| (no subject) |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|03:42 pm] |
[1-40] Doctor Who - Blink
1-4 - The Doctor
5-7 - Kathy Nightingale
8-14 - The Angels
12, 15, 33 - Billy Shipton
11, 16-35 - Sally Sparrow
13, 34-40 - Larry Nightingale
Here at ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ccxvii |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|11:31 am] |
This Octopus Pie comic describes my week.
I leave the dog alone for two minutes, only to come back to see that Pekoe has gnashed some unexpected item with her teeth. As soon as I purse my lips, she rolls onto her stomach as if to say: "Hey there. Look! I chewed something for you. I was going for a sort of Avant-gard, Dada-esque piece but then I decided to stick with classic Pekoe-ism. Are you just happy to have me around taking care of your stuff?"
But she is helpful to have around sometimes. Not sure if its the stress of the move (or the stress of living in Hobotropolis has finally cracked my brain) but I've been having terrible nightmares this week. Last night's offering including some stuff that was so bloody disturbing that I shot out of bed thinking: " What is wrong with you subconscious?"
Instead of climbing into my lap to comfort me like a loyal and understanding dog would, Pekoe looked up at me and snorted helpfully. And then went back to sleep.
At least her snoring was comforting.
Only six more days until the big move and then I can roll around on my hardwood floors and twirl around the book nook and generally be further away from Hobotropolis and the third floor drug dealer & tenant who think that 7 o'clock in the morning is a great time to start vacuuming.
Let the count down, well... Not exactly begin... Continue!
|
|
|
| Torchwood 5 |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|08:54 pm] |
What a long, strange week it's been. Tell us what you think here. |
|
|
| Waiuku and Waitomo |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|08:49 pm] |
 Craters of the Moon It had been 25 years since I had seen him and I didn't remember him at all, when we met again in Waiuku. He drove us along the beach in the pouring rain, through small rivers that had formed, and past the remains of tree roots, exposed. We'd get closer and closer to the waves, and zig-zag around the tideline, and then when we couldn't go any further, we got out and wandered around on the black sand, feeling windswept in the rain.
It continued to rain as we walked up to the lighthouse, where apparently there are usually good views, but I could just see a blankness, a whiteness, where the fog had settled in. I remember being able to see phormium, as we walked up the steps.
We visited my aunt and uncle's house, but they were in England at the time, and it felt somehow weird being in their house while they weren't there.
That night, we stayed in Waitomo and visited a local pub, and tried out the local cider and the feijoa Archers. I had only tried the fruit, feijoa, a few weeks before, for the first time, in Melbourne.
--
I floated through a cave on a boat, loooking up at the glow-worms above, mesmerised by the glowing. After that, I walked through the spiral entrance down to Ruakuri Cave, and was intrigued by stalactites, weird shapes forming. It seems so magical that such things exist underneath the ground and I wonder what else is below.
We headed onwards from Waitomo to Taupo.
Steam arose from the Craters of the Moon, and I stared at the mud bubbling and the steam, so much steam, and at the pretty colours of the rocks. I hadn't imagined the moon would have so much vegetation. |
|
|
| Stuff wot haz bin happnin' |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|08:16 pm] |
It seems like ages since I wrote anything here. In the meantime I have:
- Had a CT scan for my kidneys (actually that was before my last entry), but not got the results yet, despite it being nearly 3 weeks now
- Had some friends over for dinner, on one of the hottest days of the year, and really enjoyed eating with the patio doors open beside us
- Been given an appointment for July 28th to go talk to the surgeon at Addenbrookes about having my dodgy parathyroid gland out. Apparently I should get the date for the surgery itself on the day, so looking forward to that, though no doubt it'll mean more waiting.
- Reached the point where I've lost 10% of my body weight, and so should be seeing positive health results provided I keep it off (there's the rub!). Will go see GP (once the damned CT results arrive!) and ask if I can come off the pills. At least the metformin, since it seems to upset my digestive system a bit whenever I forget one or take one with too little food. Have decided to lose a little more and stop at either 90 or 85 kg.
- Been to a fab BBQ in Histon with Mike's colleagues followed by a bijou party for Pete's 30th, both of which were excellent.
- My sister now has a date on which they plan to induce her baby (at just over 38 weeks, for health reasons), which is a week on Monday! So excited and looking forward to visiting her and the baby (and Dave) the following weekend assuming all goes well *fingers crossed*
- Had a day off today to make sure I do use up all my holiday before the end of September. Will still have a week to spare to hopefully go away in August.
- Looking forward to Rae's hen night in Cardiff in mid-August. Half wishing she'd gone for the hen weekend approach given how long it takes to get there. I will be on a train from Shelford before 7am on a Saturday. Ow.
There's probably other stuff too, but that's the main events. I've generally had a few chilled out weeks, with far too much time spent playing the Sims, and doing quite a bit of reading. I should give Tom his book back now I've finished it. I have applied for a library card and will see if I can borrow the rest from the library in the village. I have at least got round to cataloging the books I've finished over the last 2 months now, and reviewed them all over on librarything. I'm still really glad it's the weekend though. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|11:39 am] |
I don't care that I can't really afford it. I have to have this dress. With a leather jacket??? YES!
Recently, I've been very drawn to the 80s rock groupie vibe and that is not even a joke (is it all the hair metal I listen to?). Like, OK. Not costumy, but that black dress in the linked picture? Totally something I'd wear. And I'll pass on the mesh top and the belts (multiple) but I'd do 1 belt and giant earrings. No bow though. No perm either. So let's say "updated 80s rock groupie."
I've been wandering the streets of Seattle in a leopard print bubble dress every weekend, and my skinny black pants with long tee shirts and combat boots. I think my style is evolving in that direction. I'm going in for a haircut on Sunday and fully plan on getting some choppy, shaggy cut that will allow me to put height in the crown. And, y'know. Me and the eyeliner...this was probably bound to happen.
(To be honest, I've still got like 4 mod dresses as well, but I think I'm moving away from the 60s clean lines to a messier look) |
|
|
| Animal Crossing |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|07:32 pm] |
It was lovely to spend a few days catching up with theoclarke and Sonia. They were crashing on our lovely sofa bed while they were visiting the Royal Show. Theo was on good form and we took the opportunity to reminisce back to the days of the Esso games club and the Small Furry Creatures Press. This was pretty much my entry into fandom and fan art back in 1986/87 or so. While working on the 'zone Theo kinda prodded me into learning how to draw properly and so I have much to thank him for.
Anyway, while they was here we took the opportunity to eat a lot of cheesecake, much to Theo's distress... |
|
|
| Back |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|07:08 pm] |
I have somehow managed to get jet lag from a two hour flight from the south of France. Something to do with delayed departure, not getting home until one in the morning, and not getting to sleep until three, I think. Briefly: fantastic couple of weeks with my brother, his wife, the nephew and niece, and various French relatives. I have firmly acquired the nickname "juicy" which I'm not altogether keen on (but the point of nicknames is that you don't get to choose them). It does have the advantage that both young children and French people can pronounce it, which is not the case with "Andrew". Saw the Tour de France passing through Nice, the Fondation Maeght, various villages in the mountains, Antibes, etc. Proved my credentials as the world's greatest sportsman by beating a four-year-old at badminton, read a pile of books, ate lots of cheese (but returned to the UK pining for a nice piece of mature cheddar, the world's greatest cheese), drank one glass of wine, one of champagne and one of beer, and gallons of coffee. I would do it all again (especially the camping, at the bottom of a steep river valley away from the heat), but I think I'll wait until the exchange rate is slightly more favourable (three coffees and four scoops of ice cream at Tourrettes sur Loup yesterday came to something like fifteen quid - excellent coffee and ice cream, but almost everything was that eye-wateringly expensive even in supermarkets).
Anything exciting happened? I see nobody seems to give a stuff about MPs' expenses any more. |
|
|
| 2-4-6-8, Time To Transubstantiate |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|05:26 pm] |
After some debate, we holidayed early this year and spent the last 10 days in Krakow and Wrocław in Poland. For years, air travel seems to have been a nightmare, but this time around, it was all fairly straightforward, if a little time-consuming with a 4-hour wait for the connection in Warsaw on the way back.
It's fairly obvious that Poland has (at least) a two-speed economy, with close to Western European prices for accommodation and major tourist venues, but ticket machines for the trams that won't take anything higher than a 20-zloty note (about £4), or no notes at all in Wrocław. When the trams turned up, they were fine, but the services weren't as frequent as you find in Western Europe, and there were so many alterations to services, it was rather like playing Mornington Crescent. It seemed that the Polish solution to "improving" infrastructure follows the British model, where motoring is encouraged and public transport left to wither.
So, we saw the sights - the Wawel castle complex, the Jewish quarter, galleries, gardens and museums. One of the art collections was housed in the Archdiocesan Museum - we had to make our way through a cloyingly earnest exhibition on John Paul II, which came perilously close to the Toilet Brush of Rassilon in terms of some of the artifacts. kharin was frustrated a few times with churches that were always closed (unless you wanted to attend Mass); it was noticeable that it's the first time I've been somewhere that almost all of the open churches had punters in them as well as tourists. And there were nuns everywhere.
We had consciously decided not to go to Auschwitz. People who have good reason to visit it should, but I'm not convinced it should really be a tourist venue. So instead, we went to the spectacular Wieliczka Salt Mine. We rounded off Krakow on Monday morning, with a laconic tour of the Collegium Maius by a guide who insisted it had all been downhill for Poland since the Third Partition of Poland in 1795, and a visit to the Archaeological Museum.
On Monday afternoon we were scheduled to catch the train to Wrocław; I'm afraid I can't recomment the Odessa-Poznan "express", which was an hour and a half late and had an average speed a shade over 30mph. At one stage, a bird flew parallel with us, keeping up with the train for some time. At least we were in First Class. But the website hadn't offered us a non-smoking seat reservation, so we were stuck with a couple of Poles who were (reasonably enough) chain-smoking their way across the country. When we finally arrived in Wrocław (the train had caught up a little, and was only an hour late by now), the hotel couldn't find our reservation (though they had no trouble in finding a room for us). In Krakow we'd been in a small guest-house, run by a woman who presented a quite spectacular breakfast spread every morning. Unfortunately, what wasn't eaten it seemed would be kept indefinitely and re-presented the following day. By Monday morning (when our hostess had mysteriously regenerated), I noticed one or two spots of mould on the marmalade, and it seems it hadn't been confined to that plate. So let's just say I had a rather unpleasant Monday night.
Wrocław has a more compact centre, but there was a proportionate amount of things to see and do, and we filled out two and a half days there.
Food-wise, I think I had game almost every night: certainly rabbit, duck, boar goose, and venison all featured on menus, interspersed with borscht, bigos, dumplings (including a trip to a Georgian restaurant where I found my Tkemali quite a good match for what was on offer) and cakes, mostly washed down with the local beers. On the soft drinks front, we discovered Kvas and pronounced it quite nice, provided you like a malty flavour. Our arteries may never recover, though we did avoid the lard when it was presented neat (as it was in the equivalent of a plougman's lunch on one occasion).
Uncharacteristically, we surrendered and took a taxi from the hotel to the airport, due to uncertainty about trams, buses, the carriage of luggage and their speed relative to a bydło. I think it was the smoothest of all the trips we made. In its favour, the people were generally friendly and helpful, and we encountered very few Americans, but it was depressingly clear how much further even urban Poland has to travel than, say, the Czech Republic, to catch up with Western Europe. |
|
|
| Big red reset button! |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|01:28 pm] |
Title: ‘A Thousand Years’
Author: QKellie
Rating: PG
Genre: Drabble/romance/angst
Summary: Set between Torchwood 4x4 and 4x5. Spoilers for 'Children of Earth' parts 1-4. Written prior to the airing of 4x5. Vague spoilers for Doctor Who up through ‘Journey’s End.’
Word Count: ~1900
( Gwen had to look away... ) |
|
|
| Fanfic: The Worldship |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|12:21 pm] |
Title: The Worldship
Author: betawho
Characters: The Eighth Doctor (solo adventure)
Status: Complete
Author's Notes: This is an Eighth Doctor adventure taking place after the TV movie, when he's still travelling alone.
Summary: The Doctor receives a distress call from a worldship where the people are going mad and spontaneously combusting. Some people are hallucinating, others are so apathetic they can't be bothered to do anything, and some are deliberately electrocuting themselves, with no apparent harmful effects.
This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened. The Madness comes to the inhabitants of the worldship once every few generations, always at the birth of a special child. It is up to the Doctor to find the baby and protect it, to discover the true cause of the Madness, and to save everyone before they self destruct.
And then there are these rumors of ghosts in the walls.
Read more |
|
|
| Bananas |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|05:53 pm] |
You need to see this:
|
|
|
| Iran Then and Now |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|11:38 am] |
Thanks to tanith_astlik for pointing me to this:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-08/an-iranian-icon-on-todays-protests/
The link goes to an interview with Ahmad Batebi about his role in the 1999 protests and the protests still ongoing in Iran. Here's the beginning of the story:
[Yesterday was] the 10th anniversary of the day Iranians refer to simply as 18 Tir. On that day in 1999, a group of students who had holed up in Tehran University for six days to protest the government’s closure of a major reformist newspaper, Salaam, were savagely attacked by paramilitary forces under orders from the Revolutionary Guard.
The protests were the biggest of their kind since the fall of the shah two decades earlier—though they have been dwarfed by this past month’s protests, which have swept through the whole of the country. The university students had been emboldened by then-President Mohammad Khatami’s reform agenda to demand greater rights, including the right to peaceful assembly and a free press. However, the regime, frightened by the spectacle, saw the student movement as a threat to the stability of the state. In what has now become a familiar sight, the government unleashed the full force of its security apparatus on the students
Early on the morning of 18 Tir—the date according to the Iranian calendar—while most of the students were asleep, Basij forces raided the dorms of Tehran University, indiscriminately beating and arresting people. In the melee, a bullet whizzed by the ear of Ahmad Batebi, a young university student, and lodged itself in the chest of his friend. Batebi took his friend’s shirt off and used it to put pressure on the wound, but to no avail. He then ran to the front of the protests and held the shirt aloft for all to see, a witness to the massacre that had just taken place.
A photographer in the crowd snapped his picture. The next day, the image was splashed across the cover of The Economist and instantly became a symbol of the uprising: It was the lonely Chinese man standing before a phalanx of tanks at Tiananmen Square, or, more perhaps more fittingly, it was Neda Agha-Soltan slowly bleeding to death on the streets of Tehran, blood pouring from her mouth and nose.
The day after Batebi’s picture appeared, the police arrested him. He spent the next 10 years in prison, most of it in solitary confinement, in a cell the size of a bathtub. He was repeatedly tortured and forced to undergo a mock execution. The government wanted him to sign a statement saying the blood on the shirt was not blood at all—it was tomato sauce. Batebi refused. |
|
|
| reading matter |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|04:38 pm] |
Poll #1427836 emily
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: AllWhat was the last book you recommended to someone? |
|
|
| Silence Implies Consent: Why We Need to Continue Supporting the People of Iran |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|09:55 am] |
35,000 people protested in Iran yesterday, marking the tenth anniversary of the brutal crackdowns at the universities in 1999, despite warnings from the government that they would be facing arrest and death.
These people are not backing down. This is not over.
http://iran.whyweprotest.net/news-current-events/10643-green-brief-23-july-09-a.html
21. In Tehran, the Telephone Directory Service was out, SMS was cut off again, cell phones weren’t working in several parts of the city and even land-lines were also cut off in some parts. Most Iranian televisions ignored protests almost completely. Some later showed limited footage. Press TV again claimed that the UK was unquestionably behind the unrest in Iran.
Where is the American mainstream media in all of this? Why are they still covering the death of a has-been musician and pedophile? Aren't they supposed to be covering the news?
CNN is a worldwide news source, and they could be a major voice for change and an end to repression. They have repeatedly over the past month failed their mandate. Maintaining silence in the face of brutality, repression, and censorship validates those tactics. All over the world, CNN is considered the voice of America. In the face of their indifference and their decision to suddenly become just another entertainment "news" source, they have failed us all and silenced our voice.
If we as a nation keep silent, if we ignore what is happening in Iran, we are in effect supporting their brutal regime and aiding them in their attempts to cut their people off from the rest of the world.
Every day I and many, many others are working hard to help the Iranian people be heard. Won't you please join us in speaking out against brutality and censorship? Email the news sources of your choice, let them know you want them to cover the REAL news. Speak up, in any way you can, in any venue you can, to anyone who will listen. Let the world know that repression and brutality no longer have a place in this world. Every voice matters...let yours be heard. |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
distressed
geeky
"In fact, his preoccupation with male genitalia and anal sex is so tedious, it makes you forget the real outrage: the inequality of the class system."