Life on Queen Street

I have the 'flu, which is like my eighth flue this year.

Dear Ireland, pls. send back my immune system. kthxbye!

I love The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Twilight is quite possibly the worst book I've read since I stopped reading the white-cover Harlequin Romances when I was 17.

However, Twilight makes Laurell K. Hamilton look like freaking Austen (porny, porny Austen - why Mr. Darcy, I can never look at you the same way ever again) in comparison.

LKH still hasn't learned how to structure a narrative but someone's paying her by the on-page orgasm so she doesn't care?

No, really, the Children's Aid should be allowed to intervene in cases of parents allowing their teen daughters to read Twilight - mmm, yes, abusive, controlling relationships for $500, Alex.

Did I mention that I have the 'flu.

*drags sorry self to bed*

Would dare buy me a copy of TWILIGHT.

FOUR Hussies would autograph it, then dare me to read it and write a review.

So, I'm not saying I'm some sort of knight in shining armour (and I like bows and arrows better) but is anyone surprised by this result?

Your result for The Camelot Test...

Lancelot

Take The Camelot Test at HelloQuizzy

Also, I can't be one of a kind since at least one of my flist is also Lancelot. O_o

I digress.

Thesis is in the hopper and waiting to hear back from the various people I've sporked it over to for review. I was going to put it up here under flock for the weekend for anyone interested but saner heads, or at the very least heads more paranoid about information security prevailed...

I have poetry to read. Be well.

A choice between sleep, coffee and food (and exercise)
Sleep was chosen
A mistake
It seems
All things lost in seeming, sleepy eyes and empty brains
Retreat to instinct
Stagger
Roam unto the 7-11
Manna in a travel mug
Chemical clarity

The bean is a lie

QED I am over the 'flu and recovered from my holiday (Vienna and Venice, baby! Whoo!) and still and giant nerd. Or geek. I'm not sure which. Anyone have a definition handy? How do you know if you're a nerd or a geek? And what is the difference? Or should I just accept that I'm generally socially retarded and a bit odd and leave it at that?

In other news:

There is Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles comment fic in the comments to the above entry courtesy of taraljc who took me at my "you are a bad woman-oppressing fanfic writer" word and wrote Derek/Sarah angst to atone. No one is sure quite how we've managed to oppress women by writing stories about cool women like Sarah Connor and Aeryn Sun, but I aim to write (and encourage others to write) angsty pre-smut until we figure it out or the patriarchy surrenders. Whichever happens first. Or I get bored. Or strike porn. One of them.

Could Summer Glau be a nicer person? Now I want to go rewatch all the River Tam bits of Firefly again (I have promised myself that I will stop rewatching TSCC before I memorize all the dialogue).

This is what Benicio Del Toro will look like in Wolfman. This is not what the werewolves in my story will look like.

Ever.

How many versions of the "The Green Fields of France" do I fucking need? Three strikes me as one, if not two, too many. Surprisingly, of the three I have - The Fureys, Shilelagh Law and the Dropkick Murphys - the Murphys' version was the best.

What the song really needs is a June Tabor or a Shane McGowan cover. If anyone knows of such a thing, please let me know.

Oh, what the hell people - Sarah Connor does not bake, okay? It's not a tough thing or a feminist thing, it's a baking-is-a-giant-fucking-effort-that-requires-time-and-actual-culinary-skill thing, which would be two things we've established that Sarah Connor has never had much. Why do you think the Connor family lives on pancakes? It's something a ten year old with a spatula and a hotplate can cook. *faceplam* Jesus.

On a related note - I need a better Latin translation for "Bad fic fucks you up worse than crack" than Fabula Mala Fissilis Deterium Cupidare. Anyone who's Latin is fresher than mine care to help?

PS - I want a t-shirt that says "Coming This Summer: River Tam Beats Up Everyone." - I wonder if it's XKCD or Joss Whedon I need to convince?

This to do this weekend:

fics from November 2006 - that's getting really shamefully overdue, mate

research the Hanseatic League

mass on Sunday

see if flatmate has bike tools - tighten brakes

This weekend, I moved, I finished Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire, finally got a good night's sleep, had a long bath and traumatized my cat.

Have to go back to the apartment and clean it tonight, and then hopefully I will be free and done.

Meanwhile, I still feel completely exhausted. When is this going away?

I finished The Time Traveller's Wife sometimes around four this morning. The urge to flip to the end hit hard at about page 300 and by the last 50 pages, I was reading faster and faster so I could be finished with the damn thing and go to sleep.

So, on the one hand, I found TTW readable and engrossing. But when I finished the last page, I snapped the book shut on the author's afterword and got up from my bed. I walked down the hall and put it down firmly on the pile of stuff to go to the garage sale ELL is running Saturday, the story already fading from memory. This morning I'm left with a nagging frustration that the philosophical conundrum at the center of the novel's premise remained largely unaddressed and a twitchy dissatisfaction with the novel as a whole as, curiousity satisfied, I now realize that I was never moved to particularly care about any of the characters.

I plucked Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire out of the totebag full of yesterday's gym clothes on my way out the door and spent a happy half hour on the way to work tracing the lines down the genealogical tables delineating Georgiana's connections to both the late Princess of Wales and the Kennedy family. With the TTW out of the way, I have only 12 books I absolutely must finish before September. I really shouldn't be indulging myself with Georgiana but I'm already fascinated by this woman who counted Marie Antoinette as a personal friend, had an acknowledged illegitimate child and remained an intimate friend of the woman who became her husband's lover and the mother of his illegitimate children. Yea and verily, the truth is weirder? kinkier? more improbable? than fiction (give or take a time-travelling spouse or two).

Speaking of truth and fiction, I saw The Bourne Ultimatum Monday night. I quite enjoyed it but I found the shakey-cam and the volume to be rather headache-inducing. I also had trouble with suspending my disbelief during an otherwise riveting sequence set in London's Waterloo Station. There are many things I believe of the CIA but their ability to take over a train station in the middle of Central London without drawing the attention of a single bobby is not one of them.

Things That Made Me Cry Today:

· watching Jessye Norman dressed in le (?) drapeau tricolore singing La Marseillaise

· Land of Hope and Glory from the Last Night of the Proms album I bought from iTunes

· Jerusalem because it reminds me of my grandparents, Kit and Les, and it's just so beautiful and meant.

Things That Didn't Make Me Cry Today:

· the ass who I told to leave the driver alone on the streetcar this evening and, after I told him to take his own advice (he'd told me to be quiet) since I didn't want to listen to him, offered this riposte: "Well we have to listen to you eat, fatty."

Seriously?

Seriously?!

"Fatty" - that's the best your easily 30 pounds overweight, sweatpants and "Beerpal.com" t-shirt-wearing, platic bag and Two/Four-carting, 'I don't have the smarts to get directions before I leave but I will be an ass to the conductor because she doesn't know the way to buddy's house" ass could come up with: "fatty"?

My God.

I am stricken, stricken - I do not know how I shall ever manage to carry on, so mortally wounded as I am by your deadly wit! *swoons*

Or, y'know, not.

To paraphrase Churchill, tomorrow I'll be thinner but you'll still be a rude, mannerless jackass - only not as smart because your average jackass can, at least, find his way back to his stall at the end of the day.

Alas, since I'm posting about this, I can't claim to be completely unaffected after being insulted by such a specimen of Toronto manhood, but I'm kind of pleased with myself because my reaction was largely to be bemused: "we have to listen to you eat, fatty." Seriously? It was like I was suddenly transported back to grade 7/8 [aka junior high] - Oh, Noez, You Called Me Fat; I Must Go And Die of Shame Nowz - only completely different because, not being 14, I didn't quail and crumble inside, open up a psychic vein or anything else. Instead, it was like I showed up for a duel only to have the other guy pull a wiffle bat instead of a broadsword - you think you're going to hurt me with that? Seriously?

Dude, my dad's more verbally abusive saying goodnight after a family party (that was Thursday night, btw - and people wonder why I avoid men). Not to mention, people who wear droopy-ass track pants in public should not be casting no nasturtiums on the appearance of others.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel good and strong this evening, like I discovered that someone had filled in a chink in my armour while I wasn't looking. I was fat as a teenager and I'm fat as an adult (shocker) and it's something I struggle with, particularly in terms of self-confidence and self-esteem. I'd still rather have a body like Katee Sackhoff and I still have a lot of issues related to my appearance that leave me, at best, ambivalent about doing the work and committing to the healthier lifestyle that would bring me closer to that personal ideal. I'm not a happy fat person (I'm actually kind of a frustrated fat person since most of the things I want to do my weight makes more difficult) but I refuse to give in to the people and the prejudices that consider the breadth of my ass the most important signifier of my personal worth. And as long as losing weight seems to be giving into that segment of our culture, there's a very large part of my psyche standing there screaming "FUCK YOU, I'll lose weight when you stop being a vapid, fatuous, shallow fucktard" and giving moral heft to the part of me that would rather go home, take a bath and read a novel after a day at the office than hit the gym. But in spite of all that, I'm stronger and happier and more settled in my self and more confident today than I was before.

So, I guess maybe I'm a little grateful to Mr. Droopy-Drawers for showing me how far I've come because, yeah, I'm fat. But you're still an asshole.

On the whole, I think I'd rather be fat.