This MY town of Halloween

News at 11: Bard scares drunk girls, wins prizes

Dressed up for our campus Halloween party tonight. My ears are still ringing.

I credit Jack Skellington's influence for getting me offwork early tonight, allowing me to enjoy the full power of the party. Also, my boss is giving me a raise. Which rocks.

Anyway, I'll be posting pics in a few arns once I've got them uploaded. Apparently, just like last year, this costume was inordinatly scary, becuase I had a LOT of people commenting on it. Its sort of a mix between Mister Fane from The Nocturnals, The Gunwhich, and Doc Holiday.

There were some GREAT costumes tonight. A couple dressed as Neo and Trinity, a friend of mine dressed as Miho from Sin City, this guy who was damn near IDENTICAL to Johnny Depp as Raoul Duke in Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas, and a whole lot of other stuff.

I did surprisingly more dancing than I'd intended, which is really weird becuase I DON'T normally dance. But the music just kind of got to me. Did I mention the earing ringing?

Anyway, at some point this chick in a witch outfit sidles up to me and informs me that I've won the costume contest. Well...ok. Great. What do I get? I got a HUGE bag of CDs. At least 15, probably closer to 20. Mostly bands I've never heard of...though I DID get the new Gorillaz CD in there, whcih is good becuase I DO enjoy them. I guess I'll have to test the discs out. Those I don't like I'll probably just give to the first used music store I can find. Might earn myself enough money for a burger or something. Not bad for a $4 costume.

Now I sit back. I eat bangers and mash again (apple-cherry pork and sundried tomato -garlic pork this time), drink my Blackthorn cider, watch Farscape, and realize that I left the third sausage still in its packaging at work. Pity. It was only a buck fifty, but still...blueberry maple. Just DAMN.

Ah well. It was a good night. I scared drunk people. I won prizes. My ears are still ringing. And now I relax.

Romantic Musings 6

Essay due today rather than on Monday (well, this past Monday) I got an extension. Mainly because of massive amounts of work due recently. This course load is killing me. Two novels a week, plays, and reading for Roman history. I’m honestly considering just not doing half my course readings and doing them the week before the exam.

Not the greatest essay I ever wrote, but it’ll do. Well…considering I handed it in an hour or two ago I think it’ll have to, lol.

I do, however, return to the subject of the Dickishness of Wordsworth (…saying it outloud I keep sounding like the crazy doctor in Nightmare Before Christmas going on about “wormswort”). The Intimations of Immorality is interesting…in a poetic essay sort of way.

It’s an interesting poem, but I have to admit a certain exhasperation with reading it. Wordsworth is a really touch and go poet for me. Either I like it, or I hate it. This…eh. Its leaning between.

But after that comes something called “Ode of Duty”. Now THAT is cool. I dunno. There’s just something to it. Some je ne se quas. But there’s an air to it. Its cool.

Further Funding From the Phoenix Foundation

My laptop must have taken a jolt today, because the POWER button came loose in its housing and got permanently stuck in the "ON" position. Which resulted in my laptop overheating and draining its battery while I THOUGHT it was on Hibernate.

Got home. Had a rough few minutes of jiggling at it with a jewler's screwdriver before it finally got popped back into shape. Its still pretty loose. I'm not sure WHY it was built so loose to begin with. If it messes up again I'll probably just fix some tape over it to keep it where it ought be.

Still not 100% sure how this happened, though.

...but still. Cue the 2 minute opening credits sequence.

The Defintion of Decadence

-An ensuite bathroom (my room at home has a small alcove bathroom with a toilet and a sink near the desk)
-A desk chair with a wide seat
-a laptop
-a wireless modem

I never have to go offline.

This is rapdily shaping into a book pitch

"What do Christmas elves with laser sights in their eyes, a man-eating, 240lb Easter Bunny, three anorexic turkies, and an incontient, balding Cupid have in common?

They're all attending the world's first 'Holiday Character Convention' in Indigo City, and they're all trying to kill someone. The only person who might have the slightest chance of keeping the Convention from going to hell is Jack B. Quick, the pyromaniacle sometimes-private eye.

The only problem is that Jack is busy drinking in a bar three blocks away with a couple of St. Patty's Day leperchauns. Until his drunken stupor is interrupted by a renegade, illegally parked reindeer.

As the body count starts to pile up, Jack has to ask himself: was it really worth getting out of bed this morning?"

Romantic Musings 5

We went to the Fisher Library today.

I mean, its not like I haven’t been there before. But its still a cool place. Reminds me of the library at the British Museum, or at least the ones they have on display. Its really nifty inside.

Got to look at a old copy of the Blake stuff I’m doing a project on. Its weird. Kind of like a poetic version of Austin Spare (leading chaos magician wacko artist guy). These print images with poetry inside them. I think it really presents the text better than the version in the Norton Anthology we’re reading does. If nothing else it makes it LOOK nicer. And makes it look less like an essay and more like something closer to a poem.

Still. It feels like a crime to touch all those wonderful old books. I mean, they’re beautiful. We should at least have been handling them with gloves or something. It feels like to a crime to get finger oils all over them. But then again I suppose they wouldn’t be out if they were going to crumble on us. But still…I just think we should respect the books.

Bootleg Bangers and Mash

Felt a hankering for my favourite English dish yesterday, so I went out to Whole Foods and picked up some sausages (a pork Bratwurst and a turkey Chorizo), but their mashed taters were too expensive.

...so I made some mashed taters today at work, and made a little port onion veal jus, and then took it home with me.

It's good stuff. May have to do this more often. Nice, filling, WARM stick to your ribs food.

Romantic Musings 4

I had ham. Then I had turkey. The dining hall served turkey, which I count as a blessing considering that my parents didn’t serve it.

Anyway.

Wordsworth has redeemed himself. Great Cthulhu may eat him last. Or…y’know…second to last. Or he’s at least been taken off the “top 100 people for the Sunken Lord of R’lyeh to Devour First Upon Awakening” list.

Anyway.

“We are Seven” is a wonderful bit of poetry. Its nice, and maybe just a little creepy. There’s a little kid who’s stalwartly refusing to admit that her two siblings are dead. No, there are seven children in that house. Yes, there are two graves out there. No, there are still seven of them. It’s a bit back and forth, and the dialogue between Romanticism and Enlightenment rationale is a bit…annoying…but at the same time the poem is kind of evocative. The imagery’s really nice. And that last stanza is great.

“But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in Heaven!”
‘Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
And said, “Nay, we are seven!”

There’s almost an occult feel to the poem. Not sure how to express it, but it seems almost like a cultist refrain. I have half a mind to put a little shack in the Rockies venue and have five Bone Shadow kids inside, cared for by their two dead siblings, and torment the other Werewolves when they come upon the kids who keep insisting “Nay, we are SEVEN!”

…though I could also use that in an issue of the Paradise Seven…but anyway.

Comments on Members Only

Becuase of the slieu of shit and solicitations that people have insisted on slapping into my Comments section, I've now turned the Comments to "Blogger Members Only". Sorry about that, folks. But its just really pissing me off to every day have to delete 2-3 new spam comments.

Romantic Musings 3

Wordsworth was a dick.

Well, ok. He was an egotist. And then he was a dick.

The preface to Lyrical Ballads is dense. So dense I didn’t, I can’t, even read all of it. And its kind of annoying. He just carries on with the same point. It’s a preface! What he wrote here should have been included in the book as “An Essay on Lyrical Ballads”. The preface should have just said “I’d like to thank everyone who got this book published, here are two paragraphs on its aims, now enjoy.”

The preface itself is innately egotistical, though. Wordsworth keeps referring back to himself. He keeps returning to the first person and his relation to the book, which I suppose makes sense, and maybe its just that I was always taught never to use “I” in a formal essay…but still. He basically seems to be saying “Look at me, I’m so cool, look at how cool I am, I’m fighting The Man and the Man’s poetic conventions, the Man can’t get me down, mainly because I’m so cool.” I exaggerate, but still.

Ok, so not the greatest prose week. Hopefully it’ll get better.

Cheese and crackers

There's nothing better than a nice cheese platter with a bit of fruit, some nice crisp crackers, and a bit of meat. My Danish step-grandmother always used to lay out her open faced sandwhich spread, but there's also just something wonderful about a nice board with three or four kinds of cheese, a bit of bear, a bit of nectarine, and some smoked meat.

Today's spread was 3 year old Balderson (half a kilo bought for about $12 at a bakery down the street...for those that don't know this is the primo sharp cheddar), Lancashire Tasty (a taste I picked up on the farm, a very sharp cheese as well), and some nice runny Camembert (just a bit...I can't stand TOO much of the stuff). Ryvita rye crackers were the base for it all, and there was also some nice dry smoked salmon, sliced into nice little pieces, and a pear and nectarine. Complemented by a sweet, sparkling Italian desert wine. A nice combination.

It was good. Its always good.

Damn do I ever love cheese.

SHINY!

I shiver. God.

Serenity.

Best movie I've seen all year. It beats Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, hands down. And that's...wow.

It's a beautiful movie. Hard to describe just HOW beautiful. But it was great. The fight scenes were quite nice. River's especially were real nifty.

I only have a small handful of complaints:

1) The guns make noise. IN the series they made these weird whistles, like they were run by air or were electrically triggered. The gunfights in the movie are full sound, full bangs. On the upside, there was still no sound in space.

2) Serenity's internal designs had changed a bit. It was a harder, more piece-meal Serenity. Not quite the ship we came to love on TV.

3) The slightly changed Simon and River's story. The only thing this REALLY does is make his opening lines on the second Niska episode make kind of strange. Still. It was a bit odd.

Still, characterization was solid. Inara got a gun. Well, a mechanically driven bow that she shot quite gracefully. But Jayne's very favourite gun, Vera, didn't make an appearence in the show. Which was such a damn shame.

But...wow. Go watch it! NOW! TWICE!

Go! Go! Ma Shong Jien Cha, Ta Ma Duh! Now!

...ahem. So yes. Very shiny.