Freckles & Doubt

Indexindexindex. Today's problem: trying to index Angela Carter and Feminism as separate terms without just shrugging and exactly duplicating the page numbers. They're... intertwined. Possibly passionately.

In default of having the time to actually say anything interesting that isn't easily divisible into hierarchical topics, linkery! For anyone who loved Dr. Horrible, this is a rather endearing video by Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen, who co-wrote the songs for Dr. H. They're horribly drunk and singing immaculate harmony about their favourite foods. I don't think any singing group I've been in has ever sounded that good while sober.


And, courtesy of Cute Overload, My Little Cthulhu. Also, Princess Leia, Batman and Robin and Edward Scissorhands. The My Little Alien is actually disturbingly cute.

Finally, this is something Charles Stross probably wrote about, or should have. Man robs bank with simple elegance, making his getaway in the confusion created by a mob of similarly-dressed men assembled by means of a Craigslist ad. The modern burglar is seldom so intelligent.

... in the event of one's hands suddenly deciding to burst into flames as a result of chopping chillis, apply vodka. Liberally. With cotton wool.

In other news not entirely unrelated to webcomics about bands, aliens and stuff, Joss Whedon is completely cracked. So am I, after two days of progression coding. But it's over.

*does victory lap*

Except for the four-hour meeting tomorrow, that is. *sigh*.

Also, The Superest. Competitive superhero design.

Last Night I Dreamed: that khoi_boi and his wife incautiously went away for a few days, leaving me in their house in charge of their 3-year-old daughter - which is, I have to say, an essentially unlikely proceeding fraught with catastrophic potential. In fact, it went quite well, since they'd hired two cars with baby seats for me to use. Highlights included child plus friend spontaneously initiating a session of kiddie-yoga in the garden.

Then I was plunged into my usual dream-campus, which is enormous, completely over-built and filled with odd-shaped buildings, with strange stairs and tunnels and atriums connecting them. The purpose of the dream was (a) to have dinner with d_hofryn, which entailed fondue with lots of meat in a campus dining hall (she's vegetarian), and (b) tracking down the evil SCA person (European SCA, not local) who'd embezzled money and framed someone else for it. Large amounts of guilt for unjustly suspecting the be-framed one.

Term is now over! *dances, slowly and wearily, and plots bunny-homicide*

I haven't managed to watch Angel with d_hofryn in our regular Friday afternoon slot for a month or so, owing to our mutually insane schedules/states of health. However, I think I'm being cosmically reproached for this: the stars in their courses have moved, and their new configuration says Whedonverse in many odd corners of my life. Viz:

• Last night I dreamed that the entire cast of Firefly came to an SCA event that was also, somehow, an sf convention. Sean Maher lost his napkin. Nathan Fillion, in a bright pink tunic (!) sang with the band.
• Joss Whedon does a mean feminist rant.
• I've stumbled on the only piece of Buffy fanfic I've ever enjoyed, here. Usually I dislike fanfic from any Whedonverse, mostly because the original texts are complex, layered and convincing enough that most fanfic writers are inadequate to the task of furthering them. (Unlike Harry Potter, which has sufficient holes, psychological and narrative, that a lot of fics are an actual improvement). This one is Spike-heavy, a very nice characterisation.
• It's heading for June at speed, in that irritating way the space-time continuum has. 23rd June is Joss Whedon's birthday. In a bizarre twist most gratifying to my inner fangirl, it's also my birthday. This year it's also a Saturday. Please keep said Saturday evening free for a largeish party, since I have to celebrate not only being 38 ("An excellent calibre in a woman!", according to wytchfynder), but surviving glandular fever and, if all goes according to plan, finishing this thrice-dratted book.

I get it, universe. Now that term is over, d_hofryn and I can resume our ritual Friday-afternoon Joss-worship. *hopes*

Joss Whedon is off the Wonder Woman project. Woe! I would really have liked to see what he made of it.

My amoeba-like status in the dept. notwithstanding, I seem to have advanced in l33t admin skillz to the point where I will spend large chunks of the next two weeks on the Dean's Table during registration, signing off student curricula and watching my signature deteriorate even further beyond its current minimalist scrawl. This isn't nearly as much fun as assisting bewildered students through the thickets of curriculum design, but hey. It also means that, between registration and Honours dissertation marking, I won't get much done on this chapter for a bit. Woe.

On the upside, the one Hons student gave me a copy of Six Moon Dance, hitherto missing from my Tepper collection, as a thank-you present for supervising her thesis. It's a good thesis, too, I'm rather enjoying wading through eco-feminist theory. The problem's in the dualism: the division of society into reason/nature absolutes which are mapped onto man/woman divisions and which relegate women and nature to the same low-status lack of agency. Chewy stuff.

Army of Reconstruction update: they've taken the roof off my bedroom. It looks very odd.

Who'd be a grrrl? Damned 2-day hormonal headache. Mutter. Not helping is the fact that I'm (finally) finishing up this wretched Disney encyclopedia entry, which entails digging around on the Disney site, which is (aargh) all Really Slow Flash Animation, punctuated with relentless advertising and cunning concealment of actual information. Deeply annoying.

I have, however, read a couple of rather enjoyable young adult fantasies this weekend. Holly Black's Valiant has just won the Andre Norton award, a new category in the Nebulas for young adult fiction. It's the gritty urban faerie thing she does in Tithe, but here is edgier, dealing with issues such as teenage drug addiction and running away from home to live homeless on the streets of New York. Nicely done: her faeries are downright nasty, even the Seelie ones, and way more sexy than they have any right to be. Also, judging from the fact that I wanted to slap them quite often, I'd say her angsty teenagers were fairly spot on.

Book Club last week netted me Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, another in the long line of contemporary Greek godscapades. I didn't have high hopes of this, which represents a Very Done theme. However, Riordan, whatever you might want to say about his originality, has a good sense of pace and character, a somewhat off-the-wall sense of humour, and a completely stunning ability to actually write full sentences. (The full sentence is a dying art, had you noticed? More and more writers who really should know better are scattering their work with these poor, mutilated, verbless things, which are presumably meant to sound punchy and with-it. There was a verb-deprived M&G article by Khadija Magardie this week which made me gnaw my own foot off in sheer irritation). I wouldn't say The Lightning Thief was great literature, or even great kids' literature, but it was a fun read, I wouldn't mind reading more in the series.

I also scored the next in the Lemony Snicket series, which I am still, in defiance of everyone else I've lent them to, really enjoying. Book 11: The Grim Grotto. Submarines, tap dancing, evil fungus, a missing sugar bowl, and more than you ever really wanted to know about precipitation.

Finally, in the Department Of There May Actually Be Something In Astrology*: I apparently share a birthday with Joss Whedon. It's not my fault I'm a devoted fan, the stars foretold it.

* not really.

It seems to be Ancient SF B-Movie Week back home in Extemporanea City: I capped the recent run of dodgy 80s classics by watching Barbarella last night. It's one of those movies that SF movie critics feel impelled to reference early and often, so actual experience of it was somewhat overdue. Well, now. What an amazingly entertaining piece of hokum. In fact it turned out to be nothing whatsoever like anything I expected, although I'm not actually sure what I expected; certainly not the oddly Monty Pythonesque feel it had at times (circa Erik the Viking: surreal, black, comic, slightly stilted). Interestingly psychadelic visuals, not just the weird trippy floating fractal thingies, but the sets, especially the labyrinth. The movie is often quoted as an embryonic instance of a strong female hero, but in fact that's a load of bollocks: she's symbolic of nothing except her sexuality, and is shunted passively between situations created and controlled by others, either men or demonic women. Annoying, but often very funny; the weirdly passive and clearly meat-between-the-ears angel was an entertaining male version of the same sexualised passivity. And Barbarella's endless succession of skimpy costumes was played with such deliberate over-the-top irony that I couldn't even take offence.

Of course, my enjoyment of the film was probably heightened by the fact that we watched it more than somewhat sloshed, after the usual jo&stv visit had turned into an impromptu Sunday evening braai, with wine. (Important to celebrate the Evil Landlord's recent installation of a wine rack). Our Nasty Neighbour was in top form: she has this amazing way of giving vent to shrieks of rage and volleys of swearing the instant we light a braai, followed by loud, obvious slamming of windows. Last night reached a new low, with her shouting "Selfish pigs!" over the wall. From her reaction, any social manifestation on our part is equivalent in her mind to a massive party continuing until 3am, with loud music and shouting, followed by fireworks and the random release of clouds of mustard gas. In fact, there were four of us, we went inside at about 8.30, and we weren't talking loudly, playing music, or making a particularly smoky fire. We'd be a lot more likely to be sympathetic to her problems if (a) they were reasonable, and (b) if she had any other way of expressing them other than a temper tantrum. Stupid woman.

In between the sf movies I've also discovered a bunch of new graphic novels, courtesy of confluence, who pushes them like a pimp. I am hooked on Hellboy, which is beautifully drawn, wildly atmospheric and studded all over with happy folkloric references that are making me drool and purr. I'm also retroactively impressed with the movie, which seems to me to have reproduced the feel and to some extent the look of the series, even if its plot was somewhat Hollywoodized. I also enjoyed Scarlet Traces, which is a sequel to Wells's War of the Worlds; unfortunately, although this was visually and conceptually stunning, I found it somewhat poorly plotted. I was also very unimpressed by the three issues of Serenity, which is amazing artwork but otherwise insubstantial: Joss is not usually this thin on the ground, plot-wise. Disappointing.

An interesting point arose in this morning's random browsing. Rotten Tomatoes have released their 2005 Golden Tomato awards, which always interest me because they track and evaluate film reviews and manage to assign them some kind of numerical value in terms of how the film was received. Significant to note: in the top 25 wide release list, the top 5 are fantasy films of some sort - Wallace and Gromit, Harry Potter, Batman Begins (which I must see again, incidentally), King Kong and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The next five include Star Wars and Corpse Bride, for a total of seven out of ten. The ranked listing across both wide and limited releases clearly pulls in the art-house movies, as there are, by contrast, only 8 fantasy films in the top 30. One can infer several interesting points: fantasy is very popular, studios are making a lot of fantasy movies, they're pumping a huge amount of money into wide-release blockbusters, and both audiences and critics really like them. The year's theme is clearly "anyplace but here". See the happy human race, running pell-mell into cultural disaster with its head firmly buried in the sand!

A terrifying and possibly earth-shattering matter of judgement confronts me. The Army of Reconstruction have reached the bit where they're knocking down the old garden wall, having build the new garage walls high enough to presumably deter the persistence that is South African Crime. Simultaneously, I've been marking essays for two days, and they're uniformly the kind of thing produced by desperate undergrads who have left all their work until the last week of term, and have sandwiched essay research and writing for my seminar into a twenty-minute period between, judging from context, lengthy and technical Sociology papers which encourage jargonistic waffle in place of actual thought, and an extended drunk-up. I cannot work out if the continual thumping of the wall-bashers is more or less horrifying than the continual thumping solecisms of these wretched, accursed, horrible, annoying essays. Sometimes it's one, sometimes it's the other. Sometimes I have to give up on both for a bit and watch Angel with the sound turned up high. And, may I add, I'd forgotten how darned cute Lindsay is.

Fortunately I have also been in a position to distract myself from the manifest cares of my existence by reading my way through the complete collection of Sandman, which I am able to justify as, in fact, necessary research for the next encylopedia article (this month, Gaiman, Ever After and various Joneses). That Gaiman, he's actually a pretty extraordinary myth-maker. And, may I add, I'd forgotten how darned cute Morpheus is, in that typically gothy, brooding way, which is also tending to make me realise that Angel, while clearly Mr. Billowy Coat King of Pain, is a mere amateur in the brooding stakes.

Also whiled away half an hour today by having my teeth X-rayed. None of the technicians ran screaming, so presumably I'm not actually growing fangs from Angel-exposure, but the nice new Ideal Dentist is eyeing my wisdoms with that speculative look I so hate and mistrust in a dentist. I forsee a painful couple of days in my near future. *unchannels gypsy fortune-teller*

Must go and sleep. Last night rendered somewhat exhausting by vivid dreams about repeated encounters with an aunt in a largish institution of some sort which featured hundreds of people sleeping on rows of white mattresses on the floor. (In retrospect, this might also have been about teeth, although probably also about aunts. Either way, rather trippy.)

Random fun quotes for the day!

Off James & the Blue Cat, an amusingly self-deprecating British scriptwriter's blog, a glancing reference to the Terrifying Carnivorous Seagulls of St. Ives:
In D&D terms, a monster with a Challenge Rating of 4, Attacks: beak +6, flappy feet +3 and a ranged area effect weapon you really don't want to be on the wrong end of, even if it is supposed to be lucky. Also has skills: Sense Pasty and, Mob Tourist. Varient 5 hit dice Dire Seagull with Carry Off Small Child rumoured to exist, as yet only a rumour.

Time magazine interviewed Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman together, causing mass outbreaks of helpless fan squeeing and fainting. My favourite Gaiman quote, on the general all-round coolness of fandom at a con signing:
...we're ready to leave the stage. I look up and they have a bodyguard line of 30 Klingons. They're six-foot six and four-feet wide and they have the foreheads and they had linked arms. We were being lead off behind a human wall —a Klingon wall—of Klingon warriors. And I thought, how good does it get?.

And Joss on the Big Damn Movie: "This will be the greatest film since whatever film comes out right before it. And I'm not backing down from that."

Prophetic, given that it hasn't done as well at the box office as everyone hoped, although the reviews are generally good. Sigh. Cinema audiences. Like herding brain-dulled media zombies.

Excuse me, I have to go and discuss Terry Pratchett with a lively third-year class now. Academic life, such hell.

Being unable to stand the suspense any longer, I eventually simply mailed Ster-Kinekor. I have to say, I'm impressed - my query was answered within an hour. Serenity premieres in South Africa on the 18th November. As I thought, they're delaying it for the Christmas holidays, bastards. So we have to wait a month and a half. On the upside, we get it earlier than Malaysia and Peru.

Much as I would like to blame the Birthday Conspiracy for the fact that I've played ShadowMagic for two days solid (because it just looks so cool on this new screen), I know, deep down, that I've played ShadowMagic for two days solid because I have the approximate focus and self-control, work-wise, of something small and fluffy and ineffectual, probably drawn by Ursula Vernon. Goldarnit. Must ... finish ... Tolkien ... paper! Must also get self off butt in order to take car in for (a) electrical overhaul (random indicator and brake lights have died) and (b) mechanical overhaul (still drinking water like a fish). However, I vouchsafe to all you witterers the unhappy truth that probably I'll sit here all day playing ShadowMagic, possibly with a small break to maniacally practise up my recorder piece for Bardic. I have an exam meeting tomorrow, however, which will drag me kicking and screaming into some sort of activity, whether I like it or not. At the very least, running amok in the meeting with a blunt object, such as the Riverside Chaucer. (They tend to be lengthy and frustrating).

Have discovered two things this weekend, diametrically opposed in terms of value:
1. LiveJournal is disgusting over weekends for us mere dial-up plebes. It takes 20 minutes to load a page. (Probably exacerbated by IAfrica's connection foibles, which are also worse over weekends). This possibly explains the fact that I never seem to post on Saturdays, although conversely it utterly fails to explain the fact that I almost always post on Sundays.
2. I appear to share my birthday with Joss Whedon, if Meg's Boyfriend Page is to be believed. (And thank you, scroobious, for the link to that little time-waster!). How cool is that?

Some of today's slight dreaminess and tendency to revert to ShadowMagic may be because SABC2 chose to show Batman Forever really late last night, and I'm a tad short on sleep. Don't know why I've never got around to seeing that particular Batman movie before, since generally I adore superhero movies. It's a rampantly camp and ham little production, isn't it? (She says, laying on the assonance). It is my considered opinion that, Eternal Sunshine notwithstanding, Jim Carrey should be taken out back and shot in the overall interests of the human race, and that Tommy Lee Jones should know better. I ask you. Even Nicole Kidman was ham. It quite made Val Kilmer's characteristic tonelessness attractive by comparison. Also weird multiple personality tendencies in the dialogue: 90% of it was really bad, and the other 10% was inspired and screamingly funny. I suspect they hired Joss Whedon or someone to salt it with one-liners after the fact.