Good evening, Vladivostock!

This is a dead letter drop. If you have anything to ask me, if you wish to contact me or if you have critical remarks on my behaviour, whereabouts or the colour of my socks, feel free to leave a comment.

Comments are screened, anonymous posting is enabled. It'll stay at the top of the journal page.

Avoid me because I'm: accomplished

Many happy returns of the day to snacky. Apologies for the lateness; I was up north for the weekend.

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I am going to change the name of this LJ because it's the only way I am ever going to bring myself to write in it again, for various reasons which do not bear public examination. So if you see an odd name on your LJ list in the next week or so, that's who it is. Probably.

I'm also going to reshape my reading list. I mostly quit reading people who hadn't updated, hadn't answered email, or when it was a user name and I couldn't remember who the hell the person behind it was.

Accordingly, it is defriending amnesty month. To be honest it always is, though I am not fond of the process.

But please, have at it. Defriend away. Particularly if you don't want to hear about UK politics; what is wrong with The Wire (1. Insufficient spaceships. 2. Not enough frocks); Spooks; music; Doctor Who and whatever else I can think of.

It's probably blasphemy but I like the adaptation of North & South even better than the 1995 Pride & Prejudice, despite soggy Colin Firth. I feel as though my world has wobbled slightly on its axis.

and listening to: Yes - McAlmont & Butler

Many happy returns of the day to kirbyfest and, belatedly, to vonnie_k. I feel like I missed important birthdays last week but I was offline, in Rome, and had no computer access. Please consider yourself birthday-greeted if you would be so kind and forgive me for the lapse.

and listening to: Martha's Harbour - All About Eve

Many, many happy returns of the day to denyeverything1.

I have missed many birthdays. I had a good excuse. Apologies. At least I didn't miss this one. Many happy returns of the day comice. May times get much, much better for you and your loved ones.

I do not wish to speak too loudly but I think there is every danger that when I get home tomorrow the effing house will be finished. It's all over bar the sanding and the big row over money. It was supposed to be finished a fortnight ago but then there was a big row, all the doors were torn out and started again, and that I did not stove anyone's head in with a bucket of readimix cement was a wonder and a miracle. Of course, now the fucking roof leaks and I am skint, potless, wonga-free, pockets bare, skint.

Still, I have an exciting weekend of hoovering up the dust, washing everything clean of the dust, waiting until it dries and then starting the process again. Also repainting the two rooms I had painted because removing the doors screwed everything up again.

In conclusion: aaaaaaaargh.

About eleven years ago, just as The X-Files began to make cultural and ratings waves, the BBC decided to commission a serious science fiction series. It was to be written by Jed Mercurio, who was just coming off the success of Cardiac Arrest. It was called Invasion: Earth, it had a big budget and it was about a mysterious encounter with an alien lifeform in the past (wartime, rather than 1965); which left the survivor of that encounter permanently changed (Clem v Tyrell in I:E) and which had repercussions in the present. The alien baddies in question are ( small spoiler )

I've never met anyone who watched that show, largely because no one really watched it. It was like Star Cops, only without the tiny fanatical following.

Ultimately Invasion: Earth tanked because it just wasn't fast enough, dramatic enough, funny enough. Too many of its characters were bland ciphers. However, it did have a strong military bent, humanity on the losing side and the bleakest of endings. Do you think RTD was maybe taking notes?

I finally watched Children of Earth: Day Five, in which Russell T Davies demonstrated once more that beneath the facade of the jovial, giant Welshman beats the heart of a misanthropic sadist of epic proportions.

Who can't write a bloody coherently thought-through ending to save his life and who just blew a giant hole in the secondary franchise. And as per usual for RTD, there were moments of exquisitely bleak writing and moments of utter fail.

Edited to say: I think I've been unclear: I thought 75% of it was brilliant -- but [spoilers redacted] felt gratuitous and the last ten minutes were, as a commenter below puts it, flabby and self-indulgent in a very particular RTD way. Also, LORD, it was bleak.

SON OF ETA: SPOILERS AND SPEC FOR THE WHO XMAS SPECIALS IN THE COMMENTS

( Day 5: Spoilers say 'Oh, Team Cardiff, NO' )

Firstly, may I suggest that Russell T Davies move on from things I love fannishly. Please. GO AWAY AND DO OTHER STUFF SO I CAN LIKE YOU AGAIN. Thank you.

And finally, ( Spoiler for the thing that caused the fannish kaboom they probably heard on the Moon )

Avoid me because I'm: recumbent

This is wonderful: Antony Gormley, the sculptor responsible for the Angel of the North and the bronzes that were placed on London rooftops the other year, has created a new artwork for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. For 100 days ordinary people will stand on the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square and do whatever they like. One person an hour, 24 hours a day.Here is a good explanation.

There are 2,400 places, with, as of this morning, 19,538 applicants – up by about 14,000 from yesterday. This is a live feed where you can watch them do... whatever it is they're doing..

The Guardian does this better than The Times, which seems a bit sniffy about the whole thing, by using Twitter feeds and flickr to record who has been on the plinth.

One of my favourite things was reading the explanations of people who wanted to stand on the plinth, which, alas I cannot find a link to now. However, this is a list of some of the people coming up today. My favourites yesterday were the man who threw chocolate off the plinth, the man who took up a tea service and danced in the rain to demonstrate that the BNP are [Plural Of Very Bad Word] who do not understand Britishness and the art student who dressed up as a panda and put his mobile phone number on a placard then took phone calls from all over the world. (One person told him to jump. The git.) I even quite liked the woman who just danced like a space cadet.

* * *

musesfool had a lovely section of a post the other day where she talked about mix tapes; how they worked, what makes a good one and why they meant more than mix CDs do now.( to borrow a quote... )

Would anyone be interested in a mix tape challenge or exchange in which you post a playlist of music split into two sides of 30 minutes each?

You could illustrate a theme, subject or make it for a particular person. You could make an intro mix tape which illustrates the best of one band or one scene, or make a mix tape that evokes a city (I could do one for London in no time flat. )

If we posted links to the music, pretty soon we could have a whole masterlist of coherent one-hour playlists, which works really well when you've got tasks to perform and need stuff to listen to.

What do you think?

Avoid me because I'm: awake

Damn you, Torchwood. Every time I think I have you pigeonholed as the slightly crap, campy show, the show that makes little sense but is fun to go for a ride with, you go and do something extraordinary that makes me care. Occasionally, it is something dreadful -- yes, Cyberwoman, I'm looking at you -- but lately, it's been something great. And it might just be me, but I thought Children of Earth was *fantastic*. Can't wait until tomorrow.

True, there were plotholes and one development required a mighty disregard for data protection and common sense, but this is a country where you can find national secrets on eBay hard drives and on the Silverlink train at Clapham Junction, so it's not, you know, *out* of the realms of possibility.

I didn't get home from work until 10.30pm tonight, but I watched it straight away and, having finished it, wanted to watch it all over again on iPlayer. Which I am now doing, only with the subtitles turned on, because there were two bits I missed.

This is important: watch it unspoiled. This review is tl;dr.

( Here. Here. Here Are. Here Are. Here Are Spoilers )

I only hope that by Day Five I am not looking back on this review and shaking my head at the credulous, hopeful fool who watched Day One and thought this was going to be a coherently plotted week of glorious telly. For Doctor Who RTD has always written knock-out set-ups and pisspoor denouements. Let this be the exception. Let this be a QAF: series one or Second Coming. Not another Journey's End.

Tags: torchwood
Avoid me because I'm: surprised
and listening to: Light Through the Veins - Jon Hopkins

Three days off work. I have three days off work. Isn't that a beautiful sentence? Of course, the three days off come just as the beautiful weather has buggered off, and I did do eleven hours at work yesterday, so I feel as though I am allowed to be joyful.

It's been an immensely frustrating time to be offline, given that the political world *exploded*. The MPs were hoist by their own secretive petard when the Torygraph got hold of a disk of their expenses and proceeded to have a lovely time outing people who were flipping, charging charitable donations to the taxpayer and buying duckhouses or clearing moats. Gordon Brown became the first beleaguered prime minister ever to be saved by an incredibly awful election result -- after all, why chuck your leader out off a cliff when you've no chance of winning in 2010 anyway?

( books )

I wanted to link today to the most witless piece of pointless bloggery masquerading as journalism to appear on the Guardian website since, well, the last time there was a witless piece of pointless bloggery yadda yadda yadda but they have taken it down. parthenia14 yesterday linked to the ongoing horror that is Observer Woman or Women or whatever the hell they're calling it. Alas, it is against the law to coat their entire office in banoffee pie or put them in stocks outside King's Cross.

I do not want to know the answer to the question "how many times can K watch episode 5 of Being Human -- "WHO WANTS SOME OF MY CHAIR!!?" -- as I suspect the number is very large.

Happy July 4th (as of five minutes ago) to those of you who celebrate

Avoid me because I'm: working

Hello world. Long time, no communicate. I've been up to my arse in rubble and emulsion paint. As a lifestyle I do not recommend it.
( Since we last talked ... )

Things I have learned while not posting on LJ:

(1) Do not pull the first piece of flaked paint off the woodwork. Even if it is all sticky-outy and begging to be pulled. NO. STOP IT. DON'T. If you start, the next think you know it will be 1am and you will be surrounded by mucky white flakes of paint like the dandruff of a diseased giant, your door will be denuded and you will have to paint and sand the bugger.

(2) If you write stuff and publish it online, and someone reviews it without slathering you in the sweet honey of unmitigated praise, under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you get defensive and utter any variant on "interrogating the text from the wrong perspective"; "you do not understand that I did that ON PURPOSE, stupid reader", "kindly remove your rec from the internet, you philistine" or "writers get no respect". Resist your grand toys-out-the-pram moment, grit your teeth, smile and say thank you for reading -- because at least they did read it, even if they are wrong, wrong, wrongity-wrong. To do otherwise makes you look very very silly. Also pompous and ungrateful and generally delusional.

(See also "feedback is my coin and you're not paying me, so why should I produce?" To which the only possible answer is "you shouldn't. TEH INTERNETZ HAZ SPOKUN" )

(3) I see that as it is WTF o'clock, fandom is doing the warnings debate yet again, in -- SURPRISE! IT'S FANDOM! -- a fairly obnoxious way. I genuinely, genuinely do not get this.

Dear writer who will not warn,

If someone says politely, "please could you let me know in advance whether there might be something in here which will make me and others like me ill" then why wouldn't you do that?

Back in the old days, when we typed uphill both ways in the snow, with frostbite, and slash was the edgiest thing in the land, there was a problem: everything was in text files and you couldn't even italicise words, never mind hide a warning. I could understand a bit of pissing and moaning about having to spoil your own cunningly laid surprises then.

These days you young whippersnappers don't even know you're born. There's whiteout text, LJ-cuts to other posts ... good lord, you could even make a YouTube video in which you sing about your story's oh-so-dark sensibility, dubcon, violence, goats, excessive featuring of capri pants and other crimes against fashion. I'd watch it. I'd even sing along if it were catchy enough. [Handy hint: goats rhymes with boats, floats, moats and groats, so if you're writing an AU set in the age of sail you are WELL IN THERE. :::two thumbs up:::]

You could always throw some theatrical shapes by going on about your artistic integrity being compromised but it makes you look a bit daft. You could also say that books and movies don't warn people -- which isn't strictly true. Someone who wishes to avoid material which might make them ill -- not a bit sick, actually ill -- can look up warnings on the BBFC website or read film/book reviews.

Even if it's true that artistic endeavours in the wider world do not warn for potentially damaging material, shouldn't this world, this self-constructed fannish would-be utopia, at least *aim* to be better than that? To be more courteous and more thoughtful about people who have to deal with problems enough without being kipper-slapped in a forum they thought was safe-ish? Surely, a simple 'here be dragons, email me if you need details'-type warning is not too much to ask.

Also, may we dispatch the argument "well, I can't warn for everything! What if someone has nightmares about baked beans or trumpets or squirrels"? You can warn for things you might reasonably expect to cause readers difficulty. Everything else you judge on a case-by-case basis. If someone takes issue with you over not warning them for something and you think it's unreasonable, it's entirely possible that they're wrong. They might even be self-righteous and obnoxious about it. Or you might be. You won't know until you've thought about it. Yes, it's unpleasant to be attacked but so what?

To quote your own argument back at you: it's a big, bad world out there. It's no one's job to protect you from the horrifying emotional toll of someone being angry and rude about your fanfic.

In conclusion: Donna Noble pwns you all (though if fandom could stop with the incessant babyfic I would be so grateful given my compulsion to read everything on the Daily), gloss paint is vile stuff, who scratched my fucking floor, and -- given that I am fortunate enough to support the fourth most shit team in the premiership and therefore we did not get relegated -- when does the football season start again?

Lots of love,
K.

Avoid me because I'm: awake

I have a Dreamwidth account because I caved. It is called finisterre.

I shall be posting there at some point, GOD WILLING, but I think I shall post different stuff -- probably fannish things. Who knows. If I ever have proper internet access again, maybe I will. (It might be next week)

Let us not speak of the house. It's going reasonably well and to budget but... oh, never mind. Suffice it to say that (a) I love my friends; (b) I am irretrievably anti-social; (c) I am so very, very tired of May already and want it over, so that I can be alone in my finished house, with a Dulux paintpod by my side and a song in my heart.

Email to come to relevant and lovely parties tomorrow.

I am quickly piggybacking on an unsecured broadband connection to post this. There's someone round here whose broadband network is called "getyerown". Bless 'em

I think I watched the Doctor Who Easter special in the best possible way: with two boys under the age of ten and a very large glass of wine. (I just wrote "glass of win" which would also be true. Fairtrade Chilean red wine is gorgeous).

It was beaten in the ratings by that contradiction in terms, Britain's Got Talent, which featured a boy blowing up a hot water bottle until it exploded, as "entertainment". Never let it be said that the United Kingdom lacks high culture. Never let it be said that we shouldn't string up Simon Cowell by his shrivelled manbits and spank him until he promises to *stop it*.

Anyway, Planet of the Dead.

Firstly the verdict of the small boys: ( aristocratic jewel thieves need Asbos too... )

Avoid me because I'm: cranky

I'm going to get back from nine weeks of relative internet exile and everyone is going to have buggered off to Dreamwidth.

I'm not sure you've lived until you've spent half an hour trying to use Yo Sushi! chopsticks to fish out six years' worth of (clean, I promise!) undercrackers from behind the radiators.

Eleven hours until I have to move out of my house. I have corralled all the things I need into one room. Now I just need to work out how to half that number of things, so I can actually live in someone else's house, and stay friends with them.

I also have no telly. I am finding this distinctly odd. Hooray for iPlayer.

Avoid me because I'm: awake

Occasionally, I heart The Guardian. Someone has used the Open Platform tools to chronicle the paper's history through its use of swearwords

Yesterday I found a cache of six episodes of Charm Offensive, which were extremely funny while I was packing, and reminded me how much I want to see Armando Ianucci's film "In The Loop". There's a trailer here



And now, G20 and NATO! And when I get home, packing!

killmenowkillmenowkillmenow

Avoid me because I'm: bouncy

Four days until I go and live at S's for two weeks. Four days until they rip everything out of my house. No one wants my lovely sofas. The pixies have stopped taking things out of my garden and running away with them. I am knackered. I am about 2/3rds of the way through packing all my stuff, and at the point where the house looks like a bomb just hit it. I have way too much stuff but I can't bear to get rid of the books.

( how this all started, in picture )

Avoid me because I'm: working

Anyone want two sofas? Deep red two-seaters with staingard on 'em, nice cushions, medium-sized arse dents, smell quite nice because I washed the covers. Yours for free if you can pick them up from my house.

Charities don't want them because you have to take the front door off its hinges to get them out of the house. The opening is about half an inch too small. I tried to explain that all the person collecting the sofas had to do was HOLD THE DAMNED DOOR while I did the screwing and unscrewing with my lovely electric thingie (a 30th birthday present from my dad, bless him). But no. This would mean they would be "liable" if anything went wrong.

And now, I feel a shivery wretching feeling as the words "political correctness gone mad" roll across my brain like an oozing, slimy tide of Richard Littlejohn. The horror, the horror. I must go wash, and possibly meditate on my thoughtcrime for some hours.

Though I do think it's pretty bloody silly that I am not allowed to take responsibility for taking my own door off because someone might have to hold it. I have decided to blame the Labour party, because they annoy me at the moment.

Anyway, adventures in freecycling continue to suck quite a lot. Today was the man who would kindly take my chest of drawers off my hands if only I would deliver them to his house. Make a sentence of these words: Strongly I Off You Suggest Bugger.

So out in the garden it goes for the wee pixies of East London to spirit away.

In yesterday's installment of Comedy Government The Labour Party Way, we learned that the home secretary's husband claimed taxpayer's money for his "additional services", i.e. gentlemen's filmic entertainment of an adult persuasion. Today it was the outrageous snout-troughery of our other fine elected representatives.

( And these are the people shaping the future of this country. The spaghetti monster weeps noodly tears )

I completely recommend this excellent look at ten of the most venal and/or stupid MPs in this fine country of ours. I particularly like that two MPs claimed for their iPods, and one MSP, shaking the moths from his wallet, tried to claim a £1 charity donation made by a hotel on his behalf.

At the risk of going all Jeremy Clarkson again, I laughed at and was depressed by The 10 most ridiculous fines ever imposed, from the Times, a well-known comic based in London. I particularly enjoyed the comments, which were full of frothing at the mouth loonies, banging on about socialism.

This is fun too: Those 20 G20 questions answered. Snarky but informative. (though at the time of writing everything with two Fs in it looks like it was written in the seventeenth century. Someone at the Guardian should probably sort that out. )

And tomorrow? ANARCHY IN THE UK! (or the small bits of it where people are really, really cross at the G20) FOOTBALL VERSUS UKRAINE ON APRIL FOOL'S DAY! (The headlines write themselves. Also Wales v Germany and Scotland v Iceland)

THERE IS NO FUTURE IN ENGLAND'S DREAMING!

Avoid me because I'm: tired

So. Golgafrinchans.

:::laughs arse off:::

:::is staked out on anthill for apostasy:::

Avoid me because I'm: amused

So, the answer is: "Too much white wine and poor impulse control"

What is the question?

Nicest. Wedding. Ever. And now me and my hangover, which is so large it has its own gravitational field despite the fact that I drank two litres of water yesterday, are going to do some washing, spy on the foxes living in the brambles next door and go see Watchmen. This last may be a bad idea with a hangover.

Avoid me because I'm: sick

Happy birthday to parthenia14, quickly, before I lard myself in failure by missing it. I hope you had a tremendous day and all the best for the year to come.

Avoid me because I'm: restless
and listening to: Paid For My Doorbell (Eric B. & Rakim vs. White Stripes) - Party Ben

If you're going to watch QI this week via downloading, get QI XL, which should be around in about an hour, if precedent is any guide. Much funnier than the Friday night edition and you get to find out how Emma Thompson used to make Stephen Fry scream.

Avoid me because I'm: sad

I added some new people to the reading list. This is because I am bored and want interesting things to read. Six days to go and I am back at work. I cannot wait. Feel at liberty to roll your eyes and call me sad. I am sad. I need structure.

* * *
I watched the new Law & Order: UK tonight. It's very slickly done. They've kept a lot of the stylistic tics of the original, including the music stings and the time/place captions. It looked good -- grainy, hand-held camera but not to vomit-inducing levels -- and the casting is excellent.

Aside from Jamie Bamber and Freema Agyeman, who are terribly pretty and the main reasons for two fandoms taking a squint at the show, there's Ben Daniels, whose voice is brain-melting; and Bradley Walsh, who has excellent comic timing and whose acting I like very much, even though his range is narrow.

Fandom failed to tell me that Harriet Walter and Bill Paterson were slumming it among the six leads, for which you all must die, obviously.

So far, so good, right? Alas, no. The script, directly adapted from an original script from the US version, was mechanical and awkward and did not take much account of the differences between the US and UK law systems. For example, I don't know whether district attorneys investigate crimes, but I was under the impression that the Crown Prosecution Service didn't have time for that, being chronically underfunded and also lawyers.

Worse still was that it was totally tone-deaf. ( Law & Order: Chris Chibnall is a cloth-eared twat )

* * *
Today's enthusiasm, in honour of the Oscars, is the films of Danny Boyle. I loved Slumdog Millionaire, slight though it was, because of the fantastic direction, full of kinetic energy and colour, and the performances he and his Indian co-director, Loveleen Tandan, pulled from the actors. He always seems to manage to do both of these things and he switches genres. ( Read more... )

* * *
As annajaneclare said, WHAT THE BLOODY HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE

* * *
I cleaned out the downstairs cupboard today, which has not been done for 18 months. Went for a bath and when I got out there was a fuckoff massive cockroach on the kitchen floor. Which I SLEW with my mighty kitchen tissue obviously. I am now going to be seeing cockroaches out of the corner of my eye for the next year. I am so hacked off.

* * *
The five words meme. vivwiley gave me the following words ( 1. Travel 2. iPod 3. Books 4. Theater 5. Kindness )

Tags: ohfuckoff
Avoid me because I'm: grumpy
and listening to: QI on Dave

Episode 5 of Being Human is up on the BBC blog ahead of tomorrow's transmission.

It may well be the best hour of television I've watched this year, with one enormous caveat. If you're not watching this show, bloody hell, you should be. It's funny and ingenious and occasionally heart-breaking.

I'm afraid I can't really summon up enthusiasm for anything else. I've had a crap day and some bad news and, God, can I go back to work already? Next week can't come soon enough.

Avoid me because I'm: distressed

Dear anon, I am not sure how I missed it when I got back from up north, but many thanks for my shiny star. It is lovely.

• The finalists in the Diagram Prize for the year's oddest book title:
Baboon Metaphysics by Dorothy L. Cheney and Robert M. Seyfarth
The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais by Philip M. Parker
Curbside Consultation of the Colon by Brooks D. Cash.
The Large Sieve and its Applications by Emmanuel Kowalskiis
Strip and Knit with Style by Mark Hordyszynski (Alas, not naked knitting)
Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring by Lietai Yang.
From AP : Philip Stone, a sales analyst at The Bookseller, said choosing the finalists had been particularly difficult this year. "Six seems such a cruelly low number given titles such as 'Excrement in the Late Middle Ages' and 'All Dogs Have ADHD' were rejected," he said. Previous winners of the prize include The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification and People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It.

So to today's enthusiams:
• Cover Lay Down is a folk blog, which concentrates on two things: folk covers of familiar songs and new versions of folk songs. ( Read more... )

• Jon Hopkins makes tuneful ambient music. I came across him because he produced part of King Creosote's wonderful album Bombshell. He's also supporting Coldplay on their world tour. ( Opalescent )

• A meme, which I like: comment on this post and I'll tell you five subjects/things I associate with you. Then you post them in your lj and elaborate.

( dine gave me the following )

Tags: meme, music, tv
Avoid me because I'm: energetic
and listening to: Dennis Kucinich on Radio 5 Live

I thought I might talk about things you might like but might not have heard of.

( 1. Moses Jones )

2. The Lilac Time
The Lilac Time were formed by Stephen Duffy, who remains famous for three things
a) Being in one of the original line-ups of Duran Duran
b) This 1985 hit, Kiss Me, which was much-mocked for its lyrics. A little harshly, I think. It's very very 1980s
c) Co-writing most of an album with Robbie Williams before he completely misplaced the plot.
In between (b) and (c) he formed a group called The Lilac Time, who wrote folk-rock much influenced by Nick Drake and had pretty much zero success with it. They were the very definition of music press darlings whose critical acclaim never translated into sales. ( links )

3. Teddy Thompson
Last week I had the pleasure of going to see TT in Shepherd's Bush in the fine, fine company of ravurian, ruric, parthenia14, rhade_rad and some other nice people whose LJ names I don't know. He's excellent live and I urge anyone who sees him playing in their area to go and see him. He's very handsome, has a wickedly dry line in onstage patter and his band play like bastards. His website is here.( Links and a small amount of rambling )

( That Doctor Who casting spoiler )

I'm a little glum this week. It'll be the bowel-squinching fear of failure that's doing it.

Tags: dw, music, pimp, tv
Avoid me because I'm: devious

I have returned from the 20th century with estimates for windows! Four thousand quid basically, to which I laugh in a hollow fashion and say, "You wish, sunshine."

I went up north for three days to see my parents and then spent the evening catching up on LJ to the –200 point. I am now down to one shelf full of books and only the music I have on my iPod and laptop. All my CDs are packed and stored up north. I feel strangely bereft without books and CDs and DVDs.

I have to point you towards something completely brilliant. I've seen links to Spotify twice this week, once in the new OMM, and once in this month's Word. It switched from invitation-only beta to full service only seven days ago. It uses streaming and P2P to create a sort of iTunes of stuff you haven't actually bought (or stuff you have bought if you want), caching the songs to create a seamless playback. The libraries are huge and if you want the free service, you have to sit through a short ad every 10 songs, which isn't too painful.

I think this might change the way I consume music, simply because I can listen to full albums painlessly and buy them if I want or else only buy the tracks I really love.

Additionally, once you get a bunch of people on there you can swap playlists or make collaborative playlists. NOT THAT I AM HINTING.

I did a bit of spelunking to check how good the libraries are -- there's no Led Zep, Beatles, Pink Floyd, Metallica and other usual suspect refuseniks -- but otherwise it seems fairly decent. I checked my own personal criteria for obscurity, which is Ulrich Schnauss, Boards of Canada, Howling Bells, Rokia Traore, and it only really fell down on the middle two. There are lots of soundtrack albums and things you wouldn't usually find easily.

They need a better recommendations system but otherwise I'm having a great time with it. It already suckered me into spending money on iTunes for something I want to put on the iPod. (One caveat: I think it's northern European at the moment. )

This week, I think I am going to talk about one thing per day that I think other people should have a look at or listen to. Anyone else care to join a week of pimping?

Avoid me because I'm: awake
and listening to: Paper Planes, Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack

I posted a creative thing. It needed to be off my hard drive. Naturally I decided that the optimum time for posting, in terms of maximising one's readership etc etc, was to post at 3am on Valentine's Day morning. As one does. Feh, sod it. It is 11,000 words of a crossover between Doctor Who and The X-Files based on an unclaimed prompt from a ficathon I didn't take part in three months ago. No, I have no idea why either.
HERE: The Flexible Concept of Tomorrow, or Five Times Donna Noble Remembers Meeting That Bloke With The Stupid Name (and One Time She Doesn't)

I suck at titles. I'm sure I used to be good at them. Feh, sod it, Part II

I have to be up in six hours to talk to an Irish bloke called Vincent about fascia boards and skimming. My life is the ne plus ultra of excitement. And on Sunday I have to go up north and visit my parents. I need to write about the many ways in which Thursday was tremendous but maybe tomorrow. It needs links and playlists and I am knackered.

Oh, one last thing: this is a total shot in the dark but does anyone have a song called I Perceive Things by a Brooklyn singer-songwriter called Ish Marquez? I don't think he's signed, and I certainly can't find it on any iTunes or paid-for site. There's a torrent of demos but obviously that's completely naughty and I would never do that and the torrent is buggered. It's just that it's a completely *wonderful* song and it burns that I can't get my grubby mitts on it except by sparking up the hideous MySpace.

Tags: dw, rubbishness, tv:xf
Avoid me because I'm: awake
and listening to: The Price of Love - Teddy Thompson

If you can get BBC1, press the red button now. They're playing the concert with Elbow and the BBC Symphony Concert orchestra and it's wonderful

( A birthday mix for M )

and listening to: Let Down - Easy Star All-Stars & Toots & The Maytals

It is coffeeandink's birthday. I feel there should be celebratory dancing of some kind. Not by me, as that would be unseemly. Just general dancing.

Happy birthday!

and listening to: Wyrd Sisters - Sir Terry Pratchett

In contrast to every bugger else...

Today was meant to be the start of my sabbatical, a glorious month off work filled with nothing but books, tea, ringing builders, selling all my furniture and being mithered to death by my parents about making a start on the fabled home improvements.

Instead I am at work, because it proper, proper snowed last night. Unlike the usual faint covering which is generally a slushy, piddle-stained mess by 10am, London is all lustrous and white and filled with children shrieking with joy and bouncing off walls, parked cars and trees with excitement because school is cancelled.

No buses are running at all, which makes the streets look wrong. They and black cabs are so much a part of the way the city looks that when they're missing it registers

I can get in from where I live, unlike people who were foolish enough to go live somewhere nice and leafy like Kent. Being in has gained me lots of praise which makes me feel intensely uncomfortable, like the worst sort of swot.

The entire country (by which I mean England, not Scotland or Wales, because they are too sensible) has gone completely off its box because it has snowed, all proper like. We have access to a picture grid for the agencies here and there are 2,390 pictures under the search term "snow" just today. There are many pictures of dogs and foxes shagging in the snow, "to keep warm, nudge nudge wink wink", and at least three photographers would appear to have gone to their local zoo with the sole aim of taking a picture captioned "Arctic Monkeys".

Oh, photo agencies. Never stop being classy.

Avoid me because I'm: cheerful

I was watching The Railway Children 1970, Jenny Agutter and Bernard Cribbins edition, which is the one I grew up with. Wikipedia terrifies me by informing me that the boy who plays Peter is now 54. Good lord. I had never realised what a difficult life E Nesbit lived until I read this article from the Guardian.

I just watched Being Human on BBC3 and if that doesn't get a slash fandom the size of Merlin's in short order I would be astonished. I had avoided the pilot due to laziness, Toby Whithouse issues (I may have slightly hated a little bit the retcon involved in School Reunion) and then hearing that it had been recast so there seemed to be little point in seeking it out and having to get used to a cast change.

George, who is a beleaguered woobie werewolf longing for normality, shares a house with Mitchell, a vampire who is less reformed than he might be. They discover that the house is haunted by Annie, who has died in somewhat murky circumstances and remains deeply in love with her fiance. It reminded a great deal of a remix of Buffy, This Life and Ultraviolet, but in all the positive ways ( mild spoilers in as much as it discusses the premise )

An excellent thing:
Wuthering Heights by the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain



( I used to watch loads of telly )

Where is all the good fiction for my current fandom? I can't have read it all already. That would be disappointing.

Avoid me because I'm: nostalgic
and listening to: The Railway Children

Oh my God, go here.

It is the 404 page for b3ta. Some of these are HIDEOUSLY offensive and some of these are the funniest things I have seen in weeks.

And now I shall return to my ridiculous crush on Michael Sheen who has a glorious Welsh burr, messy hair and just told Miranda Sawyer, who talked about Laurence Olivier's process of building a character, that when he is building up a characterisation he "starts with the arse". I love you Michael Sheen. You, me, Guy Garvey and Barack Obama are getting married, right now. Some of you lot can join our polyamorous union as long as I don't have to do the cooking or the washing up.

( Milk )

And now The Culture Show is talking about The Wire. They have an interview with Ed Burns on writing the show and Generation Kill. Everyone at work is talking about The Wire. People are posting on the noticeboard about The Wire. M is lending out the boxsets like a crack dealer trying to build his market.

I think the universe is telling me to watch The Wire. I am RESISTING. RESISTING, I tell you.

"The trick is to make them people"

Goddammit, I am going to have watch the bloody bastard Wire.

Avoid me because I'm: awake
and listening to: Hard To Handle, Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain

It is not possible for me to have a bigger crush on Barack Obama, even if his inauguration did mean that I started work at midday and finished at a quarter to midnight. It didn't matter though, because it was all exciting and cheering.

Our office actually stopped dead for the moment when he spoke. I loved that speech. It wasn't high-flown or full of flights of rhetoric but it was a straightforward indictment of the fuckery of the Bush administration; a warning that the west cannot continue to eat all the pies and not expect some serious indigestion; and a straightforward plea to the Muslim world to be allowed a fresh start. I cannot believe how undisappointing he is. Where's the grubby compromise, the acts of distressing expediency? He didn't just close Guantánamo, he shut down all foreign prisons and called a halt to extraordinary rendition.

Obamaaaa. I loooooove you. Dear America, you win. You have the best leader. (Well, until you don't)

Work continues to be troublesome. Our current bet is that they will not replace the boss when he leaves because we're in the midst of budget cuts. This is all right until someone wants to go on holiday or gets ill. In the present situation we can't really do anything but be grateful that we have jobs that are decently paid and that we work for fairly decent people.

Big Boss continues to be very charming and demand impossible things. This is a tricky combination. It doesn't annoy me but it infuriates some of my colleagues. My dear, dear friend M sent me a text which consisted only of "[Boss] is a COCK" repeated ten times and I laughed so hard I think I strained something, which shows you how knackered I was.

And Britain's economy is in the toilet. My favourite quote last weekend was from an unnamed Cabinet minister who told Patrick Wintour of The Guardian: "The banks are fucked; the economy's fucked, we're all fucked"

Why thank you for that incisive analysis. I can tell why you're in the top seat.

Oh God. We're all so fucked.

Anyway, how are you all doing?

Avoid me because I'm: morose
and listening to: Guardian Football Weekly

It's not five times in one day if it's tomorrow here already. Oh, shut up. I have a question.

What kind of snack stuff could you get from an American vending machine in 1990? And how much would it cost? I need to know for science.

Avoid me because I'm: awake
and listening to: Grace - Jon Hopkins

So. Demons, with Philip Glenister, Christian Cooke and Mackenzie Crook

(  OH MY GOD, THEY DIDN'T EVEN FILE THE SERIAL NUMBERS OFF!  )

Avoid me because I'm: bitchy

( Three resounding whatevers! )

Avoid me because I'm: cynical

( Read more... )

And now my sod of a headache is demanding Lemsip and a trip to the shops for the Saturday Guardian. Adieu, until later.
At some point I will write about something other than a daft TV show.

Avoid me because I'm: sick
and listening to: Fading Glow - Jon Hopkins

I have decided to travel back to the 1980s. Yes, time travel. It's 2009, surely it should be possible to do that now.

In the super modern world of 2009, we have mobile phones on which irritating little tits can play terrible tinny music loudly on my train so where the hell is my jet pack? And my food capsules and my 3-D hologlasses which make me feel like I am tripping up the yellow brick road when I am in fact dodging pools of sick, drunks and crackheads in King's Cross? Where are they?
(Love the location of my new workplace. Post-industrial hellmouth is a great 'look', particularly at 10pm.)

I want time travel. I won't disturb the fabric of the causal nexus, I promise. No butterflies will be harmed in the making of this adventure. I won't even go and warn myself about the leopardskin pants or the first year of sixth form, no matter how tempting it might be. I just want to go back for a few weeks.

Since we're living in the pseudo-80s at the moment, I'd rather visit the real thing. Loud, flashy and shallow. Great music. Completely ridiculous hair. Irony hadn't been overused to such an extent that one desired to beat with a saucepan the next person who 'ironically' appreciated Love Thy Neighbour (I mean, yes, you wanted to beat anyone who appreciated LTN with a saucepan, but it wasn't because of irony). Politicians you could properly *loathe* in the knowledge that they weren't all like that, just the ones in power. These days, seems like they are all like that.

Back then there was economic misery too, and articles about cooking dead pigeons you found on the side of the road to save money and mending your shoes with sticky tape. Well, I exaggerate, but only slightly. And people from the south shook their money at people from the north at football matches, and Thatcher was doctrinaire, monstrous and magnetic, and I was dressed from jumble sales because my dad was unemployed for two years, which is not fun as a teenager. But it didn't matter because there were The Smiths and the cliffs at Flamborough; the Romantic poets and Spooky Wood; Edge of Darkness and the Who Dares Wins pandas -- and soon there were going to be jetpacks and moonbases.

* * *
Resolution #1: to read more this year
I've been rereading V For Vendetta as part of the 80s kick. One of the things I've been thinking of doing this year is rereading things I loved in the past and trying to work out why they worked for me, and more, *how* they work. If any of you know of any writing/review/meta of V For Vendetta I'd really appreciate a link. Or just your opinion of its strengths and weaknesses would be nice.

* * *
Resolution #2: Stop. swearing.
( little old lady swearing )
* * *
Resolution #3: To write more this year. If that means an LJ post about telly, so be it
I didn't watch the telly much this Christmas, and of the things I watched I loved best Blackadder Rides Again, though this might be because I wish it was the 80s, rather than this rubbish pseudo-80s we've got going on at the moment. ( Blackadder )
* * *
Resolution #4: No passive, unthinking consumption. That goes for TV, food and music
Two of the things I most wanted to watch this festive season were The Royle Family and Gavin & Stacey. I loved one and thought the other was total bobbins. Had The Royle Family been written by anyone other Caroline Aherne, would all the critics have scurried to praise it? Had it been written by someone like, say, Paul Mayhew-Archer, wouldn't everyone have been shocked and outraged and saying that it portrayed the working classes as stupid and feckless and ignorant and this was class war of the worst kind, yadda yadda yadda?

The jokes that worked were lazier retreads of ones that had worked before, or half-arsed lines that Ricky Tomlinson or Sue Johnston turned beautifully. The stuff with David Senior was a mass of tics and stunts, overplayed by Tom Courtenay, and there were numerous lines that wouldn't have made it into the first few series of The Royle Family in a month of Sundays. The reason that show worked in the first place was because it was beautifully observed and played with great naturalism. It was like sitting down in the front room at my gran's and listening to my mum's cousin Susan bemoaning her fate, and my aunties talk about [whoever] who is "no better than she should be" (a terrible slur) and who in the family was doing what scandalous thing and who had eaten all the pies. The Tv would be on, and there would be a tin of biscuits on the table and maybe the odd game of cards played for buttons, and all the jokes were funny because they were inside jokes.

At its best, The Royle Family let you in on its inside jokes -- and they were told fondly.

I am not sure who the joke was on this Christmas. Possibly the BBC, for paying Caroline Ahearne, Craig Cash, Henry Normal and some bloke I've never heard of to sully the memory of a great sitcom.

Gavin and Stacey was thirty-five minutes of decent material stretched into an hour and the main fight was too forced, but it stayed just on the right side of broad and ridiculous. However, inside the sad jokes about Mint Baileys, cooking turkeys and Do They Know It's Christmas, was a sad and intricate subplot about Smithy, Nessa and Neil, beautifully played. I wish they'd stopped after series two, but since they didn't, it wasn't too bad a way to carry on.

* * *
Resolution #5: to find out more about my family
Much to my surprise, my dad has been doing some geneaological research. Or rather -- typically for my dad -- he has found a distant relative who did the research and sweethearted a copy out of him. I now know my relatives back to the seventeenth century. 1678 is where the trail begins, in parish records.

I didn't discover any lost lords or privateers or intriguing mysteries. They were bare-bones-of-the-arse-poor fishing stock, scrabbling to live on the few patches of flat land on an island that looks out over the swell and howl of the Atlantic Ocean.

They only started to spread from their home village in the early twentieth century as a result of too many brothers and too little work. These are the names repeated through that history: Severin, Cornelius, Julius, Hans, Martin, Jenny, Borghild, Anne. And this is where I come from:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=gimstad&lr=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl
It doesn't even have a wikipedia entry, which I think is how we define the boonies these days. At least I come by my love of the sea honestly.

Avoid me because I'm: weird
and listening to: The Hurting . - Tears for Fears

And so happy new year to you all (I mean that in a cheery way, despite the mood)

It is no surprise to anyone, I am sure, to learn that not only has 2008 sucked but it will also last a second longer than other years. An extra second of a rubbish year. Why couldn't we have got an extra second of 2007? That was a pretty fun year. We were happily ignoring the portents of doom then.

In keeping with this year's personal theme of laziness and ennui and being annoying, I leave you with the worst earworm in history. Well, I exaggerate, but only a little. From the Sony Bravia advert, I give you a small gem of 1980s pop music
Sonic Boom Boy Westworld. Four minutes of irritating genius.
You can't get it on iTunes so I don't feel bad about sharing. I can't believe how long it took me to realise what it was actually about either.

Goodbye! Farewell 2008! So long! Don't let the door hit your arse on the way out!

Avoid me because I'm: fucked off
and listening to: Religious Song - Withered Hand