Jimmy Kimmel's return!

Sep. 24th, 2025 10:55 am
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[personal profile] brithistorian

A. and I just watched Jimmy Kimmel's comeback monologue from last night. It was great — I'm glad to see him back. I've got to say, though: After seeing his supercut of all the time's Trump said not to take Tylenol in his press conference with RFK Jr., I feel an uncontrollable urge to take Tylenol!

Welcome home, Miss Bitch.

Sep. 24th, 2025 06:38 am
sistawendy: me in a Gorey vamp costume looking up (skeptic coy Gorey tilted down)
[personal profile] sistawendy
After I unpacked, I got a wild hair and went to the open decks night at the Blue Moon. Some great tunes, some less great tunes. Dawgs. Stickers. Ravers. Happiness.

But then I got tired from my cross-country trip and headed for the bus. When I got to the stop, there was an older White woman talking at a younger Black man. He was irritated enough to leave the bus shelter and walk past me a few steps. But the old lady followed him. At some point she said blah blah "you people" blah blah, and that's when I spun around to look. I thought that it might be a come-get-your-girl moment.

The young man looked me in the eye and gestured for me to stay out of it. I gestured to him that I couldn't even hear her over the four lates of traffic right behind me.

Shallow fashion details, because they're germane: I was wearing a 1950s-inspired dress with a rose-and-spider-web print, and the steel necklace that my mother gave me that looks like pearls, and MAC Ruby Woo lipstick. I was dolled up a little because that's how I roll.

The old lady turned to me and said something like, "Her people don't even give a shit. Do you even know what the NAACP is?"
"Yes," I said. I didn't interrogate her about who "her people" are.
The old lady went back to the bus shelter.
"Are you OK?" the young man asked.
"I'm fine. What about you?"

The bus arrived mercifully soon after that. I got on first and the old lady said, "Get on the bus first, Miss Bitch!" I hadn't noticed that she was shuffling a bit, and the doors had opened right in front of me.

Fun fact: the old lady got off in the middle of Wallingford. That's at least the second time I've seen an elderly transit pest get off there. Coincidence? I hope so for the sake of Wallingford residents.

Y'know, I just spent a week riding transit all over the New York city area and I din't encounter anyone like this on transit, even after midnight. I come home and it happens within two hours of walking out my front door. Christ on a pogo stick. Having been until recently the daughter of someone like that, I'm still not sure what to do about them: the really irritating, possibly partially functioning ones.

New York City, part 7 of 7

Sep. 24th, 2025 05:52 am
sistawendy: my 2006 Prius at the dealership (Prius)
[personal profile] sistawendy
Greetings from the Devil Girl House!

Monday was largely about the eetz: on a tip from [personal profile] neurosismancer I went to Xi'an Famous Foods in Chelsea and had the lamb noodles. Fan-damn-tastic! Yeah, they're cheap eats, but they're great cheap eats.

I took a recommendation that I got Saturday night and jumped on the L train to Brooklyn, just to see what I could see. It was reassuringly normal at Graham Ave, a neighborhood with no skyscrapers; pedestrians of all ages; a high fraction of residential property, most of it from before this century; and businesses some of which sell stuff that people need. There was a big mural of one woman pouring coffee for another woman. The former wore a necklace reading "Boricua"* and the other one wore one reading "Italiana". That was the vibe I got.

From the Dept. of Mystery: what's up with the popularity of Union Square station on the L train? A whole lot of people either get off there coming from Brooklyn, or get on there going to Brooklyn. I even checked for large employers nearby, but I didn't see any. Sure, it's a transfer stop, but there are a lot of transfer stops in lower Manhattan.

Got pierogis at Veselka — another restaurant tip from [personal profile] neurosismancer — over in the east village and conveniently close to the L train. Honestly, I think I should have ordered them fried instead of boiled. But Veselka is a pretty big place with tasty food and fast service in a neighborhood settled by east Europeans. The have borscht and deserts I'd never heard of.

I allotted more time than I needed to get to JFK. Maybe it's just as well that my subway ride from midtown Manhattan to outer Queens was mellow: I got conflicting information about where my A train was going**. The conductor*** settled the matter over the train's PA. The glory of the subway is that it resulted in only a seven-minute delay somewhere underneath Brooklyn.

Farewell, New York. Too much is just about right.



*A Puerto Rican. I'm pretty sure only Puerto Ricans use that word.
**To get to JFK, you want the A train to Far Rockaway, not Lefferts Blvd. AKA Ozone Park. The A forks like London's Northern line.
***Most of the recorded subway announcements don't have a New York accent. Real live MTA employees, however, do.

There is no last battle

Sep. 23rd, 2025 09:24 pm
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[personal profile] rimrunner
I’m a fan of A.R. Moxon’s The Reframe, which often gets me thinking differently about things than my default, or reminds me what’s foundational about an issue. Sometimes when I’ve spent a little too much time doomscrolling down Internet rabbit holes, it’s helpful to help myself to a shift in perspective.

A Reframe essay from the end of August reminded me yet again of an incident in C.S. Lewis’s novel The Last Battle, the last of his Chronicles of Narnia series. I mentioned this same incident in a post almost five years ago (which I put on Wordpress but not here), it being a moment from that novel that stuck with me through growing from adolescence into adulthood and leaving my cradle Catholicism behind me. (Unlike some, I was always aware that Lewis was telling a Christian allegory, and did not have the experience of discovering this later and feeling, in some cases, disappointed or betrayed. That’s what weekly CCD classes for five years gets you, I guess.)

That’s not what I’m thinking about right now, though.

No, what I’m thinking about is how stories like that, and how they were situated in the culture in which I grew up, more than suggested that while there’s a big battle to be fought, at a certain point it’ll be won. Permanently, irrevocably. And how this all too easily in my mind plugged into the idea that the time I now live in is automatically more enlightened, more progressive in its thinking (not necessarily politically but in terms of things like declining bigotry and discrimination) than in the past. This latter notion is often used to explain away, if not excuse, the kinds of opinions that are supposed to be consigned to the dustbin of history by pointing out that the people who held them are long dead. “[X] was a man of his time,” you’ll hear people say.

What’s funny is that no one ever says this about, say, the American abolitionists of the nineteenth century. The “men of their time” were never more enlightened, more equity-minded, or more forward-thinking than people of today, apparently.

This is obviously false—there are plenty of counterexamples from just the last week—and it also indicates that there is no final battle.

In The Last Battle, the world of Narnia ends, and the characters who readers have followed through the preceding seven books—most of them—get to go to heaven. But the ending that seems more fitting to me is that of The High King, the end of Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain.

There, after the obligatory dark lord has been defeated and peace restored to the land, the heroes of the story prepare to depart from Prydain. In addition, all magic and enchantment will be passing out of the world. It’s a bit like Lord of the Rings, with an important exception: Taran, our main character and an aggressively ordinary dude, is offered the chance to leave for paradise with everyone else. And he turns it down.

He turns it down specifically because there’s work still to do. And that’s a good thing, his mentor says, because in defeating the dark lord they defeated only the enchantments of evil. “That was the easiest of your tasks, only a beginning, not an ending. Do you believe evil itself to be so quickly overcome? Not so long as men still hate and slay each other, when greed and anger goad them.”

I liked the Narnia books as a kid, but I liked the Prydain books more. Though they were full of magic and monsters, they seemed more like what life was really like. Taran fucks up a lot, spends an entire book trying (and mostly failing) to find his vocation, and at the end it turns out that his work has only just begun.

I’ve been joking lately about speedrunning the worst of the 1980s and 1990s, as all the crap that I was fighting back then resurges. I’m a lot older now, and I’m tired.

But there is no last battle, only the next one.
cupcake_goth: (Default)
[personal profile] cupcake_goth
The title is because every time there's a Rapture predicted, I listen to Astro Zombies. It seems appropriate.

---

As some of you may have noticed from my shrieking on social media yesterday, My Chemical Romance announced tour dates for 2026. The closest they're coming to me is San Diego or L.A., and yes, discussions are being had about which show I should try to purchase tickets for. EXCEPT that I'll have to purchase those tickets later, because they go on sale on Friday, right when I'll be in the office for an all-day meeting. 
:: wails ::

The Stroppy One pointed out that more tickets always become available closer to the concert dates, and while I know he's right, that doesn't sooth the wailing fangirl part of my brain. Stupid work calibration meetings.

---

Yesterday I discovered the clothing company Market of Stars, and specifically this duster. I flailed a lot about in on Bluesky and Tumblr, because my god that is pretty and I already thought of two different outfits I could use it with. To my complete shock, someone who's followed me for years and years sent me the money for it, saying they wanted to spread some kindness. I am shocked but grateful.

---

IG has started showing me a lot of witchy content. Not just the aesthetic IG witches, but people who's approaches are similar to mine. I don't know why the algorithm started doing that, but I prefer it to the hordes of "alt" makeup tutorials done by baby faced, dripping with collagen youngsters. (I found all of them adorable, but found myself muttering "Okay, now show me how to do that with permanent eye bags" a lot.) 

---

As many of you know, my company hosts the all-hands Company Kick-Off event at the beginning of every year in Phoenix AZ, and there's always a costume theme for the first day. The 2026 theme is ... teams. Any way someone wants to interpret that, but of course all the examples were sports-related. But! I came up with a brilliant idea and presented it to my team: we all carry notepads and oversized pencils, and ta-da! We're the writing team. My peeps liked it, so that's what we're doing.

Potential new fannish activity

Sep. 23rd, 2025 09:26 am
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[personal profile] brithistorian

I've aspired to be a tag wrangler at AO3 for a while, but each time they opened up applications, I haven't been able to find fandoms I wanted to apply for. They recently opened up applications again, and the fandoms they were looking for wranglers for included a lot of K-pop girl groups, including several that I have written about at length. So I put my application on the 19th and now I'm waiting anxiously to hear back (they said it could be 4 weeks, I put my application in 4 days ago, so I've go plenty of waiting to do). Fingers crossed!

New York City, part 6

Sep. 22nd, 2025 09:58 am
sistawendy: my 2006 Prius at the dealership (Prius)
[personal profile] sistawendy
I think I found the way to zen out in New York: sitting on a bench in Madison Square Park around 11:00 in the shade of trees, listening to a busker play sax across the park, and peeking up at the top of the Flatiron building.

And why was I in the neighborhood? To go to the Museum of Sex. I’m sorry to say that I don’t think it’s worth the ticket price, even if it does a fairly good job of showing how messed up the past was. I can only hope that things are better for future generations.

Then, much napping because of Saturday night.

After dinner, I made a pilgrimage: the Stonewall Inn, where the (modern, effective) queer rights movement started with a riot on June 28th, 1969. There’s a tiny, triangular park with life-size statues of gay activists talking about what to do next after the riots. There was also a memorial to a trans girl who’d been recently murdered by a family member. Outside the gate stood a bored-looking policewoman. Trust New York to produce some unsubtle visual metaphors.

The bar itself? Seems perfectly normal. It’s mostly men, natch, but they’re not clones. Yes, it’s a bit of a tourist trap, but not obnoxiously so.

Today’s plan: good eetz and Brooklyn.

New York City, part 4

Sep. 20th, 2025 09:57 am
sistawendy: my 2006 Prius at the dealership (Prius)
[personal profile] sistawendy
I tried to take it easy yesterday in an attempt to let my feet heal. Read on to see how successful I was.

I took the subway to 86th & Central Park West with every intention of walking straight across the park to be at the Met (the art museum, not the opera house). The thing is, Central Park was designed to facilitate relaxation via meandering paths. So I got turned around in the park a couple of times, thereby exploring way more of it than I meant to. Favorite part: the big, OTT fountain where you can row boats. Less favorite part: serious cyclists hauling ass on what, it must be said, are well-engineered paths for them. They wanna ride, I get it, but the laws of physics demand caution from pedestrians.

But on to the Met! Which is gigantic! And the same price as MoMA! Navigation wasn’t easy for me: I ended up going up, over, and down to get to the Man Ray exhibit, nomming sushi along the way. During that wander I learned that a French artist in the 1870’s got grief from critics because the women in his painting weren’t pretty enough; most of the models were his sisters.

So yeah, the intensity of the “fuck you” that the early twentieth century art movements delivered to the art establishment makes a lot of sense in that context. And who better than Man Ray, MKA Emanuel Radnitzky, an outsider even to the Paris art scene where he flourished, to mess with things? He moved from painting to airbrushing, then basically invented contact prints (“rayographs”), made experimental short films, and made everyone from his artist friends to an Italian countess love looking weird in his photos. Yeah, he was clearly a het dude, but.

Here’s why you should always read the blurb: you might not immediately notice that the 16th-century Dutch print you’re looking at is porn. And at least when it came to ceramics, the Greeks got their act together less than 200 years after the Bronze Age collapse, in the so-called geometric period.

Recovered in my hotel room for a couple of hours. Had a fancy BBQ sandwich down the street. (I’ll be getting to restaurant recommendations today.) Then crashed at a reasonable hour in this time zone. Je ne regrette rien.

Book titles for the win

Sep. 19th, 2025 10:52 am
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[personal profile] brithistorian

I was reading the current issue of American Historical Review this morning and in the reviews, I came across a very clever book title. In a play on the phrase "locus of power," Samuel Dolbee named a book Locusts of Power: Borders, Empire, and Environment in the Modern Middle East.

New York City, part 3

Sep. 19th, 2025 10:45 am
sistawendy: my 2006 Prius at the dealership (Prius)
[personal profile] sistawendy
I was at the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, from opening to closing yesterday. Duh, I loved it! You know how my favorite piece at SFMOMA is a big Rosenquist? Well, MoMA has a Rosenquist that fills an entire room: “F-111”, from 1964, with a pointed juxtaposition of consumerism and the military-industrial complex. Pity Rosenquist died back in ‘17; we could use more of that.

And the macrame craze of the ‘70s? Apparently got its start in downtown lofts here a decade earlier. And op art? Got a big boost from MoMA itself back in the day. Clearly, I love this stuff. My only regret is that I didn’t leave enough time for the gift shop.

I couldn’t help noticing the abundance of attractive women at MoMA, some of whom were gothed up. Sure, everyone knows sexxy deth chix are into art, as well as hot normal chicks, but they were surprisingly numerous.

As you might expect, the MoMA cafe has healthier, artier sandwiches than the Guggenheim. Not that the Guggenheim sando was bad.

Speaking of eats, I had a seriously mediocre dinner last night. I need to do more research about eats.

I also did something that locals tell tourists not to do: I took the subway during the evening rush. But the downtown E wasn’t bad; I’ve ridden worse on BART. I did see a packed A zip by, though. (The A is the 8th Avenue express. It zips by a lot of stations.)

After a two-hour break to let my feet recover, I got on a commuter train bound for Newark to check out QXT’s, the recommend local goth joint. But let me say that as tolerable as the subway was earlier, the last train to Newark was packed. Notable among the passengers were young delivery men with bicycles, who needed lots of space.

Edited to add: don’t be a mook like me and get on a PATH train at Penn Station if you’re going to Newark, because you’ll have to transfer in New Jersey where a bunch of arrival boards don’t work. Get on at the World Trade Center.

But anyway, how’s Newark? Kinda normal, and not in a bad way. People drive faster. It’s quiet after 2100. It’s America.

How’s QXT’s? Let me preface this by saying I knew I was going on a burlesque night. I would have gone Saturday, but I have (ahem) something else planned then. QXT’s is friendly, but the drinks and the sound are better at all of the west coast goth joints I’ve been to: the Mercury, the Coffin Club (PDX), the Cat Club (SFO), and a couple of defunct places in Seattle.

How was the burlesque? Not bad! There was an angle grinder involved, which reminded me of [personal profile] leenerella. Chatted with the MC during her smoke break.

Took a Lyft back to Manhattan, which was less expensive and more educational than I expected.

TL;DR: success.

SOTD: Say My Name, "Goldilocks Water"

Sep. 18th, 2025 10:07 pm
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[personal profile] brithistorian

This popped up on my playlist today while I was doing some yardwork and I loved it. When I came in, I watched the video, and I loved it more: They were apparently copying Weeekly's aesthetic, which I fine with me: I can always use more of Weeekly's aesthetic, especially now that Weeekly has disbanded. Enjoy!

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[personal profile] cupcake_goth

- I had a dream last night where I was in some sort of high-end, very posh mall, and spent ages looking at a mysterious cosmetics counter that had lipsticks that were exact matches for the OG Chanel Vamp and MAC Verushka. They had tubes of those discontinued lipsticks to swatch and match. I woke up as my dream self was about to spend $160 for two lipsticks. I'll admit I'd be tempted to do that in real life if the company did indeed have the OG tubes to swatch against.

- The US leg of the MCR tour ended last weeked. HOWever, as of yesterday, new ads related to MCR have been seen in New York, Detroit, Minneapolis, and San Diego. Some are just spray painted logos in parking lots outside of stadiums, but some have been bulletin boards and signs of either one or more of the band in the Black Parade uniform, or the Keposhka MCR logo. The fandom, no surprise, are losing our MINDS. Does this mean there's going to be another US leg of the tour? If there is, does it mean more weird storyline/lore that the band is potentially in some sort of stasis or time loop? (I won't give you the whole breakdown, but over the course of the tour Gerard has become more and more corpse-like; paler, wounds on his face, etc., and he's stabbed to death at the end of each Black Parade segment of the concert. There's more. There's a lot more.) Does this mean there's going to be a DVD or something? Should I start saving money for tickets and travel just in case? Who knows? Not the fandom, that's for sure.

- I've been tired ALL THE TIME lately. I'm sure some of it is the ambient stress level we're all dealing with plus the ongoing varying stress levels of work, but the rest may be my chronic health issues flaring up? My body trying to stage a coup and force me to rest? I don't like any of these answers.

- I'm finally getting back into a rhythm of witchy things. I'm pulling a tarot card most days, and I did some ritual work this week. It felt good. I need to do more, because it helps me approach things with more clarity and giving myself grace. And whooooo-boy, do I need both of those things.

So! How are you folks doing?

Fun with autocorrect

Sep. 18th, 2025 10:39 am
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[personal profile] brithistorian

I was trying to type the information for an art exhibition into the to-do app on my phone. I had typed "University of," and the three options that autocorrect offered me were "Nature," "Art," and "Style."

Obviously none of these were correct, but they're all universities I would have considered attending if I had known about them earlier in my life. ;)

New York City, part 2

Sep. 18th, 2025 09:37 am
sistawendy: my 2006 Prius at the dealership (Prius)
[personal profile] sistawendy
First, a small surprise: there are some subway stations, usually the less busy ones, that won’t let you double back without exiting. So it’s good to be sure which train you need in advance, and for that, the MTA is clearer than Google.

I’m glad I’m a Florida girl who likes to dress lightly: the subway stations are warm and humid.

On to Central Park! Such mellow. Very exercise. Dawgz. Also a park bench dedicated to a late FDNY chief admonishing people to “check your smoke detectors or you’ll end up sleeping here.” Truly a New York moment.

But I had a destination on the far side of the park: the Guggenheim Museum, whose building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, features an iconic spiral ramp around a central rotunda.

The building does indeed kick butt, with the permanent collection in side galleries that branch discreetly off the spiral ramp. Another New York moment: the Guggenheim’s curators mince no words about Gaugin’s gross attitudes.

The artist featured on the main ramp was Rashid Johnson, who I’d never heard of. He’s what was once called a race man: his work is full of allusions to Black and West African culture and history. I dug some of it.

There was a trans docent talking to a group at the top of the ramp. Go us!

On the way back through the park, I saw the obelisk from a distance, but I didn’t check it out because my feet were trashed. Two hours of horizontal time ensued.

After dinner, I took a C downtown to the west Village, wherein lies the most adorable and compact lesbian bar I’ve ever seen, the Cubby Hole. I ended up chatting with a trans woman who (of course) works for Google. We talked about trans things, boy howdy.

I’m not quite sure why I’m neither hung over nor crippled. I figured goddess wants me to go to MoMA as soon as I pay for breakfast.

New York City, part 1

Sep. 17th, 2025 09:12 am
sistawendy: my 2006 Prius at the dealership (Prius)
[personal profile] sistawendy
Getting on the plane was easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Props to my adopted hometown for getting its airport act together.

But next, a gripe: Alaska Airlines by default doesn’t really feed you on a five-hour flight.

I have taken the A train, famed in song. About an hour from JFK through most of Queens and all of Brooklyn to midtown, which isn’t bad at all. I got on at 2030, and it didn’t really get crowded until Manhattan.

And let me tell you, Times Square is bananas even at 2130 on a Tuesday. Times Square is also Blade Runner: everyone knows about the Jumbotrons everywhere, but even 15 floors up my room is behind two of them. I can see the access and support structures and some AC units. I may be a replicant.

I’m glad I’m staying at the W, though: everything works, and it’s convenient to everything. I let them upsell me because they have a deal with the Guggenheim Museum, and it’s definitely on my to-do list.