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    Monday, December 28th, 2009
    artnouveauho
         		1:06a
    The rest is irrelevance
     I haven't been posting much here. One of my unwritten-yet-mandatory rules of blogging is "Don't post unless you have something interesting to say."

    Not that there's been a lack of material: [info]speedlime and I prepared our usual Thanksgiving dinner, saw some amazing art, and went to Istanbul! Then [info]esdi_leanne, for her birthday, decided to recreate the dinner party from that one scene in Rocky Horror-- and truly epic it was. I never cease to be amazed at the excellently inspired madness of my friends.

    Just before leaving for DC, I saw the Royal Opera's der Rosenkavalier. This opera is like an old friend in whom you keep discovering new reasons to love them.
    ( Then and now )
    So there have been interesting things happening, but when there's been the time to write about them I haven't seemed able to muster the enthusiasm. I could blame the grey of winter for this, but I think it's probably some mental flaw instead.

    I hope all of you are staying warm. Firelight and friends are the best antidote to winter.
    ed_fortune
         		2:22a
    Quick Update
     Back in Manchester.

    Flat still there.

    Christmas with family was awesome, very centred around the wee golden child, as it should be.

    Good to see people.

    Have seen New Who and liked it.

    Proper update later.
    Sunday, December 27th, 2009
    roseseule
         		5:38p
    invisible_al
         		10:20p
    squirmelia
         		6:11p
    Bears
     A small child who looked a bit like me was colouring something in, or maybe reading, although I do not remember what now. A bear landed in the garden, by the pond, and the child who looked a bit like me was alarmed and started screaming, "a bear! a bear! there's a bear!". The child's mother rushed into the room, but when she saw the bear, she was convinced she saw a heron flying away, as bears were not often seen in gardens in the south of England. Not at that time of year, anyway.
    satyrica
         		6:34a
    the ocean speaks and spits and I can hear it from the interstate
     I've been touring round the South West corner of Australia over Christmas which has generally been pretty cool: jumped off at Margaret River for a few nights but otherwise keeping moving on each night. There has been endless admiring of white beaches, walking among ancient forests and clambering over interesting rocks, I saw a whole bunch of stalagtastic caves, canoed up the river, climbed a mountain and played beach cricket.

    Margaret River was pretty sleepy when I stayed there: a lot of the guys at the hostel were long-termers, working in the vineyards so there wasn't much going on in the evenings, although I managed to find entertainment by going to see an Aussie movie called Beautiful Kate (in lieu of a cinema, a bunch of local residents have clubbed together to organise screenings of newish releases twice a week, which is pretty cool) and also an open mic night at one of the pubs.

    I was glad to be back on the bus for Christmas Day itself though: we saw some stunning stuff during the day, made it to the beach for the afternoon and went back for a barbeque with a sociable and fun bunch in Albany. The wildlife count is doing well too: today included the local celebrity sea lion who lives just around the jetty here in Esperance plus an unexpected dolphin sighting. Just a trip round to Kalgoolie then I'm back in Perth and preparing to head East again!

    Current Mood: tired
    Current Music: another travellin' song- bright eyes
    valkyriekaren
         		1:11p
    Feeling a bit blue and isolated today. Woke up with a vision of another day like yesterday, sitting on my bed watching inane Christmas TV on the iPlayer, and completely choked up. I know it's just the traditional Christmas blues, but... there's a hard knot of pain and fear and sadness in my stomach that is hunching my shoulders and twisting my spine and grabbing at my throat with granite fingers.

    I suppose I should get up and think about going out and getting fresh air (always helps) but to do what? I don't feel up to the sales and in any case I don't have a lot of spending money - switching from being paid weekly to being paid monthly after 6th January will leave a three-week hole in my cash flow, if that's not too mixed a metaphor, so I need to be relatively frugal for a while. After February things should improve - I'll be on a proper regular salary and can sort out my overdraft and even by the end of Spring be thinking about replacing the savings that got trashed last year.

    Is anyone doing anything today? I know there was talk of the Pembury, though that's a bit of a pisser to get to and from for me, particularly with all the various train and Tube engineering works this week (checking tfl now - though for some reason JourneyPlanner seems to be insanely slow-loading).

    And my day really ought to involve food at some point - I'm at that annoying stage when I have meat, cheese, wine and root vegetables but no bread, milk or fruit juice. The eventual plan is to make a sort of Provencal-style sausage casserole with beans or lentils in, but that's hardly a 'quick fix'.

    Please, someone rescue me!

    Update: Have had a bath, feel at least slightly more human. TfL's Journey Planner is still down, which is going to make trying to get anywhere a little... challenging.

    Update 2: I'm off up to the Pembury Tavern - still no TfL so my route might be a bit convoluted but hey ho (suspect bus to Brixton, tube to Highbury & Islington and then bus from there is the optimal solution). I won't be taking my netbook as it isn't behaving itself at the moment (in particular, not bringing up a network list, so it might not connect to the WiFi at the Pembury) but I will take a book to read until people show up.

    Feel free to pop up and join me!

    Current Mood: sad
    Saturday, December 26th, 2009
    fridgemagnet
         		9:16p
    I'm having a really strong "run away" urge at the moment, and the fact that the Eurostar is fucked is not helping me there. I've never been to Amsterdam; I wonder whether I could get a few days in Amsterdam next week.
    huskyteer
         		6:51p
    Festive Paws
     I have seldom been so glad to see rain as I was on the 23rd, as it washed the remaining slush and ice off my road and enabled me to get my bike out and thus actually get home to my mum's for Christmas.

    ( And receive presents! )

    Current Mood: grateful
    blahflowers
         		4:33p
    Doctor Who: The End of Time (SPOILERS)
     It's Christmas so Russell T. Davies is going to write a Doctor Who special and it's going to be poo. The only satisfaction in this was that by now we all know that Doctor Who specials are always quite uniformly plopped from Satan's behind (all except The Runaway Bride) so at least this didn't come as a surprise. As it was we had a jumble of ideas thrown in together with little care and attention (did we really need the Ood?) and what sounds like a fairly big plot point about the Time Lords chucked in to Confidential as though it's no big thing.

    What we had yesterday was quite large dollops of filler pie. No doubt whatever story it is RTD wants to tell (perhaps retconning these Time Lords as being what Dalek Caan went in to the Time Vortex meaning to save but accidentally letting out a Dalek fleet at the same time) is more than an hour long, but not much, so we get June Whitfield pinching the Doctor's bum and The Master laughing more than the annoying bald bloke from Derek Jarman's Jubilee. Russell talked about how there's got to be moments of levity before the gloom of the end of the Doctor, but he's been saying this since last Christmas. Get on with it!

    That said, there were some nice moments. The scene with the Doctor and Wilf in the cafe is wonderful, for a moment David Tennant seems older than Bernard Cribbins as each of the nine hundred years of his character's life but also however many the Tenth Doctor has lived since his last regeneration. And it's a nice point of view on regeneration, even though something walks away afterwards for this Doctor it is still as final a death as the one that Wilf will some day face. And I did get a little excited when Timothy Dalton turned up (I've been fairly succesful in avoiding spoilers for this), even more so when I realised he was spitting and gobbing in front of a load of Time Lord costumes.

    But The Master with his energy blasts and his bouncy legs and his eating people whole? What a sad diminuation of the character, it's like at his end RTD decides to channel the worst excesses of the John Nathan-Turner era. For all that fannying about with the Cult of Saxon and his wife and what-have-you at the start it all seems rather unnecessary and over-complicated and timewasting. And so presumably the Doctor will now have to fight the Master on a rain-soaked street of the city will all the other Master's look on until the Master can absorb Neo and so balance out the free-will equation and... ugh.

    And if seeing alien/weird shenanigans is enough to make Donna start remembering her adventures with the Doctor isn't that another black mark for the Doctor in dumping her on a planet which gets invaded by aliens every other week?

    I'd like to believe that the reason Wilf finds the Doctor so easily is because he's another Time Lord in a human body, the stuff with the mysterious woman on telly did seem to infer quite heavily towards him being someone who avoided fighting or at least killing in the Time War. I'd like to hope that the woman is either Susan or Romana but it seems unlikely, maybe she's the spirit of the TARDIS? And what exactly are these Time Lords going to do (presumably it'll be their fault) that might cause the end of time?
    satyrica
         		11:55p
    My Decade
     First seen via [info]oedipamaas49 . . .

    ( 2000/2001 )

    ( 2002/2003 )

    ( 2004-2006 )

    ( 2007 )

    ( 2008/2009 )

    I find it interesting I don't mention my school friends much when they've remained my bedrock in many ways, but I guess that (apart from [info]urizen unwittingly) they've not really been the main agents of change in my life during this decade. Also that I find my clubbing habits so much more significant to mention than going to gigs (which I've probably done more of) or plays or whatever. Now to see what the next ten years will bring!
    fridgemagnet
         		12:38p
    Things which make me turn off Radio 4 after just having switched it on
     Yesterday:
    • Count Arthur Strong. Seriously, get this off the fucking radio. Either you've not heard it in which case really don't seek it out, or you've heard it, in which case you either think it's unforgiveable balls or you are seriously delusional.

    Today:
    • A Moneybox Live special on housing and how basically first-time buyers are still fucked regardless, which I did make it to the end of with some pain, but then the Now Show started up. Normally I can cope to the Now Show with just an occasional grimace - it's not the worst Radio 4 comedy - but in the context I just wasn't prepared to indulge it.
    huskyteer
         		11:16a
    "...and then Dr Who helped Mary put the baby back in the manger..."
     When I was small, Christmas proper began on Christmas Eve afternoon when I attended the Crib Service at Wimborne Minster. I'd see all my little pals, sing carols, then home for Yule log and the last episode of that year's Chronicles of Narnia. So I was delighted when my bessie mate mentioned that she would be taking her goddaughter this year and I was welcome to join them.

    Many things remain the same: the wailing babies, the coughing infants, the procession of children around the church, Away In A Manger, the placing of Baby Jesus in the crib. The principal difference this year was the nativity play with added Who.

    Yes. Really. In church.

    The plot was as follows: the Doctor (a sort of Everydoc played by a quite silver-foxish member of the church in a long coat and scarf) finds a lost lamb behind the TARDIS and goes in search of its shepherd. Along the way he meets a man and a pregnant woman on a donkey and feels a mysterious compulsion to stand up for them against the innkeeper.

    The lost lamb snuggles up to Mary, leading to the line "Thank you, Doctor, and thanks to your fluffy little friend - he certainly kept me nice and warm!" and much snorting from my pew.

    The narrator started off referring to our hero as 'Doctor Who', but someone must have whispered to him during the first hymn because when he kicked off again after While Shepherds Watched he quite correctly said 'the Doctor' for most of the rest of the performance.

    At the end of the tale, the Doctor realised that he himself, wandering space and time, was as much in need of a shepherd as the lamb he had returned to its owners. Luckily Mary promised him that when her very special son grew up, he would be a shepherd to everyone in the universe.

    "So it was that Dr Who, the Last of the Time Lords, came to know Jesus, the Lord of Lords."

    And with that thought, merry Christmas to all my LJ chums!

    Current Mood: amused
    huskyteer
         		10:22a
    Very Special Christmas Special
     For years I have been under the impression that no Time Lord could possibly rival the sexiness of Jon Pertwee as the Doctor.

    Then came Timothy Dalton in a red robe.

    Current Mood: enthralled
    Friday, December 25th, 2009
    barrysarll
         		11:54p
    The Middle Of The End Of Time
     The reason I didn't get straight online to share my thoughts with the interweb...well, yes, I was also busy on some hard-fought games of Othello with the parents, but beyond that, I simply don't know what to make of it. The first time since the comeback we've had a named Part One and Part Two on TV, and fair enough because it's just too soon to say. I could have done without the Matrix bits, I guessed what "they are coming back" meant as soon as I heard it on the trailers, but the key Being John Simm stuff - I don't know yet whether that was good or not. I have invites for NYD which I may decline simply because I cannot wait one second longer than I need to before finding out where this all goes. Curse you, RTD, you glorious bastard.

    In other news, I've finally caught up with Alan Moore's new 'underground' paper Dodgem Logic and...well, the articles by Moore, Graham Linehan and Josie Long are pretty entertaining, as you'd expect, if not any of their best work. The contributors you've not heard of mainly make clear why you've not heard of them; there's a lot of the sort of kneejerk hippy claptrap which eventually saw me lose patience with The Idler, the worst being the Lejome Pindling screed which rehearses the tired old complaints about 'manufactured pop'. Pindling loftily pronounces that Lady Gaga's "lyrical content is trash at best"; I suppose at least that quote is literate (if inane), which is more than can be said for most of his piece. Later he declares "The majority of albums I listen to nowadays have 2 tracks which I would consider good and a further 12 which I would say are questionable", unaware that he is himself one of those filler tracks. In between is the local content, one piece again by Moore, which I almost compared to a Northampton version of the less good bits of the capital's delightful Smoke before realising how unfair that would be. All Moore's previous Northampton work - and presumably his novel-in-progress, Jerusalem, have found the same wonder and strangeness in the town which most other psychogeographers can so much more easily pick up in London. Here, he and his collaborators are just taking the simple route and showing provincial Britain as a denatured, grotty dump. I'll give it another issue or two to settle in, clearly, but I really expect more from Moore.

    And is it just me (and my family, in rare consensus) or would Wall-E have been a better film if it were half an hour shorter?

    Current Mood: halfway through Balls of Fury
    Current Music: It Doesn't Often Snow At Christmas (New Version) - Pet Shop Boys
    artremis
         		11:49p
    fridgemagnet
         		9:02p
    For the culinary record
     Sushi rolls made with tortillas because you have no seaweed have considerably greater structural strength than those made more traditionally. On the other hand it's surprising how much taste a tortilla has, and that taste is not all that appropriate to sushi rolls.

    The potential that this has raised for me now is for "mex-sushi", which is basically a tortilla wrap but with stickier rice and rolled like a sushi roll. Think of a standard roll, but with, say, strips of beef and pepper in the middle, and with sour cream and chilli sauce inside too. I think that avenue is definitely worth going down, or at least peering down while standing at the well-lit corner with Sensible Street.

    Here is a bad webcam picture of an over-exposed Instax picture of a cat called Piper wondering what the hell I am doing trying to make sushi with tortillas:

    artremis
         		5:22p
    Hoping everyone's YuleTide is suitably Gay (etc.)

    I've mostly been in bed due to glandyness/ibs which wasn't exactly my planned for christmas day activity but i am now feeling quite a bit better for the resting (earlier i didn't even have the spoons to knit while sat up in bed!). And traditional dinner and muppet watching with [info]omangel has been rearranged for tomorrow.

    Good Thoughts to everyone

    Current Mood: still a bit glandy
    valkyriekaren
         		11:31a
    Christmas presents from my brain
     What a peculiar, quite sexy and Christmassy dream!

    [info]d_floorlandmine  and I were at a Christmas Eve party that was being hosted by [info]thalinoviel , except it wasn't at her house, it was in a gorgeous, warm, red brick Arts-and-Crafts style house that was attached to a church - it may have been a vicarage. It was a good party and lots of wine was being drunk and hugs and gifts exchanged.

    There was a very attractive man there who I didn't know, and I sort of accidentally-on-purpose managed to brush against his hand while reaching for a wine bottle, and something just clicked and a few minutes later we were kissing. His name was Ben - I told him about my rule of not dating men called Ben and Tom as they're always either flakey or bastards (apologies to Bens and Toms reading this - I really did have this rule for a while!) but observed, as I so often do, that a rule's only a rule until you break it, then it's more of a guideline. This was considered quite witty by my companion. Introduced him to [info]d_floorlandmine , explained the poly thing, all fine but he went away to talk to someone.

    Then it was time for Midnight Mass in the church. [info]d_floorlandmine  and I didn't want to go so we went to another place where there was a band playing, who all looked about 12, sounded a bit like Busted and weren't very good. So we came out of that and the party started going again but I couldn't find Ben anymore, and then a girl I knew called Abigail (who was neither Abi nor Gail, nor an amalgam of the two) was hugging me and then passed out. I yelled for someone standing nearby to help me get her onto the floor by holding her head, but they were stupid and held her hair, which didn't exactly make it easy, but we got her down and into the recovery position. She started to come round but she wasn't making much sense - she would respond to her name but the responses were gibberish, word association: "Abigail... have a nail... bang the nail in... hammer... bang"

    After the party [info]d_floorlandmine  and I went to a hotel, and then in the morning came back to the house to round up stray people who needed lifts and any stuff that might have been mislaid in the course of the night. I asked [info]thalinoviel  to pass on my contact details to Ben when she next saw him, but complained that he was so gorgeous I was sure he had girls queuing up and didn't need to hear from me. She reassured me that he was quite picky about who he took an interest in and only liked smart and vivacious women.

    Last bit of the dream was leaving the house with [info]d_floorlandmine  and getting into the car and driving away down windy roads through a town full of big Victorian townhouses.

    The End.



    Now, I'm not one to go in for dream interpretation, and I certainly don't think they can foretell the future, but sometimes they can be one's subconscious mind processing thoughts and feelings. So I'm choosing to interpret this as a reminder that a) it's good to be spontaneous and take chances once in a while, and b) that I am smart, vivacious, witty and competent in a crisis, and that other people see and value these qualities. And if that's not a good thing to unwrap on Christmas morning, I don't know what is!

    Current Mood: thoughtful
    julietk
         		10:58a
    Merry Xmas!
     Merry Xmas to those as celebrate it!

    Xmas Day started off auspiciously with the dog throwing up. No Xmas dinner for him, then. (We might try him on some boiled potatoes. He doesn't like carrots anyway.)

    A certain amount of present-exchanging has been going on. I have given Marna her present. WARNING: do not click on that link if you do not wish to read very very wrong (if quite amusing) HP Baxxter*/Bill Drummond slash (non-graphic). (If you don't know what that sentence means, &/or you are my parents - hello! - either a) ask me, or b) don't read it, you probably don't want to.)

    More suitable for readers of a delicate, or any other, disposition is my Yuletide gift, which is fic for "The Swish Of The Curtain" by Pamela Brown, and is seriously awesome. ("The Swish Of The Curtain" is a book I absolutely adored as a kid, and the fic is bang on in terms of style & story. Thank you, mysterious author!). I cannot as yet link to the couple of things I wrote for Yuletide this year, because authors are secret till New Year's Day. (But have already had a comment from the recipient of my actual assignment, and she likes it. Hurrah.)

    In other gift news, [profile] uon has given me ALL OF THE CHOCOLATE NOM NOM NOM (& also climbing shoes, which were acquired a couple of weeks ago, & are the *business*); Marna has given me a lovely silver-and-glass bracelet; and Pete has given me a book about mushrooms, possibly prompted by the several hours I spent a while back trying to identify some mushrooms that appeared outside our front door. Also a new saddle to replace the one that some *total scumbag* nicked from my bike outside St Martin's last weekend (it is on its way. The only saddle in the world that I appear to get on with comes from TV's America & therefore takes a while to ship).

    Next order of business: POTATOES um sorry I mean XMAS DINNER GENERALLY (but especially the potatoes).

    * Him Out Of Scooter.
    Thursday, December 24th, 2009
    fridgemagnet
         		11:54p
    A Manhattan does need a cherry in it. Either that, or making it with dry vermouth is a slight mistake. This should be a surprisingly relaxing cocktail on the tongue. Still, not too bad.

    A proper Margarita next, and it is surprising how much better a proper one is compared to what is served in pitchers in faux-Mexican restaurants and urban meat-market chain bars. Well, probably not all that surprising, but it is a Good Drink.
    fridgemagnet
         		9:24p
    Is "hello little fella" an Australian phrase?
    valkyriekaren
         		5:49p
    My, that's a large joint!
     Just put the marinade/spice rub on the beef for tomorrow. My hands now smell of garlic and mustard. These are nice smells, though not necessarily on hands.

    For anyone who's interested, the marinade/rub is 4 cloves garlic, 1 tbsp dijon mustard, 1 tbsp herbes de provence, I tsp paprika, salt & pepper and a splosh of olive oil, all worked up into a paste and applied all over the meat. Had to take the stupid net thing off to apply it so I will have to get some string to tie it all together and stop it losing structural integrity in the oven. I'm not sure where one buys string on Christmas Eve but I'm hoping one of the Shops of Stuff in Streatham will be open. At least my rope bondage skills will come in handy with trussing up an intractable object!

    It will be roasted on a bed of diced carrots, leeks and onions and basted with red wine - this will form the basis of the gravy which will then be made up with flour and beef stock (bought - I didn't have time to beg bones from the butcher and I only have chicken stock in the freezer, which might be a bit insipid).

    Right, off to Streatham to drop off boozes at the West Wing and hopefully find a Purveyor of String.

    Merry Christmas, everyone.

    Current Mood: cheerful
    artnouveauho
         		1:03a
    Hear ye, hear ye
     Today, as you may know, is International Liza Day. It is the time of year when we contemplate the true meaning of Lizatude. You may wish to enter into the spirit of the day by exchanging jokes that fall flat, making references that make the 2 people who get them think you're a huge dork, and/or committing some hitherto-uninvented social faux pas in the middle of an audition.

    Alternatively, you may accept this mission: For my birthday, I desire tales of awesomeness! So if you've done or seen or experienced something awesome, tell me about it.
    Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009
    blahflowers
         		11:22p
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