Just given up trying to read through a self published cozy romantasy. It has pacing issues, is in dire need of an editor, and uses terms and races directly lifted from D&D such as 'Tabaxi'. But what really broke it for me was when the characters just 'fixed the oven' like it's a modern appliance. And this was important because the setting involves someone trying to bake and cook meals for an inn. All feeling of place just came unmoored as it became clear that the writer just hadn't thought beyond the surface aspects of 'things in a kitchen'.
I can't imagine someone trying to 'fix' an AGA with what ever tools they have laying around. Let alone a wood fired stone oven that's part of the wall.
Last weekend was Airbourne, Eastbourne's free airshow over the sea. I hadn't been for a few years, and I had a free weekend, and why not? I picked Sunday as I thought it would be quieter, and it turned out to be the nicest possible weather, hot and sunny.
I’ve now been in Florida for over a month and a half, helping joreth get her new (to her) RV set up and situated...a project that involved gutting the entire inside, adding 600 watts of solar to the roof, and replacing the house batteries with a very large lithium battery bank.
As we've run bto and fro between Winter Haven and Orlando, mainly along I-4, a wretched hive of scum and poor civil engineering, I noticed a very peculiar thing:
Florida has given up on the idea of advancing your station through hard work.
Drive across Florida on Interstate 4. Drive around in downtown Winter Haven, Orlando, or Lakeland. Notice anything peculiar?
I’m talking, of course, about billboards. But not just any billboards. Florida is, to an extent I’ve not seen in any other state, littered with billboards...for accident lawyers. Billboards as far as the eye can see, all advertising how much money you can make if you are in an accident.
Billboard after billboard after billboard, all for accident attorneys. On the stretch of I-4 we’ve been driving regularly, most of the billboards—54%, by my count—are advertising accident attorneys.
They’re everywhere. It’s absolutely uncanny.
I took these photos from inside a moving car, so I know the quality isn’t the greatest, but they just go on and on. We would drive down stretches of road where every single billboard for miles advertised accident attorneys, one after another after another.
Florida has long been legendary for the staggering numbers of terrible drivers on the roads, the result of snowbirds coming down from all over the country without being accustomed to the rain, a olice force focused on making money over protecting public safety, and lax licensing laws.
But I think there’s another part of it as well:
In Florida, there’s a cultural attitude that says getting in a car accident that you can blame on someone else is like winning the lottery.
They even have lawyers who specialize in going after semi owner/operators and trucking companies.
And, of course, language is no barrier to your payday.
But the absolute freakiest thing?
Remember when I said that getting in a car wreck is like winning the lottery? I meant that literally, not figuratively.
Accident lawyers put up shiny happy billboards with shiny happy accident victims wearing shiny happy smiles under headlines trumpeting how much money they made.
(There’s something so very very Florida about this little scene: an “I won $500,000 in an injury lawsuit, isn’t that awesome?” billboard over a strip mall with a pawn and gun shop, an acupuncturist, a martial arts center, an MMA arena, and a weird Evangelical church, all sharing a roof.)
The way these billboards are designed, they’re exactly like state lottery billboards.
“Dude! You got hit by a car and smashed into rubble? Awesome! Cha-CHING!!!”
Every time you pull into traffic in Florida, you’re sharing the road with people who sincerely hope you hit them because that’s the way you get ahead in this world.
It’s really deeply creepy...and perversely, it incentivizes the exact opposite of driving defensively. Coming up to a light and it looks like someone might be about to run the red? Gun it! Get in that intersection and hope he slams into you. Then maybe you’ll be one of the shiny happy people with a big payday, baby!
I haven’t done it since I returned to the US from Canada waaaaay back in the distant Before Time of 2018, so a few weeks ago, something finally snapped. I woke up at 3AM, decided it's been far too long since I spun, and ordered a set of LED poi from Amazon. You know, as one does.
When the poi arrived, Joreth’s first reaction was “hey, the local dungeon has a photo night coming up, we could do a Borg Queen xenomorph parasite poi-spinning photo shoot!” Of course, I immediately said yes, and so, that Friday, we did.
It’s a little-known fact that when a Borg Queen is parasitized by a xenomorph, a peculiar quirk of Borg physiology makes the Borg Queen spin LED poi. Later, as the xenomorph parasite takes hold, the Borg Queen is driven to do...unspeakable acts by the hiphugger on her hips.
My Talespinner’s boyfriend came into town days before the shoot to help us work on Joreth’s RV, because that’s how my polycule rolls. (Seriously, I have awesome metamours!) So naturally I pressed him into the shoot as well.
We had an absolute blast.
Behind the scenes, Joreth’s boyfriend (who, as it turns out, also spins!) helped with lighting and such.
The alien xenomorph hiphugger is definitely a head-turner wherever we go, or maybe that’s just Joreth.
A couple of weeks ago, I heard Mark Radcliffe on his Folk Show interviewing that veteran trouper, Peggy Seeger. I enjoyed the track they played from what she has announced as her final album, Teleology, but when I heard that there was another track called 'I Want To Meet Paul Simon' I ordered a copy immediately.
I'm an occasional listener to the SpyHards podcast, which covers Bond and other spy movies, and I've met one half of the production team, Scott, a few times when we've caught a relevant film together. The other half, Cam, lives in Canada, so when he came over to visit, we organised a get-together.
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jayblanc
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