sheldrake

In retrospect, I think yesterday went downhill when I put the telly on to wrap my presents in front of... only I didn't wrap any presents, I slouched under a blanket watching Catherine Cookson's A Dinner of Herbs on UKTV History. Thank god my dad phoned to complain at me, or I might have watched Bugsy Malone as well.

This year's Christmas comfort reading is The Children of Green Knowe. It's working a treat. And now when I read it I remember the real house. Here's the website, if you want to go there. You can arrange an appointment, and Lucy Boston's daughter-in-law will give you the guided tour. It's very cool. You can touch the rocking horse omg!

A letter to Neil Gaiman's blog really made me cringe today. ...I told her that I don't have any brothers, just sisters, and that I didn't know the gentleman she had named, and that I was sorry. Ooh. Ouch. Not quite the same thing, obviously, but someone once contacted my cousin, who is a record producer, pretending they were me. It was during his brief period of being mildly well-known, after he worked with Madonna and had a record in the charts. I still have no idea who the person was, or where they got my name, or anything! Weird. Quite fun for me though, heh.

I like stories about really bad Christmasses, they make me feel better. Here's a sad little memoir by Will Self. The last Christmas we had spent in my natal home, two years before, had been distinguished by my brother and I having a stand-up fist fight in the street, smiting one another until we fell into the privet – a small suburban nightmare.

I recently subscribed to a bunch of writing-type magazines, in a moment of unbridled madness. I think the general idea was that if I spent enough time reading about writing, I could successfully avoid having to actually do any. Anyway, interesting. Some stuff is good, some is crap, which is a bit like life in general, really. Here is some stuff that occurred to me, helpfully bullet-pointed:

• Avoid anything with a picture of a fountain pen on it.


• Some guy says: 'Common pitfalls [of writing short stories include] - Not enough characters. Two characters are not enough: you need three so they can have a relationship.' WTF? I say again, WTF?? Other common pitfalls include having 'too many characters'. Genius. Mind you, this guy thinks that 'a story is about the problems people face and how they overcome them'. Ah. Right.


• Incidentally, the above article ends with the intriguing non-sentence, 'In the end, the problem is'


• I love this classified ad: 'Looking for new topics and new characters? SciTalk can help, with its free easy-to-use database and website of enthusiastic scientists who would really enjoy talking to you. Browse the topics now and arrange to meet.' What is this, some kind of bizzare writer/scientist dating organisation? That's almost as good as Llama Speed-Dating (which is a real thing btw, you get to meet the man/woman of your dreams while walking a llama up a hill.)

It occurs to me that not much of that was stuff that occurred to me, it was just stuff. Anyway, putting the magazines down for a sec, Neil Gaiman has posted pics of the novel he is currently writing, all in its pretty little notebook, and I thought it was rather a fun thing to see. :)

Also: they threw another rock through the bus window! Before I got on this time. The driver had to stop to kick the bits of window out into the road.

Right, that'll do for now.

This isn't really about anything. I just wanted to use that subject line. I found it on eBay.

I HAVE DAYS OFF NOW!!! Can you believe it? Actual days off! HOW COOL IS THAT?

Well, well, yet another fancy dress party coming up. Oh God, will they never end? (Fancy dress party thrower, if you're reading this - that was sarcasm. I love dressing up.) So yes. I went to the last one as Tonks from HP, and my wig, it was tres pink. Who shall I be this time? Because there's nothing I like more than attempting to explain which obscure character I am to a bunch of people who neither know nor care what I'm talking about, I thought I might go as Death from Sandman. But then I thought, actually, I am too fat. So then I thought maybe I could go as Despair. But then again, she is awfully naked and fangy. So now I'm thinking I'll just go as a short, fat Death.

Oh yes, and we got broadband, and it is fast and it is wireless, and lo, it is good.

Now, I could go on to talk about my growing SGA obsession, but it occurs to me that my loyal readership might not be getting quite the right impression of me. I mean, one could hardly blame you if you were to acquire this image of a silly little dumpy, geeky person, stumping around the town on her stumpy dumpy little legs, unable to buy boots that fit around her calves. Whereas, in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. In actual fact, I ethereally beautiful, sophisticated and dignified. I'm also incredibly cool.

I have to go away now so I can do something extremely cool, sophistated and dignified.

Did LiveJournal go away for a while? That was a bit scary. *twitch*

So. Saturday! Yes. I just signed a petition, and I know that online petitions are, by and large, about as much use as a wet rag in a gale, but this is for a very important cause. It's to get A Bit of Fry and Laurie released on DVD. You can sign it here, although it doesn't seem to like Firefox much.

dandywalker is evil. He made me eat a cheeseburger last night, when I wasn't even hungry. He forced me to. It was terrible.

I've been looking at old sketchbooks and things this morning, and frankly, I'm not terribly impressed. I was trying to make myself feel better because my drawing skills have deteriorated so much, but a) I fear they weren't that good anyway, and b) I'm apparently too lazy to document and archive my work properly, so I don't seem to have very much left. Which is kind of sad. I sort of have an idea of something I'd like to do, but I don't know if my skillz are really up to it. Whatever I do, I know it won't live up to my wild and tingly imaginings, but I should probably try anyway. Just cos, you know.

Ok, we appear to have ventured into extreme rambling territory now.

Other stuff includes the following:

I have been developing some mildish new obsessions, mainly in order to combat the extreme sense of boredom and frustration engendered in me by Ordinary Working Life, and Getting on Buses, and Buying Sandwiches Every Day and Stuff. Firstly, I have been hanging round eBay and Amazon like it's the end of the internet tomorrow. I probably should stop doing this, but I just really like spending money on shiny things.

Secondly, and in reverse order, I have been swallowed up, masticated thoroughly, and chomped into tiny, tiny bits, by Stargate: Atlantis. By which, of course, I mean the fandom rather than the show itself. Because the fic, my friends, is bloody great. And this leads to all sorts of inarticulate musings about fannishness and fic and so on, because I'm always doing this the wrong way round. It was the same with the X-Files. See, I'm basically in it for the slash, and then that makes me want to see the show to find out what they look like, and where this reference came from, and so on and so on, and omg, they really do do that - I thought Anon McFicwriter made that up! And I do end up enjoying watching the show, because of the fic, and my watching of the show enhances my fic-reading. One feeds the other. But I almost certainly wouldn't bother watching SG:A if no one was writing great fic about it. Hmm. Anyway, I should do some recs or something.

Ah, but now I must contradict myself, because thirdly, I have been displaying some disturbingly fannish tendencies. I have suddenly discovered Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. Yes, when it comes to being late to the party, I like to arrive when there's nothing left but beer cans full of fag-butts and a few suspicious stains. Hm. But anyway, um, yes, perhaps I need to feed the inner goth I never knew I had. Because, oh, Dream! He's just so ... broody and annoying and cool. Sigh. I'm up to World's End, and my favourite so far is Brief Lives, which I found oddly moving. I like the guy who's lived for fifteen thousand years, and then gets killed when a wall falls on him on his way to work. And he says to Death, "Fifteen thousand years. I did ok, didn't I?" And she says, "You got what everyone gets. A lifetime." Er. And, anyway, while there is much more to say, I think I feel like stopping writing now.

Ok! Stupid rambly post over! Yay!

I'm not doing NaNothing, and I can't be bothered to do a proper post about Pilates and Neil Gaiman and World Events and Lotrips On The Radio, so I'm going to compromise and type a bunch of nonsense straight into my journal.

***

People, thought Exterior, were glinty. Glinty and pointy and uncomfortable. It didn't like the way they poked their sharp elbows all into everything, their glinty pointy eyes and noses glinting and pointing all over the place. When they opened their mouths they sprayed nasty little droplets of saliva into the air, and the vibrations from the backs of their throats scraped harshly at the atmosphere.

Tonight, Exterior was wearing a short orange dress and a peacoat knitted from the hair of Persian cats. Its feet and lower legs were sucked into slightly shiny boots made from the skins of dead things, and there was a small machine gun pinned to its chest in the form of a brooch. It caught its reflection in the darkened scullery window as it crossed the patio and tilted its head so that the shiny plastic wig and the white planes of its face shone in the fake moonlight. "Adequate," it thought. And then it thought, "She." It must think of itself as a she.

She gave her card to the butler as she entered the house, smiling up at him shyly. Her white arms stared up at her and she was temporarily amazed. "Miss Liddle," said the butler. "The other guests are in the drawing room. Let me show you in."

"Thank you so much," said Exterior. She touched the wallpaper in the hall with her fingers. It was soft and the raised pattern was slightly velvety. When she was sure the butler was looking the other way, she turned her head quickly, and licked it. It tasted interesting. Unusual. Not great though.

***

There. Wasn't that fun?

I have been eating new Cadbury's Snaps. They are good. They are definitely good, and yet everyone I've spoken to on the subject has said the same thing - we want them Pringle-sized, and we want them packed into a tube, like Pringles. Basically, we want them to be chocolate Pringles. The fabulous hyena-based adverts do rather imply that they are, in fact, chocolate Pringles, which is misleading.

Stuff I read today that struck a chord

From Neil Gaiman's journal:

Half-way through Election Day, feeling stressed-out and irritated, I decided to take my own advice (from the Harvey Awards keynote speech earlier this year):

As a solution to various problems you may encounter upon the way, let me suggest this: Make Good Art.
It's very simple. But it seems to work. Life fallen apart? Make good art. True love ran off with the milkman? Make good art. Bank foreclosing? Make good art.

[...]

The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before.

David Mitchell on what he learned from the process of writing Cloud Atlas (link from lobelia321)

I learned that art is about people: Ideas are well and good, but without characters to hang them on, fiction falls limp. I learned that language is to the human experience what spectography is to light: Every word holds a tiny infinity of nuances, a genealogy, a social set of possible users, and that although a writer must sometimes pretend to use language lightly, he should never actually do so -- the stuff is near sacred.

That said, I am currently writing nothing and making no art. Instead, I am spending money on things I don't need. Yay!

I do rather wish I'd stayed up to watch the Oscars last night. I'd say it was nice to be slightly awake today, but as I've spent the entire day procrastinating for England, I feel as though I may as well have been asleep. Still, highlights are on later.

The Windowsill of Kitsch is getting out of hand. galactic_jack and dandywalker are currently at loggerheads over which of their seperately-purchased cereal box toys is the kitschest. The wobbly moose with intriguing skin disease? Or the alien with the slidey mono-eye? There's also a pair of tiny plastic shoes on a string. I fear it will all end in tears.

I enjoyed Neil Gaiman on The King and I today. Haha, he said Mary Sue! And, incidentally, linked to this rather interesting post on the Mary S phenomenon here. You can sort of see how the procrastination progressed, can't you?

Some pimpage:

lobelia321 has set a challenge for her Manly Men list.

troy_rps, yo! Come on, get going now and you could be a BNF by teatime!

Also, it's Self Injury Awareness Day today. Some links for anyone who might find them helpful, gacked from foreverdirt:

Her own very sensible post on the subject, and another by fox1013
The National Self Harm Network
Self Injury: Information and Resources
The American Self Harm Information Clearinghouse

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.

This is an advertising supported journal. Scroll down for dull rambles.

***
Looking for a tryst, Sir, Madam? A fling? A fumble? A quick snog in the back seat of a clapped out Mini*? Well, search no longer. I'm cheap, available and good value for money. Call 1234 567890 after 6pm Tuesday to Thursday, and ask for Madam Instant Whip.

Prices: Quick Snog - £3.50; A Bit of a Go - fiver; Full On Tryst - seven quid.

*Please provide your own clapped out Mini.
***

( A disturbed night )

( Music and writing (dull) )

In other news
-- The nurse was very, very lovely and did not hurt me in any way.
-- I wish Sean Bean did voice-overs for all the adverts.
-- Everything's suddenly stopped working around here! My bloody phone won't let me delete any old messages, so how is anyone supposed to text me, hmm?
*throws stupid phone across room*

ETA: loads of italics, cos I bloody love 'em, I do.

Stuff I stole from Neil's blog:

( Neil laments the unfairness of elf ears )

***
( Neil embraces the National Curriculum:  )

Stuff Neil's blog reminded me of:

Martin Millar and The Good Fairies of New York
The Magnetic Fields
Heath Robinson

Other stuff you can learn about if you read Neil's blog:

Cannibalism
Digoenes
How to fold a cat into a drawer
What to do with a dead woodpecker
A guide for people going to book signings
Lobster Newburg
Neil Gaiman and his lovely books

So read Neil Gaiman's blog. It will enrich your life!