You had plenty money 1922

cynicalcylon has a new kitty. Which I accidentally managed to name. Damn mindmelding. Say hello to My Apprentice. So now I'm threatening to introduce a hamster by the name of Fluffi-Wan into its life.

Everything appears to be sorted for discworld.

Really need to get started on preliminary research for nano. which also involves narrowing my options down so by doing/checking how much research is involved I can figure out whether it's possible. (see last year's peninsula wars girl!soldier option - did the research and realised it really needed to percolate into my hindbrain properly to write it, so went for the 1920s valet fic instead as I could surf that 'verse with ease)

Oh, and poke the Dean-as-Trickster-disciple and see what I want it to be. angle, pov, etc, and plot. plot would help. Because if the entire thing boils down to the great revelation, I might as well just be writing a drabble. It's like those crossovers where there appears to be nothing more than the OMG/you are so weird reaction. I want substance, not a Jerry Springer reunion. at least put a damn case in there that both sets can contribute to. Read a truly horrific Supernatural/Inception crossover recently where the Inception team were hired to get into Dean's head...but never went anywhere with it. a), discovered within two seconds (which makes sense considering Dean has done plenty of lucid dreaming in canon - djinn, Gabriel, other angels) but no exploration of the dream/dream state at all, and as soon as there was discovery, they were awake. Uh...no, dream state doesn't work like that in Inception *or* Supernatural. b) 'everyone's coupled up, isn't this weird!' c) 'OMG Angels seriously?' d) Team Free Will: 'Zachariah hired you, now stay out of the way while we fix this.' (the crappy writing, exposition mouthpieces and dialogue didn't help)

Poking sheepskin aviator jackets on ebay and online as my current one was starting to get a bit creaky towards the enter of last winter. There's a good one in my size on ebay for £27 but ...center zip, dammit. Problem of being picky and wanting one with a side zip. Worth buying this and then waiting to see if a decent one comes along (probs at £100+ :sigh:)?

Question for americans and other foreigners: How obvious/distinct is British style/fashion? I can tell Germans a mile off, and you can tell american tourists, but a bit more hazy on Spanish/Dutch/Polish etc.

And, because I'm curious : describe me to a stranger. or describe my output.

Those of you on the barrowmanonline yahell pit o' voles and fail list:

George announced that ADWD was going to be aired on BBC America.

I replied to the list with what I thought was a reasonable discussion topic - ie, what kind of audience they'd think they'd be getting aside from the JB obsessed, since you don't have the personal investment of following it each week and ringing for your favourite - because the competition aired nearly two years ago, the result is done and dusted, and everyone knows Lee won. I've never heard of them re-running pop idol...

George has just emailed me off-list :

( my original response )
And like I said, George emailed me back off-list with this :
( George's response )

Cue me facepalming and replying :

um, yes, that was what I was asking of the list - who they thought would be watching it. i was interested in what the list thought because I've never heard of tv channels re-running the 'vote for your favourite' pop-idol type shows. America's next top model, yes, where the public has no vote, but not the ones where the viewers voted.

....Missing the point much? Considering the list was discussing it to hell and back when it aired....

working from home, and for some reason i'm getting quicker loading times for web pages through the remote desktop (have to access through IE. :shudder:) than I am on the stuff that's actually on my laptop. In other news, started forcibly introing one work mate to firefox yesterday to see if that would make any difference to crashing issues.
Me : you will learn to like it. And you will never go back. IE IS BAD FOR YOUR SOUL.

In other news, listening to radio 1 because i can't be arsed to go into my music store on my work computer (how many musicals can you fit on one pc). Had slightly weird experience of 'this dj is slightly annoying but tolerable, voice is familiar, but can't figure out who it is...' then she mentioned her name a couple of hours in. Sarah Cox. My god. The person I wanted to stab through the eyeballs for being such a complete twit a few years back? Huh. Appears that having two kids has mellowed her 'I'm mad, me' tendencies...

gah. someone tell me a decent program/service that teaches you accurate typing. Mavis Beacon? Another one? Seriously. I have had perfect spelling since birth, it's just the typing gods deem that I mis-spell really simple words like 'the' and get anything ending in '-ng' as '-gn', and constantly hit the ';' instead of the ' when doing contractions.

Finally got off my arse and went looking for narnia icons. After sifting through all the actor icons to find actual *character* icons (not to mention half of narnia fandom seems to lock their damn icon posts after a week, *thanks so much*), I then had the insurmountable :headdesk: of loads and loads of prettily cut and edited icons.... none of which had a decent colour balance. Seriously. How do you not notice that the blues are a bit too turquoise and the scarlet-orange everyone's mouths are turning? Especially in a film where there's a lot of red-red in the general colour scheme.

Some of you may think this is not such a problem or just a filter thing. This is not like using a sepia or toning filter. This is getting your damn colour balance wrong, where your whites will not be correct. Seriously. Do you know how long we used to spend trying to get that correct in the photo labs? There is no either/or, correct colour balance is correct colour balance. It. Looks. Shit. And it is *different* from when you've lit it in an interesting way, or processed it in strange ways to get weird colours. It's very simple. Your whites will be really weird and dingy with a yellow tinge.

...Have thought that I probably sound like one of those old hands in any other craft profession where you spend years of training to make sure that your edges are smooth and suddenly the new trend is for unfinished hems and ragged edges. I don't care. It's not a style thing. It's shoddy and would not stand up to further examination.

(further note to the whole birth certificates thing - apparently I do have one beyond the certificate of live birth, but we couldn't find it. However, we did find my parents' marriage licence, which is an awesome piece of old west-style scrollwork, with all the language and everything. It's quite clearly the next generation up from having the Boot Hill font on it. And the judge has the name JD Plunkett. Who apparently was getting on a bit by the '70s - and he came out to Oklahoma on a wagon train. Why yes, I am jealous.)

:headdesk:

Gah. What is it about some people? They ask you out. You say 'no, thanks, I prefer friends' because you don't fancy them. Simple as that.

...And for some reason, instead of accepting this and moving on, some people see this as a cue to pour their hearts out in an email or letter and say how much they love and adore you. And are pining something chronic. In excruciating detail.

See other person go :'SHIT!' and scramble backwards, preferably as far away as possible.

Seriously, in what universe do they think that will help their cause? At the very least it causes intense embarassment and discomfort on the part of the person who said no, which as we know, screws up the normal friendship.

I ignored the email and acted like everything was normal. and then got follow-ups with 'I didn't say anything the other day but _even more detail, including past relationships_' (which I only read so far and then closed before reading any more) Cue me attempting world record for scrambling backwards and sending polite reply of 'look, I said friends, I don't fancy you, please stop sending me the emails NOW.'

Please god let that stop it there. And not go any further down the path of certain previous whatsits like that.

:headdesk: it's at times like this you want to retreat into Austen or Shakespeare speak about unwelcome attentions and 'I have not encouraged your attentions with one look or glance' type phrasing. I can understand misreading someone's behaviour as flirting, but surely the initial 'sorry, no' should put paid to that? It normally does. Maybe we just need a large sign saying 'No means no. In every sodding possible social situation.'