2026 10:12 pmkaberettToday was A Travel Day; yesterday, in preparation for same, I Ran Errands, including "acquiring Tiny Cake" and "visiting the pharmacy".
On the way from those two jobs to the next couple, I passed Several Good Things.
One was a new-to-me flavour of completely ridiculous daffodil:
It's a double not in the sense of having a confusing froth of intermingled trumpets (as of Double Fashion or Double Camparnelle, both of which exist locally), but in the sense of having two nested trumpets, one shorter and orange, from which the longer white one protrudes. I have never! previously! seen a thing like this! I am really enjoying my current streak of encountering varieties of daffodil that make me go "what the fuck???"
Shortly thereafter I checked over my shoulder while crossing a tiny bridge and was startled and delighted to see A COOT UPON THE NEST that, last I passed it, was clearly still derelict. Obviously I went back and Gazed Upon It for Some Time and was eventually rewarded by it STANDING UP to reveal SEVEN??? (possibly) EGGS!!!
And the Egyptian goslings were peeping about the place when I subsequently passed them on my way back up the hill. A+ errands would run again.
A quiet Saturday
Mar. 21st, 2026 11:59 amsholioI posted some more Babylon 5 fic in the last couple of days: a new Londo/G'Kar fake dating fic plus a new chapter of the B5 catacomb WIP.
It's been a year this month since I started watching the show - my first post under the B5 tag was posted March 3, 2025 after watching the first couple of episodes. Still completely gone on it! I regret nothing!
In other news, NYT gift link to an article about Paul Brainerd, creator of Aldus PageMaker and inventor of the term "desktop publishing." This was a fascinating nostalgia read for me because, while I had no idea of the actual history, this guy (and Adobe and Apple) created the professional world of my young adulthood. My first job out of college in (I think) 1998 was working in the layout department of a newspaper that had just recently (last few years) gone from paste-up to an all-Mac layout room using a program similar to PageMaker from a third-party software maker that no longer exists. PageMaker - which I also learned to use in the college computer lab, and later at work - was the direct predecessor of InDesign, widely used even today. It's interesting to think back on those old newspaper days and how thoroughly they shaped me and continue to shape me. The computer/layout/marketing experience I got as a layout artist in the late 90s and 2000s has been immensely useful for my current self-publishing career.
It continues to be horrendously cold. We've been sitting under a high-pressure ridge and have had gorgeous sunny days that are absolutely freezing. It was -20F when I got up this morning and it's 0F out there right now. My husband's (uni-age) students are over here today because they wanted to help him dig out an ancient non-working snowblower that someone gave us ages ago from a snowbank and try to get it working again. (We do actually have TWO other snowblowers. This is just for fun.)
I took this picture on a walk up our driveway to the highway to get the mail a couple of days ago:
At least at this time of year, the sun warms it up SOMEWHAT during the day - in January it can sit at -40 24/7 for weeks; at this time of year we're still experiencing 20-40 degree increases during the day .... which is still barely enough to push us above 0F. The 10-day forecast shows that it will be glacially (haha) warming up, but still may not have crawled into above-freezing temps by the end of the month. UGH, I'M READY FOR SPRING.
It's been a year this month since I started watching the show - my first post under the B5 tag was posted March 3, 2025 after watching the first couple of episodes. Still completely gone on it! I regret nothing!
In other news, NYT gift link to an article about Paul Brainerd, creator of Aldus PageMaker and inventor of the term "desktop publishing." This was a fascinating nostalgia read for me because, while I had no idea of the actual history, this guy (and Adobe and Apple) created the professional world of my young adulthood. My first job out of college in (I think) 1998 was working in the layout department of a newspaper that had just recently (last few years) gone from paste-up to an all-Mac layout room using a program similar to PageMaker from a third-party software maker that no longer exists. PageMaker - which I also learned to use in the college computer lab, and later at work - was the direct predecessor of InDesign, widely used even today. It's interesting to think back on those old newspaper days and how thoroughly they shaped me and continue to shape me. The computer/layout/marketing experience I got as a layout artist in the late 90s and 2000s has been immensely useful for my current self-publishing career.
It continues to be horrendously cold. We've been sitting under a high-pressure ridge and have had gorgeous sunny days that are absolutely freezing. It was -20F when I got up this morning and it's 0F out there right now. My husband's (uni-age) students are over here today because they wanted to help him dig out an ancient non-working snowblower that someone gave us ages ago from a snowbank and try to get it working again. (We do actually have TWO other snowblowers. This is just for fun.)
I took this picture on a walk up our driveway to the highway to get the mail a couple of days ago:
At least at this time of year, the sun warms it up SOMEWHAT during the day - in January it can sit at -40 24/7 for weeks; at this time of year we're still experiencing 20-40 degree increases during the day .... which is still barely enough to push us above 0F. The 10-day forecast shows that it will be glacially (haha) warming up, but still may not have crawled into above-freezing temps by the end of the month. UGH, I'M READY FOR SPRING.
Fossils
Mar. 21st, 2026 02:39 pmysabetwordsmithThis crocodile ran like a greyhound across prehistoric Britain 200 million years ago
A newly discovered Triassic reptile from the UK looked more like a racing greyhound than a crocodile, built for speed on land. With long legs and a lightweight body, it hunted small animals in a dry, upland environment millions of years ago. Scientists identified it as a new species after spotting key differences in its fossils. It’s also a tribute to an inspiring teacher who helped spark a future scientist’s curiosity.
Peculiar Obligations has several such species called galloping crocodiles, hoofed crocodiles, or hoofers.
A newly discovered Triassic reptile from the UK looked more like a racing greyhound than a crocodile, built for speed on land. With long legs and a lightweight body, it hunted small animals in a dry, upland environment millions of years ago. Scientists identified it as a new species after spotting key differences in its fossils. It’s also a tribute to an inspiring teacher who helped spark a future scientist’s curiosity.
Peculiar Obligations has several such species called galloping crocodiles, hoofed crocodiles, or hoofers.
Birdfeeding
Mar. 21st, 2026 02:10 pmysabetwordsmithToday is sunny and hot.
I fed the birds. I've seen a small mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 3/21/26 -- I put topsoil in the four large pots that sit on the ground along the north side of the picnic table.
I also put the indoor flats of tree sprouts and squash sprouts outside to get some sun and air.
It is so hot outside as to limit my activity. In mid-March. This annoys me.
EDIT 3/21/26 -- I put topsoil in the four large pots that sit on the ground along the south side of the picnic table. There is just a little left now.
It's 81°F now. :/
EDIT 3/21/26 -- I spread the last of the topsoil in other pots around the new picnic table.
It's 82°F now. Fuck climate change.
EDIT 3/21/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
I've seen two mourning doves in the forest garden.
EDIT 3/21/26 -- I did more work around the patio.
I am done for the night.
I fed the birds. I've seen a small mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 3/21/26 -- I put topsoil in the four large pots that sit on the ground along the north side of the picnic table.
I also put the indoor flats of tree sprouts and squash sprouts outside to get some sun and air.
It is so hot outside as to limit my activity. In mid-March. This annoys me.
EDIT 3/21/26 -- I put topsoil in the four large pots that sit on the ground along the south side of the picnic table. There is just a little left now.
It's 81°F now. :/
EDIT 3/21/26 -- I spread the last of the topsoil in other pots around the new picnic table.
It's 82°F now. Fuck climate change.
EDIT 3/21/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
I've seen two mourning doves in the forest garden.
EDIT 3/21/26 -- I did more work around the patio.
I am done for the night.
You are just the fingertips of something
Mar. 21st, 2026 02:58 pmsovayThe afternoon's mail brought my contributor's copy of Not One of Us #86, containing my poem "Northern Comfort." I wrote it out of my discoveries of the ghost-ground that has been directly underfoot all my life and longer, from King Philip's War to Pomp's Wall, and this administration and its murderous terror of history. It shares a page and an issue of emptiness with a precisely targeted incantation by Gwynne Garfinkle as well the equally hollowing fiction and poetry of Kris Schokrowsky, Penny Durham, Carsten Cheung, Jennifer Crow, and more. I almost referred to the covert art by John and Flo Stanton, obscured by shattered webs of negative space or the rust-light of abandoned industries. Subscribe! Contribute! Make the right kind of strangeness in this world. I am off to South Station to collect one north-traveling seal.
movies: The Revenant and Stalker
Mar. 21st, 2026 11:58 amsnickficThe Revenant (2015). A wilderness guide (Leonardo Dicaprio) left for dead after being mauled by a bear goes on a revenge quest against the trapper (Tom Hardy) who killed his son.
As suggested by that summary, this extremely whumpy, if you're into that, to a point well beyond realism. Somehow our guy Glass struggles through total wilderness for tens of miles with myriad open wounds and a broken leg, and rather than dying of deprivation, exposure, or infection, he actually gets better. By the end of the movie he's barely even hobbling anymore. Also, the people in this movie spend so much time tromping through and even immersed in barely-melted icewater that I expected them to either die of hypothermia or lose some toes to frostbite in the first twenty minutes.
This is also an incredibly linear movie. There are no surprises here, no unexpected decisions or developments. No depths of character are revealed. It's also incredibly male-centric. The only female character with lines is Glass's wife, who's dead before the movie even starts, and the only other woman on screen is a Native woman-shaped Macguffin who gets raped on screen, then rescued, but never gets to speak. Even worse than that, to me, is that we get nothing of Glass's relationship with his half-Pawnee son at all. Other than simmering resentment over unjust treatment, we don't have any sense of the kid's personality or Glass's dynamic with him, which makes for a weaker movie and also makes it hard to believe in the movie's pretensions of giving a shit about the effect of European colonization on Native peoples.
I watched this for the scenery, and I will say it was great on that front. Lots of snowy crags, excellent! I also really enjoyed Will Poulter and Domhnall Gleeson, who round out the cast.
Cannot believe this beat Mad Max: Fury Road for best picture.
--
Stalker (1979). Wikipedia summary: a man called a stalker guides two clients through a hazardous wasteland to a mysterious restricted site known simply as the "Zone", where there supposedly exists a room which grants a person's innermost desires.
This is a Soviet movie by director Andrei Tarkovsky, who also did Solaris. If I'd realized that, I could have better set my expectations for this movie. I watched it because the premise gave me cosmic horror vibes and specifically because it felt like a precursor to a bunch of more recent cosmic horror that I've loved or at least loved concepts from, including Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach trilogy and movies like A Dark Song, Malefique, YellowBrickRoad, and Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made. (If you're not familiar, this a hilariously idiosyncratic list of widely varying quality, lol. There's a reason you probably haven't heard of most of those.) Maybe, I said, this is the original source of these other things I love!
Unfortunately, while this does promise many horrors, it delivers none of them. Very possibly it was an inspiration for those other things, but in the sense that other people watched this and were like, "okay but what if this were actually a horror movie."
The first hour or so is my favorite; I was genuinely shocked when the sepia filters of the real world give way to full color in the Zone, and there's some great tension as our stalker navigates the Zone using methods that hint at incomprehensible dangers. However, the longer we go without encountering any of those dangers, the harder it is to believe in them. By the time we finally arrive at the possibly magical room, I was more than half convinced that the dangers were all imagined, and the glimpse of two decaying skeletons came too late to change my mind. And then! We DON'T EVEN GO INTO THE ROOM. NO ONE GOES INTO THE ROOM. *flips over table*
Tarkovsky was not trying to make the movie I wanted to watch; he was much more interested in big philosophical questions and really long takes, and I gather this is considered an all-time classic for those reasons.
This was apparently an adaptation-in-name-only of the Strugatsky Brothers' novel Roadside Picnic, which I happen to have already have on hold at the library for unrelated reasons. I'm interested to see how it compares.
As suggested by that summary, this extremely whumpy, if you're into that, to a point well beyond realism. Somehow our guy Glass struggles through total wilderness for tens of miles with myriad open wounds and a broken leg, and rather than dying of deprivation, exposure, or infection, he actually gets better. By the end of the movie he's barely even hobbling anymore. Also, the people in this movie spend so much time tromping through and even immersed in barely-melted icewater that I expected them to either die of hypothermia or lose some toes to frostbite in the first twenty minutes.
This is also an incredibly linear movie. There are no surprises here, no unexpected decisions or developments. No depths of character are revealed. It's also incredibly male-centric. The only female character with lines is Glass's wife, who's dead before the movie even starts, and the only other woman on screen is a Native woman-shaped Macguffin who gets raped on screen, then rescued, but never gets to speak. Even worse than that, to me, is that we get nothing of Glass's relationship with his half-Pawnee son at all. Other than simmering resentment over unjust treatment, we don't have any sense of the kid's personality or Glass's dynamic with him, which makes for a weaker movie and also makes it hard to believe in the movie's pretensions of giving a shit about the effect of European colonization on Native peoples.
I watched this for the scenery, and I will say it was great on that front. Lots of snowy crags, excellent! I also really enjoyed Will Poulter and Domhnall Gleeson, who round out the cast.
Cannot believe this beat Mad Max: Fury Road for best picture.
--
Stalker (1979). Wikipedia summary: a man called a stalker guides two clients through a hazardous wasteland to a mysterious restricted site known simply as the "Zone", where there supposedly exists a room which grants a person's innermost desires.
This is a Soviet movie by director Andrei Tarkovsky, who also did Solaris. If I'd realized that, I could have better set my expectations for this movie. I watched it because the premise gave me cosmic horror vibes and specifically because it felt like a precursor to a bunch of more recent cosmic horror that I've loved or at least loved concepts from, including Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach trilogy and movies like A Dark Song, Malefique, YellowBrickRoad, and Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made. (If you're not familiar, this a hilariously idiosyncratic list of widely varying quality, lol. There's a reason you probably haven't heard of most of those.) Maybe, I said, this is the original source of these other things I love!
Unfortunately, while this does promise many horrors, it delivers none of them. Very possibly it was an inspiration for those other things, but in the sense that other people watched this and were like, "okay but what if this were actually a horror movie."
The first hour or so is my favorite; I was genuinely shocked when the sepia filters of the real world give way to full color in the Zone, and there's some great tension as our stalker navigates the Zone using methods that hint at incomprehensible dangers. However, the longer we go without encountering any of those dangers, the harder it is to believe in them. By the time we finally arrive at the possibly magical room, I was more than half convinced that the dangers were all imagined, and the glimpse of two decaying skeletons came too late to change my mind. And then! We DON'T EVEN GO INTO THE ROOM. NO ONE GOES INTO THE ROOM. *flips over table*
Tarkovsky was not trying to make the movie I wanted to watch; he was much more interested in big philosophical questions and really long takes, and I gather this is considered an all-time classic for those reasons.
This was apparently an adaptation-in-name-only of the Strugatsky Brothers' novel Roadside Picnic, which I happen to have already have on hold at the library for unrelated reasons. I'm interested to see how it compares.
starandrea♥ Things my Gen Z High School students said while playing The Oregon Trail (youtube short by JahnifestDestiny)
The best thing about this video is this description of the game by a commenter:
"Oregon Trail: The game that unites students with the realization that they are NOT prepared to travel all the way to Oregon in a car, let alone a covered wagon in the 1850s."
The second best thing about this video is that there are eight more popular comments before someone says:
"'my Gen z high school students' says the Gen z teacher"
And the following classic exchange, which still made me laugh:
"The Oregon Trail isn't 40 years old I was born in 1985."
"As someone also born in 1985, have I got news for you..."
The best thing about this video is this description of the game by a commenter:
"Oregon Trail: The game that unites students with the realization that they are NOT prepared to travel all the way to Oregon in a car, let alone a covered wagon in the 1850s."
The second best thing about this video is that there are eight more popular comments before someone says:
"'my Gen z high school students' says the Gen z teacher"
And the following classic exchange, which still made me laugh:
"The Oregon Trail isn't 40 years old I was born in 1985."
"As someone also born in 1985, have I got news for you..."
the barbarians in chief
Mar. 21st, 2026 11:16 amsolarbirdPete Hegseth either has no idea what a pocket square is and/or what it’s for, or he uses the American flag as facial tissue, for blowing his nose. You might point this out to any flag patriots who still worship the shitstain and his minions:
Normally, I probably wouldn’t bother with something this stupid and petty, but they’re trying so hard – so hard – to pretend to be old money and yet have no fucking idea what any of the symbolism means that this basically became a small but perfect snapshot of the sick delusional fraud encompassing literally every aspect of their worthless, filthy lives.
There are nearly infinite reasons to want to punch this cretin directly in the face the moment you see him, this is merely one of many.
But it’s just so completely on the nose, isn’t it?
Just like someone’s fist should be.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.