WHERE WERE YOU, AUTO-SAVE?!
Dec. 20th, 2008 12:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
x_losAn entire long post has just been lost to the world. After years of mocking Cirque du Soleil, I tried to make one (just one!) more joke about it here and now. I must have finally pushed that 'dramatic mix of circus arts and street entertainment' too far, because the attempt to confirm I'd spelled it right (and I had spelled that ridiculous bullshit French name right, goddamit, I didn't even need to check it! The bitterest bit of all!) navigated me away from the post window instead of popping out a new window and lj promptly ate the whole thing. Hats off to you, Cirque du Soleil--you are a more cunning adversary than I ever previously believed.
Back to what I can remember of the post that might have been!
For the past few days I've been waking up at nine-something am. This is the first week in four months in which I don't have to be up with the dawn for another exciting day of embedded journalism, in which I have no obligation to harvest, pack, or even look at fruit with intent. Nine-something, while heinously early for me, who scheduled her lectures to begin at eleven or later all through uni and then slept through them anyway, is not an entirely disreputable hour. The sun's up doing its thing (or so they tell me--it's hard to tell, I'm in England, they might well have turned on a big searchlight behind this cloud cover for a DIY day), people with real-person jobs are setting down in cubicles somewhere, someone more industrious than I am is making and consuming a Full English breakfast. Sturdy, good old nine-am.
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aralias, who I'm visiting, doesn't wake up before noon if the flat's on fire. Normally I don't either. And so I resent the three hour slog to consciousness. When she had work I watched SJA and Merlin on the BBC iplayer (which, along with her smooth-like-buttah, not-shitty-Israeli internet, is convenient as anything, and I wish England would extend iplayer access to Israel in a sort of 'sorry partitioning was a crap idea, have some good free television?' gesture--India could get in on this too, we're calling it the 'Lord Balfour's Bad' program, tell your friends). But now, having finished these, I wait around writing lj posts that get eaten. Woo.
Last night I was persuaded to stay up past the limit of my 'might turn into a pumpkin at any moment!' midnight exhaustion. I hoped this would mean I too could wake at noon like all the cool kids. But I had a nightmare, woke up, and tried to go back to sleep, only to writhe around under the duvet in uncomfortable semi-consciousness for what seemed like hours, still troubled by the dream I'd slipped back down into believing was real. I gave up and craned my head back--the microwave clock is visible from the pull-out sofa bed by trained contortionists. Nine fucking thirty. Maybe now that I'd gotten up and acknowledged the time, the dream would fuck off and I could sleep some more. But a phone--not mine--left by my ear bleated irregularly but insistently.* Nope. Unconsciousness was not going to happen.
In the past couple days, my sloth has not stopped with just mainlining SJA and Merlin--oh no, that's be too cool for me. And there's still another Who-spinoff to go! I also finished all of S2 of Torchwood! I know, I know I said I'd never watch it after the drek that was S1, but there were moments of S2 that were just perfect television. Though diet!Master does make me feel somewhat miffed at the appropriation of the original, superior (I said it, yeah) Three/Delgado!Master ship-this is probably exactly what black people feel about Eminem** rapping. My struggles as a classic-who shipper are indeed similar to those of modern African Americans searching for cultural identity and civil rights. Truly.
We watched the Muppet Christmas Movie, which was fine but, like American idol votes, entirely phoned in.aralias has already said as much, but hey, have I even been stopped by a joke having been made before?**** It was no Muppet Christmas Carol. Dr. Horrible for my second time, possibly her millionth. Hairspray was adorable, as was Iolanthe as directed by my hostess (a la Roger De Bris, according to some :p). I was reading the libretto as we went along, because I hate not knowing the words to G&S, and with less-than-incredibly-expensive recordings the patter portion's always one long, unintelligible smear and the singing a prettier smear unless you know exactly what you're listening for.
I also read Rowling's slim Tales of Beedle the Bard, which was quick and well-presented. The Warlock's Hairy Heart, easily my favorite of the stories, was a recapitulation of The Picture of Dorian Gray in some ways, I thought. At any rate this soothed the pain of having to walk through a Tel Aviv plastered in Hebrew Twilight film posters.
She introduced me to Never Mind the Buzzcocks, which has healed a hole in my heart. QI is too witty and spontaneous and I think Stephen Fry is cleverer than me. Now, not long ago, I would have either 1) denied this with my dying breath or 2) killed Stephen Fry and asked him to do the same, because no one was allowed to be clever than me except at common sense things, because I did have to acknowledge the blatant evidence that I did suck hard at those. But I've mellowed, you see, and now realize that the world won't crumble like it's the end of Labyrinth if I admit that perhaps I'm not capable of understanding everything about everything. This is either oncoming maturity or resignation, or both, swirled like the chocolate-vanilla Dairy Queen soft-serves, but, you know, more 'bitter taste of one's own limitations' and less 'ooh, hey, and it's in a sugar-cone as well!'
But to un-digress: QI is intimidatingly clever and if confronted with its challenge of improvised clever banter on camera I'd vomit words all over poor Stephen and have to offer to pay for his dry cleaning. This is a problem as my card doesn't have chip and pen and so probably, I could not make it go through and Stephen's shirt would get stuck at the cleaners forever and I'd have to leave the UK never to return. BUT, while Never Mind the Buzzcocks is fun and funny, I think I could do alright on it. The challenges aren't impossible. I, too, can insult people scathingly in a funny manner if given a forum. Even if not given a forum! Hi, Abby Ben's Girlfriend I once drunkenly called 'fat on the inside' in an ill-advised phone call made from a Steak 'n Shake. Still dull? Yes, thought you might be.
It's somewhat similar to my life long dream of being invited to Dave Chapel's Hater's Ball (incidentally, only Americans think Dave Chapel's funny, in my experience--can anyone prove this wrong? It'd be a sad discovery, Chapel's great.). So I could be a successful Never Mind the Buzzcocks guest without humiliating myself! Huzzah! And given the fact that 1) everyone ever has a brief 'solo artist' phase, and 2) this show apparently capitalizes off that by inviting all of them on at one point or another, when I move here, eventually I will be. Please buy my single, 'Untitled,' out in all bad bookshops, next to the elephant in the back, conveniently located beneath the cheese wheels.
What else have we done? We made cheeseburgers? We got pizza with meat and cheese? That's a step up from Israel's kosher-pizza incarnations, and by the way, though I can clearly envision the planning meeting ('It sounds like better!' Or 'hey, try it out!' Or an imperative command to try it!') 'Beta Pizza' is a crap name for your pizzeria, Israel. 'There might be bugs in it--literally, metaphorically, I don't know, it's still in beta...'. We got curry, and if Israel has any lying about, they've not told me about it. Well, they may have, my Hebrew's for shit, I probably wouldn't know if they carefully explained 'delicious curry, up that street, Erin, try some!' ASDA mince pies turn out to be /delicious./ Oven-warmed, they're savory-sweet, with a shortbready-sugar crust. I think they'd be great a la mode, but from the eye the hostess gives me when I mention this, there's either 1) something lodged in her cornea or 2) this is Just Not Done.
And tea. Wonderful, instantaneous, bounteous, properly-strong, well-brewed, good-quality, taken-with-milk tea. The electric kettle > cotton gin, fuck off, Eli Whitney, no one cares, you just enabled slavery some more anyway. Basically the electric kettle can produce hot water for tea for one or any number of people in under twenty seconds, and we don't really do kettles like this in America, but my god, I want one.
Friends ask me how I'm liking London, and I'm too embarrassed to admit I've actually er, not gotten out of Hounslow. Except for how I just did. Hiii, internet. We did think about seeing a movie yesterday? But then they all looked bad. Tonight we may go to a sushi restaurant with the boats that go round, as she's never had sushi and the prospect of trying Israeli sushi terrifies me, JAPs around to be catered to enforcing standards around Ramat Aviv or no JAPs. Then we may get milkshakes at this Americana diner, because I love milkshakes and she loves this diner, and I'm looking forward to the amusement that is faux!Americana after like, Sixty Three Diner (which BROKE MY HEART by shutting down while I was off at college, thanks). Tomorrow night's her birthday gathering, and so it's Icebar (http://www.belowzerolondon.com/icebar/index.html) time. Which seems fun, in an especially 'Danny is jealous, win' way. Plus I'll get to see Becca again, and she was quite nice.
I like to end my incredibly long entries on a sort of 'oh' note, so yes, here's that for you.
* Incidentally, nothing is more fucking annoying than the cock crowing to meet the dawn when you've been up in the fields for at least twenty minutes. It's not just one sharp announcement, oh no. It's a performance, it's fucking rooster Cirque du Soleil, with the thing hopping around its cage going oooon for a quarter of an hour about how it's omg REALLY DAWN NOW. Dazed with seeleep-dep, I've sometimes been reduced to grabbing the bars of his cage and answering back "YES. YES, THANKS, I KNOW. I WILL EAT YOU, YOU KNOW. I DON'T EVEN CARE THAT YOU WILL TASTE BAD, BECAUSE I DON'T THINK YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO EAT ROOSTERS. I WILL EAT. YOU. MMMMM, BITCH."
** Not to be confused with Erimen. Who should never meet Eminem. Ever. It would make no one happy.***
*** Except maybe Peri. Despite having never yet heard of him, I can see her appreciating meeting a star of American music. And it would increase her street cred from negative twenty to a firm zero. This isn't bashing, I like Peri just fine: I just can't see anyone ever accusing her of menacing south central while drinking juice in the hood, is all.
**** Being physically stopped by Danny's fist doesn't count for this one, according to the rules that I've just made up.
Back to what I can remember of the post that might have been!
For the past few days I've been waking up at nine-something am. This is the first week in four months in which I don't have to be up with the dawn for another exciting day of embedded journalism, in which I have no obligation to harvest, pack, or even look at fruit with intent. Nine-something, while heinously early for me, who scheduled her lectures to begin at eleven or later all through uni and then slept through them anyway, is not an entirely disreputable hour. The sun's up doing its thing (or so they tell me--it's hard to tell, I'm in England, they might well have turned on a big searchlight behind this cloud cover for a DIY day), people with real-person jobs are setting down in cubicles somewhere, someone more industrious than I am is making and consuming a Full English breakfast. Sturdy, good old nine-am.
aralias, who I'm visiting, doesn't wake up before noon if the flat's on fire. Normally I don't either. And so I resent the three hour slog to consciousness. When she had work I watched SJA and Merlin on the BBC iplayer (which, along with her smooth-like-buttah, not-shitty-Israeli internet, is convenient as anything, and I wish England would extend iplayer access to Israel in a sort of 'sorry partitioning was a crap idea, have some good free television?' gesture--India could get in on this too, we're calling it the 'Lord Balfour's Bad' program, tell your friends). But now, having finished these, I wait around writing lj posts that get eaten. Woo. Last night I was persuaded to stay up past the limit of my 'might turn into a pumpkin at any moment!' midnight exhaustion. I hoped this would mean I too could wake at noon like all the cool kids. But I had a nightmare, woke up, and tried to go back to sleep, only to writhe around under the duvet in uncomfortable semi-consciousness for what seemed like hours, still troubled by the dream I'd slipped back down into believing was real. I gave up and craned my head back--the microwave clock is visible from the pull-out sofa bed by trained contortionists. Nine fucking thirty. Maybe now that I'd gotten up and acknowledged the time, the dream would fuck off and I could sleep some more. But a phone--not mine--left by my ear bleated irregularly but insistently.* Nope. Unconsciousness was not going to happen.
In the past couple days, my sloth has not stopped with just mainlining SJA and Merlin--oh no, that's be too cool for me. And there's still another Who-spinoff to go! I also finished all of S2 of Torchwood! I know, I know I said I'd never watch it after the drek that was S1, but there were moments of S2 that were just perfect television. Though diet!Master does make me feel somewhat miffed at the appropriation of the original, superior (I said it, yeah) Three/Delgado!Master ship-this is probably exactly what black people feel about Eminem** rapping. My struggles as a classic-who shipper are indeed similar to those of modern African Americans searching for cultural identity and civil rights. Truly.
We watched the Muppet Christmas Movie, which was fine but, like American idol votes, entirely phoned in.
aralias has already said as much, but hey, have I even been stopped by a joke having been made before?**** It was no Muppet Christmas Carol. Dr. Horrible for my second time, possibly her millionth. Hairspray was adorable, as was Iolanthe as directed by my hostess (a la Roger De Bris, according to some :p). I was reading the libretto as we went along, because I hate not knowing the words to G&S, and with less-than-incredibly-expensive recordings the patter portion's always one long, unintelligible smear and the singing a prettier smear unless you know exactly what you're listening for.I also read Rowling's slim Tales of Beedle the Bard, which was quick and well-presented. The Warlock's Hairy Heart, easily my favorite of the stories, was a recapitulation of The Picture of Dorian Gray in some ways, I thought. At any rate this soothed the pain of having to walk through a Tel Aviv plastered in Hebrew Twilight film posters.
She introduced me to Never Mind the Buzzcocks, which has healed a hole in my heart. QI is too witty and spontaneous and I think Stephen Fry is cleverer than me. Now, not long ago, I would have either 1) denied this with my dying breath or 2) killed Stephen Fry and asked him to do the same, because no one was allowed to be clever than me except at common sense things, because I did have to acknowledge the blatant evidence that I did suck hard at those. But I've mellowed, you see, and now realize that the world won't crumble like it's the end of Labyrinth if I admit that perhaps I'm not capable of understanding everything about everything. This is either oncoming maturity or resignation, or both, swirled like the chocolate-vanilla Dairy Queen soft-serves, but, you know, more 'bitter taste of one's own limitations' and less 'ooh, hey, and it's in a sugar-cone as well!'
But to un-digress: QI is intimidatingly clever and if confronted with its challenge of improvised clever banter on camera I'd vomit words all over poor Stephen and have to offer to pay for his dry cleaning. This is a problem as my card doesn't have chip and pen and so probably, I could not make it go through and Stephen's shirt would get stuck at the cleaners forever and I'd have to leave the UK never to return. BUT, while Never Mind the Buzzcocks is fun and funny, I think I could do alright on it. The challenges aren't impossible. I, too, can insult people scathingly in a funny manner if given a forum. Even if not given a forum! Hi, Abby Ben's Girlfriend I once drunkenly called 'fat on the inside' in an ill-advised phone call made from a Steak 'n Shake. Still dull? Yes, thought you might be.
It's somewhat similar to my life long dream of being invited to Dave Chapel's Hater's Ball (incidentally, only Americans think Dave Chapel's funny, in my experience--can anyone prove this wrong? It'd be a sad discovery, Chapel's great.). So I could be a successful Never Mind the Buzzcocks guest without humiliating myself! Huzzah! And given the fact that 1) everyone ever has a brief 'solo artist' phase, and 2) this show apparently capitalizes off that by inviting all of them on at one point or another, when I move here, eventually I will be. Please buy my single, 'Untitled,' out in all bad bookshops, next to the elephant in the back, conveniently located beneath the cheese wheels.
What else have we done? We made cheeseburgers? We got pizza with meat and cheese? That's a step up from Israel's kosher-pizza incarnations, and by the way, though I can clearly envision the planning meeting ('It sounds like better!' Or 'hey, try it out!' Or an imperative command to try it!') 'Beta Pizza' is a crap name for your pizzeria, Israel. 'There might be bugs in it--literally, metaphorically, I don't know, it's still in beta...'. We got curry, and if Israel has any lying about, they've not told me about it. Well, they may have, my Hebrew's for shit, I probably wouldn't know if they carefully explained 'delicious curry, up that street, Erin, try some!' ASDA mince pies turn out to be /delicious./ Oven-warmed, they're savory-sweet, with a shortbready-sugar crust. I think they'd be great a la mode, but from the eye the hostess gives me when I mention this, there's either 1) something lodged in her cornea or 2) this is Just Not Done.
And tea. Wonderful, instantaneous, bounteous, properly-strong, well-brewed, good-quality, taken-with-milk tea. The electric kettle > cotton gin, fuck off, Eli Whitney, no one cares, you just enabled slavery some more anyway. Basically the electric kettle can produce hot water for tea for one or any number of people in under twenty seconds, and we don't really do kettles like this in America, but my god, I want one.
Friends ask me how I'm liking London, and I'm too embarrassed to admit I've actually er, not gotten out of Hounslow. Except for how I just did. Hiii, internet. We did think about seeing a movie yesterday? But then they all looked bad. Tonight we may go to a sushi restaurant with the boats that go round, as she's never had sushi and the prospect of trying Israeli sushi terrifies me, JAPs around to be catered to enforcing standards around Ramat Aviv or no JAPs. Then we may get milkshakes at this Americana diner, because I love milkshakes and she loves this diner, and I'm looking forward to the amusement that is faux!Americana after like, Sixty Three Diner (which BROKE MY HEART by shutting down while I was off at college, thanks). Tomorrow night's her birthday gathering, and so it's Icebar (http://www.belowzerolondon.com/icebar/index.html) time. Which seems fun, in an especially 'Danny is jealous, win' way. Plus I'll get to see Becca again, and she was quite nice.
I like to end my incredibly long entries on a sort of 'oh' note, so yes, here's that for you.
* Incidentally, nothing is more fucking annoying than the cock crowing to meet the dawn when you've been up in the fields for at least twenty minutes. It's not just one sharp announcement, oh no. It's a performance, it's fucking rooster Cirque du Soleil, with the thing hopping around its cage going oooon for a quarter of an hour about how it's omg REALLY DAWN NOW. Dazed with seeleep-dep, I've sometimes been reduced to grabbing the bars of his cage and answering back "YES. YES, THANKS, I KNOW. I WILL EAT YOU, YOU KNOW. I DON'T EVEN CARE THAT YOU WILL TASTE BAD, BECAUSE I DON'T THINK YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO EAT ROOSTERS. I WILL EAT. YOU. MMMMM, BITCH."
** Not to be confused with Erimen. Who should never meet Eminem. Ever. It would make no one happy.***
*** Except maybe Peri. Despite having never yet heard of him, I can see her appreciating meeting a star of American music. And it would increase her street cred from negative twenty to a firm zero. This isn't bashing, I like Peri just fine: I just can't see anyone ever accusing her of menacing south central while drinking juice in the hood, is all.
**** Being physically stopped by Danny's fist doesn't count for this one, according to the rules that I've just made up.
