cobweb_diamond

There's a saying about growing up: You reach adulthood when one of your parents dies. My philosophy is that you know you're a woman when men start harassing you in public and nobody gives a shit.

Think about it. If you were twelve years old and some strange man started shifting into your personal space or even talking to you, at least one person nearby would intervene and maybe even call the police and report him for being a sexual predator. But once you're an adult woman (by which I mean: someone who looks old enough to drive) you are on your own. I have lost count of the number of times some creep has done something to make me uncomfortable in a public place and no one has done anything. The most I have ever got was a sympathetic look from one woman on a crowded tube when this guy started leaning over... and over... and over on top of me. (I got off at the next stop and changed trains.)

I get paranoid about what I'm doing to inspire these things. Like, should I stop wearing short skirts because that makes it worse? I've also noticed that red lipstick increases the likelihood of gross comments in the street, particularly among the old turkish guys in my area. Most of the pervs in my area are in the least scary category of public-harassment-creeps: whisperers. They either hiss sexual stuff at you when you pass, or follow you for a little while making kissy noises. I have a fantasy of turning round and just laying into one of them, but it is pointless: they have like five friends with them (the young ones, anyway), and would either make some kind of incredulous denial or call me a bitch. The likelihood of a feminist debate occurring in this situation is not high.

The worst place I've been for street pervs is Nice, where guys of all ages find it totally acceptable to grab you and/or follow you for a whole block. A couple of times me and my two friends had to shout at them to fuck off and physically hit them because they wouldn't accept us just ignoring them or walking away. Oohh, and I nearly forgot some of my personal favourites from this holiday -- the guys smelling strongly of tobacco who invaded our compartment on the night train and WOULD NOT LEAVE ME ALONE, plus the guys who followed us IN THEIR CAR around Aix En Provence at night, scaring my friends and I so much we all had panic attacks when we finally got to the hotel. My holiday in france this summer was simultaneously awesome (my friends and I SOMEHOW managed to have a good time) and packed with some of the scarier experiences of my life. Also, I discovered recently that thanks to Guy On Train, whenever I am near someone who smells strongly of tobacco I become intensely fearful and nervous.

Okay, this was just meant to be a link post, but it turned into a serious rant. The link you should all read is this post about how to POSITIVELY approach women in public by Fugitivus, a blogger I found today who has a lot of smart things to say. Also to read: her post about why rape jokes aren't funny. Because rape jokes? Aren't funny.

Just to note: the few times a stranger has come up to me in public and told me I was beautiful in the non-threatening type of way described in fugitivus' blog post, it was awesome. Oddly, two of the guys who came up to me did so in Piccadilly Circus (they were different guys, and on different days), leading me to suspect that there MAY be some men who just hang out there copmlementing like a hundred women a day until one finally gives them her number.

1. How the hell did I manage to get a run in my stockings when the most strenuous thing I did today was reread Breakfast At Tiffany's?

2. Last night: Victoria & Albert late opening with Lizzie & Morwenna. It was gender & sexuality themed, and the crowd looked pretty excellent. I was impressed by the guy wearing an outfit entirely made out of red and cream latex, including tights & face-mask & inflatable wig. Lizzie kept saying things like "OH I FEEL QUITE OUT OF PLACE HERE FOR I AM A HETEROSEXUAL", and "AS A STRAIGHT PERSON I DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS", which got rather tiresome. When a gay person goes to the supermarket do they shout out "OH DEARY ME, I AM QUITE OUTNUMBERED HERE. I WILL AWKWARDLY ANNOUNCE THINGS ABOUT MY PRIVATE LIFE TO ALL THESE STRANGERS IN ORDER TO PUT MYSELF AT EASE!"? It is just a late-night gallery opening! You are not going to be kidnapped & shipped off to a Gay Camp.

We saw an old-school circus sideshow about masculinity, a (kind of lame) participatory research/performance thing in a darkened library, and did a life-drawing class with a gender studies lecturer & a drag queen who attempted to imbue us all with the power of the night (or some bullshit) before berating me for being a restricted and conservative artist (much like every art/music teacher I have ever encountered). I am a restrictive and conservative artist. It is the only way I know to be!

3. So the other day I saw Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus. What a film! It is everything I had hoped for and more. However, I inexplicably got very very drunk afterwards and was hungover for nearly the whole of the next day. What gives, man?

4. Unexpectedly, Jess & I have bonded over the fact that we are slobs and Ed expects us to do totally unreasonable things like clean up after ourselves and pay utilities. OK, I exaggerate, but Ed is slowly training us to be adults who do washing up right away instead of waiting until a perilous tower of dishes accumulates, falls, and crushes us all. Also, we have finally found Ed's breaking point. Usually he is impervious to anything disgusting (ex: last night he was dismembering a chicken carcass while I getting ready to go out) but this morning Jess & I were having a fun conversation that could be entitled "Interesting Ways To Break One's Hymen", and finally Ed was like, "GUYS, I AM TRYING TO EAT BREAKFAST, PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT HYMENS." Objective acheived!

1. As a birthday gift my parents got me these two fantasy novels (Luck In The Shadows and Stalking Danger by Lynn Flewelling). Ordinarily I hate sword-and-sorcery epics, but even though the second of these two books has an honest-to-god wizard on the cover and 50% of the characters have unnecessary "Y"s in their names, I TOTALLY ENJOYED them:

The heroes are Seregil the nobleman who lives a double life as a cat-burgling international spy, and Alec, whom he takes on as an apprentice in book one. Essentially this is Batman and his attractive young ward, except because it's a fantasy novel Alfred is a wizard and everyone has a stupid number of "Y"s in their name. They go on international fact-finding escapades! Often they must resort to cunning disguises (drag; travelling minstrels; possibly glue-on facial hair)! There are curses and skulduggery and quite a lot of housebreaking! There are lots and lots of strong female characters! Then in book two Alec and Seregil fall in love! But it ended on a cliffhanger (plus they didn't get together till like the LAST PAGE) so I had to buy more books. Sound marketing strategy, Ms Author!

2. Now I'm officially IN MY TWENTIES yet still I feel less mature & responsible with ever passing day. The party went pretty well, I think -- very few people went with the theme (teen movies!) in terms of costumes, but in terms ambience it was very much a teen party... the next morning I was feeling pretty proud of myself for not having fallen over anything or whatever, until Ed informed me that at one point I'd stopped talking to him mid-conversation and just started making out with this Danish ballet dancer. But I do remember most of the people I made out with that night, plus nothing got broken, so overall I mark it up as a success. It was all pretty silly really. We weren't as overcrowded as Ed & I anticipated because a lot of Jess's friends turned out to be douchebags who showed up and then left after ten minutes because we were too lame for them or some shit. Jess is so fun and non-judgemental but it appears that many of the people from her dance school are dicks.

3. My little brother Merlin came to visit for my birthday! Tim said he was "surprisingly normal", which I will take as a compliment to my excellent parenting skills. He put up shelves for me so now all my books are protected! And was remarkably sanguine about the fact that he probably saw me sucking face with random strangers at my birthday party (undoubtedly a horrifying sight for any little brother). What a dude!

4. Guys, I am pretty cut up that there is no more Supernatural for two whole months. Thank god they gave us a bumper dose of Castiel in this latest episode! It was an all-out super-Supernatural show: ( Spoilers for 5x10 )

1. DOCTOR WHO ( SPOILERS FOR 'THE WATERS OF MARS'! ) ( Aaaaand, spoilers for the Christmas Special trailer. ) Apparently trailer spoilers are a big deal... when we were watching it gracieflower literally FLED the room to avoid catching the trailer at the end.

2. This awesome White Collar video exhibits many of the reasons to watch the four currently available eps. I decided to share it with my brother.
typhonatemybaby: I think it's wasted on me cos I haven't seen the show.
cobweb_diamond: BUT HE HAS A HAT.
cobweb_diamond: IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL.
typhonatemybaby: Yeah: hot guy with hat, and homoerotic subtext. Whatever.
cobweb_diamond: The straight guy and his wife are equally awesome! And it has Wendy from Middleman!
typhonatemybaby: Gosh.
typhonatemybaby: Look, can this wait? I'm trying to concentrate on Top Gun. I'll get round to it when I'm finished with Tom Cruise.

Top Gun vs. White Collar? Tricky.

3. I cunningly volunteered to do a presentation at the British Museum (!!!) on roman portraiture next week, forgetting that I have saturday's party to prepare for. Ed is a bit peeved about the state of the house right now, so Jess & I are going to have to clean like fuckery on sunday (our birthday!), otherwise he will eviscerate us. Quite psyched, though! The party's teen movie themed and I have narrowed my costume ideas down to Molly Ringwald in Pretty In Pink and the red-haired Heather from Heathers, depending on what clothes I find.

I'm quite excited about this! Although having seen some of the enticingly esoteric fandoms (or should I say, "fandoms" -- I'm looking at you, 90s Public Service Announcement Character slash) I feel very dull & unimaginative with my requests. Why, my requested fandoms are all practically brand new! Ish. I also feel like I've gone kind of agonizingly specific with a lot of my preferences here, but you know -- you are the writer, you are the boss in the end!

General likes & dislikes
No character death, please. If you're writing a slash story: no noncon, and no agonising sexual identity panic. Things I like: crime-fighting and teamwork; happy endings; badassery; people rescuing each other (but not in a way that makes one of the characters seem like a damsel in distress).

( Fandom-specific ideas )

1. Yesterday I saw Jarvis Cocker. Truly, he is the skinniest man in the world, which only enhances his radical dance moves. Also present were various circus acrobats. It was all terribly Shoreditch trendy. The minute I leave Old Street tube station I start to feel antsy at the high proportion of indie/hipster 20-somethings, probably discussing things like How Vice Magazine Is A Sell-Out. I fear the Jarvis Cocker experience was somewhat lost on me as I am not a fan of britpop or even indie guitars in general, but I bumped into gracieflower in the venue and she and her friend seemed to be VERY excited about it.

2. Continuing with the Britpop theme, I went to a launch party (really just a bunch of people hanging out in a bar) for the latest volume of supernatural/pop-culture themed graphic novel Phonogram. Michael & Tim informed me upon arrival that due to Twitter the writer was aware of my worryingly short minidress, despite not even knowing me. Fucking Twitter. Thanks to drinks with some sci-fi nerd friends earlier in the evening I was kind of drunk when I first arrived and probably said something stupid when I met this guy who WAS Sandburg from 90s crime-fighting anthropologist/superpowered cop show The Sentinel. Hopefully I didn't mention that I've read homoerotic fanfiction about him (I can but hope).

Once again a situation where my shitty hearing means that I have to get Tim to repeat everything he says about 10 times. There is something about the pitch of his voice that means if there's any background noise I can't make out what he's saying at all. I think if Tim & I ever hung out somewhere serene and quiet like a church or a tea shop we would end up much better friends. It was cool to see Michael though! Michael is my favourite geek buddy. How have we not seen each other since March??

3. DON'T WATCH "SURROGATES". Just because it stars Bruce Willis as a robot cop (a flawless premise, one might assume) doesn't mean it's good. One day, when I have four or five hours going spare, I may list the million squillion things that are wrong with the worldbuilding in this movie, starting with: if you have the technology to live life as a robot, how come you are USING A CELL PHONE?

1. Fireworks at Alexander Palace last night were brilliant for many reasons: a) fireworks, b) I love to stand among enormous crowds of strangers (55,000 people!) all enjoying the same thing, and c) I feel many London Points are awarded for referring to Alexander Palace as "Ally Pally", which I said as many times as possible and probably annoyed everyone quite a lot.

2. Did anyone see this week's Bones? The mystery was pretty fucking ridiculous but it had Michaela Conlin cooing over an adorable pig, which is more or less the only thing I require. And Bones and Booth kind of held hands! I was UNREASONABLY excited by this. Their romance is so glacially slow-moving it is DOING MY HEAD IN.

3. I typed up the first chapter of my novel last week and am giving it to people to critique. Ed got it first, basically because he's handy and Ash and Jess are too busy dancing all day to read, but once he finished reading it I became crippled with self-doubt and horror in case he'd just said he likes it because he has to live with me. WHAT IF IT IS TERRIBLE? Too late; I've already emailed it to like five people and now they are going to judge me. *cries*

My brother and I were discussing our respective disastrous writing projects:
typhonatemybaby: I just abandoned a dieselpunk detective story. I based the detective's assistant on Cyndi Lauper. Sadly there was no plot.
cobweb_diamond: I find the plot just sort of materialises the more I write.
typhonatemybaby: OK, in this scene of your book the mother character would not call him "honey".
cobweb_diamond: You're right. But I want someone to call someone honey! I love it! It's so motherly! People should call each other honey more often.
typhonatemybaby: That's why I put in Cyndi Lauper.

( Spoilers for Supernatural 5x08 )

P.S. I am disappointed they didn't go to an even more meta place and have Sam and Dean star in a TV series based on Chuck's Winchester Gospel books. It would be delightful! And by delightful I mean shirtless and highly homoerotic, with very poor dialogue. (Which incidentally describes a significant proportion of all my viewing material.)

In other news I spent all of today and yesterday cramming for a Latin test, which I subsequently bombed. OH LATIN. How is it that I love classics and ancient history so much but hate Latin with such a fiery passion? If only I could just do cuneiform for my language unit! To compound my sadness, I can't even complain about study-based exhaustion because Ash is dancing in Sleeping Beauty every night plus training for the Nutcracker on top of his normal ballet school stuff, thus is far more hardcore than I can ever hope to be. Sadface.

Val Kilmer's a secret agent. Kristen Bell, a politician's daughter, gets kidnapped by sex-traffickers and the guv'mint call him up to retrieve her. About 50% of all dialogue is lines like, "We've got to get the girl back!" and "Where's the girl?" I finished the film five minutes ago and "the girl"'s name was mentioned so few times I've already forgotten what it was.

It fails at Action and being a thriller: there are no cool chases, fights or explosions and no suspense because the viewer has zero investment in "the girl". Val's character fails to adhere to either of the two essential action-hero sterotypes: competant or emotional. Action heroes need to be EMOTIONAL (ie. on an angry rampage, or having some kind of familial/romantic/moral investment in getting the McGuffin/defeating the villain) or COMPETANT (ie. efficient killing machine, possibly with zingy one-liners). The reason why John McClane and Jason Bourne are awesome is because they combine these two qualities. Val's clearly meant to be in the second category but has no backstory to explain his "I'm just following orders" attitude and never does anything physically impressive enough for you to go "whoa, what a badass!" He comes across as an unemotional moron who doesn't care that a bunch of girls (American girls, as the movie helpfully points out) are being sold into the sex trade, and when he DOES finally save Kristen Bell he appears to be doing his utmost to exacerbate any trauma caused by her captors.

The big twist is that halfway through, Kristen apparently dies. However, any fool who has ever seen a movie knows that this can't be true because we're only an hour in and the female lead HASN'T SHOWN UP YET. Lo and behold, it turns out the Evil Guv'mint faked her death because it's too much bother to shut down the sex trade during election season. The Token Black Guy (who is also a Naive Rookie, highlighting Val's supposed hardassery), figures this out, tells Val, and is promptly shot dead, having served his purpose. Val is all, "whatever, who care's about the slave trade?" until Kristen's Secret Service guard makes a sadface at him and we are supposed to think he's had some kind of ethical epiphany. When the middle-aged Secret Service lady showed up I was overjoyed because up until now the only females had been hookers & an army woman who had two lines. But no! All she did was implore Val, whom she'd never even MET before, to save Kristen because she's a poor little girl, blah blah blah. Then Val goes AWOL and saves her, the end.

Kristen Bell's performance salvaged this movie. She expressed actual emotion whenever onscreen and her dialogue was ALMOST well-written, unlike everyone else's ("Where's the girl?" "We need to find the girl!" etc ad nauseum). However, all the way through people (her boyfriend; Val, right after rescuing her from kidnap) were calling her a slut for such valid reasons as dying her hair blonde and acting a little too friendly with a male professor. ARGH WHATTTTTTTT. In the end the evil government conspiracy isn't even vanquished, and Kristen just goes back to her depressing life with parents who don't love her and serious psychosexual issues, while Val grows a beard and moves to London to signify that he is On The Run.

Yet despite all this, I would well read a fanfic where Val and Kristen meet up later and go on a killing spree or something. Kristen would be the brains of the partnership. Too bad Yuletide nominations are closed!

1. Everyone was hungover so I ended up going to Day Of The Dead celebrations alone. Didn't even consider staying in bed: November 1st is the only chance you get to dance with skeletons and a mariachi band! I went to the big fiesta at the British Museum, which included stilt-walkers dancing romantically amongst firework flares while dressed in fabulous Mexican skeleton costumes. There was also a parade, lots of life music & dancing, and a big Day Of The Dead altar with paper skeletons & food offerings. Yay!

3. On Friday I still felt sick & was worried I'd miss out on Halloween, but then Ed & Ash made me get out of bed & go to a party down the road! I didn't know anyone there but ended up staying till Ed dragged me home. Have vague memories of drinking a lot of punch & talking to a Young Tory for quite a while, baiting her into saying increasingly offensive things. Watched Supernatural when I got home, but the only things I can remember are: 1) there was a poker-playing Irish wizard, b) Dean was magically aged to 80, c) Sam had to play poker for his life. Even in my simplified state the outcome was predictable: Dean clearly couldn't remain an old man because at least 50% of the viewers are just there for Jensen Ackles' pouty lips.

5. Ed cooked a delicious Halloween feast last night, all while dressed in a sexy bunny-girl outfit & corset. Pumpkin soup served out of the pumpkin shell, beef and vegetarian stuffed marrows, pineapple upside-down cake and banoffee pie. We then moved on to Yashoda's sitcom-themed costume party, which was in a bar decorated with Arrested Development characters. Wish we'd got there earlier than midnight because it seemed like awesome fun! Freja & Stefano, my guests from Ed's impromptu dinner party, were convinced some guy I was dancing with was into me, an annoying habit of theirs I had forgotten about... they always try to convince me to put the moves on any guy I interact with. I was dancing with Jayde for far longer; why not ask me to hit on her? Note: the night buses through Camden on Halloween are ASTONISHING. So much fake blood!

I also got to meet Tim's girlfriend but Tim set off alarm bells later when he said she liked me. How can she have liked me? We spoke for like three seconds! Which implies that maybe she didn't like me and Tim is trying to make me feel better?

6. White Collar continues to rock my socks. Ep 2 was set at NEW YORK FASHION WEEK! Neal the handsome con-man threw a fashion party with the FBI in order to catch the villain of the week! FBI Guy got jewellery from his wife in a total reversal of gender roles! Neal's waistcoats and gangster hats were very attractive! Wendy from The Middleman guest-starred! Best show on television.

My room probably qualifies as a plague pit by now. I've been sick for four days & today is the first time I've even felt up to leaving the house. And that's only because I'd bought tickets to an evening lecture. No kidding, my friends, this illness thing is total bullshit. I eat like 95 portions of fruit and veg a day! My immune system should be like fucking titanium, but nooo...

This evening I went to a Treadwell's lecture with this guy I met when we took part in a drunken mass wedding at a street party the year I first came to London. But I digress. (I just like telling that story.)

Treadwell's is an occult/mythology second-hand book shop that holds lectures & stuff in the basement. I'm surprised I hadn't been there before, and looks like I'll be returning because the crowd were totally up my street. Lots of queer/feminist/alt-pagan folks, although I felt too sick to stay and chat. The lecture was on Mesopotamian demons, but the lecturer couldn't articulate his knowledge very well & thus wasn't enough to distract me from my headache. He clearly wasn't prepared to deal with the questions -- his knowledge was very narrow & he seemed to have no idea about the modern connotations of namechecking Lilith in your lecture title. Newsflash: Lilith is not most famous for being the Mesopotamian Lilu/Lilitu infertility demon, she has a fully fledged Judeo-Christian mythology (he seemed surprisingly unaware of the details), plus being a great big feminist icon. A woman in front of me started talking about the whole anti-missionary-position Lilith thing and he was just stumped.

But I think I'd find it tricky to hang out with Pagans for any length of time, just as I find it tricky to hang out with anyone who is super into their religion. I get worried I'm going to offend them with my total lack of belief in anything, and confusion at their absense of logic. In some ways it's worse with Pagans, because they are almost always late-adopters who have studied their religion in depth and then picked it, as opposed to being indoctrinated from birth. How can you study the ancient roots of a faith and then decide to believe in it? I find that the more I learn about a religion, the less plausible it seems. My highschool Classics teacher was an evangelical Christian and I could never understand how. Week after week she could discuss how the ancient Greeks used the gods to explain away natural disasters, or performed rituals give themselves a feeling of safety, yet at the same time she thought Jesus was a real dude who watched you on angel-CCTV to make sure you were behaving, and would magically whoosh you up to heaven if you were.

At the same time I have quite a lot of respect for anyone who wakes up one morning & decides that Mithras worship is the way to go. Like Alan Moore's snake god, who he just made up. Awesome. Generalised Gaia-worship I can kind of get on board with because a lot of it is practical, like not exhausting the earth's resources, respecting the environment, etc. But compared to becoming a straight-up Odin-worshipper it seems like the pussy end of the religious spectrum. The guy I was with tonight is a practising chaos wizard, which is pretty fucking cool, but I can't imagine being able to get into the mindset of believing I could summon a freaking demon. It'd make my life a lot more fun, I think, if I weren't such a dyed-in-the-wool atheist. It'd like being in The Craft!

1. Only one episode has aired so far. Easy to catch up!

2. It's about a charming, handsome, stylish con man and the FBI agent who sent him to prison. Together they fight crime! But it's not the typical antagonistic odd-couple, straight-man/flamboyant antihero combination -- they have a lot of respect for each others' skills due to their history, plus they've already got an unexpectedly friendly and jokey rapport going on.

3. Good female characters: the agent's wife is witty, real and looks like an actual person as opposed to a TV fembot. She doesn't get much to do in the pilot, but is credited third so will presumably appear more. The FBI agent's probie (ie. trainee agent) is an african-american lesbian (!!!) and comes across as confident and professional even though most of her lines were just exposition.

4. Mark Sheppard guest stars in the pilot! If Mark Sheppard's in it, it's a good show.

5. In case you couldn't tell from point 2, this show has tremendous potential for slash fanfiction. Once you've seen even half of the pilot, you'll see what I'm talking about. But despite the totally awesome bond between the two main guys, their female love interests are both totally sound as well! So there is also tremendous potential for het and gen. The agent's marriage is clearly going to be a pretty major part of the show, plus the con man has a subplot where he is searching for his ex who is on the run and may be in trouble. She's why he broke out of prison in the first place! And that's why he's now working for the FBI!

Over the last three days I've been to two parties and an anime convention. Now I have a cold, which is very sad because it would suck if I had a red nose while dressed as Morticia Addams for Hallowe'en.

Dan P's birthday party was a Jack The Ripper themed pub crawl around Whitechapel, where the murders took place. We dressed in Victoran garb & it was all generally quite a lark. I fear I'm becoming one of these boring people who goes home early instead of staying all night, but it's a good thing I was in bed by 3am as it turned out that Ed's birthday dinner the next day started in the early afternoon as opposed to, you know, dinner time. Ed was serving up food to guests for something like seven hours. He is a cooking MACHINE.

The whole anime con thing was because my mother was in town and thought it'd be an interesting way to spend a Sunday. She got to hang out with some steampunk friends, but I was a bit bored. I'm not into much anime or manga, & the scifi/comicbook stuff was a little thin on the ground. The women who play Morgana & Gwen on BBC Merlin were there, but most of their panel questions were for children & kind of dull. It was nice to see so many teens having fun with cosplaying and stuff (although there were some pretty unsettling costumes... what's up with the paddles with "uke" written on them? Isn't uke something to do with submission? I can't remember much japanese) but in the end, not really my thing.

In other news, Barbie is making Ladies Of The 80s dolls. My brother, who is obsessed with 80s pop music and teen movies -- he recently called to ask if he could borrow my Duran Duran albums. I have Duran Duran albums?? -- wants (only semi-ironically, I think) either Cyndi Lauper or Joan Jett for Christmas. My parents' faces would be pretty hilarious if I did get him Cyndi Lauper Barbie, which is an obvious point in favour.

I'm watching eo 2x02 of The Mentalist right now and Paul Michael Glaser -- AKA Starsky from Starsky & Hutch -- just showed up! Wow! He is so awesome. Also, Agent Cho continues to rock my socks. More Cho please!

1. All settled in now. Am no longer phased by Housemate Ed bursting into my room wearing a bathrobe to perform a song and dance routine about how much he wants a hammer dulcimer. Still unable to cope with the stories my two ballet dancer housemates home home with, however. Today Ash was telling me about a boy in his class who landed wrong & basically snapped off the bottom half of his leg. This is nearly as horrifying as Mairi's tales of interning at the hospital, where she recently opened up a man's bowels using "that burny spike thing I can't remember the name of".

2. Pete's 26th birthday last weekend: lots of people, many of whom didn't know each other. Went to a club called the Roxy, where the first thing I saw upon entering was Amy Winehouse making out with Elvis (the gender of either participant was indeterminate). It was fun & I stayed dancing till after 3am, but obviously it was more a party for Pete, Grace, Farley, etc who all had many nostalgic bonding moments over songs that came out before I hit puberty. Getting to see Tim flail manically to 90s Britpop before falling asleep on a bench was pretty excellent -- it's comforting that I no longer have to have so much respect for his grown-up, mild-mannered librarianish ways.

3. Went to Ukulele Cabaret last night. The MC was Tricity Vogue, a singer I've seen before at White Mischief etc. She did a few singalong/playalong ukulele songs before announcing an INCREDIBLY AWESOME dude named Fang who was at least 65 years old, walked with crutches, & had a long white beard & ponytail. He played blues covers of Black Sabbath & a couple of songs he couldn't remember the names of. Wow. The next act was a duo covering songs from the 20s, 50s and 70s, but Tim & I felt too tired to stay for Patty Plinko after.

4. Ed and I joined the library today. I got 4 comics (Hellblazer, Y The Last Man, and The Authority) plus a nonfiction book about a Victorian psychic, William Hague's biography of William Pitt, and a book about the British Empire in 1759. Ed stared at me doubtfully an said, "Are you sure you're going to finish those in three weeks?" Are you kidding me? I'll do it in one!

5. Got the first Dresden Files book today. So far it's as awesome as expected: entertainingly pulpy noir-detective first person narration, & adhering to a TV-like formula. Also, quite clearly written by a dude, considering the two female characters introduced at the beginning are both -- seperately -- compared to cheerleaders in some way. God damn I wish I could write like that. It'd be so fucking lucrative.

6. I've watched 19 episodes of The Mentalist in less than a week. EVERYONE WATCH THIS SHOW, PLEASE. All I will say right now is DEAR LORD I LOVE AGENT CHO. Agent Cho is the best character. It is the Cho Show. He is THE MAN.

REJECTED. I got the boot from my Georgian History department, as it's oversubscribed and History dept. students get precedent. Upset, as even though there's only been one lesson so far, it was my favourite and I've already done all the reading. I feel spurned. Spurned!

( Small spoilers for Supernatural 5x05. )

I used to look forward to the comedy eps as a break from all the emosauce whining, but now Castiel's in the show I tend to favour the serious eps because hello: by the end of this season they will be zooming in so close on Dean & Castiel's faces during their love scenes that it'll be nothing more than growly dialogue about daddy issues and religion, interspersed with artsy shots of their beautiful beautiful eyelashes and pouty lips.

That being said, Paris Hilton's cameo was fabulous (what TERRIBLE acting), and at this point the Supernatural team are like a polished machine when it comes to comedy. The only flaw was the absence of the Ghostfacers. Who better to deal with demonic Paris Hilton than the GHOSTFACERS? Ghost... Ghost-FACERS!!!

Shows
The Fiery Furnaces: My friend Yashoda called me up on Thursday to say she had a ticket going spare and would I like to go? Also there were free cocktails; I was powerless to refuse. The concert was fairly good but had a too-trendy-to-act-enthusiastic Shoreditch audience, and the FFs current incarnation as a 1970s garage rock band was not up my street. According to Yashoda I should've caught them a couple of years ago when Eleanor was playing keyboard and accordian.

The Cesarians: In contrast to the previous night, this band were 100% my thing. Dark cabaret is a fairly narrow field, & at this point only a fraction of the many bands springing up are enough to hold my interest. The Cesarians didn't go in for the typical faux-19th-century stuff. In style the singer was Nick Cave with shades of younger Iggy Pop, wearing a grey-gold suit and giving off sexy/dangerous stage charisma. Bald, slightly Uncle Festerish drummer who recited an amusingly gothy poem; BADASS middle-aged woman playing saxophone and clarinet; butch trombone woman with eye-catching Eddie Izzard makeup; woman on keyboards who looked like a fetish-wear Martha Burns; younger girl on French Horn & backing vocals. While they're a young band (this was their debut single launch, apparently?), they're all clearly experienced performers, & in general it was a KICK-ASS gig.

Considering the fact that I've been SPURNED from my 9am class tomorrow (that's how much I loved it! I was willing to go in at 9am on a Monday!) I have no reason to go to bed. I'd say it was time to write J2 highschool superhero AU fic now, but I recently found out that Tim still reads this blog, so I have to pretend I do more respectable things than that with my time. ;)

My classes this year are so good. Turning over an extremely new leaf, I've already been to the library twice, spending about as much time there as I have collectively over the last two years at university, excluding the days directly preceeding exams. Apparently there is a second floor, containing all the history books! Who knew? Everyone but me, apparently.

Here's what I've done so far:

Georgian London: Economy, Society and Politics: Everyone in this class appears to be an attractive American or Canadian exchange student, meaning that I feel like I'm in a TV show about hot young historians. It's also a totally interesting subject and the lecturer is really engaging, as well as being one of those guys who bitches about the other writers on the reading list, which I find entertaining. My favourite class so far.

Classics and Literary Theory: Boring and incomprehensible to the max, so I've dropped it after two lectures in favour of Renaissance Art History, which Freja assures me is interesting, easy and taught by an adorable, retirement-age gay couple.

Power & Knowledge in Mesopotamia: This one's about scribes and court magicians/diviners in the ancient near east. Basically, if a course has the word "exorcist" in the summary paragraph, I am going to take it. In the first lesson we wrote cuneiform in plasticine to see what it felt like to be a scribe! I can now write many useful Sumerian things, like how to address a letter, the word "mule", and my own name (phonetically).

History of the Roman Republic: Pretty wide-ranging topic, but I like classes about city history and the lecturer seems very nice, like an attractive yet maternal Italian lady in a women's drama. There's going to be a fuckload of reading, though.

In other news, yesterday I read The Demon's Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan (AKA sarahtales) cover to cover. It was so good! I don't read much YA or urban fantasy any more -- even though it's one of my favourite genres -- because I find that a lot of it quite cliched and childish, even books that come highly recommended. But this was such a page-turner! It read quite a lot like her fanfiction (as Mistful in HP fandom), lots of quipping and swords. In a fit of giggling evangelism (boys with swords are hot! everyone should appreciate this!) I've already lent my copy to someone.

P.S. The other day I made an earring out of a plastic hallowe'en toy shaped like a severed thumb. It's alarmingly realistic. What can I say, I accessorise well.

This evening I met the guy who reviews BBC Merlin for AfterElton.com. His ACTUAL JOB is to analyse TV shows for homoerotic subtext. Can I just say, AWESOME? We were at a funeral-themed tea party to hear gracieflower's latest short story be read out, and Tim and I were talking about Merlin. Then the guy beside us was all, "Yes, it is essential slash fiction, isn't it?" Heh!

I realise that I have been to two shows recently but not even mentioned them! So here they are:

( Amanda Palmer at the Union Chapel )

( Mika album launch )

So, it's freshers week at UCL. I popped in today to play cello on the stage in the quad to help entice freshers to join Ed's music society, but the mics weren't working so had I lugged my cello all the way there for nothing. Maybe tomorrow will be better. Ed's music club is called Bongos, but in fact any instrument can join, and considering the fact we had played together precisely once, we sounded pretty good. Or would have, had than one of the fucking mics had been functioning correctly. But despite this minor mishap and the utter shitness of most of the clubs on offer at Freshers Fair, I have a good feeling about this year.

I watched the trailer clip from Supernatural 5x03. The one with Castiel and Dean. Yeah, you bitches know what I'm talking about. I CANNOT BELIEVE THEY ARE GOING THERE.

At last my friend Dan, the only person I know in real life who watches SPN, has caught up to season 5:

Dan: Is it just me or in the last couple of episodes have dean and 'cass' just gotten about 10x gayer?
Me: Like the episode near the end of s4 where they get gay married with god? I TOLD YOU!
Dan: By the married bit do you mean dean swearing himself as holy warrior?
Me: Just wait till you get to the part where Dean gives him his necklace like ARWEN to signify their love.
Dan: I do not believe two actors can have that much freaking eye contact without knowing what they're up to.

This took place before either of us had seen the aforementioned 5x03 clip in which Castiel and Dean oil each other up and get jiggy in the name of the cliche'd apocalypse aversion have the best totally-platonic, non-sexual discussion ever. Hopefully by tomorrow I will be over this shitty cold and will a) be able to leave the house without feeling like shit, and b) appreciate this episode in the evening. FYI: being ill sucks. I am missing a party right now! It was an Alice In Wonderland party! Hmph.

Glee: As of this ep I officially love Kurt. OH MY GOD THE FOOTBALL SCENE! And Kurt's dad! Glee is fantastic. Also, the villainous cheerleading coach is by far the most excellent baddie since old-school Disney cartoons. She's got Stephen Colbert's deadpan thing going on, but talks about CANING while DRESSED IN A PINK VELOUR TRACKSUIT. Godlike.

Turns out that flatmate Ed is a big BBCMerlin fan, enough that he's seen the season premiere already. Considering how hilarious I found the two eps I saw last year, I look forward to revelling in the gay. I am finally breaking and watching this show. Arthurrrr!!!

Tonight I'm going to see MIKA! He gave out tickets from an ice cream van in Brick Lane this afternoon, and thanks to Twitter I knew to be in the queue, wearing an uncharacteristically brightly coloured outfit to celebrate the awesomeness of a) rainbows, and b) Mika. He said he liked my baby-head earring, and gave me an ice cream! Oh, oh, oh, I look forward to tonight, which promises to be FABULOUS. Accompanying me to this festival of sparkles and happiness will be gracieflower, Ed and his girlfriend Sian. Mika Mika Mika!

Jess and Ash have been telling me about ballet school. These anecdotes primarily seem to be about their crazily abusive boarding school teachers getting fired for perving on students, or getting sex changes and dying during the operation, or driving pupils to move to self harm and/or move to russia, or instructing waiflike 12-year-old ballerinas to pour surgical spirit on their bleeding feet to toughen them up. Good times.

Last night I went to see Troilus & Cressida at the Globe. For nearly the entire play I thought it was a comedy, but then the end (which was way inconclusive) suggested it was a tragedy. The ambiguity didn't stop it from being really entertaining, however. Cressida sprung around the stage like a Mancunian imp with purple hair. Pandarus started off as a camp idiot but became more sympathetic as the rest of the characters continued to make purposeless war, as he remained the only supporter of making love instead. The real stars of the show were Achilles and Patrocles: Achilles was welsh and wore robes, Joker-like eye-makeup and a perpetual smirk (everyone else was decked out in lilac or blue skirts -- depending on whether Trojan or Greek -- and leather), and Patrocles was 100% eyelash-fluttering warrior twink, slinking around in the background and fondling Achilles whenever the Greek generals turned up to try and persuade him to get off his arse and fight.

Our main street was closed off for a big food fair. Unfortunately we didn't get up early enough to catch most of the food (and the queues for all the cooked stuff like Caribbean chicken etc. were just too long... plus I am vegetarian), but I did get some baklava. I felt a little saddened by the giant cluster of white folks around the smoothie tent. LOOK, GUYS, IT IS JUST FRUIT. But when someone puts it through a blender it miraculously becomes £4 a cup. Whoever invented the Smoothie Myth is a marketing genius.

This gathering also enlightened me to a social group I had not previously noticed in my area. The ethnic split mainly turkish Turkish, with the rest being Greek, Polish, Caribbean & white British, but I now know there is a signficant representation of GOTHS. Yes, there were entire goth-punk families in amongst all the old turkish ladies at the food fair today. I love to see non-teenage goths, it gives me hope for my later life. Most of them were couples with kids: daddy with a green mohawk and mummy dressed like Morticia Addams, but the kid dressed normally (I approve: as with religion you shouldn't pressure unwilling offspring into gothism).

( reaction to Supernatural 5x02 )

This evening we had a dinner party with Ed's friends and delicious cooking, including fish smoked over hand-picked herbs, and a giant cauldron of soup with home-made pesto. Plus Ashley's cookies, which I swear were about 110% dark, melted chocolate. Jess and I were mesmerised by him beating the fuck out of the cookie mixture with his slim little ballet dancer arms.

The other night Mairi and Flossie, with whom I have had countless misadventures, texted me in the middle of the night to say that they were trapped in London on their way home from NYC (where they saw many wonders, including Gossip Girl being filmed and a boutique entirely dedicated to hairbands, which I am certain represented the culmination of all Mairi's hopes and dreams) and could they please take shelter in my house. They arrived at 1am and left at 6am to get the bus to Scotland, kindly bursting into my room on their way out in order to say goodbye, at which point I catapulted myself from slumber to yell "WHAT THE FUCK!?" and thus wake up Ash as well, which I am certain helped him greatly in being well-rested and prepared for a day of lifting ballerinas over his head by their shoulderblades. (He actually has to do this, no joke.)

My new housemate Ed appears to be friends with every stallholder in Borough Market. I want to be Ed's cookery padawan: already I've learnt the important lesson that if you have friendly conversations with shopkeepers they will give you discounts. When we went to the dairy (SO MUCH DELICIOUS CHEESE) I discovered that Ed has an arrangement with one of the cheese guys: he gives Ed apples each year and Ed makes the apples into cider and apple liqueurs. WTF! It is like living in a village fete!

As for Ash, I didn't realise how talented a dancer he actually is. He's in his final year at the Royal Ballet School, which essentially means that he's one of the top 15 young ballet dancers in the country! Tom sat in on one of his classes last week and was raving about how incredible it was, which is impressive considering the fact that Tom has scoffed at me in incomprehension and vague reverse-snobbery whenever I said I was going to see a ballet. Oh, and Ash is also a very talented photographer. Living with these two renaissance men is going to be both exciting and a trial: on the one hand, my cookery skills will improve greatly and I'll be driven to develop some kind of skill so as to keep up, but on the other hand, they're going to be a downer on days when all I want to do is lie in bed and watch internet TV.

Ed & Ash's friend Lee was our houseguest for the weekend, so we took him to Borough Market, Camden Market, Chinatown (are you sensing a food theme yet?) and various other London attractions. He was suffering pretty badly from big-city culture shock because it was his first time away from his home town, even though he is 22. He was a nice guy and he and I bonded over geek movies, but in many ways he seemed quite naive: he couldn't use public transport, and was surprised by how multicultural London is, like for example the fact that about 70% of the people in our area are Turkish. I guess this is why UKIP and the BNP are so successful in smaller towns: all the young unemployed guys have little else to do than play video games and develop a vague sense of generalised racism.

The Thames festival was this weekend, so we went to the Feast On The Bridge (a harvest festival food market on Southwarke Bridge), and the night carnival. The night parade was beautiful: many many floats and dancers festooned with lights like the beginning of Spirited Away when all the demons go to the bath house at nightfall, and a different band or drumming group for every section. My favourite float was one like a giant glowing white sea-urchin, with a woman belly-dancing on top, a skeleton on the front, and a band on the back playing Thriller. Afterwards we huddled together on Waterloo bridge to watch the fireworks over the river. We got talking to the middle-aged couple next to us in the audience, who were apparently related to some of Oi Va Voi.

I want to make some kind of parade-style outfit involving a finned skirt underlit with fairy-lights, I think. Too bad I don't have a sewing machine in London.

I'll have to rewatch Supernatural 5x01 a) sober and b) without two people who know nothing abot SPN in the room with me, but my immediate reaction is: AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME. Especially all of Dean's dialogue. Am I right?

Also, it was slightly less misogynistic than usual in that they did not, for example, massacre a room full of nuns for no reason.

1. Despite the minor issue of my new bedroom having precisely zero shelves in which to house my quadrillion books and DVDs, my first day in the new London house has been excellent. Tom (who is moving to Austria next week) and Ash (my new housemate, a ballet dancer) took gracieflower and me out for Turkish food at a nearby restaurant whose mission seemed to be to give you as much delicious food as humanly possible for ridiculously low prices. Attached to this restaurant is a shop dedicated entirely to baklava. In addition to this, approximately half the shops in my area appear to be all-night Turkish supermarkets containing all the fruit and vegetables in the world. SO MANY NOMS.

2. My other housemates are Jess (another dancer; I've known her for literally a day) and Ed. Within an our of arriving in the house tonight Ed had a) fixed the wifi on my laptop, b) told me he needed someone to "help him drink all this liquor", and c) gifted us all with hideous Welsh tea-towels with pictures of cats on them. Also he is an amazing cook.

3. Tomorrow night I'm going to see Amanda Palmer at the the fabulous Union Chapel. After that I hope she doesn't come back to the UK for a while because a) I feel like a stalker, and b) unless it's a small impromptu gig (which it isn't) she typically plays a fair amount of album songs, and at this point I am so intimate with her back-catalogue that what I really want is obscure shit and weird-ass cover songs, which makes me feel like a mean and ungrateful fan.

4. So psyched for new Supernatural tomorrow! Am listening to AC/DC right now and feeling very glad that I have proper internet with which to watch the Castiel Show in the highest def I can find.

P.S. Congratulations to gracieflower, whose radio play will be broadcasted soon.

I've finished reading the Lymond series and thus have NOTHING TO READ (apart from the bazillion other books in my parents' house). Sadness! So tomorrow typhonatemybaby and I will go on a Quest to get Jedi Apprentice books from the library. I have a serious craving for them since my brother and I were discussing the beautiful love between Obi-Wan and Qui Gon earlier today.

Because I've been thinking about Star Wars this evening I made a t-shirt with "HATE LEADS TO THE DARK SIDE" bleached onto it. It's pretty rad. I'll post pictures soon. My brother, meanwhile, made a Bikini Kill t-shirt, in keeping with his slightly baffling lesbian/feminist-punk music taste. Mum's started making all these headset things from leather straps and giant fake diamonds, presumably to sell when she and Merlin go to a steampunk convention at this old lunatic asylym in Lincoln next week.

Yesterday I made a corset out of duct tape. It, too, is pretty fucking rad. I'm contemplating stencilling a yellow Bat-symbol onto it to go with the yellow lacing. <----- dork. Also I made a miniskirt from all these scraps of red & gold silk we've had lying around the house since forever. It looks kind of like if you made a Gryffindor cheerleader skirt and then sewed pennants round the bottom. In other words: crazy.

All this random creativity is because the internet is down in our house so Merlin and I are forced to do something other than watch Leverage and 80s teen movies. I'm using my laptop's internet for this, but it is total bullshit and works for like three seconds before cutting out since I used up my bandwidth thingie internet-procrastinating during exam season. P.S. Am going back to London on Wednesday! Someone better invite me to a wild party or something, otherwise I'll make a sadface like this: :(

I spent last night with male strippers.
It will be an experience I will treasure for years to come, I expect. Thankfully Frances made me get my picture taken with all the Chippendales, so I will be able to picture them clearly in dark times to come.

So, on Saturday night I attended what I thought would be my final show at the festival: Power Plant, an enormous sound/light installation at the Botanic Gardens. All the glasshouses were filled with mysterious buzzing and clicking noises from kinetic sculptures, and outside was a giant pipe organ-like instrument that spat fire. It was pretty spectacular. I went with my dad and typhonatemybaby, whose new short hair and leather jacket make him look like a butch girl. Not sure how he managed this. C'est la vie. Afterwards, Dan & I went to the end-of-Fringe party at the Forest, the interior of which we had watched being covered with silver foil earlier that day. (Note: During my final shift in the Forest kitchen, I serverd Mikelangelo of the Black Sea Gentlemen. He said I looked glamourous due to my fascinator. This was a high point for me.) We got home after 3, with tired dancing feet and silver paint all over our faces.

But the next day I still couldn't let go of the festival, and went to a flute/organ recital, which was an intriguing mixture of haydn, takemitsu and an experimental new piece based on the sounds a foetus makes through a stethoscope.

Frances saw the Chippendales on Saturday night and enjoyed it so much I decided to go with her last night, leaving just enough time for me to run and get the midnight train back to Glasgow. IT. WAS. AWESOME. The crowd was totally wild and hen-nightish and I probably looked massively out of place (motorcycle boots; curly hair; glasses), but this did not detract from the experience AT ALL. They did routines to Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy and Shook Me All Night Long (which was kind of like watching a Supernatural-themed male stripper act, I cannot lie), and it was generally HILARIOUS. Frances insisted on aisle seats so we could dance with the Chippendales (sweaty... ewww), and I caught one of their shirts, which has been autographed. Hahahahaha WTF, what an excellent ending to Festival month.

1. The Festival is winding down, conveniantly coinciding with me going broke and shirley_1989 and Frances finishing their exams resits.

2. Today I served Mikelangelo of the Black Sea Gentlemen at the cafe. His hair is excellent even offstage, but it was odd to hear him speak in his normal voice (Australian). He told me I looked glamourous in my sparkly feathered fascinator. I looooovvveee hiimmmmm.

3. Went to a wee party at Anna's house last night. I know her from uni in London, but she's in Edinburgh visiting her parents.

4. I am sorely out of date with my Fringe reviews, but will now attempt to recap:

Nights At The Circus 3/5
Unusual, as it was at TePooka (the venue for the steampunk/AFP night last week), and involved the cast often going into the audience and pawing us. Cabaret musical set at the turn of the 19th century, about an everyman type guy becoming embroiled in the circus, with solo songs from various characters such as a winged girl, a psychotic clown (DEFINITELY the best character, very unnerving yet catchy song about wife-beating), the ringmaster, etc. Music & live band were excellent and right up my street, but some of the acting was underwhelming and the plot was generally quite hackneyed.

Ernest and the Pale Moon 4/5
The Terrible Infants specialise in Tim Burtonish storytelling, with live music and puppetry. Their show last year was excellent, a variety of made-up fairytales along the lines of Struwel Peter. This year they did a play about a man obsessed with the pale, light-sensitive girl living across the road from him. Murder then takes place. Their style seems more suited to shorter pieces than a full-length play, making it a little slow-moving on occasion.

Zeitgeist, by Zen Zen Zo 5/5 to the max: SO GOOD.
AWESOME physical theatre, influenced by Japanese Butoh. The show consisted of a series of vignettes, performed by some or all of the eight-piece team, usually dressed in nothing but thong underwear and white body paint, giving the appearance of them being perfectly hairless marble statues. The first section was bestial and began with them all miming hatching from eggs. Then, they impersonated babies (with DISTURBING accuracy) and spat egg yolk into the audience, continuing on with great variation to camp and humourous (strutting around in red high heels and posing) to mournful (a caveman-themed dance which appeared to have been about bereavement) to scary to sexy. If you ever get a chance to see Zen Zen Zo, DO IT. And sit in the front row.

Bane 5/5
One-man Film Noir parody about a hitman named Bruce Bane, providing all the sound effects himself, and miming all props. He had excellent comic timing, hit every noir cliche on the nose without seeming stupid, and kept the story racing along like a good hollywood blockbuster. Recommended.

The Return Of Ullyses by the Royal Ballet of Flanders 3/5
This was an official Festival thing rather than part of the Fringe, and concerned Ullyses' return to Icatha and disposal of Penelope's suitors. However, thanks to a confusing repetitive motif the plot was totally unclear, and each of the more entertaining movements was interspersed with a seemingly meaningless chorus number. However, I did enjoy it, especially Poseidon in flippers, goggles and tutu. The music was refreshingly esoteric: Purcell (sung live, and beautifully so), Perry Como, Doris Day...

Beast 5/5
This was a recommendation from my boss at the vintage store, who is a poet (the published kind as opposed to the "I posted a song about my ex-girlfriend on the internet" kind). Emotional yet un-melodramatic two-person play about an aging artist's affair with a prostitute. The dialogue was all in verse, as was the narration, which the two characters spoke directly to the audience. The high quality of the writing made me a little sad that it wasn't being performed in a more publicised venue.

Snatch Paradise 2/5
Crap, indelicate title; crap, indelicate musical. It got good reviews (mystifyingly) and I was curious to see a drag king show. Instead I got a mediocre musical in a half-full hall at the Underbelly, a dark comedy about a couple of Australian celebrities and all the vile (primarily slutty) things they do to cling onto fame thanks to their evil sexual predator of an agent. At one point the girl got naked for no reason, and it was all just a bit grotesque. The woman playing the boyband star was a good actor, however.

Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen 4/5
Very, very polished. They're in the music section of the programme, but considering the fact that each member of the band is always in character, and everything is perfectly choreographed, it would do just as well in Comedy, Theatre or Musical. Every one of them was brilliant, both in terms of musical skill and the funny character stuff, but I think the show suffered from being in a less intimate venue (I previously saw them in a Spiegeltent) and from being too short.

GuruGuru
You go into a basement room with five chairs and a TV in it, and put on earphones which tell you to speak lines and act as a character. There are five participants and it lasts an hour. This was one of the weirder things that I did at the Fringe, and by the end of it I felt totally trippy. An interesting experience, although I'm not sure what I was supposed to learn from it.

Actually not a very dramatic story, except from my own hysterical perspective. She came into the cafe with some friends (Neil Gaiman popped in but only for a moment) and I served her and stuff. I have a tendency to get very star-struck (Simon Amstell now eats there for every meal, it seems, and I still get jittery when I see him), but for some reason I was unusually calm when meeting my #1 all-time idol. Of course, later I tweeted that I had loved her for 7 years and she found my twitter and replied, but whatever: it is the truth. And I am certain she is used to it. Who am I but another face in the sea of crazed-looking, black-wearing fans she has to contend with on a daily basis? Be realistic.

She put in a surprise appearance at the Steampunk event I attended at the lovely Big Red Door with Merlin, my mother and all their steampunk friends, plus gossamer_tune. It was a beautiful night. The costumes of all attendees were top-notch, but the atmosphere was friendlier than White Mischief, I think, because it was all in one room and everyone was sitting down on sofas and at tables around the little stage. In between each act was a script-read radio play that was heavy on the puns but light on plot. The first performer was a guy doing comic songs on a ukulele-like instrument. His stage name was something like Karmadillo. Then were two people in outfits made of sound-effect touch-pads, who did a routine that began with a Marvin Gaye cover and degenerated into a fight complete with punch/gun/etc sound-effects courtesy of their suits. Then Thomas Truax, who was brilliant. I saw him a few months ago because my mother loves him, but didn't like him a great deal that time around -- I think the enthusiasm of the steampunk audience did a lot to enhance the experience. Plus he did a couple of pretty rad covers using his ingenious home-made instruments.

Finally AFP came onstage at around 2am. Dan and I were seated directly beside the stage, and typhonatemybaby, for whom this was his second concert experience EVER, was practically vibrating with excitement. She did a couple of songs on keyboard accompanied by the brass band the Horn Dogs, which were energetic and altogether a very good performance considering the fact that they hadn't rehearsed. Then Die Roten Punkte (the fake-german comedy goth band shirley_1989 got into a fight with last week) came on to do their title song, with AFP joining in with the dance routine (TOO AWESOME). The night ended with Amanda retiring to one of the out-of-tune pianos next to where we were sitting beside the stage, and singing a long, quiet cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", a song that in recent years I have come to detest thanks to it being incredibly overplayed. But this time around... it was amazing. One of the best concerts of my life. Happily, gossamer_tune took roughly 40 bajillion photos on his supercamera, so once he has sifted out all the ones where I am in the picture and look like a mutant (approx. 95% of them) we will have excellent documentation of the evening.

Saturday night was the official AFP gig, with the queue of goths snaking all the way along the road. We didn't arrive early but our friends Jonno & Rich were at the front of the queue already, so we ended up near the stage anyway. The support act was a very young-seeming pop-punk outfit, who we all found rather laughable but who will probably go far. Then the Australian physical theatre group Zen Zen Zo did two numbers (more on them later... I went to their Fringe show last night, and it was breathtaking) before AFP took to the stage for a polished-up repeat of the brass band songs she performed at the secret gig. Thanks to the intimate nature of the previous night, it sort of paled in comparison, and by the end I felt uncharacteristically tired, partially thanks to the realisation that no matter how many times I see her play, she will always play Coin-Operated Boy (the most popular of the early Dresden Dolls songs; one of the two "hits") and its opening notes will always be greeted with an unparalelled roar of 14-year-old adulation, much like myself circa 2004, about which I cannot be bitter because that would be gigantic hypocrisy. The high points of the night were Neil Gaiman's appearance to read a short story from the book and act as roadie (too cute), her new song (the piano part of which reminded me of anime music), Dear Old House on ukulele, a very Dolls-esque cover of Jason Webley's "Icarus", and my favourite Momus cover.

Circus vs. Sideshow (free) 4/5
This one off event did what it said on a tin, and was a contest between sideshow and circus performers. Representing the circus were three ripped, clean-cut acrobat guys called Controlled Falling, and the sideshow guys were The Dirty brothers, who did things like lift car batteries with their nipple piercings and snap mousetraps with their tongues. It was presented by Mikelangelo (of the Black Sea Gentlemen, who are very entertaining and I am looking forward to seeing next week) and a comedian. The judges were Die Roten Punkte (more on them later), Stephen K Amos, and AMANDA FUCKING PALMER. The best bit was when the Black Sea Gentlemen sang with AFP on backing vocals.

Lamplighter's Lament 4/5
This was a play with no words apart from an introduction at the start. Three men, all playing the Lamplighter and performing using music, puppets, light magic and various props. It was very atmospheric and low-key, with a sort of mournful tone, but I can't decide whether the structureless plotting was a good or bad attribute.

Lady Carol 3/5
Ukulele chanteuse. I'm only giving her 3 stars because she almost entirely did covers, and then only using about 2 chords. However, her audience patter was engaging, she looked great, and she had a deep, intriguingly yodel-y singing voice.

Die Roten Punkte 5/5
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Filed in the comedy section of the Fringe guide, Die Roten Punkte are a German gothic brother-and-sister rock band who sing songs about robots, lions, and their parents dying in a train accident. Their onstage personas were hilarious, with the more straight-edge brother trying to go along with the label's requests for a radio-friendly ballad and use "workplace-friendly" language, and the supposedly rehabilitated sister sneaking drinks whenever her brother's back was turned. They did a bunch of audience participation stuff, like making us shout out non-alcoholic drinks (APFELSAFT!!) during the drinking song to encourage the drummer on her road to rehabilitation. They interrupted the first song to tell shirley_1989 to stop texting, and instead of apologetically capitulating as one might expect, he got into an honest-to-god argument with the band (!!!) until I confiscated his phone.

Shakespeare Bingo 2/5
Hamlet in 50 minutes, performed by highschoolers, played for laughs. We arrived a couple of minutes and so didn't get bingo cards (presumably for words in the play), but even if we had been participating, I doubt it would have been very good.

1. Today I made dinner for Simon Amstell. This is the second time I have seen him in a week, and this time we actually spoke! Clearly this is fate. However, I kept my cool and did not once lick his face, ruffle his hair or otherwise molest him whilst taking his order at the cafe. In case anyone is wondering: Simon Amstell is just as adorkable in real life as he is on television.

2. Have now officially moved out of the London flat with Mimi, Freja and Stefano, and moved into the house with Ed, Ash and Mystery Jessica (who I am yet to meet). While in London this weekend I did a lot of housecleaning, but also got to see Tim, Tom, Anna and sundry others, which was cool. As usual, Anna gave me a million film recommendations, mostly with titles like "Attack Girls Swim Team Vs. The Undead".

3. Am going to post my latest reviews of Fringe shows later, as I have to be up extremely early tomorrow. In this installment of reviews you will find: surprise Amanda Palmer, puppets, shirley_1989 getting into a fight with a German comedy goth band (this is never going to stop being funny), sword-swallowing, ukuleles and much more.

4. This evening I went to the symphony with my dad. It was fun times, although one of the pieces in the first half was kind of bad, and the composer's description of it in the program was crazypants and involved futuristic robot birds. I made friends with the little old lady sitting next to me during the interval. It was delightful!

Frances, the latest addition to the rotation of houseguests at shirley_1989's Edinburgh Festival Refugee Camp Apartment, has arrived. I present the following exchange as proof that she is awesome:

Frances: This is my first Fringe ever.
cobwebd_diamond: Want to come see a 76-year-old singing stripper?
Frances: Sure! We should probably get juiced first.

She instantly heeds my suggestions and then spruces up the original plan with the addition of Bloody Marys? I approve!

In the end we didn't see the stripper, who is on every night, and instead watched True Romance, an enriching and fabulous film. Frances the only person I've met who has seen as many 80s teen movies as me. To put this in perspective, when John Hughes died last week, no one else in the flat even knew who he was. (Except my brother, in whom I have instilled a deep appreciation for the genre, the latest addition to our repertoire being "Some Kind Of Wonderful", which made Merlin tear up and may have surpassed "Footloose" as his favourite.) In summary: Frances and I are clearly destined to be BFF.

Grace & Mike's boat launch was successful, and they're now very sunburned from rowing it miles and miles along the canal. We toasted it with Mike's 21st birthday Champagne, and I was very impressed when he opened the bottle with an axe. AN AXE. I missed the actual launch due to work, which is now super busy thanks to all the Festival tourists. At one point the entire Forest kitchen was being run by me and one other girl, giving me a new appreciation for the phrase "run off my feet".

Amanda Palmer is now in Edinburgh, which was a source of great excitement until I remembered the following problem: although it would be super-awesome if I were to accidentally (or "accidentally", thanks to the power of Twitter) bump into her -- whereupon we would, naturally, strike up a fascinating conversation about books or whatever and become friends -- I know that in reality I would instantly be struck down with the greatest case of babbling hero-worship the world has ever seen. A conundrum indeed.

I'll be in London this weekend to move into next year's house. sweetmintmojo is going back to Boston next week, Mike a few days later. wrongeyed_jesus is apparently having a hell of a time in India, as her living arrangements fell through and she had to queue for EIGHT HOURS to register at Delhi university. Her friend Frances will be joining us in the Edinburgh flat as of tomorrow. We are going through a time of great upheaval. (Also, gossamer_tune still does not have a bed in his room, a room which he is still sharing with Grace & Mike's soon-to-be-launched boat, and for a few days, typhonatemybaby as well.)

So, the Festival has started. On sunny days, this is a wondrous thing that fills me with whimsical joy and causes me to put on pretty clothes so I can skip gaily through the city, pausing occasionally to witness some delightful street theatre. When it rains, the world is a wasteland of soggy leaflets and posters and all but the hardiest of stoned buskers adjourn to the pub. Here are reviews of the Fringe shows I have seen so far:

Ballad of the Skull Fairy 0/5
Some of the worst theatre I have EVER seen. This was our first show of the Fringe, and there were no reviews out at this point. However, the programme summary looked reasonable, and it had an awesome name. Only when we arrived at the venue did we see the crapness of the poster, which indicated that it was a) gigantically low-budget, so much so that the lead's costume still smelt of hot glue gun, and b) intended to be "wacky" or "zany", two attributes that I despise. The play was so incomprehensible, the jokes so bad, the general idea so bizarre that we were laughing in sock & disbelief until we finally gave up after half an hour, and ran out of the theatre. RAN. OMGWTFBBQ, do not see this play.

Broken Holmes 4/5
As you might surmise from the title, this play was about Sherlock Holmes. The posters appealed to typhonatemybaby, gossamer_tune and I, as none us could miss out on what appeared to be a Holmes/Watson slash play. It turned out to be less of a queer-themed read and more a send-up of the ludicrous mysteries in the Holmes stories, as well as how much of a drug-addled dick Holmes could be. Despite the fact that I romanticise Holmes hugely and am a big nerd for the books, I found it pretty freaking hilarious, especially poor underappreciated Watson having to deal with Holmes ripped to the tits on opioids and ranting about the poison of the Sumatran Weasel-Viper. I would see this again.

Cabaret Whore 3/5 (free show)
One-woman show in the bowels of some multi-level bar in the Grassmarket. She performed in three personas: a Southern trailer-trash woman who sung about how slutty she was (this got old fast; one song was amusing but three was too much), a nerdy librarian who wanted to be a reality TV star (one of her songs was catchy, and witty in a pathos kind of way) and a bitter French cabaret singer (definitely the best -- her songs were the funniest and she finished by singing one about how she would stab us if we didn't put money in her collection bucket). Her voice was excellent but I thought her patter with the audience was only properly entertaining when she was being the angry French cabaret girl.

Abridged Fringe (free show)
Basically a variety show of Fringe performers doing a few minutes of their act as a kind of movie trailer. When we went to it there were five comedians, three of whom were terrible and two I might consider seeing later on, particularly a geek-humour guy named Nish Kumar.

Sammy J: 1999 4/5 Link
One man musical comedy play about his own experiences as an unpopular teenager in 1999. The songs weren't particularly inspire but otherwise his performance was hilarious and the school bullying anecdotes seemed weird and embarrasing enough that I'm pretty sure some of them must have actually happened to him. We were laughing A LOT.

Jane Austen's Guide To Pornography 4/5
We went to this because it was written by the same guy who did "Buttboy and Tigger" at last year's Fringe, and play we loved so much we saw it twice. This was about a porn-writer getting writer's block when he's asked to do a romantic play, and he then asks the spirit of Jane Austen for writing advice in return for helping her make her final (unfinished) novel more raunchy. There as also a subplot about the to lead's of the writer's play falling in love, which I didnt think fit very well with the Austen plot, although this may have been because I missed the first few minutes of the play. It was funny and kind of romantic, but definitely not as LOL-worthy as "Buttboy and Tigger". (Also, we were expecting more porn and less writer's block.) The guy playing Jane Austen was very good, though.

1. Grace and Mike have spent the last two days building a boat in the living room. It's made from duct tape and plastic tubing, and in my opinion looks very professional -- for a boat made from duct tape and plastic tubing. The outer hull is going to be added before launch next week. It's all terribly enterprising. shirley_1989, who has been staying at his parents house this week to facilitate the revision process, was not too pleased that his houseguests had "turned the house into Harland & Wolff shipyard", having heard via twitter that they were melting plastic tubing over the stove. As of yesterday gossamer_tune has moved into the flat, turning the living room into his new bedroom. He does not yet have a bed in his room, but hey... he does have an unfinished boat.

2. The Edinburgh Festival is getting into swing, with preview shows starting tomorrow and the big parade along the Royal Mile happening on Sunday. The trickle of weird-looking people in the streets is becoming a deluge. Today I saw a giant lobster walking past the Meadows, along with Satan and what may have been a really sparkly Saddam Hussein. The Forest remains unchanged, as far as I can tell: the same selection of hippies, unwashed young travellers, experimental musicians and queers. Had my first negative experience at the Forest the other day... a Nosferatu-looking guy who I am pretty sure was a junkie was watching me for a while but considering the creepy attention I've received in far less safe locations, it was OK. And balanced out the fact that I met this cool old dude named Gandalf, who is apparently a Forest fixture. In other Forest news: they have obtained a liquor licence. I am certain that the addition of beer to the kitchen will not damage the high productivity/efficiency rate one jot. Er...

3. This evening Grace demonstrated her fire-poi skills in the Meadows. I was suitably impressed. Shiny bright fire was moving very fast! It was circus-y and awesome! She tells me she is out of practice, but perhaps I am just easily amused. Hopefully there will be time for her to teach me to poi before she and Mike return to Boston.

4. I'm rereading Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond books, starting with volume 3 because I read the later volumes in such quick succession I barely remember them at all. I'm finding it very gripping and easy to read this time around, probably because unlike books 1 and 2 it is weighted more towards action than courtly intrigue. Ordinarily I love a bit of courtly intrigue, butthe first time I read a Lymond book I had to have about three dictionaries on hand to decode what everyone meant as they bitchily quoted French, Latin, Gaelic, etc at one another. But book 3, The Disorderly Knights, is all warfare and explosions! The opening chapter has Lymond in drag, leading an army (also in drag) into battle before leaping onto the enemy general's horse and undressing him on the hoof. Then to Malta, where Lymond hangs out with a bunch of Christian knights who have sworn poverty, chastity and obedience (yeah, that goes about as well as you might expect) and finally back to Scotland where he raises an army of mercenaries and more sex, violence and biting witticisms occur.

Entertainingly, it turns out there is a Dorothy Dunnett fanclub Twitter, who friended me, presumably out of happy shock that there is someone out there who enjoys both dense, lengthy historical melodrama, and inane microblogging.

1. Preparing for Claire's goodbye party tonight. Claire has baked cookies in the shape of moose, snails, bears, foxes and hedgehogs, Shirley is making muffins, Mike's been making chilli for five hours, and Emma has baked a cake in the shape of the Taj Mahal (including the pond made out of blue jelly) due to the fact that Claire is going to India. We are having calamari for dinner. Not certain how well liquor will settle on top of a stomach full of squid, Taj Mahal cake and animal cookies; what could possibly go wrong?

2. Grace, Mike and I accompanied my family to the Isle of May this weekend, where relaxation occurred. It was calming. There was no electricity, and we got quite sunburned sitting outside the lighthouse as Mike turned 21. On Sunday we would've been trapped in Fife thanks to the late ferry if not for dr_octavia, who drove us to the station in the nick of time, staying classy with an icecream in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

3. Working at the Forest Cafe is completely awesome, not matter what the haters (ie. Hector) might say about it being coagulation of unwashed hippy jackasses. I make delightful food and serve it to people while feeling clean and efficient, and everyone is friendly and interesting-looking. The cafe is communally owned and there are performance spaces, a rehearsal room with drums, a shop (where I think I will try to sell some paintings) and art studios. The music is pretty weird sometimes, but I'm good with that. They have a lending library for anarchist literature and HATS (!), and give haircuts with vodka. (It's unclear whether the hairdresser or the victim customer gets the drink, however.)

4. lady_w is travelling round the UK and was in Edinburgh last night, so she came round for dinner. Claire is an excellent housewife and was unperturbed by having to cook for two Austrian backpackers I had met on LJ and she had never met before. lady_w is cute and quiet, and I think spent most of the time laughing at us in vaguely disbelieving horror. When I was walking her home she said, "Are you always like that?" which I choose to interpret as complimentary. Stay cool, Lisa.

5. The vintage store job continues apace. A Victorian-themed cafe is opening next door and the manager keeps coming in to ask for advice. He made me try on Victorian-style dresses, which some poor girl is going to have to wear while standing outside the cafe selling pies to passers-by. This was the same day that a man wearing a Confederate flag necktie came in and called me his "beautiful angel".

6. During high school there was only every one teacher my friends and I liked. He taught Geography, which is the only class any of us can remember with any clarity. The other day Claire, Grace, Emma and I all went for coffee with him to catch up. It was odd, but fun. We are grown-ups! Or something. Then I got a text from my mother reading, "Isn't he MARRIED?" It turned out that she thought I had gone on a DATE with my old geography teacher. And not only this, she was perfectly OK with it (as long as he wasn't married). WTF.

It's like fangirl kryptonite.

1. The people I'm living with are giving me an inferiority complex. Claire (wrongeyed_jesus) ran 10 kilometres this morning while I was still in bed. Grace (sweetmintmojo) and her boyfriend Mike (who goes to Harvard, and is reminiscent of Oz from Buffy in that he is small and quietly humorous, wears nail polish, plays guitar and has had blue hair) both have engineering internships that involve many hours of industrious & mystifying work to do with, I don't know, warp coils. It is all very impressive, as is shirley_1989, who spends large chunks of each day in the library studying for his Physics exams.

I, on the other hand, float around like a 1950s Valium housewife, except for my 6 hours a week at the vintage store. But I'm starting at the Forest Cafe (Edinburgh's primary hippy convergence point; Claire is convinced I will be eaten by a junkie or something because she dislikes places that are not perfectly sterile), and hopefully the internship lady will email me back soon so I can enjoy some fun times working for environmental research's answer to Malcolm Tucker. In the name of cultural improvement, I am working my way through Intellectual Hector's bookshelves. So far I have read A Moveable Feast by Hemingway (the prime lessons of which appear to be Wine Is Good For You, or, Gertrude Stein Was A Bit Of A Dick), and have started on In America by Susan Sontag, which is a lot of fun if you enjoy reading about 19th century Polish immigrants having lengthy internal monologues about sexual inadequacy and the martyrdom of the motherland.

2. Grace, because she is a whorefaced shitbeetle of a friend, has given my super-mega-amazing novel the working title of Magical Love Gentlemen, despite the fact that my protagonists are probably Just Good Friends.

3. Harry Potter is a thing of beauty. We sat in the cinema in a haze of glee, making noises of hilarity whenever poor sadfaced emo Draco appeared onscreen in his Armani suit and guyliner of evil. Claire and I finally understood about Snape/Draco after seeing the scene where Snape pins him to the wall and is all like, I AM HERE TO PROTECT YOU WITH MY ENORMOUS MAGIC WAND OF MORAL AMBIGUITY and made our ovaries tingle. My favourite thing about the film was the fact that Hermione and Harry are utter BFFs who hold hands and talk about their romantic failures and/or the oncoming dark magic apocalypse. (And the extremely entertaining level of douchebaggery present in Hermione's hot boyfriend -- who, BTW, goes to my Uni.) Also, when Tonks first appeared onscreen I shouted "HOMEWRECKER!" because I am a mature individual with serious and legitemate concerns about the imaginary gay relationship between Tired Werewolf and Poor Dead Sirius.

4. Went to a party at dr_octavia's family's house, which is located in one of those horrifying housing estates like Agrestic in Weeds, or the one where all the wholesome pastel-coloured families live in Edward Scissorhands. Predictably, we ended up playing Oven Gloves.

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?