It's Got to Put a Sparkle in Your Eye

Oct. 31st, 2025 12:10 am
austin_dern: Inspired by Krazy Kat, of kourse. (Default)
[personal profile] austin_dern

This week my humor blog features some nonsense, some nonsense based on the English language, and even more MiSTing than usual, plus stuff you've seen before. And I get a bit of good news about Dick Tracy author Mike Curtis in the comments. Seek it in here:


Next up I'm going to be finishing off Christmas: we did a couple of tours of light shows and I refrained from taking a million blurry unfocused pictures of dots, so you're spared too much of all that. Let me show you.

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This was [personal profile] bunnyhugger's Christmas jigsaw puzzle, featuring a bunny and squirrel interrogating the reindeer, and a raccoon watching just in case. A very SpinDizzy Muck situation.


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Here's the Lake Victoria Light Show house, with something like half the lights on all at once. It's easier to watch in movie version but movies are hard to post.


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Lake Victoria Light Show snowman, who several times during the show comes out to be brutally melted by some punny tune.


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The house again, this time with at least all(?) the strands of light on the central tree lit and in a variety of colors. They're color-changing LEDs and synched up with the low-power FM broadcast.


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And now down to Brooklyn, Michigan, for the Nite Lites display! Here, a crane hauls twenty tons of candy cane.


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Would it be holiday lights without dentist content? Here's teeth pulling Santa's sleigh, or else all the reindeer have turned their rear ends to you.


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The official entrance to Nite Lights, at the Michigan International Speedway. There's like a half mile of lights of mostly sponsors leading up to this so there's a show before you even pay for the show.


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And a more ceremonial entry to the light show by driving through a castle walls, which in real life would be contra-indicated.


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Nice wavy Michigan here with the hat on its thumb because they didn't know of a better place to put it.


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I love those tunnels of light, and the slight streaking of my windshield adds surprising motion to the Christmas trees.


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Finally, some of that fairy-tale content: Rapunzel pulling a boy up to the shoe she lives in with her giant shoelace or ... I'm not sure what's going on here actually.


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And here's a Big Bad Wolf trying to blow out the Three Little Pigs' home, unaware that you can't just blow out LEDs! Silly wolf.


Trivia: The first attempted buyers of the Cunard Lines' Queen Elizabeth in 1968 were a group of Philadelphia investors who planed to moor the ship on the Delaware River and operate it as a hotel (as the Queen Mary was doing off Long Beach, California), but the group failed to check whether the cruise ship would fit in the river at that point (it would not) or how patrons would access the location (it would need a new highway built). Source: Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers, Simon Winchester.

Currently Reading: Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham.

Kumoricon 2025, Day 0 – Thursday

Oct. 30th, 2025 08:00 pm
lovelyangel: (Kagamin Upbeat)
[personal profile] lovelyangel
Kumoricon 2025 Registration Hall
Kumoricon 2025 Registration Hall
Oregon Convention Center
Thursday, October 30, 2025
iPhone 13 mini photo

I have Kumoricon badge pickup down to a routine, with a preferred driving route from Barnes/Burnside to Everett/Steel Bridge to street parking underneath I-405. I left home at 2:30 pm so that I could listen to Marketplace on NPR during the drive – and fed Parking Kitty at 3:10 pm. I did a WAG and requested 45 minutes of parking time.

This morning we received an email from Kumoricon saying the Ginkoberry entrance was closed this year and that we could use the Holladay street entrance instead – which is what I did. I headed straight to Exhibit Hall E. Unlike last year, there was a long line which fed shorter lines in front of each of the badge stations. The wait in line this year was longer.

At the station, I presented the volunteer with a printout of my QR code and my photo ID. The volunteer was delighted. “You’re a Pro!” Apparently it’s much easier for their scanners to read paper than smartphones. And a lot of people don’t have their photo ID ready. I said I didn’t know if I was a pro or not, but she reassured me I was. She directed me to the program guide, lanyards, and clips, and I took one of each while she prepared my badge. She asked if I wanted a Day 0 ribbon, and I declined. “You’re the first to decline one!” Honestly, I don’t see why advertising that I attended Day 0 was cool in any way.

After leaving the station, I stopped to assemble my badge/lanyard, and then I walked back to my car. There were five minutes remaining on my Parking Kitty, so the round-trip Shizu-to-Shizu was 40 minutes. Unfortunately, it was now rush-hour, and I used one of my Lloyd-to-Home rush hour patterns so that I didn’t get too bogged down in traffic. Still, I didn’t get home until 4:35 pm.

Anyway, I’m now equipped for the convention tomorrow. I’ve already used Guidebook to plan a schedule. I’m not particularly optimistic for photography, as candid photography is nearly prohibited nowadays. 😞 I’ll set expectations low and hope to get one or two keepers over the three-day event. I’d actually like to skip Sunday if I could.

One bright spot is guest seiyuu Kikuko Inoue! Belldandy! (And a zillion other well-known characters.) I don’t know if I’ll stand in line for an autograph, though. 🤔

Kumoricon 2025 Pocket Guide and Badge
Kumoricon 2025 Pocket Guide and Badge
lovelyangel: (Meiko Smile 2)
[personal profile] lovelyangel
Bookwall
Bookwall

Yesterday (Wednesday), the remaining bookshelves were delivered, and in the evening I shelved the books that I had staged. I wasn’t exactly sure how many shelves would be available, so I left some extra room. Books keep coming, though, and there’s no such thing as too much empty space.

At any rate, I’m happy this wall is finally done. Work on the library continues, with new furniture arriving next Tuesday. My own office furniture won’t return until several days after that.

Library Update #17: Discards

Oct. 30th, 2025 06:40 pm
lovelyangel: (Cooker WhatTha?)
[personal profile] lovelyangel
Culled From the Library
Culled From the Library

Due to my not rigorously checking the design of the bookwall, I figure I lost about 10 linear feet of shelf space. That’s unfortunate, as I could have saved many of the above books that had to get cut so that I’d have enough space. Ah, well. Everything has to go at some point in time. These boxes of books will get taken to The Book Corner, run by the Friends of the Beaverton City Library.

I’ve also filled my recycle bin with more odd items. I wasn’t going to devote time to see if any could find a home. The recycle bin gets picked up tomorrow morning.

Recycle Bin Fodder, Below This Cut )

A Thousand Stars: Episode V, Part 23

Oct. 30th, 2025 12:04 pm
matril: (Default)
[personal profile] matril
Till now, the only Jedi training we've seen is a brief session with Obi-Wan teaching Luke with a lightsaber, a floaty ball remote, and a helmet. What does it look like for Yoda? An intense physical routine, to start with. Not only is Luke expected to run through the swamp, swinging on vines and executing flips through the air, but he's carrying the Jedi Master on his back the entire time. How does this bodily exercise provide a spiritual training? It's not that unusual if you look at various religious traditions which require some process of exerting the body in order to achieve higher awareness.

All the while, however, Yoda is teaching Luke vital doctrine as well. The difference between the Dark Side and the good, the crucial importance of being mindful of one's emotions and the weaknesses that can lead to darkness. Yoda emphasizes a certain stillness of mind even while the body is in constant motion. You will only have discernment, he tells Luke, when you are calm, at peace. Luke is trying his best to achieve this state, but it's so counter to what he's used to. He's always been energetic, impulsive, eager to act and move forward, impatient with waiting. While those inclinations aren't evil of themselves, they can be twisted into temptation.

His first test occurs when he senses something unsettling nearby. (Note how his face is half shadow, half light.) Yoda explains it is a place of the Dark Side, and Luke must go there. Curiously, when Luke asks what it holds, the Jedi Master replies Only what you take with you. This is a journey of the mind, not the body. Yet even when Yoda tells Luke won't need his weapons, he misses the warning and takes them anyway. He practically scoffs at the notion of danger that can't be fought through physical means.

We're given multiple visual clues that this isn't a place of grounded reality. A descent into the underrealm, a cave of mist and shadows. Then most tellingly, the action shifts into slow motion, I believe the only instance in the entire saga. This is a personal preference of mine, I admit, but I have very little patience for frequent use of slo-mo. It's heavy-handed, unsubtle and practically ubiquitous in most action-oriented movies nowadays. In contrast, when it shows up so rarely as in these films, you can be sure there's a very deliberate reason for it.

This is a dream. Whether it's all in Luke's head or some outward manifestation that the cave creates, I don't know and I don't really worry about it. The metaphor is the meaning. The important thing is that when Darth Vader himself shows up, we quickly realize it's not real. The Imperial March that has played at his every appearance in the film is now decidedly absent. Everything feels odd, like it's being viewed through water or a blurry mirror. The clashing lightsabers seems more like a dance than a battle. Then, if anyone is left doubting, Luke beheads the Sith Lord. No one would expect such a towering villain to be taken down so quickly and easily.

And of course he wasn't. Instead, a baffled Luke watches as the helmet bursts apart to reveal a chillingly familiar face. The symbolism of this image is perfect because it works on multiple levels. Luke is in danger of becoming the very monster he despises. Lashing out with violence destroys himself just as much as his enemy. And then there is the foreshadowing of his secret parentage.

It changes the stakes dramatically. Didn't we want Luke to kill Vader? Isn't that how we get a happy ending? Now we have to wonder if it's possible to vanquish evil without becoming evil yourself. Luke is no longer facing just a straightforward battle against the bad buy. He must battle with his own inner darkness as well.

Next, a bit of scum and villainy...

A Reminder re: Politics

Oct. 30th, 2025 11:10 am
dewline: "Worst President Ever!" in Russian (Russian politics)
[personal profile] dewline
Putin has organized the automation of psychological warfare.
austin_dern: Inspired by Krazy Kat, of kourse. (Default)
[personal profile] austin_dern

All the way ago last Tuesday [personal profile] bunnyhugger hosted this year's Fear and Trembling pinball tournament. This is her pin-golf event, where the goal is not to score points but to complete objectives in as few balls as possible. This is a fun and frustrating format, for everyone. Us, for the challenge of figuring out what tables to use and what objectives to set on them. Everyone else, for finding that they can't manage to do something on purpose that they always do incidentally while playing. Sometimes your best approach is to ignore the goal and just play a good game, but people only resort to that in desperation.

Speaking of desperation: one extra challenge we put on ourselves is that the tournament offers a player's choice of objectives, so we need to find tables that have two clear objectives that aren't just ``get a bunch of points''. Ideally they should be objectives you can make progress on that's saved, ball-to-ball, and should make it really clear when you've made the goal so you don't have to guess what happened. The point of this is to make choosing, and knowing you might have succeeded if you'd picked the other objective, part of the game.

Ironically, we passed on the challenge of picking which tables, turning the choice over to a random number generator. Well, we feel like we always pick the same games and after long enough you run out of different goals. The random number generator picked an interesting enough course, though, including a couple games I really like, at least one that I don't but am somehow good at, and didn't repeat too many from the last couple years' of games.

Picking objectives was annoying, in part because many modern pinball games have gotten complicated to the point there are jillions of things to do and the video screens, for all the space they have, don't always persistently show you what happened. Ultimately we only had to bump one game from the main bank to backup for want of being sure we had a clean objective. And there was testing, because with stuff going on we didn't have enough time at our local barcade to try them all out. I went two days in a row in the leadup to the tournament to try out objectives I wasn't sure about, but still left a couple games --- like Medieval Madness, which I've played so many times in person and in virtual form that I doubt there's anything I don't know --- with objectives that were technically untested.

Still, what's the worst that could happen?


That teased, let's wrap up photos of our trip to Crossroads Village from the last week of last year. I'm almost up to within the past ten months!

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Another intersection with a nice lighted fence and some really good reflections here.


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Here's the village's central tree and the reflections in the slush around it.


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Not Santa! Just one of his many statues waving around the place. Note the over-decorated tree in the background, one of the village's centerpiece items.


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The opera house and the coffee shop here, near the end of the night. The gift shop has already closed and is dark.


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The tree wrapped up tight in lights. I think this is the time we overheard someone asking and told them that yeah, we'd been here in the summer and the tree was still wrapped, just unlit.


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And a parting view of the train station and a lot of wet planks of wood.


Trivia: When developing the first periodic table of the elements Dimitri Mendeleyev supposed that the atomic weights of either tellurium (128) or iodine (127) must be wrong because tellurium clearly preceded iodine in order. Mendeleyev was correct about the ordering, but did not know of isotopes, or that there is enough abundant tellurium-130 that an unrefined sample's average weight will be closer to 128, while iodine-127 is the only common isotope of that element. Source: Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements, John Emsley.

Currently Reading: Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham.

It's the House on Christmas Street

Oct. 29th, 2025 12:10 am
austin_dern: Inspired by Krazy Kat, of kourse. (Default)
[personal profile] austin_dern

Guess who spent the whole day either at work or at pinball league? And you know who's going to see a double dose of Crossroads Village pictures to make up for it? If your answers were ``you'', meaning me, and ``me'', meaning you, then you, meaning you, were right.

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The centerpiece of any Crossroads Village trip is the carousel. Here's some horses on display showing off, particularly, the kind of shape they were in before restoration.


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And here's a case that shows off just how bad a horse's leg can be.


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More horse parts, including a tail. I'm sorry to report that's from an actual once-living horse.


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And here's the carousel. The blankets are festive and also protect the mounts from snow- and mud-caked boots.


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And who's the maker? Large C W Parker, Leavenworth, Kansas.


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Almost all the horses at the Crossroads Village carousel are sponsored by someone; here's two horses that I think are the ones we rode, and their dedication plaques.


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Went for a dramatic low shot between the horses here.


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And here's an over-the-shoulder picture to look back.


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This time around we rode in the chariot for some reason and it was a much better, more intense, ride than we imagined. In front is a row of kiddie-size horses.


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Exiting the carousel building we got this view of the wreath and what totally is not the couple on top of a wedding cake in the middle of that.


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Here's a giant white Christmas ornament ready to be walked into.


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While it was above freezing, once again, that meant the melted snow gave us good reflective puddles just everywhere.


Trivia: An April 1973 Consumer Reports review of the Mazda RX-2 found it burned a quart of oil every 875 miles (to lubricate the Wankel engine seals) and averaged 15 mpg, good by American standards but far lower than typical Japanese imports. Source: Car Wars: The Untold Story, Robert Sobel.

Currently Reading: Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham.

austin_dern: Inspired by Krazy Kat, of kourse. (Default)
[personal profile] austin_dern

So skipping ahead a little bit in what I mean to report here: we just got back from our Halloweekends vacation at Cedar Point. I had filled out, online, the Post Office's form to Hold Mail. Sunday night we got home to a mailbox stuffed full of un-held mail.

You might remember that we had a problem holding mail this spring, when we went to France and they delivered one day's mail in the middle of the hold period, and then just ... like ... never really got around to delivering the held mail. Not in full, at least. So this time I had specified that I would come to the post office and collect the held mail, in person, and I did that today. Yes, I had a bunch of mail already, including some today --- theoretically the last day of the hold --- but how did I know there wasn't any more?

The clerk took my printed-out hold mail form back, and disappeared for a long while, during which (he would tell me) he looked in the various mail hold compartments, and talked with a supervisor, and with some carrier who wasn't ours but who knew something about the hold mail process, and they had nothing. So I asked why. With two hold-mail fails out of two tries (I forgot our Extreme Heat road trip) I wanted to know if I was somehow doing something wrong.

The clerk did not know why, as they never do. But he did ask if I'd filled out the hold mail form in person. No, I'd done it online. And so it turns out this was probably my problem. Because you know what you need when you have data in an online system about whose mail should be held and on what days? You need someone who can access the system and apparently our local post office currently does not have anyone who can access that system. This is a sufficiently ridiculous explanation that I believe it.

But they think that filling out a physical form, at the post office, will make it less likely that something goes wrong, I guess because someone at the post office will actually be able to read any of this. We'll see whenever our next multi-day trip out of town comes up.


Next thing on my photo roll is Crossroads Village, so we're in the Christmas-to-New-Years stretch of lots of lighting, so, please enjoy that. I am again trying to limit myself to sharing pictures that look better than usual.

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[personal profile] bunnyhugger looking like she's having a great time already as we get to Crossroads Village.


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Someone ahead of me peeking at the train as it arrives and isn't that a great halo around their hat?


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Here's the holiday train going into warp right past us.


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Inside one of the Crossroads Village preserved buildings. Here you see Santa Claus's Willy Wonka hat.


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There's a shuttle that runs from the front of the village back to where the carousel is. We never take it because waiting for it would be slower than just walking back there, but you can see here at least four of the same guy wearing the same blue jacket and cap taking the ride.


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But we're already back at the carousel building and looking back at the village, here.


Trivia: The fastest flight of the first-generation Bell X-1 aircraft was 960 miles per hour, Mach 1.45. Its highest was 69,000 feet. Source: American X-Vehicles: An Inventory - X-1 to X-50, Dennis R Jenkins, Tony Landis, Jay Miller.

Currently Reading: Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham. I should say if you haven't figured this out. Given how for the past week I haven't had time to write up what I've been up to, and that we were at Halloweekends all last week, I haven't actually had time to read one page in like a solid week now.

Tsundoku Reset

Oct. 27th, 2025 06:11 pm
lovelyangel: (Aoi Startled)
[personal profile] lovelyangel
Tsundoku Stack, October 18, 2025
Tsundoku Stack, October 18, 2025

A sizeable tsundoku stack remained as of the End of June – and that stack remained unchanged through September. As the bookwall needed to be fully populated with my books, I moved (almost) all tsundoku books with the book boxes for the reshelving process. Every few years such a tsundoku reset takes place, and the entire stack gets shelved.

After that, I acquired two significant books: Queen Demon by Martha Wells and Only Rogue Actions by Jennifer Estep. Earlier, I had bought an autographed book by favorite photographer David duChemin. Then the Frieren book arrived. And while I was going through manga, I found some that Katie had given to me for possibilities of series I might want to follow. I had bounced off those manga, but I thought with the passing of time, I should revisit them.

So already, a new tsundoku stack was forming.

At the same time, the bookshelves were filling up, and I needed to make sure there was room for these significant new books – so the major books got sent to the bookwall. Tsundoku reset #2.

I decided to reread all the v1 manga Katie had given me – and one more book arrived. I need to whittle down this new tsundoku stack as soon as I can. Tsundoku grows like weeds.


Tsundoku Stack, October 27, 2025
Tsundoku Stack, October 27, 2025

Library Update #16: Distractions

Oct. 27th, 2025 05:32 pm
lovelyangel: (Chibi Alice 1)
[personal profile] lovelyangel
Apple Inside Macintosh & Motorola 68000 Documentation
Apple Inside Macintosh & Motorola 68000 Documentation

60 boxes of books is a lot to sift through. It’s a slow and time-consuming process. Figuring out what I am willing to discard is tough. I have a trash pile, a recycle pile, and 10 boxes holding giveaway books. And I’m still not done.

It’s my bad for squirreling away so much stuff.

Photos of Odd Stuff Below This Cut )

I’ve worked hard to not start re-reading any of the cool books I’ve shelved. But last night I caved and re-read 2005’s Birds of Prey, Volume 2: Sensei & Student by writer Gail Simone and artist Ed Benes – my favorite pairing of all the Birds of Prey comic collaborators. It’s been so long since I read the collection that I had no idea what was going to happen in the story. That meant I could enjoy and love the book even more.

When I was finished, I saw that the cover had been autographed by Gail Simone. I had no idea I had such a thing. (They say that memory is the first thing to go.) It’s a good thing I have this blog, as I was able to find that I got Ms. Simone’s autographs at Stumptown Comics Fest 2009. I vaguely remember. 😳 And this is why I need this blog.
[personal profile] quippe
The Blurb On The Back:

Who has time to think about murder when there’s a wedding to plan?


It’s been a quiet year for the Thursday Murder Club. Joyce is busy with table plans and first dances. Elizabeth is grieving. Ron is dealing with family troubles, and Ibrahim is still providing therapy to his favourite criminal.

But when Elizabeth meets a wedding guest who fears for their life, the thrill of the chase is ignited again. A villain wants access to an uncrackable code and will stop at nothing to get it.

Plunged back into their most explosive investigation yet, can the gang solve the puzzle and a murder in time?


The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

The 5th in Richard Osman’s THURSDAY MURDER CLUB is a welcome return for Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim. I particularly enjoyed seeing more of Ron’s character and his relationship with his children and also Joyce’s uneasy relationship with Joanna with new son-in-law Paul proving an interesting addition to the cast. However the mystery itself was underpowered and the way Osman pulls the various strands together was a little hand wavy at the end.
austin_dern: Inspired by Krazy Kat, of kourse. (Default)
[personal profile] austin_dern

Another day without time to write so you get Christmas Day photos. Please enjoy!

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Our Christmas tree at home, decorated --- we went with just white lights --- and gifts to give out to everyone.


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We got out like five kinds of paper and also some of the nice little mini-greeting-card style gift tags. Also you can see our Stephen laser-cut wood ornament there.


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The tree and a view into the dining room. The dining room is so bright because of a grow light there keeping an aloe plant from giving up on life altogether.


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And our arrangement of things on the mantle, including a bunch of cards, pinball trophies, and the scented candle thingy that I got really into last year.


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Now, Christmas day and the tree at [personal profile] bunnyhugger's parents. Not seen: cat wondering why she has to maneuver through all of this stuff to get at the sun room.


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[personal profile] bunnyhugger sitting up and wondering where the coffee and pancakes are.


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And here's Athena, wondering why she had to be moved from home for whatever this all is going on. Her first Christmas!


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[personal profile] bunnyhugger's parents' dog, in her sweater, wondering why I'm Stitch's Girlfriend Angel.


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And here she is sitting up on the sofa and looking very serious about everything.


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Back to Athena. We gave her a couple presents, one of them this board with rope loops that she could pull and chew. We figured with her interests in pulling things and chewing them she'd love it, and she did, for minutes.


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Here she is standing on it and investigating why I'm holding the camera at her.


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Athena guarding her board. While she's never been wild about it, she has recently got more interested in it, or at least in chewing the rope loops open. I'm not sure what her favorite toy is, really, at this point.



Trivia: The United States Post Office was given control of both telephone and telegraph communications in autumn 1918 as wartime measures, ostensibly to prevent a threatened telegraphers strike and to keep private companies from managing secret government communications in wartime. Source: The American Mail: Enlarger of the Common Life, Wayen E Fuller. Or it was the peak of the Post Office's attempts to control long-distance communications. Take your interpretation.

Currently Reading: Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham.

Database maintenance

Oct. 25th, 2025 08:42 am
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Good morning, afternoon, and evening!

We're doing some database and other light server maintenance this weekend (upgrading the version of MySQL we use in particular, but also probably doing some CDN work.)

I expect all of this to be pretty invisible except for some small "couple of minute" blips as we switch between machines, but there's a chance you will notice something untoward. I'll keep an eye on comments as per usual.

Ta for now!

austin_dern: Inspired by Krazy Kat, of kourse. (Default)
[personal profile] austin_dern

Wrapping up the Wonderland of Lights now, Thanks for sticking with me through it.

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Now, an unsettling discovery to me: they're demolishing some old and outdated enclosures just because they're not really well-suited to the ways we now understand animals should be kept. I had thought they were originally built as WPA projects but 1930 is far too early for that. Note in the pictures of old animals you can see a raccoon there, and the sign mentions that the grottos have housed, among other animals, coatis. Or at least one coati, the sign doesn't promise more.


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This enclosure we haven't seen occupied in years but I recall it having housed a couple meerkats, one of whom was repeatedly hiking a small rock between their legs as if they were using it to break the wall down. Come to think of it I haven't seen meerkats in the zoo in a long while either.


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Another of the enclosures, housing nothing but snow. You know, this zoo one had a 'guinea pig mound', just a big enclosure with a modest hill that had guinea pigs roaming tolerably free. When have you ever seen a 'guinea pig mound'?


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And one more that I think we last saw in use promising some kind of live animal show we weren't there at the right time to see.


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Now I've just turned from the Wonderland of Light to looking at the unlit wooded areas just outside the fun zone.


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There's something moody about being out in the shadows like this.


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On into the bird enclosure. There's toucans here.


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The bird enclosure seen from outside. These buildings I think were WPA-built but see how wrong I was about the grottos.


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Oh hey, there were penguins out and out of focus! My camera did not like trying to figure out where to focus on things, particularly in low light.


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Remember that wall of colored lights I mentioned yesterday? Here, you finally get to see it, plus an up-too-close view of the 'fence' lights.


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Carnivores and primates, finally working together on wordplay.


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And a final image, what looks like a resin or something reindeer statue with just a bit of lighting.


Trivia: When imprisoned in 1953 Fidel Castro served in the Presido Modelo jail on the Isle of Pines, built in the late 1920s as a series of round buildings on the panoptical plan of Jeremy Bentham. Source: Cuba: An American History, Ada Ferrer.

Currently Reading: Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham.

Library Update #15: Cruel Cuts

Oct. 24th, 2025 07:42 pm
lovelyangel: Homura from Homura Tamura v2 (Homura Nonplussed)
[personal profile] lovelyangel
Boxes of Manga, Staged for Sorting and Shelving
Boxes of Manga, Staged for Sorting and Shelving
iPhone 13 mini photo

Two Weeks Ago I did not have any functional bookshelves and was waiting for delivery of replacements. I expected a long wait, but, surprisingly, the bookshelves were delivered and installed one week later, on Friday, October 17. I could finally start sorting and loading books into the bookwall.

Meticulous Chaos, Below the Cut )

I’ve had to cut a lot of books. *snif* But it’s pretty clear (to me) that all the books that are now visible in the bookwall are books that I really love. I want to revisit them all (and I’ll be hard-pressed for time to do just that).

Sunflower Stories

Oct. 24th, 2025 01:49 pm
yourlibrarian: StoryGathering_crystalsc (BUF-StoryGathering_crystalsc)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian posting in [community profile] common_nature
Visiting the sunflowers made me see stories in progress.



Trying to sneak into the In Crowd

Read more... )
austin_dern: Inspired by Krazy Kat, of kourse. (Default)
[personal profile] austin_dern

I am once more asking you to bear with me and look at photographs as I don't have the time to write things. Please enjoy the Potter Park Zoo Wonderland of Lights from ten months ago.

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A peek inside one of the large animal veterinary buildings. I'm sure that you, as I, would really like to rub your back against that big brush.


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Skating bear illuminations, much like ones we see at the Crossroads Village lights display.


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A gazebo with its own lights. This looks out over an actual if small pond that was frozen over.


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See? Pond both small and frozen.


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The twin swans illuminations, which have been around forever and in a series of new locations.


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This is the bottom of the curtain of vertically hung strands of light. I love how the loose ends form these pools of color. The horizontal strand in front is a couple feet off the ground, there to discourage people going up to the wall of light.


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One of those illuminated swans with trail lights around them.


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Corvid Corner is a new thing but I think you'd all agree you'd like to hang out there.


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Here's another portal of light ready to engage and whisk you off to an alternate universe.


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[personal profile] bunnyhugger getting a close-up picture of a couple trees heavily wrapped up to about what a tall guy could reach without a ladder.


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Construction of the new Polehenge is looking good.


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And here's a couple illuminated deer/reindeer that are looking good.


Trivia: In 1403 King Taejong of Korea initiated the printing of the country's laws using copper plates in the printing press. Source: A Place For Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order, Judith Flanders.

Currently Reading: Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham.

A Thousand Stars: Episode V, Part 22

Oct. 23rd, 2025 12:53 pm
matril: (Default)
[personal profile] matril
Misty underground caves -- the perfect setting for a story that explores the unvoiced drives of the subconscious. Later we'll see how this theme plays out for Luke, in the secrets parts of him that are drawn toward the Dark Side. In the Han and Leia storyline, it's a somewhat simpler exploration of the push-and-pull of practical needs versus romantic desire. They've been dancing around the issue, but while hiding in the cave they have their first significant step, a shared kiss.

Now Leia broods alone, only to get jump-scared by a mynock. (Her disgusted scream is almost exactly how I would have reacted.) There's something so evocatively gross about the creature design. A sucker-mouth surrounded by feelers, big bug-eyes, leathery wings, yecch. To investigate, they have to enter the murky fog of the cave. It is fundamentally unsettling. No wonder Leia utters a version of the famous 'bad feeling about this' line. Something is off. The ground doesn't feel like rock. It keeps shifting beneath their feet. The moisture levels are bizarre.

We see the answer click for Han, very expressive even beneath his mask. If we the viewers haven't figured it out with him, we're about to see the answer. The 'cave' that Leia thinks is collapsing turns out to be, in fact, the giant maw of a space worm.

Doesn't it just give you the shivers? A creature massive enough to swallow a spaceship, maybe a whole fleet of spaceships. Too enormous to even comprehend. It's a beastie from a fairy tale, expanded to cosmos proportions. And they were literally in the belly of it, in case you missed all the other hints that this is the darker second act where everything goes wrong for our heroes. For all that, it's not malignant. Once the Falcon has flown out of its reach, it just settles back into its hole to wait for another meal. Nature isn't evil, only unpredictable and chaotic.

That's certainly true on Dagobah, where we'll return next time for a surreal moment of pure, unrestrained subconscious.

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