withiel  and me wrote this. It's only hald serious, but it is half serious. I'm sorry, fans. I'm sorry, JK. But bring it the fuck on.

Happy birthday to lionpride042004, avonette and happy belated birthday to seshat1.

( TUC LGBT conference )

( Torchwood - Children Of Earth Episode 1 )

Better than anything in the previous two seasons - and worked bloody well as a "first episode" for all those new BBC1 viewers as well.

9/10 - but only because I hope to be able to score some later episodes higher.

"Starting Off" - mmm, imaginative.

(I'm going to be surprised if the majority of first entry subject lines aren't either left blank or some variation on 'new journal', 'first entry', 'starting an LJ', etc.)

...to fill in the time before Torchwood.

These are the top 15 books in each of the main Doctor Who series of novels, as ranked by the number of people who own them on LibraryThing (also the top 15 non-fiction Who books at the end). Apologies to co-authors who fall off the list due to LibraryThing's practice of prioritising first-named collaborators compounded by my laziness in not looking them up.

( Doctor Who books poll )

Edited to Add: Bah, listed one book twice. The Face of the Enemy is of course a Past Doctor Adventure not a Missing Adventure. But you can't edit polls, so there we are.

Our weekend was bracketed by death.

Friday night, maybe midnight or thereabouts, we were woken by mad scrabbling on the landing. Investigation revealed Ron with a new toy: another mouse was moments away from its end.

There was a degree of oh-buggrit-we-want-to-sleep-clean-up-the-bits-in-the-morning and we subsided; until, that is, Ron brought his prize into the bedroom. No way I wanted to risk the rodent being deposited in several bits on (or worse, in) the bed, so up I got and chased the PoD downstairs to grab hold of him at the foot of the stairs. For a brief moment.

Ron does not like to be thwarted.

He emitted his bloodfreezing scream of fury and slipped away (I wasn't going to try and hold on anyways), but the scream necessitated the opening of the Maw, and the Fangs Therein, and thus the now dead and still miraculously intact rodent was left behind for me to grab - quickly! - to enbag and, given the hour and my naked body, be hurled outside the front door for attention come the dreadful light of day.

This was not the end of the story, for on Saturday Mac went out onto the patio, and lying there, still in its (admittedly slightly punctured) baggie was the mouse. How it got from front to back, given our home is mid-terrace, is left as an exercise for the reader.

The weekend itself passed peacefully: I went shopping on my bike on both days, for food on Saturday and to Brislington Maplins for a can of airduster, Roomba, switches, for the cleaning of. The A4174/A4 junction really is a miracle of Bristol Cycling City planning: the only practical (for unusual values of practical) way of turning right on a bike is to filter between two narrow, car filled, lanes through one set of light and to another. The filtering bit is fine; the pedalling down the white line with vehicles overtaking on both sides mere inches away after the first lights change to green is less so. That the shedpark on Bath Road is entirely bereft of Sheffield racks (at least anywhere near my destination) just provides a little shining jewel of experience before the return, stopping at the lights heading straight on into Brislington, and feeling the rush of traffic again in a fine intimacy as the turn left filter goes green.

I'd decided to return via the Sweet Mart in Easton, to pick up the 5 litre can of olive oil I lacked carrying space for on Saturday. Taking a scenic route for a change, I diverted through the pastoral joys of St Annes, down to the river before crossing same next to the charming and friendly sight of the Village Centre. Thence to Barton Hill where the skies opened and I got as soaked as a very soaked thing. I dripped into the shop, bought my oil and a bunch of spring onions, and headed home. Pausing briefly by the Floating Harbour to tramline, tip over elegantly, and land on my arse. Was bound to happen one day, and no significant harm ensued (I'm too old to have retained any dignity).

Sunday night, The Aliens (being Mac and I, and friends Pat and Dave) acted as quizmasters for the first time at the monthly village quiz night at the Legion. The consensus seemed to be that our questions were too hard, but I think most had fun; we certainly did and might contemplate doing the same again in the unlikely event of being asked.

Oh, and I promised death after: that came at around 6am this morning. Mac got up to go bathroomward and discovered a cloud of feathers, an observant Henry, and a Ron, who was whacking the very ex blackbird in his jaws against the banister rails. That murdered sleep (as well as the bird) quite effectively for both of us. By the time I got to gathering up the remains, the part-chewed, feather-denuded bird was in Henry's jaws in the kitchen, being whacked against the floor and the fridge as H. leaped and swivelled in the air. I added the Bits to the bagged mouse from before, still awaiting final disposal, and vacuumed up feathers from the kitchen, hallway, stairs and landing.

Ron and Henry, or maybe Ron and Reggie, or possibly Doug and Dinsdale: I expect they were good to their mum.

[ crossposted from DreamWidth - please comment there via the wonders of OpenID if so inclined ]

It's recommended by Tim LaHaye, and published in the UK by Scripture Union. This is probably some kind of a warning. tree_and_leaf has warned me off the creator of Left Behind, and I have read many SU books over the years that have set my teeth on edge. However, a Christian book suggesting that sex is a good thing is, well, a good thing, so I gave it the benefit of the doubt.

( Read more... )

This is not a book that I would wish my wife or my servants to read. It is particularly not a book I would like my children to read surreptitiously and take for gospel. (Granted, I did that with Marie Stopes' Married Love, and have not turned into a eugenicist, but even at the time I read it I was able to recognise her dodgier theories as an unfortunate effect of existing in the twenties. It would be fatally easy for a child to think, 'Mum is a Christian; this book calls itself Christian; therefore Mum must think this book is right'.) I shall not even be giving it to a charity shop, because I don't want to be responsible for putting this copy back into circulation. If anyone wants it for purposes of mockery, let me know.

Having failed the UK citizenship test, with a score of 33%

http://www.ukcitizenshiptest.co.uk/

We went to see this yesterday, and it was fun, but not quite as much fun as the first film.

It's the same sort of stuff again, so anyone who enjoyed the first film is likely to enjoy this. Although the first film had a sort of charm that this one lacks to an extent. I thought the humour in the first film worked really well, but here it's more on the level of humping dogs and people being tazered in the nuts. Plotwise, there's not much to talk about, but these films are not about plot, they're about huge robots kicking the crap out of each other, and there's certainly plenty of that.

Unlike the first film, this one seemed to sag a bit towards the end I thought. There was a loooong section of the film crammed with troops mobilizing, jet-fighters taking off, military types delivering exposition to each other, that sort of thing. It reminded me of the endless scenes of stock footage that were always used to pad out old 50s B-movies. The story doesn't progress, it just gets put on hold while we get to look at lots of military hardware.

After all of that stff, we get the final battle which is a bit of an anticlimax, as big final battles often are. Some of the earlier action sequences were more impressive to me, and the film has a hard job topping them.

Still, the effects are bloody amazing, there's enough mechanical mayhem to keep anyone happy, and Megan Fox is bleeding gorgeous (and wears some very tight trousers) so there's something for everyone. Well, everyone who has an inner 14-year old boy, that is...

It could have been about twenty minutes shorter, but it was a fun ride. And it'll look very pretty on Blu-ray. :)

Being a collection of pictures of churches, and interesting things found in and around them, that we saw on honeymoon. Not as long as you might fear, since I feel extremely uncomfortable taking photos in church, unless I'm the only one there, or it has been deconsecrated. And a lot of interior shots will be done without flash, and therefore be rubbish, because I'm paranoid about destroying wall-paintings and what have you. That said, there's nothing to stop me taking pictures of the exterior...

( Read more... )

And this would be an appropriate post on which to wish tree_and_leaf a very happy birthday!

X-posted to spotification.
This one is quite a personal one, as the title might suggest. As I put it together I realised these are all tracks that I really like to sing, dance around to and generally wig out in a totally undignified fashion.
Still if you can't indulge in guilty pleasures on your birthday, when can you?

Guilty Pleasures

1. We Made You – Eminem
2. Don’t Stop Believin’ – Journey
3. Oh Sherrie –Steve Perry
4. Cuddly Toy - Roachford
5. Regulate – Warren G
6. Say You’ll Be There – Spice Girls
7. Crazy for You – Madonna
8. Here I Go Again (87) – Whitesnake
9. Since You Been Gone – Rainbow
10. More Than A Feeling – Boston
11. Cherry Pie – Warrant
12. She’s So Fine – Thunder
13. Wanted Dead or Alive – Bon Jovi
14. Addicted to Love – Robert Palmer
15. Don’t You (Forget About Me) – Simple Minds
16. All for Love – Bryan Adams, Sting, Rod Stewart
17. Get into You – Dannii Minogue
18. I’m Your Man – Lisa Moorish
19. Don’t Let Go – En Vogue
20. Diary of Horace Wimp – ELO
21. Dance Hall Days – Wang Chung
22. Ordinary World – Duran Duran
23. Hourglass – Squeeze
24. Bitch Is a Bitch – NWA
25. Nasty – Janet Jackson
26. Labour of Love – Hue and Cry
27. Magic Dance – David Bowie
28. Temptation – Heaven 17
29. (Keep Feeling) Fascination – The Human League
30. In the Meantime – Spacehog
31. So What – Pink
32. Happy Together – The Turtles

Well, that's something I've never done during Top Gear before - changed channels to look at ceefax while a boringly wittering twat went on and on and on and on and on and on and on in the apparent over-enthusiatic belief that he was being amusing and/or interesting.

I've never seen this Michael McIntyre bloke in anything before. And now I'm going to make damn sure I never do again.

Mainly sparrows and waterfowl; mostly in Annecy or on the lake, although there is a Parisian sparrow in there. Not remotely dialup friendly; sorry.

( Read more... )

Being a collection of pictures of the best things we saw on honeymoon.

( Read more... )

Awesomeness I didn't manage to get a picture of: the meal on the Eurostar (talk about travelling in style!), the snake we saw swimming in a river we crossed on our cycle trip, the (electric) Montmartrobus. Also awesome and unpictured, but not part of the honeymoon: the Lady Penelope car that passed us this morning on the way back from church (not a Roller, but exactly the right shade of pink).

Still to come: birdspam, churchspam, landscapespam, artypretentiousspam. If you can't wait, or don't trust my editing skills, the whole lot are here

It's not surprising that the "Companions of Doctor Who" series of books was dropped; if anything it's more surprising that another two were published (Harry Sullivan's War by Ian Marter and Terence Dudley's novelisation of K9 and Company) after this very unimpressive start. The evil female leader's name is Rehctaht, which probably tells you all you need to know. The plot, such as it is, has Turlough, back on his home planet, reinventing the Tardis and trying to prevent nuclear destruction. There is much confusion of timelines, and too much material hastily thrown together. I think there are about three different novels in here, but it is difficult to tell if any of them would have been any good.

Poll #1425261
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Which of these books first published in 1959 have you read?

And which of these books first published in 1909 have you read?

So which of these books first published in 1859 have you read?

And finally, which of these books published in 1809, 1759, 1609 and 1509 have you read?

Was 1859 a particularly good year?

(Lists from a combination of Wikipedia and LibraryThing, with fairly arbitrary cutoff points which meant I missed off The Manchurian Candidate etc. Interpret the word "read" to your own satisfaction.)

Listening to Steve Earle's tribute album. It is very very indeed. Earle makes the songs his own while staying true to the spirit of the originals. I'd love to hear these live in an intimate setting, like, say, the Bluebird Cafe.

I'm a firm believer that self help is at worst a con and at best a sticking plaster to mask real, although probably not serious, insecurities and percieved character faults. So it was with some glee that I noticed the BBC article mentioned in this here post...

http://andyourelectronmicroscope.wordpress.com/2009/07/04/self-help-mibbes-no-the-best-idea/

For as long as I can remember, I have been aware of the Democratic Unionist Party, founded by the Reverend Ian Paisley in 1971 and now the largest Unionist party in Northern Ireland.

Now I discover that there is another Democratic Unionist Party (referred to by its members as الحزب الإتحادي الديموقراطي‎) in Sudan, founded in 1967. I doubt very much that Ian Paisley and Desmond Boal were aware of it when they rebranded and slightly expanded the Protestant Unionist Party four years later, but I shall be on the lookout for parallels as I do my weekend reading of African history.