in an octopus's garden in the shade

[freckles_and_doubt]

Today's delirious bit of billboard poetry: SPAIN DEFENDS PSYCHIC OCTOPUS. I love this because it's absolutely, literally true. We live in a world where a psychic octopus has made world headlines because of its apparent ability to predict World Cup match outcomes. This makes me very, very happy because it externalises neatly everything I've ever believed about the frivolously demented nature of human society. As a race, we have no sense of proportion.

I'm on leave for the next week or so, taking time out to write the paper for this conference. There's a giant pile of critical tomes variously and separately on vampires and fairy tales all over my desk; my act of possibly hubristic synthesis is not being materially aided by the Hobbit's characteristically feline need to sprawl all over them. If I try to move them he bites me, lovingly. I assume it's lovingly. He hasn't actually drawn blood yet.

I have also spent large chunks of the last day or so Running Errands, such as collecting my passport from the visa people and applying for forex (this latter because I have a deep and terrifying fear that my credit card will get nicked or decline to work for some reason and I really want back-up cash). In addition, the lovely agent lady in France has found tenants for my house! which means I'm now trying to jump through about a zillion French and South African bureaucratic hoops in order to (a) set up a French bank account, which I didn't have time to do in all the frantic of the French trip, (b) pay the French company which did all the required assessments for woodworm and footrot and what have you (requires official translations of the documents, have spent the morning locating French translators and plaintively emailing them) and (c) pay the nice agent lady, who has seriously earned it. This house-earning lark is costing me a fortune, but hopefully it'll be worth it in the long run.

In other news, I don't really want to mention that the internets seem to be back in case they immediately fall over again in an attack of petulant self-consciousness. (The squid has been gnawing on them intermittently for several days, but seems to have given up, possibly in favour of predicting World Cup outcomes). This means I have been able to play a reasonable amount of Echo Bazaar, which is a beautifully-designed Twitter game set in a subterranean steampunk Victorian ur-London with vaguely decadent and Cthulhoid properties, and which functions as a cross between a card game, a text adventure and a RPG. I am a Charming and Keen-Eyed Lady with a Sulky Bat. Let me know if you play and we can loiter with intent or have risqué cosy dinners together or something.

Comments

[herne-kzn.livejournal.com]

Dear lady. You are the first, nay the only person to have turned me from my natural luddite/never adopter path to a mere late adopter one and induced me to get a twitter account. Fie

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Why, sir! 'Tis a gross calumny, indeed. Would I recommend any service which was not perfectly consonant with the conduct of a gentleman, however Luddite his impulses? Twitter is as you make it. I prefer to make it into a pleasingly recondite distraction within the challenging confines of Fallen London. I hope we may meet, just as soon as I hunt down this damned absconding demon who, mayhap, will give me the connections in Hell I so badly need.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

1) Wait, you have twitter widget over yonder ( <- ) Looks good, but Not sure I want to link my identities together like that.

2) Echo Bazaar - What hath Alexis wrought ... he was almost normal a few years ago. If I had time to do the things that I don't have time to do, then Fallen London would be right after them on my to-do list.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

My identities are already linked, my Twitter profile has linked to the blog from the start - I see them as one online identity which isn't really traceable to my real-world identity unless you happen to know me already. I would have been Extemporanea on Twitter as well if some swine hadn't already nicked, so to speak, the nick. The widget has been up for a couple of months and nothing has exploded yet ...

You clearly wot of this Alexis of legend and song - in what context? He hath wrought most pleasingly.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

He used-to-work-where-I-used-to-work.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Right, which means that either it's all your fault, or it's all your employer's fault and we're about to see you launch a successful Twitter-based game of some sort...

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Nope, I blame him entirely. That and the employer for kindly allowing him to do his own thing. Lots of people who used to work there are now. There were lots of redundancies.