[personal profile] cosmolinguist

Mostly Moira of course.

But I'm also missing my DVD boxset that included Waiting for Guffman and *A Mighty Wind".

Not, apparently, the same person

Jan. 31st, 2026 04:47 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin

I keep seeing the name 'Ratner' in connection with the Fantastic Flopping Vanity Movie - he's the director? - and apparently he is not the same Ratner who crashed the value of a chain of jewellers in the early 1990s:

Ratner made a speech addressing a conference of the Institute of Directors at the Royal Albert Hall on 23 April 1991. During the speech, he commented:
We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, "How can you sell this for such a low price?", I say, "because it's total crap."

He compounded this by going on to remark that one of the sets of earrings was "cheaper than a prawn sandwich from Marks and Spencer's, but I have to say the sandwich will probably last longer than the earrings". Ratner made a guest appearance on TV chat show Wogan the day after his speech, where he apologised and explained his joking remark that some of his company's products were "total crap". Ratner's comments have become textbook examples of why CEOs should choose their words carefully. In the furore that ensued, customers stayed away from Ratner shops.
After the speech, the value of the Ratner Group plummeted by around £500 million, which very nearly resulted in the group's collapse.

But, you know, at least a certain honesty there?

***

In happier business, there's a charming piece here by Jackie French (author of Diary of a Wombat about her real-life relationship with wombats, in particular the one who was the inspiration for the book.

A factoid exploded:

I hear her snort each time someone declares that wombat droppings are square. (They can be – but only when their food is dry. When it’s lush grass, they’re long and green.)

3SF Fills, Part II

Jan. 31st, 2026 12:14 pm
nyctanthes: (road trip T2)
[personal profile] nyctanthes
Some more fills from the January long weekend. I’ve been collecting prompts, and hopefully will have time to play around with them in February. I’m in the mood to write very short fic; now I just have to find the time!


Terminator: TSCC, John and Sarah and Cameron )


Sinners, Lisa Chow )


Sharp Objects, Camille Preaker &/ Amma Crellin )


Hm, maybe my next round will be fluffy? Or perhaps not. :P

(no subject)

Jan. 31st, 2026 12:28 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] conuly and [personal profile] thursdays_child!

Box!

Jan. 31st, 2026 05:51 am
kalloway: White string light bulbs (Xmas Lights 15)
[personal profile] kalloway
A lovely Winterthing box from [personal profile] tainry! (A couple of days ago, actually-)

Oooh, jewelry! Lemon earrings! I don't think I've ever worn hooks like these and I had to get an old pair to put in to make sure my holes were clear. Got it figured out, though. ^^;; And the set, omg it's gorgeous. I need to spend more time being elegant. (Though when it gets warmer, I think.)

Spatula! I love bamboo spatulas and this one is gorgeous. One day I will climb up and get the whole collection spruced up and take some photos. (They're on top of a china cabinet; I at least need to stand on a chair.)

Bag!! I actually have a bunch of Marvel reusable shopping bags from boycritter but not this one! I use these bags for everything so it will get a lot of use. (I still have some of my very original cloth bags from... almost twenty years ago now?! Quite a few have fallen apart, but some have surprisingly survived. It'd be nice if they'd catch on more here but a lot of people are still surprised and baffled by them.)

And stickers and goodies, omg. These are an absolute joy and I'm going to be pawing through them forever to pick favorites and decide what goes on my new toolbox. (And possibly my old toolbox, when it gets warmer, since that's just in the garage and will be getting use. It still has a bit of real estate here and there.)

Thank you thank you!! <3<3<3

A Reckoning of Swords 30

Jan. 31st, 2026 12:20 am
kalloway: "Lemonade Cafe" in faux neon with lemons and flames (Lemonade Cafe)
[personal profile] kalloway
Happy Anniversary, Lemonade Cafe! I certainly did not think, 23 years ago, that I was creating anything enduring. But it is still here, and I am still here. Go figure.

I have, in fact, chosen a notebook to tackle, though it's going to share with writing a bunch of stuff (hopefully) for the [community profile] small_fandoms Drabblethon. It has some blank pages, so I can also write drabbles in it. (Ha!) So far I've been able to tear out and pitch some pages of things already long written and posted, which feels good. Some of what's left includes notes for projects that are downright ancient. And, like, to be honest I can probably just write whatever to finish some of these up? It's been so long that I feel like any actual expectations have vanished.

I am free.

Songs for Saturday: Disaster season

Jan. 31st, 2026 07:30 am
mdlbear: portrait of me holding a guitar, by Kelly Freas (freas)
[personal profile] mdlbear
Music: see post Picture: freas Location: Mood: distressed

Late January through early February is not a good time of year. My mother-in-law died January 20, 1999. My father died a little over two weeks later, on February 5th. In between, we had Challenger, 40 years ago on the 28th (last Wednesday), and Columbia, 23 years ago tomorrow. Meanwhile people are being killed in the US by the Mad King's gang of thugs. So, in order:

  1. The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of -- written for my father, but applies equally well to my late mother-in-law, Shirley Hentzell. I sang it for him a couple of months before he died.
  2. Keep the Dream Alive Written a couple of days after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. That was the second Challenger song I wrote; the first was Thrill-Seeker's Waltz. Sorry about that.
  3. Rainbow's Edge written specifically for my father. tl;dr: Dad was highly influential in the field of infrared spectroscopy. See the notes at the end of the lyrics page for more details.
  4. Rocket Rider's Prayer was written in 1986. The line in the fifth verse, beginning "better pray to Hell's own Pluto..." was not intended to be prophetic of what happened to Columbia.
  5. Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio)

Recordings on Bandcamp hopefully in about a week.

dialecticdreamer: My work (Default)
[personal profile] dialecticdreamer
Unanswered Questions
By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams
Part 1 of 1, complete
Word count (story only): 1315
[Tuesday, May 12, 2020, 9 am]


:: With Ronna… elsewhere… the humans focus on Aesh, wanting more information. Part of the Edison’s Mirror (Teague Family) story arc. ::




As soon as Ronna disappeared, the din of overlapping voices made Aesh take a broad step backwards. “What’s the matter? She’s not going to disturb you, or endanger any more lycanthropes,” she began.

Beverly crossed her arms. “We’d like to know what happened to Amber’s grandparents. We’d like the names and the places where they lived when Ronna attacked them. Are they still missing? Did they concoct a reason to move away? We don’t know.”
Read more... )

Medical stuff

Jan. 30th, 2026 09:16 pm
cornerofmadness: Angel in drag holding up cards (Default)
[personal profile] cornerofmadness
As I said, I canceled school today and went down to the library to get books/return same, cashed in my Mexican restaurant freebie (another free soda, luckily it could be tea) and had my mammogram. The tech was the first grad from the program back in 2003 and I mentioned teaching them and she gave me things to think about that I hadn't. Like how could I forget they do enemas of barium? Or that I personally have used them IN surgery? I want them to know it's more than taking x-rays and this is WHY they need to know anatomy.

My psychiatry visit was virtual and I guess I'll be needing a new one. I like her and she swears she's staying with the hospital system but her husband had to relocate to FL and all our visits have to be virtual. Yeah like she's really going to stay. Ah well

here are a couple of stories I wrote to [community profile] threesentenceficathon

good old days, hazbin hotel )


James Bond He's Not, Hazbin Hotel )

Fannish 50 Friday Fandom Recs )

Projects and Bunnies

Jan. 30th, 2026 08:44 pm
senmut: Darryl Hannah in white and red face paint (Earth's Children: Ayla)
[personal profile] senmut
~ [community profile] 10trueloves - 3/10 written

~ [community profile] genprompt_bingo 0/5 written (Line Only)

~ 3SF - 12 fills in 11 fandoms, still checking daily for new prompts

Random Plot Bunnies to Hold Over

GenPrompt Fills:

~ A Moment of Understanding / Clarity - Commander Appo comes face to face with Atin (includes a horrific flashback to Ashla's death from Appo's POV)

~ Teenagers - Continue https://archiveofourown.org/works/12124011 - Rex and Ahsoka with Hera and Chopper

~ Telepathy - Long Distance Phone Calls in the Force: "You left me/He wanted me dead/I would have protected you/But could you really" / "It hurts/You always hurt, couldn't he get you better healing/There wasn't much of me left/He all but owns a master cloning world and you're stuck like that? Your benefits package sucks"




~ Ahsoka the Daughter whispering guidance through time in Anakin's head. Starting in AotC TPM. Includes:
Okay no wonder some said I was just like you (her reaction to the reckless deal in TPM)
Hey Skykid, what's a guy with all the power thinking to make a point of having time for you? (Comics of the Padawan years)
Oh kriff he's so young (first meeting of Anakin and Rex)
I am SO shiny (Ahsoka arriving)

~ Fulcrum and Rex time travel to before Anakin runs to Mace.
~ Fulcrum accidentally pulls Anakin to Malachor in That Fight.



Finished

~ Dreams of Her Own - https://archiveofourown.org/works/71432751 - Sequel prompts from [profile] ukiacatdragon - Eilistraee, the shroud of Lolth, Corellon, Arvandor's overwhleming goodness, plotting to nullify Lolth's plots via Sharr, the raid being brought up, Tall Ones finding Ellifain early, closure for drow and elf child, quest - READY TO POST / using as fill for A Test of Worthiness on GenPrompt

~ HLH shortcuts sequel - https://archiveofourown.org/works/74116516 - Joe and Rachel meet in Seacouver - READY TO POST

~ Freestyle Crossovers - Jurassic Park/X-Men crossover (late request for More Joy Day) - READY TO POST

Daily Happiness

Jan. 30th, 2026 06:35 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Yesterday was the first day of soft open for our new store in the SF Bay area (tomorrow is the grand opening). They were only open from 10am to 4pm (same hours today) and no advertising of the soft open, so we weren't sure what to expect, but they did really well, if not as good as the Irvine soft open in July. But word of mouth must have spread fast because today's sales were sky-high, even higher than for Irvine and that was such a hectic day. Since I'm not directly involved in the store side of things anymore, I didn't go up there to help and just got reports on Teams. Honestly, the best way to experience it lol. I've had enough of grand openings for a while.

2. I finished another puzzle today. Decided to do an easy one as a palate cleanser after that long one I just finished up. Not only is this one only 500 pieces, but because each cat is in its own square with really different colors, it went super fast. Still very cute and fun to work on.



3. So far no tattoo itchiness today. Fingers crossed we're over that part of the healing process!

4. Since I was working from home today again, we walked up to the fancy bagel shop for breakfast and while Carla did get a bagel, I opted for a slice of lemon loaf and it was soooooo good. They also had a couple new drinks on their menu, including a passionfruit matcha latte, which I couldn't resist. Definitely getting that again at some point. It did not disappoint.

5. Look at this handsome man!

Weekly Reading

Jan. 30th, 2026 05:05 pm
torachan: aradia from homestuck (aradia)
[personal profile] torachan
Recently Finished
The Honjin Murders
The first in the Detective Kindaichi series. I am a long time fan of the Kindaichi Shonen manga in all its iterations, and the central conceit of those is that Kindaichi is the grandson of the famous detective, which is like saying he's the grandson of Sherlock Holmes to western audiences. But despite loving the manga, I've never got around to checking out the original novels. There's been a boom in translations of Japanese mystery series in recent years (this book was originally published in 1946 but only published in English in 2019) and having now read a few, more are popping up in the recommendations on Goodreads and such, and they all seem to be easily accessible at my local library. Anyway, I enjoyed this, and it was fun seeing what the Kindaichi manga drew on in addition to the name. The OG Kindaichi is a shabby, eccentric young man who no one would expect to be a famous detective, which is definitely something they carried over to his grandson! I'll be reading more in the series for sure.

The Night Diary
Middle grade book about a girl whose family has to trek from what is now Pakistan to India when Partition goes into effect. Told through diary entries to her dead mother. I really liked this. I listened to the audiobook and enjoyed it, though the narrator is Indian American and while she does a very good Indian accent, she does randomly sound American every once in a while lol.

The Souls of Black Folk
Classic essays by WEB Du Bois. A lot of interesting stuff in here.

Fadeout
First in a series of gay mysteries written in the late 60s. There's definitely some stuff that's "of its time" and not in a good way, but I enjoyed it and will be reading more in the series. Looks like they were written all the way up till the early 90s!

Dreadnought
YA about a closeted trans girl who inherits super powers from a dying superhero and is transformed into the body she's always wanted. But there's no escaping transphobia. At home, her dad tries to find a way to turn her back into a boy, while another superhero exhibits more TERFy type hatred towards her. Feeling uncomfortable with the superhero league when they make no move to stand up for her, she instead starts fighting crime with a minor crime-fighter, a girl in her class, and they start trying to find out who the super villain is who killed her predecessor and what she wants. I liked the story well enough, but cannot recommend the audiobook. The narrator made some weird choices, including having a bunch of minor characters speak with southern accents even though this is taking place in the pacific northwest, and the superhero persona of the MC's classmate is cowgirl/western themed and has an exaggerated cowboy way of talking that would be annoying enough to read but is excruciating to sit through in an audiobook. There's a sequel, but the main story is wrapped up in this book, so I'm not going to bother with it.

Twixt
A young woman wakes up in a strange place with no memory of anything before that moment, and is told by the first people she meets that they are "sleepers" who have to hide from "snatchers". It's not a spoiler to say they're dead and this is a sort of purgatory because it's super obvious from the beginning. There were some twists, but the pacing wasn't great and motivations didn't really make a lot of sense. There's a f/f romance between the MC and the girl who first finds her, but it's insta love, which I always find annoying (in fact, the whole timeline seems extremely compressed and would have been a lot better stretched out). The ending is abrupt. It's not terrible, but it wasn't good, either.

A Star Brighter Than the Sun vol. 1
Current series by Kawahara Kazune. I had seen this on Amazon Japan and it sounded sort of generic, so even though I really liked a lot of her stuff over the years, I hadn't bothered with it, but I saw it's on the Viz app in English, so since I already have a subscription for that, I decided to give it a go. It's cute. I'll continue for now.

Something for everyone

Jan. 30th, 2026 09:55 pm
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

A friend of mine in Minneapolis has found a way I can help from here. It meant I did an onboarding call this evening. It's nice to be able to contribute. It was nice to hear familiar accents again! I think even that is enough to calm my lizard brain a little bit.

D's nexus of skills and experience is incredibly relevant right now too, and I'm so proud of him doing what he is good at.

Adult Content Bans

Jan. 30th, 2026 04:51 pm
lb_lee: a penguin saying "Just because you decide to sell out doesn't mean anyone's going to buy!" ($ellingout)
[personal profile] lb_lee
Since the Vice articles apparently got taken down, this Mashable article by Raksha Muthukumar, "Adult creators are still getting debanked — but it doesn't just impact them," is the best summary I have of how a bunch of middle-men can get between you, a consenting paying customer, and a willing seller of legal work. (Back when itch.io banned AllFam, I likened this to being jerked around by the guys who made the cash register.)

AllFam is still banned on itch.io, and if Payhip/Patreon goes down next, we'll probably end up on Ream. But just so y'all know, this is an ongoing problem, and for a lot more people than just us.

EDIT: also, Apple's on their Patreon shit again, so please, please, if you want to support our work, do it through your browser and not some app that allows yet another middle-man to chokehold our business. I swear, I'm this close to just taking checks through the damn mail or something, because then at least we only have to deal with the post office and the banks...

Rose and Bay Awards

Jan. 30th, 2026 02:55 pm
ysabetwordsmith: (Rose-Bay)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith posting in [community profile] crowdfunding
he 2026 Rose and Bay Awards are still open for excellence in crowdfunding. Today and tomorrow are the last days to nominate your favorite projects and patrons. If you have not yet done so, please do that now.

The award period for eligible activities spans January 1-December 31, 2025.
The nomination period spans January 1-January 31, 2026.
The voting period spans February 1-February 28, 2026.

These are the handlers for the 2026 award season:
Art: [personal profile] gs_silva Nominate art! Vote for art! (4)
Fiction: [personal profile] fuzzyred Nominate fiction! Vote for fiction! (3)
Poetry: [personal profile] gs_silva Nominate poetry! Vote for poetry! (3)
Webcomic: [personal profile] curiosity Nominate webcomics! Vote for webcomics! (3)
Other Project: [personal profile] curiosity Nominate other projects! Vote for other projects! (3)
Patron: [personal profile] fuzzyred Nominate patrons! Vote for patrons! (3)

Had a fired-up moment last night...

Jan. 30th, 2026 12:18 pm
chicating: I have a new dragon (Default)
[personal profile] chicating
about pitching one of my essays, like, right now."I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and damn it, people like me."(Well, I'm not sure they do, really. Especially around here.)

But I had a target in mind and they seem like they don't really do personal accounts anymore. So, there goes that head of steam...felt nice for a moment though.But I guess any thought that includes me and"tackling" anything is just sort of wrong. All that wasted, misplaced self-love, bubbling around for no good reason...can a person's ego get blue balls? It's probably from the story and how eager I am to try to prove I'm not some...literary make-a-wish. But, now I feel like I put on makeup to lie down alone. Either I can focus on how pretty it was or what a pain it'll be washing it off the sheets...usually, I admit, I'd pick the sheets because that's just what my life is like,

Maybe it was Jacqueline....it was sort of frustrating when she made me feel good about myself when she was alive, too. Good that we can keep that streak going across time and space!

It's not really that I hate myself *that* profoundly, although I do have my moments. I don't know, the timing would usually be really bad. Like, "Fill out a fellowship application in three days because you can't win if you don't play," bad.(Do I seem like a person that could EVER happen to? Leaving aside the whole can't-be-accomplished on benefits thing, which I don't think she ever understood, where winning that would have closed one door as it was opening another. maybe.) Looks like it still is.
There'll be some contest(that I won't win, either) Or I'll be bored in the heat of summer(Hopefully strong enough not to get a Bluesky) put it up the blog and vaguely remember this little hint of drama.

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rix_scaedu

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