freckles_and_doubt | Entries tagged with music

Oh, dear. In pursuit of watering the burgeoning and increasingly verdant collection of pots in my back courtyard, I seem to have accidentally watered the Hobbit. He is slinking about the house at half his usual volume and twice his usual density, looking matted and hedgehog-spiky and somewhat cowed. I would be feeling more guilty except he's amusing like this :>.

In the Department of Random Ongoing Fangirling: so it turns out that if you slow the Sherlock theme down it sounds like something from a Tim Burton soundtrack.

Watch on YouTube

I am obscurely charmed by this. Particularly since it beautifully accompanies fanart such as, for example, that by La-Chapeliere-Folle on deviantart, which won't let me link to the image, phooey. The Sherlock/Burton crossover appears to be inevitable. I blame Sherlock's silhouette.

Random fanfic rec! surprisingly, not Sherlock. This is an exceptionally beautifully-written slow-burn Harry/Draco fic which does my favourite thing in Potterfic, which is to explore the manifest iniquities and logical flaws inherent in Rowling's Slytherin/Gryffindor stereotyping. She really doesn't do nuance or sophistication or real human impulse in her moralities. Fortunately many fanfic writers absolutely do. This one is set mostly in pub arguments and is amusing as well as true.

The subject line is because it's a beautiful sunny day and my car sound system is onto The Life Pursuit, the Belle & Sebastian album voted most likely to make me randomly happy. It's all catchy, boppy, whimsical tunes, and I am a slut for catchy.

I am Randomly Amused this morning.

My lovely new car is a lovesome thing, god wot, but it has a rather cheap and nasty sound system. As a result, I can't persuade it to play music off my MP3 player in any format other than through individual tracks in one ginormous string. This means that when it randomly resets, as it does occasionally if I don't switch the car off in exactly the right order, it starts at the top and works down, playing my musical collection in strict alphabetical order by (a) artist and (b) album title. The last time it did this I thought, right, clearly the Cosmic Wossnames are trying to tell me something, let's just let it. In the last week it has thus played through Arcade Fire and Bed on Bricks in short order and is currently in the middle of the more than elegant sufficiency of Belle & Sebastian which characterises my music collection. I am thoroughly enjoying the resulting slight whiplash, as well as the chance to rediscover odd corners of my musical taste I'd forgotten about.

The Rules dictate that I don't skip tracks or otherwise disturb the order, other than the obligatory repeat of "Crown of Love" and "Wake Up", because I'm physically incapable of listening to either track just once. (Other than that I have decided, on mature reflection, that "The Suburbs" is probably my favourite Arcade Fire album, possibly because "Wasted Hours".) I'd forgotten how much fun Bed on Bricks are - they're a local outfit of some maturity and skill, not to mention considerable iconoclastic whimsy ("large Nigerian..."), whose overall style is eclectic but sounds at times like Chilli Peppers circa "Californication". And, for no adequately defined reason I haven't actually listened to any Belle & Sebastian for months. They tend to land me on campus in the morning obscurely soothed regardless of how many actual BMWs have cut me off in traffic. Possibly it's the Scottish accents.
I think I posted the gifset of the cute wol bathing in a previous post, probably accompanied by the horrible moist owlet pun with which it was doing the rounds. Someone in my Tumblr feed unearthed the YouTube video which spawned it, which features not only the full bath experience (bathing birds are ridiculously cute, I love the air of ferocious concentration), but the bit where someone dries the bedraggled wol with a hair dryer. This makes me obscurely happy because I have rather lovely memories of my dad doing the same to his peregrines, when they'd been sitting on their block in the garden during a highveld thunderstorm. They do the same thing the wol does, spreading their wings to dry under them. I do like birds.

Watch on YouTube
Obligatory BC content: the Sherlock fandom is currently all up in arms because Benedict Cumberbatch, in an interview, was somewhat patronisingly dismissive of fanfic. (Not that this is anything new, he's characteristically a bit tone-deaf to fanfic issues and tends to make pronouncements which are clearly based on extremely sketchy knowledge; I suppose the fandom will eventually stop having small volcanic eruptions about it on the grounds that exhausting). What's tickling me no end, though, is the beautifully in-character fan responses: the current meme is to pick up on the rather outrageous interviewer phrasing of fanfiction as something which turns Sherlock into "a lustful cock monster". Current games: strategically place "lustful cock monster" into Sherlock dialogue on the "in bed" principle. (On John's forehead in the drunken Rizla game scene. Replacing SHERLOCK in the opening credits. "William Sherlock Lustful Cock Monster Holmes. If you’re looking for baby names.") Design new and ever more pink and sparkly t-shirts, icons and banners declaring "LUSTFUL COCK MONSTER" in defiant capitals and sprinkle them across the internet. Summarise the fic elements he mentions in the article and write actual fanfic to match, claiming that you're allowed because Benedict did. Etc, etc, etc.

I love this. Apart from the fact that it's given me the giggles all morning (particularly since I teach a Sherlock seminar on Wednesday afternoons and have spent most of the morning making screencaps and constructing a Powerpoint on "His Last Vow" in between internet noodling), this is the essence of fan production. Take an element in the canon text which is clearly not addressed to you (and this is almost always a female "you") and which is ignorant of your actual desires and interests. Appropriate the hell out of it. Comprehensively reject the version of you it enshrines. Recontextualise, reshape and reimagine it in ways which do authentically reflect you, and which incidentally comment somewhat trenchantly on the limitations of the original text. Share and enjoy.

I keep saying it: fanfic is a political act. The fact that it's enjoyable is almost incidental.

This would be all a lot easier without the discovery that my camera has a broken catch on its battery lid, which is why it's been telling me that the battery is flat after four photographs for the last few months. I have thrown out, with unnecessary imprecations, an awful lot of perfectly fine batteries. Further book stack photos are taken with my cellphone, with something of a reduction in quality, apologies.

There has been something deeply satisfying about arriving at the realisation that both Jasper Fforde and Gregory Maguire annoy me utterly and don't have to be given shelf space. Also, that while I enjoyed the C. J. Cherryh, I look elsewhere these days when I have a yen for feminist sf, and will probably never re-read these. And Kim Stanley Robinson is Worthy But Often Incomprehensible, and life's too short.

The subject line is Franz Ferdinand. I have been rediscovering Franz Ferdinand as driving music over the last few weeks, it's bloody good fun, although falling very distinctly into the category of "Rock Music Which Makes Me Drive Slightly Ferally". The song is "Live Alone", which has been making me laugh because it's so bloody apposite just at the moment. Anthem adopted, forthwith.

This is mostly for

wolverine_nun and

noirzette, although any of you witterers with a musical background I wot not of are free to enjoy it as well :>. Musical notation as described by cats. This has just made me giggle for five minutes straight.

In additional to felinious musical notation, the dreary grey cactus desert that is work is currently being enlivened by (a) teaching third-years internet eroticism, with added Powerpoint, Secret Diaries and clips from Avenue Q, (b) the memory of an excellent girls' night at Fork last night with the Jo and the aforementioned

noirzette (tapas and that Black Pearl cabernet/shiraz blend), (c) the joyous contemplation of the metric buttload of public holidays infesting the next few weeks (if I play my cards right I can have a four-day weekend followed by a four-day week followed by a three-day weekend followed by a two-day week followed by a five-day weekend, score!) and (d) the next in the Chocolate Digestive Biscuit saga, which this week is the miniature Woolworths ones. These are generally a pleasing thing, although slightly chewier and less melty in the biscuit region than the larger versions, and surprisingly difficult to eat neatly. Even if you consume the whole thing in one bite you still end up with chocolatey fingers. I'm going to have to extend the experiment to find the optimal eating position. Darn.

Further to the Fork experience (Fork is great! lovely food and only very slightly hipster, as befits a Long Street joint), I note with some alarm that my driving skills have a serious deficiency. I'm significantly bad at driving a social expedition into town, which in hindsight is perfectly logical, since it's not something I've ever done. I've driven small/old cars for long enough that I'm never actually designated driver for social groups, someone else with a larger car always drives. I'm thus really bad at (a) navigating into town from friends' houses, and (b) concentrating on the road while chatting. Given that the Great DVT Debacle and associated Warfarin seems to have permanently shrunken my booze capacity, I end up drinking a lot less than most of my compatriots, which means it's only logical for me to be designated driver a lot of the time, which means I'll get lots of practice in. Score!

The subject line, as is only inevitable, is from the musical Cats, specifically the Jellicle variety. Jellicle cats sing jellicle chants.

I wish to report the following, in mitigation of a really long post hiatus:

The complete inability of the campus network to load an LJ post page, suggesting I have to flee this sinking LJ ship sometime soon, this is ridiculous.
A return to work after two days at home battling the sinusitis/glandular fever/chronic fatigue Trifecta Of Doom, which finally caught up with me after the reg/orientation hellperiod.
Three separate students in tears in my office today over my inability to wave a magic wand and cause the rules to cease to apply to them. This is a representative sample of the last few weeks.
An addiction to chocolate digestives. (The Woolies ones have lovely crumbly biscuits with substandard limp pale chocolate coating. The McVities biscuits are chewier and not quite as good, but they have a dark chocolate version which is my current favourite. The weather is still hot enough that chocolate digestives are somewhat messy and can only be eaten in pairs, sandwiched together. This is my story and I’m sticking to it. Further dispatches from the Chocolate Digestive Addiction Front to follow.)
A retreat into a Skyrim replay, or to be more accurate a re-re-re-replay. This is a traditional summer escape from (a) orientation/registration woes and (b) the heat. All that snow is very soothing, although I still can’t tactically outface frost mages worth a damn and end up filled full of ice spikes and immobilised shortly before being dead. Then again, on a re-re-re-replay I’m playing on Expert level, so there’s that.
The conviction, over the last week of car music, that the Fratellis exhibit possibly unhealthy fixations with (a) romancing slightly demented and dysfunctional ladies, (b) romancing older women and (c) sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, or at the very least sex, booze and rock’n’roll. Figures. Also, memo to self, must acquire their new album.
A fast-developing fear of the house-hunting process.
Exhaustion.

The subject line is from the Fratellis, "Whistle for the Choir", one of my favourites of theirs - they actually write lovely ballady things. In honour of the two-hour load shedding power cut this afternoon, which was a slightly demented mix of frustrating beyond belief, and curiously restful.

Oh, lord, it's orientation season. Close on 500 bemused first-years are wandering the campus in small herds, being corralled in a large lecture venue at intervals while I harangue them on the mysteries of curriculum design. With Powerpoint. Yesterday was an 11-hour day. Today was better, being only a 9-hour day, although it provided varied interest by being wall-to-wall orientation all morning, and then wall-to-wall briefing curriculum advisors all afternoon. There's a subtle, surreal dislocation in briefing the same curriculum structures from opposite ends only a few hours apart.

Tonight I should have been allocating advisors to registration sessions, but my subconscious, with unerring accuracy, leaped salmon-like from the depths and kiboshed the sending of the necessary files from work to home so I could work on them. (I know I pressed "send" on the email, but it never arrived and my outbox is innocent of it. Aetheric bears appear to have eaten it. Most mysterious.) I was practically forced to spend the evening reading fanfic instead. Today I have discovered Sherlock/Firefly crossovers, Sherlock/Star Trek crossovers, and a Sherlock/Winnie-the-Pooh one that I've actually refrained from reading on the grounds that my sanity is fragile enough as it is. At least the Star Trek is explicable on the grounds of Vulcans.

All of the above being the case, I'm completely buggered but surprisingly low on stress. I have, it appears, reached a point of familiarity and facility with the large-scale logistical demands of my job that I simply drift along doing the necessary in good time, properly, with only half my attention. So far no wheels have fallen off. It is also pleasantly cool and rainy this evening, mitigating somewhat the tragic fact that today has felt like Durban, i.e. a sort of muggy soup. I am now going to bed, on the grounds that I'm dead and also mosquitoes are eating my feet. Please confidently expect me to return to normal human function, like socialising and interesting posts, somewhere around March.

Subject line is from Magnetic Fields, "The Horrible Party", which sounds like something Edward Gorey should draw (actually, given the lyrics he probably has already.) Fields are still the flavour du jour in my car music buffet. Love at the Bottom of the Sea is their latest album, it's slowly growing on me as it ambles through the rotation for the umpteenth time. My dear, it was heaven until they ran out of champagne.

Arcade Fire, Reflektor. Arrived today. Here are dispatches from the front.

Wait, do I have the right disk? Is this Arcade Fire? This isn't the usual textured indie pop/rock sound, it's danceable. Lots of beat, synth, electronics. When did Arcade Fire start doing disco? Or is it more 80s dance? Must have wrong disk in sleeve.
Oh, wait, yes, that's Win Butler's voice. And the classic Arcade Fire layering and texturing and instrumental density and general tendency to head off in new, complex directions without warning. Characteristic melody lines swing in occasionally.
Am bopping quietly in seat.
Sounds a bit like the Bowie reinvention circa Scary Monsters or so, with a touch of Outside.
Wait, wtf, was that a David Bowie vocal for a line or so?
Quick google reveals that it was indeed a David Bowie vocal for a line or so. *awards self fangirl Cold Recognition merit badge*.
This is an extended and rather dirty flirtation with rock and pop history.
I miss their violin.
Nice drums. Not quite African, perhaps Caribbean? Keep cropping up.
Why do I love this? Not my usual thing at all.
That was thrash punk, but only very briefly.
Wait, end of the disk already? They've split one massively-long album into two short disks. Seems a bit unnecessary.
Oh, hello Arcade Fire, there you are. Disk 2 is apparently gentler/lighter, less danceable, more like the Arcade Fire we know and love and are generally intimidated by.
Still very electronic, but at least the violin swims by occasionally.
I love this track, it has the classic Arcade Fire build and soar, what is it? "Awful Sound". Are you fucking with us, Arcade Fire?
80s synthpop flashbacks. That that didn't go so well for Bowie in critical terms, but I'm really enjoying their take on the sound, possibly at least partially because nostalgia. They seem to be stuffing around with Orpheus/Eurydice motifs.
These tracks should feel overlong, but really don't.
The fuck? The end of this track is apparently six minutes of vague, ethereal electronic improvisations over what seems to be the sound of a tape rewinding. Strangely soothing.
OK, hooked. I love this. It's not an album so much as a sort of explosion; it jolts you out of your expectations on a more or less ongoing basis. This album does not deal in comfort zones other than momentarily, and only because they lull you into a false sense of security. They're doing fascinating things with lyrics and theme which I'm not even properly aware of because I'm so submerged in the sound, and which I may start to unwrap after a few (dozen) more listens. This is an album to swim in.
I mostly love Arcade Fire for their texture. This definitely delivers. It's also, of course, a direct pandering to my deep-in-my-bones and only semi-intellectual love of anything which consciously stuffs with genre and structural expectation. The Orpheus/Eurydice motifs are semi-ironic, because this sure as hell doesn't lose anything when it looks back.

Subject line is that warning they put on rear view mirrors. Arcade Fire seems to be generally fascinated by reflection and light. Black mirrors, neon, flashbulbs. And with things not being what you expect.
Chunks of this post ganked off my Twitter, incidentally, assembled here for your convenience, or possibly mine.

I have a very cheap and nasty MP3 player, which means that my car stereo system is incapable of recognising a folder level and thus of doing any more than playing through the entire list of songs either (a) from the beginning, alphabetically by artist, with only about a 30% chance of actually displaying the artist's name rather than a tasteful and euphemistic row of stars, or (b) randomly. I have taken to hitting the random button until I arrive at something that appeals to me, at which point I scroll back and play the whole album, often repeatedly. I am thus re-acquainting myself with odd corners of my music collection without particular plan, which is why I've oscillated madly between the Velvet Underground and David Byrne/Brian Eno, and which is why I am currently immersed in the Manic Street Preachers.

Preachers do damn fine covers. Possibly my favourite song of theirs is their cover of "Suicide is Painless", the theme from MASH, but they also have a B-sides/oddities album which has an entire disk of covers, including particularly fun versions of "Raindrops Keep Falling", "Take the Skinheads Bowling", and a deadpan "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" which always gives me the giggles. They do covers with enormous enjoyment and verve, it's extremely infectious. What has colonised my brain at the moment, however, is their version of the Rolling Stones's "Out of Time", which is a joyous little piece and more catchy than it has any right to be even before Preachers get hold of it. (I attribute entirely to my current Sherlock fixation my enjoyment of its bouncy violin bits). I present this to you in the spirit of share and enjoy, and because I've been compelled to play it six times in a row since yesterday and someone else may as well have the ear-worm. But at the very least it'll brighten your day.

Watch on YouTube

Hobbit has some dashed odd tastes, really. I mean, apart from his low predilection for plotting my death by occupying precisely the spot near my feet where I am least likely to see him and most likely to fall over him, he has recently evinced a tendency to consume, with every evidence of enthusiasm, (1) toothpaste (via drinking water out of my basin when I've just finished cleaning my teeth), and (b) lemongrass. There's a perfectly good catgrass bush planted in the herb garden, sporting that kind of spiky Einstein hairstyle which says the cats frequently graze it down, but Hobbit spurns it in favour of the lemongrass next door. I do not think he has Thai ancestry, and am concerned that the lemongrass leaves may slice his tongue, they're sharp.

I am, thank FSM, in the happy position of having just finished my marking obligations for the year, which means I face the prospect of a weekend absolutely uncolonised by other obligations except the usual research ones, which I have really rather a lot of experience in completely ignoring, but may toy with in a desultory fashion just because. It has also been something of a revelation to have a modicum of teaching and research attached to my actual job, which means I can sit in my office of an afternoon and merrily plot encyclopedia entries on Snow White films as an absolutely legit and integral part of my day. (This entry is only two months overdue, it's making me bizarrely reluctant, for some reason. I blame Kristen Stewart).

Hmmm, I should probably do my taxes. Is it odd that I really enjoy doing my taxes? Apart from the rather nicely designed and intuitive SA system, it tickles my Lawful Good.

Subject line, for no other reason than my MP3 player shuffled to it this morning in the car and made me happy, from "My Big Nurse" on the Brian Eno/David Byrne collaboration album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, which is a marvellous thing and you should have a listen. Also, apologies for the essentially random and inconsequential nature of this post. The moons of Saturn got in my eyes.

Several Things!

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.
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).
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.
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.
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.

Things Which Feel Odd:

Climbing back into your driver's seat after picking the car up from the car wash. Someone else has driven it. The seat and the rear-view mirror are in the wrong place, and it inevitably takes me about three traffic lights to adjust them so they feel right. But the whole car has a strange air of the indefinably alien. Something's different, but you can't tell what it is. It isn't your space any more. (Although it's certainly cleaner).
Spending a happy half hour noodling around on the piano (currently I'm trying to play Arcade Fire, a project doomed to failure owing to their texture fetish, which means you actually need six hands, twelve people and a violin to have any stab at reproducing the sound) and then trying to type. I both type and play with some facility, fast, and without looking at my hands, and apparently cross-wiring happens. My fingers keep trying to do arpeggios instead of QWERTY. I have to consciously rein them in for a bit before all the right circuits click in. Very odd feeling.
Christmas in July. Particularly when we're even more disorganised than usual, and it was actually Christmas in July in August in September in October. That is, last night. Roast chicken and ham and all the trimmings and Jo did barszcz and uszka for starters (garlicky Polish beet soup with mushroom dumplings, for both of which I have an unholy passion) and I made chocolate berry trifle (because Christmas pudding is of the divvil), and we ate and drank too much and pulled crackers and exchanged ridiculous presents in large quantities, and listened to Annie Lennox sing English Christmas carols. It feels odd and wrong, though, because it's all the good bits of Christmas, and none of its socially-mandated unpleasant ones. No enormous awkward obligatory extended family jamborees with added fighting and guilt trips, or expensive present expectations which entail battling the consumerist hordes through acres of tinsel and product-pushing. Although I did go forth and buy myself an actual Blu-Ray home theatre system this morning, to replace our almost-defunct hi-fi, which was a conscious decision to spend my November bonus early and thus was almost Christmas-shoppy. Except for me, not other people. Feels odd.

Subject line from Arcade Fire's "Wasted Hours", which is for the most part not actually thematically appropriate at all but was on my mind and is a gentle, wistful, beautiful thing. Also, I think googling how to spell "barszcz" has infected me, I keep trying to blockquote this paragraph by typing "blokqvote".

Bugger, I forgot to go back and do the May attribution thing. Excelsior!

2nd May, "it's not about what you love, it's about how you love it". Quoting Wil Wheaton on being a geek, from a response at a Q&A (linked from that post). The man is very sane.
5th May, "the same old painted lady". The Mandatory David Bowie Quote, this one from "Song for Bob Dylan", slightly mis-applied because I was talking about wearing make-up. You know, I'd never realised until I looked properly at those lyrics how involuted the imagery is. "Here she comes again / The same old painted lady / From the brow of a super brain..." The image is actually Athena (wisdom) emerging from the brain of Zeus, but the song snarls up the ideas so you're not sure if the painted lady is actually Dylan's wisdom, or if she's some sort of harpy-like figure to be vanquished by his songs. Typical Bowie flow--of-consciousness, in fact.
8th May, "I'd much rather have a mansion in the hills". Crowded House, "A mansion in the slums". Somewhere round the third verse they stop trying to differentiate between a caravan in the hills and a mansion in the slums, and decide they'd rather have it all. Word.
13th May, "the stars look very different today". Bonus Mandatory David Bowie Quote, this time clearly from "Space Oddity", appropriately enough since I was talking about Chris Hadfield covering "Space Oddity" from the International Space Station, and yes, it bloody still makes me weepy.
24th May, "you may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air". T.S. Eliot, "Macavity, the Mystery Cat", from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. You should have recognised that one. And not because of Andrew Lloyd Webber.
28th May, "one day will flash and send you crashing through the ceiling". From "Thank heavens for little girls", jolly old Lerner and Loewe, originating in Gigi, but I think I probably know the Perry Como version, FSM knows from what source. The aether, perhaps.
30th May, "what she says is all right by me, I kinda like that style". Talking Heads, "The lady don't mind", and if you're anything like me the mere reading of this sentence will have infallibly ear-wormed you with the song in question, which will resist all exorcism for upwards of a week. Catchy little bugger.

This should be the last ever Giant Attribution Post, on account of how I've started footnoting posts with an attribution for the subject line, just because. It's remotely possible that my academia may be showing.

In other news:

I write like
Ray Bradbury

I Write Like. Analyze your writing!

I am deeply flattered.

Cat Valente, on the other hand, writes always and only like Cat Valente. The Shoot-Out at Burnt Corn Ranch Over the Bride of the World is a sort of weird mythic western thing which causes me love and despair and illuminating pain, like a crowbar inserted to the head and twisted. Read it and weep. (My subject line is her penultimate sentence, which I steal because, in its precise moment and context, it's perfect in the way that Mozart is perfect).

Oh, hooray, as of today I am on leave for two and a half weeks. Given that I've spent the last week dragging myself around with a cold in the head and a hacking, bring-me-a-lyric-soprano-and-a-garret sort of cough, this is possibly not a moment too soon. I am surprisingly unrepentant at the idea that for the rest of the month there are no curriculum advisors available for any strangely dislocated student who happens to wander in over the vac. They can just deal, is all. There's work ethic, and then there's just silly. While there are not sufficient wild horses in the multiverse to prevent me from actually reading my work email while I'm on leave, I have sternly resolved to answer only those I deem emergencies. (All the students who email me will infallibly assume that it's an emergency, but I reserve the right to deal with their post-adolescent narcissism as I see fit).

As a good start to my holiday, you absolutely need to watch this Jazz-Age-style cover of Mackelmore's "Thrift Shop". Because of reasons. Also because the band is called "Postmodern Jukebox" and should therefore be rewarded.

Watch on YouTube

Subject line quote is, strangely enough, from Mackelmore's "Thrift Shop". Some of the other options were even ruder.

Today I appear to have bullied my therapist, been excessively nice to a string of students, and taken a flamethrower to my Intray Of Doom, which was starting to achieve sentience via the compaction heating of its organic layers. This appears to be guilt in operation, not least because I am now badly overdue on one paper submission and slightly overdue on the other, but spent the last few days playing Morrowind nonetheless. In mitigation, Monday afternoon through to the Wednesday public holiday (yay workers!) was rendered more than usually null and void by a lovely gastric bug, which means I'm still pale and nauseous and inclined to dry crackers and staring moodily into my tea. However, the weasel-like cunning of my Cunning Plan is now revealed: having a monthly Acknowledgement of Intellectual Debts post is a free and ready-made theme about which I don't have to think very hard, so hooray!

Things Wot I Have Referenced In April:

4th April: "how do you like your blueeyed boy / Mister Death?". This is, of course, e e cummings, the poem without a formal title, but usually referenced as "Buffalo Bill's". I have an unremitting adoration for e e cummings, I love the jerky, fragmented life and colour and convoluted wit of his poems. This one talks about heroism with a wry, partially deflating tone which makes that last line, the one I quote, amazingly complex. The post was talking about the Iain Banks cancer news; like Buffalo Bill, Banks seems to me to be inherently associated with death, and with a dark and deconstructive sense of heroism.
5th April: "worlds collide and days are dark". I'm quoting the lyrics to Adele's "Skyfall", in the post reviewing the movie. I remain unimpressed by the movie, but I still love that song, and the quote covers both the clash of genres and the descent into Gothic which I found in the film.
11th April: "one day in spring I'll take him down to the road". Belle & Sebastian lyrics, to "Dog on Wheels". Beautifully appropriate to a post about those little ambulatory robots in the park.
19th April: "a truth universally acknowledged". The post was being madly enthused about The Lizzie Bennet Diaries; anyone who didn't recognise the quote from the opening sentence of Austen's Pride and Prejudice should jolly well be ashamed.
22nd April: "I'm getting too old for this sort of thing". Star Wars, Obi-Wan. Of course. Slightly lateral given that the clip in the post was Harrison Ford, but he's really getting old.
28th April: "Drive-in Saturday". Title of the David Bowie song, not entirely thematically appropriate. In retrospect, "Science Fiction Double Feature" would have conveyed more of the movie club multiple-film sense without the resonances of weird post-apocalyptic desexualisation, but on the other hand I was talking about Iron Sky...

Today's subject line, incidentally, a quote from Wil Wheaton, from this lovely meditation on geekery or nerdery and what it actually means. He's right: it's about the intensity of the connection: that the actual object of all that affection is purely secondary, which is why geeks can flock together even if they variously represent DC and Marvel, or Star Wars and Star Trek. Given that this subject-line roundup has referenced a good proportion of my nerdy loves (poetry, Gothic, Belle & Sebastian, Austen, online narrative, Star Wars, David Bowie), it felt appropriate.

One of the advantages of driving the Evil Landlord's old car, mitigating somewhat the exhaust fumes in the cab, the non-operational inside catch to the driver's door and the lack of rear bumper, is that the radio works. I've ended up listening to 5FM on the way to and from campus a great deal, the best of a non-perfect set of options given my music tastes. (Everyone plays rap and hip-hop, there's no escaping it, but at least 5FM plays less R&B and more SA alt/rock than KFM, although in this case "more" means "slightly above zero". And I like their DJs, who are frequently rude and iconoclastic). This 5FM exposure has had various interesting knock-on effects, among them a growing fondness for Desmond and the Tutus and an ability to collapse giggling at this particularly delirious work of fan-art, which crosses The Hobbit with "Thrift shop" and which causes me to think "What up I got a big elk" and lose it every time they play the song. (Warning: click on "Thrift Shop" link at your own peril, it's insanely catchy).

Today, however, they played a weird St. Patrick's day mix which featured a good minute or so of "Tubthumping". I barely knew this song until recently, Chumbawamba hadn't really colonised my musical life even back in their heyday, but a month or so back I ran into a hysterically funny piece of Avengers fanfic which includes, among other things, a drunken birthday party at which Thor, Sif and the Warriors Three are introduced to "Tubthumping", which appears to nicely encapsulate their warrior-booze ethos. The scene amused me enough that I dug up the song on Youtube, whereupon it promptly ear-wormed me, and has continued to do so ever since at random intervals after random triggers including mentions of booze, the Warriors Three, parties, tubs, the whisky drink or resilience. With any luck today's subject line has ear-wormed you, thus enacting the only possible response to an ear-worm, which is to pass the bloody thing on. (For the record, although to do so is terminally unhip, I have to say that I rather enjoy "Tubthumping" and there are far worse ear-worms).

I owe an apology to the nice ladies of the book club. Yesterday was something of a blur: I woke up with a bit of a headache, which proceeded to worsen, with side orders of sweating and nausea, throughout my 8am psychologist's session. (It didn't help that my control was thus way down when she hit a couple of major nerves with meticulous accuracy, causing me to lie in the chair sobbing jerkily between distracted assertions of "No, no, it's fine, you're absolutely right, this is an important insight.") I crawled back home in a slightly shattered state, called in sick, took insane amounts of sinus meds and fell into bed for five hours, which helped a great deal. It did, however, mean that I spent the rest of the day shambling around the house in a dazed and zombified state, completely not registering that it was (a) Thursday, (b) the 14th, and (c) book club night. When Tracy phoned in an enquiring sort of way to find out where the hell I was, I was peaceably making myself french toast for supper in an unwashed, rumpled and generally stunned-herring sort of persona entirely unsuited to leaving the house for any reason. Sorry, ladies. I plead lack of brain, mostly because it was too busy biting me.

Yesterday wasn't good, but today is better, probably because of all the extra sleep. Also, two things.
(1) Veronica Mars movie kickstarter. Official, Rob Thomas-led, all the stars on board. Eeeeeeee!
(2) Leopard in a box. Your argument is invalid, because leopard in a box.

(The pic has led the usual phantom Tumblr reblog existence for a few days, the link above is the earliest one I can find. Tumblr's psychotic defence of their touching belief that a reblog constitutes an actual source drives me fifty sorts of demented).

It's bucketing down outside, and in the interstices between lectures the foyer of my building is filled with damp-puppy students staring dolefully out into the downpour amid the smell of wet hair. We are clearly in autumn, a season of pleasing damp and benevolent chill, and I have broken out the first boots of the season. I am happy. I am, however, also faintly worried to consider the inexorable drift of my language vis à vis students towards dehumanising diminutives - when they're not gazelles, they're puppies. The latter is perhaps a more healthy characterisation along the maternal/cute axis than than the former, which has a lurking hint of the predatory. I do, of course, owe the "gazelles" designation to

starmadeshadow, who views the quivering herds from the vantage point of her own leopard-like stalk. She is planning on returning her big-cat self to Cape Town more permanently in the near future, causing much callooing and, for that matter, callaying in the ranks.

I have spent the morning immersed in the inevitable realities of my working life, viz. checking student transcripts. This has vouchsafed to me several insights, most notably (a) that my advisors, train I them never so carefully, are bloody useless at checking course pre-requisites despite repeated reminders and pointed inscriptions on lists of "common advisor mistakes". Insight (b) is, however, more interesting and rather less depressing. Honestly, the skills and experience on which I draw most frequently in this job are those of my frivolous role-playing proclivities. I spend my days wrangling student character sheets, the lists of numbers which quantify experience and achievement, each individual mapped carefully within the constraints of the system. I am alert to rule-breaking, to player dissatisfaction and lack of success, to the judicious balance between challenge and reward, test and fulfilment. I also rely heavily on the experience gained from DMing players like

rumint, whose control of the system and its potential exploits is absolute and terrifying. It's all one in the eye, really, to anyone who thinks of D&D and beyond as a waste of time. Not only is play intrinsically about experimentation and learning in a low-stakes environment, it's about understanding the shaping of behaviour through structure. Which also explains, I suppose, why I've drifted inexorably into genre theory in my academic life.

Talking about genre: David Bowie is busy releasing his first album in about ten years. The one single, "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)", and particularly its video, is an utterly fascinating disquisition on fame, identity, androgyny, and an explicit and rather wry dialogue with his own past. Also, Tilda Swinton. The music is very Reality-era, which works for me.

Watch on YouTube

Mid-orientation/registration, and I am dead tired like a dead tired thing being tired in a lake of tiredness. Clearly dragging one's way through two intense weeks of organisation and lecturing on top of what appears to have been viral bronchitis is somewhat exhausting. Odd, that. My voice has mostly returned, although it's considerably more of a contralto than my wont. Hopefully the students are at least enjoying the husky seductive bit. Matters may also improve given that I slept properly last night for the first time in a week, the racking coughs having hitherto kept me awake. Health, how I do want you back.

I am dead enough that today's tabloid billboard caused me to giggle for ten minutes straight.

CRIPPLED CONMAN HAD SEX IN MOSQUE!

Perfect tabloid: layer the transgressions until they become completely ridiculous. If we were still doing Microfiction I'd love to see the narratives people might invent to reach that unlikely apotheosis.

Still in the Department of Being Easily Amused, Sarah Rees Brennan's summary of Bujold's Vorkosigan novels is amusingly apt. (Spoilery, if you haven't read them, and if so why not?, but pleasingly acute if you have).

In other random news, I have discovered Everything Everything. Their music is poppy, but complex and quirky. They're more electronic than I usually tolerate, and I also don't usually enjoy falsetto, so I'm a bit weirded that they're demanding my attention as much as they are. (The music video for "Kemosabe" is also interesting). Whether it remains complex and quirky once I've had some sleep is another story entirely.

Watch on YouTube

A random Christmas post! happy festive wossnames to you and yours, and have a handful of randomly off-beat semi-Christmassy things.

Ursula Vernon is doing the 12 days of Christmas with things from her garden, but she has posted her usual Christmas image, this one entitled "Fake Christmas tree".

As always with her art, it's the narrative which makes it. "Bob the hamster was pleased with his new Christmas tree. It didn’t drop needles, it wasn’t a fire hazard, and it didn’t look fake like all those cheap plastic ones. It did wander off occasionally, but it always came back when he filled the food dish."

Next year I'm simply putting antlers and Christmas lights on Hobbit.

In a surprise move where it's not actually David Bowie, here's a rather lovely, jazzy rendition of "Little Drummer Boy" off the Charlie Brown Christmas movie. I'm always amazed we never had a family tradition of watching that, my dad was madly into Peanuts. Of course, having an actual TV and video player at any point might have helped.

Watch on YouTube

This was a hot tip off JGL's Twitter.

Finally, things ending in "olly" include "wolly", as in having a lot of wols.

dancing_crow pointed me to these, which are ceramic versions of all the Doctors as wols. They're ridiculously expensive, which is the only thing preventing me from acquiring Doctors Nine through Eleven posthaste, but beautiful and clearly worth every cent. There's something about the Doctor which visually translates very well to wols, quite apart from the pun on the hooting.

This concludes your scheduled Christmas content. I shall now proceed to have a day as much unlike Christmas as humanly possible by playing Skyrim, mostly because its snowy landscapes make me feel cooler in these damned heatwaves. Bring me another planet, this one is skraaatched.

Current Mood: do they know it's Christmas at all?

It's apparently the sixth of the month. Not sure how that happened. It's gone past in a blur of meetings and stressed students. I had a very weird dream last night in which I was exploring a derelict haunted house in the woods somewhere, and kept encountering a ghost of a 4-year-old girl in a black dress who ran through the rooms with a fairly cheerful, focused, childlike intent, and looked perfectly substantial except for her tendency to run through people. I think my subconscious thinks I'm not real.

It does mean that I'm unfashionably late to acknowledge my intellectual debts, and the Duchess will have my head off forthwith. Consequently, Words Wot I Have Swiped In November:

2nd: Arcade Fire, "Wake Up", my second favourite song of theirs, and one of the ones I was rhapsodising about in the post.
5th: slightly sadistic Guy Fawkes rhymes. I've always loved the phrase "Gunpower, treason and plot", it's magnificently satisfying. Something about the balance of assonance with the scansion (the 3-2-1 syllable arc is pleasingly rhythmic) and the powerful plosive punch of "plot".
8th: I am quoting stoner-Fran Krantz in Cabin in the Woods. The bit where he arrives driving with a bong.
20th: my contractually obligated David Bowie quote, from "Always Crashing the Same Car", slightly doom-ladenly given that I was talking about taking my driver's test. (Again).
26th: the phrase is, of course, John Scalzi's. And highly characteristic.
27th: "Train in Vain" is a Clash song that I actually know better from the Manic Street Preachers cover. It's one of those weird songs which doesn't actually have the title phrase anywhere in the lyrics.
29th: if you don't recognise "The Hunting of the Snark" I'm saddened and disappointed.

Current Mood: contemplative

Picture courtesy of

first_fallen, who panders most kindly to my wollecular proclivities. I should reciprocate with more pandas and llamas and the like.

Most wols seem to disapprove utterly of most things. It's a wol thing. I, on the other hand, disapprove utterly of having been in an uninterrupted and unrelenting selection committee meeting from 7.30am to 5.30pm yesterday, during which time the chair issued us all with Red Bull and I scribbled approximately fifty-six curvy wol and kitty doodles all over my notes. It was a far more enjoyable selection committee than Monday's six-hour one, which degenerated into fire and blood and unnecessary wrangling, but I'm still dead.

I'm also not sure if it's Monday's meeting which made me wander around all yesterday and today with the Pet Shop Boys' "In suburbia" in my head, although to be fair it may also be the weird Avengers/werewolf slash fic I was reading. Hmmm.

Current Mood: ded
Current Music: Pet Shop Boys

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Another sunny day, I met you up in the garden
tell me what the specials are today, I'm feeling special
I could be happy on my own
can you sing at the same time in more than one key?
it's a big, big city and the lights are all out
why, why are we at this horrible party?
objects in mirror may be closer than they appear
my poor old-fashioned baby
I'm counting all the possibilities for dancing on this lazy afternoon
if I could make the world as pure and strange as what I see
the wind it takes you where it wants to go
You need a seed and a dark place.
I'm hella happy, that's a bargain, bitch
it's not about what you love, it's about how you love it
I! GET! KNOCKED! DOWN! butIgetupagain
the interconnectedness of everything
turn me over I'm done
things ending in "olly"
oh my fur and whiskers!
Wednesday wol disapproves utterly

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Theme: Purple Haze by timeasmymeasure

Freckles & Doubt

With my mastery of narrative structure I should be ruling the cosmos by now.

Entries tagged with music

Another sunny day, I met you up in the garden

tell me what the specials are today, I'm feeling special

I could be happy on my own

can you sing at the same time in more than one key?

it's a big, big city and the lights are all out

why, why are we at this horrible party?

objects in mirror may be closer than they appear

my poor old-fashioned baby

I'm counting all the possibilities for dancing on this lazy afternoon

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

the wind it takes you where it wants to go

You need a seed and a dark place.

I'm hella happy, that's a bargain, bitch

it's not about what you love, it's about how you love it

I! GET! KNOCKED! DOWN! butIgetupagain

the interconnectedness of everything

turn me over I'm done

things ending in "olly"

oh my fur and whiskers!

Wednesday wol disapproves utterly

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December 2024

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