Diary of a Suburban Squeen

It's Friday evening, so I'm sure I can be forgiven for bullet-pointing!

♥ I made an actual, honest-to-god new recipe for our dinner! I am always in a rut cooking-wise, and though I do occasionally add new dishes, it's at a very slow rate. (In the past year we've had chicken korma, PCP, kedgeree and... yeah, that's about it.) Anyway, this was one off a Waitrose recipe card - sausage, potato and pea casserole. Tasty, tasty. We will have the leftovers for dinner on Sunday, possibly with, as Katie phrased it, a hunk of rustic bread to mop up the juices.

♥ We went to see Crazy Heart at the kino on Wednesday, which I enjoyed. Entirely concur with Katie that Colin Farrell's role should have been played by Christian Kane, but that's the lunacy of Hollywood for you. Not as stylised as recent outings, but I still liked the cinematography, and enjoyed Bad Blake's character progression.

♥ Continuing my earlier outrage, I was further incensed to see yesterday that Ed Balls had waded into the Jamie Bulger thing to say that Atkinson's comments had been "unwise". Fuck off Ed Balls, and grow a pair.

♥ Etsy. Oh, Etsy, Etsy, Etsy. I love you and all your beautiful, beautiful things. I want my pay rise chiefly so I can buy necklaces from you. But not even for you will I contemplate a vagina plaque. I do not think it would suit our decor.

♥ We are off to Hampton Court tomorrow. I am quite excited - I do like a bit of historic house visiting. Hopefully the weather will be nice, but who knows? Actually, let's see if BBC Weather knows. Ein minuten bitte... Boo. Rain all day. Ah well, an outing isn't British if it isn't tipping it down at regular intervals. I shall, however, be taking my cag. Also a tiny picnic, as I will be meeting Katie en route from her morning chores. Egg mayonnaise sandwiches, je pense, with a bit of bugel crisp action and maybe some oreos. A meal for kings. (Not the Kings, natch, they will be at home... oh lol.) And on Sunday I must, must, must tidy the radioactive fallout zone that is my bedroom because it's just shameful. I have tunnels. They don't quite have roofs, but it's not far off. I fear for my future.

♥ Work continues to be engaging, though apparently not so much for the new prog man who has disappeared off again. Strange times. Tragically, my afternoon was spent in mandatory training for the new patient management system (which I will not be using personally), along with a dozen or so IT-illiterates, including a slightly deaf, surely-near-retirement-age lady, who asked coquettishly stupid questions all the way through and maintained a near-perfect record of clicking the wrong thing. One aged volunteer was incapable of double-clicking ("Click it, and click it again. No, more quickly. Try again."), and the trainer had obviously had more than he could bear of the whole thing (ours was the last training session for the whole hospital before the system goes live). Painful. I left as soon as possible.

♥ I have now bought all of Katie's birthday present, and want it to be her birthday NOW so I can give it to her. Why isn't it April yet? Why? IT'S SO FAR AWAY!!

Jizzy Chrizzy, I need to stop reading CiF, because it just drives me mental. On a more general news level, this fucking Jamie Bolger case rearing its ugly head thing is pissing me off. I daresay people will disagree with me, but whilst I don't deny that what those boys did was absolutely awful, they were CHILDREN. All this "ooh, they did the crime; they should have the time" bullshit is ridiculous because, as noted, THEY WERE CHILDREN. And, yes, clearly very disturbed children and, yes, sanctions had to be taken, but that was done. I don't know, it seems to me that as a society we go batshit insane when a child is killed. We lose all sense of reason and proportionality. Justice is kidnapped in the middle of the night and we wake up to find Vengeance complaining about the milk tasting funny on its Frosties*. And the press revel in it. They print article after article of family and friends and perfect strangers lamenting the crime and bellowing for retribution. Mothers of murdered children are treated as the arbiters of justice when it's clear to all rational thinkers that they are the last people who should have any say in anything because their children were killed. Justice is blind, remember. Justice isn't sitting there, weeping over her dead child's corpse.

I think I just wish that, as a population, we weren't encouraged to react to every situation with blind, unreasoning sentiment.




Anyway, in other news, I spent this morning in a meeting from 9.30 to 11.30. Then I went to work and had some lunch. Did a bit of data stuff for fifteen minutes. Then went to Teddington for a meeting from 2.30 to 3.30, at which point it was too late to go back to work, so I went home. My kind of day. Also, I bought some pasta from Tesco for my dinner, but frankly c'était un peu ming, so that was disappointing.

Also, to people who are interested in this kind of thing, I recently got volume 1 of Unwritten, which I thought was really good, so I would recommend that.

And finally, the post this morning was seasons 2-5 of Press Gang, which I lent out over three years ago and which has now been repatriated. Woo.



* LOL at my pretentious metaphor.

Fuck you, Nick Griffin. Fuck you, and your ideas, and the horse you came in on.

"That was not a genuine Question Time; that was a lynch mob," [Nick Griffin] told Sky News.

The programme ought to have been filmed somewhere other than London because the capital was "not my country any more", he said.

He went on: "That audience was taken from a city that is no longer British ... That was not my country any more. Why not come down and do it in Thurrock, do it in Stoke, do it in Burnley?

"Do it somewhere where there are still significant numbers of English and British people [living], and they haven't been ethnically cleansed from their own country."

He added: "There is not much support for me there [in London], because the place is dominated by ethnic minorities. There is an ethnic minority that supports me: the English. But there's not many of them left." (source)

What a wankpot. Apart from anything else, he might want to rein in the hyperbole and check his statistics.

ETA: I mean, Jesus fuck, who actually, actually says things like There is an ethnic minority that supports me: the English outside a drunken rant? Who says things like that and expects to be taken seriously when it's clearly a load of old wank? English people are not an ethnic minority in England. I can't believe we're in a position where that has to be pointed out to an elected politician. Also, if the BNP actually wins any seats in the Commons at the next election, I may have to shoot someone.

You know what? You'd think people would get tired of having such asinine headlines. But no.

A clueless BBC is giving the BNP the legitimacy it craves* (source)

No. Just no. I think you'll find, regrettably, that it is the British electorate that is giving the BNP the legitimacy it craves by, y'know, electing them to stuff. Yes, they're shit. Yes, their political viewpoint is repellant. Yes, giving them any kind of public voice goes against the grain. But maybe, instead of politicos wringing their hands and writing vituperative articles, they should address the issues that are leading people to vote for the BNP in the first place. Then, maybe, they could slink back to the edges of the political landscape.



* Please note: I am commenting merely on the headline, not the content of the article.

Oh, what a lot of things I have to relate. Well, not that many really. My life is not, after all, so very thrilling. Hmm, let me see. So, the other night, pim2005 came round for dinner. I cooked curry. It wasn’t ace. I also made some chocolate mousse, ditto. We watched Waiting For God and had a little bitch. It was perfectly charming. Last night, we had pizza (yum) and watched NCIS. Tonight, I am going to weird_bird’s, and then bopping back home to welcome into the fold Chris, who is using FT as a cheap (viz. free) alternative to a hotel.

Tomorrow, however, will be a beautiful day. katie__pillar and I are meeting balooky and klo_the_hobbit at the National Theatre and doing their backstage tour (OMG HOW MUCH DO I LOVE THE NATIONAL? AS MUCH AS THE SKY!), then going on to lunch in Trafalgar Square, and then rounding things off with the Wodehouse exhibition in Mayfair (or wherever it is; I’m not really sure; I just like the idea of its being in Mayfair). How ace does that day sound? Fingers crossed the weather will oblige, for there’s nothing drearier than tramping round the grey streets of London in the pouring rain (espesh when one doesn’t own an umbrella; or, rather, all one’s umbrellas have mysteriously vanished: I blame Borrowers).

Anyway, further to the tale of last night’s pizza, I was extremely disappointed in the White Hart Lane Sainsbury’s. Six kinds of cheddar and grated cheddar in a bag, but do they have any grated mozzarella to put onto homemade pizza? No they fucking don’t. It’s like the new Tesco in Sheen, which, although full to the gunwales of stuff, never actually seems to have anything. It’s freakish. Every single time I’ve gone there to get something, they’ve never had it, and I’ve had to go to Waitrose. Given that they constructed themselves right opposite Waitrose (where the Woolworths used to be – oh, Woolworths, my lost darling…), you’d think they’d make more of an effort to compete, but they’re rubbish. Anyway, that’s all by the by. Grr – Sainsbury’s – no cheese. Also, apparently a lead-lined box, because I had no phone reception.

On the plus side, however, when I was walking down the Terrace between Barnes Bridge station and the White Hart pub, it was so lovely! The sun was just sliding behind the horizon, and the sunset was glittering off the Thames (high tide), and there were lots of trees and ducks (and, fine, the Mortlake Brewery, which is a bit of an eyesore), and it were all gorgeous like out of yon picture book. We do live in a nice area. *sighs happily*

In other news, I’m a bit late to the party with this, but what the fuck is it with this free Polanski bollocks? Leaving aside the total bizarreness of slebs queuing up to support a man found guilty of inappropriate sexual conduct* with a thirteen year old girl who then fled the country (OMG WHAT PART OF ‘HE DID A BAD, BAD THING’ DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?), this is a man who was found guilty of a crime, fled the country before he could be sentenced, and finally got caught with a view to being extradited. Whatever the whys and wherefores of the case, simple judicial procedure is at stake here: of course he should have to answer to the courts. And then, of course, there is the RAPED A CHILD aspect, which you would think was a no-brainer. Are the people supporting him actually damaged in the head? So fucking what if he’s an ‘artist’? No one should be above the law.



* My understanding of this is that he was accused of rape, and then plea-bargained to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor (presumably statutory rape by any other name?). And, please. My understanding of thirteen year old girls is that they are unlikely to be mature enough to properly consent to sexual intercourse with old men.

Dear God, Jodi Picoult is annoying. The flumph on her recent book, Change of Heart, goes along the lines of: What if your daughter needed a new heart? What if the only one available belonged to a murderer? WHAT DO YOU DO?

Um. Take the heart? Unless medical science has been deceiving us all these years and in fact the heart has a secret compartment where Bad People Germs live. WTF? (Closer examination on Amazon reveals that the plot has more to it than this, but I JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER so I don’t care.)

Seriously. Oh yes. With my tiny, tiny shiny laptop teetering on top of the laundry basket. Laptops and wireless: they make the world a glorious place.

Anyway, I had some thinking to share, about history and how we understand it and stuff. This was, naturally, prompted by an SGA fic I just read: Written by the Victors, a superlative piece of fiction about Atlantis seceding from Earth, and historical interpretions of the same. It featured straightforward fictional prose about the events in question, combined with "secondary sources" from both sides of the schism. It was a brilliant read, and is actually one of my very most favourite fandom tropes, namely how events and characters will be viewed by history when anyone actually alive at the time is nothing but crumbled dust. I've seen Buffy fic that looked at this (and the Fray comic sort of touches on the idea), and Harry Potter as well, I seem to recall. Babylon 5 actually did it themselves, with the wonderful ep Deconstruction of Falling Stars. I've even written something similar myself in the Hornblower fandom.

And I love it. I love it so much I can't even express it, because they never KNOW. They never can, it's impossible. Seeing how characters in the future construe and interpret the past that we know is just so real, and I can't put this into words, though I've been thinking about it for a couple of days. Because this is how our understanding of the past works: we take the evidence, what we have it. We look at paper and buildings and art and laws made and unmade, and we cobble together what we think happened. And we can be right and we can be wrong, and we can't really know, because we weren't there. And people lie and are unreliable and it's so easy to misinterpret something.

And I love it when characters in the future come face to face with the figures of their history (everyone should read liz_marcs' Living History [BtVS], because it's awesome), because their figures are creations of the collective imaginations of generations, and the present characters are real. I just... meh. I really don't have the words to say what I'm trying to say. Boo.



In other news, this whole 13-year-old boy fathering child / not fathering child / someone else / what-the-fuck-ever: NONE OF MY FUCKING BUSINESS. I DO NOT FUCKING CARE. WHY IS IT ALL OVER THE FUCKING NEWSPAPERS? HOW IS THIS IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST? LEAVE THE KIDS AND THEIR FAMILIES TO SORT IT ALL OUT BECAUSE IT IS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF US AND FOR FUCK'S SAKE STOP USING IT TO HERALD THE END (ONCE AGAIN) OF CIVILISED SOCIETY AS WE KNOW IT.

I obviously should just not got out of bed this morning.

Partly, I sympathise with that bus driver (I know; none of you saw that coming). If I were a bus driver and came to work one morning to find my bus emblazoned with advertisements for killing monkeys or sodomising the elderly (against their wishes, natch; whatever people want to do in the privacy of their own retirement home is their own business), I wouldn't be keen on driving it. However, I don't think the two are remotely comparable. I find it interesting that one of the first tenets of most religions, right up there with "be nice" and "don't be a murderer", is the sanctity of that religion itself. It's weird. You'd think some of them would be up front about it all. Y'know: this is what we believe. We believe it very strongly and think it's ace and we're all going to end up in cotton candy land in the sky. However, we feel we should point out, just for accuracy's sake, that lots of other people believe lots of other things, and really, objectively speaking, the odds of our beliefs happening to be THE ONE TRUE GREAT TRUE TRUTH in the universe are, tragically, quite slim. Let's all live with it, eh, and be happy.

♥ Oh, FFS. I'd probably be more sympathetic if she'd used a spell-check. But maybe not.

♥ I've been reading some excellent genderswap SGA fic. Absolutely lovely. *sighs happily*

♥ I realised the other day that the last fic I posted was the 200th use of my fic tag. It's like a little landmark.

♥ I may have a bit of egg-fried rice with prawns for tea. I think that sounds a stunning plan. Must remember to get some spring onions on the way home.

♥ Watched this week's NCIS. Will be the episode that spawned FIFTY MILLION DUCKY/GIBBS FICS. It's weird how that ship is like the OMGOTP!!!11! of NCIS fandom.

♥ Also, I clearly never need write another pome; all I need to do is post pathetically about NOT doing so, and people will do it for me. Aces. *loves flist quite a lot*

Boo. It's me. And my hair. (Quite smooth today; I blow dried it.) Once again, I have come on to LJ and then felt completely disinclined to write anything, but here goes. So, um. Yes. New phone. It's shiny and ace and takes photos and everything. I love it quite a lot already.

Jade is going back to Australia after Christmas. I am vee sad about this. *sad face*

Went into Sheen this morning and bought milk and bread and mourned (again) the loss of Woolworths. Why did they close it? Why? (OK. Recent events make that question fairly redundant, but whatever.) Particularly vexing because (a) I broke our whisk and planned to replace it there and (b) our most excellent Woolworths-bought chopping knife has disappeared and I need to replace that too.

Weather was lovely today. Afternoon, I met Jess at Brentford and we tooled along to Staines for Kathye's Christmas gather, which was extremely and also very lovely. Leek and potato soup. Yum. Plan on making that tomorrow, what with plentitude of both leeks and potatoes in FT at the moment. Also maybe celeriac soup. There will be much soup in our future. We could do with a larger freezer. Tant pis.

At Kathye's, Hannah was unfeasibly adorable. I am well on the way to making her think I am AN ACTUAL STAR. Heh. Megan is still not convinced that I am not going to be a Russian queen. I am a little bit naughty. *cheery smile* In more distressing news, some bright sparks thought it would be HIGH-LAR-IOUS to stick about three million knitting needles IN MY HEAD and then see how many could be removed before my hair fell down. Katie filmed it for the mind of the posterity (or for the mind of the film project for my grandparents' Christmas present, whatevs).

Off to Xanthe's for her birthday party tomorrow. Or off to Xanthe's church hall, at any rate.

Sainsbury's last night. I saw a trashy magazine with the following cover:



"Daddy sent me from HEAVEN" What. The. Fuck?! If I may extrapolate from this headline, I assume this woman's partner died and then she had his baby. Vee sad. But I reiterate: what. The. Fuck? Could that be any more arse-cringingly sentimentally twaddlish? Daddy and Mummy loved each other in a special way had sex and then Daddy went to play with the angels died and you were brought home by the stork were born. Daddy did not, in fact, send you from heaven.