I was supposed to be at the Wendy House right now, dancing the night away with my lovely fiancé. Because of my trick back, he has ended up going on his own. He seems to be having a good time, though, judging by his texts. Meanwhile, I have sorted through all my BPAL (and will be doing a HUGE sales/swaps post soon) and dyed my hair...

Anyway, this entry does have substance, I swear!

Firstly, nominations for my Very Prestigious Blog of the Year Awards are now closed, and you guys voted for shortlists of five, so that's what you will get in the morning. Each category will be whittled down to a shortlist of five, and presented in handy poll format. Then the voting can commence! I'll leave the poll open for a week, and after that the winner of each category will be put into a new poll to see who gets the overall title.

And, of course, there will be shiny new graphics for each stage ;)

Secondly, Amused Cynicism has taken the ball I threw earlier and run with it. I do love the way he words things:

this is the same British government that is talking about severing the Internet connections of people who break copyright law by downloading files on P2P networks. Because the government are not hypocrites, I’m sure they will now either drop these plans, or disconnect themselves from the Internet.

Tee Hee Hee.

Thirdly, another excellent post on The Curvature, eviscerating a columnist in the Daily Fail.

Fourthly and Finally, Jonathan Calder reports on some gossip in the Murdoch Rag about who is going to be running for Lib Dem Party President. Apparently there are rumours of champagne Charlie and Paddy Pantsdown throwing their glasses/undies into the ring.

I have many comments I might possibly make on this bit of scuttlebutt, but like Jonathan, I shall restrict myself to the very restrained: this blog supports Ros Scott. Knowing what Ros is standing for, and having met her, I honestly cannot see another candidate coming forward who will do the job as well or as diligently as she, however old a parliamentary warhorse they might be.

First things first: endless_psych in brilliant defence of British Sci-fi. And he doesn't even MENTION HG Wells or John Wyndham.

Secondly, today's xkcd_rss is awesome:


Speaking of teachers, Teachers teach to the test shock.

Via Chicken Yoghurt, What are your a-levels worth? 3 As and a D for me. This means Jaiesh 4 As is smarter than me?

Tory Party Election Slogans. - “Tories: because money-grabbing opportunists are STILL better than well-meaning psychopaths.” - “Tories: We’re marginally less likely to march the whole country down the slow road to becoming Airstrip One.” - “Tories: Because you want to believe there’s a difference.”

I want one! Best spider EVAR!

OMG the BPAL update!! I want Hellhound and John Barleycorn and Sugar Skull and Sticky Pillowcase...

Firstly, caseytalk made this thoughtful post on the nature of online friendships. I have known Casey for more than six years. She was there for me (along with many others reading this) through my pregnancy and childbirth, soothing me and talking me through stuff that she had experience of and I didn't. She was one of the voices of reason who talked me through the pros and cons of leaving my ex, and helped me to see that I was strong enough to do it. She is a role model for me as a mother, and although we don't always agree, she always has an intelligent viewpoint, and she always has the evidence to back up her positions.

I value her very much. There are others of you reading this I value very much. You guys give me insights into worlds and cultures I could never have seen without the intarwebs. You expose me to points of view that never would have occured to me. I have learned so much about the breadth of human experience from you lot. If I am stuck on an issue, I know I can ask you and there will be a lively and wide-spectrum debate of a quality that I could not hope for in real life.

I bloody love you guys. That's the bottom line of online friendships.

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Yeah, I'm feeling soppy today. I blame neohippie for posting this, which is unashamedly mawkish and sentimental, but lovely none the less.



Link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5BxymuiAxQ

It makes me want to watch Discovery Channel! LOL. I love arach-a-nids too! I guess that means it works as an advert.

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In other news, the Dragon Moon update is Live at BPAL. Oh shit. I HAVE NO MONEY!! But my Mum would love Dragon Moon and the associated Tee, I have no doubt. And how perfect for Liz would The Obsidian Window be? A scent that smells of Pinot Noir? LOL. And I WANT The Buggre Alle This Bible and Pepper! And... I am saving money. I am going to close that tab now. Tab closing. Honest. I'm really closing it.

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I want to join TEAL!

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And finally, via fountaingirl, a meme. List Your Dealbreakers There are some things - actions, beliefs, whatever - that would lead to you crossing a person off your date-ability list without a second thought, no matter how attractive they are. What are dealbreakers?

1, treating service staff - checkout girls, barmaids, etc. - as lower forms of life. Yup, that's FG's number one too, but it's a biggie for me. I know what it's like to be on the receiving end of that shit, and nobody deserves it.

2, Any form of religious fundamentalism, or racism, or any other ingrained intolerance. Yeah, I'm intolerant of intolerance.

3, Inability to debate. I know I'm not the best debater in the world, but I get really REALLY cross with people who make basic, fundamental errors of logic and refuse to countenance that they might, possibly, be wrong.

4, Social conservatism. While I can live with economic conservatism, although I disagree with a lot of it, because I can see that the intentions behind it are good, all social conservatism does is hurt people, oppress people, and denigrate those not in the privileged group. As Granny Weatherwax might say, I can't be having with that at all.

5, A hatred of any of the things I love, like sci-fi, or rock music, or Pratchett. Indifference I could just about cope with, but not hatred.

6, Tidyness. People think I am untidy because I'm lazy, and that's partially true, but tidy places actually make me feel genuinely uneasy. Tidy is for work, but not for home. A tidy home is a sign of not having enough fun things to do.

What are your dealbreakers, sweet f-list?

As innerbrat so rightly points out, today is the 199th birthday of the man on the back of the ten pound note. He's one of that long line of men and women from Hippocrates to Tim Berners-Lee who have made such seismic changes in the way we look at the world that it would be difficult to imagine what life would be like if he hadn't existed.

So lets all raise a glass to Chucky D and his Theory^# on the origin of species, and read cabalamat2's entirely non-controversial post about why science is better than religion in celebration.

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Tremble before me, oh mortals, for I have tasted Root Beer, and can now exclusively reveal why it hasn't caught on in the UK when coca cola and such have. It tastes exactly, and I mean exactly, like the smell of Germolene. And there's few people enjoy the taste of antiseptic ointment, myself included. The only way they could make it more off-putting would be to make it that weird pink colour...

Note to self: avoid BPAL with Sassafras notes.

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^# Lets not go into the difference between Theory and theory again, shall we?

caseytalk is 21 again today! Happy birthday, and may you have many more. We may not always agree, but I always enjoy debating with you, you thoughtful intellectual.

There now follows a non-birthday-related miscellany:

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Got some BPAL swaps in the post today. A couple of bottles, and four frimps. Three of the frimps are ones I haven't tried before. D'you know what the fourth is? Do ya? BLACK FRIGGING LOTUS!! AGAIN!!! I am being stalked by this scent, and I detest it! I'm not a huge fan of florals in general, although some of them I can put up with if they are blended with other things I like, but Lotus, even as a minor note, makes me feel queasy. As the major note? Bleargh.

Obviously, I keep giving it away myself and perpetuating the horror, but... This is the fourth imp of this stuff that has passed through my hands, and I have not yet doubled up on any other scent without expressly meaning to. Oh well; I am making up a package for someone else soon; it may end up with an imp of Black Lotus in.

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It are snowing! Am really really really amused by the fact that we have seen knack all snow all winter, and then on the day when we celebrate the end of winter (today is Imbolc, fact fans) we get a nice thick blanket o'white.

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Christians have some really odd attitudes to sex, right? No sex before marriage, heterosexual only, no groups, missionary position and lights out, right? Well, the last one on that list is certainly being dealt a blow by this guy... Note to male readers: The advice he gives on making your semen taste nicer is fairly valid, but I would (after extensive empirical experimentation) add the following: avoid drinking too much coffee and eating red meat (vegetarian semen tastes LOTS nicer) and for the love of all that's tasty, don't eat asparagus. And I say this as someone who really likes asparagus.

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fryblog is fast approaching John Stuart Mill levels of hero worship in this house. Today he writes in squeeful tones about the Eee. I really really want one, and if it hadn't have been for the fact that I had just bought the little HP beauty that I am typing on right now when the Eee first became widely touted, I'd probably have one. But I am watching its progress with interest.

I hope he's right about the death of Window$, I really do.

* waxes lyrical about a utopian open source future in a lengthy and misty-eyed manner *

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And finally, a word to the (un)wise: if you're going to breach copyright and try to make money off it, don't do it to my mate pmoodie. That would be verging on suicidal. (I'd link you but it's f-locked. Trust me, though, his smackdowns are as hilarious as they are accurate) Although if you need some illustration work doing, do get in touch with him. He can do everything from fantasy Doctor Who characters to werewolves to medical drawings, and is veryveryvery talented [/gratuitous pluggage]

I want to insert another frame in my icon. Royal Mail just ripped you off on customs charges? I went to the P Off in a Daddy Taxi today to pick up a parcel which, apparently, had attracted £11.49 customs charges. I was unfeasibly excited because I thought it would be my huge BPAL Yule order, with that amount of tax to pay. In fact, it turned out to be two bottles of BPAL which I had obtained from outside the lab. £20.09 ($40) of oil; two bottles. The eagle-eyed of you may have noticed that £11.49 (that's $22.87, according to XE.com) is rather a large charge to be paying for that value of goods. Handily, the dear Royal Mail provided a breakdown on the side of the parcel:

Import Duty: £0.00
Export Duty: £0.00
V.A.T.: £3.49
Other: £0.00
Royal Mail International Handling Charge: £8.00

EIGHT FRIGGING POUNDS HANDLING CHARGE???? The robbing bastards!

Now, at this point I really ought to go into all the liberal arguments for free trade and such, but I am too busy fuming over the fact that the vast majority of the charge wasn't, in fact, tax, but was for the spotty YTS oik at Liverpool to open my parcel and have a nosey at my oils.

And the worst of it? If whoever packed the parcel had just ticked "gift", I wouldn't have had to pay a penny, because the value limits are £36 for gifts, and £18 for everything else. Anything under those amounts doesn't get charged. So I missed the £18 by TWO POUNDS.

Still, Daddy cheered me up on the way home by singing (to the tune of That's Amore by Dean Martin):

When you swim in the creek
And an eel bites your cheek
It's a Moray
When you float in the Med
And an eel stings your head
It's a Moray...

Bless him.

In order to distract myself from horrible news of man's inhumanity to (wo)man such as this¹ and this² I am watching Question Time and This Week³ with a rather large G&T, have slathered myself in Dr. John Seward⁴, and am reading these amusing tales of Toy Horror that tyrell linked me to. I particularly like the Build Your Own Atomic Lab⁵ and Battlestar Galactica Missile Launcher...

Oh all right; there is one thing that I'm cross enough to blog about even though I'm otherwise happy: if you don't submit to the NIR and pay for an ID card, you won't get a student loan. FFS. Is there not some way we can mobilise a group of anti ID card activists to provide alternative loans for students? I mean, there's the inevitable Facebook group, but...

[this week]Blargh. Ross Kemp on about gang culture... Gang culture is not new in this country. People have been bemoaning the violence of the youth of today since time immemorial; the difference is that it's not just the underclass that are killing each other these days. The middle classes don't just play at it any more like they did when they were mods and rockers... And Michael and Andrew are trying to have it both ways. if you centralise everything, and create a nanny state, which is just as much a Conservative trait as a Labour one, then everybody gets the mindset that the government should do something and nobody wants to do anything themselves. Nobody wants to take responsibility because the government has allowed them to develop the idea that they don't have to take responsibility. It's somebody else's job... Ooooh I take that back! Michael just advocated localism. You closet liberal, Michael ;)[/this week]

ETA: Hello, Miss or Mr BBC Researcher? Am LOVING the Six Nations trailer. Oh yes. Rawr rugger boys.

* dribble *

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¹ thank you sovietkiki
² thank you ginasketch
³ which, let's face it, is my version of Easenders and Corrie - Westminster Politics is just such a drama far removed from reality as a soap opera...
⁴ starts off all lavender and bubblegum, but within five minutes is a fine balance between fruity and floral with a subtle undertone of soft herbal smoke; no one note dominates, and it's a lovely scent.
⁵ there are instructions in the comments which tell you how to build your own, since the kit is no longer available

I keep getting time outs when I try to comment the last couple of days. This are meaning I are not as interactive as usual, for which I apologise. To add to my intarwebby woes, Hasbro and Mattel are ganging up on me to take away my main reason for Facebooking. Bastards. I shall be joining the Save Scrabulous group forthwith.

I should be commenting on the US Primaries a lot more than I am, I suppose. After all, everyone else seems endlessly fascinated. The thing is, although I am concerned as to what the eventual result of the election will be, because it will have a huge effect on things here in the People's Republic of Yorksher UK, I can't actually summon up much energy to be enthusiastic about the race. It's a general principle of mine not to worry about things you can do nothing about¹, and there is knack all I can do about the US elections.

Oh well, I have some parcels to post later, and then hopefully I will be putting up a public BPAL swaps post. This will be the perfect opportunity for those of you who have not yet seen the light to see what all the fuss is about (this means you, people I am tagging on Facebook :P). For those of you who are completely unenlightened... I gave up smoking about 18 months ago. Yeah, I know, I still have the odd lapse, but mostly I haven't been a regular smoker for a while. When I was smoking I never bothered with perfume, because (lets face it) when you smoke, all you smell of is fags, no matter what you squirt on. When I started getting my sense of smell back, somebody² mentioned BPAL and roughly outlined the ethos³, and I was intrigued enough to buy a few imps (samples). The very first one I tried⁴ hooked me, and remains a big favourite to this day. Thus, giving up smoking hasn't actually saved me much money...

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¹ Worrying about something you can do nothing about is a completely pointless waste of time and energy, and I am very lazy and thus have little time and energy to go around. I have therefore tried quite hard to train myself not to do waste time thinking about things which I can't possibly affect. Sadly this means that, as in the case of the US elections, there are some things which one would expect me to be quite enthusiastic about, where I just can't summon up much interest at all.

²I think it was strangefrontier, but it may have been puddingcat

³ Hand-blended, natural perfumes, made from essential oils (and not diluted with alcohol etc. like the big name ones are); esoteric and interesting names; continual production of new and limited edition smells; happy and vibrant community of consumers who swap and sell each other unwanted stuff so there's no waste...

⁴ Monster Bait: Underbed. Yes, trust me to fall in love with a Limited Edition for my first ever BPAL...