Off the Cliff

 Temps have been just above freezing for the last three days, weather has been grey and dank and miserable, and joints have hurt in a different way than any time before. Can only assume that side effects of the booster were delayed this time beause my arm didn't really bother me noticeably until two days later, and is still sensitive. So my right knee may have hurt because of the weather and my left because scars ache when you're sick. 

Sitting on the sofa yesterday evening, not wanting to get up because getting up hurts, not wanting to do acrostics because my head wasn't up to it, nothing to read at hand except, well, those three phonebook Nemuki magazines from who knows how long ago that I keep thinking I should throw out. But grabbed one and read the Shinohara Udo story from the series I don't care for, and then the Ima Ichiko that I've already read three or four times, and when I put it down I was in another world, maybe ten years or more ago, when she was still doing weird stuff involving Ritsu and hadn't even thought of the complicated sideline of his great-aunt's homicidal grandchildren and great-grandchildren that I've never been able to get straight.

Which put me in a good mood, but also emphasizes the need to get my eyes checked and a new prescription for my left lens and possibly a custom made pair of reading glasses for special occasions, because at the moment I need a pair in every room in the house except the bathroom, and another in my backpack.

Spent the entire day in lounging pyjamas which feels odd given that I've never been able to wear lounging pyjamas before. Conduces to a lack of ambition so when I actually had to do something like dishes I put on a tshirt instead, knowing I'd get my shirt wet and probably smelly as well.

Speaking of which: I might imitate that 18th century peer who hanged himself and left a suicide note that said only, 'Buttoning and unbuttoning.' Mine would say, 'Washing and drying' except that I don't dry. But it feels like I need to do dishes every day these days. And laundry. I'm not working, I can wear the same outfit two or three days in a row if I want, but somehow my hamper is always overflowing and I'm always limping down the basement stairs or sorting heaps of clean clothes.

Googled Kaguya-hime last night. Hot mess is too kind a word for it. Thus I am done with Kaguya-hime.

In the alley the buyers come and go
Talking of downspouts and subflooring and soffit and fascia and and and

Many agents showing many people the house next door. Buyers will learn the interesting acoustics of cheek-by-jowl downtown housing soon enough.

Accuweather confidently predictd thunderstorms at 2pm and were out by only an hour ie just as I was emerging from massage. Got soaked of course, but as the lightning came closer I ducked into the local KFC to wait it out. Which was fine: I'd been jonesing for hot chicken anyway. It's a combined Colonel's and Taco Bell, but the Taco Bell machinery was closed for servicing, as announced by a sign on the door, a sign at the cash, and the removal of the Taco Bell menu items from the overhead boards. This led to tantrums from a woman who came in after me, who ordered Fries Supreme and was aghast when the clerk said she didn't have them, pointing to the cash register sign. 'But why didn't anyone tell me!?' Stupidity I can bear, having stupid moments myself, but stupidity and rudeness is flat unnecessary.

Have been indulging in retail therapy of the online variety. The last three Rainy Willow manga are coming from Japan, sweet reminder of another and arguably better time. Then last night I stumbled on KateNepveu's post about embroidery sets. Incapable of learning embroidery from books, I've long been looking for another beginner's embroidery set of the kind I had ten years ago and never found again. But here's a woman in France who does pretty patterns and can send you whole kits, complete with wooden hoops (not plastic likemy present ones.) So a set of those is on the way, and maybe I'll learn at last how chainstitch and plain stitch are supposed to work.

She lives in the beautifully named region of Mauzé-sur-le-Mignon in Nouvelle-Aquitaine. I'd never heard of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, not surprisingly, since it didn't exist before 2014. Takes in a huge chunk of the s-w, from Poitiers down to Bayonne, taking in my old stamping grounds of Pau. Being unable to remember where Vieux Aquitaine had been, I googled and discovered this lovely piece of background:

The region's interim name Aquitaine-Limousin-Poitou-Charentes was a hyphenated placename, known as ALPC, created by hyphenating the merged regions' names – Aquitaine, Limousin and Poitou-Charentes – in alphabetical order.

In June 2016, a working group headed by historian Anne-Marie Cocula , a former vice president of Aquitaine, proposed the name "Nouvelle Aquitaine". The decision came after the popular favorite, "Aquitaine", faced resistance by regional politicians from Limousin and Poitou-Charentes. The other popular favorite, "Grande Aquitaine," was rejected for its connotation with a feeling of superiority. Alain Rousset, president of the region, concurred with the working group's conclusion, reaffirming that he considered the acronym "ALPC" no choice at all. For those deploring the loss of "Limousin" and "Poitou-Charentes", he noted that the predecessor region of Aquitaine subsumed the identities of the Périgord or the Pays Basque, which did not disappear during its 40 years of operation.

"The other popular favorite, "Grande Aquitaine," was rejected for its connotation with a feeling of superiority." Oh dear, oh dear.

1) Once a year, if you're lucky, you get an evening like last night's: November cool and grey with the smell of plum blossoms and cherries and daphne and hyacinths, and everything but lilac in fact. I should have cut some of the flowering plum yesterday because today it was ready to scatter when I did. It won't last long in my kitchen but for one morning at least I'll have that delicate perfume to come down to.

2) The heat is on, and on high, because though I was well enough last night with the thermostat at 16C, I was also triple bagged in cotton and flannel under flannel and wool covers, which makes turning over in bed something of a problem. And I must turn over or I wake up abominably stiff. Which I did today, and have been sore all day in consequence.

3) I cannot exactly Konmari my bookshelves but I can throw out the books that make my heart sink within me. These are largely bunko classic manga like Wind and Tree Song and Poe no Ichizoku which were a chore to wade through even when I was better sighted. There's much truth in melannen's comment that one needs to tidy one's dreams before you can tidy your stuff. At the age of thirty-seven she realized she'd never... no, ok, at 37 I had no limitations. But 30+ years later I must face that I will never be really literate in Japanese, will always be looking up kanji and vocab I've been looking up for decades, will rarely be able to skim a manga for pleasure. I suppose I can bear not to have read Hagio Moto's or Takemiya Keiko's oeuvre, there being little pleasure or profit in it, and I suppose I should be glad that I'm relieved of the duty to do so. At least I get shelf space for my 100 Demons now. I toyed with the idea of an Ima Ichiko test: 'do I look forward to reading this as much as I do to reading Hyakki Yakou?' But no one would ever pass it.

4) Seriously thinking of getting a junk busters company in to clean out the back two rooms of the basement and half the front as well. One fell swoop, and maybe they'd take the ancient fridge out as well.

5) Because work is being traumatic I went to Pauper's pub last night for their Murphy's stew. Made with stout and root veg, they say, but I call it a boeuf bourgignon near as dammit, and prize it. Next to me a guy was having something that looked like meatloaf. The server said it was ribs. So today I went back and had those. My mother made ribs very occasionally, with barbecue sauce, and I never cared for the ketchupy dryness of them, but 'falling off the bone' has an enticing sound to it. And well, yes, they *were* prisable off the bone, but in the end I still don't see what the fuss is about. Messy meal, and the taste is all in the sauce. Like chicken wings, another pub food I never understood. It must be the cold weather that gives me meat and potato longings just now. Hopefully I can get back to the veg and fish mode, because my scale is not happy about my western diet.

After this morning's snowflurries melted in the grateful sun. Wind strong but still, the sight of blue sky counts for much. Am still exhausted after only a few hours' work, which may be age or cold or the psychic fallout of extremely unhappy knees. Occurred to me that paradoxically, joints hurt less when I was living on muscle relaxants and maybe I should try them again, but all that accomplished yesterday, when I wasn't working, was a nap mid-afternoon.
( Memeage )

Wimp that I am, I caved and turned the heat on this evening. Just enough to take the refrigerator chill off the place, because outside is still in the teens and it shouldn't go below 10C tonight, a perfectly reasonable temp. But I'm laid low by allergies and the remnants of gut unhappiness and the aches that recurred in spite of yesterday's massage with the splendid Naoko, back from vacation, so I shall indulge me. Besides, it's going to rain for the next three days, so indulgence is warranted.

Naoko actually managed to stop my knees hurting for however short a period, which was amazing. Press in certain spots and the bones open up; I need only find which spots those are.

Weekend was necessarily quiet and FWD, reading Christie stories on my tablet. Today I managed the regular Sunday laundry and accumulated dishes, and also cleaned out ancient vegetables from the fridge and took them into the overgrown backyard and dumped them in the composter. The fridge crispers are now clean and empty. Then I cleaned the humidifier from the bedroom and soaked all parts in vinegar, ready for winter. So that's two little foot-dragging chores accomplished. I could make a list of all the others but then I'd never do them: it works better if I have a spare loose-ended moment and do it then when I'm not aware that I'm doing it.

Back to the Rainy Willow Store, because I'm not sure I want to read Mercedes Lackey's psychic whatevers being Smrtrthnu ie Sherlock Holmes. Possibly A Study in Sable gets better, but somehow... I doubt it.

Last night with the autumn cold and rain outside and the purring space heater and duvets in, and me reading the unchanging Meiji world of Rainy Willow Antiquities Store, I found myself suddenly time-slipped the mid-oughties somewhere. Today, because of climate change, it's summer again, or at least a warm September that needs no jackets, and the nostalgic instant has vanished.

On a much more mundane note, why does Ovaltine powder melt in the heat? Cocoa remains a powder at all temperatures, but Ovaltine becomes a hardened shiny unmeltable enamel at the bottom of the jar.

My father puzzled endlessly how it is that garden hoses tie themselves into knots, and was delighted to find an explanation in the subtle expansion and contraction that comes with heating and cooling. I puzzle endlessly as to how my shower mat acquires brown grunge around its little suckers when I always hang it up to dry immediately after a shower. In those five or ten minutes, does enough water accumulate around the suckers to create mineral deposits? I clean them with an old toothbrush, which works but is time-consuming and annoying.
( Wednesday meme )

Blissful to sleep last night with windows open and no fans at all. This is not likely to be repeated soon, because though the forecast mid-teen lows are respectable, they come after muggy August mid-20 highs that feel much warmer than they are.

Friday I got down to the library for a bunch of graphic novels and to the liquor store for mickeys of gin and rye and rum. Then came home moments before a thunderstorm and slashing rain descended. Today I read The Best American Comic 2008, chosen by Lynda Barry. Conclude I really don't like American comics and, actually, never have. Manga are prettier and bandes dessinées (or the ones I read in the 80s) not as nightmarish. Maybe I should look at the volume edited by Alison Bechdel, to see if she's picked people who draw like *her*.

Have gained five pounds in a week, much of which is water weight because I can see that it is. Some may be due to indulgence but I suspect the rest is because of no acupuncture for two weeks. Acupuncture does drain you that way. Thus I have booked an appointment tomorrow down Spadina and hope it doesn't rain as much as it's forecast to.

I lost my sunglasses, the ones I'd put my name on, so bought another two pairs. Broke one of them last week and now have misplaced the other. Must bring the same extreme concentrated mindfulness to bear on where I put my sunglasses down as I do on whether I take my meds in the morning. True, dollar store sunglasses cost a quarter of Loblaws sunglasses but even so, one doesn't want to run through them like water.

A happy reread of A Hat Full of Sky soothes me. Alas, I don't like Wintersmith as much: might just skip on to I Shall Wear Midnight instead.

Oddly chuffed at having finished a BL manga but also rolling my eyes at why I ever read BL in the first place. One of Ozawa Kuriko's, with wavy-haired kohl-eyed blushing salarymen discovering that no they are not in love with the shachou's daughter after all, they love her brother/ their roommate/ the louche intruder who is actually a company agent tracking industrial spies. Note also occurrence of that unlikely trope, 'my parents are divorced and remarried so they bought me this huge manshon to live in, big enough for two.' At least it's not as unlikely as that other one, 'I am a high-school student living in a manshon of my own and paying the rent from my P/T job at 7/11.'

Anyway, one Japanese book down for the reading challenge and one more for the TBR. Though I'm not sure manga should count for either.

I was having a pleasant day: my aunt's 95th birthday lunch on a cool blowy sunny Sunday. Afterwards intended only to put my feet up and read The Bucks and Bawds of London Town, an historically suspect but amusing anecdotal history of Regency rakes. But then somehow I found myself dusting my bedroom, then vacuuming it, then moving the bed to get at the dust elephants behind it (alas for my naive belief that an air purifier would make for less dust).

And at the end of the achy afternoon, I'd thrown out a bunch of manga I will never read, put my humidifiers to soak in white vinegar, removed the hard drive from the computer that's been sitting there unused for five years, carried the case downstairs to be recycled, and removed the mattress top that's been under the mattress since 2009. I believe that last was my first vague and fuzzy objective, but of course there are always preliminary steps. The barrier to my doing housework is thinking too precisely on the event; if I don't think about the stages involved, I can just jump in and wind up with a clean(ish) bedroom. Cleanish because there is no end to the making of dust bunnies and much vacuuming is a weariness of the flesh: also pointless. Another little tumbleweed will come rolling across the cleanest floor.

And now I must do it all over again in the side room, so I can throw out the old mattress under the futon and replace it with the mattress top. Another vague impression I had was that the top folded, so I could put it on the floor and use it for my exercises, since rug and yoga mat aren't thick enough for my poor poor elbows. But it doesn't, and so must go under the futon.

But I at least hope my newly hard mattress will be kind to my aching back, and also not slip about as it was irritatingly wont to do. And if it isn't- oh well. I shall put the mattress cover back.

(Rug is currently airing on the line, and possibly the wind will blow some more dust out of it. Alas, cherries are starting to ripen and fall, so this feat will not be repeated soon.) (Desk chair will also go out soon, and I might even weed more of those manga boxes of anything that doesn't look promising. My eyes are too bad to read pointless 90s BL about salarymen and guys in school uniforms.)

Soares' A Samba for Sherlock is to the Holmes-fandom-canon as JET's London Mamougai, right down to the great detective who can't deduce for beans and who breaks things in his clumsy rompings. Possibly useful the way London Mamougai is, to register how a foreign culture thinks (or doesn't think) of our pet literary archetype. Soares and his six pages of bibliography is doubtless talking about 19th century Brazil, not Holmes, which is fine if you're interested in 19th century Brazil. If not-- too many similar names of too many insufficiently characterized characters, so that I had to be reminded at the end of just who the murderer was, because his name sounded like that of two other characters who wander through the story.

And I have no use at all for sexually hysteric serial killers who murder young women. Why does no one ever write serial killers who murder millionaires?

However, semi-mobile again, I had x-rays of my knees and then, on a whim, ramen at the upscale ramen place that opened last year; which was pleasant enough, though I have no standards: I was not one who queued for an hour to get into those famous ramen houses in Kouenji, even when I lived there. Also the noodles were underdone for my tastes; shall stick to instant Thai rice noodles in future.

amazon.jp knows all. They're still advertising a three volume compilation of Channel Five with a stand-alone story that will complete this 'uncompleted saga.' Volume three has yet to appear, after four years, and I'm sure never will. Given how many unfinished sagas I have of my own, I'm in no position to complain; but Shibata does do this. Well, and so do many mangaka: the system seems designed to wear them out and throw them away.

So I'm (re)reading her ancient Shounen Jump series Freeman Hero instead, with a view to emptying some of my manga shelves. S-i-l says 'in ten years I'll be 78, and if I haven't read all those books by then, out they go.' This is probably a good policy to follow.

For anyone interested: Hi Izuru Tokoro no Tenshi is being scanlated. Into vol 2 by now, evidently.

I believe I said something about being seriously underwhelmed by Adele Blanc-Sec's narrative peculiarities and general narrative disorganization (beginning with, but not confined to, a failure to name the artist and writer on the front cover of the translation.) I mean, it had the sense of place and sense of time and the right kind of characters (intrepid adventuress, smooth sleuth, batty obsessed academics) and did nothing with them worth noting. Serious lack of there there. But still, I thought-- but still, I thought-- it's the right style for something: you just have to, I dunno, turn it a few degrees this way and then it's actually very familiar, what could it be-- no, *not* Claudine in Paris, not LoEG, something much more recent than that...

At which I realized that Adele Blanc-Sec looks the way I've been unconsciously envisaging the Invisible Library world. Perfect! Clearly the Invisible Library should be a bande dessinée; and if it isn't, I shall read it as if it was.

Nick Kauffman reports on seeing the film of Led Zeppelin's 2007 concert. I am awash in nostalgia. Not for Led Zeppelin, whom I somehow missed during the 70s. (Must have been listening to the wrong radio stations.) But for Tokyo in the mid-90s when I was reading Eroica yori ai wo komete. The names, dear god, the names-- James, Bonham, John-Paul. And of course Dorian himself:

Robert Plant, well, he looks exactly the same because he’s a fucking rock god and will outlive all of us.

So he does, bar the beard. And he lives on in all those 80s&90s shoujo manga-- Eroica, Belne, Swan-- where there's a character with long blond ringlets modelled on Robert Plant.

Tonight is what my summer senses call cold. Lows of 8C/ mid-50sF. I will not not NOT turn on the heat for that. But I think of the Karin hero snuggling up to the White Tiger of the West and wish I had a White Tiger of the West to snuggle up with. Ah well. Beanbags and flannel pillow cases will have to do instead.

I tend to grab odd recs from the FFL, which is why I went to the library Friday to see what Tim Powers was available and wound up with a battered copy of The Anubis Gates that the online catalogue had said was still on loan. TAG is one of those books I come across in lists of must-read SFF-- in this case I think it was a list of classic steampunk works-- so I was glad to find it and am glad to have it read. It's still a messy mess: reminds me of the manga (which will remain nameless) where I was never sure who was who now, ie who is in whose body doing what at the moment. Manga is permitted to be a mess: novels rather less so. But it's rather manga-like in its jumping from place to place, and time to time, and high scene to high scene, ignoring connection and explanation along the way. The fact it was written 20 years ago may account for it not being the bloated trilogy it would be today, where everything is connected and explained with excruciating precision.
( Read more... )

I don't know if I can even read Japanese with these mismatched eyes, and whispers say the last volume of Ze is a whimpy letdown (which I kind of figured from where 9 was going; alas that the resolution didn't measure up to the suggestiveness this time) (but when did it ever? Shall answer that question when I have more brain, round about October.) So, should I get vol 10 of Ze? Or should I risk my computer's integrity (obviously I myself have none) and read one of those many many raw scans that may have Trojans attached?

Look guys. Mindfulness is all about living in the moment, in right now this very second and not the storied past or the wishful future; and Buddhism is all about detachment, about not grasping at that which is pleasant or fleeing that which is un. But how the hell am I to be mindful and Buddhist when people start talking about Basara the manga, and I am suddenly transported to 1994, buying volumes randomly in second hand bookstores whenever I can? (Flashback to the dim brown fluorescent-lit 2nd hand manga store that used to exist at the end of Finder Jean's street, smelling of mold and dust and oh my god 1994 was so long ago and far away nido to wa modorenai sekai.) Or transported to 1997 and the inevitable crushing betrayal of the narrative, after which I hardened my heart for good and never let a mangaka inside it again (but did not change my email handle.)

However I do *not* want to think Ageha is any version of Francis Lymond at all. Though he probably is.

My father had a theory, based on personal experience, that all clockmakers go mad, or at least intensely strange. My papyrology professor said that all papyrologists go mad, or at least intensely strange, and this may or may not happen before they go blind. In both cases I assume the strangeness (and in papyrologists, the blindness) comes from constant attention to tiny finicky details. After reading this article on the passive, I wonder if the same isn't true of grammarians.

Don't get me wrong. It's a useful article. It's just not phrased in layman's language, the sort that might convince people that 'he is running' is in fact *not* a passive. Maybe I'm just fuzzy today, but when I sat down for a nice exposition on the passive and was at once presented with "English has a contrast between kinds of clause in which one kind has the standard mapping between grammatical subject and semantic role and the other switches those roles around," my mind went on stall. I shall keep it bookmarked in case my brain unstalls at some point, but I'm not sanguine.

Otherwise, a fast romp through FMA 17-21 (In English; it would not have been a fast romp in Japanese) leaves me, yes, jonesing for more. Library has 23&24. Were it not windy and snow squalling outside, and were my knees and shoulder not yelling at me for walking home over the ice floes yesterday (the bitty steps needed to negotiate corrugated ice lead to a lot of twinge twinge stab stab), I'd go buy 22 and get the next two volumes from Spadina. Patience, patience. My love affair with Olivier Armstrong can wait till next week.

My webmail app tends to choke on Japanese emails. Can't swear to this, but I think amazon was trying to tell me about a repackaged Gaiden in two volumes. I was all ohh maybe new artwork maybe I should buy, what's the exchange rate these days. Then I read the reviews, one thing amazon is good for besides ISBNs. It's the bunko version. Thank you, no. 'The stunning artwork, the story itself, come off looking bitsy and fussy' says the reviewer. I can imagine.

Been out of the Japanese Saiyuki loop for a while so hadn't registered that there's also a couple of volumes of short stories that completist me will pass on no problemo. Even if some of her stories are included -- doubtless the ones already on her webpage-- I've read the novels, and no, just no.

Have finished Silver Diamond 2. It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of a Sugiura Shiho series, largely because one can't buy her online. bk1 doesn't deal with her publishers, Kinokuniya disclaims all knowledge of her books though they carry them in the bricks'n'mortar, jpqueen has nothing but random volumes, and I can have her from amazon.jp for lessee 108 + 36 base handling fee + 71.50 handling fee + shipping for 20 volumes by Fedex = not to be considered/ less than roundtrip train fare to NYC.

Which is a pity, because 20 volumes of a Sugiura Shiho series would be lovely winter reading. Must plan a spring trip to New York and raid Bookoff. And meantime I read Yumemakura's Seimei.

OTOH this is why my life is on stall. What was I doing three years ago? Reading Silver Diamond. What was I doing six years ago? Reading Yumemakura. Are there no new worlds to conquer?

No no no, Weather network. It is not 'slightly overcast'. It is *snowing*. And if this winter is as it looks to be, I shall be buying my third pair of new boots in as many years to ensure ankle support and happy orthotics fit.

bk1 regrets their supplier cannot supply my missing Yakumo volumes. S'OK, I have scans, and felt a mean (all senses of the word) relief at saving the money. The scans alas just got us to Kumano, dark and atmospheric again, and um yeah I would like a paper copy of same. (No. Am supposed to be letting go of the own-the-book habit.) But still there's beNippon. (There's also another visit to NY maybe...)

There are umbrellas that look like ninja swords. Am fiercely fighting the temptation to buy one, because I could never hold on to it.
( Cut for various weirdnesses )

Yakumo Tatsu 1 took me two days. Vol 2 got finished in an evening. And yes, it's a fast fun read. Alas, IIRC the first two tanks are the most atmospheric-- the brooding wooded mountains of Yamane, the suffocating past of Kyoto-- grudges and ancient wrongs piling up in the unmoving air of those two valley locations. Now we're in Tokyo, out the Chuu-ou line in... Kunitachi, is it? and the mangaka is having a harder time making me believe in ancient grudges lingering here where the winds blow off the Musashi plains.
( Cut for Yakumo natter )