solarbird | Network

Posted by frederic

https://cocktailvirgin.blogspot.com/2026/04/fantastico.html

1 1/2 oz Gosling's Black Seal Rum
1/2 oz Varnelli Punch Fantasia
3/4 oz Ginger Syrup
1/2 oz Lime Juice
2 dash Angostura Bitters

Shake with ice, strain into a Highball glass with soda water (2 oz), add ice, and garnish with a piece of candied ginger.

Another soda water recipe that I had saved up resided on the Bartender's Choice app called the Fantastico. The drink was crafted by Brandon Bramhall at Nashville's Attaboy in 2018, and the app described it as "A Dark 'N Stormy with some added amaro bitterness." After finding a way too cheap liter bottle of Punch Fantasia a little over a year and a half ago, I have been looking at ways of using it past the ounce and quarter to date poured thanks to the Bumbo and the Last King of Scotland. Here with another half ounce, the Fantastico offered up a caramel, hazelnut, and ginger bouquet to the nose. Next, a carbonated caramel and lime sip delved into rum, nutty, ginger, herbal, and allspice flavors on the swallow.

https://cocktailvirgin.blogspot.com/2026/04/fantastico.html

precuretokumod posting in

fandomcalendar

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Current Mood: amused
Current Location: somewhere
Current Music: zts - lastendconductor

nanila posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

renegadefolkhero

I've been sitting on this for a bit, chewing on it, and my takeaway is Hatchette is full of assholes.

I was already annoyed by the innovative new tradpub acquisition process wherein the indie author does all the work (gets the idea for the book, writes the book, edits the book, gets a cover for the book, publishes the book, does the marketing for the book, builds the platform, attracts readers, gains momentum, starting selling lots of books) and Hachette swoops in to offer a deal and take the lion's share of the profits, because Traditional Publishers Don't Actually Know How to Sell Books They Just Sorta Get Lucky Sometimes (United States v. Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster), and letting the author do literally everything and establish the book has legs saves them the trouble.

The only thing worse is the audio pubs hoovering up every audio book right they can find by low-balling clueless indies with pocket change offers. (Do your research and counter-offer Podium. I'm begging you.)

Hatchette knew what they bought. They knew the beef with the stolen cover, they knew the rumors the book was written with AI. They thought they could make a buck off Mia Ballard with frankly minimal effort on their part, and they didn't care about the AI stuff until they started to get heat. Then, instead of supporting the author THEY APPROACHED, they threw her to the curb like trash.

When faced with accusations of stolen cover art, Hatchette actually commissioned A DIFFERENT artist to do a similar cover instead of working with the og artist. (?WTF?)

Now, Hatchette has the gall to say they are "committed to protecting creative expression." Eat my whole ass.

Wanna sign with trad? Better be sure, because once these people get their hooks into your book anything goes.

Anyway, my official stance on is it ok to use AI in your self-published book is: Fuck Hachette.

poliphilo

A friend copies me into an email message beginning "All my life has been about....."

How does one respond to something like that? I favour, "Duly noted."

Know oneself? Oh absolutely. But be chary of sharing that knowledge. Mainly because you're likely to become a bore.

Anyway, other people will already have their opinion of you. Nothing you say is likely to change it.

And they will have noticed things you have always carefully skirted round.

A great line from Touch of Evil. Marlene Dietrich gets to deliver it. I assume Orson Welles wrote it. "What does it matter what you say about people? He was some kind of a man....."

A new friend says, "Don't ask me what I do, or how old I am or why I never married- because I'll simply make thing up....."

Now that's the spirit!

sonofgodzilla

Title: Marianna-sama ga Miteru
Universe: Sekai Ninja Sen Jiraiya
Series: Season One | Season Two | Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie | Ninja Quest (1, 2, 3, 4) | Fourth Down and Long | Stop the Hate Master (1, 2)
Character(s): Yamaji Kei/Murakami Mai
Rating: U
Warnings: N/A
Summary: “St Marianna has a system by which the older girls are expected to take care of the younger girls.”
Length: 1032 words
Author's Notes: external link .

Maria-sama!

( Marianna-sama ga Miteru )

Current Mood: amused
Current Location: somewhere
Current Music: Controlled Death - Untitled

poliphilo

The central courtyard at the Meeting House is a nice place to sit in summer, furnished with wooden furniture on which time is working its slow magic. There used to be chairs but they have collapsed under us one by one- leaving three benches. A week ago one of these went at the joints. Two wooden benches are not enough for a garden party.

But the tip shop has garden furniture. Yesterday we- that's Ailz and I- bought three sturdy plastic chairs at a fiver each. We didn't consult, we didn't have a committee meeting, we just did it.

The courtyard garden is cared for by Anthony. Unpaid. He visits from London and does things when nobody is looking. Bushes get pruned. Bedding plants appear. Last Thursday there were zinnias in a bed where no zinnias had been before. I have met him a couple of times. He's shy. I have never got to the bottom of his devotion to a Meeting House he doesn't attend.....

One of our more recent attenders asked if he could make a donation towards the tea and cake. I said, "Well there's a piggy bank on the kitchen table. But alternatively bring stuff- tea, cakes, biscuits...." I wish I'd added, "Surprise us..."

I like this haphazard way of keeping things going. The amateurishness.....

creepy_shetan posting in

comment_fic

[ If you're interested in being a Tuesday-Thursday guest host, you can sign up here. Thanks! ❤ ]
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Hi, everyone, and welcome to our weekly Free for All! :D There are no themes to follow for prompts or fills. Btw, if you perhaps missed a prompt theme that you liked, or you've had any ideas that didn't really work with Tuesday's or Thursday's posts, then today's your chance to prompt 'em. Be free, and have fun! ✎

Just a few rules:
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3. Use the character's full name and the fandom's full name for ease in adding to the Lonely Prompts spreadsheet.
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5. If your fill contains spoilers, warn and leave plenty of space, or use the spoiler cut.
6. If your story has possible triggers, please warn for them in the subject line!

Prompts should be formatted as follows: [Use the character's full names and fandom's full name]
Fandom, Character +/ Character, Prompt

Are today's prompts not catching your eye? No worries, because we have plenty of older prompts that just might do the trick! You can browse through the comm's calendar archive (here on LJ or here on DW) for themed and Free For All posts, or perhaps check out Sunday posts for Lonely Prompt requests. (Or, you can be like me, and try to save interesting prompts as you see 'em... and then end up with multiple text doc files full of [themes + links + prompts] that you can easily look through and search for keywords.) Multiple fills for one prompt are welcome, by the way! Oh, and you are very likely to find some awesome fills to read as well, and wouldn't it be nice to leave a comment on those lovely little writing distractions? ~_^

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If you have a Dreamwidth account and would feel more comfortable participating there, please feel free to do so… and spread the word! comment_fic

A friendly reminder about our posting schedule: Themed posts for new prompts go up on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Saturdays are a Free for All day for new prompts of any flavor. Sundays are for showing Lonely Prompts some love, whether by requesting for someone to adopt them or by sharing any fills that you've recently completed.

archersangel

1. What was the last book you read (or are currently reading)?
currently reading Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky.

2. What was the last movie you watched?
the paramount movie channel on pluto tv has patriot game often, so probably that.

3. What television series are you currently watching?
a mix of things on pluto tv; games shows, star trek (tos, tng, ds9, voy. they don't have ent right now) ask this old house, & this old house.

4. What are some of your favorite blogs or communities online?
other than DW & LJ, i don't read blogs.

5. What social media do you belong to and check often?
DW & LJ mostly. some reddit things (r//thriftstorehauls & r/dumpsterdiving).

other answers over here.

Current Mood: blah
Current Location: early saturday

sovay

The better part of my afternoon was spent sitting on a park bench with

rushthatspeaks in the classically balmy sunshine, watching a classful of kindergarteners shriek and clamber all over the climbing structures, the fountain, and the swings. One edged his way over to us with his school tablet on which he showed us the groups of things he was learning. I saw another with a pinwheel, another with a fanny pack, another with a baseball cap made of duct tape, crouching with a friend to pry open a maintenance hatch in the fountain with a stick. We agreed that we miss tire swings and feel nostalgically toward metal slides which had to be insulated from thigh-scalding summer with pieces of cardboard or brown paper bags. FiDO Pizza turns out to deliver all the way from Allston and while I recognize the garlic honey and chili zing of the richly soppressata-studded Doc, the anchovy-forward collards and kale of the Braised Greens over Parmesan cream tasted like an entire kelp forest and I ate it like one. We had cookies left over from Pesach for dessert. Especially at the end of a scrambled week, it was a low-key, springlike, lovely time. We have made plans in the newly discovered directions of All She Wrote Books and Dani's Queer Bar. In the evening we saw that Artemis II had safely splashed down.

Current Music: Holly Humberstone, "To Love Somebody"

apod_feed

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260410.html

Some 60 million light-years away in the southerly

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260410.html

kalloway

A long weekend, since I will be helping my father with things on Sunday.

Through no fault of its own, Lord of Heroes will be shutting down in the near future. The developers put all their money and LoH's money into developing a game that went straight into development hell and then tanked upon release, bankrupting the entire company. It's the kind of ultra-grindy Korean gacha that has a really good story, but I never got more than halfway because the grindwalls are real. OG Shadowverse is also shutting down but at this point that'll mostly be reclaimed space on my phone. I just cannot brain card games.

Probably going to bounce in and out of both Ever Crisis and Dissidia. That'll put me down to ~7 phone games. I guess Eternal, Last Cloudia, and Seven Knights will be my mains. Still need to get back to playing FFVII on Switch; I'm right before Wutai, which I've never actually played through, and feel like I need to put a little more effort into it. ^^;;

Picked up my new glasses, which are baby's first progressives and so far they're okay? I haven't quite figured out the proper angle to look at some things but I'll get there.

Should have the blue Estailev finished up tonight. Then, jokingly, I'm going to build like 10 HGs. But maybe. Definitely time for a few smaller things.

kradeelav

bombcar

> The analogies for these things like "hitting a golf ball into a hole in one 5,000 miles away" are always fun.

> I like starting from the fact that Ptolemy was able to get the accuracy of the "motions of the heavens" down so well that it took more than a thousand years to get observations that showed discrepancies. The math, it maths.

billroper

Gretchen notes that in the responses to yesterday's post there was absolutely no one who was sympathizing with the surgery to remove her wisdom tooth yesterday. This is what happens when I write a long technical discussion as part of the post, it seems.

Gretchen's stomach today decided that it would demonstrate why sympathy was in order. One of the pills that she was taking seems to have produced some extreme stomach upset and -- well, dynamic disassembly of the contents of the stomach onto the floor. More than once.

Dinner was some egg noodles that I boiled for her and that has stayed put so far, which is a major improvement.

Gretchen suspects that the problem was with the hydrocodone pain reliever, which she is now omitting from the regimen.

We'll see how things go.

soc_puppet posting in

fandom_on_dw

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Current Mood: excited

chazzbanner

How I came to post this:

One of the sentences in Duolingo Norwegian mentions 'the invisible man.' That reminded me that a line about Claude Rains appears in a song, but what song? I learned the line I remembered was from the Horror Picture Show, but there was another song

I like the song, I like the video, so here it is.

Watch on YouTube

I do love Claude Rains in just about anything. Be still my heart. :-)

And, here is the last scene in Casablanca

-

me_ya_ri

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Current Mood: artistic

kaberett

Behold my works: today I went to the leisure centre, and went into the leisure centre, and went into the gym, and poked around a bit, and retreated to the stairwell to hyperventilate... and then WENT TO A CHANGING SPACE and CHANGED MY CLOTHING and went back into the gym. And picked! things! up!!! and put them down again!!!!!

I have now Touched Barbell, appear to have accidentally skipped most of Phase 2 of Liftoff in favour of Barbells, Apparently, but honestly the biggest and most exciting bit of this is that I did go back into The Gym and I did push through the social anxiety of What If I'm Doing It Wrong.

It is an excellent time of year to be doing this; the cherries on the way from the gym to the bus stop are in full and exuberant flower.

hannah

In less than an hour, I leave to see Voxtrot. It's hard for me to understand, even as nervous as I am about it, even though I'm already dressed up for dancing at a concert. When I first started listening, they were already over, and a band getting back together after so many years apart isn't something that happens. It just isn't. This is almost too much to take in. I'm getting tingles. I've been listening to both their albums over and over this week. I don't think they're going to play previously unknown material, as I've heard a few other bands do before - City Swans by Neko Case, for example - but I don't know how far back they're going to go. It could go all the way back to their EPs. It could be a playthrough of the second album. I'll find out when they start playing.

Does Dreamwidth load slowly for anyone else? If I'm opening it in a new tab, it takes a measurably longer amount of time to load up than, say, anything else on the internet. It could be something on my end - I mostly want to gather data right now.

The mourning doves stopped by my place today, cooing loud enough to make it seem worthwhile for me to call back to them and greet them in return. Spring keeps arriving.

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: Change - Voxtrot

me_ya_ri

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Current Mood: artistic

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solarbird

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April 2026

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Page Summary

cocktail_virgin_feed - fantastico
precuretokumod in fandomcalendar - Chemy Card Spring Silly!!
nanila in awesomeers - Just One Thing (11 April 2026)
renegadefolkhero - The Mia Ballard/Shy Girl Thing
poliphilo - Nosce Ipsum
sonofgodzilla - FIC: Sekai Ninja Sen Jiraiya - Marianna-sama ga Miteru
poliphilo - It Seems To Work
creepy_shetan in comment_fic - Free for All Saturday, Week 15 [DW Edition]
archersangel - friday 5
sovay - And this blue and green ball keeps spinning to the beat
apod_feed - (no subject)
kalloway - (no subject)
kradeelav - (no subject)
billroper - Sympathy for the Spouse
soc_puppet in fandom_on_dw - Mood Theme in a Year: Second Medium Track Run
chazzbanner - Casablanca
me_ya_ri - Free Fiction Friday: The Heat of the Thorn!
kaberett - VICTORY
hannah - Rivers they can change but water stays the same.
me_ya_ri - I got an iPad and thus had to get Procreate!

収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

cheers, love - the cavalry's queer!

Network

fantastico

Chemy Card Spring Silly!!

Just One Thing (11 April 2026)

The Mia Ballard/Shy Girl Thing

Nosce Ipsum

FIC: Sekai Ninja Sen Jiraiya - Marianna-sama ga Miteru

It Seems To Work

Free for All Saturday, Week 15 [DW Edition]

friday 5

And this blue and green ball keeps spinning to the beat

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

Sympathy for the Spouse

Mood Theme in a Year: Second Medium Track Run

Casablanca

Free Fiction Friday: The Heat of the Thorn!

VICTORY

Rivers they can change but water stays the same.

I got an iPad and thus had to get Procreate!

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April 2026

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