you load sixteen tonnes

[freckles_and_doubt]

'Tis a beautiful spring day, and outside is balmy and warm and clean; in the garden, my small stupid kitty (Golux) is crouched by the herb bed, watching in apparent fascination the slow, reptilian crawl of water on the soil surface from a dripping hose. She's been there for 15 minutes by my computer clock. Dear little dimwit. I think she expects the trickle to make a break for it any moment, allowing her to pounce and get her little white paws all wet. Then again, this is generally more desirable behaviour than last night's, when she and her demon-spawn sister were discovered playing happily with a mouse-corpse under my bed as I trundled sleep-wards, muzzy and wine-soaked.

I always seem to revert to the Miyazaki coal-heaving fuzzies icon when I have the Marking Pile Of Damocles hanging over my head. Marked most of yesterday afternoon and all this morning. Yesterday's essays were almost uniformly horrible, causing screaming, blasphemy and rants about apostrophes at intervals. Students can do some horrible, horrible things to one's favourite authors. However, there were at least two first-class efforts this morning, just in time to prevent ritual suicide and create that warm, fulfilled glow and desire to hug the perpetrators. One reason why babies simply don't appeal to me is that any further experience of the psychotic alternation between frustrated fury and the warm fuzzies that is the maternal instinct, would be entirely redundant.

Yesterday's marking session was blissfully interrupted by the descent of jo&stv, who remained for supper and an unpremeditated watching of Pirates of the Carribbean, which has my vote as Film Most Likely To Be Even More Fun With Each Re-watching. I'm madly looking forward to the sequel. I still have a dozen or so essays to go, which is clearly why I'm blogging, reading fanfic, writing random e-mails and watching the cats.

p.s. I seem to have blogged, to a greater or lesser extent, every day for the last week. I think it's the moons of Saturn in an odd conjunction.

Comments

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

I watched the Pirates for the third time recently, and noticed that although Mr Depp simply repurposes the intoxicated swaying gait that he developed for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and wears a funny hat; his physical performance is actually much more nuanced and original than that. I.e. I noticed that he never even has all four fingers in a row. One or more digits are always splayed out, El Greco style.

[(Anonymous)]

Now you're forcing extemporanea to watch it *again* with an eye on his hands the whole way through. Bad man, she has marking to do. And, extemporanea, in an earlier post you said "that will teach me to do them earlier". No it won't. It'll teach you that you *should have* done them earlier, a lesson learnt long ago, and revisited at intervals, with no discernable effect. This is not criticism, this is fellow feeling and empathy, from the person who has made 3 a.m. request calls to a radio station while marking, mere hours before the marking is due.

wolverine_nun

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, Johnny Depp's hands... Actually, you're not forcing me to watch it again, hands are something I always more or less notice, particularly on men. Particularly attractive men. Johnny Depp has beautiful and very expressive hands. And, yes, it's a very good performance which manages to be ironic, empathic, over-the-top and nuanced all at the same time. OK, maybe you are forcing me to watch it again, just to enjoy all of above.

The marking will be finished this morning in my free tuts between 11 and 2pm, mere hours before the marking is due. Comrade, w_n!

Beautiful hands

[(Anonymous)]

Some might say _too_ beautiful. Like the producers of the sequels, for instance.

http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/celebrity/57882004.htm

- Jo(ty)

Re: Beautiful hands

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Keith Richards as Captain Jack Sparrow's dad? It has the obvious-in-retrospect quality of genius.

Re: Beautiful hands

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Indeed, although, with Bill Nighy in the same movie, after his Love Actually stint, it might seem a bit redundant. At the very least, we should have some sort of aging rocker black hole critical mass effect.

Re: Beautiful hands

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Good grief, they can't do that! that's sacrilege! and stupid! and shows a total lack of aesthetic judgement! and is sacrilege! and is all about stupid macho stuff! and is sacrilege!

There will be a stiff letter to the Times about this, I can tell you.