jengalicious | Reading

Last night was one of the Petting Zoo parties down in Sodo, to which I took the Tickler. Since this was a Burner-flavored* event, there were thundering herds of scantily-clad sweet things. The Tickler and I had huge fun watching people, or as they put it, being door queens.

Shallow fashion detials: my newish hot pink latex bodycon tank dress with "Slut" in Barbie-like type across the chest. Over that, my leather harness wrapped with two strands of blue electroluminescent wire with the drivers taped to the harness. I brought spare tape and batteries in case I needed them, so of course I didn't. Those batteries had probably been in my Burning Man bins since 2018. It is to laugh.

Was it kind of queer? Yes. Did the kinky folk show up? You know they did, but not quite in the same numbers as last time. Were the DJs good? Yes, notably a young lady called DJ Zucchini, who was mentored by DJ Trinitron. Trinitron had just come from the baseball playoff game and had gotten some attitude from the door people because she was wearing her Seattle Mariners shirt, and they didn't know who she was. Nyuk nyuk nyuk!

Today, Tickler-friendly, i.e. lactose-free, breakfast, then lunch at Made In House.

In summation, much fun.

*The Petting Zoo folks aren't really affiliated with Slutgarden as I'd thought. They just share personnel, including the founders of Petting Zoo.

Current Mood: chipper
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House
Current Music: Squarepusher, "Welcome To Europe"

madgastronomer

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Current Mood: grumpy

sistawendy

I went to the first-Thursday queer women's munch at the Wildrose last night. There were only eight people there, but that's not bad because I don't get the FOMO because I can't get to half the people in the room. I could have stayed home and circumflatulated, but I'm glad I didn't. Happiness is hanging out with people you have a lot in common with.

I still haven't seen Martha, the 'Rose's owner, all year. That's too bad.

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House

sistawendy

After udon courtesy of the Wendling for dinner, a little houswork, and (yeah, I know) Duogingo, I started to feel sleepy. It had been a rainy day, and local sunset yesterday was at 1837. So I listened to my body and went to bed.

I woke up afet 2230, took off my makeup and brushed my teeth, and fell asleep again around 2315. I slept until my alarm went off at 0600.

That's over ten hours of sleep. And I got what I thought was a decent night's sleep Tuesday night. I'm not entirely sure why this happened, but this is definitely a gift horse situation.

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House

cupcake_goth

Yesterday was a pray-for-a-coma migraine. I went to an appointment with my GP to talk about a bunch of things, then came home, looked at my computer, realized that yes really a migraine was coming on fast and hard, then logged out. My interrupt meds kinda-sorta helped, but I spent the day in a napping haze.

Late afternoon-ish, there was a marked drop in the symptoms that mean I can't look at the TV, so Peev and I decided to watch Weapons. Which is a decent horror movie, and I'll probably watch it again to see what I missed. You see, Peev was adamant that I not do my usual thing of spoiling myself for the movie, because he'd heard from multiple people to avoid all spoilers before watching.

... yeah. Now he understands why I spoil myself, because being tense and anxious about possible jump scares and just what happens next means I can't settle in and enjoy the story AND causes a low-to-mid level anxiety attack. He gets it now.

sistawendy

I'm home in Seattle, not bopping around New York.

Poo:

I have put away my bike shorts for the winter.

I have closed all my windows.

I have gotten back on the apps (Now on Feeld!) but my heart isn't in it.

Still not Imperatrix Mundi. And the mundus certainly needs an imperatrix like yours truly right now.

But hey:

I no longer need to water my outdoor plants for the next several months.

It's amazing how quickly my weight responds to getting back on my bike and not eating minibar snacks.

I've been making circumflatulatory progress.

I've got some awesome Burner-flavored events scheduled for the next two weekends, and the Tickler is going with me to the first of them.

Current Mood: okay
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House
Current Music: Hall & Oates, "Man Eater". WTF?

lil_m_moses

Books Finished
- Everyday Angel by Victoria Schwab [e-audio]
- The Near Witch by V.E. Schwab [Kindle]
- City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab [e-audio]
- Tunnel of Bones by Victoria Schwab [e-audio]
- Bridge of Souls by Victoria Schwab [e-audio]
- Our Dark Duet by V.E. Schwab [e-audio]
- The Fragile Threads of Power by V.E. Schwab [e-audio]
- The Archived by Victoria Schwab [e-audio]
- The Unbound by Victoria Schwab [e-audio]
- Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz by Garth Nix [e-audio]
- We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord by Garth Nix [e-audio]
- Cthulhu Fhcon edited by Frog Jones [e-audio]
- The Shattering Peace by John Scalzi
- The Spirit Collection of Thorne Hall by J. Ann Thomas [e-audio]

Library DVDs/Streaming Programs Watched
- Fit for TV [1 equiv]
- The Great Pottery Throwdown: S6 [3 equiv]
- North of North: S1 [1 equiv]

djwudi

Sigh. Shuffle by Album seems to be broken in Apple Music (the app, not the service; what is it with companies giving their apps and services identical generic names?) under macOS 26 Tahoe.

After starting Music, if I go to my library’s Album view (that is, songs that are downloaded and stored locally), the shuffle icon in the new control bar appears to be glowing (with a bad effect The left side of the audio control bar in Apple's Music player under Tahoe, with the shuffle icon highlighted in red with a very harsh, hard-edged glow with no fade. It looks really ugly. ), but if you check options, through the menu bar, Controls > Shuffle shows “Off” and by “Albums”. If I switch that to “On”, I get about a two-second SPoD (Spinning Pizza of Death) — which seems really odd for an audio player on an M4 Mac Mini — before it responds again.

Pre-Tahoe, I could either hit “play” or double-click the “Albums” item in the Music app sidebar, and Music would randomly choose an album, play it through, then randomly play another album.

Now, If I hit the “play” control, Music starts playing the first album in however the album list is sorted; I usually keep my Album display sorted by year, so it always starts playing the oldest item in my collection (Victrola 88049, Enrico Caruso performing “Ideale (My Ideal!)”). If I double-click the “Albums” item in the sidebar, Music starts playing the first song of the first album sorted alphabetically by artist (for me, that’s “Take on Me” off of A-Ha’s Hunting High and Low). Either way, though the shuffle icon is still glowing, checking the menu bar’s Controls > Shuffle shows that that’s now set back to “Off”.

If I let it play as-is, it just plays through the album. If I set Shuffle back to “on”, then it start shuffling by song, not by album. Well…sometimes. Right now, I can’t get it to shuffle at all, even though Shuffle is turned on, both in the menu bar and with the glowing shuffle icon in the control bar.

Revised original line: Shuffle is either partially broken (only shuffling by song, not by album) or entirely (not shuffling at all), possibly randomly choosing (…shuffling?…) between the two options.

I know Apple’s gone all-in on their streaming Music service, but I really wish they still had a few people assigned to making sure they had a decent basic audio player. Music just gets worse and worse for those of us who have extensive non-streaming collections.

Environment:

M4 mini (2024, 16 GB)
macOS Tahoe 26.0.1
Music 1.6.0.151
41,596 tracks on 4,044 albums (136.4 days, 317.43 GB)

📸 Photos

The Seattle Symphony on stage, with blue and purple lights on the walls, and a screen displaying a Tim Burton sketch of two bare trees on a checkerboard landscape and the text, 'Danny Elfman's music from the films of Tim Burton'. — The show about to start.

Looking south down the Seattle waterfront from the roof of the new aquarium with the skyline on the left and the Seattle ferris wheel on the right, with people strolling along the sidewalk by the old aquarium building. — Before going to the symphony, we went down to look at the newly remodeled Seattle waterfront. It’s really nice!

Panoramic shot of the Olympic mountains across Puget Sound, half-shrouded in clouds, under a mostly cloudly sky, with a ferry on the water on the far left of the image. — The Olympic mountains were really pretty this morning.

A section of brick wall and utility pipe barely visible behind hundreds of pieces of used, chewed gum, some stuck to the wall in blobs, some stretched to hang off of the pipes. It's actually more gross than it sounds. — It had been a while since we’d gone by the gum wall. It’s as appealing as ever! (My wife glanced up as I was working on this photo, and commented, “That’s disgusting. I looked up just in time to see my husband looking at dirty pictures on his computer…”.)

📚 Reading

Finished Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Curse of Chalion.

🔗 Linking

Colin Nissan at McSweeney’s, with the perennial classic: It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers: “When my guests come over, it’s gonna be like BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There’s a nip in the air, and my house is full of mutant fucking squash.”
Varsha Bansal at The Guardian: How thousands of ‘overworked, underpaid’ humans train Google’s AI to seem smart: “A great deal of attention has been paid to the workers who label the data that is used to train artificial intelligence. There is, however, another corps of workers, including Sawyer, working day and night to moderate the output of AI, ensuring that chatbots’ billions of users see only safe and appropriate responses. ¶ ‘AI isn’t magic; it’s a pyramid scheme of human labor,’ said Adio Dinika, a researcher at the Distributed AI Research Institute based in Bremen, Germany. ‘These raters are the middle rung: invisible, essential and expendable.'”

Mirrored from Eclecticism.

sistawendy

I went to Mercury A's 50th birthday party at her place on Capitol Hill last night. It was a good old-fashioned house party full of goths, many of whom are old friends. Pretty awesome, and easy to get there & back on the bus. You know, I could do my 60th that way. We shall see.

I've decided not to spend the night in San Francisco, which means no clubbing. Given that I'll need to be more careful with money for surgery — yes, even with the inheritance — and work has been a little unpredictable lately, it seemed like a bad idea.

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House

sistawendy

Latex drinks, all very sociable and an excellent opportunity to show off something I picked up in New York. (Madame Zoie identified the maker, Polymorphe, while I was blanking on their name.) Sadly, the season of needing heat lamps in outdoor spaces has begun in Seattle, at least if you're wearing latex, which doesn't insulate. Le sigh. And that cutie who looked age-appropriate? Very poly and as far as I know het. Le sigh redux.

Oh, and speaking of things I picked up in New York, a piece of information: The Deschamps-Braly clinic in San Francisco does excellent facial feminization surgery. I've since learned that their lead times are actually reasonable. I, uh, pulled the trigger: I put down a deposit and scheduled an in-person consultation down there. Gosh, what kind of trouble can I get into on a Wednesday night in San Francisco, and with whom? (Folks, I have a pretty good idea of the answers to these questions.)

Current Mood: excited
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House
Current Music: Elvis Costello, "Veronica"

sistawendy

TL;DR: I have replaced my upstairs smoke detector.

Epic saga: the old unit was made by Kidde. I took a bus ride to my favorite hardware store, only to learn that they didn't carry anything by Kidde, but switching manufacturers is just a simple matter of installing new mounting hardware and wiring. I noped out of that.

Yes, it's questionable to go with the same manufacturer again given that the first unit died way before its time, but this has dragged on long enough. Besides, turning the power off to mess with wiring upstairs means I lose internet, which means my son might perish from lack of internet.

Who sells Kidde? Home Depot, which is Trumpy. Amazon, which is... less Trumpy? I went with Amazon.

Oh by the way, Kidde has switched power connectors between the old unit and the new one. At least the adapters are cheap.

Anyhoo, in my loft I finally have one (1) smoke & carbon monoxide detector securely placed in the old mounting bracket (whose color doesn't quite match) with a happy little green light powered by the mains of the Devil Girl House. It feels like a bigger deal than it is, which is why I'm writing so much.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House
Current Music: Frank Sinatra, "New York, New York"

lil_m_moses

Found three days relatively empty of customer meetings this week, so I'm working on that annual goal of taking some time off every quarter. Go me!

I'm not doing anything super special, but I do have a couple of fun things lined up. Today I planted some spring flowers (iris and daffodils) and did a weed and feed spread on the lawn (and, of course, it's been pouring rain for the last 30 minutes), made myself take advantage of weekday day hours to go revisit the top two contenders for care homes for Mom and see what they have now, ran a couple of errands, went to dance class, and cooked a thing.

Tomorrow is trying again with the evaluation to hopefully qualify Mom to start making claims on her long term care insurance (after its 90-day waiting period). We're getting her own doctor to do it this time instead of some random nurse over a Zoom call. And then a nice family multi-birthday dinner out in the evening. I haven't yet decided what will go between, but toilet repairs will likely be on the list (one flush valve leaking, one likely has a partly-clogged fill valve). Maybe I'll read some of the paper library book I have out.

Friday cousin and I are going to visit the SkyBridge about an hour north. It's a long wooden pedestrian suspension bridge amongst the hills at a ski resort. She says it's nice, and it sounds like my jams, while husband and child would never go near it. The weekend will likely be usual stuff, possibly with bonus minigolf because the season's almost done and I love it but haven't been this year. Kiddo wants a haircut too.

And then back to the frenetic work chaos on Monday. At least I get 2 days before invoicing starts again (and with it new billing for a newly-launched customer, which promises to be challenging).

sistawendy

After I unpacked, I got a wild hair and went to the open decks night at the Blue Moon. Some great tunes, some less great tunes. Dawgs. Stickers. Ravers. Happiness.

But then I got tired from my cross-country trip and headed for the bus. When I got to the stop, there was an older White woman talking at a younger Black man. He was irritated enough to leave the bus shelter and walk past me a few steps. But the old lady followed him. At some point she said blah blah "you people" blah blah, and that's when I spun around to look. I thought that it might be a come-get-your-girl moment.

The young man looked me in the eye and gestured for me to stay out of it. I gestured to him that I couldn't even hear her over the four lanes of traffic right behind me.

Shallow fashion details, because they're germane: I was wearing a 1950s-inspired dress with a rose-and-spider-web print, and the steel necklace that my mother gave me that looks like pearls, and MAC Ruby Woo lipstick. I was dolled up a little because that's how I roll.

The old lady turned to me and said something like, "Her people don't even give a shit. Do you even know what the NAACP is?"
"Yes," I said. I didn't interrogate her about who "her people" are.
The old lady went back to the bus shelter.
"Are you OK?" the young man asked.
"I'm fine. What about you?"

The bus arrived mercifully soon after that. I got on first and the old lady said, "Get on the bus first, Miss Bitch!" I hadn't noticed that she was shuffling a bit, and the doors had opened right in front of me.

Fun fact: the old lady got off in the middle of Wallingford. That's at least the second time I've seen an elderly transit pest get off there. Coincidence? I hope so for the sake of Wallingford residents.

Y'know, I just spent a week riding transit all over the New York city area and I didn't encounter anyone like this on transit, even after midnight. I come home and it happens within two hours of walking out my front door. Christ on a pogo stick. Having been until recently the daughter of someone like that, I'm still not sure what to do about them: the really irritating, possibly partially functioning ones.

Current Mood: pissed off
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House

sistawendy

Greetings from the Devil Girl House!

Monday was largely about the eetz: on a tip from

neurosismancer I went to Xi'an Famous Foods in Chelsea and had the lamb noodles. Fan-damn-tastic! Yeah, they're cheap eats, but they're great cheap eats.

I took a recommendation that I got Saturday night and jumped on the L train to Brooklyn, just to see what I could see. It was reassuringly normal at Graham Ave, a neighborhood with no skyscrapers; pedestrians of all ages; a high fraction of residential property, most of it from before this century; and businesses some of which sell stuff that people need. There was a big mural of one woman pouring coffee for another woman. The former wore a necklace reading "Boricua"* and the other one wore one reading "Italiana". That was the vibe I got.

From the Dept. of Mystery: what's up with the popularity of Union Square station on the L train? A whole lot of people either get off there coming from Brooklyn, or get on there going to Brooklyn. I even checked for large employers nearby, but I didn't see any. Sure, it's a transfer stop, but there are a lot of transfer stops in lower Manhattan.

Got pierogis at Veselka — another restaurant tip from

neurosismancer — over in the east village and conveniently close to the L train. Honestly, I think I should have ordered them fried instead of boiled. But Veselka is a pretty big place with tasty food and fast service in a neighborhood settled by east Europeans. The have borscht and desserts I'd never heard of.

I allotted more time than I needed to get to JFK. Maybe it's just as well that my subway ride from midtown Manhattan to outer Queens was mellow: I got conflicting information about where my A train was going**. The conductor*** settled the matter over the train's PA. The glory of the subway is that it resulted in only a seven-minute delay somewhere underneath Brooklyn.

Farewell, New York. Too much is just about right.

*A Puerto Rican. I'm pretty sure only Puerto Ricans use that word.
**To get to JFK, you want the A train to Far Rockaway, not Lefferts Blvd. AKA Ozone Park. The A forks like London's Northern line.
***Most of the recorded subway announcements don't have a New York accent. Real live MTA employees, however, do.

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House
Current Music: Buena Vista Social Club

cupcake_goth

The title is because every time there's a Rapture predicted, I listen to Astro Zombies. It seems appropriate.

---

As some of you may have noticed from my shrieking on social media yesterday, My Chemical Romance announced tour dates for 2026. The closest they're coming to me is San Diego or L.A., and yes, discussions are being had about which show I should try to purchase tickets for. EXCEPT that I'll have to purchase those tickets later, because they go on sale on Friday, right when I'll be in the office for an all-day meeting.
:: wails ::

The Stroppy One pointed out that more tickets always become available closer to the concert dates, and while I know he's right, that doesn't sooth the wailing fangirl part of my brain. Stupid work calibration meetings.

---

Yesterday I discovered the clothing company Market of Stars, and specifically this duster. I flailed a lot about in on Bluesky and Tumblr, because my god that is pretty and I already thought of two different outfits I could use it with. To my complete shock, someone who's followed me for years and years sent me the money for it, saying they wanted to spread some kindness. I am shocked but grateful.

---

IG has started showing me a lot of witchy content. Not just the aesthetic IG witches, but people who's approaches are similar to mine. I don't know why the algorithm started doing that, but I prefer it to the hordes of "alt" makeup tutorials done by baby faced, dripping with collagen youngsters. (I found all of them adorable, but found myself muttering "Okay, now show me how to do that with permanent eye bags" a lot.)

---

As many of you know, my company hosts the all-hands Company Kick-Off event at the beginning of every year in Phoenix AZ, and there's always a costume theme for the first day. The 2026 theme is ... teams. Any way someone wants to interpret that, but of course all the examples were sports-related. But! I came up with a brilliant idea and presented it to my team: we all carry notepads and oversized pencils, and ta-da! We're the writing team. My peeps liked it, so that's what we're doing.

madgastronomer

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sistawendy

I think I found the way to zen out in New York: sitting on a bench in Madison Square Park around 11:00 in the shade of trees, listening to a busker play sax across the park, and peeking up at the top of the Flatiron building.

And why was I in the neighborhood? To go to the Museum of Sex. I’m sorry to say that I don’t think it’s worth the ticket price, even if it does a fairly good job of showing how messed up the past was. I can only hope that things are better for future generations.

Then, much napping because of Saturday night.

After dinner, I made a pilgrimage: the Stonewall Inn, where the (modern, effective) queer rights movement started with a riot on June 28th, 1969. There’s a tiny, triangular park with life-size statues of gay activists talking about what to do next after the riots. There was also a memorial to a trans girl who’d been recently murdered by a family member. Outside the gate stood a bored-looking policewoman. Trust New York to produce some unsubtle visual metaphors.

The bar itself? Seems perfectly normal. It’s mostly men, natch, but they’re not clones. Yes, it’s a bit of a tourist trap, but not obnoxiously so.

Today’s plan: good eetz and Brooklyn.

Current Mood: pensive
Current Location: Times Square, NYC
Current Music: something Mexican over restaurant PA

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jengalicious

jenniferlovely.com

October 2025

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jenga

Corporate Goth, because nice boots are expensive.

Reading

Nun takes the Tickler to Burnerland.

I do not want to write fic for Kpop Demon Hunters

a mellow much

I remembered how to sleep.

(no subject)

Reality arrives with fall.

September Media

macOS Tahoe Music (app) breaks shuffle

Weekly Notes: September 22–28, 2025

📸 Photos

📚 Reading

🔗 Linking

party now, save later

New York continues to shape my life.

No more electronic screaming.

Pausing for a Recharge

Welcome home, Miss Bitch.

New York City, part 7 of 7

Prime directive: exterminate the whole human race

No covid! Paaaaartyyyy!

New York City, part 6

Profile

October 2025

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