Gaaah! I really, really don't like it when the author forgets where their character is... I mean, really—she's inside the house, dog exploring, finding a pile of clothes, then suddenly they're outside again‽ And the neighbor, who's simultaneously at her door and his own, moment-to-moment

It's not that I'm looking for an excuse to stop reading this, but... you know what, I have a new Helene Wecker to read

The cult angle sounds annoying anyway

#books #bookstodon

What's with the sudden upswing in helicopters falling out of the sky?

Filed under the "did not think this through" category, I'm an American introvert in a non-touristy part of a foreign country in which I have zero knowledge of the language (verbal or written)

There is a non-zero chance that I simply starve near-to-death in the next 57 days

Or, I suppose that jet-lag has something to do with it...

Naw, I'm going to return home a fucking skellington, just in time for Thanksgiving

Grandchild came in while I was sautéing the meat for stroganoff

I explained what I was doing, and the conclusion was, "sooo, stroganoff is basically chicken-fried steak soup"

I have disowned the child

Just finished reading Mae West: An Icon in Black and White by Jill Watts in audiobook

It's interesting book, and I'm inclined to find a couple of her movies, considering I've only glimpsed like part of one scene once with her and WC Fields

It's a good and interesting book, and it describes how West made a life of being subversive through her sexuality and brilliant wordplay

The author suggests, but has no proof that West had some African-American blood in her, perhaps via one of her grandfathers, a mariner with very little presence in the public record

In any case, Mae consorted with the African Americans and successfully co-opted their music and dance and insisted on having African American actors and bands whenever the script required them

Since Mae West wrote most of her scripts, they featured African Americans somewhat often

She was one of the raunchiest, dirtiest actors to grace the stages on and off Broadway, and then in the movies,

I will reread this again...

#bookstodon #books #Audiobooks

Spouse's favorite battery, a 50000mAh (why can't they just say 50Ah?) charger—which is actually my charger 🙄 —is bulging

Just noticeable by a gal like me, but that means time to replace (and find someplace to properly dispose of this thing)

weirdly enough, the battery which cost me $56 or so back on June 29, 2025 can now be had for less than $22 (as long as it's pink)

Guess who's got two pink batteries coming in the mail 😅

Well, that only took me five minutes to break... actually it wouldn't allow me to select my music folder to search for music? I mean, I'm not going to open up [checks notes] 1,108 folders , most with subfolders, to add each album...that kind of negates the whole concept of library management

so anyway, yeah--five minutes after furiously clicking and trying different methods of adding the primary folder to it's search function, it locked up solid

The hunt for a decent music organizer (for linux) is once again on...

I tried Tambourine for exactly 20 seconds--long enough to download, then five minutes to figure out that there is no way to change its root folder (despite my default folder in settings being set to a different location)

So, let's try Strawberry...

Oh, yeah, updated flu and covid shots today

Spouse is complaining about their phone just downloading things at random times

Turns out, the Netflix app just decided that they needed to download episodes of whatever someone was watching

WTAF, Netflix? No one asked for that, I'm pretty sure

Also, I'm sitting here in my daughter's house, wondering exactly whose wifi is being used to download this show when she doesn't have a wifi router I the house 🤔

TFW you buy fancy new earbuds only to discover that your phone is too old to work with them 🤦

Buyers accepted our counter, so house will be entering escrow!

🎉🎉🎉

I will be hanging out in Kitakyushu for a few weeks in October... I'm hoping my trainees will point in me in the direction of some good ramen (so I can be forever disappointed with ramen in the US 😅 )

It's his Toad of Many Covers

I just popped a coffee mug of water into the microwave for tea and hit Start

The machine beeped, and I opened it, pulling it out and... it was a quarter-filled with—coffee?

My friends, I experienced a bewildering bout of cognitive dissonance

I tried to explain to Spouse what happened... "I just took this off the shelf, poured water... and this!"

Then I realised that it was a different color... my cup was hidden in the back of the micro, and Spouse forgot their coffee in there, again 😅

A conversation I was dragged into, about someone who recently had a birthday:

Daughter: Did dad say what he wanted for his birthday? (implied—dessert)
Mom: He said he wanted a cream pie
Daughter: ...
Daughter: did he mean cream pie or pie, pie
Mom: what? He said last night ke banana or coconut cream pie.
Daughter: 😅
Mom, turning around to ask me, reading off the text, "what does she mean?"
Me: um...
Mom: wait, it's gross, isn't it? Don't tell me, I don't want to know gross

😅

Oldest adult child has been earning a bachelor's degree in computer animation or somesuch

Now that the schoolwork is done, it should be time to apply for jobs

Unfortunately, his laptop broke, and his backup drive is also broken

So now he's buying his sister's gaming laptop to use (but what of the programs he needs? 🤷)

Not a single person in the entire house thought to ask the computer builder to look at it

I asked for the machine, turned it on and got color-coded blinks

No memory installed

I tried a reset, hoping against hope, bit no such luck

I will change slots and see what happens, but I think he will have to buy another stick

Mayhaps one of my older machines has DDR5, but I have doubts

One of the local Japanese fast food chains, Yoshinoya, discover my current favorite spice, crispy chili

I don't usually follow this thread, but I thought I'd shake it up a bit with Weird Al's homage to the Godfather of Soul—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_with_a_Hernia

#FortnightFridayMusic #brass

I saw an ad on the computer where this... person? is talking prostate issues and the video is showing a brain with a red circle highlighting something very not prostate-related