Humans vs. The World

In Flanders fields no flowers grow:
The poppies, too, are dead.
The weathered crosses sag askew,
All larks have long since fled.

A desert burns where it was green,
The sky is bright and bare.
This Global War-ming none can win,
We've poisoned sea and air.


This made one in two test subjects laugh. I'm slightly worried about that....

Have not fallen off the face of the Earth. Nor off any other part of Terra's anatomy, come to mention it. Still on limited net access, though, so, in brief:


I have a new job! Putting up with nonsense from the Recurring Temp Job was finally rewarded, as they now mess me about on a contracted basis.
This may be considered good news. Mostly.

I have found somewhere to live, which is just as well, as my parents are handing over the keys to their flat tomorrow. Most of my stuff is there; books and clothes are unpacked (priorities...) and everything else is still piled in boxes. I will have to face it all after work tomorrow and get the place fit to live in. Or at the least, get everything off the bed.

My sister has moved to Oxfordshire. I miss my niece.

...I think those are the main points.

PSA

A open note: due to an unfortunately protracted house-moving, I will lose my home internet on the 29th, and have no idea when I will get it back.

So if you need my attention for any reason - before next Tuesday would be a good time to tell me so.

So, Any Dream Will Do - I will never after tonight believe that the Cabbage Patch Doll knows what he is doing. (Er, Andrew Lloyd Webber, that is. Dad came up with that a couple of weeks ago, and it stuck.) Not that I had much faith left by this point in the contest anyway, but really, the judging criteria seem to get weirder by the week.

How, after the number of times Ben veered off tune - and that's just tonight, forget his previous disasters - can he possibly be a better potential leading man than Craig, who is admittedly a poor actor, has hit his vocal limits and simply does not have it in him to improve any further, and is a bit bland to boot, but can at least carry a damn tune? Which is rather the point, no?

I called it weeks ago, and now that we're down to the semi-finalists it's pretty damn clear that only two of them count, and one of them isn't quite right for the role of Joseph; Lee might as well be given the dreamcoat now.
Although someone ought to offer Keith a different role, because he was born to perform; I want to have an opportunity to go and see him sing live in the future.

Saturday night is going to be boring after it's over.

#
Oh, and for the record? Tonight's Doctor Who didn't totally suck. I'm looking forward to part two, in fact; maybe it's connected to the fact that several of the guest stars are stealing the show.
Martha is brighter than Rose - which is not hard - and does not drive me to verbal sniping every five minutes, but I find her a bit boring, so overall only a small improvement.
I don't think I like S3 so far any better than I did S2. I have given up expecting to ever love new Who; merely liking it is difficult much of the time, and I still miss Christopher Eccleston.

I wish the show would stop cannibalizing itself; it can't be that hard to find new different plots. Not when they tend to be such stupid plots anyway. ( Possibly a vague spoiler )

Saw a snake today, and finally understood a description I read years ago, in the Pentecost books by W. J. Corbett, of a "snake with orange earmuffs." The shade Corbett used may be an exaggeration of the markings, but I love the image - and it's definitely of a grass snake, like this one. (Once again: yay for Google's image search! It would have taken a lot more work to get that information out of our branch library's somewhat limited reference section.)

I'd been for a walk with my parents and the Storm Goddess, and just as we left the park, we saw the snake heading away from us, across the hot tarmac, in a quick, ripply motion - no idea where it thought it was going, but it didn't seem like a good idea; that area gets used as a car park, and a lot of dogs come through there too. (Funnily enough, on the same walk we'd already seen what we at first took for part of a cast skin. Dad picked it up and looked at it, and then passed it to me, and my first thought was, "Uh, hang on, that's too heavy..." and then when I looked inside one end there were little bones in it. Thanks, father; you give me the nicest presents! It was only a small piece of the total length, and we didn't see the rest of it; we don't know whether it could have been attacked by a predator or if perhaps it had an encounter with the ride-on lawnmower they use in the park. Not a good sign for the live snake, either way.)

It was small, about eight or nine inches long, and it didn't have the black markings down its sides that most of the photos of Natrix natrix show, but the collar markings were unmistakable. After we all stopped to look at it, it headed straight into our shadows, and then skulked down beside my father's shoe, trying to hide from the sunlight; when he moved, it managed to slip under my sandal, and curled itself up, completely hidden.

It's a long time since I've felt that lucky. It's a little absurb how trusted it made me feel, to know I was standing there with a snake sheltering below the arch of my right foot. So I felt mean when I uncovered it; with its body looking flattened and malleable, as though it could fit through and size or shape of cranny that it cared to. I could see it breathing, a small section of its length expanding and contracting. We didn't want to leave it there, so I tried to slip a book underneath it so I could take it back to the grass, but it just coiled up more tightly; Dad lost patience, picked it up by the tail and carried it back into the park. I hope it found somewhere safe to hide.

This was precisely the kind of day when one ought to have a digital camera. I would have liked a picture of it to show my brothers; can't be helped.

Okay. I admit it: BPAL really is an addiction.

I emptied most of my collection out of its box last night, while trying to find three particular imps for a swap, and - good grief, it's hard to believe I've been collecting for less than six months. I can't have worn more than a fifth of the scents I've acquired, either.

I am banned from buying any more BPAL, starting now, and lasting at least until I've tried the majority of my hoard. Making that resolution public is the only way I'll stick to it, so here it is.

I think I'm about to get really into swapping, next...

A swap/sales post will be posted before the end of the week, should anyone be interested in keeping an eye out for it.

In Japan, they have recently released garlic seafood Pringles.

I just thought you should know.


^{(See? See? Browsing eBay totally counts as research!}

Mph. Just thinking aloud, here, with unconnected dots; feel free to ignore.

Wikipedia on Pale Fire

Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences.

Nabokov, Pale Fire

Dowling on the identity of the narrator in Pale Fire

Brian Boyd's foreword to Nabokov's Blues

Shade and Shape in Pale Fire; by Brian Boyd - I want to read more of his work. I'm not sure yet whether I accept this theory, but it's very interesting, and nicely argued.

It wasn't at all relevant to what I wanted to find out, but how could one not love this? Kickshaws and Motley - if, in an academic essay, you can make me laugh at your footnotes, you have just gained a fan.

It's a long time since I've been this desperate to hang on to a library book a little longer, but Pale Fire has to go, as someone else has requested it and *cough* it's already several days overdue. I think my brain is telling me it's past time to find a course of some kind to sign up for. I miss studying.

Oh, and this, which I'm committing to memory as a marvellous example of ways in which one should not approach literary criticism: Arrogance and stupidity in one package; how efficient!

Comtinuing the evening's musical theme and lack of content....

All but one of my CDs are over at my sister's house; naturally it was this week that audiography came up with a theme I couldn't resist - colours. I'm mostly limiting myself to the songs I think might not appear on the comm otherwise; I know I've been beaten to The Beatles and Nina Simone, among others.

My computer is slow and cranky, so I won't start uploading the lot unless there's some interest - please do ask if there's anything you'd like!

Never Saw Blue Like That Before, Shawn Colvin (which, I note, is not available on any of her albums). And her cover of Killing the Blues.

Black Boots, Paula Cole (and it may be more of a stretch, but Chiaroscuro as well. Oh, and Carmen.)

Crimson and Clover, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. Simply because I love it.

Black & White, Sarah McLachlan.

Violet, Savage Garden. Not hard to find, but not the kind of thing that would necessarily appear on audiography.

The same applies, with less certainty, to The Green Fields of France; June Tabor or The Furies, take your pick.

School Scarlet from the Revolutionary Girl Utena soundtrack

It's Not Easy Being Green, Andy Hallett, from the Angel soundtrack

Captain Scarlet theme - it's a cover version, I think, from what appears to be an out of print CD of SF theme music.

Red Light, from the film Fame


^{(JP, don't shoot! I surrender, and will sign a confession to the effect that my taste in music is abysmal.)}

Meme via cluegirl: the soundtrack of your life.

1. Open your music library
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie.

*eyeballs heading* What sort of film comes with an obligatory fight scene? And a school dance? My life has apparently just been transplanted to the US, and I suspect it of having perverse teen comedy tendencies.

( I may disown my iPod for this )

In conclusion, I was an unwanted child, which led me to becoming an alcoholic and embarking on destructive love affairs by the age of five. It is probably not, in fact, a teen comedy. It may (or may not) be significant that it begins and ends with songs from musicals.

Overall, my life was somewhat thematically confused.

- Hey, is it me, or have I read something very similar to that line given as a character's epitaph somewhere?

Aargh! The stupid, it - is me, actually. In my recent BPAL soap post, I mentioned my dislike of Villainess soaps, because of the weird chemical tang many of them seem to have.

I confess to having made a mistake there. All but one of my Villainess product tests so far have been small samples, which have been cut off a bar and shipped from the US in small ziplock bags. And since there were a dozen different ones, labelled in black marker written directly on the plastic bags, I left them in the ziplocs so I could identify them - which wasn't as sensible an idea as it seemed at the time.

Villainess soap absorbs the smell of plastic ziploc bags. Plastic + the soap itself produces a very odd fragrance indeed, which lasts until the soap has been thoroughly rinsed in water.

Villainess soaps still aren't quite my cup of tea, but they are not actually unpleasant, as I first thought.

My bad. Sorry.

I read SlaughterHouse Studios (or LJ syndication here), because it often makes me rearrange my thoughts in a way that I would not have otherwise considered. It's like my brain is a snowglobe that's just been gently shaken, and though it's all the same pieces of glitter that are falling down, they come down in a new pattern.

This post is one of those mind-shuffling posts.

Things are swirling around in my mind, connecting to things they had been separate from before. I think a poem seed may be germinating.

As a not entirely unconnected point, on Monday I went to bed long after everyone else, and found a fork on my pillow. Even when you can work out the culprit and at least half of the reasoning that went into the act,* it is still disconcerting to find something so out of its place.

Particularly when one finds it the hard, cold, and stabby way, by not turning the light on, and sitting on it.




* I mean, I knew it had to be my mother, returning my fork that the family borrowed because they didn't have enough, but - why on the pillow? One of life's little mysteries. My mother, that is.

I wish that blogging about my mother didn't remind me quite so much of cat-blogging.

Snout Event: a photoset of an - event - in London, which was apparently about, or against, climate change. I wish for more accompanying text with the photos; nevertheless, it is fantastic.

(Thanks, Brother #2. How do you find these thing?)

The left mouse button just fell off. &%$O^$&!!

Hi, my name's astromachy, and I'm Josephoholic a sucker for cheesy music talent shows a fan of Any Dream Will Do - any fellow addicts out there?

Please, come and squee over talk to me about last night's episode!

Meme via purpleprimate

you are mediumaquamarine #66CDAA

Your dominant hues are cyan and green. Although you definitely strive to be logical you care about people and know there's a time and place for thinking emotionally. Your head rules most things but your heart rules others, and getting them to meet in the middle takes a lot of your energy some days. Your saturation level is medium - You're not the most decisive go-getter, but you can get a job done when it's required of you. You probably don't think the world can change for you and don't want to spend too much effort trying to force it. Your outlook on life is brighter than most people's. You like the idea of influencing things for the better and find hope in situations where others might give up. You're not exactly a bouncy sunshine but things in your world generally look up.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

Cyan?

(Oh, siblings #1 and #3? You're seeing the funny side of this, right? I am!)

Cyan is good. I can live with that.

^{*coughs* I edited the spelling in the results, because it was hurting my brain.}