planning the revolution

Haha, so I was reading old entries (from about a year ago) and I realised, wow, I'm a posting miser these days. What's with that? Mostly it's because I have nothing to do right now except complain - about being home, about my parents, about my lack of employment. So. Consider that portion of this post over with because I'm too tired to talk about that again.

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Last night I had a dream which mashed up Life and Weeds. Crews and Nancy were married, and Crews was having an appropriately challenging conversation with Shane. It was SO BIZARRE.

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My cousins from Canada are in England this summer for my other cousin's wedding (which is in a fortnight, aie). They're staying at their paternal grandfather's house but they came to visit this week. (Their mum is The Dad's younger sister.) Anyway, they arrived on Wednesday night, although I thought they were coming over the weekend. This turned out to be a good thing which I knew it would be, regardless of my reluctance, because my older cousin, R, is hilarious. Her sister, T, and I are the same age, and she's very sweet, too. So we had dinner at our house on Wednesday night, and on Thursday we had dinner at Baby Cousin's house. We also tried to watch Enchanted but we kept getting interrupted. Managed to watch the whole thing, though.

There was a lot of walking to and from my house because my Foiba (The Dad's sister) is a walking fiend. On Thursday we also made a trip to a local park where we fed ducks and played in the kids' playground with Baby Cousin. Again: hilarity! It was a really lovely day, actually, and so sunny, too. On Friday they went to Twin Lakes with Baby Cousin; I skipped that particular trip. I saw the photos when they came back, though; looks like everyone had a great time.

Said cousins spent Friday night at our house again, which was great. We watched Hairspray and fussed with bedding &c. &c. They left after breakfast on Saturday morning. Poor R! They're super bored at their grandparents' house because there's nothing to do, and no-one to hang around with. No net, either, so it's not like they can talk to people back in Canada either.

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So, V's wedding is in a fortnight. The registration is in a week's time, 16th August, and then the wedding itself is a week later. Things are, naturally, crazy in the house at the moment because clothes need unstitching and restitching. I'm slowly extraditing cheese from my diet and trying to keep up a habit of walking out. That said, every time I step out it starts opouring with rain. Thankfully I have my trusty brolly to keep me dry.

Today I walked into D. (yes, it was raining) and on the way I saw about 50 classic cars drive past. They all had yellow cards with numbers on them stuck to the windshields so I guess there was something going on. It was pretty amazing all the same.

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Am having a bit of a disc crisis. The drive is working again, thankfully, but I was trying to access NCIS S4 for The Sister today and the disc wouldn't read. "Cyclic redundancy check". SIGH. It turns out the settings I was using to burn the discs were incorrect so now I have to salvage twenty-odd discs of information. SIGH. Thankfully the ones I was using to back up actual files are fine.

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In the musical portion of this update, I've recently started listening to a folk band called The Wailin' Jennys. Invested in a couple of albums early last week. A light and lovely sound, fairly traditional, and a great soundtrack whilst I'm reading. (The Time-Traveller's Wife continues to be wonderful. It's been slow going, though, what with the visits &c.)

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Yesterday I watched The Darjeeling Limited which I've been waiting to see for quite some time now. It was funny and beautifully shot. Someone's posted a picspam of it at picspammy today which made me want to watch it again but I'll give it a break, I think.

I also posted some icons for the first time in months yesterday. I don't know. I just don't get a kick out of making icons any more. DUN DUN DUNNNN. A sign of age? Or a sign of impending doooom? I'm going to strike for a middleground and suggest that I'm too lazy to bother doing anything I give a damn about any more.

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Do you know what's smashing? THE MIDDLEMAN. How I love it so! I've finally caught up and was Very Pleased to see the return of Jacket-less Middleman. !!!!

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Oh, Tracy Chapman. all you folks think you own my life / but you never made any sacrifice / demons, they are on my trail / I'm standing at the crossroads of the hell ♥ Have y'all heard never yours yet? Hell, yes.

GIP because tigertrapped reminded me that I need to watch the last few episodes. (Ah, this scene kills me. Birdie and the birds, and all that self-sacrifice. I used to find her vacuous. Obviously I've seen the GRIEVOUS ERROR of my ways. January Jones is smashing.) I only know a couple of flisters who are watching this which... guys, rectify this already. Between January Jones and Christina Hendricks - plus the production which is TOP NOTCH; the clothes alone make me *swoon* - you can't go wrong.

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I love this song. When I first listened to the album, I was a bit bored (Mercy isn't really representative, so if you go in for more of that, it's hit and miss), but now I'm seeing its charm. Warwick Avenue is great, too.

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So! Let me tell you how great Monday was! Sunday afternoon through to Monday morning, I was writing that stupid essay. I didn't sleep, and because the office opens so late I didn't want to sleep straight off. Took a shower, dressed, drank some juice and went for a great early-morning walk at around 7am. It was still cool; the early morning air is sharp but good for walking. Got back to the house, went through my internet-related routines and then sat with The Flatmate and T as they had breakfast. (Wrote a letter because letter writing has become my thing again.) Left for the subsidiary campus at around 10am, Rilo Kiley swinging me on my way. The day was amazing, so I dropped off the essay and then walked the distance into town. Hung out in the park, then walked through town down to the docks. Came back up to the city centre and decided, fuck it, I'm going shopping. Unfortunately, though I earmarked some gorgeous dresses and tops, my budget doesn't really stretch that way right now. (Haha, I found a top I liked in Principles, so I texted The Mother - Nice top in Principles. £20 y/n? - and got 'yes' back. Except it wasn't worth £20 so I left it in the end. But! Wallis has a sale! May go back and buy me a dress.)

T met me a little while after that and we went to M&S (she bought sushi! I bought juice. NATCH) before buying doughnuts to share with N and The Flatmate when we got home. (The Flatmate was writing a 3k book journal on Holocaust related literature so we decided doughnuts were in order.) Ate lunch, went to Boots, Paperchase and then Asda where I bought a delicious French stick which I ate for dinner last night.

Aie, aie, aie. I was so dizzy in the evening because (a) NO SLEEP and (b) I hadn't really eaten. So I sat down to eat, and moron that I am, decided it was time to finish the rosé. MORON. Now I'm sleep-deprived, carb-filled and I'm pretty certain that wine hit me. What do I do? Go for another walk. At 8.30pm. *headdesk* But I needed to stay awake until 10 or I wouldn't sleep properly. Came back from the walk (whole thing was dizzying), washed up, sat with The Flatmate for the first 10 minutes of Waking the Dead (no specs, no consciousness, so I have no idea - someone was convinced that the bones weren't his father?) then went and dozed on T's bed whilst she played some Ani DiFranco. Finally dragged my arse up the stairs and went to bed a little after 10pm.

Woke this morning to Leona Lewis at 7am. I slept straight through, unsurprisingly. It's shaping up to be another beautiful day. I'm going to go for another walk and then read Eugenides' Middlesex because I think I'm going to use it for Monday's essay.

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I have three weeks' worth of Bones to watch, lols. Fandom, currently you fail to live up to RL. (Unless you are WMC or BSG. Or Cold Case, apparently, which I am storing up to watch. Why hello there, Crime Procedural.) WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WHEN I HAVE TO GO HOME?

Let's talk about how coming home is like moving time zones, shall we? It's 1721 over here and it actually feels like that's the right time. Ignoring the fact that my body doesn't seem to be able to deal with the sudden drop in temperature (it's freezing; I forget that about being in D.) and the fact that I am date challenged ("It's Tuesday today, right?" "Wrong." "...what?"), whenever I'm in D. I always know the time. I don't have to look at a clock! I get tired around 11pm! I sleep through the night! I wake at a Human hour! Lunch time falls in the middle of the day. I think it's all the exposure I get to daylight here that makes the difference. (Bay windows = love.)

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So, I've been promising a recs post for forever, but looking at my del.icio.us account, I think it's going to have to be 'posts' plural. I've started doing that, though, so the first of those will be up soon.

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Today I spent the morning standing behind the till at The Dad's store - D. is deathly quiet so the shift went slowly, except for The Dad coming in and out of the store. As part of his work with the local Rotary Club, The Dad has been involved in a local school art exhibition. This morning, he and the Club president had to judge the entries and pick winners. He also had various other chores to get done, and The Mother went to a computer class, so I was all on my own.

Although it was boring as always, it was nice to see the locals. One gentleman, Mr N, is originally from Poland (not one of the 'Poles' the documentary was talking about; Mr N is post-war immigrant) and I first met him when I started working for The Dad 5 years ago. Back then Mr N would barely look at me. Today he walked in, saw me, smiled wonderfully, and we had a pleasant conversation. ("Have you passed, or did they kick you out?" Pleasant is a relative term, naturally. But he wasn't being ornery, just joking.) Anyway, that was less stressful than it used to be.

This afternoon I've been sitting in the study next to The Dad watching (and dictating) as he writes a letter to one of the schools which participated in the exhibition. (OH GOD: LEARN TO USE KEYS LIKE 'END' AND 'HOME' PLEASE OH GOD PLEASE.) The letter is to inform the schools of the winners and of the prize-giving date. That took at least an hour. After he left, I formatted the whole thing, spell- and grammar-checked it, and then saved copies with the different school addresses so that all he has to do when he gets back is print them out. (We were working off letters that another Rotarian sent out last year - whoever he is, he needs someone to check his writing. Atrocious spelling mistakes!)

Irony: I stopped half-through the above paragraph to answer the phone. It was The Dad who wanted me to (a) find a telephone number of one of his Rotary partners, and (b) send said partner an email. Admin skills? Check.

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Since Friday, three different people have commented (positively) on my diction. Ironically, I was being arch on all three occasions. Verily M's Voice of Bitch = well-spoken at the very least.

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( The weekend, in which - amongst other things - M. survived the journey from Soton to D. Yayarms. )

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Benefit of being home: reliable net connection! Additional benefit of being home: reliable net connection that always loads LJ userpics! Smashing!

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The music blogs that I'm subscribed to via Google Reader have supplied me with endless Rilo Kiley this weekend, not to mention other wonderful things. Thus, I'm now listening to 'The Execution of All Things'. A Better Son/Daughter is one of those Rilo Kiley tracks that I hated the first time around (why???) and now LOVE quite viciously.

Now: to answer comments and emails. Huzzariffic.

How much do you love that drum at the beginning of Don't Choose the Wrong Way? Goddamn. (I think it's that Irish hand drum. I don't know. It makes me shiver.)

edit: AND HER VOICE. This blend of sound is actually pretty reminiscent of that Imagined Village track, yes/no? I mean, in terms of the instrumentation. The mental landscape is completely different (this one's much smoother, for one). But the idea feels the same, like seeing the horizon and being on it.

Today's perusal of music blogs revealed a track that I actually own but have never listened to properly. To wit: check out Jaymay's Gray or Blue.

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The answers for this meme: ( answers. )

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So, Vera Farmiga has astonishing eyes. I thought so in The Departed! And now in Touching Evil (US), too. Which did exactly what I thought it would do with the British version. It reminds me of Life? Except. I don't know. Life both takes itself more and less seriously than TE. ODDNESS. (Oh guys. Life needs to come back. RIGHT NOW PLEASE. daygloparker, are you watching this? Because: yes.)

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edit: OH MAN. Best in Show is one of the funniest films ever.

( and the pursuant scene, in which Parker Posey loses her shit. )

Today I am obsessed with this:

( cut because it is being arsey. )

That's pretty much it. Also: I feel pretty unwell, but I'm sure I'm not actively dying.

HA. HA HA. HA.

So, it took about six hours (and many, MANY days), but my 3,000 words on Shelley's A Defence of Poetry? So nailed. I'm going to finish the bibliography and the references tomorrow morning (they're basically done, actually, I just need to put in the full citations). I feel much better now, natch.

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I fucking love Metric. So brilliant. (And KEXP has The Editors doing a live session! Fabulous!)

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This upcoming week is Reading Week which means I have time to catch up on some of the books that I've got stacked and waiting. It also means I can actually do my dissertation research, and start writing the first half-draft which is due in December.

The craziest part of this week is my assignment for Experiments in Writing. We have to re-write a popular myth or folktale (you can't buy this kind of irony; it's just too good) but we have to do it using a collage method. Which is to say, none of it can be my own writing; I have to piece the text together using other people's texts and 'found' text (i.e. text that I see everyday, like on cereal boxes or street signs). !!! I'm tempted to write the myth of Hades and Persephone again, using only Sylvia Plath's collection Ariel, because the idea of using the woman who wrote Lady Lazarus as the basis for the origins/coronation of the Queen of the Underworld is almost too ironic and fabulous. So, yeah.

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UGH. I'm so going to sleep now. I'm too softcore for this late-night stuff.

So, a handful of you have emailed me today (twincy, I'm pretty certain five of those are from you, not that I'm complaining), and I'll get around to answering those eventually but it's been a really long day, so in all likelihood I won't touch my inbox until tomorrow morning. If there's anything really urgent in those emails, comment here. Alternatively, I'll be signed into MSN after I've had something to eat.

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Haven't really opened iTunes that much this week because I've remembered Pandora. I created a new station based on Kendall Payne's music and I'm so glad because I've picked up loads of new musicians to obsess over, including Catie Curtis who I am finding so easy to listen to. It's such a relief after such a long day.

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I spent the day in the library doing the reading for 19th Century Poetry. It was all women poets this week, and I found them less obscure than their male counterparts, and even more approachable in some respects. I'm still at a loss as to why we had to read three of the nine parts of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh, especially considering the three parts that we read were: one, two and five.

Basically, this girl (Aurora) is orphaned and sent to live with her aunt, and she ends up devouring every book she can find and determining that she wants to be A Poet which isn't a Womanly Pursuit. She's offered marriage by her cousin, which she declines because she (a) doesn't love him and (b) doesn't believe that their pursuits are compatible. Her aunt admonishes her because, of course, being a woman, she owns nothing unless she's married; the aunt subsequently dies, and leaves Aurora her small fortune which Aurora uses to set herself up in London.

The fifth part closes with Aurora learning that her cousin (who has now set up some sort of socialist Christian commune that society disagrees with) is going to marry another woman. I think in the missing two sections the cousin falls in love with another girl who either dies or shames him in some way, and thus he's rejected a second time. But, anyway, the cousin has found a third person, and this one actually wants to marry him; she's more than a little rude to Aurora who, in any case, has decided to leave her cousin to his own affairs and return to Italy which is where she was born and spent her formative years. I have no idea what happens after that, although Wikipedia tells me that Aurora ultimately decides that she loves her cousin, which I find more than a trifle disappointing.

A lot of the poem deals with femininity, and what it means to be A Woman, and what it means to be A Poet. It was quite good all things considered, but it took a long time and I also had to read other poems, as well as criticism, although, in fairness, Letitia Elizabeth Landon's prose was pretty straight-forward for the most part.

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Hahaha, more books arrived in the mail today - my copy of the shortened prose version of The Mahabharata (which so far has a disappointing tone and narrative flimsiness that I disapprove of - make of that comment what you will) and a copy of The Bhagavad Gita which so far is poetic and thought-provoking, though I'm not far into it.

I really want to sit down and read all the books I've bought (I know I can read each of the Myths texts one per day) but I won't really have that opportunity until Reading Week which is when I have to properly begin my research for my dissertation (no to mention re-wrote my dissertation proposal). By that point, I'll likely be much less excited by the whole thing.

The rest of this week will be dedicated to (a) the reading for Experiments in Writing which will take all of an hour tomorrow morning, and (b) my essay for 19th Century Poetry which - if I force myself - I can get done for Monday. If. So tomorrow (and the majority of the weekend) will be sold to that pursuit, a prospect which I find wholly depressing. (GAH. Why do I always think it's Wednesday on a Thursday night? That's so freaking irritating.) Sometime before Tuesday I have to write a minimalistic piece for Experiments in Writing, too. I have an idea but it might take some doing.

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I just realised, though, that after Tuesday's class, I have almost a fortnight off. Hmm. Maybe there's time to indulge in a book or two after all. Which is good because The Flatmate just lent me Bharati Mukherjee's The Middleman and Other Stories, and in a day or so, my copy of The Ramayan should turn up. I hope that's written in a style superior to that of my copy of The Mahabharata otherwise I'll be sorely disappointed.

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Eventually I'll take time to indulge in fandom. Tonight, though, I have to type up and code my numb3rswom3n fic, and watch Life.

I've never tried this before so here's hoping that this works.

Fingers crossed?