Hi there. It’s been a while as usual. Hope life finds you good and if not that at least well or decent. Unless you want it indecent because hey! If indecent works, it works. No shame from my end.
Here it was beginning to look up being a freelance artist and then NFT scams opened up for AI and twitter imploding and it’s been rough.1 Again. Had being in retail already not proven to give me panic attacks, I would probably be there at least part-time. Searching for something that will work with this anxiety disorder is not fun.
Turns out there has been a few or a handful or a dozen "WTF? This is a possible symptom of ADHD?!" so I should get an assessment just to be sure and possibly get some aid. I keep forgetting though, but I have gotten a to-do app in the phone. So far it has two recurring entries: feeding Henson and writing this newsletter. So, sorry not sorry, next might be here faster than 2024.
Unlike the Us and the Canadas, we don’t have Thanksgiving here. In a way, it’s good. We can fight enough with relatives on Christmas. There’s no need to do that twice in the span of thirty days. But I also think we should have more holidays about food and loved ones — found families are valid families, perhaps even more so!
Sure, we got the midsummer2 but if you know anything about Swedish alcohol culture, then you know that it’s going to be some barbecue and then that turns into a sloshfest. I’m not so keen on everything revolving around alcohol either anymore. Fuck, I’ve been compromised by adulthood.
What I want though are friends and food and nice times. One of my favourite moments while living in Uppsala was when we gathered at Johan Jönsson for food — it was a small kitchen but people who could helped with the cooking — and then we sat down to eat and talk enthusiastically about books. Wonder if I have some photos from that? …No. Damnit.
A side note to this is that this is what made me write the rules/guidelines for a Moomin Reading Society that sadly had never had a meeting. It’s my fault, I moved back home away from everyone due to a severe depression3 and got lingering anxiety disorder. (Depression is gone, mostly. Sometimes it makes haunts but it seldom stays for long.)
It would be real nice to just spend time with friends like that. Books, food, and friends mix really well. That’s been my experience anyway — perhaps I’ve been lucky. We should all get friends who reads.4
Speaking about reading…
Stephen’s god died a little after noon on the longest day of the year.
Is a heck of a way to start out a book series about a paladins. Ursula Vernon’s series the Saint of Steel is as of this week up to four books and they’re all great. Which is my favourite shifts depending on mood and that’s a good thing. Wouldn’t it be boring to be certain of something like that?
For being described as “cosy romances” they sure do have decapitated limbs and freakish horrors. It all adds up to a delightful mix. While some of the characters do suffer a little from “lawful stupid paladin” trope, they all have a surprising depth. Like in the first book, the very dependable Stephen has a very dependable hobby that most wouldn’t associate with fantasy paladins.
Stephen opened his pack and pulled out his needles and a thick ball of yarn. Knitting socks was not a particularly glamorous hobby, but it filled the same mental need as the sword—careful work that held his attention and hopefully did not allow his mind to wander too far afield. Plus at the end, you got socks out of it, and no one appreciated good socks like a soldier.
You can read them all apart from one another, but the small details of the narrative adds up if you read them in order. The quotes here are from Paladin’s Grace by Ursula Vernon writing as T. Kingfisher. It’s the first in the series and is followed by Paladin's Strength, Paladin’s Hope, and just now Paladin’s Faith.
In Hope we got hit by a slight revelation about the dead saint, and that reverberates here too. More theories and ideas get flung out and gosh, some of them seem downright plausible now. Considering what we’ve seen here and especially in the other series set in the same world — — Clocktaur War, also very much recommended — some of that plausible is of the “oh no!” variety. But I’m sure it will end fine. Fine. I’m sure. Fine.
I feel I crave the next book already.
Onion. One big.
Chicken filet, or not.
Lentils if veg or roasted cauliflower.
Coconut milk, one can. (Can be replaced with regular cream if needed)
500g of crushed tomatoes.
Red curry paste (skip this for less heat).
Mango curry spices.
A fistful of frozen spinach.
Some red wine.
Fresh cilantro. (if you want it)
A cute bowl and spoon.
To serve, pasta (farfalle or somen noodles) or rice
If vegetarian, prepare lentils and add them between steps 5 and 6, or why not some croutons or vegetables that don’t turn to mush? Perhaps more tomato bits and perhaps carrots, I need to experiment more with this recipe branch. Cauliflower works better if it’s roasted and put into the bowl rather than in the soup, but that might just be me.
The vegetables part is hard to do in an Instant Pot if you want to save time and pressure cook it, but otherwise this works great no matter how you do it.
If done properly, when you reach step 6, it has been simmering for at least an hour.
Pour soup in a bowl and eat. If you want things — that is the technical food term right? — to eat, Farfalle pasta is really good to put in the bowl on top, so are somen and udon noodles. Rice is also great as is both fresh white bread or (luxury!) naan. Seriously, whatever you throw on it works!
Last year it was Amyl and the Sniffers and it seems like my regular discover new guitar-heavy bands occur in November/December. This year’s “why the fuck did no-one tell me sooner?!” is Scowl. I am not the head music nerd here! I resigned in 2006 when I did that "try and listen to one new band a day" and that year is still sonically kinda a blur.
Henson is tricky to photograph in that he loves running up and looking at the camera. And when he realises that it's an 'eye' he can't look into it. What if it can see that he's guilty of something.
«‹‹ EOF ››»
«‹‹ FOOTNOTES IN THE STATIC ››»
1) Patreon deciding to remove goals and add a chat function made my eyes roll so hard it strained something.
2) Not to be confused with the movie Midsummer. I mean sure, it has some of the traditional clothings — I've never seen anyone actually use those outside of TV spectacles — and some people do insist on the dancing. The movie is funny and creepy, but not in a Swedish way. I found it very American.
3) I'm sure I've written about this somewhere. With a lot older stuff going offline, I might have to talk about it again — I can't do the whole "read it over there" anymore.
4) Having no friends who reads seems like a nightmare. How does that even work? What do they do?!
Thank you for reading and I hope it finds you in... a health I suppose. I do hope it was a good one though. Outside of this, there's always bluesky or the links to all things Internets (including art commission info).