Things and Stuff

Jul. 18th, 2025 10:32 am
smokingboot: (individualism)
[personal profile] smokingboot
Too many phone calls to make. The NHS keeps making all these appointments for me to have vaccinations. First it was the shingles one, which I still haven't rescheduled (because I know that the moment I phone to do that, they will remind me that I haven't had my Covid booster this year) now it's the pneumococcal. All this because I am perceived to be more at risk. The surgeon warned me that they were going to be pestering me for the next decade, but I thought that was just the yearly mammogram. Apparently there's more to it than that. I know I should be grateful and am trying to be, but injections! Pah!

Meanwhile, looks like the government is keeping its manifesto promise of lowering the voting age from 18 to 16. Loud is the harrumphing. While I can see that a 16 year old may be too immature to understand the ramifications of their vote, and yes, greater understanding with age is an expectation, I wouldn't say election results bear these ideas out. It took supposedly mature individuals to vote for Brexit, Johnson, and Truss, and now many of these same supposedly mature individuals are gathering behind Nigel Farage and Reform. There's never a guarantee that a 20/40/60/80 year old will vote wisely, even given a universal value of wisdom. I think it was Jefferson who believed that an educated citizenry is necessary for the survival of a democracy. There's a need to teach people how government works as well as the responsibilities of democracy, and we just don't do it, we never did. That's where the problem lies. We're lazy and tribal and find politics dull unless someone's knickers are involved. It's only when things go wrong that we shift our butts into gear, often too late. The main weakness with this new legislation is that perhaps 16-18 is an easily propagandised age group, very vulnerable to social contagion and media influence. But hasn't everyone had similar issues? I remember times when women voted as their husbands told them to, and an old friend of mine recalled to me how as an adult back in the 70s, he was taken to his first polling booth by his dad who also told him where to put his X. Now he doesn't vote at all.

Sweet Summer Child

Jul. 18th, 2025 08:22 am
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[personal profile] smokingboot
I had left some old clean kitty litter trays out the back because I intended to put them in the garage but forgot. Rain had come and filled them, and in one was a drowned bee. When I saw her twitching faintly I scooped her out and tried to coax her with some sugar water, but she wasn't interested. She preferred to sit on my hand among the clover flowers in the heat of the day, and I got to see close up that she was a red tailed bumblebee, cleaning herself thoroughly while her matted fluff and dripping wings dried in the sunshine. Her pollen baskets were drenched flat along her legs, but eh, work lost can be replaced. The sun beat down on us and I was happy. She crawled up my arm towards my elbow, and arrived at the rolled up cuffs of my sleeves. Suddenly the bee was slow, slower, stopped.

Oh no, I thought, it's been too much, she's - then she took off, bright and buzzing into the sky, all that beaming blue. And she flew just fine.

Just goes to show that one bee can make a great day.

But yes, those trays are in the garage now.

Century Road

Jul. 17th, 2025 07:51 am
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[personal profile] smokingboot
I am only calling this post Century Road because a friend has identified the photo below as one of the parties at her house there. Early 90s I'm guessing. I gather this must have some sort of 18th century meets Gothic Rave, but have absolutely no memory of it.



My mother's gift of a watch does not go with any other part of my outfit. That top needs cinching. Why am I clutching a plastic bag?

Of the folk in and around the photo, the gent in the wig lived happy and well off and died the same way beloved by his partners and friends, the other found himself a long term partner, created a family, pursued his genius, and rumour has it became something of a gentle recluse, recoiling from the clamour of everything. The lady who remembers Century Road found her own muse in art and left London for the peace of Kent, her then husband later got into and out of Scientology, and even now spends his time on social media presenting the world with videos from youtube channels with names like Truther777 and WhatTheyDontWantYouToKnow.

And the idiot in the middle, with her eyes closed and her Marie-Antoinette make up? She had a few falls but she found true love and good friends, travelled like a bird, wrote a bit, and turned out OK.

Word: Cavil

Jul. 16th, 2025 04:53 pm
stonepicnicking_okapi: letters (letters)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
Wednesday's word is...

...cavil.

[kav-uhl]

1. to raise irritating and trivial objections; find fault with unnecessarily (usually followed by at or about).

--

I found this in Murder in Zanzibar by M. M. Kaye.

It’s a pity that your taste in newspapers didn’t run to a smaller sized sheet, but who am I to carp and c-cavil?

News & Views

Jul. 15th, 2025 04:06 pm
stonepicnicking_okapi: ChopSuey (chopsuey)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
1. The great news is that the Gates Foundation is going to fund the boys' father's work for 2 years. He has been working (and continues to work) day and night on proposals and plans to keep the work alive since the dissolution of USAID. His boss told him to celebrate last week because of an organization which had 70+ people, there are only 10 left and it's still going thanks in large part to him.

2. My work is going along. I am learning my clients' needs and preferences and ways. People live very differently, from very messy to very clean and that's interesting.

3. Trying to figure out when to fic and how to get myself in the mood & mindset to fic.

Not much else exciting going on.

Ryu and Ryua went camping again!

The Valley of Lune

Jul. 15th, 2025 07:49 am
smokingboot: (rose)
[personal profile] smokingboot
...is beautiful whether you wander it, or just look at it through the glass of a champagne flute from a hot tub. Guess which option we went for? 😁

We met some dear mates and enjoyed a time of brilliant warmth on every level; sunshine, great conversations, fab if damaging cocktails. The morning after my birthday, I woke early and wandered out to look across the way. The sheep were not up then and the farm down the hill had not brought out its horses but the light was bright and warm already, and a large solitary rabbit lolloped 'across my path' as elders might say. It was so big and at ease I thought it had to be an escaped pet. Then it sat up and turned its head and I saw the white backs of its ears tipped with black, no rabbit but a hare and bold as brass. The folklore connecting hares with witchcraft and magic was prevalent in many places but none more so than Lancashire, and it makes special sense in a place named after the moon.* The last time I saw one was at the entrance to the venue for my hen night celebrations, when it just stared at me. This one may have noticed me or not, but wasn't concerned either way. I watched it for a long time.

I have some special memories of this weekend that won't do with pinning down in words, so I'll just have to keep them safe and for once trust myself not to forget.

*The most popular theory for the Lune's etymology has nothing to do with the moon. It comes from the name Iolonus who appears to have been a Celtic god of meadows/clearings and was respected around here. This deity is only known about from three dedicatory inscriptions, two of which were found in this area. I like this because it's poetically apt:

Music Monday: Killin it Girl by jhope

Jul. 14th, 2025 03:32 pm
stonepicnicking_okapi: record player (recordplayer)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
Yesterday jhope of BTS performed at Lollapalooza in Berlin. Here's a fan cam (not great quality) of the song Killin' it Girl. I'm thinking this will be the last solo performance of his for a while. He did his world tour (which I caught in Brooklyn in April) and he is in his 'get naked/fuck boy' phase. :)

Sunshine Revival #3: Snack Shack

Jul. 13th, 2025 05:28 pm
stonepicnicking_okapi: lemons (lemons)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
Sunshine-Revival-Carnival-2.png

Challenge #3

Journaling prompt: What are your favorite summer-associated foods?
Creative prompt: Draw art of or make graphics of summer foods, or post your favorite summer recipes. 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.


Mostly fruit and cold things and fair or picnic food.

1. Popsicles
2. Watermelon
3. Strawberries
4. Blackberries
5. Deviled eggs
6. Cherries
7. Funnel cakes
8. Ice cream
9. Lemonade
10. Snow cones

I had 2 cherry stickers, so I did this small collage.

stonepicnicking_okapi: holmes in silohuette (holmessilouhette)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
I was planning to post about The Hound of the Baskervilles in sections for the Sundays in the summer (i.e., before the boys return to school). I was intending to start last Sunday but my anxiety about the job was so high I could barely function so let's see if I can catch up a little but keep with the plan.

The Hound of the Baskervilles was published in The Strand from August 1901 - April 1902.

I actually managed to view a first edition (or at least an early edition) of it in an antique shop in one of the malls in Las Vegas when I visited there 2 years ago for the BTS concert.



It is the Sherlock Holmes work which has been most adapted, I think, into other media (film, TV, radio plays, etc.). I did a little research on the many adaptations but if you have a favorite, please drop it in the comments.

I only have the bandwidth to do the first chapter today.

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 we get a deduction (which is my favorite part of any story). A prospective client has left behind his walking stick (called a Penang lawyer) and Watson and Holmes deduce characteristics of its owner. In The Annotated Holmes one scholar remarks:

It is curious how frequenly Holmes' clients took insufficient care of their property. The result was always highly satisfactory for Holmes invariably made a reconstruction of the missing client from the missing article.

[We see this in "The Blue Carbuncle" with the hat.]

Here's Holmes looking at the stick.

chapter 1

We will meet the owner of the stick in Chapter 2 and learn what business he has with Holmes.
chapter 1 page 2

Chapter 1 page 2 of the manuscript

Sunshine Revival #2: Tunnel of Love

Jul. 13th, 2025 01:04 pm
stonepicnicking_okapi: puzzle (puzzleicon)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
Adjusting to the job, I am behind on...everything. I am still figuring out when to do things and how to engineer motivation to do things and how to prioritize and what things will have to be cut from to the to-do list permanently because there simply isn't as much free time as there was. So please bear with me (I am speaking to myself more than you because I have discovered over and over again that my friends are MUCH kinder to me than I ever am to myself).

Sunshine-Revival-Carnival-4.png

Journaling: The romance of summer! What do you love? Write about anything you feel sentimental about or that gets your heart pumping.
Creative: Write a love poem to anyone or anything you like


In 2023 and 2024, I did Fannish 50 so I have a nice list of things I like. Mysteries & detective stories, ghost stories, poetry, audiobooks, puzzles, collage, BTS, miniatures, art, libraries, coffee, chocolate, Christmas & Halloween, okapis & sea turtles, the ocean, the moon, tea, bees & honey, tarot, fireworks, autumn, Snoopy.

I watched the latest Venom movie last night. Parts of it were very good. I am glad they left The Girl out of it this time. I was glad Mrs. Chen got a beautiful cameo. I can't say it 'got my heart pumping' but I enjoyed it.

I finished the jigsaw puzzle below yesterday [Around the World in 50 Plants, 1000 pieces, art by Lucille Clerc, a decent puzzle, well-fitting pieces], and there is ALWAYS a satisfaction at putting the last piece in. Is it better than sex? My ace-spectrum self says YES. I also like poetry and this is poem #26 from Jo Bell's book 52: write a poem a week. Start now. Keep going. The prompt was erotica. I write PLENTY of explicit fic and have written explicit poetry, too, but I combined it with the journal prompt of the Sunshine Revival.

jigsaw by okapi

they spill into the lid. like shelling peas
like wheat from chaff. or sheep from goat.
soft noise, soft rhythm, fingers flick with ease
and satisfaction. bedlam’s antidote.

define fine boundaries and orient
the scene. an orgy. orifice and limb
are rife. there’s wanting and there’s turgescent
as error and trial make order of whim

But there. And there. And there. No. Yes. the frame
takes shape. union by union. head to tail
and tail to head. with time, the eye can name
the subtleties of hue and pattern scale

reward is the breath held ‘til the last piece
has found its way home, then sigh of release

Collage Journal: A Gorey Summer

Jul. 11th, 2025 08:57 am
stonepicnicking_okapi: journal (journal)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
I am much happier with this one. Imagine an author (typewriter) penning the scene of a Gorey Summer.

stonepicnicking_okapi: otherwords (otherwords)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
At Noon by Reginald Gibbons

The thick-walled room’s cave-darkness,
cool in summer, soothes
by saying, This is the truth, not the taut
cicada-strummed daylight.
Rest here, out of the flame—the thick air’s
stirred by the fan’s four
slow-moving spoons; under the house the stone
has its feet in deep water.
Outside, even the sun god, dressed in this life
as a lizard, abruptly rises
on stiff legs and descends blasé toward the shadows.

Word: Persiflage

Jul. 9th, 2025 04:49 pm
stonepicnicking_okapi: letters (letters)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
Wednesday's word is courtesy of [personal profile] kitarella_imagines and is...

...persiflage

[pur-suh-flahzh, pair-]

noun

1. light, bantering talk or writing.
2. a frivolous or flippant style of treating a subject.

origin

First recorded in 1750–60; from French, derivative of persifler “to banter,” equivalent to per- prefix meaning “through, thoroughly, very” + siffler “to whistle, hiss.”

example

Maybe that shows that they’ve finally gotten wise to the PR persiflage of Big Pharma. Los Angeles Times 10/11/23

Happy ARMY Day!

Jul. 9th, 2025 09:04 am
stonepicnicking_okapi: okapi (Default)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
Today (9 Jul) is the day that is celebrated as the day of the BTS fan (ARMY). 13 Jun is their debut day but this is the fandom's founding day. So happy day to [personal profile] bethctg and [personal profile] celli and all the other ARMYs of the world

bts

News & Views

Jul. 8th, 2025 06:18 pm
stonepicnicking_okapi: ChopSuey (chopsuey)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
1. It is day #2 of my job and I had to call #911 for my client. Talk about being thrown in the deep end! He's okay and I'm okay but it was still a wild second day.

2. Also Minisculus woke up with neck pain enough to make him sob and scream, and I had to leave him. I am being thrown the working mom angst right from the start.

3. But Minisculus placed 7th in his race at the regional club championship so he got to stand on the podium and a bronze medal the size of a dinner plate.

I'm trying to figure out my routine. I will add a second client on Thursday so I suppose I am waiting for that to figure out what I do when (like grocery shopping). I am reminding myself to take it easy and just handle one enormous shift at a time. Being a working mom fand having my kid be a latch key kid is enough for this week.
bleodswean: (Default)
[personal profile] bleodswean
 
That shattering glass, not a windshield but a doorway of shock and awe, into another place. As though she had left a place for the sole reason of arriving at another place. No wandering in between. She had never been good at telling a story, not like Daddy could be around a fire, but if she had survived then perhaps, she would have been able to say out loud those moments in a way that would capture the sheer impossibility of a human body in flight. Not falling but flying, the propulsion of her skeleton, all bone projectile, into the headlight lit darkness. The impact of her head with the windscreen was the killing blow, of course it was, yet she traveled onward still alive, through the glass, over the crumpled hood and into the forever night. Leaving both sneakers behind as she went. Did she see the stars in their firmament? In this strange leave-taking she lingered on a while, the air above and surround her insubstantial, the pavement solid beneath her, the summer scorched heat of it a small comfort to her cooling body, the bloody halo of her long blonde hair creating a vision of such suffering, such loss, hers a miraculous martyred death. Our Teenaged Lady of the Automobile Collision. The shattered shoulder bones, the leaking skull. The impossible sense of soaring passing through her nerve endings, dissipating through her pores. Simultaneous departure and arrival and departure. The touch and go of her short life. 
 
The afternoon of the day had grown hot. Morning spent working in Daddy’s garden. It was time for the leafy branches to be snipped off close to the stem to allow the lengthening buds all the sunlight. He didn’t pay her out, they had nothing extra for allowances, but after the harvest late in the fall, just before winter, he could be generous with the crumpled bills that began to stuff his pockets. She’d walk her brothers to the store, cold winds blowing through them, and buy the boys candy bars and herself a fashion magazine.
 
Daddy had two other daughters before she was born. One lived up in Alaska with her own momma and the other one of them lived in an old camp trailer on Daddy’s property with her baby. She was her momma’s oldest, after her came four more, all boys and of course Daddy was partial to them on account that they were boys, but he was good to all his children and just the day before this day Momma said she was expecting another one come springtime. She whisper prayed that it would be a girl, a sister, another sister.
 
Now the day was bending open the bars that held her prisoner, soon she would be freed. It was just gone noon. She had made sandwiches for her brothers, cleaned the kitchen and Momma told her she was allowed to walk down the road to the swimming hole. She longed to go on her own and Momma said that was fine, too, but only on account that two of her brothers seemed to be suffering from the heat and Momma wanted to keep a closer eye on them. It was hot and had been hot for going on a week. They’d taken to sleeping out of doors on the wood slatted porch, but the night before a bear had woken them up pawing through garbage and the compost and Daddy said they had to be back inside the house until he either could get a decent shot off or someone else on the hill got him first. Dressed bear in the chest freezer would be a treat. 
 
She was fourteen years old that summer day. Highschool in the fall and she couldn’t imagine what that would be like. Tried and failed. Thought she might be more than what she was, if such a thing was possible and even then, couldn’t tell you accurately what that more looked like. Knew that somewhere out there more was waiting to be had, one just needed to get to where it was at. Arrive with eyes wide opened and announce themselves with attention.
 
Cut off shorts and a bikini top, knock off Converse low tops, and her waist-length hair swinging over her shoulders, near white it was so light colored, and she swung it back and forth with a practiced toss of her head. Girl we known it was you from way down the road, he said to her when he pulled over. Driving his uncle’s truck leaning out the window at her diesel exhaust smelling so dangerously sweet and another boy she didn’t know jumped out and opened the passenger side door for her like they’d been expecting her and no one but her, and she climbed up into the cab and knew her daddy wouldn’t be at all happy because he said Levi’s family was one to steer clear of whenever mannerly possible. But Levi had his hair shorn short dagger sideburns delineating his jaw line and a swagger in his long-legged stride. On the bus, he sat way at the back while she had to sit in the front with her younger brothers, sometimes holding Caden’s hand to keep him from crying, which he was prone to doing because the only thing he wanted in the wide world was to be home in the kitchen with Momma. The high schoolers got off the bus first stop and when it came springtime, Levi started tapping her on the shoulder as he walked past and then that last week of school he sat himself down right behind her on the way home every day and caught the ends of her hair in his loose-fisted palms. Sometimes his fingers, dirty and sticky with cannabis oil would tap tap the knobs of her spine. You’re real skinny, he would tell her in a voice so quiet and low it could only be meant as a secret of some kind. And the nerves would explode across her shoulders and at night in her bed she would think about the heat of his fingers and roll over onto her stomach believing that wings could be coaxed out of the two thin blades in her back. Those shoulder bones were a storehouse inside her body for all that tingling sensation caused by his fingers on her flesh. 
 
Now she was sitting on the bench seat right up next to him. Don’t be shy girl he laughed. Bet you ain’t brave enough to jump off that high rock. The other boy had his window rolled down open too and he craned his body out of it and whooped loud. Levi gunned the big truck and black exhaust rolled out of the dual pipes and he fishtailed a bit and she gasped but the boys laughed. And soon she was laughing too. 
 
They raced one another down to the swimming hole but the boys veered up the narrow path to the high rock. She kept on down to the rocky beach, looking up. Can you see me from there? He called down to her and she nodded. What? He yelled. I can, I can see you! She visored both hands over her eyes and watched him watching her as he leaped off the rock.
 
There was no way not to be alive that afternoon.
 
She felt no pain outside the hurt of leaving. She couldn’t close her eyes as though to sleep; her soul was exiting through her vision itself. What’s the time, she asked. Her world spinning now, the dizziness of the calling fade. No more thought everything a retinal remembering. 

That day in the rain when I was almost turned sixteen telling him I had missed that month and he began to speed down and down the winding dirt roads? Or later while we raised up three young’uns and he had a bad spell with liquor and somehow it all came to a screaming head that afternoon in the truck? Or was it only the two of us again, that morning of such sadness, driving in the snow back from the hospital? Or before all that, the first sweltered day of summer when he drove us down to the swimming hole, before ditching his friend because he said he had something he wanted to show me, just him and me, and I knew without knowing how that this was my arriving. 
 
stonepicnicking_okapi: record player (recordplayer)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
I survived my first day of work! Huzzah!

So we have to play this song.

Three Strangers

Jul. 7th, 2025 10:41 am
smokingboot: (Default)
[personal profile] smokingboot
I remembered one of my old poems today in the wake of the Erin Patterson judgement (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cm26eq093myt)

Three Strangers

Three strangers come in from the wild
Their feet are wet and bare
They smell of leaves, of muddy sheaves
And the earth breathes in their hair

Now the first bears a scarlet bonnet
With spots crusted like cream
One trembling bite on a merry night
And forever more you’ll dream

Now the next is tall and shining
Cherub white and sweet of smell
And will take you straight to the final gate
Though it lead to heaven or hell

Now the final one stands quiet
yet his foot be swollen round
Though he looks so plain, do not test his fame,
Or sleep ever underground

Three strangers by the pantry door
From soil and field and tree
Never give them time, never bid them dine,
Or they’ll stay longer than thee.

And because I got excited, tried to paint the three.



The fly agaric looks like a flying saucer. This would be great if it was deliberate instead of just throwing acrylics around cos I like how they feel.

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