I had mistaken the shaking and mild hallucinations on Sunday for an absinthe hangover but as they persisted over the evening and Monday I came to the unfortunate realization that I have Man Flu. As a result it's quite understandable that I could have presumed that news that the Pope was going to visit Britain to complain that we had too much equality was just a result of the fever but I was wrong. I must admit to surprise at the failure of his attempt to reach out to the parts of the Church of England who hate gay men, lesbians, transmen, transwomen and women in positions of more authority than a housewife (who defers to her husband of course)1. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that he's decided to try and see if he can stir up more fear of people who are slightly different in person.
Unfortunately the Man Flu has meant that I have been unable to stay on track with Project : Get Thee To A Nunnery The Gym as I think I'm in enough pain as it is, however I hope to have recovered enough by Friday that I can take yet another stab at this exercise thing.
1. I felt less angry at the church for a glorious five minutes.
This Christmas holiday I finally started to make a dent on the 10 or so books I downloaded from Tor when they were doing their promotion last year as I'm trying to look at reading more fantasy rather than science fiction or cyberpunk which has always dominiated my bookshelves. I have to say that for the few authors I really got on well with I've gone off and bought the rest of the respective series and am now making a dent in their back catalogues.
My favourite so far has to be Daniel Abrahams The Long Price Quarte. It can be a bit generic oriental fantasy at times1 but at least it circuvents my least favourite of all oriental fantasy tropes in which the narrator tells you all about the endless nuances that are supposedly conveyed by the Fake Oriental Language2 (I'm looking at you Chris Wooding) depending on the status of the speaker but not actually shown to the reader because everyone in the book speaks fucking English. It grates on my nerves. At least Abrahams characters use poses of varying complexity as part of their conversations to convey certain feelings depending which of course still depend on the relationships between the speakers instead, but we wouldn't expect him to spend precious wordcount explaining how they're constructed so it makes a little more sense.
This Saturday after a long day of work1 I went to the Mesh gig with Mathias, we hadn't realized it would start as early as it did so we had to leg it up the stairs in time to catch the end of the first song. Given how tired I was I elected not to drink and so had to watch the results of mixing Mathias with beer without my usual comfort blanket of vodka.
After his first beer Mathias decided it would be a wonderful idea to go and buy one of the godforsaken2 hats that Mark Hockings apparently insists on wearing at every sodding gig. After the second beer he decided that to understand the hat I needed to wear it as well. After his third beer I tried to get him to play the Mesh drinking game (drink for every song about a breakup) but failed. We then met up with some Americans outside and went of for a fourth beer while we waited for Slimelight to open because some things are inevitable after a certain amount of alcohol in Islington even if you aren't the one who's drinking.
I must say that the disco is looking shockingly presentable nowadays, there are white walls and cocktails, what happened?
1. Which is another post entirely, suffice to say that as it is my job to decorate the large office I already have Christmas fatigue and an impressive amount of overtime for this early in the month.
2. I attempted an exorcism when we got home but I think that only made it stronger.
The other thing that I did this weekend around visits from A&E and whilst downing handfuls of Neurofen like candy was go to Obliviate 2009, the Harry Potter fan meet up, with duranorak. It was awesome. I have amongst other things a bag with my username stitched on it, a customer drabble written with my OTP1, a Ravenclaw badge, a sugar hangover and artwork of a highly dubious nature. Despite my being somewhat tired and out of sorts due to having got up at ohmygod oclock in the morning and being subjected to a surprise procedure I met a number of marvelous new people who mostly hung out at or near the Ravenclaw table. melusinahp has now joined the group of people which includes my uncle who haven't recognized me with my hair up.
1. Which for those of you who are interested is Hermione/Books. Yes, really. Hermione doesn't give a shit about you, she's in the library!
Over the weekend I saw Surrogates and I suppose it wasn't too bad as movies go, I did however have a number of problems with the world building. I should say now that my concerns are just about the movie, for all I know the comics could have been much more complex and socially aware.
For some very tedious reason I had to go to Camden this Saturday in search of more shirts, after wandering through the new stables market and lock markets I have one pressing question : where have all the goth shops gone? No, really. I remember when as a teenager1 I could go to Camden and find any number of shops on the high street that sold a variety of dubious velvet cloaks and skirts and frilly shirts for the sartorially challenged. Now there's just the Dark Side which is now selling Lip Service almost exclusively, even worse the Black Rose now appears to be wholly devoted to cut price rockabilly gear. Where do you go to get your clothes nowadays or am I doomed to shopping online and hoping that the sizing is correct?
I went to see Amanda Palmer on Friday with thisdistance and latexiron1, I've never managed to get tickets to any of her gigs before usually because I've not heard about them or been to lazy to order tickets until it was too late so it was lucky that they added an extra show this time. I must say if Shunt didn't already have the best venue space in London I'd been tempted to consider Union Chapel, it's not just a renovated church space as a concert hall but a church with a stage and I think I could get used to being seated during gigs. It was even better than I had expected it to be, it was also one of those strange experiences where it felt like something had slotted in to place and I finally got several songs played live that I had not appreciated previously. I may also be the only person there who hadn't realized that I Google You was written by Neil Gaiman, I fail at fangirling.
1. Although he came from somewhere completely different so we didn't find him until afterward.
Having woken up at 71 a whole two days after I've been paid I decided to try and do something useful with myself and start spending the money so I can go back to living off toast, so I dragged myself out of the house for the alternative bring and buy sale. As I went without Mathias I had no-one to remind me that I certainly don't need more skirts as I hardly wear the few I own so I managed to escape with a respectable two plastic bags of clothes, some of which may see the light of day soon, and some rather lovely shoes. I think I've used up all of my desire to be outside for the day and shall curl up on the sofa with DVDs until I can sleep again.
V Movie was rather wonderful by the way, but djpsyche makes a worryingly convincing hippy.
1. Thank you work for giving me the gift of unnaturally early morning the few days I week I can theoretically sleep in.
Yes I have been to see HBP with duranorak already, of course I have, and I may even have worn a Slytherin tie1 but you can't prove a thing. I think they did a very good job of picking out the few plot lines that made HBP more than just the prequal to DH but still had to have a long and twisty trip to the Department of Exposition, I think I'm getting used to it by now. I was also taken to see Moon by Michael a week ago so feel that I've fulfilled my indie bandwagon quota for this month, it's genius and you should all see it for reasons other than the much touted return to a retro scifi aesthetic.
Thank the lord for iplayer, our tv isn't working and I was informed by Rachel today that there's some sort of pre-raphaelite BBC costume drama. This will either be excellent or terrible.
1. Because that's how I roll. Whilst bar tending. In the dark.
While the squash worked out very nicely indeed but I managed to burn one of my fingers on the roasting dish as I was getting them out so now I'm sulking in front of the tv with some frozen peas and neurofen.
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