“When a person is mystified by a good magic trick it is because he can’t figure out how the magician did it. When a physicist is mystified by an unexpected observation it is because he can’t figure out how the universe did it.
“The big difference, of course, is that the universe plays fair.”
— Martin Gardner, Science: Good, Bad, and BogusIsekai: 3.7
She counted it off on her fingers. “Slay the dragon, save the kingdom, bed the princess: Heroing 101. I always start at the end, to make sure they’re motivated and don’t ask too many questions.”
It had certainly worked on me. If she had come back in five months, or maybe even five years, I’d have slain any dragon she pointed me at, with a salt shaker and a butter knife if necessary. She’d been extremely motivating.
“Problem was, you weren’t one of mine. You were protected, maybe by the Power that made that world, maybe by something else that had just stashed you there. It took me three days to fuck you back to consciousness and forge a connection to your lifeline.”
“I’m sorry I missed that.”
The mental image of that magnificent body riding me for three days straight was causing a painful reminder that it had been thirteen years for me, and it had been her the last time, too. She noticed, and a raised eyebrow was enough to make the offer: Hero Wanted, Apply Within.
I forced some blood back up to my brain and focused on what I really wanted. “If you couldn’t get in, how did you get me out?”
The state of the state
Lockdown fatigue
It’s become increasingly evident over the past few weeks that if it weren’t for porch cats and package deliveries, I’d have no real validation of my existence. And I’m fresh out of Amazon orders. Several times now, I’ve found myself trolling my wish lists and recommendations just to find something vaguely useful to buy. I usually don’t, in the end, but even indirect human contact is so rare now that if an unmasked JW showed up at my door tomorrow, I’d learn Spanish just to keep them from going away immediately.
Okay, maybe only if it was another young hot one.
Do you recall?
My only disappointment with the increasingly-likely recall vote for Benito Newsom is that it doesn’t include the entire California state government. He may be the most malignant, but it’s cancer all the way down, and they’re all responsible for how fucked-up California is.
But they’ll keep their jobs, because the so-called “Covid relief” bill is actually a pension-fund bailout for California and New York, saving them from the consequences of some of their many other failures. And if the voting “reform” bill passes into law without a successful Constitutional challenge, they’ll be secure in their grift forever.
Isekai: 3.6
She held up a hand to ward off my angry outburst. “I can’t go there any more, and I don’t know why.”
She slumped into the nearest chair like a person, not a professional temptress. Without the Manic Pixie Fuck Bunny pose, she wasn’t the redhead I remembered. Not necessarily someone I’d like, and definitely not someone I’d trust, but I thought I was seeing something real.
“I found it a long time ago. I don’t know what Power created it, but it felt abandoned, unused. It was my refuge when I needed one, my ‘fortress of solitude’. I kept it a secret from the others, and was careful never to leave behind any trace that I’d been there, that it mattered to me. We weren’t… nice to each other.”
“Angel said you broke their toys.”
She laughed bitterly. “Oh, I’m horrible to everybody, especially the new ones. We’re the meanest pack of Mean Girls in the universe, and we never grow up or grow old, but sometimes we get replaced.”
“When I got back from my last job, there were three new girls. I’d never seen that many at once before. All of them older than your sweet Angel, sexier than your weird little hybrid Ariel. Sexier than me, which meant my days were numbered. I ran away to my safe place, and found something I never thought I’d need: a hero.”
Isekai: 3.5
Her panic receded a bit. “That’s… surprisingly accurate. We’re not those Muses, of course, and not all about poetry and music and such. Although I make an awesome groupie.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet you do. Maybe I should have said Catalyst, or in your case, Succubus. Whatever you call yourselves, your job is to make men change. Inspire, tempt, seduce, distract, mother, annoy, whatever it takes. You pick a target, or someone does, and then you show up in his life again and again, pushing him in a certain direction. And when you’re not around, he forgets you. Mostly.”
“Holy shit, you really have been with Angel for three years.”
I found clothes laid out on a table, and started getting dressed. “Every hour of every day, and you’re taking me back to her, now.”
“I can’t.”
Pixiv: "by the original creator"
The most common usage of 本家 you’ll hear in anime is “main house”, as in the place from which distant patriarchs arrange marriages and summon disobedient underlings for punishment. On Pixiv, it generally refers to artwork created officially for a book, game, show, or a Youtuber, drawn by a professional artist.
It’s a good way to go trolling for some really well-done images, generally less explicit than the fan-art. In fact, pretty much all of these ended up outside the NSFW tag, and even the ones that went in were pretty tame, with mostly-mild violations of my PEEN (pose, exposure, emphasis, nipples) rule.
Isekai: 3.4
The names hit her like fists, and she dropped the tray in shock. She hadn’t known they were there, had never heard the names I’d given them, but I could see the recognition in her eyes.
“I came back for you as soon as I could. It couldn’t have been more than a few hours.”
“It was thirteen years. The first ten alone, then most of three years with Angel; Ariel joined us a few months ago.”
“I don’t understand. How could you have been there for so long? How could they have even gotten in? How could you have given them real names? Do you even know what we are?”
She was honestly bewildered, and there was panic rising in her voice. She’d walked in certain she was holding a Royal Flush, only to find out we were playing Twister.
“Yeah, I think I finally do. Seeing you drop the slutty valkyrie act was the last piece in the puzzle.”
“You’re a Muse.”
Isekai: 3.3
Ariel suddenly burst into tears and began wailing, a high-pitched, hopeless sound. She was horny, not stupid, and had followed the same chain of logic I had, but to a different conclusion: she was the one who’d be abandoned. Again. We both scrambled to comfort her, ending up in a three-way hug, promising to stay together and somehow make it work.
When I woke the next morning, they were gone. Or maybe they were still there, together, because I was definitely gone. The satin sheets were a pretty big clue, and I had a feeling I knew who they belonged to. Sure enough, my least-favorite favorite redhead showed up as if I’d just rubbed her lamp, carrying a tray full of something she probably thought was breakfast.
Surprisingly, she was fully dressed. I wasn’t, but I’d been bathed and shaved, and all the little scars I’d picked up over the years were gone, like it had all been a bad dream.
She looked at me like she was expecting praise, and I was happy to disappoint her. “Take me back.”
“Wait, what? I told you, I resurrected you to be a hero. There’s no going back, you’re dead there.”
“Not to Earth, to the place where you really found me. The rock in the forest, in the world without people. The world with the only people I care about.”
“Take me back to Angel and Ariel.”
She’s back!
Gastro-astronomy
Dick Blick Ships Quick
No, I’m not buying art supplies now, but the combination of Brickmuppet’s recent Seussian links and Nespresso’s order fulfillment brought that old slogan to mind for some reason; my dad was a regular customer when I was a kid, and I have fond memories of their catalog.
As I’ve started to develop some ability to discriminate between the various available coffee pods, I’ve taken advantage of their new-customer offers to round out my stash. I now have more of Nespresso’s little jewel-like pods than I have of my precious Gevalia Mocha Latte K-cups, although they get consumed faster due to the general lack of calories; two Splendas and a Calf don’t add up to much. So far, Capriccio is the only one I can almost drink black.
Anyway, the order I placed Saturday morning not only arrived before noon on Monday, the pod sleeves were actually all carefully lined up so that all the labels faced the same way when I opened the box. A small touch, but like the free express shipping, a sign that they’re really focused on the customer experience. Important when their closest retail boutique is a good sixty miles away and their branded pods aren’t stocked in any stores near me.
Peet’s has the only good third-party pods in grocery stores, as far as I can tell. I found Illy pods in the Williams-Sonoma at the south end of Monterey, but that mall’s a rare destination for me, and not a place I’d go to stock up on consumables anyway; I only went in out of idle curiousity since I was in the area.
Great Red Spot
I’m not the Instagram-y sort to post pictures of all my food, but it amuses me to post the combined output of my three electric coffee appliances. I hereby present the Mocha-Latte/Red-Eye/Macchiato, in my 20-ounce Bosmarlin mug:
That’s a Peet’s Crema Scura espresso pod, 2 Splenda packets, a 12-ounce strong pour through a Mocha Latte k-cup with the froth packet already stirred into the espresso, topped with 60ml of whole milk run through the foam-as-a-service gadget on its “Latte Macchiato” setting (yes, vibration control seems to be the key to using less than the recommended minimum volume). ~125 k-cals.
Normally I do 14 ounces through the k-cup and add two Calfs, but I figured the milk I needed to use up would compensate, and it did. Previous attempts to add a 40ml espresso shot and a full 100ml of foamed milk on top of that had proved too substantial, both for the mug and for the first drink of the day, so I was up for expanding my FAAS testing parameters.
Send moar spiders, plz
Unrelated silliness from Hoyt.
