asakiyume: (cloud snow)
asakiyume ([personal profile] asakiyume) wrote2021-02-11 05:04 pm

some random stuff

I saw dreadlock, deadlock, and deadname in quick succession and started thinking about not hair or tangled traffic or trans rights, but about a dreadful lock, a lock that dies--is executed even. A dead lock. And I thought, how do you kill a lock?

Answer:

The key was turned
The bolt slid into place a final time
Then liquid copper was poured into the hole
--the whole plate melted, a metal smear—

Then prayers, candles, incense
No more will people pass through here

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[personal profile] osprey_archer posted a very fun, very short Valentine's extra for her novel Honeytrap, readily understandable even if you haven't read the novel. All you need to know is it's set in the 1950s, and the characters are a Soviet agent and an American agent who are working together (for reasons). It's a discussion of the capitalist nature of Valentine's Day as celebrated in the America. (Read it here!) And then, coincidentally, a friend linked me to this TikTok video where a woman talks about how capitalist Valentine's Day is, and then provides links to her free anticapitalist you-can-use-them-for-Valentine's-or-any-day cards. I liked "Workers are Billionaire Creators" best.

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I love this art, located in London, by Colombian street artist Stinkfish:



Detail:



(Source: Hooked: Street Art from London and beyond)

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I'm doing some pro bono work for a friend of one of my kids, who's written about the Titanic. I reached a passage where it talks about the SS Californian, which was very close but didn't render assistance, and he describes how it seemed to the Californian that this ship--they didn't know what ship it was--that they had noticed was moving away from them, getting smaller, when really what was happening was it was sinking. It made me think of that famous poem by Stevie Smith, "Not Waving but Drowning.

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Well that would be a bad note to end on! So some light humor. Someone used Google translate to translate a packet of Chinese rice crackers and got this:


(Twitter source)

One of my kids retweeted it with "tag yourself"

So go ahead: Who are you?
teenybuffalo: (Default)

[personal profile] teenybuffalo 2021-02-11 11:19 pm (UTC)(link)
Tag urself, I'm tube oil
sovay: (Haruspex: Autumn War)

[personal profile] sovay 2021-02-11 11:44 pm (UTC)(link)
Then prayers, candles, incense
No more will people pass through here


That's very good.

I like the wall art, too.

I'm really torn between teaching gas and green cake.
sovay: (Rotwang)

[personal profile] sovay 2021-02-11 11:49 pm (UTC)(link)
Green cake seems like it's probably a euphemism for some horrible radioactive thing, doesn't it?

That's yellowcake! I was thinking pistachio flour.

Thank you, re: poem

(send it somewhere)
sovay: (Sovay: David Owen)

[personal profile] sovay 2021-02-11 11:56 pm (UTC)(link)
Aha!! I was aware of something even when I wasn't aware.

That's the web of associations that the human brain is made of! Good for art.

Pistachio flour, OTOH, sounds blessed.

It makes cakes the color of dragonfly ripple and tastes amazing. For one brief shining moment, I had a ready supply in Burdick's in Harvard Square and could bake with it on the regular. Pistachio marzipan is also the best.

(poem: too short? too gimmicky? I know... don't self-reject...)

It's not gimmicky. *hugs*
sartorias: (Default)

[personal profile] sartorias 2021-02-12 12:15 am (UTC)(link)
Funny how similar yet different words will come together. I like that about locks.

I love the vibrant colors in that wall art!
cmcmck: (Default)

[personal profile] cmcmck 2021-02-12 10:38 am (UTC)(link)
Lady Dedlock

Deadname? Ewwwwww!