I do love the last line of this poem.

--

On First Reading Romeo and Juliet

While the rest of us read the death scene,
you twirled your gold-red hair, red
like the inside of a pomegranate,
spun it around
your index finger
in spirals.

Maggie,
you didn't know that in a certain light
sun motes glinted
off your hair, not quite copper,
not quite bronze, but something
more rare.

When the bell rang right in the middle
of Romeo's final soliloquy,
you closed your book and tossed
your tresses, all fourteen-year-old
nonchalance, then strolled past Jimmy Dimouli,
the dumb kid who'd read the part of Romeo
you'd ignored

You made your exit like a star, hair
trailing behind--a fiery comet
showering particles of gold
at Jimmy's feet.

Maggie,
you didn't notice him, star-struck,
spiraling like a solar win toward Earth,
half a soliloquy stuck in his throat.

- Diane Lockward

Not been updating recently. Mostly because all I have right now is free floating gloom and non sequiturs. Even I'm not interested in my free floating gloom, and while the non sequiturs may possibly be of interest to someone out there, the gloom has somehow killed my ability to make words do the things I want them to. Thus, no updates.

(And also no writing. Which is probably the part that's making me crazy right now. My orginal fiction = my therapy.)

--

Here, this is something fun to read: True Porn Clerk Stories. Very funny and makes you think at times.

See how I didn't watch the Formula 1 qualifying and thus didn't jinx McLaren like last time?

*

Having fannish geek friends really is fabulous. Nothing beats brunch, cowriting a HP fic that we both know will never get finished, and talking about everything from marmite to NaNoWriMo.

*

FYI, I'm on both GreatestJournal and InsaneJournal as anachronistics if the LJ deletion asshattery thing persists, but probably won't be doing anything drastic unless things get out of hand.

There's this running joke in my family that I look a lot like John Oliver off The Daily Show. ("Seriously, I think he could be your long lost brother or something.") I had my hair cut quite dramatically short today and the first thing my mother says when she sees me: "Hey! Now you look just like John Oliver!"

Hee. But seriously, my hair is really fabulous right now. *loves* I do absolutely adore my hairdresser for putting up with my cluelessness about what exactly I want to do with it and just employing some kind of telepathy to make it perfect anyway.

--

Link: John Oliver on TDS about the flooding.

Well, I finished the book a few hours ago. Yeah, I took my sweet time with this one. My opinion? I quite liked it, yes. Some parts not so much, some parts more with the jumping up and down "eee!" but by the end of it, it levels out as a thumbs up from me.

And considering that my general track record with finales of things (books, TV shows, movies) is fairly terrible, usually involving considerable apathy, gloom and dissatisfaction, you have no idea how glad I am to be able to say I liked the ending of the book series that brought me into fandom.

Note to self: There is a reason you never watch F1 qualifying. That reason is that every time you do, things go horribly wrong for the driver you're rooting for, usually in a crashy way.

This is the first one I've watched this season, and go figure this happens. *sigh* Glad he's not hurt.




...why yes, I am made entirely out of superstition when it comes to sport.

Oh flist, you all have the boooook! And I do not! *kicks the postal service*

I'm holding out hope it will turn up in the next few hours, otherwise I'm getting hooked up with the leaked pdf. Because dammit, I have paid for this book already and I should have it. *grumbles*


ETA: BOOK!!

Ok, that epilogue thingy for Deathly Hallows that's floating around had better be a fake because some prat just spoiled me for its contents and oh, I will be so pissed if that troll has just ruined the ending for me.

The thing is, I wouldn't have been that annoyed about the spoilerage if I hadn't just seen OotP today (more thoughts on that later) which has rekindled my give-a-damn for the HP 'verse. I'd forgotten how much of that book I really did adore, between the filler. But yeah, <33333. *reads fic*

*

At some point I really do need to go through the big list of bookmarked links marked "To read properly when I have more time" skimmed off the flist while I was on holiday. Not to mention the stuff I missed completely while I was In Transit. But it's somewhat intimidating in length so *hides* and *is a bad person*.

*

ALTERED STATES FICATHON.

loneraven's doing a poll to gauge interest in an Altered Mental States Multifandom Ficathon, (and separately a Slings and Arrows ficathon).

Writers, readers, anyone in the slightest bit interested, go and vote in the poll.

/pimping

Went up from Malacca to Kuala Lumpur on Thursday. Flew back to Birmingham airport... *looks at calender* yesterday. Ish. Am now back, albeit with a deep hatred of Birmingham airport for having the most bloody finicky, superior, troublesome immigration people I've ever had the displeasure of meeting.

But yes. Back. Arrived in time to watch the Wimbledon Men's final, which was amazing in every way, and now I'm... too tired to finish this sentence?

*falls over, a la Federer*

Sometimes this country is completely insane and not in the good way.

I'm sitting in a room now with people trying to mastermind a strategy of getting my cousin out of Malaysia permanently to have a new start, because her converting from Islam has wrecked her life here.

Floods are judgement on society, says Bishop. For fuck's sake. Particularly that pro-gay laws have apparently "provoked God".

This Visual Dictionary, however, is pretty cool. *plays with it*

*

Meanwhile, I'm trying to get hold of the Doctor Who finale right now, which appears to have been something of a love-hate thing with people. Erk?

I have to say, I'd completely forgotten it had aired yesterday in the UK. Right now in the Portuguese Settlement bit of Malacca, it's Festa San Pedro. Or rather, it was; it starting last Saturday and ended yesterday. There have been decorated fishing boats, fairs, markets and (really, really awful) concerts every evening.

Also, sport has somewhat eaten my brain, too. I love that this is a house full of sports fanatics here - it's been all about Wimbledon, motorsport and football transfer rumours, so the main event everyone's thinking about on the weekend is the French Grand Prix this afternoon.

(Incidentally, yay Lewis Hamilton for qualifying second. And everyone started laughing when they heard about Fernando Alonso tenth, aw. *likes him just a bit*)

*

Good grief, it's hot. *melts*

This is the reason I am now fluent in Morse Code.

(Tch, I don't even slash Sam/Dean, but the geekiness compelled me.)

I watched The Sound of Drums last night after miraculously managing to get it downloaded on the useless internet connection in the family house here.

(Incidentally, said family house was very nearly flooded a few hours ago. Torrential rain all morning (we're talking don't-even-bother-with-that-umbrella-because-the-rain-will-BREAK-IT rain here) and the nearby field was a lake for a little while. Has now receded to merely a swamp.)

Anyway. Thanks to that episode, I've spent this morning pondering why I'd be one of those really useless always-gets-caught supervillians (and why ( spoiler ) is > most for that) whilst tapping out the diddly dum beat without realising it.

Oh, Doctor Who ILU.

Have arrived safely in Malaysia. Happily no jetlag, yay!

Stuff and things in no particular order...


- Main thing I have learned from that journey: never mix travel sickness pills with painkillers if you want to be able to, you know, walk straight and stuff.

- Dubai airport where we changed planes is completely crazy. Busy and confusing, but the cheap duty free means I've now got an 80G iPod for about £50 less than if I'd bought it in England.

- Emirates? Fantastic for fancy touch screen TV thingies on the plane. Not so good for organisation, or getting planes out on time. I had ample time for a refreshing 1-hour nap while waiting in the departure lounge for the connecting flight. Woke up and had to wait another twenty minutes to board,

- 'The Economist' is fabulous and everyone should read it. *hearts*

- God, they seriously butcher films on flights. In Casino Royale, they got rid of out whole plot-related sections, and cut down many of Le Chiffre's scenes, as well as the shower bit, and enough of the torture scene to render it completely dramatically ineffective. Bah. I'm also certain they cut at least one of M's really good lines.

- Missing Doctor Who tonight. *sads*

- Thierry Henry's gone to Barcelona? Am surprisingly depressed to hear this, considering I didn't think I cared that much about Arsenal, and have been largely indifferent to all the newspaper rumuors about Henry.

Need to be out of house in less than twenty minutes.

STILL PACKING.

Will probably not be around for at best, a few days, at worst, over a fortnight.

*waves goodbye*

Going off for two weeks to visit family in Malaysia tomorrow. Should be packing now. *procrastinates by watching football and reading Doc Who meta*

England U21 football team, incidentally, must've broken some sort of record for epic penalty shootouts, and also, SO MUCH LOVE. This is one of those cases where the result is just irrelevant. They were practically falling over by the end of that game, some playing on injured, and still kept going and oh, so proud of them.

A few pics of the U21s during training being dorky and slashy and generally love.

How can you not adore these guys?

*

You know you've spent too long in time travel fandoms when...

... friends are discussing Captain Jack and trying to wrap their minds around the possibility of three Jacks in one time period, and not only does it make perfect sense to you, but you say "Actually, I think there may have been four."

*

Had a fabulous three-weeks late birthday thingy two days ago. Presents included a handmade comic of my life, a lovely backwards-and-upside-down notebook (on the front, the question "Are you normal?" and a picture of a little stick person with a giant speech bubble "No!"), a DVD of Withnail & I, and numerous cards containing computer jokes, punning and sheep fancying.

All this interspersed with the people I love best in the world, fandom talk, pizza and giant chocolate donut metaphors.

Basically, not just the best belated birthday ever, but best birthday ever.

*

OH GOD THIS TIME TOMORROW I'M GOING TO BE ON A PLANE TO KUALA LUMPUR. WHY THE FUCK HAVEN'T I PACKED?

... Too close to midnight to pack now. And this is one really appropriate icon.

Oh, Doctor Who.

I am a happy, happy fangirl. Especially in the slasher department and the shallow department. (Not to say that the plot wasn't mind-blowing too.)

( Rampant joy, lust and spoilers )

*sudden realisation* I WILL BE OUT OF THE COUNTRY NEXT WEEK. Bugger.

ETA: All fixed now ftw!

So, that's pornish_pixies gone then, in what we seem to be calling Strikethrough 2007. (I hear people are getting the lawyers out? But that's not the point of this post.)

That's the thing that just plain sucks about internet fandom - how easily things can just disappear. People who have always been there just dropping off the face of the earth all of a sudden, places and stories that mean something to you not being there when you wake up in the morning.

I haven't been in HP fandom for a long, long time but it was my first fandom and if it wasn't for accidentally stumbling onto the pixies comm, I may never have found LJ, LJ fandom and all you people.

That was four or five years ago now. ( the story of the first real piece of fanfiction i read )

Somehow from that writer, I found LiveJournal, and the rest is pornography history.

I looked for that story recently and I found out it had been removed from all archives, even the writer's LJ because it turned out it broke some laws in the writer's country. I looked for it long and hard, contacted the writer, searched my own past computer files, but no, it was gone.

And now what was my first ever experience with LiveJournal is gone too. Times like this, I get the urge to back up everything because it's like someone's gradually erasing bits of my history.

*sigh* I need to be less of a packrat about memory, but I always worry that if I don't have something written to hold on to and look back at, I'll lose it and I couldn't bear that.

Oh, Eurovision, Terry Wogan. Love. Didn't watch it last year or the year before; had forgotten how fabulously crack filled it is.

Wogan snarking at the show hosts. "Will they fall in love? No, they're going to shout a lot. And mention Helsinki every ten seconds. Ah look, there's the first. And the second. Third..."

Oooh, Bosnia's pretty. Her dress a bit less so. Looks like some sort of algae pudding. Song boring.

Spain - "Thrusting trousers and women pretending to play the drums." So much white clothing omg.

( more livebloggish ramblings )

I'm done. I'm done, I'm done, I'm done.

Well, with Things and Variations of Things, at any rate. And as those are the only things that require actual effort, I'm done! Oddly though, I'm feeling less relieved and more kind of pointless and drained. Been watching Disney films, old episodes of The West Wing, drinking a whole lot of tea and catching up on sleep again.

Also, been thinking about next year. I feel like I've spent the whole of the past 12 months or more just trying to get to this point, to this mythical next year, when I'll be going to New York, learning some Italian, doing a lot of new things that I can't wait for.

And now I'm basically done with this year, but next year's not here yet. *drifts aimlessly and without purpose wtf*

--

The world of football seems to be drifting into the aimless vague place that I'm currently inhabiting. The situation at the top of the Premiership is settled and at the bottom, well, I don't care that much.

The Championship is over, and my Wolves miraculously didn't screw it up at the last minute and managed to make the play offs. I mean, I don't think we'll win the play offs because we have no defense, but still, it's fabulous and the future's bright considering we started with basically no team and got to where we are with mostly kids and bargains bought in the January transfers.

Plus, the fans have got faith in the team again, which is wonderful. The two matches I actually got to see this season, Wolves lost both times but I still went home dead proud of them.

In summary, football = ♥.

--

Doctor Who, The Lazarus Experiment:

Excellent episode, if with a slightly dodgy plot. Excellent performance from Mark Gatiss, who incidentally looked exactly like Peter Davison's Doctor.

Also, ( spoiler for episode and spoilers for the long trailer at the end )