Tag: tv

Marith had to get her mouth fixed today, so I went along to keep her from wandering into traffic when they threw her out still full of anesthetic. It was all fine, just time-consuming. I managed to do a little work before going over to Ayse and Ken’s for the Amerivision finale, so I guess it all worked out, or something.

Eaten: Sushi! Apparently I joined in the grand tradition of ordering too much.

Watched: American Song Contest 2022 ep 8: What are these juries smoking?! Or perhaps better asked, who are they to be so out of touch with America? (10 regional juries assigning 12/10/8/… points like Eurovision, then 56 states/territories doing the same thing and almost turning the list upside down.) We were all very sad when the 70s soft-rock guy from Washington topped the jury chart, but then AleXa won with “Wonderland” because every K-pop stan in the US voted for her or something, so it was all okay. They had the regional jury representatives videophone in to announce who got the 12 points, just like Eurovision. Not all the reps (all previously-eliminated contestants) had the proper Eurovision spirit, but it made me happy.

Played: Living room soccer.

Read: Beyond The Eyes Of Mars (Glynn Stewart): 12th in the series where FTL, stealth in space, and antimatter production are all literally magic. The heroic Martian navy is still cleaning up breakaway factions of the great revolt, and still learning increasingly horrible things about the rebels (which possibly should have been obvious to readers, but I don’t think was telegraphed at all). Also something that came up as being extremely important about 6 or 8 books ago was finally mentioned again, although none of the viewpoint characters knew the significance.

Written: FAIL.

I had no brain at any point today.

Something I read on the Internet suggested that opening links in new tabs is usually not the right path, especially when thinking about accessibility, so I guess I’ll change how I do things.

Played: Lancer, at long last. I leveled up my invisibility, but sadly, we had to make Unity look good, so the whole session was diplomacy and investigation, and we only got to the pre-fight cliffhanger. Next fortnight for sure! Probably.

Watched: Star vs the Forces of Evil 6-7: Yep, still ridiculous. I want to see Star’s next instar.

Written: 520 kitten words.

The new system is in place at work. Eventually it will even be complete!

Watched: Amerivision semifinals, part 1. Since we are watching at the time of transmission (I don’t think it’s “broadcast” any more), we get to vote, although only Ayse has an NBC account, so we only got one vote for the whole party. Our rule was “no haters” so we didn’t give anyone anything below a 5, but only “New Boots Goofin'” and “Wonderland” got the coveted 10.

Eaten: Cronchy chickens. Also fancy shortbreads.

Played: Not so much twirling, fortunately.

Words: FAIL.

Apparently this is the weekend day to do nothing.

Watched: Star vs The Forces of Evil 1-3: Very ridiculous. Pretty much TFOS: “Here’s your interdimensional exchange student who has vast magic powers and doesn’t know how to use them, have a relaxing high-school experience”. Bonus points for no obvious romance between the leads, and for the human lead not being helpless.

Read: “Men, Women, and Chainsaws” (Stephen Graham Jones): He totally had it coming.

Words: 243 kitten words.

I was up before noon, that’s good, right? Well, not as bad as it could be.

My stupid mental and physical health and I went on two stupid walks today, which again is not as bad as it could be, I guess.

Watched: The Owl House 11-12: The writing business, and learning a second spell. Go Luz!

Read: I’m In Love With The Villainess vol 2 (Aonoshimo, Inori, Hanagata): Rae may or may not be getting closer to the villainess’s heart, but she’s certainly causing a lot of commotion!

Read: “#Spring Love, #Pichal Pairi” (Usman T Malik): A young reporter in India falls in love with a mythological creature who is more supernatural than he expected. Also, pandemicm although not exactly the one we have.

Words: 424.

There were customers during my on-call, but not very demanding ones. We still ended up not going over to Monkeycats’ because they are busy packing in order to leave for Portland tomorrow. Therefore, I was completely useless.

Read: The Caretaker of Tenants From Another World vol 1 (Jammin’ Rabbit aka Tony Huo): A young Japanese shut-in becomes caretaker of a boarding house for visitors from the world of magic. They are all babes, and it is full of fan service, but on the other hand: nurturing male character, found family, recognition that living through an apocalyptic demon war is Not Okay, mental health is a thing that needs to be addressed by trained professionals.

Read: Epochrypha (Skerples): d100 imaginary geological ages, a delightfully bizarre combination of paleontology, geology, and D&D.

Watched: The Owl House 9-10: Yay magic school! And now we know what Bat Queen’s deal is.

Words: 326.

Apparently the 8am meeting was being cancelled even as I was sleeping through it, so uh good job me?

The only gaming idea I have today is remembering my gnoll/minotaur demonology empire from so many years ago when I ran D&D4. If I had successfully gotten people used to standard D&D gnolls first before springing the Henyador on them, it would have been great, but I think a further-developed form of it would make a good weird setting.

Watched: The Owl House 5-6: Eda’a backstory! Well, some of it, she obviously has a lot.

Read: Dragonbreath: The Frozen Menace (Ursula Vernon): This time it’s Danny who needs saving, and it’s related to breathing fire, so it’s appropriate that this is the last book in the series.

Read: “Sword & Spore” (Dominica Phetteplace): Bonus points for use of fungus, but gods still suck.

Read: “Stag” (Karen Russell): Humans aren’t that great either, actually. (I thought this was going to be specfic, but it was mostly literary

Read: Micchi vs The New World vol 1-2 (Jammin’ Rabbit aka Tony Huo): Isekai, but instead of a nebbish it’s one of the toughest yankee girls in Japan. Otherwise it’s kind of standard: she’s totally OP, rescues a buxom dark elf who’s devoted to her, gets involved in the adventurers’ guild, etc. However, it has about 80% less heterosexuality, and a cliffhanger at the end of each volume.

Played: Nothing, we didn’t have a GM.

Words: 451 kitten words.

Since Lancer was cancelled due to some kind of unspeakable plague situation, I stayed in bed forever reading like a huge useless lump of dumbness. Then I had regrets.

I did take my stupid mental and physical health for a stupid walk while it was still light out, but I came back with (possibly uncursed) frogurt and ordered a pizza, so that’s probably not a win.

Read: The Witch and the Beast vol 7 (Kousuke Satake): Still in Vampiretown, still embroiled in vampire murder-politics, vampires are still unprepared for what Gideau and Ashaf are going to do to them.

Read: Charming As A Verb (Ben Phillipe): A Black immigrant boy in NYC hustles and schmoozes his way through life so he can graduate with top marks from his fancy private school and get into his first-choice university, but then he’s a massive dumbass. He is charming (when he’s not being a dumbass), but his girlfriend is way cooler than him.

Watched: The Owl House 3-4: Oh, I guess there is a magic school after all. And now I know where that bit from the fan comic comes from.

Words: 551 kitten words.

I can get up on time when people expect me to be at the place to do the thing.

Played: Lancer. We defeated the Engineering Mutants and their pet abomination, by the simple expedient of barbecuing them all when they wouldn’t communicate, and some of the things that came through the malfunctioning Blinkgate. The other things we managed to delay in their incomprehensible purpose until we could unplug the console they were trying to use to reset the Blinkgate, and then get xenolinguists who have spent their entire careers waiting for this opportunity to talk to them. I’m sure there will be no consequences.

Watched: The Owl House 1-2. It was not what I was expecting, which I guess means I was expecting the wrong thing.

Read: Aposimz vol 3 (Tsutomu Nihei): Ugh, allies! Also, apparently there are no animals on this artificial world, only robots with edible parts. That’s very on-brand.

Words: 508 kitten words.

Three meetings before 10:00, but at least the work I did yesterday contributed fungibly to a graph in one of them. That’s like success in our capitalist dystopia, right?

Tomorrow I have to get up even earlier so I can have meetings in person, because management doesn’t like it when they can’t see labor laboring.

Watched: Turning Red: When you’re 13, everything is the most important thing. Especially giant red panda.

Words: FAIL. I watched Turning Red to inspire me to delete the project I wrote about a 13-year-old instead of revising it more, but I don’t think it worked. I do need to revise some more, though.

Watched: Cowboy Bebop 8-10: If there had been a second season, that would have been a good low point, but as an ending it’s pretty dark.

Read: Spelunking Through Hell (Seanan McGuire): After seeing the person who has spent fifty years searching the multiverse for her lost husband make cameos in all the other Incryptid books, we finally get her story. It’s pretty grim!

Words: FAIL.

Plenty of work, especially in the morning. Blugh.

Watched: Cowboy Bebop 7: Faye’s con mom!

Read: Escape From Yokai Land (Charles Stross): Novella about “Bob Howard”‘s visit to Japan briefly mentioned in the beginning of The Delirium Brief. A mere brain-eating demon seems quaint compared to everything that happens after it in the series.

Read: The Delirium Brief (Charles Stross): The one where the UK gets completely boned. No, not the interdimensional invasion, that was nothing compared to this.

Words: FAIL, but I gave out the URL for the kitten words to the writing channel on the slack. Also an actual book published by a slack frond came out today!

Back to getting up early, this time for cleaners. At least I don’t have to get up early tomorrow? Actually, I don’t have to get up at all this weekend, since Monkeycat Towers is a house of plague, which cancels all my weekend plans.

Read: Kiki Kallira Breaks A Kingdom (Sangu Mandanna): The main character doesn’t get the magic power to bring her drawings to life, exactly, but nevertheless they blame her for their interesting lives, which pairs well with the anxiety disorder that she arts to escape.

Read: Just Jaime (Terri Libenson): This time, two of the vaguely adversarial girls from the previous books, with Friendship Drama, and no twist ending. It certainly is difficult when friends mature at different rates and have different standards for maturity.

Read: The Savior’s Book Café Story in Another World vol 1 (Kyouka Izumi, Oumiya, Reiko Sakurada): A higher power drafts random Japanese people to be saviors for another world, but one of them is a grownup and instead of asking for combat powers to have adventures, asks for what she needs to set up a nice book café in the quietest kingdom and uses her vast magic powers to run it. She’s probably going to have deal with the other saviors, though.

Watched: Cowboy Bebop 4-5. Manne, Faye and Spike are really bad at this. Jet is more serious, with his special detecting hat, but maybe still not that great either. They need to get Ein out there tracking down bounties.

Words: 575.

Another day of complete mega-uselessness! The most I accomplished all day was to walk next door and yoink back the lamp I gave Marith so I could have light in my computer corner.

Watched: My Cousin Vinny: Someone mentioned this on the slack and I remembered I had never seen it, so I made a streaming service show it to me. I hated everyone except Mona Lisa, although I was feeling a little more charitable toward Vinny by the end. I liked the movie despite that, though, although some of the things we thought were funny in the 90s…

Words: 577.

Finally Jus and Ayse and I made it to the kitten café, and kittens are wonderful! Sadly most of the kittens that came over to say hi (because we are the right sort of people who sit in the cafe) are already spoken for, but Rotini lovingly savaged my arm, and Bullet climbed all over me and snorfled my ear extensively. I wanted to get to know Katya, who is orange and not stripy and quite chill, but our time was up and we had to let other people adore the kittens. Perhaps we will go again next week.

Kittens give life, so I was energetic enough to walk a few kilometers to Trader Joe’s, which was only out of one thing I wanted (not counting the things that are never in stock because 2021)

Watched: Cowboy Bebop 3: Spike is composed of 117% self-destructive decisions by weight, but Jet is not a whole lot better.

Words: 320.

Yay, we made it to Friday. Somehow, despite the cleaners having to reschedule so I was up two hours early this morning. I didn’t need that brain anyway.

Watched: Cowboy Bebop ep 1. It’s grimy and pretty much everybody dies, so they got the aesthetic perfectly. Casting is also good, at least for the main trio.

Read: Ascension (Minister Faust): Random school teacher from Edmonton gets swept up into the doings of aliens from counter-Earth, complete with unspeakably hot alien princess, urchin in need of rescue, and super-powered warrior monks with glowing weapons. First of a trilogy.

Read: Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret (Judy Blume): Probably revolutionary back when puberty was a mystery never to be spoken of. Both the writing style and the protagonist’s thinking seem young compared to more recent books about characters of a similar age, but maybe that’s because she’s not being dragged to a magical realm in need of saving.

Read: Hover Girls (GDBee): Enthusiastic magical girl plus reluctant magical girl vs flying fish monsters! Complete.

Words: 618 words of actual writing! I have established a reason for my MC to hate the person she went to for help, so her problem doesn’t have to be addressed completely and sensibly. Writing in first person again after writing intensively in close third for a month is weird.