Reading

Prime directive: exterminate the whole human race

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.

Entry tags:

links

Links: here comes the sun

Santa Rosa cyclist on cross-country adventure rescues kitten, rides him hundreds of miles to safety — and a new home by Kerry Benefield. *teeny* *kitten*!

Mojave phone booth

a lone telephone booth in what is now the Mojave National Preserve in California. It attracted online attention in 1997 for its unusual location – it was located at the intersection of two dirt roads in a remote part of the Mojave Desert, 12 miles (19 km) from the nearest paved road (Interstate 15 to the northeast, Kelbaker Road to the southwest) and miles from any buildings.

The Future Is Coming and It's (Literally) Sunny: Notes on the Solar Revolution by Rebecca Solnit.

[I]n the western Mojave desert of California I passed in quick succession three vast renewable energy sites: the first was three solar concentrator power plants, the kind where rings of mirrors reflect sun onto a central tower, which I think is now an outdated model, but it was striking to see the literally dazzling array; the second was a big field of solar panels around the town of Mojave t hat appeared to be tipping toward the setting sun; and then a long array of wind turbines just before the desert ends as the road heads uphill into Tehachapi

Learn about ecological restoration or get out of my way by

elbiotipo.

Now, you can go to Península Valdés and find that the whale population there is growing year after year, people can see them from their windows. In Iberá, where yaguaretés were extinct for over 70 years, there's now a population of 35 and growing, after being reintroduced just five years ago. As for rainforests?

A food designed for astronauts now fuels first responders and new moms by Madeline Taub. "Oakland resident Ryan Dowdy came up with the idea for READYBAR while working on food systems for the International Space Station." Kind of an ad, also a cool success story. No, I haven't tried them.

Better late than never

I have owned my dishwasher for 2 years now. I like to run it every few days in the evening, but sometimes I want to retreat upstairs before 9pm when the electricity gets cheaper, and I don't always remember to go back down and start it.

A couple of days ago it finally occurred to me to look for a delayed start function, and there it was, a button clearly labeled Delay that delays the start for an hour every time it's pushed. Now I know!

The two levels are awkwardly laid out and after two years I am still trying to figure out how to load my dishes and containers in it efficiently. On the positive side, it is really quiet and I can't hear it running from upstairs at all.

"Beatitudes for a Queerer Church" by Jay Hulme

via

muccamukk. This made me go "Oooh!" and repost it immediately.

"Beatitudes for a Queerer Church" by Jay Hulme

Blessed are the outcasts;
the ostracized, the outsiders.

Blessed are the scared;
the scarred, the silent.

Blessed are the broken;
for they are not broken.

Blessed are the hated;
for they are not worthy of hate.

Blessed are those who try;
those who transform, who transition.

Blessed are the closeted;
God sees you shine anyway.

Blessed are the queers;
who love creation enough to live the truth of it,
despite a world that tells them they cannot.

And blessed are those
who believe themselves unworthy of blessing;
what inconceivable wonders you hold.

Entry tags:

sundown healing arts

Questions to update a website

I got this great set of questions from

rosefox in preparation for discussing updating my website.

Mostly I want to look at the site you already have and learn what you're unhappy with and what you'd like it to do. My main questions are:

- Who's the target audience? How will they find and access the site? What do you want their first impression to be? What's your goal for how they spend their time there?
- Do you want to keep the logo you have now? Are there any specific colors or existing images you want to use for brand consistency?
- Do you want to port over the existing content? Will you be creating additional content from scratch? (I assume you'll want to write any text yourself, and my role is solely design.)
- Do you need to do e-commerce through the site, or is it mostly a pointer to another site where the books can be purchased? Are there any existing systems that the new site needs to work well with?
- Do you want any kind of frequently updated or interactive elements, like blog posts or quizzes, or only static pages?
- What's your plan for getting the link in front of people: social media, advertising, search rankings, handing out business cards?

My answers: (I know more than I realized!)
( cut for length )

I wrote a goodbye note in lipstick on your arm

- I had a dream last night where I was in some sort of high-end, very posh mall, and spent ages looking at a mysterious cosmetics counter that had lipsticks that were exact matches for the OG Chanel Vamp and MAC Verushka. They had tubes of those discontinued lipsticks to swatch and match. I woke up as my dream self was about to spend $160 for two lipsticks. I'll admit I'd be tempted to do that in real life if the company did indeed have the OG tubes to swatch against.

- The US leg of the MCR tour ended last weeked. HOWever, as of yesterday, new ads related to MCR have been seen in New York, Detroit, Minneapolis, and San Diego. Some are just spray painted logos in parking lots outside of stadiums, but some have been bulletin boards and signs of either one or more of the band in the Black Parade uniform, or the Keposhka MCR logo. The fandom, no surprise, are losing our MINDS. Does this mean there's going to be another US leg of the tour? If there is, does it mean more weird storyline/lore that the band is potentially in some sort of stasis or time loop? (I won't give you the whole breakdown, but over the course of the tour Gerard has become more and more corpse-like; paler, wounds on his face, etc., and he's stabbed to death at the end of each Black Parade segment of the concert. There's more. There's a lot more.) Does this mean there's going to be a DVD or something? Should I start saving money for tickets and travel just in case? Who knows? Not the fandom, that's for sure.

- I've been tired ALL THE TIME lately. I'm sure some of it is the ambient stress level we're all dealing with plus the ongoing varying stress levels of work, but the rest may be my chronic health issues flaring up? My body trying to stage a coup and force me to rest? I don't like any of these answers.

- I'm finally getting back into a rhythm of witchy things. I'm pulling a tarot card most days, and I did some ritual work this week. It felt good. I need to do more, because it helps me approach things with more clarity and giving myself grace. And whooooo-boy, do I need both of those things.

So! How are you folks doing?

Entry tags:

links

Fabulous portraits of people with chronic illnesses

Kyrianna.art Portraits via

house_wren.

Portraits of people in watercolors, overlaid with plants or structures that symbolize their illnesses. I love the title page portrait of a sitting woman with her limbs emerging from a much smaller decrepit house. Each portrait has its own page describing the person's illnesses and why they chose the symbols to represent them. Beautiful and powerful.

Entry tags:

sundown healing arts

Revamping my Wordpress website

I have been looking for someone who can revamp my Wordpress website traumahealed.com to make it book-focused rather than practice-focused.

Anyone have a skilled Wordpress person they can recommend? Bonus points for experience with book marketing sites.

I had a lovely conversation with one person who gave me a bunch of good marketing ideas, but said he doesn't have design skills, and I think that's the main thing I need. He gave me a ballpark estimate of $1,500 and said he charges $150/hour. He mentioned the Divi theme as one option.

The person who recommended him also recommended a woman who suggested the Divi theme and said she could install it for me on my staging site to let me see what it's like. She charges $80/hour. Sounded great. But she dropped out of communication when I had some feedback on the changes she made and asked how much time she had spent. I thought about how heavyweight and complex Divi seems and decided that's not the direction I want to go.

When she finally re-surfaced, the woman said she had been heads-down in a project (so let me know I'll hear back in a couple of weeks?) and there were "pink flags" (apparently that's the new yellow flags?) about my wanting to modernize my website. I declined to engage with that and simply paid her bill for 3 hours and called it a learning experience.

I talked to a third person, recommended by a bodyworker, who gave me a specific estimate for $1,440 and seems very open to feedback and heard what I said about a lightweight theme.

Now I'm debating with myself. That's a chunk of change to spend on marketing books that I doubt will ever earn it back, but it seems like the going rate. I don't want to just shut the website down, and I don't feel like I have the skills, time, and energy to revamp it myself. At the same time, I have strong opinions and don't want to spend that kind of money and end up with something I don't like.

I'm also struggling with wanting/not wanting to market the books at all. It doesn't feel right to take them out of print, but it still feels vulnerable to push them out into the world. It feels difficult to be making the decision alone, without outside input. If you have thoughts on the matter, let me know!

Entry tags:

links

Thurber's "The Thirteen Clocks" read aloud by Lauren Bacall

via @Zumbador@mefi.social
"Beautiful crackling record audio of Lauren Bacall reading "The Thirteen Clocks" by James Thurber

This is one of the all time best books to read aloud."
https://ia804507.us.archive.org/4/items/lp_lauren-bacall-reads-james-thurbers-the-13_lauren-bacall/disc1/lp_lauren-bacall-reads-james-thurbers-the-13_lauren-bacall_disc1side1.flac

You're right, Brain, we DO need a little treat

A week or two ago a dear friend sent me a care package of Trader Joe's marshmallows, which are entirely corn free! No corn syrup! No cornstarch laden powdered sugar!

This afternoon, feeling incredibly groggy, I decided I needed a cup of my fancy cocoa (with half a scoop of protein powder), and instead of using sugar or honey, I would use a few of the marshmallows for sweetness.

YES. This was a good idea. This helped stave off a mild panic attack because of my stupid brain deciding it wants to freak out over everything ever said to it. Cocoa and marshmallows made my brain be quiet. I need to remember this. Not the cocoa with protein powder, I've been doing that for a bit, but that 1) adding marshmallows is GOOOOOOD, and 2) maybe have this treat a bit more often because maybe it helps with the fucking anxiety.

So yeah. That's where I'm at right now.