RIP Don S Davis.

From Oxfordgirl:

"Cyber Leader: Daleks, be warned. You have declared war upon the Cybermen.
Dalek Leader: This is not war - this is pest control!"

When you see this, post a quote from Doctor Who on your LJ/Blog/Wotsit. But only if you really want to.

A very happy birthday to Ellistar and Badusernametag, two splendid chaps.

Many happy returns of the day to the effervescent Ellefurtle.

May your G&Ts always be cold.

If you don't already read jfs' LJ, I present to you a clip he popped up:

Hurrah to jfs for an elegant solution to the Big Read Meme nonsense:

"Pick one book from that list, and argue for or against it. Why should everyone you know read it, or why should all extant copies of it be pulped?

That's likely to be a lot more interesting than bolding, italicising and underlining 100 lines of text, neh?"

My choice is The Little Prince by Antoine de St Exupery. I believe that everyone should read this book because it is the most profound treatise on love and loss that I have ever read. It's a book ostensibly written for children and is very very short ... no more than a couple of hours reading. Surely you can spare a couple of hours to find out if you agree with my assertion that it is one of the finest books ever written?

Perhaps the best recommendation comes from the book itself:

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

I'm not doing it.

The list is pretty rubbish. Whichever genius thought that having "The Chronicles of Narnia" and "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" as two options whilst "the Bible" was one, should really reconsider their career choice. I've read a lot of the Bible but by no means all of it, likewise I've read a great many of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets but not all of them (and why does "Hamlet" have its own entry?). Furthermore there was no option for "started to read this but got bored/decided it was shit and stopped reading it" which covers pretty much all of the 19th century literature on the list for me. Also, who felt that it was reasonable to exclude the significant body of literature from the ancient world? Gods know how much tat from Dickens made it onto the list (did I mention¹ my dislike of 19th century literature?) but nothing by Homer or Virgil or Sophocles ... WTF?

I'm actually quite cross about it.

It's only a meme, calm down.

¹ *Glares at Clawbeast*

Yesterday evening I felt the distinct scratching of the Black Dog at my door. Now there is a big difference between feeling glum and the onrush of a period of depression and, let me tell you, yesterday I was not feeling glum. Mercifully, realising what was happening seems to have held it at bay somewhat and today I am in a better place (though I can still hear the Beast snarling at the edges of perception). Scaring off a bout of depression is a Good Thing™ and has made me feel rather better about things, feeling that I am, perhaps, more in control than controlled ... I heartily recommend this ... well, I heartily recommend it for me, I would much rather that none of my lovely friends were subjected to anything bad.

Furthermore many thanks to Invisible_Al for sharing the following piece of wonder:


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

And last, but by no means least, I am reliably informed that there are ...FIVE MORE DAYS UNTIL DOWNTIME CLOSES ... Wulfboy the poking is becoming more urgent.

Could anyone who knows Wulfboy please send him a poke from me? Hopefully he will, at the very least, be covered in tiny tiny bruises come the next Maelstrom.

Firstly, many thanks to cutietrol and Bert (sans LJ) for the following piece of poetic justice in action:



Unhappy thoughts though ... RTD promised that this week's episode of Doctor Who was going to be the one where we completely revised our opinions of Donna as a companion.

No, RTD, no ... she is still annoying and I'd rather see Rose, Martha, Jack, Sarah-Jane or any character from any of the spin-offs as companion rather than the car-crash that is Catherine Tate's portrayal of Donna. Enough already, kill her off ... properly!

I want one of these ... assuming it does what it claims to. Has anyone tried them? Know anybody who has?

The past couple of weeks have been less than good ME-wise. What I'm experiencing at the moment is rather like being permanently drunk, with all the errors in judgement and co-ordination that entails, plus the sudden sleepiness and generally disturbed rest but with none of the fun euphoric bits.

So if I've acted poorly, rudely, clumsily or thoughtlessly anywhere near you recently, I'm terribly sorry. I hate that this thing affects my brain worse han my body some days ... aside from making me look like a complete cock it's taken away something I thought I could rely on. Occasional bouts of word-blindness were nothing compared to this. It feels, sometimes, as though I'm losing myself, and that is both scary and unpleasant.

Anyway, terribly sorry if I've acted, written or spoken improperly or thoughtlessly recently ... hopefully things will improve.

Farewell Stan Winston. At least now we know that angels are going to look super-cool.

First off, a very happy birthday to Bitofadrizzle who has, no doubt, baked a cake for the occasion.

Secondly once again I poke Wulfboy, partly because he's a slacker, partly because it gives me a warm feeling in my special parts.

Once again I take unnatural pleasure in poking Wulfboy with a slightly soiled stick.

Ahem! You may notice that DOWNTIME IS OPEN ALREADY.

In other news, this comic made me giggle ... quite a lot.

First order of the day is to wish the multi-talented presenter of "Who Wants to be a Millionnaire?", Wildwinter, a very happy birthday.

Second order of business is to poke Wulfboy with a stick and see if he falls over.

The third and final part to this entry is to inform you all that the Fox is off on Holiday this weekend coming so, if I've been vaguely promising you a visit now is the time to remind me.

First order of business is to nudge Wulfboy why? Well firstly because it's fun and if he happens to be standing on one leg he might fall over, but secondly because he asked me to remind him about something.

Spent the weekend under canvas at Maelstrom and had a ratehr splendid time. Although the event itself wasn't a spot on last time's Celestial Gala, there were a few roleplaying moments that really made the event. Also the weather was much much much better at this event ... I have a sunburnt head.

In retrospect it was probably a mistake to create a character devoted to the same god as my first as, although I'm having a great deal of fun with it, there are the obvious (though incorrect) conclusions being drawn that my IC actions are sometimes driven by affection for my retired character. Comments like that are difficult to challenge as there's no real way to prove that they aren't true. Ah well, such is life I suppose.

Seeing Defcheese at the event was an unlooked for treat, and Saturday night in the Wight¹ House it felt as though I'd been whisked back ten years.

Another high-spot was chatting with the Hunapa group and watching their ball game ... their soap-drink wasn't quite such a high-point.

Ok, that's the fourth time I've dropped off writing this entry ... apologies if it's been rambling and/or impossible to follow. I can only say that I'm very tired.

¹ The White House was killed at a recent event, but has since been raised to serve again.

Just in case nobody else has mentioned it (yes, yes, I've been stuck in a WoW-hole again) the stupendous documentary series Weapons That Made Britain is being shown every morning this week on Channel 4. Sadly this news comes a little late for you to catch the first episode ("Sword") but if you've never seen it before I urge you to take a look ... and if you have seen it before then you'll know to record it (since C4 stubbornly refuse to release a DVD).

Well, yes, I tripped and fell into a WoW hole again ... what can I say? I'm just clumsy like that. Anyroadhow, despite having my head buried in more guilds and realms than I have thumbs, I did manage to squeeze out some time for some quality entertainment.

Saw Iron Man last week and it gets a comfortable eight out of ten on the Bintertainment star rating system. As an avid reader of the Iron Man comics fom when I were a lad (though I pretty much dropped Marvel when I discovered 200AD) I just adored the whole thing, the story was simple but was given ample time to reveal itself, the script was (aside from a couple of pet hates of mine ... literally two sentences in two hours that I didn't like) rather splendid (including a very naughty joke that made pretty much everyone under the age of majority wonder why all the adults in the audience had just peed themselves ... clever, clever, clever. Actually, there was an awful lot of humour in the film, some slapstick, some witty, some geeky but all good. The effects were, as one might expect, awesome but had the virtue of not being as "busy" as Transformers, which led to them being both more watchable and more credible.

I think what I'm trying to say here is, go see it, it's great!

Oh, and stay in your seats until the end of the credits. I can pretty much guarantee that your inner fanboi/girl will love you forever.

Yesterday, as a continuation of my birthday celebrations and as a rather wonderful gift from s0b and jul1et, we popped into the centre of London in order to see Pendulum in concert. Many and varied were the delights of the evening from watching a driver who I'd just seen reverse into another car, reversing towards me, to discovering that the Astoria's version of disabled access involves walking up several flights of stairs (to be fair there were a couple of burly chaps who were (nervously) prepared to lift me up all the way but, thankfully, I can haul myself up stairs (albeit slowly) and thus didn't have to face the indignity of being treated like cargo. Then discovering that the toilets involved so many (small) flights of stairs that it wasn't worth trying to take the wheelchair there ... just as well really because they don't have a disabled loo and there is no way on God's earth that I would have been able to maneuvre inside the gents had I not been walking. Having switched our Bluetooth reception on our phones off, s0b and I decided to see how many people in the audience hadn't. Needless to say, the list was long, very long ... and contained an unexpected surprise which I shall allow him to tell you (since he has the photographic proof). Apparently, fat dudes don't like Pendulum, since their promotional T-shirts didn't get any larger than XL which, sadly, is one X short of my current size ... bah! I shall have to hunt for something suitable to sate my appetite for promotional attire online.

But the music ... by all that's holy .. it was sublime. I love Pendulum, I've loved them ever since I heard Tarantula and Slam just completely hooked me on them. Last night they absolutely didn't dissappoint, all concerns about ... well, everything really ... just vanished from my mind, pushed out by beats so hard they made my bones rattle. Looking down at a sea of bodies beneath me, surging back and forth and up and down like a single organism absolutely enslaved to the incredible, uplifting sounds coming from the stage.

That was a night not to be forgotten, and I'm sure my hearing will come back propely at some point. I'm not sure how many of you would have enjoyed it, but for those that would, I wish you had been there with us, so we could have bathed in the waves of awesome together.

Incidentally (again many thanks to s0b for this) the video below is rather wonderful and I urge you to watch it just for the story, even if you watch it with the sound off ... though the song itself is bloody great.



In other news, I appear to have cut my thumb, quite deeply. There was a great deal of blood and it took several attempts to staunch the flow sufficient to actually bind the wound. This is the second time I have cut myself using our knife sharpener (now in the bin) and am now determined to get a replacement that will not endanger my digits. On the bright side, there was no scraping of bone, nor any slicing of nerves or tendons that I am aware of (I can still move and feel it ... though it hurts like crap when I bend it, so I'm not going to do that again for a while.

A most splendid and (thanks jfs) patriotic St George's Day to one and all.



By the way if, whilst celebrating the positive sides to Englishness, you feel moved to say "we're a nation of animal lovers" might I suggest a look here to see how far from that idea some people are.