Hi all, still alive. I found a great newspaper clipping which I'll try to scan in at some point.

Current music: Animal Bag, "Another Hat", stuck in head
Current mood: freezing my nonexistents off
Current read: Terry Pratchett, "Wintersmith", which probably isn't helping the previous

Pictures are from the internet (I think they're Magic: the Merchandise concept art but couldn't really care less).

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Funny thing. Over the last readthrough, DukeCommando has become (even more than previously) one of the Elf Only Inn characters I most admire.

As of Wednesday's strip... more than ever. (spoiler warning, but only if you're a regular reader; non-readers are safe to look)

I adore King Herman too. That he shares my chosen name is only part of the reason.

written 20/12: I love legal mp3s; especially, this evening, psychedelic rock ones from 1986 called City Kitty. (It amuses me for my own reasons, as well as being a pretty good track.)

I joined LibraryThing for a laugh, though I don't even know much about what you can do there except get (anti-)recommendations and see how mainstream your tastes are. (Also been updating my Amazon.com wishlist, but I'm not linking it here in case people buy me things from it. I have a... well, when it comes to presents I... uh, yeah.)

Movin' in the trash, wigglin' like a snake
I'm a black cat on the prowl and you're the mouse I'm gonna take
Down your back my claws are gonna rake
City kitty!

*sniggers* Oh, but it gets worse. Track 6 is called Sex Ninja.

added 21/12: I really had fun at work today. Yes, fun! I know! A colleague is leaving on maternity leave and we got her some pressies, notably sponsoring a midwife's kit for someone in (? Somalia? Ethiopia? it might have been one of these 'we'll send it wherever it's needed' dealies). She's got very into ethical shopping and gifts this autumn and she really loved it. And the box of chocolates. (Hey, ethical's good but chocolate is ALWAYS accepted.)

(Unless you're a freak like Erin, or me at the moment.)

Other than that, I just had fun fixing random things and actually getting to apply parts of my intelligence and just grinning a lot. I think I might even be feeling Christmassy. And I haven't tasted mulled fruit juice, mince pie or anything else apart from water and powder.

It's weird how sometimes we associate occasions so strongly with food, but at least now I know you can indeed have the season without it. Which is a relief. Watching people open gifts and say they're really nice (and clever, or "I didn't know you could even get these!", or "How did you know this is what I needed?") is apparently also something I enjoy. (Well, vicarious surprise and back-patting are guaranteed to appeal to my selfish, evil bastardly nature and make me look generous. Niceness is only a matter of standpoint.)

My grace, next I'll be singing fraying Christmas songs and then there'll be no way back. You'll have to stab me with holly.

First you need to know about Tuscan Whole Milk and its fame.

Then you can read my thoughts on it: read more...

I think I'm going to cut down Shaded psis' maximum ranges again. About ten metres, plus one in exceptional circumstances, is plenty - possibly too much.

(Actually, I thought I already had changed it to ten... but Twine says differently. Bah. Probably dreamed I had, or decided to then forgot.)

This randomness brought to you by the Trying To Edit Other People's CSS Brigade. (Today I got called a CSS whizz, which is laughable. Depending who you compare me to, anyway.)

Shopping went ok for the others. We spent practically the whole day in Mcr. Slen got his Müttly Föe coat. I didn't get any of the animal pressies I came for, though I got something small for work. We almost didn't see the film because neither of them could "be arsed", but then they actually rethought.

Spoiler for Eragon: SNAPE KILLS VERCINGETORIX. (Not really, obviously, but the film was an absolute ton of crap - I'd heard it was bad, but the reports had been much understated! - and I recommend you don't pay money to see it, even to film pirates. ...It was refreshing to hear goodies with English accents and a baddie American, though. And the waverer's 'accent' was sliding all over the place, obviously an unwitting reflection of his loyalties.)

[It] is really, really sad that sex has become so idealized by our society that nobody holds any value in innocence and friendship any more.
–Nobleplatypus via Monakoza

Just a comment from an asexuality community I read; not by someone I know, but I thought it was nicely expressed.

And no, it's absolutely not a snipe at anyone who slashes any of my characters. I rather like the not-terribly-serious speculation - after all, for example, I've been writing something into Weft from early days. But I don't think anyone has completely identified what the something is yet. (Besides, with the way tiny bits of his backstory keep sketching themselves more clearly in my woozy brain, I may end up as confused as the rest of you. Forty or fifty years of oddjob assassination must leave you with a lot of stories to tell.)

I've been rather down today. First of all I was feeling completely thrashed this morning - joints, back, everything aching, tired, freezing and (I was told) looking really pale. I got woken up in the most inept way imaginable by my brothers, only a couple of minutes before Bandmate wanted to kick us out, and they proceeded to hurry me up by repeating obnoxious noises ad nauseam. ("Maybe you could cut me just a little slack, would it kill you to be civil?" as the song that's currently playing just happened to say. Heh.) So I was unhappy and grumpy all morning, just wanting to sleep and be warm.

Around midday Slen went off to London for a few days with dad. Having stayed up to talk to him because we seldom get an uninterrupted chance to do so (this occasion being no exception), I crashed into bed. I woke up still cold and less achy (though now my back's starting up again, for which - well, thanks, spine dude).

At a low point this afternoon, I was really, seriously wondering why I ever come out of the safety of my own head to interact with the physical world when all it ever results in is injury and humiliation, neither of which I enjoy. (Printers that don't print straight and a guillotine that doesn't cut straight were some of the culprits. Does it count as "a poor workman blames his tools" if I whine about my tremorful hands?) Then I wrapped some presents, further confirming my ineptitude with all things tangibly extant. Paper too short, unevenly cut, sellotape mishaps, much loud playing of Gamma Ray's Somewhere Out In Space album, which may have managed to help my mood.

I have to wonder if my body's seriously trying to tell me something. I've been craving terribly specific foodstuffs, which is usually a heavy hint from within. (Egg and onion rice with peas and spinach is the most recent, even though I didn't see anyone eating anything of the sort.) I suspect my body's had enough of the not-eating-anything superfun medical regime and wants to do the food reintroduction quitezoonzoonernowplz. Patience, spacehopper. It's due to end soon anyway, but I want to hold on and do these extra weeks since the doc said I could and since it'll miss out difficulties with Xmas - much easier not to be able to eat anything instead of trying to calculate stuff while everyone's all "roast potaters yay".

Hmm, satsumas. Or is that mandarin? Yes, mandarin I think. With yoghurt. Also fresh raspberries. (See what I mean?)

Slen's coat almost fits round my girth. It is too long for me, of course, but upon my name, it almost fastens! I may end up narrower than him! Which will be a very poor second to being as tall as him, but, well, genes. THANKS DAD'S SIDE, SCREW YOU.

I think I'll be ok mood-wise, but I'm not sure I won't still be ill tomorrow. We'll see. If it isn't my body rebelling, this not-quite-right feeling over the last few weeks may have been my immune system trying to fight something off. It's awfully tempting to give in.

I managed to print and frame one set of presents. The other set, which needed to be printed again because they came out too small for the frame despite my careful measurements *sob*, still need to dry for another twelve hours or so.

Tomorrow morning we're going shopping - I don't need anything except yummy things for dogs, but for some reason bandmate really wants us all to go together - and probably seeing Sturagon. Woo! (Well, maybe woo.) I admit I am curious to see how they've made the lizard move, because on the poster there are some weirdnesses (eg the wings look scaled all over, same as her body, and her head looks like someone else I vaguely recognise but can't place). I don't hold out much hope for the story, having read the two currently-extant books and despaired at the attempts at Tolkienese. Also, Galbatorix just makes me think of Vercingetorix.

Firstly and unrelatedly, I need to go through the recovered files from my hard drive/s and see if I've still got the source for my 'Twelve Days' interactive Xmas card. For those who haven't seen it, 12D is a cutesy little text adventure written in Inform, and good gods that was fun and frustrating to make! In any case, I want to update it, otherwise some people will be stuck with 'generic' ones instead of personalised.

Anyway, I'd hate to have lost the source for that and the Rocca Vs Umaa game I started ages ago.

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I expect normal, mature people don't start their workday mentally screaming "All right you stairy bastards, let's see if you've got any less stairlike overnight!" and attacking them with all their (zero; zzzz...) energy before getting horribly out of breath before the flight to the fifth floor is conquered at a painful plod.

But I don't see what else I could do.

Oddly, since receiving and gamely following doctor's orders in that regard, I've been up and down them relatively often - thanks to random meetings and fetching a card from the nearby bookshop and things like that. (It won't work, Discordia, so bugger off.)

(I'm also trying to cultivate the habit of standing/sitting up straight. My shoulders hunch like anything, which - I realised when I caught sight of them in an angled mirror the other day - really really makes me look like my grandma. Hate. The only thing I'm interested in inheriting from my female blood relations is an affiliation for words.)

I fell asleep many times during someone's "really important111″ presentation today. *blush* But it was ok; I got the gist, though missed the details of work I probably won't ever get to do anyway (filming with P2 cameras - it's basically about the crossover from digibeta tape to digital, which I can't believe has taken the industry so long anyway).

I'd rather like to get to play with audio editing some day. It's always interested me, but just in a "hey, neat" sort of way. I know my ears aren't sensitive enough, my autistic noise twitch is too bad and I have bad trouble editing anything out of anything and throwing it away, and also that 99% of all radio is boring (or 96% if it's music radio) so any audio manipulation would probably involve some interview with some boring local famous person or a lame vox pop about something the public's very uninformed on, which would get my stupidly idealistic ridgeback right up because I have some serious issues with how the journalistic industry 'reports' most of its news. Regardless, I'm vaguely considering applying for some kind of work shadowing experience-type scheme. (But I'm too shy, so don't expect anything to come of that.)

Spent a large part of today editing old transcripts ready for a 'new' revamped feature. Repetitive! Chocka with bad punctuation that needed fixing! Fun! (I am so, so wrong.)

Anke: What, in a general sense, I'd like, some time, would be some idea where to look for ideas of what kind of clothes Weft would wear, particularly cut-wise.

Argh, clothing. read more...

I hate Wikipedia. <3

My number of noun classes just doubled (possibly more). And the number of dialects TRIPLED. All because aboriginal people are too damn cool. Bastards.

Considering I only wanted a quick alphabet for pronunciation purposes, forget spelling rules foisting themselves on me, I find all of this horribly unfair. (Though at least Eirhat is now a 'legal' name again, which is a relief, because I quite like it.)

Oh, and since finding out that a bunch of real-life languages really do have 'animate' and 'inanimate' noun classes, which I didn't know when I was throwing around ideas for rocca languages, now I shall probably have to use that.

DO NOT WANT. I'm not a linguist, dammit, I'm not even interested in language structure and vile grammar - someone tell my stupid imagination that!

P.S. I'm over perving on the Alienware ALX now. Well, mostly. Well, ok, no. *goes back to stare at the spec a little bit more* (P.P.S. my sibling and bunnyfriend are bonkers and I ♥ them)

I have been very, very good and stingy all year (until I began buying christmas presents).

But this... THIS...

IT WANTS ME TO TOUCH IT AND STROKE IT AND PET ITS HEAD AND FEED IT MARROBONE.

And I'm very, very, very likely to. Isn't anyone going to try to talk me out of it?

Stations of the Cross gallery
Advent calendar in case I haven't plugged it before... requires Flash.
An Advent carol service to listen to online (for a couple more days)
And Muslim poets ditto.

Here's a little puzzle for you all - divested of all identifiable details except the basic, quite interesting problem.

A, B and C share a savings account that is to be divided equally between them. Last year C took out £700 (from this joint pot of money) and earlier this year C took out another £700. In doing so, by the bank's interest rates, C caused the bank account to receive £10 less interest than it would have done.

So how should the remaining balance be divided now?

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Hot off the presses! The exciting, NEW¹, EXCLUSIVE² scoop on Saint Lucia of Syracuse! (Check out also the Devon related link. Audio LOL.)

And, by way of a random FYI, you can also sign up for ye Religion & Ethicks newsletter for more plugs of this sort. It's all cool and red now, and I won't spoil the magic by telling you how we make it.

Know what's lodged in my head? No, you'd never have guessed. It's an annoying carol called Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day, which incidentally you can hear online if you care to join me in my wo.

¹ 13th century
² ripped off from a dozen other virgin martyrs

Last night I had my first real fear nightmare in ages. Methought I was walking home along our road and that there was a herd behind me of Those Who Would Wish Me Ill. For whatever reason, I couldn't get indoors, so I was frantically beating shit out of the doorbell. Battling my unresponsive voice, I called "Dad?" as the first bluff that came into my mind. (My folks are divorced since just about forever and my father lives forty minutes away by car, but dads are a bigger threat to strangers than mums.)

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