Lament Configuration Redux

How are they against the colour yellow?

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:53:22 GMT

There is an ad that plays regularly when Nick watches his various politics shows on the internet lately. It's for Duracell batteries, and it's had several different versions, each dealing with a different type of technology that's supposed to be life-saving/incredibly important, that wouldn't be as efficient without Duracell batteries. Their latest one apparently has to do with night-vision goggles, and finishes with the line (or something very much like it), "Even in the blackest night..."

So now Nick and I have decided that Duracell power the Green Lantern rings.

"In brightest day,
In darkest night...
Duracell Batteries, proud sponsors of the Green Lantern Corps."

Books!

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:35:23 GMT

After waiting impatiently since I got up at silly o'clock to feed the cats, I got my delivery of books from Amazon just now. My new books consist of:

Zombie Holocaust: How the Living Dead Has Devoured Pop Culture
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Erotic Romance
Zombie CSU: The Forensics of the Living Dead
Too Good to be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends
Body Trauma: A Writer's Guide to Wounds and Injuries
Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema
How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Mistakes to Avoid at All Costs if You Ever Want to Get Published

One of my friends, on hearing this list of books, was silent for a long moment before asking... "please tell me you're not writing violent zombie sodomy..."

These books will soon be going onto my new bookcase, which will no doubt put Suki out somewhat as she's spent the last three days trying to dig through the bottom shelf.

Patrick Swayze RIP

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:30:38 GMT

Patrick Swayze has died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 57

I'm that strange person you've heard about who's never seen Dirty Dancing (you knew there was someone out there who hadn't seen it...) but Nick and I have always been a fan of his other work at least. So today I think we'll be watching some of those movies - Red Dawn, Roadhouse and Point Break.

Antichrist

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 15:24:48 GMT

Last night, I found myself with the chance to actually watch Antichrist, one of the two films I mentioned last week here.

We were about 10 seconds in when we got to see the first close-up shot of full penetration during sex. Which was certainly one hell of a way to start the film, I must say. After that, though, things slowed down a lot - there was some plot about a couple who lost their child (he fell out of a window while they were having sex) and the woman wasn't coping well with it all. Her husband, who was apparently a therapist, was trying to help her and so took her out to an old cabin in a forest (called Eden) that she had become scared of. There, we got to see a (CGI) deer with her stillborf fawn hanging out of her and a talking fox that was disembowling itself.

Then there was some stuff about how nature is evil, and how because women are connected to nature that means they're all evil too. I have to say I wasn't too impressed by any of this, despite Nick trying to argue that, as it was the woman saying this and she was obviously batshit insane, it didn't actually count. Then things started getting really fucked up.

The couple start having sex again on the floor of the woodshed, but the woman has what can only be described as the psychotic break to end all psychotic breaks, grabs a large piece of wood and whacks her husband in the gonads with it. This understandably makes him pass out with the pain, and so she proceeds to masturbate him to orgasm, where he ejaculates blood all over her. Then she takes a drill and drills a hole in his calf (he's still unconscious through this, by the way), puts a metal shaft through the hole and screws on a millstone to his leg.

When he wakes up, he's surprisingly not in nearly as much pain as he actually should be, but all things considered he decides that he should probably get the hell out of there. He hides in a cave and has to beat a crow to death when it nearly gives him away, but she finds him again and nearly buries him alive trying to dig him out. Then she drags him back to the cabin and, in some sort of revelation, decides to punish herself. She she has him masturbate her and then cuts off her clitoris with a pair of rusty scissors. In close up. Meanwhile, he's finally managed to get that bloody millstone off his foot and gets up to leave, but she attacks him with the scissors and he has to strangle her to death.

The film ends with him burning her body on a funeral pyre and then limping off to get out of the woods, only to be met and surrounded by hundreds of women who come out of nowhere.

In trying to come up with something good to say about this film, I can only come up with, "Well, at least it has equal opportunity cringe-inducing scenes..." Seriously, what the fuck?

This is why I've never liked Lars Von Trier. I really just don't get most of what he's trying to say with his films, and personally I think he's too pretentious for his own good and too obsessed with seeing what he can get away with in the name of art.

But seriously, I say again, what the fuck?

(Last.fm is being bitterly ironic with the music too, I see...

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:32:00 GMT

So, there's a new MMO out called Champions Online. It's a superhero MMO, and so of course everyone who plays or has ever been interested in City of Heroes is all a-buzz with talk and opinions about it. Well, this weekend there was a completely open beta for anyone who wanted to give it a try just before it went live, so Nick and I downloaded it (well, let's be exact - it got downloaded onto Nick's machine because my computer currently doesn't have the graphics to run anything much above Minesweeper) and we spent most of Sunday giving it a test-run.

The thing that everyone talks about most in Champions Online (hereafter referred to as CO to save typing) is its character creator. Five years ago when CoX first hit, its character creator was pretty much the most detailed and multi-optioned one out there in any MMO, and now the general consensus is that CO is topping that and then some. Nick certainly seems to agree with that assessment, as he spent a total of nine hours non-stop on Sunday just creating character after character, just to see if he could and how detailed the options were. He barely actually played the game, just the creator (if there was a way to download just that - and, you know, not pay for it - he'd be a happy bunny for the forseeable future). As for me, I picked the two characters I've had since CoX began, the ones I wanted to create the most in game, and used them to test out the creator.

The first thing I noticed was that, yes, there are a lot of options. And bars, and sliders, and all sorts of things like that. In fact, it almost seems a little too complicated to me, but hey, I get impatient sometimes, and spending 20-30 minutes working out what colour my eyebrows are going to be sometimes seems like a little too much for me. But in the end, despite all those options, I still wasn't able to make my characters the way I wanted them. Part of that is, of course, down to the fact that I know I'm never going to be able to get those characters exactly the way they look in my head, but there was also the problem that, in both cases, there actually weren't enough options to get what I wanted. and no, I don't think I'm being picky here.

In the first case, I have a female character who's a combination of a superspeedster and fire manipulator who uses a pair of (tonfa) batons along with martial arts to fight. Now, for the most part this wasn't a problem - you can mix-and-match powers so you can go with, say, Claws and Martial Arts or Dual Blades and Martial Arts to get the right look. The problem was that you can't select what your weapons look like at character creation. This surprised me, because in CoX we've had that option for some time now, and I figured that if CO was the improvement on CoX's creator we'd have had that option too. But no, and so as I understand it my options are limited to changing my weapons as I level up (and possibly getting stuck with each one as I level) or unlocking special costume parts. Okay, the last one's not too bad - providing I don't have to pre-order or do a microtransaction for it - hey, some people are on budgets and can't afford to shell out for every single little thing they want in an MMO, unfortunately. But when you consider that CO is starting off with being able to change the colour of your powers' effects and the like, and CoX isn't getting that till i16 (coming Soon), it does stand out a little, at least to me.

In the second case, I have my teenage psychic. I had something of a bigger problem here - CO has no options for teen heroes in its body types or faces. Sure, I can take the basic form and face and slim and tweak them until they resmble a teenager as best as I can manage, but still... And when you consider the existance of the teen hero trope in superhero comics/games, it does surprise me that there aren't any options in there for it.

But okay, overall the character creator wasn't bad at all. Very nice, very shiny, a little too over-complicated for my tastes but overall not bad. Onto the rest of the game.

Graphics are genuinely good. Nick's computer is currently running a GeForce 8600 GT, and we had little to no problems with running the game, apart from the occasional moment of stalling or patch of grass that was more vomit-yellow and pixillated than it probably should have been, but hey, it's also beta so we'll forgive little glitches like that. The controls were... Well, for me they were awkward, but that might well have been because I was having to use Nick's default settings and he uses the WADS method while I use the cursor keys. It took me a good few minutes to work out how I was going to do things there, because I kept trying to turn and ended up strafing sideways because I forgot that the keys weren't set that way.

Gameplay was more... hit-and-miss. A fair few things in CO seem to have been, shall we say, "inspired" by things in Warhammer Online, such as green circles on the map overview to show you where a mission should be completed, and Public Quests/Missions, where anyone and everyone in the area can pitch in and help save that area of the city, be it by apparently shooting an alien out of a giant cannon or detecting zombie infiltrators in Canada. The problem I found was that the difficulty levels of the PQs seems to vary rather a lot. The tutorial PQ was simple (natch), but the PQ I did in Canada had a section that was almost impossible to figure out what to do, which was somewhat frustrating. *shrug* Maybe it gets explained better somewhere and I missed it.

I found the map rather confusing to follow and use at times, but whether that's down to over-complicated design or the fact that my dyscalculia means I have no sense of direction I don't know.

The powers... well, I personally tested only a couple (although Nick informs me that Powered Armour was "awesome", Might was "kick-ass" and Munitions was "utterly deadly"). I first played with my Claws/Martial Arts combo, and found it to be mighty indeed. In fact, it was pretty much everything I might ever have wanted in a powerset for that particular character (aside from the lack of flame effects or weapons of choice, but hey, can't have everything - although while in Canada I did get the chance to create a piece of body armour that gave me a flame effect over my body as a side detail, which was good). Coupled with the Perks, Enhancements and other things that I admit I got confused over and can't remember too much about, I was able to develop the character pretty much how I had envisioned her in my head and writings in the past.

On the other hand... I found it rather more difficult to play my psychic character, mainly because, by mixing Telepathy and Telekinesis, I found that I had one ranged attack and one melee attack, which I didn't really want. Maybe if I'd had more time to change powers around I might have gotten both ranged powers, but let's face it, unless you're Emma Frost telepaths generally don't go running into melee range. This, and the fact that the telepathy power I started with seemed kind of... weak, gave me the impression that this character would be slower to play than when he was a low-level Mind Control/Kinetics character in CoX (which, for anyone who's not played it, is pretty damn slow). Which, after the Claws/Martial Arts fun, didn't make me too eager to keep playing there.

Maybe I'm being too critical here, for a game which is literally only going live now, but... It is a very pretty game, I'll be the first to admit that, but at the same time it felt to me like it was still missing a lot, and might not have had all that much to recommend it beneath the pretty graphics and character creator of time-consuming. We'll see - Nick might get the game in the near future to try it out properly, meaning I can play a little more, and several of my friends are playing it, so things might change. But right now I'm pretty sure I'm sticking with my City of Heroes game.

Your Lesson For Today...

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:51:45 GMT

Two films, both made/produced/released this year. One, Antichrist, contains "strong real sex, bloody violence and self-mutilation" - specifically, female genital mutilation. The other, Grotesque, contains "unrelenting and escalating scenario of humiliation, brutality and sadism", including amputations and eye-gougings.

The former film has won awards at Cannes and has been passed uncut by the BBFC. The latter has been banned outright and decried as having less plot or character development than the Saw or Hostel movies.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what you can get away with if you label your work an "art" film. It's like Ai No Corrida, where they got away with the hardcore porn and inapproprate use of boiled eggs (serioisly, look it up, but don't be too shocked...) because the director claimed it was an "art" film.

Before the rant gets away with me too much, I want to make one thing clear: I haven't got a horse in this race, except maybe the one to do with anti-censorship. I've always had the viewpoint that, as long as it's not real and/or (in the case of certain types of pornography) everyone's consenting and no-one's getting hurt, it shouldn't be censored at the adult level, because, you know, we're adults. Personally, I wouldn't see either of these films - Lars von Trier tends to bore and/or confuse me unless I have a guide book handy, and horror films that are grand guignol strictly for the sake of grand guignol (but without the plot, because most people forget that grand guignol actually had storylines behind them) have about as much interest to me as watching paint dry. But just because I personally wouldn't watch either film doesn't mean that I don't see the absurdity in these two decisions. I just don't see too much difference in the two films that one gets a free pass and the other doesn't - especially if you consider the fact that Antichrist is meant to be more realistic, and thereforetheoretically far more shocking than a film which apparently concludes with a scene straight out of the ending of the Lamberto Bava film Macabre (trying not to spoil the film there).

(Oh, and as a further reference, Grotesque sounds remarkably similar to a British film called Boy Meets Girl, which was banned by the BBFC for eight years but finally released uncut in 2001).

Fic: 5 Times Earth Ambassador Harkness Had to Invoke Diplomatic Immunity Whilst on Babylon 5

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:51:18 GMT

...so a few days ago Nick and I were talking sci-fi shows, and I suggested, purely in jest, the image of Jack Harkness as the Earth Ambassador on Babylon 5, with Ianto Jones as his long-suffering aide/lover. Nick, instead of telling me I was utterly mad and changing the subject, told me I was utterly mad and then started coming up with ideas of what Jack would do on B5 (or, to be more exact, what trouble he would get into)

And thus, a new brainworm was born.

TITLE: 5 Times Earth Ambassador Harkness Had to Invoke Diplomatic Immunity Whilst on Babylon 5
FANDOM: Torchwood/B5
CHARACTERS: Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones, Psi-Cop Alfred Bester, Kosh
RATING: PG-13
WORD COUNT: 173
SUMMARY: From the Babylon 5 security files...
AUTHOR'S NOTES: I'm not sure who to blame for this, but it came out of a crack-y discussion with my other half over the idea of Jack and Ianto surviving to the 23rd century in the B5 universe. Thanks go to my other half and to my friend Ardy for indulging and inspiring me, as well as correcting my B5 knowledge where necessary.

I don't have any claim over either Torchwood or Babylon 5, or any of its characters.

***

I.
Accused: Ambassador Jack Harkness, Earth
Victim: Various
Charge: Drunk and Disorderly
Details: Diplomatic immunity. Case dismissed.

II.
Accused: Ambassador Jack Harkness, Earth
Victim: n/a; see charge below
Charge: Importing prohibited goods (one package of Lumati sex toys)
Details: Diplomatic immunity. Case dismissed.

III.
Accused: Ambassador Jack Harkness, Earth
Victim: Psi-Cop Alfred Bester
Charge: GBH, threatening behaviour, possession of prohibited weapon
Details: Victim was confronted and assaulted by the accused, who was also said to have pulled an antique (c. 20th century) weapon on the victim and threatening to use it against him. A search of the accused's quarters did not produce the alleged weapon. Diplomatic immunity. Case dismissed.

IV.
Accused: Ambassador Jack Harkness, Earth
Victim: Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Vorlon
Charge: Threatening behaviour
Details: The accused was seen involved in a heated argument with the victim and making physical threats against his person. Victim refused to discuss the incident. Diplomatic immunity. Case dismissed.

V.
Accused: Ianto Jones, Human
Victim: Various
Charge: Unauthorized use of hydroponics garden, illegal use of Babylon 5 resources, growing, cutting and pushing Sidamo ground coffee.
Details: Victims would not press charges. Ambassador Jack Harkness claimed diplomatic immunity. Case dismissed.

sigh

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:35:54 GMT

I have a friend by the name of Ardy. Ardy is a sci-fi geek, much the same as me. Earlier this week, Ardy discovered that I had never actually bothered to watch Torchwood, mainly because I was feeling disappointed at the way the new Doctor Who series had not lived up to my childhood expectations and memories. As the new Torchwood series was starting that night, he encouraged me to give some of the earlier stuff a try and see what I thought.

Well, I did. And I found myself hooked in pretty short order, which was a pleasant surprise. And, as is always the case with any TV series, I quickly developed a favourite character or two, favourite pairing and all the stuff that goes along with that.

...Anyone who saw Children of Earth, the latest Torchwood series, can maybe guess where this is going.

I love my dead gay Ianto!

(Okay, so he's really technically bisexual rather than gay, but the Heathers reference just doesn't work as well with "bisexual", does it?)

It is just my luck really, that I get really into a series and develop a favourite character and pairing - Jack/Ianto - only to have it ripped from me four days later. I'm seriously toying with the idea of fanfiction for Torchwood, except that I'd be retconning Children of Earth (the parts with beloved characters dying, natch) to suit my own ends. Because scary obsessive fangirlism isn't unhealthy at all, no sir.

Damn

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:00:35 GMT

I missed Blog Like It's The End of the World Day.

Brontophobia

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:39:12 GMT

We're having a thunderstorm right now. Poor Suki is afraid of the thunder, and thinks it's chasing her. Every time she hears a rumble, she gets up and moves as quickly as her arthritic legs can carry her to go hide in a corner, only to move again the next time there's a rumble.

Ironically, Sandy is completely non-plussed about it all.

Vet Tales

Fri, 29 May 2009 08:52:29 GMT

Yesterday Sandy and Suki had to go to the vets.

It was for nothing major, really; Suki needed to have blood tests to see how well her medication was dealing with her hyperthyroidism so they could decide if she was going to have a second operation or stay on the medication, and Sandy needed to have a dental because he had some bacteria problem in his mouth. And both of them needed to be microchipped.

The Cats Protection people were able to help us again by providing us with a couple of volunteers who were able to take the cats too and from the vets, but I wasn't able to go with them (which made me a little sad for a start). But we still had to put them into the cat boxes ready to be picked up.

Both cats really didn't want to go in the box. Sandy, normally such a placid cat, struggled and squirmed free every time we picked him up and tried to put him in the box, and ended up decorating me with scratches. Once he was in the box, he immediately started trying to fight his way out of it (apparently he also peed in the box at the vets too, which may have been another attempt to get out of it somehow). Suki didn't fight, but instead she just started to cry, loudly and so desperately that she reduced me to tears after seconds of listening to it. I felt like a terrible person.

Suki came back from the vets after an hour or so, sulking over her experience and with a large patch of her fur shaved off where they'd injected the microchip. She came round, however, after we gave her kitty milk and Sheba, and this morning she woke me up to curl up on my bed and go to sleep on me, so I figure we're pretty much forgiven there. Sandy had to stay at the vets overnight, however, as he needs to be put under for his dental and they wanted to make sure that he would be okay given his FIV status and the fact that it would be nearly impossible to keep him from eating the night before. I expect that when he comes back this afternoon he'll head straight for the back of the sofa and refuse to come out for a day or so, poor baby. When Sandy comes back we'll also find out the results of Suki's blood tests, and then see what happens next with her.

***

In other news, I have short hair.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Thu, 28 May 2009 13:23:54 GMT

Nick and I watched this last night, in lieu of anything else that caught our attention.

I thought that, all in all, it was a reasonably good movie. Not brilliant, by any means, but certainly not some horrible monstrosity either. Nick, on the other hand, took the opportunity to pick holes in every aspect of the plot that he could, because he's just so OCD about plots and characterisation being the same in both the comics and the movies. Sometimes he can be a real pain to watch stuff with...

But anyway, like I said it wasn't that bad a movie, although both of us agreed that Deadpool/Wade Wilson wasn't in the movie enough and didn't speak enough when he was (although having his mouth sealed shut admittedly was a factor there). You know, if you're going to have a guy known as "the merc with a mouth" in a movie, you really should have him talking non-stop in every scene he's in. But there were whole minutes where he didn't say anything! Gambit was also an interesting character, although Nick complained that his accent wasn't strong enough (although I pointed out that if it was full-on Cajun then the audience wouldn't understand a word he was saying).

The biggest thing in the movie for me though was the inclusion of the young Scott Summers and Emma Frost in the movie, and even though they were only together in the movie for about ten-fifteen minutes in total, the Scott/Emma shipper in me could definitely see a lot of promise there. I could even go for an alternate movie universe where Emma joins the X-Men and she and Scott become a couple instead of Scott and Jean...

Wed, 27 May 2009 13:05:21 GMT

It's local election time here soon, and this morning we got the British National Party's "vote for us!" flyer in the mail. Here's a few choice quotes from it, complete with my... translation/rebuttal/snarking:

A doctor says: "I'm voting BNP because I see what immigration is doing to our NHS." - What, bringing in badly-needed nurses to fill roles in hospitals that our own country can't do? Yeah, that's some insidious evil there...

The text next to a picture of a soldier says: "We're fed up of being sent ill-equipped into foreign wars. The BNP will bring our troops home and ensure that British soldiers are not abused on the streets of our cities by Muslims." - Okay, first off, unless you're planning a second civil war (and knowing the BNP I wouldn't be too surprised) all wars are going to be "foreign" by definition. Second... so instead they're going to be abused by drunken yobs?

Next to a picture of an elderly couple: "We're with the British National Party because it's not fair that people who've worked hard and paid in all their lives are pushed to the back of the queue behind bogus asylum seekers." - of course, since the definition of "bogus asylum seeker" in BNP language is "anyone and everyone we don't like who doesn't look white", that's a really misleading line.

Also, I tell a lie - there are some non-whites on the leaflet. There's a picture of a line of dark-skinned men next to the line "Oppose the dangerous drive - backed by the other main parties - to give 80 million low-wage, Muslim Turks the right to swamp Britain." 80 million? That many? That's impressive... especially when Wikipedia tells me that, according to Turkey's 2008 census, the population of Turkey is 71,517,100

All in all, this is a rather disappointing flyer from the BNP. Hardly anything to rip apart in it - well, apart from the above and the rather insulting "Battle for Britain 2009" logo with a WWII bomber they've got. Because, you know, WWII was all about fighting to allow facism in Britain wasn't it? It's almost enough to make me want to miss some of their earlier gems (snarked here and here).

Happy Birthday Nick!

Fri, 22 May 2009 07:42:07 GMT

It's Nick's birthday today. He's 33, and I get the feeling he's feeling a little depressed over it. He doesn't like the idea of getting older.

His mother sent him a big box of stuff, including a new George Foreman grill because our old/current one is starting to lose its non-stick coating in places and really getting on a bit. I'll be "christening" it for him tonight. Suki got a present too, in the form of the box that everything came in. Suki likes to play in boxes.

Apparently, Nick shares his birthday with (among others):

- Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744)
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 - 1930)
- Harvey Milk (1930 - 1978)
- Theodore Kaczynski (1942 - )

New Cat Pictures!

Wed, 20 May 2009 12:31:37 GMT

And now that I've uploaded them, here's some pictures of our new cats...

(Suki shortly after arriving in the house)

(Suki once she'd discovered her favourite spot in the house)

(Sandy, still not too used to being petted by us.)

(Sandy, sitting still and waiting for us to pet him a couple of days later.)

Return

Wed, 20 May 2009 12:17:45 GMT

I haven't been around for a while, have I? Yeah, I could claim that having to effectively share a computer with Nick has made it difficult to get onto lj much, but really, it's not that hard to get to the computer when he's asleep, so... Anyway, I'm making an effort to be back again now.

The bad news that's happened while I was MIA is that Jelli died in March. It was pretty sudden, although Nick says that for the few days before she went she wasn't eating much. I didn't see this because I was away visiting friends in Ireland. Anyway, the day after I came back, I was working when I noticed Jelli limping around the room with one paw completely limp. We managed to get her sitting on the sofa to check her out, and while at first she didn't seem to be in any discomfort from this, while I was digging out the emergency vet number (as it was nearly midnight) she started to wheeze. The vet immediately told us to get her down to them ASAP, and so it was down to Nick to beg the local taxi firm to drive us down there on credit, as we weren't going to have the money until the bank opened in the morning. Thankfully they did, and we got her down there.

Sadly, once we got there and the vets checked her over, they found that she could barely breathe even after being put in an oxygen tent, and they could barely hear her heart sounds. The vet was honest with us, and said that he didn't even know if she'd make it through the night, and if she did she'd be in a lot of pain and it would be a long and painful process to work out what was wrong with her. (He also mentioned that the cost of all this would likely run into the thousands, but frankly we didn't give a crap about that at that point.) So we had to make the decision, sadly, to have her put to sleep to save her any further suffering.

As it turns out, Jelli was probably older than we had thought she was. We had thought she was no older than six or seven, but the vet said she could have been anywhere from eight to twelve years old. He also suggested that she had probably had a stroke, possibly brought on from complication from FIV or similar.

So after that, it was a pretty horrible time for us. I personally fell into a depressive episode I've still not come out of, but I'm getting better slowly. Part of the reason that I'm now starting to get over my latest depression is that last week we adopted two new cats from the local Cats' Protection Agency.

We started looking at getting a new kitty in April, and it was a difficult task as there were so many cats that needed a new home. At first we saw two cats that each only had one eye that we considered taking in, but they both got adopted before we "got" to them. But in the end, one cat kept catching our attention whenever we looked at the website. His name was Sandy, he was seven years old, and he'd been with the CPA for several months because he was a FIV positive cat and no-one else had been willing to adopt him. At first Nick was a little leery about adopting a cat who might get ill and break our hearts again, but Sandy had a look that just pleaded "Love me?" and in the end we just couldn't resist him any more.

When we contacted the CPA to start the adoption process, before we even mentioned that we'd seen Sandy the woman we spoke to suggested him to us (because we were willing to adopt a special needs cat), which was another vote in his favour. Then it turned out that there was another cat who needed a home who came with Sandy. Suki was an older cat, 13 or 14, and she suffered from hyperthyroidism. She was also able to actually live with Sandy because their original owner - who had sadly died - had adopted Sandy from the street and the two cats knew each other and didn't fight (although Suki tended to bully Sandy, who was a very timid cat). Well, we couldn't separate them when they'd lived together for several years, and so we agreed to adopt both of them.

As it turned out, Sandy is actually a very healthy cat, and other than Suki's hyperthyroidism (which makes her hungry a lot, but thin apart from a distended belly and some wobbly back legs) so is she. Furthermore, because we were willing to adopt two special needs cats, the CPA are going to pay for any medical costs to do with their pre-existing conditions, which will be a great help (and not least because most pet insurance companies won't insure Suki because of her age).

We've had the two of them a little over a week now, and they've settled into the house as if it was always theirs. Suki settled in the easiest; she wandered around the house for an hour or so before claiming a slot on my giant stuffed tiger which she rarely moves from now. Sandy took longer to get used to his new surroundings, and spent the first couple of days hiding behind the sofa until we tempted him out with some tuna in springwater. He's such a timid cat that he's still scared of sudden movements and loud noises, and even the squeaking noises that Nick's shoes make, but he's also such a loving cat and loves to just sit next to you, either at your feet or on the computer desk, and purr while you pet him. And having them around to fuss over has been making me feel better, because the two of them just love to be petted and given a fuss and are so loving to us.

So that's the big news that's happened to us over the past few months.

Fun With Taxes, Part the 1st

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:00:14 GMT

Today I started getting my taxes sorted. If you know me at all, you'll be able to guess that this was an adventure all itself.

Being "self-employed" as I am (actually an "independant contractor" according to the contract, but the meaning is the same), I have to be responsible for sorting out all my National Insurance contributions and the like. Well, I'd been avoiding getting this sorted because I knew it wouldn't be easy for me, but yesterday I saw someone on the work forum reminding everyone to make sure their self-assessment was in before the end of the month. Cue panicking from me, and a trip to the taxes website to see what I needed to do.

Cue even more panicking from me when I read the site and couldn't make heads nor tails of it. I ask Nick, but he doesn't have any idea either. The only things I see that I can understand is a part that says that, if you don't register yourself with them as self-employed within three months of starting work, you get a fine.

So this morning I rang the tax people, hoping that they would be able to help me out with some of the stuff I needed to do (such as telling me what I needed to do, for starters). Thankfully, the woman I spoke to was very helpful, and walked me through things with a minimum of fuss:

- First off, it turns out I don't need to do a self-assessment until I've been working for about a year. Since I've only been working (properly) for about two months, I don't have to worry about that till around October (I think). So that's not a problem.

- She also took my details for getting registered as self-employed, and explained how the whole NI contributions thing works. You pay £2.30 a week in NI, and that covers you for pensions, Incapacity Benefit and the like, and you can pick how to pay. However, if you're earning under a certain amount a year (about £4800) you don't have to pay the contributions - but you also don't get your pension and benefits covered. It's something of a trade-off, and one I have to think on before deciding.

- I'm apparently getting a form to fill in through the post in a few days, which I know I'll need Nick to help with (because the chances are it'll be full of numbers), and then I'll see where I can go from there. I still need to investigate things like rebates and claiming costs back though...

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:15:29 GMT

It is cold. -6 degrees celsius (that's 21.2 degrees fahrenheit) to be exact. As a result, Nick is wearing socks on his hands a la Jeff Hardy (I've threatened to get some brightly coloured fabric dyes and paint stripes on them) and Jelli, once she's on our laps or in fact anywhere where there's a duvet or chance for warmth, refuses to move. She's perfectly happy to employ her claws in this as well.

In trying to keep my hands unfrozen and have the blood keep running through them, I'm trying to knit gloves. Only I don't have any sircular needles and I don't know how to shape fingers, so they're likely to end up as some sort of freaky handwarmers or something...

Oh, and there's also snow. I hate my country's weather.

The Mist

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:23:42 GMT

I just got finished watching The Mist, which is a film I'd wanted to see for some time now, and not just because it was an interesting horror film based on a Stephen King novella.

No, the reason I wanted to see it was because, in my second year of Film Studies at university, I had done an adaptation of The Mist for a script project (well, a scene and various suggestions for how to adapt it, along with effects, cinematography and the like), and I wanted to see how the actual movie had ended up differing from my "version".

I envisioned The Mist in a kind of B-movie way, somewhat similar to the way King said he originally imagined it when he was writing it. It had a slightly kitschy, 1950s monster-movie feel to it, with more emphasis on the suspense and only a limited amount of time devoted to actually showing the monsters. I had the idea of shooting it in black-and-white, with the only colours being the occasional one that would need to stand out, such as blood or Mrs. Carmody's yellow cardigan (and all this was back in 1999-2000, years before Sin City and the like...). The particular scene I adapted into script form was the scene when Brent Norton and his "Flat Earth Society" (what the story called those few who refused to believe that anything unusual was out there in the mist) were going out of the supermarket, and the main character asked them to take a length of clothesline and tie it to something when it had all played out, to prove they had gotten at least 300 feet. Of course, they don't get that far, and the scene ends with the clothesline been pulled back in and turning blood-red at the end. I thought that was a pretty striking image, and had it planned with lots of close-ups of the clothesline being pulled in and slowly turning red, and quick cuts to horrified faces watching the scene and listening to the screams outside.

The movie was in colour, not black-and-white, but I guess that's not too bad. The clothesline scene was shot somewhat differently to the way I'd envisioned it too - no or very few screams from outside, and more focus on the fight to hold onto the clothesline as it was nearly pulled out of their hands by something. Still not too bad. The bit I thought that kind of ruined it, however, was the very end of the scene, where instead of just pulling in a bloodied clothesline that's apparently been chewed through, we're shown that it is actually still attached to the lower torso of the man who'd tied it round his waist. I thought that was a little too obvious a shot, and kind of ruined the tension.

Other things about the movie... the effects were pretty good, CGI (of course) that still managed to look - where appropriate - a little B-movie cheesy. I did really like the fact that several of the monsters (the bugs and spiders) had human-like faces. That was creepy. And while I think they showed too much of some monsters and not enough of others, I do think they managed to keep the vaguely Lovecraftian, Cthulhu-esque quality of them. The casting seemed a little off (again, I'd had ideas for people playing specific roles in my head years ago, so I might be a little biased there...) - in particular, I'm not sure I was able to successfully believe the man who played the Punisher could be an artist.

Things I didn't like about the movie: the addition of several characters and a subplot that I swear must have been put in just to get some romantic tension going. In the book, the main character ends up having a kind of desperate one-night stand with another woman in the supermarket, borne more out of a simple need for comfort than anything else. They ditched that in the movie (couldn't show the main character to have a weakness like that, maybe?) and instead put in a subplot with a young cashier and a soldier who very nearly got it on but didn't. And then she got bitten by one of the bugs and died. Which I thought was really just a stupid Sledgehammer of Plot moment if ever there was one.

They didn't seem too confident that the viewers would believe that Mrs. Carmody could get people so brainwashed that they'd be willing to try to sacrifice a small child, so they had to have her orchestrate the killing of someone else first, which I personally thought actually lessened her power.

Finally, the ending sucked. In the novella, the main character, his son and a couple of others manage to escape the supermarket and try to drive to safety. They try to find his wife but can't get to his house and so we never know if she's okay. The story ends with the mist still there, but the possiblity of there being somewhere safe to go, and the characters not giving up. In the movie, however, we're shown that his wife ends up dead and, when they run out of gas the MC ends up shooting the others (including his 5-year-old son), supposedly to "save" them from whatever's in the mist. Then the mist clears, the military are everywhere, and the film ends.

W.T.F.

I can cope with "realistic" or "downbeat" endings. Hell, sometimes I even like them. But this? This just seemed like a giant "fuck you!" to the audience who'd been investing everything in these people for so long - not to mention that it wasn't anywhere near as good as the story's ending. I can't see why they had to change it - if they didn't want a "hopeful" ending they could have just had them driving onwards into the mist, with the strange creatures moving all around them. That would have worked too.

To further clarify: I don't have an issue with the idea of the MC killing everyone else - including his son - to save them from the horrible fate of being eaten by the monsters. The thing is, there was no threat like that when he actually pulled the trigger. None whatsoever. They'd just been driving for a while and were going to run out of gas soon. I've seen comments that this was the director's intent - to be either "anti-Hollywood" or to show some of his personal political/religious views - which again really fucks up what was otherwise a pretty good film. Furthermore, even if we're willing to accept the suicides, the arrival of the army and the clearing of the mist literally a couple of minutes afterwards is just... Arrgh. If he really, really had to kill them, then a better ending might have been for him to just exit the car and wander off into the mist. The way it was done, it wasn't so much a "fuck you!" to Hollywood, but as I said, a "fuck you!" to the audience.

In conclusion: It's an enjoyable enough film, but I prefer the book - and my version - better overall.

Dyscalculia

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 19:18:29 GMT

I was recently provided with a link to a website called Dyscalculia Forum. I think most people already know that I have dyscalculia, also known as numerical dyslexia. I wasn't diagnosed until I was in university - before that, everyone just thought I had really bad math skills. I'd also been aware of the fact that there were very few dyscalculaics (is that a word?) around - or at least, ones who knew that they were, in fact dyscalculaics.

Anyway, I had a look round the site, and found it very interesting. One part that I found particularly interesting was their "symptoms" page - there are considerably more symptoms than I'd known about (and of course, reading the list convinces you that you've got all the symptoms...)

- Normal or accelerated language acquisition: verbal, reading, writing. Poetic ability. Good visual memory for the printed word. Good in the areas of science (until a level requiring higher math skills is reached), geometry (figures with logic not formulas), and creative arts. This is definitely me. Verbal, reading and writing I can all do well, obviously, logic problems and the like I'm almost scarily good at, and as long as it doesn't have equations or formulas I'm fine. Beyond that...

- Mistaken recollection of names. Poor name/face retrieval. Substitute names beginning with same letter. I'm forever confusing names of people and faces.

- Difficulty with the abstract concepts of time and direction. Inability to recall schedules, and sequences of past or future events. Unable to keep track of time. May be chronically late. This one's an interesting one - I'm fine with time (almost obsessive-compulsive about schedules and the like, which for all I know may be me trying to compensate), but terrible with directions. I continually get lost when playing computer games, even.

- Inconsistent results in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Poor mental math ability. Poor with money and credit. Cannot do financial planning or budgeting. Checkbooks not balanced. Short term, not long term financial thinking. Fails to see big financial picture. May have fear of money and cash transactions. May be unable to mentally figure change due back, the amounts to pay for tips, taxes, etc. Nick would tell you, at length, about how bad I am with money (although he's not too hot with it himself...), and I'd happily agree with him. As for my mental math ability... when I was very young, my father used to work with me for an hour a day with mental arithmatic exercises because he recognised that I had problems with it, so I can actually do some sums in my head better than if I do them on paper.

- When writing, reading and recalling numbers, these common mistakes are made: number additions, substitutions, transpositions, omissions, and reversals. I am forever confusing the numbers in phone numbers, PIN numbers and the like. It makes for fun times at the cash machines.

- Inability to grasp and remember math concepts, rules, formulas, sequence (order of operations), and basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts. Poor long term memory (retention & retrieval) of concept mastery- may be able to perform math operations one day, but draw a blank the next! May be able to do book work but fails all tests and quizzes. Oh yes. This was so bad for me that, when I was in school I had to do a seperate exam rather than submit coursework for my Maths GCSE.

- May be unable to comprehend or "picture" mechanical processes. Lack "big picture/ whole picture" thinking. Poor ability to "visualize or picture" the location of the numbers on the face of a clock, the geographical locations of states, countries, oceans, streets, etc. I'm not sure I have this one, to be honest. It's not something I've ever thought about. I know I don't have problems with clock faces.

- Poor memory for the "layout" of things. Gets lost or disoriented easily. May have a poor sense of direction, loose things often, and seem absent minded. (Remember the absent minded professor?) Again, my ability to get lost is almost legendary.

- May have difficulty grasping concepts of formal music education. Difficulty sight-reading music, learning fingering to play an instrument, etc. Don't have this one. I've played various musical instruments and learned musical theory since I was seven with no problems.

- May have poor athletic coordination, difficulty keeping up with rapidly changing physical directions like in aerobic, dance, and exercise classes. Difficulty remembering dance step sequences, rules for playing sports. I do have problems with dance steps and the like, although not that bad...

- Difficulty keeping score during games, or difficulty remembering how to keep score in games, like bowling, etc. Often looses track of whose turn it is during games, like cards and board games. Limited strategic planning ability for games, like chess. Don't think I have this one either.

Which makes 8 or 9 out of 11, I think...

The Christmas Post

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 16:56:08 GMT

Here's hoping everyone had a good Christmas/Giftmas/whatever you choose to call it.

My presents this year...

- chocolates from Jelli
- pyjamas from Nick's mother
- DVD of Dead Set from Nick's mother
- a couple of scented candles from Nick's mother
- some Winnie the Pooh shower gel from Nick's mother

- DVD of Diary of the Dead from Nick
- DVD of The Shining from Nick
- DVD of Candyman from Nick
- DVD of Lord of Illusions from Nick
- DVD of The Cottage from Nick

...yes, that is a lot of DVDs. But I'm happy, of course.

I got Nick a book about hating Bill O'Reilly, a Vampire Counts batallion box, a box of Twiglets and the DVD of Iron Man. Nick was so happy with the Iron Man DVD that I almost wouldn't have had to get him anything else. It was good to watch him marking out like a giddy kid.

Bad Movies Ahoy!

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 14:00:48 GMT

Well, I'm looking forward to the next couple of days.

The next three films I'm getting sent from my DVD rental account are...

Cloverfield

Mother of Tears

Frailty

Nick, on the other hand, will most likely be not as... exuberant as me. Well, maybe for Frailty. It might be the kind of film he likes. And he has had to admit more and more that some of the films I watch aren't that bad - he enjoyed The Faculty, although whether that was due to it being a mix between The Breakfast Club meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers or because Laura Harris got naked even he can't really say...

Bleh.

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 01:14:18 GMT

I had to go to the doctor's today. The "feeling sick" that I had at the beginning of the week didn't go away, and instead was joined by constant trips to the bathroom, headaches, nausea, light-headedness and, this morning, rather excruciating stomach pain that made it very difficult, if not impossible, to work. the NHS Direct website didn't, for once, tell me to book a coffin and have a dance band ready to play Abide With Me, but they did suggest calling the helpline proper. Who promptly told me to get an appointment to see my doctor.

So down I went, at 5pm, to luckily see the best doctor in the surgery. After breaking his electronic thermometer and blood pressure machines, he told me that I had a fever of about 39-40 degrees celsius (that's about 102 degrees fahrenheit), which would neatly explain the light-headedness at any rate, and in general I had a moderate case of gastroenteritis.

Nick was disappointed; he was certain it would be kidney stones.

***

While I was out, I saw a billboard for the Twilight movie, which is opening over here on Friday. On the left-hand corner are Bella and Edward, with Edward kind of looming over Bella and glaring out at onlookers with dark circles under his eyes and a look that I think the publicists were hoping would portray intensity, brooding and/or attractive emo-ness. Instead, he looked like he belonged on Crimewatch UK in their Most Wanted Faces section - "Have you seen this vampite stalker?"

sigh. Sparkly vampires. What next?

Distractions

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:01:00 GMT

Ah, payday.

This morning I finally managed to get the three months' free that LoveFilm were offering me (it seems slightly counter-productive that I had to have money in my account to be able to use a gift card to give me the free time, but there you go) and will soon be going into town to put money on the pre-pay card to re-activate my WAR account. Happy days, and the strong chance that no-one will see me for several days after this, as I'll be suddenly inundated with DVDs and the desire to play a Black Guard/catch up with being ganked by Witch Elves while playing my Archmage.

While I'm in town, I'm thinking I'll also check out Woolworths, to see if I can get any cheap Chocolate Oranges there now that they've started their "Closing Down" sales. Granted, I'll also need my best crowd-beating stick and my BPAL perfume that, when I wear it on my wrists and gently waft it around, seems to clear a space for me with remarkable speed (New Orleans actually smells really nice, it's just really strong for some reason and makes people back away...), but cheap chocolate is worth the effort.

Warning: Rant Ahead

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:15:03 GMT

UK government comes one step closer to legalising slavery, Daily Mail readers rejoice

Most of you should be very used to my views on this sort of thing by now, so I'll spare you most of the frothing-at-the-mouth ranting and raving about this.

Basically though, the government is using the old "sledgehammer to crack a nut" practice to deal with the dual problems of the small number of people illegally claiming benefits, and how to get basic stuff done in this country as this recession creeps ever closer and they can't afford to pay everyone. So we get this "community service" idea to make the problems look like they're going away.

I'm lucky now in that I have a job. Granted, it's not exactly a job I envisioned myself doing, nor it it the best-paid job in the world, but I do enjoy it and we make do with it. But I've also been through the benefits system, both Incapacity and Jobseekers, and so I know full well what it's like. It's not the life of Riley that so many of the far-right brigade like to shout about.

If you want to claim Incapacity, you have to collect endless sick notes from your doctor and send them off regularly, then fill in a long form with tick-boxes for nearly every possible physical and mental problem imaginable (interesting point: being an alcoholic can get you Incapacity Benefit, and you don't have to do anything to deal with your addiction. Considering yesterday's big story was about the latest Scarlet Letter against smokers, and how no-one would ever suggest half of the measures they use against smokers to be used against people who drink, it's an interesting little tangent...). Then you have to have a medical examination with a government doctor, which is usually a crap shoot. I've had mixed luck with them - one time it was fine, but another time the doctor outright lied on the form and denied me the aid. And that's just to get on Incapacity Benefit. The government claim that the "severely ill and disabled" will not be affected by this, but somehow I expect that a lot of people will suddenly find themselves declared "fit for work" when they shouldn't be...

Jobseekers' Allowance is even more fun. Not only do you have to prove that you're looking for work (which so many people claim is easy to fool and that they know someone who does just that, to which my answer invariably is, "Well, bloody shop them then!"), but if you haven't got enough National Insurance credits then you don't get anything anyway. This is what happened to me when I had to claim it, just before I started this job. I'd therefore expect that the influx of people being unceremoneously turfed off Incapacity Benefit will find themselves working - sorry, "doing community service" - for no money at all because their NI credits aren't up to date. Which will help practically nobody, except the government who get their cheap slave labour.

Don't get me wrong, I know there are a good few people who are just out to scrounge and take whatever they can, but they're still very much in the minority. And rather than spend the extra cash to try to ferret them out, the government decides to just punish everyone on benefits to save time and try to distract the growing mobs of people baying for their blood as the recession deepens.