the day my body caught fire

In a couple of hours I have to drive (!!!!) to town, park my car (£8 for 24 hours, which is pretty good going), and take a train to London. I have planned this poorly, because I will be back around midnight, and am at work tomorrow and Friday, before having all of next week off. And yet? Fucking fantastic.

I am so excited about today! I am totally that lame person who goes to shows by herself but it has rather got to the point where I just don't care.

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One of those useless facts that I have in my head and now can't get rid of: today is Gil Grissom's birthday.

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Work continues on apace. Am gradually getting more things to do, and some informal proof-reading, which I always enjoy. My boss is still completely mad, but I find I'm getting better at ignoring the random expletives that eject from the other side of the cubicle. And I do like her a lot. Other!newbie is back from her holidays and insists on IM-ing me, instead of just talking to me, so she IMs, and I answer out loud. She is an odd, odd thing. Feeling vaguely triumphant, though, because it's been a week since I last got off the elevator on the wrong floor. Hurrah! Progress.

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People are very weird about invitations. Have spent some time sorting out a meal for Tuesday, and people sometimes fail to understand that I need definite yes and no answers in order to book the table. It's okay! I invited a boat of people because I knew 95% wouldn't be able to come, but it was rude not to offer! I don't mind if you can't make it, though I would be super happy if you could. But - and here is the vital thing - I do actually need to know one way or the other.

Relatedly, there are seven of us going now, and does anyone there know anyone else? Ahahahaha, NOPE. I'm quite excited to see how this fest of awkward is going to go. At least fizzawrites and hestia8 will have The Internet in common? Um. Yes.

Have planned poorly, though, as hestia8 and I will miss The Hour's finale for this. Lady, I have done you - us! - a great wrong.

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At some point I hope to finish watching Glorious 39, but it's difficult to take caps on iPlayer, which is why a two-hour film is taking me years to watch.

Fuck, guys, I am totally fulfilling my role as flister you'd most like to incarcerate: if you happen to get a particularly lovey-dovey email/comment from me it's because hi, I'm a freak. Please don't wig to the tenth? Yes. And thanks.

In other news: I'm trying to reign (wtf) rein it in.

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Nothing is happening in my life. The remaining snow is all icy and gross and I hate it; I am still at the community centre (today I fought with a huge ass printer and nearly burned my hand off: true story); I have discovered that I like my notebooks to have heft but also front covers that don't easily come off. No, but really.

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I watched Fringe, Leverage and NCIS. The first I loved; JJAbrahms loves to headfuck, and whilst I wish the light puzzle had been an actual puzzle (i.e. something that you could solve with enough intellect as opposed to literal brain power) I still kind of loved that. Also: The Observer totally freaked me out. Again.

Leverage was half awesome (Lauren Holly! Parker!), half fucking insulting (it was the skin colouring that really bothered me and the idea that the Indians in charge of the company didn't know their shit; fuck you). So. Yeah.

NCIS. Man. ( spoilers. )

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Oh man, so, I'm watching CSI on five, yes? And it is kind of breaking my heart! It reminds me very much of the mood last season pre-strike (with all that melancholy) and I don't know. The show itself isn't as formulaic as, say, CSI:NY, but the cases don't really interest me any more. And yet all the character bullshit has me clinging on. Oh show. WHAT TO DO.

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Tangentially: yeah, whatever.

Last night I watched Merlin (!!!!) and then made dinner whilst the NCIS pilot was on (again - dear Five, shouldn't you start airing S5 already, or are you waiting for February?) I didn't watch the whole thing because even though I love it, I can pretty much recite the dialogue at this point. I remembered a couple of things: that Kate seemed older, and more together, and that Jethro laughed a lot, and that the pilot really is a thing of beauty. I didn't make it to the confrontation scene in the bathroom, but I did see: TOBIAS FORNELL, and Tony getting thrown out of the car. Marvellous.

For whatever reason, Bête Noire is on my mind today, and whilst that episode is obviously so much about Ari, the part that I tend to forget is that the episode is littered with references to how Jethro is old school to the point where it is kind of detrimental to his work (his pad and pencil versus Kate's palm pilot &c.) So there's an element in the whole arc where Ari is this child who is outwitting him, and it's bringing his age into focus. Which, as I've said before, is probably in a sharp place already because we've just had Enigma and Terry O'Quinn, and the first of the laboriously complicated mess that is Jethro's history.

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Then I watched CSI (the episode with Drops and all his progeny) and was amazed to find that I actually enjoyed that episode a lot.

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For the most part I've been sorting out laundry, cooking, and have started my Homicide marathon again. I'm about to watch Thrill of the Kill and then the two-part Sniper episode from season 4 and judging from other people's hints/reactions (coughdaygloparkercough) I AM TRÈS EXCITED.

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edit: HOLY SHIT THAT'S JEFFREY DONOVAN.

More top 5s. Still open to requests. razorxrosary asked me for my top 5 poems/pieces of verse and top 5 female characters.

( top 5 poems/pieces of verse )

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( top 5 female characters )

Ironically, 3/5 of these choices have turned out to be blond characters. If there was a #6, I'd pick serial killer Suzie Costello or ass-kicking Kima Greggs, both of whom I love but don't talk about nearly enough.

--

I still have one of razorxrosary's top 5s to answer, as well as a handful from other people. Slow going but I'm taking care with my answers, yo.

I went to school! I participated in (useless) classes! I'm going to construct a bookshelf out of my books!

Also, am reading Jean-Francois Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition (the Postmodernist manifesto, basically) and it actually makes sense. Like, I'm still trying to accurately define 'legitimation' which sounds like it should be obvious but really isn't, but it's all very readable and actually likely to be properly useful for my dissertation.

In other news, however, still really busy. !

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I finally watched the rest of that CSI episode. ( spoilers. )

But Saving Grace is back tonight, yay.

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I also started reading Where Three Roads Meet today, by Sally Vickers. So far, so excellent. The Myths series is so many levels of wonderful.

So last night I was terribly excited because Bete Noir was on but ultimately I decided not to watch it because my levels of NCIS crazy are, well, making me crazy(-ier). I did however randomly decide to go down at 11pm and watch Numb3rs, though. On a real television! It was season 2, Bettor or Worse. I remembered that I actually enjoyed season 2 a lot. I also realised that between S2 and S4, Dylan Bruno's arms have near doubled in mass. That can't be healthy, right?

Then I watched CSI:NY whilst The Flatmate slept on my bed. All was good. (I'm sort of psyched by how awesome CSI:NY is this year? Because it really is!)

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This morning I woke up at 0800, then rolled over and fell asleep until 0930. Oops? Got to the library just before 1100 and was there until 1630. I HAVE READ SO MUCH SHELLEY TODAY, GUYS. (Also: John Clare who believed he actually WAS Byron.!) Tomorrow I have to organise my notes and write a 5-10 minute presentation that I have to give on Monday afternoon. I also need to do my Experimental Writing piece. I think I'll do the word list in a minute, actually.

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Tonight I will be cooking (I have peppers! And hopefully I also have half an onion otherwise I'm going to have to make a run to the One Stop) and watching NCIS, despite what I said above. But it's on at 2000 and I can cook and eat and watch, and it's all good. (The episode is Boxed In. UM. This will be the forth time I'm watching it. FOURTH.) In a minute I'm going to watch this week's Numb3rs and after NCIS I'm going to watch CSI and - AND! - the Women's Murder Club pilot. If it turns out to be rubbish, I'll just skip to the arts with Angie Harmon in it as she's obviously the only reason I'm watching.

The real debate, though, is whether to watch new CSI or to watch the repeat that's showing - Redrum! With Keppler! With angsty!team! Hmmm. HMMMM. DECISIONS, SO MANY DECISIONS.

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Did I mention how much I loved the tone of the Keppler arc? The direction and music changed a fair amount, and I really loved it. Those four episodes were so creepy and atmospheric. And because I wasn't really invested in the miniature killer until the end of the season (and even then: not really) I felt like the Keppler arc was refreshing and stimulating narrative. Love!

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Oh, earlier this week I collected my essays from last year, including my asstastic research skills/dissertation proposal grade. So. I mean, the plan was to start looking at my texts for the second/third time this week and then get to work on a format. But that's just not going to happen. For one thing, I think I need to reduce the number of texts I'm looking at (I'm tempted to drop Atwood, actually, for a number of reasons). For another, I need to rework my plan of action, obviously, because if my proposal wasn't up to scratch, then something is wrong. The actual paper will only be 8k which sounds like a lot, but I wrote a 4k essay last year and in the end it turned out not to be enough (hahaha, I actually aced that paper, yay; I was reading the feedback today and it made me all internally-glowy). SO: STRESSFUL. And in the dumb way, too. I'm more worried about my external research than the texts. I know what I want to say about them.

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Note to self: take out trash already.

Oh boy. This time last year CBS had renewed just about everything it was airing. This time around? Survivor. What? Not that the shows are really in danger of being cut but still. This is a whole new world of crazy.

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( The Black Donnellys, 1x10; 1x11. )

( Bones, 2x19; 2x20. )

( Criminal Minds, 2x22; 2x23. )

( CSI, 7x22; 7x23. )

( CSI: NY, 3x21; 3x22; 3x23. )

( Grey’s Anatomy, 3x24. )

( L&O: Criminal Intent, 4x02; 5x04; 6x21. )

( NCIS, 4x23. )

( Numb3rs, 3x22; 3x23. )

( The Unit, 2x23. )

This is going to sound weird but even though I’ve seen spec for the finale episodes, I don’t like talking about them. I’ll talk to you about the episodes I’ve seen, but I’m speculation-phobic, so. Yeah.

And now I have to go and do actual work.

Dear Google,

How much do I love you? Not only, in my time of need, are you providing me somewhere to type up my most pressing eljay post, but you delivered me this, Judith Butler, just as I returned from the last of my On Reading lectures. You are near-prophetic. Thank you.

Now, if you'd just let me download my photos from my duck cheer account, that would be brilliant,

Lots of love, as ever,
M (kisses!)

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No, but seriously, when I try to download attachments from gmail, my system goes on the fritz and then my server needs resetting because the net refuses to load eljay. I'm leaving it for now because I'm dong other stuff but all I can say is thank fuck for ljgate.

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(Possibly Controversial) Statement of the Day: The Postmodern is not a temporal event, but a geographical one. The East has yet to meet it.

My lecture has nothing to do with this in the grosser sense, but it was about hypertexts and the woman kept throwing the term Postmodern around and I kept thinking, well, hey, a good portion of people I know don't believe in DNA. Sure, our sense of selves may be more and more attuned to technology (we're Cyborgs - I love Harway's critical piece), but you can't talk about that as a Postmodern occurrence if you want to suggest that post modernity is a global occurrence. It isn't - it's a social, economical, theoretical, arguably Western term.

My grandmother thinks that asking for family medical history is part of a medical conspiracy. I tried once to explain the concept of DNA but when she has no concept of genes, cells or microscopes, it gets difficult.

I'm a person who owns a mobile phone that is nearly never on (ask my family). I don't have an iPod, or a MP3 player, or a Walkman or a disc man, though I do have a laptop. But my connection to the internet, oh boy. That's what makes me as much of a Cyborg as anyone I know.

OK, I need to stop talking about this because I just CALLED MYSELF A CYBORG and no-one knows what the fuck I'm on about.

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Oh boy: Hairspray. !!!

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Dear CSI fans,

Regarding the last episode to air in the US: don't be stupid. It was bait; don't get caught. Think about the type of person he is. Admittedly, it was a nice throwback to a comment that Keppler made (one that I hoped would be played with) but, please. DON'T BE IDIOTS. For one thing, it makes no sense. For another, the guy is just completely - it'll be an empathy/sympathy thing.

M.

I have new NCIS to watch and nearly all of last week's fandom. This is very exciting.

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There was other stuff but it can't have been so important because I don't remember. Actually t was about translating and interpreting, but it basically ended with the phrase: "and that, ladies and gents, is why FedEx is the right-hand of God." Yeah, really.

Oh man.

--

( CSI, 7x16, Monster in the Box; 7x17, Fallen Idols. )

( CSI: NY, 3x17, Sleight Out of Hand. )

( Studio 60, 1x16, 4am Miracle. )

( Criminal Minds, 2x16, Distress; 2x17, Jones. )

( Battlestar Galactica, 3x14, A Day in the Life; 3x15, Dirty Hands. )

( Stargate, 10x17, Bad Guys; half of 10x18, Talion. )

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LENNY HENRY TONIGHT! Woo! *excited*

Re: Battlestar, I loved 3x11 and really, really didn't get most of 3x12. By which I mean to say, I didn't really understand what they were going for. But hey! War trial. OBVIOUS MUCH? Anyway, parts of the latest episode felt a bit too much like the latter episodes of season 2 to make me care all that much, which is a shame. I loved Gaius, though, and I loved Adama's interactions with him. I really, really loved DeAnna's fate because, shit, that's insane.

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The latest two CSIs to be aired? I have absolutely adored. ( CSI, 7x12 and 7x13 )

Um. Is anyone on my flist still watching this? spiescameout, you will be, right, when it airs? Anyway, I now have a really big yen to write the rest of the Sara Sidle fic I was writing as an addendum to the Megan Reeves one I wrote. Can I pull it off? Likely not. OK. Back to fandom.