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Good luck to those still working!

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.fanart

Fan Art, Day 6, Frances Neagley from Reacher

Title: Tough as They Come
Fandom: Reacher
Character: Frances Neagley
Prompt: Day 6-Her own personal code.
Rating: Teen (Just because she’s tough as nails.)
Summary: I love her even more than Reacher.
Need Tag for Reacher.

( Neagley )

Current Music: Lark in the Clear Air by Cara Dillon

Day Three Theme - Like the first dewfall on the first grass (BtVS)

TITLE: Like the first dewfall on the first grass https://kerk-hiraeth.dreamwidth.org/22329.html

PROMPT: Day Three - The Caregiver

FANDOM: Buffy the Vampire Slayer {AU}

AUTHOR: kerk_hiraeth

RATING: PG-13

LENGTH: 1,000

CHARACTERS: OCs; Fatima El-baz & Sofia Blazhevich

SUMMARY: The duties of a Chaplain, whatever their religion are many and varied; sometimes causing reflection on their own lives.

A/N: This story is dedicated to Father Francis Mulcahy, as played by William Christopher on M*A*S*H between 1972 and 1983. That character heavily influences my conception of the Muslim, appointed by Buffy to be Chaplain to all the Slayers; (full name ~ Fatima Amastan Sultana Sara Tirzah Elbaz (or El-baz).
The background to her full name and their histories will, should my muse permit, be revealed in further stories but briefly, her family is from the Atlas Mountains of Tunisia; has mostly Amazigh & Hebrew origins, with some Arab threads as well. Her wife is Jewish from a conservative Orthodox sect. The Slayer is Russian but Roman Catholic, rather than Russian Orthodox.

Goddess be with you,

Father Francis Mulcahy, as played by William Christopher

Father Francis Mulcahy, as portrayed by William Christopher

kerk

Current Mood: blank
Current Music: nothing now

Weather anticipation.

I'm geared up for another cold snap, with this Sunday looking like the nadir of the coming week. Tomorrow's going to be cold, and it won't be quite as harsh as Sunday seems like it'll be. It doesn't change many of my plans, since I didn't plan on much to begin with, but it's kind of nice to have the framework to assess potential plans. Like imagining which movies I'd go to, if I were to go to the movies.

Most likely, the movies will come after the job's wrapped up. Catching a matinee as a way to say the gig's done.

Current Mood: impressed
Current Music: "Big Black Car" ~ Gregor Alan Isakov

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Book 12, 2026

The Last One by Alexandra Oliva

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

View all my reviews

For Christmas, my boss gave me one of those “mystery books” that come wrapped in brown paper so you have no idea what you’re getting. I’ve always thought it was a fun idea, but I never bought one for myself for fear I’d buy a book I already have. When I finally opened the book from my boss, I was hoping for a mystery. What I got was a dystopian novel based on a reality survival show. I confess, I have no interest in dystopian books, movies, etc, and I detest “reality” TV. Nevertheless, the book was a gift, and I took it to work intending to read it on my lunch breaks. The book was The Last One by Alexandra Oliva.

Twelve contestants are chosen for a new, survival-based reality show, which will include group challenges and solo challenges. There’s no voting anyone off; instead contestants are provided with a Latin phrase that they can use if they give up and tap out. The show’s creators assign nicknames to each participant, such as Tracker, Rancher, and Biology. The story focuses mainly on one of the few female contestants, who is known as Zoo for her work with wildlife. For Zoo, this was meant to be one last, grand adventure before getting serious about having children with her husband. She’s tough, resourceful, and resilient, but she harbors little hope of actually winning the contest. As hunger and exhaustion begin to blur the lines between reality and what are carefully staged props, Zoo and the others are unaware that a catastrophic pandemic has swept the globe. Zoo soldiers on, convinced that the emptied buildings and “staged” bodies she encounters are part of the elaborate game she’s playing.

I had low expectations when I began reading this. I intended to soldier through like Zoo, I guess. Instead, I found the story to be utterly engrossing to the point that it annoyed me to have to close it and go back to work. LOL! As a reader, there were times I wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t, either. As it became apparent that Zoo was deluding herself, the story took a darker tone, because you knew the other shoe was going to drop eventually. Characters were portrayed very well, from Zoo to the other contestants, to the smarmy “host” of the show. The narrative skipped around, time-wise, which is never a favorite trope of mine. It alternated with Zoo’s first-person pov in present time, then went back in time to showcase a particular group challenge, which was all in third-person. Interspersed throughout where various social media threads by fans of the show discussing it online. I’m not fond of vacillating timelines and points of view, but it worked for this book.

Favorite lines:
♦ It’s exactly the same except now I can’t see and I’m missing a shoe.
♦ The journey’s too hard only if I’m too soft.

Not an enjoyable read by any stretch, but it was compelling and thought-provoking. Five stars.

"La Cosa" ("the thing"), bigger and more intimidating than "Cosa Nostra" ("our thing" ["Mafia"])

Posted by Victor Mair

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72758&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=la-cosa-the-thing-bigger-and-more-intimidating-than-cosa-nostra-our-thing-mafia

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72758

From Keith Barkley:

There was a story on Morning Edition this morning about using “thing” as code for something you don’t want the government to overhear:

'La cosa': In Cuba, this single phrase carries coded truths
Eyder Peralta, Morning Edition, NPR (February 6, 2026)

Listen to the 4-minute audio recording (linked in the title above) and / or read this transcript:

In Cuba, "la cosa" speaks louder than words. That single phrase carries the weight of daily struggle, coded truths and the country's unspoken realities.

—–

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

In Cuba, expressing opinions in public can get you in trouble. But for Cubans trying to tell you what they really think, there's a single phrase that does a lot of work and carries coded truths. NPR's Eyder Peralta reports from Havana.

EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: If you want to get a Cuban talking, just ask…

(Non-English language spoken)?

"How's the thing?"

MARISLEYSIS: (Laughter).

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).

PERALTA: Marisleysis (ph) sizes me up, and she takes a leap.

MARISLEYSIS: (Non-English language spoken).

PERALTA: "My love. The thing is very bad," she says. Her friend stops her. She's saying too much in front of a microphone. But Marisleysis dismisses her because that's the thing about the thing. The thing can be anything.

MARISLEYSIS: (Non-English language spoken).

PERALTA: The thing is our food, our sustenance, our clothes.

MARISLEYSIS: (Non-English language spoken).

PERALTA: "How's the thing? It's super high. It's super expensive. It's super bad." Fidel Castro argued that there was freedom of expression in Cuba, but he was cryptic about the limits. He famously uttered…

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

FIDEL CASTRO: (Non-English language spoken).

PERALTA: Within the Revolution, everything against the revolution, nothing." Cubans who crossed that line have ended up in jail. So like bishops deciphering an encyclical, Cubans have learned to navigate. I catch Nino (ph) and Gabriela (ph) running errands in downtown Havana. Everyone in the story asked us only to use their first names because, well, things are complicated in Cuba, and they didn't want to get into trouble.

GABRIELA: (Non-English language spoken).

PERALTA: "La cosa is the situation in general," says Gabriela. La Cosa, says Nino, is abstract. It can mean something as simple as the struggle to find gas, or it can mean the corruption scandals plaguing the Cuban government.

GABRIELA: (Non-English language spoken).

PERALTA: The meaning also changes depending on the trust you have with the other person, she says. Sometimes, only both of you know what you're talking about. So la cosa in Cuba is like a wink and a nod. It's a phrase you hear on the streets, but also beaming from the high altar of Cuba's music royalty.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

PERALTA: In his latest album, the singer-songwriter Silvio Rodriguez has a song titled "Here Comes The Thing."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "VIENE LA COSA")

SILVIO RODRIGUEZ: (Singing in non-English language).

PERALTA: "The thing is coming," Rodriguez sings. "It's going to be bad."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "VIENE LA COSA")

RODRIGUEZ: (Singing in non-English language).

PERALTA: It's a song about an unstoppable change, and it comes at a time when Cuba is facing a crushing economic crisis, discontent on the streets and a belligerent President Trump who's predicting the demise of the communist government. The thing is coming with eyes wide open, he sings, and lies won't ever stop it.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "VIENE LA COSA")

RODRIGUEZ: (Singing in non-English language).

PERALTA: The thing Rodriguez writes about could be anything – a popular rebellion, a communist renewal or a vicious foreign intervention, and that mystery gives him plausible deniability. Back on the streets, I find Mario (ph) leaning against the government building where he works as a receptionist. He says, defining the thing is not complicated.