LW isn't sure about punishment for son's inappropriate illustration
Mar. 5th, 2026 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
firebatvillain posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
agonyauntDear Care and Feeding,
Two weeks ago my wife and I received a call from the school our 10-year-old son, “Josh” attends. Apparently, Josh was angry with his teacher, “Mrs. Smith,” after he was kept in from recess for playing with his phone during class. So he drew a picture.
The drawing was of his teacher in a compromising position with a dog. It circulated among the students, one of whom ultimately ratted him out. We had to attend a conference with Mrs. Smith and the principal, and Josh ended up with a week’s suspension. He’s been grounded for the next month, but his best friend’s birthday falls during that time period. My wife thinks he should be made to skip the party. I think that’s excessive and punishes not only Josh, but his friend as well and we’ve been at odds over it since. I don’t think making an exception will diminish the lesson we are trying to teach Josh about his behavior. Thoughts?
—Doodle Debacle
( Read more... )
Two weeks ago my wife and I received a call from the school our 10-year-old son, “Josh” attends. Apparently, Josh was angry with his teacher, “Mrs. Smith,” after he was kept in from recess for playing with his phone during class. So he drew a picture.
The drawing was of his teacher in a compromising position with a dog. It circulated among the students, one of whom ultimately ratted him out. We had to attend a conference with Mrs. Smith and the principal, and Josh ended up with a week’s suspension. He’s been grounded for the next month, but his best friend’s birthday falls during that time period. My wife thinks he should be made to skip the party. I think that’s excessive and punishes not only Josh, but his friend as well and we’ve been at odds over it since. I don’t think making an exception will diminish the lesson we are trying to teach Josh about his behavior. Thoughts?
—Doodle Debacle
( Read more... )
the evil dex
Mar. 5th, 2026 09:07 pmcalimacThe late blogger Kevin Drum was under treatment for many years for multiple myeloma, which eventually killed him about a year ago. He wrote often about his medical adventures, and had particularly strong feelings about a medication he was on, a steroid named dexamethasone, which he called "the evil dex."
What exactly was evil about it he never made exactly clear, but it seems that it prevented him from sleeping, leaving him groggy all the time.
I do not have myeloma, but I have been taking intermittent courses of dexamethasone - one to four days each - and have to report differently. It doesn't seem to have caused any disruption in my sleep, which has actually been getting less disrupted lately, and though that may be because I was taking the dex in the mornings, I've had it in the afternoons with no further effect.
What it does cause is a spike in blood sugar, which has to be watched over carefully. And either it or some of the other medications I've been taking at the same time has been causing constipation, about which the less said the better.
What exactly was evil about it he never made exactly clear, but it seems that it prevented him from sleeping, leaving him groggy all the time.
I do not have myeloma, but I have been taking intermittent courses of dexamethasone - one to four days each - and have to report differently. It doesn't seem to have caused any disruption in my sleep, which has actually been getting less disrupted lately, and though that may be because I was taking the dex in the mornings, I've had it in the afternoons with no further effect.
What it does cause is a spike in blood sugar, which has to be watched over carefully. And either it or some of the other medications I've been taking at the same time has been causing constipation, about which the less said the better.
Dept. of This and That
Mar. 5th, 2026 08:42 pmkaffy_rMice and Considering Community
There is not enough paper in the world, not enough pixels in the Intarwebz to give me the room to talk about how much I loathe discovering mice in the larder.
Again.
After cleaning and supposedly - supposedly - mouse-proofing one of our two larders.
Again.
So we'll go out and get more coarse steel wool, and we'll drag everything out of the other larder - again - and I swear to every god there is, that I will stuff steel wool into every hole I possibly can, even the ones BB was so sure were too small even for mice to come through. BZZZZT wrong answer. They can.
*Heavy sigh, goes looking for the soju*
*** *** *** ***
Again.
After cleaning and supposedly - supposedly - mouse-proofing one of our two larders.
Again.
So we'll go out and get more coarse steel wool, and we'll drag everything out of the other larder - again - and I swear to every god there is, that I will stuff steel wool into every hole I possibly can, even the ones BB was so sure were too small even for mice to come through. BZZZZT wrong answer. They can.
*Heavy sigh, goes looking for the soju*
*** *** *** ***
Daily Happiness
Mar. 5th, 2026 08:19 pmtorachan1. Well, I was expecting to just WFH and go to the nearby store for a bit, but I got a message in the morning that the person I wanted to talk to at the store had called out sick, so I ended up going to Gardena instead, which worked out as I did have a meeting in the afternoon and some stuff to do that was easier to do from the office than from home.
2. Yet another Santa Ana is blowing through and the weather is suuuuuper dry. I do prefer dry to humid, but I wish we would get more of something in between. The high temps for this weekend's accompanying hot spell are not supposed to be as high as last weekend's, though, so that's good.
3. Carla got the most amazing picture of Ollie yesterday. Look at that little mouth!!
2. Yet another Santa Ana is blowing through and the weather is suuuuuper dry. I do prefer dry to humid, but I wish we would get more of something in between. The high temps for this weekend's accompanying hot spell are not supposed to be as high as last weekend's, though, so that's good.
3. Carla got the most amazing picture of Ollie yesterday. Look at that little mouth!!
Poet's Corner: Verlaine Boit by Antoin Artaud
Mar. 5th, 2026 07:32 pmstonepicnicking_okapiToday is National Absinthe Day, so please cavort as much as you dare with the Green Fairy!
Verlaine Boit by Antonin Artaud
"Il y aura toujours des grues au coin des rues,
Coquillages perdus sue les grèves stellaires
Du soir bleu qui n'est pas d'ici ni de la terre,
Où roulent des cabs aux élytres éperdues.
Et roulent moins que dans ma tête confondue
La pierre verte de l'absinthe au fond du verre,
Où je bois la perdition et les tonnerres
A venir du Seigneur pour calciner mon âme nue.
Ah! Qu'ils tournent les fuseaux mêles des rues
Et filent l'entrelacs des hommes et des femmes
Ainsi qu'une araignée qui tisserait sa trame
Avec les filaments des âmes reconnues."
Verlaine Drinks [translation from this website: http://www.absinthe.se/]
"There will always be whores on street corners,
Lost shells stranded on the stellar shores
Of a blue dusk which belongs neither here nor on earth
Where taxis roll by like bewildered beetles.
But they roll less than in my whirling head
The green gem of absinthe deep in the glass
Where I drink perdition and the thunder
Of the Lord's judgement to roast my naked soul.
Ah! How the tangled spindles of the streets
Turn and spin the fabric of men and women,
As if a spider were weaving her web.
Degas' L’Absinthe
Verlaine Boit by Antonin Artaud
"Il y aura toujours des grues au coin des rues,
Coquillages perdus sue les grèves stellaires
Du soir bleu qui n'est pas d'ici ni de la terre,
Où roulent des cabs aux élytres éperdues.
Et roulent moins que dans ma tête confondue
La pierre verte de l'absinthe au fond du verre,
Où je bois la perdition et les tonnerres
A venir du Seigneur pour calciner mon âme nue.
Ah! Qu'ils tournent les fuseaux mêles des rues
Et filent l'entrelacs des hommes et des femmes
Ainsi qu'une araignée qui tisserait sa trame
Avec les filaments des âmes reconnues."
Verlaine Drinks [translation from this website: http://www.absinthe.se/]
"There will always be whores on street corners,
Lost shells stranded on the stellar shores
Of a blue dusk which belongs neither here nor on earth
Where taxis roll by like bewildered beetles.
But they roll less than in my whirling head
The green gem of absinthe deep in the glass
Where I drink perdition and the thunder
Of the Lord's judgement to roast my naked soul.
Ah! How the tangled spindles of the streets
Turn and spin the fabric of men and women,
As if a spider were weaving her web.
Degas' L’Absinthe
Home System 2026
Mar. 5th, 2026 02:23 pmlovelyangelA major storage change necessitated an update to my Home Computing Environment Diagram:
A minor change is that I removed the CalDigit TS3 Plus hub that had hosted memory card readers. I found that the memory card readers got warm while they were always plugged in, so I decided I’d just plug them in as needed. And the USB-C ports on Belldandy’s front panel made it convenient for plugging in all USB-C cables. The hub was no longer needed.
Because I removed the CalDigit hub from Belldandy, that opened up a Thunderbolt 5 port, and I direct-connected Homura II to the newly opened port instead of going through the TB5 hub.
 Click above picture for larger image |
A minor change is that I removed the CalDigit TS3 Plus hub that had hosted memory card readers. I found that the memory card readers got warm while they were always plugged in, so I decided I’d just plug them in as needed. And the USB-C ports on Belldandy’s front panel made it convenient for plugging in all USB-C cables. The hub was no longer needed.
Because I removed the CalDigit hub from Belldandy, that opened up a Thunderbolt 5 port, and I direct-connected Homura II to the newly opened port instead of going through the TB5 hub.
spies, romance and mystery
Mar. 5th, 2026 09:43 pmphilomythaA Perfect Spy (BBC 1987)
An adaptation of the Le Carré book, and unusually for Le Carré I could follow what was going on the whole time. It helps that it wasn't particularly twisty as plots go, and it was really a psychological exploration of Magnus Pym, where he comes from and how his relationship with his father made him into a perfect spy and then into a double agent, rather than complicated spy shenanigans as such. And it did this very well, with a slow steady journey through Magnus's life from start to end. Also it was devastatingly slashy: Axel and Magnus were just absurdly in love with each other and the show absolutely leaned into this far more than I would have expected for something made in 1987. Poppy and Sir Magnus, my poor heart. I shall have to read the book.
The German Secret Service, Walter Nicolai
This was a fascinating piece of history. Walter Nicolai was the head of German military intelligence during World War I, and he published this book in 1924 about his work. And it's an intensely, hilariously biased narrative, also full of Nicolai's fairly predictable prejudices. The way Nicolai tells it, WW1 was just not playing fair and the virtuous, noble, honourable Germans had everyone else ganging up on them in a very mean way for no reason at all and when Germans wanted to do things honourably and properly they had to contend with everyone else cheating and making unfair kinds of war with trenches and blockades which cruelly prevented the Germans from doing what they were good at and winning outright. But along with all that is a really comprehensive overview of the entire German intelligence system and also the various Entente Powers' intelligence systems and how they interacted. Nicolai lays out the different theatres of the intelligence aspects of WW1 in Europe - he doesn't go into the wider world elements - and discusses the differences between the Russian, British, French, Belgian and American intelligence networks and what they focused on and where they operated, and the measures he took to counter them. He focuses more on this than on how the German system was operating, for all that it claims to be a book about the German secret service it's more a book about catching enemy spies than about what German spies were up to, though he does talk a lot about how difficult it was to get spies out of Germany anyway when there were hostile countries on all sides. But I spent a lot of time laughing at how he kept turning absolutely everything into a propaganda argument for how much better Germans are than everyone else, even things like the significant number of Germans who were induced to spy on their own country he makes into a virtue by carefully explaining that these German traitors were utterly faithful to their new masters, loyal and reliable and provided really valuable intel and didn't ask for large sums of payment, and so as well as being the best at everything else, they were also the best double agents!
A Company of Swans, Eva Ibbotson
Harriet Morton runs away from her oppressive bigoted father and miserly aunt to join a ballet company going on tour up the Amazon river to the newly prosperous Brazilian city of Manaus. Like all the other Ibbotsons I've read, once I'd started this it whisked me along to the end without really drawing breath, it's a delightful experience to read. The characters are gorgeous, the romance is lovely, the descriptions of Harriet blossoming in her new life are a joy and the whole thing was a tremendous ride. I did find the various misunderstandings a trifle contrived, Ibbotson is quite fond of the sort of misunderstandings that cause total disaster for the characters but could have been averted with ten seconds of conversation - though she did lampshade it a bit with the Romeo and Juliet feather motif - but I loved the characters and narrative voice and the storytelling overall so much that I just rolled my eyes at those parts and carried on happily anyway.
Magic Flutes, Eva Ibbotson
In the aftermath of WW1, an Austrian princess is working backstage at the opera while her elderly aunts arrange the sale of their castle to a fantastically wealthy English industrialist, who wants to impress the woman he still loves despite the fact that she previously turned him down for being too poor and unknown. Lots of fun here, with the opera company being fantastically, hilariously and vividly described, the elderly aunts are an utter joy, and of course everyone nearly ends up married to the wrong person before a bit of subterfuge sorts it all out.
A Song for Summer, Eva Ibbotson
This one was particularly good. Ellen, raised by three determined suffragettes, unfortunately enjoys cooking more than attempting to train in a profession, so she swaps university for cooking college and then takes a job as matron of an experimental school in Austria in 1938. Here she takes on a deeply chaotic school full of troubled children whose wealthy parents don't want them around, with all of Ibbotson's usual fantastic characters, and also the mysterious groundsman Marek who is pruning trees and looking after animals in between disappearing on mysterious jobs into Nazi Germany, and refusing to participate in any music whatsoever. I won't spoil the plot, but Ibbotson doesn't follow the strict romance novel rules of the other books quite so much here and I really liked how it all worked out.
Death On Ice, R.O. Thorpe
A fun contemporary murder mystery with a Golden Age vibe. Our heroes are twins, both marine biologists, who are going on a joint luxury cruise/scientific expedition to the Arctic, when one of their shipmates turns up messily dead. The Arctic luxury cruise ship recreates all the best things about a traditional country house murder mystery, with the structured formality, enforced interaction and fancy settings, and this very much had the country house mystery feel to it. The plot was a bit involved in places, but the story overall was great fun, the characters were well drawn and I did not figure out whodunnit before the reveal - though unfortunately I also did not have the 'oh, OF COURSE' sense you get in a really well constructed murder mystery. Still, I'd definitely read another of this series, and I believe there is one, so that's all to the good.
An adaptation of the Le Carré book, and unusually for Le Carré I could follow what was going on the whole time. It helps that it wasn't particularly twisty as plots go, and it was really a psychological exploration of Magnus Pym, where he comes from and how his relationship with his father made him into a perfect spy and then into a double agent, rather than complicated spy shenanigans as such. And it did this very well, with a slow steady journey through Magnus's life from start to end. Also it was devastatingly slashy: Axel and Magnus were just absurdly in love with each other and the show absolutely leaned into this far more than I would have expected for something made in 1987. Poppy and Sir Magnus, my poor heart. I shall have to read the book.
The German Secret Service, Walter Nicolai
This was a fascinating piece of history. Walter Nicolai was the head of German military intelligence during World War I, and he published this book in 1924 about his work. And it's an intensely, hilariously biased narrative, also full of Nicolai's fairly predictable prejudices. The way Nicolai tells it, WW1 was just not playing fair and the virtuous, noble, honourable Germans had everyone else ganging up on them in a very mean way for no reason at all and when Germans wanted to do things honourably and properly they had to contend with everyone else cheating and making unfair kinds of war with trenches and blockades which cruelly prevented the Germans from doing what they were good at and winning outright. But along with all that is a really comprehensive overview of the entire German intelligence system and also the various Entente Powers' intelligence systems and how they interacted. Nicolai lays out the different theatres of the intelligence aspects of WW1 in Europe - he doesn't go into the wider world elements - and discusses the differences between the Russian, British, French, Belgian and American intelligence networks and what they focused on and where they operated, and the measures he took to counter them. He focuses more on this than on how the German system was operating, for all that it claims to be a book about the German secret service it's more a book about catching enemy spies than about what German spies were up to, though he does talk a lot about how difficult it was to get spies out of Germany anyway when there were hostile countries on all sides. But I spent a lot of time laughing at how he kept turning absolutely everything into a propaganda argument for how much better Germans are than everyone else, even things like the significant number of Germans who were induced to spy on their own country he makes into a virtue by carefully explaining that these German traitors were utterly faithful to their new masters, loyal and reliable and provided really valuable intel and didn't ask for large sums of payment, and so as well as being the best at everything else, they were also the best double agents!
A Company of Swans, Eva Ibbotson
Harriet Morton runs away from her oppressive bigoted father and miserly aunt to join a ballet company going on tour up the Amazon river to the newly prosperous Brazilian city of Manaus. Like all the other Ibbotsons I've read, once I'd started this it whisked me along to the end without really drawing breath, it's a delightful experience to read. The characters are gorgeous, the romance is lovely, the descriptions of Harriet blossoming in her new life are a joy and the whole thing was a tremendous ride. I did find the various misunderstandings a trifle contrived, Ibbotson is quite fond of the sort of misunderstandings that cause total disaster for the characters but could have been averted with ten seconds of conversation - though she did lampshade it a bit with the Romeo and Juliet feather motif - but I loved the characters and narrative voice and the storytelling overall so much that I just rolled my eyes at those parts and carried on happily anyway.
Magic Flutes, Eva Ibbotson
In the aftermath of WW1, an Austrian princess is working backstage at the opera while her elderly aunts arrange the sale of their castle to a fantastically wealthy English industrialist, who wants to impress the woman he still loves despite the fact that she previously turned him down for being too poor and unknown. Lots of fun here, with the opera company being fantastically, hilariously and vividly described, the elderly aunts are an utter joy, and of course everyone nearly ends up married to the wrong person before a bit of subterfuge sorts it all out.
A Song for Summer, Eva Ibbotson
This one was particularly good. Ellen, raised by three determined suffragettes, unfortunately enjoys cooking more than attempting to train in a profession, so she swaps university for cooking college and then takes a job as matron of an experimental school in Austria in 1938. Here she takes on a deeply chaotic school full of troubled children whose wealthy parents don't want them around, with all of Ibbotson's usual fantastic characters, and also the mysterious groundsman Marek who is pruning trees and looking after animals in between disappearing on mysterious jobs into Nazi Germany, and refusing to participate in any music whatsoever. I won't spoil the plot, but Ibbotson doesn't follow the strict romance novel rules of the other books quite so much here and I really liked how it all worked out.
Death On Ice, R.O. Thorpe
A fun contemporary murder mystery with a Golden Age vibe. Our heroes are twins, both marine biologists, who are going on a joint luxury cruise/scientific expedition to the Arctic, when one of their shipmates turns up messily dead. The Arctic luxury cruise ship recreates all the best things about a traditional country house murder mystery, with the structured formality, enforced interaction and fancy settings, and this very much had the country house mystery feel to it. The plot was a bit involved in places, but the story overall was great fun, the characters were well drawn and I did not figure out whodunnit before the reveal - though unfortunately I also did not have the 'oh, OF COURSE' sense you get in a really well constructed murder mystery. Still, I'd definitely read another of this series, and I believe there is one, so that's all to the good.
Well, That’s Not Good...
Mar. 5th, 2026 01:29 pmlovelyangel |
What do you do when all your photos, stored and managed in Adobe Lightroom, disappear in a flash? (Besides cry, of course.)
My Lightroom Photo Library has 211,500+ photos from 2008 to 2026. It takes up 5.83TB. Yeah, it’s a lot. And it’s a shock when those numbers drop to zero.
( The Crisis )
( The Scramble )
( Technical Support Fail )
( The D’Oh! Moment )
( Fingers Crossed )
( A New Start )
You guys will be shocked but I've been watching some more horror
Mar. 6th, 2026 07:42 amlucymonsterSince my sudden mania for film shows no signs of slowing, I've created a Letterboxd account. I don't really plan to use it for much besides tracking what I've watched and what I plan to watch, but add me if you're a user and I'll heart your reviews when I see them. :)
Anyway it has been A Week and I've been too tired by the end of each day to do ANYTHING other than vegetate in front of the TV, and specifically to vegetate in front of something scary and tense enough to prevent my otherwise inevitable zoning-out. The upside of which is yay, more horror movies!
Hell House LLC (2015): A documentary crew investigates a haunted house attraction that went gruesomely wrong on its opening night, leading to more than a dozen fatalities under baffling circumstances which the authorities have hushed up. Whensnickfic recced this movie to me, I said I would not watch it because clowns gross me out. But the haunted house + found footage conceit was calling to me enough that I decided I could probably handle the clowns - and hey, I was right! This is not especially clowny clown horror by my highly arbitrary personal standards that mostly boil down to "there are no gross clown smiles" and "there are no even grosser clown laughs". Maybe this is a gateway for me? Maybe someday I'll be sufficiently desensitised to clowns that I can catch up to the rest of the world and watch It? Whatever the case, I had fun with this movie. I admired the filmmakers' decision to leave so many questions unanswered and I think that uncertainty is scarier than any explicit answers they could have devised. (For that reason, I'm going to go right on ahead and ignore the fact that there are sequels. Not EVERYTHING has to be a franchise, damn. The movie stands alone just fine.)
On a minor note, I REALLY liked the piano-and-violin piece in the soundtrack. Beautifully simple, beautifully discordant.
Carrie (1976): I am once again standing in awe of the incredibly broad palate of flavours that get lumped together under the "horror" label. This movie is not a scare so much as an anguished distillation of the cruelties of high school. Carrie suffers horrific religious abuse at home and extreme bullying at school; after falling victim to a very public and sadistic "prank" during senior prom, she unleashes her budding telekinetic powers on the watching crowd with murderous results. But her rampage is - well, not an afterthought per se, but it happens right at the end of the film in a dizzying blitz; the vast majority of the screentime (and the most visceral source of horror, for me at least) is the long, slow lead-up to the prank, as tension mounts between the glow-up narrative Carrie thinks she's living and the humiliation we know she's about to suffer.
I am not enough of a Film Buff(TM) to comment on the weird split-screen thing they were doing during the climax, or whatever the fuck was happening at the start with that borderline pornographic locker room shower scene. Both of them threw me out a bit but neither was enough of a hiccup to spoil what was otherwise a really gripping story.
The Old Dark House (1932): I watched this because it stars Boris Karloff, and while it may not be one of his most iconic roles, it was the one my library happened to have on offer at the moment I found myself thinking, 'Hey, I should watch some Boris Karloff!' So on those qualifications, I bring you this old-school spooky cult classic about two small groups of travellers who are forced by a violent storm to go begging for shelter at an isolated old house in the Welsh countryside, whose eccentric inhabitants turn out to be harbouring a deadly family secret. Karloff's physical acting is impressive: his character, Morgan the butler, is completely mute but has an immense screen presence (literally as well as metaphorically) despite the lack of dialogue. He's a hulking mass of danger whose sullen subservience turns to violent, lust-addled malice when he drinks, as of course he does on the stormy night in question. There's also a romance between a feckless WWI vet and a chorus girl who is only technically not the sugar baby of one of the other houseguests, which aside from being endearing in its own right was a lot more risqué than I expected of a movie from the 30s. Evidently the "pre-Code" label is more than just a historical technicality!
Anyway it has been A Week and I've been too tired by the end of each day to do ANYTHING other than vegetate in front of the TV, and specifically to vegetate in front of something scary and tense enough to prevent my otherwise inevitable zoning-out. The upside of which is yay, more horror movies!
Hell House LLC (2015): A documentary crew investigates a haunted house attraction that went gruesomely wrong on its opening night, leading to more than a dozen fatalities under baffling circumstances which the authorities have hushed up. When
snickfic recced this movie to me, I said I would not watch it because clowns gross me out. But the haunted house + found footage conceit was calling to me enough that I decided I could probably handle the clowns - and hey, I was right! This is not especially clowny clown horror by my highly arbitrary personal standards that mostly boil down to "there are no gross clown smiles" and "there are no even grosser clown laughs". Maybe this is a gateway for me? Maybe someday I'll be sufficiently desensitised to clowns that I can catch up to the rest of the world and watch It? Whatever the case, I had fun with this movie. I admired the filmmakers' decision to leave so many questions unanswered and I think that uncertainty is scarier than any explicit answers they could have devised. (For that reason, I'm going to go right on ahead and ignore the fact that there are sequels. Not EVERYTHING has to be a franchise, damn. The movie stands alone just fine.)On a minor note, I REALLY liked the piano-and-violin piece in the soundtrack. Beautifully simple, beautifully discordant.
Carrie (1976): I am once again standing in awe of the incredibly broad palate of flavours that get lumped together under the "horror" label. This movie is not a scare so much as an anguished distillation of the cruelties of high school. Carrie suffers horrific religious abuse at home and extreme bullying at school; after falling victim to a very public and sadistic "prank" during senior prom, she unleashes her budding telekinetic powers on the watching crowd with murderous results. But her rampage is - well, not an afterthought per se, but it happens right at the end of the film in a dizzying blitz; the vast majority of the screentime (and the most visceral source of horror, for me at least) is the long, slow lead-up to the prank, as tension mounts between the glow-up narrative Carrie thinks she's living and the humiliation we know she's about to suffer.
I am not enough of a Film Buff(TM) to comment on the weird split-screen thing they were doing during the climax, or whatever the fuck was happening at the start with that borderline pornographic locker room shower scene. Both of them threw me out a bit but neither was enough of a hiccup to spoil what was otherwise a really gripping story.
The Old Dark House (1932): I watched this because it stars Boris Karloff, and while it may not be one of his most iconic roles, it was the one my library happened to have on offer at the moment I found myself thinking, 'Hey, I should watch some Boris Karloff!' So on those qualifications, I bring you this old-school spooky cult classic about two small groups of travellers who are forced by a violent storm to go begging for shelter at an isolated old house in the Welsh countryside, whose eccentric inhabitants turn out to be harbouring a deadly family secret. Karloff's physical acting is impressive: his character, Morgan the butler, is completely mute but has an immense screen presence (literally as well as metaphorically) despite the lack of dialogue. He's a hulking mass of danger whose sullen subservience turns to violent, lust-addled malice when he drinks, as of course he does on the stormy night in question. There's also a romance between a feckless WWI vet and a chorus girl who is only technically not the sugar baby of one of the other houseguests, which aside from being endearing in its own right was a lot more risqué than I expected of a movie from the 30s. Evidently the "pre-Code" label is more than just a historical technicality!
Like buses in a bunch
Mar. 5th, 2026 07:28 pmoursinSo, I may have mentioned I would be giving a paper in one of the Fellows' Symposia of the Institution with which I am now affiliated, coming up over the horizon very soon. And I had originally intended to revisit some research I did Before Events Intervened and Do Something with that, but it has not been coming together as I should like, needs more percolating I think. So I am instead returning to a project I put aside when other things supervened and demanded my attention, for which I did a preliminary paper or two, and can spruce up and get, I hope, some feedback on, and maybe kickstart this back into action.
Meanwhile....
I think I mentioned being solicited to give an entertaining and instructive talk on the history of johnnies/baudruches some months hence, which I have a fair amount of material already on hand for. However, what the organisers would like is An Image for publicity purposes, fairly soonish, and REALLY. One is tempted to go with the Dudley Hoard which require a good deal of imagination to reconstruct for their original purpose.
Younger scholar whom I have been somewhat informally mentoring has now submitted their PhD thesis and would like me to read it, and think of what might come up in viva.
The project which I was involved in for some considerable while which went very weird last year, with me being somewhat accidental being left out of the loop for some months due to error in email address, so I never really got the full story, is being revived in a smaller and more defined way as a journal special issue edited by Old Friend and Me.
Meanwhile I am in the process of getting the latest volume of the Interminable Saga prepped for publication.
A linkpost for the northern spring
Mar. 5th, 2026 07:22 pmdolorosa_12I spent a delightful day working from home with the sunlight streaming in through all available (open!) windows, watching birds frolic around our new bird feeder. This latest batch of links has a similarly spring-like feeling — not all are cheerful and light-hearted, but there is a common theme of emerging into light and life.
The first three are all Ukrainian, sparked by the complicated emotions around the four anniversary of Russia's fullscale invasion, on 24th February:
The Kyiv Independent team — journalists, videographers, adminstrative staff and more — took readers behind the scenes to show the ingenuity and determination it took to survive this winter's Russian-inflicted energy crisis and carry on bringing their reporting to the world.
From Ukrainian Institute London, a panel discussion on 'culture as security'
And from chef and campaigner Olia Hercules, a video conversation with Dima Deinega, founder of an (excellent) UK-based Ukrainian vodka company, which ended up being one of the most life-affirming discussions I've experienced.
On other topics:
An interview in the Guardian about being a professional chef in Antarctica
Viatozka, the Persephone Letter, which, to quote tozka, They're subtle marketing, more about vibes, focused on sharing things similar to Persephone Books/the people who enjoy them then about blasting sales info or whatever. If I must be marketed to, I'd rather receive it in this manner: rambly, meandering newsletters or blog posts sprinkled with links to interesting things that give a fuller picture of the person or organisation behind it, rather than just a list of things to buy now.
(Incidentally, the Antarctica link came from a similar newsletter, this one from the Vanderlyle restaurant, which takes a similar approach.)
I think that's it for now.
The first three are all Ukrainian, sparked by the complicated emotions around the four anniversary of Russia's fullscale invasion, on 24th February:
The Kyiv Independent team — journalists, videographers, adminstrative staff and more — took readers behind the scenes to show the ingenuity and determination it took to survive this winter's Russian-inflicted energy crisis and carry on bringing their reporting to the world.
From Ukrainian Institute London, a panel discussion on 'culture as security'
And from chef and campaigner Olia Hercules, a video conversation with Dima Deinega, founder of an (excellent) UK-based Ukrainian vodka company, which ended up being one of the most life-affirming discussions I've experienced.
On other topics:
An interview in the Guardian about being a professional chef in Antarctica
Via
tozka, the Persephone Letter, which, to quote tozka, They're subtle marketing, more about vibes, focused on sharing things similar to Persephone Books/the people who enjoy them then about blasting sales info or whatever. If I must be marketed to, I'd rather receive it in this manner: rambly, meandering newsletters or blog posts sprinkled with links to interesting things that give a fuller picture of the person or organisation behind it, rather than just a list of things to buy now. (Incidentally, the Antarctica link came from a similar newsletter, this one from the Vanderlyle restaurant, which takes a similar approach.)
I think that's it for now.
It's 9 pm, the ground is covered in sheets of ice,
Mar. 5th, 2026 08:52 pmcimoreneand yet this ice cream truck has the fucking cheek to drive by playing its little tune.
It's not time for ice cream!!! The ground is frozen!!! Stop mocking me!!!
It's not time for ice cream!!! The ground is frozen!!! Stop mocking me!!!
baby hornet
Mar. 3rd, 2026 09:20 pmmarginalianaVarious:
--My mother tripped on her way to a concert (again) and fractured the bridge of her nose (again) and got up and went to the show anyway and enjoyed it while holding a plastic bag full of ice from the bar to her face (AGAIN). On the one hand I want to rage about her choice to just fucking carry on to the show, except on the other hand that's absolutely what I would do because I'm just as stubborn as she is, but back on the first hand she is seventy two years old and I amin the prime of my youth not. So I will just allow myself to be a little bit of a hypocrite about it, thanks.
--Melodifestivalen final is on Saturday. The lineup is mostly not terrible! I have no idea what the ultimate Eurovision pick will be, however, because I have given up on predicting the ~~mystery~~ that is the collective mind of Sweden (affectionate).
--I have been writing a deeply lemon-chicken fic for my new fandom but I'm fairly sure all the members of this fandom are too young to understand what it would mean if I tagged it lemon chicken. But I can glory in the tag in my mind. (Also I might not even finish it because there's no fun in writing an actual plot when I can just write my blorbo being hard done by.)
--My mother tripped on her way to a concert (again) and fractured the bridge of her nose (again) and got up and went to the show anyway and enjoyed it while holding a plastic bag full of ice from the bar to her face (AGAIN). On the one hand I want to rage about her choice to just fucking carry on to the show, except on the other hand that's absolutely what I would do because I'm just as stubborn as she is, but back on the first hand she is seventy two years old and I am
--Melodifestivalen final is on Saturday. The lineup is mostly not terrible! I have no idea what the ultimate Eurovision pick will be, however, because I have given up on predicting the ~~mystery~~ that is the collective mind of Sweden (affectionate).
--I have been writing a deeply lemon-chicken fic for my new fandom but I'm fairly sure all the members of this fandom are too young to understand what it would mean if I tagged it lemon chicken. But I can glory in the tag in my mind. (Also I might not even finish it because there's no fun in writing an actual plot when I can just write my blorbo being hard done by.)