Author: Trip the Space Parasite

It is too hot and it’s not even July yet. Why is summer?

Read: Seven of Infinities (Aliette de Bodard): A criminal scholar and a criminal starship get entangled with each other in a draconian future where criminality is easy to fall into and difficult to survive.

Read: The Loot (Craig Schaefer): A recently discharged vet discovers she really does need a lot of money and seizes an opportunity which is sort of a metaheist. Almost no one in this book has a moral compass, and the ones that do are pretty skewed. First of a series, but apparently only available through (spit) Amazon.

Read: Komi Can’t Communicate vol 13 (Tomohito Oda): Conclusion (for now?) of the arc with Komi’s smol cousin, back to the usual wackiness.

Words: check. I need to figure out how to publish these, though. I am still writing them in plain HTML files, which is not what WordPress uses.

Read: Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer (Kelly Jones, Katie Kath): An epistolary middle-grade story of a girl who ends up living on a farm surrounded by white people, and her very unusual chickens.

Read: The Never-Tilting World (Rin Chupeco): Post-apocalyptic fantasy based on the myth of Innana and maybe A:tLA. First of at least a duology, because so much is not resolved by the end.

Words: check.

The water to the building exploded in the middle of the night, so there was no washing of any kind until the end of the work day. I used this excuse to get lunch out, because why not? Apparently the water will also be out for part of tomorrow to install a more permanent fix, but at least we have warning this time.

I did not succeed in doing more than the most trivial amount of work, because my brain is too small.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Apparently we can argue forever about the most ethical and practical course of action, but in the interests of fun, we decided to foist the AI off on some other Firewall people. (Maybe we could have come up with a better solution if we had been able to make Research rolls, but Kelsey was busy being oppressed by hierarchical capitalism.) Next week: maybe something else!

Read: Lagoonfire (Francesca Forrest): The decomissioner from “The Inconvenient God” gets into another mess, and we see that her government is every bit as horrible as hinted at, and also she has a Backstory.

Words: FAIL.

As proof that all corporate execs are sociopaths, we had a company meeting announced on Friday for the following Monday with no details. Fortunately my boss’s boss let us know that it was not anything that needed an emergency announcement, just a reorg. My boss’s boss now reports to a different person, but that’s not expected to have any effect on people at my level, at least not until the new CCO starts and wants to make everything just like at her old (huge) company. Whatever. (I know, I’m a bad capitalist unit.)

Read: “Cinnamon Blade: Knife in Shining Armor” (Shira Glassman): An unpowered but cool superheroine finally gets to spend some quality time with the woman she keeps rescuing. In detail. My.

Read: “The Inconvenient God” (Francesca Forrest): A bureaucrat responsible for decommissioning obsolete gods runs into an unexpectedly complex case.

Words: check.

Today was full of walking in the excessive heat, but at least I got to play D&D? This was the second session of Edie’s summer campaign, and we finally met the local sophonts, who want to get us involved in their war against the other local sophonts. This is bound to go well. Also we fought some ugly monsters, which would have worked better if I had remembered my character takes only half damage from being clobbered/stabbed/sliced while hopped up on combat drugs.New theory: I don’t like D&D not because of the binary resolution or stat-centricness, but because I’m not smart enough to play it. Anyway, after walking back in the heat, I walked around some more trying to grocery shop and get chicken strips for dinner, and then was a useless melted lump for the entire evening.

Words: check.

I meant to get up early since I have to get up early tomorrow and the day after, but failed completely. I still managed to do most of my grocery shopping and eat lunch and stare blankly into the void before going over to Ayse and Ken’s to visit the Mushroom Sisters and run Zoomwarts and eat Thai food and watch anime.

Zoomwarts: We jumped ahead to December. There’s a new History of Magic curriculum from the Ministry (everyone hates it), a new Potions teacher with Opinions on Aesthetics and Blood (everyone loves her), Snape is still in a coma, and the mermaid still wants arms.

Watched: Yona of the Dawn 11: Poor White Dragon. No one should have to put up with Hak like that.

Not watched: Somali and the Forest Spirit 6: Cannibalism was on the table, but we didn’t expect to see it onscreen! Deemed “Unsuitable for Jus”.

Watched: Kaleido Star 1: Oh yes, America as seen from Japan.

Words: Check, since I’m counting anything as a success now.

Slow day at work. I should probably have done the things but I was too sleepy. (This may be an ongoing theme.)

Read: Aetherbound (EK Johnston): It could have been an exciting tale of space magic, intrigue, love, betrayal, rebellion, &c, but it only talked about feelings instead of showing them and the characters were very sensible despite the feelings, so it ended up feeling a little bloodless.

Words: check.

I still did not manage to do the thing. It’s not clear I was successful at doing any things, although I sent email to customers and stuff. I would rather sleep.

Read: Legendborn (Tracy Deonn): Urban fantasy based on Arthurian myths, but the main character is a black girl and it’s set in the South. I suppose the twists would not be very surprising to a more critical reader but I thought they were well-done.
Read: Hard Reboot (Django Wexler): A hapless scholar visits Earth to study its antique software, and gets mixed up in giant robot gambling and also yuri.

Words: check. I finally wrote more Samuel journal, but I still don’t know how to automate getting it all posted here.

I think I made a customer happy today, although I did not exactly fix their problem. I’ll call it a victory, anyway. Decided not to join From Written To Recommended because I no longer have any delusions that I could someday write something worth publishing. Ordered a new toaster oven so I can give the old one to Marith for her new apartment.

Read: Eniale & Dewiela vol 3 (Kamome Shirahama): More hijinks, Eniale defends her love of fashion, Dewiela almost gets away with something, they’re still friends (somehow), the end!

Played: Eclipse Phase 2: I think we’re about done here, as we have found a suitable disposition for the alarming artifact we discovered, which should protect transhumanity without infringing on any person’s rights. Next session: we go somewhere creepy! Gaming might be moving to Thursday nights. We talked about in-person, but we’re so spread-out and carless that it might not be feasible.

Words: FAIL.

Look! Another journal entry! But this one is very boring, because I was useless today. I meant to get up at a reasonable hour and go shopping, but instead slept in and read manga and got chicken tenders for lunch and otherwise futzed around until it was maximally hot. Then I went shopping, and still couldn’t find any double-fiber english muffins anyway. Bah, capitalism, why have you failed me? Into the alligator pit with you!

Read:

  • Sex Ed 120% vol 1 (Kikiki Tataki, Hotomura): Enthusiastic high-school PE teacher tries to teach her students sex ed even though the national curriculum is terrible (in her opinion), and also seduce the school nurse who keeps trying to get her to tone it down. It’s definitely bawdy, probably R-rated if it were a movie, but the sex ed seems accurate?
  • I’m the Catlords’ Manservant vol 1 (Rat Kitaguni): Hapless broke teenager is enslaved taken in by the werecats his father once helped. Pretty much entirely male cast, lots of oppression and ridiculousness.

Words: Check, although this conversation is not coming together.

It looks like I might be able to import my old journal entries if I can convert them to XML of the right format, but right now that seems like a lot of work, so I’ll just start from today (okay, yesterday as I type this) with new entries.

Marith moved out yesterday (mostly) so I was only shopping for my own groceries, which was both less than usual and not as much less as I expected. I should probably still get food for her when everything is not confused, so that she does not die before getting a better job. Or maybe I should stay under my rock forever and never speak to her again. Difficult to tell which is the most diplomatic option.

We went over to Monkeycat Mountain to see friends because we are living in the future when such things are possible again! Instead of starting season 2 of Zoomwarts, though, we showed Jus Labyrinth. Being a child of her generation, her first question on seeing obvious male romantic lead was “…how old is he?” Good job being age-gap aware! She seemed to like the movie, though, and it gives me an extra week to figure out the doom of Zoomwarts.

Ken fed us vaguely Moroccan tomato fish, bacon cabbage, scallops, and rocket salad, which was all very good, and also did not make the robot spy on my arm unhappy, and we watched Yona of the Dawn 9-10. Yay, new party member! Marith had to leave after that, so she can get abused by capitalism before dawn tomorrow, so the rest of us played the Temple of Elemental Evil board game and successfully escaped despite Ken having accidentally shuffled the big scary monsters into the deck. Then I rode the bus home and was almost completely useless the rest of the evening.

Words: check.