Today’s bewhiskered otter was shared by virtualreality on flickr.
Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a good book (or a bad one)? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? What have you created lately? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
Categories: Life
Soggy here, innit? 
In memoriam: Diana Rigg 
Getting out the ‘yes’ 
100 books by women in 2016 
Hoyden About Town 
Currently reading: “Rule 34″ by Charles Stross
I love Charlie’s stuff, and I’ve been wanting to read this one since it came out. So Thursday I went into town and grabbed it from White Dwarf (specialist science fiction/fantasy bookshop in Perth). I blitzed through the first reading at high speed, as usual, and carried on to the second, which means it’s now my go-to book for brain slowdown before going to sleep. However, I have to point out that one of the weirder things that Stross stuff does for me is that it seems to hypercharge my brain, giving me some very strange nightmares at times (“Iron Sunrise” is one of his books which is practically guaranteed to do this). Mixed together with a re-read of a particular Kingdom Hearts fanfic (“The Unfamiliar” by the.israel.project.107) which deals with some interesting concepts regarding reality, digital simulation and so on, I got some really odd dreams last night, most of which circled around various characters and whether they were really real or not (one of the characters being me, and one of the questions raised being how I know I’m really real…).
None of which means that I dislike the Stross book. Just that I’m going to be relatively careful about what I read in concert with it.
Overall, it’s a loose sort of follow-up to an earlier book, “Halting State”, which is written in the same second-person format, and which follows a few rather interesting days in the lives of a set of characters in a near-future Edinburgh (about 12 – 20 years post-now). The world is different enough to be futuristic, and recognisable enough to be believable, and the daily dramas are recognisable as being a lot like our own – Liz realises she needs to Get A Life, but doesn’t know how to find one; Anwar is trying to thread the tricky dance between being a good father, a good husband, and a good Muslim in a Scotland, and being able to enjoy himself; the Toymaker wants to succeed in their latest enterprise; and the Independent Republic of Issyk-Kulistan wants a consul. These various factors all intertwine in fascinating ways, and the plot rockets along at high speed once it gets going.
It’s a character-based thriller, and it gets more and more interesting as the plot gathers speed.
Wonders why the same cat that jumps in puddles, rolls in mud and begs to be let out in the rain, runs howling from the room when I bring out a packet of tiny flea treatment tubes. Does it burn?
Maybe it’s an allergy.
TAK, my theory is they hate the smell – mine is the same. I suspect with their noses, which of coruse are much more sensitive than our noses, the chemical smell woud be quite overwhelming.
Strangely, it doesn’t seem to worry my dogs tjough.
I’m enjoying Debt: the First 5000 Years in light of Occupy Wall Street especially.
Also eating Darrell Lea’s Chocolate Mint Balls. I prefer the orange ones I think.
Stormageddon, Lord of All.
@YetAnotherMatt, I’ve been muttering “Stormageddon” at intervals ever since I saw that episode. Loved it.
@YetAnotherMatt, I am full of love for Stormageddon! That was my favourite bit of the episode.
I am currently editing and revising the essays I have due this week, and have just come across a section of one essay that has me wondering just how tired and/or bored I was when I first wrote it. It’s awful, and needs to be dumped and completely rewritten.
I’ve also found out that a movie version of the Les Miserables musical is in the works, with Russell Crowe as Javert, Hugh Jackman as Valjean, Anne Hathaway as Fantine, and Helena Bonham Carter and Geoffrey Rush as the Thenadiers. This news has had be squeeing for days (although Emma Watson is rumoured to be Cosette, and I must admit, I really can’t see it).
Gruen planet. Talking about the weight watchers counter near the plus sized women’s clothing in a department store at the start of the episode, and then talking about Matt Preston eating a contestant’s cake once it had fallen on the floor. You can hate on fat people, but only in one line, it’s called portion control.
@Merinnan – I hear you on that bit of ‘What was I thinking when I wrote that’. Unfortunately I have a major assessment due tomorrow which I’ve been unable to motivate myself to spend large chunks of time on. I am very close to just jamming a few more sentences in and posting it off! It’s the HOLIDAYS! I want to be on holidays with the kids, not writing legal advices!! 😦
Yes. I have always suspected this.
Unfortunately I have a major assessment due tomorrow which I’ve been unable to motivate myself to spend large chunks of time on.
I thought I was the only one! I hope the sentences wrote themselves overnight and they gave you a chocolate muffin for handing it in. #unidreams
Good wishes for the assessments.
Just came across this article about a 2008 column by a current Queensland LNP candidate saying if women get drunk and get raped, it’s their own fault.
Have located column here
Ugh.
I have a new to me shiny flatscreen monitor, courtesy of my youngest brother moving interstate and half-arsed sister looking for easy ways to ditch it.
And I finally got around to making a facebook page for my colourful ‘Boy’ Pants – amongst other things. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Aphie/194383357264889
I’m currently polishing off a piece for an in-class debate at uni tomorrow. I misread the question and am now stuck arguing for a “side” to the issue I don’t especially agree with, but it has been fun typing and thinking much like a neo-con over the last few days!
Took the child out to the Temple of Consumerism (aka The Mall) today for a hot non-dairy beverage and strolled past cheap-arse jewellery chain Diva. Front and centre, pointing right at the doorway was their new range; ‘Playboy for Diva’. In the midst of which was a necklace representing a disembodied arse (with bunny tail), legs and high heels. CLASSY AS.
Mmm, mainstream pornification and objectifying of women, EXACTLY what I want my three year old exposed to when shopping for some cheap plastic bracelets or hair clips! *gag*