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I'm not really present, generally, because of how suckalicious my life is right now, and so, so, so much of that is due to the trainwreck that is the macintosh OS. I'm no huge fan of Windows. It has a lot wrong with it. But having now worked with macs for a year and a half, Windows is starting to look like a marvel of software engineering.

I'm forever hearing that macs have a nicer user interface.

okaaay This would be the nice interface that does its level best to make me move my hand from keyboard to mouse twice a minute?

The one that thinks being able to use a fucking menu from the keyboard is a special accessability mode and doesn't have automatic direct jump shortcuts to individual menus unless you create each one, for each application, individually, by hand, instead of just automatically having them there like that mean old Windows interface?

The one that physically cannot let me see the menus for two different applications at the same time?


I'm forever being told that macs are more reliable and safer.

okaaaay This is clearly some new meaning of safer with which I'm unfamiliar. I suppose it is keeping me safer from data theft to simply randomly remove various subdirectories from my account periodically, like say, 100% of the material for one of my classes, unlike those careless Windows machines that only delete files when I tell them to.


The one that can't handle a usb drive being unplugged without being "ejected" (which takes three minutes and is frequently cancelled because it is "in use" by one of the zero applications open at the moment) and teaches me a lesson by destroying all the data on the drive, unlike that immoral Windows that doesn't even care?


My first-year students write code with less bugs than this OS.


Let me repeat. The entire directory for one of my classes. Just gone. While I was in another room, not using the machine. I came back and there were files from those directories still open. I made a change and saved, and was informed there were no such directories to write to.


This has been a theraputic spewing of venom. Thank you.

tears hair. rends clothes. goes back to recreating material from the backup drafts on my Windows machine.

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oh my fuck.

The Eye of Argon is now complete.

Okay, the addition has nothing to match "lithe opaque nose" but at least, at last, it is over.

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There are exactly three over-the-counter medications that ever do me any discernable good. Pepto Bismol chews settle my stomach without themselves being so horrid as to make me throw up anyway. Excedrin Migraine makes the pain rather more bearable, if I take it the first moment I feel one is oncoming. And Dayquil/Nyquil really does ease the drippy nose, can't breathe, coughing, achy misery.

Everything else just makes me sick to my stomach, if it does anything at all.

Unfortunately, during my current bout of lurgi (much less miserable than the last), my reaction to Dayquil/Nyquil has moved from "Oh sweet baby Moses on stilts, that tastes vile," to, "Well, I hope I absorbed some of the drugs from that in the minute and a half before I brought it back up along with my lunch." And this particular sickness hasn't otherwise been particularly stomach-related, while I know I've taken Dayquil in cases where it was, and not thrown it right back up.

This is the price I pay for my uniformly blissful reaction to vicodin, etc., isn't it?

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Just read Anansi Boys. It was pretty good.

I liked it better when Peter Straub wrote it and called it Mr. X though.


Yeah, yeah, okay, nobody argues louder than I that if you give two writers the same ingredients, if they're any good you'll get two completely different stories, and these two books are one example of how true that is. And that's cool. I generally like reading lots of different versions of the same story (I will read as many Blue Rose books as you are willing to give me). But so much similarity does invite comparison, and Anansi Boys suffers by it.

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Okay, so, I'm a bit deaf, and I had my headphones on, so for a minute I was under the impression that the man who came up to me while I was grocery shopping was making polite conversation, or asking me where the paper towels were or something, and simply didn't understand me repeatedly telling him that I didn't speak Spanish. And I am a well trained creature so when he reached forward to shake hands, I shook.

And he grabbed my hand and started stroking it.

Language barrier or no language barrier, I think it cannot have been remotely unclear what I meant when I (effortfully) pulled my hand away and said, "Please don't do that." He grabbed my hand again and started stroking it. I fled, feeling terrible for being so rude as to turn my back on someone while he was speaking to me. He followed me around, grabbing for my hand every time I stood still.

This kind of thing happens to me a couple times a year. Every time it leaves me confused and upset. The men doing it are uniformly relaxed and cheerful.


Also, I keep seeing men, with a complete lack of self-consciousness, spitting in the street -- during conversations, while walking with their families, any old time. This really shocks me. Nobody else gives it a second glance.


The extent to which I was raised by wolves and remain incapable of assimilating into normal society cannot be accurately measured by modern science.

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Dumb Brain: Tomorrow it will rain and I wanted to go to Octubafest and WOE.

Sensible Brain: There will still be Octubafest. You just need to take an umbrella.

Dumb Brain: But it will not be sunny and just right for lemonade and funnelcakes and I will get damp and things will be imperfect. Woe.

Sensible Brain: Angus H. Prune, take a valium or something. You could go see a movie, since there's actually movies you might like to see, which happens roughly once every other year.

Dumb Brain: But it will cost money and the seats are uncomfy and I hate movie theatres. And I wanna go to Octubafest and spend money on arts and crafts.

Sensible Brain: Aargh. So, go then.

Dumb Brain: But I already spent too much money and if I spend more then a year from now I will be homeless and starving and it will be my own fault. Woe!

Sensible Brain: Trepanning looks better every day.

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If you send me email from a particular address, asking for information, but when I send you the information it bounces back to me with the message that you're no longer reading mail at that address and if I were important enough you'd already have given my your alternate contact info? I cease wanting to be helpful.


The mail lady has reached the point where she recognizes me as that chick who got, at a rough estimate, a metric assload of packages in the past two weeks. It works like this: Amazon tells me something I've been waiting for has come out. It isn't quite expensive enough to qualify for free shipping, so I add on one of the list of cheap dover books I keep for such occasions. Then Amazon decides to ship parts of my order separately, so the two items come in separate boxes. Meanwhile, ten minutes after I confirmed the last order, Amazon announces that something else is now available.

And I also got a Dark Crystal lunchbox on Ebay. Because it is of a cute that could kill a small rhino.


Also, the hardest thing in the world to grade is the assignment where only one person in the class did exactly as I asked them to, and finished everything and got it right, and the rest were varying degrees of feeble.


Also, have now read most of Stovold's MC Almanac, and hereby demand that Graeme Garden go write more total silliness right this minute, dammit.


Also, my brother is now employed. And there was much rejoicing.


Also, sleepy bye-byes.

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I give thanks to the great architect of the universe that however miserable and pointless my life gets, I can still concentrate on the things that matter: very old television and my giant killer attack libido.


Dear Tim, Graeme, and Bill,

No commentary on Earthanasia?

cries. a lot.

I mean, why not a commentary on all the episodes? They're short. And nobody cares whether you remember behind the scenes anecdotes for everything. Just keep sitting there heckling yourselves. I'd certainly pay more for it.

I still love you with a love that is more than a love,
Pest.

p.s. If it were not for the fact that Graeme is clearly about ten years old, I would be unable to believe the Broaden Your Mind footage is from the late sixties. It's a hell of a lot clearer and more vibrant than most of the footage in shows being put out today. (she says, pretending she has watched two hours of tv in the past six months).


meanwhile, timlegs. DVD quality timlegs on a sizeable screen. gleep

Other Observations From The Day
- Want a glowing ebay feedback from me? Here's a tip: don't send my package by bloody registered mail. Because once I find a time during the twelve minutes a day the post office is open that I'm not teaching and can go stand in line there and then they go off and rummage in the back and tell me, oh no, they decided to try to redeliver it (then why in hell did you leave me a note saying I could pick it up?) and since I'm not home to sign for it, being as I'm at the post office, they cannot possibly leave it with the rental office like any package sent in a sane way, so I can pick it up tomorrow, and if I don't they'll count it as too many attempts and send it back, I'm not particularly well-disposed toward you. I'm sure most of your other customers are agoraphobics and/or medically housebound, but please have some mercy on those of us who have jobs and cannot sit at home all day watching for the mail lady.

- Students don't love the divide and conquer closest points method like I do. This is sad, because this algorithm is as cunning as a long, involved, tortured, circuitous similie about something particularly cunning from Blackadder.

- When somebody uses a sports reference to explain something, I don't just glaze over right away anymore. I actually instate a retroactive glaze from the moment I met them. Then I just sit there and think about something more interesting, such as whether to paint the cieling beige.

- Some people get more done when they remove all possible distractions and work in a clear, simple space. In the abscense of other distractions my daydreams just get more elaborate. Also pornier.

- My hormones announced this morning that they want a male transvestite with a baritone voice and they want him now and if these demands are not met a disaster beyond your imagination yadda yadda yadda. Yesterday it was Warwick Davis. Some people have a 'type.' I appear to have a random number generator.

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gives amazon.com lots of money in reward for finally sending me my book after two months

gives amazon.co.uk lots of money, as me ordering direcly overseas seems to be a hell of a lot faster than amazon

gives a certain amount of money to grocery store for fancy cheese, and pumpkin roll

gives remaining pennies to people on ebay


On my stereo, Tim Brooke-Taylor is singing The Funky Gibbon to the tune of Hey Jude.

I am the richest woman in the world.

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Grar, world, feel the blazing fury of my femmy rage.

You've heard me rant on this before. But it seems to be one of the few things that not everybody in the world is also ranting about, rather better than I am.

I've got long hair. I almost always wear makeup and jewelry. I wear skirts at least half the time. I never wear heels shorter than an inch and a half if I can help it. I sometimes paint my nails. I am so, so sick of people telling me that I do all this to manipulate men and please the patriarchy because I haven't learned to have self-worth as a human being outside my appearance.

To please men? Jesus ben fucking Joseph, do you know how hard it is to get me to do something I don't want to do? I buy new bras just to avoid doing the laundry. And I'm supposed to be doing things to please some vague amorphous subset of humanity? I don't even do enough things to please the people I know and love.

I do things because I like them. I think long hair and jewelry are pretty. I like to look at them. I like them on me. I like them on boys. I like them on girls. I like them on people whose gender I'm not clear on. I'd probably like them on small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.

I've never met any of the alleged feminists who hate all men and think all heterosexual sex is evil and think women should get our own continent. I rather suspect they may be mythical. But I've met an awful lot of feminists who think feminism consists mostly of despising anything traditionally associated with women.

The fact that you never liked any of that stuff does not mean that it is therefore unnatural for any other woman in the universe to like it. It doesn't mean that you've overcome the brainwashing that poor dumb me fell prey to. It means that we. are. not. the. same. person.

Your preferences and opinions may be based on doing the opposite of whatever you think men want you to do. I'm too hedonistic, too self-absorbed, and altogether too lazy to care about what anybody else likes or doesn't. Some things give me pleasure. I try to get more of those.

And because I'm too busy being hedonistic and self-absorbed and lazy, I have no interest in convincing you that just because I like something you should like it too. Because I pretty much think that we. are. not. the. same. person. so your preferences are none of my business. Until you start shoving them in my face and telling me they make you a better woman than I am.

I like crocheting lace, and swordfighting, and shopping for clothes, and math, and cuddling babies, and taking apart electronics, and dresses made of velvet and lace, and tromping around the woods with a big dog and getting all dirty. And I damned well will not apologize to you or to anybody for anything that gives me pleasure. And I damned well will not apologize for anything that doesn''t.

I will not apologize for enjoying human adornment. I will not apologize for enjoying a good proof. I will not apologize for disliking pink. I will not apologize for being able to sew. I will not apologize for being able to write shell scripts. I will not apologize for being repulsed by insects. I will not apologize for enjoying porn, being dominated, or orgasms in general. I will not apologize for finding sports less interesting than watching paint that is already dry. I will not apologize for wanting to fuck Portia di Rossi, Alan Cumming, Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Praed, Hugh Laurie, or Eddie Izzard. I will not apologize for wearing eyeliner, or lipstick, or perfume. I will not apologize for not waxing when I don't feel like it. I will not apologize for being delighted by small children. I will not apologize for writing technical papers. I will not apologize for giggling.

Because neither you nor I should ever apologize for the fact that we. are. not. the. same. person.

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surprisingly satisfying

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The fabulosa Te has found a really interesting article on the development of the pill.

In pagan circles, to say you're on the pill will inevitably bring on a torrent of "Ooooh, how can you disrupt the beauty and joy of natural menstruation though evil artificial means developed by Western Doctors?"

(Western Doctors are to many pagan women what Satan himself is to the Pope.)

They'll tell you that, oh, yes, they experience pain and bloating and mess, but they celebrate this, and of course the pain will go away if you just accept and love your body.

This whole burning witches business does have some things to recommend it.

If you celebrate ten to fifteen days of losing control of everything from the nipples to the knees, changing a tampon every hour during the day while relying on "overnight" pads as backup, and sleeping on a folded beach towel in case you don't wake up often enough in the night, constant diarrhea, constant aching in alternation with stabbing pain every few minutes, blinding migraines, constantly craving the richest foods you can think of and then immediately vomiting them back up if you do eat them, while feeling all the while the kind of emotional hangover as if you'd just had a terrible fight with someone you loved right before they died, and being unable to remember anything you don't write down from one minute to the next, all while being expected to handle your every day life and being sneered at if you even mention you might be having a problem, well then, enjoy, and more power to you. But if that's natural, then you can stuff natural up your ass, because I'm going to stick with bearable living through chemistry.

The pill narrows this down to seven days, only the first three of which are really dreadful. And it turns out the presence of those is purely an artifact of the effort to reconcile the Church with the idea of the pill. My insurance won't spring for Seasonale, but someday maybe a more sensible pill will be the standard, and I will be one step closer to my lifetime's dream, since the age of nine, of never having to deal with this stupid shit again.

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have been struck down by lurgi all week and only just now recovering -- and thus in that lovely state where you can more or less breathe freely, but when you talk sometimes your airway suddenly blocks itself, causing not only a spasm of panic across the face in mid-lecture, but the strange addition of a glottal stop to the word "implementation."

Thus neglected to post about the teenage brawl that occured immediately outside my front windows (sometimes within inches) last weekend, and resulted in four cop cars appearing on the scene. A brother and sister were arrested and forced into a cop car, screaming and struggling. I was . . . shocked. I've never seen humans behave that way except on television.


A girl in one of my classes announced loudly that she couldn't understand people who couldn't lose weight, since she'd lost the 25 pounds she once gained, and all she did was run. Because going back to a lifetime's low-calorie, active lifestyle after a few months hiatus is exactly like changing the entire perspective on food and physical activity you were raised with. I bet she also thinks "eat right and exercise" is a statement with non-zero information content.


My ISIHAC desktop wallpaper brings me an unseemly amount of joy. Every time I see Humph apparently gazing in contempt at the window I'm working in while Graeme reads the A-Z upside down, I bwee like a bwee-ing thing.


In the process of moving some files around, I rediscovered my Egon/Janine love. And was forcibly reminded how perplexingly few E/J stories there are (possibly somebody is hiding them from me) and that the number of really good ones is within epsilon of nil.

If I ever write one, it will be the soppiest thing ever. When you've carried an OTP around since the early eighties, I think you're entitled to get sentimental.

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Season forty-five episode seven!!!!oneoneinterrobang!!1!

I am dead from sick. I got maybe ten hours of sleep all week. There are a zillion things I really need to do semi-now. But as soon as I finish sucking this thing down, I'm going to plug the stereo into the computer, crawl into bed, and die happy. If Graeme sings one song to the tune of another, I may die of happy.

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My upstairs neighbors either have the cleanest floor or the biggest vibrator on the face of this earth.

Just thought you should know.

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my alarm clock: meep-meep-meep! It is fuck-that-shit o'clock.

me: Someday I will build an entire dungeon just to house the torture chamber I'll use to torment my alarm clock to death.

me (yesterday): made breakfast ahead of time, put out clothes, and packed bags

me: Yesterday Me, I love you with a love that is more than a love. buys doughnuts, muffins, cupcakes, and cookies

first class: We already had breakfast, thanks.

me: ... so the chimpanzee starved to death through trying to eat flathead ants with a phillips head stick.

first class: We think you're serious. Either that or we've never seen a screwdriver in our lives. But on the whole, we look to be a decent group.

second class: We already bought lunch, thanks.

me: ...it's an abuse of terminology, but they can't touch you for it.

second class: We have already decided you're boring, and can't hear a word you say.

me: beta tests first lab

first lab: seems to work

this: is almost surely a vile deception only to be revealed when the kids try it tomorrow.

me: works on more stuff

brain death occurs: At exactly 4:48pm.

me: comes home

me: has package, including tea and fancy tea infuser thingy.

me: does snoopy dance. falls over

6pm: is my new bedtime

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icons, characters, alphabetize, pair up, baaaa

Ace / Annie (Buffy) --
"I'm a young woman with a disturbing passion for offensive weaponry and an inappropriate relationship with a much older mentor figure."
"So am I."
"Let's have the sex!"

Delerium / Frodo --
"I used to be pretty and happy and sweet, but then the weight of the world fell on me and I kinda lost my mind."
"Me too."
"Do you ever get the one about the giant eye watching you?"
"And it goes bounce, bounce, bounce, and then the aqueous humor squirts out all over and there are fishies swimming in it!"
"Instead of having sex, let's both take our medication, ok?"

Gandalf / Giles --
"At the end of a day of herding silly young fools through dangers unnumbered, an old spell-caster like me likes to have the sex."
"Me too."
"I'm not sure I'm up to the beard though, to be honest."

Prince John / Oscar the Grouch --
"Everyone says I'm filthy and stinky and have a bad attitude."
"Me too."
"And they're right. Let's not have the sex."

Sam Gamgee / Sappho / Seven --
"I married a girl and had six zillion kids, but also obviously had a thing for my male employer."
"I'm so gay I changed the meaning of 'Lesbian' but I also allegedly fell for guys."
"I look like a man, but many people argue I'm not even gendered."
"This is going to be the most apocryphal sex ever."

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Prof 1: You've got to see show X! It's by the guys who did Seinfeld, which I am under the erroneous impression is some kind of recommendation.

Prof 2: Have you seen movie Y? It's awful. And the Director's Cut was even worse.

Me: (You watched the Director's Cut why?)

Prof 3: I am shy and a bit awkward, so I'll talk to the unthreatening girl professor. So, do you watch a lot of TV?

Me: Well, I'm always kind of behind. I'm still working my way through the Goodies.

Prof 4: (is new, and English) An American who knows who the Goodies are?

Me: (is smug)

Various Profs: What're the Goodies?

Prof 4: Well, there are these three guys who'll do anything...

Prof 5: Oh, like Jackass.

Me: (Please god let me die before I catch up with television from now.)

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Me: woe. woe... life is lonely and sad. woe. woe. I wish I could meet people. Why doesn't anybody talk to me? I'm not asking for anything exciting. Just your basic social contact.

My Neighbor: Hi.

Me: Hi. (OMG conversation! I'm talking to people! yay! whee!)

My Neighbor: I believe that street performers have godlike powers. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? They really do. It isn't possible that they can do those things physically! You know what I mean? You know what I mean? You know what I mean? I will now describe every trick I have ever seen and demand that you explain how it could possibly have been done, if you're not going to agree that they are powerful and inhuman. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Also, my opinions about computers pretty much outweigh anything you may have researched in graduate school, because I have the penis. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? You know what I mean?


Me: gnaws off own leg and crawls away two hours later.

Me: I want to live under a rock. On an uncharted island. On Mars. With Graeme Garden. All alone forever and ever and ever.


I blame you, friendslist. You fooled me into thinking people were, by and large, too fab for words.

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Wait, what? Semester? Nooooo...

Had to go on a web fast for a while, because things were just getting silly. I mean, there I was, compulsively checking friendslists twenty times a day and wasting hours that I could have been using to do something constructive... like compulsively listening to twenty isihac episodes a day. There was also the whole Cannot face getting out of bed because Life is Scary thing.


Just saw all of Battlestar Galactica up to 2-05 and it was interesting and exciting and President Wossname is my new girlfriend, la la la... and my urge to write fanfic here is less than zero. (Of course, perversity of the world -- now I've said that, I'll wake up tomorrow suddenly full of the need to write poetry about Baltar or something.) This is a pretty rare thing for me. Usually if I like a show, I immediately want to write lots of fic (none of which I'll ever finish). Hell, usually I don't even have to like the show. My "what happened next?" switch is permanently jammed in the ON position.

On the other hand, there are, at last count, forty seven fics that I'm meant to be getting around to. By which I mean fics that I still think of as being current works in progress, as opposed to the several hundred I've more or less resigned myself to abandoning. I'm starting to understand what drives people to drowning puppies. The urge to stuff the Leela/Romana, the Claudius/Herod, and two or three of the more sickly Jeeves/Woosters in a sack and throw them in a river is undeniable. But that would barely make a dent.

And then today I had this idea about... ohgodkillmenow


Let us not even discuss the non-fan fiction currently eating my brane, in which the prince and the wizard seem to have decided that, as long as their relationship is sufficiently fucked up, shagging is an adequate substitute for plot.

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Indulges in extended fantasy in which she teaches all her classes next semester in the manner of a stroppy Kenneth Williams.

Imagines the looks on their faces.

Enjoys immensely.

The trouble is, I have now learned, through hard experience, that I could come in and tell knock-knock jokes for fifty minutes and they would think I was deadly serious.






Knock Knock. Who's there? Sam and Janet. Sam and Janet who?

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I'm a great believer in Google. I firmly believe that All Knowledge In the Universe resides in four places: r.a.s.f.c, my friendslist, my father's brain, and Google. The ability to google for any scrap of information has changed the way I live totally.

It's really rather weird to remember that there was a time when, on finding a reference to some historical figure, or musical style, or space-age polymer that I'd never heard of, I'd just frown a bit and wish I knew what in hell they were talking about. Or, if it sounded particularly interesting, I might think, "Oh, I'll have to look that up sometime," or, more usually, "I'll ask Daddy about that next time I talk to him." [1]

Now, it is the work of milliseconds to type the offending term into the search box and Learn All. (It then being the amusement of hours to websurf thence through a chain of tangentially linked ephemera until I have forgotten not only all that I'd learned, but the subject I was researching as well, but that is point-adjacent.) (True, there are ever more "websites" designed specifically to defeat the usefulness of Google, content-free files of garbage (euphemistically referred to as "advertising") that use various of the all-important high df low cf terms in random combinations and make the range of third to thirty-fifth results of any search a barren wasteland of uselessness, but we have a year or two before these outnumber real webpages ten to one.)

And so it is all the more irritating, frustrating, maddening, and in fact bewildering when Google actually fails to deliver the goods.

Things Upon Which Google Has Stiffed Me Lately

* The MST3K episode in which one of the bots supports wears a tee shirt saying something like "NATURE FUND" which is actually the acronym for the much longer name of the group (which may have itself been an acronym for something even longer).

* Stephen Fry's Desert Island Discs list. I know I read this on the web once. Apparently it wasn't actually on Desert Island Discs, because he isn't listed on the BBC web page for the show, so it was in some other kind of interview.

* Whether Tim really did an episode of Wife Swap or if that was just to set up the microwave joke.


[1] There are many who smirk at the fact that I call my male parent "Daddy" at the advanced age of ahem. In fact, people have on many occasions been quite rude to me on the subject. My response is that "Daddy" is the name under which the gentleman was first introduced to me, and, barring a request for a change in nomenclature from himself, I see no reason to alter. I have been known to use the nickname "Da" (pronounced with two syllables) when in public, to avoid the aforementioned rudery, and this has mutated, in its occasional usage by my brothers, into "Dar."

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Unregenerate!: My exclamation point is not too twee for words.
Mel: I'm rather fab, really, but we need more Ace and Hex stories, stat, because Dreamtime sucked.
Seven: Weird ........pauses and strange ......... emphasis of......... pointless lines. Inability to overcome ........ feeble "crazy" dialogue.
Klyst: I was given this part because I was in one of those really bad Peter Cushing "Doctor Who" movies. Which is a pretty lame reason. But this in no way diminishes the fact that I am fantastic and sound like Zoe Wannamaker.
Rausch: Does Godwin's Law apply to fiction?
Louis, Rigan, and Klyst: Surprise, we're... what it was obvious we were all along.
The Cover Art: is for great yay.
The Title: was apparently chosen out of a hat.
The Story: was really pretty good, but suffered from the expectations set up by the totally unrelated title.



Brax: If this show had tv-style credits, I'd have the Tony Head spot: "And Miles Richardson as Brax." Because I'm just that fab.
Time Lords: Plot and politics, politics and plot. Plot, plot, plot. Politics, Politics, Politics.
Romana: Help, help, I'm being posessed.
Other Romana: It was all a plot from the very beginning!
Leela: Let's use the K9's to solve the problem. It will keep them out of the way.
Romana: Good idea. You're very clever and beautiful and wonderful... ahem, for an ignorant savage.
Leela and Romana: bicker. bicker.
Romana: Let's go on vacation together to work on our relationship. And let's get into these devices that make you dream that your deepest desires are being met.
Leela: What is this writing on the side? It says . . . "Standard slash plot device #384."
Romana: Well, we've already gone camping...
Leela: This machine doesn't work. I am not having a dream, I have just woken up into a weird dreamlike landscape. I don't see the obvious because I'm an ignorant savage. What's your excuse?
Romana: Let us never mention that what each of us got from the Deepest-Desires-o-Matic was intense intimacy with each other. Now let's get back to politics and plot.
Leela: This man has been hideously disfigured in ways that keep us from identifying him. I haven't figured out that means he's probably someone we know, but I'm an ignorant savage. What's the rest of the cast's excuse?
Darkel: I am evil incarnate. It's fun.
Romana: Leela is my savage alien bodyguard. She savagely guards my alien body. I sagely arouse her good body. No, wait... In conclusion: savage alien bodyguard.
Andred: I'm your husband.
Leela: Ex-husband, you personality-free creep.
Brax: Would you like to take advantage of my giving-debilitating-migranes-to-ex-husbands service? I'm very good.
Andred: Why did you marry me in the first place?
Leela: I wanted to get close to Rodan.
Time Lords: Plot and politics, politics and plot. Plot, plot, plot. Politics, Politics, Politics.
Wynter: uh oh.
Darkel: mwah ha ha.
K9: I can so too be used in serious scenes. Listen to this.
Romana: eww. just, eww.
Leela: You're declaring me the what? Are you trying to incite riots?
Brax: uh oh.
Darkel: mwah ha ha!
Pest: You bitch!

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Have now listened to all (almost 40 seasons) ISIHAC I have. Which is sad enough, but I was using the 90's episodes of ISIHAC to put off listening to the last couple seasons of ISIRTA. When those are gone... cries

Meanwhile, I would pay so. much. money. to see The Importance of Being Earnest with Tim as Lady Constance Bracknell.

Also (and here I speak as a person with a lifelong aversion to facial hair of all kinds, particularly sideburns) Graeme should have kept the fuzzy chops. You know how when people who wear glasses first take them off there's that 30 second period when their faces look all incomplete and naked? Without the sideburns he always looks like that.

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This may or may not be satire. I really can't tell.

A Kid: By giving me a liberal arts degree you have knowingly doomed me to a life of poverty and starvation! Take back my degree! Take it back!
A School: Um... no.

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Tim: [to the tune of Danny Boy] Rah-rah Rasputin, Russia's greatest love machine...
Pest: ...
Pest: ...
Pest: squeebly glee

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Tim's aforementioned Svengali-like powers? Entirely explained. Those are some seriously mesmerizing legs. I'm not a person who particularly notices legs, as a rule, but once they were pointed out to me . . . um, wow. Even if there weren't a hundred other good reasons to stick Tim in a dress at every opportunity...

Also, I hate avi files in pal format. None of my media players really comprehends them, so though with some adjustments I can watch them, I can't pause or rewind and watch a scene again without going back to the beginning. My great annoyance, it should be made clear, has absolutely nothing to do with any desire to stare at the appendages of any person for extended periods with a glazed look on my face.

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Humph: I like to dress up in a frock.
Willie: Captain Kirk whispered fondly to Spock.
Graeme: But when beamed up by Scotty.
Tim: He emerged minus botty.
Barry: And never got over the shock.




Meanwhile, they clearly have all learned that nobody ever lost an audience by being cruel to Tim Brooke-Taylor.

I find Tim's Svengali-like powers over the audience somewhat alluring scary. I mean, two lines, and he's trained the audience to lose its mind over "woof" for thirteen episodes.

And Graeme has just made a crack about old jokes, which is a bit rich and quite creamy, mmm.

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I knew 'Zeus lives in our blender,' wasn't a good sign.

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John Cleese: I've got a ferret sticking up my nose. Worst of all, it constantly explodes. 'Ferrets don't explode' you say, but it happened nine times yesterday and I should know, for each time I was standing in the way...

Pest: glazes over All is right with the world.

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This week's ISIHAC: lacks Graeme

Pest: sulks

Pest: realizes this means there'll be another Graemeless show this season

Pest: sulks harder

1977 rerun of ISIHAC: subjects Tim to a completely unfair game of strip poker

Pest: dies. of. glee.

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Pest: Well, obviously, they should just tow the whole country outside the five-mile limit.

Graeme: Tries to tow whole the country outside the five-mile limit.

Pest: Loves him so much.

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watches bad wolf

vibrates at a frequency that gives dogs headaches

watches trailer

(ignores the lame "twist" at the end)

rocks back and forth behind sofa holding plush cybermat

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No idea why, but...

Announcer: Colin Sell is at the MP3 player and your chairman is Humphrey Lyttelton!

HL: Hello and welcome to I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. We're here again broadcasting from Livejournal. A unique opportunity for intimate knowledge of complete strangers . . . is something our lovely scorer Samantha knows a thing or two about. If you'll be kind enough to click on her signature below, I'll introduce you to our teams

( .)(. )

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Have glimpsed Tim/Graeme theirlovesowinsatmorningtoncrescent. Can sink no lower.




Meanwhile, since installing greasemonkey I keep reading my firefox weather forecast thumbnails as:  "Saturday: thunderstorms.  Sunday: rain.  Monday: rain. Tuesday: partly cloudly.  Wednesday: monkey heads falling from the sky."

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loads canned goods and yacht batteries into bunker in preparation for oncoming slashpocalypse

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The Algonquin have a word for people who don't eat their vegetables. They call them brocomico, literally, "skinny rabbits." I think we can all learn a lesson about nutrition from this.

The Germans have a word -- derchoochooklokengut -- that means trains that run on time. I think we can all learn a lesson about traffic calming from this.

The Americans call the furniture we store books on shelves. I think we can all learn a lesson about literacy from this.


The lesson is: Appealing to a foreign lexicon does not constitute an argument.

It may provide convenient vocabulary for use in debate. It may preface interesting historical and sociolinguistic arguments. It may be simply a decorative digression surplus to the actual discussion. But it does not make your point for you.

Most of the time the word is taken from american aboriginal culture (preferably an extinct tribe) which is, of course, ancient and mysterious and more spiritual than 'us'. Asia is very popular too because those inscrutable orientals surely must know something we don't.

Whoever is chosen, the implication is that they have some mystical knowledge we lazy, self-indulgent english-speakers are unable to grasp. Or a primal understanding of the world that comes from the savage, primitive innocence we civilized people have lost. So their very language must be imbued with a wisdom on all subjects, and if a subject is important enough to have its own word, then that word will convey enlightenment on the matter.

Plus, it is implied, since you know this foreign word, surely you must either have really done your research, or you must be really really smart.

Also, if you happen to have an english translation of the literal roots of the word then that must communicate the very essence of the matter, and your spin on it must be definitive.

Which is all just a permutation of the fallacy of appeal to authority. And since fallacy obviously has the root "phallus." I think we can conclude that people who rely on this tactic to make their point for them are all dickwads.

In conclusion, I would like to bring to your attention the Bantu word for useful, reasoned argument: they call it urthlojik. Which proves, without a doubt, that I should be given lots and lots of money cookies kittens Gillian Anderson.

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Dear Vocal Readers With Brains,

I like you, I really like you. I especially like you when you're demolishing some sad bint who thinks she's a writer but hates writing so much that she won't do it unless somebody pays her.

But you have got to let go of this "cliche" thing. Now.

Everything is cliche. No exceptions. All plots are cliche. All characters are cliche. "Turning a cliche around" is a cliche.

By shrieking "Cliche!" every time you see something that has been done once before, or looks like something that was done once before if you tilt your head and squint and use your imagination and are on drugs, you've changed the meaning of the word. Cliche now means "not so world-shatteringly novel that it actually kills the reader within seconds."

But even if we were still on the original meaning of the word, I think it's time you engaged your sexy, squishy brains and realized that a cliche plot/character/whatever is about as detrimental to storytelling as owning a cat: the potential for real disaster is there, and yet a vast majority of writers seem to handle it just fine.

If a writer can't take a plot you've seen umpteen times before and turn it into something engaging and memorable and entirely her own, that's the writer's fault, not the plot's.

thank you for your attention
-pest

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I left doctorwho recently. I have no interest in conversation with people who have explicitly said that the whole point of a show that has run for 150-odd television episodes, 70-odd audio stories, 200 or so novels, plus comic books &c, is that the main character has never had a single sexual thought.

Really. That's not just something we have no canon evidence for or against. It's the whole point of the show. It's not about time travel, or space travel, or history, or good triumphing because evil keeps double-crossing itself, or blue boxes. Doctor Who is a series about an alien not having sex.

Of course they have good reasons. Remember such classic episodes as "Doctor Who and the Daleks Don't have Sex" and "The Sexless Ones" and "Not A Double Entendre From Space" and "City of Abstinence"

And of course, there are all those wonderful scenes like the one where Two tells Victoria about how his family sleeps in his mind and reassures her that there are no wet dreams involved. Or that Tom Baker line: "I'm a Time Lord, I don't have sex in eternity." Or that bit from Seven: "Somewhere else the tea is getting cold. Come on Ace, we have sex not to engage in.

Or possibly these people are bugshit crazy.

I mean, I'm ambivalent on the whole Doctor-having-sex thing. Sometimes it's interesting to explore in fic, but I certainly would prefer not to see it happen in canon. But if all you got out of "The Sunmakers" or "Frontios" was, 'a man didn't have sex, again,' then you are a) a little too obsessed with sex yourself and b) a drooling cretin.

Especially if you also believe
a) that fanfic has the voodoo power to warp established canon
b) that fanfic about X amounts to an argument that X has happened in canon
c) that fanfic can hurt you if you don't read it
d) that if fans talk about sex, the show must immediately become NC-17
e) that if a character ever has a sexual thought, he will immediately start schtupping everything that moves

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I haven't been posting a lot of fic lately (do. tell.) except for some drabbles. This is because, except for some drabble-sized ficlets, everything in my head these days wants to be in a novel.

Note the distinction: not to be a novel, but to be in a novel. Everything requires the long-term structure of a novel to make it work without being plot sufficient to support the novel in turn. I am a verdant field of B-plots.

Pat Wrede does this really good bit about short stories and novels, where she talks about Cinderella-goes-to-a-rock-concert. In the short story, we only pay attention to the main road between wanting to rock out and overcoming the machinations of the Evil Roommate with the help of the Fairy Godfather. In the novel we get to meander down the side streets of dealing with the Fairy Mafia and wander into alleys to watch the Evil Roommate's power struggles with the Equally Evil RA and pause at a rest stop for Cinderella to briefly chicken out before finding her resolve and getting on with the head banging. (I'm probably using different details than Pat does). Anyway, I'm just doing the side bits.

Out of this have grown various novelish plot-like life-support systems for the B-plots that, despite being totally unworkable, are more coherent and reminicent of actual plot than anything I usually get. I am charmed and excited. I break them down, give them cute chapter headings, summarize, draw little diagrams. This is weird and new -- usually I just start in the middle and write until something happens (which frequently it doesn't).

I plunk the bits I've already written into place. I write more bits. I even write some bits that aren't actually porn. I start filling in the bits in between.

The bits in between kick my ass.

The bits in between require me to win a land war in Asia, bring peace to the middle east, and/or invent cold fusion. To use a plot conflict easy enough for me to solve, one side or the other has to be stupid, because otherwise they'd have solved it already.

I abandon ship and move to a new fandom where I am deluged by new plotbunnies that can't survive without a novel as a respirator.

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the famous eccles: Hi.
fandom: omg best Doctor evar!
pest: meh
ten seconds pass
the famous eccles: B'bye.
fandom: you bastard! how can you abandon us? all is lost! worst Doctor evar!
pest: meh.

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Dear Citizens of the World,

I believe it is in the best interests of everyone concerned that I bring the following facts to light:

- "literally" is not an intensifier. 
- grading sucks.
- Barry Letts cannot write Blakes 7 for shit.
- stealing an hour of sleep from my weekend is a bad idea.
- I am ready to stop throwing up and go to sleep now.

hope that clears things up,
-pest

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Dear lj community pan handlers,

I have no problem with posting this stuff in your own journal. That's totally cool. But posting a begging letter in a community and claiming it seemed okay because it's "kinda related," or just because you're "such a big fan," or because you "wanted to give you guys the opportunity," makes. you. an. asshole.

I do not want to buy your fucking lame cafepress merchandise, I do not want to read your fucking lame vanity press novel, I do not want to listen to your fucking lame garage band, and I do not want to subsidize your fucking lame amateur film.

I'm not going to buy your ugly-ass ipod cozies, I'm not going to buy your ugly-ass baby hats, and I'm not going to buy your ugly-ass one-skein scarves. Not even if I a) didn't know you were working a 2000% markup and b) couldn't make a better one myself in 15 minutes.

I'm not going to paypal you "just a couple bucks" because you can't afford that new DVD boxed set, I'm not going to paypal you "just a buck or two" because you can't afford to go to that con, and I'm not going to paypal you "just a dollar" because you want a faster laptop. I don't care that if "everybody just gives a dollar" nobody's really giving much up. I don't owe you a dollar. I don't owe you a fucking ha'penny.

I mean, pop-ups and banner ads and spam and click-throughs weren't enough, so you had to contribute a little bit more idiot advertising?

You officially make the internet suck.

no love,
Pest

interior: cranky

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And In His Turn
by merripestin

A cold lump of hunger sits low in his belly and thirst is giving him a headache.  He is tired from their long sneaking run across the forbidden scrubland outside the dome and despite their claims about drugs his mind seems no clearer.  Nor can he find any hole in his memory that this woman Dayna might fill.  Kerr Avon knows perfectly well who he is.
 
A week later he is a convict on a ship of criminals, his future a barren lifetime sentence.  He wants freedom and he would kill or die to get it.
 
The circle snaps closed.

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DEaR saInT MaTthEw's cHURchEs,

I hAve YOur vALuAble QuAlITy pAPEr PraYEr RuG 'soaKeD WitH tHe POweR OF pRAyEr.' If YoU WAnT tO SeE It AgAIn, yOU WilL StoP SeNdINg ME sHiT.

nO LOVe,
OcCUpAnT

Ps: HINTs FrOm helOIsE SaYs yOU cAn UsE bAKiNg soDa AnD vINeGar tO gET PrAYeR OuT oF CArpEtS. hOPe THat heLpS.

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There are some things you cannot get away with in fic. A "shining fall of waist-length dark hair" is one of them. I have waist-length dark hair that's reasonably shiny, and even I don't buy it.

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I went looking for B7 fanfic. I happened across this site with a long schpiel about why slash is a bad idea. My fave quote:

I know of people who have been turned off all fanfic because the first piece of fanfic they read was slash . . . it makes me furious thinking about the loss to the fan community when people get turned off fanfic because of these stupid mistakes.

Because, the reason people get turned off fanfic is that their first exposure to it tends to be slash, not that their first exposure tends to be crap written by semi-sentient sugar-crazed morons using a tortured pidgin of leetspeak and fangirl-Japanese. No, it's the -slash- that's the problem.



So, anyway, what I want is something longish, with Avon scheming, and then getting wounded and suffering a lot, snarkily, and all that turns out to be part of the scheme, but then it all goes pear-shaped for some reason that does not even tangentially involve somebody stupidly dropping a teleport bracelet, and then Vila opening lots of locked things and nearly saving the day, but fumbling at the crucial moment forcing Avon to sacrifice an innocent and mildly sympathetic minor character to get them out of there. Suggestions?

I hate getting drawn toward luddite fandoms where 97% of the fic is mouldering out there in paper-only fanzines. It means I'll end up moving on to the next fandom PDQ, and I'd quite like to look at Avon and Vila for a while longer.

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Dear certain segments of fandom,

Me not liking something you like a whole bunch? Is different from me beating up your sister and raping your dog. Also, I am not a super-powerful joy vampire who can magically suck out all your pleasure in something just by me not liking it. Also, there is a difference between "there were parts I didn't like" and "it is radioactive waste and I will kill anybody who liked it by voodoo," which seems to be all you are capable of hearing.

And I have had it right up to the tits with you snootily declaring that it must be that I had the "wrong expectations" or I didn't go in "wanting to enjoy it." You may go through a whole routine of gearing yourself up and deciding your level of enjoyment beforehand -- that's certainly how it looks from here. But me? I sit down, open my eyes, and see how it feels. Sometimes it gives me joy, like dark chocolate with hazelnut cream inside. Sometimes it makes me go, "oh for fuck's sake," like Voyager. I don't get to choose which one it will be based on what will annoy you most (though if I could I think I might).

-pest


Meanwhile, am in the middle of Blakes Seveny goodness, hee. I mean, okay, Tarrant and Dayna couldn't be less interesting if they were played by small tasteful throw pillows. And Cally keeps having to be The Woman, which is a sucky thing to be in late 70s sf.

But Vila and Avon are my two favorite characters: the blundering, flawed smart-ass who's actually twice the man of most of the alleged heroes standing next to him (cf. Ray Vecchio) and the complete git who is snarky and self-serving and heartless and cruel and absolutely fucking right (cf. Lacroix).

Also, they're overusing Servalan; I mean, yeah, she's really really nice to look at, and she's sick and wrong in a lot of fun ways, but see too much of her and you're back in that same old Robin Hood trap: every time the Sherrif of Nottingham shows up, he has to lose, and every time he loses, he's a bit less intimidating. Especially if there's no Guy/Travis to take the blame for fucking up.

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( Rose Spoilers )

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dearpo-ETS,

WHEN youuuread      your
po-eeeee-treeee
with. total ly-ran DOM
PAUses aaaaand     emPHAsis
it mmmmmm-akesyou
sssssoooound     LIKE     a
comPLETE shhhhh     itwit.

nnnnnnol ove,
Pest