jamoche

When we last left our intrepid heroes, they were at Doomer Disneyworld, trying to figure out how theme park employees have outlived the rest of the population of this alternate Earth. As you may have deduced, they haven’t: the employees are all animatronic robots.



The JLE keeps trying to investigate in the face of the robots’ relentless cheer, but they can only hear “It’s a Mauled World After All” so many times before they snap.

( 🎶 It’s a world of fallout, a world of trash, it’s a world of rubble, a world of ash, and it has to be said, it’s too bad we’re all dead… 🎶 )

CDJapan Order, Delivered February 2026

As noted Last Year, some special goodies were available for pre-order in Japan, and those items were delivered to my home a week ago (Wednesday, February 4).

My twin biases in TWICE are Sana and Momo – and those women are also two of the three members of TWICE’s Japanese sub-group, MISAMO. So I do whatever I can to support Misamo, even if their music doesn’t quite match my listening preferences.

So my order included:

Misamo PLAY DVD/CD set
MISAMO visuals are the best, so I always get any DVD or Blu-ray that I can. I’ve been too busy to view the DVD. The videos will be stuck in my backlog for a while.

Warner Japan doesn’t offer much in the way of extras. The oversize box (with cover photo) includes a large (10.75" x 7.5") but thin (32 pp) photobook/lyrics book – along with a matching (same size) poster. A single, small, random photocard was included. A CDJapan-only bonus was a round compact mirror with photo back and clear vinyl case.

Misamo PLAY DVD/CD set

Misamo PLAY CD
The music CD that is included with the MISAMO DVD doesn’t have the three solo songs. How annoying. So I had to buy a separate CD to get all the recorded songs. Warner Japan, always stingy with bonuses, provided just a single, random photocard. The CDJapan-only bonus was another round, compact mirror with photo back and clear vinyl case.

As a lifelong Gunbuster fan, my order included a special reissue:

Sound Collection of Gunbuster 3-CD set
This CD box set completes my collection of Gunbuster CDs, and I’m eager to listen to the whole thing – even though it’s a superset of my other CDs. I think there are new (to me) sound clips – and I add good ones to the sound library on Belldandy to replace system sounds. Anyway, I’m super happy to have completed my Gunbuster audio collection – a nice compliment to my complete video collection.

PDXWLF 2026 Press Badge

Things are troubled but not quite dire here. I’ve had a catastrophic failure of the external SSD that holds my Lightroom library. Normally I’d take a timeout and begin work on a lengthy rebuild. However, this happened just one day before the start of the Portland Winter Light Festival, and I’m a photographer for the festival – so I had to do an emergency restore of a 9-month-old Lightroom backup so that I could process photos starting last Friday.

PDXWLF runs for nine days, and I have photo commitments for six of those days (including tonight). PDXWLF is the worst (most difficult, least satisfying) of the photography I do each year – and it’s more of a chore than anything. Even after the event is over after this Saturday, I’ll have a huge amount of photos to process. There are deadlines.

I’ve talked with support for my dead drive, and there is almost no hope of recovering the data. (There is a very slim chance, but I’ve studied the tool, and I’m not optimistic at all. I’ll explain on another day.) Basically, there’s nine months of work that is lost and would have to be recreated – in my spare time, of course. This includes all my 2025 Oregon Country Fair, Portland Saturday Market 2025, Portland Farmers Market 2025, Kumoricon 2025, and TWICE concert photos. 😔

In the meantime, my library cleanup/organization is on hold. And there is a lot remaining to do.

LiveJournal Scrapbook/Photos download hasn’t received attention, either.

Maybe the only good thing is that I finished compiling a big, electronic stack of documents that I’ve sent to my tax accountant. This was right on my ideal schedule – and three weeks ahead of last year.

If I slowed down and stopped to think, I’d know how much of a mess everything is right now – so I’m not going to do that. There’s no time to be depressed. For now, I have to get ready for another photo outing tonight.

( books: Pratchett )

yarning
Went to yarn group Sunday and worked on the pink kickbunny. Spent the week making balaclavas for Minneapolis protesters.

healthcrap
Massive vertigo the last few days. Really annoying. Psych and allergist tomorrow.

#resist
+ https://standwithminnesota.com
+ https://projectreliefme.com (mutual aid in Maine -- the ICE surge in ME is over, but they arrested 200 people there and their families still need help.)
+ On the state of the Haitian immigrants in Springfield
+ Feb 17th: #50501 Protest: Impeach Trump, Abolish ICE
+ March 28: #50501 No Kings Protest #3

Seven Seas announced today on bluesky and twitter that they're launching a label for baihe and new baihe licenses will come soon! (I'm assuming label = imprint)

 

( Scans under the cut... )

How to be Lyndon Baines Johnson:

1. Treat any older more powerful person as a surrogate parent. Flatter extensively and adaptably. If it turns out a surrogate dad hates suck-ups and is raring for a good argument, give him that instead.

2. Find small informal organisations no one cares about, such as a student political body or congressional secretaries' society. Rig elections to win control of these; then, once you have the power to, use them for a wide range of goals such as meeting and flattering additional powerful surrogate parents.

3. Work your staff hard. Try to praise them enough that they don't have nervous breakdowns,
but it's not essential.

3.1. Don't employ anyone who objects to this.

4. Check and recheck every piece of work yourself. If someone doesn't respond to your telegram, write them another making sure your first got through.

5. If there isn't any work to do then make some. (But self-care is important: if you get appendicitis due to the resulting stress, you are permitted to stop working for several days, perhaps as much as a week.)

6. Avoid principle.

7. Be motivated by a ceaseless inner flame.

8. Have a good politician as your actual father and spend your childhood watching how he does it. Copy the useful bits but not the bits that lead him into penury, i.e. his failure to avoid principle. Never quite forgive him for this last.

9. Don't ever have an affair with the lover of one of your most important allies - but hey, everyone has to break one rule, right?

10. Avoid going on the record with your politics. Let everyone you're talking to think you agree with them, ideally by getting around in front of the conversation and saying the things they're about to say.

11. Find rich people who need entrée to Washington; for example, a construction company in desperate financial difficulties whose gigantic semi-legal hydroelectric dam you can smooth the way for. Up-and-coming millionaires from the new Texas oil field are also a good option. Drink their money in deep, tasty draughts. This is guaranteed never to cause any complications later in your country's history.

12. Decide as early as possible that you are going to be President, and never make a decision that could keep you from that goal.



Other notes: Caro only seems to write books about abusive bosses. The relationship between Johnson and his assistant Latimer was painful to read about. At the point where Latimer is saying, “Well, he'd do anything for you and you'd do anything for him,” having lived a life that makes it very clear only the second of these things is true, I thought, "Huh, Pearl and Rose Quartz from Steven Universe had a comparatively functional relationship, all things considered."

Oh, and speaking of, Johnson also puts the hard sell on his prospective wife to marry him after a ridiculously short acquaintance, partly by lying about his own interests. Charming man.

Where did Johnson get his ceaseless inner flame? At least partly, an upbringing in a very poor place by parents who very much believed they deserved more. The book spends a lot of time in the Texas Hill Country, a classic case of 'This place looked like a fertile paradise but only and specifically because no one had been fool enough to do intensive crop-based agriculture to it.' Incredibly poor scrappy farms, worsening by the year, as the fertility of the soil did an up-and-down dance that let people believe the trend might turn upward, even as it continued steadily down. A whole chapter is about what a farm wife's day looked like without electricity. It did not look good. (One of the really concrete good things Johnson does in this book is use his influence as a congressman to get electrification of the Hill Country going.)

This book spans the period from Johnson's grandparents' births to Johnson's first race for a Senate seat. In some ways, the whole front half of it is set up to explain every factor that makes his extremely implausible run for a seat in Congress possible. The later senatorial race is ridiculously corrupt, in at least three different ways, and Johnson loses it for the kind of reason that history, C.J. Cherryh, and Patrick O'Brian are willing to put in their plots, but few other writers seem to be: protagonist suddenly collided with by the second unrelated novel that has been happening offpage.

Does this book need to be book one of a projected five, each the size of a small dog? Ask me again if I get through the rest of them. I certainly don't think I'd have faulted a Lyndon Johnson biographer who spent merely a hundred pages on the historical context of Johnson's family.

Immediately after The Power Broker I had thought 'I need a break from Caro,' so I started listening to Seeing Like a State by James Scott. Caro had spoiled me for it, I could not get on board its rapid jumping through time and space, nor its degree of abstraction, nor its density of detail. I returned to Caro feeling rather as though I had just been seduced by the great man theory of history.

Apologies for the long radio silence at Casa Gerrib Norte. I was heavily involved in running Capricon and then other Life happened. But relax - your silent suffering is at an end.

Comes news today that the FAA shut down the airspace over El Paso, Texas for 10 days on very short notice. Then, after a widespread round of WTF, they re-opened it. Well, the problem resulted from a spat between the FAA and DOD over using high-powered lasers to shoot down drug cartel drones. Apparently the DOD has been using these at Fort Bliss over FAA objections. Also at least one use of the laser was to shoot down errant party balloons. I have thoughts.

1) Dealing with low-and-slow drones over any urban area is tough. There's a lot of stuff flying around.

2) Especially in peacetime, you really should know what you're shooting at before firing.

3) The drone problem will require multiple solutions, to include sending up your own drones to eyeball a target before hitting it with your Mega Death Ray.

4) The (lack of) planning this incident exhibited is reason #3741 why you need competent people in government. Alas, in the current Administration, competency is actively discouraged.

 

( Scans under the cut... )

The Silver Bullet, and Other American Witch Stories by Hubert J. Davis

A selection of folktales gathered in the 1930s. A number of people claimed to have been the actual victims, others to know the people involved. A number are just told without a connection. Two are recognizable fairy tales.

It has sections about how to become a witch, how they worked, how to counter them, and tales of their witchery for money or mischief. Many references to witch doctors (or white witches).

Picking up a book called Part Time Girl about a high school kid who switches (physically, magically, inconveniently) back and forth between Being A Boy and Being A Girl, I was like, okay, I know pretty much what the vibes of this are going to be. And the first couple chapters in which protagonist Michael/Kayla worries about a Sort Of Girlfriend and a Hot Boy and I Have Taken This Part Time Job As A Girl But Now I Need Girl Clothes, Bra Shopping! So Stressful!! did not really lead me to think anything different!

Then about 40% of the way through the book our protagonist was suddenly running through the woods from evil wizards, and I'm like, okay, this I did not expect.

It turns out the plot of this book is NOT high school drama and figuring out your complicated gender feelings! The plot of this book is that evil racist homophobic wealthy wizards called the Clan (yes) run the world and you have to team up with your traumatized neighbor to fight them, while also figuring out your complicated gender feelings along the way.

Also, the protagonist and the traumatized neighbor bond by hanging out and watching the 2014 kdrama Healer, the plot and cast of which is lovingly described in text. This is in fact plot relevant because they later use their arguments over which cast member is hotter to prove their identities to each other when it's in question. Now I do love Healer but given that it came out, again, in 2014 and I haven't heard anyone talk about it pop culturally in more than a decade, this possibly surprised me even more than the evil wizards.

I can confidently say that at no point did I predict some of the major turns this book took, and I will put them under a spoiler in case you, too, would like to experience this Experience as I confidently believe it was meant to be Experienced: ( here we go! for the ride! )

Fandom: Heated Rivalry
Characters/Pairings: Scott Hunter/Kip Grady, Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Cliff Marlow, Elena, Carter Vaughan, JJ Dagenais, Eric Bennett
Rating: Mature
Length: 14,405
Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply
Creator Links: toomuchplor on AO3, sweaters_in_the_summer on AO3
Themes: Inept in love, Canon LGBTQ+ characters, Established relationship, Outsider POV, Humor, Happy Endings

Summary: Scott Hunter is just trying to make the most of his closeted NHL career, keep his head down, wait until he retires before he tries find his person.

He doesn't want to know anything at all about these two dumb rookies and what they're getting up to behind the facade of their so-called rivalry... but they're making it really hard for him to ignore them.

Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov are not Scott's problem. That's all there is to it.

Reccer's Notes: This is a brilliant and often hilarious fic about Scott and Kip, but also about how Scott keeps catching the two damn rookies giving themselves away ineptly left, right and centre. I love outsider POV and this delivers, and there's also a wonderful portrayal of Scott and Kip's relationship across the years - Scott can be pretty inept in love, as well! I loved the texting and chat between Scott and Kip as Scott overhears yet another Shane/Ilya secret or catches them out somewhere - Kip is so gossipy and funny. There's some angst, but of course a happy ending. So good, and very clever and full of heart.

Fanwork Links: Knowing
And there's a great podfic by sweaters_in_the_summer

+ Doing poorly at getting enough sleep. I hereby decree that if I go straight in the shower and then straight to bed after work for the remainder of the trip, I get to order a batch of the damaged chocolates from Jentene På Tunet the next time the offer comes up + one new tarot deck (or just the oversized Buffy one? idk).

+ We did get two more days of orcas last week. Day one was just a solo boisterous youngling aggressively darting after the net, but the next day? The biggest pod yet! And best of all: after the net was up on deck they slowly glided alongside the ship, letting me observe them from the deck under water (which was crystal clear that day). I stood outside until all feeling left my hands and snot was running freely. ( Read more... )

+ Comics! My brain is so cooked, the only reading I've attempted was the physical trade of Batman: Secret Files that I picked up for a song during the New Year's sale. Made it half-way through the first story before my brain went "no thanks, I'm full". And I know The Gardener is in there! Brain tired. Sucks.

Know what doesn't suck? Poison Ivy still has an ongoing written by G Willow Wilson and Harley is in it as well and it is beauuutifull. Vol 2 of Absolute Wonder Woman is dropping in a few days. Meanwhile THIS HERE is Diana showing up in Absolute Batman (the writing is excellent, but THE LOOK woohee).


I'm waiting for it to be collected, but Harley & Ivy is bringing so much cuteness. Lookit!


+ I really wanna whine about work but I'm not gonna. Big sigh though.

+ hrrmm I need to cut my nails.

Tuesday, February 10, 2026

Spondulicks (noun)
spondulicks or spondulix [spon-doo-liks]

noun, Older Slang.
1. money; cash.

Origin: An Americanism dating back to 1855–60; origin uncertain

Example Sentences
But in a larger sense, the Qataris were offering something more seductive than pure spondulicks.
From Salon

Sir Alex Ferguson is going to continue with his stated on-the-record policy of only ever investing in youth by sending £12m spondulicks to Everton's current account in exchange for the 27-year-old fresh and fledgling full-back that is Leighton Baines.
From The Guardian

The Ochre, I mean, mate, the spondulicks, call the dashed stuff wot you please.
From Project Gutenberg

For the Roosevelt Administration, after seven years of practice in free & easy spending, was now really swinging the spondulicks.
From Time Magazine Archive

Mr. Pinhead was worth eighty millions, Miss Nothingbutt had eighty-two; Why do cash and spondulicks get married?
From Project Gutenberg

Dear Father, it has been a month since my last confession.

I am so tired, y'all. I've been working overtime for the past three weeks trying to stash some money away for the inevitable basement bullshit and it's been exhausting. (You wouldn't think a job that requires sitting at a desk would be tiring, but I feel like somebody threw sand in my eyes by the end of the day.)

Permit-wrangler is still trying to find an engineer. Apparently the problem is that I can't just dig a hole and have an engineer look at it and yes the foundations are good, they have to figure out how to reverse-engineer whatever was done to create new drawings - and that's going to be expensive regardless.

I sicc'd permit-wrangler on the engineer who got the original permits. "Tell him if he helps me out I might leave him out of the lawsuit."

***

I looked out my window this morning and there was a huge raptor in the trees behind my house. Couldn't get a clear enough view to make a guess at what it was but at least twice the size of the red-tail hawks I normally see back there.

I reiterated to the venerable Lord Brock that no, he is not going outside no matter how much he bonks his head on the window. (He is enormously offended by the squirrels.)

***

Last time I visited my dad I took my laptop over and started quizzing him about family. His memory is shot, but he does remember incidents from his childhood. What's hilarious is that he remembers the kids who pissed him off - I suggested one possible connection and he was all, "Oh yeah, Joey, he visited from the States. What a little prick."

He also remembered the aunt who baked cookies and the heavy-drinking aunt who was a huge bruiser and all the men were afraid of her. So if they left an impression he had me stories about them, even if he doesn't remember how they're related to him.

***

Somebody here was talking about how Skip The Dishes made up a new address for them, and it reminded me that I had the exact experience last time I ordered from them. The system sent the driver to an address a couple of blocks away and I only caught it because I got the ping that the order was five minutes away and when I looked at the map I didn't recognize the streets.

Calling their customer service did nothing because the driver was already showing as "arrived". But as soon as I hung up I got a call from the driver because the address they had given him was a park, so I was able to redirect him and get my food after all.

***

We have reached the part of the winter where I start to worry that I have run out of places to put snow. My yard is maybe five feet square and the snow is already piled up in a pyramid.

I keep wanting to go out with a hose and ice it up and build an igloo or something.

Yellface (spayed, *16) decided to sit on me last night. Thorn came in and snuggled me. Yellface sniffed their hand politely as we held hands. The first time she'd ever encountered Thorn's hand without some cranky meowing. (Right now Yellface will sniff and rub her face on an extended finger, but will say things about it.)

Many minutes of stillness later, Thorn said something.

Yellface suddenly took notice of an alien hand near her territory, stood up, and gave a snake-strike grazing bite to the nearest hand, followed by a swat.

My hand, naturally.

I uninvited her from the bed and found an alcohol wipe. She broke skin but didn't draw blood. Today only the deepest scrape is visible, if you're looking for it.

Oh, cat.

 
Image: A loon made of many eyes stabbing a fish labled ICE with the words: Gone ICE Fishing (by Fayrn Hughes)

No laser eyes, but, yes, loons STAB fish with their insanely sharp beaks. There is video. It is wild.

So, I know there is some concern about whether or not I should keep these posts public, but I would like to. I am very careful not to name names (especially after the whole Capclave misadventure), and, I guess, I would be surprised if ICE infiltrated Dreamwidth to track me (or any of the rest of you) down. Obviously, we would be vulnerable to a Google Alert, but I can't imagine what the Feds would search on. ICE in Minnesota is going to get a tremendous number of Google Alerts at the moment. I'm sorry if that cools anyone's enthusiasm to join the conversation. However, I do think it is worth keeping things open so that folks who might not otherwise see this news, will. And my Food Communists have actively been asking people to push out calls for monetary assistance on social media. So, like, going public is one of the ways we are fighting in this resistance. 

Without further ado, here's what's been happening in my life.

Let's see. So, last Friday I was chatting with neighbors, as you do, when we were standing outside of our local mosque. A woman there asked if anyone would be willing to join a group that is trying to keep eyes on school pick-ups and drop-offs. I thought I might be able to help out, so I exchanged the proper Signal information, got on the right groups, and then attended an in-person meeting last Sunday.  This group is not in my immediate neighborhood, so I travelled to a DIFFERENT Lutheran Church to sit with a bunch of folks and talk about what's going on. This was their usual neighborhood gathering and I was only there to get connected into the Rapid Response team. But, it was generally very fascinating.

Without going into technical details (and I really couldn't even if I wanted to because I am no one's idea of a tech head), I can say that there are neighborhoods in Saint Paul that are already planning for what happens if/when the government shuts down Signal or the Internet in order to stop our efforts to track them. Friends? We are living in the solar punk future and it gives me such hope, I can not even. 

As it happens, however, the Rapid Response team did not meet until the very end when I needed to run off, but I happened to sit in a pew next to one of the "guys in the chair," (a volunteer dispatcher), who showed me all the how-tos before I had to run.

Monday was my first patrol and... it was a bit of a technical nightmare at first, but I got connected to the live call eventually... and, I am happy to report, all my students got off their buses safely. There was a tense moment when Saint Paul police happened to be doing parking enforcement at the same time. They aren't SUPPOSED to be aiding ICE, but I did let dispatch know of their presence and that everything seemed legit (and, in fact, was.)  That was, as others have probably talked about when they go "commuting," both an extremely tense half hour of my life, and also an extremely boring half hour of my life.

My patrol does cut into the amount time I'm able to spend vounteering with the Food Communists, but Mason has been going with me and picking up my slack. I'm also not planning to do the patrol every day of school. I could? And they absolutely do need people at my particular corner, but, I don't think it would be good for my ability to endure.

I am trying to strike a balance to make sure I stay committed to the things that I started with, like the Food Communists. There are a lot of us in this fight? But there are still plenty of roles to be filled! When I filled out my volunteer shifts for the bus patrol, there were more blank spaces than filled.

I worry that people are getting exhausted. I worry that Americans have already moved on to the next thing.

I do believe many of us will keep up this fight no matter what. We were here before Renee Good was murdered and we'll be here long after the last of the news cameras moves on to the next horror. 

This article boils down to “we told you so.” But I like how it explains why the mainstream media dismissed and downplayed what we told you (because their “how to do journalism” rules demand it, e.g.: “Insist on a both-sides structure even when one side is lying“).

“The Media Malpractice That Sent America Tumbling Into Trumpism” by Parker Molloy
https://newrepublic.com/article/205913/media-malpractice-trumpism-project-2025