I Just Noticed Something...

Ever since the BBC (well, Warner Bros. for the BBC) has been releasing DVDs in the American market, they've felt the need to replace the British release covers. And without exception, the US releases are hideously ugly. As in "Oh my god, put that /down/: someone might see you!" ugly.

I will, for sake of example, use the release of Remembrance of the Daleks, where the dichotomy is most obvious:






















Yes, in the last few moments of the story, a Black Dalek goes mad and spins around a bit, but I've yet to determine why the designer put two in full spin on the US cover, nor why he thought a sort of neon pus color would be an ideal background.

But with the release earlier in the summer of the Under the Surface* collection, the US and UK releases have been identical! Hurrah!

*Oh, how I long for this! However, since it took me a month to scrounge together the cash for The Time Meddler, I won't see this collection -- which is more than double the price -- for ages. It's not like I don't already have all three stories it contains on trusty BBC Enterprises (RIP)
VHS**, but it's still a better buy than, say, Time-Flight at any price.


**Well, The Silurians and The Sea Devils. I still have an off-air recording of Warriors of the Deep -- "WUNE-TV. Channel 17, Linville." Cor, that doesn't half reveal my age. Or level of sadness.

Reel Around the Fountain

Or, Why Morrissey is god and Duncan Sheik is an insufferable poseur. Or possibly the other way around.

I have a confession to make. There's this Duncan Sheik song I like.

Well, it isn't a Duncan Sheik song, first of all, it's a Smiths song. But he does a cover of it.

It was released yonks ago, and I grabbed if off Napster, back when I was in college and it was free to do things like that. After college, for some reason, that track never survived -- probably because well, I don't like Duncan Sheik. I loathe him and all his works and all his ways. He is, in his own little way, the opposite of everything I like in music.

But when, in the course of my internet travels today, I saw an mp3 of this song, I was over-joyed. And then drowned in a sea of self-loathing. But it got me thinking:

Why is his cover better than the original?

It hit me: /because/ Duncan Sheik is loathsome and pathetic.

Here me out:

"Reel Around the Fountain" is, like practically every Morrissey song, a song about being pathetic (Deeply pathetic: "Slap me on the Patio/I'll take it now..."). It's Morrissey's delivery of the song, with just the right level of self-awareness, that makes the song ironic. And irony, of course, is based on the existence of two simultaneous levels it is and isn't pathetic at the same time, since it is an honest statement of how the speaker feels, but by being aware of how sad it is, it isn't quite as sad as it could be.

And this wry self-consciousness is what makes oh, every smart adolescent with a sense of style fall hopeless for Morrissey. Your sex doesn't matter. Neither does your sexual identity. A few years ago my friend Maddie Minx, noted Midlands lesbian, went to a Morrissey concert. "Oh," she told me, "I wish I was 18 again, so I could lose my virginity to him*." I remember nodding, and thinking "That is exactly the way I feel."

[Of course, the practical reality is non-sense. We all know he'd ejaculate prematurely onto your favourite t-shirt, then immediately run away crying. Later, he'd write a song about it, and you'd love it and sing it to yourself when you're lonely. But that's hardly the point.]

But Duncan Sheik eschews that sort of complexity. It goes after emotion of the song with all the awareness of a basset hound going after a ham. He revels in it. He recognizes himself in the utter bathos, and brings it out in a way more purely honest than Morrissey ever could.

Which utterly, utterly misses the point.

The song is quite clever, in its way, and Duncan misses it all. Take the verse for example:

I dreamt about you last night
And I fell out of bed twice
You can pin and mount me like a butterfly
But "take me to the haven of your bed"
Was something that you never said...

If you take the time to actually listen to the song, you can hear that Morrissey is quite careful in his phrasing: the middle line, after all, comes in between two references to being in bed; it's fairly obviously a sexual reference. Accordingly, Moz manages to make the verse into a coherent lyrical unit, downplaying the rests between line three and lines two and four. If he were speaking, that line'd be a parenthetical (subjunctive) statement underlying the (indicative) statement of the verse. Irony. Especially considering the concrete blutness of actions of "pin and mount me" with "Take me to the haven of your bed."

But poor Duncan has a plodding rhythm with rock solid rests between the lines: each line becomes another item in a list of wrongs done by the would-be lover. Nothing subtle. Nothing ironic. Just one dumb person getting treated brutally by another. It's almost painful to listen to, since you almost become drawn into the conflict.

Sheik identifies himself with the emotional experience (and knowing anything about his person, this wouldn't surprise you. I don't know that much, but I do know he got locked in a limo by a group of models he was trying to hit on...) completely. He isn't posing, as such, because he is that sad, but he is posing, because he clearly doesn't have the first clue how the song works.

Still, such is the glory of music, I suppose. He gets it wrong, but it's still sort of right. His appeal comes from his forth-rightness, his genuineness, in presenting it. But if you like the original song, there's a fundamental feeling of him missing the mark, a sort of "Yes, but..." that you can't shake. I mean, I suppose I should laud someone that willing to open themselves up to the world, but like I said, it also makes you a party to his abuse and emotional stupidity.

Good lord, I've gone and turned a Smiths cover into a Sarah Kane play. Excuse me, but I'll have to go and masturbate into my shit now.**

*Quote slightly altered to preserve dignity.

**This isn't pointless vulgarity. Honest.

You rub two sticks together until something good happens.

Pretty, no?

And in the picture I wanted to find, blond, too. But oddly, the photos from Eragon weren't quite as amusing.

Actually, I don't find blond twinks all /that/
attractive; I find them more purely aesthetically pleasing than anything else.

Riiiight.


Anyway, I posted that picture because I'm currently working my way through the novel the film is based on. I've been hired*, you see, to do a sword-fighting demonstration for the release of the third novel in the series. I figured it behooves me to know what sort of sword-fighting actually goes on therein.

And the book's not horrible. It seems to me exactly the sort of novel a bright but not very wordly 15-year-old would write -- he works in the verb "to fletch" on the first page, which ought to tell you enough -- and though I'm none too keen on fantasy, the book works. Too supplement some of its weak spots, though, I've taken to imaging the protagonist pretty much as you see above and his dragon as a giant basset hound**. And added a shower scene or two. And a rather different sort of treatment for chafed thighs.***

But reading the books has done largely what I wanted it to: finding out what kinds of hardware the mention and what their fighting and/or training is like. Pleasantly, they make a point of mentioning training with wooden wasters and there are both (anachronistically) rapiers and broadswords. And target shields.

Although, pointedly****, no daggers with those rapiers. So that'll be a fun thing to fold in.

The only thing I can really find fault with is the use of language. Well, not language, as such. It's pretty much just a "drop a letter from a real Germanic word and pretend it's a new one" deal. It's the orthography is /awful/. I don't think the kid has a grip on what actual diacritical marks mean. I mean, I know I can't castigate someone's /made-up/ language, and only someone trained in hist/comp linguistics would probably even notice, but still.

*Well, asked.

**Okay, that crosses the "creepy" line from fanfic to slash that I am unwilling to actually make.

***Think the Falcor the Luckdragon from The NeverEnding Story, but with more drool.

****Insert rim shot.

Dear Channel 4:

I don't understand why you insist on casting straight boys in gay roles (I mean, what: you can't find enough gay actors? Seriously?) but I have resigned myself to it.

But do you really have to make them so heart-achingly pretty? It's cruel.

In completely unrelated news, Skins premieres on BBC America tonight.

[The pictures, by the way, are a game. Can you guess which are stars on a Channel 4 series and which are porn models? Didn't think so...]

It's not all about Central Asia:

Lake Como is also nice this time of year.

One Thing I Absolutely Do Not Understand...

...is slash.

In any form.

I mean, I get porn. I even get erotic writing. I get fanfic, too, sort of, inasmuch as it's a way for fans to creatively interact with writing and the shows they love. So it there oughtn't to be this huge idealogical gap in me understanding slash in a meaningful way.

And what staggers me is the sheer /bulk/ of it. From TV shows that really don't easily suggest it.

The new Doctor Who does sort of lean towards it a bit, what with Rose and Martha's attachment to the Doctor, so some "shippers"* do something that sort of makes sense. And Captain Jack lends himself to poorly written erotica easily.

But there are Doctor on Doctor freaks. That just short-circuits my brains in all kinds of ways and leaves me twitching and drooling in the corner. There's Adric slash. Tegan-rape. Ugh. That's just as foul, if not worse.

And there's Office Slash out there, which I found out accidentally. (And you know I mean that accidentally, too, since I have no problem discussing actual my porn habits from time to time.)

Gay Office Slash. Which, because it was Jim/Ryan I looked at. Still didn't get it. I mean, I'd /watch/that in a heartbeat, cause I think BJ Novak and John Krasinski are both cuter than average. But it falls a little flat in practice, though, because it's just so creepy.

The Dwight/Michael stuff and the Dwight/Jim stuff -- god help us, there's a /word/, "Dwim," for that, which sounds like a semen euphemism -- I couldn't bear to look at.

I was -- in equal measures -- curious and repulsed so I nosed around looking for other bizarre slash. ER? Kovac and Carter, Malucci and Romano**, and a cross-over so bizarre it makes my brain hurt: Kerry Weaver and Seven of Nine from Star Trek: Voyager.

That's so weird I have to go cry now.

*God, I loathe that word. The lingustics student in me understands it perfectly well but the English major just want to hit people who use it with a big book.

**Erik Palladino is another in the category with Philip Olivier that elicits a "shut up and fuck me" reaction in me that makes /no/ logical sense.

Virtual Dirty Looks

Heh heh.

Sitemeter is great.

The same day I posted about Sakhalin island, I got several hits from there (*waves).

Привет Друзья в Сахалине! Я надеюсь, что москиты не слишком плохи!

I also got a mysterious hit (no place of origin, no IP address, no referring page) from a government office in Moscow.

Привет Товарищи в ФСБ!

When I posted about Chechnya and Georgia, I got a few hits from the Caucasus!

Прошу прощения для того, чтобы использовать Россиян, но нет никакого ингуша Английским переводчикам в Интернете.

Долой российский империализм! Свобода для Кавказа!

And a few more from gov. offices in Moscow!

Этническое Сельское население - всегда скука, да?

(You can run those through this to see the Russian bits. And see and hear them here. Back translation is a hoot!)

We were born at night, when the she-wolf whelped.

It feels a bit weird to be writing this, after a recent post. But Russia's invaded Georgia.

I don't claim to know much about the situation, but I do know a bit more than the average American. Before I moved to New York, I worked on a production of a show called The Man Who Tried to Save the World -- about the American, Fred C. Cuny, an American relief worker -- and maybe spy --who disappeared in the last Chechan War. I learned a bit of Chechen language (enough to translate a few lines their national anthem, sort of -- see title quote), and enough to learn their country was more than bomb craters and ravaged cities.

Even the briefest of study of the area reveals a long, nasty history of military brutality. It'd be nice if you could reduce that brutality to just one side, but you can't. The Russian/Soviet/Russian occupation of the area has been anything but pleasant (they pretty much removed the entire Chechan ethnicity away from the Chechan homeland, so there are no natural-born Chechans), but so has the Chechan reaction to that occupation. They've done horrible things to innocent people, too -- murder of aide workers, innocent children of different ethnic backgrounds...

And the situation is happening all over again in Georgia, for the same reasons, it seems. The old super-structure of the old USSR feels like it needs to prove itself against the machinations of some tiny republic with a history of a free past. Whatever he says, Putin is aligning himself exactly with the old-school Soviet rulers, and only someone as deeply stupid as Bush would ever believe otherwise.

And most of America will be looking at Beijing.

Pah.

"I Read About You on the Internet!"

Or, Sixty Million Tween Girls Can't Be Wrong.

I spent last Friday night at an out-of-town book release party for Breaking Dawn. I was intrigued by the concept, mostly because the proprietress of the store, Miss Laura, had sent me an email specifically barring me from several of the activities.

She mentioned something about the innocence of the teens there, her good name in the small town, and (with a delicate sniff honed, no doubt, through generations of Southern Good Breeding) "my reputation".

*My* reputation, mind, when one of the survey answers to her question, "Name a mode of transportation mentioned in the series?" was a seventeen year old boy. Well, who wouldn't snigger at that? Especially considering some of the seventeen year old boys she's had in the bookstore...*

I was also informed of the negative consequences of introducing alcohol to the festivities. Actually, I wasn't. Those were sort of left up in the air to increase the general air of malignancy associated with them, but they were No Good Things. It was sort of a shame I nevertheless got a thin covering of Crown Royal that night.

I got there early so I could help set things up. She -- in defiance of years of knowing me -- asked me to set up a PlayStation 3. Which I pretty much did. I got all the wires and things plugged in where they were supposed to be. Then I got to blow up balloons. Lots of balloons. /Lots/ of balloons. With little fortunes in.

After that, I went to go get ice. At this point, I should mention that I had grabbed dinner at a local Long John Silver's. ("Oh," I thought, "that'll make a nice change," forgetting that "sea-food" and "quick-service"** go together a bit like "feminine charm" and "Amy Winehouse".) When I came back to my car, I saw the refuse from dinner. Without thinking, I grabbed it an tossed it into a nearby bin. Along with the car key.

I got to dig through the bin liner to get it back. Conveniently, someone left a bottle of Crown Royal somewhere in the middle of the bag, and I drenched myself up to the elbows before I figured out what it was.

There were several other fascinating things in the bag besides the whiskey, like an empty bag of Hershey's Miniatures, a box of sleeping pills and a used container of Depends (though, uhh, fortunately, no actual Depends). I can only assumed I missed a rockin' Seniors field trip downtown...

So I showed up almost 30 minutes later with the ice. The festivities soon began.

It was actually a lot of fun. There were a lot of people -- about 300 teen girls, it seemed, and one guy. Yeah. One of /those/. He was first in line to a get a copy of the book, too, apparently. We all talked about him after the shop closed. It was rather a pity he was so intensely creepy, since he was sort of cute. In a beady-eyed, "don't turn your back on him unless you want a bread knife stuck there" sort of way. Which really wouldn't be a problem as long as he was a bottom.

There were bingo games, and fortune-telling, and arm-wrestling, and make-overs, and raffles and quizzes and Pictionary ("It looks like a homeless man's last will and testament," Ben said, when we looked at it after), and everyone left ecstatic. And clutching their copy of the book.

Which was pretty good, considering that at the climax of the night, a 6-foot ex-marine girl climbed the counter and shouted at people. The guests, except for someone who threatened to rip Laura's face off, were charming, and I met some really lovely people, including Laura's sister, who gave the title quote. Yes. It's nice to be in the same category as Goatse.cx!

Clean-up took a long time, and I didn't get on the road till 3.30 -- which is about my standard for leaving from a trip to see Laura. One day, I should really take a camcorder and record myself singing aloud to Sharleen Spiteri or New Order or the 1989 London cast of Anything Goes about 5.15 to keep myself up.*** That would keep her in stitches for weeks.

You can see pictures of the event here. Though, curiously, I'm not in any.

*Well, not that kind of had, though she probably could have with the Boy G. Not that I would wish that on anyone. Well, twice. (I'd remind you of what Dan Savage says about paying sex workers...)

**That's the industry term for "fast-food". Like all industry terms, it's stupid.

***Granted, the infamous Interstate combined exit/on-ramp, complete with on-coming traffic, I once found on the way back from Laura's worked a lot better at waking me up.

"There's a one-eyed Yellow Idol to the North of Kathmandu..."

You know, I don't think I've ever mentioned something to /anyone/.

As much as I like to travel, I've never been interested in going to Japan. Or India. Or (most) of China. But I'd love to go to Central Asia. As in the northern branch of the Old Silk Road -- places in Xinjiang, the Chinese far West like Turfan or Urumqi or Gaochang or Khotan, the Tarim Basin where Tocharian mummies were found, The Flaming Mountains and the Tian Shan Mountains.

Places like Bukhara and Samarkhand (in Uzbekistan), Bamyan in Afghanistan, Hazrat-e and Tamburlaine's summer palace at Shahrisabz in Turkmenistan.

(And a little further away, but just as remote and seldom heard-of, the Amur River or the Sakhalin island)

The closest I've ever gotten to any personal contact with the area was my friend Phil who decided to travel the world. After I watched a years old (now) episode of Globe Trekker where Ian Wright goes to that part of the world, I convinced him through a series of lies and promises to get me a Kyrgyz hat. Yes, my virtue was used, but it was long gone before I knew Phil, so it wasn't that much to promise. Unfortunately, SARS broke out while Phil was in China, and he got the boot back home. He never got across the border into Kyrgyzstan, and I never got my hat.

Anyway, you almost never hear of most of these places anymore. Most of them are poor, or have unstable governments, and travel is pretty difficult there. But a few days ago, an attack in Kashgar made it into the news. It made me sad that something like that was the only reason the area got name-checked.

[Blogger, as far as I can tell, give you no options short of editing HTML (a bit beyond my ken) to select where the pictures go. They are -- from top down -- the Amur River; Registan, a citadel at Samarkhand; Shahrisabz; Khan Tegri, one of the tallest of the Tian Shan mountains; and the Flaming Mountains in Turfan.]

[The title quote, which has nothing to do with anything, really, is the opening to "The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God", an interesting poem set in Nepal during the Raj.]

More shilling...

...for more excellent t-shirtage. This lot come from Ninja-Bot.





I'm not sure when exactly I began to believe that excellent t-shirt-making became a trait as vital to the species as agriculture, bread-making and wit, but I do. It was probably 'round about the time I realized that 90% of my shirts had some band's name across the middle, and that was boring.

If You're Not From Lesbos...

O Dykes, Rejoice!

The Greeks are okay with you being Lesbians and not Lesbians.

In other gay news, South Carolina is not gay-friendly. Despite what they tell people.

I know. Shocking. And I'm not sure whether it's amusing or disturbing, but SC's response to a gay ad agency doing ads for the state to attract gay tourists was to not pay them. I can't help but wonder if they actually said "Nyah Nyah Nyah" when they refused to pay.

Fucking Pterodactyls.

These are t-shirts designed by Jeremy Kalgreen available over at amorphia-apparel.com. Needless to say, I adore them. And shall, in the fullness of time, purchase some. When I have teh monies.

Dear Person from Sussex:

I know -- through the magic of Sitemeter, so don't get any creepy ideas of me stalking -- you're from East Sussex and this happened in West Sussex, but do you know anything about the GrannyKart Blowout?

I found this bizarrely, and maybe macabrely, fascinating. For instance, did happen at Tesco's or Sainsbury's or somewhere else? I don't know why that matters, but for some reason it does. What started it? I could see if it were over the last package of Chocolate Hob-Nobs.* Was either morbidly obese, and therefore have an unfair advantage? One was taken away to hospital, after all.

Update: Further research tells me it happened in a place called Crawley, (Really? "Crawley"? What's the next town over, Little Snivelling?) a new town which has Tescoses, Sainsburyses, and ASDAses and Icleandses.

*Mmmmmm. Chocolate Hob Nobs. Though my research has discovered a Milk Chocolate and Orange Hob Nob, which I would Kill to Get. Yes. Kill.

**Seriously, check out the site. It's angry! No wonder the grans were playing at MarioKart.

Why I hate NC, part 12,563

Senator Dole:

As one of your constituents, I wanted to inform you how appalled I was at your attempt to attach Jesse Helms name to the recent Congressional bill for AIDS relief.

Helms was a racist and a bigot, and I am sure -- whatever his late actions in office may have been -- history will confirm his legacy as little more than a rabble-rousing hate-monger, and a relic of a less progressive age.

Your attempt to attach his name to the bill was a flagrant act of partisanship and an obvious attempt to whitewash Helms' dark memory. Were you just not able to find the names of some actual victims of the AIDS epidemic to attach to the bill?

While I don't doubt this act will be popular with the majority of your electorate, I think it's important the strong minority make their voices heard.

--Jaylemurph

Dammit!

The day -- the very day -- I mention ER here, I find out next season will be the last one.

I'm not very torn up about it -- it jumped the shark a while back* -- but still, I had to find out today?!

And in other TV news, who's going to tell that Dayton kid from The Baby Borrowers** that he needs to go somewhere and do a solo stroke flick and/or a Peter Z Pan movie***? Oh come on. You know you'd watch it. And I refuse to believe he uses that much peroxide, Nair and fake tan without self-selecting to look like a twink.

Not that I'm convinced he hasn't already, but he is the sort of ammo that the US twink market needs against Eurocreme and the other leading companies from Eastern Europe. And something in me is adamant that the US can -- and should --compete in this market.

*I'm pretty sure it happened 'round about the time /every/ episode got promoted as "a very special/touching/can't miss episode."

**You should really, really hate NBC for thinking you need to be watch hours of TV to learn that teen-agers are stupid and shouldn't (successfully) breed. I say "you" because *I* watched it and can't personally bitch. Granted, I probably watched with a creepy leer (see above), but I did watch it.

***No? Oliver Twink? Betwinked?**** The Da Vinci Load*****? Tell me he doesn't belong in there, somewhere.

****Well, obviously you know about the dreadful mike problems in the last few scenes. Marred an otherwise lovely film.

*****The gay one. Apparently, there's also a straight porn title called "The Da Vinci Load." Who knew?

Ars Gratia Auctore

I think it's stupid to take your own photos at an art museum (doubly so at a gallery where you ought to be coughing up actual money for your gawping) , since there's practically no chance you're going to get a better image than has already be made for a post card, coffee mug or calendar.

But there were two I couldn't resist.

One should be obvious to anyone reading this.

The other is for anyone who's ever seen me.

I was also delighted by a Giacametti sculpture of the type I particularly love, and a really engaging Matisse I'd never seen before, "Laurette with a Cup of Coffee"

Trip Debriefing III

As in St Louis, I didn't actually stay /in/ Chicago, I stayed away in Lisle, a pretty distant suburb, but closer to Union Station than my place in Brooklyn was to Manhattan (timewise, on an express train, anyway).

Now, I may never have mentioned here, but I'm a big ER fan. As in "I have all 9 DVD sets and have watched all of them twice". So my biggest treat in being in Chicago was going to nose around ER locations. Consequently, my first trip was to try to find the Michigan Ave bridge, just down from where Cook Country General Hospital is supposed to be. Of course, I got lost. But I did see the Sears tower and the Chicago Opera House (Which is right on the river. I don't envy their damp problems...)

I went back the next day and found it. And took spent most of the day wandering around, taking some pictures. (And giggled a lot to myself -- "Look at me, I'm Dr Greene jogging by the Lake" or frowning and thinking "Now I'm all serious and moody like Dr Benton*)

I also got a pizza. I was sat next to -- literally -- the most beautiful boy I'd ever seen. I use the word beautiful because it's more accurate than "hot" or even "cute". He was almost like a Botticelli youth, or a similar period cartoon** drawing to gage an artist's technical perfection rather than his talent at conveying actual appearance: his lips and eyes and colour were so perfect they had that look of being drawn on rather than have grown. His lips were literally pink. I've never seen that before on anyone, male or female, without make-up. I had trouble not looking at him. I hope I didn't come over as "creepy" rather than "interested" or, since I know what I can reasonably attain, "appreciative" since I know he caught me looking at him. And it's not like he was the best thing that happened to me there, so I don't know why he gets all these CIs. I guess it shows I've been swallowing the Twilight series virtually whole. In any event, this guy has Edward Cullen nailed better than Oliver-whatever-his-real-name-is-Wood.

I also went to the Art Institute of Chicago, on a Friday afternoon when it was free***. I enjoyed it. I also took a ride around the entire Loop, just to say I had written the El. One picture that I didn't post here was for the CCGH stop (Library-State/Van Buren). Yeah, it's pretty sad I know which one it is.

*Oh all right, Dr Luka probably is a better comparison. Not that chip-on-their-shoulder Docs are hard to come by on that show.

**Not that kind. This kind.

***Thank you, Target. A big box deal I can approve of.

Nerd Topicality: I Has It.

Yes, The Kings of Convenience were bump music on this week's rerun of This American Life.

Un-hunh. That's right: Jaylemurph has his finger on the pulse of Geek Life.

Dear Pastry Chef Mike from Charlotte on Chemistry.com

I'm sorry I'm too poor to actually afford to pay for things at the online dating service. You sound quite lovely, and I'm sorry if you think me ignoring your "nudges" is a personal insult. It isn't. Believe me, even if you were a hag -- and I'm not suggesting you are -- being a pastry chef makes you seem a lot sexier.

On a tangential note, I tried baking something calling itself "an old Southern recipe for Sundrop Pound Cake". If you don't know, Sundrop is a lemon soda from the Carolinas and Georgia, notorious for leading soft drinks in caffeine and cholesterol*. I like lemon pound cake, so I thought I might give it a spin. (I'm not going to shame the originator of the recipe with a link.)

It sucks. Even after a made up a lemon glaze for it, it still has no particular lemon taste and the texture is awful. Honestly, it was bad enough I thought I must have done something wrong, but if I did, I can't figure it out. At this point, I'm willing to concede that shitty soda makes shitty cakes. And besides, making soda pop-based baked goods is awfully 1957.

And on a note that's not even tangential: Dear Aaron, current Jeopardy! champion: I love you. You are hot, yet geeky; smart, yet awkward. And you're fooling no one into thinking you're straight by telling Alex stories about kites instead of significant others who are female. I would learn Japanese to please you.**

*For years, the single best thing from my hometown -- and yes, the point was debated all through high school and agreed upon buy Those Who Count(ed) -- was the appallingly-named but infinitely delicious Cherry Vanilla Sundrop at the local barbeque shack. Said shack created a controversy that rocked the town to its roots a few years after a left for college when it switched from Pepsi brands to Coke and had to eschew Sundrop (which is, after three or four removes, owned by PepsiCo***). People still spit on the ground rather than call it a "Cherry Vanilla Lemon Drink".

**And I loathe Japan and all it works and all its means.

***And that little reference, folks, was enough to get a mean virtual glare from the fine folks at PepsiCo. It wasn't even a mean reference to their crappy direct product. Pah. Pepsi. Fit only to be served hot to Turkish soldiers.****

****Very, very obscure reference to a Doctor Who work. Anyone (who is not the author) who recognizes it gets a prize!

Trip De-Briefing II

I was in St Louis for two days. Well, /near/ St Louis. All right, the St Louis airport. I did break out on Sunday to run over to the nearby Creve Coeur* park, the namesake for Tennessee Williams' late play A Lovely Sunday at Creve Coeur. Unfortunately the river was nigh-unapproachable.

My father wanted to go see the Gateway Arch, so as driver, I got to go too. It's located in an agreeable stretch of park surrounded by a disagreeable reconstruction of the "historic waterfront". For which read: scads of tacky tourist shops and tragic faux taverns in fake stone cladding.

If you didn't know it, you can ride to the top of the Arch. Alas, my fear of heights prevented that jaunt. There's also a museum under the Arch, complete with groovy (or creepy, take your pick) animitronic talking cowboys and indians. It's free to get in. I did go there.

I learned that the reverse image of the new(ish) nickel comes from the reverse of old Presidential medals given to Indian chiefs as a sign of "goodwill".

But my biggest occupation was gawking at the floodwater.

*My French isn't bad, so I've thought for years that it was pronounced "Crev" Coeur. It turns out -- and I have the assurance of Danni, the waitress at Pasta House, Inc. and the sales director of the St Louis Airport Hyatt -- that it's "Creeve" Coeur. Bah.

Trip De-Briefing I

I didn't take any pictures of Evansville, IN because there's just not that much picturesque there. They were busily involved with their annual (Ohio) Riverfront street fair called "Freedomfest" -- and yes, before you say it, a local told me it got changed to that after 9/11.

The third day, a local woman asked me to pay to get in (I walked in for free the first two). I wasn't trying to be insulting when I laughed and said "Really?" When she told me how much she wanted, I was trying to be insulting when I laughed and said "Really?"

Twenty bucks is a /lot/ to pay for the opportunity to pay to eat deep-fried fatty starches, get free samples of chewing tobacco or try to be recruited by all five of the armed forces.

Curiously, I did get to meet (one of) the people running for County Coroner. It suggests an odd and certainly creepy plethora of pathologists in your vicinity when there's at least enough for an election. To be fair, six people were murdered in the four days I was there, so maybe there isn't the overabundance of them I perceived.

I also stopped at the amusingly named Angel Mounds site, (fnur, fnur) the site of a Mississippian period city full of raised earth mounds. It was mildly interesting except for the ticket seller, who gave me a spiel at least ten minutes long about the State park. I suspect I was the only person she saw that day.

Po-Faced or Pie-Faced?

I'm a reasonably big fan of the Kings of Convenience -- of all the Bergen Wave movement, really* -- but it's been a while since I had a good listen to their Riot on an Empty Street album. And I had one today.

Is it just me, or does the song "I'd Rather Dance Than Talk to You" song sound uncannily like a Flight of the Conchords bit?

*Even if the bastards wouldn't let me into their country.
*shakes fist t Norway

Sigh.

I'm back. Unfortunately (and possibly unconnectedly, but I rather doubt it) I'm in a bit of a funk and don't feel like being awfully rakish or a la mode d'un raconteur.

That last, no doubt, stems from being right in the middle of Jane Eyre. Perhaps the rather Victorian bit of a funk is, too. That or being sucked out of the only culture I've been in for a while.

I also have pictures to post. Yes, I know. Whee and all that. Badly-made photographs. Fortunately, I'm not in any of them, so they aren't that hard to bear.

I'll end with this: I wasn't very, very impressed with Chicago. It was a nice city, but I think it's telling that long ago, Chicago self-selected to be America's Second City. It lacks a certain something*, a spark that New York has. There's a palpable feeling in New York that at any second something will happen -- good, bad, or awful. And it usually does. You don't feel that in Chicago.

Also, those fucking obnoxious Midwestern accents drove me out of my mind, in a way that never happened in New York, or even Durham.** I want to buy the entire state of Michigan elocution lessons.

*On further reflection, that something may just be New Jersey.

**I apologize to anyone who has such an accent. I don't think I know anyone who has one***, since I haven't hit anyone recently.

***Well, one girl I knew in college, who played Laura in The Glass Menagerie. As I recall, she seemed to spend at least some time fretting over her accent in the scene where Tom breaks some of the glass animals, but hers was never that bad, and I'm sure was even less noticeable by the time she graduated.

Yeah, I'm waiting for something interesting to happen, too.

I'll let you know when it happens. Sadly, the good folk of St Louis aren't nearly as happy in the Russian Velvet Mafia department, so to work off any abundance of what Natural Philosophers a century or three ago called Animal Spirits, I've spent a lot of time in hotel gyms. *

I may be the first person to come back from a vacation weighing less than when they left.

*My apologies to anyone reading this line a second time. I thought it was clever -- and true --enough to recycle.

...You are looking at the working week through the eyes of a gigolo

I'm a whore.

As I said before, I don't really want this to be a collection of tawdry tid-bits, as it were -- him over at Glitter for Brains will beat me out for that every time -- but I have been enjoying this sojourn to the Midwest a /lot/ more than I had anticipated.

It turns out (for some reason I can't even begin to fathom*) that there's a sizeable collection of Russians working in this hotel on short-term --4 to 6 month -- work visas. And my, uhh, conspirator** was about as subtle as I was about this morning.

So imagine my surprise and delight when a waiter from the hotel restaurant showed up at my door. Now, my sense of dignity rather impelled me to tell him to go, but quite frankly, he has the most incredible ass. I felt like it behooved me to entertain him at least for a while.

Now, I know you think this sort of activity is reprehensible, and very possibly stereotypical of Gentlemen That Can't Catch, but I think it's understandable. The past weekend aside, I've always been the model of if not strict monogamy, then monogamy as strict as my significant other at the time demanded (Ooh, that was a fun summer. And to think I spent /years/ with someone who thought getting a handjob while he was riding in a car was the wildest thing one could do...). And my one night stands have been few and far between.

The past few months have been literally no fun. And I've Turned Old within the past few weeks. And even though I've lost almost 30 pounds since March, I still have some measure to go before I feel more than sub-averagely attractive. So all this -- especially with no one coughing discretely and asking for cash when it's over -- has been a decent and probably-more-needed-than-I'd- like-to-admit boost to my ego. I am asserting my sexual identity, like a trashy women's studies professor from the late 1970s.***

And, guys being what they are, there's always a sign of a job well done, so I know I'm not being completely egotistical. It's almost a shame I have to leave for St Louis tomorrow.

*Well, the getting out of Russia bit I can fathom. The whole "picking Indiana out of the whole US to make money in" I don't.

**In the most literal sense. Look up the etymology.

***I'll take "Quotes I'll Regret in 10 Years", Alex.

It's All Go in Indiana.

While I clearly wouldn't like this blog to descend into nothing more than a tawdry report of my affairs de coeur, I am pleased to report that some scenes long cherished in the realms of porn may be true. Randy hotel maids /do/exist.

Well, whatever one calls male hotel housekeepers.

What makes it all the more sweeter -- for those of you conversant with gentlemen's films of a certain stripe -- was that the young gentleman referred to is, in fact, from Eastern Europe. I am now forced to conclude that all those Eurocreme movies are really documentaries, and that watching them constitutes a form of international studies.

You know what?

I'd almost forgotten how much fun boys in bands are. I'm happy to report they are still an amusing way to pass a few hours. And then they go away forever. Very tidy.

Wrap-Up, Day 1

Miles Driven: 520

Hours driven: 9

States crossed: 4

No.of times my father drove off the side of the road listening to his new cheap navigation system: 6

No. of times cheap navigation system gave wrong directions: 3

No. of times I found the right way with an atlas: 3

Average driving speed of father: 60 mph

Fastest driving speed of father: 60 mph

My average driving speed: 80

My fastest driving speed: 93

Arguments over content of "Tigermilk": 3

Arguments over content of "If You're Feeling Sinister": 2

Heart attacks at content of "Savage Lovecast"played in retribution: 1

So, this trip started off rather swimmingly, eh?

Fan-boy Wankery*

Rumors of Davros returning to the new Doctor Who have been floating around for a while now, so the pictures of him -- looking surprisingly like his old-series self -- are not, in fact, very surprising.

What *is* surprising are images of new, red Daleks.

Red... daleks. I love red. I love Daleks. The effect of the idea of Red Daleks on my person is shameful to admit. But not quite as shameful as admitting just how much my imported, 18 inch, radio-controlled movie-version red Dalek cost.

And I will hug him as I watch the up-coming series finale.

*Literally. By all that's holy, did you see Colin Morgan in "Midnight"? It's a singing testament to RTD's writing I even noticed /a/ plot, let alone the greatest plot in new Who. Forget Edward Cullen when there are actual people who look like that.

Breezes and Surf. But the Wrong Kind.

I just found out I'm going to the Midwest for 10 days, starting next week.

Do I know anyone in Chicago besides Ross "I'm working a fecking cruise ship in the Med and the Baltic and hence unavailable till Fall" Bryant?

Pour Emily

see more hipster robot webcomics and pixel t-shirts

You know, I've spent most of the past decade (or longer) thinking Rivers Cuomo is gay.

He's not -- although he does have an Asian girlfriend, so five years ago he could have been bi, since all those "bi-curious" hipster boys of a certain type have all moved on to Asian chicks. Although it is pretty generous to include Cuomo in the "hipster" category.

I'm trying to remember just what put it in my head he was gay, and for some reason I think I remember reading that in an interview in Abercrombie and Fitch catalog. But that makes no sense -- I never stopped to /read/ anything in one of those. I don't think anyone did.

All the Umbrellas of London

If I make it tonight, it'll be all right.
It'll make a good song or something
I've been trying to give myself reasons to live
But I really can't think of one thing

I drive around, I walk around in circles
'Cause I've got no sense of direction
And I guess I've got no sense at all

[chorus:]
All the umbrellas in London
Couldn't stop this rain.
And all the dope in New York
Couldn't kill this pain.
And all the money in Tokyo
Couldn't make me stay.
All the umbrellas in London
Couldn't stop this rain.

I don't cry anymore, I go out the door
And I usually keep on walking
I will sit in the bar where the cocktails are
But I really don't feel like talking

I lie around and let the darkness fall
'Cause I've got a sense of perfection
And nothing makes much sense at all

I've been thinking a lot about the relationship of lyrics to music, and I've come to the conclusion that, at least, in pop music, there's something odd about them. I think most people would be hard pressed to describe -- to even think of -- lyrics in situ as poetry. But they are.

I think the upshot of this is that that fact hits home every once in a while and get you get struck by this new appreciation of a song you've heard a thousand times. This has happened to me several times recently, and did again tonight when I heard the above song. I don't really know where to go with that, but it seems odd to me that music can have such a masking quality.

(Brecht, of course, was aware of the phenomenon, and used it to his advantage, making happy, cheerful tunes out of black deeds. "Mack the Knife" is a jaunty little tunes about child rape, murder, theft, whores and burning down occupied orphanages.)

In other news, I had a dream about Billie Piper last night. Well not /about/ her but with her in. Which is oddly appropriate as her series The Secret Life of a Call Girl premieres in the US tonight.

We were in a van with several other members of my family, crossing the Rocky Mountains when the van wrecked. There was more to it, involving a kitsch 70s-style hotel, but I don't recall that in detail. I do remember thinking, "How odd to be dreaming of a Doctor Who girl instead of the Doctor himself." I've only done /that/ once, when I dreamt I was racing along in Bessie with the Third Doctor. Even if it was the Best. Dream. Ever., it was still yonks ago.

All in all, I was just pleased it wasn't a tooth dream after last night's Britain's Worst Teeth doc.

For When "Big Mouth Billy Bass" is just *too* classy.

America Has Failed.

Don't get me wrong: I love the system of American government. It is an elegant tribute to a generation of men with wisdom, foresight and dedication to their ideals. It is a testament to even more generations that their system has grown and developed with a fervent dedication to the Enlightenment ideas of liberal democracy.

But this isn't about America as a political entity. This is about America as cultural institution. We have failed. Miserably. It's time to up stakes, wash ourselves clean and try a completely new paradigm.

Jingle Jugs: The Jugs that Jiggle to a Jingle.

This is why the rest of the world hates us: Jingle Jugs and Justin Long.

Note to self:

The person who consistently dreams of his teeth falling out, and who constantly worries the chipped tooth he can't afford to have mended probably shouldn't have watched "Britain's Worst Teeth".

Big-Head Want Dolly!

So, I have this irrational hatred of Justin Long. And I'm not sure why, really -- most people I hate, I know /why/. But he fills me with an inexplicable loathing. I would love to see him forced to participate in the most disturbing, degrading sex acts, of the type that women justly use to condemn the worst excesses of pornography. With John Hodgman, as payback for those damn Mac ads, even if Hodgman did include a humorous picture of the Cybermen in The Areas of My Experise, under the caption "Typical Cyborg Mischief".

Sorry. I watched Waiting this weekend and my anti-Long feelings have been percolating around.

Other than that, it's been a reasonably good birthday weekend. There were some nice touches from on high -- Tivo recorded (out of the blue, as far as I can tell) my favourite episode ever of Gilmore Girls ("Emily in Wonderland", if you're interested) and there was a question about Faulkner's Snopes trilogy on Friday's Jeopardy!

I spent Saturday night watching a little Doctor Who marathon -- this series is the best yet, by far, so I watched the three latest episodes over again. Alex King was the guest star for the recent Steven Moffat two-parter, so I was a little confused by having Charlotte Corday from ER sniffing around David Tennant. (For a little present -- the only present I got except for Laura Llew's books -- I got myself the DVD of "Timelash". "Timelash" is without question the worst episode of the series original run and should only be watched under the influence. And so I did. It helped immensely.)

The real treat was my trip over to the local Human Society. My father underwent eye surgery recently, turning me into a chauffeur. Which is nice, because I don't have a car and, consequently, don't get about much. On one trip, I took us over to see a basset hound they had at the Humane Society's huge new complex.

His name is Stetson. He doesn't look very basset-y hound-y in the pictures, but he does in real life. I was able to take him outside and play with him for a few minutes -- he was very active for a basset hound. Meaning, you know, he was actually in motion for a few moments. Like most bassets, he didn't particularly care whom he was with, as long as he could smell things, so he wasn't very interested in me.

Typical.

The day before my birthday is the end of the world.

My close associate, Noes the Apocalypse Kitteh, and I have decided to start drinking heavily at 5 pm and not stop till the end of the world, just in case.

Nobody Writes Them Like They Used To, So It May As Well Be Me

I should mention that I finished the first draft of my play last night. I should be far more excited about it than I am, considering how long and how hard I've worked on it, but it's almost exactly as long as it should be (110 A4 pages) and actually hits the mark I wanted to set for it -- beginning with normal dialogue and slowly changing into the iambic pentameter of the source.



There aren't any songs (except one) beyond the first act, but I have a fair idea of what songs I want and where they need to go. It needs lots of work, but it's off to exactly the sort of start I wanted.

I need to get people to read it. I'm not ready to post all of it here, but I did want to post some pictures. They're snagged from all over the internet, and I used them -- provisionally as scene backgrounds. They're in no real order.

Clockwise, from top left: The Dungeon where Daniel is executed; castle interior 1; the forest where Michael is killed; the meeting-place of the barons.

I have a few more I might post.

Today's Episode in One Act.

No. 4 in my list of possible birthday presents: Ira Glass.

Ira is the host of NPR's This American Life with the velvety-smooth voice. That alone is a selling-point; the fact that he's reasonably hot is secondary.

Actually, his response from his show getting named-checked on The OC -- I believe the quote went something like "Is that that show by those hipster know-it-alls who talk about how fascinating ordinary people are? -- is more than enough to swoon over.

Best. Doctor Who. Companion. Ever.

No. 3 in my list of possible birthday presents: Philip Olivier.

Since the last two pictures haven't been that exciting, I figured a little beefcake never goes awry.

Olivier was on Brookside and Bo Selecta. He also starred in several of Big Finish's Doctor Who audio plays, though it seems to me that most of his obvious talent didn't get used.

In the productions, anyway.

And if they weren't used at all, then the people of Big Finish have a lot to answer for to the rest of Doctor Who fans who boldly live up to 90s stereotypes.

As an aside, there are very, very few people out there who inspire in me the same pillow-biting, immediate lust to get...

[cut scene of Roger Moore waving]

... uh, busy as Phil does.

I'll take "The Question is Irrelevant", Alex: Get to the Skin!

No. 2 in my list of possible birthday presents: Jon, from the Jeopardy Clue Crew. We'll just glide over the fact he's married and has kids. Oscar Wilde did, too.

[I reckon KJZZ is a joke unto itself here, and needs no further elaboration.]

[Later: It turns out KJZZ is in Salt Lake City, which is even more of a joke...]

Wrapping Not Necessary. Well, not all over.

Since I've made up my mind I'm not getting anything for my birthday Friday*, I have decided, O anonymous-silent-but-hopefully-still-extant audience, to give you a selection of appropriate gifts over the next few days. (If, that is, I don't decide to suppress any suggestion of celebration, which I have half a mind to do.)

No. 1: Nathan, from the Speaking of Sex Podcast. Yes, the picture is bad (it's the only one I could find at all). Fortunately, they're wrapping up a series of video podcasts to accompany their tour of the US, so you can download those and see better images. He's cute, smart, and funny. And I'm willing to bet (if he's retained even a tenth of what goes out in his podcast) one fine roll in the hay.

*I did get a package from Laura, though, so I did receive something. I'm just betting on nothing else.

Retraction

Yes, I know it's the middle of the say, so it must be a little disconcerting to see anew post pop up, but I thought the ending to that last post was a little mis-leading. On a little further reflection, I remembered one time recently I was quite happy, and -- truth be told -- I feel a little hangdog for skipping over it.

Probably the day or the day after the last hiatus here, I went to an It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia marathon at the home of Miss Laura Llew. That was a legitimately happy time, but the moment that stands out comes a little bit later.*

After getting terribly lost in upstate SC and narrowly avoiding a lynch mob down Bob Jones University way, I didn't get started back home till late -- late by my standards, which meant 3.30 am or so, I started back home. The sun rose about 15 or 20 miles from home, and by then I was punchy from lack of sleep and the last effects of some particularly good bourbon. My voice was a little scratchy from singing aloud various Belle and Sebastian songs.

But that moment reminded me of many, many other very happy moments, and not a few of them were under nearly identical circumstances, so it reminded me of an earlier period when I was quite happy, quite often.

Like times when I had to avoid a head-on collision with another car because the highway on-ramp and exit ramp were one and the same in this little town, which sounds terrifying (and was at the time), but now strikes me as hysterically funny, if not pointlessly symbolic.

Or like any number of occasions when I had to drive back from the Outer Banks or elsewhere and wouldn't leave till after dark and still faces a 6- or 8-hour drive.

So there. Happy.

*Anyone else and I might think that would be the suggestion of a poor hostess and not mention it, but I'm reasonably sure Laura understands.

More Hardy than Wolfe

You know, after last night's post, I went digging through my boxes of books (all 1440+) to find my copy of The Web and the Rock. I remembered that it started out with a reference to Old Catawba, the name of the river that runs by here. Turns out I was wrong, incidentally.

In the midst of rooting around in all those books, I found a journal I kept from my last vacation. I bought because it was a cute, recycled children's and I knew I would be online for the duration.

It wasn't in with my other journals. It had been tossed in a box with some other books from my bedroom, mostly Southern lit -- Faulkner, Judge Whedbee's ghost stories, Capote.

I made the mistake of leafing through a few pages, just skimming it over without taking much in, when I realized it was exactly a year ago. I didn't think it would bother me much, and I don't think it per se did. Well, not per se. Maybe ipsa re. It did eventually make me pretty sad as it made me reflect on my life then, as opposed to now.

I haven't been out of the house in... well, the last day of Forum, which was the 18th of May. And I literally can't remember the last time I was legitimately happy about anything. That shouldn't make me want to die, but it sort of does.

I suppose you could. It'd be very Faulkner-y, "The Snopes done come to meetin' "looking, though.

The above quote was from a discussion I had with Ms Llew about wearing China Doll Dresses and petticoats. If pressed, I'd probably say specifically from Sanctuary. I hardly ever quote myself for a title, but I thought it was funny.

I can't believe it's been over two months from my last entry. I was in a local community theatre production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum for much of it. It was just as pointless over-dramatic and fraught with disaster as you think. I may well get around to discussing it more (there were some legitimately funny things in it) but not now.

One of the reasons that I started with a Faulkner mention is that something about this time of year always makes me pick up one of his books, and then read several more. I started out this year with where I left off with The Hamlet last year*. That doesn't really work, so I started off from the beginning of it again and finished it within two days. I want to finish The Town and The Mansion before summer gets too far along.

I decided to hold back a bit and try something else. This may (appropriately enough) be the Summer of Southern Writers. Before moving on to The Town -- which I could only ever find in the last volume of the Library of America series, although Wikipedia shows that somewhere there's version to match the old school Vintage editions -- I decided to read Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel, especially since it's roughly contemporary to Faulkner on a few levels.

But it's far harder going that Faulkner. I don't want to say it's clunky, but... it lacks a certain evocative economy when compared to Faulkner. Wolfe is into minute detail and laborious description. Most strikingly, he tries to affect something akin to a literary montage -- an early-ish chapter on morning in Altamount comes to mind -- that attempts to pile incident upon incident to evoke morning. In purely visual terms, it would work. But a picture being worth a thousand words, the result in a novel is long-winded description for its own sake that doesn't achieve a lot. Stylistic masturbation?

I wouldn't be surprised. Wolfe himself was never one to decry his own talent; it's hard not to see that kind of ego in the prose and what it asks of the reader. It isn't quite so bad as to make me throw the book down (yet), but it requires of the reader a certain dedication that I'm just not sure is warranted.

What's really scary is that this is the /edited/ version of Wolfe's work. When he died, he left hundreds of manuscript pages that his editor just sort of hacked into his last two novels. I read bits of The Web and the Rock in college, and what I recall of it corresponds to my worst fears.

When Wolfe died, Faulkner called him the best writer of their generation. I just don't see that. Maybe by the time I finish LHA, I will.

*I think I started Absalom, Absalom! at least eight times before I finished it.

The Surviving Things

I wondered around the city for some time. I noticed the doors were quite small and rounded, not shaped for a human. After a while, I began to realized I was being guided. Doors were sealing off. Eventually I was bundled into a room that converted into a lift. I plummeted several stories. When the door opened, I went through, heavy with foreboding.

I knew I was being watched. I turned around. There, in front of me, coming towards me was... was...

I could only scream...

The BBC -- the Basset Broadcasting Corporation -- continues its new serial, the adventures through space and time of Poochles Poo.


Meanwhile, at the edge of the city, Poochles and I were growing tired of waiting for Ms. Daisy. "We'd better go look for her," I said. Poochles dabbed a handkerchief to his forehead. He was panting quickly and shallowly. "Yes. Yes, that seems best," he agreed.

We went through the door and into the corridor I investigated earlier, and found what looked to be a small lab. "Look at this!" Poochles exclaimed. "It measures something; look at the drum." I agreed, but wondered what it measured. "But, sir, it means the people who built this city were intelligent, scientific!"

"Well, clearly, Poochles..." I said as we continued to nose around the room. I heard an odd clicking noise and followed it over to a huge bank of computers. I quickly realized it was a Geiger Counter. "Uhh... Poochles? I found a Geiger Counter. And it's all in the 'Danger' zone."

Poochles trotted over to it and peered down. Almost conversationally, he said "Yes, that would explain quite a bit, quite a bit. We've got Radiation Sickness. But... Oh No! Look at this!" He was pointing to another read-out just below the Geiger Counter.

"This is a Ham-Detection Unit! And it's reading zero. We must leave -- leave at once. There might be no ham on this whole planet!" he looked at be a bit wall-eyed and marched towards the door.

I grabbed his arm. "But Poochles, what about Daisy? We've got to find her! And what about your fluid link? Don't you still need Mercury?"

"About that... I have to admit, that was a little sabotage on my part," he said sheepishly.

"I know. I watched you, remember? I asked you why you did that. And you ignored me!"

He again moved towards the door. "So I did. So I did. Well, I'm going back to the BASSAT. You can find Daisy if you like but..." As we crossed through the door, we saw Them.

Four of them glided over to hem us in, their noses twitching. Imagine a pink pepper-pot that someone put bunny ears on, and a little plastic bunny nose. From the top dome, an eyestick stuck out, and two appendage stuck out about half-way up the pot, one a pointy stick and the other a gun. I briefly wondered what the pointy stick was for, but then noticed the bottom half of the things were covered with parti-coloured Easter Eggs.

They looked... oddly festive. And aggressive. Like they were going to foist an Easter Egg hunt on us, whether we wanted it or not.

"Stop!" one of them said. "You-are-our-prisoner," they told us in a matter-of-fact way. Its voice was synthesized, harsh and metallic and irritatingly high-pitched. Its ears glowed with each syllable. "Follow."

This, I thought, was increasingly stupid. I walked towards the door. One of them glided over to me very quickly and poked me with its stick. "Ow!" I said. "That kinds hurt!"

Apparently, they thought this took all the fight out of me, and they shepherded Poochles and me into a bare room they seemed to be using for a cell. Inside, Daisy was lying on the floor.

" 'Lo," she said, not looking up.

The creatures left.

"So here we are again, imprisoned." I said, fingering the place where I was poked. "I do hope this doesn't become a regular thing."

Poochles looked dubious. We sat there for a while, playing 20 Questions and growing sicker. Eventually, one of the things came back and took Poochles out of the cell.

Poochles later told me they dragged him into their pastel yellow headquarters. Muzak version of "Your Easter Bonnet" and "Here Comes Peter Cottontail" endlessly piped in. Four of the creatures interrogated him, asking him if he was a Thrall.

He wasn't. He didn't even know what one was.

"Oh." said the thing. He then launched on a long speech how how he was a Bunlek, and how the Bunleks had been at war with a group of Christmas elves called the Thralls. The war had gone nuclear, and the Bunleks, who originally were Easter-loving bunny-suit furri enthusiasts, built the metal suits they wore for protection and retreated into their city. The Thralls stayed out in the open, no doubt to become hideous mutants. But they had a nifty anti-radiation drug.

"Oh," said the Poochles. "Yeah, they gave us some, I think."

The Bunleks gave him a few menacing pokes with their sharp sticks and told him he had to go get some. He agreed, but pointed out he was too sick to go.

He told me all this back in the cell, as a preface to my own trip back to the BASSAT. The Bunleks were getting antsy; one poked me right in the butt and said "Get-going. Bring-us-the-drug."

So I went. The trip back wasn't that long, so I ran around in circles several times through the woods. I even ran in place for a while, and let some floor technicians hit in the face with some branches. The forest wasn't that large, and it was difficult not to run into the shirtless guy following me.

When I got to the BASSAT, it had just started to rain. When I had grabbed the box of vials from inside the console room, I opened the double doors to a roll of thunder. It wasn't very scary,
but I had noticed almost 24 minutes had elapsed...

Next Week: Escape to Danger

Dreams of Lost New York

I'm coming to the end of another cycle of insomnia: that is, I've spent the past two weeks or so getting by on two or three hours of sleep, so tonight I'm going to swallow three or four sleeping pills and crash. Well, have taken, so if I begin to become incoherent, that's why. And if problems ensue, I'm saying the only reason I did it was because I heard it on Stephen Fry.

If there's anything good that can be dragged out of sleepless nights, it's that the dreams I have are proportionately more vivid. Some people claim to only dream in black and white; not me. I always dream in colour, and insomnia seems to guarantee Technicolor and extra vividness in recollection.

About a week ago, I dreamed I was coming home on the subway, but for some reason, I missed my stop. I was going to get off at the next stop and catch a train in the opposite direction to get back. But for some reason the next stop was Coney Island. Now, since I lived on the D line, my stop was the Ninth Ave. station at 39th Street: Coney Island was another 12 stops away. (To put this into perspective, it was 10 stops to work in Manhattan, and a lot of those were short Manhattan skips apart, like between 50th Street at Rockefeller Center and 53 St at 7th Ave. Brooklyn stops are much further apart.)

And this wasn't the fancy new Stillwell Ave terminus. In my dream, the Coney Island station was on a huge pier: at leats a mile wide and quarter mile across. The pier was made of blond wood and the two tracks (The Stillwell Ave station ends three lines, so there must be tracks in real life. I wouldn't know for sure since I've never been there) that were right in the middle of the pier, leading down into the water. There was also a ferry service back into Manhattan. The sea water was a brilliant turquoise of far warmer beaches.

There were kiosks like arcades and food booths all up and down the pier, and a few rides, like a ferris wheel, and a roller coaster. I was shocked to see the kiosk nearest me was some sort of Dalek game, with them painted garishly all over the stand, and a row of prizes that included pint glasses with daleks stencilled on. I don't actually remember the game you played.

It made me very sad to be there, I remember, and I was grateful to the daleks for making me happy. I decided to leave, and thought about taking the train back. There were two in the station, but they were both N trains, parked and waiting, just like at the other end of the line in Astoria, and they didn't stop near where I wanted to go. I decided to take the ferry instead, even though that went into Manhattan.

The ferry was sort of a sub when I got in, and launched itself under the water, with lots of bubbles floating up to the surface. There were two bubble-shaped window at the front, where two pilots were, and maybe about a dozen other people in the car. The interior was dark brown, more like a helicopter than the ferries or train cars. There were also rows of windows down the sides, and through them, we could see two or three Orcas swimming and playing. I determined that I was going to go to Jim Halliwell's Comic shop on 33th Street, which is across the street from the Empire State Building, and where I used to get some Doctor Who books.


And then I woke up.

I also had another dream about having a rent boy, but I was living in my grandmother's (now vacant) house. I will not go into torrid details of the first part, but later on I was worried because I had spent more time than I thought -- three hours -- and it was more than I could afford. The bill was $379, and I was worrying if I could cover than AND a tip. In the end, I think I could.

I pushed the poor guy into a bathroom because other people were coming in. Family, I think. In the end, he came out and I introduced him as my boyfriend, and he totally went with it. I really remember the guy, though: all tall, dark and curly and more built than I usually like, but not anybody I had ever seen before.

Oh well. The pills are really kicking in now, so I 'm going to scoot.

Where did I pull that title from? I googled it, but it doesn't come up, and I'm pretty sure it's not one of my own terms. Conjures up sort of a sub-par version of Benet's By the Waters of Babylon.