vital question
Apr. 8th, 2026 04:45 pmWhat is the name of the hockey team from ancient Uruk?
the importance of being puzzled
Apr. 1st, 2026 08:38 pmPerhaps in celebration of the National Theatre at Home production, The Daily Spell has switched from telling an original fantasy story to encoding quotations from The Importance of Being Earnest.
I wasn't sure about the change, but there is something satisfying in teasing out the familiar lines, and it isn't any more difficult, if you are familiar with Wilde's cadences or his epigrams.
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I wasn't sure about the change, but there is something satisfying in teasing out the familiar lines, and it isn't any more difficult, if you are familiar with Wilde's cadences or his epigrams.
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Happy Trans Day of Visibility! 25 years this TDOV. Trans health care saves lives!
Thank you, universe, for the chance to become middle-aged and wear goofy hockey jerseys. Help me make it so that the ones who come after me have the same chance, and better.
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PS I could say a lot of other things, but then we'd never get out of here.
What team do you play for?
Mar. 30th, 2026 09:46 amI'm not saying I'm ordering more book-themed hockey jerseys, although the manufacturer did send me a 30% off coupon.
But if I were, what are some good goofy literary team names? Any genre, any joke. Maybe leaning towards classics.
Like even just "Readers" or "Poets" or "Critics" is fun (to me) when sportsified into that jersey script. Or "Weirdos".
[ETA: Now that I think of it, political ideas are good, too. "No Kings" instead of Kings, etc.]
(Look, I need something to teach in this summer. Baggy cropped trousers and theme jerseys. That seems like earth people clothing, right?)
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But if I were, what are some good goofy literary team names? Any genre, any joke. Maybe leaning towards classics.
Like even just "Readers" or "Poets" or "Critics" is fun (to me) when sportsified into that jersey script. Or "Weirdos".
[ETA: Now that I think of it, political ideas are good, too. "No Kings" instead of Kings, etc.]
(Look, I need something to teach in this summer. Baggy cropped trousers and theme jerseys. That seems like earth people clothing, right?)
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Here's the thing I've been helping to organize! Just picked up my posters for distro today.
A blurb:
Come celebrate the Rachel Reid book that started the whole phenomenon. Attend Victoria Festival of Authors' spring fundraiser at the Sports View Lounge above Oak Bay Rec on May 8th (7-9 pm). There will be burlesque, drag, and 🌶🌶🌶🌶 readings from real-life Victoria residents who have broken barriers around gender and sexuality in Canadian sports. Even better than the cottage!
Ticket link is here.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Thanks to
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
contrarywise for the title!more stumbling through ancient poetry
Mar. 19th, 2026 09:48 amAs usual, true scholars, please forgive my dilettante's sense of discovery over things you have always known.
When searching for some examples of "pleasing the heart" as erotic joy, as persovay's information, I arrived at this (in the ETCSL).
( A love song of Shu-Suen )
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1. Well, a balbale, but the immediate internet is of limited use in defining this except as a form that uses variety in repetition.
2. For those interested, the transliterated Sumerian given for this phrase is dcu-dsuen cag4 dmu-ul-lil2-la2-ke4 ba-ze2-be2-en-na-ju10.
I assume the subscript numbers refer to different versions of the cuneiform character. I dunno about the superscript d.
When searching for some examples of "pleasing the heart" as erotic joy, as per
sovay's information, I arrived at this (in the ETCSL).( A love song of Shu-Suen )
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1. Well, a balbale, but the immediate internet is of limited use in defining this except as a form that uses variety in repetition.
2. For those interested, the transliterated Sumerian given for this phrase is dcu-dsuen cag4 dmu-ul-lil2-la2-ke4 ba-ze2-be2-en-na-ju10.
I assume the subscript numbers refer to different versions of the cuneiform character. I dunno about the superscript d.
Poem Post: Tracy Fuad, "Object Exercise"
Mar. 16th, 2026 11:31 amThis comes from Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora (2025, Ed. Holly Mason Badra), which I am reading and getting much from.
Object Exercise
First you must gather the objects.
Open the polish and polish each object
until every object is coded in polish,
a thin film that takes on the shape
of the object. Then dissect every
object with a circumstantial blade.
When the object is fully dissected,
remake it, but more in your image.
Then use concise scissors to prune
the object, removing what wilts
or yellows. Turn up the object
sound. Then dissect again. Hold
each piece to check for resistance:
if it withers, it's an object.
If it's shudders, it's a subject.
Object Exercise
First you must gather the objects.
Open the polish and polish each object
until every object is coded in polish,
a thin film that takes on the shape
of the object. Then dissect every
object with a circumstantial blade.
When the object is fully dissected,
remake it, but more in your image.
Then use concise scissors to prune
the object, removing what wilts
or yellows. Turn up the object
sound. Then dissect again. Hold
each piece to check for resistance:
if it withers, it's an object.
If it's shudders, it's a subject.
Today's poem
Mar. 10th, 2026 09:00 amThe raccoons are fight-dancing, upright,
with outraged, horrible noises.
The night is illegible,
the streetlights dead staves.
You move into each orbit of darkness
like an extinction.
Time the storyteller is tired.
She begins many stories
but loses track of the endings.
What will happen to the angry raccoons?
In the morning, count the cats,
count the birds, count the worms,
count the earth.
No doubt we will find all the endings
in the end.
with outraged, horrible noises.
The night is illegible,
the streetlights dead staves.
You move into each orbit of darkness
like an extinction.
Time the storyteller is tired.
She begins many stories
but loses track of the endings.
What will happen to the angry raccoons?
In the morning, count the cats,
count the birds, count the worms,
count the earth.
No doubt we will find all the endings
in the end.
important vulture updates
Feb. 27th, 2026 11:01 pmDid you know vultures are sexually monomorphic? Females and males look so much alike that it's difficult to sex them unless you personally watch one lay an egg (and even then bird genes are delightfully unpredictable). Just another awesome vulture fact I learned from the raptor centre insta.
Further, condors (aka Really Big Vultures) can reproduce via parthenogenesis. Here are some excellent queer bird stickers. I have ordered the asexual condor and the trans kookaburra.
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Further, condors (aka Really Big Vultures) can reproduce via parthenogenesis. Here are some excellent queer bird stickers. I have ordered the asexual condor and the trans kookaburra.
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It occurs to me that some folks might want to know about CAIABB (Canadian Authors and Illustrators Against Book Bans) and even, you know, join. But I keep forgetting to bump it here.
In the wake of US Supreme Court reinforcement of the ban on children's books that discuss LGBTQ+ and racialized experiences, my pals Kari Jones and Robin Stevenson founded Canadian Authors and Illustrators Against Book Bans.
Robin's book about an adorable puppy at a pride parade was the target of a particularly nasty spew of vitriol. Robin is perhaps the kindest, most generous person in the world, and she gets incredible amounts of hate for making affirming books for queer kids and families.
There's a Linktree here, but most of the action is on Instagram.
(ETA:bibliofile points out that they are also on Bluesky.)
Note: CAIABB is not directly affiliated with the American organization Authors Against Book Bans, but they cooperate with similar orgs, like PEN.
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In the wake of US Supreme Court reinforcement of the ban on children's books that discuss LGBTQ+ and racialized experiences, my pals Kari Jones and Robin Stevenson founded Canadian Authors and Illustrators Against Book Bans.
Robin's book about an adorable puppy at a pride parade was the target of a particularly nasty spew of vitriol. Robin is perhaps the kindest, most generous person in the world, and she gets incredible amounts of hate for making affirming books for queer kids and families.
There's a Linktree here, but most of the action is on Instagram.
(ETA:
bibliofile points out that they are also on Bluesky.)Note: CAIABB is not directly affiliated with the American organization Authors Against Book Bans, but they cooperate with similar orgs, like PEN.
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A new series of Poetry Unbound has begun, and gorgeously, with Anishinaabe poet Kimberly Blaeser's "my journal records the vestiture of doppelgangers."
“my journal records the vestiture of doppelgangers”
Kimblerly Blaeser
i.
Remember how the loon chick climbs to the mother’s back.
Oh, checkerboard bed and lifted wing—oh, tiny gray passenger
who settles: eyes drooping closed, webbed foot lifted like a flag!
Each day, each week, I write missives—Mayflies' transparent wings
a stained glass—fluttering across the surface of lake. An impermanence.
Imagos who transform: molt made glitter as splayed bodies on water.
I write the red crown, mad V of vulture-wings drying in morning sun.
I record red squirrel swimming (yes! swimming) across a small channel.
ii.
I barely breathe watching the narrow body (a mere slit of motion)
dark and steady like all mysterious—paddle, paddle, and arrive
now climb bedraggled and spent onto the small safety of a floating log.
It rests. We catch our breath. Now it scurries ahead to the other log end.
Here my journal stutters with a squirrel story bigger than words:
Unfathomably, it plunges back into blue chance—into uncharted.
We are never done, it says, with a body tiny enough to know.
The world is large, it says, with a courage I am greedy to learn.
iii.
Praise here all fabulous unwritten. Each shimmer of spent body,
journey from rest to blue next. Who, I ask, is the blissful beaver
devouring each yellow water lily if not our doppelganger?
Continually, I feel paws pulling, mouth filled with flower lust—
what little rooms are words in these seasons of plenty.
* * * * * *
Pádraig Ó Tuama's commentary is, as always, tender, attentive, and personal. He seems very taken by the squirrel (as who would not be?).
It's interesting that he glosses the "imago" in section i as theological, the Imago Dei. I read it first literally as a phase of insect development, and then psychoanalytically as an internalized image of an idealized self based on the Other -- but it strikes me that this second reading probably derives from Ó Tuama's source, Lacan having been raised within Catholicism.
I like Blaeser's use of "doppelganger," how slightly off-kilter and irreducible it is, how it makes the images not just celebratory but metaphysical and eerie - ties back into that reading of "imago."
What do you hear?
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“my journal records the vestiture of doppelgangers”
Kimblerly Blaeser
i.
Remember how the loon chick climbs to the mother’s back.
Oh, checkerboard bed and lifted wing—oh, tiny gray passenger
who settles: eyes drooping closed, webbed foot lifted like a flag!
Each day, each week, I write missives—Mayflies' transparent wings
a stained glass—fluttering across the surface of lake. An impermanence.
Imagos who transform: molt made glitter as splayed bodies on water.
I write the red crown, mad V of vulture-wings drying in morning sun.
I record red squirrel swimming (yes! swimming) across a small channel.
ii.
I barely breathe watching the narrow body (a mere slit of motion)
dark and steady like all mysterious—paddle, paddle, and arrive
now climb bedraggled and spent onto the small safety of a floating log.
It rests. We catch our breath. Now it scurries ahead to the other log end.
Here my journal stutters with a squirrel story bigger than words:
Unfathomably, it plunges back into blue chance—into uncharted.
We are never done, it says, with a body tiny enough to know.
The world is large, it says, with a courage I am greedy to learn.
iii.
Praise here all fabulous unwritten. Each shimmer of spent body,
journey from rest to blue next. Who, I ask, is the blissful beaver
devouring each yellow water lily if not our doppelganger?
Continually, I feel paws pulling, mouth filled with flower lust—
what little rooms are words in these seasons of plenty.
* * * * * *
Pádraig Ó Tuama's commentary is, as always, tender, attentive, and personal. He seems very taken by the squirrel (as who would not be?).
It's interesting that he glosses the "imago" in section i as theological, the Imago Dei. I read it first literally as a phase of insect development, and then psychoanalytically as an internalized image of an idealized self based on the Other -- but it strikes me that this second reading probably derives from Ó Tuama's source, Lacan having been raised within Catholicism.
I like Blaeser's use of "doppelganger," how slightly off-kilter and irreducible it is, how it makes the images not just celebratory but metaphysical and eerie - ties back into that reading of "imago."
What do you hear?
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Poem post: stunbone
Jan. 8th, 2026 01:39 pmWhere is there to sit exactly
If everything is shining on me
Friend, you have buttsense
you have stone buns, as your grandma says
Here in the driftwood feeling sundrunk, sunbent
Sensate among the ebb tones of the sea
I thought you said stun bone
You draw with a stick among the ebb stones
The tide wriggles up the sand grooves
Your breathing makes the subtones shimmer
You draw the water up to bait our shoes
Just for the craft of it, just because you can do it
Like a gull riding on the sky tide
Laughing at our temporary ruin
* * * * * *
Every morning very nearly without fail I solve the Merriam-Webster Blossom puzzle, and then I re-solve it to see if I can get a higher score, and if I'm not careful this becomes a kind of intellectual busywork I can use to distract myself from actual writing.
So a thing I'm trying to do (among all the other things) is to use the puzzle as a prompt. Inevitably each group of letters generates a semantic zone. Real and nonce words produce themselves. The letterset today was BENOSTU.
Here's a less complete poem from Sunday (letterset EINRTVW):
The riverine interview of winter,
that inept vintner: cool distillate
interrogates the view, shreds and repurposes it,
turns window to vitrine
where the morning light, when it comes,
cold citrine, tobacco stain,
will ennerve us, animate the inert twin
...Not sure what I planned to do with that twin, but I will let you know.
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If everything is shining on me
Friend, you have buttsense
you have stone buns, as your grandma says
Here in the driftwood feeling sundrunk, sunbent
Sensate among the ebb tones of the sea
I thought you said stun bone
You draw with a stick among the ebb stones
The tide wriggles up the sand grooves
Your breathing makes the subtones shimmer
You draw the water up to bait our shoes
Just for the craft of it, just because you can do it
Like a gull riding on the sky tide
Laughing at our temporary ruin
* * * * * *
Every morning very nearly without fail I solve the Merriam-Webster Blossom puzzle, and then I re-solve it to see if I can get a higher score, and if I'm not careful this becomes a kind of intellectual busywork I can use to distract myself from actual writing.
So a thing I'm trying to do (among all the other things) is to use the puzzle as a prompt. Inevitably each group of letters generates a semantic zone. Real and nonce words produce themselves. The letterset today was BENOSTU.
Here's a less complete poem from Sunday (letterset EINRTVW):
The riverine interview of winter,
that inept vintner: cool distillate
interrogates the view, shreds and repurposes it,
turns window to vitrine
where the morning light, when it comes,
cold citrine, tobacco stain,
will ennerve us, animate the inert twin
...Not sure what I planned to do with that twin, but I will let you know.
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Because when I make fan art, I like it to be as obscure as possible
Sure, it looks like a linocut of a loon but really it's a symbol of queer hockey transcendence
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[ETA: I want to use some of the shimmering ink* to create the iridescent effect of the black feathers and to do the red eye -- painting ink on overtop of the print didn't do what I wanted, so maybe painting it right onto the printing block somehow?]
* specifically, Octopus Fluids' Witch, pine green with purple sheen
Cards! (Emergency printmaking)
Dec. 22nd, 2025 10:49 pmThank you, james for the excellent dinosaur card!
I've been too exhausted to do any of the semi-bespoke painting I half-promised over the summer, but I had a last-minute compulsion to make hand-printed cards because anything that looks like work went into it makes me appear marginally better.
You see? the cards say. An Effort.
I don't mind how they turned out. Sort of "the Dove of Peace is pissed and wants you to get your shit together."
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james for the excellent dinosaur card! I've been too exhausted to do any of the semi-bespoke painting I half-promised over the summer, but I had a last-minute compulsion to make hand-printed cards because anything that looks like work went into it makes me appear marginally better.
You see? the cards say. An Effort.
I don't mind how they turned out. Sort of "the Dove of Peace is pissed and wants you to get your shit together."
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The Daily Spell
Dec. 18th, 2025 10:49 pmI stumbled across this well-spell-crafted game whilst wondering around itch.io: The Daily Spell, a story about a sudden surge in magical beast manifestations in a fantasy city, told through daily word puzzles that resolve into the headlines of brief newspaper articles that advance the story. Quite delightful and very well done.
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as widely requested
Dec. 16th, 2025 04:50 pmThis was the best of the gingerbread cuneiform. I put the good ones in the freezer to give to pals tomorrow at brunch and will eat the rest, or something. This is one of the maple syrup tables, which were lighter in colour and held the clarity slightly better. (More water, therefore harder texture? Not sure.)
I copied characters from Andrew George's excellent renderings of the tablets, as any photos I looked at were way too unclear. However, I freely skipped tricky characters or sections. Sîn-lēqi-unninni would be pissed.
ETA: Oh, I believe this text is taken from a fragment of the third tablet.
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I copied characters from Andrew George's excellent renderings of the tablets, as any photos I looked at were way too unclear. However, I freely skipped tricky characters or sections. Sîn-lēqi-unninni would be pissed.
ETA: Oh, I believe this text is taken from a fragment of the third tablet.
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Weird. (a game)
Dec. 12th, 2025 10:53 amHey, I posted my game! You can find it here.
Playtests welcome. It is a solo storytelling/journalling/story creation horror game. It uses a simplified version of solitaire to drive the story.
[ETA] From the writeup:
And yet the sun rises.
Weird. is a horror game about a flawed protagonist confronting their worst nightmares.
I, a troubled character, am alone on the longest night of the year.
You, a storyteller, use prompts and the inevitability of card order to tell a story for me, driven by fear and fate.
I am tormented by unfinished business, which, as you know, is a great way to become the target of supernatural forces.
Enjoy bringing about my nearly inevitable and almost certainly miserable end, but also maybe final moment of grace, redemption, or transformation, in Weird.
* * * * * *
Title-wise, I went with Weird, as an archaic synonym for fate, styled with a period: Weird.
I liked the suggestion of Patience quite a bit, but this isn't really a game about being patient. I'd want waiting, duration, something like that, in the mechanics somewhere. Actually, maybe I'll try to make such a game, since I still seem to have Game Fever. Maybe it's to play in waiting rooms.
As predicted, the game jam I made has not posted to the Itch calendar, so I am the only person who knows about it or has submitted anything. But I tried!
( Thoughts on the possibilities of this mechanic )
* * * * * *
Qua writing tool, I find the game a pretty decent method for creating something between a detailed outline and a rough story draft.
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Playtests welcome. It is a solo storytelling/journalling/story creation horror game. It uses a simplified version of solitaire to drive the story.
[ETA] From the writeup:
And yet the sun rises.
Weird. is a horror game about a flawed protagonist confronting their worst nightmares.
I, a troubled character, am alone on the longest night of the year.
You, a storyteller, use prompts and the inevitability of card order to tell a story for me, driven by fear and fate.
I am tormented by unfinished business, which, as you know, is a great way to become the target of supernatural forces.
Enjoy bringing about my nearly inevitable and almost certainly miserable end, but also maybe final moment of grace, redemption, or transformation, in Weird.
* * * * * *
Title-wise, I went with Weird, as an archaic synonym for fate, styled with a period: Weird.
I liked the suggestion of Patience quite a bit, but this isn't really a game about being patient. I'd want waiting, duration, something like that, in the mechanics somewhere. Actually, maybe I'll try to make such a game, since I still seem to have Game Fever. Maybe it's to play in waiting rooms.
As predicted, the game jam I made has not posted to the Itch calendar, so I am the only person who knows about it or has submitted anything. But I tried!
( Thoughts on the possibilities of this mechanic )
* * * * * *
Qua writing tool, I find the game a pretty decent method for creating something between a detailed outline and a rough story draft.
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(Repost) Atmospheric River
Dec. 10th, 2025 09:10 pmAs we are once again fording the atmospheric river, here's the villanelle (!!) I wrote about the one in 2022:
(Climate Change Villanelle)
After an image by K.
Consider the atmospheric river
as a dragon, slithering through peri-
apocalyptic skies. The end is never
reached of all this rain. Its teeth of silver
gnaw the bones of men who refused boldly
to consider the atmospheric river
as a dragon, not just as the weather,
winning us the wages of false bravery:
apocalyptic skies. The end is never-
ending. Consider the dragon, glitter-
ing, greedy, cruel and wise; now carefully
consider the atmospheric river
as an alternative to the wither-
ing coils of smoke, wildfires' choking, hazy
apocalyptic skies. The end is never
quite what you expect or would prefer.
Drink if you wish, smoke up, get high, daily
consider the atmospheric river,
apocalyptic skies. The end is nigh.
(Climate Change Villanelle)
After an image by K.
Consider the atmospheric river
as a dragon, slithering through peri-
apocalyptic skies. The end is never
reached of all this rain. Its teeth of silver
gnaw the bones of men who refused boldly
to consider the atmospheric river
as a dragon, not just as the weather,
winning us the wages of false bravery:
apocalyptic skies. The end is never-
ending. Consider the dragon, glitter-
ing, greedy, cruel and wise; now carefully
consider the atmospheric river
as an alternative to the wither-
ing coils of smoke, wildfires' choking, hazy
apocalyptic skies. The end is never
quite what you expect or would prefer.
Drink if you wish, smoke up, get high, daily
consider the atmospheric river,
apocalyptic skies. The end is nigh.
What is best?
1. A patch with just the text "Tablet XII is Canon"
2. A patch with this text and the shape of the broken tablet above or below it
3. A patch that's in the shape of the broken tablet with the text written on the tablet?
Font would be vaguely cuneiform-y but legible.
For aesthetics, so far as I can tell with very sketchy research the best Tablet XII fragment is shaped kind of like this:
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1. A patch with just the text "Tablet XII is Canon"
2. A patch with this text and the shape of the broken tablet above or below it
3. A patch that's in the shape of the broken tablet with the text written on the tablet?
Font would be vaguely cuneiform-y but legible.
For aesthetics, so far as I can tell with very sketchy research the best Tablet XII fragment is shaped kind of like this:
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Winter Solstice Haunting TTRPG Game Jam
Dec. 8th, 2025 09:20 amHey, I made a little game jam, mostly so that I had a jam whereat to submit my own game:
https://itch.io/jam/winter-solstice-haunting-ttrpg-jam
Make something and I'll try to round folks up to play it!
https://itch.io/jam/winter-solstice-haunting-ttrpg-jam
Make something and I'll try to round folks up to play it!