Trismegistus

Monday Media - April 27 Edition

2026-04-27T20:42:52Z

Games: This was a busy weekend for games. We spent ::mumblemumble:: hours playing a session of Eldritch Horror, and actually managed to vanquish the Ancient One 💪 so the sleep deprivation winning entailed was ultimately worth it. Twenty-four hours later at a gathering at Favorite Indian Buffet, we decided to reconvene to spend another ::mumblemumble:: hours playing Wyrmspan.

Both games are great fun. I like Eldritch Horror even more than Arkham Horror, I think because its whole-of-globe canvas just feels like the appropriate setting for 1920s pulp/supernatural horror to my brain. And while both Wingspan and Wyrmspan are both gorgeous and I love birds, I really love fantasy dragons, so I'm an easy mark for the latter. Nor did it hurt that I'm currently reading Novik's Buried Deep (and am about to start Brennan's Onyx Court) and so would have had dragons on the brain even if there weren't a few Temeraire-verse stories in the anthology.

Movies: The anime fan-subset of the Geek BBQers wrapped up our Rebuild of Evangelion (re)watch. As one of the viewers who watched the original anime back in the day but had not seen any of the remakes before, I was not quite sure what to expect (and still have vivid memories of watching a bunch of very upset and equally committed otaku protesting the release of 2.0 at the movie theater across the street from my workplace in Kyoto). I enjoyed it! It was definitely a nostalgia trip but also interesting to watch knowing 1000 percent more about Japan's domestic experience of WWII versus viewing it through the lens of adolescent angst (Everything is so hard and no one understands me!) We tackled Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo and Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time during this session, meaning I was wholly out to sea as to what would happen in many places. But it felt like the new stuff dovetailed really well with the original, the new additions were fun, and (without spoiling anything) there was a lot about it that I felt improved on the original while still keeping its patented "psychological turmoil as interpreted through Christian mysticism by someone who did not grow up Christian"-weirdness vibe.

Music: We saw Carpenter Brut and Health at the "Okay but not great" concert venue. Carpenter Brut was fabulous We got our tickets months ago when the show was first announced and were bemused to learn that it had sold out in the meantime. As a result, we did not arrive early and did not have great sightlines on the stage for the first half of Carpenter Brut's set. But honestly? There was not much to be seen anyway, given that Carpenter Brut is primarily an auditory experience. And it was an experience: his music is eerie and foreboding enough on a set of earbuds or speakers. In a proper venue it is wicked.

Health was a bit of surprise. I mainly knew them as "the guy that remixed that Crystal Castles track" and was surprised to learn that "that guy" was actually an entire band, and that said band has been around for about 20 years. We'd assumed, judging from the venue info and the tickets, that Carpenter Brut was the headliner (as did most of the crowd, who took off after Carpenter Brut's set ended) but upon realizing that Health was actually the main acted, said "Eh, we already paid for it" and decided to stick around. Their guitarist's cringe high school jock jokes aside, they're actually pretty good. Their vocalist sounds like the forlorn lovechild of maynard keenan and Brian Molko, and their music is clearly pretty heavily inspired by APC, NIN, and the like. Having only heard it once I have no real opinion on theme or lyrics, but I would certainly listen to it again.

Podcasts/Articles: Too many to mention them all, but I did revisit Patrick Radden Keefe's A Teen's Fatal Plunge Into the London Underworld while I wait for my hold on London Falling to come in. (Guys, Keefe is one of my favorite nonfiction authors and I lust after this book. Luckily, I'm only about #17003 on 35 copies! 😒)

Roleplaying: Having Put Together A Crew^(TM) from the star players of our various D&D homebrew and official campaigns, the GC held a pretty excellent Session Zero for a new Wild Beyond the Witchlight campaign. I am playing a fey swarmmaster druid, who I'm envisioning as a sort of fish-out-of-water by virtue of the fact that as a few amongst a bunch of human children in the feywild, she's the only one who 1) knows what's going on, but 2) doesn't know how out of their element any of the others are.

Television: AEW continues to be an absolute delight. My heart and soul increasingly belong to Thekla, who is about as close to an IRL incarnation of Karlach as I think this timeline can get. Her Collision match with Alex Windsor was fire. Pac versus Lio Rush was a verrrrry close second; I love how good Pac was at playing the straight man to Rush's Smeagol-brand creepiness, which made me an instafan. (Seriously, it's the best wrestling creepiness since Velveteen Dream. Also, Pac continues to be criminally underrated and underused.) Mina Shirakawa and Hikaru Shida's Japanese smacktalk is fabulous. Nick Wayne made Mox look both fast and not boring 😂, Brody King continues to dominate, MJF continues to be the consummate heel, and FTR and Stokely will always crack me up. This is an absolute match and storyline golden era, and not even the unnecessary reintroduction of Jericho can spoil it.

Video Games: It's been a dry period for me for video gaming, but I am casually spectating as the GC plays his way through Metaphor, which, hysterically, he keeps inadvertently referring to as "Persona", and which, hysterically, everyone still knows what he's talking about.

これで以上です。

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Monday (March) Media - Last Three Weeks Edition

2026-03-30T19:16:48Z

This month's been pretty busy + I have a new hell commute that limits my time and desire to do more things on a screen once I get home. Let's catch up.

A PPV happened. AEW Revolution was surprisingly good. We hosted—nine people in total (not including two no-shows). I was both pleased with and surprised by FTR's win, and that Mox's match was less cheesy and more watchable than we'd anticipated. Swerve vs. Brody King was really good. Thekla vs. Statlander was fire. The MJF match was brutal and a great close the the PPV. Also: Ronda Rousey! The following Dynamite felt like a continuation of the PPV, like, wow, those matches did not feel like the typical "I'm tired coach" post-PPV fare. In general, AEW has really regained its stride and is pretty much what we're watching these days if the TV is on.

My various D&D campaigns are still on hiatus for various reasons, but in the meantime, our Cyberpunk campaign resumed. I play the crew's fixer and am really enjoying it. (Which is maybe not so surprising; I tend to gravitate toward rogue-y classes.) My character is solidifying into a bubbly gladhander, which is very fun to play, especially as our GM is really good at riffing off of us players and adjusting course mid-stream in response to whatever curveballs we throw at them. This definitely keeps things interesting for the players...but isn't an unvarnished good: this last session we narrowly avoided unknowingly handing a lethal bioweapon over to an anarchist criminal syndicate. Oops. That said, we've thus far managed to complete our gigs relatively unscathed; no mean feat for this RP universe.

Last week the Geek BBQers gathered for Equinox Brunch, our first big seasonal event since winter. The weather obliged us by being balmy, meaning we spent the first six or so hours outside in the glorious sunshine before shifting indoors. The guests were a good mix of core and core-adjacent Geek BBers plus individuals the host knows and knew would be a good fit with the rest of us. Good food, good conversation, good weather, and good vibes.

Our Vinland Saga (re)watch has also resumed. We're currently six episodes into season two, and it is pretty fun to see the reactions of the people who've never read or watched the series before: Wait, all that back there was just the prologue? The entire series is good, but I really enjoy the pacing and character development in this season. Also: Thorkell has reentered the chat. In addition to watching the show, we also got to play with the hosts' two adorable kittens, who have endless amounts of curiosity and energy and were an excellent bonus to the proceedings.

Weekend Buffet at one of our favorite Indian places seems to be transitioning from a spur of the moment thing we do on low-errand days to a semi-regular Geek BBQer gathering: some configuration of us has been there pretty much every weekend for the last several months. This weekend we emerged to discover the local charity secondhand book popup had set up across the street, so we spent an additional half-hour or so browsing.

What else? Dance has calmed down a bit since the big St. Patrick's Day events. The individual classes themselves have been a bit of a mixed bag depending on whether the instructor on a given night spends time on drills and fundamentals, or teaches to the most advanced students in class (some of whom have years of childhood—and even adult—experience under their belts). But it's a ton of fun, I get the chance to jump around for an hour each week, and even the lightspeed ahead instructors are a personal challenge to see how much I can master before the next week's session.

これで以上です。

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Monday Media - March 9 Edition

2026-03-09T22:02:57Z

Games: Pretty much the typical go-tos.

Music: We have seen some great shows. The first was Peaches ( Cut because Peaches. ) Everything about it: the costumes, the choreography, the energy, was so good. Absolutely phenomenal show. A++ please don't make us wait another three years before you come back again.

The following day we saw Timecop1983 with Bad Dreamers and Brent Michael Woods opening. Woods is very much of the "Richard Marx with an acoustic guitar" mode of mid-80s nostalgia pastiche, which is not my thing per se, but he is very talented at it and thus fun to watch live. Bad Dreamers joined the tour at the last minute when the scheduled opening act was unable to get US visas; I'd been aware of him through his vocals on a bunch of Timecop tracks, and he was just as good live. (And I particularly appreciated his insistence that the venue turn the stage lights off so that he could see the audience despite it's meaning that the audience could not see him.

Timecop1983 was fabulous, as expected. Just a really energetic show that sounded as good or better than the albums live. He was joined by Josh Dally on guitar and vocals as well as a killer live drummer, which really added to the energy (the drummer was clearly having the time of his life), and Dally and Timecop had great onstage chemistry, with Dally providing the garrulous crowd engagement and running commentary, and Timecop the well-timed laconic one-liners. (Dally also graciously handled the very drunk woman in the crowd who kept loudly insisting he go for drinks with her after the show despite the conspicuous wedding band on his hand.)

They played a good selection from their back catalogue as well as some new tracks we weren't familiar with, as well as a few numbers with one or both of Bad Dreamers and Woods on the stage with them. This too was an excellent show and I will certainly see any or all of these acts if they're ever in town again.

Podcasts/Articles: I listened to The Women's Podcast episode The Digital War on Women and How To Fight Back, which was unsurprisingly as horrifying as the title suggests. The panel members were (rightly) so energized about how vile this stuff is that they were unfortunately often not as clear about explaining to the audience what it was they were discussing as one would have wished but they made up for it by explicitly pointing out that the primary solution to all this shit and enshitification is to stop. Just stop. Get off these platforms and go do something else with your time. (That said, how you convince anyone under 15 to do so...)

For long form articles, I read:

Roleplaying: Nothing. The GC is DMing some one shots, but since they're on the days that I am step dancing and I can't be in two places at once, dancing it is 🩰

Television: When the TV's on, pretty much all AEW, all the time. The pendulum is very much swinging back toward Restaurant Quality 😁 these days. Of course, the usual suspects (Hangman, Mox, Young Bucks) are still there with predictable plotlines, but everything going on around them has been great. FTR and Stokely steal the show for every promo and match they're in. You wouldn't necessarily think Brody King vs. Swerve would make sense but it does, and Prince Nana is clearly having the time of his life. The Brawling Birds won me over with the throwback name alone, but they are more than living up to its promise. Jet Speed and Speedball are great. Kyle Fletcher is great. The IInspiration should annoy the living bejeezus out of me but they were hysterical and I wish they'd got five times the screen/ring time, TK please bring them back. Don Callas is as oily and entertaining as ever. The Thunder Rosa vs. Thekla match was fire.

Speaking of wrestling, we also finished out Dimension 20: Titan Takedown group watch, which had a very satisfying (if a bit railroaded, probably due to time constraints) conclusion. Humor, action, lore and iterating in-jokes, and some really affecting emotional character arcs: this is what I want from wrestling and from a D&D game, and this D:20 season had them all in spades. I enjoyed the nostalgia of (most of) The New Day and Bailey, and while I don't watch WWE anymore, it absolutely sold me on Chelsea Green and I hope she makes it over to AEW some day soon.

Video Games: The gaming computer is acting up *sigh* so nothing these past few weeks. We did get Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2, which seems to have inspired divergent takes among the people who've played it, so we'll see.

これで以上です。

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What Am I Reading Wednesday - February 25

2026-02-25T21:16:13Z

I didn't finish anything over the past seven days, due to a combination of late days at work, a bunch of after-work obligations, and heroic attempts to complete the crosswords in two collections I own with an eye to sending them to the recycling center once I do.

What I Finished Reading This Week

Nothing.

What I Am Currently Reading

Of Dice and Men – David Ewalt
I've got one chapter to go before I finish.

A Fate Inked in Blood – Danielle Jensen
I read another 50 pages this week.

When the Tides Held the Moon - Vanessa Vida Kelley
This novel's premise is intriguing, but boy does Vida Kelley love their adjectives.

What I’m Reading Next

I acquired no new books this week.

これで以上です。

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What Am I Reading Wednesday - February 18

2026-02-18T22:35:45Z

A short entry for today since I got home late from work and have to scramble to get to the next thing. Anyway, here's what I read over the last six days:

What I Finished Reading This Week

Lake of Souls - Ann Leckie
This is an excellent book (and I say this as someone who vastly prefers novels to short stories). Lake of Souls has three sections: stand-alone short stories, stories in the Imperial Radch universe, and stories in the Raven Tower universe, and they're all excellent. I enjoyed all but one of the stand-alone stories (and the sole story I didn't like, I didn't enjoy only because it's a bit of a downer. But it's also only 1.5 pages long, so hey). I'd read two of the three Imperial Radch stories prior to this anthology's publication and enjoyed them again here (I won't spoil "She Commands Me And I Obey" but IYKYK...and it's good.) The third, new-to-me story was my least favorite of the bunch, but only because it's so obviously a reskinned version of a standard folktale that didn't add much to the Radch universe or benefit from having Radch elements introduced to it. I was surprised by how much I liked the Raven Tower stories; in fact, I liked many of them more than the novel itself. The Raven Tower worldbuilding constraints just work so well in a short story format. And throughout all three sections, Leckie says a ton of incisive and so-sharp-you-won't-know-you're-cut-and-bleeding things to say about gender. This book was delightful and I will absolutely read it again.

What I Am Currently Reading

A Fate Inked in Blood – Danielle Jensen
I'm only about 50 pages into it but enjoying things so far.

The Laws of Brainjo – Josh Turknett
I'll have this one finished by next week.

What I’m Reading Next

I acquired no new books this week.

これで以上です。

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Monday Media - February 16

2026-02-16T19:45:55Z

A good mix of activities over the last seven days.

Games: Boardgame group has resumed, with the added bonus of two ridiculously cute and rambunctious new kittens. We played Everdell. And I mean played. ( We spent four hours on this 80 minute game. ) This is funny to remember now but it was even moreso to us at the time, when we were already slap happy from being up in the middle of the night, after a long gaming session, after a long week.

Music: We saw Nine Inch Nails, a phenomenal show and perhaps my favorite of the three times I've seen NIN live (the first with A Perfect Circle opening; the second their "final" show at Summer Sonic in Osaka). The GC, by contrast, had never seen them before and if you only had to see one of those shows, I think this was the one.( Read more... ) So yeah, freaking amazing show. I wish I could watch it all over again.

Monday's house session had seven people—the biggest attendance since I've started playing with this group, and a commensurately big sound. The number of players also meant each individual called fewer sets but we played a bigger range of sets, and at different tempos, than the norm, which was both challenging and fun. And I'm going to adopt a few of those sets for my own calls in future sessions.

Podcasts/Articles: No podcasts. I did read a couple of longform articles: Apocalypse No: How almost everything we thought we knew about the Maya is wrong and The Privileged Life and Tragic Death of an 11-Year-Old Tipperary Girl.

Roleplaying: Nothing.

Television: We finished the final episode of Max Headroom season 2, and with it, the entirety of Max Headroom itself. ( Read more... ) All that said, Max Headroom is still one of the shows that was before its time, and cancelled before its time, and setting aside the few dud episodes it still absolutely holds up.

Video Games: Nothing this week, what with the concert + standing post-work activities + peace monkpocalypse during my commute.

これで以上です。

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I logged on to post about something else...

2026-02-15T20:59:52Z

...but instead I will just say that I am incredibly saddened to learn of spikedluv's passing. She was such a lovely presence on my reading page and like so many others, I will miss her.

これで以上です。

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What Am I Reading Wednesday - February 11

2026-02-13T01:11:02Z

Posted on the following Thursday, for reasons.

What I Finished Reading This Week

The Dog Stars – Peter Heller
This book did not agree with me and I HAD THOUGHTS. ( Strap in. )

What I Am Currently Reading

Lake of Souls - Ann Leckie
I'll have this wrapped up by next Wednesday for sure.

The Goddess and the Tree - Ellen Cannon Reed
I read the prologue.

The Laws of Brainjo – Josh Turknett
A reread; first completed in 2023.

What I’m Reading Next

This week I acquired Danielle Jensen's A Fate Inked in Blood, 김미정의 한나랑 떠나는 신나는 성경여행, and 한재홍의 콩쥐 팥쥐.

これで以上です。

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Monday Media (on Tuesday) - February 9

2026-02-10T23:18:11Z

Today was one of those days I had no choice but to drive, because I had no choice but to go to a transit-inaccessible worksite.

Today the Peace Monks came to DC. Because the Peace Monks came to DC, the final 3 miles of my commute took two hours and 17 minutes to complete. I can walk 10 and a half miles in that same amount of time.

And I would have walked those three—or even 10.5—miles, except the city still has not bothered to remove the snow, meaning there was no shoulder to park on and had I parked in the street I would have screwed over every other car behind me, Everybody Hurts style. (I have, on more than one occasion in the past when traffic was ~~stupid~~ American, parked my car on the shoulder, walked home, and then walked back to retrieve it at some later time.) By the 60 minute mark, people were throwing on their left turn signals, pulling into the left turn only lane, and then "realizing" that they'd meant to go straight all along, fucking everyone else who'd been waiting over. By the 90 minute mark, people were pulling into oncoming lanes and gunning it as far forward as they could before forcing themselves back into the head of the lane they wanted to be in all along as soon as oncoming traffic showed up. And maybe I could have got home faster if I'd acted similarly, but I do not have the confidence? Shittiness? Confident shittiness? Shitty confidence? To try it myself.

At about an hour into this shitshow, when I still though I'd be home in under a quarter of a work day, I was like, "Huh. Never thought I would actually want try a BG3 Durge playthrough, but maybe I will."

Then I spent another 75 minutes in the car, during which time I traveled a whopping 1.4 miles.

And you know what? No. At that point I had moved welllllll beyond a mere Durge playthrough. I get the appeal now. I UNDERSTAND HOW BHAALISTS ARE MADE YOUR IDEAS ARE INTRIGUING TO ME AND I WISH TO SUBSCRIBE TO YOUR NEWSLETTER ALL HAIL THE LORD OF MURDER.

Eh-hem.

Anyway. I consumed some media last week, do you want to hear about it?

Games: More Fishy, Squishy, Crusty, Quirky, which has become our go-to game for those "Huh, we have 27 random minutes to kill, what will we do with them?" situations.

I came home from a long day at work Thursday to a message from the resident who'd gone incommunicado after proposing a game night some weeks back had messaged again to say, "7:30 tonight." This occasioned some angst (Oh god, I have to do a socializing) but it turned out the other resident who expressed interest couldn't make it, so I got my introvert evening after all.

Two Geek BBQers had us over for dinner and games Saturday night. We played Jaws, a new-to-all-of-us game. I have no particular feelings about the movie one way or another but still enjoyed the game, which is essentially a simplified version of Betrayal at the House in the Hill. Three players playing as Brody, Hooper, and Quint cooperate to defeat the fourth player (who is obviously playing as Jaws). The game has two acts: the first on Amity Island, where all four players need to use different combinations of skills and movement to save as many swimmers as possible and locate Jaws. Once located, the game moves into the second act on the Orca, where characters attempt to kill Jaws before it kills them. The game introduces a bunch of new mechanics and abilities for each player at this point along with a much more complicated round structure. We managed it well enough but it's not the smoothest transition, nor one you could wing without frequent guidebook consultation. TL;DR—it's a fun enough game but one fans of the movie will probably get the most out of, as the comparative lack of randomization would make it pretty repetitive after awhile.

Music: One of the Monday house session folks hosted me at their place last Friday for a mini-session. It was WONDERFUL. Just two players (one full melody, one melody + chords), both of whom belong in the "slower with ornaments and rhythmic variation" camp versus the "125 BPM ride or die" camp. Bonus benefit: we could both hear ourselves playing. Additional bonus benefit: you can't hide when there are only two people playing, so those tricky bits? We actually had to correct them.

We wrapped up 30 minutes earlier than initially planned (important because the original finish time was when the GC and I had planned to meet at favorite Chinese takeout place for dinner). I considered calling to see if he could head down early, but this beautiful, twinkling snow was falling, like fairytale 3D snowflakes, so I spent the 30 minutes walking around the neighborhood, almost the only person out, enjoying the sights and the stillness, and the crackly, tinkling sound of the snow falling all around me.

Podcasts/Articles: I read a bunch of articles this week, but nothing that I'd consider longform. Still no podcasts.

Roleplaying: Still nothing.

Television: Does binging cute parrot, cat, or bunny videos count?

Video Games: Nothing this week, as I spent my gaming time reading books, and then drafting reviews of the same.

これで以上です。

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What Am I Reading Wednesday - February 4

2026-02-04T22:22:26Z

Well, I guess the gubmint is turned back on. Anyway, I read some things over the last seven days.

What I Finished Reading This Week

The U.S.-Indonesia Security Relationship – John Haseman & Eduardo Lachica
I knocked this out over the course of a day as part of an effort to read and release more perennial shelf-sitters this year. The U.S.-Indonesia Security Relationship was published in 2009 and is generally informative, although padded and sloppily edited in places, particularly toward the end ("The Indonesia until it recovers its purchasing power" reads a one such example sentence. No, it doesn't make more sense in context.) In general, it's pretty interesting to see which of the authors' predictions, recommendations, and concerns have come to pass 17 years lateromghowisitpossiblethatthisbookandtheworldandIareall17yearsolder😭😭😭😭

The Bone Chests - Cat Jarman
The Bone Chests reuses the structure Jarman employed to great effect in River Gods: she uses a historical artifact(s)—in this case, 10 wooden chests filled with human bones in Winchester Cathedral—as a jumping-off point to examine the history of a pre-modern ethnic group in England (the Anglo-Saxons in this case). I enjoyed River Kings very much, but enjoyed The Bone Chests well enough. Part of this is to do with the fact that, unlike the previous volume, scientific work on The Bone Chests's framing artifacts hadn't finished at the time of publication; the subtitle promises to "unlock the secrets of the Anglo-Saxons" but the book's conclusion is essentially an unsatisfying "watch this space". Part of it is because The Bone Chests focuses primarily on a small number of elites: a bunch of kings, some clergymen, and a scant few queens, whereas River Gods dealt more heavily with the everyday people whose lives I find more interesting. And as plenty has already been written on Anglo-Saxon kings and clergy, there's not as much that's new in The Bone Chests, or that distinguishes it from those other volumes. The end result is that the parts of this book I found most interesting were the ones discussing the Scandinavians and Normans and how their societies influenced Anglo-Saxon dynastic politics, not the Anglo-Saxons themselves. I fully acknowledge that these things are, if not Me Problems, certainly Me Preferences. But Jarman's writing is as effortless and engaging as ever, and people who are interested in the book's actual focus will find much to enjoy here.

The Scottish Cookbook – Coinneach MacLeod
What can I say? If you like all the elements of the first three cookbooks (gorgeous photographs of gorgeous food and gorgeous landscapes, artfully composed to suggest that electricity, plastics, and phones or computers don't exist in this universe; interstitial "highland life" chapters that mix humorous anecdotes with summaries of folklore from Carmina Gadelica and The Silver Bough; a mix of ridiculously sugary confections and—often ridiculously dairy-heavy—savory dishes) you will like this book too. I also get the feeling MacLeod has made an effort (for better or worse) to include more recipes that aren't as heavily reliant on main ingredients that are difficult to source outside of the UK. At any rate, we've already made several dishes out of this volume, they've been very rich and very good, and yeah. It's certainly more of the same, but the same is good stuff.

The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish vol. 1 – Xue Shan Fei Hu
This book was so much fun; exactly what I needed to be reading this week. Our premise is that the narrator awakes to find himself a drab-colored carp about to be turned into soup for the mute oldest son of the emperor by his primary wife—the eponymous tyrant of the title, only before internecine court politics have turned him from a prince into a bloodthirsty fiend. Of course there's a system, and of course it immediately starts spamming out prompts that have our piscine main character trying to endear himself to said proto-tyrant and attempting to save secondary characters from canon doom. It is the utter opposite of Kafkaesque and I love it for that: the main character is mildly bemused to find himself a fish but takes to it with aplomb; he's a bit intimidated by the prince but takes to him immediately too; and the prince is instantly calmed and fascinated with his new pet fish. It's so nice. And the recurring plot element? In which ( cut for spoilers. ) I am delighted by this first volume and will absolutely continue on to the next one.

What I Am Currently Reading

The Dog Stars – Peter Heller
Basically, I am hate reading at this point.

The Stations of the Sun - Ronald Hutton
I read the chapter on Candlemas.

Lake of Souls - Ann Leckie
I am not a big short story reader, but Leckie is an excellent author in any format and I am plowing through these.

What I’m Reading Next

I acquired Roberty Henryson's The Testament of Cresseid & Seven Fables (Seamus Heaney, trans.) this week.

これで以上です。

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Media Monday - February 2

2026-02-03T23:17:57Z

On Tuesday, February 3, because sometimes it's like that.

Games: More Witchcraft. ( My thoughts as I continue playing. )

We also obtained Fishy, Squishy, Crusty, Quirky, another "kawaii [insert category here] card game" offering from Unstable Games. It is, as hoped, turning out to be an ideal Geek BBQ game: lightweight and small with minimal set up, simple/intuitive/derivative (take your pick) enough to learn quickly, possible to keep playing even if the environment gets loud or distracting, over in an appropriate amount of time for a big social setting, and with enough interesting mechanics to keep it, well, interesting. (In this case, reversed cards that other players can see but you cannot, among others.) I'm also a sucker for kawaii octo and squid pictures, so, yeah. It works.

Music: Well, the gubmint is shut down again, and once again in such a fashion that no one aside from the gubmint employees who have to work without being paid will notice that the gubmint is shut down. Predictably, this put me into a funk. I skipped the pub session and considered not going to the house session but ultimately dragged myself out to do it, knowing that future me would benefit from being jolted out of my doldrums. And future me did. The start was admittedly rocky (which it would be given that the session starts past my bedtime and I was bummed and distracted) but got progressively better as I was able to focus more on just playing music. I left in a pacific state. It's also a 6 mile roundtrip walk, and there's still plenty of snow around, so I was in my element both on my way out and on the trip back.

Podcasts/Articles: Two longform articles Exploiting Meta's Weaknesses, Deceptive Political Ads Thrived on Facebook and Instagram in Run-Up to Election, which angered me for all the reasons it says on the tin + did nothing to allay my suspicion that meta outsources the discovery and reporting of such content to investigative journalists instead of "wasting" money doing it themselves; and Extropia's Children, which is a series of not particularly well-written substack posts about a topical and ostensibly fascinating topic. Unfortunately, the author's thesis? argument? basically amounted to "Look! The same group of people who were theorizing about AI in the 90s are still doing AI things today!" And, yeah. That makes sense. I don't understand the author's conspiratorial "Get out the red string!" framing.

Roleplaying: Nothing this week, again. Gah.

Television: We're an episode away from finishing Max Headroom Season 2, and with it, the entire show. We watched Neurostim, one of the series' weakest episodes, both because it basically repeats the plot of the previous episode, and for its wealth of "You Can Do That On Television!" 80s-isms that...have not aged well, to be very polite about it. Japanese people are a conniving cultural and economic threat! (And for some reason speak with Chinese accents?) South Asian people are slimy used car and suit salesmen! (And for some reason sitar music is always playing while they're around?) The next episode, Lessons, is a return to freaking form, and one that anticipated: social media mogul-led censorship, oligarchs war against educating the non-wealthy, and how both news media and entertainment television are willing to bend the knee to both.

Online, I watched the first episode of The Remarkable Life of Margaret Barry. I primarily know Barry as the composer of The Strayaway Child, an absolute hypnotic banger of a double jig. I was also aware that she was famous as a banjoist and ballad singer, and for her collaborations with Michael Gorman, but this was first time I'd actually heard any of this work. Barry had a powerful freaking voice, and the stuff she accomplished, despite being both a woman and a Traveller, is impressive. That said, I am just not a fan of Irish ballads or pub songs in English. Give me the tunes.

Video Games: Machinarium, which I've lost a bit of steam on as I've hit a particularly tricky puzzle (I know I can just look up the solution in a walkthrough but I won't, dammit! I have standards!) and Baldur's Gate 3 and omg I don't remember what I was doing on this playthrough at all 😭)

これで以上です。

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January Language Roundup

2026-02-01T14:46:14Z

Duo fuckery continues apace: in addition to retroactively resetting users' progress through courses (i.e., I completed Indonesian unit 17 in December 2025. After completing two more Indonesian units last month I somehow find myself at the start of unit 17 as of February 1st), the app has started only registering lessons completed toward the daily quests after 15 minutes of engagement. As no doubt intended, this rankles from a "But I want to hit the gamification metrics!" perspective. From a language learning perspective, sustained engagement—not collecting merit badges—is what produces results, so maintaining a daily streak (regardless of whether or not the app logs it as such) is what I'm focused on.

Chinese — Finished 1/9 of Rookie Unit 8; legendary through Rookie Unit 3
Dutch — Finished 1/2 of Explorer Unit 3; legendary through Rookie Unit 6
Gaelic — Finished 1/3 of Explorer Unit 16; legendary through the Explorer Unit 10
Hindi — Finished 4/5 of Unit 1; backburnered to focus on the letters
Indonesian — Finished Explorer Unit 16; legendary through Explorer Unit 10
Japanese — Finished 2/3 of Trailblazer Unit 8; legendary through Traveler Unit 20
Korean — Finished 1/3 of Rookie Unit 6; legendary through Rookie Unit 5
Latin — Finished 1/3 of Rookie Unit 6
Manx — Finished 1/2 of lesson 10 of the Loayr Gaelg 2 textbook
Welsh — Finished 1/3 of Rookie Unit 6; legendary through Rookie Unit 3

これで以上です。

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Snowflake Challenge #15: How Did the Fandom Snowflake Challenge Go?

2026-01-31T01:55:32Z

Challenge #15

How Did the Fandom Snowflake Challenge Go? Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it.

I managed to complete 2/3 of this year's challenges within a few days of posting, which is actually pretty good for me overall given that mid-January through April are always an IRL whirlwind, and especially so this year given that so much about this 2026 timeline seems TAILOR MADE TO DECIMATE PSYCHOLOGICAL WELLBEING. So while I didn't manage to complete as many of the challenge as quickly as I'd hoped, I doubly appreciated the experience of participating this year for the opportunity it afforded to take my mind off of anxiety-producing-to-straight-up-horrific things at the macro-level and turn my attention to fun and imaginative things and community at the micro-level. The latter is something I definitely want to keep focusing on as the year progresses, because it's a much better way to spend my energy.

これで以上です。

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What Am I Reading Wednesday - January 28

2026-01-28T19:00:50Z

Inhospitable commuting conditions have kept me home the last few days. (Fun fact: the city counts any road as plowed that 1) a city vehicle has driven down, or 2) has less than two inches of snow on it...which may explain why a truly perplexing number of people have tried to drive—and ended up marooned—on so many of them.) If nothing else, it's been a great boon to my page count totals.

What I Finished Reading This Week

Mannaz – Malene Sølvsten
The final volume in the Whisper of Ravens series, after Ansuz and Fehu. These books are by no means Literature, but they are a great deal of fun. Although they are original fiction, they have the vibe of a really excellent fanfic epic, if that makes sense. There are definite strengths and weaknesses to the story itself, but by this point in the trilogy I was just along for the ride and enjoying myself despite whatever happened.( Read more... ) But at the end of the day, this novel—and the entire trilogy—were entertaining reads and ones that I will return to again.

Freya the Deer – Meg Richman
This book is very well written. It will frustrate—if not anger—many readers with its almost complete refusal to pull punches, but will also probably frustrate the remainder of its readers by easing backing from the few punches it does pull at absolutely critical moments.

What it does well:

There's no moralizing (or even handwringing) to be found about women's sexuality here.
Richman's nuanced, uncompromising portrayal of Freya's autism. This is not "neurodivergence" i.e., just an informed attribute, or conflation of feeling socially awkward with fundamental mental difference, or something that's "solved" with the right romantic partner or found family. Freya is differently made from most of the people around her.
That fundamental difference just is: sometimes it helps Freya, sometimes it hurts her; she is not always aware that it's doing one or the other, and even when she knows or suspects, she doesn't necessarily know why.
Richman's characters—even the secondary and tertiary ones—are generally complex and well-rounded. These are real human beings with opinions, motivations, virtues, and flaws that don't fall into easily defined (or easy to stomach) categories.
The same goes for novel's approach to the complexity and messiness of human existence. Good and bad can exist in the same person, institution, or event, and by and large Richman avoids railroading the reader into intellectual straitjackets or moralizing about any of it. It doesn't shy away from asking uncomfortable questions and refuses to provide facile answers, even at the risk of upseting or alienating readers who'd rather be comforted with easy, packaged solutions.
Richman can evoke a three-dimensional scene, interpersonal interaction, emotion, or psychological state with an absolute economy of words.

Where it fumbles ( (major spoilers ahead): )

TL;DR—This book is not perfect, but it does things that many other authors are not talented or courageous enough to attempt, let alone succeed at, and frequently does them very, very well.

What I Am Currently Reading

The Dog Stars – Peter Heller
So far, this is The Road, if that novel were written by a far less precious and pretentious author who—unlike McCarthy—is not a child rapist.

The Stations of the Sun - Ronald Hutton
I read the chapter on Imbolc this week.

The Bone Chests - Cat Jarman
With about 100 pages left to go I can confidently say that this is a well-written book about a subject that does not interest me.

The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish vol. 1 – Xue Shan Fei Hu
Is the premise silly? Yes. Does the author know this? Yes. Is the book great fun for precisely these reasons? Yes. I'm currently a third of the way through and will probably pick this up as my next main-focus read.

What I’m Reading Next

I acquired no new books this week.

これで以上です。

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Monday Media - January 26

2026-01-26T21:44:57Z

WE FINALLY GOT SNOW YESTERDAY! The initial "2 feet starting at 7 pm Saturday night" became "3-5 inches starting after midnight Sunday morning" but seeing as we haven't had a real snowfall in ten-freaking-years I WILL TAKE IT. (Seriously, I hate "sunny blue skies and cold with no snow" winters. There are few things I find more depressing.) I tried my absolute best to stay up for the snowfall as the estimated start times ticked further and further back into the night but alas, tapped out around 11:30 pm. There was a good 4" (Only four? *sob*) on the ground when we got up yesterday morning, but we went out for a lovely multi-mile walk through the streets and Park in the virgin snow, seeing absolutely nobody aside from a few other couples and a group of seven armed national guardpuppets walking single file up the street in the opposite direction, doing absolutely fuckall of use to the city.

Wintry mix and an increasing number of fishtailing and/or marooned cars on the unplowed roads ultimately got us to head back home. We made hot coffees, and then hot cocoas, and then mulled cider. I settled in to read my Asian news sites, and then my European news sites, and then realized it was Burns Night. And then I got a little sad.( Read more... )

Games: A main gaming group member's beloved-by-everyone pet passed away last week, so gaming has been preempted by other distractions, hugs, and really, whatever else they need from us for the foreseeable future.

Witchcraft has proved super challenging and great fun. This is a solo player tabletop game where you command a coven of witches trying to protect your fantasy medieval European village from fairytale monsters in the face of a skeptical jury. The game's mechanics are complex and challenging, with enough variability in their components to create a lot of replay value. Would I enjoy them as much if the setting were "medical researchers trying to save their chronically ill patients from certain death in the face of a skeptical ethics review board" or "rogue military alpha males trying to save their kidnapped ladyfolk from 'terrorists' in the face of a skeptical JAG?" Absolutely fucking not. But this game knows the sort of player it wants to appeal to with its chosen scenario, I am exactly the sort of player it appeals to with its chosen scenario, and it plays to my/those preferences brilliantly.

Otherwise, a fellow resident is in the early stages of setting up a gaming night, with Azul, Carcassone, Catan (*sigh*), or Wingspan as potential options, so I'm (no pun intended) on board and excited about that.

Music: I skipped last week's house session as my socializing meter was at 0. Both yesterday's pub session and today's house session have been cancelled due to Weather (ruling out group playing), and seeing as I can't get the humidity in my unit above 19 percent even with both humidifiers going full blast for the past 72 hours, I won't be doing any solo playing at home. (PS: Houseplants, I am so, so sorry. Please don't all of you die on me I swear I am doing the best I can.)

Podcasts/Articles: Nothing this week.

Roleplaying: Nothing this week.

Television: An unsung hero uploaded a 40 minute interview with one of the Stars in My Personal Firmament of Irish Fluteplaying to yt this week, and I inhaled it like oxygen.

Video Games: Machinarium, Pentiment, and Ghost of Yotei continue apace. The GC has been replaying Knights of the Old Republic on the tower, so my Ultima IV replay has not progressed at all in the last seven days.

これで以上です。

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2026 Book Bingo

2026-01-21T22:15:37Z

Non-Fiction: Internet Security Fundamentals — Nick Ioannou (01/21/26)

An Author's Debut/First Book: After the Forest — Kell Woods (01/18/26)

Set in a Country Other Than Your Own: Mannaz — Malene Sølvsten (01/25/26)

Set at a School/University: Freya the Deer — Meg Richman

No Sex/Romance: The Scottish Cookbook — Coinneach MacLeod

Short Story/Novella Lake of Souls — Ann Leckie

Pet or Animal Companion The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish vol. 1 — Xue Shan Fei Hu

From Your TBR: The U.S.-Indonesia Strategic Partnership — John Haseman and Eduardo Lachica

—

これで以上です。

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What Am I Reading Wednesday - January 21

2026-01-21T21:49:15Z

I managed to finish two books this week despite the competing pressures of work, gaming, and other socializing, and aim to have a few more honkers wrapped up within the next few days.

What I Finished Reading This Week

Internet Security Fundamentals - Nick Ioannou
This self-published freemium book covers exactly what the title suggests it will. Because it's free and frequently updated, the editing is atrocious: typos, omitted words, garbled sentences, and occasionally mistakes that utterly change the meaning of what Ioannou surely meant to say (e.g., the equivalent of accidentally omitting the word "never" from the following sentence: "The absolute most important thing you can do is to never leave your doors unlocked when you go out.") That said, this book is free, it's frequently updated, and the information is solid and presented in a fashion that won't overwhelm readers who need an introductory explanation of these concepts and practices; if you're looking for a book that does just that, you could do far worse than this one.

After the Forest – Kell Woods
This book was excellent and I will eagerly read anything else Woods writes. Set in 16th century Germany against a backdrop of interstate conflict, witch trials, and religious intolerance, it tells the story of the folktale Hansel and Gretel's titular characters (Greta and Hans here) after the woods; that is, as adults, post-witch and -oven, and -gingerbread house. The setting is fantastic, the descriptive language is fantastic. The blend of historical fact and fairy tale elements is fantastic. The pacing is fantastic. The characterizations are wonderful and strike the difficult balance of depicting characters with believable strengths and weaknesses without slipping into caricature or melodrama, and desires and agency without relying on anachronism or unrealistic motivations or capabilities. This is a definite winner, and I will read it again.

What I Am Currently Reading

Mannaz – Malene Sølvsten
I've got just about 100 pages to go and can't wait to see how the trilogy concludes.

Freya the Deer – Meg Richman
There I was, calmly reading the prologue, when Richman casually dropped a sentence that came out of nowhere like a blow to the face. "Gripped me from the very first page" is a cliche in book reviews, but the first page of this volume delivers a mean jolt, and so far Richman has the chops to keep the momentum going.

The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish vol. 1 – Xue Shan Fei Hu
Mannaz, After the Woods, and Freya the Deer were all affecting my nightmares, so this has become my bedtime reading, a job to which its unapologetically, gleefully over-the-top premise is perfectly suited.

What I’m Reading Next

I acquired no new books this week.

これで以上です。

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Monday Media - January 19

2026-01-20T02:29:33Z

Last week was a pretty good one for leisure media and entertainment.

Games: Gaming group this week! We met at an inconvenient (1+ hour drive) but favorite tavern since there was also a birthday to celebrate. Alas, the games we'd planned to try out (including some recced during snowflake_challenge) were unavailable, so we played First to Worst and King of Tokyo, and had a great time.

The first is a familiar standard; we mixed things up by eschewing scoring entirely and having the ranker draw only four cards from the deck while the rest of the players collectively tried to correctly order the ranker's preferences, to sometimes hilarious results (one player's partner insisting that they disliked "gift giving" much more than the other three, trivial options, or shocked disbelief at another player's—correct—insistence that their partner genuinely preferred pickles and journaling over ice cream sundaes).

The second, is a familiar group standard but one I had personally yet to play (on account of generally playing Betrayal in the House on the Hill or such instead). The setup is that the players are a group of kaiju battling to level Tokyo. It strikes me as a very Munchkin -or MtG-esque game in that the first several players who look like they have a chance at winning will invariably be leveled by the other players. My low-and-slow strategy got me one victory point away from winning the game, but a bad role ultimately gave the GC the win. Still, not bad for a first playthrough.

And now, a brief digression so I can ( gripe about AI. )

We also played more Hive and picked up copies of Betrayal, Everdell Farshore, and Witchcraft, the latter of which I am about to try out very shortly here.

Music: We had a very excellent house session on Monday, after which one of the players used some fancy software to transcribe my playing of some of the tunes. It's pretty cool to see what I'm actually doing set down in notation.

Podcasts/Articles: No podcasts, as I just haven't been in a longform audio mood for the last several months. I did read one longform article: Irish Gothic, however.

Roleplaying: Nothing this week, although there are noises about starting up Oldest D&D Group's homebrew campaign back up.

Television: Late days at work last week + the full slate of extracurriculars meant the GC and I weren't up for much aside from cute animal videos this week, but we did watch Max Headroom S2 Ep 3 today. The main plot was another variation of the "how channels try to corrupt the elections" storyline, and was convoluted with several gaping holes, but one of the subplots is ( among my favorites in the series. )

Video Games: I'm still playing Pentiment and Ultima IV, and started Machinarium; we also got Ghost of Yotei.

In other news, ( I wander in the wilderness no more. )

これで以上です。

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Snowflake Challenge #9: Tropes

2026-01-18T00:02:23Z

Challenge #9

Talk about your favorite tropes in media or transformative works. (Feel free to substitute in theme/motif/cliche if "trope" doesn't resonate with you.)

I don't know if there's already a trope and/or term for this, but I'm a huge sucker for what I'm going to call ( house voyeurism. )

これで以上です。

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Snowflake Challenge: #6 & #8 - Creative Process & Top Ten List

2026-01-17T22:37:30Z

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done, they’re done.” — Kurt Vonnegut

I am a hopeless basher.

Challenge #6

Top 10 Challenge. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it.

Let's do something a little different and talk about my ( favorite recordings of the slip jig Elizabeth Kelly's Delight. )

これで以上です。

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Snowflake Challenge #7 - Three Things You Like

2026-01-14T21:48:24Z

Challenge #7

LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.

( Here are mine. )

これで以上です。

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What Am I Reading Wednesday - January 14

2026-01-14T20:43:17Z

What I Finished Reading This Week
Nothing. Still working through multiple lengthy titles, at least two of which I should finish later this week.

What I Am Currently Reading

Internet Security Fundamentals - Nick Ioannou
So far, it's doing exactly what it says on the tin.

Mannaz – Malene Sølvsten
Sølvsten introduced some interesting new settings and characters in the chapters I read this week.

After the Forest – Kell Woods
This book continues to be very, very good, although I'm skeptical that Woods can draft a satisfying, unrushed conclusion in the amount of pages left.

The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish vol. 1 – Xue Shan Fei Hu
Because why not add another 400+ page book to my current stack of in progress titles.

What I’m Reading Next

This week I acquired Mickey Clement's The Irish Princess, Vanessa Vida Kelly's When the Tides Held the Moon, TJ Klune's Wolfsong, Meg Richman's Freya the Deer, and Xue Shan Fei Hu's The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish vol. 1.

これで以上です。

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Monday Media: January 12

2026-01-12T23:08:17Z

Games: I played a bunch of Hive.

Miscellaneous: No podcasts, one longform article:

Why I Wrote Dirty Linen

Music: I didn't go to yesterday's pub session because Newest D&D Homebrew Campaign had a D&D session scheduled, which was cancelled at the last minute. Alas.

Roleplaying: See above. :-/

Television: We watched the first two episodes of Max Headroom S2, which predicted AI-generated avatars of deceased loved ones and parodied certain aspects of religion in ways that ::cough:: would not make it onto TV in 2026.

I also watched the final three episodes of Heated Rivalry. ( Thoughts, in no particular order. )

Video Games: I finished Samorost 2, which is a mechanically simpler game than Botanicula and thus tricky to play after it, as I had to rethink the way I approached the puzzles. It's still a super fun game; I love everything Amanita Design puts out.

I wanted to play Downwell next for a change of pace, but fucking windows insists on rendering it in a tiny 3" x 4" box in the center of the screen, making it all but unplayable. I've thus settled on a Pentiment replay (in which I am once again on a collision course with the church from the get-go) and am also toying with the idea of a Darklands replay as well, given the clear debt the former owes this game...provided windows cooperates.

これで以上です。

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Snowflake Challenge #5 - Wishlist

2026-01-09T21:23:44Z

Challenge #5

In your own space, create a list of at least three things you'd love to receive, a wishlist of sorts. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it and include a link to your wishlist if you feel comfortable doing so.

Beginner knitting tutorials ( for a very specific purpose. )

Help ( keep me accountable. )

Rec me ( a boardgame! )

これで以上です。

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What Am I Reading Wednesday - January 7

2026-01-07T21:34:04Z

What I Finished Reading This Week
Nothing, as three of the four books I'm reading this week are over 400 pages long.

What I Am Currently Reading

Skeul an Tavas - Ray Chubb & Nigel Roberts
I tackled most of the first chapter this week.

The Stations of the Sun – Ronald Hutton
I read the chapters on Christmas, the New Year, and Plough Monday.

Mannaz – Malene Sølvsten
This book is a giant, over-the-top potboiler and I am here for it.

After the Forest – Kell Woods
I was suspicious, given the cover, that this would be standard Tor-quality YA dreck, but it is very, very good indeed.

What I’m Reading Next

This week I acquired Ray Chubb and Nigel Roberts's Skeul An Tavas, Richard Marsh's Meath Folk Tales, and Angela Saini's Inferior.

これで以上です。

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