Avernus

So, I'm back from the giddy heights of Oxford again. I do mean giddy heights, I was very much living in a garret. Not quite as impressive as Andrew's garret, because it didn't have all the exposed wooden beams everywhere, but it did have slopy ceilings and slopy floors and, if I were a more energetic sort of person, a way to crawl up into the enclosed space between the college wall and the chapel, which seemed like the most Northern Lights thing in the world. Must have been Lyra's room, I swear it.

Rehearsals were pretty good fun, actually, much to my surprise. Twelves hours rehearsal in two days ought to have been more painful. My voice got somewhat knackered the first evening, probably because it had seized up in the week since the end of term, but it seemed to have perked up again by the next morning. The music for Florence is really good stuff, especially the Vaugn Williams mass, which I hadn't sung before and sounds all scrunchy, like the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. (We're doing some Tallis too, but that's a different matter.) I get to do a solo in it, which gives me happy pride. Yeah, okay, I like to be wanted, leave me alone >_<

So, other than singing, I wasted much time with Lizzu, which was muchly fun. She has already commented on the giant mutant cruise-liner eating worms, which kicked ass. There was also a really rather good episode of Outer Limits, featuring Markus from Jeremiah as the main character, a strangely practical psychotic bomber with a fatalistic outlook. He had much angst ^____^ Mmm, pseudo-Markus angst, almost as good as the real thing and with none of the calories... We also wasted time this afternoon before parents came to collect me, watching a rather odd film about cannibals in suburbia, and copious quantites of Next Generation. Next Generation featured all the worst things about the franchise, including dreadful cutesy children and Riker sex >_< >_< >_< Is a Q episode too much to ask?

(I should probably mention that the Gaudy dinner last night was pretty sensational, featuring five courses and much port. But no one wishes to hear about choir drunkenness, especially not when it wound up at the comparatively civilised hour of 2.30am. Very restrained. Though Lawrence and I did manage to set pictures of stick-man sex as the backround on Tim's computer. Heheh. I have a juvenile sense of humour.)

So, I'm currently at home again, and have many many bad 70s/80s shows to watch, which makes me happy. A new Professionals box set, which will eventually belong to Liz as soon as I've ripped copies, (Nee-sama, an online messenger chat on the subject of DVD ripping would be greatly appreciated sometime...) and the whole of Tripods season 1, which I've been watching all evening and enjoying to a surprising extent. The three kids are remarkably sweet, and I can definitely see the slash potential ^___^ Though I'm completely uncertain about whether Bean-pole is actually trying to have a French accent or not - if he is, it's not *exactly* recogniseable. And the boy who plays Henry looks remarkably like Sean Aston in certain lights....

Posted by Calliope at 09:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I had copyright infringing pot-ramen for lunch ^___^ Mmm, illegal. I love it when my father brings home freebies.

My mother is trying to make me do responsible things like find out bus timetables. Meh. I keep trying to kick myself back into intelligent mode, but it really ain't working. I blame the scifi channel, they have too much fun stuff. Up to and including the Time-Life adverts. 'Our normal price for Jesus is £14.99, but for a limited time only, save £5 - get Jesus for only £9.99!' No, really, that's what it said. Bargain, I call it.

Posted by Calliope at 02:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Eternal thanks to Neil Gaiman and his blog, without whom I might have completely missed this little gem, which has considerably brightened up my day and may well keep me laughing throughout the summer.

Ladies and gentlemen, we present.... Andrew Motion's birthday rap for Prince William.

And they said middle-aged middle-class white men couldn't be down wit' the hood.... *bangs head on desk* Why?! Why??!!

Posted by Calliope at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Well, I think I've ended my encoding with something that's reasonable. Ended up at 285MB, which is about average, and the quality is....well, not stunning, but watchable. Even full-screenable, if you're not nee-sama ^_^

It has had the unfortunate side-effect, however, of mulching the brain (not that you'd necessarily be able to tell the difference from my normal mental state, but...) Sentinel was slashy as hell, the day has been pleasantly full of encoding, and I *really* need to start unpacking sometime...

Posted by Calliope at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Am in a mood best described as ambivalent. On the one hand, I am back at home, and this means family and good food and lounging around on the sofa with crappy scifi and laptop and broadband, thus encompassing all good things and leading to no stress whatsoever ^______^ The first few days at home after the end of term leave me in a little contented pool on the floor.

To sum up: I've been playing around with various programs on my computer, and trying to set up my video capture stuff so that it actually, y'know works and all. I've also been feeling pleasantly geeky because the area between TV and sofa (hence laptop) in my sitting room now resembles a plate of spaghetti made out of wires. There's our old playstation, which *yes*, I did manage to get to work (^__^) though I've discovered it's missing a memory card (>__<) so I need to go buy one tomorrow before I can start on any of the final fantasy games. Meh. There are also various cables and things snaking out of the laptop, and various cables coming out of the back of the TV and plugging into mystious boxes and generally lurking malevolently which is the video capture stuff. Which I can't get to work yet, but I'm gonna keep trying.

I've also seen the first ep of Sentinel. To which my main reaction was 'ahahahahaha!!', my second reaction was '*wow* there are a lot of really blue eyes in this show' (whaat? It's true!), and my third reaction was 'if they're this slashy in the first episode, what's it going to be like when they actually get to know each other?!' For Jim and Blair are every bit as slashy as every fanfic makes them out to me. The very first proper scene they have together puts in waaaaay more touchy feely than most heterosexual men I know would be *entirely* comfortable with, and it kinda continues from there. I sat there through most of it with an idiot grin on my face. Okay, so it's not exactly the *classiest* TV show in the world, but hell, it amuses me okay?

The ambivalence of my mood is caused by having spent most of yesterday reading the new Harry Potter (*bows head* Yeah, I caved to the hype, big deal. I liked them years before anyone else I know.) And I don't want to spoiler anybody for the heap big spoiler, but.... *wails* Damn you woman, couldn't you have killed a character I didn't like? Or, any character who *wasn't* one of my few favourites?! *cries* Damn you, damn you to Hades!

*sniffles* I'm an emotional wreck now....

Posted by Calliope at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

To quote Katy: TAKE THAT TRINITY 2003! I WIN!!!!!!!

You tried to break me with mods (well, okay, Hilary did that, but I hold you jointly responsible) and with excessive amounts of essays, but I whupped your damned ass!!!!!

So - yeah. A birthday party is the ultimate way to finish a term, and I laugh in the face of everyone whose stupid date birthdays mean they can't try it out. Ahahahaha. For yea verily was there my birthday, And It Was Good. I have lots of beautiful shitajiki, a beautiful Tsuzuki giant see-through thingy (mmm, Shinigami-y...), a Lucifer comic, the promise of Sandman plushies (*pounceGLOMPS* on Tasha for the bestest idea for a present ever in the world), and a Laguna doujinshi which made me squee more embarrassingly than anything else ever ^_____________^ It's called 'Lagunalaguna!!' and that kind of sums it up. It's full of pretty Laguna pictures and pictures of Kiros blushing (I believe because he's thinking Laguna is cute ^___^) and pictures of Laguna spazzing through leg spasms, which are the cutest thing ever. I love Laguna spaz. It's the best sort of spaz in the world.

Except maybe the spaz of lying on the floor too tired to move making ineffectual flailing gestures at Katy because she just poked me and is sitting too far away for me to be able to retaliate properly. That's fun spaz too. There was much spazzing last night, and The Great Mint War of 2003 will go down in history. Death duels over a small packet of clicky mints (ahhhh, their minty goodness.... 'You may have defeated me, but I have the mints!' 'Damn you!' 'They love me best...' 'Damn mint-hos!' 'Mintoes, if you will....') conducted with three plastic bottles and much spazzing. Bottling people in the face works less well with plastic bottles, but they work great for lightsabre battles.

And there was cake, and sweets, and general sugar hypedness, and Tasha and Ivan dozed in various corners, And It Was Good. Thank you to everyone for the cake and the presents and being generally the bestest loons in the world. *glomps*

So - this afternoon is home, hurrah! I will be very sorry to leave Oxford, as unlike just about all the other scums I love almost every aspect of Oxford (nee-sama has declared me an 'Oxford Person', I'm not sure whether to be flattered or insulted.) I love the town and the people and the general feel of the place and I love my college and seeing my friends and the random shops and sometimes I even love the work. So I shall be sorry to leave, especially as it means I won't be able to see the scums as regularly for a while >_< But it is nice to be going home for a comparatively quiet couple of weeks, before the work (both paying and university varieties) kicks in and I have to do tours and things. I shall watch crap (Sentinel! Sentinel is on the scifi channel! Wheee!) and see whether my Australian playstation plays Katy's games and read and sleep lots and download muchly on the new broadband connection ^____^ Which is a happy. Just a shame I can't take the people with me.....

Now I shall go and burn more anime to CD for watching over holidays. Mmm, more GetBackers than a human being can watch with sanity intact ^_^ Back in contact when I get home....

Posted by Calliope at 02:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Meh. It's been one of those days which feels like about three days rolled into one, none of which have been very productive.

Right, suppose I ought to start from choir dinner, which was Muchly Good Fun. Food (seafood kebabs, chicken wrapped in bacon stuffed with paté, and white chocolate and strawberry terrine for dessert) not *quite* as spectacular as last year (which included ostrich steak and quails' eggs in cheese sauce and snuff for afterwards), but still more than palatable, and add about 24 bottles of wine and three of champagne between 14 of us, and you've got quite a pleasant evening. Said evening moved from the Old Bursary to the SCR (all wood panelling and far too expensive paintings - if you've read 'Northern Lights' by Philip Pullman, the retiring room at the beginning of the book that Lyra hides in is I believe based on our SCR), and thence to the MCR for generally drunkenness. And yea, whenever two or three choir members are gathered together in one place shall there be the playing of comedy piano pieces and the singing of Victoria Wood songs. Heheh. We then talked crap for several hours, several people were very nice about my singing abilities (hoard the drunken compliments, hoard them like gold-dust....), and I eventually staggered off home at about 2.30.

Well, I say home - I really mean Tasha's floor. Barged in there at about 3, and promptly went to sleep on the carpet. Which she says is strange, because she's *sure* she locked her door. Aha, behold my l33t lock picking skills and worship.

Woke up about 7 (why god, why do you never let me sleep in when I've had a drunken late night?), mooched about downstairs for a bit in an effort not to wake Tasha up, got dressed (organisation for the first time this term meant I had actually brought a change of clothes with me), and went off to a tute at 10. >_< Tute went fine, as far as I could tell through the haze of tiredness. Then departed for Pusey, rehearsal, service (which was somewhere higher than the Pope in terms of religious affiliation, I suspect), and then off for lunch.

Which takes us to more or less now. I've been pounced on to do another service this evening, at Merton for some unknown reasons, and I'm just hoping my voice will stand up to it tolerably well - it was distinctly dodge by the end of this morning. Ugh. I am also tired and feel like I've pulled a muscle in my leg, so I'm whining and feeling sorry for myself and making a nuisance of myself etc.

I'm going to be dead on my feet by the end of animesoc. Two more days, just two more days, then I can go home and sleep for a week. Eighth week exhaustion has struck...

Posted by Calliope at 03:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bon mot of the choir dinner: On the subject of Tim's somewhat camp music tutor. 'He puts the anal into analysis....'

More coming soon....

Posted by Calliope at 09:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Heheheh. I beat Ultimecia. *happy grin* Only took me.... oooooh, an hour or so to finish that fight. Damned dull it got by the end, too. It's such a foregone conclusion when you're using megalixirs, and it *still* takes forever. Still, I managed to finish the fight with my three original party members, and considering one of them was Selphie, I call that an achievement.

The ending CG scenes were lovely, I have to admit. Tasha was ooooohing over the fact that the movements actually looked good, unlike a lot of the stuff that's still being turned out - I swear, the movement in the scene of Squall on the time compression plain thingy looked better than the bit in the Final Flight of the Osiris. *shrugs* Unlikely, but true. And there was a Laguna scene! Squee! He's so pretty and cute and he was visiting Raine's grave and awwwwwww. *glomps* Must make only decent Laguna winamp skin on web....

And, just to get my geeky gamer talk out the way, I started Kingdom Hearts yesterday. Now, this may not seem like much to most people, but it's a major step to me. While I was just on Final Fantasy, I could claim that I was only playing for the plot and the characters and the fanfics. But starting on another game.... it shows a gaming tendency I have hitherto entirely suppressed. It's an alarming matter, I tell you. Though perhaps not quite as alarming as the heap of playstation games Katy has kindly lent me in the hope that my Australian chipped playstation will be able to deal with them. Don't ask why I have an Australian chipped playstation. It was free, okay?

*glances outside at the horrible weather* Meh. This is *so* not the weather for a summery black-tie dinner. I've got to wear summery black tie tonight, it'll look weird otherwise, but I can just *tell* I'm going to get severely rained on. And I have to remain sober enough to get up for a tute at 10am tomorrow. >_< Sometimes I suspect god of laughing at me.

In fic news, the beginning and end of the Getbackers fic are more or less written. The middle bit when things are actually meant to happen is more of a problem. Meh. *kicks characters for being OOC* I also want to start work on the GW AU again, given that that seems to be the only thing people send me feedback about. *sweatdrops* Hmmm, how long has it been since I last wrote anything for that....

Still intending to do a blog with actual content sometime. *shrugs* Ehhh, what can you do....

Posted by Calliope at 03:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

....Katy, you need to read this so much that it's not even funny. Probably Andrew and Liz and Ivan and anyone else who's ever played a squaresoft game, but especially the Squaresoft ho herself. It really, really struck a chord today.... *shakes fist at Ultimecia*

Oh, and I got mail from Aoi-sensei, so I shall be posted my YWAM winamp skin at some point in the near future. I don't care if you don't read the damn comic, you still need to go and wonder at the Killian-y goodness of it.

Perhaps more later, when I can be bothered. It's too sunny and I'm too enervated for proper blogging. I have a new dress and downloaded Fred Astaire mp3s and I've written my last essay of term and you can't make me care about anything :p

Posted by Calliope at 04:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

...okay, when your finalist friend has been blogging more than you have, you know you've been lazy too long.

I have been working though, which is something of an excuse. I'm trying to get both my final essays finished by the time Nee-sama finishes her last exam done on Wednesday, which means I need to get one of them done this evening. Curses. This *would* be the time when the Ban-chan and Jackal fic bunnies start biting again. I have also been a busy-bee making a Your Wings Are Mine winamp skin, which I hope to post if I get permissions from Aoi-chan. Here's hoping. I sent it off to her yesterday, anyway. Went quite well, in a horrifically tasteful way.

So, nee-sama and I went to see Matrix Reloaded. And.....well, it wasn't *quite* as shite as I was expecting. Though admittedly that would be quite tricky. I didn't like the first one much, so I wasn't exactly going in with high expectations. I'm not very visual orientated in films, generally - special effects always rather leave me cold, they're never as good as the ones I can make in my head. I much prefer an interesting concept, a clever script, and involving characters - which is why The Lion in Winter is still one of my favourite films. (If you haven't seen it, do. Richard I being slashy with Philip II of France. Dude.) In any case, the Matrix breathtaking factor never really struck, and when that's taken out you're left with pretty poorly acted, somewhat melodramatic, badly scripted moosh. Not much fun.

So I went in thinking I'd find it more laughable than actually *good*, and I was right. So I could sit through the gratuitous sex and primal dancing scene with equanimity, I could put up with the complete absence of good characterisation and good lines, and even Keanu's complete inability to act. I only burst into irrepressible laughter a couple of times ('Trinity....I love you so damned much...' *snorts*). And there were one or two redeeming points. Agent Smith, for one. For lo, he was slashy with himself, and that's *always* amusing. The Twins were certainly worth watching, being as they were vaguely pissy and largely beat the crap out of people, which was nice. And...no, wait, that was all the redeeming features. *sighs* Why couldn't they get a good script writer in? Why? Poor Morpheus....

(Oh yeah, and the kid from the Animatrix who was looking at Neo with big puppydog eyes was fun too ^___^)

I'm planning to write a big rambling entry on Fucked Up Bishies And Why I Love Them, but I don't have time this evening - a Thucydides essay is calling me. Instead, I shall leave you with a song Nee-sama recently introduced me to. See, I'd never listened to any Tori Amos, but I knew she was a friend of Neil Gaiman, so I listened to a couple. And the slow melodramatic ones were very pretty and I liked them muchly. I think Delight/Delirium was partly based on Tori Amos, and this song somehow makes me think of Delirium's tragedy, though I'd be hard-pushed to tell you just why. Anyway, it's pretty, and it's here.

Right. Essay. Not fic.

Posted by Calliope at 08:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

(reproduced from Neil Gaiman's blog)
'One major character in Neverwhere is gay, although you'll not know it until he develops a romantic liaison.'

Aaaarrgh. Now I'm killing myself to try and work out who it could be. I know, I know, if Neil Gaiman says we can't know it we can't know it.... but, but, but...!

*is torn between the Marquis (though I'd have put him rather in the 'would sleep with anything if the reward was good enough' camp) and Garry from corporate accounts....*

Posted by Calliope at 01:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

*about two minutes later*

Heheheheh. Neil Gaiman is god.

Posted by Calliope at 06:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My little sister is the best ^________________^

She also sent me a character profile for Captain Magenta. He's a crimelord of the underworld! But he's so perky too! 'Yes Sir, Colonel White Sir!' 'Calm down, Captain Magenta!' ^____________^

Muchly smilies this entry. Even though I have a really dull essay to write this evening, I still feel strangely perky. Could be because I have a sudden sugar hit through flapjack and hot chocolate after spending six hours in the Sackler library this afternoon, which was dull as anything. But I have many books needed for my history essay, and may have a few thoughts about my Hippolytus essay (tonight's little task), so *that's* okay.

In other news, I found the Adel fight in FF VIII to be laughably easy compared to what everyone else was saying about it. The Ultimate Weapon was a *lot* more difficult. I know I spent longer levelling up than just about anyone in the world, but.... Adel didn't seem to have any good attacks! And yeah, I know it's a pain having to keep using Curagas on Rinoa, and not being able to use GFs or Ultima or any good spells, but - just keep using Aura on Squall and limit-break the fucker to death! Frankly, I was a little disappointed. Now I need to wander round Ultimecia's castle and get those f*cking paintings right, and then it's all over bar the shouting, as far as I can tell. *siiiighs* Never mind, maybe I can play it again and do some side-quests. And level up so they're *all* at 100 ^____^ That sounds like a plan. At least I get to see my Laguna-bunny again near the end.

Have an urge to go look for crappy sci-fi on IRC. Then must write essay. I could wax lyrical about the gorgeousness of wasting time in the Botanical Gardens on a sunny afternoon, but I think everyone else has already done that. Suffice it to say it was very pleasant, and it is at least in part responsible for the fact that I haven't written this bloody essay yet. Meh.

Still, mustn't grumble. I have a dancing Spiderman gif. ^___^ Good luck to Anne, if she's reading this!

Posted by Calliope at 06:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)