sheldrake

This thing wot I am downloading is taking too long. :(

Anyway. I've been watching Season 1 Buffy this evening and thinking about Doctor Who (yes, this is pretty much how my life goes on a day-to-day basis) and I suddenly thought, ( it occurs to me that pretty much everything I might think of to say about Doctor Who from now on will be something of a spoiler ) And then I thought, no. That would be both ridiculous and unpleasant.

I was going to say something else at this point, but I forget what. I shall go to bed.

Just a few things I've enjoyed recently.

Mark Haddon (author of 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time') in the Observer, on writing for children and adults.

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Fic:

Dom and Billy and the Trainwreck of Angst by circe_tigana

Cee's ...and a happy home and its companion piece, where, when you go there (Viggo, Orlando, OFC)

I'm sure everyone with an interest in that sort of thing will be reading it already, but shaenie's The Only Way Out is Through [WIP, previous parts linked from part 10] is classic dizzily addictive angst-smut delight of the first order.

The perfect movieverse Starsky/Hutch -- Love American Style by ladyjaida

Big Rock Candy Mountain: Five things that never happened to Andrew Wells by Basingstoke

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Not fic, but I always find myself wanting to mention ineke's posts, because they're so often wonderful and entertaining and fascinating. So I'm just reccing the whole journal.

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... and hugs to those on the flist who may be in need of them.

Er. If you should happen to find yourself no longer on my friends list, um, sorry. It's not because I think you're horrible or anything, it just got to the point where I was so desperate to get to the bottom of the page, I wasn't actually reading anyone's posts. So, I kind of went through it with a strimmer. Don't take it personally.

Hm. I thought my copy of Belle & Sebastian's 'Boy with the Arab Strap' album had magically got all better after being fucked up by being left on the floor for a long time. But it has just proved me wrong in the middle of Seymour Stein. Ah well.

Saw Kill Bill last night. I loved it! Wow. And I've never been the biggest Tarantino fan in the world. Lot of blood though. Lot of blood.

( Moaning about TV programming and English usage )

You may get the idea from this post that I haven't done anything of great value recently. And you would be right.

I'm having a bit of a holiday. I wasn't meant to be, but then the sun came out, and so I've been pretending my house is a hotel, and spending a lot of time outside in our patch of concrete garden, pretending it's a balcony, and that the traffic noise is the sea. This is helped by the fact that every few hours an open-topped tour bus goes past, complete with amplified commentary. I've been trying to learn local history from it, but so far have been unable to make out anything due to distortion. I have, however, turned an attractive shade of pink.

I haven't bought any books lately. Well, except I bought two, but I bought them in WH Smiths so it doesn't count. My philosophy is this: WH Smiths is not a proper bookshop; it's just a stationery shop that happens to sell a few books. So buying books there doesn't count. The books I didn't buy were Good Omens (because of people talking about it, and it being there in front of me suddenly, and well, because Neil Gaiman) and Holes by Louis Sachar (because of people talking about it, and it being there in front of me suddenly, and because, as lobelia321 pointed out, it does have a lovely lizardy cover.) Anyway, so those are the books I didn't buy, in any real sense of the word.

Speaking of Neil Gaiman, I had a dream last night that I was mentioned on his fantastic blog. Admittedly, he was a kind of composite person in this dream, made up of himself, Martin Millar, and Andre Schneider (no, I have no idea either), and the blog was less a blog, and more a magazine designed rather hideously in pastel colours, but it was still a bit of a disappointment when I woke up and realised it wasn't true. Although it was a relief to realise that, if that was just a dream, then so was the thing about a tiny alligator coming out of the tap, growing to an enormous size and chasing me up the stairs.

Speaking of Martin Millar, he is a nice man who answers emails from fans, and it's a disgrace that his earlier books should still be out of print. So there.

Note to self: For God's sake, will you please stop starting new stories and finish at least ONE of the old ones? Please! Thanks.

Naughty hjartadhas been trying to make me write My Fair Lady Lotrips AUs and songs for Boromir to sing in the LOTR musical. It's just a good thing she writes things like this, that's all I can say! ;)

Am also rather happy that Six Feet Under is back on the box of televisual excitement. Yes. It's helping me with my ongoing frustration with BBC2, and its strange reluctance to show Buffy, ever, if it can possibly help it.

I've been eating a lot of apples lately. Uncharacteristically healthy of me.

And I'm sorry I didn't put any of this behind a cut, but that's life, so there you go.

I have started watching EastEnders again. Curse you, Alfie Moon; you and your cheeky, lovable Cockney ways! *shakes fist* Ok, hjartad, I eat my words.

I must pimp kestrelsan's fine new thingummy - a lovely page of links for The Dark is Rising fanfiction.

In other news, I seem to be spending most of my time lately wishing I could wake up properly, and/or go back to sleep. When I'm not doing this, I'm battling unsuccessfully with my newfound addiction to troika slash. Ahhh, cute little murdering super-villains!

And look! I made a Billy icon!

It' s so difficult trying to be a Buffy fan in England without access to non-terrestrial TV channels. This week BBC2 woke up and remembered it was supposed to be showing Season 6 (it kept forgetting and showing snooker and football and battling robot type shows instead). At this rate, we might even get to the end of Season 6 before my pension comes through. Yay!

Also, I wish I wasn't addicted to reading spoilers.

Now. I've just got to do some work.

Have given myself the day off from being productive in any way at all. Admittedly, this decision was rather forced on me when I accidentally stayed in bed all morning. I then had the happy idea of sprinkling cinnamon on my coffee (nice once in a while, even if you wouldn't want to do it every day), only I accidentally tipped rather than sprinkled and it was really rather over-cinnamonny. I think I prefer my coffee to taste of coffee, really.

I was really tired last night, after a stressy day, but I had to stay up until one in the morning to watch the repeat of Buffy (we're still in Season 6 in this here backwater), which I missed on Thursday because of my evil job. I tried to tape it, but the video was obviously having an off day - it said 'Noooo, I don't think so...' It wasn't the best episode ever, but still, I find myself hovering over those great lines of dialogue like a magpie, wanting to pick out the shiny ones and take them to my nest. Or something. It's like being a kid in a sweetshop. A kid and a magpie in a sweetshop. A kid and a magpie in a sweetshop with a bull, who's saying, "I'm bored. Can we go to the chinashop now?"

Er... yeah.

So, after drinking my disgusting coffee, I wandered over to CTB to see the fun. Ah, nothing like a whiff of battlesmoke in the... early afternoon. La la la. One thing I wondered though. Why do so many people seem to believe that there is somehow a different set of rules for writing about sex than writing about anything else? That when you write smut, you can start writing badly; in fact, you probably should write badly. Why should making someone feel sexy be any easier, or demand a lower level of skill, than making someone feel sad, or frightened, or amused? Personally, I find it more difficult to write about sex than anything else, which is probably why I don't do it very often... :)

( Corrections and ammendments )