Alien Romance, the daily comic strip

Cathy carefully composes a note in English, using her French-English dictionary. She presents it to Ella, who reads: "Please help me. Maurice wants for other people to desire him. He says this to me. I am not sufficient? Speak to him please."

Ella puts her arm around Cathy reassuringly. "Oh, Cathy, my amie, don't worry. I'll handle this for you. I'll catch him coming out of work."

She catches Maurice in the parking lot of Liquor Warehouse. "Hey, stud," she greets him, much to his confusion. "I need to talk to you in private."

"Okay," Maurice says.

"I just want to start by saying I'm not blaming you," says Ella.

"Oh?" Maurice looks a little bit alarmed.

***

My friend whose Gofundme I posted a few days ago is in a dire situation. The fundraiser isn't going to hit its goal. Her house got foreclosed on, her car was repossessed, she has two kids including one who has socio-emotional disabilities even in secure times, and she has 5 rescue cats that she is determined to hold onto because they're all difficult cases. I ran out of ways to help her, and I feel terrible. I wish I had a place to let her crash temporarily, but we have a full house here, and we can't allow the cats because Typhoon is vicious and horrible with other cats - we already tried twice to take in other cats and it didn't work. (I don't need advice on that front - I'm very experienced in cats with behavior problems and the rescue thereof, and it's just the layout of this house plus Typhoon being a Force of Nature with no 'off' button.)

I'm backing off from bothering my friend with my half-baked ideas, but I feel rotten about it. Her survival plan is not perfect, but it might have worked before all her assets were taken from her.

Life is tough all around. We'll all be affected in some way or other, some more profoundly than others.

Opera 2026: Grammy nominees

When I was watching the Grammys, I was intrigued by the nomination lists for classical and opera. So I thought I'd look them up.

Huang Ruo hits two of my cultures, Chinese and American, so we'll start with him. Here's An American Soldier on Youtube.

In case anyone's interested.

I'll add more links into this post as I find them, but first I'm listening to this one. It's in English. So I'll be able to follow the story as it unfolds. That's not a requirement for my opera enjoyment; I quite love listening to music in languages I can't understand at all, and languages I can only understand to a basic degree are enjoyable for their own reasons.

Okay, wait, look what I found! It's Huang Ruo playing a sheng. I own a sheng! He's making it sound like a pipe organ. I don't know how he does that. I can't get mine to sound like a pipe organ. I realize there is also a real pipe organ there, so, yes, I can see how the sheng looks like a tiny hand-held pipe organ. Looks like, no, that's precisely what it is. It's the pipes held right there in your hands.

Mine whistles too much. And the notes seem unreliable. There's nothing wrong with my instrument; it's all me. I need to fiddle with it some more. (No, it's not a fiddle.)