Inside the little plastic castle

My iPad is always within reach, but it doesn't have cellular service. Could I get a mobile hotspot and use it as a phone?
( more details )

I first saw Fies' work with Mom's Cancer, a sweet and terrifying tour of hope and loss (now available free online):
http://www.gocomics.com/moms-cancer/2015/04/20

He and his wife just lost almost everything in the Santa Rosa fires blazing in central California, and he's made an almost instantaneous comic about it:

A Fire Story.
https://brianfies.blogspot.ca/2017/10/a-fire-story-complete.html
(thanks to umadoshi for the link)

I've started to make a transcript/image description:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aUa58clWMZzNEqZkdGhzttH6wTiTEO_m1P9aZ_oqA3Q/edit?usp=sharing

Ping me here if you'd like to help create this.

Hey, it's thefridayfive, and I came up with these questions (and why am I finding them so hard to answer?)

1) What is the first song you remember from your childhood?
"Never Mind the Why and Wherefore" from Gilbert and Sullivan's 19th C operetta Pirates of Penzance.
song and lyrics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYOCPeQvlB4

2) What is the first music you purchased with your own money?
Joni Mitchell's Song to a Seagull, 1968. I think I wore out the grooves.

3) What's a piece of music that you know by heart?
"How Can I Keep From Singing" happens a lot in the shower.

4) What's a song that makes you turn off the music right away?
"Me & Julio Down by the Schoolyard"

5) And why?
Lived below someone who played that song 20 times a day for a week.

What We Lost: Undoing The Fairy Tale Narrative Of Adoption by Liz Latty

Until reading this piece, I’d thoughtlessly hummed along to the stereotype that adoptions are about how wonderful the adoptive parents are.

( read it now )

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I’m Done Debating Racism With the Devil: White people playing devil’s advocate in conversations about race are completely counterproductive to actual progress. by Maya Rupert

“Devil’s advocate” arguments have always annoyed and angered me, but this essay explained why.

( now you can too )

Questions borrowed from grrlpup's entry https://grrlpup.dreamwidth.org/49196.html

What’s a good movie for October that has nothing to do with monsters or Halloween?

I'm fond of Jodie Foster's HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS. While it's set at a US Thanksgiving weekend, I like to think it provides a firm base course for visiting family in the months to come.

What’s a good couple of songs for October that have nothing to do with monsters or Halloween?

Joni Mitchell's "Urge for Going," music & lyrics: http://jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=71

Charlie Maguire's "Fall is Here" lyrics: http://www.charliemaguire.com/FallIs.html music: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/dhbdrake11 first track

What are some reasons to love October?

Liminal days when the ground is still warm and the colder Chinook winds make an ethereal atmosphere, with only-in-October lighting recalling Maxfield Parrish. Clouds coming from all directions. Fresh apples!

Radio stations sometimes call this month Rocktober, doing special playlists or giveaways in celebration of rock music. What would be a better rhyming name for this month, and how might it be celebrated?

I think Walktober, because the weather most often provides temperatures cool enough for me to walk outside, and landscapes colorful enough to want to go.

What would be a good holiday to establish in October for those U.S. states not commemorating Columbus Day?

I'd love to have a Harvest Day, where we could learn and share where our food comes from, who grows it, picks it, processes it, cooks it and enjoys it.

How did you choose your LJ/DW username? I'm the same name everywhere! My first name is Jesse, my last name starts with K, and I'm old enough to have heard "Murray the K" on the radio.

What has been your favorite day this year and why? WisCon Saturday is always my favorite. I've reconnected with many of my annual friends, I've attended some good panels, and there are two more days left.
Also, my birthday was particularly sweet this year, thanks to your lovely comments.

What is your favorite film you've seen in the past year and why?
Arrival -- the aliens' language was truly alien, and beautiful. The cinematography was novel and fascinating.

What is your favorite book you've read in the past year and why?
Word by Word -- Kory Stamper. Details what lexicographers do. I truly LOLed twice every page.

You get to program a half-hour of music videos on MTV. What videos to you pick?
not fluent enough in MTV to answer this question. But I really loved HELP! (the Beatles' full-length music video)

I didn't find this answer on a quick search of Mobilereads.com forum, so I thought I'd share. I read on my iPad in the Kobo app. I buy my ebooks from Kobo because they have a deal with the American Booksellers Association; when I buy a book there Room of One's Own gets a 15% cut. ( why & how step by step  )

This is a 10,000-year rabbit hole!

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) was designed to store radioactive waste in Nevada. The storage area would not be safe to enter until 10,000 years had passed. Several groups of smart people came together to design warning messages that could outlive our civilization and protect future explorers. These designers knew they couldn't rely on any current language surviving that long, so they worked on landscape designs that project "this is toxic waste, don't mess!" (  audio/text background and four fanfics )

One of the forbidding-landscape proposals is incorporated into California, a meh dystopian novel published by a non-genre writer in 2014. If the WIPP project follows up on the experts' suggestions, elements of those proposal should be showing up in pop culture for millennia.

The WIPP-fic tag: http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Expert%20Judgment%20on%20Markers%20to%20Deter%20Inadvertent%20Human%20Intrusion*d*dd%20-%20Sandia%20Labs/works ( WIPP Discussions on Metafilter: )

Kim Nielsen is a disability historian. Her one-volume A Disability History of the United States provides an overview of living with disability in these colonies from founding to 1990. What particularly interested me is how non-white-male bodies were defined as disabled, and then how the divisions changed.

http://www.beacon.org/A-Disability-History-of-the-United-States-P836.aspx

On Worldcat in print, braille, and ebook

On her author blog, her essay "God’s Real Name: On Rescues, Ableism, and Unexpected Empathy" explores her reaction to a homeless man who blesses her.

begin quote
My own ableism, my own class squeamishness, and bigotry, my interpretation of his religiosity as distasteful insanity, had led me to dismiss the man. I had excluded him from our joint rescue plan--indeed, had understood him as something to be rescued from--and ignored his offer to gift me with help and rescue.
quote ends

http://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2014/03/gods-real-name-on-rescues-ableism-and-unexpected-empathy.html

Seven described photos inside

( click for pix and prose )