Distortions

I've now listened to the BBC Radio versions of LAST, ILLU, and BLAN. Bert Coules wrote the first two of them, while another dramatist Roger Danes wrote BLAN. These adaptations depart quite a bit from the original stories, and not for the better.

I was prepared to find LAST sad and nostalgic in the usual "there's an East Wind coming" way, but Bert Coules made it fucking depressing by writing that Watson hasn't seen Holmes in ten years other than one weekend visit to Sussex. One. Coules has reduced "an occasional weekend visit" to one only, and he implies that Holmes's lack of invitations is the reason it's only been once. (Whereas in the "Lion's Mane" story, Holmes implied that Watson's absence was because he was busy in his life, not that Holmes didn't want to see him.) So that's an unhappy distortion of their drifting apart. We find out this info because Watson meets with Stamford at a New Year's 1914 party and agrees to give some public talk on Sherlock Holmes to some young doctors. Watson confirms to them that Holmes is retired to beekeeping, but he thinks Holmes is just going through a phase; he'll ache for brain work again and eventually unretire himself.

Movies and Dogs

Thunderstorms have been so loud in the mornings lately that they sounded like trains roaring on tracks. Looks like we're in for more rain and cold weather next week. Well, it's better than ice and snow.

Meanwhile I've seen some small movies lately. Sarah's Oil is another Angel Studios film, a fictionalized biography of Sarah Rector, a Black girl in Oklahoma who inherited Indian land with oil on it. This is back in the early 20th Century, a bit before the Osage murders depicted in Killers of the Flower Moon. So Sarah and her family are in danger not only from swindlers but also murderers. There is a white character named Bert Smith who helps Sarah dig for the oil, but he's an imperfect ally who succumbs to greed and fear when a villainous oil company tries to cheat Sarah out of her land. For animal lovers, I will warn that someone shoots a dog off screen, then it disappears; people assume that it died but it later comes back, like a miraculous sign. Some faith-based movies are indeed heavy-handed, but this one didn't annoy me really, and they did show Bert learning his lesson and listening to NAACP people to help Sarah win.

The other movie I watched was Rental Family starring Brendan Fraser. He's a struggling actor in Japan who gets a new job with a company that sends actors to role play in real life for people. His first job is to pretend to be a groom in a staged wedding, so that the bride can marry her lesbian girlfriend and leave for Canada without her family objecting. Other roles are more ongoing, such as playing a father to a girl and befriending an old, dying man. It's a sweet film about modern loneliness, and the need for connection with friends and family. The Japanese cast is good too, and it's a really heartfelt story.

HOUN and VALL changes

I have watched a few of the old Sherlock Holmes movies starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Mostly they were the Universal movies set in the 1940s. They were okay mysteries, but I was annoyed with Watson being portrayed as dumb, old, and blustery. I had always assumed that the 20th Century Fox movies would be in the same vein. But recently I finally watched the 1939 Hound of the Baskervilles, actually set in Victorian times. I was pleasantly surprised that Watson is smarter here and more competent.

Though Holmes does tease Watson about his deductions being wrong, he still trusts Watson to go to Scotland Yard and bring the hansom cab driver for questioning. In Dartmoor, Watson figures out that Barryman is signalling with the candle in the window. After Selden tries to kill them, Watson sensibly says they shouldn't follow him and should return home. When Holmes appears in disguise as a peddler, Watson is suspicious, and he notices that his limp changes legs. So I appreciated these glimpses of a stronger, intelligent Watson.

However the movie changes several things from the book. The most trivial is changing Barrymore to Barryman. Beryl is made Jack Stapleton's stepsister, with no knowledge of his villainous plot, nor his secret Baskerville lineage. She's also blonde and English, clearly not the former Beryl Garcia from Costa Rica. The movie cuts the whole subplot about Laura Lyons too, and avoids any hints of adultery, unjust marriages, or Frankland being cruel to his daughter. Meanwhile, Dr Mortimer's wife is a medium who conducts a seance. The hound is suitably scary, but with no glowing phosphorus, and the dog's attack on Sir Henry lasts a long time before he is rescued. In the end, Stapleton escapes, running out of Baskerville Hall, and Holmes shrugs it off, saying he's got police waiting for him. We can only guess if he'll be arrested or die in the Grimpen Mire, like he should. Also the movie ends on an abrupt and crazy note, as Holmes says "Quick Watson, the needle!" and Watson grabs his medical bag to follow him, as if he fully approves of giving Holmes cocaine. Like, what the hell? So it's an imperfect HOUN adaptation, but better than I was expecting.

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Dog Lash Solved

Oh, I almost forgot again. Happy Native American Heritage Month! In a five-part miniseries of Molly of Denali, she has been traveling the U.S. with her Grandpa Nat, who is making a documentary about indigenous knowledge of volcanos. This allows Molly to interact with kids of different tribes and to spotlight their culture in the live-action segments. The only downside is not much interaction with her friends Tooey and Trini back in Alaska. With the attacks on PBS's funding, I worried that the show would be canceled for DEI, but the producer says there's more:

"There’s going to be an interactive game that comes out with the ‘Epic Adventure," Evans said. "Then we have another interactive game coming out later in 2026. We have another episode that will be premiering in 2026 as well. So more great stuff to come."

Meanwhile, I finally solved a mystery from the Sherlock Holmes story "The Speckled Band"! In Roylott's room, Holmes finds a "dog lash" hanging on a corner of the bed. Watson says, "The lash, however, was curled upon itself and tied so as to make a loop of whipcord." So he clearly describes it as a small whip. But who on earth whips dogs? Is that a thing that Victorian people do? I kept imagining what context you would need a whip for. Dog racing? Fox hunting?

Some movies and other adaptations of the story treat the "dog lash" as an innocuous "dog leash" instead. But now I've found a Wikipedia article on the extinct profession of Dog Whipper. Apparently people did once use a whip on dogs who were being unruly or aggressive in church. This job eventually became obsolete, but clearly there was enough memory of it in Victorian times that Doyle felt no need to explain the existence of a "dog lash" in his story. So yes, the lash is a whip, not a leash. But now I wonder what "dog tongs" look like.

Revivals

I was puzzled and disappointed by the sudden end to the government shutdown, with no real progressive goals accomplished. But I am too busy at work to rage about moderate Democrats and wheeling/dealing in Congress. Does this resolve the SNAP funding crisis? Do the furloughed workers get their backpay yet? There will probably be another government showdown in January too.

In any case, reopening the government now forced Mike Johnson to finally swear in Adelita Grijalva into the House, so that's good at least. And the Epstein scandal has blown up again with the release of new emails. So maybe once they hold the vote, more will come out to bring him down. Would he possibly have enough shame to maybe resign or something? But we'd still have to fight the resulting Vance administration. We'll see.

I admit that it annoys me that several posts on Bluesky lately are just repeated explanations of Epstein's allusion to the dog in "Silver Blaze". I mean, how many times do you need it said? Sherlock Holmes in general has been in the news lately with the dapper "Fedora Man" at the Louvre revealed to be a French teen who is a fan of Holmes and Poirot; he just dresses like that at school all the time. Also James Bond writers recently complained of how to resume the franchise after the death in Daniel Craig's last Bond film, so lots of people on Bluesky referenced how ACD resurrected Holmes. And Bond has been recast and rebooted several times like a regenerated Time Lord. Like, how is this a problem, Horowitz?

In chronology news, I found this post about the first Sherlockian scholar, Helen Elizabeth Wilson. She doesn't give specific dates for the cases, but does arrange them in a brief biography in 1898. Too bad she died young of typhoid fever, but it's good to see that women were in the fandom at the beginning, despite the chauvinists at the Baker Street Irregulars.

Blue Wave

The elections on Tuesday were so good! Definitely something to lift my mood. I had been worried, as I saw a stupid Charlie Kirk sign during early voting. Again, it wasn't at the polling place, but at the same restaurant where I saw a pro-Trump sign during a previous election.

The sandwich-throwing guy also got acquitted this week. Trump is still defying the judge's orders to fund SNAP, and they're appealing the ruling. What a shitty guy, to starve people, especially with Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up. Grocery stores wanted to give discounts to SNAP people to help, but apparently the government told them they weren't allowed to do that. Fucking bastards.

Meanwhile the shutdown continues. Is Mike Johnson that desperate to hide the Epstein files? How can we force him to swear in the new Representative? Fucking coward.

Some Halloween

Hurricane Melissa did a lot of damage, but I read on Bluesky that Jamaica has a catastrophe bond that will pay, so hopefully they will get a lot of aid quickly. World Central Kitchen are setting up too.

Meanwhile it's Halloween, and Governor Pritzker asked Kristi Noem to pause ICE operations (because they already ruined a Halloween parade last Saturday), but Noem refuses. It's so sad that they think it's ok to just terrorize neighborhoods like this. And the government shutdown continues, with SNAP ending on Saturday. How awful.

I've been on vacation this week, and I wrote a new Holmes story, but I am feeling sad about everything else. Even political satirical humor isn't much help. I did manage to vote, though.

Fall

Well, after an October with many hot days, autumn weather seems to have finally arrived with rain lately. Such storms seem worse all the time, not just with tornado warnings, but power blackouts too. At least this time it was just a breaker that tripped.

Damnit, Apple! You're not doing anything to separate yourself from the other Big Tech companies financing the Epstein Ballroom and the destruction of the White House. Fuck.

Anyway, I got to print out my voter guide and get to the polls today. Early voting is only open until Halloween. I don't really do Halloween myself, as I don't want to contribute to the bad ethics about cheap chocolate, but I like spooky mysteries of the Scooby-Doo variety. (And also Sherlock Holmes, when the stories do get spooky-adjacent.)

If you have any elections this year, make sure you vote.

So-so sources

I'm still re-reading the canon, and possibly will have a finished chronology in a few weeks. I have to make some final decisions and figure out how I'll summarize the results. Some things still confound me, though. As an example of the problems, take the "Silver Blaze" horseracing story. The horse Silver Blaze is descended from a real horse named Isonomy, so with his age, and horse gestation taking a year, the earliest the tale could be is 1887. Then I noticed that the final horse race takes place in Winchester, not on Dartmoor where the stables were. In Trumbull's Chronology he posts this argument:

As Sherlockian Ernest Bloomfield Zeisler observed, between 1881 and 1903, the only time there was a race scheduled at Winchester was on Tuesday, July 17th, 1888. This places the beginning of the case on the previous Thursday, the 12th.

I thought, "Wow, that solves it! Hooray, something simple!" But then I asked myself, "is that true?" Why should Winchester, a town that used to have regular races every year, suddenly stop for decades and only have one in 1888? What is the source for Zeisler's observation? Did he have a newspaper account or some other historical document listing all the races in Winchester? Can I buy Zeisler's book and check his sources?

Of course I did an internet search on "Winchester horserace history" trying to find the source myself. Unfortunately, that only brings up a website talking about how Jane Austen attended races and died in Winchester. My searches also keep bringing up modern-day horserace sites, or other Winchesters not in the UK. The nearest result I can find is this City of Winchester article talking about the decline of horseracing in Winchester due to new Jockey Club rules about prizes, and it claims that the last race was in July 1887. This directly contradicts Zeisler! That website at least cites its source as a local newspaper, the Hampshire Chronicle. How did they find that, but Zeisler didn't? He thinks there were no races that year. And where is his source for 1888? So that's how frustrating and confusing chronology conundrums are. Do I follow Zeisler, or Winchester itself? Zeisler's Sherlockian book is rare and expensive where I can find it. One website lists his chronology for the stories, but it's only the dates, not the reasons or the evidence.

Meanwhile, I discovered an entertaining blog that goes through all 60 stories with An Observance of Trifles. Snell sometimes discusses differences in TV and movie adaptations too. You can go through his posts by dates starting in 2014, or you can look for the story titles themselves. On the right side menu, look for Labels, which lists each story, so you can directly get to that post. In his "Retired Colourman" post, I was glad to see I was not alone in wondering why Holmes believes Josiah Amberley's story so completely. Why are his clues like "we were" so flimsy? And why does he think the suicide attempt is "as good as a confession" of guilt? If not for the bodies being found, I would wonder if Holmes got the case completely wrong.

No surprise

I never trusted the ceasefire in Gaza to begin with, but was glad that at least the hostages were freed, and the Palestinian prisoners were released home. But Israel never keeps a ceasefire. They always break it with attacks that somehow don't count to international peace negotiators. There's no way to stop this shit until they actually get rid of Netanyahu and someone imposes actual consequences on Israel for being a rogue state that does whatever the hell it wants to do.

Look at what they did to Greta Thunberg for being in the flotilla, and wonder how much worse it is for non-famous people they torture and kill. People who have no access to the media.

No doubt Trump and his fucked up State Department will be as incompetent about this resumed war as they are about Ukraine. They only got this ceasefire in the first place because Biden's administration had been negotiating it before, and Netanyahu held out until Trump was in power. I'm not sure why he waited this long to get back the hostages, but I guess he had more killing to do. No one's getting a Nobel Peace Prize out of this. Fuck them. I can only hope that Europe and other countries might do something since they more clearly see that Israel has been guilty of genocide all along.

I'm glad at least that the No Kings protests went well yesterday, but I worry about what the Supreme Court will do with their new voting rights case. Early voting for November's election will start tomorrow on Oct 20th.

More Chronology

On my reread of the Holmes canon, I've finally reached the Casebook stories, so I'm in the home stretch at least. It annoys me, though, that the last short story collection jumbles up the stories; they're no longer in order of the Strand publication dates. They're just random now, and I have to check Klinger's annotations to read them in the proper order.

Speaking of Leslie Klinger, I'm amused that his website calls him the World's First Consulting Sherlockian :) He provides his Table of Major Events online, but note the asterisk! Lots of these events are taken from Baring-Gould's imagination about the biography of Sherlock Holmes. That's fanfic, not data provided in the canon. In the Table he includes dates from real history and Conan Doyle's life too.

I also found an old discussion of Problems of Chronology, and it confirms what I thought, that The Date Being--? book is just a list of dates without justification; if you can't read past theories, then it's basically useless and not worth trying to buy somewhere. There's a list of links on that page, but some are broken, as Sherlockian.net is now just preserved as an archive, and not updated any more.

I'm confused by someone trying to move STUD out of 1881 to 1883. As if Holmes would wait that long to tell Watson his profession or invite him to a case. Watson makes it seem only a matter of weeks or months, not years. I can certainly see the argument that the "Book of Life" conversation doesn't need to take place on the same date as the Jefferson Hope case starts; Watson may have combined the 2 days in poetic license to move the story along. But a difference of years? Wow.

221B Layout Problems

When rereading the canon for chronology reasons, you also notice references to the layout of rooms in Baker Street. Most of the time Watson's room is referred to as upstairs, while Holmes's room is on the same floor as the sitting-room (i.e. seventeen steps above ground floor). However, this is not consistent, because in the "Beryl Coronet", Holmes goes to his "chamber" upstairs, then returns in disguise. In "Thor Bridge", Watson says that he can see a solitary plane tree in the backyard, so his bedroom is presumably in the back of the house, not the front. In "Black Peter" Holmes has two sailor guys wait "in the next room" so he can prevent them from going downstairs again and warning away the killer he intends to capture. But does Holmes mean his own bedroom next door? Surely Holmes wouldn't invite random people to walk into his bedroom and use it as a waiting room? (Watson offers to wait in "the next room" in The Red-Headed League" but he's not a stranger.) Holmes's room is not like a normal bedroom, what with its pictures of criminals on the walls, and it's probably as big a mess as the sitting room. So what is this, an extra room? Or, *gasp* has Holmes moved upstairs, nearer to Watson and converted his previous room into something more nondescript? Hmm...

Anyway, there have been numerous attempts to draw the layout of the sitting room and Holmes's bedroom. (Most illustrators ignore Watson's room altogether and just make a note that it's upstairs.) This image is an example from a graphic novel of Hound of the Baskervilles by Edginton and Culbard.

Another example is Russell Stutler's floor plan, which he's done 3 versions of over the years. I bought a copy of the 2nd version, which I think has been featured in several Holmes publications. Stutler helpfully wrote up all the details in the canon which describe the Baker Street rooms. His final plan seems to show that Holmes's bedroom has 3 separate doors, one from the sitting room, one from a secret set of stairs going to the street, and one to the little curtained alcove in "The Mazarin Stone." That's an astonishing amount of doors for a bedroom. Though I applaud his effort to be complete, it seems unrealistic and bizarre to me.

Besides, all these floor plans have the same problem, that they are not deep enough for a building in Baker Street. I recently found a different floorplan (apparently from a law firm's website) which takes into account the whole building, not just these couple of rooms.

Revised Outline of DIM

This is my new outline of the chapters in DIM, my perpetually unfinished Sherlock Holmes novel. Please disregard the numbering on the previous outline, which is now obsolete.

I've had to renumber everything because the Speckled Band chapter has expanded to 11 chapters by itself. Old posts will have the old numbering, especially if they were URLs. Sorry.

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Slashy nap

Meanwhile, I've been writing more Sherlock Holmes fic lately and it seems that "Chapter 6" of my novel DIM is turning out to be at least 10 chapters long! This chapter is the one with the Speckled Band case, retold in much greater detail. Years ago, when "The Reminiscences of Helen Stoner" was in 1st person point of view, I managed to make it only 3 parts long, but since changing it to 3rd person to include Holmes/Watson, the story has greatly expanded, and I'm still not done. So clearly I will have to revise the old outline, renumber it, and add more quotations. That's going to screw up all my prior posts using the previous numbering, though.

This also means the overall novel DIM will be 30-ish chapters at minimum. Like, wow. That's the most ambitious I've ever been in Sherlock Holmes, and I've written 50+ chapter epics in other fandoms. (AO3 does make it easy to just keep adding onto a work in progress and never end a story.) But DIM has a clear storyline planned and a definite ending. I just need to find the time to actually finish...

To give a taste of why it's worth the expansion of Chapter 6, here is one of the new scenes. Holmes and Watson stay at the Crown Inn, and they decide to take a nap together. They've been up since 7AM and need to be out all night on a vigil, so it makes sense to nap, even though Watson never told us they did so in his account.

By the way, Sherlockian Chris Redmond's 1984 book acknowledged that gay characters do exist in the canon, but he seemed to think that gay content only shows up in stories without any female characters. I don't know why he'd think that. Slash is in every Holmes story; it pervades the canon, including stories with strong women like Irene Adler and, as I write her, Helen Stoner. In the Speckled Band, it's in everything from the "knocking you up" joke, to Holmes bending the poker straight to impress Watson, to Holmes whispering in Watson's ear at night (when he could have just given Watson the warning ahead of time at the Crown Inn). As I've said before, Helen Stoner is a conduit to slash. See for yourself.

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Money vs speech

I finally made enough money from my holiday pay to buy a newer iPhone. It's used and certainly not the latest model. Granted, I'm not happy with Apple since Tim Cook tried to placate Trump to avoid tariffs, but I've been needing an upgrade since last year, as many apps and websites that I use were starting to reject my obsolete phone. I shall not upgrade again for years, staying perpetually behind and delaying any use of stupid AI tech as long as I can. The upgrade was fairly easy and seamless, backing up the old iPhone to my Mac and then copying that backup to the newer phone. Then I could just take out the SIM card and erase the old iPhone. Had I switched to some android phone, the process would have been more trouble, and it's not like any other technology companies are morally better. Wired has a whole issue about the billionaire tech CEOs all caving to fascists. They value greed more than our democracy. Me staying with Apple's ecosystem for now lets me continue to have free software updates for years still.

Boycotts come with sacrifices and hard choices. It was easier for me to quit Target, though it still rankles when I can't find what I need locally and have to shop online. Many people canceled Paramount Plus (me included) when CBS canceled Colbert, but I assume people are still watching his show for now until it ends. So exceptions are made. I'm still angry at Netflix for their anti-trans content, while other people are happy with Netflix for saving Sesame Street. Everybody has to find their moral line and weigh what they value vs what they can give up. I know many people are still on Amazon because they have no other options; I don't begrudge them that.

I was heartened to see the public rage against Disney when ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel. They have finally backed down and restored his show, but Sinclair TV stations are going to still pre-empt because they still have a merger planned and want to suck up to the corrupt FCC. So some people may continue their boycotts to keep pressure on Disney and ABC. We'll see if we can win any other victories for free speech and democracy.

Holmes improvement

In Sherlock Holmes news, there's an animated Sherlock Holmes in development now, but it won't be a kids' cartoon like Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century. It's based on a book series about Holmes's "Unexpurgated Adventures." That is, uncensored adventures with adult themes. I've never read it and have no idea what it will be like. I don't even know where the show will air once it's made.

Meanwhile, the anniversary of Jeremy Brett's death reminded me of the Granada TV series where he starred as Sherlock Holmes. Although in the later years, the quality went downhill and Brett's health declined, I still appreciated the early episodes. They never completed the full canon, and I actually wish they would have stopped sooner to let Brett rest and recover. Poor man.

While doing my chronology, I've continued listening to the BBC Radio shows starring Clive Merrison and Michael Williams. I just reached the "Empty House" episode, and I was fascinated by the changes to the story. Writer Bert Coules replays Holmes's letter to Watson from "The Final Problem," but then Watson wakes up from his nightmare to yet more grief. His wife Mary is dying, and we have a whole goodbye scene that's heartbreaking and more than we ever got from Conan Doyle. Some time later, Watson meets up with Stamford, who encourages Watson to write again, or failing that, to investigate cases with the police. Meanwhile, Ronald Adair has a card game, then gets murdered in his locked room. Watson goes to the scene to gawk with the crowds but there's a twist. The police coroner is late, so Lestrade invites Watson in to examine the body. Watson apparently also testifies at the inquest, and when he's leaving that, he runs into the old bookseller.

World on Fire

What a terrible week. The violent assassination and manhunt in America crowded out other news, such as Israel's strike in Qatar in defiance of the peace talks with Hamas. There was also the overthrow of government in Nepal, led by young people's protests. If only Netanyahu could be toppled too; there'lll be no ceasefire with him in charge.

Oh and ICE raided a Hyundai plant in Georgia, forcing South Korea to negotiate a release and flight home for the 300 detained people. Way to destroy international relations with an ally, you racist fuckers! All of this is insane and depressing.

Anyway, knowing that vaccines might not be available soon, I got my COVID and flu shots done last week. Even if federal guidelines are changing because of that stupid RFK, try to get your vaccine anyway. Pharmacists might give it to you without trying to restrict by age or anything else. Stay safe.

Fat Ham

I saw Fat Ham at Stage West this weekend, and it was excellent! I only vaguely knew that this play was a black and queer retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet, and that it had won a Tony. I was quite surprised at how funny, poignant, and delightful it was. Juicy, the main character, does quote Shakespeare a few times, but most of the dialogue is contemporary, and it's set in modern times in the South. Juicy and his cousin Tio (Horatio) prepare for a backyard barbecue to celebrate his mother's wedding; she just got married at the courthouse to Juicy's uncle Rev, only a week after Pap died. Pap was in prison for killing someone at his BBQ restaurant. Then Pap's ghost appears, telling Juicy that he didn't just get killed randomly; Uncle Rev hired someone to shiv him in the neck (much more believable than poison in the ear) so Rev could take the restaurant and his wife. Pap wants Juicy to kill Rev in revenge; Juicy wonders if he can get metaphorical revenge instead, but no, Pap graphically imagines Juicy butchering Rev like a pig, then cooking and eating him at a BBQ. Wow, that went dark, and of course Juicy struggles with his emotions and whether he really wants to do this for Pap, who wasn't a good father.

However, as we meet the rest of Juicy's family and friends, there's joy and fun in the casual party. There's karaoke as well as charades. Sometimes characters go in the house, while others have private conversations in the yard; sometimes characters also break the fourth wall and talk to the audience. Juicy's mom Tedra asks "what are you telling them?" and insists that he tell us the truth that Pap was abusive to both of them, and that Tedra remarrying so fast is because she doesn't know how to be alone, not from heartlessness. Juicy's young friends Opal and Larry (Ophelia and Laertes) also arrive and reveal that Juicy is not the only queer youth in the neighborhood; he's just the only one not closeted. Everyone talks about how soft Juicy is, but it's not always meant in a derogatory way. There are painful revelations and some violent scenes, which made me worry about the tragic ending, but in the end, we do resolve the revenge plot and confront the issues of generational trauma. This was amazing, and I loved it! See it if you can.

Strange ACD movie

I recently read something about ACD and Jean Leckie having an affair while his first wife Louisa aka Touie was alive. The affair has long been known, but ACD always claimed that he was celibate for the nine years it took Touie to die of tuberculosis. Just because the affair is emotional rather than physical is a mere technicality; ACD still went out in public with Jean and introduced her to family and certainly acted unfaithfully. Still, ACD's biographers went along with that claim of celibacy, and one book, Christopher Redmond's In Bed with Sherlock Holmes in 1984, even argued that ACD's feelings of sexual frustration and guilt showed up in his many Holmes stories focused on love triangles. It also argued that many characters, Holmes and Watson included, are projections of aspects of Doyle's personality.

So anyway, I read somewhere a post saying there was now recent proof that ACD and Jean Leckie were actually meeting in hotels with assistance from Doyle's mother, who fully approved of them together. So the whole celibacy thing was bullocks. I wanted to see the proof myself, so I did internet searches, and I found this article about Jean being a terrible stepmother according to an ACD biography by Russell Miller; I've never heard of him nor read that biography. I have read the 2008 biography by Andrew Lycett, though, but I think that one still claimed that ACD was celibate during those nine years.

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Chronology Conundrums

I'm still working on my own Sherlock Holmes chronology, and I found this interesting timeline by John Trumbull. He dates all but 3 cases, and he adds references to historical events like the Ripper Murders and the Titanic sinking. Not strictly relevant, but it puts events in context, I guess. I don't agree with everything he says, but it's a good effort. He also supports SIGN being in 1887 due to the six pearls Mary Morstan received. (This Sutori thing seems to be some kind of educational tool for use in schools. I'm not sure if it's worth me signing up too.)

I'm reading the stories in the New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, but I wish that Klinger would stop including notes trying to identify particular place names or famous people like British Prime Ministers. I don't care about the real world, just the fiction. Besides, if we're pretending that Watson is disguising things out of discretion, one could argue that his clues are deliberately wrong to mess people up. Why, just look at the tangled mess of SIGN, and GLOR, and VALL, where the past histories don't add up to the present events of the case. Watson lies, people!

More important historical events like the Indian Mutiny, the gold rush in Australia, and the Crimean War are relevant to some stories of course, and that's where I appreciate Klinger's notes. I'm also rereading some Sherlockian books I have by John Hall and D. Martin Dakin who also did chronology, so I can follow their theories even if I don't agree. The weirdest little details don't fit, like Holmes claiming that he boxed McMurdo 4 years ago in SIGN, but McMurdo has been working for Major John Sholto since 1877, about 11 years ago. What a mess. I'm in the Return stories now, taking copious notes, and will need to consult my perpetual calendar about dates.

Fight On

So the Texas Republicans passed their stupid gerrymander. The Democrats that had been breaking quorum came back for various reasons explained by Gene Wu. I don't think that it's a surrender, just that they knew that Abbott would keep calling special sessions constantly, and they believe that blue states like California will redistrict to counteract this gerrymander.

But oh the drama when the Republicans made Democrats sign "permission slips" and locked up Nicole Collier in the Capitol to prevent her from leaving! I'm glad some other Democrats joined her, and protestors came. Keep up the good work.

Meanwhile, Washington D.C. is dealing with the troops being deployed to terrorize the citizens. Really awful and ugly. I don't know how this all ends, if they'll eventually chicken out and withdraw like from Los Angeles. Lots of blue cities have to be anxious whether they'll be next. What a hellscape.

Messy

I hope the Texas Democrats can continue breaking quorum, and that Greg Abbott does not succeed in removing them from their jobs. There are various claims on the internet that the gerrymandering could backfire on Republicans, or that it's illegal for the FBI to go arrest the Democrats, but I don't know what will happen. Everything's chaos since the Supreme Court lets Trump do whatever he wants. Abbott could keep calling special sessions over and over. Paxton is even threatening Beto O'Rourke, who's not currently in office, but raises money for Democrats.

Meanwhile I tried making pizza from a frozen pizza dough ball that I bought at the grocery store. However, I don't have a rolling pin to flatten the dough, and when I stretched it out by hand, it wouldn't be circular. Plus, I didn't realize that the unfrozen dough would now be so soft and floppy that the toppings would fall off if I picked it up. So it was a struggle to put it on a baking sheet while not spilling things. The dough did bake fine in the oven, but it reminded me that my experiments in cooking can be messy. Overall I think it's less trouble to just use naan bread to make pizzas. That bread is better than baked pizza crusts I've tried, and I can just microwave instead of bake.

I'm looking into whether I should republish my Prelude to a Partnership novella as an ebook. It was on Feedbooks in 2009 for free, and I didn't ever get an ISBN for it. But I did at least get an EPUB out of it. If I can fix it up again, I could self publish on Draft2Digital to reach as many ebookstores as possible. I need a better book cover, though.

Also I recently rediscovered the Sherlock Holmes radio dramas done by Imagination Theater (Jim French and M. J. Elliott) which cover all 60 stories of the canon.

Already August

CBS's Watson has cast someone as Sherlock Holmes for season 2. So we'll get a post-Reichenbach story I guess. I really did not understand why their season finale ended so weird with respect to Moriarty and the younger doctors. I'm not sure I'll continue with the show.

Meanwhile, I found this interesting list of queer Holmes books posted on BlueSky. I'll have to see if I can find any of these books in print. (I want to avoid ordering from Amazon.) I have of course already read Rohase Piercy's My Dearest Holmes and Larry Townsend's gay porn Sexual Adventures. I didn't really review Townsend's book, but I mentioned it here.

I do really wish a Holmes adaptation would finally have him and Watson be in love. Why do we have to keep putting up with queerbaiting, and Holmes in love with Irene Adler?

Meanwhile, one of the new Star Treks apparently claimed that Spock's ancestor was Arthur Conan Doyle. Some people are excited, while some people wanted to think that Spock's ancestor was Sherlock Holmes, and are sad now that he's fictional in Star Trek's canon. But wasn't he already a fictional character when Data played him on the holodeck in Next Generation? Really, all this started because Nicholas Meyer, a noted writer of Holmes pastiches, also wrote and directed Star Trek movies. In the 6th movie, The Undiscovered Country, Meyer had Spock quote Holmes's "eliminate the impossible" maxim and claim that the phrase belongs to his ancestor. He didn't actually specifiy whether he meant ACD or Holmes, but most fans wanted it to be Holmes. I don't care either way. Whoever the human ancestor is, they must be related to Spock through Amanda Grayson, his mother from Earth.

Vacation Mode

So the world's gone to hell, and I just can't take it. Congress stole the PBS funding that they previously approved. The fascists continue to kidnap people and deport them to who knows where. CBS canceled Colbert and claims they're going to kill the entire show just for "financial reasons." And Malcom-Jamal Warner just died by drowning. Fuck.

The news is horrible, and I don't even care that MAGA are upset about the Epstein files. Prove that you hate Trump now by not voting for Republicans anymore! Otherwise I don't give a crap. And apparently there's some meme going around about a CEO caught cheating that involves a Coldplay song? I don't know and I don't care to find out.🤷 Me being all Lucille Bluth on it...

So anyway, I'm on vacation from work and I'm gonna just write my Madness fic and try again to do a Sherlock Holmes chronology like I started years ago. I had hoped to go see some more plays and movies, but most of the ones I want to see won't come out until August. At least Peacock will have The Phoenician Scheme on Friday so I can rewatch it.

Recover

I worked on July 4th. I need that holiday pay, after all. I avoided the news so I wouldn't be depressed about that fucked up bill passing Congress. Fuck Murkowski. Fuck all of them that voted for it despite pretending to criticize it. They fall in line, like we have an actual king.

I heard late in the day that there was flash flooding in central Texas, around Kerrville. I'm not familiar with the Hill Country, but I'm sad for all the victims and the girls still missing. There probably won't be federal assistance in the aftermath, due to FEMA being gutted. So awful.

I need a break, a rest. That's why I've been escaping into Holmes and writing again. I have some vacation time planned and there's a book fair coming up even if I can't afford to buy much. Trying to enjoy some of life even as the world careens into disaster. Nobody can live in stressed-out survival mode forever.

I still heard some fireworks going off last night, and my family will celebrate together this weekend. Try to regroup I guess before moving on. Have a happy holiday if you can.

Visit in 1884

Well here's a throwback. After looking at "The Speckled Band" again, I did some more writing about Helen Stoner. This is another partial chapter from DIM, my unfinished Sherlock Holmes romance novel. I would say this is from Chapter 21, when Holmes has decided to visit Helen Stoner in New York.

=====

Fandom: Sherlock Holmes

Story: Deeper in Memory, partial Chapter 21

Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/Helen Stoner 

Warnings: G, unresolved sexual tension

Sweltering Summer

Political news has been devastating and exhausting, what with the Supreme Court's odious decisions and the horrendous bill going through Congress. They're trying to pass it by July 4th. Plus the whole Israel-Iran war erupted while Gaza continues to be devastated. Stupid Trump just made the whole thing stupider.

I'm glad that Pride marches around the world were especially defiant.

Meanwhile I've been shopping at thrift stores to try to save money, but it's harder to find clothes that aren't from Shein or cropped to be tiny or otherwise weird-looking. At least Ross stores actually have Petite sections, instead of jumbling everything together.

I forgot to review the Holmes play I saw at Stage West in June. I found the first act kind of slow and hard to get into, but it improved in the second act. Oh, and also Holmes and Watson dance together for one scene! :) Overall, I think the show should have been called "The Playboy Prince" after all because the souffle was a small plot point, very late in the show. At least I got better seats and close up photos of the stage set.

Meanwhile, I saw that Mattel released a She-ra Barbie doll, and it sold out quickly. I couldn't have bought it anyway, as I already splurged on the Lego Nook Book. Gotta save money.

Silly Sherlockians

On Sunday I saw a post on Bluesky saying that it's John Watson's birthday and I was confused. What is that based on? A particular story or TV show? A particular Watson actor? I'd never heard of a settled date for Watson's birthday. Searching the internet revealed various dates without any reasoning, and strangely all summer dates. Finally I found this website summarizing various Sherlockian theories. As always, it's flimsy "evidence" based on Watson drinking wine with lunch as if celebrating something. Stupid trivial crap like that. The only guy arguing against a summer date was Brad Keefauver, but still "using the time-honored hangover system of dating birthdays" and surprisingly he chose to use The Speckled Band story.

I would, therefore, like to propose the opening of “The Speckled Band” for the morning after Watson’s birthday bash. In that April morning of 1883, Holmes awakens a slightly resentful Watson at 7:15 a.m., the doctor being a bit put out as he fully expected Holmes to sleep in. Daylight, according to Violet Stoner [sic] came well before six that morning, so 7:15 is hardly an ungodly hour to be wakened ... unless, of course, one had a rough night before.

I mean, what kind of reasoning is that? Plus I'd have more respect for the theory if he could remember that the client is named Helen Stoner, not Violet. "Violet Stonor" is the name ACD used in his "Stonor Case" play based on Speckled Band, and it's actually Julia's alternate name, not Helen's. And in his Sherlock Peoria article, Keefauver keeps slipping between 1883 and 1893 as the date of the story. You accuse Watson of not being good with dates, while not checking your own dates for typos? The fucking arrogance. Plus, Helen never said it was daylight. She said, "I started from home before six." Do you not know anyone who gets up before dawn to start their commute to work? And Helen wasn't going to work; she was escaping her home in a panic about the whistle she heard in the dead of night; she was rushing to see Holmes and "knock[ing] sleepy people up out of their beds," with some urgency. Holmes, though amused, speaks as if they are ALL having an early morning, so I would contend that it IS an ungodly hour to wake up, even when you don't have a hangover.

So I still have no idea what Watson's birthday is, and there's nothing convincing in anybody's arguments. What if I make it May 4th?

But no, that's their "unhappy anniversary" I've decided in Madness. (There's too many pop culture holidays on May 4th anyway. Need a less crowded date.) Incidentally I found an interesting post about asexuality on Daily Kos, which will give me more to think about in how to resolve their love. This is the most writing I've done in a long time.

Edited to add: Ah, I was wrong. Helen does indeed say "daylight" much later in the story. After the whistle, she says:

I was too shaken to go to bed again, however, so I dressed, and as soon as it was daylight I slipped down, got a dog-cart at the Crown Inn...

So that, taken with "I started from home before six" seems to mean daylight was before 6 AM that morning. My point about Helen's name and the 1883/1893 flubs still stands, though.

Also, I reread the Stonor Case play (often retitled as The Speckled Band), and discovered that Billy the page boy was pretending to be Holmes's daughter Amelia. Holmes came in disguise as a butler named Peters, and brought Billy as his accomplice in Stoke Moran. I don't know if the Sherlock & Daughter writers knew this fact, but how fitting that they named their daughter character Amelia too.

Still Pride Month

I watched a new documentary on astronaut Sally Ride and how she had to hide her lesbian relationships due to media scrutiny. Her longtime partner Tam and even her lesbian sister Bear also talk about how Sally was very private and emotionally closed off due to her upbringing. Sally even married a male astronaut for "good PR" while still having an affair with Tam. They were also friends with Billie Jean King and saw how she lost her tennis career after people found out she was a lesbian. Even after Sally got a divorce and left NASA, she stayed in the closet while running a business on recruiting more girls into science careers. Tam discusses the arguments they had, and how she even considered leaving Sally because she hated hiding their relationship, but she came back. At least when Sally got cancer and they worried about being denied access in the hospital, they signed up to become domestic partners. I'm sad that they couldn't be more open, but that was the world back then. Hopefully we can keep fighting so that LGBT+ people don't have to go back in the closet now.

If anyone remembers my old Sherlock Holmes fic Madness, I've been posting it to AO3 lately. I deleted the first chapter for being too simplistic, and I substantially rewrote and changed Chapter 9 from the previous version. It's the one where an asexual Holmes is still romantically in love with Watson, resulting in arguments and confusion on what that means. How Watson loves Holmes and still comes back to him even though Holmes faked his death. Sometimes love is so strong that you keep holding on, though it may be unwise and hopeless.

In lighter news, I watched the new movie Bride Hard, and loved it. Unlike the 2015 Spy movie starring Melissa McCarthy, this new movie treats the lead character seriously as a competent spy. The comedy is from her friendship with the bride, the wackiness of the groom's rich family, and the hostage/heist situation. Although Rebel Wilson's character does have a cover job as a cat show entrepreneur (selling plinths to display the cats), there are no jokes about how she's fat and dowdy; other spies don't treat her as an amateur, just as a rule-breaker who doesn't work well in a team. I so loved seeing Sam be competent and badass, while also flirting with a hot guy. I also loved that Da'Vine Joy Randolph plays a bridesmaid who is sexy and funny. Really a positive and hilarious movie.

Happy Juneteenth

I read that Opal Lee won't be in the annual walk this year, but her granddaughter Dione Sims will take the reins from her. Good wishes to both.

Israel has expanded its wars and now wants to rope the US into bombing Iran too. I have no idea what the mad king will do. Fuck Netanyahu. Fuck Ted Cruz. Fuck all these fascists and warmongers. Fuck the Supreme Court for ruling against transgender children. Fuck Trump for canceling funding for an LGBT+ suicide hotline. He just had to be extra cruel during Pride month.

It's very hard to keep up hope in this world. I watched Attenborough's latest documentary on oceans, and it starts out very grim and depressing, but then he reveals that oceans are so resilient that they recover swiftly if you just protect a small area for even a few years. Just designating one area as a no-fishing zone can lead to miraculous renewal and the effects expand far outside the boundaries of the zone.

It's a hopeful note. And so were all the No Kings protests on Saturday. So live for hope and celebrate freedom.

A Pox on his Parade

I didn't realize today was Friday the 13th. I have had bad luck this week trying to get on the internet. At least I finished my Holmes Lego set. I was somewhat dismayed to see a logo on it saying that the Doyle estate was involved. I thought those greedy guys wouldn't get anything after all Holmes stories went public domain. It was an interesting build, though, with a rotating window turret and a sliding door that hides Moriarty. Some people were complaining about making Irene Adler Black, but I'm more concerned that the box pictures and such keep putting her with Moriarty as if she were a villain. I'm very pleased with Watson's skin being darker than Holmes. At last he's "as brown as a nut" as he was described in A Study in Scarlet! Also, the magnifying glass is comically large compared to the minifigures, but my set did include a smaller piece that looked more to scale. It was being used as table legs, and I had an extra piece which I put in Sherlock's hand. Maybe I'll paint it later to look like a magnifier. The tiny violin is great, but no bow to play it with.

Meanwhile, I have heard about the protests in L.A. and Trump sending in the National Guard. Also the assault on Senator Alex Padilla. Then I heard that Greg Abbott wants to squash protests in Texas too, and that scares me as an immigrant. I don't know if I'll go to the protest now. Regardless, I hope Trump's parade gets rained out.

Oh I almost forgot--Theatre Arlington is putting on a Sherlock play in December. This seems to be pleasantly a year of Holmes, even if everything else has gone to hell.

Bits and Pieces

I finally got my fridge fixed. Apparently a door gasket wasn't sealed, creating the ice crystals on the hinge. The repair guy sealed it with some type of heat gun. So glad I was still in warranty.

I got my Sherlock Holmes Nook Book, but haven't finished assembling it yet, because I was working all weekend. I put together the bookstore part with the rotating window. I got my little Watson assembled, but his cane doesn't fit his hand well. I might substitute Irene's umbrella instead. Love the stickers.

I did manage to see the new Wes Anderson movie. I haven't liked his story-within-a-story framing devices lately, so I skipped a lot of his recent films. But the new Phoenician Scheme is more straightforward, only cutting away to dreams/visions of heaven each time the character Korda has a near-death experience. I liked the whimsical charm, and Michael Cera's character is fun. But I don't know where exactly this 1950s Phoenicia is supposed to be. I didn't get a good look at the map.

Oh speaking of Michael Cera, I heard that Barbie made a new Allan doll, but is only selling it in Australia. Not the same face as the 1960s original, but it would be a good way to get a similar rainbow outfit, if I could find it on ebay or somewhere. I hope Mattel will let US stores get it.

I'm excited for the finale of Sherlock & Daughter this week. The recent episodes have been good, and I was glad to see Watson rescued at last. Meanwhile Dougray Scott has been incredible as Moriarty. I hated him when he played the father in Batwoman, but he has earned a lot of goodwill back with his professor. I haven't been this pleased by a Moriarty actor since Jared Harris in Game of Shadows in 2011.

Finally June

Elon Musk has allegedly left the government, but I'm skeptical. People also previously claimed that Mike Johnson would be gone, but he's still Speaker. People said that Hegseth would be gone due to the security scandals, but he's still there. I really hope Musk goes. Maybe he is finally scared that he could get fired from Tesla? If so, good riddance, and may the court cases against him continue too.

I have to empty out my fridge and get it fixed this week. June 14th will be the No Kings protest, and then we'll have Juneteenth. Happy Pride Month, too. I'll be seeing the 2nd Holmes play at Stage West. This is a sequel to last year's Elusive Ear.

The recent episodes of Sherlock & Daughter have been good. I was right that Holmes did know Amelia's mother under a different name; she was Little Dove while touring in the Wild West show. Meanwhile Moriarty has a son named Dan, but he changed his name in Australia, and the reunion was not happy. It seems that Dan wants to be an honest person, not a criminal mastermind like his father. The far-reaching conspiracy seems to center around a prototype tank designed by Amelia's mother Lucia. I hope Watson and Mrs. Hudson get rescued soon.

Doll woes

In Barbie news, I tried again to remove the legs from my Aztec princess Barbie, but failed. I realized that it's not just a hip joint I'm fighting. It's an armature going down the whole leg. Mattel used this skeleton-like structure for their "bend and snap" knees.

 

 

This screenshot is from a Youtube video on the history of these bendable knees. It goes from the 1960s Mattel through different types of articulation like pivotal bodies and Made to Move bodies.

So it appears that I must do an amputation to cut the armature and remove the leg. Then I'd have to recut the hip joint somehow to be compatible with the other "beach feet" legs I have. Why couldn't they have made the Aztec princess Barbie with flat feet to begin with? Or made actual high heel shoes if they were going to insist in high heel feet? Ugh.

Hopeful moves

Israel has finally started letting a few aid trucks into Gaza, but it's a pitiful amount and at the same time they want to launch another devastating war offensive. At least the UK is suspending trade talks with Israel and calling out the intolerable humanitaran crisis. The UK also recently made a deal with the EU. Can the both of them force Israel to end the war? Just cut out the US, which has not helped at all and has backed Israel too many times. Sounds like Canada is joining with Europe to criticize Israel's actions too. I hope there can be both peace and justice, but peace would be a good start.

Meanwhile Netflix made a deal with PBS to save Sesame Street. So many people complained that the show wouldn't be available free anymore, ignoring the fact that PBS would continue airing the show, and even get new episodes on the same day as Netflix. This is much better than the HBO deal. It's sad that Sesame Workshop need corporate money at all, but this way at least the show continues, and past seasons are available. I think I heard that Sesame Workshop unionized too.

I boycotted Netflix over Dave Chappelle and other anti-trans content, but this is a good thing for Netflix to do. So when Knives Out 3 comes out this year (if it doesn't show in movie theaters) I will sign up at that time to watch that movie, the Black Barbie documentary, and anything else on my list that people have raved about on Netflix, like that White House whodunit show. If Netflix doesn't piss me off again, I may keep my subscription going a month or so. But I have to be careful of my budget and too many monthly subscriptions.

For now I watched some more episodes of Poker Face, and the alligator one was an annoying farce. So weird, then Peacock sneakily switched me to another show called Long Bright River which I watched for far too long before realizing it wasn't Poker Face. I hope other episodes this season will be better. I think they are building to some kind of plot twist on the "Good Buddy" guy on the radio. We'll see if it's any better than previous mob plots.

 

Ghouls

The news media kept dredging up Biden's age and claiming somehow that it's a "litmus test" for who Democrats will nominate for President next. Excuse me, but who did you ask about this?! My litmus test is who will fucking fight the GOP. I'm not re-litigating Kamala's campaign and the debate that tanked Biden. Fucking ghouls!! And now Biden has cancer. :( I hope the stupid media are happy. Good luck to Joe.

I'm just trying to get through day to day. My fridge, which is only 6 months old, keeps frosting over in the freezer. I thought it was a fluke at first, or I needed to make more ice, but it keeps coming back. So I gotta have it serviced and I guess empty it out again. It's still under warranty at least. I can't afford another costly repair.

I've already spent a bunch of money to install a new roof that will hopefully not leak anymore. I so wanted to take a vacation this year, but I'm afraid of flying nowadays and afraid of going out of the country and not being let back in. So I guess it'll be a staycation.

Movies and music

Recently I saw Shadow Force and Juliet & Romeo in theaters, and I liked them both.

Shadow Force is an action adventure starring Omar Sy and Kerry Washington as two assassins trying to protect their 5-year old son Ky. Their ex-boss has a vendetta and is hiring their former Shadow Force colleagues to kill the whole family, who have been separated and in hiding for years. I didn't follow the whole plot with Mark Strong's villain facing scandal and investigation; I just waved it off as similar to Valentina getting impeached in Marvel's Thunderbolts* and wanting to destroy evidence of her crimes. Omar Sy is as charming and French as ever; I really love him as a leading man and want him to star in more stuff. Kerry Washington is good as the mother, and they also have friends Auntie and Unc played by Da'Vine Joy Randolph and Method Man. Amid all the danger and gunfire, there are very cute scenes with the son Ky connecting with his parents and singing Lionel Richie songs. There's also Chekov's song where they use "Truly" so much that you know it's going to become the soundtrack to a fight scene. When it happens, it's great. Very fun film.

Meanwhile Juliet & Romeo is a pop-song adaptation of the old story. It doesn't follow Shakespeare's play or dialogue, but rather it imagines the history that Shakespeare based his story on centuries later. It plays with the difference between legend and what may have really happened. We see Verona in 1301 during some kind of dispute between Rome and the apparently evil Pope, where both sides are trying to take over Verona. So the Capulets and Montagues are fighting over who will ally with the Prince. The cast list is impressive, including Derek Jacobi as the Friar, Rupert Graves as Prince Escalus, and Rebel Wilson as Lady Capulet. I also like the colorblind casting, showing that medieval history is diverse, especially in cosmopolitan cities. They also add some other characters such as Rosaline being Juliet's friend, and Mercutio having a girlfriend; he's also been adopted by Lord Montague after his parents died, so that he and Romeo can be more "brothers" of a sort. Anyway, the apothecary is secretly Jewish and makes his potions to help smuggle his Jewish compatriots out of Verona away from religious persecution. I liked all these touches, and the songs and dances were nicely choreographed, though I couldn't make out all the lyrics. I did get confused between some of the male Montague characters whose names I didn't know, though.

TV News

Networks are starting to cancel shows again, in preparation for new fall schedules. I'm sad to lose The Irrational and Night Court because they were charming. I sometimes watched Found too, but the melodrama was too soap opera-ish. They took most of the season to reveal that Jamie was not an impostor, for example, when they should have just done a DNA test.

Meanwhile, Poker Face season 2 has started, but I found the first episode with the quintuplets to be farcical and somewhat offputting. I know it's a pun on "the game is afoot" but it looks like she technically lost a lower leg, not just a foot, presumably in the car crash that killed her father. Maybe I'm not in the mood for the absurd farce, like I didn't enjoy Elsbeth's musical season finale.

I was sad to lose Shinwell on CBS's Watson, and I worry how the Moriarty plot will end in the finale. I have always found the twins gimmicky, though, so I wouldn't mind losing one of their characters. On Sherlock & Daughter, Moriarty turns out to not be in the Red Thread. It seems they are trying to overtake his criminal empire. Moriarty secretly runs the prison and enjoys luxuries like Dale the Whale does in Monk. He also has a lost son Dan, and wants Holmes to find him. I think Dan is the guy following Amelia, but we'll have to see what happens there. I think there are only 8 episodes total, so hopefully we'll get answers soon.

Edited to add: Oh I guess Shinwell survived on Watson after all. Strange ending on the finale, with the whole team agreeing to Watson's plan to kill Moriarty (even though John had just lectured Ingrid that they shouldn't fake promise a cure to Hannah's daughter). And the "2 weeks later" scene didn't reveal anything important about if Ingrid truly left the clinic for good and they hired that new recruit from a few episodes ago. Really puzzling and strange choices, but possibly the writers felt they needed to move on from Moriarty and do something new next season. We'll see, I guess.

Elections matter

Even local elections for school board and mayor matter. There are encouraging results from Texas's May elections. I'm glad that Deborah Peoples also won her race for city council.

Meanwhile a new pope was elected. I don't care that much, but rightwingers are calling him woke and Marxist. Fuck their feelings.

I'm so relieved that the Tufts student and the Newark mayor were released. I hope everyone who was kidnapped and detained gets released. Lately in Texas we keep getting ads with Kristi Noem claiming that everyone arrested were dangerous criminals and they're all going to be deported. It's disgusting. Yet Noem claims that if immigrants use the CBP app to register and leave voluntarily, then they might come back somehow someday. Isn't this the app that Biden administration used to help immigrants, and weren't Trumpists complaining about it before? I'm so confused by all their chaos and reversals. Lawlessness and cruelty.

May the 4th

So fandoms associate today with Star Wars and also Arrested Development's Cinco de Cuarto fake holiday, but I didn't realize that people on Bluesky would also note today as the date of Holmes's presumed death at Reichenbach Falls. I mean, I've been a Sherlock Holmes fan for decades, since middle school, but this date in "Final Problem" never really stood out to me; plus the idea to celebrate a death date, let alone a fake death date, is weird to me. I'd rather celebrate when Holmes returned in "Empty House." Now that I think about it, I did write one Holmes/Watson story where he calls May 4th "our unhappy anniversary" as he's trying to apologize for deceiving Watson. But other than that, I didn't hold onto May 4th in the context of Holmes. But happy May 4th, whichever fandoms apply to you. I'm sure non-geeks were celebrating Cinco de Mayo early this weekend.

Hooray for the great election results in Canada and Australia! I was also glad for the May Day protests everywhere. Has Elon Musk left DOGE yet? He said he was leaving in May. Meanwhile, Trump is claiming he can defund NPR and PBS with an executive order. Republicans have been after PBS forever. I hope they don't succeed.

The past few days I had vivid dreams that I suddenly had a perfect plot point for a story and was trying to write it down, only to wake up. So yeah, I don't think I'll be able to write fic any time soon. I am sad about Jill Sobule's recent death. I knew her from her song Too Cool to Fall In Love playing on the radio, and then I got her album and liked those songs too. I hope she didn't suffer too much in the fire. Maybe the smoke got her before the fire itself?

More elections

What a week with the Pope's death and drama in the Democratic establishment fighting with David Hogg over whether to support new, younger candidates in primaries. Hogg says he's not against old politicians, just the passive ones that don't fight fascism. But in related news, the DNC announced it would increase funding in all 50 states, with special bonuses for red states. I hope that can help in Texas. I early voted for our May elections; it was mostly for school board positions and mayor, and such local things.

I worked this weekend so I didn't get to seek Cory Booker and Hakeem Jeffries having a 12-hour sit-in. I hope the election in Canada goes well.

I read somewhere that Trump is trying to revive Columbus Day. Between that and him trying to change Denali back to Mt. Mckinley, it's clear he wants to reverse time and pretend nothing's changed in the world. It's as stupid as trying to rename the Gulf of Mexico.

Sherlock and Daughter

Well Happy Easter, such as it is. I normally don't care about this holiday and can ignore Christians celebrating, but the White House getting corporate sponsors this year is fucking crass, and religious bigots continue to try to push Jesus onto everything. At least there were good protests yesterday, and the Supreme Court actually ruled to stop deportations from the Alien Enemies Act. Are they finally going to rein him in? Will someone do something finally about him lawlessly defying court orders? We'll see.

I saw the new Wedding Banquet movie on Friday and enjoyed it. The remake stars Kelly Marie Tran, Lily Gladstone, Bowen Yang and Han Gi-chan. Their characters have been friends for years, and the couples even live on the same property together. However these millenials have commitment problems due to mother issues and self esteem issues where they don't think they deserve love or would make good parents; they avoid confrontation and use delay tactics to not make decisions. This comes to a head when Min's Korean grandmother says she will force him to leave his art career and come home to run the corporate business. Meanwhile Lee and Angela's IVF treatment doesn't work and they don't have the money to try again. So Min comes up with the scheme to marry Angela to give them money and to stay in America with Chris. But then the Korean grandmother Ja-young flies in, and we get hijinks about putting on a traditional Korean wedding. You'd think that Chris would realize that Min loves him enough to live in a converted garage shack, so getting cut off from his family's wealth means nothing to him! Some of the comedy is mixed with relationship drama and tears, but I found the story touching as it showed the deep love in this found family. Finally something great in theaters.

On television, I saw the new Sherlock & Daughter show, and I loved it too. The late Victorian setting really cheered me, and I loved seeing a traditional Baker Street. David Thewlis is great as Holmes, and I like the young actress too. I didn't realize that the Amelia character would be partly Native American through her mother, and that they would reference real history about Wild West shows touring in England and such. Wonderfully clever idea. I don't find Amelia anachronistic, because Americans were always brash and less formal in manners compared to Europeans, plus Amelia is lower class and not white, so she's been raised as an outsider for a long time. Of course she would push Victorian boundaries and not know what a traditional English breakfast is. If anything, Clara the ambassador's daughter is the one who was unrealistically trying to be friends and inviting Amelia over for dinner. I like Amelia's personality and she reminds me of what I enjoyed about Netflix's fantasy show about The Irregulars, before they canceled it.

Sherlock & Co SIGN

Ugh, there's an new Easter movie called King of Kings that uses Charles Dickens to narrate the Biblical story of Jesus. Yet another thing from Angel Studios, and I guess they want to expand Dickens from his hold on Christmas to Easter also. I mean fine, he was a Christian, but the original book was private, meant for his family only, and he specifically forbade publication. This reads like the Dickens descendants doing a cash grab, and the animation looks ugly. But of course it's doing great at the box office, and most everything else out lately is horror movies or gimmicky thrillers. I'm so sick of this crap.

And the news remains awful and scary. So I'm trying find escape in shows and books, but the Sherlock & Co podcast continues to irritate. I finished the ten part SIGN case, and I see what the writer was trying to do, but he needs an editor. The case is still bloated, and I wish they had cut some of the rambling speeches by Jonathan Small. And the scene where Watson replays audio and catches Small in a lie; I got the clue the first time. Why does he have to sit there and replay the clips 3 or 4 times? Plus they could have cut Holmes's rambling deductions about the jewel guy Bernie; let Wiggins just threaten him again to force the guy to talk. Several choices could have been made that would have condensed the show and improved the pace, but no, they want to stretch everything out.

SPOILERS BELOW

Good Trouble

Congratulations to Cory Booker for speaking for over 25 hours in the Senate. (I don't care that it wasn't technically a filibuster.) I was only able to watch part of it before going to work, but he spoke passionately about American history and how we fought fascism in Europe only to now betray our allies and our own principles. I'm glad he invoked John Lewis too, and that other Democrats helped participate with their questions. Please let more Democrats speak out and make good trouble. Yes Democrats have limited power now, but we can take some stands and not just quietly obey.

And I'm glad that Wisconsin defeated the Musk-approved judge on Tuesday. At least one election couldn't be bought by the billionaire. I really hope Musk and DOGE will leave. How come his other companies don't beg for him to stop destroying their brands?

Meanwhile, I was sad to hear that Val Kilmer died, far too young. My favorite movies of his were Thunderheart and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Thunderheart was a good drama on Native American themes, and it alluded to Leonard Peltier. I'm glad that Leonard Peltier finally got clemency from Biden so he could go home, even if still not fully free.

I'll miss Richard Chamberlain too, though sometimes I would confuse him with Christopher Plummer. I was too young for any of Chamberlain's famous miniseries, so I knew him mainly as the prince from The Slipper and The Rose. I was going to try to watch Dr Kildare, but apparently that TV show is not streaming anywhere. Perhaps I'll try finding some of his other movies like theThree Musketeers or Count of Monte Cristo?

Sherlockian Rant

I listened to this podcast episode on Irene Adler from a female Sherlockian Toni Sutherland, and it enraged me. To be clear, Irene is only the focus of this one episode; I think the podcast in general is about Sherlockian "conspiracy theories" and discussing TV show episodes as far as I can tell. There is one supportive guy on the episode, citing a Sherlockian book to add to Toni's point about a conspiracy to belittle Irene Adler.

Blooming bluebonnets

Well, spring is in full swing with flowers on the roadsides and thunderstorms. Plus a lot of road construction trying to deal with potholes I guess.

There are important elections soon in Wisconsin and Florida, and in Texas there will be elections in May. We're already seeing political signs on local streets, but I haven't heard any radio ads yet.

I'm disheartened that Amber Ruffin won't be hosting the White House Correspondents' Dinner after all. Such cowards. I wonder if she will respond on Seth Meyer's show and/or her CNN panel show Have I Got News For You. I don't watch that, since I don't have cable. I started to do my taxes this year, but it looks like I owe money. Just my luck. At least I'll get a raise at work.

I went out to watch a new movie called The Penguin Lessons starring Steve Coogan. This a charming, funny movie about a British schoolteacher working in 1970s Argentina and rescuing a penguin from an oil slick. He cleaned up the penguin to impress his kindhearted date, then got stuck with the bird when it wouldn't return to the sea. Michell hides the bird in his campus apartment and also uses it to motivate his students during English lessons. At first you think the movie will be all about the penguin and the grumpy Michell learning to love life, but then one of his new friends is "disappeared" by the fascist government regime. Scary, especially as the US has recently started disappearing people too. Michell eventually finds some bravery and even makes his poetry lessons more politically/intellectually challenging. The movie is based on a true story, but I don't know how loose an adaptation of the memoir it is. I enjoyed it, though. If you don't find hope in the world, you give up the will to fight.

Still disappointed

I'm listening to the Sherlock & Co podcasts again, reluctantly. I've said before that I dislike these podcasts, but I keep listening to them, hoping they'll eventually get to "Speckled Band" or do something remarkable/original in their modern updates on the Canon. But it's a really hard slog because they make Watson into such a bumbling, rambling comic relief, and they bloat the episodes with so much filler content that they think is humorous. It got really egregious in The Red Circle, where the story was simply a mafia story, that had no relation to the Canon story. They didn't even make use of the story's clever ruse where this man rented a room, then sneaked his wife in there, forever in hiding from the landlady, while he tried to fight their enemies. Despite using character names from the Red Circle, they used nothing else; it's like when they totally skipped the case from Study in Scarlet. So yeah, that's two Canon stories you've failed to do, you lying podcasters!

War and chaos

So Israel broke the ceasefire agreement in Gaza, as I knew they would. It's not like the US has ever held them accountable, and now it's even worse with Trump blathering about deporting all Palestinians so he can do his obscene resort idea. I expect Russia will do the same in Ukraine, so I hope the EU's forces will be able to mobilize in time. Canada probably will align with Europe to to counteract the chaos in America.

Meanwhile, Unilever fired Ben & Jerry's CEO, which is the latest blow in their many disputes over Ben & Jerry's pro-Palestinian stance. I hadn't eaten Ben & Jerry's ice cream since their brand was bought out, but this is just blatantly politically motivated interference. So I'll be boycotting more of Unilever's brands. I've already been avoiding lots of corporate brands in my search for palm-oil free products, so this will just involve me being more careful to check for the Unilever logo on the back of things in the grocery store. Thankfully I found new alternatives for bar soap since Ethique discontinued some of their products.

I hope more protests and boycotts will make Trump and Musk back down on things. It's disgusting how they're targeting trans folks and immigrants. My family are immigrants too, and things are getting ugly and dangerous.

More Theatre

I went to see Penelope at Stage West. It's like a play/musical, where Penelope tells the audience about her life waiting for Odysseus to return from the Trojan War, but often she breaks into song, while the band plays and acts as a Greek chorus. The website describes it as a "solo cabaret" and the audience seating was arranged to feel like you were at a bar or nightclub. I saw a show with the understudy Rowan Gilvie, and they were wonderful.

Meanwhile I look forward to the next production, the 2nd Sherlock Holmes play in David MacGregor's trilogy. I hope it will be as funny as last season's Elusive Ear production. If you can't see any of these plays near you, apparently you can buy the trilogy in book form too.

There seems to be a comedy Moriarty play in Allen, currently, but I don't think I want to drive that far to see it. The description of an international mystery with spies also turns me off. But good luck to them.

The End of the World As We Know It

This R.E.M. song was featured in the new Looney Tunes movie The Day the Earth Blew Up, so it's been stuck in my head. It's appropriate for the times too. I would have avoided the movie because I hate Warner Brothers lately, but articles say that WB didn't want to release the movie. Instead they allowed an independent distributor to buy it, so watching the movie can be an act of protest against WB, even if it's not the same as getting the Batgirl movie or the Coyote Vs Acme movie that they shelved. The Blew Up movie is a zany comedy and I liked what they did with Petunia Pig and Farmer Jim. But still, fuck Zaslav.

Anyway, the Ides of March came and went without the government shutdown after all. Schumer claimed that keeping the government open was important for the court cases to continue, but does that matter if Trump's just going to defy court orders? Any power we have to stop the lawlessness needs to be exercised. At least the Tesla protests are working.

But speaking of movies, after the Amazon boycott ended, I went on Prime to watch the Murder She Wrote TV movies, which I haven't seen before. I've only had time for 3 out of 4 so far, so I'll finish tonight. I enjoyed seeing these additional mysteries with Jessica. The first film on the train reminded me a little of Murder on the Orient Express, but had interesting twists too. I did guess that the Macguffin would be in the Gameboy, though. The second film is set at a high-end speaker's conference, with an ex-KGB head getting killed; I never really liked espionage plots on the TV show, but this one at least had some good clues. Some characters even suggested that Jessica solved murders as publicity stunts for her books. The third film The Last Free Man tells a cold case story set during slavery in the South. Angela Lansbury plays Jessica's ancestor Sarah McCullough in the 1860 scenes as Sarah investigates when her slave Samuel Pinckney is framed for a murder. I was surprised to recognize Taraji P. Henson in a minor role, before she got famous. I liked that Sarah knew that solving the murder should be set aside for Sam's more urgent need to escape the lynchmob. I hope the new rumored Murder She Wrote reboot movie will be good, with whichever actress they cast to play Jessica. I miss my JB Fletcher.

Whitewashing

I'm sad that The Wild Robot didn't win at the Oscars. I haven't seen the winner Flow, so maybe it was deserving too. Oh well. Award shows usually disappoint in multiple ways. Zoe Saldana won for a problematic movie, but that's been a thing since Hattie Mcdaniel won for playing a maid in Gone With the Wind. You do your best in the parts you're given. One can imagine it's a reward for a different role in Zoe's filmography instead.

On Paramount+ I can also access documentaries from the Smithsonian channel, and they had some interesting ones for Black History, such as Black cowboys in the Wild West. I found one doc called "Birthing a Nation: the Resistance of Mary Gaffney" which is very short, only about 20 minutes. Weird title but it talks about an important topic, the slave owners who would "breed" more slaves so they could get more free "property" without buying at auction. Besides raping the women themselves, some enslavers used to forceably pair off slaves to make them have children, treating people like animals/livestock, calling them wenches and bucks. This disgusting practice was part of keeping up the "domestic slave trade" after international slave trade was made illegal. However, Mary Gaffney apparently knew a secret contraceptive in cotton roots to prevent getting pregnant while she was enslaved, though after emancipation she had children with her husband. I like that she managed some agency, though there's resignation too in her just staying with the guy she previously said she hated. Also the documentary mentions the thousands of "slave narratives" from the Works Progress Administration interviewing the survivors of slavery who were still alive at the time. What important history could have been lost, if nobody thought to do this work during the Depression.

I fear the Trump administration will try to delete all this history, like they're deleting "DEI" photos from military history too. Do we have enough online archives that can save this history? Where can they download from?

March Forward

Apparently the Oscars are tonight, so there are a ton of movies in theaters this weekend, but I don't think I'll bother. I don't recognize a lot of these titles, and some descriptions like Emilia Perez are frankly offputting. As for the awards, I don't really care about anything other than The Wild Robot. I've heard good things about The Substance, but I don't like horror films in general. Good luck to Demi, though.

On Tuesday Trump is going to do the State of the Union address. There are protests scheduled for Tuesday, along with ongoing protests at Tesla and more rolling boycotts against Walmart, Amazon, etc. I hope the Democrats will have a strong message rebuking Trump, especially for his awful meeting with Zelensky on Friday. Also I think the government funding will end on March 14th, so we could actually have a government shutdown on the Ides of March. Given how Elon Musk is slashing government jobs and is freezing funds that were already earmarked and approved, I don't see why Democrats would trust any deal negotiations this year.

I'm sad to hear that Joann's will close their stores. I'll miss them. I'm still hoarse from my sore throat and wishing I had some Vietnamese chao (also known as congee rice porridge) like my mom used to make. The closest thing I got is a chicken and rice soup from the local Asian buffet.

Sick again

I got another yucky cold. Most of the symptoms went away except the sore throat and a hacking cough that goes quiet for a while until erupting into a violent fit of several coughs. I'm taking cough drops and a truly disgusting cough syrup, and it still doesn't get better. I hate this.

Yesterday was an economic boycott and I managed not to buy anything. I will have to go to the store today and try to find a more palatable cough remedy, or at least buy more soup. I've been having to resort to yogurt and ice cream to soothe my throat.

Looking though my Sherlock Holmes media, I found my box set of 1950s radio shows starring Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson as Holmes and Watson. These are actually on audio cassette, and yes, I still have a boombox capable of playing cassettes and CDs. I've only got 12 out of 16 shows, but I guess I can find the rest online. (My set is sadly completely out of order from either the radio series or the publication dates of the stories.) I never knew before that Gielgud did these shows while recovering from scandal in Britain. He'd been outed as gay with an arrest not unlike that of George Michael decades later. Gielgud had feared his career was over, but thankfully was wrong and eventually his prolific acting career revived.

Similarly in America, Raymond Burr had to remain in the closet and lie frequently about his personal life for the sake of his Hollywood career, but I'm happy to hear that he did find love and happiness with a partner. I've been watching Perry Mason episodes lately and while some of the shows are dated, I like the diversity of the cases.

Hurdles

I've been having computer problems again. Hard to log in and open my browser. Even opening the Private Browser clean of cookies was an ordeal. I thought I had a roof leak, but it appears to be a false alarm. However I do have an expensive car repair now. So much trouble lately.

Also I recently decided to upload my Private Life of Sherlock Holmes fic to AO3, so that it's all in one place. I'm gonna try and add more chapters. I was glad to see that other people have been writing fic for that movie too.

There's an upcoming scifi movie called Mickey 17, and the premise sounds eerily similar to the 2009 film Moon starring Sam Rockwell. The only difference seems to be that Mickey knowingly signed up to become an expendable series of clones, whereas Sam didn't discover he was a clone until later on. There may also be other differences in tone or plot, but we won't know until it opens in theaters. Moon felt very solitary and lonely, whereas Mickey 17 seems to be a comedy, with a larger group of characters in the space colony.

Blues

Stupid chilly weather keeps coming back despite one or two days of warmth. I'm so tired of it. Meanwhile deadly storms in other states make me wonder if FEMA's able to do anything now due to Musk's DOGE idiots gutting everything they can get their hands on.

Greg Abbott is in Washington lobbying for money for the border 'cause he wasted billions on Operation Lonestar. Now he wants to sell border land to the feds. Fuck him and all the GOP. Also, I saw that PBS closed their DEI office, and I was like Noooo!!!

As usual, Jasmine Crockett is our saving grace, showing that not all of Texas are GOP idiots. There's another national protest today at noon. Good luck to everbody who goes.

Also, I just read the story about Frances Thompson, a Black transwoman who bravely testified about her assault in a Memphis race massacre in 1866. This is the kind of American history that MAGA wants to suppress and erase with their anti-DEI crusade.

Getting By

Well it was hard, but I stopped shopping at Target due to them caving on DEI. I don't buy enough food to make a Costco membership worth it, but I went to the employee-owned Winco supermarket, and their prices aren't too bad. Every grocery store has the "egg shortage" notices though. I guess I can go to a different store for the clothing and home decor stuff that I used to get at Target too.

So what's there to say about Trump's insane ramblings about owning Gaza? And Netanyahu just lets him do it, not even trying to assert he wants that property too. These fucking racist dictators.

I tried to distract myself by seeing Love Hurts, but the movie wasn't as fun and camp as I thought it would be. Not as funny as One of Them Days, for instance, and they didn't use Marshawn Lynch for as much bonkers absurdity as I wanted. I liked the knife assassin who writes poetry, but the movie lingered a little too long on his awkward romance with Ashley from the realtor's office. And they had a silly cameo from one of the Property Brothers as a rival realtor. I mean, it was nice to see Sean Astin in this as Marvin's close friend and mentor, but I guess the action/fighting put a damper on some of the comedy. I read rumors that there's a Goonies sequel movie in the works, but I don't know if it will pan out at all.

Meanwhile, I found my boxset of the BBC Radio dramas of Sherlock Holmes, so I started listening to them again. They're much better than the annoying Sherlock & Co podcast in which Watson stammers and rambles so much, wasting valuable airtime on pointless filler scenes. I mean Watson is supposed to be an average guy, normal to contrast to Holmes, but why does this podcast think that means Watson is perpetually awkward and embarrassing himself? Stop making him the comic relief! If something happens that's only tangentially related to the case, then cut the damn scene and just narrate a summary of what's important. You are the narrator, John. Do your damn job!

Happy Black History Month

I thought someone had said that the White House wasn't going to celebrate Black History Month this year? But apparently there's an official proclamation on the whitehouse.gov website. Well, they're still choosing to "celebrate" by blaming DEI for the helicopter/plane crash, and making civil servants snitch on each other about DEI. Such racist assholes. I heard that there's some big protest planned on February 5th, but I'm not sure why they picked a Wednesday? I guess to avoid Superbowl weekend or something? I don't follow sports.

I didn't watch the Grammys, but congrats to Beyoncé for album of the year and country album of the year too.

Personally I have had a bad few days and really need my next paycheck for my bills. Replacing a broken crown blew out my budget this month. I haven't had a chance to do my tax return either, but I gotta get that refund too. I'm too exhausted to keep doomscrolling the news. 

I'm gonna try to see Love Hurts this weekend for some relief. There's just too many horror movies at the theaters year-round and you can't even avoid the trailers. I don't even see any romcoms out for Valentine's Day; apparently those all went to streaming. I might as well see the new Paddington movie that weekend I guess. I did finally see the first one on Peacock. I initially avoided that because the stupid trailer had the yucky bathroom scene, making me think it was going to be stupid and gross, not cutely English and twee. It's also a bit Wes Andersony with the dollhouse scenes. The beginning with the Darkest Peru documentary reminded me of the explorer in Up, though this guy is genuinely nice and doesn't care about collecting specimens.