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Freckles & Doubt ([personal profile] freckles_and_doubt) wrote2008-10-26 02:51 pm

we all have flaws, and mine is being wicked

The Daily Voice strikes again! This time, LESBIAN KILLED BY EVIL BUSH! or, possibly, LESBIAN KILLED IN EVIL BUSH! This is rife with possibility: (a) shrubbery, (b) the current anti-gay sentiment in the American administration, and (c) maddened dodgy euphemism. Also note the characteristic Daily Voice use of EVIL! It could never be a mildly annoying bush, or even a slightly badly-behaved one.

Ounce managed to distinguish himself this weekend by setting fire to his tail. He climbed into the Evil Landlord's lap while said EL was pewter-casting, turned around three times in that characteristic feline way, and passed his tail through the gas burner, causing it to merrily catch alight. He then lay there in blissful obliviousness to the conflagration, purring madly, while the EL extinguished the flames. Honestly, that cat has even less brain than Golux. Stv suggests that Ounce's drink is probably the Flirtini. I concur.

Have just sent jo&stv home full of reasonably successful tiramisu (I'm still in the recipe-tinkering stage), so that I can, at least, say that I achieved something this weekend. Oh, and most of today was spent reading Harry Potter papers and scrawling acerbic notes for this paper I'm writing jointly with [livejournal.com profile] wolverine_nun. Glory, but you did a lot of research for this, w-n! Shall try and have something coherent for you by next weekend. Currently, I'm deeply suspicious of the pedagogic principles inherent in the HP novels, and inclined to disagree with the critics who see the hands-off teaching styles of the Hogwarts faculty as a chance for children to engage in self-directed study. Call me old-fashioned, but a curriculum slanted towards defeating Voldemort is not, in my book, addressing the inner needs of the individual child.

Fiery kitty

[identity profile] schedule5.livejournal.com 2008-10-27 07:03 am (UTC)(link)
Oh thank-you, thank-you for the Ounce story. I can just picture it :).

Re: Fiery kitty

[identity profile] extemporanea.livejournal.com 2008-10-27 10:09 am (UTC)(link)
He does have very thick fur on his tail (apart from the new singed spot :>), so it's not surprising he didn't feel a thing. Similarly, Fish used to accidentally lie her tail along the surface of the birdbath - it would take her several minutes to register that it was getting wet.

[identity profile] bronchitikat.livejournal.com 2008-10-27 09:22 am (UTC)(link)
Call me old-fashioned, but a curriculum slanted towards defeating Voldemort is not, in my book, addressing the inner needs of the individual child.

Nope, but it might ensure that those children do, eventually, have a future at all! :)

[identity profile] extemporanea.livejournal.com 2008-10-27 10:10 am (UTC)(link)
Well, yes, but that's not really the purpose of school, after all. Rowling basically superimposes her heroic agenda over the school's pedagogic one, with the net result that the pedagogic purpose buys it completely. As a teacher, I resent that. Bloody saving the world...

[identity profile] bronchitikat.livejournal.com 2008-10-27 10:16 am (UTC)(link)
See your point entirely.

Not the first time an author has subverted the purpose of an institution, or its members, to the plot though, is it?

[identity profile] mwotn.livejournal.com 2008-10-27 07:04 pm (UTC)(link)
Hey, what's wrong with teaching the dear children how to fight the evil overlord? For one thing, it saves the world, and for another, it makes in-school fights all that much more amusing....

I wonder what dear old Sherborne teaches most of its pupils. "How to be tossers" seems about right.

Bush of eveel

[identity profile] first-fallen.livejournal.com 2008-10-27 11:49 am (UTC)(link)
I suspect it's something to do with the bosveld on the Flats. There's a large piece of uncleared land (I don't know who owns it) where lots of bad things happen. People walk through there to get to the taxi ranks and often get waylaid by brigands.

Re: Bush of eveel

[identity profile] extemporanea.livejournal.com 2008-10-27 11:55 am (UTC)(link)
That sounds likely, if considerably less interesting. While deploring the death of lesbians (or anyone else, for that matter), I cling to my mental image of an animated shrubbery with attitude and teeth.