*** ChanServ changes topic to 'Welcome to BONCified Denny's. Our specials today are Russian Fruit Bat Nads with special kiwi sauce, roasted Albanian simian eyeballs, and tofu fluffpie. Feel free to ask our servers about the underpants.

Why it is without doubt: I know very strange people.

I've changed things so that fewer posts show at once on the main page. Before it showed a week's at a time, and I'm just too dang verbose for that.

I went to JAFWA for the first time last night. Surprisingly, I had a good time. I was there for Kiki's Delivery Service, and they showed an episode of Card Captor Sakura, which I love. But the other eps - halfway through serieses I knew nothing about - were surprisingly entertaining. So, yay. Although I got hit by my friend for suggesting that Ursula was so hitting on Kiki.

My cat, Mouse, is in failing health. It's saddening. A lot of the time she wants things, but she doesn't know what she wants and can't tell us what. This morning I made her very happy by letting her follow me into the bathroom. The other day I found some old photos of her - when she was sleek, and athletic, and young. We used to keep her food on top of the deep freeze, over a metre off the ground - she'd jump their lightly to eat. Her favourite spot for sleeping was a shelf a metre and a half off the ground, no access but a direct jump - now she has to work to get up on to the couch. Come to that, she has to take extreme care to get off it again.

<sigh>

Tonight I viewed the Ultimate Televisual Evil.

Red Dwarf USA.

My word, it's appalling. It's like they took Red Dwarf, extracted every last trace of funny they could find, and put it back on air. Which is an achievement, because they stole 95% of the dialogue from the original show - and those lines ROCKED at first. But the actors in Red Dwarf USA manage to deliver them with zero timing, zero skill, and zero credibility, and they're just not funny.

Now, in the pilot with Terry Farrell, Terry does an amazing job rescuing lame lines and shonky characterisation with consummate skill. And she looks gorgeous as the Cat. But she alone cannot resurrect this stinker - nor can the entertaining Robert Llewellyn, who plays Kryten again and plays him well - but all the jokes they stole from the original series we've heard before, and his few new lines are lame, lame, lame.

Red Dwarf USA is the most singularly awful television show I have ever seen in my life. Not even in the "so bad it's good" category, just the "so bad it may ruin the real Red Dwarf for me too". There are four original jokes in the entire first pilot (the one with the male Cat, who sucks too). One of them is good. One of them is semi-good. The other two are lame, and in the recap for the "this is Red Dwarf for Dummies" thing they show an entire boring scene just so they can rehash one of their really lame jokes.

For Red Dwarf fans, who are probably the only ones still reading at this point, an example.

Remember this scene?

Lister: Cat? [The Cat grunts.] Did you ever see the Flintstones?
Cat: Sure!
Lister: Do you think Wilma's sexy?
Cat: Wilma Flintstone?
Lister: Maybe it's 'cos we've bin in deep space too long but every time I see that Sherwood body it drives me crazy. Is it me?
Cat: I think in all probability Wilma Flintstone is the most desirable woman who ever lived.
Lister: That's good. I thought I was going strange.
Cat: She's incredible.
Lister: What d'ya think of Betty?
Cat: Betty Rubble? I'd go with Betty... but I'd be thinking of Wilma
Lister: This is crazy. Why are we talking about going to bed with Wilma Flintstone?
Cat: Your right we're nuts this is an insane conversation!
Lister: She'll never leave Fred and we know it!

This whole conversation was delivered wonderfully by Danny John-Jules and Craig Charles, and had us laughing very hard. In Red Dwarf USA, this conversation was similar in terms of the bare words spoken, but the timing was awful, it was between Lister and Rimmer, and it just wasn't even vaguely funny.

Please, American TV Producers, listen to me.

1) If the British made it funny, that doesn't mean you can make it better. If you want more Red Dwarf, give Grant Naylor, Chris Barrie, Craig Charles, Danny John-Jules, Robert Llewellyn and Hattie Hayridge (for my preference) lots and lots and lots of money until they agree to do something good.

2) If you must try and do something that's already been done better than you'll ever manage, hire more than one person who can act. If they'd all been of Terry Farrell's calibre, it might actually have worked.

3) Again, if you must, keep the properties of the original's coolness. Do not make Lister tall, clean-cut and buffish. He loses his cred.

4) Smoke less crack. It will help.

5) You suck. You suck a lot.

6) There is no number six.

I feel vaguely purged, at least, now. This post is dedicated to Julie, who was drawn to my tales of Red Dwarf USA like a sightseer to a really gruesome car crash.

Saturday, 12pm: Well, it's certainly an interesting way to start the weekend.

Woke up this morning... lazed in bed awhile, I was sleepy... Got up... Washed dishes I was too tired to wash before I went to bed last night... Heard Mother get up.

Mum: The fence has blown down.

It occurred to me later: This is just the new facet of the trial that is Non-Swearing Week. As my father always told me, the perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum. Hence I could greet this news only with:

Me: The fence has what?

Anyway, as it turns out, the end section of the corrugated asbestos fence ripped out of its bolts and fell down, leaving a nice, clear gateway into the pedestrian alley running alongside our house. (Perth's suburbs are riddled with these, they're very convenient.) The inconvenience aside, we were suddenly in breach of pool fence laws - not to mention general weirdness statutes. It only occurred to me later I should have grabbed my digital camera and taken pictures of this.

So Dad and I unpacked some stuff that was in the shed and moved an old cupboard thingie from there to block the gap, and braced the remaining end with rope so it doesn't shatter itself. Picture will be forthcoming. (Digital cameras are also the Uber-Cool.)

Today is a day for major furniture rearrangement, so I need to go clean my room to make pathways. Woo freakin' hoo. Later: JAFWA. Scary anime geeks, all so I can watch Kiki's Delivery Service.

Today is also a day for writing my blog in a text file in the knowledge that I won't have a chance to update-it-really until later, and have such tales to tell.

Glancing at the more-than-slightly-dead weblog section on my webpage, I was reminded of this page, which, as a former CS student, appeals to me. If only for the pleasant visuals of shooting certain lecturers.

Only two full days left before the end of No-Swearing Week. Midnight Sunday I get my swearwords back, yay me!

I've broken the habit of swearing carelessly, and will now only use bad words in truly deserving circumstances. This was my goal. Secondary benefit: the first week's archives for the All New All Wonderful TransDimensional Blog will be entirely clean. I make no guarantees about future weeks - although I'll try.

Now Listening To: The M*A*S*H tape my parents are watching.

Another game, Bejewelled. Irritation Warning: requires IE or Netscape 6 to run, but it's fun. More thought-game than the oh-so-frustrating helicopter game.

There's a sort of list/quiz thing I've been seeing on some blogs and livejournals lately. I've been ponderingly how spectacularly ill-suited to me it is. Goes like this:

TEN movies you couldn't live without

Well, personally, I can't come up with one movie I couldn't live without. I very rarely watch movies - and go to the cinemas even more rarely.

NINE albums that are important to you

Easier. Although if half of them are by Sarah McLachlan, do they still count? Also Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, and Tommy and... Well, I have a lot of CDs I like, but I wouldn't describe them as important to me, just music I like.

EIGHT "bands/artists" you couldn't live without

Same problem as above. Frankly, my life would go on even if all my favourite bands and artists died in the same freakish plane crash. Am I too cynical for this? Or just too self-centred?

Or literal-minded?

SEVEN things that annoy you

Only seven?

In Non-Swearing Week?

Okay. People who smoke around children; people who smoke around ME; Manics/Leisure (UWA-specific reference there, sorry); people who are freaky at me on trains; people who don't return their books to the UniSFA library; my father, a lot of the time; people.

SIX of your favourite songs at the moment

"At the moment" makes this work for me. Okay. Possession (Sarah McLachlan), There Must Be An Angel (Eurythmics), Adia (Sarah McLachlan), German Bold Italic (Towa Tei/Kylie Minogue), Another Way (Paul van Dyk), Cartoon Heroes (Aqua).

FIVE TV shows you watch regularly

I don't even watch ONE TV show regularly.

FOUR of your all-time favourite desert-island books

Only four? Um. The White Dragon, Anne McCaffrey; Lucifer Rising, Sharon Bowers; The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien; The Mote In God's Eye, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

THREE albums you've bought recently

Nothing I've wanted has come out recently!

TWO people that [sic] have influenced your life the most

Miss Daly, yr. 10 English teacher
Talia

ONE thing you could spend the rest of your life with

Oxygen.

I had to put a smart-aleck answer in there somewhere.

Huh.

I guess it's one of those signs that you live in an advanced and peaceful society that cigarettes are just... cigarettes, rather than the focus of a major smuggling problem. Easy solution: everybody quit smoking already, it's bad for you and it's annoying to me.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I can see arguments both ways. On the one hand, genocide and war crimes are, it seems, difficult enough to prosecute regardless, and all the evidence they can get they need. On the other, it's a credible point that this could put the journalist(s) in danger, and also make it harder to get the information that feeds the witch-hunts; yet on the gripping hand, you'd think someone who volunteers to be a war correspondent would expect a certain measure of personal danger.

Now Playing: Sarah McLachlan - Adia

Non-Swearing Week Update

Well, the past couple of days have been flawless - no swearing at all. On the other hand, I'm apparently more uptight than my present social circle's inhabitants have ever known me to be.

The moral we appear to be reaching: Swearing is bad when it gets out of hand, but being able to swear away my frustrations in irksome situation keeps me far less tense than I otherwise would be. I'm still intending to maintain Non-Swearing Week until, well, the end of the week. Three days to go. Of course, given than I nearly had a raging temper tantrum earlier because:

a) people were committing the UniSFA library to things I didn't think we wanted without even asking me, and I'm librarian

and

b) one person in particular apparently feels that I'm not allowed to decide we should accept things either, and I'm librarian

this may not be a good thing if I plan to spend time around, you know, people in the next three days.

It doesn't help that Non-Swearing Week has been a very stressful week, and I really want to swear about things like my suede jacket getting damaged (that's today's), and losing my umbrella, and all the myriad little frustrations which have been plaguing me. (And, in some cases, the myriad frustrations who have been plaguing me.)

New entry for people-types I hate: The guy who won't stop talking to me even though I'm QUITE CLEARLY trying to read a book, who is totally unattractive (particularly to me), and who keeps apparently trying to flirt with me. Who makes comments about friends who are dating people with age gaps of, like, six to ten years, and is spineless enough that when I say "My girlfriend is 49." he backflips and says "So what?" then starts telling me he's into poly relationships and asks if I know what that is and doesn't get the hint until I say "Yes, I do. It's very much not my thing though."

ARGH.

AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

<deep breath> I feel marginally better now.

Non-Swearing Week, however, will not be a repeated event in my life. I've broken the habit. I will swear responsibly again now. But if I don't swear at all I will not be responsible for the consequences.

I should have started blogging ages ago. Some truly wonderful people have been making appearances in my life again after far too long. (Hint: If I haven't heard from you in ages and I ever said I loved you, I will be thrilled if you e-mail me or drop a comment on a post.)

Today I took my monkey to uni with me.

Well, actually I took a monkey puppet I've had forever. His name is Rosscoe. He was quite popular with some people, who found him various degrees of entertaining/amusing. I was well-satisfied. Monkey puppets are... well, not inherently cool, but a lot of fun.

With apologies to my Marxist history tutor, I've decided Communism is a flawed system. Several reasons. One is that, in strictly Marxist terms, the only country in the world that can successfully become Socialist is the United States, and that's so not gonna happen. Another is that it's a system which relies on people not being corrupt - and that's so not gonna happen either. Democracy is an awful system, but it's less awful than the others humans have tried.

It's curious trying to get a grasp on the mindset of people seventy years ago, though. People who were Stalinist even outside the USSR, people who blamed Democracy for everything that was going wrong and were calling for an end to democracy and the re-establishment of autocracy and dictatorship - things which are anathema to us now. People who actively sought war in the period before and even after the First World War because they thought, somehow, that war was a good thing. A certain song, if written in 1910, might well have gone:

War
What is it good for
Well, quite a lot actually;
It is the cure for cultural decadence
The decline of morality
It will revitalise Europe
It is what our nation needs

Don't even get me started on nationalism and what's wrong with that. And a song like that just doesn't scan.

Currently reading: The Mote In God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. One of the best sf books ever written, imo (I have read it before).

Listening to: The rhythm of the falling rain.

Feeling: Sleepy/Contented. Life is happy, uni is... survivable, and I spoke to my beloved last night for the first time since, like, the WEEKEND, so the withdrawal symptoms have eased off for now.

Ah, mornings. How I love them so.

Actually, the cool thing about being an Arts student is that even though I live at the back end of beyond, I get to sleep in until a reasonable hour every morning anyway.

So far today? I've read my e-mail, and added two links to the sidebar. Sandra, because her site works again now, and Uncle Willie, because I read his blog intermittently and he's far cooler than you'd expect.

That is all. Since I've so far: got out of bed and walked the six inches to my desk, and done the above, and no-one I know is online to converse with, I haven't exactly had any thrilling experiences.

Now Listening To: Birdsong, traffic and breezes.

Rae: Oliver! You've been watching my webcam?! You never said! Not even after the monkey!
Olly: well, i was hoping you'd get another monkey at some point
Rae: Well, I still have the same monkey in my cupboard, if you like.
Olly: yeah, seen it all before
Rae: Hey, that reminds me. If I bring a monkey puppet to uni and talk through it at a committee meeting, will you recognise us?

ding-dong, e-mail arrives.

San: "... being the curious monkey I am..."

Monkeys suddenly surround me.

But Oliver and San are both the Uber-Cool.

I will state this flatly: I love Eurythmics. Dave whatsisname was never anything special, but Eurythmics offers us Annie Lennox in her prime, and Annie Lennox is just frustratingly wonderful. (Frustrating because I'm a writer and there are no words for her wondrousness.)

But that (and the beauty of Angel, the song I'm listening to, aside) isn't what I'm wanting to talk about.

I'm actually thinking of a specific image I noticed in the clip for King and Queen of America, just a fragment of a clip of a woman watching a leopard pacing agitatedly in a cage at a zoo, and then looking around - and she's wearing a leopard-skin coat. There's something in that image, for me, and I'm not sure what - besides sheer bad taste on her part, of course. But there's something powerful symbolic.

Now Playing: Annie Lennox - Angel

I learnt something about psychosomatic disorders today, I think. I was reading some Truly Nasty Things about Stalinist USSR for History, and reached the point where I was either going to burst into tears or throw up. (Yes, it was that bad, and no, I'm not going to recount it here.) I shut my books, left the library, and went to UniSFA where I knew I would be much cheered. On the way there, the smell of food was turning my stomach, and I had a stomachache all afternoon. (Still do.)

But I love the people of UniSFA. Not only did they not push for details of the things I'd been reading that had me so very upset upon arrival, but they were highly entertaining and had me feeling better. (The opportunity to heap scorn on Stupid Scrabble helped.)

I think I'm too sensitive to History, sometimes. It gets to me - I have a vivid imagination, and a tendency to strong empathy, and I'm all too aware that these were real people, and they were suffering.

I also noticed, today, the differences age and experience can make. I seem to understand the different mindset of the eras we were studying more readily than the other students in my tute - I'm not sure if it's that I'm older (and we do change a lot between 17 and 21), or the fact that I was born in South Africa, which is so very different, and have a greater knowledge of a different cultural mindset.

Now Playing: Eurythmics, Greatest Hits on DVD. In a window in the corner of the screen, so I can periodically gaze upon the goddess who is Annie Lennox.

Stupid Scrabble, for the record, is Scrabble where it has been decreed that any combination of letters that's on dictionary.com is acceptable - including acronyms. It's very lame, hence the opportunity for heaping scorn on it. The scorn was good, it gave me a protective layer of good humour to carry me through my tutorial on Stalinist USSR. They also played a variant in which made-up words were permitted but real words weren't - and definitions had to be provided, thus combining the most spectator-friendly elements of Scrabble and Balderdash. That was fun.

I've decided I need more Kylie Minogue in my life.

Whether this revelation heralds my incipient realisation that I'll have to kill myself as well I haven't decided yet.

I've been reading a little about the death of Pim Fortuyn. He seems to be a very Pauline figure, but more effective; he and his personality were the focus of his party, much like 'Pauline Hanson's One Nation' if only she had personality. I have to say I never trust a political party that's constructed around the cult of a single person - as has been most notable in the governments surrounding Hitler and Stalin, which should tell you something. Demagogues aren't a good thing, as a rule.

His death, it seems, comes as something as nasty shock for the Netherlands, whose politics are apparently pretty calm, as a rule. Fortuyn changed that somewhat - and his death, the pundits say, will change Dutch politics.

The party, List Pim Fortuyn, has a doubtful future at this point, since it was built around Pim Fortuyn. The likeliest candidate to take over is Joao Valera, an immigrante from the Cape Verde islands.

Which seems a little odd for a party whose primary stance is anti-immigration.

It's all very non-traditional rightist, though. He was openly gay, and deliberately camp, and so he didn't appeal to classic conservatives but did get some support from the extreme-right skinheads. And he wasn't as bullishly evil as most... Including such as Jean-Marie le Pen, and he's still alive.

He shouldn't have died. If I was Dutch, I wouldn't have voted for him, but he still shouldn't have died.

Now Playing: Wagner - The Entry of the Gods into Valhalla

As various readers may be more or less aware, I write. Less so this year than I used to, but I'm planning to work on that.

I like to listen to music when I write, a lot of the time. Sarah McLachlan does wonders for my creative output, although I once wrote an intensely romantic seen listening to the Doug Anthony All Stars, which just goes to show really that sometimes I tune it out completely. But sometimes I draw active inspiration from the music - Path of Thorns was very much inspired by one of her songs (guess which).

That said: I really, really hope I don't find myself writing a story based on Warm Leatherette, by the normal. A song of lust and car crashes is not my style, and yet - I'm tempted to write something called A Song of Lust and Car Crashes, and would except the title scans badly.

Tonight Mein Vater talked to me for a rather extended period of time about some software he's working on. Not that interesting, but worth it to maintain the good mood he was in because he came home to the fresh hot dinner I'd cooked... God, this is 50s.

"We are now entering Hell. Please keep your hands and elbows inside the car."

We're all of us different people in different circumstances. I think, though, I'm slightly odd in that my every persona has a different name - which would be why I get more uppity than most about that thing in Voyager fanfic for calling Seven of Nine Annika as soon as she gets into a relationship with someone. I don't see it as credible because of the importance of names to identity, and she doesn't identify as a human being named Annika. She is Seven of Nine - Borg, then neither Borg nor Human... But that's all material for my Fangirl Goes Academia essay I'll eventually write.

The point is, I answer to more names than any rational human being should. Rae, Raeby, Sunny, Sonnlich... And others. But every one of those names has meaning.

Most things do. Even my jewellery has meaning, for me. I generally only wear necklaces, but which necklace I choose, and if I wear a necklace, as a rule indicates something about my emotional state when I got dressed. Because every necklace I wear was given to me, and so there's all this stuff tied into them that's all about the origin of the necklace, and how long I've had it, and what the design represents.

There's all these layers of meaning to my life that I can't help thinking are really really cool, but which only apply to me, and which only I am aware of, and when I stop to think about that I realise too that it's probably like that for *everyone* and we just don't see it in each other, and then I realise there's this whole, amazing world full of complex and amazing people and I'll never get to see it all, ever.

And then I think further, and figure probably most of the people out there aren't all that complex and amazing, and I'll just have to settle for loving the complex and amazing people I do know. Which I do. But the whole thought process is an emotional rollercoaster of some kind.

In Praise of Fingernails

Fingernails are cool.

You may not think about this much, but they are. Why, you ask? Let me tell you, person(s), fingernails allow us to bring chef's knives down with considerable force on our thumbnails and not sever our own flesh.

However, I do have a small, painless scratch on my thumbnail. For the foolishness of chopping potatoes carelessly this is light punishment.

Now Playing: Sarah McLachlan - Mirrorball

Entirely uncool: When my VCR decides spontaneously to start chewing the edge of my tape, and pretty much nukes the teaser for Blind Faith (X:WP), and means I can't continue this Xena Fandom Revisited kick I've been on lately.

At least: the fact that it was messing up was evident as I was watching so it didn't shred the tape behind itself, leaving me a nasty surprise in, oh, 2005 or so, the next time I went to watch. Still uncool though.

Vaguely cool: The Museum of Subtext is still around. Sure, it hasn't been updated since I last went there when I was about seventeen, but it's still entertaining. High bandwidth to entertainment ratio, admittedly, but that link skips the front page for you. (A triumph of web-design it isn't.)

Uncool: Even if he was a right-wing extremist, the assassination of Pim Fortuyn. Don't shoot them, just vote against them. Remember, if we're going to be free to be the liberal-minded, overwhelmingly cool people we are, they have to be free to be the slimy nasty horrible people they are.

No Swearing Week: 24 successful hours and counting, despite insomnia, political badness and the VCR. Yay me. But I accidentally said The Other D-Word earlier.

Things Which Kill Productivity:

- IRC.

- Social clubs such as UniSFA.

- Blogs. (Your own and other people's.)

Also, the helicopter game. On the other hand my high score's up to about 1800. (Yes, I know I still suck, but hey, at least I've reached the Industrial Revolution.)

Some interesting conversations on IRC. One fed more material for the excessively Fangirl Goes Academia essay I'm eventually going to write about the characterisation of Seven of Nine in canon and in fanfic, the other got onto the topic of slash, particularly NC-17 slash. And why I don't like it.

<sonnlich> A lot of it is written using words I dislike and don't find even vaguely romantic. And a lot of fic sex is so sameish it's annoying. And it's just... eh. Not my thing.

Of course, I'll read a good story that has sex scenes in it, just like I'll watch a good movie that has sex scenes in it even though I don't like movie sex scenes either. (But I'm a sucker for a good, romantic/dramatically perfect kiss.) But somehow there's something unpleasantly voyeuristic, for me, in reading graphic sex scenes about characters. Or maybe it's just my "everything is about me" mindset - I wouldn't want anyone contemplating *my* sex life in that kind of detail, after all.

And yet I still think Jane St Clair is wonderful...

I have insomnia.

This is so not fair in my I'm Not Going to Swear week.

And now it's time for: Bad Examples Of An Already-Butchered Artform - Haiku!

my link list grows long
like a flower, growing, but not
vegeta sounds like sandwich spread

I know there's too many syllables in the last line, yes.

I like this because it is weird, funny, and I know people like that.

Now Playing: Sarah McLachlan - Blackbird

An interesting article.

I think that the ready availability of information online is a good thing, myself, but it's crucially important to be critical of your sources. I would no more believe something just because I read it on a website than because some bloke in a pub told it to me. It's also true that the sheer volume of information accessible online provides a level of information overload that means people burn out and stop looking.

Now Playing: The Kinks - Lola

Today/this week did not start well.

Morning was okay, I guess, but early afternoon I headed out to uni (having already missed a class I'd fully intended to attend until I looked at the clock and saw it had started fifteen minutes ago). Stepped out of the house, realised I'd left my umbrella behind (yes, I found it - hanging on my cupboard doorknob) and went back to fetch it, costing me thirty seconds. The thirty seconds I missed my bus by. And the umbrella had been useless because it was so windy I couldn't open it up.

So I sat at the bus stop, and went to read my book.

My book was missing.

I'd dropped it.

So I had to walk back nearly to my house to find where I'd dropped it, pick it up, and walk back to the bus stop. Got a few pages into The Mote In God's Eye and then my bus came. I boarded my bus, and rode it to the train station.

Getting off at the train station, I dropped my book. "You dropped your book!" exclaimed the sole other bus passenger.

"I noticed," I replied, being already halfway through the action of picking up my book.

"Do you know - you're probably a bit young for this, but do you know Julian from Glendalough?"

[Note for non-Perthites: Glendalough, pronounced Glen-da-low, is a suburb in Perth. Being that Perth is a city of over a million people, despite the "getting Perthed" phenomenon I don't know everyone.]

"No, I don't," I answered politely.

"No, you're, what, 25?"

"I'm 21."

"Ah, well, you look like this woman I met at a party in the early nineties... She would have been about 18 then... We talked for a few minutes, then my friend whose house it was kicked me out... She had this really big earring [he pantomimes it] in one ear, remember?"

No, you moron, I don't remember, I was probably busy finishing primary school at the time, because I'm 21.

So he goes on and on until the train arrives about how he's been asking people about this because the longer you leave it the harder it is to remember what someone looks like. As far as I can tell this guy's seen too many movies like Sleepless in Seattle and figures that if only he can find this poor girl whose friend probably rescued her from a fate worse than boredom, he's going to have his soulmate and it will all be happy. Note: He was about 45.

Anyway. I carefully made sure I was at the other end of the carriage from him when we got on the train.

It was about as the train was pulling off that I realised I'd left my umbrella behind somewhere.

I liked that umbrella. It'd even lasted nearly two years, which is something of a record for me and umbrellas. <sigh> Some people shouldn't be allowed to own umbrellas, and I am their queen.

Anyway, when I actually reached uni I ran into a woman I hadn't seen in about five years and a guy I hadn't seen in a few days, both of whom I had great chats with, and the rest of my afternoon was reasonably decent, but still, meh.

Especially since I've resolved that I am not going to swear this week, and I wasn't doing too well with that once I got to uni. I think uni is a bad influence. But at least I'm trying. [Chorus: Very trying.]

I did have it explained to me that Bro can't be my real little brother, since I don't live with him and never have and don't find him intolerably annoying. Feh on them all, he's my brother as of Saturday and that's final.

Well. I just wrote a scintillating commentary on the anthropology of online community, why I started my blog and the irksome absence of my umbrella. But my Blogger session timed out because I kept wandering around doing other stuff while I was at it, so I lost the lot.

Narrow escape for some. I still eagerly solicit good links to articles about online community, though. It's just interesting. Note to self: Copy update text to clipboard before hitting "post" just in case.

I'm conceptually intrigued by blogs. It has the same community/contact appeal as e-mail and chat systems and newsgroups, but with a certain shame/faux pas element removed: Posting about you and your life and whatever's intriguing your dull and insipid little mind at a particular moment to a newsgroup is tacky; sending it to everyone you know by e-mail is rude, since you're forcing your prattle into their inbox, and chatrooms work like conversations, and monologuing at length will annoy people no end, and rightly so.

At last, a forum for our egos. And the curious thing is that these things do become interesting to your friends, loved ones, and (often) total strangers. Because a lot of people do have something to say, and blogs (and the internet generally) give everyone online the chance to put it out there.

Sure, the Internet also gives us the chance to see how annoyingly banal and shallow a lot of people are. But hey, I'll take what I can get.

* sonnlich returns from: going to bed. (Gone for 5hrs 20mins 12secs)

Bad, bad scene.

That's the real problem with IRC scripts and away systems. Sure, they make it easier for other people to know whether you're really there or just faking it, but they remind you far too clearly of where and why your lifestyle sucks.

The (relatively) good news: Exit polls suggest that Chirac has won by a landslide, scooping approximately 80% of the vote.

The bad news: This suggests le Pen got about 20, although real results will have to wait.

The amusing bit: le Pen has his excuse all ready.

As he voted, Mr Le Pen alleged that there had been a dirty tricks campaign against him, and said he wished he had called in international monitors to prevent vote-rigging.

"If I get less than 30% (of the vote) it would be a huge disappointment," he said.

Prat.

Forgot to mention.

My favourite quote from the BBC's coverage of the French elections: "Some left-wing activists have urged voters to don rubber gloves and hold their noses in disgust at having to vote for Mr Chirac. Electoral authorities have warned that this could infringe rules against campaigning in polling stations."

Vive la France.

First results in the French presidential elections are due in at 8pm local time, apparently. The best summary of why this is interesting is probably SatireWire's, which is disturbing in some vague sense (if not as disturbing as why I'm writing about French politics after 1am).

Obviously I'm not French, and what with uni and having a life and all I haven't been paying close enough attention to French politics to be able to comment in any great detail with particular authority. Nonetheless - and I never thought I'd have to say this after all those nuclear tests in the Pacific - I hope Chirac gets in. le Pen bothers me - and I'd thought the One Hit Wonder of Australian politics that was Hanson was bad. At least we never had to worry that One Nation was a serious contender.

It's not just his anti-everything-right-and-pure stance, or the fact that I distrust right wing politics. I distrust left wing politics too, after all, and he's French so an obnoxious personality is assumed. What I really don't like is fervent nationalism, which he has.

Nationalism was a huge causal factor in World War One. (And France remembers the world wars so fondly, doesn't it?) I've been reading a lot about it for History, and nothing I've read makes me think it's a good thing. Nationalism, fervent patriotism, leads to discrimination, to violence, to political unrest and to war. These are not a few of my favourite things.

So go to, Jacques, go to.

Looking at it rationally, I know I'm not going to keep up posting to this thing at the rate I have been today. But that's almost certainly a good thing.

I'm going for interestingly intelligent people 101 today. With interesting things to say. For example, Kit's Concatenation on the subject of critique is interesting, and valid, although similar points have been made before. Also exceptionally intriguing is Jane St Clair's comments on writing in different media.

I agree with her, for the most part. I've never liked "Ohhhhhh"s in my fic just because to me they look stupid on screen as well as in print, and I've been known to read proper novels in text form (go go Gutenberg). Tastes differ. That form of extreme third person limited she's talking about I happen to love, and have even used it from time to time - who would have thought I'd ever write present tense anything?