Oh, you mean THOSE pineapples?

Together they fight crime! (Colony Chapter 8)

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:20:24 GMT

It's a Colony recap! Previous chapters. Wow, this one ended up looooong.

Chapter 8, in which David has some growing up to do.

Yay, this chapter's back on Island One! I am growing really really fond of Evelyn and David. Maybe it's just because I've seen more of them than a few pages of introduction, but I just... like them. I really enjoy their interaction in this chapter, too.

I don't remember if David's age is ever stated, but even if he's an adult, he's pretty much got the mind of a teenager, in my opinion. This is his puberty chapter.

It starts with them at the holo!ballet.

Yes, the holo!ballet. Because on Island One, they stream ballet performances from Moscow in hologram form, and then transmit the audience's reaction back for "emotional feedback". I bet the dancers and the Moscow audience really hate that: there's bound to be lag, and imagine the irritation of a bunch of disembodied clapping halfway through the next section.

Also, David is jealous of the dancers, because he's too self-conscious for dancing. He "decided that ballet was not for him, emotionally." See, he totally has weaknesses and everything, despite being a perfectly engineered test-tube human! Well, the self-consciousness, and the fact that he's really pretty thick.

Anyway, they go to a café (with robot waiters!) and Evelyn tells him about breaking in to Cylinder B and finding it empty except for rainforest. He tells her that she should be careful, as people have been thrown out of the colony for less, and she finally tells him that she's not planning to stay on Island One for any length of time, but actually just went there to write a story about him to sell back on Earth.

He is not very happy about that.

"Well, you got your story the first night. I hope you enjoyed it. Everything you always wanted to know about the manufactured man, including his sex life. Was I any good? Do you want me to pose for photos?"

N'aww, someone needs a hug.

Evelyn tells him that she isn't going to leave yet, because ~~he's really hot~~ she realised he was a real, feeling human being, and her conscience won out, so she's trying to find an even better story in Colony B. And David can help her find out what's going on!

"Now I understand. If I help you to unravel this mystery, then you'll have a story about Island One bigger than the test-tube baby story. Right?"

"I'm sure of it!" She nodded excitedly.

"And if I don't help you, you've still got my story. You can go back to Earth and sell my story to your bosses."

An unhappy frown creased her brow. "I don't want to do that, David."

"But you will if you have to."

"If I have to... I don't know what I'll do."

But I know, David said to himself.

Well, what's wrong with using your initiative and some implied blackmail to get a good story and keep the guy?

I love these kids.

~*CHANGE OF SCENE*~

The mysterious Board of Directors is having a meeting. Via holograms, again. (Sent by laser via privately-owned satellites, naturally.) Holograms are all the rage this chapter. Here's the members of The Board (cf. World Government):

T. Hunter Garrison: "[W]ispy white hair fringing a bald dome, narrow-eyed hawkish face with skin like badly wrinkled parchment, liver-spotted hands that would have been gnarled with arthritis if they didn't possess so much money and power." Lives on the top floor of his office-building in Houston and never leaves because the world comes to him.

Hideki Tanaka: Bluff industrialist with eyes "as cold as those of a professional killer". Lives somewhere with a view of Mt Fuji.

Wilbur St. George: Lives in Sydney, smokes a pipe, "beefy face" with a "no-nonsense scowl"

Kurt Morgenstern: Lives in Cologne, "wary-eyed [...], pasty-faced and flabby-looking", controls most of central Europe's industry.

And my second favourite character (Ev and Dave get joint first), the evil Sheik himself, al-Hashimi.

They discuss their funding of El Libertador! (he just feels like he should have an exclamation mark in his name) and how to stop him from causing too much trouble for them while destroying the World Government, and the ways they've been manipulating the weather to make things easier for him. Because it's important for the reader of a novel to always know the plans and objectives of every single character or group of characters, lest they strain their brains with speculation and uncertainty for more than a chapter or two.

Other points the book wants us to know about:

- Al-Hashimi has contacts with a member of the PRU who he gives money and advice to.
- Some of the Board members feel a bit guilty about killing people and/or endangering their profits, but their computer predictions show that the World Government will bankrupt them all if they don't do something. (Where "doing something" = fucking over most of the world's economy through disasters and wars. Go go gadget self-fulfilling prophecy?)
- They have a thing called Operation Proxy that will combine all the revolutionary movements around the world to cause a global civil war, and which somehow involves Island One
- Garrison controls Dr Cobb. He's very sure about this. He uses italics, and everything.

Oh, and St. George, the Australian member, owns the newspaper Evelyn works for, and is using her as a spy without her knowledge! Well, unless he has a different "snoop" who "[t]hinks she's digging up a scandal for the International News".

From now on, I'm imagining Evelyn with an Australian accent. Even if it is the International News.

~*TWO SCENE CHANGES IN ONE CHAPTER HOLY SHIT*~

Ok, exciting things: we finally get to meet Dr Cobb, head scientist of Island One, and David's father figure.

Aaaaaand now I have George Michael stuck in my head. :|

Anyway, Cobb has banned organised team sports from Colony One, because he doesn't approve of "vicarious violence" or competition of any kind, apparently. Good luck with that, doctor. He does have a 0g sports complex, so he can play ball games while having fatherly talks with his after-school projects, like we're suddenly in an American family movie.

So, there they are playing 0g-handball, which is apparently a very hazardous game and can cause a lot of injuries. This is hardcore handball, guys. Believe it.

David asks him about Cylinder B, and Cobb, who has the same exposition disease as everyone else, goes all "oh yes, she asked you about it, didn't she, I watched her break in the other day through the security cameras I SEE EVERYTHING." He reveals he threw David and Evelyn together when she first got there to give him an opportunity to learn how to deal with people from the real world. So, that went well.

He also reveal the plans for Cylinder B. (He's just looking out for us readers, really. Do you want to risk brain-strain?) The members of the Board has requested five mansions to be built in it.

"But why... what do they..."

Arching an eyebrow, the old man asked, "Do you see any statistical correlation between the fact that the Board has ordered five mansions and the fact that there are five—count them, five—members of the aforesaid Board of Directors of the island One Corporation, Limited?"

David blinked at him.

Are you sure you engineered this guy with a superior brain, Dr Cobb? I'm just asking, purely out of interest.

The Board want the mansions on the colony to retreat to once the Earth collapses into chaos and civil war, obviously:

"And they'll let the world collapse around them?"

"There's nothing they can do to prevent it, even if they wanted to."

"I don't believe that!"

"Well... there is one thing," Cobb said. "After the Board comes here to love, we can shoot anybody else out of the sky when they try to come up here and invade us!"

DUN DUN DUUUUUN.

And with that, we get to the end of Book One (of five). Pray to the gods of the five-act structure that now things will begin to happen. Prediction: David and Evelyn team up to save the world.

Sometimes reading books, you think about whether they would make good films or not. I think Colony would make a neat anime. I'm not sure why it makes me think of that rather than live-action, maybe it's the politics and the great silliness.

Also, I'm still hoping for a Colony Drop (TV Tropes, click at your own risk.).

I'm back!

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:15:20 GMT

THREE DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS, GUYS! Are you excited? I'm excited. I like Christmas. :3

And now, an entry:

FFFFFFF, how long has it been since I last posted? I didn't intend to take a three-week break, I just never got around to writing an entry. ¬_¬ (Though I have been twittering it up as much as ever.) I haven't done that much, to be honest:

I took the JLPT!

It was pretty easy, to be honest; there was only one or two questions I wasn't sure on. (Damn you, particles.) Results come out in March, I think.

I also got the references in for my MA application! I got an email last week that it had been passed on to the appropriate course coordinator and that I'll hear from them again in the new year. They'll probably ask me to an interview, too. Ah, so much waiting, I want to know nowwww whether I get to go.

Now that those two things are done, though, I'm really being worn down by not having anything to do — I'm so easy to irritate sometimes, it's really pretty ridiculous. I'm going to try to get more work next year, also enrol in a Japanese course to prepare for the next level of the JLPT, maybe start practising my violin again, and keep working through the Ruby on Rails textbook... you know, all those things I resolved to do when I left Durham. I might do a New Years Resolution post sometime, so they're written out and I have to stick to them.

Also, I'm trying to draw every day. It's not going perfectly, as you can see, but at least I'm drawing a bit, even if it's only doodles. These are pretty bad, dirty scans, but I'm too tired to fix them right now.

Giant lizard! :3

I can draw dudes, too, see?

Hurrrrrr

If I don't do art posts on a semi-regular basis from now on, someone shout at me about it. Next time: maybe an actual nice, finished drawing. :O Shocking.

I also have some Colony recaps, gonna post the first when I finish this post. \o/

And now I'm going to bed and reading about ancient gas warfare. Tim got me a subscription to Current World Archaeology for Christmas; it's making my life right now. :D

A winnar is I.

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:33:52 GMT

I sent off my MA application to UCL today! :D Oh man, I feel amazing. It's finally done! I'm also pretty confident about the JLPT on Sunday, so basically I am just relaxing all over the place today. :D

Ok, there's still other stuff I need to do, but today I am relaxing all over the place.

I also did some scanning! This is a bit depressing, because it's pretty much a month and a half's worth of drawings. T_T I want to draw more and practice more, really.

The first one of these is a bit NSFW.

IT MADE ME LOL, OK. ¬_¬

I always have to listen to music when I'm on buses, because they shake too much for me to be able to read without getting carsick.

When my cold was really bad last week, I watched a lot of Life and doodled some stuff. More than this, but the rest wasn't really worth scanning. I was ill, ok? XD

The leopard seal from the first episode was my favourite. I was sad it wasn't in the mammals episode, too.

I like graphs. They are gratifying. I'm a loser. I also own a lot of trousers.

She's wearing a magical stone around her neck on a lanyard.

Would anyone like a Google Wave invite?

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 15:19:38 GMT

I have 15, and no-one ot give them to. Here's a video thing that explains what you can do with Google Wave:

I think it'll be pretty cool once more people use it. I'll screen comments, so if you want an invite just comment with your email and I'll put you on the list.

I have not accomplished my week goals, because I've been busy coughing my lungs out. I feel a bit better today, but then I also felt a bit better on Thursday, and still spent all Friday in bed watching Life, so... *shrug*

PS: If you are some anonymous person, I'm not going to give you an invite unless absolutely no-one else wants one. I don't know if you're a spammer or whatnot, and also I'd prefer to give my invites to people I actually know, at least a bit, and can potentially use Wave with. Nothing personal. You can always introduce yourself in an email or something!

Coooolony. Chapters 6 & 7.

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:32:10 GMT

Technically I'm meant to be studying Japanese right now, but I want to read more Colony, which means I have to write more about Colony or I'll get too far ahead. (I should just write about each chapter as I read it, really. But some of them are only 4 pages long, so I can read about a million in one stretch.)

Chapter 6, in which we are imprisoned in the home of the evil Sheik, oh noes!

This chapter is stupid. Backstory: Dennis McCormick is an Irish-Canadian architect who's building the palace from 1001 Arabian Nights in Baghdad for tourism reasons, and someone tries to assassinate him in the market quarter as he's walking back from the site one day. Not in a sexy Assassin's Creed way, in a hired thugs with knives way. Anyway, he's rescued by a pretty lady in an expensive car, and blacks out.

He wakes up in a room like "the Moslem version of Paradise—or, at the very least, on a movie set for an Arabian Nights scene." Draped silk, luxurious sofas, a view over the rooftops of Baghdad, the works. Turns out it's al-Hashimi's house, and the pretty lady was his daughter, who brought him there instead of the hospital for no particular reason. Well, because it's ~*romantic*~, but she'd presumably have an easier time being allowed to visit him in the hospital than getting past her father's guards. Because yeah, al-Hashimi has totally posted armed guards on his door. He's very "old-fashioned" about his daughter, as the servant girl informs us, but he himself sleeps with a bunch of girls and boys all the time, blah blah blah. We all heard the dun-dun-duns last time, he's totally evil.

Also Bahjat, the daughter, gave Dennis a blood transfusion so he wouldn't die, and then they meet for about three seconds before she goes to Island One to be educated there (and get hit on, probably) and then they are ~*in love*~ and this chapter is just really contrived and I'm bored of them already.

Chapter 7, in which you are a white-ass dude.

Chapter 7 is only 5 pages long, and I really want to just type them all up for you, because they are pretty amazing. It's all about gangsters in Manhattan, and they talk in future gangster slang, which means saying "shee-it!" and asking people if they want to "get zapped", basically. Oh, and it offers a rare insight into future!2008 fashions:

The dude was black, and he wore the right kind of clothes: blood-red shiny plastic jacket with the sleeves torn off, tight-ass bullfighter pants, heavy boots that're good for stomping or running. But the clothes were too right, like somebody'd handed him a uniform. And they were new. Instead of fitting into the First Avenue scene, he stood out like a hooker's pointed bra.

Yessss. The dude is a cop from the "Fuckin' World Guv'mint" who wants to meet Leo. Leo is the uber-boss of the local Neighbourhood Associations: "[W]hen Leo says you do, you do. No matter which association you're with, no matter who's got a war going on with who." The Neighbourhood Association pope, so to speak. He's also got the best food-analogy-skin-colour description so far: he's the colour of an aubergine. He's also pretty badass.

When they meet it's revealed that Leo is actually a World Government agent called Elliot, and his orders are to come back to base, but he likes it too much as a gangster, so he tells the cop to GTFO.

"Listen to me," the cop said. "If you don't come back now, voluntarily, they'll drag you back."

"Take some draggin'," said Leo.

"They can do it. You know that."

Leo slowly got to his feet. It was like a dark storm cloud rising. "No, they only think they can do it, Frank,” he said in a kind of voice that Lacey had never heard out of him before. He sounded almost like the cop! "I've learned quite a bit about how things go out here in the streets, quite a bit about power—how to get it and how to use it. Power does not reside in the government bureaus and agencies. There's no power in those long corridors between offices or among those faceless, interchangeable automatons that you report to. Power is here, in the streets, in the cities, among the people who are hungry enough, scared enough, mean enough, desperate enough to fight."

The cop staggered a step backward. "You're talking nonsense. Madness!"

"Am I?"

"You can't survive out here without us, Elliot. The melanin treatments, the steroids, the hormones—they'll cut off your supply."

Leo shrugged massively. "I've got other sources, Frank. I don't need you people anymore."

[...]

"You're crazy, Elliot. The drugs must be affecting your brain. They'll come and get you..."

"Shee-it, man!" Leo's voice went back to normal, and Lacey felt better for it. "We gonna come an' get you. We got more soldiers than you got, more guns, too. An' we know how t' use 'em. All over the world, man—the underdogs are gonna knock off the white-asses, wherever they are."

Yeah, Leo is badass.

I am actually quite excited about all these bits of plot that keep being set up, but I really hope this is the last one. I'm ready for them to get started moving and actually happening now, ok?

PS: Spellcheck keeps asking me if al-Hashimi shouldn't be "sashimi".

Releasing a statement.

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:44:14 GMT

THINGS I WILL DO THIS WEEK:

1. Send off my MA application.
2. Finish that now embarrassingly ancient entry about the "native British" already ffs.
3. Get my laptop to a repair shop.
4. …That's all I can think of, actually. Neat. (Apart from general drawing and studying Japanese and stuff, obviously.)

I shall report back on Friday.

Colony Chapters 4 & 5

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:11:29 GMT

Guys. I tidied and rearranged my bookshelf a few days ago (I was procrastinating), and I have a ton more vintage sci-fi and fantasy books hanging around waiting to be read. I think I should make this a ~series~. What do you guys think of Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny next? With a cover like this it's got to be good, right?

Right, I finished with Chapter 3, where Evelyn and David were doing it and talking about politics and how David was basically the extracurricular after school project of the scientists on Island One (that's the name of the space colony, btw), who genetically engineered him to be the perfect human (he's immune to the common cold. So jealous.) after his engineer mother died in some tragic construction accident while he was in the womb. No-one knows who his father was. I can never get a handle on this future!2008; it's such a weird mix of progressive and backwards.

I forgot to mention, by the way, in the end of Chapter 3 David also explains what it is he does with all his time on the colony, since, as secret after-school science projects don't get passports (angst!), he's not allowed on Earth: he's a "forecaster". Which means he tries to predict the future with the clever use of maths and computers and shit. It makes about as much sense that Island One's weird hippy organic farmer in space self-sufficiency. See, he's really good at economics — he got "within half of a percent of last year's Gross Regional Products for Western Europe, Eurasia, the Mideast, and North America" but apparently he stays away from politics because it's too complicated. Because... politics... never affects the economy... at all.

But fair enough, I can see he would be rubbish at politics, because until Evelyn suggested otherwise, he was absolutely convinced the corporations who run Island One were in no way involved in politics. Island One produces all of Earth's energy by harvesting solar energy with satelites and beaming it to Earth in some unexplained way that allows it to be caught with antennas.

Yeah, no political power at all.

He also thinks this:

And where would rebels such as the revolutionaries in Latin america get their arms and munitions? If the corporations wanted to weaken the World Government...

Gee, do you think those mysterious rebels might be important for plot reasons? I wonder, I wonder.

Chapter 4, in which we meet the World Government.

The World Government is based in Messina. I don't know why, maybe they just thought it was a nice place. In any case, they went to Messina, and built a big shiny glass-and-steel complex next to the old city, so as not to distract the beggars and starving children, which seem to litter... everywhere on Earth, basically.

The Director of the World Government is Emanuel de Paolo, who has the "swarthy" skin and "dark and suspicious" eyes of a Sicillian peasant, but "instead of the fleshy, heavy features of the native Sicilian [his] face [is] fine-boned, almost delicate."

This chapter is full of great descriptions like that. The North American representativel for example, has skin "the color of milk chocolate". Here's what the rest of the government looks like, in a paragraph of De Paolo musing about the homogeneity of internationalism:

Each man had come from a different part of the world: tobacco-skinned Arab, brown Chinese, black African, red-haired Russian, blond Dane, and the darkish American. Yet they all wore the same type of conservatively cut grayish suit. The colors of their clothing varied less than the colors of their skin. And they were all men. We still do not allow women to rise to the level of the Executive Council. That would be too cruel.

That paragraph. I don't even know where to start. Is Africa one country now? Like Denmark? What sort of colour is "tobacco"? Darkish. That would be too cruel.

The big thing for the World Government at the moment is weather modification. They came to power, it seems, by preventing a nuclear war, which they did by threatening everyone with ruining the weather if they didn't disarm (and the Moon helped by threatening everyone with satelite lasers, apparently. From then on I basically imagined everything in the style of a Gundam episode). Except now everyone has gotten hold of weather-modification technology and are using it to make a ~*secret war*~ or droughts and flooding. I admit, I think that is actually a really neat concept, if pretty impractical. It's also possible that the multinational corporations are the ones doing all the weather modification, in order to destabilise the World Gov, though why they'd want that is anyone's guess. De Paolo is worried they're developing weaponised diseases up there in space. Because the scale of scientific progress naturally goes NUCLEAR BOMBS => MANIPULATE WEAHER => WEAPONISE DISEASES. Yes.

Al Hashimi, the tobacco-coloured one, gets all defensive because he's on the board of a multinational, and they are NOT DOING ANYTHING, OK? HE INVESTIGATED! HARD! BUT YOU CAN'T COME VISIT ISLAND ONE BECAUSE... WE ARE PAINTING THE LIVING ROOM RIGHT NOW. And then he and the Russian have a little catfight because, and this is possibly the best thing in this chapter, Russia is still communist. They are "the workers' paradise". I guess they must've sorted themselves out and are totally cool now, having happy Marxist-Leninist funtime parties every night.

They have another problem, whch is El Libertador, an underground revolutionary who has united the global discontent into one big "Peoples' Revolutionary Underground" movement "against the gray authoritarianism and sameness of the World Government". And the the South American representative enters and reveal that El Lib' has TAKEN ARGENTINIA. DUN DUN DUUUN.

And then tobacco-flavoured Al Hashimi sends this memo to someone:

De Paolo's main concern continues to be the weatehr modifications, I suggest we terminate this phase of the operation as quickly as possible, before they can find a leak.
We should make stronger ties with El Libertador, [...]. Under no circumstances should [he] be allowed to make conciliatory gestures toward the World Government, or vice versa.

DUN DUN DUUUN.

Chapter 5, in which Evelyn gets hit on a lot.

Evelyn must be one sexy lady, because she spends this entire chapter being hit on by guys who think it's cute how low gravity makes her feel queasy. She is generally sarcastic about this in her head, but uses it to her advantage in her journalistic endeavours. I like Evelyn.

First, she's shown around some farm-pods outside the main Island One cylinder, in which "experimental crops" are grown. (dun dun duuun?) On the way back some guy gives here som anti-space-nausea medication and spends the entire trip talking to her about his ~lonely bachelor life~. Yeah.

After her induction tour, she goes off trying to find a way into the second cylinder. I was just writing up a big thing about how it doesn't make sense for two rotating (for gravity purposes) cylinders to be thethered togetherk and then I realised they're probably not next to eacother, but in a line. I'll let you get away with it this time, Bova. In any case, the two cylinders are tethered together, and there's an elevator that ferries people across, but the Cylinder B is meant to be off limits. To Evelyn, this is a personal challenge. I really like Evelyn.

On the way there she runs into an astronaut, who takes it upon himself to steady her when the gravity decreases as they approach the control center (zero gravity = getting hit on) and then tries to get her to give him her adress, but she tells him he can just call her at the training center. Shot dowwwwn.

She eventually slips away and hacks into a few security doors to make her way into an elevator that takes her to Cylinder B. Which contains... a rainforest. Except there's only plants, no birds or insects. So, an empty rainforest. And there the chapter ends.

I've read the next few chapters, as well, but I'm too lazy to write more right now, so I'ma save it until the weekend.

A post of negligible import.

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:06:20 GMT

Charlie Brooker and Yahtzee should make out.

Anyway.

I was going to write about Colony yesterday, but making tea turned into having dinner, which turned into watching TV with my parents and then Warehouse 13 was on and the The Mummy Returns right afterwards, and then I went to bed.

And now I have at least three blogposts in my head that should be set free onto the rolling hills and pastures of the internet (and a million comments to reply to, where "a million" = ca. 6), but I am so very tired even though it's only 11, what's up with that, but nonetheless, SO TIRED, so I think I'm gonna go to bed and then blog my face off when I wake up.

It's a plan.

PS: I read pretty neat Star Trek fic today. You should probably read it if you think you would appreciate AU Star Trek slash based on the new film. It has vampires in it?

I consume visual media.

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:23:41 GMT

[I wrote half of this last night, hence it is a little rambly. But it does have subheadings! 8D]

I miss the times when I'd go to see a film at least twice, with different friends or whatever, and I'd always bring a notebook to the multiple viewings and take notes and write down quotes to use in my LJ review. I think I should start taking notes and writing about TV shows again, too. It’s fun.

2012
I went to see 2012 last weekend. It was pretty cool if you like seeing things fall apart in grandiose and dramatic ways, and I really, really like that. Especially the Earthquake stuff when the ground moves in waves like water; that is so badass.

In terms of the story, though, I pretty much agree with the io9 review. I really just didn't care either way about whether the main characters lived or died. The question of what the various world governments were doing to survive occupied me, and the thing about whether they were going to suck it up and let their full capacity of people on board the ships, but after that I was a lot less engaged. The Eurasian arks got away, so what if the North American one hits Mt Everest? And I guess South America, Australia, and Africa's arks didn't get finished in time? I guess they redistributed the people from that onto the completed arks? Nah, the future of mankind doesn't need any Australians, don't be silly. And don’t even talk to me about Africa. There’s no-one there who’s rich enough to afford a giant Chinese ship anyway, amirite?

Ok, I’ll stop now.

But anyway, the only people I sort of wanted to survive both didn't, the Russian pilot guy because he nobly sacrificed himself to land the plane, and the Russian woman because... she had a boob job, or because of her affair, or some other transgression against movie ethics, idk. Maybe the pilot died because he was sleeping with her, as well. RUSSIAN INFIDELITY DOESN'T PAY. Obviously. I am rambling, because I am quite sleepy. Oh, but the Tibetan(?) family survived. I liked them, too.

ANYWAY. It was a very pretty film. it suffers from that thing that films sometimes have where all the side characters are more interesting than the main ones, but if you're like me you'll spend most of your time enjoying the destruction and fantasising about what you’d do in an apocalypse, anyway, so that's alright.

Doctor Who

I drew this on a train.
I really enjoyed Sunday's Dr Who special thing. I like it when things go wrong for people they usually always work out for. And things went pretty spectacularly wrong this time, I'd say. I really don't pay any attention to Dr Who canon, either (when they mentioned the daleks invading at Christmas, I thought something like: "did that... happen in a previous Christmas special? I vaguely remember... or do I?"), so they can do anything they want, imo, as long as it stays interesting. And if not, I'll just stop watching like I did before, no harm done. I am a very casual Doctor Who watcher.

Tin Man
The first half of a film (mini series? idk.) called Tin Man (which I'd heard about. On Fandom Secrets. XD) was on the SciFi channel last night. It's pretty good! Much like Alice in Wonderland, my only knowledge of The Wizard of Oz comes from pop-culture osmosis, so I may be missing the odd reference, but it's fun in any case. Not super amazing, or anything, but fun.

ΠΛΑΝΗΤΕΣ
When Tim came over this weekend, he brought a box set of Planetes with him, and we watched it, and I totally thought we had run out, but it turns out that box set was only half of the series, and we're going to watch the other half next weekend. This makes my life a small but statistically significant amount more amazing.

Twilight
My mum is suddenly really into the Twilight film, and she really wants me to watch it, too, and I really just have no desire to. I clawed my way through the book, I know what happens, I just don't feel like bringing up the energy to give this a chance. Ok, no, I do sort of want to watch it with Steph and an intoxicating substance of some kind (by which I mean caffeine, because I couldn’t stay awake through a movie if I had alcohol), but that’s a different matter altogether.

I think that's all I had to write about. Now I shall make some tea and write about the next few chapters of Colony. Mustn't let my reading get too far ahead of my writing.

Not that popping hormones is my favourite concept ever now, or anything.

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:11:35 GMT

I had a lesson with the tiny Germans today. We made spiders! 8D

Mine had three eyes, but one fell off.

Tiny boy-German made a spider that was a cowboy first (it had a lasso), and then turned into a princess ('cause he made it a crown). Yeah, tiny boy-German is pretty awesome.

I got my test voucher for the JLPT yesterday! Much excitement. :3 I think I'll do one of my past papers tomorrow. Things I will also do tomorrow:

- Go to the post office
- Edit my personal statement
- Finish colouring robot commission
- Find a cobbler who will fix the zipper on my boots

Awesome!

I've read the first three chapters of Colony now.

A vague summary of stuff that's happened:
So, this book is actually quite good so far. I mean, the writing is pretty silly, but I'm getting quite fond of the characters. Also, the terrible sex scene I was waiting for actually happened. I wasn't expecting that. That's epic.

There is David Adams, who is a ~*genetically engineered perfect human*~ (which I wasn't meant to know until the latter half of chapter three, but the blurb on the back spoils it. Screw you, blurb.), with blond hair and blue eyes and a firm backside and everything. And Evelyn Iamtoolazytolookupherlastname, who is a journalist sent into space to perv on him, basically. Chapter 1 and 3 are about little but their sexual tension. They meet, he shows her around a bit, she pervs on his firm backside, he puts his arms around her to help her ford tiny streams, they take a bath in a lake (there's no showers, because you clean yourself with ultrasonic vibrators. Yes.), make out in a star observation "blister", ride an electronic bike together, complete with her arms around his waist and her breath on his neck et cetera, and then they go back to her place and "She straddled his body as she had straddled the bike's seat and he exploded inside her."

Hormones. They are popping.

In between, though, they manage to argue about politics a bit, in an exposition sort of way. Earth is apparently sort of poor and in a mess, and there is a giant utopian half organic hippie farm half super-science lab space station sparsely populated by obscenely rich people and scientists who work for obscenely rich people. It also makes no sense sometimes. Apparently, water is too precious to use for washing (but it's totally ok to bathe in random lakes), and they are completely self sufficient (except for booze which they import from the Moon), but he has a wood fire in his faux-cave home, in front of which they lounge and drink wine. I guess their trees must grow super fast?

All I know about Earth so far is what I learned in Chapter 2, which is that sometimes people try to assassinate Irish-Canadian architects in Cairo's market quarter. And then their hormones pop, too:

Somewhere in the back of his head he was marvelling that he felt no fear, no despair, not even anger that someone had gone to such lengths to kill him. He was trembling, but with an anticipation that was almost joyous.
Jesus, God, he thought, we really are pagan warriors underneath all that politeness and chat.

Prediction: There will be some dramu about Evelyn sleeping with David to get his story. Hopefully she'll keep being a total unashamed perv, because that's awesome. Maybe now they have actually slept together I will get to see more of the world, because it sounds really interesting.

Oh, and something will happen with the Irish-Canadian architect that explains what is going on. Hopefully.

30-year old sci-fi like candy

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:57:19 GMT

I finished the book I was reading yesterday, and picked a new one from my to-read shelf:

Colony, by Ben Bova, first published 1979. "It is the year A.D. 2008; world population has steadily grown above 7-billion."

I'm gonna have so much fun with this. Choice quote from the first page:

Grasping her wrist firmly, he helped pull her up along the climbing path. "It gets easier up ahead. The gravity slackens off. And the view is worth the effort."

She nodded, but said to herself, He knows he's handsome. Good muscular body; firm backside. That's why they picked him to guide me, no doubt. He gets all the female hormones popping.

He gets all the female hormones popping, guys. I can't wait until the mandatory aloof, calculating, genius-scientist character shows up.

This entry contains a surprise BSG spoiler and a link the squeamish might want to avoid.

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:11:47 GMT

Oh hey, it's that time again, the time where the World Service talks about deaths in childbirth and how they haven't really gone down in the last 20 years. The time where I sit here absolutely incredulous and so very thankful for the healthcare and scientific progress in my life.

I learned what an obstetric fistula is from this series last week, and I am still not over it. There's people who live with them for 40 years or more. Years! Words nor emoticons can properly express my horror.

Just another reason "let's all go be hunter-gatherers now yaaaay" at the end of BSG was a really stupid decision.

Fear my legitimacy.

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:27:23 GMT

Look guys, I got my staff badge at school today. \o/ Now I don't look like an impostor sitting in the staffroom being all... young. And stuff. The lesson today went pretty well, though no-one did their homework. -_- I've assigned them something they have to read out loud in front of the class next week in revenge.

Oh hey, it's November now, I guess I should start revising for the JLPT in earnest. get out those past papers I bought and stuff. I also haven't gotten any confirmation from SOAS at all that they got my application for the test, I think I'll call them about it tomorrow. It's still a month until the actual test, but I did send the application ages ago.

At the moment, I am constructing my Christmas list. I really want one of these flannel shirts. ♥ I want to buy a least half of everything Uniqlo sell. UniqLo? UniQlo? UNIQLO?

In other news, I've been watching a cool documentary, called Race and Intelligence: Science's Last Taboo. Rageh Omaar, who is a journalist, I think? Goes around investigating the evidence behind the claim that intelligence is linked to race, going over the flaws in IQ tests, whether race is even a valid biological/genetic factor (not really, big surprise), and so on. The conclusion (SPOILERS! You should go watch it yourself unless you're not in the UK and Channel 4 won't let you) is something pretty cool that I'd never heard about before - since I know little about IQ tests - which is that the IQ test measures a certain kind of conceptual thinking that has been developing as we've adapted to modernity. Someone in the 1900s, for example, would score pretty badly by our current standards*. So, taking that into account, obviously the average score from sub-Saharan Africa would be lower than that from the USA or... I think North East Asia was the term they used.

It was a pretty excellent documentary, which thoroughly confirmed me in all my previous conclusions and offered me even more evidence to back them up with, allowing me to be continue being a smug git until the end of time. (It was quite balanced and objective in tone, though, while still acknowledging how personal and loaded the issue was, which I liked.)

* Also, it is massively biased towards the educated middle class. The one he took asked what an imaginary number was. How is that intelligence as opposed to knowledge?

Oh hai guys. I haven't blogged in forever.

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:35:24 GMT

The exhibition was pretty cool! Many pretty things. I love ~~Aztec~~ Mexica writing so much. This was probably my favourite thing, but I can't find a proper picture of it online. I'm amused that the guy on the left is named "leg". Friday at 3pm was the wrong time to go, though; it was massively crowded. And people kept. Standing. Right in front of me. While I was reading something. щ(≖益≖щ) *murders*

I finished reading the Third God as well, and the ending was surprisingly good! (almost everyone I was really attached to survived! :O) In the last few chapters everything sort of comes together and you see the huge cycle of history that the characters only occupy a small, final part of, and it shifts the way in which you look at the story in a really interesting way and FFF I LOVE IT, OK. I can't really say more without spoiling, which I won't because I need you all to read it so I have someone to talk about it to. It's main selling point is the setting, I think, which I'll probably talk about more later. The author also has a huge amount of world building notes up on his website, which makes him my favourite.

I think I'll probably end up reading it all over again soon from this new perspective and to look for foreshadowing. :3

The book I'm reading now is one my mum brought me from Germany a little while ago; Die Praktikantin by Yannik Mahr. It's a sort of satire romance intrigue, I think, about a Journalist who gets put in charge of a small rural newspaper, not the big metropolitan one he had his eyes on, and hires a pretty intern, and then according to the blurb something mysterious happens, idk. It's really amusingly written, so far.

I had my second German lesson last Monday, and it went really well. :D I ran out of time before I ran out of things to do, and everything. Spent the first half an hour or so talking about the Middle Ages, because the kids didn't know anything. They hadn't even heard of the reformation, apparently. I'm probably going to give them a short history lecture every week, starting with the Völkerwanderung next Monday, since it's relevant to the Nibelungen. I'm making a ~powepoint presentation~. 8D

I also have about two thirds of a blog post written about Nick Griffins hilarious "indigenous British who've been living here for 17000 years!" comment on BBC Question Time, which was about a million years ago in internet time but who needs temporal relevance amirite? I might finish it tomorrow, I've been wandering around London a lot today shopping with Tim and I'm not in the mood to concentrate on properly structured writing. God, I missed writing properly structured things about archaeology/history, though. So much.

Oh yeah, I also started filling out my MA application! My personal statement is another thing I will probably write tomorrow.

PS: I say I was shopping with Tim, it was mostly Tim shopping, really. I only bought one thing. A pretty cool thing:

BFFs!

FLEXING MY CAPSLOCK MUSCLES.

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:43:23 GMT

So I was honestly halfway through writing a real entry. But then I got distracted. And now it's too late to scan the pictures I was going to put in it anyway without waking up my mum. So I will just leave you with the Gundam fanfaggotry and post the rest tomorrow.

Feel free to ignore this if you've already been subjected to my capslockspam on Tumblr. I am utterly incapable of discussing 00 sans capslock.

OMG GUNDAM. OMG EVERYONE. OMG BUM AND CROTCH-SHOTS. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

CRACKTASTICAL MECH DESIGNS OH HOW I LOVE YOU~. <3

OH HEY I THINK I'VE READ THIS FANFIC.

<3

PS: I have given up speculating on what is in Innovators' pants, or if they ever underwent puberty. It is never going to make any sense.

What ho.

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:36:32 GMT

The British museum sent me an email reminding me that I have tickets to the Moctezuma exhibition on Friday, titled "Your visit to Moctezuma", and while it was loading up on my phone, a part of me was imagining it was going to continue "... will have to be cancelled because the exhibits have mysteriously come to life/vanished."

Because I am secretly 10 years old.

To-day has been pretty useless. I had to go to the job centre in Weybridge at half past noon, and because the trains are lame, that meant I was out from 11 to 3pm. And after that I had a headache, so I laid down for a nap, and after that I've been too groggy to do much except read webcomics and stuff. I was going to do so much to-day, as well. D:

Oh, by the way, I don't think I ever posted it on here, but I made that photo blog for pictures I take on my phone! pseudocarp.tumblr.com. Check it out!

PS: Admit it, you totally want to see this, too. Yeah, I'm using tumblr a bit more lately. I sort of like to pretend my LJ is for longer, more thought-out posts. But then sometimes I post things like that trailer on there that I want to share with people on LJ, too. To expand my online presence over several different kinds of blog, or to contract it all into one? I am conflicted.

I am also going to bed now, definitely.

Looks like I'm a teacher now.

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:59:48 GMT

I went to the European Bookshop yesterday, with my mum and a colleague of hers from school who were textbook shopping, and I got some books to read with my German class. :D

I can't decide which to do (or which to do first, since they're pretty short), though. One is Level 4: Stadt der Kinder, which I read when I was little and is about a bunch of kids mysteriously becoming characters in a videogame. The other one is the Nibelungen written in easy words, which is also awesome because a) mythology is always awesome, and b) the book comes with little info sections about medieval history, and quizzes about the content, and all sort of other stuff that makes my life easier. So maybe I'll do that one first.

I am still a little terrified by this surprise teaching gig. XD I'm glad it's half term next week so I have time to figure out what's going on. Also I'm getting another group of really tiny 1st grade German children, who I get to teach how to read and write and stuff like that. :O HOW AWESOME IS THAT GOING TO BE? I've always sort of wanted to teach someone to read and write.

Also, the European Bookshop is the best thing in the world. I want to go back there when I have money and buy everything.

PS: Probably going to the London Expo next weekend. :D I'm trying to find something useful like a schedule of events on their website, but no luck so far. >_>

From last night's twitterings:

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:22:53 GMT

If anyone tries to tell you that I was actively looking forward to the day I could attempt to translate "The Spice must flow" into Japanese, they would be lying.

I actively look forward to the day I can translate "The Spice must flow" into Arabic.

I was going to go to this to-day, but it turns out it's one of those exhibitions you have to order tickets in advance for, and they're fully booked until later this week. Maybe I can drag someone along on the weekend.

I still want to go out somewhere, though... guess I should save my train money. :<

Hnnnnnnnrgh

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:24:15 GMT

A little while ago, I made a resolution, to be more confident, to not put myself down by assuming I couldn't do things, and to throw myself in at the deep end more.

Granted, I made this resolution in the context of deciding on what difficulty level I should play BioShock on (which ended up being academic, since my computer overheats and freezes as soon as I get out of the elevator capsule thing and start enjoying the creepy atmosphere), but I think I can transfer it to teaching German classes to a handful of 13-year-old native speakers after school with absolutely no previous experience at all.

And next week, I'll have more than half a day's warning, so I'll have more of an idea what the fuck to do.

In other news, I've finally thought of something fun to do with tumblr. I often take pictures on my phone and then don't really have any idea of what to do with them. I cold spam twitter with them, but I'm not convinced pictures and twitter work that well together. I keep meaning to do an LJ picspam post with all of them, but I've not gotten around to it. So I had the idea yesterday that I could email them to tumblr straight from my phone whenever I take one. (Unless I find another/better site for mobile photo blogging.)

All that I have to do now is figure out a title.

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:41:55 GMT

I drew a diary-type comic that was going to basically be half of this entry yesterday, but I just noticed my new drawing pad is bigger than my scanner, so that's not going to happen right now. It's ok, it wasn't that well-drawn anyway.

I went to London with Tim on Friday, mainly to get some revision material for the JLPT, since the revision course I'd signed up for was cancelled due to lack of interest. >_<

Read Real Japanese is a little bit above my level still, actually - lots of grammatical structures I've not come across before - but in a few months I can probably handle it.

I also watched a ridiculous documentary about Easter Island this weekend, with a full complement of stupid, notably: "'primitive' cultures are too dumb to invent stuff themselves", "aliens did it", and "Egypt is the source of all monumental architecture".

Before they mentioned aliens and I stopped paying as much serious attention, I got really irritated with some archaeologist they interviewed who was talking as if it's really weird and unusual and probably ~*mysterious*~ that people would want to build these huge apparently useless statues*. I know it was a documentary and they were trying to make it interesting, but that sort of attitude irritates me for so many reasons. Trying to smother genuinely interesting and intriguing things in pointless obfuscating mysticism, for one thing, and the suggestion that only "sophisticated" cultures are good enough to build monuments. And on a more basic level: Come on. Have you not ever looked around? Building big awesome impressive things is pretty much what we, humans, do here! I mean, by all means, be impressed that we manage it, I am constantly impressed and amazed by the crazy stuff we manage to do, but being surprised by the simple fact that we try is practically insulting.

... I may care too much about this sort of thing.

OH HEY, AND NOW I MUST BE OFF TO TEACH A SURPRISE GERMAN CLASS. Be back to explain later, if the 13-year olds don't eat me. O_O

A clever title is not coming to me right now.

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:26:46 GMT

I watched the first episode of Season 6 of House just now. I only saw bits and pieces of S5, but this season looks interesting. I think I'll follow it. Following a TV series on actual TV, guys. :O Craziness or what.

The trial at Costa went pretty well, I think. I mainly collected dirty dishes, and washed dishes, and carried clean dishes back downstairs. Also made some coffee, which was actually pretty fun and easy. I'll find out by Friday whether they'll hire me. *crosses fingers*

That's all, really. Everything is covered in dust from the new stairs and floor being put in. It's a really nice staircase, though. I enjoy walking on it. (What? I can enjoy a staircase.)

PS: You guys should totally read Hanjuku Joshi. The beginning is so-so, but it gets better and better as it goes on. Fffff, it's so adorable, it makes me grin like a stupid person.

I have to do that post about the gory, dark (but wonderful ♥) book I'm reading soon now, to balance out the fluffy yuri rec. XD

HI GUYS.

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:59:42 GMT

When I was finishing my new website design the other day (have I blogged about that, actually? MY NEW WEBSITE IS UP. 8D) I saw my Hourly Comic Day comic, and it made me want to do more. So I did yesterday! Except I didn't do much except have a cold yesterday, so it's not very exciting. >_>

AND THEN I GAVE UP.

It was meant to be a sort of practice for drawing quickly, but I think I might just give up on drawing quickly, tbh. XD But hey, it looks nicer than my last hourly comic.

ALSO. I had a job interview at Costa on Saturday, and I have a trial on Wednesday. EXCITING STUFF. I just really want my account to be in credit again, srsly. ;_;

Going back to blowing my nose every 10 seconds now. See ya.

PS: giving_ground & firescribble, I was working on sketches for you earlier (probably email you what I've got tomorrow), and look what I found while looking for reference pictures. HOW'S THAT FOR MANLY POSING.

I like drawing trees.

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:14:43 GMT

Sooooo, I was about to do a bunch of scanning for an art post, and then I noticed that most of the stuff I'd drawn recently was in pencil, and then I gave up.

Even with the extensive high-tech array of settings available to me when scanning (there are three: brightness, contrast, and dpi), I have never managed to make it play nice with pencil drawings. And while I am not at "do nothing but lie in bed watching Kyou Kara Maoh!"* levels of sick, I am in no way healthy enough to bother with staring at a screen fucking with levels for a few hours.

So here is a thing I drew in pen. I'm quite proud of it, especially since I made it up as I went along.

*Which is actually the best thing in the world do to when you're brain-dead from flu or similar. No, seriously. Scientific studies have shown this to be true. (And by scientific studies I mean me.) Though I think Star Trek TOS might be just as good.

Now watch email posting strip out all the images...

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:23:19 GMT

Haha! I activated a thing in Gmail Labs that lets me have a million silly icons! Look! Sparkles! Whale! Donut! Rocketship! Flag! Boat! Aubergine! ...I have no idea what that one's supposed to be. There's a million of them, and fuck knows what practical use most of them would ever be, but I totally approve.

DASTARDLY MOUSTACHE TWIDDLING.

That is all. Move along.

ETA: XD Well, that was a moderately successful email posting experiment. *puts images in the right places in the text*

Do not repeat the mistakes I have made, young ones.

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:23:25 GMT

Here's what you shouldn't do on Twitter if you're trying to avoid spam, as demonstrated by Steph (@brainsinajar) and myself:

(Read bottom-to-top, naturally.)

I know, I know, we should've know better. -_-

A few days ago, I gave in to the secret urge to find fanfic ~~about Rossiu's angsty unrequited crush on Simon~~ that I've been harbouring ever since I finished watching TTGL, and now my brain's gone on a Gurren Lagann kick again. XD I wanna make icons, but VLC is really really not a fan of .mkv files, and taking screencaps in Media Player Classic is like pulling teeth. Maybe I'll redownload all the episodes in .avi format later, idk.

Also, I don't even like high-school stories that much, but you have to love a series with a canon high-school AU. (Though I admit, as my actual time in high school recedes into the past, high-school stories are growing on me. Growing from dislike into indifference, but growing nevertheless.)

Tim asked me to do some concept art for a game he's working on, and it totally brought back my drawing groove. XD I should really figure out how to make it so whether I manage to produce creative things isn't determined by my mood. That would be awesome. Anyway, when I get back to my place* there'll probably be a massive art post sometime.

I'm working on a post pimping out one of my favourite book series of all time, but I'm a little hesitant to post it, because I am so exaggeratedly emotionally invested in the world and the characters that I'm afraid someone'll comment something along the lines of "I read it and thought it was pretty lame." T_T

Also I still have 200-odd pages left of the final book, and WHAT IF IT SUDDENLY TURNS RUBBISH? *irrational fretting*

PS: Oh gosh, Hiling, you are too adorable. Come live with me and be my girlfriend and we'll go look for bugs together, I promise.

PPS: Oh yeah, and I watched the first two episodes of the new season of Merlin. It's still pretty awful. Episode 2 did make me laugh out loud a few times, though. (I think it was on purpose.)

*Our staircase is being ripped out and replaced, so I'm staying at Tim's for a few days.