Matthew's Journal

**Pinch Hits for Spanking Flash**

Deadline is

PH 1: Succession, Dragon Age, Breaking Bad

PH 2: Original Work, Stardew Valley, Avatar: the Last Airbender

PH 3: Makai Ouji: Devils & Realist, Kyou Kara Maou!, Captive Prince - C.S. Pacat, Degrassi the Next Generation, YuYu Hakusho: Ghost Files

PH 4: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters

PH 5: Fire & Blood - George R. R. Martin, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series

DM me or email me at themonstersoflove@gmail.com for more info or to claim!

Alphabet Meme

1. What is place you have visited, or want to visit, that starts with D?

Dublin - visited that in my early 20s with my brother in tow. Wouldn't mind visiting Denmark.

2. What is a food that you like, or don't like, that starts with R?

Raspberries, not so fond of Rhubarb unless its in pie.

3. Own anything that starts with the letter M?

Mattress

4. Know anyone whose name (first, middle, or last) that starts with N?

I know a lot of people named Nancy from the Buffy fandom. Weirdly, that fandom had a lot of Nancys in it.

5. Favourite movie, book, TV show, or song whose title starts with T?

That is hard. Taken - Liam Neeson film, not that good, but only thing that comes to mind.

Question a Day Memage for June

11. Have you ever taken a first aid course? Do you know how to perform CPR?

Yes. More than once. Do I know how to perform CPR? Weirdly, no. Or I do, but I'm not comfortable doing it? The last time I learned CPR was over 15 years ago. They gave a course at work once, I think. And used to do it all the time during school - I had it in college and in high school. I do not remember how to do it - or only vaguely.

12. Is there any food you would never contemplate eating?

Outside of the horrific delicacies of various cultures (not worth mentioning because I don't want to gross anyone out including myself) of which are numerous? I won't eat insects, or any animal meat outside of beef or lamb, and I've stopped eating that for the most part. The idea of red meat turns my stomach at the moment. I think diabetes and metformin are turning me into a vegetarian or pecatarian. I also won't eat calamari or octopus any longer.

13. If you could win a cash prize, what would be the minimum you would want to win?

$100,000

14. Are there many people in your family who are left-handed?

Not that I'm aware of? I'm sure there's somebody?

***

Twitter and Threads asks questions that bring out the worst in me - or the snark. I honestly think that platform brings out the idiot or asshole in just about everybody. There are exceptions. There's a woman in South Africa who is really cool. And another in Florida. I see a few random ones.

Examples:

Does anyone read actual books any longer?
ME: Yes. I know a lot of folks who do. I see them on the subway, in parks, on benches, at coffee shops, daily.

Does anyone spend all day in their house without ever leaving it?
Me: Yes. Seriously, people spend all day in their apartment without leaving it.Shocking, I know. My god, the pandemic must have been torture for you?

Have you ever lived all alone without a roommate, pets, or anyone but you?
Me: Yes, and a lot of people do. Some apartments require that?

The problem with these platforms is it encourages people to post without thinking it through first. Just because you think it - doesn't mean you should share it with over a million people.

****

Television

Binged We Were Liars over the weekend, which is adapted from We Were Liars by E Lockhart. I was curious. It's supposed to be a psychological thriller or psychological horror. When I was on the third episode - I thought okay why is this a psychological thriller - because I'm not seeing it? It's produced and co-written by Julie Plec (who was the last show-runner on either Supernatural or Vamp Diaries, and the writing is kind of around that speed? Although more Vamp Diaries than Supernatural - so I'm thinking from Vamp Diaries. It even has the actress who played Caroline on Vamp Diaries in a supporting role.)
( Read more... )

There's a sequel. It did well. Very well. I can see why - it has a doozy of a plot twist. Unreliable narrators are kind of fun. Oh - if you don't like horror or to be scared? No worries here. There's no violence, no gore, and no jump scares. It's not scary or suspenseful in that way at all. I'd say more angsty teen romance meets dysfunctional family, with plot twist. Then straight up horror. The plot twist makes the series horror - and it doesn't happen until the last episode. It's only 8 episodes, so ...not that long a wait.

About 12 or 13 years ago, when I had only been running for a year or so, I remember having a discussion with two of my sisters about our running goals. I don't remember what one said, but the other said she wanted to run a marathon by the time she turned 60 (which at that point was about 18 months away), and my stated goal was to be able to run 10 km/6 miles. At the time, my longest run ever was about 6 km/4 miles, and 10 km felt like an almost impossible dream. Well, my younger sister did run a marathon the next year (her first and last), and I eventually worked up to running 10 km and now I run that distance fairly regularly. (The main thing that really helped was learning about using run/walk intervals rather than straight running.) Anyway, all this to say I did a 10 km run very early this morning and although the temperature wasn't extremely high at about 20°C/68°F, the humidity was fairly high and sweat was literally dripping off me (and running into my eyes - ouch) by the time I got home again.

The rest of the day was quite relaxed, but late in the afternoon I achieved something else that had seemed impossible - I managed to get my two little basement windows open. I had thought they were painted shut, so I asked my daughter if she would mind if they were made openable and she said she would get my son in law to try. However, he always seems to have too much to do on weekends and of course is working during the week, so I thought I would have a go. Then a bit later I noticed a strip of what I thought was paint hanging down on one side of one of the windows, and it turned out to be silicone sealant, the kind of thing that can seal around the edge of a bath, and I figured I could probably get that out with scissors. As it turned out, I didn't manage to get the strips of sealant out from around the windows but I was able to run the blade of the scissors under the edges of the strips so the windows then weren't actually sealed, and voila, the windows can be opened!

I don't know how much difference this will make to the temperature in this room over the summer, but I figure it has to help a bit to have some cooler air coming in. The windows don't open very wide - they swing open at the top - but every little helps. The nights here mostly seem to cool down nicely in the warmer weather and it's always a lot cooler outside than it is down here in the basement when I get up and also when I come back from an early run or walk.

It was very exciting to watch the Knicks win the NBA championship last night with another wild 4th quarter comeback! My brother's kids went to one of the watch parties and put me on alert that if they couldn't get home, they were planning to come here to sleep, and I said of course! And then I did not hear from them again, so at 2 am, I went to bed.

I woke up this morning and texted to make sure they got home all right, and when they didn't respond, I checked in with my brother, who told me that the subways had been shut down (I had not read or heard the news), so they ended up going to one of my nephew's friend's apartment to sleep before getting home this morning. But they said they had a good time and it looked like people were mostly being cool while celebrating from what I saw.

The parade is on Thursday! I am no longer one to stand in a crowd for several hours, so I have no intention of going, but I think it's gonna be super cool.

In other news, I was doing one of my every-so-often checks to see if there was a publishing date for Alecto the Ninth yet and I ended up on the Locked Tomb subreddit, which is fine - there is some cool meta there - but I have tried to consciously repress that Muir was in Homestuck fandom, and posts there always remind me, and I do not wish to know anything more about Homestuck than I already do, which is almost nothing. And there is still no release date for AtN. Sigh.

*

Public

Amusingly, I went to Worcester twice this weekend! Yesterday for a small but pleasant meetup of my MLP fandom friends, and today with someone who offered me a lift and a pub lunch. (BBQ chicken melt and chips, since you ask. Very nice.) The weather was decent on both days, and I quite like Worcester as a city anyway. Some pleasant wandering, although the centre was a little busier than usual yesterday owing to a uni open day. Nothing to bother me, though.

Hugo homework continues. I and my reading buddies are posting about it real time on the sync read post, but also posting here as I finish things I consider stand-alone books (novellas and longer) and complete categories:

11. Emily Tesh, The Incandescent – Hugo homework furnished me with a copy and a deadline, but I’ve been curious to read it for a while, because a number of my flisters had, and I’d even seen some of their Yuletide requests. I was also approaching it with a bit of trepidation, because so far everything I’ve read by Emily Tesh started out being great and then disappointed me in the ending to some degree. I think maybe my expectations are getting calibrated appropriately, because I was less disappointed by this ending than by aspects of Some Desperate Glory, let alone the entire second novella of the Greenhollow duology, but I was also less excited about the beginning. ( More, with spoilers )

I liked the individual components of the book – the magic school from a teacher’s perspective was great! I liked the students, I thought the central character and her arc were interesting even if I didn’t like her much. I do think it’s put together in a very weird way that doesn’t do it any favors as a novel, and Emily Tesh’s inability to write endings that I find satisfying strikes again – so I think I’m left more frustrated than won over by the whole…But I’m glad this book exists, and that I read it, for the teaching-of-magic aspects, and general teaching-as-vocation feels (which were well-timed for the weekend of attending my younger child’s probably-last graduation). I would not be mad if it wins a Hugo.

*

I found a chance to catch up on Taskmaster Australia s5e06. I was actually going to wait until I came back from Europe and binge the rest of the season, but a Reddit post hinted at ep 6 having something extraordinary, so I decided to carve out the time. ( Spoilers! )

*

Meme stolen from a couple of flisters: ( Some questions about books )

but I am certain that the lieutenant’s eyes are not lambent.

Somebody needs to remove that word from the word a day calendars, I swear. Replace it with uxoricide or inchoate.

I’m leaving for a short trip soon and I thought it would be nice if I could finish up some of the massive pile of library books I have sitting around before then, seeing as I don’t want to take them with me. I didn't read as much of the pile as I hoped but I did make some progress!

Many of these are nominees for this year's Eisner Awards, since I looked at those and put in holds for the ones that seemed interesting recently.

Vern, Custodian of the Universe by Tyrell Waiters—Graphic novel about Vern, who having lost his job moves home to Florida where it turns out his grandma has gotten him a job at a weird tech company. This was fun and zanny. There’s multiverse travel and kinda trippy art to go with it. The story is a bit didactic but I really liked the message so that worked for me.

This Place Kills Me by Mariko Tamaki and Nicole Goux—This a murder mystery set at an all girls school in the 80s. (It took me an embarrassingly long time to notice it wasn’t contemporary) Our main character is a recent transfer student who doesn’t fit in. I really liked this, the characters were compelling, the mystery was interesting, and the ending felt just right

Content notes are spoilerish

Homophobia, underage sex, death of a teen

Globetrotters: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's World Tour by Julian Voloj and Julie Rocheleau—This graphic novel is inspired by real historical events – that I knew basically nothing about before reading this! All I knew was that Nellie Bly was a pioneering woman journalist. The subtitle makes it sound like Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland were traveling together but actually they were racing to see who could get around the world the fastest! I was totally riveted!
Content note: period typical sexism and racism

Detective Beans: Adventures in Cat Town by Li Chen—The second Detective Beans book, about Beans the adorable detective kitten. This one is a collection of shorter stories, my favorite was the last one with the bear and the moon!

Hello Sunshine by Keezy Young—This is hard to talk about. It's a graphic novel about a group of friends who are looking for one of their friends who is missing, possibly dead. (They are all teens) its kinda creepy, but also kind of heartwarming? Anyways I enjoyed it a lot!

We're rewatching (or for Martin for many stories first time watching) the Peter Davison era of Doctor Who. Starting up with Castrovalva, which we watched last Sunday night and tonight, fitting in a couple of episodes at a time. We are watching on the remastered Blu-ray release, albeit opting for the original special effects.

I remembered enjoying this on original TV watch, and a couple of decades later. But this time I found it really dragged in the opening two episodes. Way too much wandering around the TARDIS, and Tegan and Nyssa repeatedly climbing up rocks. I've never worn high heels, but I felt huge sympathy for both actresses re the climbing, especially Janet Fielding. I don't blame the director so much for the poor pacing, I just don't think there was enough content in the written scripts for these episodes to make sufficiently satisfying episodes.

Things pick up once they reach the city, and there are some fantastic ideas in here. I've long loved Escher's art. But even here there are too many not fully shown scenes, e.g. Shardovan swings into the web, then there's a cut, then we see an aftermath (again note I'm watching the original SFX).

I wasn't sad to see Adric sidelined. And his “wardrobe malfunction” was, erm, far too noticeable ...

Things get so much better when the Doctor takes a more active part, though I suppose that’s the intention.

Watching the the making of documentary (nearly 40 minutes long!), which is steered by Mark Strickson (Turlough), for much of his life a television producer, I was amused that Mark is refreshingly frank on how boring he found watching the opening two episodes! Also in the "making of" documentary I was frustrated that the BBC clearly didn’t get permission to show the relevant inspiring Escher art prints on screen, so they could only be talked about instead.

We plan to watch a couple more of the mini documentaries included in the Blu-ray's bonus special features - the one with Tom Baker discussing the large TARDIS crew back then, and also Peter Davison explaining how he tackled his new Doctor. But we'll fit those in sometime over the coming week, ready to swap discs and carry on to the next story next Sunday.

We trekked up to Manchester with choir yesterday, which is always an interesting experience. The BBC Phil is very different from our orchestra, and because they exist primarily to perform for radio broadcasts rather than making their income by selling concert tickets, the hall is often pretty empty - but not yesterday, which was about 90% full, I think.

The vast majority of our concerts are with our own orchestra, and the BBC Phil is the only other one we work with regularly enough to start to get to know them a bit by sight. Their lead cello has always been rather Byronic; he's now rather less so than formerly, partly because his hair is thinning and therefore less dramatically swoopy, but I did leave the building to find him outside smoking in a leather jacket, so he's clearly still fully committed to the bad boy lifestyle.

( orchestra demographics )

The audience was very enthusiastic! which is always nice. We got a bigger cheer than the orchestra or the soloists, which always seems a bit mean when the orchestra play for ninety minutes and we only sing for ten, but it's true that we get the best bits of the piece, so... And now back to work and next weekend is very nearly free, except for (nooooo) my reaudition for choir, the highlight of every two-year period.

 Sondra Radvanovsky dioes them all from Lauretta to Turandot

https://myscena.org/john-gilks/cd-review-sondra-radvanovsky-puccini-heroines/

Wow. An "investment" that is not based on anything is losing value? Whouldathunkit. Now, if you'd generated a few hundred Bitcoins at the beginning when it was possible and sold them when they were worth $100,000+, that would have been quite awesome. But it still wouldn't have been an investment: it would have been speculative trading to other speculators. Because there's nothing behind it. Still, the only value in Bitcoin is other people buying it and it being used for illegal activity such as to traffic in drugs and paying ransomware demands.

This is an excellent quote from the CNBC article: "Bitcoin differs from stocks, bonds and real estate because it doesn’t generate earnings, interest payments or rental income that investors can use to estimate its value, says Robert Johnson, a finance professor at Creighton University. Instead, its price is largely determined solely by investor demand.

“You cannot invest in Bitcoin, you can only speculate,” he says."

A comment in the Slashdot story notes that prominent FORMER promotors of Bitcoin, Marc Andreesen and Peter Thiel are no longer singing the praises of Bitcoin, they're now telling people to invest in AI. Apparently they made their money in BC and got out.

By the way, unless you're really good at timing markets, don't invest in AI.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/12/bitcoins-price-drop-is-forcing-investors-to-revisit-why-they-own-it.html

https://slashdot.org/story/26/06/14/0817238/bitcoin-has-lost-nearly-half-its-value-in-11-months

O, the times we live in. I have bought a portable air conditioner. Not so much for us, as for aged father-in-law. I was remembering the summer a couple of years ago when emperatures reached 40C. Bryan was staying with us then, and he really struggled.

My cunning plan was to store the air-con unit in the attic until we needed it. I carefully checked dimensions, and measured the attic hatch, and yes it would fit through the hatch. But I didn't think of the weight. The air-conditioner weighs 20kg, and the loft hatch is 12ft up a steep & awkward ladder. Fallback plan - my wardrobe

Thinking about units ... I seem to do temperature and weight in metric, but distances & volume are mixed. Petrol comes in litres, but beer & milk come in pints. People's heights are feet and inches, driving distances are miles, but if I'm walking in the countryside it's kilometers (because it's km on the OS maps). If I'm measuring with a tape measure (eg. attic hatchway) it's centimeters, but if I'm guesstimiting a distance (height of ceiling) then we're back to ft & inches. Interesting to see myself doing it.

I do like the way the British mix units; the local hardware shop used to sell planks with sizes such as 2cm x 30cm x 6ft. And everyone was just fine with that.

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/06/14/happy-flag-day/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=61102

It seems to come earlier every year, doesn’t it?

There may be other things going on today, but if there are, I don’t want to know about them, I’ll just be here with my flag.

Also, congratulations to Knicks fans today, and condolences to Spurs fans.

I think that covers it!

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/06/14/happy-flag-day/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=61102

My activity over the past month:

British Trust for Ornithology: I've reported Garden Bird Counts every week.  Lots of sparrows, plus some pigeons.  One sparrow had a bath in our smallest water bowl, much to the disgust of the pigeon which arrived a little later and didn't fancy sparrow bird water.  I've done 8 surveys for Birds in Green Spaces in two sites, including yesterday when it was Birds in Green Spaces Big Day.

UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme: Nothing this month.  It's only just stopped raining for long enough to get out for a survey.

Butterfly Conservation: Butterflies for the New Millennium. 4 counts. It has not been butterfly weather!  Voted for Britain's Favourite Butterfly and took the quiz to see what sort of butterfly I was. (Large skipper - energetic and feisty)

30 Days Wild: Have gone out for a walk every day with an aim to keeping to the theme of the day.  I've practised recognising bird song and downloaded a number of spotter sheets which I can continue to use over the summer.  I also made a wildflower collage for fan_flashworks based on local wildflowers.

Maintenance: Topping up the water bowls and cleaning them now it's not raining.

Sightings of note: The swans together with five growing cygnets. A furry caterpillar. Several damselflies, including beautiful demoiselle.

Other activities: None

I listen to music while I swim. I have about 5,000 (not an exaggeration) mp3's that are randomly-ish divided into groups of 20-ish. So any group of 20 might have most of one album and some of a couple others. I am going through the groups in numerical order. When I charge my player, I delete what's on there and grab another group of 20. No clue what it will be until I kick off the side of the pool and start to swim.

Today's music was part of an album from the last group and very pleasant and then I hit a bunch of Crosby, Stills and Nash. And with the first cord, I detected the distinct order of marijuana. While I was swimming head down in the water! And I kept smelling it, too. It cracked me up. I smoked weed when they were hot but not that much I didn't think. Apparently, my nose thinks differently.

I woke up this morning and noted that it was Monday and mentally reviewed my plans for the day. Then I got up and put coffee on and opened the door and saw that Jim Across The Hall had gotten his Sunday paper*?? And then I opened up my email and saw the emails I get on Sunday. Hmmmmm guess it isn't Monday after all!

*Jim is still gone and is not coming back but his apartment is just abandoned. I assume it's still being paid for. His newspaper subscription has continued since he left at the end of March. In the last couple of weeks, however, it's been very random and intermittent. (This drives Joan crazy because she must know every detail of everyone's lives - mainly so she can tell everyone else - and she's very frustrated that she cannot find out a clue about Jim.)

So, since it's not Monday... the Mariners haven't lost their game yet!

Yesterday I cleaned out the fridge. I tossed out a bunch of really old stuff. I need to do the freezer next. I think there is far less to toss there but I need to get a better handle on what is there. Since I'm eating so much less these days, things involved with food are also far more simple. Win win.

I got my inventory a nice boost yesterday and hope to repeat it today.

I'm not really sure how the week went, because think my brain was turned off for most of it. Actually, I think it mostly still is. To be fair, this isn't surprising. My cat, Ticia, crossed the Rainbow Bridge last Thursday. She was my dear companion for the last eleven years. I've done enough grieving to know how it goes.

I don't have a song for any of the cats; don't know if I ever will. My creativity has ebbed considerably. The song that kept coming back, for some reason, was my setting for "The Cap and Bells", by Yeats. It was one of the last songs I sang to her, the morning of her passing. She loved music. I sang it again this morning at the Festival of the Living Rooms Saturday evening circle.

Also The Cat and the Moon (which is pretty obviously relevant, and which may get read in a circle sometime soon) and Sailing to Byzantium (which is certainly relevant to me; it's been on my mind of late). That is no country for old men...

Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Meanwhile, just a reminder that The World As it Ought To Be, by Naomi Rivkis is on sale for $2.99 until the rest of the month, and that the Goodreads book giveaway is still in progress.

( Notes & links, as usual )