girlofprey

My parents gave me £50 for my birthday. And apparently, the Playstation 3 is coming tomorrow. Which is very nice of them. Especially since I realised that even if I have the Playstation 3 and manage to hook it up to a decent screen, I don't have any games to play on it, and I can't afford the ones I like. But now I can. I'm a bit excited really. This is the first time I've ever had a games console, aside from the time my sister borrowed a Playstation off a friend of hers for a few days when I was in highschool. We played a bit of Tomb Raider for a few days, couldn't get out of a cave, and then gave it back. Good times.

We went out for lunch as well, to The Rustic Arms, which is a pub in Ackworth that I haven't been to since I was a teenager, and used to go to a bit as a kid. It had a big playground and a lake/pond, and we thought it might be better for my nephews than the slightly posher place we normally go to. The playground has either been changed or I remember it being a lot bigger, and the pond was fenced off for the local fishermen/people, but it was lovely, and really child-friendly, and the food was really nice, so it was quite a nice day out. We came back to my parents' house for some cake, and brought my grandma down, which she ended up complaining ferociously about (as always), but there were no real fallings-out and it stayed quite nice. And then I came back and watched the Dancing On Ice final, and Chris Dean and Jayne Torvill danced the Bolero, and Craig Mclachlan, with beautiful scruffy hair and a load of stubble, skated a little bit of his routine he did in the first week. Which was all lovely.

However, I am not so pleased about this habit of me having to lose an hour of my birthday, world. I dimly recall it happening before, I think. Less of that, please.

Anyway. In other news:

• Since reading all of Gastrophobia in the last week or so, I thought I couldn't love it more. But then I saw the latest strip, and it turned out I COULD love it more. New Who lovers may want to, um, not read that. ETA: UNLESS YOU LOVE PARODY. Maybe you should read it then.



• It's a Cracked.com article, so possibly on shaky ground scientifically or prone to exaggeration, but apparently crows are even more intelligent and slightly terrifying than we generally thought they were. Crows will TELL THEIR FRIENDS YOU ARE DANGEROUS AND TRIED TO HURT THEM. I love crows. And even after that article, am only slightly afraid of them.



• I also spent a lot of last night reading various Cracked.com articles about many comic book stories/characters you will probably wish did not exist. It's the combination of hysterical laughter and horror that is such a big draw for me.

I've been meaning to post this for the last few days. I've not been posting much recently. That is probably, I realise, the only thing I don't need to tell you. The explanation/excuses is partly I think to do with the fact that nowadays when I come onto Livejournal, I have about 100 or so messages since the previous day from comments on the Watchmen Kink meme, which I feel the need to try and clear out before the next hundred by the next day, and which I must carefully go through to make sure none are about pairings I like. Almost none of them are. This is a little bit annoying. But mostly it's to do with the fact that I haven't really been doing very much lately. Without a job to get up for, I've been sleeping in a lot, and staying up a lot. I have discovered that going to bed just as it's getting light is not the best of plans. I've basically only been going out to buy food for the day, and I've been skipping meals if I sleep through them. I'm basically sort of hibernating. Which is not the best job-hunting tactic, really. So I've not really had much to post about.

But - I'm posting now just to say that I am still around and reading stuff, although I'm not doing much commenting (sorry), and to thank lovely jekesta, who has posted me the first season of Leverage, which came today, because she is ace. I have not seen it, THANK YOU XXXXXX

I have been doing some stuff though. Things that are good recently:

• My mum came down to Nottingham and we went to see the Dancing on Ice live tour. And discovered just how high the back row of Nottingham Ice Arena (also known as Nottingham Trent FM Arena) is. Vertigo inducing, honestly. And the ledge the chairs are on has space for about your feet and that's all. But you do get used to it after an hour or so. Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean skated their Bolero in front of me, live. It was a bit great, although I annoyingly drifted out and missed a bit of it. But it was still great. Donal MacIntyre wasn't there, and it turned out Chris Fountain was only doing Fridays and Saturdays or something, which we found out after the show. But Roxanne was there, and she skated to I Wanna Be Loved By You, and Hallelujah, even if it was the new Alexandra version, and her Hallelujah routine was a lot better than it was on the TV, and she is just great, I love her a lot. Only two of them skated their Boleros, which is the way it was in the show, but I thought they might do something different on the Bolero anniversary tour. Oh well. I suppose they all get the pleasure of planning a Bolero, anyway. But it was still great, and my mum even shouted us both a hotel room for the night. Which was also pretty nice.



• I saw The Good, The Bad, The Weird at a special screening at the Broadway. I missed the very beginning, but saw most of it, and it is not only brilliant but beautiful. Visually beautiful. And brilliant.



• I saw the current RSC version of the Tempest. The RSC do a special £5 deal for 16-25 year olds, so I went down on Thursday, got a ticket, and went and saw it. And it was great. It's a South-African influenced production, I think, and all the actors were great, really, and I usually have a problem with the way Miranda is played, always a little too prim for the way I imagine her, but their Miranda actually seemed like she had probably grown up on a deserted island, which was great. I enjoyed it a lot.



• David came back to Coronation Street after a few weeks away, and almost immediately started gaying it up with Gary. He's pretending to be his friend now so he can stitch him up later on. I think Gary will be suspicious, but then start to believe him, and do something actually nice for him, and then David will be conflicted, and they'll end up actually being friends. I'm pretty biased though. At the moment Gary is mostly reacting with a mixture of "What?" and "Are you trying to seduce me, Mr Platt?". It's lovely. Also, David's grandmother has given him his job back at the salon. He could start cutting hair ANY DAY NOW. Mostly he's been getting the tea. But still. Probably he just needs to brush up on the art. ANY DAY NOW.



• Also - Tony Gordon is amazing and I love him. I almost don't care what he does, so long as he doesn't harm characters I like. He's just casually sort of going around owning everyone at the moment. I love that they had him kill someone, and then not just spend the rest of his time worrying and angsting over that. I'm aware that he's still a killer, but he gets to do other stuff as well. It's brilliant.



• Also, I saw The Boat That Rocked, which is good, and a few weeks back The Damned United, which is similarly good. Hurray.

Those are the main things. There are probably more. But yes. I'm still looking for work. I'm still not currently working. Which is pretty annoying.

You know when you get an idea that's completely mad, but you realise actually really works? That's what happened last night when I got the idea of a Princess Bride version of There Will Be Blood. I don't know how it came about, except for the sentence "Eli came to realise that when Daniel said 'I drink your milkshake', he really meant 'I love you'". Daniel would make a great Dread Pirate Roberts. And I can't think of any two people better suited to the "I'm sure you really loved your intended before you decided to marry someone else, YOU FAITHLESS WHORE" conversation. Oh. I don't know why some of my favourite stories about the shows or films I like are the stories of others shows or films. I JUST DON'T KNOW.

Last night there was ice-skating on the TV, which was really quite unfair and distracting. I think ice-skating might be My Sport. And oh God, Chris Fountain. He was beautiful. I think he should have won. The two semi-finalists had to do a version of Bolero, and they were both great. BUT CHRIS FOUNTAIN IS BEAUTIFUL. They're going on tour soon. It would be great to see them live.

Tidying: Bits of my flat are now definitely tidier than they were before. And the mess is a lot more centralised, which means it's a big pile in the middle of my floor rather than scattered all over the place. I think this probabkly going to have to be an ongoing project. Except that tonight I have to hang up my washing. You know when you think "Oh, I'll just do the washing" and then it takes forever? Dude.