Day in the Life of an Idiot

 One of the exciting things that happened today that I totally forgot to mention in all my various updatery (Patreon and my newsletter) was that I was interviewed by Cat Rambo as part of the promotion they are doing around The Reinvented Heart Anthology. In a couple of days, Cat expects to have the interview with me up on the Cat Rambo Reinvented Anthology playlist. I will also absolutely drop a direct link when it goes live.

I always feel like I'm rambling? But, Cat says they will clean it up, so fingers cross that I come across vaguely human-ish. 

The interview came at a good time, at least, since I JUST (as in literal minutes earlier) finished writing the story that I'd promised Cat and crew for the next "Reinvented" anthology, called The Reinvented Detective. There is no detective in my story? Though it does deal with crime and punishment, per the submission guidelines. I love this story a lot because it is PRIME Lyda Morehouse weirdness, but I am uncertain that it will actually sell to this particularly market. We shall find out in May, one way or the other.

Other than that, I've been watching at lot of Satoshi Kon movies, actually. The Smithsonian's Museum of Asian Art is in the middle of a virtual film festival of Kon's work, and I've been taking advantage of the free access to finally catch up on Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress, and a documentary of Kon's life called: Satoshi Kon: The Illusionist. My anime-turned-C-Drama friend had shown me his Paprika movie early on and I ADORED it. Paprika is 100% the kind of science fiction I strive to write. (I should probably read the novel is it based on, but I'm not sure if it's been translated. I should look.) I have not seen Kon's Paranoia Agent (which is a TV series,) but I have now picked up and read at least one of his manga, which I'll probably talk about tomorrow.  

Anyway, the virtual film festival has proved so popular that they opened up additional viewings of Perfect Blue (which I ran out an snagged a ticket for) and Tokyo Godfathers. It is a weird thing they are doing because it's free, but they make you get a ticket? I think because they are the Smithsonian/a museum, they're just trying to get a sense of how many people would attend a virtual showing, and since they have sold out, perhaps they are limited in terms of whatever they may have spent to be an official venue for these classic movies. Anyway, check them out, perhaps there are seats left: https://watch.eventive.org/satoshikon

So, that's been kind of fun.

The other thing I've been doing is finally going through a box of junk that I got as part of a stamp collection someone gave away on our neighborhood Buy Nothing group. I say junk, but it's basically a box full of envelopes with stamps on them. The stamps are all of one kind, so I am currently just harvesting them off the envelopes for eventual resale. But, occasionally, there are envelopes that have not been entirely stripped of their contents. The most interesting thing that I've found so far is a Japanese Government-Issued Peso, which was a fiat bill that was produced during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in WWII. This one is very specifically a 1942 issued ten centavos. 


Image: WEIRD bit of history found in a box of worthless stamps

I was a bit disappointed, after having read the Wikipedia article about these, that this one was not one of the counterfeit bills that the United State government printed in an attempt to destabilize Japan's occupying force. Apparently, those had specific letters printed on them and/or were actually overlaid with propaganda (and then dumped by the bucketful out of airplanes, holy shit)!  

Anyway, I also found a few letters home from 1889, of which only one is interesting because it is clearly in response to an accusation by this person's mother, who is convinced that son(?) talked dad out of an extra $200 loan (on top of the THOUSAND dad had already given him!!) What I found most amusing was the overuse of underlining, which of course made me imagine the whole thing as an ALL CAP email. :-)

The more things change, right?

Okay, I'm off. Hope you all are doing well!

 I promised dreamshark  that I would post any pictures of things that I've made from the cookbooks that she gave me from her big clean-out. So, this weekend, I made a rye bread from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest.


Image: two lovely round, extremely delicious dark rye loaves cooling on an accordion rack.


I followed the recipe fairly closely, except that since I have Vera, the sourdough starter, at my disposal, I hived off a cup of her and added it to the mix. I will admit to being somewhat distrusting of the sour dough, so, where the recipe called for two packages of active dry yeast, I still put in one. I know, I need to trust Vera. Thing is, we had a somewhat disastrous attempt at sourdough donuts on Saturday. They did not rise nearly enough... and so we ended up with fairly leaden donuts. Good flavor, but so chewy and dense as to be ALMOST unappetizing--we still ate almost all of them, of course.


Image: they look like decent donuts, but they're secretly trying to break your dental work.


So, I didn't trust. Listen, Lyda's Lead Bread has been a thing of far distant past and I would very much like to keep it that way.

When I first started making bread, I did probably every thing wrong at one time or another, but Shawn (my only family at the time) would still bravely try my failures. We started calling anything I made with yeast Lyda's Lead Bread. It made me laugh enough to keep at it, keep trying. The truth is, now that I'm where I'm at, I am secretly very embarrassed by those early loaves and very proud of my current prowess. So, if this sour dough experiment is to continue, I'm either going to have to keep cheating or abandon it, entirely.

I was tagged on a Facebook post today citing the "cult" of sourdough, as in, someone lumped me in with all the people who are extolling the virtues of wild yeast.  I guess I approach this cult the way I would any new religion, with much skepticism. I'm just not convinced in the miracle of the wild yeast. I am happy to have seen results in my starter, but after that...? I have yet to become a true convert. In fact, I am definitely seeing the down side of sourdough. Everyone is talking about how yeast is basically free, so it's an easy way around the yeast shortage. But, NO ONE is talking about how much flour you have to feed your starter on a regular basis. I'm at the point where I can safely put Vera in the fridge and only feed her once a week, but previous to this? I was supposed to be throwing away half the starter and adding hot water and flour every day. It's starting to be fine, because I've been using the discarded half to make daily bread, but before it was ready I was throwing it away because it wasn't good for anything yet. We have a flour shortage here, too, although I did see flour making a comeback at Kowalskis.

Enough of that.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is the postal service. There is a thing going around various social media platforms suggesting that we all do our part to try to keep the post office afloat by buying postage stamps. I have no idea if that would really be enough to get them through another fiscal year, but I highly recommend this, regardless. There are some really neat stamps out there. naomikritzer  sent me a link to the T-Rex forever stamps and so I will pass it on to you: https://store.usps.com/store/product/buy-stamps/tyrannosaurus-rex-S_479204?fbclid=IwAR0W8EkhwUH3NqoxWzTJ7-zNZX_OrFppwXtfbB9umAPyx21Ne-VyQ66_gZ4 

Also, this is your regular reminder that if you need someone to write to with those fancy new stamps you're buying, I am always willing to be the one.  Just drop me a PM or email at: lyda.morehouse@gmail.com with your snail mail and I will send you a long letter and probably a very weird card. I have a huge collection of greeting cards that I have picked up over the years from estate sales. Not to mention very fun, cute stationary from Taiwan, courtesy of jiawen .   

I was also going to do the pandemic meme that was going around, but perhaps another day.

I hope you all are doing well.

A lot has actually happened in the intervening week that I failed to report. A dear friend of mine, Peg Ihinger (known to a lot of readers as pegkerr), lost her husband, Rob, to cancer. His memorial was last Friday. Rob's obit ran in the Star Tribune. His daughters did the most amazing eulogies that broke me down to tears, which, considering that I'm far close to Peg than I ever was to Rob, is something.

Funerals are always awful, though I really enjoyed the fannish wake that was held for Rob in MnStF style. It made me think that something like that is very much what I'd like for... well, I guess what's weird is that I would actually like it FOR ME, which is to say, I'd want something like that while I was grieving, and the only thing that's wrong with that idea is that Shawn, my wife (the one I'd likely be grieving--banish, banish, banish), is not at all fannish. And, throwing a party might seems weird, you know:, "I'm a widow! Party for me!! Bring out the Irish folk music!" No, no.... okay, NO. Upon deeper consideration this is a terrible idea for my family, but it was absolutely perfect for Rob and his.

In completely different news, a friend from Wales sent me a care package of tea (thank all the gods! I was back to drinking Earl Grey, which, I had previously considered OK tea and now realize the errors of my ways), jelly babies, and two sets of United Kingdom "Game of Thrones" themed postage stamps. I'm not the world's biggest GoT fan, and have not, in point of fact, even watched a single episode of the HBO series. However, these stamps were just too cool not to try to get copies of. My friend very kindly obliged... I mean, I made her go to the post office twice, which makes me feel rather badly, but I have offered to return any care package in kind, if we could ever figure out if there's anything America doesn't already import to the UK. (In the past, I've sent her things from the Asian markets around here, because those items were harder to find in small town Wales.)

I have also, speaking of reading, still been slogging my way through the manuscript I'm critiquing for the Loft. I have been working at it, steadily, nearly ever day since I got it... it's just slow going when you're reading at that deep a level, I guess. The good news is that I officially have six weeks to finish it, and I don't want it to be hanging around my neck that long. I'm going to keep pushing at it, and hopefully by this time next week I can report that not only did I finish my work, but I had my meeting with the author.

I also signed up for MarsCON programming, so if you're planning on being there, I will be, too.

Things I have read. I'm currently reading an actual novel that I picked off the most recent Locus Recommended Reading List called The Tropic of Kansas by Christopher Brown. I'm enjoying this one so far, despite the fact that it should give me nightmares as it's clearly a dystopian extrapolation of the politics of the current administration.

I've decided I'm going to try to read as many of the debut books listed as possible, so I also have on my TBR pile: The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss and The Guns Above by Robyn Benis.

Read a number of manga this week, of course, including:

Renai Crown / Crown of Love (Volume 1) by Kouga Yun, and
Haru ga Kita / Spring Has Come by Kome Mochino

My library has had a sale of manga that they've weeded from their collection and so I bought several dozen titles, which I will be reading and reviewing over the next week, no doubt. I picked up anything that had a first volume, so it should be interesting to see the range of things.  I suspect I'm going to be reading a lot more shoujo than I normally would have, but what the heck.  The price was right: 5 for a buck.

How about all y'all?