potentialities

fantasy football

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 04:36:31 GMT

The Chiefs defense played a one hour Dungeons & Dragons one-shot together. I can relate because when my team is out of the playoffs, I also want to retreat to a world of fantasy and maybe try to kill some people!

There's a teaser on Instagram if you're curious but not a one-hour video curious.

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Falling for Autumn

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 21:02:34 GMT

This Switzerland tourism ad campaign is laser-targeted at me, personally. Maybe I do need Swiss autumn!

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Is my blue your blue?

Wed, 04 Sep 2024 17:51:58 GMT

This website attempts to ascertain your personal blue-green boundary by making you look at slight variations on the same greeny-bluey blue-green until you have the chromatic equivalent of semantic satiation and categorize them as either blue or green. It told me that my boundary is located hue 175, which is apparently bluer than 65% of the population.

My blue does not include Travis Kelce's eyes, which I have always held to be very obviously green. I may have even jested about the failing New York Times when they off-handedly referred to them as blue in their profile of the Eanes brothers. They possibly actually attempted some fact-checking, though, because it transpires that Donna Kelce is convinced that her son's eyes are blue.

This revelation caused enough of a kerfuffle that it worked its way back to the New Heights team and they addressed it in this week's No Dumb Questions segment. Jason agrees with me that they're green. Travis sided with all factions by saying that they change colors, but what he put on his (presumably now current) driver's license is green. Vindication!

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Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto

Sat, 20 Apr 2024 02:26:44 GMT

I’m really enjoying this new NFL RPF fic! It’s so sweet and fun and more than a little saucy, and the Travis Kelce characterization is on point. Definitely going to subscribe to the author, someone named Taylor Swift? She really knows her stuff. Can’t wait to see what she writes next!

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“the only life I am sure of is the life of the Imagination”

Sat, 18 Nov 2023 00:38:38 GMT

Enormously sad to see that A.S. Byatt has died.

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I see skies of blue

Sat, 30 Sep 2023 22:31:59 GMT

If anyone wants a BlueSky invite code, I have three to give away!

Or if you want to follow me there, I have an account, although it's fairly quiet at the moment.

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Vid Rec: Me and the Devil, Folk of the Air, Jude/Cardan

Fri, 21 Jan 2022 00:28:05 GMT

Some straight-up fae magic here by hurleybird. The actual sources are the Netflix series Cursed and the CW series Legacies, but the edit is astonishing.

Makes me want to reread the Folk of the Air books again.

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Math with Whit and Brady

Tue, 16 Nov 2021 18:48:26 GMT

In response to a prompt from Royals, someone posed the following question:

If WhitMerrifield can paint a house in 3 hours & Bsinger51 can paint the same house in 5 hours, how long does it take for them to paint it together?

WhitMerrifield: 5 hours. I make Brady paint the house while I crack a beer and watch.

Bsinger51: You don't even drink beer.

Too cute.

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I said, "I will write to them" — but they didn't believe me!

Sat, 25 Sep 2021 01:54:46 GMT

There’s new canon in the 3,750-year-old fandom I wrote for a few Yuletides ago.

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canonical coffeeshop AUs

Fri, 30 Jun 2017 22:06:07 GMT

It's probably just as well that I don't live in Japan or I would be far too tempted to scoop up all of this adorable Café Inui merch. How can you say no to delicious probability 100%?

Meanwhile, Peter Moylan is serving the rest of the Royals coffee drinks out of his locker, including a signature drink involving espresso and chocolate milk over ice that he calls a "Sledge-iatto". Yum.

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TODD BONZALEZ

Wed, 22 Mar 2017 23:42:56 GMT

Struggling to come up with a name for an original character? Why not use one of these fine suggestions from the 1995 Super Famicom game Fighting Baseball? They are incredible. Like, literally incredible.

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the warmer the coffee, the softer the hands

Tue, 29 Nov 2016 19:30:31 GMT

This video where Vikings defensive end Brian Robison goes around asking his teammates who on the team would make the best hand model is incredible. The Vikings may be struggling on the field, but their locker room game is still on point.

Edit: Replaced link to video with HD version. Thanks, NFLVideoConverterBot!

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The New Yorker ships it

Tue, 31 May 2016 20:25:59 GMT

Lovely short piece about Arnold Lobel and Frog and Toad in the New Yorker.

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I Constantly Thank God for Escobar

Sat, 16 Apr 2016 01:09:41 GMT

There's just nothing fair about this incredible 6-3 double play from last night. Carlos Gomez had just broken up Ian Kennedy's no-hitter with a leadoff single in the bottom of the sixth. Marwin Gonzalez followed it up with a bloop that by rights should have fallen for a hit in an awkward spot in shallow center. Instead, Alcides Escobar raced out, made a sliding over-the-shoulder catch, popped back up to his feet and doubled Gomez off with a long throw to first. There's a reason they call him El Mago.

Once more, with Statcast.

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if you start me up I'll never stop

Wed, 09 Mar 2016 00:53:45 GMT

Longtime readers with good memories will remember my debilitating obsession with a photograph of Bill Gates from his high school yearbook. Well, he's just painstakingly recreated it for a reddit AMA verification photo and it is amazing.

( start button )

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it's here!

Sat, 20 Feb 2016 03:23:09 GMT

The baseball season officially begins when Salvy posts his first video of Cain on Instagram.

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baseball withdrawal

Fri, 06 Nov 2015 02:20:26 GMT

I went downstairs and found my mom using the YouTube app on the bluray player to watch compilations of Salvador Pérez's Instagram videos.

The last I knew, she had no idea that there was a YouTube app on there or how to do anything with it.

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Curtis Granderson : Lucas Duda :: Salvador Pérez : Lorenzo Cain

Tue, 27 Oct 2015 16:36:20 GMT

Met's Lucas Duda is an Instagram Star, Whether He Likes It or Not

Apparently, documenting your teammates against their will on Instagram is A Thing, and I love it. Is this not a form of fanwork? Who says that pros can't be fans of their fellow pros?

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auspices

Wed, 21 Oct 2015 03:36:23 GMT

Yesterday's Royals game was a bit alarming, I'll admit. With two more games to be played in Toronto, things could have gotten very messy very quickly. Which they did…for the Blue Jays.

I wound up deeply pitying the Blue Jays pitchers, who included two old men, a rookie, and a position player, the last of which is apparently a first in the history of postseason baseball, all desperately attempting to keep something in reserve for tomorrow without actually letting the game continue until tomorrow, and giving up 14 runs in the process. Ultimately, the Royals did not actually need to run the score up that much, as they also held the Blue Jays to two runs, but it was fun to take the wind from beneath their wings.

This piece about Chris Young, posted before the game started, is easily the finest piece of humorous sports writing I have read this year. I love watching him pitch.

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Rose Wilder Lane ebooks

Tue, 09 Jun 2015 19:04:59 GMT

I haven't actually read any of these yet, but I thought I'd link them for coercedbynutmeg and anyone else who might be interested in Rose Wilder Lane's writing outside the Little House books.

I am so close to getting my hands on a copy of Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography! Only sixteen people ahead of me!

These books are all available to download or read online at any time:

The Making of Herbert Hoover (1919) is the solution to the mystery of why Rose Wilder Lane's papers are held in the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library.

Charlie Chaplin's Own Story: Being a Faithful Recital of a Romantic Career, Beginning with Early Recollections of Boyhood in London and Closing with the Signing of His Latest Motion-Picture Contract (1916) is another, earlier biography, with an amazingly entertaining subtitle.

Henry Ford's Own Story: How a Farmer Boy Rose to the Power that Goes with Many Millions, Yet Never Lost Touch With Humanity (1917), likewise.

Diverging Roads (1919) is the only novel in the selection of public domain titles. It seems to be about a girl trying to make her fortune in telegraph operation.

These books are not exactly free, but you can check out ebooks from Open Library, or at least add your name to the waiting list, which is still pretty great:

Young Pioneers (originally titled Let the Hurricane Roar, 1932) is a novelized version of some of the same material that would later become On the Banks of Plum Creek. Under the original title the names of the characters were actually Charles and Caroline, but they were later changed to David and Molly; I'm not sure if any other changes were made at that time.

Free Land (1938) followed on the success of Let the Hurricane Roar but seems to be a less optimistic take on the same material.

Old Home Town (1935) is a collection of short stories originally published in the Saturday Evening Post which seem, from the introduction, to be aiming towards a sort of portrait of small-town life. Actual story titles: Old Maid, Hired Girl, Immoral Woman, Long Skirts, Traveling Man, Thankless Child, Nice Old Lady. I am not making these up.

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speaking of Jane Austen

Tue, 05 May 2015 17:31:09 GMT

My Austen-loving former teachers on Facebook shared some positive reviews of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: a Musical, which has Jane herself a character, revising her manuscript of First Impressions into its published form.

Although I am thousands of miles from being able to check out the show itself, they have a large selection of demo recordings on their Soundcloud page that I've been really enjoying. My favorites are Not Romantic (Charlotte Lucas's song), Miss Bennet (the Lizzie vs. Lady Catherine showdown) and When I Fall in Love.

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Angel Clare is the worst

Fri, 16 Jan 2015 01:43:13 GMT

It's Nightmare Pairings time again over at mctabby's journal, any fandom, crossovers welcome, which is why I have taken a stab at outlining the possibilities of Sherlock Holmes/Angel Clare.

(Spoilers: It doesn't end happily for Angel Clare.)

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the story of a guy named Noah

Tue, 06 Jan 2015 18:46:01 GMT

I reblogged this medieval illustration of Noah's ark from discardingimages and remarked that its unusual grid arrangement reminded me of the Brady Bunch theme song. redscharlach went one better and filked the whole thing. Go and read; it is delightful.

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deaths in the children's section

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 17:24:08 GMT

I just saw that Zilpha Keatley Snyder has died, coincidentally two days after I was moved to reread The Egypt Game. (I checked because it could have been the same day and it wasn't, but it was close.)

I also just learned that Mary Rodgers died back in June and that she published a book called Freaky Monday in 2009. I loved Freaky Friday when I was a kid and the 1970s New York it describes was far more fantastic to me than the idea of body-switching.

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Wednesday reading — theatre and other roleplaying

Thu, 17 Jul 2014 01:59:19 GMT

What I've been reading

I read Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics, because when I set about geeking out about a subject I like to be thorough.

I read The Voyeurs, which is one possible answer to the question how introverted and socially awkward can you be and still draw a compelling autobiographical comic? which, as an introverted and socially-awkward person, drew me in. Amusingly, her boyfriend during the first part of the period of time covered by this book was some French director named Michel who was working on some short films and stuff, and it wasn't until much later when she mentioned him leaving to make The Green Hornet that I realized oh, wait, that's Michel Gondry. (I am the only person I know who loved that stupid movie.)

I read March: Book One, the first volume of John Lewis's graphic autobiography, and it's really great.

I read Venus in Fur, the play by David Ives. Or rather, I was watching this bootleg recording of Venus in Fur, because I'd seen the gifs of Hugh Dancy on tumblr, and I was having trouble making out the dialogue at times, which is a problem in a talky play, but then I found this PDF of the script that maybe isn't supposed to be public but Google totally found it and that let me follow along. It's a meta play about a playwright who's written an adaptation of Sacher-Masoch's book and an actress who shows up to audition for it. I found it really smart and sexy, the smartness totally enhancing the sexiness for me.

I was then, for obvious reasons, inspired to reread Venus in Furs, and was honestly surprised by how funny I found it. For an absurdly masturbatory fantasy, it's oddly realistic about how tiresome and ultimately unsatisfying it might be to fulfill some dude's incredibly demanding 24/7 lifestyle. I think my favorite part though is how Aurora Rümelin was inspired by reading it to pursue a Venus in Furs-type relationship with the author, only to eventually write her own memoir about how tiresome and ultimately unsatisfying it was. Ahahahaha whoops. I'd really like to get ahold of that book sometime, because it sounds fascinating.

I also reread David Ives's classic collection of short plays, All in the Timing. Back in high school I assistant directed a production of three of them for class and it was awesome, even though we had to edit some of them for language ("You brought me into your freaking Philadelphia!").

I read, for the first time, another of David Ives's collections of short plays, Lives of the Saints. I was particularly taken by the one about the Maytag man who's in a relationship with a washing machine.

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