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Apr. 9th, 2008
(no subject)
Apr. 9th, 2008 10:19 amR and Andrew made it home okay from the gig last night, and this morning I woke up and stumbled into the kitchen to find them both asleep in the living room with Mr. Roger's Neighbourhood just coming on the television. So, I had a lovely breakfast of cold cereal and toddler-level moral aphorisms.
I miss being able to make a leisurely breakfast in the morning, but in order to actually cook something like bacon or pancakes or some poached eggs I'd have to get up even earlier than I do now. I've refined the morning routine down to about forty minutes from waking to leaving, but that's only because when the time-change hit it suddenly became VERY IMPOSSIBLE to get up at 5:45 every day. Now the alarm goes off at 5:45 and I roll over and sleepily reset it to go off at 6:15. I may have to actually get an alarm clock (I'm using my phone right now) and do what I did in high school, which is set it seven minutes fast. Why seven minutes? Because I can't do math very well, and subtracting seven from any given number to discern the actual time is complicated and requires me to wake up more fully.
People are often impressed with my organisational skills and the tricks I can pull on my own brain. They don't seem to realise that this level of neurosis exists to cover up the fact that if I did not regiment myself I would probably die from an inability to remember anything, ever, like how to breathe or when to eat.
In other news, can someone just tell me when the orgy of maudlin angst-raddled memorial "Jack is an emortal" fics are done and it's safe to go back in Torchwood fandom? Or is this going to be another six-month phase like the post season-one "woe iz us, dystopia has come, and also Ianto is a sociopath" festival of useless badfic last year?
I miss being able to make a leisurely breakfast in the morning, but in order to actually cook something like bacon or pancakes or some poached eggs I'd have to get up even earlier than I do now. I've refined the morning routine down to about forty minutes from waking to leaving, but that's only because when the time-change hit it suddenly became VERY IMPOSSIBLE to get up at 5:45 every day. Now the alarm goes off at 5:45 and I roll over and sleepily reset it to go off at 6:15. I may have to actually get an alarm clock (I'm using my phone right now) and do what I did in high school, which is set it seven minutes fast. Why seven minutes? Because I can't do math very well, and subtracting seven from any given number to discern the actual time is complicated and requires me to wake up more fully.
People are often impressed with my organisational skills and the tricks I can pull on my own brain. They don't seem to realise that this level of neurosis exists to cover up the fact that if I did not regiment myself I would probably die from an inability to remember anything, ever, like how to breathe or when to eat.
In other news, can someone just tell me when the orgy of maudlin angst-raddled memorial "Jack is an emortal" fics are done and it's safe to go back in Torchwood fandom? Or is this going to be another six-month phase like the post season-one "woe iz us, dystopia has come, and also Ianto is a sociopath" festival of useless badfic last year?
(no subject)
Apr. 9th, 2008 02:48 pmThe building cafeteria had a chinese food buffet today. And now I am dead from potsticker.
Over lunch I was working out some Jack&Ellis in my head, and I realised that I was writing it all in present-tense, which is not the way that Jack&Ellis has been for, you know, the past 110,000 words or so. I think it's because I've been writing a lot of present-tense fic in Torchwood, which in turn is the result of my unconscious but highly valuable instinct to mimic. I've read more Torchwood fanfic than any other fandom for ages (mainly because HP fandom is FULL OF CRAZY and most of my other fandoms are teeny tiny) and a lot of the writers in Torchwood that I admire or enjoy write very edgy present-tense stuff.
Present-tense is a good look for shows about time travel and people who have a lot of rage to spare (metal men from a parallel universe killed my girlfriend horribly and all I got was this stupid pterodactyl).
Then after lunch I came back to my desk and checked my phone and discovered that Mama Tickey's been in the hospital for two days with the flu. Way to keep me in the loop there, Mum.
She's fine, apparently, but she's also eighty. We're all glad she has excellent health insurance.
Over lunch I was working out some Jack&Ellis in my head, and I realised that I was writing it all in present-tense, which is not the way that Jack&Ellis has been for, you know, the past 110,000 words or so. I think it's because I've been writing a lot of present-tense fic in Torchwood, which in turn is the result of my unconscious but highly valuable instinct to mimic. I've read more Torchwood fanfic than any other fandom for ages (mainly because HP fandom is FULL OF CRAZY and most of my other fandoms are teeny tiny) and a lot of the writers in Torchwood that I admire or enjoy write very edgy present-tense stuff.
Present-tense is a good look for shows about time travel and people who have a lot of rage to spare (metal men from a parallel universe killed my girlfriend horribly and all I got was this stupid pterodactyl).
Then after lunch I came back to my desk and checked my phone and discovered that Mama Tickey's been in the hospital for two days with the flu. Way to keep me in the loop there, Mum.
She's fine, apparently, but she's also eighty. We're all glad she has excellent health insurance.
(no subject)
Apr. 9th, 2008 03:11 pmOH MY GOD CRAZY CUBS JACKET LADY CAME BACK.
She doesn't have a backpack this time, she has a giant paper gift bag instead. And she is very, very angry about the way she's been treated.
But as it turns out apparently she has forgotten that she called me stupid, because she loves me now. And my boss is getting an earful.
Oh man, this is classic.
*eats popcorn, eavesdrops on meeting*
She doesn't have a backpack this time, she has a giant paper gift bag instead. And she is very, very angry about the way she's been treated.
But as it turns out apparently she has forgotten that she called me stupid, because she loves me now. And my boss is getting an earful.
Oh man, this is classic.
*eats popcorn, eavesdrops on meeting*
(no subject)
Apr. 9th, 2008 04:04 pmEdwin Arlington Robinson is a particular favourite poet of mine, in part because, while I've been familiar with his work for years, I read his biography recently and found a lot of myself in it. He wrote meticulous verse which studied and sometimes celebrated the failure of great minds. He did not generally write on cheerful themes; his biography stated that "Ellsworth Barnard counted fourteen suicides in his poems, not including a couple of probables." He does write very dramatically, however, of the beauty of dreams even after they're broken.
Richard Cory is a poem of suicide and by far the most anthologised and best-known of his work, though for my money Flammonde is a more affectionate, if less dramatic, portrait of a similarly stranded gentleman. They are some of the more accessible of his poems, which are not necessarily known for being easy to parse. I thought I'd pick a slightly obscure and difficult one for you today.
How Annandale Went Out
E.A. Robinson
“They called it Annandale—and I was there
To flourish, to find words, and to attend:
Liar, physician, hypocrite, and friend,
I watched him; and the sight was not so fair
As one or two that I have seen elsewhere:
An apparatus not for me to mend—
A wreck, with hell between him and the end,
Remained of Annandale; and I was there.
“I knew the ruin as I knew the man;
So put the two together, if you can,
Remembering the worst you know of me.
Now view yourself as I was, on the spot—
With a slight kind of engine. Do you see?
Like this … You wouldn’t hang me? I thought not.”
Richard Cory is a poem of suicide and by far the most anthologised and best-known of his work, though for my money Flammonde is a more affectionate, if less dramatic, portrait of a similarly stranded gentleman. They are some of the more accessible of his poems, which are not necessarily known for being easy to parse. I thought I'd pick a slightly obscure and difficult one for you today.
How Annandale Went Out
E.A. Robinson
“They called it Annandale—and I was there
To flourish, to find words, and to attend:
Liar, physician, hypocrite, and friend,
I watched him; and the sight was not so fair
As one or two that I have seen elsewhere:
An apparatus not for me to mend—
A wreck, with hell between him and the end,
Remained of Annandale; and I was there.
“I knew the ruin as I knew the man;
So put the two together, if you can,
Remembering the worst you know of me.
Now view yourself as I was, on the spot—
With a slight kind of engine. Do you see?
Like this … You wouldn’t hang me? I thought not.”