merripestin's livejournal

and now for a public hating

2005-11-15T21:51:49Z

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.

enthused barbarians, arise and celebrate!

2005-10-29T21:34:31Z

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.

sex and drugs, except without the sex part

2005-10-17T20:18:42Z

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?

Anansi Boys

2005-10-17T19:40:08Z

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.

bays at moon

2005-10-09T04:35:01Z

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.

of two minds

2005-10-08T03:16:21Z

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.

nothing, really

2005-10-07T04:39:06Z

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.

comes home, falls over, sticks in dvd, dies of graeme doing muppets

2005-10-04T03:40:03Z

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.

who wants to be a millionaire

2005-09-30T00:53:58Z

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.

I float as the clouds on air do, I enjoy being a girl.

2005-09-29T02:52:02Z

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.

bubbles, bubbles, thumpy thumpy thumpy, bubbles

2005-09-28T23:52:30Z

surprisingly satisfying

yeah, with the gynecological TMI, and you can just scroll if you don't like it.

2005-09-22T16:04:34Z

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.

bits and bobs and allsorts and crumpled up tissues

2005-09-19T05:00:16Z

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.

thank you Edinburgh Fringe

2005-09-10T22:34:59Z

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.

vroom

2005-08-31T00:42:12Z

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

Just thought you should know.

merripestin @ 2005-08-29T17:36:00

2005-08-29T21:36:14Z

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

I memed. I have no excuse.

2005-08-29T21:24:02Z

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."

highbrow ivory tower academic discussion

2005-08-25T00:08:34Z

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.)

that'll teach me.

2005-08-23T03:16:48Z

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.

are there animals that hibernate in the summer?

2005-08-21T06:55:03Z

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.

Dijkstra is a cult. People were always saying, Dijkstra, you're such a cult!

2005-07-16T05:10:38Z

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?

Things Upon Which Google Has Stiffed Me

2005-07-15T18:52:52Z

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."

recent big finish - Unregenerate and Gallifrey season 2

2005-07-06T08:42:43Z

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!

produce more entertainment for me dammit

2005-07-06T06:48:35Z

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.

It's like a scarlet letter, omg.

2005-07-04T20:39:30Z

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.