mneme | Network

No idea why both my knees should be having conniptions today but suspect the recurring Baker's cyst on the right one, oh dear. But went out in the one day only!! sun to return my library book at long last. It will be spring (10C/50F) and wet tomorrow and snow thereafter so will doubtless go back to my wonted lethargy. Some day I may get to the laundromat but that day will certainly not be tomorrow. Am relieved I was efen able to get my dark wash from the basement.

Did have lunch at the Pour Boy, a cocktail and fried chicken sandwich that put me in a good humour. Bill was 29 and change with tax, I gave my attentive Vietnamese waitress a ten and a twenty and went merrily on my way-- until I realized, twelve feet up the block, that I hadn't tipped her. So had to go back to retrieve my ten and give her the twenty I should have given her in the first place. Very embarrassing. Ginkgo biloba has not taken hold yet, obviously.

troisoiseaux

My goal for 2026 is to re-read War and Peace, which I originally read... approximately ten years ago? (At some point between discovering Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 in 2015 and seeing it on Broadway in October 2016.) Started on January 1st and have been reading at least one chapter per day— as the individual chapters are (so far) very short, I haven't gotten very far, but enough to remind me that a. Tolstoy was just so, so good at writing characters who feel like people, and b. Pierre is such a doofus, I love him. If I had a nickel for every 19th century novel where someone fails to read the room and starts praising Napoleon, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but etc. etc.

I saw a fantastic production of Guys & Dolls (the STC's) over the holidays and now I'm reading the collected short stories of Damon Runyon, which were the basis/inspiration for the 1950 musical. Off to a fun start from the first sentence of the first story; my mental narrator's voice can't decide whether it's an old-timey radio host or in The Godfather:

Only a rank sucker will think of taking two peeks at Dave the Dude's doll, because while Dave may stand for the first peek, figuring it is a mistake, it is a sure thing he will get sored up at the second peek, and Dave the Dude is certainly not a man to have sored up at you.

(This particular story ends with Dave the Dude getting beat up by his girlfriend's boyfriend's wife, by the way.)

Also just started The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin; immediately intrigued and enjoyably bewildered by being flung headfirst into its alien setting.

rachelmanija

A new comic from Ignite Press by Stephanie Williams, Letizia Cadonici (main artist) and Juliet Nneka (alternate covers.) At the turn of the century, Etta, a young Black woman, studies both science and a book of old remedies she inherited from her mother, along with some dire warnings she doesn't heed.

This is a really interesting historical fantasy with elements of cosmic horror and dark academia. Each issue has alternate covers in very different styles. I like both of them.

I'll be following this one.

Content notes: So far racism is part of the world and why the characters make some choices, rather than violent or constantly present on-page. The rabbits are used in experiments that are not cruel - Etta tests a healing ointment on one that has an injury - but they seem likely to eventually turn into zombies or get possessed by cosmic horrors or merge with eldritch plants.

$radiantfracture: a white rabbit swims underwater (water rabbit)$

radiantfracture

Where is there to sit exactly
If everything is shining on me

Friend, you have buttsense
you have stone buns, as your grandma says
Here in the driftwood feeling sundrunk, sunbent
Sensate among the ebb tones of the sea

I thought you said stun bone
You draw with a stick among the ebb stones
The tide wriggles up the sand grooves
Your breathing makes the subtones shimmer

You draw the water up to bait our shoes
Just for the craft of it, just because you can do it
Like a gull riding on the sky tide
Laughing at our temporary ruin

* * * * * *

Every morning very nearly without fail I solve the Merriam-Webster Blossom puzzle, and then I re-solve it to see if I can get a higher score, and if I'm not careful this becomes a kind of intellectual busywork I can use to distract myself from actual writing.

So a thing I'm trying to do (among all the other things) is to use the puzzle as a prompt. Inevitably each group of letters generates a semantic zone. Real and nonce words produce themselves. The letterset today was BENOSTU.

Here's a less complete poem from Sunday (letterset EINRTVW):

The riverine interview of winter,
that inept vintner: cool distillate
interrogates the view, shreds and repurposes it,
turns window to vitrine
where the morning light, when it comes,
cold citrine, tobacco stain,
will ennerve us, animate the inert twin

...Not sure what I planned to do with that twin, but I will let you know.

§rf§

susandennis

We have, in fact, made our way through the list. My bedroom closet now has ONLY clothes and shoes and my ironing board. Perfection. It just needs organization - designer coming Tuesday.

The storage area used to look like this:

And what you couldn't see was an even bigger pile o' crap.

Now it looks like this:

I need to go through all those plastic boxes and I'll be half that shit can go right to the dumpster but that's a project for another time.

In addition to the closet, the utility room gained some breathing room, too. Nice.

We took Biggie to the vet. His bladder is way better but he still has stones. One option was to operate tomorrow to remove them. But the option the vet recommended was to try one more time to dissolve the rocks. He's now back to a pill twice a day. For a month. If the stones are still there, then operation time. Meanwhile he's Jimmy Buffet stoned on the gabapentin I gave him for the vet visit. And it's pretty hilarious.

Me and Biggie at the vet.

We're off tonight for dinner at a dim sum place Bonny and I have wanted to try and we are taking her with us. Should be fun.

lauradi7dw

-Amazon
-AT&T
-Booz Allen Hamilton
-Caci
-Charter Communications
-Comcast
-Dell
-Ecolab
-FedEx
-General Dynamics
-L3Harris
-Motorola
-Thermo Fisher
-UPS

Thanks to Robert Reich for the list. There may be others. Fortune 500 is a pretty small subset of all companies, of course.
Grateful that the parcel I received yesterday came by USPS, not Fedex or UPS. Glad I switched from AT&T to Verizon. I don't use any of the others.

sovay

Now that we are back in the swing of the year, my days are marked by doctors' appointments. I preferred being outside the calendar. I did dream briefly and unexpectedly of Alexander Knox, playing one of those harrowed, abrasive, obdurate figures on the other side of some internment or imprisonment that made me think he would have been anachronistically great as E. T. C. Werner. Have some link-like things.

1. John Heffernan falls into the category of actors of whom I have somehow become very fond without actually seeing all that much of them, which normally happens with character faces in the '40's. I am unlikely even to see his latest project, the freshly announced Amazon TV version of Tomb Raider, but since his character is described in the promotional dramatis personae as "an exhausted government official who finds himself tangled up in Lara's unusual world," it's nice to know I would almost certainly develop a disproportionate attachment to him if I had the chance. You can tell I am otherwise a solid generation of actors behind the times since I was impressed by the casting in the same place of Jason Isaacs, Bill Paterson, Celia Imrie, Paterson Joseph, and Sigourney Weaver.

2. This song transfixed me a few nights ago on WHRB: Barbez, "Strange" (2005).

3. I meant once again to praise the Malden Public Library for ordering me a sun-bleached, peach-orange, jacketless first edition of Leslie Howard's Trivial Fond Records (ed. Ronald Howard, 1982), about whose selected nonfiction I have been intensely curious since discovering its existence in 2008, but the problem with reading some of the broadcasts he made for J. B. Priestley's Britain Speaks in 1940 is that one runs into passages like:

Democracy today, to survive at all, must be as militant as autocracy, and what the world is desperately in need of now is not the gentle, philosophic democracy of Jefferson, but the outspoken, militant and ringing democracy of Roosevelt, representing the righteous anger of the free people of the world aroused against the cynical arrogance of the totalitarian feudalists.

Current Music: Barbez, "Strange"

steepholm

My family history entries used to be a regular feature of this blog, but has rather trailed off recently, in part for lack of time, in part because I'd already picked the low-hanging fruit on the family tree. It's long been my ambition to do something more substantial with the Butlers in due course, but I'd thought of it as a retirement project - which indeed it still is. However, recent events have made me consider starting a little earlier.

A few months ago I was contacted by my third-cousin (once removed), Michael, of whose existence I had been aware but whom I had never met. He had recently inherited from his elder brother a large number of family papers, and very generously offered to share them with me - and, indeed, to give me a portrait of my great*4 grandmother, Margaret Kynnier, born 1736. Her picture is now hanging at the top of the stairs:

Just as exciting, though, was a cache of letters from my great-great-grandfather Thomas and his siblings, written between 1822 and 1825 to their elder brother Weeden, who was at Harrow at the time. Weeden (the third of that name) carefully preserved a good many of them, and together they constitute a fascinating (at least to me) source for what life was like at 6 Cheyne Walk at the time, when Weeden's father (also Weeden) was running a classical school there. Everyday life, the activities of the siblings and the school pupils, visits to different parts of the country, public events, worries and illnesses, are all laid forth in the disparate voices of Weeden's four siblings:

Anne (b. 1808), aged 13-16 over the period of the letters, and the most prolific correspondent.

Tom (b. 1809), aged 12-15

Fanny (b. 1811), aged 10-14

George (b. 1813), aged 8-12.

The baby of the family, Isabella (b. 1820), is too young to write herself, but a presence throughout.

Luckily, Weeden Senior taught his children good penmanship, so the letters are mostly legible, though several raise the stakes by using cross-hatching - a way of saving paper by writing twice on the same sheet at 90-degree angles:

All in all it's quite a treasure trove. I'll give you a few highlights in the entries to come. And here, to start us off, is a letter from Fanny, then aged 11, dated Sunday 22nd June 1823, the day after Weeden's 17th birthday.

My dear Weeden

We all drank your health yesterday but Anne, who was not returned from school. My Holidays began on the 10th of the month. Mrs Wishart, Brunell, Mr Leeds and his two daughters, Mr Bey and Mr & Mrs Quinby and Willets were here at the play on Tuesday they all acted very well, Henry Hancock was compared with Kean. He and Tom acted the best of all.

Thursday 26th. Maryann Leeds was continually saying to me that it was very well acted. I sat next to her. She and her sister Susan had never been at a Play in their lives before so it was a great treat to them. Brunell sat just behind me. I asked him if he remembered when they acted a Play here before and when he was an old woman. He said yes but that was nothing compared to this.

Anne is now marking Studholme’s and Strachey’s stockings. I think George will not be satisfied till he fills the house with Cats for he has been out today to get one.

I went yesterday to the house of old Mr Griffith with Papa who went to see him and his son Abel. It seems Griffith had pawned his coat which was a very good one, for the man gave him £2/1s for it and being in want of money he had gone I believe to ask his father for some more. His father would not listen to him so he shot him dead in the Temple and then laying down on the table the Pistol he had shot his Father with he walked to the looking glass to see where most effectually to shoot himself. I staid down in the parlour while Papa went upstairs to look at them both. He could see no likeness in Griffith to what he was when Papa saw him last. He was still bleeding at the mouth though he had been dead I believe 2 days and the verdict was settled at 11 o’clock on Tuesday night. It was brought in Murder and Suicide. William has heard that his body will be buried in the cross road at Pimlico.

One of our hens has been set for duck’s eggs.

I remain
Your affectionate sister
Frances Mary M. Butler

"Brunell" is of course Isambard Kingdom Brunel, then 17, a Cheyne Walk neighbour and a former pupil at the school. I don't know if it's widely known that he acted the part of an old woman, but therein lies my flimsy justification for the clickbait title. As for the case of Abel Griffith and his father, it was well known at the time - and in fact he was the very last suicide to be buried, according to tradition, at a crossroads; the law would be changed just a month later. The place of his burial is the current site of Victoria Station, apparently. At the time of his death Abel was a 22-year-old law student, and it seems quite likely that he, like Brunel, was one of Weeden Senior's former pupils, since he clearly knew him from some time before - and felt concerned enough his affairs to take his 11-year-old daughter to the place where his corpse was being stored. Different times.

hrj

So yesterday I was checking my calendar to make sure I was keep track of things and had a "wait...what?" moment when I realized that I fly off to the east coast for a couple weeks...um...next Monday. And that means I"m popping down to Monterey for a family ting on Saturday. And that means...

So I spent a large chunk of yesterday evening drawing up my compulsively -detailed itinerary/schedule and making some additional reservations. I got the plane tickets months ago, but my plans also include some Amtrak travel, a rental car, and a motel room. I didn't want to leave any of that to chance (despite it being off season) but I hadn't previously nailed down exactly when I was doing the non-NYC parts of the trip.

The conjunction that inspired this trip is a friends large-number birthday (hi Lauri!), the Emma Stebbins exhibit at the Heckscher Museum (which I did a podcast interview for), it having been too long since I've seen my brother and family in Maine, and the chance to meet my grand-niece (also in Maine). Alas, the grand-niece contingent had since decided to do the snowbird thing for several months and won't be in scope on this trip.

So I'll be in NYC for 7 days (including two planned-but-not-yet-calendared events) then Augusta ME for 4 days. Currently it's looking like no blizzard, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed as that would make the driving parts annoying.

Unlike most NYC trips, I have plenty of unscheduled time this trip, and I'd love to meet up with folks if it works out.

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/01/08/the-big-idea-lance-rubin/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59066

Many people wish they could return to a specific age in their life and live it all over again. But what if that person didn’t know they were reliving the same year over and over again? New York Times best-selling author Lance Rubin explores the idea of being a teenager seemingly indefinitely in his new novel 16 Forever. Follow along in his Big Idea to see a fresh take on the beloved time-loop trope.

LANCE RUBIN:

It’s no secret that we live in a culture that’s afraid of aging. Thousands of products exist to keep us looking as if we’re frozen in time. “Forever Young” is the name of not one, but two, classic songs. Forever 21 was a popular clothing store for decades.

But it occurred to me at some point that, if you could find a way to stay eternally young, it would actually be a complete nightmare. (Cue creepy, echo-saturated horror movie trailer version of Alphaville’s “Forever Young.”)

I said it occurred to me at some point, but I know exactly when it was.

I was five years old, watching a VHS tape of the 1960 televised Peter Pan musical starring Mary Martin. At the end, Peter comes back to the Darling home, and Wendy…has become an adult. They can’t hang out anymore. So instead, Peter flies off with Wendy’s daughter, Jane. Um, I thought, is this supposed to be a HAPPY ending? Seeing the playful bond between Peter and Wendy SHATTERED because of time? With Jane easily replacing Wendy simply because she’s YOUNG?

Around the same age, I saw the 1986 Disney film Flight of the Navigator, in which 12-year-old David falls in the woods and wakes up eight years in the future. His younger brother Jeff has become his older brother. Good god, it chilled me to the bone. The jarring role reversal. The visceral terror of time moving on without you.

And so, I decided to explore these ideas in a novel, with poor Carter Cohen stuck forever at age 16, literally unable to grow up. I’ve always loved a time-loop story, but the idea of a year-long loop, where every character knows the loop is happening except the person it’s happening to, rather than vice versa, seemed unique and intriguing.

I quickly realized that Carter’s perspective was an inherently disoriented one, seeing as his memory wipes clean every time he leaps back to the beginning of sixteen. It felt like the story wanted to be grounded in another POV too, to better understand the way Carter’s looping—which feels almost like a mysterious medical disorder—affects the people around him.

So the story is also told by Maggie Spear, the 17-year-old girl who Carter dated and fell in love with during his most recent loop. Once Maggie sees that the boy she loves now has no idea who she is, she decides it’s too painful to start over.

The experience of writing the first draft started pleasantly enough, as the premise gave me a lot to explore. It was fun to work through what a mess it would be to wake up thinking you were sixteen and then seeing your family had all aged six years without you. It was similarly compelling to think about the devastation of having your boyfriend walk right past you in the high school hallway because he has no idea who you are.

But when it came to cleaning up the mess these characters were in, I was pretty clueless.

As my editor David Linker said after reading my first draft, it “really falls apart in the second half.” The worst part about that note was that I knew he was completely correct.

I had two main struggles with this book. One was accounting for the six years of looping that happens before the novel even begins. Kind of an unwieldy amount of time to work with. I decided to write several chapters from the POV of Carter’s younger-now-older brother, Lincoln, since as a sibling he would have been there for every previous loop. That said, it was still hard to determine what had happened during that time and what was worth sharing with the reader.

The other struggle involved, well, THE LOOPING. Like, um, why was it happening? And would Carter get out of it? If so, how would he get out of it? How would that connect to the theme of growing up? Would a solution, if there was one, be clear or ambiguous? Literal or figurative?

Unlike a Groundhog Day loop of twenty-four hours, Carter had to make it through at least an entire year for the reader to see if he was going to make it out of the loop or not. Again, I’d boxed myself into a cumbersome duration of time. Which led to other questions too, like if Carter and Maggie were going to get back together, when in the year should that happen? How could I maintain the necessary tension when the ticking clock was A YEAR LONG?

So, yeah, imagine the above two paragraphs looping through my brain for months and months, as I paced around my apartment, as I walked to get groceries, as I talked through ideas with my wife Katie. I was, of course, as stuck as my protagonist—draft after draft after draft, unsure if I’d ever be able to write a version of this book I felt good about.

Ultimately, there were no quick solutions. No lightning bolt moment that solved everything. Instead, there were a series of tiny discoveries and changes that slowly made the book into something better. When my editor read the second draft, he felt it had improved, but it still fell apart in the last third. When he read the third draft, he felt like it was almost there, but not quite.

And so on and so on. There’s probably a reason writers are so attracted to the time-loop trope—in many ways, it so aptly represents the creative process: living something over and over and over again, trying to make it a little better each time.

Until finally: you stop looping. And it feels amazing, like you’ve done something impossible. I’m so happy with where the book finally landed and proud of the journey it took to get there. And, just as importantly: I have a deeper understanding of why Peter Pan and Flight of the Navigator made me feel so damn sad when I was five.

Author socials: Website|Substack|Instagram

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/01/08/the-big-idea-lance-rubin/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59066

solarbird

JD Vance said – in response to a reporter asking why the FBI and Federal agencies were blocking Minnesota’s investigation into the ICE agent murder of Renee Nicole Good – that ICE agents have “absolute immunity” from state laws.

Screen photograph of JD Vance at the White House podium on CNN with the chyron "BREAKING NEWS | LIVE: VANCE: ICE AGENT WHO KILLED RENEE GOOD 'PROTECTED BY ABSOLUTE IMMUNITY'"

This is not law. This is fascism.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

anais_pf posting in

thefridayfive

These questions were written by

losseloth.

1. Do you have a favourite cause that you support?

2. If so, how do you support it?

3. Have you been an active member of an organization (attending meetings, volunteering, etc)?

4. Have you ever led any group?

5. If so, how was your experience with it?
OR: 5. If not, why, is it a conscious choice, of lack of opportunity?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!

duckprintspress posting in

cnovels

It's that time again (Seven Seas monthly survey).

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScp3j1csWSOu0DJuKZ3Kq0vsJaHY4fo70lV1fhvO8TUQEtLRg/viewform

petra

Drabbles and limericks for people who requested them:
Chrestomanci
due South + Murderbot
due South + Venom
Interview with the Vampire (TV)
KPop Demon Hunters
Pride and Prejudice
Singin' in the Rain
Slough House
Star Wars

Prompt me if you would you like something in one or more of my fandoms. I may not get to you today, but we can have Even More Joy Day tomorrow!

Current Mood: joyful
Current Music: Hearts unfold like flowers before thee

james_davis_nicoll

Not on Earth.

Where to Look for Evidence of Alien Visitors to Our Solar System

regshoe

Trying something a bit different for the annual Sutcliff this time.

We Lived in Drumfyvie (1975) is a series of short stories about the history of a fictional Scottish town (nothing to do with the real Fyvie in Aberdeenshire, setting of my favourite ballad), from its creation as a burgh by David I in the twelfth century to Victoria's Diamond Jubilee at the end of the nineteenth.

( God, it's exhausting being Scottish, in't it? )

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/01/08/construction-time-again/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59059

After a delay when the route from the manufacturer to us was literally closed by winter weather, all the components for Krissy’s new garage have arrived and the final construction has begun. One of the advantages of this type of construction is that it’s relatively quick to set up; the should have the whole thing up and insulated in a couple of days, after which time this garage will be the new home of our ride-on lawn mower and Krissy’s dad’s old pick up, which she has kept in meticulous shape and which still runs great.

Obviously I will post when the thing is completed, but I thought this early morning, snapped-when-I-took-the-dog-out shot was a pretty cool in-progress moment. I know Krissy will be happy when her new garage is done, and also, when all the construction mess is gone.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/01/08/construction-time-again/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59059

katiedid717 posting in

agonyaunt

My Grandchildren Don’t Thank Me for Christmas Gifts. Is This a Moral Failure?

My grandchildren are in or nearing their teenage years. Two are from my son and his wife, and two are from my daughter and her husband. Of course, all children love and, to some extent, expect birthday and Christmas gifts. My daughter-in-law and her children continue a tradition of giving me handmade greeting cards every Christmas. They also always send me handwritten thank-you cards for the gifts I send. However, I receive no gifts from my other grandchildren, both boys, and never thank-you cards.

I mentioned this to my daughter, their mother, but there was no response. I suggested that each might give me a card promising 30 minutes of picking up sticks in my yard. I know that gifts should come from the heart with no sense of reciprocity, but the current situation bothers me. There seems to be a lack of moral character being demonstrated, as well as poor ethics and manners.

What do you think?

From the Therapist: You’ve framed your grandsons’ behavior as a case of bad manners or moral failure, but I hear a yearning underneath. No matter how much we tell ourselves that gifts aren’t about reciprocity, the reality is that they often hold emotional significance in which both parties are essentially asking to be recognized. The giver wants acknowledgment of their thoughtfulness and investment, while the receiver wants confirmation that they’ve been truly seen. Both are essentially asking, “Do I matter?”

When we don’t feel seen or appreciated, hurt feelings can disguise themselves as something else, like concern about good character or proper etiquette, because it’s easier to push pain outward than to say, “I feel unimportant to you.” But remember that children take cues from their parents, and I have a feeling that this lack of acknowledgment has more to do with your daughter than with her sons.

For instance, you mentioned that you got no response from her when you brought this up. But instead of telling her what her children should do for you, I’d be curious about why she doesn’t facilitate gift-giving or thank-you-note-writing. I say “she” because most teens don’t do this without some parental prodding, and I imagine that your daughter has her own feelings about your relationship that are being played out in the gifting dynamic.

Maybe gifting between you and her family feels empty or performative, when what she really wants is a different or more meaningful relationship with you. It could be that she perceives you as critical of both her and her sons, demanding of something that she doesn’t feel she or they owe you. She might also find your suggestion that the boys pick up sticks for you as a bit thoughtless: Would it make you happy to ask her children to do something that would feel more like a burdensome chore than something they would actually enjoy giving you?

Meanwhile, you say that your “daughter-in-law and her children” give you cards and write thank-you notes, but I noticed you don’t mention your son. It’s nice that your daughter-in-law has created traditions for her kids around gifting, but this doesn’t mean that her children have stronger characters than your daughter’s children do. It just means that the person your son married facilitates gifting and thanking — and that your son and your daughter don’t.

So what might help? First, separate your hurt feelings from judgments about character. You can feel unappreciated without that meaning that these boys are being raised poorly — or that this is primarily about them. Second, consider what you actually want. Do you want thank-you notes, or do you want to feel more connected to and valued by this branch of the family? If it’s the former, you could issue an ultimatum (no thank-you notes equals no gifts), but I don’t think forced statements of gratitude are what you really want. If you want genuine connection and appreciation, you can start by approaching your daughter with curiosity instead of complaints.

minoanmiss posting in

agonyaunt

Well, two tales of skimpy clothing, to compare and contrast.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: curious

cakewrecks_feed

Posted by Jen

https://www.cakewrecks.com/home/the-final-countdown-2026

Look, bakers, I'll be the firth to admit I'm not so great with numbers...

...but something here just doesn't add up:

Major props for helping "Keydunce" celebrate such a special milestone, though.

The kind of milestone, in fact, that most of us will spend the next few seconds trying to pronounce.
(I'm going with "three-und." Or maybe "Thirnd.")

Hey, is it just me, or have you noticed families having LOTS of kids these days?

Not to mention getting super lazy naming them all.

(Johnny Five's sister? We can only hope.)

Ok, now you're just making stuff up.

Maybe if you skip the number superscript all together...

Nope.

Well, bakers, I guess you're just going to have to spell them out. That way there's no chance of any of these piddly little technical errors, you know?

I don't... how could... WHY... Oh, never mind.

Happy Liberation Day, Kanaan.

Thanks to Kajal, Kailey S., Anony M., Moira B., Beth M., Tyffani C., Alison U., & Crystal T. for putting two and two together... and getting all sixes and sevens. (That one's for you British mates. Smoochies!)

*****

P.S. I found the COOLEST toy for helping kids learn their numbers:

Transforming Number Robots

These would make awesome cake toppers; then you can surprise them by showing the number is really a robot. As of this writing they're on sale for over 50% off, too. SCORE.

*****

And from my other blog, Epbot: