Looking forward to attending this on Thursday night. If you're in the area--join me! I'm excited to hear from a new-to-me author and also roam around Phoenix Books. Haven't had a chance to do that much since they moved to their new location on Church St.
I could, like, wear a flower pinned to my lapel or something...
https://phoenixbooks.biz/event/2026-10-15/annalee-newitz-wall-also-road
@oscarjiminy
Enh. I don’t know. Everybody’s got their reasons, and women are perpetually under a lot of pressure with regard to looks.
Also, Botox has gotten pretty inexpensive and widely available, I think?
Probably accounts for the increase in usage I’m seeing. It’s just never not strange looking to me.
I’m surprised by the amount of casual Botox treatment I’m seeing, every time I’m out and about.
I mean, fine, body-mod to your heart’s content I guess? I use Retinol to even out my skin tone.
It just… gives me pause. I like faces that move and have folds in them. Botox-freeze is a little too uncanny valley for me.
RE: https://toad.social/@davetroy/117344116634368129
And every one of them has an Amazon buy button...
A little like railing against the machine from your Substack platform.
Your best birthday wishes: lay ‘em on me!
I have somehow completed 62 circuits around the sun.
Just finished up season 1 of RJ Decker on Hulu. No spoilers, don't worry.
It's a straightforward crime drama with a lot of likeable characters (even the bad guys) and even better eye candy. Solid casting, and cast chemistry is great.
The writing is... a straightforward crime drama based on a novel. The dialogue is comfortable without being terribly hackneyed. Some fun Florida Man humor thrown in. The story arc is neatly tied up at the end, with a solid set up for Season 2 (which I just found out lands on my birthday this month, 9/15).
It's one of those series you can enjoy watching without feeling as though it's some kind of guilty pleasure -- and feel even less guilt over how forgettable it will be in six months.
So I'll happily watch Season 2 when it hits, as a way to wind down from a long day. Sometimes it's nice to watch a show that isn't aspiring to be something it's not, too clever for its own good.
And did I mention the eye candy??
David Zayas (remember him in Dexter (and a million other things)?); Jaina Lee Ortiz (SMOKIN'); Bevin Bru (who is simply not in enough anything anywhere); Stephen Bishop (whom I remember most fondly from the series Imposters); and Scott Speedman (serviceable as a roguish love interest in an unshaven-model sort of way) in the lead role.
Kevin Rankin as the lead's resourceful sidekick is just unusual enough looking to be cute. Adelaide Clemens is the outlier for me. I don't think I've seen her in any of the other things she's been in, and I want to say she was the one weak link in the cast, but it may just be that she's not my cup of tea.
3 couch potatoes out of 5
Having a bit of fun on a long car drive, reading Ignobel award toots from others kindly filling the rest of is in.
I'm always so tickled when someone changes instances and then asks to follow me again. Such a cozy loved feeling.
There are so few among us above reproach. Fred Rogers and Dolly Parton are the only two coming to mind right now. Oh, and Jimmy Carter, of course.
As I was stumbling around the lake shore today, I startled a Red Breasted Merganser. As it was brown, it was either a female or a non-breeding male.
In truth, we startled each other! I was not expecting a duck to take off noisily as I rounded some scrub around a tree, and I also was surprised by the shape of the duck.
These Mergansers are very odd and distinctive-looking, long and lean bodied, a with pointy beaks and shaggy crests. The racing cars of ducks.
Between my crashing through the brush and the duck smashing around in the water, between us we also managed to startle a large bullfrog, which promptly dove into the water with a loud BLOOP.
If you are looking to buy books for kids and/or wondering whatever became of your own childhood favorites, you should check out Purple House Press.
Their mission, for at least the past 20 years, has been to bring back into print beloved childhood classics.
You know. The Mad Scientists Club (all FOUR books! did you know there were FOUR?), Mr. Bear Squash-You-All-Flat, The Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek...
That is all.
The indecently wealthy owner of a local crunchy grocery store chain (think: Whole Foods for the Northeast but with way more attitude; store name is Healthy Living, known less affectionately as Wealthy Living by the locals) is now a union buster, in addition to shoving an artificial turf project down a local high school community's throat because by god he is writing the check so to hell with the expert science testimony presented to the school board.
While I dislike Healthy Living, particularly for the way they treat their employees and fawn over their wealthiest customers, they sometimes are the only local purveyor of certain specialty items.
On a rare trip there the other day, I got chatted up by an employee with a clipboard, who was standing outside in the parking lot. As you can guess, the employees had overwhelmingly voted to create a union, and "management" is opposing it. Would I sign his petition.
"Sweetie, if I could sign it ten times, I would. Give me that thing."
Afterward, I brought him a cup of coffee from the in-house cafe.
Be real special if y'all felt moved to sign their petition.
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/support-healthy-living-workers-fight-for-a-fair-contract
This year, for some reason, my gardens and yard are BRIMMING with frogs and toads. I know not why, but it makes me happy.
We are always having to step very carefully. Today, either a Pickerel or Northern Leopard frog kept trying to leap up into a raised planting bed, so @dwenius and I gave it a helping hand.
I didn't realize that Pickerels are the only toxic frog in Vermont, emitting a toxic substance when attacked. It can be fatal to other animals and irritating to human skin. Neither @dwenius nor I suffered any ill effects, so who knows which kind it was.
@dwenius also nudged another frog off the lawn and toward the creek, one more brownish I think; I didn't get a good look at it. Might've been a Peeper. Or a Gray Tree Frog. Or a Wood Frog. I know from their calls that we have all of those and more splashing about.
Early Sunday morning:
While the rest of the household sleeps, I open doors and windows to the morning air.
Brandishing a brush, I apply a coat of marine spar varnish to various thingies what be needing such.
Was contemplating renting a deck sander, but it's probably already too late, and I'd have to wake someone as I'm unsure of my ability to wrangle one in and out of the car on my own.
This morning I found a juvenile Hermit Thrush lying dead on the front patio. 🥺
The house windows that birds have most often hit by accident, I leave screens on all year round now, which seemed to help a lot. But we also have several crank-out windows; the screen placement for those is on the inside, which does nothing to dull their reflectivity.
Most often, birds aren't flying too fast around those windows, and if they hit them, they're only stunned for a bit. But not this young one.
#birds
Been rewatching Battlestar Galactica. Being so familiar with it, I can zip past the space battle scenes, choreographed fight scenes, and endless improbable explosions.
I can simply marinate in the gritty old-fashioned drama as it unfolds.
The dialogue is clunky, unsubtle almost to the point of parody, but as such it creates a kind of Rorschach effect, allowing a viewer to see something different depending on which decade it's viewed from.
What captured my attention in 2004 is different from what rose to the surface in 2014 is different from what strikes me today. And each time I've found it oddly – and differently – relevant.
The dialogue may be clunky but the themes and threads are clever.
#TV #BattlestarGalactica
Vizio has, as far as I can tell, intentionally broken my 6-ish year old TV with a firmware update.
First question when I complained: "Gee, your television is SO OLD; have you thought about buying a new one?"
The loons are haunting the lake again tonight. The frogs are their backup singers.
Hey @oscarjiminy! I finally finished season 2 of Matlock!
