flamingsword | Links, life update, love of food

For those of us dealing with brain fuckery: Dealing With Executive Dysfunction: a masterpost.

For those who could use a few chuckles at the expense of militaries the world over: Schlock Mercenary’s The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries - “Your name is in the mouths of others. Make sure it has teeth.”

For my historical-foodie types, The Sifter just launched and I am HYPE:
"The Sifter is a public database, free to all users. It is a tool for finding and comparing historical and contemporary writing on food and food-related topics. It is overseen by an advisory board composed of members from The Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery as well as other friends of food history. As with Wikipedia, the Sifter will be populated by its users. All entries will have an English translation, enabling users to search languages they cannot read. Soon, we will have over 100 languages represented. Registered users will be able to make corrections and add new information. Future releases will include a data visualization component. We also plan to include more resources linking to digitized photographs, artworks, television and film. With the aid of this tool, it is our hope that what has been invisible will come into focus."

Things I am reading to write a cool Midsummer ritual: Litha Lore, How to Celebrate Litha, and Litha, the Summer Solstice.

Thing I might take myself to see on my birthyday, if the afternoon tea doesn’t pan out: Impressionism Exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art

My anxiety is swinging back up this week, because Bat’s memorial is on the Glorious 25th of May, and I am one of the people putting this thing together. (-at the last minute, on a shoestring budget, in someone’s backyard. Batrick’s memorial will be a lot like his life-) so I am over-planning and perseverating on every fucking thing, trying to make sure all of our bases are covered, all the To-Do lists checked off. I’ll be taking the crash pad and some chairs and card tables and a picnic blanket and his favorite whiskey and … fuck, just a ton of crap that we may not even need. We’ll see. I just … this is the last bit of it, isn’t it? After this the crisis mode is officially over and there’s no more need for me to prop folks up, so my thoughts are about to turn inward and I’m both afraid that there’s more grief down there, and afraid that that’s just it, you know? That after this, my brain’s inability to hold onto things will slowly push Bat into the past as time passes, and that he will eventually be someone I remember loving once, the way I remember my brother, my aunt, my cousins, my friend Albert, everyone else who left me behind who’s still alive but my brain doesn’t keep up with mourning on any day but January 21st. That my brain will forget the immediacy and vibrancy that was Bat; my favorite unwise libertine trash goblin; my cryptid swamp mage; my overgrown petty theater kid, for whom all of life was drag, was performance, was the cast party after the play.

I have a stress headache, I think. I should get up and take stuff for that.

I love y’all. Thank you for being good to each other, and to me, and for being one less source of suck in the world, one more fountain of joy.