This that and the other thingamig
Mar. 16th, 2023 06:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Came home the last two days to a pervasive stink, that came and went. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. It wasn't in the bedroom, or the bathroom, nor in the kitchen. Yet it smelled a little like garbage or rotting food. Sickly sweet, with a kind of sourness to it.
I sprayed freshner. I tried to light candles - but my bic lighters aren't working. Smelled around the windows - to see if it was from outside. Smelled the hallway. The next door neighbors. Outside. This morning, I thought maybe it was coming from outside. There was an odd sweet smell outside this morning...so maybe?
I hoped it would go away when by the time I got home. And while there was nothing outside, when I entered my apartment - I was hit with it again. That sickly faint spoiled food order, or as if someone had forgotten to take out the kitty litter.
So, I sniffed about again - and finally found it.
I had a cloth basket in the corner of my apartment, that I'd put various items to help with my back. Including a type of heating pad that was filled with synthetic corn or sand that could be heated in the microwave. It's a soft back pillow that can be heated up and is filled with some sort of pellet.
This was in the bottom of the cloth basket, with a back brace and various other things on top.
Well, apparently a mouse found it and chewed into it, eating the pellets and making a nest for itself. I'm not sure if it engorged itself or what exactly killed it. But it was dead and stinky. So I threw out the cloth basket, the mouse and the pellet heating pad.
This is actually the third heating pad that mice have destroyed. I don't know what they are putting in these heating pads that are attracting mice - but it apparently killed one of them.
Gross. I know. I didn't see much of the dead mouse. Just enough to know it was a dead mouse.
Also kind of strained my back a bit, bending over to clean up the area where the basket was - there was mouse poop, and getting rid of the cloth basket. I put down some more mint tea bags to discourage future visits.
2. Eh, struggling with IBS again, which is resulting in sleep deprivation.
I may try to veer away from broccoli tonight.
Tomorrow they are doing a pizza party at work for St. Patrick's Day. (They can't find Gluten-Free pizza in Jamaica, which is fine. I shouldn't eat it anyhow, the carb count is horrible - my blood sugar jumps to 270 when I eat pizza. ) I'll go to Chipolte and get a chicken burrito bowl instead, with grilled chicken, salsa, romaine lettuce. Or, I'll just bring in my lunch.
Other than that the blood sugar seems to be okay, averaging around 6.8 AIC.
The sensor is starting to itch a little bit, wasn't before. And I occasionally lose it. There's 8 days left on it. If it's still bugging me tomorrow, I'll do something about it.
3. As much as I don't like Daylight Savings Time - on the bright side?
* It's lighter later, and it's admittedly nice to have more sunshine.
* I get to watch the sunrise over the Viaduct on the way to work each morning. I get up at the same time, but now I'm watching the sunrise again, when before the sun was already up and blasting.
I appreciate a good sunrise. I actually prefer sunrises to sunsets.
And the view from the viaduct is amazing.
4. Been making progress through the Artist's Way. Week three is all about Criticism or handling it. And it talks about being shamed, or how a well-meaning but nitpicky friend, teacher, etc - can shut down an artist and block them completely.
We don't make art with its eventual criticism foremost in mind, but criticism that asks a question like "How could you?" can make an artist feel like a shamed child. A well-meaning friend who constructively criticizes a beginning writer may very well end that writer.
This almost happened to me several years ago. I had sent my novel to a friend to review and beta. She was well connected in the publishing world and had an agent, also had worked as a magazine editor. My hope was that she would love my book or at the least be able to send it in the right direction. I'd betaed her novels, and had helped her.
So with baited breath, I waited for her response. And it came in a "shaming" email. She berated me for several paragraphs regarding how I began the story. How I wrote it.
And basically told me that I wrote it wrong and "how dare I". (My novel starts with the protagonist contemplating suicide and someone she meets on the train, stopping her. It's a comical scene, and an expression of my own anger and pain and experience. But my friend who had gone through post-partum depression recently - was offended and made it all about her. She reamed me. And not just over that scene. Because obviously she was the expert on suicide, and the only one who had ever had suicidal thoughts, and how could I know a damn thing.)
I was sobbing by the end of her email. And it broke up our friendship. We never spoke again after that - not in person. And I broke all ties with her. I wanted nothing to do with her. Although I did recommend her books to my mother - who tried two of them, and I read one (the one I betaed and helped her with - ironically, I'd really helped her, while she had almost shut me down.) Add to all of this? I'd hired a life coach to help me get over a writer's block to write it. I'd been shut down by two other well-meaning publishing agents on another book that I wrote.
Another friend in the publishing community kind of did the same thing. Shamed me. Told me that it should be a cozy style mystery, and no one would be interested.
It was my father who saved me. My mother had also read it and loved it. As had Wales, who really loved my book and encouraged me to publish it. While it wasn't my father's genre or type of book - he told me that I needed someone more professional to look at it. Objective. So he persuaded me to send it to his editor, Robyn, who'd formerly edited for Writer's House, and various other Literary Agencies, and was now freelance. My father was a non-traditionally published writer. And had been through what I went through with his own novels - where he'd sent it to a friend, who shamed him and almost shut him down.
Robyn came back and told me it was well-written, she loved the characters, and the story, and felt that I should probably "self-publish" but the publishing world would try to change it, and wouldn't know what to do with it. It didn't neatly fit within any of their nitches. And was, as a result, hard to market.
I did end up self-publishing or non-traditionally publishing the novel through Amazon. This is why, by the way, that I have no issues supporting Amazon and don't give a damn if they put the publishers out of business.
The traditional publishing industry almost shut me down. And they almost did it more than once. My anger at them - is partly why the book got published.
And many people loved it.
I've given criticism here and there - but I've also been taught how to constructively criticize, and explain what works for me and what doesn't. Most people don't know how to do it. My friends didn't. I've taken Creative Writing courses, where we sat in a room while people critiqued and discussed our work, and we did the same. But, Criticism is always painful though. My father was also taught how to give it.
Although, he wasn't always perfect in this regard. My father was critical of my art work at times. I think he critiqued it based on what he could or couldn't do? I could draw people and he really wanted to, and couldn't. I draw people better than places. I always get the perspective off with places, I think it's the spatial relationships bit? My father had troubles understanding that - and his critique of my art, often shut me down, as did my mother's at times. Although generally speaking she was supportive - because she had people shut down her artwork. One of my father's younger brothers' told her that a painting she'd done for my Dad and hung up on a wall was horrible - it was an abstract oil painting of a red ball over a black dot. Kind of a futuristic sunrise. (I liked it). That was a bad painting, and shamed her. She took it down and didn't forgive him until a few years ago, realizing it didn't matter. But of course it did - he shut down her art. Considering his wife is an artist, and he's a writer - it's ironic he did it. But he was young at the time and didn't know any better, and neither for that matter did my mother.
I wish people wouldn't do this. We should let people do what makes them happy. We don't have to read or view or look at or like the art.
5. DW posted a notice about California's Age Appropriation Design Code. (WTF? I know, right? Some nitwitty lawyer must of come up with that title.)
" This bill would enact the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, which, commencing July 1, 2024, would, among other things, require a business that provides an online service, product, or feature likely to be accessed by children to comply with specified requirements, including a requirement to configure all default privacy settings offered by the online service, product, or feature to the settings that offer a high level of privacy, unless the business can demonstrate a compelling reason that a different setting is in the best interests of children, and to provide privacy information, terms of service, policies, and community standards concisely, prominently, and using clear language suited to the age of children likely to access that online service, product, or feature. The bill would require a business, before any new online services, products, or features are offered to the public, to complete a Data Protection Impact Assessment, as defined, for any online service, product, or feature likely to be accessed by children and maintain documentation of this assessment as long as the online service, product, or feature is likely to be accessed by children. The bill would require a business to make a Data Protection Impact Assessment available, within 5 business days, to the Attorney General pursuant to a written request and would exempt a Data Protection Impact Assessment from public disclosure, as prescribed. The bill would prohibit a business that provides an online service, product, or feature likely to be accessed by children from taking proscribed action, including, if the end user is a child, using personal information for any reason other than a reason for which the personal information was collected, unless the business can demonstrate a compelling reason that use of the personal information is in the best interests of children.
In other words, it's asking that social media platforms police their content to ensure it's safe for the teeny-boppers. Eh, good luck with that.
Honestly, parents? You can't protect your kids unless you restrict internet access completely - which will only last until they are teenagers. At least that's what happened with my brother.
This reminds me of a twitter comment where some idiot posted that we shouldn't teach kids about sex, because oh dear, how risque. Please. If you are willing to teach your kid to fire a gun, allow them to play a violent video game, participate in a game of football, or let them watch violence on television or film - you teach them about sex. Sex results in births, and for the most part, bliss. If you teach them about violence first, and violence is hunky dory, but sex is bad - don't be surprised if your little tyke becomes a serial rapist. That's on you.
My difficulty with all of this is well...I know people are watching Game of Thrones, Glee, and Last of Us with their kids, not to mention the Walking Dead. So...
Anywho - DW sees it as censorship and is protesting.
I sprayed freshner. I tried to light candles - but my bic lighters aren't working. Smelled around the windows - to see if it was from outside. Smelled the hallway. The next door neighbors. Outside. This morning, I thought maybe it was coming from outside. There was an odd sweet smell outside this morning...so maybe?
I hoped it would go away when by the time I got home. And while there was nothing outside, when I entered my apartment - I was hit with it again. That sickly faint spoiled food order, or as if someone had forgotten to take out the kitty litter.
So, I sniffed about again - and finally found it.
I had a cloth basket in the corner of my apartment, that I'd put various items to help with my back. Including a type of heating pad that was filled with synthetic corn or sand that could be heated in the microwave. It's a soft back pillow that can be heated up and is filled with some sort of pellet.
This was in the bottom of the cloth basket, with a back brace and various other things on top.
Well, apparently a mouse found it and chewed into it, eating the pellets and making a nest for itself. I'm not sure if it engorged itself or what exactly killed it. But it was dead and stinky. So I threw out the cloth basket, the mouse and the pellet heating pad.
This is actually the third heating pad that mice have destroyed. I don't know what they are putting in these heating pads that are attracting mice - but it apparently killed one of them.
Gross. I know. I didn't see much of the dead mouse. Just enough to know it was a dead mouse.
Also kind of strained my back a bit, bending over to clean up the area where the basket was - there was mouse poop, and getting rid of the cloth basket. I put down some more mint tea bags to discourage future visits.
2. Eh, struggling with IBS again, which is resulting in sleep deprivation.
I may try to veer away from broccoli tonight.
Tomorrow they are doing a pizza party at work for St. Patrick's Day. (They can't find Gluten-Free pizza in Jamaica, which is fine. I shouldn't eat it anyhow, the carb count is horrible - my blood sugar jumps to 270 when I eat pizza. ) I'll go to Chipolte and get a chicken burrito bowl instead, with grilled chicken, salsa, romaine lettuce. Or, I'll just bring in my lunch.
Other than that the blood sugar seems to be okay, averaging around 6.8 AIC.
The sensor is starting to itch a little bit, wasn't before. And I occasionally lose it. There's 8 days left on it. If it's still bugging me tomorrow, I'll do something about it.
3. As much as I don't like Daylight Savings Time - on the bright side?
* It's lighter later, and it's admittedly nice to have more sunshine.
* I get to watch the sunrise over the Viaduct on the way to work each morning. I get up at the same time, but now I'm watching the sunrise again, when before the sun was already up and blasting.
I appreciate a good sunrise. I actually prefer sunrises to sunsets.
And the view from the viaduct is amazing.
4. Been making progress through the Artist's Way. Week three is all about Criticism or handling it. And it talks about being shamed, or how a well-meaning but nitpicky friend, teacher, etc - can shut down an artist and block them completely.
We don't make art with its eventual criticism foremost in mind, but criticism that asks a question like "How could you?" can make an artist feel like a shamed child. A well-meaning friend who constructively criticizes a beginning writer may very well end that writer.
This almost happened to me several years ago. I had sent my novel to a friend to review and beta. She was well connected in the publishing world and had an agent, also had worked as a magazine editor. My hope was that she would love my book or at the least be able to send it in the right direction. I'd betaed her novels, and had helped her.
So with baited breath, I waited for her response. And it came in a "shaming" email. She berated me for several paragraphs regarding how I began the story. How I wrote it.
And basically told me that I wrote it wrong and "how dare I". (My novel starts with the protagonist contemplating suicide and someone she meets on the train, stopping her. It's a comical scene, and an expression of my own anger and pain and experience. But my friend who had gone through post-partum depression recently - was offended and made it all about her. She reamed me. And not just over that scene. Because obviously she was the expert on suicide, and the only one who had ever had suicidal thoughts, and how could I know a damn thing.)
I was sobbing by the end of her email. And it broke up our friendship. We never spoke again after that - not in person. And I broke all ties with her. I wanted nothing to do with her. Although I did recommend her books to my mother - who tried two of them, and I read one (the one I betaed and helped her with - ironically, I'd really helped her, while she had almost shut me down.) Add to all of this? I'd hired a life coach to help me get over a writer's block to write it. I'd been shut down by two other well-meaning publishing agents on another book that I wrote.
Another friend in the publishing community kind of did the same thing. Shamed me. Told me that it should be a cozy style mystery, and no one would be interested.
It was my father who saved me. My mother had also read it and loved it. As had Wales, who really loved my book and encouraged me to publish it. While it wasn't my father's genre or type of book - he told me that I needed someone more professional to look at it. Objective. So he persuaded me to send it to his editor, Robyn, who'd formerly edited for Writer's House, and various other Literary Agencies, and was now freelance. My father was a non-traditionally published writer. And had been through what I went through with his own novels - where he'd sent it to a friend, who shamed him and almost shut him down.
Robyn came back and told me it was well-written, she loved the characters, and the story, and felt that I should probably "self-publish" but the publishing world would try to change it, and wouldn't know what to do with it. It didn't neatly fit within any of their nitches. And was, as a result, hard to market.
I did end up self-publishing or non-traditionally publishing the novel through Amazon. This is why, by the way, that I have no issues supporting Amazon and don't give a damn if they put the publishers out of business.
The traditional publishing industry almost shut me down. And they almost did it more than once. My anger at them - is partly why the book got published.
And many people loved it.
I've given criticism here and there - but I've also been taught how to constructively criticize, and explain what works for me and what doesn't. Most people don't know how to do it. My friends didn't. I've taken Creative Writing courses, where we sat in a room while people critiqued and discussed our work, and we did the same. But, Criticism is always painful though. My father was also taught how to give it.
Although, he wasn't always perfect in this regard. My father was critical of my art work at times. I think he critiqued it based on what he could or couldn't do? I could draw people and he really wanted to, and couldn't. I draw people better than places. I always get the perspective off with places, I think it's the spatial relationships bit? My father had troubles understanding that - and his critique of my art, often shut me down, as did my mother's at times. Although generally speaking she was supportive - because she had people shut down her artwork. One of my father's younger brothers' told her that a painting she'd done for my Dad and hung up on a wall was horrible - it was an abstract oil painting of a red ball over a black dot. Kind of a futuristic sunrise. (I liked it). That was a bad painting, and shamed her. She took it down and didn't forgive him until a few years ago, realizing it didn't matter. But of course it did - he shut down her art. Considering his wife is an artist, and he's a writer - it's ironic he did it. But he was young at the time and didn't know any better, and neither for that matter did my mother.
I wish people wouldn't do this. We should let people do what makes them happy. We don't have to read or view or look at or like the art.
5. DW posted a notice about California's Age Appropriation Design Code. (WTF? I know, right? Some nitwitty lawyer must of come up with that title.)
" This bill would enact the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, which, commencing July 1, 2024, would, among other things, require a business that provides an online service, product, or feature likely to be accessed by children to comply with specified requirements, including a requirement to configure all default privacy settings offered by the online service, product, or feature to the settings that offer a high level of privacy, unless the business can demonstrate a compelling reason that a different setting is in the best interests of children, and to provide privacy information, terms of service, policies, and community standards concisely, prominently, and using clear language suited to the age of children likely to access that online service, product, or feature. The bill would require a business, before any new online services, products, or features are offered to the public, to complete a Data Protection Impact Assessment, as defined, for any online service, product, or feature likely to be accessed by children and maintain documentation of this assessment as long as the online service, product, or feature is likely to be accessed by children. The bill would require a business to make a Data Protection Impact Assessment available, within 5 business days, to the Attorney General pursuant to a written request and would exempt a Data Protection Impact Assessment from public disclosure, as prescribed. The bill would prohibit a business that provides an online service, product, or feature likely to be accessed by children from taking proscribed action, including, if the end user is a child, using personal information for any reason other than a reason for which the personal information was collected, unless the business can demonstrate a compelling reason that use of the personal information is in the best interests of children.
In other words, it's asking that social media platforms police their content to ensure it's safe for the teeny-boppers. Eh, good luck with that.
Honestly, parents? You can't protect your kids unless you restrict internet access completely - which will only last until they are teenagers. At least that's what happened with my brother.
This reminds me of a twitter comment where some idiot posted that we shouldn't teach kids about sex, because oh dear, how risque. Please. If you are willing to teach your kid to fire a gun, allow them to play a violent video game, participate in a game of football, or let them watch violence on television or film - you teach them about sex. Sex results in births, and for the most part, bliss. If you teach them about violence first, and violence is hunky dory, but sex is bad - don't be surprised if your little tyke becomes a serial rapist. That's on you.
My difficulty with all of this is well...I know people are watching Game of Thrones, Glee, and Last of Us with their kids, not to mention the Walking Dead. So...
Anywho - DW sees it as censorship and is protesting.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-17 06:47 am (UTC)There is apparently something in some kinds of plastics that mice (and other rodents) like to chew on. Maybe it makes them high? I dunno, but many car technicians can regale you with stories about vehicles that have been damaged by rodents chewing on the wiring harnesses in them. My sister ran afoul of this a year ago. Got in to her car, turned the key, and.. nada. Had to get it towed, and when the service company checked it out, found that the harness had been damaged by chewing, and in multiple places. (Finally a critical wire got damaged, and thus the car wouldn't start).
*******
One of the things I try to do when I watch any TV show, or movie, or evaluate writing, or any kind of art is not to impose what I would do on it. I may or may not like something, but as long as I see some reasonable attempt to express what the artist intended, I'm good. Doesn't have to match my tastes.
Westerns are a good example. I generally am not a big fan of the genre, but there are any number of ones I've seen over the years that I did like. The ones I didn't care for were, to me, sloppily made, or were very racist, or pointlessly violent. (Pointless is the operative word-- it's not the violence in and of itself).
Or science fiction. If the story is good, thought-provoking or simply entertaining, I handwave the very often technical/science errors made in it.
Some people are just too damn ego-driven, and reject perfectly respectable artistic efforts because it's not what THEY would do.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-17 12:17 pm (UTC)OR maybe we need to rethink plastic? Whole other discussion.
Westerns are a good example. I generally am not a big fan of the genre, but there are any number of ones I've seen over the years that I did like. The ones I didn't care for were, to me, sloppily made, or were very racist, or pointlessly violent. (Pointless is the operative word-- it's not the violence in and of itself).
There is admittedly a reason culture snobs scoff at genre - there's so much pulp. I mean this is true of Westerns, Comic Books, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Romance, Mystery (whether mystery fans wish to admit it or not.)
If you dip a toe in any of those genres without recs or don't know where to start - you're bound to run across the pulp or cheap assembly line crap. And the more that was produced/written under it - the worse it is.
Also virtually 75% of the stuff published or produced in those genres prior to 1990 - had isues with sexism, racism, gender, nationalism, etc. A lot of it does not hold up well. Some of it is ironic - because there's things in there that were controversial at the time they were produced and condenmed by racists etc for being too progressive. (White people condemned Huck Finn when it was originally published, now it is condemned by Black people and liberal white folks.) Same with say Harry Potter - originally condemned for being progressive with LGBTA, class and race, now condemned for transphobia, and not being progressive enough (the author was dumb and went nuts with her transphobia on social media.) This is also true with Star trek - what was considered progressive in 1965, isn't now.
Westerns for the most part are products of their time period - which were uninformed, poorly educated, etc. There are however quite a few that subvert or stand out. But if all you knew were the B westerns, mainly John Wayne's and Taylor's, and skipped over the ones with Jimmy Stewert, Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, Gregory Peck, Barbara Stanwyk, and the ones directed by Sam Peckinpah, and John Ford, among others...you'd not know that.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-17 06:09 pm (UTC)We had an issue with mice a few months back and the exterminator seems to have done his job because a week after his visit we haven't seen any more signs. Does your building get exterminator service?
no subject
Date: 2023-03-18 01:05 am (UTC)The mouse is dead, so not a problem. The difficulty in getting rid of them - is I live in a 77 unit apartment building, it has hoarders and section 8 folks in it, and well the mice live in the walls and wander about it.
According to other responses in this thread - there's something about plastic that mice like. I think this thing was filled with plastic rice or synthetic rice? I don't know. I threw the whole thing out.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-18 01:09 am (UTC)