cobweb_diamond

When people are writing fanfiction about the Emergency Medical Hologram from Star Trek: Voyager (and I am certain they do), what the hell do they call him? I mean, I know that fandom loves a challenge, but how do you write porn about a person who a) is a hologram, b) can be switched on an off and reprogrammed at will (hello, ethical dilemma!) and c) doesn't even have a name?

Actually, it's a pretty weird character full stop. Robert Picardo is a pretty well-respected TV actor, or he gets a lot of work at least, so how does he describe it? "Oh, I spent seven years playing the Emergency Medical Hologram in Star Trek"? It doesn't sound like it'd look very impressive on an acting resume.

1. Moving to Edinburgh tomorrow, where I'm staying with wrongeyed_jesus, shirley_1989 and assorted houseguests for the next couple of months. It will be a fun but penniless time: I'm working at the Barnardo's vintage store (which is delightful because I am surrounded by fabulous clothes all day, but unpaid because it's for charity) and hopefully have an internship as a political researcher as well. Maybe after this someone in London will be willing to give me actual paying work. Anyway, roll on Edinburgh Festival! I'm also looking forward to spending a lot of time lying around The Meadows dressed in summer girlfriend outfits, reading books stolen from Intellectual Hector's shelves.

2. Harry Potter tomorrow! sweetmintmojo, wrongeyed_jesus and I have watched every movie together since we were like fourteen (thank god this one came out when we were all in the same country!), and HP6 will doubtless prove to be exciting due to the prominence of Draco (finally becomes interesting and hot!) and Snape (tortured and tragic!) even though Sirius is dead meaning no more beautiful Remus/Sirius love. But I guess it will be a little odd as well because we have all well and truly grown out of our Harry Potter obsessions now -- I certainly haven't read one in years. Still, I'm sure the second the WB logo appears onscreen tomorrow we'll all turn into a hysterical, hyperventilating fanatics once more, if only for a couple of hours.

3. The new season premiere of Leverage RULES. Am somewhat doubtful of the DVD review on BoingBoing, however. "taut, smart thriller?" Uh... no. It's like the cheesiest show ever. Although this season is already improving with a significant drop in the number of cliches per minute, plus they have decided to put Aldis hodge in a suit in every scene, which is an EXCELLENT MOVE. In all, it was adorable (Parker!) and funny, and the crime was ridiculous, so they have fulfilled the Leverage ethos of lightweight awesomeness.

P.S. Why is the weather so FUCKED UP? The minute I think I'll go out and, like, bask in the sun somewhere, it gets overcast and threatens to rain. MAKE UP YOUR MIND, SUMMER.

( Gigantic spoilers for the MOST DRAMATIC EPISODE OF TORCHWOOD EVER. )

I am exceedingly anticipatory about today's Torchwood... my friend Mairi is making out to me that it is the most momentous episode ever and is jaw-droppingly shocking, but it still isn't up on iPlayer! Argh! I want to see it! Impatient impatient impatient!

Anyway, more to follow re: Torchwood once I've seen it. EXCITED EXCITED, LEMON EXCITED.

GUYS GUYS GUYS, today's Torchwood was freakishly brilliant! They are actually improving in terms of actual quality television, plus there were sex jokes! And all of fandom's beliefs re: Jack's outfits are vindicated! Torchwood = uncharacteristically good drama!

( Things about Torchwood: Children of the Earth Day 1 )

On a final note: they are really cranking up the Welshness factor to 11 on this one, aren't they?

I was in London this weekend to see Waiting For Godot with my dad and Merlin. I'd like to say that this was purely in the name of cultural enrichment, but it was at least partially down to the excitement factor of getting to see Patrick Stewart & Ian McKellan onstage.

Arrived on friday evening but instantly decided I could not stay cooped up in my flat alone. So I found something to do: the Barber of Seville at The Scoop, an outdoor theatre near the Thames wherethey do free shows. I know vanishingly little about opera, but this was brilliant! gracieflower and I arrived late but it was very easy to pick up and kind of pantomime-ish, and was clearly a modern translation because they had Doctor Who jokes and references to Marks & Spencers, etc. And there was audience participation! A walrus-moustached old policeman character broke the fourth wall a lot and spoke to the audience. Also there were men dressed as nuns, which is unfailing comedy in my opinion (I am sophisticated). Afterwards, Grace & I retired to her ant-infested house to watch Star Trek. (Note: "I, Mudd" is a sincerely terrible episode.)

During the first half of Godot I was a little worried the tickets had been wasted on me. What was going on? (Answer: nothing). However, Merlin had seen the play before and assured me that nobody knows what is going on. Anyway, Patrick Stewart & Ian McKellan were very charming, but slightly sad in a my-husband-has-alzheimers kind of way. I eventually concluded that they were in a post-apocalyptic scenario where everyone had fallen victim to a plague of memory-loss, and Estragon (Patrick Stewart) was looking out for Vladimir who had been hit far harder by the plague.

Unexpectedly, shirley_1989 turned out to be in London as well, on holiday with his family to go to various concerts. His father always buys excess tickets to everything and gives them away, and he had SPARE TICKETS TO SEE NEIL YOUNG! So after the Godot matinee, gracieflower and I met up with Shirley and we all went to Hyde Park to see Neil Young. Grace was overjoyed, because she is a huge fan and some of her friends were already at the concert. I enjoyed it a lot, apart from a couple of songs where he noodled away on the gutiar for about a billion years. Shirley is a big fan of the guitar-noodling of 1960s-80s dad-rock, but I tend to get bored once the verses of Day By The River get into double figures. The audience were loving it all, however... lots of overjoyed, pot-smoking baby boomers swilling beer from plastic bottles. My favourite was "The Needle And The Damage Done", but the highlight must surely have been the encore, a cover of The Beatles' "A Day In The Life", at which point PAUL MCCARTNEY CAME ONSTAGE! Paul McCartney! It was clearly a rather impromptu performance as Paul was somewhat drunk and, uh, not performance ready. But even when he and Neil were playing random toddler-like xylophone it was amazing and the crowd was going wild, because hello, NEIL YOUNG AND PAUL MCCARTNEY! Understandably, we were all shrieking like a mofo.



After Neil Young, Grace, Shirley, Richard (who looks like Rupert Everett and I think gave me a disco ball at some party last year), and Grace's flatmates Dan and Rich all went to the Globe to see the midnight performance of As You Like It, which was hilarious and far better than the first time I saw it. I think Shirley was a little miffed at being kept out till 4am, but hello, midnight Shakespeare! What's not to love?

Yesterday we took the train back to Glasgow. The most delayed train EVER. We were on it for approximately a MILLION GAZILLION YEARS. Merlin was so bored he not only read the entirety of Written By The Victors (which I have stored on my computer), but resorted to papercraft modelling while Dad and I drank ale and tried not to argue too much.

Travelling to London tomorrow to see Patrick Steward and Ian McKellan in Waiting For Godot.

Still unemployed. (Suck.)

Writing a super-awesome Sherlock Holmes fic that has meandered utterly away from the original cliche_bingo premise.

1. In Edinburgh today to interview for one of those charity jobs where you wear a neon rain poncho and harass people for donations in the street. The interview went pretty well but I didn't get it, which is probably just as well because I am an antisocial misanthrope and probably wouldn't have dealt well with spending seven hours a day being rejected by strangers. Still, this is probably the only chance I will ever get to wear my lucky Amanda Palmer-signed motorcycle boots to a job interview.

2. Signed up for cliche_bingo, which should be fun. One of my cliche prompts is "tentacles" -- Hannah Montana is a fandom just crying out for tentacle fic, am I right?

3. Met sweetmintmojo's Harvard boyfriend, who is a) a lot hotter than his Facebook photos suggest, and b) very quiet. He reminds me of Oz from Buffy, and I am fairly certain I did not make a very good first impression, as had just got back from France and spent the whole time obnoxiously shrieking at his girlfriend about how awesome Britney was, etc, etc. Hopefully I will be able to impress him with my depth of character at a later date. Or, you know, get him drunk so he actually speaks.

4. There are these bell-chimes from inside a clock sitting in my living room like a couple of thumb-pianos, and they are awesome fun to play. I think Merlin is going to attach them to one of his spare typewriters, but for now I am free to fantasise about making a beautiful clock-chime based album and supporting Regina Spektor on tour.

5. If there are any Star Trek fans not reading "Home" by Lanaea on fanfiction.net, I urge you to do so. I have been reading it religiously (she updates EVERY DAY), and it is not only one of the most well-written Nu-Trek fics out there, she has written 187,000 words in a MONTH. That is a LOT OF WORDS. This was highlighted by the fact that I wanted on the computer earlier but Merlin was finishing a chapter and taking for-ev-er.

I'm back in Scotland! And locked in the house, which is frustrating because I want to go to Edinburgh and meet sweetmintmojo's and her boyfriend, who have recently flown over from Boston.

Mairi suggested that instead of a diary of our exploits in france last week, I should compile a Fail List of all the Fail we accomplished and was perpetrated upon us during our relaxing, relaxing holiday. The fail is documented most accurately at my Twitter. The first fail was our attempted night-time trip from Marseille airport to Nice, which through various bus-related mishaps resulted in us being chased round Aix in the middle of the night by scary men, both in cars and on foot. Eventually we found a hotel with free rooms, although the guys would only give us rooms once we actually started to have terror-based tearful breakdowns in his lobby. Funtimes. Anyway, this set the tone for our interactions with men over the rest of the trip. What I learnt on my summer holidays: Men Are Pigs.

The hostel in Nice was the best hostel any of us had ever been to: shuttle buses to the tram, good breakfast, 5Euro pizza, big bar & cool decor in the main common room, internet, clean showers, helpful staff, kitchens we could use if we wanted to cook for ourselves. Nice itself is very touristy, but more in the sunbathing & English breakfast way than here-is-something-actually-interesting-to-do way. Or at least, there is not a great deal of very interesting things to do if you are on a 15Euro-a-day budget, as Flossie & I were. Most of the people at our hostel were Australian or American and spent the whole time at the beach; most of the other tourists were retirees, often women accompanied by eurotrash toyboys. We visited the Matisse museum & some Roman ruins, as well as a super-lame museum/gallery in some rich ddue's house (all on my request) & went shopping (on Mairi's request). I got very tanned.

One day we went to Monaco, which is crazy-rich and filled with fat old guys on gleaming, stationary yachts with their Barbie-like trophy wives. We went to the Prince's Palace on the top of the hill overlooking the harbour, and took one of those recorded tour thingies, which was singularly uninformative about Monaco's history (ie. what is a Principality? still not sure! possibly it is like Wales.) but talked very adjectivally about the furniture & art, giving the impression that the Crown Prince of Monaco was trying to sell you all his heirlooms on the Shopping Channel.

Okay, so. Merlin will be back soon to unlock me from my house arrest. More news about France later! It will probably mainly be complaining about how we were stalked by possible-racists (French) and irritating douchebags (american & english) the entire time. i swear, by the time we got on the plane home i was fully ready to crotch-punch the next man who spoke to me in anything less than a 100% decorous & respectful manner.

Tomorrow, we fly to Marseilles!

It sounds good when you say it like that. It has flair.

Today had flair, of a sort. Like, the kind of flair you have if you are a court jester. We went to see Hannah Montana: The Movie (on Mairi's insistence), which I found surprisingly tolerable, but only because we were sharing a giant coke with approximately half a bottle of vodka glugged into it. Sadly, Flossie got very drunk, and as it was 1pm on a Sunday in the middle of a suburban shopping mall (the only place still showing Hannah Montana), this was a recipe for disaster. Mairi fucked off to buy dresses while I tried and failed to stop Flossie from a) falling over, and b) lying down in a shop for a "nap". I managed to get her out of the mall (didn't want to be arrested) to the crowded street, where she attempted multiple times to run across the road in the middle of traffic, but eventually entertained herself by trying on a pair of shoes she found on the ground. In conclusion: I am never having children.

After some sobering-up time, we went to see Star Trek, which was still brilliant. How is it just as awesome the third time? We have now successfully converted Mairi to Trek, thus striking a blow for Geek Culture (although she did feel that the new movie suffered from lack of whales). We also proved to her that black-and-white movies can be good (example: Casablanca), so apart from the Hannah Montana blip this morning, the day was a victory for Film in general.

So, next time I write I will either be in Nice or home in Glasgow. Farewell!

Mairi & Flossie's trip to London is going... interestingly. Yesterday I slept in and when I woke up they had drunk all my rum for breakfast. Today Mairi took me to a "mystery location" (ie. somewhere she thought I wouldn't agree to go to unless blindfolded), which turned out to be Tiffany's. It was sparkly. Then we went to As You Like It at the Globe, which was very funny, expecially Touchstone (who had a lot of Rowan Atkinson-style rage going on) and the chap who played Orlando, who looked rather like David Tennant.

Flossie & I have introduced Mairi to Star Trek. First we went to gracieflower's house and watched very start of the first season, before Sulu and Chekov had even turned up. At this point I discovered that without even watching very many episodes in my life, over the past couple of weeks I have transformed from "mildly interested" to "crazy-eyed trekkie". Oh well. Maybe all the Trek esoterica I have accumulated will come in useful? (No. It won't.) This evening we watched the movie with the whales & time travel to the 1970s, which won Mairi over because it is so fucking ridiculous. So we decided to go see the new Trek movie tomorrow. This will be the 4th time Flossie has seen it; for me, only the 3rd.

Our other plan for tomorrow is (on Mairi's insistance) to see Hannah Montana: The Movie. My criteria was that I would watch it, but only while drunk. So after hours of careful research, the three of us have ascertained that the cheapest place to watch Hannah and Trek is Wood Green, which is unfortunately in the middle of a mall. Mairi loves malls; I think they are Hell. But I will be drunk by the time we leave Hannah Montana, so the hour of mall time between the two movies will be relatively painless. If only the level of organisation dedicated to this expedition could also be dedicated to our trip to France next week.

Last night I said goodbye to Tom. It was very tragic. Although he's not moving to Austria for another couple of months, it's unlikely we'll see each other before then. :( Who knows when we two will meet again?

My friends & I decided to get into the spirit of a pure Britney experience by making pink t-shirts with "IT'S BRITNEY BITCH" stencilled onto the front, and then sprinkled with a fuckload of glitter. We also got matching hot-pink top hats with veils. This was inspired by Britney's facebook page, where they show pics of selected fans from each concert, usually either identikit Bristol Palin lookalikes in, yes, home-made t-shirts, or drag queens. However, we were more or less the ONLY PEOPLE who had dressed up! There were some girls in Britney Ringmaster outfits, but apart from that we were the most awesome & tacky-looking there, although sadly we never ran into the audience photographer.

We got there 2 hours early, thinking it would already be full with hardcore fans. But it was quite empty,and we were right at the barrier round the circular stage; the only people standing closer than us were in the VIP area, which costs over £500 and a lot of the people there didn't even appear to be into it, which struck me as a waste. The first support act was Ciara, whose dancing was a combination of sexy and hilarious while she shouted along to recordings of her own songs. Then was the Big Apple Circus, who were majorly underwhelming, apart from the acrobat girl.

Britney's show opened with the screen round the top of the stage showing a film of Perez Hilton dressed in drag, announcing the Circus tour before Britney appeared and shot him in the junk with a crossbow. WTF disturbing. Here's how the show went:

Circus: Great big KAPOW of an opening number: Britney appears in a circus ringmaster's outfit, with a whip. The dancers were dressed in fetishwear with gimp masks or as scary goth clowns. All I remember is the dance routing was awesome (although they were ALL awesome).

Piece Of Me: Four of the leather gimps roll her around the stage in a gold cage. I think she removed some clothing to reveal some kind of corset at this point? She came REALLY CLOSE to us for the first time because we were at the edge of one of the walkways. We could see her face and it was very exciting! The two guys closest to us, who had come all the way from Spain, totally freaked out.

Radar: I think this one opened with Lucho Libre-dressed acrobats coming down from the ceiling on ribbons. Now wearing a sparkly bikini, Britney did a bunch more well-choreographed stuff with the backing dancers, then pole danced on the walkway in front of us.

Gimme More: This was just dancers, a bunch of martial arts guys. Britney herself was setting up for the next two songs.

Ooh Ooh Baby & Hot As Ice: Wearing a spangly silver dress, Britney acted as magician's assistant, this guy with a quiff and a cape cut her in half (HOW DID THAT WORK?) and then she took off the dress to reveal lingerie, for a sexy dance with 4 female dancers for Hot As Ice.

Boys: I didn't know this song; I only own one Britney album so had to ask Mairi what was going on a couple of times. This one had a military theme, at first, with Britney dressed in a military jacket, ordering all these hip-hop guys to do pushups. Then two guys cycled around her in giant pimped-up tricycles, one of which had a pole on the back, where she pole-danced for a while. WTF IDK.

If U Seek Amy: THIS SONG IS INSANELY BRILLIANT. The lyrics are 100% stupid, even for Britney, whose lyrics are, by and large, massively dumb, over-sexualised and often totally nonsensical. Anyway, I LOVE THIS SONG. She strutted around in a black sparkly bathing costume and pink feather boa, hitting male dancers with a giant, sparkly pink mallet. We'd previously seen the pink sparkly mallet in promo pics, and were glad to find out what it was for, because: pink sparkly mallet!

Me Against The Music: Bollywood themed dance and costumes (even more blindingly spangly than before). Thought this was a bit racially suspect, then remembered I was watching Britney Spears and switched off the analysis part of my brain.

Everytime: This was the only ballad of the show, and is also the only ballad I love. So glad she played this song! They switched her microphone on for the first time (seriously, no one could be expected not to lip-sync when they while doing such insane dance routines) and she said generic hellos before being lifted up on a flying blue parasol while the dancers flitted around underneath with their own little parasols. I may have teared up a little at this point, because I am a tool.

While they got read for the second half, they showed a video of Britney doing a rock cover of Sweet Dreams by Eurythmics in some kind of sex club involving masks and fetishwear. Yeah, there were only about 5 kids in the entire audience, which at first surprised me but now I think was probably a good thing. It was not exactly child-friendly.

Freak Show: Totally BADASS. The gimp masks, chain harnesses and fetish clowns were back, and the rest of the dancers writhed around on furniture that came down on cords from the ceiling. I think this was the song where there was a dancer in a straight-jacket, which was disturbing.

Get Naked (I Got A Plan): Involved the male dancers removing a bunch of clothing (like there was much to begin with) and Britney being lifted up in a giant picture frame. Then she sung Breathe On Me to this guy who was apparently a fan from the audience.

Touch Of My Hand: Britney put on a blindfold and sat on a leather couch. Then these two male aerialists wearing leather underwear and harnesses lowered down on top of her, and one of them started making out with her and lifted her up into the air with his legs.

Do Somethin: The dancers all had metal armour and all these metal frameworks appeared on the stage. The dancers used those grinder things that make showers of sparks. It was badass. She then did Slave 4 U, which I recall as being rather meh.

Before doing a remix of Baby One More Time, all the dancers did separate routines and were introduced by name. Then they did a remix of Toxic with green lighting and all these metal framework things. My friend Flossie was overjoyed as this is her favourite song.

The encore was Womanizer, which was a brilliant end to the show, with Britney and the dancers dressed in police uniforms before taking their bows and leaving in a shower of confetti.

Then we came home and ate candy and watched The Little Princess. WHAT A BRILLIANT NIGHT! My entire house is covered in glitter. SO MUCH GLITTER.

I am on THE TRAIN. With Mairi and Flossie. To London.

You may be asking why I am not already in London? Well, this is because I had to take an emergency trip to Glasgow to pick up my passport from the passport office. This meant running straight from my Patrick Wolf gig last night (PATRICK WOLF!!!) to the sleeper train, which is a total misnomer because I did not sleep.

But now we're on the way to London, and tomorrow, to BRITNEY! We've bought our plain white t-shirts in readiness of decorating them with sparkles, glitter, and Britney-themed slogans. We have a giant suitcase for the three of us to share when we go to France next week although Flossie has already filled 60% of it with shoes, makeup and cocktail umbrellas. We have exciting plans for the week between Britney and France: Hannah Montana movie with accompanying vodka-spiked slushies; Star Trek marathon (with gracieflower?); trip to the Globe; sunbathing & consumption of candy & wine, etc. In summary: WE ARE PREPARED FOR ANYTHING.

Patrick Wolf: brilliant, with an enthusiastic & sweaty audience. Tom, who has seen him five times, pronounced it his finest Patrick Wolf experience. I, a Patrick Wolf novice, found it greatly exciting & now fully understand the appeal of PWolf's egotistical and sparkly sexual charisma. Plus, he played the dulcimer, which was impressive. The support band were called YACHT, and were violently amusing: a man dressed in a white suit and a very androgynous girlin a black outfit, dancing robotically to techno and yelling. They invited us to their house in Portland, Oregon; Tom & I have resolved to pop in on our way to Canada, when we go on our epic Canada trip for the purpose of stalking Paul Gross.

Went rowing in the Thames with gracieflower & friends. We bumped into each other on the train, where I was engrossed in my new Star Trek tie-in novel. Grace and I immediately launched into a semi-hysterical dissection of Star Trek and its epic brillance, while her flatmates looked on with expressions of bemused tolerance (or in Rich's case, severe hangover). By the time we got to the boats, we'd accumulated more people (this girl called Jade had a rainbow sequinned sun-visor!) & had to split between a big boat & a small boat. To give you an idea of why it might be something of a hardship to be stranded in the middle of a large expanse of water with Grace & me, this is the conversation that took place as Grace, Dan P & I were waiting for our boat:

ME: *reluctantly* I guess we should probably, like, talk about something that includes Dan in our conversation.
*...long silence...*
GRACE: So... who do you think would be better at rowing, Spock or Kirk?
DAN P: *expression of quiet horror* Oh my God.

In the evening we went to see Romeo & Juliet, which was probably my least enjoyable Globe trip to date: it felt very touristy (which, okay, it's the Globe, but for some reason this time the costume-drama was a little grating), the relationship between the leads didn't work for me because a) it wasn't very intense and b) Juliet looked like a 12-year-old Anne Frank whereas Romeo was dreamboat cute; and the way they played out the transition between emotional and comedic scenes seemed quite jarring. Still, Mercutio was brilliant, though it's kind of a gift of a role: everyone loves Mercutio.

flossatronha suggested we go boating when she and Mairi come to visit next week. My immediate thought was of the three of us capsizing and drowning in the Thames, possibly while drunk. I told Tom this, but reconsidered because I couldn't imagine Mairi getting wet or dirty and thus ruining her hair. Tom then pointed out that this paints my friends in a somewhat negative light, which worried me. Am I being bitchy? Taking care of your appearance isn't a character flaw! And past evidence of our activities does indicate a certain trend towards liquor and humourous catastrophe, which in my opinion is also not a bad thing. I certainly don't disrespect Flossie & Mairi... unlike me, they are both gainfully employed, so in terms of adulthood & responsibility they are already far ahead. I don't know... you guys, I assume you realise how much I am looking forward to what is clearly going to be a SUPER-AWESOME TIME, with my SUPER-AWESOME FRIENDS. (And Britney Spears on June 2nd.)

The gallery in the St Pancras church crypt is utterly brilliant. They've not renovated the original stone crypts, so it's very chilly and calming compared to the HOT HOT HEAT outside. Or at least it was calming until I turned around from looking at some nifty bugs made from syringes and came face-to-face with a TERRIFYING RABBIT CREATURE. I loved almost all the the artists they were showcasing, but it was rather spooky to view alone... there was one antechamber containing nothing but a featureless black mask and I was NOT GOING IN THERE, because hello, supernatural peril!

Then I found a lovely little second-hand bookshop run by two silver-haired ladies with incredibly plummy old-fashioned English accents. But as I perused the shelves of 16th century poetry, etc, I came to the realisation that what I really wanted was original series Star Trek tie-in novels. I embarked on a quest through various second-hand bookshops, but got sidetracked by a poster for something called "Saturnalia" at a place called the Horse Hospital. It turned out to be underneath some storage units in Russell Square, and was an exhibition of rather lurid paintings involving vaginaphallic flowers, goat-headed men, genitals, claws, snakes, bone and steampunkish weaponry. The ladies at the gallery liked my baby-head earing, but I did not buy their art, because it was all £4000+, WTF.

Finally went to Fantasy Centre, an old-school sci-fi bookstore which has been around for 40 years but is tragically closing down in two weeks. There were all these old men there, chatting about ale and sci-fi, but rather than being all elitist and mean like that type can so often be, they were really nice and friendly, like Geek Dumbledores! I got four Trek novels, rejecting all the ones with ludicrous titles like "Spock: Messiah!" or with Mary Sue OCs in the blurb. I've started reading "Black Fire", which is soooo enjoyable: by page 3, McCoy is in tears because he doesn't think he will be able to save Kirk, "the man he both admires and respects", and the blurb says Spock is soon to be wrongfully jailed for sabotage. Brilliant!

Heard some intriguing things concerning a party that took place last night in Edinburgh... apparently all the boys put on the purple sequinned dress I gave Jamie to assist in his drag fetish last year, and there is video of them giving wrongeyed_jesus lapdances. Also, Hector found shirley_1989 in the stairwell at 5am this morning, dressed only in his boxers. I feel comparatively tame, as while I was at a party here in London, my wild drunken activities consisted of coming home and (apparently) doing laundry, as I woke up the next day, fully clothed and with the light on, with laundry hung up all over my room. Not really sure how I got home, but c'est la vie.


ETA: gracieflower just called & wants me to go dancing in Camden tonight. BUT I AM TIIIIRED, GRACE! TIIIIIRED! I want to settle down with my Star Trek novels! *is dork*

My exams are OVERRRRRR!

Historiography was surprisingly un-disastrous. It was held in the American Church in Tottenham Court Road, about which I have always been curious. I always wondered, is it the awesome kind of church like in Blues Brothers where instead of listening to a bored Presbytarian talk about sin, people leap around and clap whilst wearing colourful choir robes? In fact, the interior was sadly disappointing, but when I left there was a guy lounging in a chair beside the exit. He had a spiv moustache and a matching trilby and suit, and looked like he might be friends with Huggy Bear. And outside the door was a gigantic, gleaming Harley Davidson. Vindicated! Cool people do go to the American Church!

So, I am considering whether or not to go to Ed's garden party now. On the one hand: delicious food and drink. On the other hand: I have had three hours sleep and look like utter shit.

P.S. sweetmintmojo IS BACK, sweetmintmojo IS BACK! I am massively bitter that I will not get to see her till I am back in Glasgow in mid-June. Gracicle, do not forget me! Also, I am excited at the prospect of spending the summer with you and Harvard Boyfriend! (providing I can get a fucking job in edinburgh before then.)

I'm not sure how I managed to delude myself that I would be able to study while my friends were visiting. Still, when I inevitably fail tomorrow's Historiography exam, at least I will have the super-awesome memories of the last week to cheer me up.

1. Charlie Chaplin film The Kid at Wilton's Music Hall. Beautiful venue; beautiful movie. I'd never seen a Chaplin film before and wasn't sure I was going to like it. On the one hand, I dislike slapstick, but on the other, Weetzie Bat likes Charlie Chaplin and Weetzie Bat is never wrong. As it turns out, I loved it and even teared up a little... ordinarily I hate movies with adorable kids, but he was an impressively good actor, especially considering the fact that it was filmed in 1921 and cinema acting had only been around for about three seconds. Afterwards my visiting Scots and I adjourned to gracieflower's house to play boardgames. Oh, a game where you're required to read minds and finish one anothers' sentences? HOWEVER WILL wrongeyed_jesus AND I MANAGE?

2. It was fucking hot. So we drank a lot of icy mojitos and went the only place we could find with air conditioning: the movies. Coraline 3D was 100% too frightening for me and I wanted it to end. In The Loop was just as hilarious the second time around, with the added bonus that shirley_1989 can (surprisingly) do an impression of Malcolm Tucker, leading to the genius invention of the Malcolm Tucker Crossover Fanfiction game. Malcolm Tucker in Star Trek: "Go suck on a phaser, ya posh slaphead!" Malcolm Tucker in Harry Potter! Malcolm Tucker in Narnia! It cannot fail. We also watched Demolition Man (HOW CAN I NOT HAVE WITNESSED THIS GENIUS BEFORE) and Strictly Ballroom (OH MY GOD WHAT THE HELL).

3. White Mischief surpassed itself in terms of performance quality and audience costumes, but I think attendance is down since last summer as there were actual gaps on the dancefloor by the time Tough Love came on at midnight. The Correspondents were, of course, the highlight of the night. The singer was even more hotass than usual (who knew it was POSSIBLE?) leading to a semi-meltdown from both me and wrongeyed_jesus because we were right in front of the stage for the performance (BEST. DANCING. EVER.) and he kept wandering around near us all night. It turned out he knew that hot drag-king who was standing in front of us, which just figures: the super-stylish all know one another through some kind of cultish secret society, possibly through their secret Dorian Gray handshake.

The other acts: OK but not amazing burlesque act (Claire & I concluded we had never seen any burlesque that had genuinely wowed us, although the fox-hunting woman last Hallowe'en with the wip and the fake blood came close). Chainsaw juggler with a cheery street patter who stripped down to a red pleather man-thong, nearly sending shirley_1989 into cardiac arrest. Desmond O'Conner the ukulelist was MC for the main stage; always good value. Fitzrovia Radio Hour doing a 1930s/40s radio pastiche thing on the small cabaret stage. Tough Love, who were pretty good as always despite the lead singer's baffling new haircut (Spock fringe + weird bangs at the sides + shorn at the back = WTF?). Really snazzy aerial acrobatics show from four women in glowing white bodysuits. And after all the shows were over we danced till the wee hours in the hot hot heat of the upstairs jazz room. WM FTW!

4. Is there some way for me to get the clip of Spock saying "Live long and prosper" to the Vulcan science council so I can watch it forever? It is possibly my favourite film moment EVER now, and is impossible to duplicate. All I know, is, it was the most badass thing ever the two times I saw it, like, "Live long and prosper, motherfuckers... *nyyaaaoaooooqq GUITARS*" and then me going into paralytic shock from its awesomeness. (Okay, bedtime now, I think. SLEEP BEFORE EXAMS.)

The last few days have been filled with excitement and mild heatstroke.

White Mischief occurred. I will write about that in agonising detail, later.

Now my friends have gone back to Scotland. Sadness!

And I am supposed to be revising for my exam on Thursday. BUT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. Because I don't care about the fucking exam any more (why can't it be OVER) and the internet is filled with Star Trek fanfiction. AAAGGGHHHHH GODDDDDD.

1. Sweaty, crowded bar + beer + awesome blues music = funtimes.

2. Mojitos and cupcakes for lunch! wrongeyed_jesus's idea of a mojito involves like 5 shots of rum but no sugar because sugar makes it "less refreshing". However, the rum did cure the pain brought on by inadvisedly wandering around Covent Garden in 4-inch heels.

3. Misha Collins now has a Twitter. It's pretty much the most insane thing ever. I love him.

4. Discovery: gossamer_tune is apparently getting sick of me randomly texting him at 3am to babble about how awesome Misha Collins is. To be honest I don't understand this mindset. How can he not be interested? Weird. Whatever: I'm pretty sure he appreciated it when I emailed him last night with J2 fic where Jared is a hooker who dresses up as a superhero. (Like there's anything better for him to do on the fucking Edinburgh-London Megabus, anyway.)

My Edinburgh friends wrongeyed_jesus, shirley_1989 and gossamer_tune are coming to London tomorrow. Technically they are here to attend the White Mischief steampunk event on Saturday, but they decided to come for a whole week because they miss me so much there is a Gavia-shaped hole in their hearts that makes them cry themselves to sleep at night. (In fact it's because London is 100 times more awesome than Edinburgh, home of shortbread and shortbread-based tourism, but whatevs.)

Minor problem: today I realised that I hadn't got round to finding anything to occupy them while they are here. Recently I've been so busy with exams (!) that my love-affair with London has been curtailed somewhat and I have no idea what's going on. However, the internet is my friend and I have now drummed up about 20 competing entertainment options for this week, creating the opposite problem: decisions, decisions. The biggest issue is what to do with Friday night: free Charlie Chaplin screening at Wilton's Music Hall, or a male burlesque competition? I am leaning towards the latter, primarily because the only thing more hilarious than the idea of Shirley at a burlesque event is Shirley at a male burlesque event.

Am getting a little worried about my White Mischief costume, or lack thereof. This WM looks like it's going to be even more hardcore-awesome than the previous ones, and I feel my outfit (Whoreticia Addams dress plus some kind of hat) is definitely not up to par. I just don't want to spend much money, and it's probably too late to get typhonatemybaby to build me some kind of steampunk accessory and mail it to London. Dammit! Well, at least I will be able to dance, unlike all the people who will turn up in space-suits or bondage armour or 20lb Victorian ballgowns.

THERE IS NOW A TRAILER FOR THE UPCOMING SHERLOCK HOLMES MOVIE.

It is, as my friend Anna said when she sent it to me, "wack as fuck".

Considering what I had previously heard about this film, my standards were set VERY low. After seeing the trailer, I can only say... HOLY SHIT I ACTUALLY WANT TO SEE THIS FILM. It is so incredibly, mind-boggling unlike the actual Sherlock Holmes that it cannot possibly count. WTF HILARITY.

1. Holmes is a bare-knuckle fighter.
2. Who gets chained up naked in bed by Moulin Rouge girl (?) Rachel McAdams, who may at some point be involved in a pagan ritual sacrifice.
3. The apocalypse is nigh, and the undead may be involved. Possibly also Satanism or some kind of Victorian cult.
4. There are multiple comedy action sequences.
5. Holmes is a crazy-eyed druggie who has an office in the Houses Of Parliament, and office which he exits by leaping out of his window into the Thames.
6. Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law) are incredibly gay. This appears to be the only similarity to original Holmes canon, except according to this trailer they are really gay. Watson complains about how Holmes steals his clothes and is "depraved", and RDJ smirks and makes all his lines sound like double entendres.
7. No actual detective work appears to be involved. Like, at all.

In short, it appears to be the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

Well, I for one am glad that they made the decision to make the SPN finale just 42 minutes of Dean and Cas making out while shirtless.



P.S. HAHA IT WAS SO AWESOME. Similarly midnight IMAX Star Trek, after which I got the nightbus home with, no exaggeration, a gangster kid who is wanted for murder. Funtimes! SPN post tomorrow after I've slept and eaten something that isn't an alcoholic and/or caffeinated beverage. Exam season is fun!

Have spent significant portion of the last 24 hours attempting to compress the entire cultural, military, political and trade history of the Ancient Near East into my brain. SO. MUCH. INFORMATION. And in a minute I am going to start rereading all 1209123 pages of my revision notes.

When I get back from the exam this evening I am going to settle down with a beer and listen to the most violent and mind-numbing music I can get my hands on. If anyone has any suggestions, please tell me.

Then, I am going to see the midnight Star Trek showing at the IMAX with gracieflower.

AGHHHHHHHH.

1. Spent the day sunbathing & reading Volume 1 of a giant tome on the Ancient Near East, which contains all the information I am required to know for my Friday exam, but unfortunately does not demarcate between the interesting/useful information & the boring tripe. Even more unfortunately, the author is my lecturer, & her lecturing style is about as scintillating as her writing style, meaning that I spent at least 50% of her classes writing Leverage fanfiction and drawing on my legs. I may come to regret this when it turns out the exam paper requires me to write, like, a 2000 word essay on the usefulness of reedbeds in 3rd Millenium Ur, or whatever.

2. gracieflower's flatmate turned 25 on Saturday, so there was a big 1984-themed costume party. There were not one but two guys with cages of rats on their heads. I felt very smug the next morning because instead of dying slowly amongst the pile of corpses in the kitchen, I drunkenly took the tube home at 9am with this previously-shirtless girl and her boyfriend. But Tom, who for some reason did not believe me when I told him that tequila aids the studying process, remained disbelieving that I would ever get any work done. Of course, I did end up doing no work because I was still drunk at like 1pm and spent the entire afternoon eating m&ms and (shamefully) surfing del.icio.us for J2 highschool AUs. Tom said: "Basically your motto should be 'bad decisions are fun!'" which, sadly, is very true. It is extremely tragic that he is moving to Austria. Who then will tiredly point out my many flaws and then ridicule them in public?

3. Had my first exam on Friday. It was OK, despite the fact that whenever I stopped concentrating my mind instantly snapped back to fantasising about Star Trek and how amazing Star Trek is and how much I want to see Star Trek again. I did go a little weird towards the end of the 3rd hour and start rambling about Aristotle's obsession with bees, but all in all I think I passed.

4. Just spoke to my friend at MIT, sweetmintmojo, and she now has a bronze rat class ring, just like Iron Man! I pretended to be unexcited by this, but I am super-impressed. Okay, that's a lie. What I actually said was "Now you're like one degree of separation away from assfucking Captain America!". One day? I will learn how to keep my mouth closed. ;D

5. The other day I discovered my friend Dan reads Wincest. Unsettling?

I had very low standards for this film. I was fairly sure Spock was going to be good, at least, and as long as Kirk at some point got it on with a green alien woman with ludicrous hair, I would be happy.

It fulfilled my one criteria very satisfyingly, plus SO, SO MUCH MORE. This film is fucking amazing. Every character was spot-on without being a copycat of the original actors (Chekov was adorable, BTW), and it definitely did not feel like a reworking of the same tired old thing. It was a genuinely good, and even the cheesey bits (fight scenes on walkways etc.) were done not in a tongue-in-cheek way but more in a "we don't even acknowledge this because we are SO AWESOME" kind of way. And guys: IT WORKED. I am desperate to watch this movie again. The level of squee-age in the cinema? Was VERY HIGH.

Ok, so, I am going to write an actual review tomorrow once I've come down off the sugar rush high and, uh, done my exam. Yeah. Exam.

Today did not start well. My flatmate came into my room to borrow a textbook at 8am while I was still naked and in bed, and then I spent eight hours reading analyses of 2500-year-old philosophy texts in preparation for tomorrow's exam. But Star Trek? IMPROVED THIS 100%. It is my film of the year, for certain.

P.S. I love you Kirk, I love you Spock! I draw a big heart around you and then lots of little hearts around the big heart! Because that is how much I love you right now! Also I want a Star Trek 1960s minidress uniform.

P.P.S. Spock is utterly hotass in the black uniform he wears when he's not on the bridge. HOT. ASS.

Guys, guys, guys! I have something amazing for you! FOOTAGE OF JAMES MARSTERS AS AN ALIEN-FIGHTING COWBOY! Soon to be airing on the Syfy channel (what a shit name), ALIEN WESTERN! Okay, so it's a sci-fi channel made-for-TV movie with an incredibly lame title, but who cares? It's James Marsters as a cowboy, fighting aliens!

1. Started reading "Perdido Street Station" by China Mieville. Seems easier to read than "The Scar", while remaining just as brilliant. The protagonist is an obese, balding renegade scientist whose artist girlfriend has the head of a bug, like with pincers and chitin and multi-faceted eyes. The first scene in which they appear ends in man-on-bug sex. AWESOMECAKES! </p>

2. Am in tip-top fighting form for my first exam next week! Am physically fit (Beer for breakfast today at 3pm. Tim's fault!) and mentally prepared (I have a notebook AND a pen!) What could possibly go wrong? NOTHING, because tomorrow I am getting up at 8am and going to the library to learn about Thales and Heraclitus! And no matter what my whorebitch flatmate says, I will not mistakenly write "hairy clitoris" instead of "Heraclitus" during an exam.

3. Yesterday: Sci-Fi London Film Festival short movies programme. My favourite was a fake 1950s propoganda film (Spanish dubbed over German, with English subtitles, and a really genuine feel of grainy stock-footage about it) about a fictional disease brought to East Germany by a crashed US spacecraft. They cured the disease by engineering a half-turtle, half-leech creature (LURTLE!) that sits on the patient's chest and sucks out the virus. It was delightful. Although not as delightful as Eelgirl, my favourite from last year. The most charming was probably a stop-motion animation about adorable robots in post-apocalyptic London and the cutest was a very British one about two OCD people who survive a plague because of their obsessive cleanliness, but all the films were pretty good. (Then we went to the pub. Because Tim & Tom were there.)

4. Bought a totally random-ass DVD boxset in a charity shop today. The four films are "Strictly Ballroom" (Baz Luhrman campiness), "Human Traffic" (some 90s club-kid movie?), "Carry On Doctor" (Yeah, I know, WTF?) and "DEATH TRAIN", which I watched today. It stars Christopher Lee, Pierce Brosnan and Patrick Stewart, but is 100% B-movie.

Not a very good film. Went with Michael (total comic-book nerd) and Jackie, who are always awesome to watch movies with. The good points of the movie (spoiler-free) are as follows:

1. The G.I. Joe trailer (HAHA THIS FILM LOOKS HILARIOUS WE MUST SEE IT AT ONCE).
2. Any time Gambit is onscreen.
3. Hugh Jackman's charm and incredible hotness.

We decided afterwards that it would have been a far better film if Wolverine and Gambit had partnered up at the beginning and become BFFs, so that when Wolverine finally lost his memory, Gambit would have been incredibly upset and emo about Wolverine not remembering him. Gambit would compose sad country songs on the guitar, but the pain would be so great that his superpowers would overflow and he would blow up his guitar in a ball of pink lightning.

In other news, my boobs and the front of my legs are now totally sunburnt from spending too much time on the balcony. Well, at least I don't have a tan-line in the shape of the Oxford Classical Dictionary, which would have been a serious danger had I fallen asleep. Now I'm going to watch the new Supernatural! (Probably while topless, because of the heat. Sexy!)

1. I have a Twitter now! It's strange how many previously boring-looking hobbies you pick up in the revision period before exam season.

2. I tell my mother, like, everything, but there are two things where it is just never going to work out: sexuality and my academic career. On the first count, I have patiently explained to her about ten times over the past 5 years that bisexual doesn't mean "too slutty to pick one and stick with it", and as for the latter she seems to have some idea of my life plans that has no bearing in reality. For example, that time she thought I should go to music school when I was 11; that time she assumed I was going to go to art school instead of university; now, when she apparently thinks I am planning on doing a Masters next year. Like, what?

3. This trip to Nice is going to fucking RULE. Mairi found us a hostel that is only 16 Euros a night including breakfast, transport, a kitchen, and a giant bar that looks like the USS Enterprise if Starfleet's interior decorator was a gay cruise director. The one downside of this trip: Between the Britney concert and going to Nice, Mairi and Flossie will be in London for several days and will probably force me to shop, which I imagine will be about as fun as putting my hand in a meat grinder. They will drag me up and down Oxford street trying on 12091021 brightly-coloured outfits made by sweatshop babies, and Mairi will probably quote sex scenes from Twilight at me the whole time because she is a vile slattern who enjoys causing me pain. :'(

Just received two texts from my friend Mairi (with whom I recently travelled -- somewhat disastrously -- to Paris).

The first text reads: "return flight to marseilles -- £2. you in? we have found an awesome hostel"

The second text reads: "okay so FYI: you're coming to France! I booked your flight."

So... apparently I am going to France? For five days? With flossatronha and Mairi? And stayng in a hostel in Nice with a bar that looks like Star Trek or the Restaurant At The End Of The Universe. What the hell.

1. Merlin made approx 23912 scones when he came back from school today, presumably as a homework-avoidance technique. Let's put it this way: if I were to have 10 scones as a midnight snack while I watch Bones tonight, it would barely make a dent in the giant scone pile.

2. You know when you have a toy that you never play with but when someone borrows it, suddenly you must have it back? Well, I had all these animal bones on my desk gathering dust, but the second Merlin took them to use in whatever he's making right now, I had to have them back. I spent this afternoon drawing a gannet skull, which apparently he is going to make into the top of a staff tomorrow. WTF idea is that? You can't put a bird skull on top of a staff, it's way too delicate. And he's not letting me trade the bones for some of his circuit boards, he's just STEALING them. What a little bitch!

3. In The Loop is the fucking hilarious, and brilliantly dark. I love The West Wing, but this was like someone cutting off The West Wing's head and shitting in the neck-stump. And I was loving it. I was laughing out loud in the cinema all the way through, and occasionally curling up into a tiny ball of embarrassment in the corner of my chair. It makes me want to watch the rest of The Thick Of It, but how could youtube-sized Malcolm Tucker measure up to the experience of him screaming obscenities in enormous high-definition and surround-sound? I keep remembering all the insane/obscene insults he yelled in the movie, and laughing to myself like a crazy person.    

P. S. I watched The Edukators today and it's just as good as everyone says. I'm kind of glad nobody told me what it was about, however, because if someone had said "You've got to see this movie, it's three germans complaining about capitalism for two hours!" I probably wouldn't have watched it, I can't lie.

In Edinburgh. Am occupying self with the letters of Pliny the Younger, because it's the most lightweight thing I could find in Hector's collection of awesome & intimidating literature, and wrongeyed_jesus  is too busy studying to entertain me. I tried watching David Lynch's Rabbits over Hector's shoulder but had to abandon it on the grounds that it was disturbing and nonsensical. People in rabbit suits moaning random & ominous dialogue, and a laugh track? Sorry. (Hec has a giant Russian Ark poster on his wall and watches The Seventh Seal for fun... I doubt our taste in cinema often overlaps.)

Jamie & Alex's 10th houswarming party last night:wrongeyed_jesus  and I were alluringly overdressed (I find it nothing short of miraculous that I managed to get out of my Morticia Addams whoredress when I went to bed this morning) and many people were seduced by the beauty of my baby's-head earring. Who doesn't want a severed doll head hanging from one ear? I met a guy with a mohawk and I was going to pierce his ear for him, but some jackass confiscated the needle for some inexplicable reason. I will just have to pierce him next time I drunkenly sit on his lap at a party. :D

Camera Obscura are doing some kind of album launch shebang at Mono tonight. I may go, if I am back in Glasgow by then. Kapil and I will hang out with the scenester types!

P.S. Saw Let The Right One In with gossamer_tune  yesterday, pre-party. What an unsettling film. I have not seen such a physically unappealing cast since Delicatessen. Actually, I found it a little disappointing because although it was an entertaining and pretty film, it wasn't as INCANDESCENTLY AWESOME as all the reviews suggested.

ETA: I just remembered losangelino  smearing cake all over my face. What a bastard... he didn't even approve of my ear-piercing plan, which is quite frankly shocking. I think I retaliated by insultuing his fashion-sense, which of course must have been cutting and 100% effective.

1. I feel like I've betrayed myself in a fundamental way . Today I wore a hooded sweatshirt. In public . It was navy blue. I disgust myself. Dear god, I hope this isn't the start of some horrifying transformation. Since when have I made sartorial decisions based on comfort and warmth rather than level of blackness and... figure-hugging-ness? I will leave it buried under the pile of jackets in my room, just to make sure I can't possibly sucumb to the temptation once I'm back to London.

2. Addams Family Values is one of the few flawless films in the world. Nothing could improve upon its genius. I rewatched it today after reading this amazing piece of fanfiction, a crossover with Buffy where Harmony (a ditzy blonde from Buffy's high school who is later turned into a vampire and works as an office assistant for Angel) hooks up with Wednesday Addams when Wednesday comes to work for Angel. The person who came up with this idea should be applauded and given celebratory pie.

3. Tchai Ovna today withwrongeyed_jesusand shirley_1989. wrongeyed_jesus  is moving to Delhi next year! This is a super-exciting adventure for her, but it will cause Shirley and I to pine and huddle together like little lost lambs. Shirley will probably be forced to go to Dan for physical comfort. Again, Also, she will miss the Edinburgh festival! The only possible upside to this is the fact that she will not have to witness the mess in her flat as me, sweetmintmojo , sweetmintmojo 's Harvard boyfriend, Frances and various others move in for the duration.

4. Tomorrow: Edinburgh! One of my visits to Scotland finally coincides with one of losangelino  and dr_octavia 's legendary parties. Party mission: make friends with Jamie's girlfriend. This should be very easy because she is very Christian and nice, and the only other time I met her I passed out drunk in Shirley's bed, no doubt preceeded by hours of making obscene jokes, heckling Withnail & I, etc. with Mairi, Kapil and sundry cohorts.

 

5. How does one crosspost between Dreamwidth and LJ? Does it happen automatically if your previous LJ posts have been transferred over?

So... does anyone have a Dreamwidth entry code thingy I could have? Because this does appear to be a mass exodus at this point.

My friend Mairi and I differ greatly when it comes to music. For example, she loves Taylor Swift and hates all classical music (except for Clair De Lune... because it was on the fucking Twilight soundtrack), while I love Amanda Palmer (who blogs about menstruation and Neil Gaiman, and never shaves her body hair), and can listen to old-school American punk rock more or less indefinitely. However, one thing we agree on is BRITNEY SPEARS. In June, she, flossatronha  and I are going to see Britney in London. We've been looking at photos of Britney fans at her recent concerts, have come to the conclusion that we have to make matching t-shirts, possibly with glue-on rhinestones and definitely with a sexually-suggestive pun or slogan of some sort.

cobweb_diamond : Okay. All these fans look like Bristol Palin.
Mairi: I know! Wait... oh my god, I just saw a pic of two girls wearing Pussycat Dolls t-shirts!
cobweb_diamond : They went to Britney to see the PUSSYCAT DOLLS?
Mairi: I KNOW! That is insane!
cobweb_diamond : It's like, Britney is the queen, but instead of going to see the queen they are choosing to see Birmingham town council.

The fan-photos are amazing. One guy had "gimme" shaved into the side of his head, and was wearing pink sunglasses and bright-yellow earplugs. I cannot wait for June so I can be part of this insane and whorishly-dressed crowd! The only problem with the home-made t-shirt plan is that the more rhinestones, diamante studs etc we put on it, the less wearable it will be. At first I thought I'd just wear it to the concert and then, like, pin it to my wall in the classic style, but as Mairi pointed out, if you make an insanely tacky, glitter-smeared Britney concert t-shirt, aren't you, like, duty bound to your own awesomeness to wear it forever?

PARIS. This is going to be a little patchy as none of us remembered to bring a pen to Paris for note-taking/diaries etc. We had to write instructions onto our map using eyebrow pencil, from which fact you can probably deduce our level of preparedness. The thing is, Mairi has the soul of a Valley Girl, flossatronha  is kind of spacey and lives on candy, and I am a dick who is always convinced I am clever and right (even though I am never clever or right), so whenever we spend a significant length of time together, the situation tends to descend into a vortex of ludicrousness.

• Flossie arrives in Paris in the morning. She texts Mairi & I with Parisian updates such as "Got lost for two hours!" and "At hotel! Lots of sex noises from next door".
• At airport security, Mairi's hair is so big with hairspray they pat it down for drugs and weaponry.
• Mairi convinces me it's okay that we didn't put our terrorism-proof less-than-100ml cosmetics into the requisite ziplock bag, but she is wrong and they send us back to get ziplock bags and do it properly. The man is very nice to us, possibly because of our wide-eyed confusion: "Shampoo is a liquid? Is perfume a liquid? But isn't a liquid like, a drink? You can't drink perfume." It is a blow against feminism, but sometimes acting like a moron is the simplest solution. Especially when you don't have to act very hard.
• After getting off the airport bus in Paris, a woman takes pity on our confusion and leads us on an incredibly circuitous journey through the bowels of a shopping centre to the Metro. Hilariously, once we got there, a Scottish lady asked us for Metro instructions because we "looked like we knew what we were doing".
• Flossie tells us our plans for the evening. A bar with a guillotine upstairs, and a cave basement! A women-only bar where cocktails are 3Euro! We carefully write the locations onto the map.
• But we leave the map at the hotel.
• And the guillotine bar is kind of shit. So we leave.
• We spend a million years looking for the women-only bar. But Paris is very beautiful at night so all is not lost. We abandon our plan in favour of a random cocktail establishment in Rue Rambuteau.
• Next morning we are woken up with the phonecall telling us we have 10 minutes to vacate the room. How did sleep in till 12???
• Miles and miles of dark underground catacombs! The walls are made of arm and leg bones, with skulls decorating the top. There are notices warning not to steal the bones, but who is stupid enough to steal HUMAN BONES? Hello, these people were buried in a totally disrespectful manner and are therefore going to be unrestful dead, and if you remove part of the body, the vengeful spirit will be able to follow you around. Are people really dumb enough to invite this kind of supernatural peril?
• Mairi: "Gavia, you made me look at corpses. NOW WE ARE GOING TO THE MALL."
• After the mall we go to the Pompidou, which is really cool, but sadly we don't have money to go to exhibitions. I want to live in the Pompidou centre... there are puppet shows outside in the sun, and inside there is wifi, attractive art kids and random screens showing confusing art cinema and Pippi Longstocking!
• Sculpture! It is calming. I have forgotten the sculptor's name, but despite the serene properties of his work, he appears to have been insane, from what I read in the leaflet.
• OH MY GOD! By accident we find the elusive all-women bar. Hmm... it is covered in Pride flags, and deserted except for a couple of women playing pool and a bartender. We are clearly encroaching upon their territory. Also, the cocktails are not 3Euro as the guidebook claimed. "Why didn't the guidebook say it was a lesbian bar, anyway?" I ask, but Mairi and Flossie, exhibiting an entertaining lack of gaydar, a) didn't notice all the lesbians, and b) didn't recognise the Pride flag.
• More wandering around beautiful Paris in the sun! We go on a carousel. One of the primary rules for life Flossie and I share is: You Are Never Too Old For Carousels.
• Ooh! Vintage clothing store! I get a tight black lace dress with a high collar and long sleeves. It looks like what Morticia Addams would wear if she decided to become a prostitute.
• AIRPORT. They do not have tampax machines in French bathrooms, even though there are condom dispensers in the streets. WTF is up with that? I do feel an affinity for Amanda Palmer, however. She is right: getting your period randomly in airport bathrooms sucks.
• BACK IN SCOTLAND. Flossie, Mairi and I still have all our limbs! We will reconvene tomorrow in order to watch the new Doctor Who. I love my awesome friends!

Tomorrow: GOING TO PARIS. Our exploits will be sophisticated in the manner of visiting royalty, and carried out with the efficiency and organisation of a well-oiled machine. I know this because today Mairi, flossatronha and I had a very civilised discussion about it over instant messenger (except for the frequent pauses when Flossie had to go clean up vomit and/or be yelled at by her mother for not cleaning up all the vomit). We now know the location of our hotel, for example.

It turns out that Flossie does not speak French, which is problematic because this means that contrary to my previous assumption, none of us can speak French. And if recent events (ie. Flossie's birthday "dinner" last night) are anything to go by, we are probably going to end up in a charming Parisian drunk-tank. I think in this case the question "what could possibly go wrong?" is pointless. What can possibly not go wrong?

Okay. Well. I am going to go eat chocolate cake and rewatch the s4 premiere of Supernatural instead of worrying about it. Please include us in your prayers for the next couple of days. Over and out.

I am going to Paris next week, for an evening and the day after. I don't have very much money, and am with two other people. What should I do while I am there to squeeze as much awesomeness as possible from my trip?

GUYS GUYS GUYS.

I JUST SAW SUPERNATURAL 4x18.
AND IT WAS GOOD.

I thought it was just going to be a comedy episode with slash fanfiction jokes and comicbooks. BUT IT WAS SO MUCH MORE.

SAM.
AND DEAN.
SAMMY!!!! DOING THAT THING WE KNEW HE WAS GOING TO DO!

AND DEAN AND THAT AWESOME YET MILDLY SPOILERY CHARACTER FROM SEASON 4 WHO WILL REMAIN NAMELESS! OMG!

( Cut for a small portion of spoilery hysterics. )

(it was very difficult for me. I texted my friend gossamer_tune approximately 129081203 times being all like, "ZOMG AWESOME!" but could not mention anything spoilery because he is only halfway through season 2! very frustrating!)

Sadly, the family has just gone to the Isle of May, leaving me all alone for a week. Except for that whole part where my homies and I go to Paris on Wednesday, but I seriously have no idea what is going on with Paris. What are we going to do? Some kind of itinerary must be formed, otherwise disaster is inevitable! As for what I am going to do with my house while my parents are absent, my way seems clear: eat all the food, drink all the wine, and play gramaphone records at 3am, possibly while painting because I left all my paints here in Glasgow.

1. During our first Tchai Ovna visit of the holiday, the owners were filming an internet advert. There will be much background footage of Hector, wrongeyed_jesus, shirley_1989 and I sipping tea... a very realistic portrayal of Tchai Ovna during non-term-time, I feel. I will definitely post it here when they put it on youtube! Unless it is unflattering, because I am very vain. (Note: the video will illustrate how incredibly fucking West End Trendy we all are, but happily, only Glaswegians will pick up on this.

2. Rocky Horror with Claire, Kapil, Dan etc! Classic film. Need to see it live though.

3. Went to see Thomas Truax last night with gossamer_tune and my mother. He was pretty nifty with his home-made instruments (hornicator! mechanical drum machine!) and did covers of David Lynch soundtracks and Blue Velvet. The band before him were super-terrible though. As in, possibly the worst band I have heard outside of high school battle-of-the-bands, except they were like 30 years old. Embarrassing.

Then we went home and watched a million episodes of Supernatural. I LOVE SUPERNATURAL. I look forward to watching the new SPN tonight when it gets dark and scaring the crap out of myself all alone in the house. I ask you, internet: HOW AWESOME IS SUPERNATURAL? (Answer: VERY.)

1. It seems that next time I encourage someone towards drunk party makeouts, I should include a caveat. Instead of, "Sadly I am unable to attend, so please make out with somone in my stead," it should be, "Sadly I am unable to attend, so please make out with someone in my stead, but not anyone who has a girl/boyfriend, is not oriented towards your gender, or is named Shirley." EVENTS OCCURRED.

2. Today: went to Wilton's music hall with Tim and gracieflower, which is without a doubt the coolest place EVER. Oldest music-hall in the world, and just round the corner from Grace's house! Very beautiful, decaying appearance, and lots of deliciously raunchy history. This is 100% my kind of place, and I now desperately want to live there, as well as see and/or perform in a variety show there.
Then we went to Grace's house and hung with her homies. By which I mean, we snuggled up in a blanket and watched Starsky & Hutch while eating microwave custard.

3. toomuchplor has written Stargate Atlantis fic about Rodney not being able to keep up with Jennifer Keller's youthful sex drive. I am reading it right now, even though I have not been into SGA in months. It is freakin hilarious!

1. Sadly, Freja's and my plan to have a delicious end-of-term mojito picnic on the balcony was foiled by hail. (Rule: if ice is falling from the sky, it is not the season for iced drinks.) But no matter. Instead I went on a walking tour with Tim, Tom and Yashoda. I don't know what the tour was about. A man who looked like Cliff Richard told us about famous people who had done historical and/or scandalous things in various big houses, and then we went to a church. God was probably there, but I did not see him. Then we walked along the canal full of houseboats and barges, and Yashoda and I agreed that That Was The Life: any vehicle you can drive while eating a sandwich with one hand and balancing a full pint on the roof is a thing of beauty. Then we adjourned to the pub.

2. My flatmates have left me alone in the house tonight. Sadness. Also, Tom is too busy studying for exams to speak to me again until, like, June. More sadness. Right now in Edinburgh, all my Edinburgh friends are at losangelino & dr_octavia's party (titled "9", because it is their ninth housewarming party this year), but although I was not able to get a train ticket to Scotland for today, I am there in spirit because Dan has promised to get drunk and make out with someone in my stead.

3. I got DVDs of s2 Supernatural! GUYS, SUPERNATURAL IS SO FUCKING AWESOME I CANNOT EVEN GET OVER IT. I would happily watch an entire feature film of the Winchester brothers shooting things and driving around in their shiny car while listening to classic rock. Also, watching Supernatural in the middle of the night in a house by yourself: not a good plan.

I want to watch it another eleventy or so times, but sadly I have a Latin test in two hours. On the bright side, I am HANDING IN MY FINAL ESSAY.

I really like my flatmates Freja & Stefano's method of essay-writing. One of them languishes attractively on the bed and/or tidies things while the other one takes colour-coded and meticulous notes and demands backrubs. At the other end of the spectrum, I curl up in a tiny ball frustration in the 10% of my bed not covered with 102910 open reference books, and alternate between gazing wistfully at my ukulele and going on Facebook chat to complain about the existence of homework.

In other news, I have just noticed a bunch of people posting about Supernatural on LJ, which is very frustrating because it won't be online till tomorrow and I want to watch it now. Before this season, Supernatural was a show I'd watch when I was bored, and think "hey, this is pretty entertaining!" before wandering off to forget about it for a few weeks. Now, I am like, "Kripke, how are you so awesome and clever? Why do I have to wait a whole week before I get to watch Misha Collins gaze soulfully at things and talk in riddles again? What is going to happen next??"

Happily, I think I have persuaded gossamer_tune to start watching it and I am going to use my Borders card one of the seasons on DVD (WHICH ONE?) so we can watch it when I am in Scotland. w00t!

Okay, so, I have finished the essay (sort of; I cannot face rereading it today), so will take a short break for cake and Sentinel fanfiction before starting on Catullus & Virgil. I can't decide if it would be a good or a bad thing if an obscene sex poem turns up in tomorrow's Latin test.

So, sweetmintmojo is learning Java for one of her clever-person MIT classes. And I am writing an essay about Heraclitus. So naturally we are on Facebook chat discussing these things.

cobweb_diamond: Now you can hack into the alien mothership like in Independance Day!
sweetmintmojo: ...because the stupid aliens didn't put up a firewall
cobweb_diamond: well, those aliens.. they like to go on twitter in starbucks,what can i say?
sweetmintmojo: give into ubuntu, that's what i say.
cobweb_diamond: ok, now i want to do a webcomic about an alien Gawker Stalker.
cobweb_diamond: all these fanboy ewoks are like, "holy shit, Darth Vader's at the smoothie place down the road from tatooine! let's go there and see if we can catch some cellphone pics of what he's eating, and obnoxiously email them to all our friends!"
sweetmintmojo: HAHA yes.
cobweb_diamond: "god, gawker just updated with this pic of Spock's new hair. what is UP with that? SOOOOO Williamsburg"
cobweb_diamond: this is almost as good as the amazing gossip girl/sga crossover fic i wrote during some class last year.
sweetmintmojo: i feel this is what you should do with your time rather than write essays about pseudo-philosophers.
sweetmintmojo: hold on. what?
cobweb_diamond: all the characters were upper-east-side new yorkers. at highschool. and half of it was told in chirpy blog-style like in Gossip Girl.
sweetmintmojo: oh my holy hell
cobweb_diamond: mckay was like a nerdy and sarcastic scholarship kid. and sheppard was a douchey rich boy with a place in the hamptons and a tennis-playing girlfriend.
sweetmintmojo: oh god, of course
cobweb_diamond: teyla and ronon probably shared an apartment and owned an organic coffee shop or something.
sweetmintmojo: please write it?


Well, at least I know I will have something to occupy me during the 6-hour train journey back to Scotland next week.

This kid is a genius of sentimental political speechwriting. I actually teared up a little? And then he goes on to answer questions! Articulately! A career in gay rights awaits, I think.


Edited to add: Okay, this is a complete non-sequitur to my previous point, but I just read Amanda Palmer's most recent blog and apparently she made NO MONEY busking at South By Southwest. I find this impossible to believe: based purely on the total beauteous hotness of the picture of her busking, I would give her money, and I am a pennyless student.

My friends are so hot and awesome! wrongeyed_jesus went to her Haitian lecturer's house and ate salsa and got drunk on lychee liquor; gossamer_tune went to some fantastically Mirrormaskesque show and is making himself a pinstripe and lace waistcoat; sweetmintmojo is taking a break from putting on awesome geek Shakespeare at MIT in order to go to Florida with Kel (Kel's parents are paying for it in thanks for her being his beard? or something?).

Meanwhile, I have a shitload of end of term work but have spent my time learning to play "Country Roads (Take Me Home)" by John Denver, on my ukulele. Ordinarily I would be bitter and resentful because everyone else is having such exciting lives this week, but instead the BEAUTIFUL AND AWESOME SUN fills me with joy. Bare legs + chilled soy milk on the balcony = summertime.

Three days till the end of term! I'm going to go watch Gossip Girl now!

Dammit! I think I missed Holi. I had it marked up on the calendar as tomorrow, but I think it was today there was a dude in local shop all covered in paint and he and the shopkeepers were having some kind of conversation about "back home". Apparently there's a big thing going on somewhere in London, presumably a park or Trafalgar Sq or something?

The house is not a place of positive vibes. Freja is having nervous breakdowns over her current essay (last I saw it was 4000 words over the limit and in 5 different colour-coded typefaces, which boggles my mind because how complicated can it be to write about Augustus' influence on State religion?) and Mimi is practising for her next show, an opera of Macbeth that opens next week.

I have to write a paper about Babylonian king Hammurabi's diplomatic skills, but what I actually want to write is slash fiction about the tragic split between Hammurabi and his friend Zimri-Lim, with whom he corresponded for years before they had a falling out and Hammurabi sacked his palace. Zimri-Lim appears to be one of these burly, none-too-bright guys who got his power through marriage and just wants to ride around on a horse and shoot stuff all day while the scribes get on with the work of running the country, whereas Hammurabi built an empire and wrote a famous law code that's carved onto a large and phallic stela at the Louvre. I kind of want to read their letters. Too bad I don't get to write about that stuff in this fucking boring essay.

Tom came round today, for all of two seconds before I kicked him out. I am a terrible friend. He comes to my house after a hard day down the mines (that is what geologists do, right?) and I tell him to get lost so I can write my essay. But not before telling him that I have invited several of my friends to stay over at his place during revision break! Man, I can really imagine that he will miss my charming ways when he moves to Austria next year. Sorry, Tom!

Okay, okay. Essay-writing. Good times. Then I can get a few hours sleep just in time to get up, go to class, hand in the essay, go to three libraries, start another essay, and attempt (and fail) to translate some more of the Aeneid. Fucking Aeneid. IT IS UNTRANSLATABLE. You get a sentence with five words of Latin and then to make any sense out of it you have to add another fifteen words in English. Fuck fuck fuck. Still, there is light at the end of the tunnel: on Friday, term will be over, and Freja and I are going to make mojitos and sit on the balcony for as long as the sun is out.