who only by moving can balance

... because I have just made P read it, and then we stayed up til 1am talking about it, and I haven't talked about it here yet because Too Many Feelings, which I will now attempt to sketch.

(Spoilers within!)

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jedusaur told me about it, of course, and staranise has just started writing fic about it, which in turn means that I've been flailing about headcanon.

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I DON'T EVEN GO HERE, etc etc etc.

Tuesday afternoon I went to Otherworlds with sebastienne -- an exhibition of space landscape photography -- and it was so good, people, so good. It was so good I started crying less than fifteen seconds after entering (good little space robot). I accidentally left with a scarf and two postcards. I am going to drag me_and along and let him wander the hall while I sit and cry over my favourites. I am willing to take absolutely anyone else along at all to wander the hall while I... sit and cry over my favourites, with breaks for getting loud and overenthusiastic at you about how geology is fucking FANTASTIC, okay, BECAUSE, right, [a totally relevant and utterly enthralling fact]. The curation is brilliant (you get to see reflections of other photographs in the black backgrounds of the ones you're looking at). I just -- I had a lot of feelings, okay, and then they leaked out of my face.

(And then we went and recuperated in the Members' Room for fifteen minutes before braving the thronged hallways of It's The Natural History Museum And It's The Easter Holidays once more, and a small child sat thoughtfully on the sofa said to its mother, "I wish the WHOLE WORLD was made of candy... except for us," and then in the queue for the accessible loo I had a fantastic chat with another three small children about why I use a wheelchair, and how it's polite to ask people before you touch their wheelchairs, and how they could give me a quick push to see how easy it was, and how I could do wheelies. OFFICIALLY COOLEST GROWN-UP IN THE TOILET, okay.)

And then! An Evening Of Unnecessary Detail! This month's -- it is a monthly thing -- featured Tom Scott (talking about emoji), Morgan and West (the time-travelling magicians), and a couple of other people sebastienne and shortcipher were actively interested in, I think; it was a show in three thirds, each third being subdivided into three acts; there was one act I Actively Disliked (a whole bunch of misc oppression-perpetuating not-actually-very-funny jokes strung together as a thinly-disguised ad for an upcoming show), but the other eight + MCing were great. I am now actively into Helen Arney and Marian Call (particularly Good Morning, Moon), and I also learned a great deal about how to cook in hotel rooms from georgeegg (it had not occurred to me that balancing a cereal bowl on top of the kettle would give you a double boiler, e.g.).

Meanwhile I have been reading a lot of excellent short fiction. Over the past few days I have particularly enjoyed John Chu's Hold-Time Violations (the politics of physics; content note for ill mothers) and Restore the Heart into Love (orthography); SL Huang's By Degrees and Dilatory Time (transhumanism and aids and vision; content note for cancer and surgery), and the diptych Hunting Monsters (content note for abuse) and Fighting Demons (... I mean this also has content notes but I am struggling to word them); and I have finally got around to starting T Kingfisher's The Raven & The Reindeer, which thus far I am finding very comforting.

And there is sunshine, and I am basking in it.

CN Lester is crowdfunding their new album, Come Home. I wasn't able to attend the first performance of it but I've heard the live recording: it's lush and lyrical and sharp, as all their work is, and is something I end up identifying with a lot, very frequently.

There's a pair of songs on their last album, one from the perspective of an audience member and one from the perspective of a performer. The former features the lyric I forgot my perpetual moving/because he marked time with a pen in his hand, which stills me and settles me and, well, it's not a wonder that fades with distance or knowing how it's done/it's hearing my thoughts, unspoken, on someone else's tongue: I have had that crush, more than once. The other -- well, the other is called You. That video has content notes for slurs and abuse, but it -- the pair together -- make me cry, every time.


Dave Hughes, about whom I am written before, has a memorial EP available for pre-order: all proceeds go to a specific charity (content notes: cancer; death).

and that's funny because I use it to help me manage health and executive dysfunction, get it.

Apps I am currently using (Android ecosystem), in case they are of use to other folk:

• my useless ex's timer for medications: I have it set up so that it counts down a four hour interval, sounds an alarm, and keeps sounding an alarm (through multiple snoozes) until I tell it I've actually taken my meds, at which point it starts counting down from four again. Some bugs and rather dated; I'm working (very intermittently) on bringing it up to date, and as matters stand you have to build it yourself, sorry. Permits multiple named timers.
  
• Clean Interval Timer for physio: I need to do 6 reps of 45 seconds each with brief breaks in between, and this makes that easy. Lets you configure whether it makes noises at you or not as auditory cue as well as the visual (useful for me because I'm working up to doing physio with my eyes closed); optionally keeps the screen awake while a timer is running (once you've finished a session, you then need to back-button away from the timer to make it stop keeping your screen awake; I mention this because it was non-intuitive to me). Permits multiple named timers.
  
• Chrono List is in fact what I use as an interval timer as of Feb 2016. I like how it handles sets less than how Clean Interval Timer does, but it handles multiple timers much better, alas.
  
• Depression Test adds up your PHQ-9 and keeps a record of previous scores plus dates. It's ad-free, uncluttered, and if you're testing as Ill it offers Helpful Links. Also available on other platforms.
  
• Clue for tracking periods: gender-neutral, scientifically solid (set up to facilitate thorough competent fertility tracking and is completely agnostic about whether this is for attempting or preventing conception), highly configurable as to what you track, gives you configurable reminders, 10/10 absolutely do recommend. Also available on other platforms.
  
• Swype + Dragon Dictate. I don't actually use Dragon on the AIDe but could hook it up to desktop-flavoured Dragon profile if I were that way inclined; good predictive text, and rapid easy switching between keyboard layouts. I have the minor frustration that it doesn't seem to exist in the specific keyboard theme I want (namely pale blue with alt keys) and I'm not yet up to learning how to make one (if third-party creations are even possible). Also available for other platforms.
  
• Regularly for shame-free reminders (with urgency indicator and historical record) of things that need doing, er, regularly. Things I have in there include physio, brushing my hair, meditating, wiping down the kitchen surfaces, changing my bedlinen, pumping up my tyres, and cleaning/oiling my penknife. It is great for not having to remember whether I've done something recently or when it needs to happen next, and is also great for giving me the hit of Ticking A Thing Off on things that would ideally happen daily.
  
• Wunderlist for more general/less-repeating todo. Still slightly dubious about it but it's definitely helping some; will doubtless write more about it at some point. Also available on other platforms.

Recipe in fact by John Meecham, one of his chefs; features in the book Jerusalem, which actually made me cry a bit when I read through it at aella_irene's earlier this week (because homefood, and because unity, and because all sorts of things).

I in fact had been craving rice pudding for a little while, long enough at least that I bought some pudding rice a few weeks ago and hadn't got around to doing anything with it; and we had some double cream in the fridge from my profiterfails a week or so ago, and a four-pint flagon of milk that needed using up. Ergo.

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Today's Strong Female Protagonist (it's a webcomic) carries a content warning for allusions to all the terrible things people do to each other, and I suppose for all the terrible things they do to themselves, and it's probably more effective in the context of the storyarc leading up to this point but it's nonetheless really good, okay, and I encourage you to check it out.

Er, kab, said sgsabbage after my last post on the topic, do you actually like Frank Turner? I can't tell.

Well, something to that effect.

AHAHAHAHAHA, I said.

swaldman noted he'd liked I Still Believe (iirc) when it was performed at the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, or something (I was actually completely oblivious to the fact the guy was performing at that point, but then I was kind of screamingly crazy and also in Edinburgh at the time), but hadn't particularly cared for the others or found them memorable.

And that, you see, is the crux of the matter, and it is this: Frank Turner has written one good song and a lot of variations on it, and he's also written a lot of intensely misogynist bro-y crap. (For my go-to example of the latter, look up the lyrics to Worse Things Happen At Sea, which has content notes for threats of stalking and domestic violence.)

The good song, to be clear, is I Still Believe, and all the songs that sound like it: the rock-anthem paeans to holding fierce & tight & viciously exulting to life (let's grab life by the throat/and then live it to pieces), with an endearingly misguided veneer of assertions that any of this shit is meaningfully punk rock. It's misogynist around the edges, because fundamentally there is absolutely no fucking way I would last longer than five minutes in a pub with this guy before I was yelling at him that the fucking reason he's stuck on I have to say that, honestly,/I still haven't found/the person who can take the strain/.../so I'll do this on my own is that he's straight and he doesn't think of women as people, and he doesn't want a partner he wants a Manic Pixie fucking Dream Girl, and perhaps if he could think of higher praise than Tre's the safest girl I know and if he could conceive of women having complex interiorities with motivations beyond being the addressee of but darling, if you're there, gentle voice and soothing hands,/to quiet my despair, to shore up all my plans he'd have more satisfying relationships--

-- all that aside, right, I Still Believe, and here's a run-down of its variants.
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But seriously there are so many other people you could spend time and money on instead. The Indelicates, obviously, though they don't particularly do much of a line in grimly-clinging-on-to-positivity-rock-anthems (and the one they have written I can't share with you, sorry, but they're perfect anyway and you should listen to them); Freshlyground (start with Doo Be Doo and Air Hostess); Matt Fishel, particularly Testament (NSFW music video; it's ok to keep your head held high/and it's ok to doubt yourself sometimes/and it's ok to fall in love), and if you're into Orphan Black please watch this then tell me that Felix isn't into the guy; Muncie Girls (Feel It Soon); everything by ONSIND. Yeah.

#smashgenrebinaries

also special shout-out to the creme brulee van

Not Disabled... Enough! Accessible venues are a lie. Charming in parts & the performer was a sweetie; my main take-home, though, was that I really should get my act together to write a comedy show to take to Edinburgh next year.

Women's Hour, by Shit Theatre. YES YES YES. Content notes galore, but handled excellently and respectfully and it made me laugh a lot; the venue gets a solid 3.5/5 for accessibility, and the performers get a 5 as far as I'm concerned. Music-singing-physical theatre; we are contemplating designating Friday afternoon For Repeats and doing this again then along with Black.

Hearts of Folk. I was self-flyering for this one -- I was amused by the image and assumed it would be a bunch of folk music that the useless ex and I would quite enjoy and sebastienne would tolerate for the sake of watching our faces. ... IT WAS NOT FOLK MUSIC. It was, however, an excellent and loving pastiche of vicious music-scene gossip and folk in general. Absolutely delightful. Adored it. A+ self-flyering, would self-flyer again.

Rent (from New York). Holy SHIT I had never seen Rent before and was familiar with only one of the songs (and a filk of it at that). I. I. I started fucking bawling my eyes out (in the best possible way) partway through the first half, and continued bawling my eyes out all the way through the second, to the extent that enough of the actors noticed it that I was deemed In Need Of Hugs when they were going off after final bows. I. It was amazing. Beautiful singing, beautiful physical work, band in the pit jamming misc other shite during intros and breaks, beautiful set design given the constraints of the Fringe, yes yes yes fucking yes, maybe I will be more coherent about it on another occasion but basically yeS YES Y E S.

Saucy Jack & the Space Vixens. Right around the corner from where we're staying, and it had loud bass and brightly coloured lights and lots of glitter and was pleasantly mindless and pleasantly unabashedly cheerful and was a good way to wind down (provided not paying too much attention, ha) after the above, which, yeah, BAWLING. (I have decided I can only manage one show that makes me cry that much per day.)

ADDITIONAL SPECIAL BONUS MENTION TO Chapter 1 of Ancillary Mercy, which arrived in my e-mail today and which I read in the foyer while waiting to be let in to Rent, and promptly flailed about to anyone who would listen (vass, reply to come when it's not way past my bedtime and I am actually situated so as to have internet xx)

BY WHICH I MEAN

The Indelicates have just released Elevator Music (spot the URL it's worth it), or at least they've opened it up for pre-order -- and if you pre-order physical media they'll send you the digital album by return of e-mail.

And here's the thing, right -- I've listened to the singles, I've heard a couple of the tracks played at gigs, I've got my hands on two generations of demos, and I am still crying over this album. It's about (very loosely) human society as a network, and what happens if that network becomes self-aware, and cynicism about the space age(s), and being in love, and at least two of the tracks make me cry every single time, and I really really REALLY want these people to be able to afford to keep making music, so please please please consider checking it out.

And yes, I do in fact own the t-shirt that says I'm proud to be a part of the Indelicates' marketing strategy. I'm trying to work out what good-ESA-news-of-earlier means I can afford in terms of packages. (Probably I am going to wait until the lump sum hits then call it a present for having dealt with this shit.) But seriously, I love this band, I love their music, and here's a VR single for the song off this album that makes me cry most.