queen_ypolita

I've just realised that instead of dumping what I used to take to a recycling point in our new recycling bin, I'll be actually sorting my plastics into what can go into the bin (plastic bottles) and what still needs to be taken to a recycling point (yogurt pots and the like), so the new bin isn't actually making my life any easier.

And our new box for paper and card seems to have gone walkabout--I saw it briefly on Tuesday, all our rubbish and recycling was collected on Wed so we had everything set out, but I haven't seen it since. And seeing I went through some of my old uni stuff yesterday, I'd actually like to get rid of some excess paper right now.

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Over the past few weeks, I've been watching the first series of two TV shows on DVD (thanks to Lovefilm) that I initially dismissed: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The L Word.

My former flatmate occasionally watched Buffy so I ended up seeing bits and pieces here and there but it just didn't feel like my kind of thing at all, I couldn't muster any interest in vampires or demons, disliked the fight scenes, and didn't like Buffy's leather jacket. I sort of reassessed my disinterest once when I stumbled on Willow sitting on a sofa and talking to a girl and ending up watching the entire episode, but by that time there were several series to catch up on that I didn't give it a serious chance. But eventually I thought I could give it a go on Lovefilm. So I watched the first couple of episodes, found that I could actually like Buffy and Giles, and that Willow was adorable. And that I could put up with the fight scenes now that I felt I understood Buffy a little better. I've now watched the first series, and am quite looking forward to watching the second whenever Lovefilm decides to start sending it to me.

When I watched the The L Word pilot on TV, I found it sleep-inducing (not exaggerating here, I actually fell asleep) so I wasn't exactly inclined to give it any more of my time. But like with Buffy, I thought I could give it another chance, and armed myself with knitting to help me focus. Well, after a second try at the pilot, I could see why I found it sleep-inducing the first time, because whenever Jenny and Tim were in a scene together I found myself zoning out, ditto when Jenny was being painfully writerly, and struggled to maintain any sympathy whatsoever with Bette and Tina and their we-will-have-a-baby-now stuff. But everyone else seemed interesting, so I didn't hesitate to continue through the first series, and now, having seen all episodes, I really like it, and all the main characters. So looking forward to seeing the second series at one point.

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Ooh, this is interesting.

Based on a random post and the beginning of a The Charioteer fic:




Based on the beginning of "No more hiding from yourself" (a Harry Potter fic):




However, if I change the names (Sirius, Remus, Black, Hogwarts) and a few details (Animagi, broomsticks) in that passage, I get:




How can I write like Joyce or Kipling when I've barely read anything by them?

And just to try one more, based on the beginning of this fic, I get:




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Until today, we've had a black bin for general rubbish, and a blue bin for paper and card. The blue bin had its last paper-and-card collection this morning, and has now morphed into a plastic bottle/tin/glass bin with a shiny new sticker, and we should be getting a new box for paper and card. We'll have to see how it goes (apparently recycling rates are down from last year), but it's great that they are doing this.

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Places we love by Ivan V Lalic (translated into English by Francis R Jones)

Places we love exist only through us,
Space destroyed is only illusion in the constancy of time,
Places we love we can never leave,
Places we love together, together, together,

And is this room really a room, or an embrace,
And what is beneath the window: a street or years?
And the window is only the imprint left by
The first rain we understood, returning endlessly,

And this wall does not define the room, but perhpas the night
Your son began to move in your sleeping blood,
A son like butterfly of flame in your hall of mirrors,
The night you were frightened by your own light,

And this door leads into any afternoon
Which outlives it, forever peopled
With your casual movements, as you stepped,
Like fire into copper, into my only memory;

When you go, space closes over like water behind you,
Do not look back: there is nothing outside you,
Space is only time visible in a different way,
Places we love we can never leave.

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Not a surprise, but it's nice to have it confirmed: it's a first.

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Yesterday, White Material--with a non-linear structure, it wasn't immediately clear why the protagonist was so desperate to get to her home, or when signs of ongoing war started to emerge, it wasn't easy to see who was who and what they were after. And this wasn't a film to explain things. Towards the end, quite uncomfortable to watch, but well worth seeing.

This afternoon, The Doors documentary, When You're Strange.

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This is not really a soundtrack of my life. These are some of the songs that I associate with a particular time in my life... which is something I've been thinking about recently when I've been having all the music on my laptop on shuffle (I ripped most of the CDs I listened to in my late teens/early twenties on my computer last time I was at my parents, and have to say shuffle has been pretty interesting... and has involved a lot more skipping than I perhaps anticipated).

( Cut for length. Embedded YT vids under further cuts )

But after that summer (2007) I once again seemed to stop listening to new(-to-me) music; I pretty much stopped listening to any radio for two years, and felt the ratio of new/familiar on last.fm never seemed quite right to me, and Spotify easily allows you to listen to music you already know. Over the past year, I've listened to more radio, paid a bit more attention to what I've heard, and been more willing to follow up any throwaway mentions of this-band-or-that-singer, so music once again feels exciting rather than just safe and familiar, and I love it.

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I've just got back from cinema to see Lymelife. It sounded reasonably interesting in the description on the cinema website, but in actual fact it wasn't anything special, and pretty predictable. One of the people I went with disliked writing, plot and acting, the other thought it was OK. And just before writing this post I came across the Guardian review by Jason Solomon; I was amused to find that he described it as "bland and predictable".

In the trailers, I kept up my Swedish watch for the Stieg Larsson adaptations: where The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo seemed to actively hide its non-English-language status, with The Girl Who Played with Fire you might actually be within a chance of working out it takes place somewhere Foreign if you pay attention (there were some shots of Stockholm, a sign saying "Ingång", a house door with a "Välkommen till familjen XXX" sign (I didn't have time read the actual surname)).

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Pauses by Eila Kivikk'aho (translated into English by Donald Adamson)

I
The far-away music of the drawing rooms
doesn't reach me here

only the spaces-between sing, the telephone wires
if the hum of the forest is ever stilled

and threat behind it all, the forgotten dangers
as deep as tremors in the earth--

that human beings
could have something in common.

II
The dumbness of stone
the spring-song of tree-sap
the music of the spheres.
Does the earth listen--and how
can the skull bear such awareness?

III
I've learned to look out of the window
and the door is forgotten.

IV (Nidaros)
'In the cathedral
the paintings of hell show
the oldest violins.'
What about the harps? They too
have a heavenly sound...

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From thefridayfive:

1) What do you love about Summer?
Long daylight hours, warmth, scents of early summer

2) How many times you had a fun on summer?
????

3) What mostly you like to do during summer time?
Sitting in a park with a book?

4) Do you like the place where you live?
Yes

5) If you have given a chance, do you want to live in a tropical country?
Absolutely not, partly for the daylight hours, partly because hot weather makes my face break out in spots like teenage acne never went away.

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LibraryThing EarlyReviewer books and a Member Giveaway:

Selene of Alexandria by Faith L Justice, as an ebook member giveaway from the author--my brief review on LT

LTER: Brief Lives: E M Forster by Richard Canning didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know about EMF, but as most of my EMF-related reading took place about 12 years ago, it wasn't a bad way to remind myself of the main events of his life; this is a short, easy-to-read bio.

LTER: Along a Ruined Sea is a book of poetry by Larry Kuechlin that I won from January list, I think, but I didn't actually get a copy until earlier this month (apparently there were problems in shipping the copies over from the US, or something). I posted one of the poems, Against the Rain", a couple of weeks ago.

Dangerous Pleasures: A Decade of Stories is a collection of eleven short stories by Patrick Gale, and I nearly stopped reading after the first one, "Wig", because it came across as a misogynistic pile of rubbish (and was a bit creepier than I fancied for bedtime reading anyway). I realised I had actually read two of two stories previously in anthologies (with one I realised about halfway through, the other through publishing history), but the author hadn't registered at the time (I swore I had never heard about PG until someone else mentioned him in about 2005 or 2006). OK stories but the details of most have faded in the four weeks since finishing this book.

Autumn Term by Antonia Forest--I hadn't read anything of hers before, and this one was pure joy from start to finish.

Book group book: Augustus Carp, Esquire, by Himself: Being the Autobiography of a Really Good Man by Sir Henry Bashford, a comic novel written in the 1920s and "rediscovered" by Anthony Burgess in the 1960s. And it was mostly funny, in the way books with severely hypocritical protagonists are, which made a change, since as a group we seem to have gone for misery or not-joy for the most part.

Summer reading to get through quickly in the park:

The Fall of Troy by Peter Ackroyd - OK

Marked for Life by Paul Magrs - I'm not sure what exactly I expected--I was intrigued by the title, but the blurb sounded a bit weird, but in the end it was genuinely touching with complex characters with complex choices.

Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon - requires a conscious suspension of disbelief, but once you get past that, it's not bad for a summer afternoon in the park

Good Girls Don't by Claire Hennessy - Irish YA with bisexual protagonist, OK

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... but we got emails saying that feedback for dissertations was available, so I went to pick mine up (rather curious after I ran into my supervisor on Saturday and he was asking if feedback and results had been given out yet, and I got the impression it probably would be good). And then the office handed me the whole lot: diss feedback, feedback for group project for one module, and feedback for an annoying paper for another. Which means I know how did in everything except the exam (worth 40 per cent of the final mark) for the module that also had the group project. And it looks very good although at the moment the marks are not final.

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Encounter by Czeslaw Milosz (translated into English by Czeslaw Milosz and Lillian Vallee)

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

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Thought I'd give this a go... five questions from thefridayfive:

( My answers under the cut )

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Watched Lennon Naked last night while ironing/knitting and felt its daddy issues complemented the mummy issues of Nowhere Boy rather nicely. Christopher Eccleston was very good.

Walked up the hill to do my weekly shop, with some baking stuff to buy on top of the regular, and felt once again that it's stuff like baking (and cooking as well, I suppose) where you really get culture bumps--that stuff you take for granted turns out to be less readily available than you expected.

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Pretty much everything the Centre Party says or does is guaranteed to raise my blood pressure in unpleasant ways, but as we don't get female PMs every day, I'm willing to have a little moment of yay. The party elected her as their new leader the other week, and the parliament voted today over making her the PM, making her the second-ever female PM in Finland--I do hope she annoys me a little less than the first one did.

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Apparently someone has written a novel about Anne Frank and her relationship with Peter van Pels (or something). And as reported in the Guardian, the Anne Frank Trust has Concerns over fictionalising a life that (young) people seem to be able to relate well enough as it is. And there are also Concerns over sexualising the story.

I don't think it's entirely surprising that the Trust has issues about a fictionalised version of the story because it puts another version of the story out that they have no control over, but on the other hand, real-life people (particularly if they are no longer alive) are surely fair game for the most part, and using them in fiction is absolutely nothing shocking (A point made by Meg Rostoff in the book blog (although she didn't particularly care for the manuscript in question)). And depending on which version of AF's diary you read, you're already reading a partly fictionalised/at the very least edited-for-a-specific-slant account. And as far as sexualising goes... again, I don't know what the book does, exactly, but as the piece points out, it's not like AF doesn't talk about kissing Peter, or her periods and things like that.

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This episode of hayfever annoyance is totally my fault but still. I've been taking my hayfever stuff regularly ever since March and apart from a brief heavy tree pollen period when I had symptoms in the mornings before that day's doses kicked in, it's been perfectly in control, so I didn't worry too much about my annual repeat prescription review and getting new repeats as soon as possible. Totally unsurprising end result after nine days without antihistamines (nasal spray only) = itchy eyes and sneezing. And nasal spray is probably running out before I can get more, so looks like I'm going to have to try to remember which non-prescription antihistamines actually do something to me if I want to be able to do something between sneezing tomorrow.

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You don't have to watch every single YT video of Adam Lambert tour gigs that adamlambertetc links to.

But it's soooo hard to resist.

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