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listen ham sandwiches are the only sandwiches that aren't disgusting so that's what i'm having

As I think I made pretty clear across all three parts of the post, I could not give less of a damn who eats what kind of sandwich. Eat ham and be free.

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A small remark about your "Job Offer" fic: all trains coming from Nice are arriving at Gare de Lyon in Paris, which is for all the southeastern lines, whereas Gare du Nord is for all the northern lines (i.e. Lille).

Thanks for the fic, though. It's great, like all your Shivadhverse!

Yeah, I reversed the two, which is particularly funny since I spent like, a good solid few hours in Gare de Lyon when I was in Paris. You'd think I'd have managed to get it right :D I will be fixing for publication, never fear!

(I also got the arrondissement wrong, I'm not sure how, since I ALSO stayed on Rue des Lombards and it's a really small and short street, it's not like it's complicated.)

Sometime I should write the story of Michaelis and the swimming party at the Piscine Molitor. I feel like he probably had to do some quick thinking not to become entangled with the contessa that wants to be his next queen. And it's also kind of fun to write the royals hobnobbing a little, because they don't really do the ultra-luxe thing, but they're adjacent to it a lot. Like, he could stay at the Molitor, it's a hotel and a fairly swanky one and he has the money for that. He'd just rather stay at the Shivadh guesthouse that has like eight rooms and he's in the only (small) suite, since it's really all he needs and he knows he's likely to be among his people there.

But he is absolutely going to let a slightly predatory Italian noblewoman treat him to lunch if it means he gets to spend the afternoon in a really nice pool. Depending on the quality of the lunch he will even flex a little when he dives.

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The thing about pain, that I never really knew until this happened to me in my thirties, is that if you are in bad enough pain or for a long enough time (and that's in weeks, not months or years) it can give you depression. Even if your quality of life isn't otherwise impacted -- if it doesn't impede your mobility or exhaust you so that you can't go out -- even if it's "just" pain, being in pain is depressing. And the thing about both pain and depression is that independent of one another, when you are in either one of them you tend to make poor choices. You aren't able to pay full attention to the decision and depression impedes your ability to envision your future, effectively making you feel as if there are no consequences or rewards for your actions.

Now, the nice thing about being a little older and having gone through stuff like serious physical injury, particularly a brain injury, is that it's a lot easier to recognize when you've begun to make poor decisions, and put a stop to it before you make some really poor ones. You can't necessarily just tell yourself "hey stop doing that" but you can readjust your risk assessment and also stop trying to make as many.

Like, you catch yourself walking in front of a car that probably can't see you at a dangerous intersection, and for the rest of the day you make sure you don't cross against the light even if you think you could probably make it. You take the ramp instead of the stairs. You move more slowly. You don't buy anything. You walk away when you might normally pick a fight.

I'm fine -- I injured my foot last night so walking is very painful today, but the wound isn't see-a-doctor serious and I'm getting around okay. I did have to come in to the office for a meeting, which necessitates walking, catching and boarding a bus, and navigating a downtown street that's still pretty busy even at seven in the morning. And I did catch myself walking in front of a car coming out of a driveway because I wasn't watching the driveway as I normally do, because I was in pain. So, for the rest of the trip, I moved as slowly as necessary, stopped at crosswalks if I didn't have a clear walk signal (ie, no flashing red hands), and kept my eyes on the ground. In the office today I'm going to stay quiet and I've made a mental note not to speak in the meeting unless directly addressed. I might catch a cab home, though that has its own perils and the bus is arguably more safe given my muscle memory of public transit. And that's just because I made one bad call after being in pain for like, twelve hours. But I know me, so, a couple of days of caution it is.

Anyway the only real point of the post is to let people know, because nobody told me, that if you're in longterm or serious pain, a) it can materially impact your mental health, and b) you should move a little slowly and not make any serious decisions if you can avoid it.

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Radio Free Monday

Good morning everyone, and welcome to Radio Free Monday!

Ways to Give:

Edminister Engler is a recent widower who has now been diagnosed with cancer; he doesn't have health coverage and is too sick to work, so is raising funds to help find an oncologist and seek treatment. You can read more and support the fundraiser here.

secondalto was in a car accident in February that totaled her car, and she missed work through the end of the school year; insurance was slow to pay out and she didn't get another car (necessary for her job) until last month. Due to the staggered nature of her work, she is facing car and insurance payments, plus gas and other bills, that she won't be able to pay before they are due. She is raising funds for bills and is also offering fic beta services and handicrafts in return for donations; you can read more, reblog, and find giving information here.

songspinner9 linked to a fundraiser for Wren, a young, chronically ill person trying to stay active in their community and studying for a Library Science degree. Insurance will not cover the new wheelchair they need to achieve their goals, so they are fundraising for the wheelchair and power assist; you can read more and support the fundraiser here.

Anon linked to a fundraiser for meowdistract/hauntedrph, a friend with Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which leaves her with limited mobility and weakness. She's offering commissions and raising funds via donation to help pay off debt and treat herself a little for her 30th birthday tomorrow. You can read more, reblog, and find giving/commission information here and there are also links to wishlists and donation options here.

maryellencarter is homeless and has recently moved cross-country to be closer to friends, and has finally been placed in a shelter; they are fundraising to keep their car insurance so they can travel to aid appointments and try to find a more permanent housing solution. You can read more, reblog, and find giving information here.

Beth linked to First Draft Detroit, a Detroit metro region nonprofit intended to replace NaNoWriMo; they're holding their first fundraiser on October 5th. If you are local to Detroit you can buy a ticket to play one of several TTRPGs, plus a silent auction and a bake sale; if you are not local you can still donate to support the org. You can read more, buy a ticket, and support the fundraiser here.

Recurring Needs:

loversdoom has recently been diagnosed with PCOS and needs help to afford the prescribed birth control pills on top of living expenses and dental bills; you can read more, reblog, and find giving information here or give via paypal here.

onedollopofsourcream is fundraising to help support a large family including young children during a difficult time; they particularly need funds for needed medication (including insulin), and hopefully eventually to get out of an abusive living situation. You can read more, reblog, and find giving information here.

chingaderita is raising funds to help their family get back on their feet after a house fire that left them in an unsafe living situation with black mold; their partner has also recently had oral surgery and many family members are unemployed, and they need funds for clean water, food, and cleaning until the mold can be taken care of. You can read more, reblog, and find giving information here.

memprime linked to a fundraiser for a friend, virtualalternative, who needs help with cat vet bills after their cat had several blockages; you can read more, reblog, and find giving information here.

And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can post items for my attention at the Radio Free Monday submissions form. If you're new to fundraising, you may want to check out my guide to fundraising here.

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Well, one, I agree that is a great interpretation of the card and I think for that reason alone he should still get it tattooed. But also I think it kinda disproves the start of the quote in a way.

I don't really think of cards as having value attached -- not sure if it was how I was taught or just some function of being indifferent to that kind of category but I don't think of cards as bad or good, in the same way that Death doesn't mean literal death. The Ten of Swords might mean ruin, but whose, and when? Sometimes you gotta burn something down to get to something better. As the husband said, taking ten swords to die can just mean you were a badass.

The idea of a "bad" card is kind of unsettling, actually, because I think that can mess with your relationship to the deck. The cards are just paper, at least as I learned it; they're there to help you, not to dictate to you. If you can't accept or appreciate a card because it's bad, or if you love a card because it's good, that fucks with your ability to use it as a tool.

I have a personal fondness for 19, The Sun, and I do like to see it turn up in a reading because it's like seeing an old friend, but I don't think of it as a perennially "good" card even though it means joy and health. It's all context.

But yeah...I do have cards I especially like, I just treat them as neutral until they're placed. Mostly major arcana, I do most of my work with them.

Everyone who plays around with Tarot cards long enough winds up with a “bad” card that they love. I just barely persuaded my husband not to get the Ten of Swords tattooed on his body; traditionally, it shows a corpse with ten swords stuck in their body and means “utter ruin,” but he thought that if it took ten swords to kill you, then you must have put up a pretty good fight.

honestly this is the most badass ten of swords interpretation i've ever heard.  i'm stealing this

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I hope this email someday finds the eagle of the ninth

i hope this email finds my legions in the teutoburg forest

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Friends, I have volunteered in the lunch tent once more and I have new scientific findings to share regarding the Sandwich Gender Spectrum.

We still do not serve roast beef, the most toxically manly of all sandwiches, but it turns out that there is a sandwich option almost as masculine, the mention of which will preclude a certain type of dude from even asking for roast beef:

The Italian.

For those unfamiliar, an Italian sandwich in most American sandwich shops is composed of ham, capicola, salami, and sometimes pepperoni, with provolone, the usual sandwich veggies, and a drizzle of Italian dressing.

The hierarchy from ham-downwards remains undisturbed by this revelation currently rocking sandwich discourse, but new data has indicated that the Italian sandwich occupies a special place above ham and technically below roast beef but so acceptable a substitute for roast beef that I only had one guy ask me for it this time around. I would say, "We have ham, Italian, turkey, or veggie," and the Certain Kind Of Man would look skeptically at the ham and then ask for an Italian.

I am now working on my doctoral thesis in Sandwich Gender, where I will be examining whether there is a direct correlation between how masculine a sandwich is and how weirdly homoerotic the name is. I'm going to call it "I'd Like An Italian: Gender And Sexuality Between The Buns."

Men, boys, and eggs of my acquaintance, I cannot stress this enough:

Nobody worth being with will ever judge you based on your deli sandwich choices.

Sincerely, a dude who had to watch like two dozen men pretend to find vegetarian sandwiches unthinkable in order to maintain a sense of masculinity today.

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I’m reading on old superstitions and: “Do not go out collecting nuts on Sept 14th, holy Rood Day, as the devil will be out nutting too!” September 14th: the day the Devil nuts

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[ID: Two photos, each of one side of a bookmark advertising for This Old Book, a bookstore in Grayslake; the ends of the bookmarks have portraits of famous western writers on them. Well, sort of.]

So I got this bookmark when I bought a secondhand cookbook at Litfest, and they were super nice so if you live in Grayslake Illinois do check em out. But I was looking at it and had a pause, because I know these guys:

[ID: Close-ups of three of the images; one shows a portrait of Shakespeare in a wide white collar, one shows Edgar Allan Poe with a raven on his head, and one shows a caricature-style drawing of Mark Twain. The image below is the fourth image, showing a round-faced man with short white hair and a white beard, wearing black.]

So there's Shakespeare, Poe, Twain, check. And I probably should have recognized the fourth guy but I had no clue who he was, so I just thought to myself preeminent playwright, king of emo goth, biting satirical humorist, and silver fox Daddy. Sure, why not.

Before you scroll any further and without googling, make your best guess.

Now, I thought to myself "It's probably Hemingway, he looks rugged and also it feels oddly like those four should come as a set somehow" and a reverse image-search informed me that this is in fact Ernest Hemingway, whose books I have never read, and about whom I know very little except that he once had to take F. Scott Fitzgerald on a tour of a local museum to prove to Fitz that his penis was normal-sized.

So if you guessed Hemingway, you win! If you guessed anyone else, you also win, I want to know who you guessed in comments.

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I had enough ideas for a second mini-zine about ADHD that I put it on my to-do list for when I felt like doing something kind of relaxing. Today I was going to start assembling it -- not do the whole thing, just add the title page and maybe work on layout a little.

I was organized enough that when I made the first zine, I saved off both a blank template and a PSD file with proper layers of the final draft, so that I wouldn't have to redo everything and could even reuse stuff like the barcodes I generated.

Sure would be nice if I knew where the fuck I put them.

I'm absolutely now going to screengrab this post for one page of the zine.

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Aw, look, we found the brain cell.

[ID: A photo captioned "He is under mind control"; it shows an orange and white cat looking past the camera, with a blue-green crab resting calmly (possibly deceased) on his head, its legs hanging down around his face.]

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I owned that one on the upper right. It was the most perfect digital device I will ever own. You plugged it into your computer and drag-dropped the music onto it; it was basically a flashdrive with headphones. In addition to playing music, it got AM and FM radio and you could click a button that would record from radio direct to MP3 if a song came on that you liked. You could also use it as a voice recorder with a pretty wide pickup range.

I still have songs on my phone I recorded off radio using that thing in 2003.

[ID: Four images of early 2000s MP3 players, with varying levels of sophistication; the one I'm speaking of is a blue SanDisk with a control wheel, a small digital screen, and several buttons on the side.]

i think we should all go back to carrying cheap little plastic mp3 players that look strangely edible and only hold like 200 songs

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Recently, I discovered these "Galia melons" while shopping. It obviously made me think of the Shivadhverse immediately, but also made me question how you came up with the name? (Wikipedia told me that Galia means "God's wave" in Hebrew is that related to why?)

[ID: A small cantaloupe-looking melon with wrinkly yellow skin, labeled "Bio Galia Melone"; it looks delicious.]

So, fun story, as I recall I just...came up with the name, like I thought "what would I like to name a country" and thought "Galia." Then I googled to make sure the word wasn't already in use or offensive or something, because it did feel like a word that already existed. That was when I found out it means "God's Wave" in Hebrew, at least that's how it is in my memory. (I'm...genuinely worried there's something out there about me finding the meaning first, everything gets muddled after a while -- as Michaelis says there's so damn much to remember when you get to be my age.)

ANYWAY, I definitely did not know about the melons until later, although I suspect honestly what happened is that I saw the melons in Trader Joe's, where they sell them seasonally each year, and internalized the word without consciously noticing it. The first time I saw a Galia melon in Trader Joe's I nearly did stop and do a forehead-smack, but I've done enough dumb things in that Trader Joe's (viz patience bananas and multiple times getting mistaken for a manager in my floral shirts) that I can't push my luck. :D

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HAHA, are you saying I have Tattoo Radar? I'd buy that. I hope it's something cool, I want to see photos when it's healed!

Title: Job Offer

Fandom: Shivadhverse

Rating: Teen+

Summary: When King Michaelis offered a young Shivadh lawyer a ride on his way to his hotel in Paris, he didn't expect to witness her beat three would-be kidnappers unconscious in an alley. He's lucky she was there, though, especially since the kid in question is his friend Oliver's son Hal.

Warnings: This story contains references to the attempted abduction of a child as part of a custody dispute; the child is not actually kidnapped, the violence is fairly brief, and the only harm done is to the kidnappers. Still, as always, read with care.

Timeline Note: This obviously is tied to the short story Pirates Of The Riviera, in which Oliver helps to save Noah from a Predicament; however, Pirates isn't published yet and thus is only quasi-canonical, and it is the story most in need of a thorough rewrite, so if you're wondering why Imp and Olly don't mention the events of this story in that story, it's because I wrote that one first. :D

READ "JOB OFFER" HERE AT AO3

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BTW in the latest episode of this game we met a super hot super powerful crimelord rogue. Both times we met, the last thing my rogue halfling did was roll charisma to flirt with her.

I rolled 3 and then 6. On a D20.

The first time I tried to hold the door for her while bowing, and fell over. The second time I tried to say something sexy and cool to her in thieves' cant and instead ended up saying the local equivalent of "seeya later, alligator."

But I am continuing to maintain my reputation as an accidental tank by taking out a doppelganger with a crossbow, so lucky in murder, unlucky in love, I guess.

(I had to acquire a crossbow because I gave my weighted beast-killing sock to a playwright. It was a whole thing.)

I'm in a new tabletop game a friend is running, and my weird fortune to accidentally double-class as a tank without any of the power of a tank continues.

I don't play physically strong characters -- I like the comedic potential of halflings and the relative simplicity of non-magic users, so I play weird halflings generally, but I seem to have a knack for using them to beat the shit out of enemies based purely on luck. In this case I was in a party that includes a paladin, and where literally everyone is larger than me with better combat and higher hit points. But I rolled lucky to attack the beast we were fighting, so I managed to land the first hit on him and take I think about half his hit points in a single blow, unarmed.

Well, okay, statswise I was unarmed, I had no weapon modifiers. For color, I had suggested that I improvised a weapon consisting of a couple of weighted objects tied up in a sock.

We determined that to do as much damage as I did, I must have done a running slide under the creature and hit it directly in the nuts.

Later I started a riot by notifying the entire population of our local medieval-style slum that the cops were about to raid, so I'm off to a cracking beginning as a fifty-pound, three foot tall ball of pure chaos.

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Work got us some free tickets to a White Sox game so tonight I'm playing traitor and abandoning my beloved Dogs to see my first game on the south side. It's a beautiful night for a ball game...

[ID: a photograph from the outfield of Guaranteed Rate Stadium, the stadium of the Chicago White Sox. It's....not very full.]

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you cannot advertise to me in a way that matters.