Featuring Green, a dragon.

Reclining Green (800×600, 133KB)

For reference, her body (disregarding the neck, etc) is as big as this bullock.

(Oh, and the dog isn't a self-insert. That would be an Irish Wolfhound up to trouble. This is a spaniel cross.)

I'm just getting into Merlin on BBC One, Saturdays. I'd taped a few (what turned out to be almost the whole series, apart from the first ep, I think) and hadn't got around to watching them. Over the weekend I watched three or so to free up drive space.

It's pretty ok for what I take to be a children's series. (No idea if it is supposed to be a children's series, but if I read it as such I don't get offended by being dumbed down at or by the main characters being young teens.)

The dialogue is jarring in places (a few Americanisms, lots of modernisms).

There is Dragon and because I missed the first episode or so, I don't know what its deal is. Dragon has a trendy chain and is suitably Dragonlike (in a sense Suitov would recognise, no less): mysterious, knowledgeable, given to talking in riddles and not always prepared to help directly.

There's a lot of heavy-clawed foreshadowing about Merlin and young Arthur and their shared destiny. I bet the fanshippers have been licking their chops over all that.

The magic is the real fun and I'm seizing at the little systembuilding details with pleasure. Hoping the 'magic language' they talk in is good old gobbledygook and not Celticese. (I strongly dislike Celtic stuff of any description. Too many trendy idiots get squiffy over it.)

All in all I'm enjoying the series surprisingly much, given that it's no exaggeration to say that the Arthurian mythos and derring-do with swords are two of my pet loathings!

It's probably a lot to do with who they've got playing Uther Pendragon. (DRAGON GEDDIT LOL? I sure did, an episode or two in...)

Dragon wallpaper and all sorts of other stuff on the programme website. (I don't know if I'm missing a gene or something, but despite working with and on the web constantly, I never really bother visiting programme support sites.)

DragonForce concert was great. My feet hurt from all the bouncing up and down. Afterwards we were thirsty and found a shop that has not only lychee Rubicon (a range of exotic-fruit carbonated drinks, generally sold in Asian shops) (I'm British, so Asian = South Asian) but also cartons of lychee juice! It is my new favourite shop evar—and very close to my work.

So far I've been very lazy this weekend and am thoroughly enjoying the break from arts and other stuff.

After posting this I'll go to make smoothies (i.e. shove lots of marked-down fruit in a blender. YUM!) with the bros and play more Resident Evil 4.

I was complimented by so many people on Friday... lots of them liked my tie. I have eccentric rules, such as "if I wear the black shirt on a Friday I wear a tie with it" (my office's dress code is jeans and t-shirts, as a rule; I overdress because the novelty of fitting into reasonably-priced shirts is still a new one on me). Apparently the shiny light grey/silver tie is popular. My favourite is a shiny dark slightly-blueish-grey.

If it wasn't so very clichéd I'd go and paint myself as a metallic dark-grey-blue dragon* now for the lulz. Or a large shaggy grey dog. Or one turning into the other. Sexxxay!

Also complimented on my work, which was even better. I win at graphic design, proofreading and site-building and two people have asked why I'm not a CSD yet.

* Classic Western, four solid legs, canine teeth, four fingers and opposable thumbs, all claws but dews semi-retractable, hard scales, ridges and fins, no spikes, good solid tail rather than snake-whippy, no tail blade and good solid wings rather than tiny hangbutt membranes. Energising/inspirational breath gift, blue flame breath weapon. Probably shown hunting wild lychees, pwning cats and followed by cute animals.** Now you can all pretend I drew this already and save me the trouble. The dog is pretty much an Irish Wolfhound.

** edit: in dragon-geek-ese, since Vespy asks: DC2.Dw Gn L W T+ Phfwlt C"Dark metallic grey-blue" Sks B"Blue flame; breath gift: energise/inspire" A- Nu M—! O/ H+ $ F+f/v R—! J+++ I+ V—! Q- Tc++ E—!# but my description above's more accurate.

I've finally been identified as the culprit who left the paper dinosaur.

Direct questions—my one weakness!

I wasn't averse to being found out, mind you. To cause a little curiosity and confusion was my aim, and evidently I've done that. It's been, what, 14 days or so since she found it...

As I wandered back downstairs I heard the recipient saying "I've found out who left the dinosaur!"

I think the part in parentheses says it all...

Black Dog's Curse (To a Paper Dinosaur)

Ambling, shambling life benign
In processed, bleached herbivory:
Let cold-blood Nature, serpentine
Entwine you in her livery

All right, all right, but not bad for improv.

Made up one evening when I was in work late and alone. Mwahahaaa. After having this breathed into its ear, the subject was put on a workmate's desk, there to graze on paperwork through the night. If any urgent reports go missing, you don't know a thing, got it?

We went to a summer fête today. It was run by the Stockport branch of the Cats Protection League and included a dog show. (Yes, a dog show; they don't think cat shows are kind to cats.)

Here are all my photos from the day with my notes. I had battery trouble with all the cameras I brought, so couldn't get as many snaps of the dogs as I've have liked to.

(Tagged "dragons" only because of the sky picture, which is nicely blue-grey-white.)

Apparently not.

(This is supposed to be he.)

Iran rounds up Bahai leaders. Lovely.

Oh, more charming. People burnt as witches in Kenya.

Tasmanian tiger DNA implanted in mousies.

Cat gatecrashes concert (vid)

Ravens fledging in Scotland and disappearing in Lancashire.

Mixed-sex NHS wards 'still a problem'. Not a problem for me. If I ever have to go inpatient I don't particularly want to be segregated by caste. Besides, there are shockingly few "strange neuter-creatures from the planet Zog" wards.

Tram expansion's green light (vid)

There is hope for me yet. (brilliant audio)

Dog too big to patrol beach (vid) and article

In pictures: Senegal's beached whales (distressing images)

Exam papers had answers on back. It is unlikely that any of the 12,000 students sitting the examination would have recognised the value of the information in the copyright statement and subsequently used it. Unfortunately probably true, as schools don't teach critical thinking any more, just rote answering. (Yes, I do know this for a fact. What does "don't put it in your own words, just make sure you write down every point with no waffle" sound like to you? From a good mid-league independent secondary school?)

'Trust drug' may cure social phobia and help autism. Ooh! Just what I need, to be more trusting and less alert to manipulative, untrustworthy bzsatards!

Whole scelidosaurus on show to public. Just in case you needed to be informed, ankys are the best dinosaurs EVER and you should adopt one, because every party needs a tank.

Churches boo-hoo-hoo over the fact that despite all their sound and fury, everyone's ignoring them. Since the topic at hand doesn't concern them one jot (besides, never mind my relationships, I definitely don't want a church anywhere near my children!), this is a healthy thing for society and makes me feel more positive than I have for a long time.

If we ever feel the need to pass any more laws about precisely how trefoil the invisible magic friend is, or who's not allowed to eat the invisible magic friend's flesh, we'll give you a call, 'kay?

We're asking the public what is the most respectful and appropriate way to display them. ... The majority of the comments have been that we shouldn't cover them up. So what did we do? Oh yes: Egyptian mummies are covered up

I'm gonna throw this one over to Charlycrash. *Erisian smile*

Supernova filmed LIVE! (Well, timeshifted a bit. Like 100 million years.) More from AP. Squeeeee.

Registrars' beliefs make them unfit for their jobs. So, resign. They shouldn't be pandered to and accommodated, because religion is a voluntary disability. Or, to put it another way, if you feel you can't do your job for reasons of conscience, you have a moral duty to resign.

Derbyshire couple may have 'oldest' dog (vid)

Sesame Street puppets explain war to kids of soldiers (vid)

Some punks and goths in Mexico want to beat up emos. (vid)

Infrasound may be the cause of shadows during eclipses, rather than atmospheric disturbance. Well, sound is atmospheric disturbance, anyway...

New dinosaur tracks discovered

Biggest rodent ever... not so big (if that's not ready-made inspiration for Ursula Vernon, nothing is...)

The cult of the Eurovision (vid)

Escaped mother panda found alive and gorgeous

Grey squirrels culled for red (embedded vid)

Dinosaur skeleton auctioned (embedded vid)

I object to the reader's final comment.

Call to protect tiger numbers (embedded vid)

Euro MPs urged to save tigers

Pope addresses clergy abuse (embedded vid)

France debates 'too thin' law (embedded vid)

Animals put out the lights at zoo

And quite right too. Who likes light pollution while you're trying to sleep?

New transgender laws considered for Isle of Man. No big shakes (unless you live there); seems to be the same as the UK law.

Further eye candy of the day: this is probably a terrible, dreadful individual who is bad and as for these, don't even get me started (or there'll be the squalling and the dying and the liquification and it'll just get ugly).

Name your top 10 most played bands on Last.fm:

(I'm not sure if this is my most played list or most tagged list. 0,o But it's some kind of list. And there are few surprises on it.)

1 Angra
2 Falconer
3 Blind Grauniad
4 Stratovarius
5 DragonForce
6 Rhapsody
7 Nightwish
8 Edguy
9 Sonata Arctica
10 Avantasia

read more...

(Organised Dog writes news posts and forgets to post them. Organised Dog is organised.)

New BBC homepage has gone live.

Earthquake felt across much of UK

Oh yes. I woke up and found myself trapped in my room by a fall of books. One of the bookshelves behind my door had toppled. Good job the house didn't catch fire or anything, because it took me ten minutes to get out.

How can a dog sniff through concrete? Because they are that badass.

New search powers lead Firefox 3

Victorian houses. Lots of those around the prettier bits of Manchester.

'Doomsday' vault opens its doors. I hope they have pomegranates and blueberries and bananas and darn it, now I made myself want fruit. And pecans.

Cocaine's brain effect revealed

Germany cleared in Parmesan case

Huge pliosaur. Can I get a HELL YEAH!? Lots of happenings at Svalbard today; clearly it's the place to be.

("we assembled all the bones in our basement" <3 Imagine the geeks down there sipping Djew and complaining when their mums come in to do their washing.)

'Misleading' Nutella TV ad pulled. Advertisers are evil. Then again, how anyone can believe a jar of Nutella is equivalent to a handful of hazelnuts and some milk... I mean really, people, how thick are you?

Hospitals see rise in dog bites

Poor dogs with stupid owners.

Roger Waters to play 'final' Dark Side of the Moon gigs

Hah, this May in Liverpool? Do want.

Legal row over zombie video game.

Execumutt Summary™:

Romero: "Zombies in shopping malls is my thing! You can't do my thing!"
Capcom: "That isn't your thing! You don't own it, your name isn't on it!"
Romero: "There, I licked it! Now you can't use it!"
Capcom: "MOM!!"

'Da Vinci link' to chess drawings. (Waah, I want pics, not generic file photo!)

"Leonardo is thought to have understood chess" - yes, yes I imagine that would have been within his faculties. Pfft.

Radio-tagging bumble bees

Sound problems throughout marred this, though I didn't really notice most of the time. I quite liked it being mostly quiet, in fact.

The Scottishness felt like an exaggerated stereotype throughout. The boy must've said "Jings!"... well, even once would've been gratuitous. This was made for an American audience.

The frame story was lame, corny and unnecessary.

I found the character of the mother very dislikeable and her behaviour, especially in certain respects towards the son, inexplicable.

The humans' storyline ultimately went nowhere and made little sense. Nothing was developed fully, whether the "kids know something secret and have to hide it" angle or the romance bits or the political situation. There was even a hook for a shell-shock/PTSD subplot, not made use of.

The climactic action sequence made no sense ("why? What makes it imperative that this happen? How on earth did you know or decide to do that?").

The ending (of the frame story particularly) was lame and predictable.

The creature effects were GREAT! Let's face it, that's why I was there. The little neut (no, srsly, canonically parthenogenetic hermaphrodite) had by far the most personality of all the actors (but then, I would say that). Plenty of slapstick and action from hir. Lovely movement, says I who don't know much about how large aquatic mammals, horses or aquatic dinosaurs move; it looked right and was very very pretty. Thus, I suspended my disbelief concerning the passenger's lung capacity and the bends.

Finally, ZOMG THE DOG????

I forgot to do this on Friday and remembered late last night. The theme this week is a request from Zenbie.

"I can sympathise, really. You're tiny and frail"

20 January 2008

I can sympathise, really. You're tiny and frail
And you've no armour-plating, not even a tail,
Not to mention those teeth come to little avail—
You're like wise little worms—
So this saddling business I'll let you assail
On conditional terms.

But the nose-mounted maser is awkward and square
And the tack to support it unpleasant to wear
For it pinches and rubs—it's as well I've no hair
Or I'd suffer a pluck—
My reptilian muzzle's more comf'table bare
So you're shit out of luck.

The form is called a Burns stanza, which I grabbed at random because it's Burns supper season. The meter is anapestic tetrameter and dimeter. Or it is unless I screwed up, ROFL.

As a bonus because this was late, I'll transcribe my notes from last night with the crap stanza I wrote purely to remind me how the format I'd chosen is supposed to go.

read more...

We do a late news sift on Friday afternoons. There wasn't much interesting this morning, but I found one or two bloggable ones this avo.

Further to my rant the other day, a semi-thoughtful piece asking "What's the difference between art and [child] porn?"

Oh no! Poor beardie!

Microsoft bows to pressure on XP

Pfft. Dude, I'm never ever installing Longhorn. If they ever stop supporting XP such that it's unusable, I'm running to Ubuntuland so fast Clippy won't see my dust.

Aww, Klara. *injokeish giggle*

Any Romanov fans in the house? I dunno; dead folks is dead folks as far as I'm concerned...

Man wants time off work, calls in bomb threats. Makes perfect sense.

"Two flavours of Christianity" IS NOT CREATIVELY RADICALLY INCLUSIVE. Faith schools must be abolished and closed.

Drawers 'top place to stash cash'

Brilliant, Mary-Jane! Interest, who needs it?

Finally, some Rumi luvving!

(I know they didn't get that painting directly from Haydar Hatemi, though. Because I've exchanged emails with the late Mr Hatemi's son. They got it from WikiCommons, as I did.)

Great fun! I'm thoroughly engaged with this series now and very much appreciating how much groundwork Asher laid in the previous books. With a good solid number of pages — generally 500+ each time — there's a lot of bang, kablam, Dragon and [whatever noise evil mycelia make; I suggest "fzzzzippt"] for your buck.

Indeed, with the various things from the previous books all knitting together very finely indeed, I suspect the next Polity book may even be the last. Meh, hope not.

If I may go into the politics for a second (because it's interesting comparing Asher's Polity with Banksie's Culture), I'm fascinated to see even the AIs struggling with the mandatory capital punishment in their super-cool system of governance. The Polity doesn't go in much for repentance or redemption (I'm using those words free from religious context, of course, because on that topic Asher and I agree 100%), and it's... well, interesting to see Jack and King's take on it especially, them being the brains of gigantic arse-kicking warships.

I've been keeping an eye on Asher's rather cute phobia of using the word "because" ever since I noticed it in the second or third book I read. He conquered this fear at least once in Agent — I think it was the titanic AI Jerusalem who said it, too. But there was a bit of abuse of the word "myself" creeping in (i.e. used as a substitute for "me", which a lot of people do in recent days. I think it reflects a bit of linguistic insecurity; folks think it sounds more correct). Asher's also getting much better at not showing a character thinking something then immediately saying it out loud. The knitting murder mysteries I'm also reading (don't ask) do that ALL THE TIME.

There was one dubious comic-bookish trope Asher used with one of the recurring characters, which bothered me all along, so I was very happy to find that subverted. Not entirely unexpectedly, but all along you weren't sure. So Agent Cormac Cleverclogs gives himself a pat on the back; I would have liked to see more of the reaction of the other person involved to the development, though. I have a liking, nurtured by my KJ Parker habit, for tormenting characters. Ah yes, characters. In general, Asher's are slowly growing more well-rounded. The machines are still by far the most characterful, which should not be taken as a criticism.

We wants more drones, precious! There's always room for more drones!

Also, kinky Dragon sex for the win.

Next on my reading list is Zoltan, Hound of Dracula. The novelisation of the film. I am unabashed. ...Well, a little bit bashed. But it's monster dogs, maaan!

Dammit, another random fruit craving. Anyone know where you can get fresh dragonfruit in Manchester?

I could try to head it off with pomegranate seeds, but my inner fruit vampire isn't likely to be fooled for long...

Still trying to stabilise my weight. It's creeping upwards. Absolutely gutting, because I'm honestly not doing many things wrong. Virtually existing on quantities of cabbage, green beans, cheese, yoghurt, fruit, synth meat and nuts. I suspect it's the bits of dairy if anything that are doing it, but goddamn, it's not as though I'm eating pizza or baked potatoes or anything debauched like that.

Oh, and I'm still experiencing flashes of hunger of the non-vegetarian vampire sort (i.e. seared, bloody meat - come to think of it, I'm craving red things in general), which leads me to suspect anaemia - really must get those blood tests done. Also still as weak as a puppy physically.

(If it's not anaemia, online hypochondria services suggest multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's or brain tumour for my current crop of symptoms, so let's go with the iron deficiency.)

(11:05:36 PM) Mutt: Hehe. I like it when people imagine Weft is the Fox's terrier, but he isn't.
(11:05:59 PM) Anke: he played at it.
(11:06:31 PM) Mutt: Yep, he plays at it. He and various diplomat brothers do a very good double act.
(11:14:12 PM) Mutt: You know, a sort of 'good cop, bad cop' routine.
"My honoured friend, I assure you, I have no wish at all to see this negotiation become unpleasant."
"Can I take out his eyes, Tortile? I can hit 'em with a throwing blade from here."
"Weft! [looks shocked] Don't be so impolite to this nice member of the criminal classes! Sir, please ignore my overzealous brother..." etc.
(11:15:36 PM) Mutt: Tortile is more articulate and better-written than that, but you know what I mean.
(11:16:43 PM) Mutt: Or even, rarely...
"Well, honoured sir, much as it pains me to say this, the fact is that only I can control my stab-happy friend here–"
"[grr! looks crazy!]"
"–and if you don't stop telling me half-truths and lies, I'm going to walk away, and he may not follow me."

You know what — I've been reading too much Mr Crane. That's why Suitov's nervous about killer robots and dragons, and Weft's being more overtly sadistic. :D

I'm not altogether pleased with the sequence alluded to, when Weft was playing the dumb heavy and letting the Fox do the talking. I think it was reasonably in-character, but it wasn't the best writing I'm capable of; it was done when I was writer's-blocked.

There are big bits of ongoing stories that I can barely force myself to reread because I'm convinced my writing is so awful, waah waah. I'd like to edit Kit-Fox severely if we ever finish it. There was a gap of - a year? something? even more? - in the middle of the story before Anke joined and rescued it. And recently I've been treading water a little; I could probably easily tighten up my sections.

(There's also a crazy bandit called Jeeck who seems to belong to me, and I'm not sure yet what, if anything, I'm going to do with him. In fact I've left in quite a few potential plot points/loose ends with the bandits - deliberately so, but the ones we don't use could be got rid of in an edit.)

Really going to send those books off soon. I'll be contacting people for addresses and to ask if they want signatures/dedications. You could email me with that info to speed the process up, but please don't use my @hellhound.net address for the next day or so - it may not get through/may get deleted. Instead use the name of the character I said earlier on was nervous @gmail.com.