Rachel Manija Brown's Blog, page 90

Locke & Key # 2: Head Games, by Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez

This is the one with the head key, which gives you a literal look inside your mind. The concept could be done in other media, but the way it's done here can only be done in comics, with absolutely spectacular splash pages. It's a great idea and beautifully executed, with psychological insight and playfulness.

( Read more... )

Locke & Key, Vol. 2: Head Games[image error]

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Eat, Drink, and Make Merry Letter

Thank you for creating for me! If you have any questions, please check with the mods. I am a very easy recipient and will be delighted with whatever you write for me. I have no special requirements beyond what's specifically stated in my DNWs. I'm fine with all POVs (i.e., first, second, third), tenses, ratings, etc.

I would enjoy any art treats if any of my prompts inspire you visually.

My AO3 name is Edonohana.

I like food. A lot. For all of these prompts, I would enjoy descriptions of the food, whether it's delicious or enjoyed despite not being delicious or whether it's absolutely terrible. I also like hurt-comfort, action/adventure, domestic life, worldbuilding, evocative descriptions, camaraderie, loyalty, trauma recovery, learning to love again or trust again or enjoy life again, miniature things, and animals.

When a single character is listed as "So-and-So & None," it means I'd be happy with a solo story with them or one with them and ANY other character, including those I didn't prompt or characters not included in the tag set.

All requests are for either "sweet" or "sour." I am fine with any tone. I didn't request "spicy" for any because I'm not into food-as-sex-toy, but it's totally fine for stories to also include sex.

I have requested all of these canons before. All prompts in previous exchanges are still valid and welcomed if you can do them so they match the theme of this exchange. You can find them by clicking on the "fic exchange letter" tag.

( General DNWs )

( Dark Tower - Stephen King )

( Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin )

( The Long Walk - Richard Bachman )

( The Punisher (TV 2017 )

( Marvel Comics )

( Original Works )

( The Sandman (Comics) )

( The Stand - Stephen King )

( True Detective )

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rachelmanija @ 2020-06-01T11:04:00

Great editorial by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

"I don’t want to see stores looted or even buildings burn. But African Americans have been living in a burning building for many years, choking on the smoke as the flames burn closer and closer. Racism in America is like dust in the air. It seems invisible — even if you’re choking on it — until you let the sun in. Then you see it’s everywhere. As long as we keep shining that light, we have a chance of cleaning it wherever it lands. But we have to stay vigilant, because it’s always still in the air."

(I'm fine, don't worry about me.)

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Eat, Drink, and Make Merry: A Food & Drink Fic & Art Exchange

Since I had so much fun with Flash in the Pan, I was delighted to see another food-themed exchange pop up, Eat, Drink, and Make Merry. eatdrinkmakemerry .

This one is also low-pressure (500 word minimum) but has a longer writing period and different rules. You can nominate individual characters a la Yuletide, for instance, as well as pairings and groups. Sign-ups close June 12, and assignments are due July 19.

Nominations are open now, and there's lots of fun stuff in the tag set already. I see Little House in the Prairie, Prydain Chronicles, The Goldfinch, Hannibal (yikes), X-Men/New Mutants (under Marvel Comics), and Strawberry Shortcake - though I admit, I was a bit disappointed to see that was the 2003 TV series, not the dolls from the 80s. I really really wanted Blueberry Muffin when I was nine.

Also, my favorite for tag-browsing, Original Works.

Alien Who Can Eat Anything/Human Curious What Objects Taste Like if They Taste Good
Avant-Garde Food Truck Chef/Rival Traditional Food Truck Chef
Female Post-Apocalyptic Diner Cook/Female Gunslinger
Florist Specialising In Edible Plants/Molecular Gastronomist Who Prefers Animal Products
Guerrilla Vegetable Gardener/Confused Owner of Vacant Lot
Lonely Hermit & Hungry Wild Animals
Original Male Character & Sentient Candy Bar
Post-Apocalyptic Food Truck Owner/Hungry Wasteland Traveler


Who's joining me? Are there any canons that would be great for a food-centric exchange that haven't been nominated yet?

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Fraggle Rocks On Despite Quarantine

I thought you might enjoy this hilarious article about shooting Fraggle Rock in quarantine, with artists locking themselves in soundproof closets and flooding their neighbors' apartments. My friends Halle Stanford and Johnny Tartaglia are quoted!

Frankie Cordero, who voices Wembley, was working inside a closet that he attempted to soundproof with foam rubber.

“We have two very loud cats and they love scratching foam rubber so outside the closet, I had cats meowing trying to get to the foam,” he said.

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Flu, by Gina Kolata. Chapters 3-6

In my attempt to read a history of the 1918 influenza pandemic informed by modern knowledge of viruses, I have so far managed to read a hagiography of Great White Male scientists associated with Johns Hopkins plus some chapters on the 1918 pandemic (Barry), and an account of the search for the causes of the 1918 pandemic plus one chapter on its history and a long digression into the political fallout of the swine flu vaccination in America in 1976 (Kolata). Surely the book I thought I was going to read exists and I just haven't found it yet... right?

Kolata's book is a delightful antidote to Barry's endless chapters on Welch, whose sole contribution to the pandemic was a single field trip followed by getting it himself, and Lewis, who wasn't involved at all; she mentions them both to say that they were noted and notable, but did not contribute to knowledge of the causes of the pandemic. Bye-bye, Welch and Lewis!

Kolata has a fascinating account of efforts at the time of the pandemic and shortly afterward to figure out its causes. Very gross and often dubiously ethical efforts, involving spraying gunk from sick/recovered people's noses and mouths into healthy people's noses and mouths, in varying degrees of filtration, to see if it would get them sick.

An early American experiment with prisoners failed to get any of them sick. Barry details this but annoyingly does not explain why. Apparently it's still somewhat mysterious, but according to Kolata, the most likely explanation was that the prisoners had all been asymptomatically infected and so had immunity, or that the secretions from flu victims were collected too late in the disease process, when the virus itself was mostly gone and the people were dying of the cytokine storm reaction to it, and so were no longer infectious. Or a combination of both.

In 1918 - 1919 three Japanese doctors performed an experiment which Barry doesn't mention at all, choosing instead to spend chapters detailing the efforts of Johns Hopkins scientists which went nowhere. The Japanese doctors experimented on healthy subjects, including volunteer doctors and nurses. They filtered sputum and blood from flu victims to remove all bacteria, then introduced the filtrate to their subjects in multiple ways. They did the same with bacteria extracted from flu victims. The results were exactly what you'd expect if the cause was a virus: the no-bacteria filtrates gave all the subjects influenza, and the bacteria-only didn't. Subjects who'd already had the flu didn't get sick regardless.

These results were so convincing that... the world at large decided they were too neat to be believed. 100% of the subjects got infected from hypothetical viruses, and 0% from bacteria. No way!

[world's biggest facepalm.]

Later experiments determined that ferrets can get influenza. The notes on how difficult ferrets were to work with are pretty hilarious. Apparently lots of scientists got bitten and possibly got ferrets down their trousers before they threw up their hands and anesthetized the ferrets before trying to stick things in their mouths and up their noses. This work led to a series of experiments looking at connections between flus that can infect humans, pigs, ferrets, and finally mice. (Most animals don't get or transmit human influenzas.) In 1934 several groups of scientists working independently found that swine flu and human flu viruses are not identical, but are related; antibodies from one can provide partial immunity to the other.

Meanwhile, the 1918 influenza seemed to have vanished. But there had been a swine flu outbreak at the same time, and that was still around. And survivors of the 1918 pandemic all had antibodies to the current swine flu virus, while people born after the pandemic did not. So, was the current swine flu virus in fact the 1918 pandemic virus, mutated to no longer infect humans and living on in pigs?

Kolata then has a very charming chapter about a Swedish scientist, Johan Hultin (whose wife Gunvor was also a scientist, in radiation biology), who worked on influenza in the US and got interested in finding original samples of the 1918 virus. They had earlier traveled to Fairbanks, Alaska, and went around with a paleontologist digging up mammoth tusks. It occurred to Hultin that as Alaska has permafrost, some bodies of flu victims might still be preserved. In 1951 he took an expedition to Brevig, where 72 of 80 people died of influenza in November 1918, and were buried there.

In a surprising and pleasingly ethical manner, Hultin visited the current town and survivors/descendents, told them what he wanted to do and why, and asked their permission to exhume some bodies and take samples. They agreed. He then discovered how hard it is to dig in ground that's frozen solid, and ended up having to melt down to the bodies. But he did it, and took samples.

It did not occur to him that he might be unleashing the virus on the world all over again. They did take precautions, but it was 1951 and they were wildly inadequate. Luckily, there were no consequences. But alas! Upon his return to his lab, he totally failed at extracting any virus from the samples. He tried infecting animals. He tried growing it in eggs. Nothing.

Kolata then jumps ahead to 1976, when an American private at boot camp died of swine flu. At that point scientists could isolate viruses and quickly found that 1) yes, it was swine flu, 2) it seemed closely related to the one that was theorized to have caused the 1918 pandemic.

Kolata then spends a long, rather dry chapter dissecting the political ramifications of the US decision to attempt to rush-vaccine the entire country to prevent a pandemic. This turned out to be unnecessary and ended up very expensive and embarrassing, as a number of people sued after they vaccinated and got sick. Kolata's view is that most if not all of the post-vaccination illnesses and deaths were coincidental and not caused by the virus. Nevertheless, the US government had to pay out a lot of money and also looked bad.

Everyone involved mostly felt that they'd been too quick to rush to a vaccination and should have listened to the people who thought the swine flu was no big deal. Reading this chapter now, my sympathies are entirely with the scientists who thought they needed to move fast to prevent another pandemic. They were wrong... but they easily could have been right.

Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It[image error]

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Mucho Mojo (Hap and Leonard # 2), by Joe Lansdale

It was mid-April when I got home from the offshore rig and discovered my good friend Leonard Pine had lost his job bouncing drunks at the Hot Cat Club because, in a moment of anger, when he had a bad ass on the ground out back of the place, he'd flopped his tool and pissed on the rowdy's head.

Since a large percentage of the club was outside watching Leonard pop this would-be troublemaker like a Ping-Pong ball, and since Leonard hadn't been discreet enough to turn to a less visible angle when he decided to water the punk's head, the management was inclined to believe Leonard had overreacted.

Leonard couldn't see this. In fact, he thought it was good business. He told management if word of this got around, potential troublemakers would be sayin', "You start some shit at the Hot Cat Club, you get that mean queer nigger on your ass, and he'll piss on your head."

Leonard, taking into account the general homophobia and racism of the local population, considered this a deterrent possibly even more effective than the death penalty.

This excerpt is from one of Joe Lansdale's other Hap and Leonard books, Bad Chili. But it serves so perfectly as both an enticement and a warning that I'm using it here rather than an excerpt from Mucho Mojo. If you like it, you will like the books; if you hate it and/or find it wildly offensive, you will feel the same way about the books. I read it, cracked up, and immediately adored both Leonard and Hap, who is the narrator.

Hap is a straight white good old boy who went to prison in his youth for refusing to fight in Vietnam. Leonard is his best friend, a gay black Vietnam vet. Together, they fight crime. Their relationship is heartwarming and delightful, and it and the hilarious dialogue, atmospheric depiction of East Texas, and hell-for-leather prose style balance the crimes they investigate, which tend to be brutal and depressing.

After realizing that I'd somehow missed Mucho Mojo, I read it with great enjoyment. Leonard inherits a house, Hap moves in, and they discover a child's skeleton under the floorboards and a drug house next door. Things proceed from there. These books are more about character, prose, and style than they are about plot, though the plots are nicely constructed.

I'm looking forward to checking out the TV series. I've seen some stills and they look gorgeous and spooky. The books don't have fantasy elements per se but belief in the supernatural is part of some characters' lives, so the supernatural/Texas gothic vibe I get from the visuals seems suitable.

I also discovered that Lansdale wrote a bunch more in the series that I haven't read. Have any of you read the more recent books? Or seen the TV show? What did you think?

Mucho Mojo: A Hap and Leonard Novel (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)[image error]

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Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

A comet hits the earth, destroying much of it. Hard white men make hard choices in hard times, while women gratefully revert to 1950s-era gender roles and black people become cannibals. Except for the one token black astronaut who only got to go into space due to affirmative action tokenism. But he's not a cannibal, which proves that it's totally not stereotypical that most of the other black people are.

I've been having trouble focusing on fiction while trapped in my apartment, until it occurred to me that maybe I was having trouble focusing on good fiction. So I decided to read a book which I have not read since I was twelve, and which I recalled was not boring but also not good. Plus, it's an apocalypse novel, which is a favorite genre of mine. I thought maybe it would break the spell.

All I really remembered from when I was twelve was that I enjoyed the parts where Los Angeles was destroyed by comet, though I found them sexist even at twelve when I was not sensitive to such things (let me put it this way: I was still happily reading Piers Anthony at that age), but got bored once it moved on from immediate post-comet strike, and also found it incredibly racist though at that age I was even less sensitive to racism than to sexism.

Spoiler: 12-year-old self was right about the sexism and racism. Also, I DNF'd. But not due to quarantine lassitude, due to the fact that I was also right about when it gets boring. However, I skipped ahead to see if I correctly recalled that black people turned to cannibalism. Spoiler: yep!

The first third of this massive book is reasonably entertaining, with a couple legit very good bits. Here's what I liked:

An independently wealthy man, Tim Hamner, is one of the two discoverers of a comet, Hamner-Brown. (Brown is a 12-year-old boy.) All the main characters but four astronauts are in Los Angeles, which is described very accurately according to the geography of the time. We follow them as the comet comes closer and closer to earth, and ends up being nicknamed The Hammer. It eventually hits. This leads to the absolute best moment in the story, when a totally gnarly surfer surfs the most epic wave ever, all the way through Los Angeles, and is totally stoked until his rad ride is interrupted by a skyscraper.

Lucifer's Hammer was published in 1977; you can tell because the ginormous, mostly indistinguishable cast of characters is constantly having sleazy, loveless sex described in the least erotic terms possible.

All the women are always described in terms of their attractiveness to men (always) and breeder potential (post-comet). The two token non-cannibal black characters have no characteristics other than being black, and constantly discuss affirmative action and that they're not like the other, criminal blacks. Except for a few cameo redshirts with names like "the Indian," there are no races other than black or white.

There is an endless bit where pre-strike, a scientist has a TV interview where he describes the comet and the potential of a strike in terms of an ice cream sundae. This is mildly amusing but not actually funny, but all the characters roll around laughing hysterically when it happens and every time it's mentioned, and it's mentioned a LOT. This leads to a sort of meme where the upcoming strike is called "ice cream sundae which is actually Tuesdae;" I totally believe that this would become a meme, but not that people would continue finding it hilarious every time it's mentioned.

The main thing that's interesting about the book, because it's an idea that informs so much apocalypse fiction and also how a lot of social issues are discussed, is the idea of hard men making hard choices in hard times. Here's the premises, which Niven & Pournelle exemplify but did not invent:

At all times but especially during disasters, resources are zero-sum. If you give something to others, you lose it yourself. Generosity and sharing are luxuries which are dangerous to indulge in and must be abandoned in hard times. This is a virtue and shows your strength.

Kindness, equality, and nonviolence are bad. They are also a luxury of the Before Time. Showing kindness to others will cause them to attack you for your resources. It is now fine and in fact essential to beat children and subjugate women, because this is necessary now that times are hard. (Not shown: why it's necessary.)

Only a small circle of people, such as your own family and possibly your chosen group, deserves life. Life is also zero-sum. Attempts to protect non-group members will cause your own group to be harmed. Non-group members will harm you, either deliberately or by consuming your zero-sum resources. They must be driven off, kept out, or killed.

Empathy is zero-sum. If you show it to non-group members, you have less for your group and are actually harming your group.

Guns are essential. Everyone must get as many guns as possible. All interactions with non-group members must begin by threatening them with your guns. If you don't do this, they will interpret it as weakness and attack you.

All human relationships are transactional. Women and children are men's property. The only way an outsider can enter your group is if they possess either male-coded useful skills (ability to shoot, being a doctor, being an architect) or as a possession.

The book ends with the central group having defeated the black cannibals and enslaved them, because they have no other choice but to enslave them, kill them, or let them go and then have them return to attack the group again. Hard white men make hard choices, such as owning slaves.

It was very interesting reading this book now, because you can see how these premises are affecting the US right now. Again, this book didn't cause or invent these premises! It's just an example of them.

For instance, if you believe in zero-sum resources, then you do not want medical care for everyone, only for your own group; any medical care going to others reduces the medical care available to you. Also, if you believe in zero-sum, then any action which increases the safety or saves the lives of a non-group member is actively harming you, by reducing your safety or endangering your life. Better grab and display as many guns as you can carry!

In particular, the idea that showing non-group members empathy or kindness actually harms your own group explains a lot, IMO.

Leaning into the premise: Excellent. It promises a comet hitting Earth, and it's about a comet hitting Earth.

Lucifer's Hammer: A Novel[image error]

ETA: Just now noticed that it's a "a novel." LOLOLOL.

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Phone help

I have a Samsung phone and Verizon. As of today, I can't make any calls. When I dial, it rings once and then hangs up. I've tried this with multiple numbers.

When I tried to get on the Verizon website (because I can't call them!) it told me I had the wrong password. When I tried to change passwords, it told me I couldn't do so because I wasn't registered at the site. When I tried to register, it told me that I couldn't do so because I was already registered.

Does anyone have any idea what's going on or what I can do about it? Normally I'd borrow someone else's phone and call them, but I can't because coronavirus. I also can't get someone else to make the call I need to make, because I'm trying to get my prescriptions switched to delivery due to coronavirus and I think this will involve a ton of complicated info it would be hard to give to someone else.

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Coronavirus Discussion Post

Discussion post! Note tag - if you have a paid account and don't want to read, you can blacklist this tag and never see posts tagged with it. Or just scroll past.

Personal experiences, links to good information, reports of what's going on in your own area, discussion of specifics in my post, and other covid-related topics are all up for discussion.

Personal attacks on other commenters, theories about it being a biological weapon, and racism are banned and will be deleted. I'd prefer that you don't discuss China unless you live there or otherwise have a specific reason to. (i.e., you live in Hong Kong and it's directly relevant to your local response.)

I am genuinely happy that many other countries seem to be acting with intelligence and compassion, and are as successful as is possible under the circumstances.

America is fucked beyond all recognition. I cannot believe that we have now devolved into two factions, and one of them (judging by its own words) is fine with many people dying preventable deaths and not okay with helping people survive, and also (judging by its actions) is objectively pro-virus.

America is one of the few countries in the world that's decided to set up a false choice between "destroy the economy or let hundreds of thousands of people die." Most other countries are doing some version of "protect jobs AND protect human life."

They're not all doing it exactly the same way, but most of them are doing it and succeeding to some degree or another. Only a few, such as America and Brazil, have chosen to frame it is a binary choice in which you can save lives or save the economy but not both.

I have been sending daily texts to my governor and mayor, as follows. Feel free to copy if it seems useful.

SUBJECT: Test/trace/isolate in hotel rooms

I urge you to adopt a policy of test-trace-isolate, with isolation offered in hotel rooms for free. Specifically, I request that health care workers, homeless people and people in dorm-style housing, and all people who test positive without severe symptoms be offered the option of staying in a hotel room for free, with free meals delivered and daily check-ins by caseworkers, to protect the health of their families.

South Korea is doing this, with great success. People will be eager to isolate if they can do so for free and in safety, and it's phrased as "protecting your families." If they cannot afford to do so, they won't and the disease will continue to ravage our community.

ETA: Leaving the article linked below for the record, but I drastically misunderstood its scope.

https://www.gnyha.org/news/update-to-nycem-non-medical-isolation-hotel-program/

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