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PineTrees of Celeste

I got slightly better sleep last night, and embraced a more cheery attitude so I could dispel gloom at Madame's place. I left just as the furnace inspector was arriving at our house to do his yearly check. I stopped and got a couple of mochas for Madame and me. Normally I get her a treat as well, but last time I stopped in, she had all kinds of goodies left from Christmas. Today she still had cookies, but declined to eat any of them. She was very glad to see me. She doesn't remember Christmas, is all mixed up about what relatives she has, and doesn't recall her family coming to see her, which I'm sure they do. I know she would like to go somewhere fun, but I'm adhering to my plan of not trying to take her anywhere unless they get her a wheelchair. It's not only hard on her, it's too hard on ME. I see that her son has brought her a fancier, more sturdy walker with a seat, but that's still NOT a wheelchair, and every walker I've ever seen has explicit instructions that one is NOT to push the patient in it as if it were a wheelchair. Sigh. Sometimes people annoy me because they will not read the instructions. Moreover, Madame says it isn't hers, and looks upon it with great suspicion.

We requested that they bring her lunch in her room, so we could keep visiting. It wasn't appetizing at all! It looks as if they're trying to respect her veganism again, but that meant there was nothing on the plate but plain rice and some very plain, unseasoned greens. She hardly ate any of it. Dessert was a creamsicle, familiar from childhood. We chatted convivially for a couple of hours, and then I went home. This is kind of a double whammy, after my visit to the clinic yesterday. It is just very hard to see Madame's legs getting more and more crooked and bent, as she struggles to rise from her chair and then shuffles painfully to the door. When she gets tired, her words get reshuffled, and every sentence makes a little less sense. But she still has panache, and the old spark shows up every now and then. Oh my heart. Lest anyone think this is all because I'm just so compassionate, let me assure you it's mostly pure selfishness. It's me I feel sorry for. I feel time squeezing me toward a future I don't want. I can hope that it won't come to this for me, but it's hard to contemplate the possibility.

The day ended with joy, because it's the Lumberjack's birthday, and by luck, a Christmas package I ordered for him and Tron arrived just today, full of treats for both of them! They sent pictures, and it was beautiful and very satisfying. Now we're going to watch some figure skating, with dozens of extraordinarily beautiful and graceful people, the very farthest thing from today's sadness.

Current Mood: contemplative

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Changes and Adjustments

Changing things up just a bit here. My new external came in so I'm spending the afternoon moving stuff off the older ones and storing those away as they empty out. They still work so I can use them in a pinch for whatever, but it'll be good to clear up some of this spaghetti on the right side of my desk! Pretty sure it's going to take HOURS for everything to be moved over, but I've got the time.

In the meantime, I'm taking steps to change some things up with the Day Job. Let's just say that I'm backing away from things I have to do so I can focus on things I need to do in order to put things in motion. Tomorrow I'm going on a little trip to another store in my chain to see how things run there (and hopefully run into management I can speak with), and get the ball rolling. I don't hate the job, I'm just frustrated by the inability of others to do it and dropping it all on me.

Other than that, the weather has finally cleared up for a while, which means that we can finally go outside again! Even if it's just around the block or over to the garden (which we've been sadly ignoring over the last several days due to said inclement weather) (hey, at least it's been getting watered, just not by us!), it'll be nice to pop out for a stroll. I'm hoping that once the rainy season is done we can do this a bit more. I'm starting to feel a bit of cabin fever!

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media tracker

Media Tracker 2026

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mana

mana (MAH-nah) - n., (Polynesian culture) prestige, moral authority, spec. the power of the elemental forces of nature embodied in an object or person; (gaming) a unit of magical energy.

The concept of mana, and the word itself, is universal across Polynesia, and based on its meaning in other Oceanic languages apparently had a root sense of storm wind. The word was introduced to Europe by missionary and Melanesian ethnographer Robert Henry Codrington in 1891, apparently taking his cue from Maori, and popularized in Mircea Eliade's writings on religion. With that in the cultural background, Larry Niven used mana (iirc explicitly citing it as Maori, but I need to confirm this) as the name for fuel for magic spells in his The Magic Goes Away series of contemporary fantasy stories starting in 1969, and table-top RPGs such as D&D took the concept from there, and of course FRPGs took most of their framework from TTRPGs.

---L.

PolarBear of Celeste

I woke up about six to the rattle of sleety rain. Eventually it turned into regular rain. I went back to sleep for awhile. Still not quite enough sleep. It was warmer, but still very dark and grey, and continued to drizzle on and off all day. I got my extra super-duper mammogram plus ultrasound today. They were as effective and efficient as possible. It's not their fault that I am currently not in a good mood. The radiologist was nice. The ultrasound person wasn't particularly. The specialist who came in to tell me what was what was annoying. Her commentary confirmed my suspicion that they are mostly doing all this because their learned that I have a daughter being treated for breast cancer. Basically, I have visible calcifications, and they like to check up on those. But there's nothing there, so they'll make me come back in six months and look again. Sigh.

The hospital system has tried to make the facility extra posh, but it's just fake and depressing, in my view. Also, what's the use of providing coffee machines that are always out of order? Isn't that sort of first circle of Hell kind of thing? The ultrasound room was dark and chilly. The blinds were drawn, but I heard vrooming sounds coming from without and surmised that it must overlook the highway. When they left me alone in there, I drew the curtain aside and looked out. Sure enough, there was the highway. Also, there were those white hospital blankets stuffed against the windowsills to keep the cold air out. Again I ask, what's the use of a multimillion dollar building with leaky windows that make the diagnostic rooms cold unless you stuff them with blankets? While the specialist was speaking to me, there was a terrific thump, as if something had collided with the window. The specialist and the ultrasounder both jumped back and moved nervously to the other side of the room. They left me, the unsuspecting patient, in a chair right next to the window. I did not jump, because hey, whatever happened already happened. We were many stories up. "Maybe it was a bird," I said. They laughed nervously.

I can't tell you how many debilitated souls I saw, moving slowly with halting gaits of various forms across the carpeted floor of this soaring edifice with its pseudo-cathedralish atrium. "So many, I had not thought death had undone so many," as first Dante and then T.S. Eliot said. The Sparrowhawk arrived to pick me up. "Let's run away together," I said. But we did not. We squelched our way through the slush and the icy ruts, entered our hobbit hole, and turned the LURK dial up to eleventy. I should just be grateful that I won't need further treatment at this time, AND I AM! But I would greatly prefer not to go anywhere near the place ever.

tiki

[Sidebar: I didn’t fully unpack yesterday that the Austronesian language family includes, as a subgroup, the Polynesian languages. It encompasses the indigenous languages of Taiwan (the Austronesian homeland), the Philippines, Madagascar, Malaysia, most of Indonesia, as well as most Pacific islands to the east and south, excluding New Guinea and the continent of Australia. The Austronesian Expansion was … expansive.] [Sidebar²: Statements that Malayo-Polynesian is a synonym for Austronesian can be readily found yet are wrong: Malayo-Polynesian is subgroup of Austronesian, covering all the languages outside of Taiwan.]

tiki (TEE-kee) - n., a figurine or talisman in humanoid form of a god or ancestor.

Thanks, WikiMedia!

Also, as an adjective, relating to an exoticized representation of Polynesian culture characterized by tiki figures, palm fronds, tropical themes, etc. -- because tiki culture is indeed weird. Among Maori, talisman versions of tiki (called hei-tiki) are sometimes worn for protection/luck. Tiki was the first man in Maori mythology, and tikis are also known by the name of the first man in Tahitian (Tiʻi), though in Hawaiian the first man was Kumuhonua and a tiki is a kiʻi -- interestingly, tikis are known only in Eastern Polynesian cultures.

Which brings up the bonus word moai (MOW-ai), one of the large stone statues on Easter Island (Rapa Nui), which even though they are representations of ancestors, not to mention highly influential on tiki culture, are not considered tikis:

Thanks, WikiMedia!

[Sidebar³: The emoji 🗿 is not actually a moai but rather a moyai, a Japanese sculpture inspired by maoi -- in the dialect of Niijima, where they were first carved, moyai means joining forces/helping each other, and mayoi are often used as meet-up landmarks.]

---L.

Current Music: The Advisory Circle, "Inner Activity"

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patreon

Now let's listen to a conversation between two English actors on the subject of Warships Week

Doubtful as it may be under present conditions to find encouragement in anything of military origin unless it's the USS Princeton in 1844, about twenty-seven seconds into the two minutes' patriotism of Warship Week Appeal (1942) I cracked up.

Two hundred feet exactly of no-credits 35 mm, the object in question is a trailer produced for the Ministry of Information, essentially the same concept as the film tags of WWI: a micro-dose of propaganda appended to a newsreel as part of a larger campaign, in this case a sort of public information skit in which it is supposed that Noël Coward on the Denham sets of In Which We Serve (1942) is approached by Leslie Howard, slouching characteristically on with his hands in his pockets and his scarf twisted carelessly label-out, anxious to discuss a problem of National Savings. "How do you think we can make an appeal so it won't quite seem like an appeal?" With limited screen time to realize their meta conceit, the two actor-directors get briskly down to explaining the mechanics of the scheme to the British public with the shot-reverse-shot patter of a double act on the halls, but the trailer has already dropped its most memorable moment ahead of all its instructions and slogans, even the brief time it rhymes. Diffident as one end of his spectrum of nerd heroes, Howard apologizes for the interruption, excuses it with its relevance to naval business, and trails off with the usual form of words, "I'm sure you won't mind—" to which Coward responds smoothly, "I'm delighted to see you. And I know perfectly well—as we rehearsed it so carefully—that you've come to interview me about Warships Week." He doesn't even bother to hold for a laugh as Leslie snorts around his unlit cigarette. It doesn't all feel like a bit. The interjection may or may not have been scripted, but Coward's delivery is lethally demure and his scene partner's reaction looks genuine; for one, it's much less well-timed or dignified than the smile he uses to support a later, slightly obligatory joke about the income tax, which makes it that much more endearing. It's funny to me for a slant, secondhand reason, too, that has nothing to do with the long friendship between the two men or further proof of Noël's deadpan for the ages: a dancer with whom my mother once worked had been part of the company of Howard's 1936 Hamlet and like all the other small parts, whenever her back was to the audience and the Hollywood star was stuck facing the footlights, she tried to corpse him. One night she finally succeeded. Consequently and disproportionately, watching him need the length of a cigarette-lighting to get his face back, I thought of her story which I hadn't in years and may have laughed harder than Leslie Howard deserved. If it's any consolation to him, the way his eyes close right up like a cat's is beautiful, middle-aged and underslept. It promotes the illusion that a real person might say a phrase like "in these grim days when we've got our backs to the wall" outside of an address to the nation.

Not much consolation to the MOI, Warship Week Appeal accomplishes its goal in that while it doesn't mention for posterity that a community would adopt the ship it funded, the general idea of the dearth of "ships—more ships and still more ships" and the communal need to pay down for them as efficiently as possible comes through emphatically. It's so much more straightforward, in fact, than I associate with either of its differently masked actors, I'd love to know who wrote it, but the only other information immediately available is that the "Ronnie" whom Coward is conferring with when Howard courteously butts in is Ronald Neame. Given the production dates of their respective pictures, it's not difficult to pretend that Howard just popped over from the next sound stage where he was still shooting The First of the Few (1942), although he is clearly in star rather than director mode because even if he's in working clothes, he is conspicuously minus his glasses. What can I tell you? I got it from the Imperial War Museum and for two minutes and thirteen seconds it cheered me up. Lots of things to look at these days could do much, much worse. This interview brought to you by my appealing backers at Patreon.

Current Mood: sick
Current Location: Insomnia

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sylleblossom

Blegh.

Sorry for not posting much. I've been very ill.

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links

The Nostalgia Trap

I am part of the generation that spent most of their childhood in the analog world, and then gradually turned digital as they came into young adulthood. We are often referred to as “digital immigrants”, contrasting us with the “digital natives” born somewhere between a decade and two later. But a more appropriate term would be the “abyss generation”, because somewhere deep down we are stuck in limbo, in the abyss between fully analog and fully digital, of two worlds, yet fully belonging to neither.

Growing up, we used a lot of paper. A lot of color pencils and crayons. Our teachers put us through endless drills in cursive handwriting. A neat, legible, and beautiful hand was something to be strived for, something that was prized, and rewarded and shown off.
We had long afternoons to ourselves. We had a loyal band of neighborhood friends. We would have four hour long play sessions. Sometimes, we would listen to entire albums from beginning to end–while doing nothing else. Do you even remember the last time you just listened to music, without it being a soundtrack to some other activity you were doing?

Sometimes, we ache to go back to that time. That time seemed simpler and purer. So much so that we are willing to mutilate memories from our immediate past with sepia and Polaroid filters. Nostalgia is painful, but it is also sweet and powerful.

But here is the thing: nostalgia is a trap. It is not that those times were simpler and purer. We were simpler and purer.

Nostalgia is easy to fall into. And the older you get, the easier it gets. The universe of things you can look back on only increases with time. And it seems so much more pleasant than looking forward, where you only see hopes and dreams and fears and probabilities. It takes conscious effort to not go down that slope, to instead look to the future, and actually create it. And it takes even more effort, and more courage, to objectively compare the past to the present, and face the fact that, yes, indeed, most things are better, and are more likely than not to continue getting better.

Over the last year, I have found myself writing by hand again. Sometimes, it is page after page of straight prose. Sometimes it is phrases and bullet points and underlines and bubbles. Sometimes it is just random senseless doodling. And the reason I have come back to that archaic activity is my LiveScribe pen. I no longer have to worry about losing all that. Something that is naturally analog and free-form is seamlessly brought into the digital world.

We seem to be enveloped by the literature of despair and frustration. Complaints and pessimism always seem to be more profound and erudite when placed next to cheerful optimism. Reject that.

Look forward. Make the future.

Current Music: Fast Blood, "Rut"

How am I supposed to know what's real?

After a full week without water in the kitchen, the plumber cameth on half an hour's notice from the property manager and was horrified to hear about it, but he was swift and competent and we have a new and working faucet, which was all the problem turned out to be. Hestia made herself invisible in the bedroom throughout the proceedings. I washed a fork without first boiling water and it felt like a big deal.

I just finished reading David Hare's A Map of the World (1983), whose device of examining an interpersonal-political knot through the successive filters of the roman à clef, the screen version, and the memories of the participants reminded me obviously of similar exercises in metafiction and retrospect by Tom Stoppard and Michael Frayn, double-cast for an effect at the end approaching timeslip such as works almost strictly on stage. I did not expect to find some fragments preserved in an episode of The South Bank Show, but there were some of the scenes with Roshan Seth, John Matshikiza, Bill Nighy, Diana Quick. I wish I thought it meant there were a complete broadcast I could watch, but I'm not even finding it got the BBC Radio 3 treatment. More immediately, it reminded me of how many of the stories I read early were about stories, their propagation and mutation, their conventions, their shifting distances from the facts. "And, in time, only the bards knew the truth of it."

The problem with the denaturing of language is that when I say to

spatch that the political situation is insane, I don't mean it's a little far-fetched, I mean it is driven by wants and processes that are not rational and it is exhausting to be trapped inside someone else's illness.

FrozenSeas of Celeste

This morning, the sky was clear and the sun could actually be seen in its rising, far off to the south. The waning moon stood high in the western sky. Just a couple of hours later, the veil of cloud was drawn again. When I stuck my nose out the door for a sniff of the air, I felt the moisture in it, heralding a rise in the temperature. The birds were chirping and singing more hopefully than they have in the past couple of weeks. I was still not brave enough to go barefoot down the still-icy driveway to get the paper. I borrowed the Sparrowhawk's handy slip-on shoes.

It wasn't the best of days. Some near and dear people are having problems, of which obviously the less said the better on my part. I didn't have my usual conversation with Queenie, because she is busy with some aspects of this. I did have a brief call with her later in the day, which was nice except that it revealed she was at a clinic getting antibiotics for her own health problem. These things are worrisome to me. We were going to attend a meeting tonight, but it was too far from here, after dark, in a place unknown to us, and the Sparrowhawk was having an unusually off off-day. He didn't even go to his usual gym session. We got takeout and hunkered down. I'm not at my best, either.

Tomorrow I have to get another mammogram AND an ultrasound. I'm pretty sure this is because of that stoopid questionnaire I had to fill out, whereby they found out I have a daughter with breast cancer. This is making them extra cautious. They did this two years ago, too, and whatever they thought they were looking for turned out to be an artifact of the process. It's disheartening.

On the bright side, my pork stew with leeks and vegetables turned out acceptably, and I got a few compliments. Including one from a friend who said that she would have liked to eat everything that was in the pan and then lick the pan. She added that everyone else at her table agreed with her. I don't think it was quite THAT good, but okay. I'll take it.

Current Mood: happy

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snowflake challenge

2026 Fandom Snowflake Challenge #3

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taboo

So. Theme week: words from Polynesian languages, which are spoken on those Pacific islands in the triangle defined by New Zealand, Hawaii, and Easter Island, excluding Fiji. [Sidebar: Fijians are not Polynesian, but rather ethnic Melanesians (that is, related to Papuan peoples of New Guinea) who came to speak an Austronesian (i.e. non-Melanesian) language that’s closely related to the Polynesian subfamily.] This is definitively not part of last year’s series of words from various indigenous American languages. It happens to be aligned with one segment of that series, in that Hawaiian is Polynesian, but it and Rapa Nui are the only Polynesian languages of the Americas (and we didn’t get enough words from the latter to fill even one week), but to reiterate, this is separate. I have no plans to continue with other language groups of the world — no, not even Malay, even though it’s in the same Austronesian family — but nonetheless, here’s a two-week theme of words from Polynesian languages that aren’t Hawaiian, starting with:

taboo (tuh-BOO, ta-BOO) - n., (in Oceania) a prohibition excluding something from use, approach, or mention because it is sacred and inviolable; (in general) a ban on saying, mentioning, or doing something from social custom or emotional aversion. adj., (in Oceania) excluded from use because of its sacred nature; (in general) cutlurally forbidden. v., to mark as taboo; to ban, forbid.

Although the word and concept is found throughout Polynesia, including Maori tapu and Hawaiian kapu, we know in this case it's from Tongan tapu because the first use is by Captain James Cook in his journal of his 1777 visit to Tonga. (In Tongan, p and b are apparently hard to differentiate.) In general, his account of the word is fairly accurate, by our modern understanding of the concept.

In contrast, there's the Bonus Word noa (NOH-uh), having no sacredness / being free of taboo / a blessing, which is used almost exclusively in New Zealand English and so can be considered taken from Maori, though the word is common across Polynesia, including in Tahitian and Hawaiian. Per Wikipedia, "Noa, on the other hand, lifts the tapu from the person or the object. Noa is similar to a blessing ... A new house today, for example, may have a noa ceremony to remove the tapu, in order to make the home safe before the family moves in."

---L.

Current Music: Phil Ochs, "Cops of the World"

And we'll find you a leader that you can elect

This administration has run so hard from the start on leaded fantasies, the presence of a fossil fuel in its latest scream for the headlines seems macabrely apropos. Oil is indeed a lucratively unrenewable resource, but aren't those equally heady fumes of the Banana Wars and Neptune Spear? In my own throwback to the twentieth century, I haven't been able to get Phil Ochs out of my head. It was in another of his songs that I first heard of United Fruit. I live in endless echoes, but I am tired of these threadbare loops of empire that were already sticky shed and vinegar when another fluffer of American exceptional stupidity hung out his banner of a mission very much not accomplished. Is it the Crusades this time or Manifest Destiny? War Plan Red hasn't panned out so far, but we can always rebrand the Monroe Doctrine. Colombia! Cuba! Greenland! Daddy's shadow and Deus vult. "Every generation of Centauri mourns for the golden days when their power was like unto the gods! It's counterproductive! I mean, why make history if you fail to learn by it?" I was thirteen when I heard that line and I understood the question. Who knew I was going to spend the rest of my life finding out just how many people were never even interested in trying?

Current Mood: contemplative

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Up and coming

Did I just order another external hard drive? Yes! This one is a 20TB that was on sale for $229 (not bad, considering it was $50 off), and it would replace not one but THREE of my older externals that are currently and quite precariously perched on top of my PC. [This is the main reason I let the cats on the desk but nowhere near the hardware. They've knocked them over before.] I figure it's worth the price and I'd feel safer having all this stuff on newer drives, as these are at least five or six years old last I checked, and they've gotten a lot of use. I figure this will be my birthday present to myself, heh.

The downside is that this will make three somewhat chunkier drives taking up space, so I might want to look into some minor desk rearrangement. It'll definitely mean less wires though, and that's a good thing. Maybe another riser for the main monitor, which would give me a bit of space underneath for things like my journal and art stuff. Something to think about, anyway.

Meanwhile, the new year is going as expected. Which is to say, a few bumps in the road but otherwise bearable. New Year's Eve was a LOT busier at the day job than predicted, and we were sadly understaffed due to multiple call-outs (legit or otherwise), so I was exhausted by the end of it and slept through into the new year, only woken up once by local neighborhood fireworks. The following day I did have another minor dust-up with a coworker which eventually involved management that led, much to my lack of surprise, to nothing. At this point, though, I've decided that was the last time that would happen. And the next time it did, I would escalate up the chain of command. [And possibly involve the union rep -- who does not get along with main boss at all.] I've decided that 2026 is The Year of No More Personal Bullshit.

Point being -- I'm in charge of my life here, and it's about time I followed through with it.

WolfMoon of Celeste

My plan of bouncing back vigorously from post-holiday fatigue is not going well. My PLAN last night was to sleep well. Apparently that wasn't an option. I woke up in the middle of the night and was awake for an ungodly long time. So the night consisted of two truncated naps. This morning, I was going to shovel the remaining snow off the car and surroundings. Some kind pixie had done the far end of the driveway when I wasn't looking. Then I was going to go to the store, and prepare something for the potluck tomorrow, and clean up Christmas odds and ends, and go to church. Apparently, this again was too much too ask. I had to admit I could not hustle fast enough to do even that much. I remained irritable and lethargic even after medicating myself with a bowl of the leek and potato soup I finally got around to making yesterday. I swear it has curative properties, though not quite curative enough. I had to allow the Sparrowhawk to go to the store on my behalf, and I could not go to church. I took a nap instead.

We managed a small amount of removal of cardboard boxes and such, and in the process I accomplished my greatest feat of the day: I found a precious object that had gone astray at present-giving time. It's a sound card from a Yoto, a screen-free audio device we bought for Aquinas on the advice of his parents. The card is about the size of a playing card, so naturally, I put it somewhere it would be very safe. So safe I couldn't find it again for two weeks!

Slightly rejuvenated by my nap, I cut up and marinated four pounds of pork roast, two gigantic leeks, three onions, and a bunch of carrots. That will be one step forward for tomorrow . . . . It's a full moon tonight, and if anyone has clear skies, I advise going out to take a look. Last night I saw the moon very high in the sky, accompanied by Jupiter, Sirius, and a few more heavenly bodies I couldn't see well enough to name. Moonlight on snow is medicinal, like leek and potato soup.

Current Music: Ancient Hostility, "Hammer"

I'm aggrieved the hours I've lost I could have spent with my love

Before the news was overtaken by this latest and gratuitous moving fast and breaking of the world, I discovered that on Boxing Day there had been a three-alarm fire on the working waterfront of Portland's Custom House Wharf. I used to spend a lot of time there with my grandmother. She would buy her fish nowhere but from the Harbor Fish Market, which in the '80's and '90's had the great dried skin of a sturgeon on its wall along with its charts of catches and soundings and a wet-planked floor through which the harbor itself could occasionally be seen lapping in a wrack-green brindle of light. It smelled at once like open water and the clean insides of fish. It was spared the blaze; other addresses were not. Between the icing temperatures and the flashpaper of the buildings, the firefighting efforts sound even more heroic since no one seems to have died, but the damage beyond the total losses of gear and business remains significant. The Maine Coast Fishermen's Association has been taking donations for their support and partnered with a local restaurant toward the same end plus T-shirts. It is a small shoring-up of the world and it matters. "When I say charity, I don't mean, 'I've got a sixpence I don't want. You can have it.' I mean, 'I've got a sixpence I do want. You can still have it.'"

Current Mood: Eschrichtius
Current Music: Deftones - Fireal

Devilish: The Last Posession

75 days until the vernal equinox

Or Bad Omen if you’re in Japan.
It’s a Breakout or Arkanoid clone with a couple of twists.

( Clickity )

burning question: why the hell is the AI overview for this game talking about a giant rotten cheesecake?

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2025 game roundup

In 2025 I posted reviews of 44 games, of which 10 were replays, 1 was a revision of an old review, and 33 were games I hadn't played before.

( and here they are )

(I made sure to number them because when I went back to number my book post I realized I had shorted myself four books! It was actually 51!)

My ongoing gaming side-quest is to play games from different countries. This year my new countries were Brazil, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iran, Peru, the Philippines, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, and Taiwan, bringing my total to 28. (At least the way I'm counting. I realize that "what is a country?" is a fraught question, but it's also a question that's way above my pay grade so I'm trying not to sweat it for such a low-stakes project.) My list of potential games to play includes 31 more countries. There are still lots and lots that I haven't yet identified a game for, including some seemingly low-hanging fruit, but since I'm keeping it to titles that would be of interest to me outside this project, the search for options can take longer.

My game list is a bit silly right now because I decided to add every game I could remember playing... ever. I love revisiting childhood games, and I enjoy searching for obscure titles and figuring out how to get them to run, so I'm okay with the list just being long. I actually do think it is possible, in principle, for me to review every game I played as a child, while attempting to do the same for books would be totally absurd. I've read a lot more books than I've played games, I started reading at a younger age, and I think I'm much less likely to forget a game than a book simply because I have a strong visual memory. Anyway, for future reference (I know I'll want to know next year) I currently have 280 games on my list.

Of the games I played for the first time in 2025, my favorites include: Until Then, Disco Elysium, Engare, I Did Not Buy This Ticket, The Last Door, and The Drifter.

Current Music: Ancient Hostility, "Night Terrors"

We've found where the divide is thin and chosen the other side

The afternoon's mail brought my contributor's copy of Not One of Us #85, containing my poem "The Avalon Procedure." It is the Arthurian one, in debt to and argument with Bryher. It belongs to the outsider issue which kicks off the 'zine's fortieth year of alienation, characteristically incarnated by the short fiction and poetry of Steve Toase, Devan Barlow, Lauren Hruska, and Gwynne Garfinkle among others. The threshold shadow of the cover art by John and Flo Stanton is an excellent advertisement, or harbinger. Pick up a copy or contribute to the strangeness yourself. I remain so glad it sneaked into our reality.

"These clocks are like Time herself. Magnificent edifices, but secretly fragile. In need of constant attention . . . Forgive me. My pet subject, Time." I didn't realize until I opened the jewel case that Sigil (2023) was dedicated to the memory of Murray Melvin: it was his last recording for Big Finish, released posthumously. It starts like a classic M. R. James with a series of weird and hauntological misfortunes attending a three-thousand-year-old bronze bird ever since its ill-omened excavation in the Victorian era and then it twists much more cosmic, with a pure sting of Sapphire & Steel. I can't tell if it was designed as a farewell, but it makes a tantalizing final communiqué from Bilis Manger, a gorgeous, wickedly silken and knowing performance from Melvin whose voice caresses a stone circle because it's "an ancient timepiece" and can put a harvest-withering contempt into a statement like "I've never owned a scatter cushion in my life." There's a sort of promotional interview at the end of the CD, but it poignantly does not include Melvin. The last we hear of him is in definitive character, so much time echoing backward and forward in his voice that was then eighty-nine human years old and still made you think there could be younger barrows, meadows, stars. "What could murder a murder of crows?"

I had no idea about this historical reenactment at Prospect Hill, but I am happy to read of its turnout in the new snow. I have not gotten the sestercentennial onto my mental calendar. I am still not convinced of this decade at all.