Menu

Subscribe

Dear Diary

A 3616-post collection

Well...

We did go on a riverboat tour. For some reason, I was convinced that it would also be a paddle-steamer. No such luck. There were a few paddlewheel boats on the river, but they weren't operational.

Miss Chaos had a beautiful birthday cake made for her by the tour people, and she's been allowed to have all the chocolate-coated strawberries that were on the top and what looks suspiciously like a Ferrero-Rocher praline ball. All of which will be gone, I suspect, before the sun has quite cleared the horizon today.

I took a lot of photos, which will be part of Miss Chaos' what-I-did-on-the-holidays photojournal thing which I shall hopefully be able to do up this coming weekend. Assuming I'm not completely wrecked by this week's happenings.

We all had too much sugar, last night. Which means that we're all slightly wrecked today.

In art news, I have finished the first 'shot' of the Sleep Evil Sleep Project and begun work on the second. Hooray! Though I have had to purchase a non-touchscreen-reactive straight edge assistance tool. AKA a wooden ruler. Which I shall no doubt personalise the heck out of in any absent moment that I have said ruler and a pen or pencil in my hand.

Rulers are doodle surfaces to my mind. I don't know why.

Beloved's Mum, Capt. S., has held her riverboat captain's license for fifty years. That's some kind of amazing and she's giving the local schoolkids a talk about that later on today. This is all really her holiday. We're just emotional support.

I managed to get a heckton of the Woolies' superhero plastic pog gear things on our last supply run, and the entire family is treating them as a construction toy. Joy. At least they lie flat enough to not pierce an unsuspecting foot at fuckoff in the morning.

Also, MeMum's compy has done something weird enough to warrant her calling me about it. Joy. An update has done something funny and now I can't do anything about it until at least this weekend. These things always happen when I'm miles away, I swear.

Holidays. They're the time for everything to stuff up.

Hello from Morgan!

And for everyone wondering where the heck that is, I can safely say that it is on the Murray River, and somewhere in South Australia. I think we drove for three hours to get out here, but I can't be certain because I fell asleep for patches of it.

There's a lot of one-street towns in Australia where the Town Hall is right next to the Pub, which is right next to the only shop for forty miles or so, and the

Read more »

Rushed!

What I was not told until late last night, is that we're taking off for South Australia at four in the morning, tomorrow. So we can be at the airport in time to hurry up and wait.

Today will all be packing, when we're not celebrating Mother's Day in a very rushed way.

So far, the Primary Parental of the house has not been woken up by younglings. And one of said younglings apparently spent all night gaming instead of coming up

Read more »

No Tropes Today

We're due to get our flu jabs, this morning. As such, I don't really have the time for an in-depth rant about things that Hollywood does to tick me off.

That will probably happen more often next week.

It all depends on what else I find to write about, really.

But for now, I have a one and a half hour time window to hammer out a story for you, because post-jabs, I'm planning on heading down to MeMum's for a Stuff

Read more »

Tropes That Annoy Me: The Magical Minority

You know that point in the movie. The hero has hit a wall. Hit a low point. Hit the place where most people would give up, mourn, and try to pick up the pieces. Along comes an inspirational message from the nearest Magical Minority, a trope so large that it has entire sets of sub-tropes. This helps get

It's usually a person of colour, but occasionally a disabled person. For extra points, it's a disabled person of colour. And the reason why

Read more »

Tropes That Annoy Me: Born Sexy Yesterday

I have to admit that I've only recently realised that this one was a thing, and it's all because of this video. If you haven't watched this already, take a good look.

It's surprising often this turns up, isn't it. Sexy woman emerges, fully formed, but is also a blank slate for the male lead to impress upon. Everything he finds good, she meekly follows along with and finds good.

Keep in mind that he is in control of all of her

Read more »

Tropes That Annoy Me: Loveable Jerk

I know I referred to this earlier as the "Loveable Misogynist", but there's also excusable racism in this particular character type. It's a blend of the Politically Incorrect Hero and the Jerk With a Heart of Gold with some elements of Good Flaws, Bad Flaws mixed in.

And what it winds up making is a surprisingly generic hero for serialised drama television. Sure, he's heroic, but he's also a bit of a jerk and he has some bad habits. Sometimes, he's a

Read more »

Disruption to (ir)regular seervices

Yes, once again, life interferes with my PLNs. This time, it's getting into the inner circuit at Chaos' school so I can help with her learning at home. To that end, I'm turning up to assist at an excursion for her class.

Which means that most of this morning will be eaten up by Parenting instead of my usual faffing about on the internets.

I also have a NEW new keyboard with a programmable light interface :D Which means double the typos

Read more »

Tropes That Annoy Me: Manic Pixie Dream Girl

This one's been a long time coming. As John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans". But enough of that noise. Onwards with this noise.

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a trope dating way back beyond the dawn of fiction. You can even find her in The Tempest as Prospero's daughter. But that's sort of blended with Born Sexy Yesterday [which might not have a trope page just yet] which I will cover at a

Read more »

Best-laid PLNs

I had planned to get some spare change counted, on our travels yesterday. But the banks don't operate on weekends. On the plus side, I got a new keyboard and mouse out of it so that Beloved and I can play a better quality of game together. The downside is that the spiffy new keyboard won't work with a mac.

Sigh.

The mouse looks pretty awesome, though. I just wish I knew how to change all its colours according to my whims.

Read more »

Squeeful news!

The best band in the world, Steam Powered Giraffe, have announced that they're printing one of their albums on Vinyl!

Yes, folks, you too could own a bright yellow LP of Music From Steamworld Heist. Which the band is printing as a test subject, (a) to see whether or not this is a profitable venture, and (b) because that's the only album that will fit. All the others would be double albums or, in the case of The Vice Quadrant: A Space

Read more »

Don't Panic!

The best advice comes from Douglas Adams. The best snark comes from Terry Pratchett.

The nurse did finally turn up. Huzzah. Antibiotics administered, one more such dose before Beloved is on the pill form and life can return to something passing for normal.

The cleaners also came and now I have like $15 (not counting my change) to pay for all assorted noise. I'm going to get my silver coins counted after I'm done with my Instant, today. Maybe that will make

Read more »

Beloved is doing well

They're back from the hospital and currently overdue to get more IV antibiotics care of some mobile nurses who have yet to frikkin ring. They were supposed to ring at 7:30 this morning and have yet to say 'boo' to us.

It's gone past nine and I'm more than a little bit worried.

The good news is that the red has faded and so has the intense heat. The foot's still warm but we hope that that's a sign of healing

Read more »

We interrupt our scheduled ranting...

To deliver something in the degree of bad news. My Beloved is in hospital -don't panic!- they're getting some IV antibiotics and, once that's done, all should be well.

You know how I am about qualifiers, so you can guess I'm trying to keep calm about this noise and failing.

The Story...

Thursday evening. Beloved takes their shoes off and reveals an absolutely NASTY welt that looks, to me, like a spider bite. No matter what we tell foreigners, there are

Read more »

Tropes I despise: Fridged Women

I gave y'all a link to the trope, yesterday, but... in case you missed it, the main goal of the trope is to do horrible things to women because their man character needs motivation.

Or because they couldn't write a stable relationship to save their own butts.

Or because they have no clue how to write a woman once she stops being a love interest and starts being a life partner.

Last iteration of this that I encountered was... just before this

Read more »