terra firma
Dec. 9th, 2008 01:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mockturle06Tues: Home again, home again. And it's good to be home again. I know it's churlish to complain, considering how some folk's hols turned out, and there but for the grace of that I'm not stuck in Bangkok, but I've had/have this flu that put a bit of a capper on my enjoyment of things.
That and feeling guilty about being selfish and doing stuff I wanted to do, but if the worst my mature aged teenage rebellion can come up with is running away to watch Hamlet, well, other folks have done dirtier deeds.
But yes, anyway, home, back to warmth and sunshine and one of those golden November days that even made Redfern look pretty (was stuck there, in traffic, for ages). Finally staggered out of taxi (after three days on a plane) to the welcoming arms of a neighbour who knew I was coming home and didn't want me to arrive to an empty house. Am still verklempt at the very idea that she cared, undeserving (and selfish) wretch that I am. Then I discovered the house swept clean and coffee and cake waiting in the kitchen.
I've never had a homecoming like it. Yep, home again. Even my desk was left unmessed, my chair still there, ditto cup. Home again, home again.
Not that the holiday was completely horrible (though I think it was pretty sad when I had to turn the tv around so I could watch half of Eddison from the bog), but it was cold and wet and I was guilt ridden and probably looking for reasons to be miserable (especially after the hobgoblin wished me karma). And I got tired and stupid, but to be honest, I think I enjoyed the British museum more sans camera, and I had a great day in the national gallery, especially the portraits exhibition, reading all the wonderful captions which told so much about the painting (unlike the Royal Academy which presumed knowledge to a hostile and elitist degree, and yet I still held my own with the art luvvies on the tour), and those delightful old ducks I ended up sharing a table with in the cafeteria and heard all about their ancestor's adventures on the Victorian goldfields of the 19thC.
And yes, I am tragic enough to squee more over Ken Adam's designs for volcano lairs than a Da Vinci, but well, volcano lair, you know? Ditto discovering in the V&A exhibition (was it, I saw three or four cold war exhibitions and they've all run together now) the actual govt. video the samples from Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Two Tribes 12" remix came from (cool, agreed the Peanut Gallery).
WED: Well, that was then. Today I just want outta here. Insulted, yelled at, abused and generally treated like rubbish. And that stoopid temp, despite being told not to, had messed with the PC and broked it (why can't these people who insist on messing with stuff they're told not to mess with all stick forks in sockets and save the rest of us a world of angst). Sorry, flu ridden, jet lagged and hormonal. Yikes.
Didn't get to watch any telly at all, didn't even stay conscious enough to set any progs to be recorded, dammit. And it wasn't like I had a nice night either: shocked awayke with the worst sort of nightmares. Then it was a cruddy old bus with broken seats and a driver overly fond of braking hard, thus impaling me on the broken seat in front every two blocks or so. For two hours. Some days I really just hate, you know? At least I got a seat on the bus, I suppose.
I think the three days on a plane is really catching up with me now. We had to divert to Singapore, eventually, and came several hours late, but not too shabby for a sudden impromptu diversion to another country. Mind you, BA sure kept me suspense until the day of my flight (Sat). Also, could those Singaporean airport workers have looked any more smug? I was right though, about the Thai police at the airport. All those shiny buttons, I put them in the as completely useless as the Italian police category, and was proven entirely justified...
Did I mention there was some nabob at the airport on the way out? Everyone lined up while we were kept in a pen, complete with lasses with posies. Too bad all that spit and polish was only for show. Oh well, it doesn't really matter, just lucky I'd not booked an earlier flight back as everyone had demanded. I'd already had to cut my holidays in half at their insistence, thus annoying the rellies with my lack of time and annoying everyone else for daring to go on hols. Never mind everyone else is off for Xmas except Bob Cratchit here. Grumble.
Still, I've just about sated my anglophilia, well, not really, but I'm getting to old, fat and tired to bolt around museums and up mighty hills and scrambling over cobbles (the dicky ankle does not do cobbles) so maybe kicking back with the rels is what I should be doing. Only it's boring. They promise me castles and end up at Tesco, they bugger off to bridge nights and leave me alone in a cold, dark house and they live in such remote postcardy spots that it's all very twee BBC rural drama except there's no bus service to get one to the big cities with all the cool stuff and bugger it, I just wanted to go to the theatre.
Tues: I should learn by now to post before I do the Brit news, because by the time I've done that, I'm knackered. It's been a shitty week anyway. Work has been dreadful. Absolutely dreadful. Aside from the demolition of the building while I'm still inside it (it only you could hear the jackhammers and I couldn't get in for ages this morning) they've ruined the website, turned it into a vanity project with no basis in best practice. I despair. Oh, and I'm not allowed to comment. Somehow, the person with the most quals and experience gets paid least and is treated like a joke. Sigh.
Then there's the whole I should be decking the halls right now because the rats ate my decs. This has upset me more than you can know and if this is supposed to teach me that Xmas is more than tinsel, arse to that. I hate everyone and I want my tinsel, dammit. Besides, Xmas genuinely, annually sucks and tinsel is all it has going for it. I mean, there's me having to work every Xmas, and discovering just last year that the rels have had a big family Xmas every year to which I'd never been invited, well, fuck that, gimme back my tinsel, dammit. Still, the rats gnawed at the base of my orange tinsel tree but it remains more of less intact so its shabby self is holding the fort, my one lone bit of tinsel in a sea of oridnary awfulness. Sigh.
Housework getting away from me. Himself had the house immaculate upon my return. Seriously, floors swept, yards raked, fridge cleaned, coffee warming on stove. All lovely. A week with me at the helm and the roaches are back (I fell asleep and left stuff in the sink unwashed), cobwebs everywhere and I managed to drag the garden hose through poo (and I don't even have pets/kinder) then cover myself in it as I had to do the usual may dance that is involved winding the hose around the trees in the garden and several showers wasn't enough I can tell you.
Then I spent yesterday on my hands and knees wretching into buckets, sinks, bags and toilet bowls waiting for hot water bottles to boil. Misery. Still, I was well trippin' by the time the violent storm hit, took a direct hit - all the hairs on my resistant to all razors hairy legs stood up and burned when it struck. That upset the parrots. Who will not be fobbed off with stale bickkies, oh no.
Stil, the parrots have learnt, or some of them, anyway, to wait when I'm busy or they get the crap bickkies at the bottom of the barrel. Would that others could be trained as well. I went crook because I was trying to wallow in the Gisborne-a-thon I'd found myself in because I'd played back a few Hoods I'd found on the IQ and then there was Hood on ABC2 and then Hood on UKTV, and hell hath no fury like a hormonal, jet lagged, flu ridden hag interrupted mid Gis-drooling, I can tell ya.
Not watched much else, to be honest, except vol 1 of Merlin which I picked up in Terminal 4 desperate for anything to take back in my bag and finding, incredibly and against all the laws of statistics, nothing at all on my not inconsiderable want list. Happily, Merlin isn't that bad. I fact, I rather enjoyed it in a guilty pleasure kinda way. It's basically Le Morte De Arthur given the Smallville treatment, so one is expecting utter direness, so to find merely cheery campness, one is relieved. The stories are all one note: somebody tries to kill Uther/Arthur/Merlin by magical means, but at least one is treated to the sight of Brit thesps getting their pre-Raphaelite freak on (dragons must make a lovely change from The Bill and Casualty).
Okay, so most of the fun to be had is from mocking the poor show, but boy, does it ask for it. Take the whole central theme of magical practitioners being outlawed, thus Merlin, poor boy, must hide his true self from his friends and is advised that while he might be magic, so long as he doesn't practice it he's okay. Um....not getting any subtext here, are you? By the time we got up to the letter from Merlin's mum bewailing how her boy was too different to remain in his small village I was belting out the Bronski Beat.
Meanwhile the Peanut Gallery was riffing on another show where repressed magiks went forth as metaphor, smirking that Uther should have thought twice about employing Gladys Kravitz as his witch finder general (whomever is Uther's witchfinder, they're rather slack on the honmeland security front) and when Gaius tells Merlin to do the housework sans magic the Peanut Gallery couldn't help but erupt with "Who died and made you Darrin Stevens?"
Meanwhile, poor Arthur keeps getting knocked out ala I Dream of Jeannie everytime something fantastical is about to happen. Still, it's fun in a retro kinda way. And there are some slightly grown up themes going on, with the whole McCarthyist actual witch hunts, Gaius' past as informant and collaborator. The whole thing seems stuck in the 50s. Weird. Either the creators are really old, or they were riffing on stuff from the 50s (the classic B/W Robin Hood was written by blacklisted writers, afterall) and just picked it up by osmosis. Never mind, the camp dragon (John Hurt!) keeps insiting the destinies of Arthur and Merlin are entwined so I'll keep watching for the inevitable outing.
Also watched The Tudors (big on the entirely not historical hysterical dramas this week, I see). Oh, it's so bad, and so addictive. Actually saw the actor who "plays" Anne Boleyn's dad in a cafe and somehow resisted the urge to stand up and yell out how crap we think he is. But yeah, gritted through wrong costumes and wrong violins and pebblecrete (hey, I've tromped through enough museums to know better, would that the makers of the Tudors would do likewise). It's just so bad, yet I can help myself.
Now I'm at work, feeling weedy and wan, and getting verkempt as images from stuff I've seen flash up, like Bobo the Barrage Balloon, a children's book from the 40s. One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry over stuff like that.
It's not all bad though. Last night, as the blackhawk helicopters circled around and around and around for no apparent reason (from 4 til past ten), thus unable to sleep, I stayed up, propped up on hot water bottles, hugging my teddybear and feted with cups of tea from Himself and watched Dr No and it was marvellous. Besides, I wanted to, after that 007 exhibition. There was some mt3king going on, like when Bond plucks a hair to seal across the door (to check whether housekeeping are thorough?) and I cry "Oh no, Sean, that's a finite resource" or Himself pondering who Bond is going to get to fetch and carry for him once Quarrell goes up in smoke, not to mention the inumerous 5-0 riffs everytime Jack Lord pops up and the general drooling over the sets and furniture and fasions (my god, 1962 was just so effing cool). Great fun.
More cheerful posts and pics if/when I get over the ruination of website/xmas, etc. I mean, its not all bad, just had terrine and crusty bread in impromtu picnic lunch, but I'm still not happy. Feel a bit like Ivanov. More than a bit. Perhaps watching some Wallander MkI tonight might help. I'm feeling bleak and existential.
Penn wanted more gay scenes in Milk
http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/film/sean-penn-wanted-more-gay-scenes/2008/12/02/1227979990294.html
Ralph's 130 inflatable boobs lost at sea, never reach Australia
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24738742-5013016,00.html?referrer=email
Why is the Brigadier joining Sarah Jane?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/tvandradioblog/2008/dec/01/sarah-jane-dr-who-brigadier
BBC signs up for more of Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/nov/25/doctor-who-sarah-jane-adventures
1280x720 cap galleries + picspams
http://community.livejournal.com/generation_kill/65009.html
Toys too dull? Try Osama bin Lego
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24754535-663,00.html?referrer=email
Supernatural Angels Want Mad Men's Hildy Dead
http://www.tvguide.com/News/Supernatural-Preview-Angels-66904.aspx
Jeremy Clarkson cleared by Ofcom over joke about lorry drivers and prostitutes
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/3683475/Jeremy-Clarkson-cleared-by-Ofcom-over-joke-about-lorry-drivers-and-prostitutes.html?source=EMC-exp_08122008
The National Gallery in Wartime
http://www.nationalgallery.co.uk/wartime/
Marmite lure for Bobbies to go home
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/12/05/2438573.htm
Anne Boleyn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Boleyn
Wikipedia added to child pornography blacklist
http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/wikipedia-added-to-child-pornography-blacklist/2008/12/08/1228584723764.html?sssdmh=dm16.349945
That and feeling guilty about being selfish and doing stuff I wanted to do, but if the worst my mature aged teenage rebellion can come up with is running away to watch Hamlet, well, other folks have done dirtier deeds.
But yes, anyway, home, back to warmth and sunshine and one of those golden November days that even made Redfern look pretty (was stuck there, in traffic, for ages). Finally staggered out of taxi (after three days on a plane) to the welcoming arms of a neighbour who knew I was coming home and didn't want me to arrive to an empty house. Am still verklempt at the very idea that she cared, undeserving (and selfish) wretch that I am. Then I discovered the house swept clean and coffee and cake waiting in the kitchen.
I've never had a homecoming like it. Yep, home again. Even my desk was left unmessed, my chair still there, ditto cup. Home again, home again.
Not that the holiday was completely horrible (though I think it was pretty sad when I had to turn the tv around so I could watch half of Eddison from the bog), but it was cold and wet and I was guilt ridden and probably looking for reasons to be miserable (especially after the hobgoblin wished me karma). And I got tired and stupid, but to be honest, I think I enjoyed the British museum more sans camera, and I had a great day in the national gallery, especially the portraits exhibition, reading all the wonderful captions which told so much about the painting (unlike the Royal Academy which presumed knowledge to a hostile and elitist degree, and yet I still held my own with the art luvvies on the tour), and those delightful old ducks I ended up sharing a table with in the cafeteria and heard all about their ancestor's adventures on the Victorian goldfields of the 19thC.
And yes, I am tragic enough to squee more over Ken Adam's designs for volcano lairs than a Da Vinci, but well, volcano lair, you know? Ditto discovering in the V&A exhibition (was it, I saw three or four cold war exhibitions and they've all run together now) the actual govt. video the samples from Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Two Tribes 12" remix came from (cool, agreed the Peanut Gallery).
WED: Well, that was then. Today I just want outta here. Insulted, yelled at, abused and generally treated like rubbish. And that stoopid temp, despite being told not to, had messed with the PC and broked it (why can't these people who insist on messing with stuff they're told not to mess with all stick forks in sockets and save the rest of us a world of angst). Sorry, flu ridden, jet lagged and hormonal. Yikes.
Didn't get to watch any telly at all, didn't even stay conscious enough to set any progs to be recorded, dammit. And it wasn't like I had a nice night either: shocked awayke with the worst sort of nightmares. Then it was a cruddy old bus with broken seats and a driver overly fond of braking hard, thus impaling me on the broken seat in front every two blocks or so. For two hours. Some days I really just hate, you know? At least I got a seat on the bus, I suppose.
I think the three days on a plane is really catching up with me now. We had to divert to Singapore, eventually, and came several hours late, but not too shabby for a sudden impromptu diversion to another country. Mind you, BA sure kept me suspense until the day of my flight (Sat). Also, could those Singaporean airport workers have looked any more smug? I was right though, about the Thai police at the airport. All those shiny buttons, I put them in the as completely useless as the Italian police category, and was proven entirely justified...
Did I mention there was some nabob at the airport on the way out? Everyone lined up while we were kept in a pen, complete with lasses with posies. Too bad all that spit and polish was only for show. Oh well, it doesn't really matter, just lucky I'd not booked an earlier flight back as everyone had demanded. I'd already had to cut my holidays in half at their insistence, thus annoying the rellies with my lack of time and annoying everyone else for daring to go on hols. Never mind everyone else is off for Xmas except Bob Cratchit here. Grumble.
Still, I've just about sated my anglophilia, well, not really, but I'm getting to old, fat and tired to bolt around museums and up mighty hills and scrambling over cobbles (the dicky ankle does not do cobbles) so maybe kicking back with the rels is what I should be doing. Only it's boring. They promise me castles and end up at Tesco, they bugger off to bridge nights and leave me alone in a cold, dark house and they live in such remote postcardy spots that it's all very twee BBC rural drama except there's no bus service to get one to the big cities with all the cool stuff and bugger it, I just wanted to go to the theatre.
Tues: I should learn by now to post before I do the Brit news, because by the time I've done that, I'm knackered. It's been a shitty week anyway. Work has been dreadful. Absolutely dreadful. Aside from the demolition of the building while I'm still inside it (it only you could hear the jackhammers and I couldn't get in for ages this morning) they've ruined the website, turned it into a vanity project with no basis in best practice. I despair. Oh, and I'm not allowed to comment. Somehow, the person with the most quals and experience gets paid least and is treated like a joke. Sigh.
Then there's the whole I should be decking the halls right now because the rats ate my decs. This has upset me more than you can know and if this is supposed to teach me that Xmas is more than tinsel, arse to that. I hate everyone and I want my tinsel, dammit. Besides, Xmas genuinely, annually sucks and tinsel is all it has going for it. I mean, there's me having to work every Xmas, and discovering just last year that the rels have had a big family Xmas every year to which I'd never been invited, well, fuck that, gimme back my tinsel, dammit. Still, the rats gnawed at the base of my orange tinsel tree but it remains more of less intact so its shabby self is holding the fort, my one lone bit of tinsel in a sea of oridnary awfulness. Sigh.
Housework getting away from me. Himself had the house immaculate upon my return. Seriously, floors swept, yards raked, fridge cleaned, coffee warming on stove. All lovely. A week with me at the helm and the roaches are back (I fell asleep and left stuff in the sink unwashed), cobwebs everywhere and I managed to drag the garden hose through poo (and I don't even have pets/kinder) then cover myself in it as I had to do the usual may dance that is involved winding the hose around the trees in the garden and several showers wasn't enough I can tell you.
Then I spent yesterday on my hands and knees wretching into buckets, sinks, bags and toilet bowls waiting for hot water bottles to boil. Misery. Still, I was well trippin' by the time the violent storm hit, took a direct hit - all the hairs on my resistant to all razors hairy legs stood up and burned when it struck. That upset the parrots. Who will not be fobbed off with stale bickkies, oh no.
Stil, the parrots have learnt, or some of them, anyway, to wait when I'm busy or they get the crap bickkies at the bottom of the barrel. Would that others could be trained as well. I went crook because I was trying to wallow in the Gisborne-a-thon I'd found myself in because I'd played back a few Hoods I'd found on the IQ and then there was Hood on ABC2 and then Hood on UKTV, and hell hath no fury like a hormonal, jet lagged, flu ridden hag interrupted mid Gis-drooling, I can tell ya.
Not watched much else, to be honest, except vol 1 of Merlin which I picked up in Terminal 4 desperate for anything to take back in my bag and finding, incredibly and against all the laws of statistics, nothing at all on my not inconsiderable want list. Happily, Merlin isn't that bad. I fact, I rather enjoyed it in a guilty pleasure kinda way. It's basically Le Morte De Arthur given the Smallville treatment, so one is expecting utter direness, so to find merely cheery campness, one is relieved. The stories are all one note: somebody tries to kill Uther/Arthur/Merlin by magical means, but at least one is treated to the sight of Brit thesps getting their pre-Raphaelite freak on (dragons must make a lovely change from The Bill and Casualty).
Okay, so most of the fun to be had is from mocking the poor show, but boy, does it ask for it. Take the whole central theme of magical practitioners being outlawed, thus Merlin, poor boy, must hide his true self from his friends and is advised that while he might be magic, so long as he doesn't practice it he's okay. Um....not getting any subtext here, are you? By the time we got up to the letter from Merlin's mum bewailing how her boy was too different to remain in his small village I was belting out the Bronski Beat.
Meanwhile the Peanut Gallery was riffing on another show where repressed magiks went forth as metaphor, smirking that Uther should have thought twice about employing Gladys Kravitz as his witch finder general (whomever is Uther's witchfinder, they're rather slack on the honmeland security front) and when Gaius tells Merlin to do the housework sans magic the Peanut Gallery couldn't help but erupt with "Who died and made you Darrin Stevens?"
Meanwhile, poor Arthur keeps getting knocked out ala I Dream of Jeannie everytime something fantastical is about to happen. Still, it's fun in a retro kinda way. And there are some slightly grown up themes going on, with the whole McCarthyist actual witch hunts, Gaius' past as informant and collaborator. The whole thing seems stuck in the 50s. Weird. Either the creators are really old, or they were riffing on stuff from the 50s (the classic B/W Robin Hood was written by blacklisted writers, afterall) and just picked it up by osmosis. Never mind, the camp dragon (John Hurt!) keeps insiting the destinies of Arthur and Merlin are entwined so I'll keep watching for the inevitable outing.
Also watched The Tudors (big on the entirely not historical hysterical dramas this week, I see). Oh, it's so bad, and so addictive. Actually saw the actor who "plays" Anne Boleyn's dad in a cafe and somehow resisted the urge to stand up and yell out how crap we think he is. But yeah, gritted through wrong costumes and wrong violins and pebblecrete (hey, I've tromped through enough museums to know better, would that the makers of the Tudors would do likewise). It's just so bad, yet I can help myself.
Now I'm at work, feeling weedy and wan, and getting verkempt as images from stuff I've seen flash up, like Bobo the Barrage Balloon, a children's book from the 40s. One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry over stuff like that.
It's not all bad though. Last night, as the blackhawk helicopters circled around and around and around for no apparent reason (from 4 til past ten), thus unable to sleep, I stayed up, propped up on hot water bottles, hugging my teddybear and feted with cups of tea from Himself and watched Dr No and it was marvellous. Besides, I wanted to, after that 007 exhibition. There was some mt3king going on, like when Bond plucks a hair to seal across the door (to check whether housekeeping are thorough?) and I cry "Oh no, Sean, that's a finite resource" or Himself pondering who Bond is going to get to fetch and carry for him once Quarrell goes up in smoke, not to mention the inumerous 5-0 riffs everytime Jack Lord pops up and the general drooling over the sets and furniture and fasions (my god, 1962 was just so effing cool). Great fun.
More cheerful posts and pics if/when I get over the ruination of website/xmas, etc. I mean, its not all bad, just had terrine and crusty bread in impromtu picnic lunch, but I'm still not happy. Feel a bit like Ivanov. More than a bit. Perhaps watching some Wallander MkI tonight might help. I'm feeling bleak and existential.
Penn wanted more gay scenes in Milk
http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/film/sean-penn-wanted-more-gay-scenes/2008/12/02/1227979990294.html
Ralph's 130 inflatable boobs lost at sea, never reach Australia
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24738742-5013016,00.html?referrer=email
Why is the Brigadier joining Sarah Jane?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/tvandradioblog/2008/dec/01/sarah-jane-dr-who-brigadier
BBC signs up for more of Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/nov/25/doctor-who-sarah-jane-adventures
1280x720 cap galleries + picspams
http://community.livejournal.com/generation_kill/65009.html
Toys too dull? Try Osama bin Lego
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24754535-663,00.html?referrer=email
Supernatural Angels Want Mad Men's Hildy Dead
http://www.tvguide.com/News/Supernatural-Preview-Angels-66904.aspx
Jeremy Clarkson cleared by Ofcom over joke about lorry drivers and prostitutes
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/3683475/Jeremy-Clarkson-cleared-by-Ofcom-over-joke-about-lorry-drivers-and-prostitutes.html?source=EMC-exp_08122008
The National Gallery in Wartime
http://www.nationalgallery.co.uk/wartime/
Marmite lure for Bobbies to go home
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/12/05/2438573.htm
Anne Boleyn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Boleyn
Wikipedia added to child pornography blacklist
http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/wikipedia-added-to-child-pornography-blacklist/2008/12/08/1228584723764.html?sssdmh=dm16.349945
