Wild wolves 'good for ecosystems'

Fossil tennis- and foot-balls = cutest things ever.

'Hobbit' human 'is a new species'

I don't see what the fuss is about. Neither is very attractive.

Vikings! Fire! My morning is complete.

I considered being ceremonial about it - rubbing date juice into my gums and saying the adhaan into my ear or something - but in the end, I just boiled up a few sprouts and grilled some synthmeat.

Chewy.

And then brushed my teeth with real toothpaste and mouthwash instead of plain water. Ugh, what a relief. Except for the bleeding gums, which I hope doesn't last.

Gnaargh, and then dreamed I'd made some soup in a blender and my brother stole it. WTF. It's been so nice not having to stress about stupid food.

0.6 measly kilos. Six hundred shoddy grams. In a week. And I was doing so forking well with the water, too. I thought I'd be up in the mid-2s. *slumps*

I don't normally bitch or swank about weekly weigh-ins, since it bores even me, but that just sucks.

Anyway, they put me on the food reintroduction stage of this thing today. I'm not at all sure about this. There wasn't nearly as much information, support or guidance as I'd expected. (We still go into the hozza once a week for checks and stuff, and I suppose we can ask questions then, but I just simply expected more hard data instead of "lots of water!" and "I'll just explain patronisingly what a carb-oh-hide-rate is"...)

I have no clue, not a knifing clue, how a vegetarian would even begin to go about a gluten-free/casein-free¹ Atkinsesque² fodder scheme. Intarwebs research has been done and has convinced me the former isn't possible. We'll see about the protein-rich carb-poor business.

I spooning detest foodbores, and really hope I don't turn into one.

I have at least got a list of 'good' and 'bad' fruit and veg. (Apparently melons are excellent, which is confusing because they're all so sweet. Anything that basically consists of leaves is good, but root veggies are right out. Swede's ok though. Ho hum. I anticipate yummy blenderised cabbage - I've been craving it, in the form of 'seaweed', for some time.)

Donated blood this evening. This makes me happy.

Even if it was touch-and-go for a while, finding a vein. The nurse threatened to make me go home if she couldn't get one. :( I don't like having uncooperative arms, especially when under pressure.

I had to laugh inwardly at the questions they make you answer. There's a whole section about "During the last year, have you had sex with someone who...?". What with me being me, of course, it could simply have gone "During the last year, have you had sex–" "NO". But nope, sat through the questions anyway.

It's like a more boring, less inventive Purity Test.

Also, I couldn't even have the orange squash and biscuit. Boo hoo! They did give me water instead, though, so, er, hurrah...

Anyway, I now know I'm not anaemic and I'll get a new "you are B+, well done" card thingy in the post, hopefully also confirming that I don't have any nasty virus, and I donated an armful and did the lifesaving thing and so I am happy. Niffles.

How they can report this with a straight face...
Race row 'saved dull Big Brother'

Don't you SEE? Don't you see?! Is everyone stupid?!?! Gaaaaaaah!

(This story is dragging on and on in the UK and it's so dorramned dull, precisely because it's this blatantly engineered.)

Victorian comic's gag book found

Photo journal: Kora [African musical instrument] maker

Yeah yeah blah. :P Thanks to Sony's arrogant treatment of the European market, my unbrother put money into Microsoft's pocket and bought a 360. Ugh!

We don't want to hear anything negative! La la la!

EVIL
and CUTE!

Gnah. Misunderstandings prey on my mind and spoil my day, so excuse me if this is entirely obvious and unnecessary...

I damn well admire people with more than one language, okay? Not just my favourites, though obviously French, German or Finnish (or Latin etc) interest me personally much more than Japanese and Spanish. As someone who gets shaky and drymouthed at the very idea of talking to a native speaker, we'd be crazy to think I have anything but admiration for anyone doing the same.

Incidentally, I have been coaxed into trying to hold a conversation with a Finnish chap. It was the most excruciating experience of my recent memory. Similar efforts in Germany left me feeling like a complete numbwad. So you can forget about "oh its not sew bad if u try it121!" comments. :) (On top of everything else, I have... issues with my voice. Trust me on this one - even talking English into a microphone requires me to overcome a lot of self-indulgent "meep!")

So, anyway, non-native Anglophones, if I say I find your accent meltworthy I probably mean just that and am not poking fun.

(It's not a Fish Called Wanda thing, either. Entirely more innocent.)

I occasionally have to wonder if obscurity is a skill I've lost.

I don't know. I've worked so hard to be clear in my writing - to write fairly, if you like, though mind you, I don't know how well I succeed at that either - that I don't know if I'm capable of being crabby and secretive and mysterious like a da Vinci cabal member. So bark the con of man.

That's not to say I don't keep surprises up my sleeves, of course! Plenty of those.

I may need to work on what my brother calls "saying one thing and somehow managing to convey something completely different". Except I don't really like writing or reading things like that. It's too hard to judge whether you're laying easy clues to give a reader a delightful, solveable puzzle, or whether you're being a pompous ass. And whether, in a few (or few hundred) years' time, your clever references ("like the poor cat i' the adage") will mean a damn thing to anyone.

This post occasioned by my long-suffering inner Wiliam Shekspar. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a death scene to plan?

Annoyances today: bloomin' Livejournal's bloomin' backdate option not working and messing up my crossposter. (Other annoyance: having to wait for hot water for a bath, but boo hoo. :)

Happiness today - well, last night, really: finally getting to write a story post I'd been wanting to write for ages. I'll link it for anyone interested, along with a bit of background, under a cut. (I'm afraid it's rather thick with names; I've simplified as much as possible.)

read more...

Well, obviously!

*turns to mush*

Renaissance tank! (My worldbuildery neurones are sparking again. Hee. *never learns*)

Look, it's WASP Beetle!

I was flipping through a book on Finnish architecture today and came across a cool aerial of a fortified town. I said "I'm so nicking that for Offwhite", because whenever I read more-or-less anything nonfiction it only spawns worldbuilding ideas in my brain instead of actually educating me or anything, and then naturally I went and forgot the name of the place and so am left with just a fuzzy mental image. Ah well. It was cool regardless; concentric octagons and starry-shaped fortifications. So Offwhite's administration district, the part at the top of the hill, will probably look like that.

I haven't a bodkinning clue about town planning, needles to say. Or geography or aqueductery or any useful details remembered from my astrophysics courses or any of the other things you'd need to get a decent picture of this really quite interesting hill city and surrounding civilisation. Most of these subjects I haven't the faintest interest in and won't until I start learning a bit about them, which is part of the problem (other part: huge backlog of books to read already, no time to read 'em).

The only other impressions I got from aforementioned architecture book skim were "towers got interesting in the C18th" and "damn, Greco-nicked shit is ugly". (Which is bad news for Soprone region, because the only architectural note I have for them is basically 'Mediterranean poss Greco/Roman flavour'... but then, creating marginally realistic things one oneself finds ugly is a good skill to develop, I reckon. Besides, with all the buildings I find ugly, which is most buildings in most styles to be honest, I'd be likely to give up and make everyone live in mud flats. Mud and reed flats perhaps. Lath and plaster for the posh ones.)

Summer Shore is mine, bitchez. Must own. Yessss. (What do you mean, "prime minister"? Bah. Details, Leslie.)

P.S. If I may ask a dumb question, is it true that Finns are fussy about whether food - eg fish and so on - is domestic? If so, any idea why? Snobbery? Concern about freshness? Concern for the environment because of shipping? Yes, this is a completely random question. Excuse my total lack of knowledge about meat.

Edit2: just noticed Gneil linked to this reading list of stuff for culturebuilders (to "shame [his students] out of concocting another pseudo-medieval non-society peopled by folks like themselves (and a few dragons and vampires, also much like themselves)."), much of which looks awesome. A few more suggestions in the comments here.

And still it's windy.

I still can't help absolutely loving wandering home in a whimsical mini-gale. Even though I had one hell of a time actually getting home last night, with trams down and two roads closed and Manchester gridlocked and trains not running and buses erratic - even so, when it whips up my hair and ripples my suit trousers, I can't exactly resent it.

As far as I know, it's fairly recently that I've been conscious of loving the wind. I used to be a grey, overcast, cold weather sort of person. Since I can't enjoy the cold any more (damn lack of lipidic insulation, I say, only excusable by the fact that I'm getting sort of cute...) it's all felt different.

It'd be far too trite to try to link it all to some vagary of chronic depression, and besides I still love greyness, so! Obviously it's all down to Anadl, the Maiden of Storms, and clearly I should build her an altar and sacrifice glittery blingy things and make Diet Coke libations. (However, I'm not going to, because she's a fluffhead and I don't need to attract that sort of divine attention. I'm godly and scatterbrained enough by myself.)

Y'know, I'm sure the UK used to be much more stoic in the face of a little meteorology. Why's every storm, windy day, snowfall etc. send us into paroxysms?

After all, it's only going to get worse.

The weather is incredibly, wonderfully windy. We're several floors up and the noise whooshing around the super-duper-reinforced windows is unbelievable. Of course there's the usual panic with all forms of public transportation and motor vehicles, but that doesn't stop me enjoying it.

So. Good news, broadly, about the licence fee settlement. It's less money than the corp wanted, but it has now been indicated to us that the move to Manchester will definitely happen (if...). It's apparently a good sign that the Culture Sec mentioned the move specifically and named the departments (all except, as someone at the meeting pointed out, Five Live, though that may be because sport/talk radio is frankly boring...)

Meanwhile, "difficult decisions" have been ominously mentioned but nobody admits to knowing what sort of difficult decisions those might be. I'm the first to admit proudly that I'm not comfortable interpreting corporate gobbledegook - the term "ring-fenced" and its ilk I find insultingly obscurantist - but it's somehow hard to believe they'd mention the phrase if it was just meaningless posturing.

That's not to say there isn't a hell of a lot of posturing going on, of course. Check out the gloom and doom patrol in the news story I linked. (The BBC cannot, just cannot report impartially on itself. It's ludicrous.)

In conclusion, nyer nyer very nyer, London. You and your "whut, there's life outside the M25?" attitude can suck my anatomical components.

Dear iStockphoto,

I know your new photo tagging/keywording system is vastly better than the old and continues to improve. I've done my part by reporting some badly-tagged images.

However, indulge me in a minor bitching session.

Because when one is searching for pictures of chains and slavery for work's Abolition anniversary season, and when one, whether out of SFWness concern or personal reasons, does not want to see pictures of young ladies in fetish gear or restraints, improperly tagged photos are a big problem!

For Cicely's sake! Someone shade my eyes!

[I mean, my search terms were as careful as they could be, but "Chain (Man Made Object) NOT (Sex (Single Word) OR Sexual Activity (Moving Activity) OR Sexual Issues) NOT (Fetishes (Sexual Issues) OR Fetish Wear (Specific Clothing)) NOT One Person (Number of People)" is still turning up a few kinky images, and some just plain weird. DO NOT WANT :'( ]

Highlighting both sides of the "Britain is a nutty nation of dog-lovers" cliché here: the overindulging of spoiled pets and the great interest in and outcry about whack-job owners.

Poor Rusty. Labs are unfortunately prone to weight gain and bad hips, and he's suffered unnecessarily from both. There are things that I can tolerate people doing to themselves but that should never be inflicted on a dog. I mean, spoiling them occasionally is one thing. Diets of truffles and other rubbish is cruel.

The brothers' lawyer Ann-Marie Gregory said she wondered "where this case will stop" and questioned whether the parents of fat children would also find themselves in court. Heh. Thing is, a dog is even more defenceless than a child. At least the kid will grow up, become independent and be exposed to plenty of media messages about healthy eating. In the very weird pack context that is the human home, dogs can't be expected to understand or have any control over their diet.

Rusty's going back to his dads. Hope the authorities check up on them carefully.

Back at work today in some Dragonlordy finery. No, not my new expensive shirt; just a plain black one and silver tie (eBay January sales yay) with my new, really nice, really cheap suit trousers. No suit jacket - that would be way overboard in a casual workplace. I'm not sure I'm a 'ties' person really, but it's fun for today.

Considering my former accustomed attire was jeans and a scruffy shirt under a fleece jacket, let's just say I look significantly different.

The effect of all of this swish is somewhat weakened by the grey trainers peeking out from under my trouser legs, but that can't be helped. Experience has shown that my walk into work wrecks normal shoes. Actually, my feet have been known to wreck trainers fairly quickly too. Wear them out from the inside. I've no idea. Maybe I walk really strangely.

There's a bit of Lycraesque support happening (actually, no idea what this compression vest's made of; some polymer, anyway), because, like the old jeans I've had to discard, my skin's getting a little loose on me around the middle. To be honest: looking pret-ty fine... though I still hate my huge rear. I've never minded the tum as much as the arse. Oh, and my hair's still split-endy, but that's entirely my own fault for being a long-haired hippy metalhead girly-neuter who refuses to get it all hacked off.

That's quite enough clothing talk.

Exciting!

Sorta wish I'd had something like that. As a young child I liked trains, but Thomas the Tank Engine has a very very limited range of facial expressions. And Ringo Starr.

I'll watch it online over lunch and get back to you. All hail Jekub, that laughs at barriers and goes brrm-brrm.

OMG bloody migrants!!1! (Jolly good, I say.)

When will we get over this Have Your Say idiocy, viewing the general public as a wonderful reservoir of accurate scientific knowledge and sound judgment? Giving the public a choice is basically giving the gutter press permission to dictate.

In the future, there will be robots!

("Asimo has been in development for 20 years and its skills include walking forwards, backwards, up and down stairs, as well as running.") (Which is cooler and more sophisticated than that wry sentence makes it sound, but I love the deadpan humour there.)

WHY is this in the NEWS? @#£&% retarded.

edit: Hahahaha, Transporters was awesome! (Also, Stephen >> Ringo.)