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Like a Carousel That's Turning, Running Rings Around the Moon

When last I reported on the mice they had just got a couple new toys, a bridge and a balsa-wood house. They still have them, and they're enjoying them a great deal based on how they're burying them and using them to hide from the world. They also have a couple small plastic igloo-shaped houses that they keep turning upside-down, so they're more like a bird's nest than a sheltered area. They've done this consistently enough we have to suppose it's a deliberate choice and I think bunnyhugger has given up on trying to set it right.

But they have something new as well. bunnyhugger was satisfied that they were not fighting, at least not seriously, and had settled on what they figure their social arrangements should be. And so that encouraged her to put in the sort of toy that mice might fight over. That is, of course, a wheel, which every kind of animal, not just mice, turns out to like.

The mice took to it quickly, like you'd expect, particularly with the brown mice doing a lot of running. At least one of them was taking to it, at least; we haven't figured how to tell the two apart. We might have to wait until they're grown more and hope some clear difference shows up. But at least one of them would build up a lot of speed and then stop running, letting the momentum spin them around. We don't know whether that's a deliberate choice or just a failure to understand momentum yet. But it's also easy to suppose they find that fun.

Which made it odd that after a day or two they stopped running the wheel. Investigation revealed that they'd gotten paper caught in it, keeping the wheel from spinning freely, and once that was moved mice were back on the wheel and doing well. Besides the brown mice we've spotted the grey one. We don't have a confirmed sighting of our original, white, mouse on the wheel. I know I often saw her running the wheel when I got downstairs at like 7:30 am, but since it's been only a couple days since she had the option I haven't had the chance to observe whether she is running in the morning. I'll have more on this mouse activity stuff as it comes to pass.

Now let's look at a thing that has passed, photos of Marvin's in our November visit. Don't worry, there's another to come.

One of the mechanical contraptions, the ``Michigan Anteater''. I forget whether it was actually working which leaves me wondering just how it was that it didn't hunt well.

A head of Elsie with the explanation that cows have two stomachs and use cud to aid digestion.

bunnyhugger coining up on Attack From Mars. And why was she doing this at this moment? That will be revealed shortly.

Some of those old Chuck E Cheese figures. I forget their proper name and also the name I gave them in jest like a year ago so I won't bother calling them anything.

Another of the Chuck E Cheese figures. They aren't operating at Marvin's.

And this isn't Chuck E Cheese but rather FunHouse's Rudy as the Three Stooges.

Trivia: The United States Lines shipping company was formed in 1921 by the United States Shipping Board as a government-owned corporation. It was sold in 1929 to the P W Champan Company, which soon defaulted, and the government had to foreclose. Source: Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed The World, Brian J Cudahy.

Currently Reading: Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, Daniel Okrent.

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Book 52 - Gavin Maxwell "Ring of Bright Water"

Gavin Maxwell "Ring of Bright Water" (Penguin)

Originally published in 1959, Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell is a delightful memoir about the author’s life at a remote house on the coast of Western Scotland near the Hebrides. His descriptions of the location and the bountiful nature he was surrounded by had this reader longing to visit this idyllic place. When he first arrived he was accompanied by his dog, Jonnie, but after the death of his beloved pet, he acquired an otter named Mijbil while on a trip to Iraq.

The author documents Mijbil’s delightful and mischievous behaviour, and many of the hilarious incidents reminded me of trying to contain a toddler. His curiosity was boundless and he had a need to examine everything that came his way. Unfortunately, Mijbil met an untimely death and the author was devastated. Although he tried to replace Mijbil, nothing seemed to pan out for him until quite by accident he met a couple who had a young otter that they needed to find a home for. Once again his highland cottage was sanctuary to an otter, this time a female called Edal.

The author’s love of nature brings a richness to the descriptive writing, and his visual images and observations make Ring of Bright Water a memorable read. Although in today’s world the author would be chided for bring these creatures out of their own environment, he was living in a different time and his love and care for these otter companions is both touching and admirable.

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I Would Like You to Dance

Thank you, dear bunnyhugger.

In the humor blog mines this week: strange noises in the neighborhood, a strange discovery over by the sink, I pick a fight with none of my readers in Gil Thorp, and Jimmy Rabbit gets a wheelbarrow shakes my concept of the whole Arthur Scott Bailey novelistic universe.

How about we look in on Marvin and the Mechanical Museum from back in Mnovember?

Stuff in the back, including a claw game and that large Mannequin Doctor who is both not electric and pleasant.

And here's someone trapped in a pillar. It happens.

Cardiff Giant beside some of Marvin's Tiny Staff. (That's the area with the grill and soda machine and such.)

This proclaims itself a replica of Thomas Edison's carbon filament lamp and I don't see any reason to doubt that, particularly. I like that because of the reflection you get to see the filament from two angles.

Never seen before! In my pictures. The men's room at Marvin's. Inside the toilet stall is a sign about John F Kennedy's record as fastest public speaker, once recorded at 327 words per minute if you believe that.

And some of the stuff on the walls, above the hand dryer that has ballyhoo about how it's an experimental jet engine. The tiles underneath this are four M's in a row, but you can't see them.

Back on the game floor. Alas, once again, the Cedar Point roller coaster simulator was down. The thing offers six rides, two of which --- Mean Streak and Mantis --- have been reconfigured into different rides (Mantis only slightly, by changing from a standing coaster to a seated one; Mean Streak by a total rebuild). Gemini, Blue Streak, Magnum, and Iron Dragon are still as they would have been when the video was recorded. Note the music's by Peter Frampton.

More stuff you see by looking up, including a pig and a railroad engine plan.

Not sure I ever photographed this before but the vestibule had a big M in the tile, partly obscured by the floor mats.

A full-on Marvin's logo mat. I don't know if they ever sold these but it would've made sense.

More stuff on walls, including for some reason a gorilla chauffeur that doesn't read even slightly racially coded in any way, and a poster from the 4th Exposition de la Locomotion Aerienne, 1912.

Humpty Dumpty dressed for Halloween and looking like Pac-Man. Also you see the slushies they had on tap.

Trivia: The 62-mile Lancaster Turnpike, completed 1794, was built by a private joint-stock corporation. Of 2,275 applicants for stock only 600, chosen by a lottery wheel, were allowed to subscribe. Source: Engineering In History, Richard Shelton Kirby, Sidney Withington, Arthur Burr Darling, Frederick Gridley Kilgour. The book says the price was $7,000 per mile, which seems like a lot if that's 1794 dollars but not enough if that's in the dollars of the book's 1956 publication. Like, I'm not sure there was $434,000 in the whole country in 1794.

Currently Reading: Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, Daniel Okrent.

In The News.....

Having Dinner With Four Strangers In Columbus

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/25/having-dinner-with-four-strangers-in-columbus/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57471

To some people, sitting at a table with several unfamiliar faces and being expected to make small talk is a nightmare scenario. The anxiety creeps in of what to say, which topics to discuss (or avoid), and if you’re going to be judged for ordering an appetizer and dessert.

Such was the situation I found myself in last night after I signed up for Timeleft, a company with the goal to help you make meaningful connections with peers from your city.

I had never heard of Timeleft before, but two weeks ago I got an ad for them on Instagram. I won’t lie, the idea of dining with complete strangers was immediately interesting to me, as I love meeting new people, getting to know others, and making friends. What are strangers but friends you have yet to meet? So I went to their website and checked it out.

To my surprise, Timeleft is available all over the world. Sixty different countries and three hundred cities, including Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland. I was delighted to see that I really had my pick of Ohio cities, though I would love for Dayton to be on that list. Cleveland is a bit too far, but Cincinnati and Columbus are both about two hours, so I ended up picking Columbus as my city because I prefer the driving, parking, and dining scene over Cincinnati.

First, you take a personality test to determine who else should be at the table with you. Timeleft asks things like what field you work in, what kind of movies you like, if you’re married or have kids, if you like to talk about politics, if you’re a planner or more spontaneous, basically just some standard questions to see who you would, on paper, be compatible with.

After you take the test, Timeleft pairs you with five strangers to have dinner with, and the restaurant is a mystery to everyone until the day of the dinner. One thing I thought was really cool is that you can choose different levels of budgets for your dining experience. There’s $, $$, and $$$. Obviously I picked $$$, because if I’m going to drive to Columbus for dinner, I want to eat somewhere nice (also, I’m just bougie, so). You can also mention any dietary restrictions you have, as well.

Timeleft books the restaurant reservation for you all, and you just show up to the restaurant, meet your dining companions, and spend the next couple hours getting to know each other and sharing a meal together. Not sure what to say? Timeleft actually provides ice breaker games and questions to get the ball rolling.

After the dinner is done, every Timeleft group in the city is invited to an Afterparty. Timeleft chooses a bar for everyone to meet at to have a drink to close out the night. Once you’ve finished the evening, Timeleft asks you who you’d like to keep in contact with, and if you match you can message each other through the app. (Or you can just exchange contact info right then and there if you want. That’s pretty much what ended up happening for me, anyway.)

So that’s how it works! Pretty simple, and very stress-free since they pick and book everything for you! It was nice to have the reservation handled, and just have to show up.

Timeleft isn’t a dating site, it’s meant for platonic connections and people seeking friends in their city. It’s meant for screen-free conversations and connections with people you wouldn’t have normally met otherwise. I think it’s a really cool concept, and I was super excited to try it out.

So let’s talk about how it went.

The initial ad that I got for Timeleft was them rolling out their new Ladies Only dinner. This was what I tried to sign up for, as I have really been wanting more gal pals lately. Not that I am opposed to befriending men, obviously, but as I get older, I’ve started to really want more genuine female companionship. And not that I don’t already have some super close girlfriends currently, because I definitely do and I’m super grateful for them and our friendship, but who couldn’t use one or two more, right?

Anyways, I couldn’t figure out how to sign up for the Ladies Only one, despite clicking on the ad that was advertising them. I figured I might as well just sign up for a regular one.

I ended up dining at Z Cucina di Spirito in Dublin with four guys. There was supposed to be another girl, but she actually ended up no-showing.

In my group, our ages ranged from 25 to 32, and everyone except me lived in the Columbus area. There was one other person whose first time it was, but the other group members had done a couple of these before, and two of them had even dined with each other in a previous dinner. Between the five of us, our professions were all over the place, as well as our tastes in music, though we did seem to agree on some favorite colors. We talked about travel, movies, concerts, places previously lived, and some bad dates.

While this post isn’t meant to be a restaurant review of Z Cucina, I will say I did like it. The atmosphere was nice, it was a very pretty place, and the food and drinks were quite good. I was the only person to order an appetizer (I did share, because I think food is best enjoyed that way), but everyone did order dessert, so that’s a green flag in my eyes.

I got two cocktails; a Basil-Gin Smash and an Empress, and both were really nice. The bread for the table came with this super yummy red sauce that was surprisingly flavorful. My main was their Bucatini Al Nero Di Seppia, which was squid ink pasta with mussels, clams, shrimp, and scallops, and that was so good. I thought the shrimp and scallops were really excellent, and I’m happy I finally got to try squid ink pasta! I’ve wanted to for so long. Plus, the tiramisu was a huge slice, and I have no complaints about it.

I would say the thing I was the least impressed with was the appetizer. I ordered the Stuffed Risotto Fritters and they were fine but nothing amazing. I will say they were piping hot, though, and it came with four of them.

So, all in all, I really liked the dining location Timeleft picked, and I think they did a good job with my budget choice. Since it was Wednesday, the restaurant was not crowded at all. There was really only a few other people, so it was nice that it wasn’t too loud and no one in my group had to shout across the table.

We all decided to go to the second location, The Pint House in the Short North. My group only ended up finding one other Timeleft group, which was a really friendly group of older ladies and gents. One of them had thirteen grandkids! It was really cool to see that Timeleft isn’t just for young whippersnappers, it’s seriously for anyone and everyone, and proof that you can find people your age and with your interests that also want to make friends! It just felt really wholesome.

I felt really comfortable the whole time, I wasn’t worried about anyone being a weirdo, and we all exchanged numbers at the end. It was so nice to meet people that I would’ve never come across without Timeleft, and it’s honestly just awesome to see how many other people out there are looking to go and meet new people and make friends.

All in all, I really liked dining and talking with everyone I met, and I can’t wait to attend another Timeleft dinner.

Would you give Timeleft a try? Does the idea of dining with strangers scare you, or does it sound super exciting and fun? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!

-AMS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/25/having-dinner-with-four-strangers-in-columbus/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57471

The Big Idea: L. D. Colter

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/25/the-big-idea-l-d-colter/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57460

The retelling of myths is a tradition practically as old as the myths themselves. Author L. D. Colter has implemented some Greek mythology to help write her newest novel, While the Gods Sleep. Follow along in her Big Idea to see how a lifelong interest in any and all types of myths led to writing tales of her own.

L. D. COLTER:

I remember sitting on the floor of the library at my school (a junior high and high school combined and small enough that my graduating class had twenty-five seniors), pouring over a translation of the Bhagavad-Gita. This would have been about the same time I asked a friend’s neighbor if I could learn some Hindi from her. I remember researching the Buddha after reading Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse and looking up bits of translation of the Qur’an. I searched, pre-internet, for anything I could find on Asian and African myths and their ancient gods, though I found little. Same with Norse mythology—astoundingly hard for me to find until this millennium (but, ah, had I only discovered the rich fantasy worlds of the right comic books back then…).

Years before all this, as a child, a favorite book of mine was a tall, beautifully illustrated book of Russian folklore, given as a gift by my aunt. I still have that book today. Also sprinkled across those years was my fascination with old stories from the British Isles and all things fae: the Arthurian tales, Tristan and Iseult, the Ballad of Tam Lin (and the tale of Thomas the Rhymer, thought possibly to be the same character in tales told centuries apart). Lastly, of course, have been my decades of reading fantasy books of all stripes, especially ones with themes of myths or pantheons or faerie or folklore.

Standing out strongly across these years, though, has been my love of Greek mythology. I checked out copies of The Odyssey and The Iliad from the city library to read over summer break in high school and read and re-read my copy of Bulfinch’s The Age of Myth until I rubbed the gold lettering from the fabric cover. (Seriously. I still have that book as well, and the cover and spine are plain brown.) I bought tickets to myth-based movies—the good and the bad—and sought out novels with retellings and reimaginings of Greek myth.

Armed with this lifelong love of tales from around the world I wrote my first novel, an epic fantasy with my own version of the Celtic Seelie and Unseelie and—in my imagined secondary world—the gods who had abandoned them. It was rewritten many times as I learned the art of storytelling and was, at last, published as The Halfblood War in 2017. Meanwhile, my second novel, A Borrowed Hell (a portal/journey story), ended up being my debut novel in 2016. And then, finally, I tackled the set of three myth-based novels I’d long been wanting to write. Unsurprisingly, I began with Greek mythology.

My formative reading had been filled with Tolkien, Vonnegut, Pat McKillip, Ursula Le Guin, Gene Wolfe and others, but at the time I wrote While the Gods Sleep, I was heavily influenced by China Miéville and Tim Powers. In this book, I wanted to explore my own boundaries of weird fiction, big endings, and gods as characters—in other words, my big idea. What I discovered the hard way was that leaning weird was harder than it looked from the outside: I got my main character into the underworld with some fun weirdness along the way but then had to maintain the weird while worldbuilding an entire underworld.

But the biggest hitch to my big idea came when I discovered that writing an ordinary mortal into trouble with a pantheon of gods and demigods had been the easy part. Writing him out of it was the real challenge. My “messy middle” (as every author I’ve known encounters somewhere between that inspired beginning and the ending you’re working toward) was starting to look more like quicksand. It was suddenly very clear to me why the “chosen one” trope was so popular—at least you have one card up your sleeve to help your character win.

I persisted, though, and fortunately managed to surprise myself with plot twists that I never saw coming until I got there. When all was said and done, I like to think I ended up with a dark-fantasy thriller that does indeed lean weird and keeps picking up steam right into the final pages. Best of all, I finally satisfied my years-long goal to write a book that borrows from Greek mythology while getting to tell my own unique story.

While the Gods Sleep: Amazon|Amazon UK|Barnes & Noble|Kobo

Author socials: Website|Instagram|Facebook|Bluesky

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/25/the-big-idea-l-d-colter/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57460

View From a Hotel Window, 9/25/25: Richmond, VA

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/25/view-from-a-hotel-window-9-25-25-richmond-va/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57458

And the parking lot is in the sky! Amazing.

Hello, I am in Richmond, Virginia and I will be seeing at least some of you tonight at 6pm at Fountain Books! Then tomorrow I am off to Winston-Salem, and the Bookmarks Festival of Books! Here is my schedule for that.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/25/view-from-a-hotel-window-9-25-25-richmond-va/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57458

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All My Tubes and Wires and Careful Notes and Antiquated Notions

Last Friday we got to RLM Amusements for another Grand Rapids all-night pinball tournament. We'd been thinking to get back there and see the regression to the mean from my second-place finish last month, and besides, a couple of Lansing Pinball League folks were also planning to go out. How could we not join in 517 night in Grand Rapids?

So, skipping to the results: I did not repeat my finals performance. I didn't even make it to playoffs. I started out with a loss on 300, a bowling-themed electromechanical, and that's one of the three games I consider my pocket games, the ones I can always pull out a win on. I got to play three of my pocket games this time --- 300, Fast Draw, and Genesis --- and lost on each of them. I also lost to fellow Lansing player DG on Indianapolis 500, a game that, if I may be immodest, I rule on in its Pinball Arcade virtual version. On the other hand, I did beat PCL, also from Lansing, when we played on Dune, a boutique pinball game that we're not sure actually exists. RLM Amusements has a bunch of games that seem like they can't be real (Labyrinth, Evil Dead, Baby Pac-Man) and this is just one more in the line. I had gone in figuring, we're playing fourteen rounds, if I get seven wins I'm in playoffs, and I started out losing six games of the first eight. So I had to win five of the last six and what do you know, but that last six started with me playing bunnyhugger.

We haven't had to play head-to-head much at RLM, and we prefer it that way because c'mon. The game was Total Nuclear Annihilation, a retro 80s style game with a theme of ``light up a nuclear reactor and blow it up, nine times over''. It had been one of her strengths when the game was at The Pyramid Scheme in Grand Rapids, but at RLM Amusements she hasn't got its wave. This time around, I had the groove. I so had it. My first ball I got a nuclear reactor lit and blown up, and the second ball I got a multiball going that let me blow up a second reactor. bunnyhugger tried but, demoralized, couldn't get much of anything together. I beat her horribly, and then, with ball three --- and my best game ever, in that I'd never gotten a second reactor blown up --- I kept on going. This irritated her because I ran up what was already a ridiculous win. And I ended up on the high score table, both for points and for speed in blowing up reactors two and three, which I didn't even know was a possible achievement.

This set me going on a bit of a winning streak; I was able to beat JTK --- who'd come out when he heard we were visiting --- on Uncanny X-Men next, and I'd go on to beat PCL and someone else on Buck Rogers. But I took a loss on Evil Dead, where I couldn't find the shot to get anything started, and in the last round lost on Fast Draw, somehow.

And bunnyhugger? We kept comparing notes over the night; she started with a pair of disheartening losses, and then it became four losses before she finally got to Fast Draw and won. She got another win after that, but then took three losses in a row, sinking her below where she could expect to make playoffs. But then she started winning, racking up three victories in a row before the final game, on Terminator 2, an early-90s game that's always something of a coin flip on location like this. And she lost the flip, ending up just below me. (For the curious, we've played at RLM Amusements six times this year; I've finished ahead of her four times, she's finished ahead of me twice.)

We hung around a while, particularly because both JTK and PCL did make playoffs. Both lost in the first round. DG didn't make playoffs either. But we talked some, gossiped some, played against each other some --- we did a four-player game of Dune where once again, somehow, I know how to play Dune? For some reason? I don't know.

In other pinball, before and after the tournament I did a lot of playing on Baby Pac-Man, hoping to figure out something about that cursed game in case I get called up on it, during qualifying (random draws) or during playoffs (when specific games are chosen). I can't say I'm good at it, but I did put up a couple respectable games and one really good one, getting to the third maze, which is farther than I've done playing Ms Pac-Man. Possibly a few more sessions and the game won't be an easy loss for me.

I also finally played some of the video games, in-between rounds, trying to soothe my disappointment at lost pocket games. That Bust-A-Move/Puzzle Bobble game? That's pretty fun, I like that.

Now, more of my antepenultimate visit to Marvin's at the former Hunters Square mall, back in November:

A sequence of Broom Hilda drawings to support someone's Academy of Music. I'm curious how the Academy came to seek Russell Myers's attention.

No Smoking sign alongside a giant cigarette.

Big Head that I can't swear was ever used in a Detroit Thanksgiving Day Parade. Probably not; it's a bit big even for the Big Heads.

King Cobra, once again not up to the challenge of striking at anyone's hands.

Some of the old magician posters, like the renowned ... Virgil, I assume with the astounding Aeneid. Plus a reprint of one of those Beatles at Shea Stadium advertisements.

And it wouldn't be a Marvin's visit without a picture of the Cardiff Giant tucked away in his box.

Trivia: In 1917 the draft bureau reported that about one-third of all the American men called to serve were physically unfit, many with diet-caused conditions like rickets or bad teeth. Source: A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression, Jane Ziegelman, Andrew Coe.

Currently Reading: Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, Daniel Okrent.

W.T.F. News.....

I bet the FCC doesn't demand he is removed from the airwaves.......

Fox News' Jesse Watters Calls to 'Bomb' U.N., or 'Maybe Gas It,' After Broken Escalator and Teleprompter During Trump's Visit

Watters characterized the malfunctions at the U.N. headquarters on Tuesday as an "insurrection"

By Lindsay Kimble

https://people.com/jesse-watters-calls-bomb-un-after-teleprompter-escalator-malfunctions-11816183?hid=7f1109a25d2362f31854399df255b82ba78f015e&did=17760579-20250924&utm_source=ppl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ppl-news_newsletter&utm_content=092425&lctg=7f1109a25d2362f31854399df255b82ba78f015e&lr_input=758ad690760192cf49795c3f52223721cac5324e3e862e41c5d4db73a4d43f32&utm_term=midday&campaign=13583605

I.M.H.O......

Isn't this like the Pot calling the Kettle black???

Meghan McCain slams Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner's daughter's UN speech: 'This is why people hate nepo babies'

McCain, daughter of Sen. John McCain, quickly deleted a social media post criticizing 19-year-old Violet Affleck for speaking at the United Nations.

By Joey Nolfi

https://ew.com/meghan-mccain-slams-jennifer-garner-ben-affleck-daughter-violet-11816482?hid=7f1109a25d2362f31854399df255b82ba78f015e&did=19623640-20250924&utm_campaign=ewk_relationship-builder&utm_source=ewk&utm_medium=email&utm_content=092425&lctg=7f1109a25d2362f31854399df255b82ba78f015e&lr_input=758ad690760192cf49795c3f52223721cac5324e3e862e41c5d4db73a4d43f32&utm_term=news-alert

The Shattering Peace is a New York Times Bestseller

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/24/the-shattering-peace-is-a-new-york-times-bestseller/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57452

Specifically, it’s at #9 on the Combined Print and eBook Fiction list, which, if I’m being honest, is higher than I expected, inasmuch as I expected it to be at 14 or 15 if it got onto the list at all (the competition for the NYT list is significant right about now). I am, as the kids do not say, gobsmacked. This is a very good day.

If you pre-ordered or bought the book in the first week, thank you. You’re my favorite. And if you haven’t gotten it yet, it’s not too late! Copies are still available!

And to celebrate: I’m gonna have some pizza. And then go to sleep. I’m still on tour and have to get up in the morning.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/24/the-shattering-peace-is-a-new-york-times-bestseller/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57452

View From a Hotel Window, 9/24/25: Shepardstown, WV

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/24/view-from-a-hotel-window-9-24-25-shepardstown-wv/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57446

The parking lot isn’t for the hotel, and it isn’t even really a parking lot, it’s a car wash. Also, there’s this big damn pine in my view. West Virginia is going hard, y’all.

Tonight: Four Seasons Books at 6 pm, which is an hour earlier than I usually start. You should be on your way now!

Tomorrow: Richmond, Virginia! At Fountain Bookstore! Also at 6pm! The Virginias do things early, I suppose.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/24/view-from-a-hotel-window-9-24-25-shepardstown-wv/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57446

The Big Idea: Cadwell Turnbull

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/24/the-big-idea-cadwell-turnbull/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57440

Reality can oftentimes be stranger than fiction. Author Cadwell Turnbull speculates on this funny thing we call reality in the Big Idea for his newest novel, A Ruin, Great and Free. Follow along to see how our reality helped shape the world for the final novel in the Convergence saga.

CADWELL TURNBULL:

Back in the early months of 2020, a lot was happening. In January, the then-Trump administration killed an Iranian general in a drone strike, an “arbitrary killing” that, according to the United Nations, violated international law. At the same time, cases of infections from a new virus were being reported across the globe.

In November 2019, I read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel just as the first cases of coronavirus were being reported. Station Eleven told the story of several characters before, during, and after an influenza pandemic which kills most of the world’s population.

I promptly began talking about the coronavirus cases with my friends. Even now, I recognize that what I’d been reading was guiding much of my anxiety on the matter. I possessed no special knowledge.

But then the moment came where it was clear to everyone that this thing was indeed happening. Or it should have been clear to everyone. Instead, there was a split in our collective sense of what was happening—a fracture. As people died, I witnessed personally a very stubborn denialism take hold. As city streets lay empty and hospitals filled beyond capacity, people began protesting the need for lockdowns and other such precautions. The pandemic became a partisan issue. But even on the personal level, among friends and family with politics all across the spectrum, I witnessed a range in how the pandemic was being perceived.

I was surprised and not surprised. The effects of the pandemic were terrifying, but we all weren’t terrified by the same things. It also confirmed in a very dramatic way a speculative hunch I’d embedded into the project I was working on at the time.

Almost a full year before the pandemic I’d created a fictional fracture of my own. It was at the heart of No Gods, No Monsters, the first in what would become the Convergence Saga. In the novel, evidence of the existence of monsters from folklore and popular culture is released to the public. Almost immediately this evidence—two videos: an officer-involved shooting of a werewolf and an act of protest from said werewolf’s wolfpack—is seemingly erased from everywhere all at once.

With the loss of the evidence, the collective sense of reality splits. Some people become obsessed with the videos and their disappearance. But other people—most people, in fact—self-delete the event from their own minds. The reasons for both responses were the same. A terrifying truth can take over a person’s mind or cause a person to look away completely. In the series, I was tying this fracture idea to a bigger one, a question at the center of reality itself, a real-world counterpart to a cosmic puzzle.

As I was drafting No Gods, No Monsters, I struggled a bit with the believability of this fracture idea. Peers that workshopped early parts of the novel questioned it. I also kept questioning the idea. Right up until the pandemic forced the world into lockdown and some people still didn’t believe it was happening.

I started No Gods, No Monsters in late 2018 and it was released in 2021. The following book, We Are the Crisis, was released in 2023. And the final book, A Ruin, Great and Free, was released on September 16th. My work on this series has spanned a very interesting time in our American (and global) politics.

Sometimes basic facts of our current life feel so strange to me that I wonder if we’re all trapped in some collective nightmare. I’m constantly reminded of The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin, where protagonist George Orr has dreams that can alter reality itself. This personal quirk is then amplified by use of a machine called the Augmentor, weaponised by Dr. William Haber, a psychiatrist with goals of remaking the world into a utopia. Naturally that doesn’t quite work out, as Le Guin masterfully shows us the disastrous results of Haber’s hubris.

The Lathe of Heaven envisions for us what it might look like if a subjective ideal is imposed on the objective world. If one person can determine (either by accident or manipulation) what the world looks like, what is the cost?

I think we know this speculative premise has real-world counterparts. As individuals and collectives, we are constantly remaking reality according to our ideals.

In the Convergence Saga a shadowy kabal tries to manipulate the world for its own purposes. Like in The Lathe of Heaven there is a supernatural reality-warping effect at work in the story’s world, but there’s also a very natural one. Ideas have a heat to them. They can be felt, drawing us in. Ideas can make us ignore things right in front of us. They can also make us imagine things that aren’t there. And once we’re under the spell of certain ideas, it can be difficult to root them out. An idea embeds itself.

Like a lot of people right now I’ve been obsessively watching the news. I find it frustrating how much of the news is political commentary. I am even more frustrated by the reality-warping effectiveness of bad-faith commentators on our current reality. Once again I find myself catastrophizing about a future I don’t want to live in, but we seem to be slipping toward. At the same time, I see the split happening. We can’t agree on what we’re seeing.

If the Convergence Saga is about the questioning of reality, it is also about expanding empathy. Trying to find healing for a fractured world. Trying to mend what has been broken. The story does not neatly provide an answer—because I personally don’t have one—but it shows an earnest attempt by the characters to find a way out of the political upheaval they’re facing. Much of that work is in finding new communities, forming new coalitions, and building solidarity networks for economic support and mutual aid. Occasionally, these coalitions of monsters, humans, and cosmic beings have to do battle against nefarious organizations and supremacist groups.

Turns out that in our world there are more people that want a fascist, white supremacist future than we thought. And we’re already glimpsing what that future could look like.

Fortunately, reality remains a collective act. And they’re not the only ones out here. We also get a say in what the future looks like.

A Ruin, Great and Free: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s

Author socials: Website|Instagram|Bluesky

Read an excerpt here.

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/24/the-big-idea-cadwell-turnbull/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57440

(no subject)

Today it is my great pleasure to send out...

*~*~*~*~*GREAT BIG HAPPY BIRTHDAY WISHES*~*~*~*~*

To my dear friend,

nursesparky.

I hope you have a spectacular day. :)

Disney 1

(no subject)

Welcome Back Jimmy...

Watch on YouTube

Entry tags:

marvin's marvelous mechanical museum

Take a Look and You'll See Into Your Imagination

No time to write stuff today, so please enjoy a double dose of Marvin's pictures from back in November. We're finally almost inside! Also please read up on What's Going on in Gil Thorp? Why Is Gil Thorp All Political Now? June - September 2025 as I get all the politics going.

Pinball playfields used as decorations on the vestibule. Left to right theese are F-14 Tomcat, Fire, and Ali.

These I don't know as well because they're Gameplan games and who ever sees them? The one on the right is Captain Hook, from 1985. The one in the center is a game called Agents 777, from 1984, like you'd imagine.

Sorry to spend so much time on Agents [sic] 777, but I think you'll agree the more you look the more you're mystified, starting with the three 7's in the car.

See, a gambling-theme game makes sense as it is, and a heist or gangster-themed game, sure. Cops-versus-gangsters, yeah, I get that. And then ...

You know it's pinball because there's a sexy bell.

I assume, given the slot machine theme, that's a cherry that has those cherry breasts.

Enough of that. Getting inside here, and the Pinball Row lineup ahead of league night.

The airplanes on the conveyor belt ready for someone to put a quarter in and make them go. Those darned zeppelins, always tipping over.

From over near the men's bathroom, lots of stuff, including two carousels that might or might not be for sale.

And trophies! These would be awarded the next month, as league finals, to the top three finishers in A and the top finisher in B. You know the champion of B.

League night getting organized, so much as it ever does.

More of those planes and, of course, Ghost Homer choking Pirate Bart.

Trivia: On 23 September 1948 the FCC issued ``the freeze'' of new TV channel authorizations. Source: The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television, David Weinstein. 123 already-authorized stations were allowed to continue, although only a couple dozen were on the air in 1948. A bit over a hundred of them were on by the time the freeze was lifted in spring 1952.

Currently Reading: Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, Daniel Okrent.

Entry tags:

Malcolm Arnold 9

Malcolm Arnold
Symphony no.9
National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland/Andrew Penny

Arnold is probably better known for his film scores such as Bridge on the River Kwai,but his 9th symphony is his crowning achievement in my opinion. Composed in the eighties, this is his crowning glory with a heart aching lento in the fourth movement. The movement is bleak and intense, spare and grief stricken, like a gigantic funeral march but with a radiant resolution at the end. Without that final chord, the surrender to nihilism and despair would be total
Awesome..

Arnold: Symphony No. 9, 4th Movement

Watch on YouTube

ENJOY

Entry tags:

Book 51 - Anita Brookner "Hotel du Lac"

Anita Brookner "Hotel du Lac" (Penguin)

"Hotel Du Lac" is primarily a character study… not just of this story’s cast, but of the narrator herself.

Visualize a small hotel located in a remote but picturesque village on Lake Geneva, Switzerland. One that is quiet even during the prime vacation season. Hotel du Lac maintains a reserved, quaint, yet formal atmosphere. Imagine traveling alone to such a place to escape a disaster you recently created at home. Here, you find yourself to be one a half-dozen guests left on the premises following the summer season. These simple circumstances provide the basis for Brookner’s story, and to make the minimal plot more interesting, she provides a narrator who is a well-known author of romantic fiction writing under a pen name. Her true identity is kept a well-preserved secret.

Anita Brookner’s writing style is captivating and the plot is intriguing. In the story, the narrator is compared to Virginia Wolfe, and Anita Brookner truly does have a similar way of story-telling. She is very good at drawing out details in a way that paints a complete picture. But there are several negative factors that detracted from "Hotel du Lac" being a perfect novel.

The story takes place in a vacuum of time. Based on some trivial details like descriptions of the clothing and the fact that television has been invented, it appears to take place in the 1950s… though the way it is presented makes it more like a story from the Victorian Era. The characters exhibit strangely unrealistic formal behavior and extremely rigid manners, creating an aura of surreal existence.

Also, the entire story is based on the narrator’s observations and her analysis of the other guests at the hotel. This presents a problem for the reader because the novelist is shy, introverted, non-committal, indecisive, and according to the other guests, plain and mousy. She has no social skills. She quickly draws conclusions about the other guests and shares her thoughts with the reader. As the story progresses, she admits that writers are either known for being remarkably wise, or remarkably naïve- with no real personal experience. And it becomes apparent that the narrator’s judgement of people is jaundiced by her own lack of personal experience and lack of mature wisdom.

Personally, I was tired of the narrator’s critical assessments and harsh judgement of the other guests. I became bored and would gladly have abandoned her for the company of those she shunned. But Anita Brookner had other plans. The reader is stuck with this drab and boring woman right to the bitter end.

The conclusion is both anti-climactic and annoying because this incognito author really believes life is like the romance novels she pens. Moreover, right up to the final scene she is so tentative and wary she cannot assert herself.

Anita Brookner illustrates exceptional character development. It’s just too bad the character was not more likable.

W.T.F. News.....

The Cry Baby is at it again.....

Donald Trump halts televised speech to threaten crew member: 'Whoever is operating this teleprompter is in big trouble'

Trump made the quip before a lengthy, awkward pause while addressing the United Nations General Assembly.

By Joey Nolfi

https://ew.com/donald-trump-threatens-crew-member-live-speech-11815260?hid=7f1109a25d2362f31854399df255b82ba78f015e&did=19599211-20250923&utm_campaign=ewk_relationship-builder&utm_source=ewk&utm_medium=email&utm_content=092325&lctg=7f1109a25d2362f31854399df255b82ba78f015e&lr_input=758ad690760192cf49795c3f52223721cac5324e3e862e41c5d4db73a4d43f32&utm_term=news-alert

The Big Idea: Delilah S. Dawson

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/22/the-big-idea-delilah-s-dawson-5/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57434

Writing a book is like riding a bike: once you’ve got it down, you never have to learn how to do it again, right? Such may not be the case. In her Big Idea, author Delilah S. Dawson delves into the writing process and learning curves she faced, even after numerous novels. Follow along to see what challenges and changes came with creating her newest book, Thor & Loki: Epic Tales From Marvel Mythology.

DELILAH S. DAWSON:

The Big Idea: Sometimes Your Process Changes, and That’s Okay

I’ve written over forty books and had thirty-two of them—the good ones—published, so you’d think that I know how to write a book.

As it turns out, you would be wrong.

At least partially.

Because the thing about writing books is that just because you know how to write one book does not mean you know how to write another. Books are like fingerprints in that each one is wholly individual, unique in all the world. Books are unlike fingerprints in that they cannot be easily compared to koala bears.

Except—

Well, koala bears are notoriously single-minded and stubborn, and writers can be like that, too. Hopefully, I will convince you otherwise.

When I write a novel, I write the story straight through from the first page to the last page. I don’t jump around chapters, reread extensively, or edit as I go. I think of it like carrying hot laundry from the dryer to the bed: you wrap it in your arms and run, and if you drop a sock, you leave it behind because we all know that one hasty squat can topple the entire basket. I do multiple revisions, lest you think I am publishing the equivalent of inside-out, cat-hair covered socks, but that initial run from page one to THE END is the skeleton on which the meat of my story rests.

This method worked for thirty-one books, and then suddenly, it didn’t.

When I was invited to write Thor and Loki: Epic Tales from Marvel Mythology, I quickly realized that my Hot Laundry Process could not serve me. Instead of weaving a story from my own brain and heart, creating a new world out of the threads crafted from my creative spinnerets, I was tasked with taking an existing mythology and retelling it for a modern audience through the well-known voices of Marvel’s Thor and Loki. The Norse myths spring from an oral tradition, and there is no one, total, mutually accepted, complete source to study. Not only that, but there is no one specific Thor or Loki. Like the myths that bore them, these two ancient gods have been depicted in multiple movies, TV shows, and comics, and each individual fan has a favorite Thor or Loki, a platonic ideal of the character that they hold in their heart.

Thus, my task was to take two well-known, beloved characters that have existed simultaneously as gods and goofs for the past twelve hundred or more years, distill them into a fine mead, and then syphon that golden sauce through the sieve of collective comic memory and Icelandic poetry.

Can’t believe I’m saying this, but it might be easier to do laundry.

I don’t generally suffer from Writer’s Block, not only because I have deadlines and a mortgage, but also because I trust in my process. And yet you must believe me when I tell you that I came to a standstill on this project and began to dread it. When I invent a world, I become its god, and every decision I make solidifies the character and story. In that realm, I am always correct, and reality conforms to my whims. But in the realm of Thor, Loki, and their shared mythology, I had to instead become the bard.

In the Norse tradition, the bard is the keeper of story and memory, a vaunted figure; Odin is considered the god of poetry, and one of the myths that has lasted through the centuries tells the tale of the first bard and the mead of poetry. The bard’s job is not to spin tales from the ether, but rather to pass down the stories from one generation to the next, to remember them in a time with no written record. Each bard carried the myths and told them in a unique fashion, reminding the tavern’s occupants how to live and worship while entertaining them.

Once I realized that my job was to take up the bard’s tankard, suddenly the book actually began to flow. Instead of telling my own story, I broke the project down into chapters, and each day, my task was to look at a particular myth from several different sources and spin my own version. Or, more accurately, to channel the voices of Loki and Thor as they each compete to woo the Avengers to their side using all the bard’s techniques of enchantment and, well, propaganda. Adding in a few famous Thor and Loki tales from the Marvel comics was even more of a challenge. From The First Avenger in 1963 to Thor, Frog of Thunder and the more recent Loki for President, it was a delight to create my own poetry from famous stories never before told in prose.

For the first time, my chapters jumped around. I wasn’t carrying laundry from point A to point B; I was putting a puzzle together. Unlike all my other books, the Norse myths don’t have a specific chronology. Although there is a very distinct beginning, which involves a very large cow licking a giant, and a very distinct ending, known as Ragnarok, what happens in between is fluid. As Loki tells the Avengers, the myths exist to entertain and teach, not help you draw up an accurate timeline. Part of the bard’s art is selecting just the right story to tell.

Now, this is not the first time I’ve had to completely change my process. Writing my first novella, also known as ‘a book that is only 40% of a book’, had quite the learning curve, and I did such a bad job writing my first comic that I burst out crying at a hotel buffet during a Santa Claus convention. I’ve been writing professionally since 2012, and I’ve learned to always trust my process, and when that process stops working, to find a new process. There is no one way to write a book. A writer’s process may change over decades, years, projects, or chapters. Whatever gets the book done? That’s your process.

If you don’t have a process yet, I highly recommend the book Story Genius by Lisa Cron, which teaches you to outline by marrying character arc to plot using the third rail of emotion. And if you already have a process, maybe don’t cling to it too tightly. Don’t be that koala that will only eat eucalyptus if it’s on the branch. Writing is about fluidity and play and experimentation. As Charles De Mar says in Better Off Dead: Go that way, really fast. If something gets in your way, turn.

Thor & Loki: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s

Author socials: Website|Instagram|Bluesky

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/09/22/the-big-idea-delilah-s-dawson-5/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57434