sorcyress | Reading

I've been living at my childhood home, a hobby farm in Minnesota, taking care of my dad. Soon my dad will be moving to assisted living, along with my mom who is moving there from the nursing home.

I'll be staying at the farm and looking after the animals. I'd rather live here with other people, as it's safer and more fun. I have multiple disabilities which make managing a whole farm rather difficult on my own. I've had a couple of seizures which make it safer for me to have people around me. Minnesota is one of the better places to live right now in the US and this could be a good opportunity for someone to live here.

So, if you know of anyone that would like a nice place to live, please direct them my way, especially queer and trans people looking for a relatively safe place. There is a lot of space in the house (3 full bathrooms, 4 bedrooms), and plenty of outdoor space.

I have one cat and one dog in the house, and outside there are a few sheep, one aging horse that is strictly a pasture pet, and some guinea fowl. Amenities include a dishwasher, laundry, wifi, some streaming services, 2 gas fireplaces. This is a wonderful place for hobbies such as gardening, woodworking, fiber arts, baking, etc. In addition to the house there are some outbuildings and a nice garden shed. Opportunities for fishing, golf, biking abound in the region.

Couples (+) are welcome as are kids. There is a good elementary school just a few miles away.

The house needs a bit of work, but overall it's very nice and peaceful. One thing I do contend with here is bugs. There is no central AC but we can do window AC units when needed. Sometimes the dog barks in an annoying manner (we are working on it). I could use help with mowing, weeding, cutting brush.

You could live here for cheap as I mostly am looking for company and help. I can't live with smokers due to my disabilities. I have lived with roommates for most of my life and can provide references.

The house is rural but only a few miles from the nearest shopping area, and close to a small city. You would probably need to have a car, though we can get grocery delivery here.

My interests include watching TV shows and movies, gardening, science fiction, jigsaw puzzles, thrifting. I'm a queer woman in my 40s. I'm a rather extreme night owl.

If interested you can comment here or email me, sandphin at gmail dot com. Share this link with people you think might be interested!

sovay

Despite spending rather more of the afternoon at the doctor's than planned, I do not consider the day a total loss because it contained an unexpectedly successful nebulizer treatment, the acquisition of bagels and chopped liver, a cinnamon cake donut, and

ashlyme introducing me to Idris the Dragon. I have now seen what a gas station looks like when the fire suppression system has been deployed. Fell over in the evening and went down a rabbit hole of Boston vintage radio. Read some film criticism by Graham Greene. Am still not really watching movies myself. My brain could come back online any time.

Current Music: Pulp, "Spike Island"

landofnowhere

System Collapse, Martha Wells. I took a break from Murderbot to read a bunch of historical stuff, partly because I'd remembered that this wasn't as good as Network Effect. Which is true, but I still liked it better the second time around, though in some ways it's less of a fun read. I mentioned when reviewing the early books in the series is that part of the appeal is that while Murderbot is a huge bundle of anxiety, it's also stunningly competent in what it does, especially when it has a reason to care. However a lot of the first half of this book is Murderbot having to deal with stuff going on that is making it less competent, which is useful character development in that it gets to work more as part of a team, but means that the fun stuff is really loaded into the second half of the story.

(I have seen the first two episodes of the show, but would prefer to have this be a book-discussion-only zone.)

lb_lee

Mori: welp, our new shrink got ratfucked by Trump, even though we only got him last month, which means we have to go hunting a new one and start the whole training process over again while moving. This means we are eager to clear our plate of other distractions ASAP!

First: Wanna help us move? We will be moving on the last weekend of May--most likely Sunday, June 1 because our other three roomies move on May 31 and we don't want the front door to become a clown car. Are you available? Are you willing to lug boxes and get treated to dinner afterward? We would appreciate you (especially if you have wheels)!

Second: FREE STUFF GIVEAWAY (long as you cover shipping)! We have a couple books free to good homes:

Sweet Abilene, a M/FTM porno comic by the great E.K. Weaver. Sweet Abilene is a spin-off of their webcomic Shot and Chaser, so you can get a good idea of the art and main characters! It's great! We want other people to love it!
Festival of the Bones II: What Is Remembered Lives, an anthology of ancestor worship stories and poems edited by the Writers Egbe of Ile Orunmila Oshun. We fed it through the bookscanner, which means this book can now be liberated! (The PDF will be uploaded once we get it OCRed.)

Finally: FRAMED ART FOR SALE! An original and two print spreads, $50 a pop (plus shipping)! Frames are a pain to move! Snatch it up on the cheap!

this page of MPD for You and Me (original)
two spreads of the queer trans multi wedding in LB Goes To Alaska (prints made to look like the originals in a sketchbook, which include marginalia and green colored pencil underdrawing that are erased from the comic). You can see a photo of one of them here. One spread shows Zyfron and Mystics doing their wedding smooch and first dance; the other shows the wedding dance afterward. These spreads inspired the name of the art show they were framed for, "Love is for all of us." If you need high-res images of the pages in question, just ask!

Okay, back to trawling my health insurance website for potential new shrinks!

Current Mood: rushed

sorcyress

Content Warning: non-detailed allusions to my shitty abusive ex and the shitty relationship we had

I have been working on the Inbox0 project, which sorta has two modalities:

First, the banality of daily life. Unsubscribing from things I don't care about, and mass deleting the bulks they have sent in the past. Meeting notes and invitations and preperatory emails that can safely be labeled ("highland ball" got a workout today, from when I ran it in 2017) and archived. Going through the 50 most recent emails in the inbox and trying to at least first pass all of what's happened lately.

Second, the weight of history. I have had the same email address since 2005, so that sure is, uh, twenty years since January 15th. It's not everything I've ever gotten (see above about bulk-deleting bullshit) and I do have like, a more professionally wallet-named account, but even that sends its email into the main box.

And the weight of history can be _exhausting_. That's part of what makes this game difficult, trying to motivate myself to be exposed fully to some of my worst ADHD sins, or the parts of my personal history where the Big D went on the word depression. Have I mentioned lately I went through an abusive relationship for most of the year 2007? Yeah, uh. That still has bits and pieces lying around it sure does.

But mannnnn one of the benefits of hindsight and being an actual friggin' grown-up and stuff is the ability to look at some of those bits and pieces and see just how much I have grown and improved and gotten better. I can have a lot of grace for myself (I do genuinely like myself, regardless of how much I whine I am a really spectacularly awesome person) and part of the reason is that recognition of the work I have done to reach better and better heights as time goes on.

Or, like, to read an email in which this guy I was totally into was basically breaking up with me, in part because he was not interested in being in a polycule with my shitty boyfriend. Boo hiss, this should be real sad. But it's _not_ because it's been twenty freaking years, that guy I was totally into has developed a lovely sounding life for himself on the other side of the world and I've made a polycule that has an absolute dearth of shitty boyfriends anywhere in it. And so I can read stuff like this...

However, I talked to ksatyr....he is *way* over-reacting. You think you're not ready for a relationship? I'm sorry, but this is a demonstration of not being ready for a relationship.

...and scream lovely modern "YASS QUEEN SLAY¹" because BOY HOWDY it is good to remember that there were people who were willing to say to my face "yeah, your boyfriend ain't shit because shit at least provides fertilizer and causes growth²". I mean, I didn't listen sufficiently at the time, but it turns out it never gets old to listen to folks drag my shitty partners, even if I didn't necessarily realize it at the time.

So yeah. The history is rough but it's also nice to see the growth that goes alongside it. And it's nice to get reminders that however fucked up current-right-now Kat is, they're not (correctly) getting dragged by a twenty year old for acting like a sixteen year old³.

~Sor

MOOP!

1: This is almost certainly ironic as it's not language that has actually gotten into my lexicon yet.

2: Okay sure, I suppose you could argue that kSatyr caused growth _in me_. As a different shitty ex once said "-99 points for everything, +1 for making a better Kat for the rest of us". But just because it causes growth doesn't mean I particularly want to be covered in shit. :P

3: September party! I will finally be the age my abusive ex was when he dated me! WOOO!

canyonwalker

Yesterday reminded me of the "old days" in software selling. These old days aren't that old, of course. I'm only talking about the mid-aughts (when I started in technical sales) through the early 10s! So, what was so 15-years-ago about yesterday? It was meeting prospects and colleagues face-to-face for sales work.

Yesterday wasn't really even a travel day, per se. It's not like the old days when I was traveling a lot to San Diego, Chicago, New York, etc.— or traveling overseas— for sales calls. This one was just a ~30 minute drive away in Newark, California.

I drove to Newark, made a quick pit stop to pick up a colleague who did fly in and stopped at a nearby restaurant for lunch, then drove on to the customer's office. We had a big meeting with in-person attendees, upward of 20 people in the room. The last time I presented at a customer meeting that well attended in-person was probably 2018.

The Meeting

Seeing how big the meeting room was— it was set up as a classroom— and how many people filed in, I fretted about how the meeting would flow. Rooms where the seats are all front-facing discourage genuine conversation. People see the physical layout and think, "Okay, I'm supposed to let the presenter speak."And when there's a large crowd in a meeting, anything over 10 let alone the 20 we had yesterday, the audience size also discourages a lot of people from speaking up. It's like people are thinking, "My question had better be worth interrupting 20 people or I should keep quiet." Moreover a lot of people are intimidated by such gatherings. They're reluctant to speak up for fear that asking a question may make them sound stupid or acknowledging that there's a problem they don't know how to solve will make their colleagues think less of them.

I fretted about these problems but I fought against them. I purposefully turned around a desk and faced the group at their level instead of standing behind the lectern. I invited questions throughout my presentation. I engaged each person who asked a question with a discussion to explore their needs to make sure I was addressing them on point. And I never said things like, "Well, moving along now...."

My techniques to overcome the lecture-hall setup worked. The meeting was way more interactive than I expected. Sure, not every one of the 20 attendees asked questions, but at least 6 different people did, and some asked multiple questions. And more than half the group stayed after the meeting to chat with my colleague and me.

The After-Meeting

Oh, but the successful f2f meeting wasn't the only part that felt old school. After the meeting in Newark I drove my colleague to his hotel in downtown San Jose. Just driving with a colleague felt old school. It used to be a regular, almost daily thing in my life as a salesperson years ago. Now it happens maybe a few times a year.

What did we do in the car? We talked. We debriefed on how the meeting went. We discussed what worked well and what we could improve. We discussed next steps with this prospective customer. We also discussed sales strategy more broadly in our company and with our latest products and positioning.

When we got to SJ my colleague suggested getting a drink together. I was happy to. Again, this was a many-times-a-week thing among sellers years ago; today, again, it seems to happen only a few times a year. We sidled up at the bar in his hotel and talked for another hour. There, we talked less about the company and more about life in general. I learned about his family, his house, his outlook on life; and he learned about mine.

After a couple of drinks each— two small glasses of beer, really; our aim was to relax together, not get soused— we noticed it was going on 7 and decided to get dinner together. Original Joe's was 1/2 block away, so I suggested we eat there. Dinner was more of the same. We ate slowly, talking the whole time. It was about 9:30 when I walked him back to his hotel (I was parked there anyway 😅) and drove home.

lauradi7dw

https://ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics/kristi-noem-habeas-wrong/

lauradi7dw

Seen yesterday

canyonwalker

You know your relationship with someone is bad when you find yourself doing the math to answer the question, How much longer until I can quit these clowns? In this case the clowns are my mortgage company, and "quit" means pay off my mortgage so I can be done with them.

I've noted before that I don't like my current mortgage company. My loan has been sold a few times, starting from the originator, whom I genuinely liked. Then it was sold from Originating Lender A to New Bank B. Bank B worked fine when everything could be automated but was a pain in the neck to deal with every single time the computers kicked out an exception that required human intervention. Now Scumbag Debt Collector C— yes, my new mortgage servicer is a scummy debt collector— pisses me off with every single communication they send me because, well, they're a debt collector. All their processes as they try to move into mortgage servicing still read like they're a debt collector, treating me like a deadbeat borrower who's fallen behind on payments.

The answer, BTW, is 6½ years. In another 6.5 years of steady monthly payments I'll have this loan paid off.

Could I be done with these clowns sooner? Oh hell yes! I could increase my monthly payments to retire the debt sooner. Hell, I could just write a check to pay off the balance. The whole balance. It's not that big anymore. I've been paying down the mortgage for 20+ years and have never taken cash out on refinancing.

Of course, just because the balance "is not that big" doesn't mean I have that kind of cash sitting around. I'd have sell a few things from my investment portfolio to pay it off. But the thing is, investments are investments. They earn money. And the cost of this mortgage— the financial cost— is small. I have a rate below 2.5%! It's financially a loss to sell assets that return way better than 2.5% APY to pay off a loan that costs less than 2.5% APR.

What would change that calculation? One thing is if the emotional cost of keeping the loan with these clowns becomes too expensive. The first time these clowns screw up in a way that's more than just passively irritating, I may just pay them off and be done with them.

sorcyress

Progress is being made.

I want to be very clear (and whiny) that I'm still burnt out. That hasn't gone away. Roundabouts July 15, is when I stop having Immediate Plans, and go back to comforting vagueness. I am probably going to book the entire week after Pinewoods on my calendar as "do not schedule, do not interact, this is entirely mine and I will maybe do things on an hours notice or less, but definitely not otherwise).

But progress is being made. Having Tuesday come over this past weekend and body double me while I worked on my room was a truly wonderful help. My room still has an infinite of little projects and organizations and puttings-aways, but it is SO MUCH BETTER and because it is not a series of fucking huge piles of undifferentiated stuff shutting my brain down the moment I look at it, I have actually been able to do maintenance level cleaning on a regular basis. Like, just take five minutes to put away several things where they belong instead of dropping them back into The Pile. It feels very good.

I've also returned to the Inbox0 project after basically 11 months of not touching it. I'm not yet at my lowest-ever¹, but I have archived or deleted about 2000 emails in the last two days, and most of those were unread. GOOD PROGRESS.

I didn't really do any work progress, which was partly because I had a series of Good Individual Conversations instead. One of my favourite students came for 2.5 hours in the morning (it's a testing day, so weird schedule) and I helped drag him through most of the last six weeks, getting his grade this quarter to jump from about a 20% to an 84%. It's amazing how much quizzes are weighted if you _haven't done any of them_. I also had decent planning conversation with Clayton, and saw a couple other students for brief periods. Tomorrow, I teach one class, and have to proctor the test for ninety minutes, but it should be otherwise pretty mellow.

I should probably medialog sometime soon, especially because I have actually been reading --I've actually read a fair amount, although most of that was my recent murderbot reread. It's still good! It still hits hard! I was pretty vehement that I didn't want to see the tv show (I don't want to rewire my brain in how it visualizes or thinks about different characters, this happened with That Fucking TERF's books when I watched the movies and I didn't like it) but I've seen some pretty excited reviews, so hmmmmmmmmmaybe.

Also I earned a die yesterday, and I'm on track to earn one today. I'm happy to have this ADHD-brain-game maybe working for me again? Especially because it looks the like previous reset was _November_ meaning it took nearly six months to get 31 full-score days on my daily chart. Auuuguh. Yipes.

(gee Kat, what possible reason could your brain have for going all sideways and fukt-up since November of 2024?)

So yeah, it'd be cool if I can get through this batch, uh, a little faster. I liked the version of the game where I was going through about four rounds a year, it feels reasonable to say "I will get full points on a third of the days". Heck, it's still possible for this year if ~I only believe~.

(we build habits as best we can to support ourselves when the things fall apart)

Anyways, nice to have projects in my life that are seeing progress, even if it's just small and silly number-goes-down. I hope your life is also seeing progress.

~Sor

MOOP!

1: Technically my lowest ever was the long span of time through 2019 and 2020 where I actually maintained inbox zero pretty consistently. This is possible to do! It's just hard to get back to.

lb_lee

Still working through that big stack of zines from Jimmy Dunson and Rebel Hearts Press, and we're down to the last thing: a paper back anthology of essays entitled Building Power While The Lights Are Out: Disasters, Mutual Aid, and Dual Power. It's really making my brain buzz with ideas! I'm only midway through, but so far my favorites are "Mutual Aid and Anti-Racist Organizing in Rural Appalachia" by Rural Organizing and Resilience, "Love My People: Following in the Footprints of the Panthers" by Suncere Ali Shakur, and "Survival Programs: Then And Now" by Malik Rahim (an old guy in his seventies who was part of the Black Panthers in the '70s). Like the other stuff from Rebel Hearts, it looks to be a paper-only release.

I just want to quote a few paragraphs from Shakur here, because... how could I NOT love this book? He cut his teeth on mutual aid in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, where black men were getting murdered as looters by vigilantes, cops, and others. It was not a safe time and place, and he describes the following events:

( The stories of Mike and No. 1 Gangster Killa )

Current Mood: hopeful

sovay

While it seemed the most natural thing while dreaming to collect

moon_custafer and

thisbluespirit for the second such road trip we had taken together, when awake my brain's notions of geography seem positively Paleozoic.

Current Music: The Beths, "Metal"

canyonwalker

There's a lot of action in late season 5/early season 6 of Better Call Saul I've been skipping over. While Jimmy and Kim are doing their own things as lawyers and plotting together to embarrass Howard to force a quicker settlement to a class action case, there's been a turf war in the local drug cartel. Except it's not turf, per se, they're fighting for but power and influence. Lalo Salamanca and Gus Fring are trying to destroy each other, and their war keeps other regular characters like Mike and Nacho busy.

Nacho (Ignacio) Varga has been an interesting supporting character throughout the series. We meet him early in season 1, when Jimmy runs headlong into gang leader Tuco Salamanca. Nacho is smart and thoughtful, unlike many of the hot-headed Salamanca family members who run the gang. Nacho chafes at their leadership. Believing he'd be a better gang leader he plots to push them out. First he gets Tuco put in jail, then he causes Hector Salamanca to have a heart attack after secretly swapping his heart medication with a simple painkiller. Hector survives the heart attack but is mostly crippled and confined to a wheelchair, only able to communicate by tapping a bell with his finger. (This is the state in which we see Hector throughout the entirety of Breaking Bad. Now we know how he went from being a cartel capo to being a near-invalid in a nursing home!)

Nacho Vargo works his way into the good graces of cartel boss Don Eladio in Better Call Saul ep. 5.10 (2020)

Nacho Vargo works his way into the good graces of cartel boss Don Eladio in Better Call Saul ep. 5.10 (2020)

Despite all his plotting against various members of the cartel, Nacho rises through the ranks. By the end of season 5 he has a sit-down with cartel boss Don Eladio in Mexico. Eladio gives him his blessing to run things for the Salamanca branch of the cartel in the US.

It's hard to root for Nacho. He's a drug dealer and he's willing to murder people. But he's a thoughtful guy in a gang of psychopaths. And mostly he only murders people worse than him. So, yay? I do find myself rooting for him.

Alas, there's what I've dubbed the Star Wars Rogue One principle: a significant character in a prequel story who's not in the original pretty much has to die. I've remarked on this principle several times pondering how Kim Wexler, Jimmy's ride-or-die friend/girlfriend/wife would depart the story. It applies equally to Nacho Varga. He's nowhere in the Salamanca gang in Breaking Bad, so he's got to die in Better Call Saul.

The end for Nacho comes when Gus demands Nacho help kill Lalo. Gus has leverage over Nacho from having figured out he caused the stroke that paralyzed Hector. Nacho becomes Gus's mole in the Salamanca branch of the cartel because, if he doesn't, Gus will tell the Salamancas what Nacho did, and the Salamancas will kill him and his innocent father. Nacho doesn't have to shoot Lalo, though; he just has to use his position of trust with Lalo to unlock a door for a team of assassins to infiltrate the house where Lalo is staying.

Nacho does as asked, but the team of assassins fails. I swear, Lalo is the luckiest sumbitch alive. He bests a team of 5-6 assassins who have machine guns, body armor, and two-way radios. Nacho is on the run after the failed assassination. The whole Salamanca clan, plus their considerable network of allies, are looking for him.

Nacho begs Gus to get him out of Mexico, but Gus sets up Nacho to be captured. Gus can't be seen helping Nacho, as that would tip his involvement in trying to murder Lalo. But Nacho is shrewd enough to recognize Gus is hanging him out to dry— and also shrewd enough to realize that if the Salamancas capture him, they'll torture him and get the truth about Gus anyway. Nacho says as much to Gus and offers a deal: get me out of Mexico, and I'll say what you want me to say, then give me a clean death. Gus, impressed that someone matches his level of conniving, reluctantly agrees.

Nacho Varga threatens Juan Bolsa in Better Call Saul ep. 6.03

Nacho Varga threatens Juan Bolsa in Better Call Saul ep. 6.03

Things go a little bit sideways at the handover where Gus delivers a "captured" Nacho to cartel underboss Juan Bolsa and the Salamancas. Nacho has a script to follow, including staging an attack against Gus, at which point Gus's men will shoot him dead in apparent self defense. Nacho goes off script, breaks free of his restraints, and puts a gun to Juan Bolsa's head (pic above). Mike, monitoring the situation through a scope on a sniper rifle from 100+ meters away, whispers, "Do it!" But Nacho realizes that killing Bolsa would leave broad suspicion that he's working for Gus. So, after taking sole responsibility for plotting against Lalo, and declaring his responsibility for causing Hector's crippling stroke, he kills himself. He was going to die either way, but this way he protects his family from retribution.

sovay

How I am doing at the moment is extremely not great.

spatch took a picture of me craning into frame like a cat. I took a picture of a blinkie my father made for me.

( I've opened my doors and I've closed all my windows. )

I was unironically charmed to discover The Wonderful World of Tupperware (1965). The hard sell can get a little hard to take, but the technical details are as good as all those short films from the Children's Television Workshop about the manufacture of peanut butter or saxophones.

The rediscovered 1983 Thomas the Tank Engine pilot which I had seen linked around my friendlist turns out to have been more like a screen test for the model work, which honestly makes it even neater to watch. I wrote a letter once to the Island of Sodor. It did occur to me years after the fact that my parents answered it.

If Richard Brody would just edit the collected film criticism of Virginia Tracy and Andre Sennwald, I would buy the books like two shots and consider it a service to art.

Current Music: A Riot of Colour, "Skink"

jazzfish

Okay well that was extremely not fun and I am gonna vote for not doing it again, as soon as I figure out what it was and how to not do it.

Three weeks? Two and a half. Whatever. I spent another week or so recovering from covid. I honestly don't know if I'm fully recovered even yet: Shortness Of Breath is still a thing. As is Tires Easily, but, well. I spent the entirety of last week and probably a little more in a depressive episode. Bit of chicken and egg there, or vicious cycle maybe. Lots of sitting on the couch not doing anything, including classwork (finished the assignment by yelling at myself a lot, and I'm not particularly happy with it but at least it's done).

Putting Myself Out There is, it turns out, a reliable depression trigger. Dating, brand-new social situations, writing submissions... and jobhunting is perhaps the worst case for this. Against my best efforts I absorbed a lot of "if you don't support yourself then no one will ever love you" messages growning up. So jobhunting is just a desperate quest for external validation with extra steps. Jobhunting while not having a job, and in a brand-new-to-me field while the economy circles the drain, is just depression-fuel icing on the depression-fuel cake.

I try the normal things and mostly they're just more difficult and less fulfilling. Got a little sun, until it started clouding and raining in the middle of the week. Staying on top of ishes / apartment-tidying was more or less a lost cause. I went out to role-playing on Saturday but that didn't shake it either. It lifted, more or less, Saturday night or Sunday, and on Sunday I went over to Noel's for a full day of boardgaming and that was actually quite good.

My depression is very clearly situational and triggered, so I keep thinking I can manage it by managing my situations. That's of course not possible, not fully. And when it hits me it knocks me out -so- hard. Once job etc is sorted I am gonna have to look into pharmaceutical intervention.

Need to take my last midterm tomorrow; been reviewing notes etc today EDIT or I could just knock it out right now, that was not too terrible /EDIT. Need to wrap up the practicum stuff as well but there's no huge rush on that. Maybe this coming week.

Bah.

canyonwalker

In ep. 6.02 of Better Call Saul we see the Kettlemans, Craig and Betsy, again. They were part of a subplot in season 1 of the series. Craig was the (fictitious) treasurer of Bernalillo County, NM, who embezzled $1.6 million from his own office. Betsy is his domineering and, frankly, delusional wife who kept denying they had the money even as she literally held a duffel bag with $1.6 million cash in her hands, and thought they could somehow avoid jail time without returning the money.

Kim was their lawyer for a while and arranged a plea deal for Craig: 16 months in prison if he returned the money. He faced a sentence of up to 30 years if he went to trial, and there was plenty of evidence to convict him, as he wasn't particularly good at hiding his tracks. He wrote, and cashed, numerous checks to himself! Betsy torpedoed the deal because she wanted to keep the money. Jimmy did a bad thing for noble purposes. He stole their stolen money to give it back to the county, forcing them to accept the deal.

The Kettlemans come back into the story in ep. 6.02 through Kim and Jimmy's con to destroy Howard Hamlin.

Jimmy uses Betsy and Craig Kettleman in a con (Better Call Saul ep. 6.02)

Jimmy uses Betsy and Craig Kettleman in a con (Better Call Saul ep. 6.02)

Jimmy visits their new place of business— they run a small-time tax preparation service out of a trailer on the outskirts of town—and tells them they could get Craig's conviction overturned by suing Howard Hamlin, their lawyer of record, for ineffective counsel as he was using cocaine at the time. (The notion that Howard is a coke addict is the core of their con to destroy his reputation.)

Curiously, while Craig is pleasant toward Jimmy, even congratulating him on his recent marriage, Betsy is nothing but bitter. She blames Jimmy for Craig's conviction. Never mind that Craig actually stole the money and almost certainly did so at her behest. Never mind that she fought against effect lawyering that would have gotten Craig a much lighter prison sentence than he deserved. To her it's everyone's fault but their own. "Our kids have to go to public school now because of you," she hisses at Jimmy. And that's where I found myself rooting for Jimmy in this stage of the con.

You see, the con's a con, and the Kettlemans are patsies. Jimmy asks them to sign him up as their attorney but doesn't actually want them to hire him. He wants them to hire anyone but him. He wants them to go shopping for lawyers all around Albuquerque, saying, "We think our former lawyer, Howard Hamlin, was on cocaine when he represented us."

Interestingly while Betsy is completely delusional about responsibility for the money her husband stole and she tried to conceal, she figures out Jimmy's con. She doesn't figure it out right away, though. She marches in to various lawyers' offices— we see her being a delusional jerk with Cliff Main, head of white-shoe law firm Davis & Main— and makes her allegations against Howard. Only after being laughed out of several offices in a row does she realize she's been played for a chump.

Jimmy using the Kettlemans to spread false innuendo had the potential backfire. Betsy, once realizing she's been played, could go back to all the lawyers she visited and say Jimmy put her up to it. Howard could sue Jimmy for slander. But Jimmy— and Kim, who's really the architect of this con— thought of that. They were prepared to shut down the Kettlemans' shot at revenge.

Jimmy goes to visit the Kettlemans' office again. Betsy confronts him with having figured out his con and threatens to turn him in. Jimmy offers a small wad of cash to buy her silence. Betsy is righteously indignant at the bribery attempt and refuses the cash. Then Kim drops the boom.

Kim figured out, perhaps as a lucky guess by knowing Betsy Kettleman is a narcissist crook, that their little tax prep business is a sham. She calls a contact at the IRS, in front of Betsy and Craig, and threatens to turn them in for defrauding customers with fake tax returns. Kim alleges that they file real paperwork with the IRS while giving fake paperwork to the taxpayer, pocketing the difference in the returns. Kim's lucky guess seems to have hit a bullseye, as Betsy hangs up her phone call and agrees to keep mum about the con.

And just to be nice, Jimmy gives them the bribe anyway. Maybe he feels bad for Craig, having a life sentence with Betsy.

lauradi7dw

There was a woman on the Red Line this morning looking very miserable, covered in red spots. A quick search of duckduckgo images shows me the bare backs of adults with measles and the faces of kids. Some kind of privacy thing? I am hoping she had a bad encounter with poison ivy instead of a communicable disease. My tai chi instructor got poison ivy recently and ended up taking prednisone. I was surprised by this, thinking of rubbing pink stuff on skin rather than having a strong corticosteroid inside.
But here's a ten year old article suggesting it.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4169084/

sorcyress

I have a cold or allergies or something and it is making me cranky.

(I don't normally have allergies, but because I did so much cleaning on Saturday, I did stir up a fair chunk of dust. So like...maybe that's some of the problem? I did take a covid test Sunmorn, I should probably take another one in a day or two. Wastewater data is pretty low right now, so I'd be surprised if it was covid (I am still masking everywhere as per usual))

But yeah, my nose is either congested or runny, which is very annoying. Probably one of the solutions is to drink more water, sigh. My current main water bottle is full of flowers from the brunch last weekend. Which is very nice, but probably I should've gotten a vase in the first place.

Sidebar: I have seen the writing on the wall and begun writing on the new/current version of 750words, as the old version becomes increasingly deprecated and buggy. I hate it, so much, because interacting with things that are different is Wrong And Bad and also I am unthrilled with how excited Buster is about the concept of using AI as a cool assistant who will give you lovely reports about your writing. Honestly gross, if I want to go through my writing and see how things are different, I am perfectly happy to just literally do that. I do not need robots to tell me how to feel about the changes that have happened or to find the patterns that are occurring. Anyways, there's a nonzero chance I might abandon the site entirely and just start tracking my writing in .txt files on my laptop, which would be annoying in different ways.

Anyways, all this most recent complaint is because apparently the new site does not respond to ctrl-z. What, I say as heartily as I possibly can, the fuck. Like I know some of my crankiness is just your classic neurospice "things are different [and that's bad]" but I'm going to legitimately flag this as a Poor UX Choice.

At least he did make it so that you could type in plaintext instead of horrible automatic markdown bullshit that thinks it knows what you mean when you type *emphasis* _like this_ and quite probably thinks those two things are the _same fucking thing_ which I assure you they are *not*. Also, both of them are different from italicising or bolding, those are additional *different* forms of emphasis. The fastest way to make me stop using a website is to assume you know how I wanted to say the things I said.

(It's a fun game to take a chunk of text that has auto-formatted, like in Discord, and to attempt to put back in the proper emphatic markers. The best part is that I am frequently --I'd say between two-thirds and seventy-five percent-- correct if I later go through and edit in a way that shows me the original. No one else can probably tell the way my voice is supposed to be, but I usually can, and I like that fact about myself.)

Everything in the world is cranky because it is the end of the school year and I am burnt out, and I'm not actually a fan of this way of being. So how about this: There are these flowers that grow in big weird purple balls and they're extremely keen. Aliums, I think? Anyways, I've been seeing those pretty frequently out and about in the world and I like them quite a bit.

(it is a well established fact that I like things that are round, known also as "the strongest I've ever been fuckored". I also like flowers and bright colours! So these are very good. I will try and take a picture sometime soon.)

Okay, I am in the library for extra math help (and I have a kiddo! even if it's not my kiddos who I was expecting but some strange lovely kiddo from another class, that's still quite good!) and while I'm not actively helping kids, I am either going to play Balatro or try and work on the Endless Email Project. Wish me luck, it's been a while!

~Sor
MOOP!

canyonwalker

Across season 6 of Better Call Saul a number of sub-plots are drawing to a close. One that's new-ish is Kim and Jimmy conspiring to pull down Howard Hamlin with a con.

Jimmy has his own reasons for disliking Howard. In season 5 he plotted a few nuisance pranks to annoy and embarrass Howard. He seemed ready to give it up after that as he was just kicking a man while he was down, but then Kim took new offense to Howard and pressed him to think bigger with revenge.

What offended Kim? It was when Howard confronted her in a courthouse hallway in ep. 5.07, ratting out Jimmy to her for his pranks. Kim didn't mind that Howard was complaining to her about Jimmy. She already knows that Jimmy is that kind of person. She knows it and actually likes it. What offended her was Howard's overbearing manner of framing it as I'm warning you for your own good and you need to know what kind of creep you're with. One thing we've seen with Kim is that she really gets bothered when people criticize her judgment or imply she's ignorant for staying with Jimmy. And Howard's such a douche overall that any douche-y thing he says sounds extra douche-y the way he says it.

The goal of this new scam is to force a quicker resolution to a class action lawsuit against a nursing home chain. Jimmy was the lawyer who found and initially developed this case. He's out of it now, but as the finder he stands to earn a sizable sum when it settles— well over a million dollars, based on the defendants' most recent offer. But Howard, now the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, and the other senior attorneys are dragging out negotiations, possibly for a few more years, hoping for an extra 30%. Jimmy— and now Kim— would rather they just take a quicker deal so they can get paid out now.

The gist of the scam is that Jimmy and Kim are discrediting Howard. They're engaging in various steps to make people around Howard, especially his co-counsel, Clifford Main of Davis & Main, suspect that he's developed a cocaine habit. If people like Cliff think Howard's becoming untrustworthy, they'll move to settle the case quickly instead of risking Howard spinning out of control and jeopardizing the settlement.

What's the motive here? Well, Jimmy and Kim both hate Howard. But while Jimmy seemed happy to stop kicking at Howard last season, it's Kim who's really looking to punish him now. Money's a motive, too. But again, while Jimmy was scraping for money months ago, it's no longer urgent to him to get this case settled. It's Kim who really has her eyes on the money. The settlement would fund her decision to quit corporate law and instead conduct pro-bono defense work for sympathetic clients. So, really, this con to destroy Howard's career is Kim's idea— and Jimmy even challenges her as much in dialogue. And that's sad because throughout the series Kim has always been the smart, hardworking, straight shooter. Now she's becoming just as bad as Jimmy. Or worse!

lauradi7dw

Part of the Vincent exhibit was two rooms that represent the footprint of the Roulins' yellow house. Visitors can walk into the bigger room (that has three chairs in corners, presumably to give a sense of scale) and look into the other through a window.

Near Haymarket, there is a metal framed house (no walls) which is an installation by LaRissa Rogers. It called "Going to Ground," and is a reminder of the home a few yards away hundreds of years ago that belonged to Zipporah Potter Atkins, who is thought to have been the first Black woman to own her own home in Boston. This is the area where bellringers usually picnic and I've been watching people interact with it over the past year. When it was first opened, there was a wooden rocking chair that people (mostly kids) rocked in. The chair was removed for the winter and hasn't come back, but yesterday someone had brought his own folding chair and was sitting in the house reading. The artist's website has nice pictures from various angles.
https://www.larissamrogers.com/going-to-ground

As part of the Boston public art triennial there is a sort of house in a lobby of the main branch of the Boston Public Library.
https://www.wbur.org/news/2025/05/19/boston-public-art-triennial

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Katarina Whimsy

May 2025

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Page Summary

sasha_feather - Looking for housemates in Minnesota
sovay - I was wrestling with a coat hanger, can you guess who won?
landofnowhere - wednesday books are not at full performance
lb_lee - LB is Moving! Take Our Stuff
sorcyress - [therapy] Time shifts experiences
canyonwalker - Feels Like the Old Days (F2F Meetings)
lauradi7dw - Habeas Corpus again
lauradi7dw - A kind message
canyonwalker - How Much Longer Until I Can Quit These Clowns?
sorcyress - (no subject)
lb_lee - Building Power While The Lights Are Out: Disasters, Mutual Aid, and Dual Power
sovay - So you surf the earth's magnetic core to keep you aligned
canyonwalker - BCS 6.03: Nacho's Story
sovay - I can't read your mind and I can't write your name
jazzfish - waving and/or drowning
canyonwalker - BCS 6.02: The Kettleman Clowns Again
lauradi7dw - What does an adult with measles look like?/poison ivy
sorcyress - Two cranky, one nice
canyonwalker - BCS 6.01: Kim and Jimmy Plot Against Howard
lauradi7dw - Art installation houses

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Style: Atomic Orange for Funky Circles by ninetydegrees
Resources: Stuck in Tokyo

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People I enjoy!

Reading

Looking for housemates in Minnesota

I was wrestling with a coat hanger, can you guess who won?

wednesday books are not at full performance

LB is Moving! Take Our Stuff

[therapy] Time shifts experiences

Feels Like the Old Days (F2F Meetings)

The Meeting

The After-Meeting

Habeas Corpus again

A kind message

How Much Longer Until I Can Quit These Clowns?

(no subject)

Building Power While The Lights Are Out: Disasters, Mutual Aid, and Dual Power

So you surf the earth's magnetic core to keep you aligned

BCS 6.03: Nacho's Story

I can't read your mind and I can't write your name

waving and/or drowning

BCS 6.02: The Kettleman Clowns Again

What does an adult with measles look like?/poison ivy

Two cranky, one nice

BCS 6.01: Kim and Jimmy Plot Against Howard

Art installation houses

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May 2025

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