Amaranthinitis
May. 17th, 2025 01:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraIt was sunny & hot by the time I made it to the garden yesterday. And then Claude showed up! Prize-winning chef and former Culinary Institute professor, raised on a farm in post-war Normandy, to me, Claude represents everything that's earthy & solid.
I weeded very happily for a couple of hours, sowed my lettuce seeds.
And then something weird happened. I got suddenly and violently ill, the kind of ill that it involves bathrooms, of which there aren't any at the garden.
No embarrassing accidents, but close call.
###
In fact, my usually robust health hasn't been all that robust lately. My lungs feel congested. I find myself getting somewhat winded when I exercise, I cough up fluid, and when I breathe out, I can feel how stiff my lungs are. Classic asthma symptoms. I hate the way inhalers make me feel, so I never use them; I just cough disgustingly.
I've been backburnering a fantasy that I have some sort of fatal but painless disease! Next time I visit my primary care provider, she'll take one look at me and say, "Patrizia, I'm afraid you're suffering from Amaranthinitis. There is no known cure, but here! Let me write you a script for unlimited quantities of morphine!"
I don't care if I cough.
I do care if I feel winded and weak.
But I probably wouldn't if I had unlimited quantities of morphine.
###
I'm still feeling kinda ill today, so I have tabled exercise plans. The day is sunny and bright, so I will lounge outside and read. The fabuloussmokingboot sent me Hilary Mantel's memoir Giving Up the Ghost last Christmas; it promptly got lost in bedchamber rubble. Recently, though, I unearthed it again & began reading it.
The first two books of Mantel's Wollf Hall trilogy are among my favorite novels of all time. They have a distinctly mannered style that took me around 50 pages to get used to (50 pages during which I didn't like the novels at all), and I guess I was a little afraid that this mannered style was Mantel's voice—which works as a narrative style for novels set in medieval times because we have to assume that people living in those times thought very differently than contemporary people think. I wasn't sure, though, that it would work for a modern-day book.
Not to worry! Giving Up the Ghost does not use Wolf Hall as a style manual.
I'm also piqued because two separate subscribers to my substack told me my prose style reminds them of Hilary Mantel.
I don't agree, but I kinda, sorta see how they got the idea: I break the fourth wall in sort of the same way that Mantel does. In her prose and my prose, there is a very strong sense that the writer is talking to a specific someone (who is not necessarily you, gentle reader.)
###
And, of course, the AI video experiments continue.
Today, I animated the cat marginalia on a medieval manuscript:
I wouldn't say it works. Ideally, all the cats would chase the mice as the mice scamper off the page.
Is the limitation my clumsy prompt or the clumsy AI (NightCafe in this instance)?
Dunno, but I may try the same experiment in Sora tomorrow.
I weeded very happily for a couple of hours, sowed my lettuce seeds.
And then something weird happened. I got suddenly and violently ill, the kind of ill that it involves bathrooms, of which there aren't any at the garden.
No embarrassing accidents, but close call.
###
In fact, my usually robust health hasn't been all that robust lately. My lungs feel congested. I find myself getting somewhat winded when I exercise, I cough up fluid, and when I breathe out, I can feel how stiff my lungs are. Classic asthma symptoms. I hate the way inhalers make me feel, so I never use them; I just cough disgustingly.
I've been backburnering a fantasy that I have some sort of fatal but painless disease! Next time I visit my primary care provider, she'll take one look at me and say, "Patrizia, I'm afraid you're suffering from Amaranthinitis. There is no known cure, but here! Let me write you a script for unlimited quantities of morphine!"
I don't care if I cough.
I do care if I feel winded and weak.
But I probably wouldn't if I had unlimited quantities of morphine.
###
I'm still feeling kinda ill today, so I have tabled exercise plans. The day is sunny and bright, so I will lounge outside and read. The fabulous
smokingboot sent me Hilary Mantel's memoir Giving Up the Ghost last Christmas; it promptly got lost in bedchamber rubble. Recently, though, I unearthed it again & began reading it.The first two books of Mantel's Wollf Hall trilogy are among my favorite novels of all time. They have a distinctly mannered style that took me around 50 pages to get used to (50 pages during which I didn't like the novels at all), and I guess I was a little afraid that this mannered style was Mantel's voice—which works as a narrative style for novels set in medieval times because we have to assume that people living in those times thought very differently than contemporary people think. I wasn't sure, though, that it would work for a modern-day book.
Not to worry! Giving Up the Ghost does not use Wolf Hall as a style manual.
I'm also piqued because two separate subscribers to my substack told me my prose style reminds them of Hilary Mantel.
I don't agree, but I kinda, sorta see how they got the idea: I break the fourth wall in sort of the same way that Mantel does. In her prose and my prose, there is a very strong sense that the writer is talking to a specific someone (who is not necessarily you, gentle reader.)
###
And, of course, the AI video experiments continue.
Today, I animated the cat marginalia on a medieval manuscript:
I wouldn't say it works. Ideally, all the cats would chase the mice as the mice scamper off the page.
Is the limitation my clumsy prompt or the clumsy AI (NightCafe in this instance)?
Dunno, but I may try the same experiment in Sora tomorrow.
