Artemesia, Nerd Mom

Writer / Mom / Multi-Fandom / Cat Lover

[artemisianerdmom]

This came up on my Google homepage (I’ve never watched Rings of Power, nor do I ever intend to):

My immediate thought?

Ah, yes, Tolkien’s most powerful character, Ivan the Awesome Terrible from Night at the Museum 2.

But then, I remembered:

There we go, that’s it! Tolkien’s real most powerful character, Raya Lucaria Sorcerer from Elden Ring.

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Okay, up close I see they were going for disco ball. But, when I see this itty bitty on my phone screen, I can’t not see a used sequin color changing pillow that you’d find at a thrift store.

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The most magical part of finally seeing The Lord of the Rings trilogy in theaters?

The cacophony of “BOIL ‘EM, MASH ‘EM, STICK ‘EM IN A STEW,” which accompanied Samwise Gamgee from an otherwise near silent audience.

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Does it bug anybody else how Donkey calls Shrek a “mean, green, fighting machine!” near the start of the movie, but then later complains how finding a blue flower with red thorns would be much easier if he wasn’t colorblind?

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My highly-divisive, politically charged, possibly offensive Halloween costume:

If anyone asks me what I’m supposed to be, I’m going to wryly respond, “a friend,” and offer no further explanation.

[artemisianerdmom]

I’m so tired of the broccoli head haircut trend. It either needs to go away, or dudes gotta commit.

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Me too, Honey. Me too.

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What? No, I absolutely was not humming “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” as I quietly removed the 37 Hershey’s Kisses, 9 KoolAid candy canes, 7 mini KitKats, 6 packs of Pez, 4 tubes of mini M&Ms, and a partridge in a pear tree from my kiddo’s extended family Christmas spoils this evening.

Although you can bet that I was cursing the names of the family members who gave my kiddo 37 Hershey’s Kisses, 9 KoolAid candy canes, 7 mini KitKats, 6 packs of Pez, 4 tubes of mini M&Ms, and a partridge in a pear tree under my breath the whole time because oh my god we just finally got through the Halloween candy and now THIS—

[artemisianerdmom]

Found this gem browsing through screenshots on the family Switch. Credit to my husband for the caption lol.

[artemisianerdmom]

Husband just referred to Bert from Sesame Street as “Baby’s First Squidward” and I mean, he’s kinda not wrong.

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Me in 40 years telling my grandchildren about the Force of Nature Tour:

It’s been a month and I’m still thinking about this concert.

Read more for the memories that continue to live rent free in my head.

Saturday October 5, 2024

The Bluestone

Columbus, OH

I previously wrote another post about the most memeable moment of the evening.

And yes, my husband and I are still memeing on it.

Shortly after we paid for parking, as I was trying to pull up the tickets on my phone, my husband said that he was fairly certain he’d seen Josh Ramsay go by on one of those electric rental scooters like a lot of big cities have at the end of the alley.

“At least I think it was Josh. I think he’s got a Mohawk,” my husband said.

“Oh, no that would be Mike. Mike’s the Mohawk guy,” I clarified.

I was skeptical that he’d actually seen one of the band members for about 10 seconds, thinking that he’d probably just seen some fan who also happened to have a Mohawk. But then I watched a guy who looked suspiciously like Matt Webb ride by on another scooter before Ian Casselman, who I recognized when he looked directly at us, brought up the rear. We later had a confirmed Mike Ayley sighting by the tour bus when we walked from the lot to get in the line for entry, but I personally didn’t see Josh until they took the stage.

There had been no lack of enthusiasm for either of their openers, but following an extended break for the crew to rearrange the stage and the lead-in song of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” the whole audience absolutely exploded at the first sounds of the rain in the opening of “A Normal Life.” I don’t recall the order in which they appeared, but Josh was the last as he approached the microphone, which lit up neon blue with a little MT visible at its base when he took to it to belt out “IIIIIIIDDDDLLLEEEE HANDS THAT LONG TO SPILLLLLL—“

My husband and I were lucky to get a good spot on the balcony after discovering once we got out of the merch line that the entire bottom floor was jam-packed. The balcony, too, was almost at capacity. There must have been at least a couple hundred people stuffed into the former sanctuary.

Josh marveled at how they managed to cram so many people into the venue, observing with a chuckle that we looked “cozy.”

“Cozy” was the mild way of putting it. At the next break he remarked that it was “hot as fuck” on stage and couldn’t imagine what it must have been like in the audience.

With that being said, it came as all that much more of a surprise when, during “Haven’t Had Enough,” Josh climbed down off the stage and wound his way through the crowd on the main floor.

Before proceeding to dedicate the band’s performance of “Cross My Heart/Celebrity Status” to all of the fans who’d been with them since Masterpiece Theatre, Josh asked for a show of hands for how many there were in the audience. We weren’t close to the stage, but I watched his face light up at the sight of all the people who raised their hands and cheered.

“Where the hell have you been?” he asked with an indignant huff. But then he laughed, “just kidding, I know it took us long enough to get here.”

At one point the rest of the band left the stage, leaving Josh there picking out tunes on his guitar. He admitted that they were trying to figure out what song to do next before he asked the audience, “do you want to sing with me?”

I didn’t go in expecting it to be live karaoke, but that’s kind of how I would describe my experience. I’m not complaining in any way, though; the energy in that room was absolutely electric the entire time, and singing the duet part of “Good to You” back to Josh was nothing short of magical.

There was a woman somewhere on the main level who yelled “I love you Josh Ramsay!” after that song. Not missing a beat, Josh looked up and said, with a laugh, “well thank you, voice in the darkness!”

As I memed in the beginning, hearing “Haven” performed live was genuinely the closest thing I’ve ever had to a religious experience. I can’t estimate how many times I’ve listened to the entire album, but I was almost in tears by the end. Part of it may have been that I knew the show would soon come to a close, but most of it, I think, was feeling all the emotions in the room. I could sense all the love that every person in the audience had for the band—my favorite band, who no one I’ve ever talked to knew about before I introduced them—and that made me so happy. Not just to be there, but also for the guys in MT and everyone else who made the show possible.

I left the Bluestone that night sweaty and winded from singing along with every song, but also with an unfaltering smile plastered across my face. I don’t know how I got to sleep after all that excitement, and a month later I’m still thinking about it.

[artemisianerdmom]

An hour of AI and soullessly generated prose when the age of authors comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we write!

[artemisianerdmom]

As a creative, I genuinely didn’t think my disdain for AI could grow any larger.

Spoiler alert, tonight I was mistaken.

Tonight, while scrolling through Pinterest for pumpkin carving inspiration, my kiddo got excited upon seeing a cat face Jack-o-lantern. I could tell on sight from the giant round eyes with sparkly pupils not attached to anything and the uncanny valley realistic nose and mouth that the image was AI generated. In that moment, it didn’t seem like that big of a deal. I explained, “I don’t think I can make our pumpkin look like that, let’s look for a simpler one,” and, at first, kiddo agreed.

We scrolled through dozens of other cat pumpkin carving ideas and eventually landed on a simple one that looked like a classic Jack-o-lantern with triangle eyes that the cut out bits then got stuck on top of the pumpkin to make kitty ears. Kiddo helped me scoop out the guts and I started on the actual carving. When I turned the pumpkin around to show off my work, however, kiddo went from 0-11 upset.

After calming kiddo down, I managed to glean that the reason for the upset was that our pumpkin had triangle eyes instead of round ones and that it didn’t have a “cute mouth.” Of all the ideas we looked at, the only one that had round eyes which stood out to me was the AI one that kiddo had seen initially, with the accusation of the mouth not being “cute” only further backing up my suspicions. I reminded kiddo of the pumpkin design we’d settled on, but this only triggered another tantrum about wanting a “cute kitty pumpkin!”

Kiddo is 4 and I’m not going to hold this against them.

But I am going to add “gives kids unrealistic expectations which then leads to screaming fits when those expectations aren’t met” to the ever growing list of atrocities committed by AI.

[artemisianerdmom]

Building on my previous post, I’d also like to say that repeating the color of the crappy love interest’s hair (or eyes, for that matter, or any other arbitrary trait) ad Infinitum is does not, nor will it ever, make me like them more.

Instead I usually find myself muttering, “oh, dang it, he lived,” at the end of the book.