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loldemort

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Up late Jul. 22nd, 2009 @ 03:53 am
Been listening to the soundtrack to Brokeback Mountain on Spotify. The soundtrack was put together, and in large part written by Gustavo Santaolalla, whose album Ronroco I am listening to now.
Current Music: http://open.spotify.com/album/4aw2TluIfVGPlp9MitfXP8

The unwisdom of share buybacks May. 4th, 2009 @ 06:44 pm
From the Telegraph: RBS launched a £1bn share buyback in 2006, paying an average of £18.38 for the shares, which now stand at just 44p.

I wish... Mar. 26th, 2009 @ 02:07 am
I wish that there was some way to invest in Florette. Their salads are perfectly delicious and not too expensive (well, they are on perpetual discount at my supermarket, which surely helps). Unfortunately they seem to be part of some enormous multinational.

Food diary - 2009-01-28 Jan. 28th, 2009 @ 01:00 pm
Breakfast: 2 raw Brussels sprouts and a cup of coffee (skimmed milk, no sugar).
Lunch: 3 raw Brussels sprouts and a cup of coffee.
Dinner: 2 portions breaded fish cutlety-things and plenty of oven chips, all baked.
Nibbles: about 5 more raw Brussels sprouts and a cup of coffee.

Aw! Jan. 23rd, 2009 @ 05:09 am
Other entries
» What he really said

Discrimination on the grounds of sexuality is even more devastating than other forms of discrimination such as racism, as it reaches right into families and leaves no refuge for its victims.


Michael King, Professor of Primary Care Psychiatry, University College London. Quoted in Pink News.


» The delightful Chuck Storm

Should he ever come round my neck of the woods and do that, the urge to leap out and kiss him better would be quite overpowering.


» C****

C**** is the son of the people who live across the road. The mother did my garden for a while, then suggested that C**** take over. Turned out he wasn't a gifted gardener, so he doesn't do it any more.

C**** is in his early thirties, and has apparently been smoking dope since his early teens. He talks frequently about how the Illuminati control western civilisation. He is convinced that they are listening to him, using their devices. They are trying to stop him from bringing about the societal revolution that will destroy their control and usher in an age of peace and plenty, where everyone will live on government handouts. In the last few months he has started shouting at the Illuminati as he walks up and down our avenue.

Last Saturday, two-ish days ago, I heard him shouting outside as I was preparing to go to the shops for my grocery. It takes me a while to get ready, so he'd been going strong for about twenty minutes when I finally got under way. Once outside, I saw that he was on his hands and knees, chalking something on the pavement in front of his parents' house. It seemed to be made of squares and small circles, and could either have been a hopscotch ladder or the cabbalistic tree of life, take your pick.

I decided — perhaps it was a little cowardly of me — just to walk past on my side of the road. I thought that since he was pointed away from me there was a good chance he wouldn't see me. Even though he was busy shouting and chalking however, he must have heard my steps because his head turned towards me. (It's odd — remember that he's on all fours with his feet towards me and his head away from me — but my memory is that his head turned almost through 180 degrees, even though I know that's impossible.) I distinctly felt a kind of shock when he caught sight of me.

"Hiya mate," said the head.

"Hiya C****," I replied, walking on as fast as my legs would carry me.


» The 5 Most Horrifying Bugs in the World
http://www.cracked.com/article_15816_5-most-horrifying-bugs-in-world.html


That is, in the opinion of the editors at cracked.com. In my own very humble opinion, anyone thinking of writing off-world SGA scenarios, including nasty fauna and aliens-made-them scenarios, needs to read this article. And the comments.
» Anal probes - coming to a hospital near you
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7155635.stm

This article looks forward to a future where surgery is done mainly through long, flexible, tube-like robots inserted through what they coyly call "natural orifices or cavities". The idea being that if cuts are necessary, they won't be disfiguring if they are done from the interior spaces of the body rather than from the epidermis - though I would have thought that healing the incision wound might be more complicated in such cases.

Just goes to show how advanced the aliens really are, of course.
» New year's McShep
I've been thinking that I should bestir mystelf to write a McShep for the new year. After all the genre has given me much pleasure over the years, and I did make a couple of faltering starts a year or so ago. If I start now, 27th December, that gives me 5 days which should be enough for a short story, even at my usual glacial pace.

A half-remembered quote, "thoughts too deep for tears", sent me to the internet and the text of Wordsworth's Ode on Intimations of Immortality. Rereading it, it seems heaven-sent as a source of chapter or section headings for anyone wanting to write a McShep. I was thinking of a story structure (Rodney's life-arc, of course) set to more-or-less the following quotes:

Shades of the prison-house.
The little actor cons another part.
His whole vocation.
I now can see no more.
Thou happy Shepherd-boy.
All the earth is gay.
There hath pass'd away.
In darkness lost.
Apparell'd in celestial light.

(You're supposded to know the lines from which these come. Sometimes the meaning comes from the adjacent words that are not quoted, e.g. "As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation.")

In fact, looking at this one poem, I am amazed at just how many lines from it have made it as quotes into the English language: "The glory and the freshness of a dream", "The rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the rose", "[That] there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth", "Where is it now, the glory and the dream?", "trailing clouds of glory", "Shades of the prison-house", "Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears".

So rich a mine is obviously a minefield for anyone stupid enough to do ... erm ... exactly what I'm proposing to do. Still, I'm proud to say that stupidity never deterred me from a course of action before so I'm not about to let it now [hurrah!]. Over the next few days I'll try to flesh out those sections, until the whole story appears.
» Stranger than fiction #2
A man brought his computer to a Circuit City store and asked for a DVD burner to be installed. Technicians tested the drive's new software by searching the computer's hard drive for video files to play back... and found child pornography.


Whatever you think of the rights and wrongs of their doing so, the really important thing is the guy's name: Kenneth Sodomsky.

Still laughing at that one.
» Wind Dam? Or ...?
This site is consistently interesting. It may make it to the carefully-rationed feeds of my Google Reader page. This post deserves a look. Is that a Wind Dam? Or is it a giant, floating posing pouch? If the latter, how can I get to meet the guy it belongs to?
» Quick terminological question
What does a Canadian call someone from the US? Not, presumably, an American - I remember a Canadian friend of mine getting quite huffy about calling people from the US "Americans" on the grounds that she was also from America, just not from the US. "US-ians"? "Statessiders"?
» I didn't think we could get this low
What have we come to that someone could do this while others looked on and laughed?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tees/7063366.stm
» Stranger than fiction
Browsing Towleroad this morning I came across this story of one gay American politician smearing (possibly) another. So far so unenlightening, until you read that the 20 year old "intern" (political assistant or researcher) at the centre of the story rejoices in the name Beau Breedlove.
» The book of Daniel

Dreamed of Daniel Radcliffe playing with my little pony. V.disturbing. Had never been able to understand why people were slashing about Harry Potter and Draco or whomever until I saw this:

Speaking as an amateur of many years' standing, it is impossible that a treasure trail that promising should lead on to disappointment. So now he's invaded my dreams? First account for this, indeed! Well it's staring you in the face, love.


» What soldier type are you?
You scored as Special Ops. Special ops. You're sneaky, tactful, and a loner. You prefer to do your jobs alone, working where you don't come into contact with people. But everyonce in a while you hit it big and are noticed and given fame. Your given the more sensitive problems. You get things done, and do what has to be done.

"VULCAN NECK PINCH!!!"
"owww.......(slump)"

</td>

Special Ops

75%

Engineer

69%

Support Gunner

63%

Artillery/Armor

63%

Medic

50%

Combat Infantry

50%

Officer

50%

Civilian

44%

Which soldier type are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

» McKay and Mrs. Miller (308)
I'm sure somebody else must have picked up on it, but Teh Gay was just *so* plainly being marked at the end when Rod was preparing to go back to Rod!verse. Rodney asking Rod if he was going to click his heels and go back, and then at the critical moment Rod saying "There's no place like home." [I nearly cried! What *is* this with me nearly crying every time I was this damn program?]

So if Rod(ney) is being identified as Dorothy then, by a magnificent application of logic, John is a friend of Dorothy, and therefore Teh Gay Love exists between them Q.E.D.
» First kiss cynicism
Am I being too cynical in thinking that one of the great things about [a certain kind of] gay men for slash writers is that they can realistically be portrayed as having their first kiss at age 35? Is it just a way of reaching back to the terrors and joys of youth, by giving it to early-middle-aged men?
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