This week I finally had to face up to the realisation that I’m not going to be able to go to Worldcon in Glasgow due to Circumstances. Bummed. (But I will ‘attend’ online at least)
On the positive side, had two, count ‘em, excellent Indian meals this week, including one at a Punjabi restaurant that won Best Punjabi Good in the curry awards!
And finished both Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera which I found baffling but rich and memorable and then, immediately after, Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh, which seemed clunky and obvious in comparison. Now reading for review, Eugen Bacon’s collection of short stories A Place Between Waking and Forgetting which has yet to grab me by the lapels.
“But this should be weighed against the various other movements and subcultures that have adopted similar iconography, not all of which are exactly noted for supporting transgender people.” 🙂
Egg feelings from Revolutionary Girl Utena were certainly part of it for me. But of course no one “turns transgender”. Some people just enjoy inflicting misery on kids
Just got back with TYG from the Raleigh Science Museum which has a “dueling dinosaurs” exhibit showing their research on a tyrannosaurus and a triceratops found together. I had no idea until I picked part of one up how heavy a triceratops horn really was.
The heat dome is here. Short walks for dogs. They’re doing well otherwise, though the number of meds they need keeps mounting.
Read the last of Jack Vance’s Planet of Adventurer quartet this week. #3 in the series, “The Dirdir” remains the best. Also read the first of Nnedi Okorafor’s “Shuri” series about Black Panther’s sister. Pretty good.
My reread of Silver Age comics has brought me up to Stan Lee’s Silver Surfer series. The heavy handed moralizing would be bad anyway but given the Surfer was the obedient agent of Galactus the declarations about how pure and noble he is … no.
We’re having a lot of thunder storms the lot few days with, amazingly, a tornado watch today with a tornado warning inland, the first one in nearly forty years. We did get one here about fifty miles south here a decade or so ago that was well inland.
I’m listening to the last of The Culture series, The Hydrogen Sonata. I don’t remember listening to it but that doesn’t mean anything as y’all know so it’s great to encounter it for the first time apparently. Does that make sense?
I finished the parts of the Hugo packet I read so I think I’m ready to vote. I’ll admit, without saying which to protect the guilty, which is to say me that there are categories I don’t vote for. Ok, I will admit that neither dramatic presentation will get a vote as I’ve seen nothing in either category, and the artwork all looks excellent, so I can say what’s really good.
The novels I can’t read because I lost the ability to read as I can’t remember narrative that’s longer than a half in length (short stories are fine, some novelettes too as I remember them from nose to tail in one go though I forget them later) when I had the severe head trauma so unless the novel git a audiobook, they’re out too.
Warm-ish here. Actively hot the one day the humidity was way up. Cooling trend is setting in and at least it’s been reasonable at night for those of us who don’t have A/C. Although I have to wait till full dark to open up, because pollen.
Have KU ending Friday, so this week I will be reading madly. Figure I can get through at least 1 book and 2 magazines.
A bit blah for a couple days after getting both pneumonia and RSV shots. Arm is still a little sore.
EGG doesn’t feel the heat as much as me, so we spend most of our time on opposite sides of the house. Tomorrow afternoon I will beat the heat by washing my hair in a cool shower. No weather ever puts him off food, though.
It’s been cold by NSW standards and wet. I’m looking forward to the ground drying out enough for me to get out in the yard and not sink up to my ankles.
Meanwhile, masala chai, books & movies. Currently reading Doppelganger by Naomi Klein of No Logo fame. She is so often mistaken for Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth) that it prompted her to investigate what Other Naomi is up to these days. Anti-vax propaganda, conspiracy theories and befriending Steve Bannon, it turns out. Klein’s book is part memoir and part observation on personal branding in the age of pandemic, political polarization, climate change & economic disparity.
Movies! Saw Freaks and Promising Young Woman over the past couple days. I had no idea how either of them was going to end until the end. I have favorite films I’ve rewatched any number of times, but a bit of novelty every now & then is a good thing.
I really enjoyed Wolf’s Beauty Myth but she seems to have fallen down the spiral of “I need to say something else clever and contrarian, I know, vaccines are bad!”
And her sloppiness in sourcing stuff makes me avoid citing anything in Beauty Myth unless I’ve confirmed it elsewhere.
We’re having the opposite of a heat dome here (a cold bowl?). It has been chilly. It was quite nice to go to a tournament on the weekend because I had an excuse to go out wearing many layers of wool.
After a chilly start to the month it’s now ’unbearably hot’ here i.e. a high of 25C. Thank the Whatever my Texan-born Beloved insisted on having a ceiling fan installed in the bedroom!
Heat doesn’t bother me at all since at all I’m effectively a lizard as I don’t sweat since the severe head trauma so it is 85 f. (30 c.) in my apartment but I’m comfortable at that temperature as long as I keep drinking lots of water.
Houseplants for the most part love it, especially the airplants which thrive at warmer temperatures. I’ve had some of them triple their size here and have their stellar pink blooms twice. They just need a thorough soaking once a week.
And the thirty seven inch long airplant is growing visibly. Cool.
Watched RRR on the weekend. WOW. I still don’t know if it’s bonkers or brilliant, but I love a movie that so shamelessly embraces silly and unsubtle symbolism and wildly over the top action scenes while simultaneously telling a serious underlying story – and sometimes showing it by moments of blunt brutal violence. Also some fantastic dance numbers. And a very nice reversal as one character’s backstory is explained in full…
Will be aiming to see Furiosa tonight for a date with my husband.
Furiosa was damn good too. I was amused by how many of the theatres were taken up by Inside Out 2. Which – I love Inside Out, or did before the kids watched it a hundred times, but the sequel isn’t a movie I feel needs a whole theatre experience.
Unless my kids suddenly become totally different people from who they are and want to go.
Camestros Felapton 
28 responses to “Susan’s Salon 23-24 June 2024”
This week I finally had to face up to the realisation that I’m not going to be able to go to Worldcon in Glasgow due to Circumstances. Bummed. (But I will ‘attend’ online at least)
On the positive side, had two, count ‘em, excellent Indian meals this week, including one at a Punjabi restaurant that won Best Punjabi Good in the curry awards!
And finished both Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera which I found baffling but rich and memorable and then, immediately after, Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh, which seemed clunky and obvious in comparison. Now reading for review, Eugen Bacon’s collection of short stories A Place Between Waking and Forgetting which has yet to grab me by the lapels.
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Happy Sunday! We’re in the middle of a heat dome and I am (finally) reading The Three Body Problem.
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Got a new phone yesterday (the old one having served 6 years) – let’s see if I’ve got everything working right.
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I’ve been investigating one of the most pressing questions of our time: does anime make kids transgender?
https://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2024/06/is-anime-transing-our-teens-inside-a-moral-panic/
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“But this should be weighed against the various other movements and subcultures that have adopted similar iconography, not all of which are exactly noted for supporting transgender people.” 🙂
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Good post.
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Ditto that.
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Thank you!
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Egg feelings from Revolutionary Girl Utena were certainly part of it for me. But of course no one “turns transgender”. Some people just enjoy inflicting misery on kids
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I still have not begun to select someone to accept for me, on the off chance I win a Hugo.
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Just got back with TYG from the Raleigh Science Museum which has a “dueling dinosaurs” exhibit showing their research on a tyrannosaurus and a triceratops found together. I had no idea until I picked part of one up how heavy a triceratops horn really was.
The heat dome is here. Short walks for dogs. They’re doing well otherwise, though the number of meds they need keeps mounting.
Read the last of Jack Vance’s Planet of Adventurer quartet this week. #3 in the series, “The Dirdir” remains the best. Also read the first of Nnedi Okorafor’s “Shuri” series about Black Panther’s sister. Pretty good.
My reread of Silver Age comics has brought me up to Stan Lee’s Silver Surfer series. The heavy handed moralizing would be bad anyway but given the Surfer was the obedient agent of Galactus the declarations about how pure and noble he is … no.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Obviously they were fighting over the literary merits of t-rex as central characters in a narrative
LikeLiked by 3 people
We’re having a lot of thunder storms the lot few days with, amazingly, a tornado watch today with a tornado warning inland, the first one in nearly forty years. We did get one here about fifty miles south here a decade or so ago that was well inland.
I’m listening to the last of The Culture series, The Hydrogen Sonata. I don’t remember listening to it but that doesn’t mean anything as y’all know so it’s great to encounter it for the first time apparently. Does that make sense?
I finished the parts of the Hugo packet I read so I think I’m ready to vote. I’ll admit, without saying which to protect the guilty, which is to say me that there are categories I don’t vote for. Ok, I will admit that neither dramatic presentation will get a vote as I’ve seen nothing in either category, and the artwork all looks excellent, so I can say what’s really good.
The novels I can’t read because I lost the ability to read as I can’t remember narrative that’s longer than a half in length (short stories are fine, some novelettes too as I remember them from nose to tail in one go though I forget them later) when I had the severe head trauma so unless the novel git a audiobook, they’re out too.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I think it worthy of note that Martha Wells won both SF novel and F novel in the Locus awards. A feat to be celebrated say I.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Warm-ish here. Actively hot the one day the humidity was way up. Cooling trend is setting in and at least it’s been reasonable at night for those of us who don’t have A/C. Although I have to wait till full dark to open up, because pollen.
Have KU ending Friday, so this week I will be reading madly. Figure I can get through at least 1 book and 2 magazines.
A bit blah for a couple days after getting both pneumonia and RSV shots. Arm is still a little sore.
EGG doesn’t feel the heat as much as me, so we spend most of our time on opposite sides of the house. Tomorrow afternoon I will beat the heat by washing my hair in a cool shower. No weather ever puts him off food, though.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It’s been cold by NSW standards and wet. I’m looking forward to the ground drying out enough for me to get out in the yard and not sink up to my ankles.
Meanwhile, masala chai, books & movies. Currently reading Doppelganger by Naomi Klein of No Logo fame. She is so often mistaken for Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth) that it prompted her to investigate what Other Naomi is up to these days. Anti-vax propaganda, conspiracy theories and befriending Steve Bannon, it turns out. Klein’s book is part memoir and part observation on personal branding in the age of pandemic, political polarization, climate change & economic disparity.
Movies! Saw Freaks and Promising Young Woman over the past couple days. I had no idea how either of them was going to end until the end. I have favorite films I’ve rewatched any number of times, but a bit of novelty every now & then is a good thing.
LikeLiked by 2 people
As ancient wisdom reveals “If the Naomi be Klein / you’re doing just fine / If the Naomi be Wolf / Oh, buddy. Oooof”
LikeLiked by 4 people
I really enjoyed Wolf’s Beauty Myth but she seems to have fallen down the spiral of “I need to say something else clever and contrarian, I know, vaccines are bad!”
And her sloppiness in sourcing stuff makes me avoid citing anything in Beauty Myth unless I’ve confirmed it elsewhere.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We’re having the opposite of a heat dome here (a cold bowl?). It has been chilly. It was quite nice to go to a tournament on the weekend because I had an excuse to go out wearing many layers of wool.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I for one am pleased my house and yours don’t have the same weather like they did a few weeks ago!
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After a chilly start to the month it’s now ’unbearably hot’ here i.e. a high of 25C. Thank the Whatever my Texan-born Beloved insisted on having a ceiling fan installed in the bedroom!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Heat doesn’t bother me at all since at all I’m effectively a lizard as I don’t sweat since the severe head trauma so it is 85 f. (30 c.) in my apartment but I’m comfortable at that temperature as long as I keep drinking lots of water.
Houseplants for the most part love it, especially the airplants which thrive at warmer temperatures. I’ve had some of them triple their size here and have their stellar pink blooms twice. They just need a thorough soaking once a week.
And the thirty seven inch long airplant is growing visibly. Cool.
LikeLike
It normally has to get to 35C here to qualify as unbearably hot :-). But our chilly is anything under 15C.
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Watched RRR on the weekend. WOW. I still don’t know if it’s bonkers or brilliant, but I love a movie that so shamelessly embraces silly and unsubtle symbolism and wildly over the top action scenes while simultaneously telling a serious underlying story – and sometimes showing it by moments of blunt brutal violence. Also some fantastic dance numbers. And a very nice reversal as one character’s backstory is explained in full…
Will be aiming to see Furiosa tonight for a date with my husband.
School year end. Work actually busy.
LikeLiked by 2 people
The song that won the Oscar is absolutely a banger.
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And the scene is hilarious.
Furiosa was damn good too. I was amused by how many of the theatres were taken up by Inside Out 2. Which – I love Inside Out, or did before the kids watched it a hundred times, but the sequel isn’t a movie I feel needs a whole theatre experience.
Unless my kids suddenly become totally different people from who they are and want to go.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ve no urge to see IO2 either. It seems non-essential to spend movie price money, particularly when I have D+
Possibly getting a ticket for the re-release of CE3K; I have it on disc of course but haven’t seen it on a big screen since last century.
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Huh, turns out there are 30 free (i.e. already paid-for) credits in the account so I have gone ahead and gotten tickets for that.
Will get Deadpool and Wolverine tickets closer to time, with such a bounty to spare.
(Proof it is worth jumping through the hoops, emails, and captchas to reinstate an account!)
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