if I could make the world as pure and strange as what I see

[freckles_and_doubt]

Several Things!

1. I spent the weekend holed up in my study marking Honours and second-year essays, with the net result that when the EL bounded into the kitchen on Sunday morning with a cheery greeting he was the first person I'd actually spoken to since 9pm on Friday night. 36 hours in my own head, particularly my own head colonised by student effusions, is really rather a lot. You end up forgetting how to actually form sentences. Or was that the effect of all the student writing? Discuss.
   
2. On Friday the sound system in my car had a psychotic episode and for some reason started playing through the albums on the MP3 player in reverse alphabetical order by artist, which means I unaccountably jumped from Arcade Fire to Velvet Underground. (Have become very addicted to The Suburbs, possibly in preparation for Reflektor, which is released today. New Arcade Fire! Score!). I haven't aired my Velvet Underground collection for a couple of years, so it was quite fun to play through Loaded and the one with Nico, which is my favourite. Then my Twitter feed exploded last night with the news of Lou Reed's death. It seems like an appropriate fortuity to an extent which is potentially slightly sinister. I am unable to escape the faint suspicion that in fact I was afflicted with a sort of anticipatory musical ghost. It seems like Lou Reed's style. Of which he had rather a lot. RIP on one hell of a life. (Lovely Neil Gaiman interview here, if you're into that sort of thing).
   
3. On the subject of the Circle of Life and what have you, congrats to dicedcaret and his nice lady wife on their acquisition of sudden offspring of the female persuasion. Her name is Eva, she arrived safely on Friday via caesarian, all apparently well.
   
4. A random text message arrived this morning purporting to be from the City of Cape Town's weather advisory service, and warning of "Severe storms with large hail" today. Insofar as (a) today is cloudless and hot and has quickly burned off the morning fog, and (b) I'm not actually subscribed to any weather advisory service, this also seems a bit sinister. I am inclining to the notion that I've somehow received a text from an alternate universe in another leg of the Trousers of Time. Or exceptionally lateral phishing spam.
   
5. I could have lived very happily for the rest of my life without having encountered, in a student essay, the term "phallic fluids". She was writing about Dracula, but still. Not even the worst of fanfic does that sort of thing.

Subject line from Velvet Underground, natch. "Pale Blue Eyes". His lyrics tend to the oddly complex and evocative.

Comments

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

Re #3 above: Yay! Could you email or sms me an appropriate contact thingummy (phone number / email address, whatever) so I can say congratulations? I don't have their contact details.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Check your email! :>

[pinkthulhu.livejournal.com]

Unrelated, but not sure if you saw this.

http://kotaku.com/who-thinks-japans-owl-cafes-are-a-hoot-1453247424

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I haven't, and eek. That strikes me as being an unfriendly thing to do to owls - daylight and people and being cooped up. They're not decoration. The fact that they look decorative is entirely secondary to the fact that they're wild creatures. Aargh.

Penguin bars

[pinkthulhu.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree. And the same goes for the penguin bars.

http://kotaku.com/japan-has-too-many-penguin-bars-1446206815

Re: Penguin bars

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Good grief. I'd say that Japanese culture has some really weird quirks, except I think it's just that people are weird, period. Poor penguins.

[stringgeek.livejournal.com]

I'm not at all in favor of this for owls or penguins. But the cat cafes, that's an entirely different thing.