Trip's Life (Recent episodes)
16 July 2019 - Tuesday
[ . . . ]
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15 July 2019 - Monday
Wait, work, what? Can't I have another Sunday? Okay, it's not like I
did a great job with the last one, but this time for sure!
Tonight's episode of The
Umbrella Academy was the natural other half of yesterday's episode, and
also removes a lot of any sympathy I might have had for Chacha. Also, is
that really what young people do at parties these days?
Pretty Deadly (Kelly Sue DeConnick, Emma Rios, Jordie
Bellaire, Clayton Cowles) is definitely mythic or fairytale Western. I
mean, Death is a character, and falls in love with a human woman. It's
pretty much all downhill from there for most of the characters, because
Western.
Words:
FAIL.
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14 July 2019 - Sunday
Today I was completely useless! I wanted to go shopping, but was too
lazy and stupid and only managed to lie around the apartment all day
going blblblblblblblbl. Also Avalon cancelled date, but it was because
she's not feeling well, not for the much more sensible reason that I
suck.
In the evening, Marith and I watched more of The Umbrella Academy. We
are more than half done, and up to the episode that every show with time
travel should have.
Finally I got
Empowered (Adam Warren) volume 10, but it was not as
satisfying as other recent volumes, more like vol 1-2 where it was just
vignettes from the life of Empowered. Until the cliff-hanger ending, at
least!
Also I have finally read volume 3 of
Kill Six Billion Demons
(Tom Parkinson-Morgan), after starting and realizing I had no idea how
Allison and Cio got to where they were and having to reread the first
two volumes. It's okay, no one was really using that multiverse anyway.
But go Allison! And go Cio!
Words:
FAIL.
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13 July 2019 - Saturday
Riding the bus to shopping is a lot less sweaty than walking, but not
as healthy.
- Sailor Moon Super S 163: Trapped in a mirror labyrinth! But what are the Amazoness Quartet up to?
- RWBY 2.10-11: You can't have an fighting show without a fight on a train. It's just the rules, sorry.
- AKB0048 5:
Apparently Akibastar is not Fully Automated Luxury Queer Space Communism after all! But they do have Pheromones.
- Fruits Basket (2019) 9-10: Haruhatsu! And Valentine's Day, but mostly Haruhatsu.
I read volume 2 of
We Never Learn (Taishi Tsutsui). I think that was funny
fanservice instead of terrible fanservice, but is any fanservice
actually not terrible?
Words:
FAIL.
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12 July 2019 - Friday
Friday always seems hard after Thursday, but I survived another
week!
The Orchid Gown (Mason Frey) is a collection of dark
fantasy stories that are atmospheric but don't quite end. It's not "Lady
or the Tiger", it's more "Here are two doors, there's probably something
behind at least one of them". When it's not Prime Boycott Day, I should
see if the author has any longer works.
But mostly today I went through the 300-odd Kindle samples I have,
deleting a bunch of them and putitng some of them into my wishlist for
later.
In additional Kindle news, I managed to download 200 books at a time to
my local compute for Calibreation,
which wasn't too bad. It only took like 15 batches.
Words:
FAIL.
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11 July 2019 - Thursday
Stayed late at work again. I really want to find a better way to get
home, but transit doesn't seem to do it, and I am pretty sure I don't
think Uber or Lyft should exist. Blurgh.
Beings
From Beyond is nominally for D&D5,
but it's pretty old-school, tables to randomly generate devils and their
biomechanical minions and their giant war machines, demons and the horrific
mutations they induce, incandescents (angels of GOOD + CHAOS) and their
beautiful abstract forms and fundamental powers, or incarnates (GOOD + LAW)
of any concept, plus assorted other creatures from the planes. You want a
lion with a glowing pyramid for a head who freezes evildoers in time? A
radially asymmetric eel demon with a voice that makes your ears bleed? A
creature of living sound in powered armor? This book has you covered.
Forgotten, Forsaken, and
Unforgiven (MR Forbes) are a trilogy that starts off with the
head cop on a failing generation ship and then changes genre with every
book. Pretty much everyone dies, especially characters who don't deserve
it. Earth Unknown starts another trilogy in which the
survivors of the first trilogy are secondary characters or even
antagonists, but I had had enough by that point.
Empowered Unchained vol 1 (Adam Warren, et al) is a
collection of all the specials that are not otherwise collected. It
turns out I have read them all before, but now they can sit on my
bookshelf taking up space in the physical world&emdash; I think I may be
doing something wrong. But I liked Empowered anyway.
I generally like Seanan McGuire, so I got Spider-Gwen: Ghost
Spider vol 1 (Seanan McGuire, Rosi Ka:mpe, Takeshi Miyazama), but
apparently I need to have read at least two complete series to know what
the heck is going on, because mainstream comics.
Words:
FAIL.
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10 July 2019 - Wednesday
Kelsey cancelled at the last minute again, so Mike ran more of the
Heroquest we are going through in
13G.
Mike likes to play things out in fine detail, so this is taking forever.
(I think he really should be writing for video games.) Also
Indian food. Ken
never orders, so Brooks has been getting him the same thing for like six
months.
Books where magic and/or gods return to a major city and everything is
terrible and the hero has to save people from magical threats are a dime a
dozen when set in the US or UK, but I hadn't seen one set in Lagos,
Nigeria, before David Mogo Godhunter (Suyi Davis Okungbowa). I'm
sure I missed a lot of the depth, since I know almost nothing about Nigerian
religions or magic systems, but that was definitely a hero who
struggled.
I was sad to see that The Unstoppable Wasp was over after
only two thin collections, but I guess people with money and power were
also sad, because now there is The Unstoppable Wasp: Unlimited
vol 1 (Jeremy Whitley, Gurihiru)! (I think there may have been some stuff
in other titles in between, because mainstream comics, but whatever.)
Supervillains! Tiny gay disasters (which apparently is a level up from
Snappy Dresser)! Mental health representation! The power of Friendship and
Science!
Words:
FAIL.
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9 July 2019 - Tuesday
Avalon is still alive, even though her Internet boyfriend is not great.
In a lot of ways,
Wicked Fox (Kat Cho) is like a vampire novel (woe, I must
feed upon humans!), but the Korean flavor makes it interesting. (I'm not
sure I would be able to tell that Korean is in the same language family
as Japanese if I didn't know.)
In the Shadow of Spindrift House (Mira Grant) is short and
doomed and shows why no one should ever go near the Atlantic coast
ever.
In volume 3 of Monstress (Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda), the
threatened war is definitely revving up, and also we get to see more of
Maika's predecessor's works, and why the Cumaea are so horrible. I'm really
not sure about [SPOILER] getting more of a speaking part, though. But oh
the doom!
Words:
FAIL.
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8 July 2019 - Monday
Oh no, I left my iPad at home! I had to do work when I was at work!
And on the commute, I had to read the second volume of
Monstress (Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda)! It is just as doomed
as the first, of course. I am now more interested in looking up the
writer's prose work, although it wouldn't be the same without the art.
The Umbrella Academy is
still not explaining how Luther got to the Moon, but Klaus is showing
that all aspects have a positive side. Diego is still a butt, but I do
feel sorry for him.
Words:
FAIL.
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7 July 2019 - Sunday
Since yesterday was a bust, I had to go shopping this morning, and
Sunday is the worst shopping day. Sure enough, I had to wait 55 minutes
for a bus.
I was on call from 13:30 to 19:30 again, but nothing happened,
including brain activity. I tried to catch up on
El Goonish Shive, but didn't make
it very far because reading requires concentration.
In episode 3 of The
Umbrella Academy we learn more about Five's adventure and the hunters.
And doom. So much doom.
Salvation (Peter F Hamilton) is very Hamilton, with
corporate intrigue and interstellar travel not really used for the
betterment of humanity but the aliens are suitably obnoxious and the
far-future bits are interesting even if I really doubt the utility of
bringing back genders
Words:
FAIL.
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6 July 2019 - Saturday
I was hoping to leave at a reasonable time in the morning so there
would be some Saturday left after getting home. But at the reasonable
time, Ken wanted to start
Terraforming Mars,
and Dave didn't want to leave until after everyone else so that when
they inevitably realized they had forgotten something he could bring it,
and then finally I lost TM (tied for last with Al, but Robert won even
though he had never played before, because I suck completely) and people
started to leave, but it was already so late I couldn't complain when
Sherilyn sent Al to Target to buy
Codenames
and then the car key was someplace too safe for Dave to find it. We
didn't even leave Roseville until 15:30, and then there was traffic, so
there really was not much left of the day by the time I got home.
It was very kind of Dave to drive, but maybe I should just take the
train next time. If I can decide what I'm doing more then a day in
advance.
The second episode of
The Umbrella Academy
is not any less strange or doomed than the first one!
Words:
FAIL.
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5 July 2019 - Friday
HAPPY HAPPY JOSH DAY!!
Now Josh is eighteen, and will be going off to college in the fall,
and has to be a grownup and stuff, but I am pretty sure he will vote the
right way.
Because Ken will always push for board games over roleplaying games,
this was a board game day. First we played Caverna,
and I somehow managed to come in second, with almost 2/3 of Ken's score.
Then, after a break for swimming and going to the gaming store (I bought
the first Die collection for Ayse because she only had Carl's
borrowed individual issues) we played Ken's shiny new copy of Terraforming
Mars. I came in dead last, because I suck at all board games.
After Ken went to bed, Dave and I played
Codenames
with Al and Sherilyn, and Al turned out to be surprisingly good at
giving clues. Since this is a cooperative game, it doesn't matter that I
suck!
Words:
FAIL.
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4 July 2019 - Thursday
Because I can't get a real job (although at least I get paid
ridiculously for being in support), I had to be on call all this
afternoon right up until we took off to see fireworks, but nothing
happened.
I didn't actually do anything today, except try to play one game of
6-player Super Nintendo Every Character Melee Brawl, or whatever it's
called. Since I don't know how to play video games at all, this went
even more poorly than I expected. (Also it turned out later I received
the wrong instructions for attacking.) But it's a vacation! Ish.
We made Dungeon
World characters because Al wants to try running it. I made a dwarven
cleric who hatched from a stone egg and worships the What Lies Beneath
with sacrifice, although maybe I should have used my dwarf fighter idea.
This was Nonny's first year of getting to stay up for fireworks. I
think he liked it, although it was really very late for a smol Non.
The fairground where the fireworks are viewed has been massively
upgraded from two years ago, so it's not just a huge dirt field, there
are buildings and concession stands and grass and security goons and
stuff. But the fireworks still go boom.
Words:
FAIL.
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3 July 2019 - Wednesday
Ken and Ayse and Jus and Nonny went up to Roseville for the holiday
weekend during the day, but that filled up a car and I had to work, so I
went up with Dave in the evening. There was some traffic, and also some
heat, but we did eventually make it.
The Pettersons' new house is already full of stuff, because Sherilyn
is always ready to survive the complete collapse of the scrapbooking
industry, but it is so large that everyone had a room with a door except
Dave (and the room I had was so big it could easily have held both of us
and some additional people as well). Also I had my CPAP machine (which I
didn't the last time we visited) so I kind of slept okay.
Words:
FAIL.
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2 July 2019 - Tuesday
I did see Avalon tonight, but I am still a pretty low-quality
boyfriend.
We Never Learn (Taishi Tsutsui) has encouraging things to
say about talent and effort, but is mostly just high schoo harem high
jinx.
Valiant Dust and Restless Lightning (Richard
Baker) are the subgenre of military SF that is Victorian colonialism with
starships. Like, the major powers are not even disguised as Britain,
France, and Germany. The colonized are sometimes depicted as bumbling, but
the colonizers are pretty much always depicted as arrogant and greedy, so
that's something. (The main character is from a client world himself, so
not as inclined to jingoism.) The ossified, decadent, ancient empire of
inscrutable aliens is maybe a little too much of a stand-in for China,
though.
Unsung Heroine (Sarah Kuhn) is a shorter work about one of
the secondary characters from Heroine Complex/Heroine
Worship/Heroine's Journey, the team's unpowered but
awesome martial artist/karaoke star, and how she finds true love or at
least heart-warming girlsmooches.
Words:
FAIL.
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1 July 2019 - Monday
I did some stuff for capitalism. Probably I didn't do enough of it,
and I'm sure I didn't do it very well, but I did it.
We watched the first episode of
The Umbrella Academy,
which was very superhero, much dysfunctional, wow. So far I like Five
best. Diego is a butt.
Volume 2 of Witch Hat Atelier (Kamome Shirahama) is about
dragons and disaster response and law enforcement. But our heroine seems to
be bonding with her fellow apprentices, and learning better magic-drawing
technique.
The Fifth Science (Exurb1a) is I guess a little like Lem?
Only not really. It is short stories through the future history of humanity
as it learns to make everything in the universe conscious. Clarke's Law
applies from time to time. Humans are awful to each other and to robots.
Some things are wondrous.
Words:
FAIL.
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30 June 2019 - Sunday
I complain about traveling four hours for four hours of gaming, so I was
not all that pleased to travel four hours for like three hours of gaming
(I'm pretty sure an SCRPG
adventure takes o(N) time to play and Deirdre was out with a bad back and
Edie was at Pride). But the gaming was fun while we had it!
In the evening I saw Avalon for the first time in forever, because I
am a poor excuse for a boyfriend. She has been okay, though, and doing
death lord stuff.
Words:
FAIL.
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29 June 2019 - Saturday
Now that the cleaners only come once a month, they threw my routine
all off so I completely failed at almost everthing today. I did manage
to shop for groceries, at least.
I finally finished rereading
Empowered (Adam Warren) from the beginning, so I could read
volume 9 (Emp continues to rock!) and
Empowered and Sistah Spooky's High School Hell (art by
Carla Speed McNeil). I probably should not like this series as much as I
do.
Kaiju Girl Caramelise vol 1 (Spica Aoki) is not raunchy or
violent at all, because the main character turning into a kaiju when
afflicted by unrequired love doesn't make it not shoujo.
Words:
FAIL.
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28 June 2019 - Friday
There was a complicated plan where I would go home in the late
afternoon and do the handover there (since I am doing it tonight as a
swap with my boss), but it failed because the train was late and then
there was a different train and it was generally horrible and also
poorly air-conditioned. I ended up getting home at the usual time, which
worked well enough, so I will probably not try this trick again.
I liked Shooting the Rift, so I looked
for more books by Alex Stewart and found
A Fistful of Elven Gold. It was only okay, alas. It reads
more like an RPG adventure that was fun to play through than a
novel.
Cinder & The Prince of Midnight (Susan Ee) is like a
more horror-flavored Cinderella, with some Robin Hood thrown in.
Help Fund My Robot Army!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects (ed John Joseph Adams)
is exactly what it sounds like. Some of them are good as stories, some
are only okay as stories, some I would contribute to, all will seem
horribly dated in twenty years.
Words:
FAIL.
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27 June 2019 - Thursday
I got some love from Aspen! She did the rubbing against the table leg
with her tail up
thing while I was trying to get ready to leave, so I tried giving her some
pettins, and she approved! What a good kitty!
I did some work, and stayed until a hundred o'clock at night to hand
over to the India team and didn't get home until superlate and
bleagh.
I though the word "imagineer" was trademarked by Disney, but
apparently not. Anyway, the book
Imagineer (Honor Raconteur) is about a teenage girl with
anime-style useless absent parents who suddenly discovers she has vast
magical powers and is welcomed by the secret world of magical creatures
and there is a mystery and stuff. Unfortunately, past the opening
chapters, there is not much tension.
The Warship (Neal Asher) is the second in the "Rise of the
Jain" trilogy and therefore 390562349560th in the "Polity" universe, but
it does not really add anything. The previous book at least told us more
about the Jain and some other aliens.
I had never heard of Karin Tidbeck, but based on the short stories in
Jagannath, I should seek out more of her work! It is very
Scandinavian-feeling (to this completely-non-Scandinavian reader),
surreal fantasy or magical realism or something. Anyway, I like
them and maybe you will like them too.
Words:
FAIL.
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26 June 2019 - Wednesday
Surprisingly, we had Kelsey and not Mike (boo germs!) for gaming, but
we were prepared with
Eclipse
Phase 2E! We finally made it on to the place my character's previous
instance disappeared, and found out that something is definitely going
on or there wouldn't be gossip bloggers trying to find out why he
mysteriously vanished.
As usual, I am terrible at everything and yet talk too much.
Hexarchate Stories (Yoon Ha Lee) is shart pieces, some
barely vignettes, in the past and future of the "Machineries of Empire"
series. Just a minute, I have to go fling myself into a pit now.
I swear it's a complete coincidence that the other book I finished
today was titled Hex-Rated (Jason Ridler). It is nothing
alike, but is much 1970, very Los Angeles, wow, with sketchy mages and a
porn studio and a PI who has magic but prefers to use fast talk.
Words:
FAIL.
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25 June 2019 - Tuesday
I managed to do one of the things I didn't do yesterday, the one my
coworker didn't have to do for me. Also I got some more stuff to do,
which is okay.
Hey, look, it's an episode of Elementary where Sherlock
almost faces a consequence!
Part-Time Gods (Rachel Aaron) is the sequel to Minimum
Wage Magic, and is still much Shadowrun, very
mage/streetsam, wow. Opal's life gets better, kind of, but she is still so
very doomed.
Now I've read all the
The Promised Neverland (Kaiu Shirai, Posuka Demizu) I have,
and it stops in the middle of a giant conflict where the characters have
to come up with a really good plan right away! Augh!
Words:
FAIL.
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24 June 2019 - Monday
Because I am stupid, I failed to do the thing or the other thing at
work, and one of my cow orkers had to do the thing instead.
We've reached episodes 5-6 of MIX, which I think is
the halfway point, and now there is fan service and an obvious romantic
interest and blah.
I didn't like
Timebound (Rysa Walker) as much as the "Delphi" series, even
though it has time travel and timeline alteration and period costumes.
Meh.
The Last Supper Before Ragnarok (Cassandra Khaw) wraps up
the "Gods & Monsters" shared universe thing, with suitable mysticism and
doom and Rupert Wong.
Words:
FAIL.
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23 June 2019 - Sunday
Today I accomplished nothing because I was on call from 13:30 to 19:30.
Unlike last week, no customers caused problems, so I spent the entire six
hours scrolling through trumblr like the waste of
otherwise-recyclable organic matter I am.
After I handed things over to the India team, Marith and I watched some
more MIX. It's
still not as good as Cross Game.
In volume 2 of O Maidens In Your Savage Season (Mari Okada,
Nao Emoto), one of our protagonists gets a makeover, one of them tries to
meet the person she's been having tinysex (sorry, "cyber") with, and all of
them continue to flail about the fact that sex exists. I think Pigtails
Girl and Blonde Girl are the most likely to not be straight. Short Girl is
the cutest.
I found many volumes of
The Promised Neverland (Kaiu Shirai, Posuka Demizu) at the
bookstore, so I bought them in hopes of finding out more about the
outside world, and indeed, the end of the anime is part way into volume
5. Everything past that point is new and exciting!
Words:
FAIL.
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22 June 2019 - Saturday
No anime tonight! Monkeycats went to see
A Midsummer
Night's Dream last night, and the kids loved it so much they
demanded to see it again, so that's what we did. This production is all
women and had a strange 80s aesthetic (which means Puck had a very
David-Bowie-Labyrinth wig). It was pretty cute! And Nonny
liked the faeries so much.
The main character of
Komi Can't Communicate (Tomohito Oda) seems cool and aloof
and everyone worships her, but actually she just has such bad social
anxiety that she can't talk when people are around, and she just wants
to make 100 friends. Fortunately(?) someone has figured out her problem,
and also her school is full of weirdos, so hopefully everything will be
okay. (Komi is adorable.)
Words:
FAIL.
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21 June 2019 - Friday
Tonight I did not get home in good time, because the train was
horrible. Bah.
Words:
FAIL.
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20 June 2019 - Thursday
We swapped around on-call, so I was able to get home at a reasonable
hour tonight and we watched the first half of
Going Postal. I
don't remember the book well enough to be sure, but Marith says it is
diverging drastically.
The Grand Dark (Richard Kadrey) is not like the other
Kadrey books I've read, it is not cosmic at all. A working-class guy in a
secondary-world analogue of the Weimar Republic tries to do his job and
take his drugs and smooch his girlfriend, but robots are taking people's
jobs and the secret police hate everyone and capitalists are making genetic
monstrosities and there's another war looming and everything is
unnecessarily horrible.
Creation Machine (Andrew Bannister) feels kind of Banksian
to me, with the setting that's a patchwork of libertarian enclaves and
depraved fascist dystopias and presumably someone sane somewhere but not
on-screen (that's mostly Against a Dark Background) and
superhuman forces that tumble the characters about but end up with pretty
much the status quo.
Miniatures is a short collection of very short John Scalzi
stories. They are all humorous, because Scalzi.
Words:
FAIL.
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19 June 2019 - Wednesday
Somehow we had everyone in one place, so we managed to play some more
of Kelsey's
D&D5
adventure. I do not think it went well, but then I hate D&D. Also people
who always interrupt when someone is trying to say something so they can
say the same thing louder (yes, even when I'm the interruptor).
Mike, the fiend, stole my
Thai food plan, so I have to think
of something different next week!
The Empress of Forever (Max Gladstone) is like
Guardians of the Galaxy does Journey to the
West in a ruined transhuman galaxy, with the inventiveness of
Three Parts Dead. Or maybe it is even more awesome than
that sounds, because and it has relatively few male
characters.
Words:
FAIL.
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18 June 2019 - Tuesday
Marith had never seen
The Mummy, so we
watched it.I don't think she appreciated it as much as tumblr does, but
that was pretty much the whole evening.
Now I have read
The Ancient Magus' Bride (Kore Yamazaki), which covers
pretty much the same ground as the anime, ending with Chise giving
[SPOILER] the [SPOILER] status. In vol 10, a whole new arc starts, where
Chise and Elias are both going to have to deal with Humans. I am sure
there will be no problems whatsoever.
The Outside (Ada Hoffman) is about a physicist trying to
live under the transcendent only slightly soul-eating AI
gods when they have declared all the good parts of physics heretical just
because they drive humans mad and may destroy the universe. The main
character is explicitly autistic, but aside from sensory issues, it doesn't
seem to affect things much, which may indicate that the author (who is
autistic herself) is a better writer than I am a reader.
Words:
FAIL.
Re: The Mummy by marithlizard (Sat Jun 22 09:42:38 2019)
It was a fun movie, and the leads were very cute! Just not enough to displace any of the current fangirl devotion objects. (Apparently these days we prefer
characters with at least a millenium of backstory, to get that real angst-seasoned flavor.)
Make a comment!
17 June 2019 - Monday
Monday Capitalism. Bah.
Apparently everyone's first on-call shift has been terrible since
forever, and usually it's not like that. We'll see.
MIX is a
baseball anime based on a manga by the same person who did Cross Game. I guess
the same people were involved in the anime, because the character
designs are very similar and the story seems similar too.
Nowhere to Run (Elliott Kay) is the sequel to Run
Like Hell, in which our band of intrepid humanoids fight against
evil, and also some kind of demonic buried spirit thing. The humans suck
worse, really. Also I ship the bugbear and the human.
Words:
FAIL.
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16 June 2019 - Sunday
I didn't start being on call until 7:30, so in theory I could have
taken a shower and started the day and everything, but I am too lazy.
Also then customers sent email, and sent more email, and finally called
with a tale of great woe that I had no idea how to deal with so I had to
call my boss (which is technically fine, since she was my designated
backup, but still annoying) and there was a huge conference call that
lasted until my shift ended and my boss² took over at 13:30 and I had no
lunch and generally it was awful. Maybe I should live in a cardboard box
behind the bus station.
I did manage to go shopping, but still didn't find any pants that
were even vaguely my size. Maybe I should die in a pit.
In the next episode of Elementary, Sherlock has
the potential for personal growth but passes it by in favor of thinking
he's better than everyone else in the world put together. Shock.
Surprise.
Words:
FAIL.
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