Fishin' in the stream of consciousness (all-purpose, no topic chat thread)

In personal news, I have an appointment to talk to a psychologist to get a letter to give to my landlords to explain why pet ferrets would be a "reasonable accommodation". (Among other things, they do less damage to the flat than pets which I am explicitly allowed. I loved my rats but I'm never owning them again unless I become rich and get a place big enough for a special rat room with nothing not designed for the purpose that they can chew up.) Wish me luck regarding the letter helping?

 

Luck!

 

Turns out I've been drinking about twice as much juice as the daily recommended limit, which is a fair whack of sugar, so I may need to shell out money for smaller cups. Does juice freeze easily? It goes sour if I don't drink it fast.

 

From my experience with homemade juice pops as a kid, i can confirm both apple juice and orange juice freeze and thaw well, but there's a middle stage when thawing where its very cold and has ice clumps in it. Grape juice does not freeze well, and ive never tried other flavors.

There's also the option of frozen juice concentrate and it comes in a very compact can you can store in your freezer, then put it in a pitcher and add the appropriate amount of water as per can instructions whenever you like

 

Someone said John Mulaney speaks like he Capitalises Every Word and now I can't unsee him as a jadeblood troll XD

 

Oh No, He’s Sensitive About That!

 

In honor of Shrek being released x years ago today, I forgot to subtract, here is a very interesting discussion of why the use of pop music works so well in Shrek despite how you could technically criticize it for the same reasons you could criticize Suicide Squad. It’s just that one of these soundtracks was really thoughtful and deliberate even though it seems straightforward on the surface.

 

20 years. It’s the 20 year anniversary of Shrek and I feel so old.

 

Oh goodness, that’s such a long time ago! Same!

 

One of my cowriters is good at coming up with bizarre mind-screw formatting for chapters of our fic. We have one in rhyme, some with blacked-out text, switched points of view and weird time jumps, hallucination sequences, one written as a character's own fanfic, and general confusion. I've challenged her to try making a chapter in limerick or haiku form.

 

Hard mode: sonnet form. :P

 

I dunno, extra hard would be sapphic stanzas.

 

...as A. a poet and B. a lesbian, I clearly have a new format to learn.

 

We wrote one chapter as a character's shitty fanfic depicting analogous events to what happened to them, and I'm demanding that now we do a chapter of a character's origfic in the mould of The Eye of Argon.

 

Cool thing alert!!! It’s a monthlong event for May, and it looks like fun! I'm gonna try to participate!

Cindy of withcindy on youtube and @readwithcindy on twitter is hosting her annual Asian Readathon in the month of May. To participate you simply read Asian and Pacific Islander and/or diaspora books to meet several challenges.

Spoiler: the challenges

Challenges:

1. Read any book written by an Asian author.
2. Read any book featuring an Asian protagonist.
3. Read any book written by an Asian author in your favorite genre.
4. Read any nonfiction book written by an Asian author.
5. Read any book written by an Asian author that’s not US-centric.

These challenges can be combined if you want to make it even easier!

The twist:

• You can combine challenges and read in any order; however, EACH book you read should feature a character or author of a different Asian ethnicity. This is to encourage cultural diversity.

• Example: I can read a Japanese book to combine challenges #1, #2, and #3. But if I read a second Japanese book, that would not count for any other challenge, therefore I still need to read about a different ethnicity to cover challenges #4 and #5.
• Not sure what counts as Asian? You can refer to this list below!

I like things explained to me out loud and in detail so I have more of an idea about things like intent, so here’s her video in which she does just that:


It’s meant to be diverse but also accessible. There’s tips on free resources. Cindy herself actually permanently owns like three physical paper books, which sounds like hyperbole but I’m serious. She’s a huge fan of libraries and audiobooks.

Here’s the google doc with information about the event, and also information about the related charity fundraising drive: https://docs.google.com/document/d/...lL5hj3mFXeNMZGUD-2fnGMWBsEPtZ_w5__TBMGFi3/pub

And here’s the new Storygraph, which is where the book recommendations live if you would like recs, so that Cindy doesn't have to personally add every single suggestion herself by hand. Also it just looks nice because you can see the covers and stuff. You can sort on genres, or search for graphic novels, LGBTQ+ books, poetry, or books by country and/or ethnicity. There's a tag for Hmong authors, for example. The selection is vast. https://app.thestorygraph.com/reading_challenges/8335af7a-941e-47fe-9525-37d87a70e325

 

The list includes various graphic novels by different asian ethnicities, too (although most are japanese) if people who want to participate but can't read lengthy pieces of text, and there's a poetry section as well!

Of course me being me i immediately went to check out the comics section and damn there's a lot of diverse genres! I found uzumaki by junji ito pretty quick

 

Already found a book i wanna read! Now i have to figure out how to get my grubby little mitts on it, as I can't ask for an inter-library loan because our local library got ruined during the texas freeze

 

Winner but also witnessed for the library. If the librarians are reachable, they might actually be glad to help you with that. A lot of librarians really seem to wish people would come to them with more questions.

 

They are actually currently scattered around other city departments to get hours, what happened was the sprinkler system had a pipe burst and it ruined almost every book irreparably, and they fixed the pipe only for it to happen again in a different part of the pipe system over the weekend. The library itself is hazardous because it was left alone long enough for black mold to start growing. Its sadly not near the top of the list to fix right now as my small town is approaching a political approximation of a civil war. I wish i was kidding.

 

Genuinely enjoying ABK's series of fond little spoofs of things I like.