I waxed rather indignant this past weekend, so my mentions are a bit of a mess. Reports of the deaths of books and writing are always highly exaggerated, world without end, amen. The recent successes by creatives and people doing the damn work pushing back against corporate and billionaire exploitation has the corps and billionaires running scared that a few of their profit percentage points might get shaved off. I’ll leave it at that.
The current reading is Pekka Hamalainen’s Lakota America, which is thought-provoking and very dense. I have a couple more of his books (someone got their dear old Mum a gift card recently) added to the TBR pile, which is teetering at a dangerous angle. The Muse wants nice chewy historical reading but she also wants a very specific type of action movie, and I cannot bifurcate like I used to. So maybe it’ll be movie weekends and wading through footnotes the rest of the time.
I woke up with a very specific Pink Floyd in my head; it’s past the winter solstice so maybe I could even listen to it outside the skull radio. However, it doesn’t feel like there’s enough sunlight. I mean, I live in the Pacific Northwest and am glad that it’s nearly always grey, but I can’t listen to the Floyd without some solar radiation. Maybe if there’s a yard work or burn day soon.
Speaking of which, we do have to lug out the firepit before the spring rains halt, mostly because there are Experiments in Combustion to be done. A while ago my writing partner and I were talking about wintergreen LifeSavers making a spark when you bite them (they do!) and the comments on a video we dug up led us to wonder about granulated coffee creamer as firestarting material. Initial experimentation says not really, it has to be airborne before one gets the very theatrical puff of flame. Though in fact, we only tried with a certain kind and it could have been sugar interfering with the effect.
I really should have found a place to get sample packets, then done testing for different flame capabilities, but there was only one certain kind we could get our hands on at short notice so we made do. It’ll just mean more fun later. I want to see if different flavors produce different colors as well; the Selkie doesn’t think so since that’s mostly a function of minerals. But we’ll see. (Science!)
That’s another reason writers will never go out of style. One of our hallmarks is endless curiosity about the world, and willingness to do “research” even if it might singe one’s eyebrows.
However, lighting things on fire will sadly have to wait for a little bit, as I’m up to said eyebrows in work. I want to get this first pitched battle put to bed, get another character agreeing to something despite her better instincts, and then there’s the robot donkey (named Chicken) in the novella to get upright and working–I was about to type manageable but that’s never going to happen. Plus Boxnoggin wants a long ramble and there’s my own silly corpse to move along at a shamble for a defined distance.
And there’s mounting nerves over the upcoming release to deal with as well. All in all, Monday’s biting early and I should get my molars involved in biting back.
…I just popped over into email in order to clear some correspondence that had to go out before 9am, so the week is beginning as it means to go on, I guess. Time to choke down some toast and get out the door.