Hello, friends and enemies. The big news this week is that I got the voter guide posted! Election day is November 3 and you probably already got your ballot in the mail. There is some annoying shit on the ballot but I hope you will all join me in voting yes on Proposition 40, the one-time billionaire wealth tax, and voting no on 41 and 42, which are just on the ballot in an attempt to cancel out prop 40. I’m still working on the Spanish version, but it will be at least another week before I get that up.
Before we get into all the stuff of the last two weeks, here is an object that is delighting me. My good friend Lemon found this sconce while she was on vacation and brought it back for me. I’m obsessed with it and I bought some little tea lights for it. Please behold this little jester in a pumpkin patch.
Current Events
Speaking of the election, I hope all my homies in Congressional District 7 are voting for Mai Vang. I think she will be a much better representative for us than Matsui has been (or certainly than she would be; if Matsui wins she will be 82 years old at the start of her next term, which is much too old for this job). Vang posted online about Flock and ALPR cameras (she’s against them!) and referenced the Sac Bee article I was interviewed for about the DeFlock Elk Grove Community audit. So, I think that means I’m famous.
Books and Other Words
Carl. Again.
I can’t express how relieved I am to have finished the last (for now) book of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, A Parade of Horribles. I will start by saying that I don’t think it’s a bad book, but I was feeling sick of its particular brand of humor (not to mention lack of kissing??). It happened that my library holds on the last few books arrived in quick succession and I didn’t want get back in line and start the wait over again. Plus, Kirk really loves the books and I knew wanted to be able to talk to me about them, so I pressed on. In this book, author Matt Dinniman acknowledges through Carl that it is a bit difficult to come off the sweeping drama of the last book with faction wars and have the characters dropped into what amounts to a few rounds of Mario Kart from hell. Part of this book is Carl dealing with the tension of being an independent team of just him and Princess Donut in comparison to the previous floor where he was in charge of an entire army and directly responsible for getting as many people out alive as he could. It seems like the end of this installment (spoilers incoming) is finally what is going to break the format of the floor-by-floor dungeon crawl, which is something I had been wondering about. The dungeon has eighteen floors, we are eight books in and on floor ten. I do not believe this series can sustain itself for nearly eighteen books, so what is going to give? Well, Carl et al. have triggered some kind of failsafe mechanism by summoning the ultimate dungeon creature and the whole thing will collapse after a certain event takes place. When we go into the next book, I expect they will be in a mad dash for the exits.
Reading the last couple of books made me realize that one of my primary complaints of this series is its limited perspective: Carl. Carl is great, he’s an everyman, he’s a guy who loves his cat (a single dad who works two jobs, who loves his cat and never stops?) and solves most of his problems with explosive contraptions. Carl is also an unreliable narrator. Carl doesn’t know what the fuck is going on out there. There is an entire fucking coup d’etat happening in lower Earth orbit as the events of the last two books take place and we’re just getting a paragraph here and there about it. For the love of god, Matt Dinniman, tell me about the sociopolitical conditions outside of the dungeon!! I want to hear about the former dungeon crawlers successfully mounting an armed rebellion against the galaxy’s government! Maybe that means Dungeon Crawler Carl is simply not my ideal book, and I know there are plenty of other stories about overthrowing space government but like … god, what a fucking tease.
My other, much smaller but still notable complaint is that this book finally introduces one homosexual relationship among two NPCs (non-player characters), and aging stripper named Dong Quijote (perfect name. no notes.) and, well, I can’t even begin to explain the man/creature he’s in love with. Suffice to say, they were in a sort of ongoing lovers’ feud and hadn’t spoken in years, but Carl succeeds in a quest to reunite them. They make up and immediately undertake a noble sacrifice to save Carl and Princess Donut. I’m not saying gay people can never die in a story but these are the first obviously gay characters (or at least gay people actively in a relationship) to appear in the story and they are summarily executed. This is the kind of thing that I, as an editor, would have left a note about to the author: “Matt, I notice that your first openly gay lovers are now immediately, tragically dying. Must we bury our gays? How can we re-work this scene?” Between Dinniman’s choices in this book plus taking the most bad-ass female character out on a baby plot in the last book, I’m … well, I’m tired!
Finally Someone with Complicated Emotions
Villain by Natalie Zina Walschots is the sequel to Hench, which I read and enjoyed in 2024. I enjoyed this follow-up even more than the first book in large part because Walschots did an excellent job of evading obvious narrative choices. We expect someone who started out temping as a henchwoman to maybe be looking for an out and not want to make choices that lead deeper and deeper into villainy—and yet! In Villain our protagonist (well, narratively speaking; she’s a professional antagonist), the Auditor, is given multiple, explicit opportunities to walk out. Instead, she does everything in her power to maintain her own agency and chose the path of professional menace. The Auditor lacks any superhuman abilities, but she is, as she says, very good at pattern recognition (autism-coded, I daresay) and finds ways to make people’s lives subtly miserable, provoke minor inconveniences into full-blown catastrophes, and engineer crises of confidence. She started this gig in Hench after getting her bones broken by a so-called hero, which prompted her to start running the numbers on just how much damage the “good guys” were inflicting on everyone. It’s the sort of question I’ve often reflected on while being subjected to yet another Marvel Avengers movie and, I think, a very good basis for supervillainy. I do relish that moral no-man’s land of “what if no one is as good as bad as they think they are?” I am hoping for another book after this one. Villain felt very much like the second act of a larger story in the best way and I hope we get another installment.
Meanwhile, on the Internet
- Goodbye joint replacements? Stanford scientists found a way to regrow cartilage and stop arthritis via Science Daily. There is hope for me!!! Granted this is a mouse study, but maybe one day I’ll get to run around and frolic again.
- The people holding up the internet via sheets.works. There are soooo many computer bits that are being managed by just one guy. The whole internet would fall apart if they stopped. This should all be managed in some kind of public trust that every country pays into but I’m sure that won’t happen anytime soon.
- Gang of eight sperm whales sink yacht after ramming boat in South Pacific via the Independent. I’m so glad that sperm whales are joining the orcas in the war against yachts.
Media
Kirk and I watched the show Pluribus recently and we liked it. The premise is that a virus that makes humanity into a hive mind takes over, but a few people are, for whatever reason, resistant to it. One of these people is romance author Carol Sturka and boy is she fucking mad. I would be mad too! Everyone you knew is now subsumed into some blissed-out hive mind. What is the point of being a writer, an artist if everyone else in the world has no sense of taste? What does it mean to be social when you’re actually socializing with everyone? Shout out to my sister (who does not read my blog lol) for recommending this show. If anyone has something they think I should watch on Apple TV before I cancel my subscription again, please let me know!
Doing Stuff
Lemon and I hosted our third annual soup party (in past iterations: the Souper Bowl [2024 and 2025], but we did a fall version this time). This has traditionally been very popular but we only had two people come (in addition to Lemon and I), so that was a bummer. Do the people not yearn for soup like they used to? Regardless, I made the roasted tomato, pepper, and bean soup that I mentioned one or two posts ago and Lemon made an excellent potato and saffron soup.
I also went to a show this week. Abby asked me if I wanted to see Lucy Darling and I had no idea who that was, but I just say yes when friends ask me to do stuff and they have yet to steer me wrong. Once we got to the venue I realized I did know who she was because I have been seeing some of her crowdwork bits pop up on instagram. She’s basically a cis-woman drag queen doing a cabaret-esque show with a lot of crowdwork. It was a lot of fun and we did laugh heartily. I was informed that Lucy also does circus stuff, but there was no juggling or circus activity in the show at all which I personally found disappointing although I’m sure she has her reasons. My inherent desire to be a ham also makes it hard to watch much less cool and funny people than me be pulled on stage before a crowd of 2,000 people but I have to remind myself that it’s not my show and I am not the protagonist of existence. But still … I would have been cooler and funnier.
Yesterday, I went to the Sacramento Anarchist Bookfair, which was as cool as it sounds. I got a big pile of books that I’m very excited to read. I also found a lot of fun stickers and picked up some zines and earrings. I was mostly there for books, but they also had seminars and lots of groups tabling (like DeFlock NorCal!) to get information to the people. I was surprised at how crowded the event was! The people are hungry for knowledge.
Moving It
Here are my stickers from the last couple of weeks for all to enjoy. On the topic of stickers, my favorite sticker shop is releasing a sticker advent calendar, which I ordered. It sounds festive! I’ll report back at the end of December to let you know what I got.
Kitchen Witchery
It’s still been a little hot here but that will not stop me from making fall soups. I used some end-of-the season corn to make what NYT is calling slow-cooker chicken and creamed corn. I don’t know that I’d describe the corn as “creamed” so I’m going to call it chicken and corn soup. I did take some liberties with this recipe (as one must with NYT recipes). I added more seasoning (I think I had a jalapeño or pasilla chili that I threw in plus various whatever things I had handy and I have now forgotten about), sauteed all the aromatics before running the slow cooker because I do not like how things turn out when you don’t do that first, and blended the soupy mixture after removing the chicken to shred it and before adding the corn. We liked it a lot. I also tried this roasted squash and split pea stew because I bought a kabocha at the farmers market and then had to figure out what to do with it. I had a bag of yellow split peas on hand too, so it all worked out. I think for this one, the only change I made was to add chili flakes. I served it over rice instead of just as a soup to round out the meal.
I’ve been trying to get better at throwing together what I have on hand to make a meal. To whit: I cooked some chickpeas then mixed it with gnocchi, green beans, and pesto. It was good! I am trying not to rely on cheese so much (I was tempted to throw in some feta) so I don’t have to take a lactase pill every time I eat. I used my leftover roasted kabocha to make a sauce for some spinach and cheese tortellini (I’m not totally avoiding cheese, come on now). I didn’t really follow a recipe, just mixed the squash with some pasta water and hoped for the best. I am sure I could have made it tastier if I had been setting out with intentions of making this, but for a few days of lunch, it was perfectly decent.
Cat Therapy
We recently had our carpets cleaned and Fritz was not okay with that. We moved all his shit around and he had to endure hours of big noise, then we didn’t even move his shit back right away because we had to wait for the carpets to dry. Fritz’s review: 0/5 stars, do not recommend. Despite the big stress, he is being very good! The Prozac is helping! He peed on the floor once last week then twice in the last couple of days, but I think the latter two were crimes of opportunity. We moved the things that we normally have on the floor to prevent just that and, well, he struck. Still, I am optimistic about this situation.
Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves.
