You had plenty money 1922

last night, finally caught up on nanowrimo wordcount. so that's 13k in and still not started anything that looks like plot aside from 2 and a half main characters being recruited/introduced... I seriously have no idea whether I'm writing the dialogue in character for Susan at the mo. Lot less internal dialogue than the last nano, so hopefully will be less repetitious when I go back to it several months down the line. Also weird thing of writing in bits across 3 separate sections. Fear my final nano will end up with all the never-went-back-to placeholder notes I keep adding still intact. And having that really weird bit of figuring out how to paste in notes of dialogue and snippets and where they fit now I've written the actual scene I'd been thinking of vaguely when planning.

Turns out my nano is being fuelled by hardcore, happy hardcore, garage and other such things. also the giant archive of expired copyright 1920s jazz Wil Wheaton found and blasted across the net...

Ooo, interesting link for the writing lot - a guide to character archetypes. have seen one Dr who break down it already, Rose as the Lover, Rory as the Caregiver, Donna the rebel, the Master the Ruler, River the Hero, Martha the Explorer, Jack the Jester, the Doctor the Magician, Amy the Creator, and Mickey the Orphan.

random theatre reviews from the past couple of months, part xiii:

55 Days at Hampstead: being an account of the 55 days at the end of Civil War from the Rump Parliament (or to put it a bit clearer, when the army invaded Parliament) to Charles I's execution. Or as I tweeted: 'off to see a head of state be deposed, tried for treason and executed by legal process.' as the point of the play is, plenty of heads of state have been deposed by force and executed before, but this was the first one where it was done *legally*. aka why our Civil War is something we don't make too much of a fuss about and attempt to shove under the carpet a lot, because it's really, really not glamorous or bombastic in the way, say, the French Revolution was. ours ended not with a mob but a courtroom. Oh, and did we mention the whole thing was very carefully notarised and minuted because of the pains they took to make sure it was legal?

it's fascinating, tense, grey and they take the pains to emphasise that everyone is just so tired and sore after seven years of war. Everyone's squabbling. it's messy. There's personal and political and religious concerns tearing previous allies apart. The idealists torn down and stomping off in a huff due to compromises having to be made now that they've got to live with the new order, and the frantic scramblign because they're aware that they're having to create somethign entirely new out of thin air. It's the grey, tired men like Cromwell (Douglas Henshall), certain that god is on his side as representative of the people, versus Charles Stuart (Mark Gatiss) with his certainty that he was appointed by god to rule, and as he points out in the play (and in the notes of the trial) 'a trial of my peers? where are my peers? I do not see them here.'. Brilliant, setting anytime post war with lots of filing cabinets in grey suits, Charles being the only one in Stuart dress to make the contrast of him being from a previous time and mindset. Play, script and performances also make a very good point about how much cult of personality can affect and drive matters. (e.g., the way everyone looks to Cromwell to base their reaction on his and they talk about the fact that people just naturally follow Cromwell because he's *Cromwell*.) Very good performances all round. Couple of notes in that there is very much a change of pace between first and second act, sicne they have to cram so much into the 1st act, 2nd covering the trial period. Probably enjoyed more if you knew something of the history, as it ratchets up the tension if you know that the moment where Charles is goign to get caught for soliciting invasion by foriegn powers is coming, you just don't know when... oh, and general amusement ad when Mark Gatiss would occasionally lose the soft scots accent and Douglas Henshall would lapse into his natural scots.

Julie Atherton album launch last night (they advertise it as 'The Delfont Rooms', but seriously, it's the Stalls Bar. Which admittedly is a very nice cabaret space, but you don't need to rename it. Just admit it's the bar)

Hee. Julie adorable and in fine voice. Good songs (mix of Perfect Pitch new stuff, bit of Sondheim, Tori Amos, and acoustic/violin versions of Skunk Anansie's 'Weak' and Linkin Park's 'Crawling'*, and a couple from 'A Girl of Few Words'), rather giggly between songs and taking the piss out of her mum on occasion, with added losing an earring and a mishap with the music stand. Paul Spicer introing her - 'This album was achieved by chucking Julie into the studio'. I always forget how pretty her stage husband is in real life. When she intro'd the band, there was the classic moment of her ear-to-ear grin of 'Tom Parsons' and the audience cheering. What dedicated fans? I know no dedicated fans. Which includes 'please tell me that he has more than one of those v-neck t-shirts.' and 'oh good, she's ditched the blonde'.

*Yes, we were blinking a bit too.

Prior to that, went to the Regent St 'Taste of Spain' thing they'd been advertising to waste an hour pre-concert. Which... argh. As soon as I got there, you could tell it was Spanish tourist board-organised. Which should tell you all you need to know. A couple of not great food stalls, loads of tents with bugger all in, massive crowds desperately looking for something to do (fortunately, several clothes shops down Regents St) to the point that they're mobbing one of the tourist stands for free cotton bags, sports demo bits that either weren't working/didn't have anyone on/mostly the MC. Also slightly disturbing : there were churro stands at each end. The queues at each were a good 100+ people, winding round like a queue for a fairground ride. Seriously. it's churros. Deep-fried snack you dip in chocolate. You get them at most seasonal South Bank events. How bloody desperate are you for food? There were icecream vans too... So instead I looked into a few shops I don't normally look into (turns out Calvin Klein does 30DD bras for the same price as Bravissimo, so worth keeping an eye on when they've next got a sale) and meandered into the Regents St food court bit where I found nice pizza in the shade at Piccolino. Sadly not enough time to get a caipirinha at the cocktail bar next door, though.

Looked at cast list for Percy Jackson. Most of the gods are played by unknowns, some of which are actually Greek (OMGWTFHOLLYWOOD?) and though I saw the trailer, I missed that Sean Bean was playing Zeus. Er, what? Ares, Hephaestus, even Hermes... But Zeus? cidercupcakes, back me up on this. Raising eyebrow at Steve Coogan as Hades.

Radio 1 has this 'introing music to callers' thing where they go through their current likes, then pick some new stuff or some old stuff. They picked old stuff today, and ... oh god. This bloke had never heard of Leftfield. Either I'm getting old or he's clueless. The fact that he gave Afrika Shox 6/10 leads me to believe he's lacking in taste, too.

Rightio, who's celebrating Lupercalia on sunday? Hrrm. I know that Xmas period and August Bank Holiday are recent major conception times, but does anyone know if Feb 14th still is? Considering that's the one that's the *actual* fertility fest. (fairly simple logic : mum get preggers early feb, baby born at harvest time, plenty of food for mum to produce breast milk)

Catching up on Chuck. Oh my. with 3x06, the show's got to the point of examining what the ficcers have been speculating for ages - the effects on Chuck having to deal with spy reality, in this case handling an asset. I do like it when canon gets to this point. Though will someone tell me why there's so little Chuck/Daniel Shaw? Brandon Routh is a) ridiculously pretty (and has gotten prettier post-Superman), b) touchy-feely with Chuck (and cares about/believes in him, HELLO SLASHERS) and c) resemblance to Bryce. aka Chuck's type.

snow falling outside in tiny flakes and there was pavement ice in Shepherd's Bush/Kensington. But not settling. Bah. Apparently it's deep, deep snow back home. Hoping like hell I can get back tonight since I want to mess around in the snow. 'Specially considering tomorrow is birthday. (snow is normally only a february or Easter thing in Berkshire, so I'm used to it being bitter or frost-laden on my birthday, but no snow.) But still going to stop at River Island and New Look at lunch to grab another emergency change of clothing.

Question for the Colonialists : Does anyone ever use 'Ta' to say thanks? (thought they didn't use eejit either, but since I just heard Bobby use it on Supernatural, am guessing it's a matter of location.)

Changed ringtone post-christmas. have learnt my lesson - don't use a popular christmas song since you'll just think it's on the radio if it's not in your pocket. Subjected Meg to the first 20 secs of a bunch of stuff in a quest to find something that walked that fine borderline between irritating and penetrating. Which includes the final test of stuffing it in my bag on the other side of the room while something else is playing on the stereo and getting someone to ring me. Surprising how many songs that you'd think had really distinctive intros fail this. So now, I have the Theme from St Trinians by Girls Aloud.

Forcing self to listen to mp3 player on shuffle in effort to cull the mediocre stuff as I have a habit of shoving albums/concerts on there, as well as stuff you think you'll listen to and never do. One day I really need to go through every single version of Barrowman doing 'I am What I am' and cull them.

Things from Hub3 : Ways we'd like Ianto back : Harkness and Jones (deceased).

Torchwood conventions have two barometers : The Barrowman Line and the Roderick Culver Scale. One is a measure of bad taste and filth, and the other is how shite a guest is.

Note to self : if you can only remember a couple of songs from a soundtrack, there is a *reason*. The rest were shite and/or unmemorable. See True Blood, which is 99% average/shite country, 1% awesome title track.

Question for the colonialists : at what point do the radio stations start switching to country music? Still traumatised by that time we drove Denver-Vegas-California.

And curious : If you had to cast me in a tv show or genre, what type of role would you cast me in? (AUs are also permissible)

twitter : possibly one of the few places where I'll sigh and go 'they're really funny, but they post waaay too much'.

trying to decide whether a refrain in the Merlin ST is nicked wholesale from LOTR or if I'm just remembering it wrong. Problem is, would have to listen to the entire fricking LOTR ST to find out whether this is so.

Pondering how difficult the tin whistle is to learn to play decently, since it looks infinitely less complex than a guitar and more portable. Not to mention more tuneful and socially acceptable than the recorder I tortured my parents with as a kid.

Julie Fowlis concert was utterly fab. Better than recordings, though mostly due to the bouncy, everyone being funny and her presence - live its very similar to the recordings, which means there was very little faffing about. Oh, and she's rather preggers. Good thing that she's only got a few more dates to go up in scotland. Band kept constantly updating us on the footie scores whenever they went off stage (you'll be pleased to know that . Irish centre in Hammersmith has great acoustics, even if you could only fit a couple of hundred people (seated) in there, and I have no idea why she was nervous about it being sold out. From what I heard from other audience members, she's played far larger venues. Observation : there is a fine but distinct line between the songs you clap to, the songs you drum your feet to, and the ones you do both to. In perfect rhythm, natch. Requisite drumming of feet for encore. One does wonder where this came from, since yes, you do clap when asking for an encore, but it's not quite as widespread as drumming of feet.

Hammersmith tube : out to confuse the hell out of you. Couldn't find a local area map in the station, so using google maps was kind of useless as you had no idea what street you'd exited on or what side of the station, as there aren't any visible street signs. Even when the venue is all of two minutes from the station. Thank the FSM for kebab shops.

I have sudden marmite taste in mouth. Considering I haven't eaten marmite since saturday, this is very odd.

note for the calendar - Julie Fowlis is starting her tour. And one of her dates is 10th October. in Hammersmith at the Irish centre, £15. If you like celtic music, she's fucking amazing. (and yes, there are samples on the website)

I've had a pair of scales in the bathroom my whole life, so weighing self in the morning has been automatic and probably led to me being *very* realistic about my weight - I weigh more than I look due to my build, aka hello to the leg muscles, consistently been between 10 and 10 and a half stone since puberty at 10, no matter what height or size I was. The only time I've been below that was when I dipped below 10 stone last autumn when I was jogging for an hour 2-3 times a week and an hour and a half each weekend, which was on top of my 4-mile walk commute.

I know for a fact that weight varies during the day due to water intake and meals, and if you're female you vary over the month due to your cycle. So what I'm curious about is precisely how much. Like, is there a major difference between directly after breakfast and directly after lunch? How much water weight did I lose on the two mile walk in the afternoon vs. the morning walk? Beginning of the period vs. end?

Gah. Does anyone know any sure-fire ways to make you sit up straight aside from wearing a corset or waist cincher? Bloody office chairs make it far too easy to slouch. And as we know, bad posture = back pain (and with me, the knock-on of shoulder and wrist pain)

listening to the 2-CD version of the Dreamgirls soundtrack. And once again, it really does prove that aside from a couple of tracks (oh the joy of the different remixes), there is normally a *reason* why most soundtracks are cut down to 1 CD.

ah, youtube. reminding me that a track is *not* as good as I remember, thus saving me from hunting it down in my cd collection.

Seriously. A girl just wants a copy of the original ewok song. Possibly with the C-3PO rap on it. Yet the geek heaven that is the internet fails me. The only version I can find on youtube is scratchy, so I'm not bloody ripping that. 99% of the hits I get for 'ewok song' or 'ewok celebration song' are the new age thing of the remastered version we do not speak of HAN SHOT FIRST. Seriously. The original ST has it. (sadly, this is somewhere in my parents' record collection and thus on vinyl, so do not have easy way of ripping it)

Also : watched the clip of the original celebration on youtube and ... I can't find the Wedge-Luke hug. I'm positive that's in there, because that's the point where it's proof positive that he has legs. Yet all I can see is a shot of him in the party, waist up. Seriously. where is it? Did my fevered brain invent it and transpose a scene from earlier in the trilogy?

Help me, internet, you're my only hope.

those of us going to this - what time meeting? where?

Regarding The Saturdays' album. have now listened to the entire thing. Most of the songs are actually quite decent. Appears miracles do occasionally happen with pop albums. Who knew?

Oh, and I found out that if you search for the delicious add-on on mozilla and re-start immediately it'll install on 3.5 - not so the one on the delicious website. Now twiddling thumbs until a non-ugly minimalist skin that works with 3.5 comes up. Also, any verdict on google chrome? I despise having to use ie as a back-up when firefox is being odd/in the middle of loading something massive.