the birds have less to say for themselves

I'm not sure that watching four episodes straight of Private Practice is good for anyone's brain, but hey, at least the sky+ box has a teeny tiny bit more space on it now... hopefully. Also, I got to fastforward through every single scene featuring Sam and Naomi, so it was way less whiny than usual
( ramble ramble ramble  )

Obviously it is Saturday  night and I'm home alone, thank the lord.  Just me, the Doodle Dog and a cacophany of constant bloody explosions to keep me entertained.  Apparently I'm kinda over Fireworks Night at this point, who knew...

it used to be different when we were kids... like, sparklers! and fire of some description! And I still love fireworks, but standing in a cold muddy field to watch an organised display doesn't appeal these days, also, now the pets are kinda more of a priority.  Doodle's not well, poor sausage - what might be mange apparently, added to conjunctivitis.. not a happy itchy dog.

Really, I need to go make soup, or start knitting the Xmas Pressie Blanket of Doom for little sis, or write some more (I've been writing! It's so... novel!), or, y'know, wade through a couple hundred more pages to finish Wizard's First Rule while I'm still on a LOTS kick (I like the book so far, just thinking 700-odd pages is excessive, and the thought of that many similarly sized sequels is making me think i'm gona give it a rest before looking for the next one...)

Ack. At the moment, Strictly this year is kinda blah... I can barely remember who the contestants are, let alone care who wins (although I do have a sneaky soft spot for Laila Rouass, if only for Primeval (also, yay, reprieve!! we get the cliffhanger resolved!)) and I keep getting forced to watch XFactor. Kill me now.  Strictly  was sooo different last year that this is decidedly dull now.

although, flicking past XFactor just now, and the major, major kerfuffle over Simon Cowell making one of his contestants do a 'movies' song from an obscure 90s indie flick.(er, Gummo).. the amusement value of hearing a Harmony Korine flick being namechecked about a billion times by Louis Walsh repeatedly saying he'd never heard of it... kinda priceless.  The song itself obviously not obscure, being Roy Orbison's Crying... and I have to say, around here it's probably more likely to be remembered for the cringy version in Only Fools and Horses ("Cwying, cwying, over yooooo")

Heh. Must go do stuff at this point, fearing for my brain now I'm actually watching Simon Cowell voluntarily... eep!

 

kinda starting to learn my lesson... the laptop has to stay off on weeknights if i want to get to bed anytime before 1am.  It was a little bit ridiculously obvious when i was getting three hours less sleep (and digressing, but wtf Sky One seems to be re-enacting the Austen Powers/sausage/milkjugs scene for a trailer about a nudist show?! Decidedly odd, in context). Also, the Avatar tv adverts kicked off today... only 6 weeks to go?

Aaand, today I've been online for about a million hours. Muscles may well be atrophying, i probably wouldn't even notice, but I have finally managed to watch the first 4 eps of Stargate Universe.  

( SGU ramblings )

And, dammit, just noticed The Village is on. 

( Village love )

Whew, while I'm staying up late yet again, I may as well post all the stuff I haven't bothered with for the past few weeks... 

( Legend of the Seeker spoilery finale ravings... )

Also... Ah, I accidentally ended up booking tickets to the Mayor's Gala showing of Bright Star at the London Film Festival week before last, and have been raving about it to anyone who stands still long enough ever since. But it was brilliant!   

( Boris! )( Bright Star )

 

Hmm... After some of the conversations we had at a family dinner last night, this kinda struck a chord..

 I'll let it slide at first with relatives in that I'll go very quiet, make it clear I have no interest in having the conversation and walk off if I can, because my family seem intent on making remarks like that a hell of a lot, and there's not much to be gained by having the same argument over and over.  But I do make it clear that I'm taking offence.  When my sister's around, it's easier to play devil's advocate in that there's somebody to back me up and it's not just me sitting there being 'bloody-minded'...

None of my friends would ever make comments like that, or we sure as hell wouldn't be friends much longer. Family, unfortunately, you don't get to pick...

but I kinda broke my no new books rule.  I really only went into Waterstones to browse, cos I left work a little early, but then they had imports of Soulless, and since I only read about it last night, it kinda seemed a little seredipitous perhaps... Also, they had Catching Fire, the Hunger Games sequel (little confusing, cos I think the next Jo Graham book is also same title?) so obviously I had to take them home with me.  They did look at me pleadingly and everything...

Very strange, my brain is also in writing mode (such a rare occurrence, *swoon*) so I spent half of last night reading up on volcanic ash because, er, I need a pseudo-scientific explanation for something I think will sound cool.  And this  might be one of the most haunting, atmospheric pictures ever - daylight in Montserrat after the eruption.

I need sleep. Like, really, really badly. Like, it's now 3pm, and I've been awake since 8am yesterday on account of, er, doing the Terminator All-Nighter at the Imax last night...

Which rocked, obviously, but seriously? there's a reason I've never pulled an all-nighter for anything before, and it probably has something to do with the fact I was having trouble stringing two words together on the way home this morning, steps were presenting an insurmountable problem (they keep moving!) and I consumed so much caffeine last night/this morning that I now feel seriously icky.

But, ohhhh... all the flicks at once.  That was fun :o)



 

( terminator ramblings... )

 

The idea of taking time off work is starting to freak me out just a tad at this point... taking two days this week has meant working more than a day's worth of overtime over the rest of the week.  And it's not even like it's worth taking the time back in lieu, as i'm not exactly using up enough annual leave to make it worthwhile... gah.

Rolling home at 9pm every night does odd things to your brain, as it happens... I can barely string a sentence together most evenings  - although I've still managed to keep the knitting up, to a point... turns out moss stitch is not my favourite thing in the world.  After forty-odd rows, my shoulder has seized up completely (I'm starting to remember this used to happen a hell of a lot back when I still did yoga, badly...), so I finally admitted defeat and decided the damn thing wouldn't be ready in time for the party.. ho hum.  300-ish rows to finish the hood was, frankly, never gonna happen in that time frame even without the RSI kicking in.  As happens, my fabulous grandmother happened to ask about the knitting this morning, and promptly offered to lend a hand... she really is impressive, considering she called round to pick it up this morning, and called by 5pm to say half of it was finished already!! Did I mention she was fabulous?!

Being realistic, it's gonna need blocking, badly, so Saturday stil isn't really an option for it being ready... but it  only being a week late is looking realistic now, so I'm not too cut-up about it...!

Heheh.. two days off! There are birthdays tomorrow, and cakes to bake, so I'm not exactly sitting around doing nothing without the knitting.  As is, finally managed to see (500) Days of Summer tonight, which was really very cool.  Zooey Deschanel isn't nearly as unsympathetic as a lot of the reviews were making out (and was oddly channeling her sister at points in Summer.  The concept was refreshingly real, for once.. charming and bittersweet, and decidedly grown-up (whilst still being hopelessly romantic).

Of course, I now seem to have developed a irrational liking for Legend of the Seeker since they started showing double-bills on SciFi... Irrational because it's seriously silly for a great deal of time, with occasional forays into darker stuff now and then... Lordy, it's all so po-faced and serious about the absolute daftness, it kinda cracks me up.

And... kinda shipping it too. Gah. Still not sure why, as the acting is truly all over the place (the accents suffering the Curse of Xena, with a bunch of Kiwis flipping between NZ/faux English/American as and when), but the main cast take it all so seriously. It has improved over the past couple of eps, especially when they stripped down Kahlen's make-up and hair a bit and her acting magically improved... except for the seriously crack!fic episode last week when the leather-clad dominatrixes came out to play, and it was suddenly kinda disturbing... (oh and now Kahlen's just dressed up as one this week, so that's just creepy on a whole 'nother level).

It has a weird identity crisis thing going on (and I've never read the books, but have a fair idea of what they've changed).. the plots are usually frankly bobbins, and the stock fantasy cliches are all present and correct, except then they chuck in random bits of Dark Stuff every so often to make it stick  with the OTT melodrama (at least one person per ep has to keel over spewing blood, by the look of things).  And yet the concepts are kinda interesting, sometimes, the action is surprisingly well-choreographed, and it's not like we get a lot of straight high fantasy on TV these days... Apparently I'd rather watch this than Private Practice, who'd've thunk...

Tis started to get a tad worrying that I haven't written a damn thing in, ooh... weeks, now.  Mostly because I've been knitting the Pixie Coat of Doom in every available second since i realised I'd left it a tad late to get started (ETA: 12th September, come hell, high water or anything inbetween: I am going to that 1st birthday party con present..!). Present currently consists of a back piece, 2 front panels (minus moss stitch edging) and half of one sleeve. Eeeeep!






 

( movie-con (with added RDJ! Squeeeeeee!) )

 

( doodle dog )

 

Oh. Hell. Yes.

It's that Movie-Con time of the year (San Diego?! Who needs San Diego! Well, ok, i do next year, but that's beside the point.) and I think I've stopped hyperventilating by now.  Possibly.

Well, hell, it's not every day that a girl gets to sit about 20 feet away from RDJ, after all.

Nope, still hyperventilating.  Let's just say Guy Ritchie wasn't exactly the main surprise guest this year :o)

*sigh*  I was holding out a bit of a forlorn hope for him turning up anyhoo, having spied he was in town this week (hell, everyone's in town this week, vis a vis Jack Black spied hopping on the 365 bus to Streatham recently...) but didn't really actually expect it when they announced the "really interesting people" just before the Holmes extended trailer (which is fabulous. And the RDJ version of the poster is now prettily adorning my desktop.. It's the Iron Man obsession all over again).

And he looked adorable, and I was sitting there clutching a cuppa, so I couldn't even clap (to be fair, I could barely breathe, thanks to the complete state of shock I was in.)

Well, that's mostly my fangirl squeeeing over with... I just watched Iron Man yet again on Sky, so I'm all RDJ'd out now, just until they show up with the Iron Man 2 footage tomorrow, honest.

The surprise screening turned out to be District 9, which made a lot of people there very happy apparently.. Heh, still not sure if i'm one of them.  I did enjoy a lot of it, but some of it was a little too.. realistic, for a flick involving giant prawn-headed aliens.  Like, Hotel Rwanda, realistic.  I had some serious empathy issues with the main protag at several points, and the 'human' names for the aliens was a little off-putting.  It was an interesting experiment, with faux-documentary styling and the Jo'burg setting (and the Afrikaans accents were, on occasion, veering toward Geordie when the cussing kicked in, and thus hilarious.  I mean, it's hard not to hear dozens of African accents a day where I work, so it's hardly novelty value, but I guess I rarely hear people at work swear quite so creatively, maybe...).

Now, Kick Ass, we loved. Everybody loved it.  And Jase Flemyng turned up (he cameos as Bob the Doorman!), along with Chris Mintz-Plasse, and much amusement was had.  The film is like Wanted (it's Mark Millar again I think?) crossed with Kill Bill part one, and gawd knows what else.  It was hysterical, and beautifully shot, and grand stuff all round, really...

And lordy is that the time...! need to sleep, methinks, as it's all starting again tomorrow...
 

Heh.  Last night was Half Blood Prince at the Imax...








 

( HBP ramblngs... )

 

( dollhouse - ep 13 )

 

Ok, well, that might be exaggerating a little... I'm sat outside a bungalow in a resort on a private island in the middle of the Nile, the sun is shining and we went stargazing in the desert last night, so not that tough, I'll grant.

It will bug me a little when I'm back at work on Friday and the general assumption is that two weeks' holiday somehow equals doing sod all.  Frankly it's hard work even staying awake in 43 degree weather, let alone doing anything, and dear god, we've done a hell of a lot recently.  Sure, I guess you can probably relax a bit more if you don't mind going crispy red with third degree sunburn, going down with sunstroke and every stomach bug going and wandering around rural Egyptian towns wearing not very much... There are lots of folk we've travelled with doing exactly that. They seem to be having fun, and I keep staring in awe at quite how red someone's skin can get while they're still apparently ambulatory. 

( In the middle of the Nile... )

 

( Luxor in '97 )

But... It wasn't the worst thing that's ever happened here.  Eventually it shifted public opinion back against the extremists, and then 9/11 happened and the world changed again.
Heh.  It's going on for 5pm now, two tiny lizards are warring on the patio, the last of the muezzins are calling and I will absolutely miss that sound after I leave tomorrow.
 

 

So: Terminator Salvation.  I've only been waiting... ooh, about a year.  And honestly? I don't get that hyped about particular films so much these days.  The Trek mania didn't really kick off until the reviews came in and the preview day hit.  But T:S was always different...
Well hell.  I adore T1 obsessively, like bits of T2 (when it's not laying on the bombastics), we don't talk about T3 and was really rather fond of T:SCC to the point where I spent a lot of Salvation trying to tie it all into the timelines they set up.

And then both Empire and Total Film kinda liked it, which was encouraging, but hey, tonight was preview night...
Most of it was kinda fun; some of it was incredibly dumb (whole exchanges of dialogue I was just gritting my teeth and praying for them to be over because the wording was awful) and the action sequences were pretty damn awesome. 

( ramblings... )

After a couple of days, maybe I'm not sulking quite so much about the Lost finale anymore... after all, it's all totally reversible at this point. I'm hoping. Gawd only knows.  I've just come out of most of the season finales for that feeling kinda better about it (although, this time last year, we also thought they'd just killed off Jin and Dan, and look how that turned out.)

Now I'm all caught up on that, just about a million other things to finish watching before the season ends... I'm letting ER hang on as long as possible, just to milk all the possible angst out of it.  The Neela/Ray reunion this week was gorgeously understated... we always kinda assumed we'd been told where she was going, and forgotten - I had North Carolina in my head for some reason? - but once I saw Shane West's name in the credits I figured it might be somewhere further south.  Was expecting him to turn up at the airport, initially, but that reveal was the best, just a gentle reminder that he's where he is now for a reason. (Although, also, when she had the Gallant flashback, I'd totally forgotten they were married, and felt awful).

Started catching up on Primeval as well tonight - missed a couple after they killed off Cutter (I like my dramatic deaths well signposted and spoiled so i can get used to it and move on, thank you very much, and that was a frickin' bolt from the blue).  It looks like Jenny leaves in the next ep too (I've seen bits and pieces from the next few but missed lots) so talk about a wholescale cast change for such a little show... they're plucky though, they can get away with it.  Frankly I'm quite happy watching so long as they leave Connor and Abby alone (but then I'm sad like that) as all the characters are basically clever and likeable... (yes, Demons, I'm aiming that at you)  Ok, none of them are Doug Henshall, but I can live with that, lol. Loving their military guy though.

What it does keep trying to do is expand in scale - the conspiracies, the future world (shot with v effective filters), working back through all the mythologies, and they seem to be confident enough to ditch all their ships except for Connor/Abby (although the Cutter/Jenny/Claudia(?Helen) paradox was a doozy that didn't exactly end well, so maybe they need a break now).  It's well written, and entertaining, and filling the Who gap nicely this year.  Robin Hood, I gave up on a loooong time ago, thankfully... (About the same time I gave up on Primeval first time around though, so I've learned my lesson about checking back occasionally, just in case).
 

Ack.  What the hell was up with the Lost finale?! This season has been so good on so many levels, but that was a whole new range of wtfuckery right there.





 

( spoilery lost finale rantings )

Gah.  Need sleep.  But I'm not happy.
 

Major major plus - Star Trek didn't suck!  In fact, practically everyone loved it (and when the snippy critic from the Daily Mail and the Guardian guy both give something five stars... well, it feels like the universe should be imploding or something).

I was going to hold out until the end of this week to watch it (had to wait for better Imax seats) but in the end the  hype got the better of me.. to the point where I very nearly headed off to the midnight preview. On a work night... fortunately, sense eventually prevailed, thank god...!But, hey, it rocked.  The pre-credit, let's change history, sequence... practically welling up, dammit. JJ's always been evil like that...


 
 

 

( spoilery trek stuff )

But I'm nit picking. It wasn't perfect, but it did rock.


And switching subjects entirely... heh, I'm officially Not Allowed to blog about work, that's been kinda a thing.  But this week at work has been making me feel a little... sidelined, maybe? 

( in which my job is grossly ignored in crappy tv drama )

 

Of course it's up there with my top films of all time ever, but I'm watching the sublime Amelie on tv again right now, and kinda wishing i could be bothered to get up and put the DVD on instead...

( in which there are crappy subtitles )

Odd, too, that last night was the final ep of the Amelie-inspired Pushing Daisies over here...

( daisies, daisies, daisies... )

Really not doing my Farscape re-watch justice today.. just hit the last ep of season one now and I'm only really half-watching *sigh*  Getting impatient for the leather-wearing and the major shipping to kick off properly now, although I'd forgotten how much fun Nerve and Hidden Memory are ( 'Scape rambling )

But hey, I've had a lot more time than I expected this week, due to some random lurgy( lurgy lurgy lurgy )

Happier things.. I'm still loving Pride & Prejudice & Zombies... ( zombies rawk! )

Tonight was also supposed to be about making battenburn style cupcakes for dessert birthday party tomorrow... the black food dye didn't turn out so badly, but I have a monstrous pink thing to re-make tomorrow, oh dear..!

Heh.  I've been running around like a mad thing trying to find A Madness of Angels in various branches of Waterstones for the past week, and failing miserably.  Given that Orbit seem to be actually trying to promote this one, I'm a little confused why it's not, like, being stocked... Given that I then ransacked the Lakeside branch yesterday (where the website assured me there were several copies in stock) and had no luck in the genre section... Kinda tearing my hair out.

Then I finally find it in the 'general fiction' section - seriously? This is published by Orbit, their big title out this month (not shipping particularly quickly from Amazon, either), and SFX's book of the month.  And it gets shelved somewhere no-one will be looking for it.  No displays, in the wrong category (if you're going to compare something to Neverwhere, at least make sure it's shelved in the vicinity).

If I were Kate Griffin, I would be seriously pissed about the sales I'm missing right now, at the biggest book shop chain in the country.  We genre-bunnies don't tend to ransack the Gen Fic shelves for the latest Orbit titles, as we're kinda expecting it to be on the SFF shelf.

But hey.  While I was ransacking the horror section, I did happen to see import copies of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  Dude.

What's not to love about a literal mash-up of actual chunks of P&P interspersed with rocking undead action?! A zombie plague has been raging in England for the last 50 years, so all the Bennet sisters are Shaolin trained kung-fu masters expert in despatching the undead with lady-like daggers, and Lizzie is literally about to behead Darcy the first time she hears him insult her at the ball.  When Mrs Bennet started quoting the Day of the Dead schtick about hell being full up, I was kinda cackling.  I do keep waiting for the joke to wear thin, but mostly having an absolute blast in the meantime...

It does kinda occur to me that I know a lot of people that love Austen, and a lot of people that like zombies, but not a whole lotta folk who would find the two combined as ridiculously entertaining as I do.  Go figure.

But, genius stuff.

Also: I found a copy of the Hummingbird Bakery book, after several weeks of hunting, so there were Easter sugar cookies in vast, vast quantities today. Plus pizza, and Guinness. Bit sick now...

Oh. Lordy.

I kinda halved the recipe last time I made these.  But this time, I figured I'd take some into work so probably best to make the whole batch... Dear god. 
It's supposed to make 20ish normal size cupcakes, allegedly.

I just finished packing away... ooh, 24 normal size. Plus 20 minis for work.
And then there's probably another 30 minis left here and there, after all the sampling.

The fridge is packed to bursting with neon red cupcakes, I'm feeling kinda queasy after consuming my own weight in cream cheese frosting, and there's red food dye under my nails that's never budging, by the look of things.  But the mega-baking, it was therapeutic, as always.

On the plus side, as of Friday night I am now a big fan of this Ping Pong Lychee & Rose martini-thang. Damn good stuff.  (except with the gin, and the whole numb face thing, lol)

Last night there was mostly more Guinness, and the rest of Being Human.  And I'm kinda revising my initial horrified reaction after watching the remade pilot.
I watched half of ep 2 and all of episode three last week.  And I loved episode three, at which point it kinda did a heartbreaking little Sixth Sense riff and kicked off into something else altogether. 

ack. must sleep now.

Not that I've wasted the entire weekend (I really haven't) but I still seem to be sitting here surrounded by stuff with no place to put it away... gah.
Not wasted, though, in that the holiday is paid for, now, and ironing done, and this week's baked good are oatmeal shortbread from Bake! (said book is usually to be found acting as my laptop stand rather than, y'know, providing actual recipes.).  Cookies smell sooo freakin' good though I've had to come upstairs to avoid eating them all instead of dinner while they're still cooling down...!

Maybe more cupcakes next week... last week's candied orange and lemon were pretty successful, and after my little shopping spree in Waterstones, I now get to raid a mysteriously author-less Indulgence Cupcakes: A Fine Selection of Sweet Treats  and Kate Shirazi's Cupcake Magic... Which is kinda cute, being listed in order of 'faff' and benefitting the Battery Hen Welfare Trust. 

The first book is half about the (very pretty) set dressing but the recipes are damn good too.. think i'm going to have to try the hot cross bun cupcakes next week, yom!

Heh... totally forgot to post it before, but The Young Victoria? Absolutely adorable. Gorgeous stuff about extraordinary people, and while it's easy to see they had to jazz it up a bit, they didn't exactly betray the story.  And odd to see such a sweet romance in the context - I caught a Timewatch last year about the whole family history/Kensington method era, and it kinda stuck in my head.  Seeing it dramatised so beautifully - and Rupert Friend was honestly such a perfect choice for Albert - fabulous stuff.  The delicate dances around everybody trying to control them, and his constant little quirky waltz practice to try to win Victoria over.. loved it.  And putting it in context - they were married for 20 years, and she spent 40 years after that mourning him.  Extreme, and extraordinary.