2) Change of plans means I am now at the hairdresser (otherwise it would’ve been a week later)
3) Sunshine at moment, with a bit of luck the rain will only arrive this evening
Welcome to May, 2026! Hooray, hooray, the First of May.
Right now it's actually half an hour after midnight on the Second in Seattle. But anyway...
I listened to Hollywood Hookup on a recent plane ride, and while the tone of the narrative wasn’t really for me, I can say that the structure of the book lends itself really well to audio.
Josie Days is a makeup artist on a hit musical sci-fi show starring five hot guys who are sequel fodder. They’re doing a charity celebrity date contest with said five guys and for hand-wavy reasons Josie gets roped in to replace a last minute drop out. She winds up winning a date with Sean O’Sullivan, which she does not want.
Josie used to be a child actor under a different name until her career came to a catastrophic end during an incident that involved puppet immolation. She’s been hiding ever since and dating Sean will put her back in the public eye. Sean really wants to date Josie though because she seems uninterested in him and HOW DARE.
This book didn’t work for me very well because it’s really a mad-cap, wacky sort of comedy. The situations the characters find themselves in are very over the top and sometimes felt like they would have worked better for visual comedy versus something on the page. For example, the heroine shows up to a date with the hero in full space alien FX makeup in order not to be recognized…which might have been funnier if we had seen her unexpectedly appear in costume versus reading about it.
If a reader doesn’t mind zany shenanigans, the book does work really well in audio and it’s closed door, which I know some readers are searching for. There are two narrators for the audio book (male and female), and some sections are transcripts of podcasts and talk shows, so that makes for a lot of varying voice acting opportunities. It’s definitely fun to listen to.
Hollywood Hookup was just okay for me, but I can see it having more mileage with others.

Weekly Challenge: Do you have a big current interest? Something you've just watched or read you'd like to chatter about? Go to Explore/Site And Journal Search and look to see if others are talking about it. Join in.
(for media this works best with recent stuff, but you can always try your luck!)
Emma Tenayuca was a labor organizer in Texas who is best known for leading a strike of pecan shellers in 1938. Workers called her “La Pasionaria“ which means “Passionflower.” From a young age, she survived violence and imprisonment in her quest to help workers get better working conditions and higher wages.
Tenayuca was born on December 21, 1916, and I know all of you December birthday people will identify with her plight – born too close to Christmas, she never got ‘birthday’ presents. Her family was Mexican American, and had lived in Texas for many generations. She was raised by grandparents who were interested in politics, and was also influenced by the speakers in the San Antonio town square. She was brought up with pride in her family and their roots, and she was encouraged to be educated and politically active by her family.

Tenayuca was arrested for the first time at 16, for protesting alongside striking workers from the Finck Cigar Company. She used her bilingual language skills to help people with their problems and worked with many organizations working towards better pay and better conditions for Mexican-Americans.
One of the most common positions for Mexican-American women in the area was in the pecan industry. Pecan shelling for 6-7 cents a pound was difficult work (the meat of the shell must remain intact) for little pay. Additionally, the process filled the factory rooms with a fine dust that contributed towards tuberculosis.

In 1938, the factories cut pay to 3 cents a pound and Tenayuca, who was 21 years old at the time, found herself leading a strike of approximately 12,000 workers. The strike faced violent opposition, as detailed in the article “Remembering Emma Tenayuca:”
When Pecan production ground to a halt, the owners fought back: Tenayuca and hundreds of strikers were gassed and arrested by San Antonio police. Some were beaten as well. With the NWA rallying community support, the strike turned into a city-wide uprising of the poorest and most oppressed people in San Antonio.
Thirty-seven days after the strike began the pecan producers agreed to arbitration. A few weeks later, the workers had won a wage increase to seven or eight cents per pound.
Tenayuca faced opposition as a woman, as a Mexican-American, as a labor organizer, and as a member of the Communist Party (she left the Party in 1946). From Americans Who Tell the Truth:
In 1939, as Emma was giving a speech, an enraged mob attacked San Antonio’s Municipal Auditorium. Fearing that she would be lynched, Emma was led away through a secret passageway. The mob threw bricks, broke windows, set fires, ripped out auditorium seats, and later that night, together with the Ku Klux Klan, burned the city’s mayor in effigy for having defended Emma’s right to free speech. This event is still on record as San Antonio’s largest riot.
Tenayuca married another labor organizer, but it didn’t last (they divorced in the 1940s). Blacklisted throughout Texas, she left for San Francisco to attend college. She had a son in 1952, and worked as a teacher and returned to San Antonio to teach in the 1960s.

She never stopped working for women’s rights and worker rights. In 1942 she led a demonstration against the U.S. Border Patrol, which was beating migrants and leaving them to die in the desert. In 1944, she organized another rally which brought more attention to the Border Patrol’s brutal practices.
Emma Tenayuca died at the age of 83 of Alzheimer’s Disease. At her funeral, writer Carmen Tafolla said:
La Pasionaria, we called her, because she was our passion, because she was our heart — defendiendo a los pobres, speaking out at a time when neither Mexicans nor women were expected to speak at all.
Sources:



| loss | journey | destruction | music | fruit |
| metamorphosis | underworld | quest | nature | silver |
| recognition | centaur | WILD CARD | escape | building |
| rescue | hero | gods | identity | wait |
| monster | minotaur | chosen | magic | family |
I asked Diana Shuheng Zhang whether she thought the video was shot at natural speed or was speeded up. Her reply:
Given the movement of the hand, I think it was filmed at real time. Actually, the faster the hand moves, the easier it is to write the strokes well, especially the big strokes.
Together it says: guófù mínqiáng, zìqiáng bùxī 国富民强,自强不息 (“Prosperous nation, strong people; unceasing self-improvement”). The biggest character is qiáng 强 "strength", and there are also two small fú 福s ("auspicious") on the left and right.
Play, art, exercise….
Selected readings
[Thanks to Bill Benzon]
Free for All Saturday, Week 18 [DW Edition]
↑↑↑ Available dates:
May 5 & 7
May 12 & 14
May 19 & 21
Happy Saturday, everyone! Are you ready for this week's Free for All? :D? There are no themes to follow for prompts or fills. Btw, if you perhaps missed a prompt theme that you liked, or you've had any ideas that didn't really work with Tuesday's or Thursday's posts, then today's your chance to prompt 'em. Be free, and have fun! ✎
Just a few rules:
1. No more than five prompts in a row.
2. No more than three prompts in the same fandom.
3. Use the character's full name and the fandom's full name for ease in adding to the Lonely Prompts spreadsheet.
4. No spoilers in prompts for a month after airing, or use the spoiler cut option found here. Unfortunately, DW doesn’t have a cut tag, so use your best judgment when it comes to spoilers.
5. If your fill contains spoilers, warn and leave plenty of space, or use the spoiler cut.
6. If your story has possible triggers, please warn for them in the subject line!
Prompts should be formatted as follows: [Use the character's full names and fandom's full name]
Fandom, Character +/ Character, Prompt
Are today's prompts not catching your eye? No worries, because we have plenty of older prompts that just might do the trick! You can browse through the comm's calendar archive (here on LJ or here on DW) for themed and Free For All posts, or perhaps check out Sunday posts for Lonely Prompt requests. (Or, you can be like me, and try to save interesting prompts as you see 'em... and then end up with multiple text doc files full of [themes + links + prompts] that you can easily look through and search for keywords.) Multiple fills for one prompt are welcome, by the way! Oh, and you are very likely to find some awesome fills to read as well, and wouldn't it be nice to leave a comment on those lovely little writing distractions? ~_^
We are on AO3! If you fill a prompt and post it to AO3, please add it to the Bite Sized Bits of Fic from 2026 collection.
If you are viewing this post on our Dreamwidth site: please know that fills posted here will not show up as comments on our LiveJournal site, but you are still more than welcome to participate. =)
If you have a Dreamwidth account and would feel more comfortable participating there, please feel free to do so… and spread the word!
A friendly reminder about our posting schedule: Themed posts for new prompts go up on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Saturdays are a Free for All day for new prompts of any flavor. Sundays are for showing Lonely Prompts some love, whether by requesting for someone to adopt them or by sharing any fills that you've recently completed.