So...Night Watch, Terry Pratchett's newest Discworld novel, is very very good. Of course, it's a Watch novel and has Vetinari in it (20-years-younger-still-an-assassin!Vetinari!) so one would expect it to rock. And I love the way the Discworld books are going. They're getting darker, more thoughtful. I mean, they're still funny - sometimes hilariously so - but they also make one think. Which is good. So in this one we have history, the importance of one man among many, rememberence, futility, revolution, Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably-Price Love and a Hardboiled Egg. It also has one of Mr Pratchett's coolest, most underused creepy people - Captain Swing of the Unmentionables. (Yes, Carcer was very cool also and I love villains who grin but c'mon! Who here wants to learn more about Captain Swing and the Unmentionables? Raise your hands....oh. That's nobody. Never mind.) And we have a damn good soldier's song and just about the coolest thing to come out of Omnism (I'm spelling that wrong) - "We are here and this is now." Almost makes you want to go talk to Corporal Visit, doesn't it? Almost.

I need to learn the tune to How Do They Rise Up. Yeah.

("Circumlocution," said Mr. Croup to Mr. Vandemar. "It's a way of speaking around something. A digression. Verbosity." Mr. Vandemar nodded. "I wondered," he said.
Wow...haven't had a circumlocution in a long time...)

Things learned from A Very Muppet Christmas Movie:

• Steve Whitmire is doing a quite a good job as Kermit.
  
• Gonzo always gets the best song.
  
• Muppets should never say "Voulez-vous couchez avec moi?" They just really shouldn't.
  
• Whoopi Goldberg is not God. I hope.
  
• The idea of Goth-Dancing-Rave-Boy!Scooter is incredibly disturbing. Yet strangely plausible. My mind is eternally warped.
  
• Capitalism is inherently evil. Apparently.
  
• "Isn't helping your friends and getting revenge on your enemies the real meaning of Christmas?" Hurrah for Pepe the Prawn!
  

Yeah...

Went back to Bite Me...found that, if I squinch my eyes just right, I can make out most of the dialogue. And Rhiannon, Lucien can be yours forever. But I want Luther. Eee...creepy German werewolf smile. Bwa hahaha...

(I am a creepy fangirl for a webcomic. My life is scary.)

On the plus side - there is a new page of Bite Me with a new character who looks to be incredibly nifty.

On the minus side - I cannot read the dialogue, as my parents computer is silly and shrinks the bloody thing.

Blargh...

Yea! Home now! It's so exciting. And there is actual food here, which is a truely marvelous thing. And I get to see my family. And my dog. And subject them to Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Bwa haha!

hehe

Note to self: do not write in blog when you are tired and it's late at night. It leads to badness and general depression. Next time, just go to bed. You'll feel better. 8)

And I do feel better. That's the problem with online journals, though - they prompt you to pour forth all of your bad feelings and then other people can read them. Blargh. But I get to go home tonight and today was a much happier day in general, so all is well. hehe.

A summary of this semester:

Happy Things: Seeing my friends again. More Star Trek, Buffy, and Highlander. Finally saw Ethan Rayne on Buffy. New people who are fun (in my opinion) at Star Trek. Cool religion and logic classes. Fun had in choir. Gilbert and Sullivan obsession. Single room. New file sharing programs to get music. Cool stuff at anime. Seeing Harry Potter in a large group. Website is reasonably cool. Read much fanfic. Etc.

Not-so-happy Things: Seeing some of my friend far too infrequently. The friends I do see are often depressed (see below). Despised history class with all its bloody French people. Missed Halloween and the actual day of my birthday was kind of depressing (see below), though the actual celebration of it, I'm sure, will be fun. Chemistry lab at 8 AM. Drunken suitemates who are loud at 1 AM on weekends. (I am revenged, however, by playing light opera at 9 AM the next morning. Ha!) VCR does not like me. Between fandoms and all of my favorite authors are writing Smallville fic. Bloody Jubilate Deo number in choir. Have time to eat lunch far too infrequently. Etc.

Blargh. It about equals out. I will be glad to have a break.

I think I'm a little bit tired of all of my friends. See, my friends are - for the most part - very critical people. And, up to a point, I can take that and even enjoy it. But it wears after a while. Sometimes, it would be nice to do something without it being criticised by someone. We had our choir concert tonight and all Sarah Fulford could talk about was how much she was glad to be done with it, how she had hated the course. Well, I'm sorry that you hated it, but if you didn't want to get involved in an amateur choir, you shouldn't have signed up for U Choir. It's open to anyone who wants to sing. And wants to enjoy singing. It just makes me mad sometimes to always be around people who put everything down...who put down things that I really enjoy. And I'm just really tired of hearing people complain. I wish that we could do something where everyone has fun again, instead of some portion of us having fun and some portion along only because they never see this group of their friends and some portion being critical and catty and generally pessimistic and annoying. I hate having to worry that I'm doing something wrong because my friends seem upset.

I guess I'm just really ready for vacation. Thanksgiving break will be nice. It'll be good to see my family and be around people who are somewhat inherently cheerful (well, accept for Megan) again.

Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to me-e
Happy birthday to me

20 years old today. They never tell you that you're going to be 20 someday. They tell you all about 18 and all about 21 but they never warn you about 20. I mean, I've been 19 for a year now and I still forget that. It never quite seemed to register. And now you want me to be 20? Kinda weird thinking I've lived for 2 decades already. Most of the time, it doesn't feel that long at all. But that's probably because I told myself (on my 7th birthday) that I wasn't going to age past 7. So I haven't. Today I am 7+13. That's all. hehe. And so, now, because I can...in Dachier!

Alegru nasa'dach i ye
Alegru nasa'dach i ye
Alegru nasa'dach i ye-e
Alegru nasa'dach i ye

Updated the website. Now there is a quote page. hehe

The wrong person dies at the end of The Sorceror. I mean really wrong. Everything bad that happens in that operetta is Alexis' fault. And he's a bit of a bastard, besides. Can't we kill him instead of Mr. Wells, if we have to kill anybody?

Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century is an incredibly wrong and frightening show. As a Sherlockian, I feel I should take some sort of stand against it. So I won't watch it again. 8)

I love when songs grow. See, I downloaded Shape of the Heart (the one by Sting, not the Backstreet Boys) after watching The Professional, because it was the ending theme and the tone and the melody and the feel captured the feel of the movie quite nicely. And now I've listened to it about three times and, on it's own lyrics alone, it's a wonderful song with its own story - a very different story from the film, but a lovely story by itself. Marvelous.

Just watched The Professional on tv (because it is a Friday night on which I have nothing to do and there are many movies on tv) and now I have the urge to watch Lolita again. And possibly read the book. And finish it this time. Oh, and also to watch The Professional again.

None of this cannot possibly be good.

But productive things came of it, because I worked on my afghan and have now almost finish Mom's Lisa/Lena/whatever-her-name-is doll. All I need to do now is stuff the thing. And I braided and unbraided my hair about 6 times, because I needed something to do with my hands. hehe.

(Bwa haha...semi-transient obsessions having nothing to do with Gilbert and Sullivan!)

Things learned from seeing Ruddigore:

• The term "murgatroyd" now makes so much more sense
  
• Vincent Price really oughtn't be allowed to sing opera
  
• The name "Ruthven" is not pronounced as I thought it should be at all
  
• It's amazing, the difference a simple costume change can make
  
• In the wrong hands, an over-full prop closet can be an extremely dangerous thing (incredibly random lawn gnomes! hurrah!)
  

So much of my brain being eaten by Gilbert and Sullivan...but just think - next week I can force this on my family and spread the corruption! Hurrah!

Do know what really shouldn't be allowed? Sherlock Holmes movies where the Duke from Moulin Rouge, Professor Quirrell, the Scarlet Pimpernel and Lady Fuschia Groan play the main characters. Such confusion and odd associations really oughtn't be permitted. (Though I have to say, sadly, that Ian Hart is one of my favorite Watsons ever. Even if he does look a bit more like Lestrade than Watson. Oh, well...)

More things that shouldn't be allowed - people calling me before 9 o'clock in the morning. If it's before nine in the morning, there are really only two states I'll be in. Either I'll be in bed or I won't be in my room. One or the other. So don't call me. It just won't do any good at all. Really.

Also, my suitemates should not be allowed to be awake and in the bathroom at 7:30. They never are usually and when, on very infrequent occasions, they are it destroys my entire routine. Blargh.

And now, on a much happier note - listening to The Mikado (because I saw Pirates of Penzance today and thus it is appropriate) and just had conversation with Rhiannon about cats. And remembering that the two cats in the Cat Who novels are named Koko and Yum-yum. Coincidence? I think not.

(I am a scary, scary freak...)

So I finally, finally saw this week's Buffy. (And now all of you who don't like Buffy or don't watch Buffy or just plain don't care can leave. hehe.) And wow. And kinda oh my God. And...poor Willow. Poor Dawn (who's growing up and who's getting braver and stronger and damn you, Mr. Whedon, for making character that I can't hate no matter how hard I try). Poor Jonathan. It's terrible that you won't be mourned as you ought to be. Because you ought to be. And we're going to have to mourn for Andrew, too. Poor Andrew. He's going to be broken before he gets to die. So, here. Magic Mirror by Te. Poor Andrew. It's not gonna get any better.

It's amazing how much the beginning of Rosalita sounds like the beginning of Meet Me at Mary's Place. I like it.

Would you like to know how I spent my day? I watched 4+ hours of Lord of the Rings today. And let me tell you, the special edition rocks. All of the added stuff is great - always adding to teh overall movie and never detracting. Some of the things that went unexplained in the theatrical release are now completely understandable to the non-Tolkein reading person. Mithril, for example, and Khazad-dum. We get Galadriel's gifts to the Company and we get to see Gimli's crush on her. Celeborn gets 10 extra lines - almost enough to develop a personality. There's hobbit table-dancing, Sackville-Bagginses, an extended party scene. Sam recites poetry. We get to see the Gaffer and Ted Sandyman. Most of the battle scenes are extended, which is fun also. And Boromir has more scenes. All in all, a great DVD and one I look forward to owning. (hint hint) hehe.

(Now, how did this happen? I find myself in extreme danger of becoming a Boromir fan and this disturbs me. I never even liked him in the books or my tapes. He was stupid, arrogant, foolhardy. He seemed to have no respect for anyone. And he still is, in the film. But we're also allowed to see what else he is. He is a noble man, a man with honor who cares greatly about the things he loves - his city and his people. He's out of his depth by a long way but he's still trying his best. And though he falls, he is reclaimed. He dies a hero's death, with honor. You can respect and admire and even love him for that. And so we'll mourn his passing. "They will look for him from the White Tower of Guard, but he will not come again from mountain or from sea.")

("Circumlocution," said Mr. Croup to Mr. Vandemar. "It's a way of speaking around something. A digression. Verbosity." Mr. Vandemar nodded. "I wondered," he said. )

Saw Harry Potter last night with a bunch of my friends. Boo-yah. It was very nifty and much better (in my opinion) than the first one. The plot seemed to hold together through the condensing a bit better this time. Last time, when we found out that Quirrel was the villain, it seemed to come out of nowhere, unless you'd read the books. This year, the mystery makes more sense. And also, this one was much darker, which makes me very happy. We even get (to my mind) slight improvements over the book, at least character-wise. Dobby was (and it pains me to say this) not as annoying as he is in the book. And I loved Moaning Myrtle, a character whom I usually can't stand. Lucius Malfoy is wonderfully satisfactorially smary and hateful. I think I growled at him every time he came on screen. And all of our returning characters were marvelous. I mean, we got more Alan Rickman Snape. No movie with that could be that bad, right? 8)

(Warning to anyone who has recently been obsessed with Gormenghast or Topsy-Turvy or both - This movie is going to do weird things to your head. Because Mr and Mrs Dursley are Swelter and Irma Prunesquallor, respectively. And Moaning Myrtle is that one chick from Topsy-Turvy whose name I never remember - you know, the one who plays Yum-yum in The Mikado. hehe.)

For whom does the human skull shed tears? It sheds tears for you.

Find out what YOUR inner non-sequitur is!

quiz by A.V. Phibes

I am definately not listening to The Mikado. Oh, no. Nope. Of course not. Not at all.

(There is consolation in the fact that tonight, when I'm trying to sleep but can't because of song lyrics running through my head, I'll know slightly more of Three Little Maids from School than I did last night...)

My name is going to Mars and yours can too if you sign up by 11/15. (That would be tomorrow.) hehe

This is just cool. Because Edward Gorey rocks. And he rocks even more so when you can make the story up yourself. hehe.

Listening to The Rising again...and glad that I've gotten past the 9/11-ness of the album enough to listen to the lyrics and make up my own stories for them. (Of course, some of the songs are never going to leave the first place I found them - Into the Fire and The Nothing Man are prime examples of this.)

So, doing this, we've discovered that, somewhere along the way Further On Up the Road became a Spike song. I'm not quite sure how it happened. But, being a semi-obsessed Buffy fan, I find it hard not to associates songs with people. And the lyrics to that one just seem very Spike to me. I mean,
Got on my dead man's suit
And my smilin' skull ring
My lucky graveyard boots
And a song to sing...
Sounds like pre-chip, pre-Buffy, pre-soul Spike to me. Of course, he probably wouldn't approve. But it's my head and he could do worse. I gave Shawn Colvin songs to Krycek. 8)

I'm not quite sure what the actual song The Rising is yet. I mean, it's got wonderfully cryptic lyrics that could turn into whole bunches of things:
There's spirits above and behind me
Faces gone black, eyes burnin' bright
May their precious blood bind me
Lord, as I stand before your fiery light
There's a priest in that, and Mary (though whether it's the Mary or some other woman, I don't know), fiery wheels, angels, demons, a rising up and binding with blood. Now that's a story I'd like to know more about. Gods, but I love this CD.

(Yea...blogging because I've nothing else to do and should go to bed, but I'm not tired enough to yet. But I'm not reading web operas! Yea...)

("Circumlocution," said Mr. Croup to Mr. Vandemar. "It's a way of speaking around something. A digression. Verbosity." Mr. Vandemar nodded. "I wondered," he said.
Note to Megan: They're here because I like them. And because if I told them to leave now, they'd probably knife me.)

Brain...full of...Gilbert...and Sullivan. Must...stop...reading...web operas. Can...no longer...function...
::goes to library website to try and find soundtrack to Mikado:: Blargh...I have no will of my own. I am governed solely by my obsessions. Rhiannon and Sarah Fulford, I'm blaming this on you, I warn you. You, and the man who plays George Grossmith in Topsy-Turvy. This is all your fault. 8P

Does it seem incredibly weird to anyone else that at least two of the public bathrooms on campus have lounges attached? 'Cause it seems weird to me.

i just discovered that one of my suitemates plays the violin. Quite well, actually. I know this because I can hear her practicing as I type.

New updates to the webpage. Including an actual update page. Exciting, yes? Bwa haha.

So, I keep seeing this one crow on campus as I walk to and from class. I know it's the same crow because he has these one horizontal silver-grey stripe across the back of each of his wings. You can't see it unless he's flying. And I keep wondering what could have caused that. Does that happen to crows? Is it some sort of plumage mutation and, if so, what would cause that to form in such uniform straight lines? If it's not natural, what happened to him? It's just sort of weird and interesting and thus I felt that I should note it. This has been your ornithological thought of the day.

(Yes, I know you can't determine gender with crows unless they're actually physically mating or laying eggs. But I had to use a pronoun and I don't like "it" for crows. So sue me. hehe)

Oh, by the way...I updated the website today. Nothing fancy, just a new rec on the fanfic page, but I felt that people should know. In case, you know, they care. Yeah. 8)

Because it's just so bloody hilarious...

Flesh-eating squirrel stalks streets of Knutsford

Isn't that the funniest sentence you've heard all day?

I have been reading too much Stephen Grundy. (The author of such books as Rhinegold and Attila's Treasure.) I know this because:

• I have been writing in runes on my notes for class
  
• the words "atheling," "drighten," "wain," "orlog" and "wyrd" (etc) have become a permanent part of my vocabulary. I can literally read them and not notice anything out of the ordinary.
  
• I have an unaccountable urge to go listen to Wagner
  
• Actually, I don't, because I don't much like Brunichild and Hagan is far too cool to be drowned by Rhinemaidens. They wouldn't do that to him anyway. And Valhalla really shouldn't burn down for a long while yet
  
• I do, however, want to go to Germany almost for the sole purpose of visiting the Rhine
  
• I said the word "wood-wosel" today. Out loud. To other people.

None of this can be good, really.

But, if any of you reading this have any desire to find really good modernizations of the Volsunga saga, like Norse mythology or have any leanings toward the Asatru, you should read these. 'Cause they rock. There's not a single character in the books that's not, in some way, admirable or worthy of respect. Even the nominal villains. In fact, some of the people (Ragin and Hagan especially) who come off the worst in Wagner's operas (the place most people know these character from if they know them at all) come off as incredibly sympathetic and rich characters. Sigifrith is great, without being annoying perfect and intrepid. The only person that I don't really care for is Brunichild and even that is simply a matter of personal taste. Every character is allowed to show the motivations behind their actions.

But not only do we get to see some of the heroes of Germanic tradition, the gods are also very cool. Being one who looks for Loki before any other Norse god in fictional accounts of their doings, I can tell you that the representation of the Sly One here is first rate. We are allowed to see his playful side as well as the cruelty that many choose as the only facet to show. It's wonderful. But, of course, this is Wodan's show. Everything is set in motion by the gallow's-god and only he wins in the end.

That's one thing I should note, actually. This is Germanic mythology, which means that everything eventually ends in tragedy. Everyone loses and no one really gains anything, except for Wodan. He gets the finest and bravest warriors to fight for him at the battle of Ragnarok. Which he'll lose anyway. But, more that that, he makes sure that his warriors - and, through them, Wodan himself - will never be forgotten.

So, anyway...you should read them. They're fantastic books - some of my favorites. Up there with Lord of the Rings and Sandman for my favorite fantasy novels that I've ever read. Read them, then pass them along. That way, the old gods won't be forgotten, right?

("Circumlocution," said Mr. Croup to Mr. Vandemar. "It's a way of speaking around something. A digression. Verbosity." Mr. Vandemar nodded. "I wondered," he said.)