Today it would appear that I am managing to be pre-menstrual and perimenopausal simultaneously.
The headache is building, I slept as if I'd had strong coffee WAY too late in the day and all thoughts are being processed at half the usual speed (which wasn't very fast to start with).
I think there's also still a few remnants from Saturday where I was SO TIRED all day (blame the gallivanting on Friday) that at one point I had to apologise to Husband for being so grumpy.
Title: Miss Marple's Reflections Fandom: Miss Marple Rating: G Length: 424 words Summary: While clearing up after a storm, Miss Marple thinks how people are like her flowers
Hello, it’s Monday, let’s see what’s been going on over the weekend:
Spencer Pratt misses LA Mayoral runoff: I’ve not lived in California for decades now, and even when I did never lived in the city of Los Angeles proper. Nevertheless as a native son of Southern California, I’ve been keeping up with LA’s mayoral race, mostly because people I know were exasperated by the presence of Pratt, a fellow who as I understand it was best known for dating someone more famous than he and then extending that into an indifferent career in the reality TV genre, the sort where he and his spouse at one point announced an impending divorce for the publicity boost. Pratt is a Republican, and so perhaps unsurprisingly his entire platform seems to have been based on “backing the blue” and harassing homeless people.
The California primary election was nearly a week ago, and the vote tallying has been slow and for most of it Pratt was in second place behind the current, somewhat embattled, LA mayor Karen Bass. But as the mail-in votes have been counted over the last week, Pratt slipped into third behind Nithya Raman, and seems likely to stay there. Naturally, this has started the absolutely predictable GOP whining and foot-stomping about “election integrity,” to which the only rational response is, shut the fuck up, you reprehensible children, and take the “L” like grown-ups. They won’t, of course. But one can dream.
Earlier in the campaign Pratt said that if he lost the election he would leave Los Angeles; I understand there may be a GoFundMe to hire him a U-Haul. I will believe that he’s going to leave LA when I see it. He has not other real skills than being a celebrity of a certain low-wattage sort. He needs to be where the work is. And of course, this was all this doomed mayoral run was — an attempt to keep his name in the spotlight a little longer, to keep the work flowing. I hope it does this task… poorly.
Rush comes back: In rather more exciting news from Los Angeles, Rush opened up their new tour there last night, their first in a decade and since drummer/lyricist Neil Peart passed away in 2020. Apparently things went extremely well, with tour drummer Anika Nilles getting her critical flowers for her work on the throne. For me the moment of particular interest is that Aimee Mann (who I am friendly with thanks to our mutual participation on the JoCo Cruise) popped up for a cameo on “Time Stand Still,” which is arguably my own favorite Rush tune:
I have friends who are over the moon that Rush is back on tour, especially since it seemed unlikely, with the passing of Peart, that they would ever do so again; he was (and is) absolutely the beating heart of that band. No one could or did fault the Geddy Lee or Alex Lifeson, the other two members of Rush, for choosing to call it a career. But the way Rush are doing this particular tour, with a drummer with her own considerable skills, not designed to replace Peart but to support his friends as they take a sweet, valedictory lap, seems to be something everyone is getting behind. I hope they have a good tour, and I hope all my friends who love Rush get a chance to see them.
House-sized American flag causes a power failure: Sometimes the real-world metaphors are just a little on the nose, aren’t they? But wait, the metaphor gets even nose-ier: The New York Times reporting on the event seems to suggest the massive, 3,000 square foot flag that cut off power to 40,000 may have been the property of the WWE wrestling organization, based in Stamford, where the outage happened. A preview, possibly, of the WWE event scheduled for the White House lawn this weekend? We shall see.
I am, for the record, somewhat less outraged than some other people of my political leanings about the WWE event at the White House. I think it’s tacky as fuck, but that’s Trump for you. I don’t support it and am sure it’s going to be corrupt people doing corrupt things, corruptly, but on my list of things to seethe about regarding this administration, it’s low-ish on the list. Other people are taking up my slack, to be sure. I wish them joy in the work.
The working life is a tough one, so tough in fact that it seems to be taking a toll on our cat children even though they do not lift a finger to help us, not at home or at work. Nonetheless, we have this hilarious collection of totally tuckered out cats taking a moment for themselves after giving it their all while you were at the office all day.
Cats are highly emotional and spiritual creatures, a fact which many a cat pawrent would be quick to back up. So it is only natural that when they bond to their hooman and their hooman is going through something like being wrung out from a long day, that they too will feel rather sleepy. Some have come to think that this display of sleepiness is some sort of attempt at sarcasm. As though they are mocking their pawrents for being wimps.
And while that might be true in a minority of cases (cats are after all notoriously sassy), we believe in the majority of cases this is a show of sympathy. To show their pawrents that they see them, they support them, and if they want they are invited to nap with them.
Amazon abruptly canceled its in-development new Stargate series, saying it aimed too much at fans, too little at general audiences. Read about it on Variety.
The rumor that Disney has acquired the US rights to the entire Pokémon cartoon/anime catalogue, including an unannounced '27 project, remains unverified, with no announcements from either Disney or The Pokémon Company (Nintendo + Game Freak + Creatures), and no mainstream press reporting. Read the community discussion on Bulbagarden.
A new Moomin video game will come to Switch 2 and Steam later this year: Moomin: Midsummer Madness, a point-and-click storybook by Crossbridge/Shochiku. (It's unlike the open-world adventures Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley and Moomintroll: Winter's Warmth by Hyper Games/Raw Fury that I very much enjoyed earlier this year, and would have been glad to see another in that line.) Read about it on the official Moomin blog.
More Arirang promo variety shows! This time, it's Taehyung's turn. He appeared in Jung Jaehyung's web show Fairy Jaehyung a year or so later after Hobi's guest appearance.
This is a super mellow episode in which Taehyung's unusually shy (or, better said, shyer than he tends to be around ppl he doesn't know.) Though he does light up whenever Jaehyung's doggy shows up (the show's filmed at Jaehyung's house.)
The conversation is pretty laid back--with some occasional LOLs courtesy of Taehyung's impish personality. English CCs are available.
So physically and metaphorically overflowing. Bubbly also works in those two ways. Not a common word -- I can't recall meeting it until it showed up on a word-of-the-day list. Dates to around 1670, that prime area of Latinate imports, from Latin scaturient-, stem form of scaturiens, present participle of scaturire, to gush out, from (I think as a frequentive form?) scatere, to bubble/gush.
This historical romance concerns Carys Davies, a young woman who is mildly scandalous for her daring outfits and bold ways. She is, however, hiding a more scandalous incident in her past, one that could be ruinous. Because of this, she has been avoiding marriage. Tristan Montgomery is Carys' neighbor and childhood friend. They have been sparring and sniping at each other their whole lives. When he accepts her mocking challenge to show her what she is missing by avoiding marriage, Tristan and Carys discover that their feelings for each other are much more passionate and deeper than they had realized. This one was fun and fairly light on the conflict. The sparring and banter was fun. There's a bit of an intrigue plot in place of a third act break-up that brought tension and crisis to the plot without being too emotionally wrenching.
Senior cats usually get the short end of the stick when it comes to being adopted, but when the Cat Distribution System steps in, well, all bets are off. So we hope you enjoy this tale of unexpected outcomes in feline adoption.
As you can tell from the many stories on Reddit's r/cats subreddit, senior cats stand little chance of finding a home when and if they make it to a shelter. Often leaving many of them to stay living stray in order to avoid an end to life that likely involves many hours in a small cage and the tears of technicians who wished there were another way. And who can blame them?
So it is extra heartwarming to hear about a cat rescue story in which a sweet senior catto manages to find someone and with the support of the CDS no less. Giving this cat hope that his final years will be enjoyable and worthy of the proud feline that he has become. His past might be made up of disappointments and hoomans who have disappeared, but his future is now full of love and family.
June 8th, 2026: TCAF was great! I was just walking around most of the time, but I did have a panel and a signing and I'm sorry to the people who I didn't get to chat with as much but they were had to rush me out to get the next person in line! But it was a DELIGHT and I hope we get to do it again soon - perhaps... ONE YEAR FROM NOW??
I went to the pictures. Ticket prices are through the roof so I rarely do it these days, but I wanted to go see the new He-Man movie with friend T, who is a massive fan. He-Man was never a thing for me as a kid because I'm too young for its heyday and I seldom played with ~boy toys~ so most of my familiarity with the IP is through the new She-Ra.
Well. More thruthfully, when I hear "He-Man" I rather think about... dan na naa naa, dan na naa naa, TAISTELU-JASKA!
Taistelu-Jaska (Jaska the Fighter) is a video series from when "funny" dubs of cartoon recuts were peak Finnish Youtube. I bet for a large chunk of a certain millennial demographic, Taistelu-Jaska is the definitive iteration of He-Man. I know I still often think of the truly iconic lines ("parempi nyrkki perseessä kuin asua Lohjalla" - 'better a fist up your ass than to live in Lohja'). It's just... so dumb especially trying to explain it in English, but it's also genius.
Be as it may, we ended up having a really fun He-Man afternoon. We watched the 1987 Cannon Films version (I had seen it about a decade ago and had forgotten how much of it takes place on Earth) and an episode of the 1983 cartoon to prime ourselves. The first movie is... not terrible? And actually a really interesting project for Cannon to take on. It's just boring in a lot of places, especially the regular human drama bits.
The new movie might be a lot of things, and it is certainly not boring. I didn't know what to expect really and it was so much fun. :D
I avoided all possible spoilers so I didn't even know the cast. Teela is Veronica Riverdale! There's Idris Elba!? He was fantastic as always. And Adam is played by the prince from Red, White and Royal Blue. He was such a good choice for the type of character they went for. Very similar to David Corenswet's Superman. I think there's something to be said about the masculine softboy/babygirl male hero discourse, but I don't have a thinkpiece in me. Besides He-Man himself, the movie is very much similar to James Gunn's oeuvre in general, but I found it... more pleasant to my own sensibilities? I also really liked Bumblebee, so I think I just jive with Travis Knight's style.
The one strike against the casting is Jared Leto as Skeletor. He didn't do a bad job per se, but Skeletor was memorable mostly because of the writing -- the scriptwriters were having so much fun with him -- and the visuals. I feel like there are a dozen actors who would have delivered a really fun performance just as well. He didn't suck. It's just. Why would you hire Jared Leto. You don't need to do that, you know?
Still, that choice didn't detract from the whole. The visuals are so so pretty. The movie is looong (40 minutes longer than the Dolph one!) but it didn't feel like a slog at any point. The fights were well done. It was nice to see lots of melee fighting (with the POWER SWORD). It has a lot of jokes and a lot of them don't land, but it's very charming about it. The bad jokeyness won me over. Prince Henry Adam is buff, but in what I consider a realistic way. You know what I mean? There's like... a layer of fat tissue over his muscles and his veins aren't popping. He's like a regular, super buff but regular guy.
One of the absolute stars of the movie is the score. If you like power metal and Brian May shredding on the guitar, please listen to the score. For that alone I was glad we went to see it on the big screen. And then they even ( spoiler )
So yeah, it was fun! The plot is very standard hero's journey, but it's lovingly, thoughtfully made. I think for big He-Man fans there are a lot of fun details that I completely missed, but it works for the uninitiated perfectly well.
Yesterday, I was on the bus. It was almost empty; I was one of five passengers on the top floor, all of us travelling alone and scattered throughout the seating.
I was a little nervous when one of the other passengers - a man - left his seat at the front and walked back, past all the empty seats and the two men sitting between us, to sit next to me, the sole woman on the upper deck.
Anyway! This whole thing really got me thinking about kindness and humanity and brief connections with strangers. I don't know the name of the man who helped me out, and it's very unlikely that I'll ever see him again. But I'm glad he was there, and I hope good things happen for him.
And, if you have your own tales of a stranger doing something kind for you, I'd love to hear them!
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