effex | Reading

Current Location: Mount Erebus, Ross Island, Antarctica

Aurora Australis readalong 1 / 10, The Ascent of Mount Erebus, post for comment, reaction, discussion, fanworks, links, and whatever obliquely related matters your heart desires. You can join the readalong at any time or skip sections or go back to earlier posts. It's all good. :-)

Text: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/The_Ascent_of_Mount_Erubus

Readalong intro: https://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/662515.html

Reminder for next week: Midwinter Night, a short poem by Ernest Shackleton:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/Midwinter_Night

The Ascent of Mount Erebus, written by Tannatt William Edgeworth David, who also wrote the later published Narrative of the Magnetic Pole Journey about the same Nimrod Expedition's successful first visit to the magnetic South Pole (which was also the world's longest unsupported sled journey until the mid-1980s).

This is a ripping yarn of exploration and adventure with detailed descriptions of mountain walking through snow and ice, much specialised vocabulary about frozen landscapes and volcanic geology, and outbreaks of self-deprecating humour. Very much in the tradition of travel writing about extreme exploration (later perfected by Shipton and Tilman).

( Info and links )

( Quotes )

Hurrah! Champagne all round! :D

rydra_wong

https://whatthetrans.com/compilation-of-protests-against-the-supreme-court/

torachan

1. I had another work from home day. I'm about halfway caught up with my email and fully caught up with teams. Tomorrow I've got a couple meetings, so I've got to go in to the office, but I might work from home again on Thursday to finally catch up on everything.

2. When Carla was out today she stopped at Uncle Tetsu's, a Japanese cheesecake chain. They have a sakura cheesecake right now and we had some after dinner tonight and it was sooooooo good. I normally prefer New York style cheesecake to the Japanese fluffier style, but this was really good consistency and the sakura flavor was amazing.

3. I finished playing The Plucky Squire. Overall it's a pretty fun game, but it is not just a straight action adventure game. There are a bunch of (frankly not that fun) mini games for the boss fights and stuff where you have to play other styles of games and that is not what I signed up for. Like for one character's boss battles you play a Mike Tyson style boxing game, for another it's a rhythm game, and for the third it's a Puzzle Bobble type. Then there are some stealth sequences where you have to sneak past enemies who can kill you instantly if they sense you, and if they sense you there is no way to run to escape, even if you're close to a place you could get away. You're just instantly dead. And the final battle is a space shooter type. The good thing is that if you die in a boss battle you can sometimes restart partway through, not all the way at the beginning, and the stealth sequences have multiple checkpoints and you'll respawn there rather than back at the beginning. But I would still have preferred not to have that "variety" in my action adventure game. Still is a fun game, though. But if you suck at those types of games it might ruin it for you.

4. I finished editing all my Disney Japan pics, so hopefully I can get the last day's posts written up later this week.

5. Jasper is just so handsome.

torachan

When I last left off, we had just checked out the big gift shop at the Fantasy Springs hotel and were exploring the land while waiting for our return time for the Peter Pan ride.

( More DisneySea adventures! )

musesfool

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Mets vs Phillies on tv

Today's poem:

I Have News for You

There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don't interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.

There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures unrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings

do not send their sinuous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you—
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.

--Tony Hoagland

*

rydra_wong

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/04/protests-erupt-across-the-uk-after-supreme-court-ruled-against-trans-rights/

Many many pictures.

Also, more protests yet to come, apparently, with ones scheduled for Oxford and Cambridge.

james_davis_nicoll

Improbable, but not impossible, ascents to the world stage...

Five SFF Works About Unlikely Global Superpowers

spiralsheep

A tale of medieval women crossing the gender line LITERALLY: in 1417 the Bishop of Durham ordered two Newcastle women to dress as drag kings and parade around two churches on six separate days, because he thought it was an appropriate act of penance, and if the Bishop of Durham thinks parading around a church in drag improves one's chance of getting into Heaven then who am I to argue?

Matilda Burgh and Margaret Ushar were ordered to do this penance after they dressed as men to visit the shrine of Cuthbert, one of England's most popular saints (defo Top Five), because the Bishops of Durham had literally built a misogynist blue line of exclusion into the ground around the shrine and only men were supposed to enter. There's more. The women's employer's wife, Mrs Baxter, who was accused of aiding and abetting the "crime" of female pilgrimage to a saint's shrine, disobeyed the Bishop's order to attend his ecclesiastical court and also disobeyed his order for her to attend the drag king parades because she claimed having twins to look after made her too tired ("& uxor prædicti Petri fic eſt fatigata cum duobus gemellis quod honeſte non poteſt comparere"). Clearly I love this entire escapade, although I did feel mild sympathy for the parish chaplain who had to deal with these three ungovernable women and an out-of-touch Bishop, lol.

( Sources in English and Latin. )

james_davis_nicoll

Retired superhero turned lawyer, Naomi "Foxfire" Ziegler pursues a wrongful death case involving a fire, a young superhero and a host of shifty housing corporations.

Foxfire, Esq. by Noa (October)

torachan

1. I worked from home today, getting a fair amount of catching up done. Unfortunately I forgot that I also had to double check all my stores' budgets for next month today so that did take some time away from the email and teams catch-up, but I should be able to focus more on that tomorrow. (Probably will mostly work from home tomorrow, too.)

2. We bought a sweater for Alexander for his birthday and even though his birthday is not until next week, gave it to him yesterday so he could try it on and see if it fit, and it was a little big so we said we'd be happy to go exchange it. I was just thinking to exchange it whenever we next go, but there was availability today and Carla felt like going to Disneyland, so while I had to stay home and focus on my email backlog, she went and exchanged the sweater and had a nice morning at DCA. She managed to find all the rest of the hidden easter eggs there (eventually with some help from an online guide) and took pictures, but I'm just going to include those with our next trip post rather than make a separate one. They had Lightning McQueen and Mater ones which are super cute, though.

3. We bought a stereo for the garage and it arrived today. As all modern stereos do these days, it also has bluetooth capability to connect to your phone, but she mainly wanted it for playing actual CDs. Her current CD rack is overflowing, so we need to get another and then move the CDs out to the garage so she can have them out there with the stereo. Nice thing is, unless you're standing right by the door or window, even with it turned up pretty loud you really can't hear much from outside. Amazing what insulation can do!

4. I love the look on Ollie's face here, but he was even cuter before I turned on the light and came in. It wasn't dark but was dim enough that he was really well camouflaged in the box!

musesfool

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Good Times, Bad Times = Led Zeppelin

Monday miscellany:

- So what are the odds we get an antipope this time in addition to a pope?

- Sepinwall gave season 2 of Andor a good review (minor spoilers, I guess) - the first 3 episodes drop tomorrow and it sounds like they are doing 3 episodes a week for 4 weeks, as each one comprises a mini-arc. Trying not to get spoiled on the internet is sure to be a nightmare.

- I haven't done the AO3 stats meme regularly since 2018 because not much changes in my top 10. In 2021, however, I made note of some up-and-comers in the 11-20 slots, and it turns out that as of 4/20/25, Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc (i.e., the one where Dick convinces Jason to stop killing through the power of hugs) has crept into the top 10 by hits - it's number 9! (It looks like Our history is just in our blood (history, like love, is never enough) (the Steve/Bucky remix AU where Steve finds Bucky working as a barista) is the one that fell out of the top 10.)

Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc also made inroads into the top 10 by kudos, landing at number 5! Additionally, 2 Star Wars stories also found their way into the top 10 by kudos: There's Still Time to Change the Road You're On (in which Anakin time travels to the post-RotJ era and meets his kids) at 6, and deep as a secret nobody knows (AU where Leia tells Vader she's Padme's daughter and it changes everything) at number 8!

The 3 Avengers stories that dropped are again, Our history is just in our blood (history, like love, is never enough), plus Even a Miracle Needs a Hand (Clint/Darcy fake Christmas boyfriend), and with the lights out, it's less dangerous (Steve/Bucky, then and now).

According to these posts, I did not previously do the full list by comments, but I will note the appearance of deep as a secret nobody knows at number 3 on the comments list, and another Vader-and-Leia AU, Just a Little Bit of History Repeating, at number 10, with the VMars/Avengers crossover we travel without seatbelts on sitting pretty at number 7.

So I guess given enough time, these things CAN change.

- Today's poem:

Nothing Will Warn You
by Stephen Dunn

Nothing will warn you,
not even the promise of severe weather
or the threats of neighbors muttered
under their breath, unheard by the sonar

in you that no longer functions.
You'll be expecting blue skies, perhaps
a picnic at which you'll be anticipating
a reward for being the best handler

of raw meat in a county known
for its per capita cases of salmonella.
You'll have no memory of those women
with old grievances nor will you guess

that small bulge in one of their purses
could be a derringer. You'll be opening
a cold one, thinking this is the life,
this is the very life I've always wanted.

Nothing will warn you,
no one will blurt out that this picnic
is no picnic, the clouds in the west
will be darkly billowing toward you,

and you will not hear your neighbors'
conspiratorial whispers. You'll be
readying yourself to tell the joke
no one has ever laughed at, the joke

someone would have told you by now
is only funny if told on yourself, but no one
has ever liked you enough to say so.
Even your wife never warned you.

***

james_davis_nicoll

This all-new Coyote & Crow Bundle presents Coyote & Crow, the alternate-history RPG set in the Free Lands of an uncolonized North America.

Bundle of Holding: Coyote & Crow

james_davis_nicoll

1994: At least four MPs die from unrelated causes, Tony Blair uses his new position as leader of the Labour Party to make bold economic statements unbounded by reality, and in a bold rebuke of a half million years of effort to isolate Britain from the continent, the Chunnel opens.

Poll #33014 Clarke Award Finalists 1994

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 60

View Respondents

Which 1994 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Vurt by Jeff Noon
10 (16.7%)

A Million Open Doors by John Barnes
17 (28.3%)

Ammonite by Nicola Griffith
29 (48.3%)

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
49 (81.7%)

The Broken God by David Zindell
6 (10.0%)

The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick
29 (48.3%)

Bold for have read, italic for intend to read,, underline for never heard of it.

Which 1994 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Vurt by Jeff Noon
A Million Open Doors by John Barnes
Ammonite by Nicola Griffith
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
The Broken God by David Zindell
The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick

rydra_wong

Rebellion is growing among Labour MPs, so if you have a Labour MP, now is a VERY good and important time to write to them to protest the proposed PIP and other cuts:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/20/the-whole-policy-is-wrong-rebellion-among-labour-mps-grows-over-5bn-benefits-cut

(If you have a non-Labour MP, hassle them too and see if they can be persuaded to do something vaguely useful.)

torachan

1. Back to work tomorrow. I am not enthused about that, but I did really enjoy my time off and I felt like being off for three weeks allowed me to actually disconnect more from work than I usually do if I'm just off a couple days or even a week. I did glance at my email and messages every day, but only responded less than ten times and even when I looked at the phone screen to see the messages, I only did so once or twice a day, rather than multiple times throughout the day. Tomorrow will be the start of a huge catch-up (thousands of messages to get through) and I think I will just work from home tomorrow unless something else comes up, so at least it will be a slow easing back into things. And since it's the last week of the month, there are less meetings, which means for time for catching up.

2. We had a lovely time at DCA this morning. I've heard that easter can be a pretty busy day but while it was getting a little busier by the time we left, it was super light in the first few hours and the weather was great.

3. I love getting shots of the cats looking out the window.

torachan

Last day of the Food and Wine Festival so last chance to ride Soarin' Over California before it goes back to Soarin' Over the World.

( Read more... )

torachan

Currently Reading
The Undiscovered Deaths of Grace McGill
26%. The MC is a cleaner who goes in and deep-cleans the houses where people have lain dead and undiscovered for a long time. She stumbles upon a mystery when two of her recent jobs have had the same dried flower at the scene. Pretty interesting so far.

Architectural Follies in America
16%. This is a short, picture-filled book about various odd buildings in the US. Randomly found it in a neighborhood Little Library. It's interesting.

A Drop of Corruption
23%. This has definitely picked up now and I'm a lot more interested in what's going on. Just haven't been making much progress because I've been off work and the majority of my audiobook time is in the car. Also a note on the audiobook, and I had this problem with the otherwise excellent audiobook versions of The Locked Tomb series, but there are pronunciation changes from the first book! I'm guessing that after the first book's audiobook came out, the narrator got feedback from the author and then made changes for the following books, but it's really jarring and I wish that if the author really wanted names/words said a certain way (or in the case of The Locked Tomb, certain accents used) then they would make note of that first, rather than changing mid-series. (And if it's just the narrator making changes rather than author feedback, I wish they wouldn't make those changes, either. Pick a pronunciation and stick to it!)

Hidden Figures
44%.

Recently Finished
Winterborne Home for Mayhem and Mystery
Sequel to Winterborne Home for Vengeance and Virtue. This felt like maybe there was supposed to be more books in the series and it all got wrapped up quickly in the end? It was all right, but I wasn't super into either book.

The Boney Hand
Sequel to Charlie & Frog. Another mystery in the town. This was cute. Seems like the author maybe wanted it to be a series but there haven't been any more books after this.

The Amelia Six
Middle grade book about a group of girls who win an overnight stay at Amelia Earhart's childhood home, but while they're there, her goggles go missing and they have to solve the mystery. It was just all right.

Murderburg
Apparently originally a web comic, this graphic novel is about a small island town inhabited mostly by criminals. The actual name is Muderburg, but everyone calls it Murderburg. The main characters are not even thinly veiled Morticia and Gomez, though the children are not Wednesday and Pugsly. It was fine. Somewhat funny in places but mostly just there.

Break Out
Heavy-handed graphic novel about a world where mysterious and possibly alien cubes appear in the sky and start randomly kidnapping people. But it only happens to teens, so when the governments of the world have done all they can and can't find a way to stop it, they just say well, it's just a few people here and there, we'll just have to live with it. Then the kids save the day. Obviously paralelling school shootings, but it felt like the message was more important than the story itself, because the plot is just one of those types where so many coincidences happen just right that it feels unbelievable.

Do Da Dancin'!: Venice Competition vol. 1-2
I'm not enjoying this quite as much as the original series, but it's good enough that I'll finish it.

Umimachi Diary vol. 8-9
Overall this series was just okay. I originally read the first three volumes on a limited time free promotion and liked them a lot, but when I finally got around to reading the rest of the series now I just found it kind of dragged. Not bad, but just okay.

cimorene

I finished reading The Abbot (Scott) and The Roots of the Mountains (Morris), but I haven't been able to take time to compose posts about them because I saved a ton of quotations and I really wanted to finish the sweater I've been knitting. I finished weaving in the ends today, so tomorrow I can block it.

Also the remaining Emily Wilson translations I've got are Roman plays by Seneca, not Greek tragedies, and I'm not liking them as much. Also the book is a pdf which is always a pain. I've got another William Morris reread and another Walter Scott novel set in the middle ages to read queued up, but I'm taking a break to reread the original Villeneuve Beauty and the Beast, which I've been meaning to get around to for a while, because it has hilariously elaborate fairy lore backstory but I couldn't remember the specifics.

spiralsheep

- Readalong Wednesday's ancient mar-reminder stoppeth one of three, "Until the thrilling tale is told, this link within me burns..." :D
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/The_Ascent_of_Mount_Erubus

- Happy dyed potato day to everyone who celebrates! And for all my neighbours voting in the next couple of weeks, for all our sakes please choose a ticky box as unlike Badenoch / Sunak / Truss / Johnson as possible, thank you. P.S. remember that the potatoes who dyed for our sins are edible unless fertilized when they become treyf. Dark chocolate eggs are safer as they're always both unfertilised and unleavened! ;-)

- Birb log: when I put food out this week I only got half the numbers of birbs feeding at any moment because half of each pair is now on the nest until shift change, so even those birbs who are paired for the rest of the year are temporarily eating alone.

- Potentially improving everybody's habitat: honestly don't know where this last week went.... 13-19. Biologging. Deleting spree on mobile to clear storage. (And keeping up with regular household tasks but not improvements, lol.)

- Writing: I did commit a few prompt acts of versification.

( Lakes, bananas, laboured rhymes, and lock keys. )

james_davis_nicoll

Weird fiction from a Weird Tales regular.

Half in Shadow by Mary Elizabeth Counselman

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Page Summary

spiralsheep - Aurora Australis readalong 1 / 10, The Ascent of Mount Erebus
rydra_wong - UK: compilation of upcoming trans rights protests
torachan - Daily Happiness
torachan - 2025 Disneyland Trip #23 (4/5/25) Tokyo DisneySea (Part 2)
musesfool - in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha
rydra_wong - If anyone could use a morale boost
james_davis_nicoll - Five SFF Works About Unlikely Global Superpowers
spiralsheep - In which the Bishop of Durham orders two drag kings to parade around two churches for six days, 1417
james_davis_nicoll - Foxfire, Esq. by Noa (October)
torachan - Daily Happiness
musesfool - this picnic is no picnic
james_davis_nicoll - Bundle of Holding: Coyote & Crow
james_davis_nicoll - Clarke Award Finalists 1994
rydra_wong - UK people: disability benefit cuts
torachan - Daily Happiness
torachan - 2025 Disneyland Trip #28 (4/20/25)
torachan - Weekly Reading
cimorene - reading
spiralsheep - In which Our Heroine's habitat remains unimproved this week, 16
james_davis_nicoll - Half in Shadow by Mary Elizabeth Counselman

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to wake up, to shake up, to wake the sun

Reading

Aurora Australis readalong 1 / 10, The Ascent of Mount Erebus

UK: compilation of upcoming trans rights protests

Daily Happiness

2025 Disneyland Trip #23 (4/5/25) Tokyo DisneySea (Part 2)

in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha

If anyone could use a morale boost

Five SFF Works About Unlikely Global Superpowers

In which the Bishop of Durham orders two drag kings to parade around two churches for six days, 1417

Foxfire, Esq. by Noa (October)

Daily Happiness

this picnic is no picnic

Bundle of Holding: Coyote & Crow

Clarke Award Finalists 1994

UK people: disability benefit cuts

Daily Happiness

2025 Disneyland Trip #28 (4/20/25)

Weekly Reading

reading

In which Our Heroine's habitat remains unimproved this week, 16

Half in Shadow by Mary Elizabeth Counselman

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