What I Watched: Absolutely nothing.Whine, bitch, moan, after a long more-stressful-than-I-ever-imagined day of work my brain doesn’t want television anymore. I work for a company that provides services to the nonprofit sector, and the sector is decimated, frozen, horrified, etc. due to the cruel and heartbreaking Federal shenanigans. So, DeadSplinterites, you will need to lead the way of the watched this week!
What I Read: Waifs And Strays (The Cat Lady Chronicles Book 1) by Helen Harper. This book is perfect escapist fair – paranormal, mysteries, good guys win – unlike real life. Here’s the blurb:
Nobody is just a cat lady. Kit McCafferty’s life is quiet, unremarkable and filled with cat hair. In the magical city of Coldstream, located on the border between Scotland and England, Kit is viewed as little more than mildly eccentric and mostly harmless. She passes her days caring for her family of five cats, feeding the local feral moggies, and maintaining relatively good relations with her neighbours. All that changes, however, when a teenage werewolf shows up at her door in the desperate hope of renting out a nearby vacant flat. Kit knows that the smart move is to tell him to leave. The last thing she needs is to become embroiled in complicated shapeshifter politics. But something about the secretive young werewolf tugs at her heartstrings. It’s not long before Kit ends up caught in a maelstrom of mysterious crime and magical wrong-doing. Fortunately, there’s far more to Kit McCafferty than meets the eye and she has a few dark secrets of her own. Of course, anyone with an ounce of intelligence knows that you underestimate a cat lady at your own peril.
Waifs And Strays is the first book in a new urban fantasy crime series. Expect mystery, magic and adventure with a heroine who will keep you turning pages late into the night. There will also be a lot of cats.
What I Listened To: Darksoft– Day by Day; Matt Nathanson – Something You Wanted (You didn’t even call me on the day Prince died); and Chalk – Pool Scene:
Thank you for playing Brain Drain! How are you, dearest ones? Darling DeadSplinterites, what’s going on? Please do share with us!
Sorry to hear that Ellie.
It’s terrible how the terrible decisions of two “men” are affecting the lives here in this tiny online community.
It is easy to government bash, but the Federal funding of human services, environmental initiatives, etc. has made a real difference in literally millions of lives. Our clients range from those whose mission is women’s services to veterans outreach to immigrant support to water reclamation to food scarcity to autism support…I could go on for days. These are good people working in a low-paying sector who live their ideals every day. And they are crushed. I know I’m preaching to the converted here, but from a real-time, boots on the ground perspective Musk and Trump are truly evil. I hope Karma is watching.
amen…
I get it. My late friend worked in government so I know the good work they did protecting public health as well as the social services I needed to help my parents and rest of my family as my parents mental state deteriorated. I was never big on cutting services to help those that needed help.
The part that both disgusted and saddened me is that a number of those that need government help didn’t want others to receive the same (for mostly racist and/or selfish reasons.)
We take things for granted.
I don’t think I watched anything this week, either? Or at least anything beyond random background tv at night.
I’ve been like that for a while outside of watching Taco documentaries. I don’t really feel much like TV (and I enjoy TV!) especially since mom died.
I’ve gone out and bought the e-book for Careless People about Facebork and uberdork/asshole Zuck and his team’s terrible decisions that helped put Trump in the WH.
You’re thinking… MANCHU, AREN’T YOU DOING THE NO ‘ZON BAN? Well I am… sort of, but I bought it via Kobo.com an alternative to ‘zon. It’s supposed to be “Canadian” so I’m okay with it.
…I hear you on the watching…I guess I have been but the recurring pattern of knowing I spent time in front of a screen here & there as the week went by but not knowing what to say I watched is getting to the point where it’s not funny any more?
…that said…I did see a thing this week that I do remember…only I can’t really figure out how to say anything I thought about it that wouldn’t be redundant if you’d seen it…or read the book…& a massive spoiler if you hadn’t…but…conclave…amazing cast…was a book by robert harris…the guy who did that fatherland one that’s better constructed as a book but I didn’t like as much as the man in the high castle when it comes to alt-histories in which the allies lost WWII
…&…I’ve been thinking of re-watching some stuff…remains to be seen if I find the time but I was chatting to someone the other day & by the time we were done I had a list of about four things to figure out where to find with a minimum of fuss & bother
…the straight story…get low…the twilight samurai…& when the last sword is drawn
…also…there’s a thing that hasn’t entirely held my attention…which might be on me rather than it…called frieren: beyond journey’s end…it’s animated…about an elf-mage who was part of the party that saved the world that one time…but starts after that part & sort of leapfrogs along its time line a bit so after two or three episodes you’re getting on for a century or so later
…I might have to watch it from the beginning without getting distracted to be sure…but I think I like it?
I really loved “Fatherland.” President Kennedy, but not that JFK Kennedy, the Nazi-loving Dad Joe. The scenes set in Berlin, people having their rallies, the whole city non-smoking. I think Robert Harris is/was a smoker. There was a fun game to play in the 1980s and 1990s, when Americans still knew who Hitler was. He was a vegetarian, loved dogs (there were dogs in the bunker), didn’t smoke and didn’t drink alcohol.
A l-o-n-g time ago I went to a non-smoking vegetarian restaurant that didn’t serve alcohol for a friend’s birthday party. His choice, not ours, God knows. I thought it was quite exotic and the food was great but I, and others, smoked at the time, and we were told if we wanted to smoke we’d have to go outside. We’d never heard of such a thing. Naturally Hitler’s lifestyle choices were invoked. NOT BY ME, though. I’m up for anything. A Kazakh hole-in-the-wall restaurant in a foreign land? Let’s eat there!
…I don’t mean to knock fatherland…or robert harris…but there’s a certain thought-of-the-ending-&-worked-back-from-there something to it
…the man in the high castle is I think one of the philip k dick books that turned up in a speed-bender of a flurry at the typewriter & he literally used the i ching to “decide” how the plot forked…so I definitely never felt like I knew where it was going but I kind of had faith that I was in good hands…or they were at least attached to a heart that was in the right place…if that makes sense?
The Twilight Samurai is a good one.
Watching local news this morning to see storm damage.
It’s not a good look for an apartment complex if Channel 5 has a team on the ground interviewing your residents about the carport that collapsed last night and damaged more than 40 residents’ cars before you even have your maintenance staff en route.
I’m still playing Metaphor. If the government gets around to banning video games, this one will be top of the list because it gently leads its players to contemplate how we are governed vs how we wish to be governed. More importantly it makes a case for the former not being as set in stone as we are taught to believe.
https://www.ign.com/articles/metaphor-refantazio-review (emphasis mine)
We’re been watching “After the Flood”:
There’s something that’s not doing it for me. It’s on BritBox, of course we subscribe, and we’ve seen umpteen British police procedurals and there’s a little natural-disastering thrown in but, I don’t know.
We watched The Breakthrough. It’s a Swedish crime show about a double murder that took them 16 years to solve and they had to use public DNA databases to find the guy. Good depressing Nordic Noir.
Did the amount of speed walking cut scenes seem heavy handed to you?
sorry ellie… nothing to add from me….still drowning in overtime here…has a perk that i can stick my head in the sand about a lot of things i dont have time for right now…but i also dont have time for much of anything else…
as is im practically asleep already
The money will be good? Hang in there Farscy!
wish i could say the money would be good
bot ot is taxed to fuck over here
i actually make slightly less an hour after tax for ot despite 150% pay
you know gubment logic
sides from the workaholics….nobody takes ot coz they want to
if you want to curb unhealthy working hours….tax the employer..not the employee
if you dont want the poor to take ot…pay them enough to not need to
READ
The Log From the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck. I really loved my limited experience with Baja de California in January, and am slowly seeking out literature about that area. This almost 85-year-old account of a specimen-collection trip Steinbeck took in 1940 is pretty damn amazing, regardless of the environment, but the fact that this journey was such a ground-breaking effort is very, very cool. Highly recommended.
LISTENED
Mogwai – Fanzine Made of Flesh
Elbow – Lovers’ Leap