girlofprey

I went to a Carol service tonight, for the first time in my life. I don't hear carols sung very often - carollers don't come to our door very much, I think due largely to my dad - and I wanted to do something Christmassy, since at the moment I'm spending most of my time in Dragon Age world and it isn't Christmas there. It was quite nice, but I think I was expecting more of a choir performing for my benefit, and it was in fact a service. It ended with a slight tinge of anti-semitism and islamophobia, and we had a slightly disturbing reading where the response to every line was "But that did not stop the birth" - mostly a warning to low-income pregnant women than anything, but the carols were quite nice. We sang The Angel Gabriel From Heaven Came, which is my favourite, and you don't hear sung very often.

Oh Bianca. (This has become a The Apprentice post). I was very happy she got through last week - it was slightly impossible for her not to when Roisin didn't know anything about food production and Solomon's business plan was pictures. But it was a bit of a shame she didn't know anything about hosiery production and wasn't willing to listen, hopefully she'll do well in the future. Mark chose a team of all men, and the woman who thought all businesswomen should wear short skirts, "for some beauty". Quelle surprise.

Soaps have a weird problem with how they do brother-sister relationships. Declan and Megan, Carla and Rob, and now Tracy and Peter cuddling up on the couch together. I mean, I don't hate it, but. Shit's getting out of hand.

I also finally caught up on The Apprentice today. ( Last Wednesday's episode )

I love everyone in The Apprentice and can't wait to see them destroyed.

I don't understand the "The Apprentice" format anymore. Last time I watched, it was tasks every week to get rid of someone, or occasionally two people, until you get to a final four. Then they take their business plans in to be assessed by Alan Sugar's friends/employees, and one of them gets the investment. Now there's a Final Five, but the preview of next week suggests they're going to be whittled down to a final two. And what those two will have to do then...I don't know. Maybe another task. Maybe another series of tasks. Maybe a fight to the death. Maybe just more discussing things before the end of the show, and then one of them finally gets picked. WHO KNOWS.

In other news, I got completely confused tonight when I misunderstood which results belonged to which team, and got really confused by who'd won. But after that was cleared up, it was a vaguely entertaining end to the show, in a sort of imploding way.

Anyway. Music news. I don't know exactly how famous the Studio Killers (a band, not murderers) are - they're all over Tumblr it seems, but I haven't heard of them anywhere else. But just in case I'm not the last to know, and any of you like pop music, you should give them a try:


"Jenny" by the Studio Killers.

And similarly, I don't know if everybody knows about Macklemore by now - I found this song on a song mix called "Songs everyone knows and everyone knows the words to, don't you dare lie and pretend you don't". So probably they do. But I had never heard this song before and it really makes me laugh, so here you go (some of the lyrics are NSFW though):


"Thrift Shop" by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Feat. Wanz

The Apprentice final is on in 15 minutes, and apparently it's going to be on for 2 hours. What the fuck are they going to do that will last 2 hours? I don't remember it being 2 hours long last year. I'm half-expecting it to actually only be one hour long - or perhaps half an hour - and the rest to be a sudden, unexpected service to the Queen.

In other news, did anyone watch Planet Earth Live last night? They did a few videos/stories about various baby animals being in PERIL, THE WORLD IS SO PERILOUS FOR BABY ANIMALS, and then they switched from feed to another to hear someone, somewhere saying "Let's not overDO it, team, we don't want to look like we're-" and then just stopped. It was amazing. Also, humpbacked whales are heroes (sometimes). And I can't really take much more of Richard Hammond's Serious Eyes, but I'll probably try to watch some more anyway.

Also this week: Tom was in charge of a task on The Apprentice, and his team lost, and he TOOK SOME RESPONSIBILITY for them losing. I mean not for long, obviously, he was back to screaming at his teammates about how they didn't do this, and they didn't do this by the time he was back in the boardroom, as is the way with The Apprentice. And then revealed he was already running a multi-million pound company on the side. But still. For just a brief moment he said he had to 'take some responsibility for the failure of this task'. Behaviour I have not seen from anyone or any project manager so far this year. I STILL LOVE HIM A BIT. I also really quite like Gabrielle, the 'kooky', arty architect who was in charge of the other team. But lack of business ANYTHING is kind of really frustrating. 'I deliberately didn't ask for a budget!'. Yep. Well done, Gabrielle.

I have not been watching Britain's Got Talent this year, which is a shame, because I always mean to. Although there's only really one judge at the moment that I feel like I can stand, David Walliams, and maybe Alisha sometimes. Mostly though, it's because I don't watch Saturday television with my parents generally - they have a nasty habit of watching the X Factor - so I sort of avoided it by accident and kept forgetting it was on. But anyway, my point was I watched a bit of last night's. I liked the basketball people. And the Ring guy. Britain really DOES have talent.

In other news, I have finished Shadows Of The Damned (a computer game). I had a bit of panic about it after it screwed me over earlier this week - it's hard to explain, but it's mostly a third person-shooter, but then a few sections of it were in 2d sidescroller mode. I was in the middle of one of those when I felt like stopping for the night, and I was a little worried about whether it would save right in that mode. But it had checkpoints, the same as every other section. So I quit out of it, then reloaded it to see what it would do, and it took me back to the beginning of that section, before any of the checkpoints. That was annoying, but then I quit out of it and checked the save again, and it seemed to be saying the save was from a previous section. So I loaded it again, and it had taken me back to the last checkpoint/save, just before a fight in the previous section. Which was even more annoying, but I'd done it before. But the next day when I loaded the save and went to play it again, I realised it had taken me back to the previous section - but also taken away all my health items and, I think, most of my ammo. After trying a few times and dying horribly in the fight, I decided I'd just have to restart the chapter, and at least have a shot at getting some new items. So I clicked to do so - and it took me back to the beginning of the sidescroller bit, AFTER the fight it had just taken me back to. If that makes any sense? But I wasn't complaining. Not at that point.

So anyway, I was freaking out most of the rest of the week about it doing something like that again, or just fucking up my saves in general. Because you can't save your game manually in Shadows Of The Damned (that I could see), so you can't have a back-up in case one save file gets corrupted. But anyway, it didn't, and last night I suddenly found myself at the last boss fight and the end of the game, and now I have won! Hurray. And I really enjoyed it - it was a bit weird, because it was done in a sort of Grindhouse style, and there was a lot of playing around with sexism and a bit of racism, in the style you might find in those films. But it was all so overblown and sort of sarcastic about it (most of it) that I didn't mind it so much. Although other people might. But anyway, mostly I really loved it, and apparently it's not that well-known. So if you like games that are very combat-heavy, with amazing graphics, that are a lot of fun - and you don't mind a bit of grotesqueness and some (heavily underlined) sexism that's probably not meant to be taken that seriously - then I thoroughly recommend it. Apparently the studio's next game is about a cheerleader with a chainsaw fighting zombies, coming out in June. I am excited.

In other news, I still haven't seen Captain America or The Avengers, and I am spoilered already. Curse you, the internet. I should probably just bite the bullet and do it. But at the moment, having missed all the free showings on Sky Movies, that seems to entail shelling out £7 for a DVD. Which I'm sort of reluctant to do.

Other things: what I like about the internet, and fandom, is that nowadays, it seems like even if you have a fandom or a pairing that has no fandom, and no fic, and no discussion even...if you look hard enough and it's a new enough book/show/film/whatever, sometimes you will find at least one thing that touches on or mentions or gives some thought to your pairing. Which sometimes is sort of enough (for a while). I am back in fandoms with no fandoms again, as you may be able to tell. Woe.

I went into Wakefield today, after an appointment with my employment coach woman, and I found an item that's almost as amazing as the swordgun - the knuckleduster-bag. I tried one, and the rings genuinely do make it easier to hold the bag, and also, to punch someone in the face. One day, my friends, I plan to amass a whole arsenal of these. I will be so multi-functional it hurts. Someone else.

Anyway. I am still around, I've just been distracted by appointments and things, and catching up on TV. I've caught up with Scott and Bailey and Horrible Histories and sort of with the Apprentice, but not really much else. Thanks to 4 On Demand, I'm all caught up with Hollyoaks though. And I kind of want to punch Barry M in the face. Sadly, that isn't possible. But still. I'm sure no-one on my flist cares about Hollyoaks, but even so - welovehollyoaks.com posited a while back that a new female character Liberty was actually a robot, and it always seemed pretty plausible, but I have to say after last week, I don't think it's even in doubt. Also, if she's a killing machine, it makes her friendship with (unknown to her) teenage murderess Theresa even more understandable. Anyway. I'm going to stop talking about Hollyoaks now.

I've also been pretty distracted lately by getting into X-Men: First Class a little bit. I'm not exactly proud of this. And I've also managed to fall into the trap I usually do of shipping a little-known pairing and getting into a bunch of kink memes. However, I've decided to be a grown-up about it this time instead of whining about it. But. Hmph.

Today I was planning to go to the cinema while I was in Wakefield, and I was pretty much planning to go see X-Men First Class again. I had a bit of a dilemma about it, because on the one hand I wouldn't mind watching it to get some characterisations a bit more sorted in my head and watch Kevin Bacon again, but on the other hand I don't really want to give any more money to a really quite racist and quite sexist film. But in the end I decided to cave. But I was foiled anyway, because it doesn't seem to be on anymore. Making way for the new blockbusters, like Transformers and Green Lantern and stuff. I've managed to find some other times it's on at a local cinema though, so I'll probably go see it again then. I also want to go see Bad Teacher, which stars Cameron Diaz, and which at first look I assumed would be about a guy being a bad teacher and trying to get with Cameron Diaz, or him trying to get with Cameron Diaz who's a bad teacher. But apparently no, it's about Cameron Diaz, being a bad teacher and kind of a loser. In shades! And!! I then found out that her co-star is Lucy Punch! <3<3<3 So. I'm up for that at some point. Just not really today, especially when the next showing was an hour after I got to the cinema. I also kind of want to see The Green Lantern, partly because my dad is really into the Green Lantern and wanted to go see it with me before he started hearing all the bad reviews for it, so I got kind of psyched up to want to go see it, and partly because having heard all the bad reviews for it, I kind of want to see if it really is that bad. I've heard some reports to the contrary. But anyway. I don't really want to go see it enough to go immediately, or (again) wait an hour until it was on after I got to the cinema, or pay 3D prices to go see it. But possibly. At some point.

If anyone's interested, the pairing I like (or am interested in) from X-Men First Class is Charles/Shaw. Which is a tricky one because [sort of spoilers], and [other spoilers], and on the kink meme, even the fics that get written about Charles/Shaw tend to either start with Charles/Erik, end with Charles/Erik, or be a mere plotpoint in a larger Charles/Erik story. But I don't care. Mostly I've been having a lot of Charles/Shaw plotbunnies along the lines of a Labyrinth AU, and they make me quite happy. Even though most of them I tend to get for situations after the events of the plot/film (of Labyrinth), which feels like a new length to go to for one of my little pairings, even for me. Still. I quite like them anyway. Also, Shaw just works incredibly well as the Goblin King, and that's just a fact. Fact.