happy new year: burning the furniture for warmth
I find it faintly disturbing that my very first post of the new year was a frantic cry for academic help. Well, hopefully it is prophetic of the Year to Come -- the academia bit, I mean, not the frantic cry for help. Anyway, it turns out that essays are really fun!, especially when they're simultaneously very fannish and very academic. In fact, really, most of my inspiration for the essay was from the flood of pseudo-academic fannish essays of which I have read rather a lot. Because I love those! People read and write them for the sheer love of it, which is the best thing. Plus, in some ways you have more -- I don't know, more resonance? when writing about a fannish subject as opposed to something that hasn't been collectively experienced in that way, or that you haven't experienced in that great, multi-level manner.
(Article on NPR right now about how cinemas aren't making as much money from films as DVD sales are: why are people so thick about this? It is because CINEMAS ARE OBSCENELY EXPENSIVE. I paid eight fifty to see Sherlock Holmes, and their credit card machine was going to charge me an extra dollar to swipe my debit card. THE PLAGUE? I want to see the film again terribly, because it was gorgeous and clever and wildly, imaginatively entertaining, and also I really love the cinematic experience in general, but I do not exactly have that much money to toss around. If tickets were, say, five dollars, I would probably go three times. As it is, I am still considering waiting a few weeks and then snagging a matinee, on account of how I loved that film LIKE BURNING and it is TOTALLY RELEVANT TO MY NOVEL INTERESTS.
The high price of concessions is of no consequence, as I never buy any. Bring your own snacks! It isn't as though they pat you down before letting you into the cinema!)
At the beginning of a new year I somehow always end up listless and restless and dour. I really don't know if it's end-of-the-holidays gloom or weather-induced claustrophobia, but it seems to occur regularly every year, and I'm a bit weary of it. It must be the weather, because with so much snow and cold I feel hideously trapped -- can't go out very far, can't bicycle, can't even wear favourite clothes because I must wear sweaters and trousers constantly so as not to die, and even then my poor hands are frozen through. (Naturally, I can only find one of every pair of fingerless gloves that I own. And I need more, anyway; I haven't got very many that are actually for warmth and not for sheer vanity.) Also our hot water heater seems to have broken, and I woke up this morning to the news that we have no hot water. (I immediately thought, "DOES THE INTERNET STILL WORK?!" and then remembered that the internet is not powered by water.) I had been putting off a shower and now need one desperately. It is horrible. My hair is all greasy and my face hurts. Fie. We are supposed to get a new heater tomorrow morning, but it should take even more time for the heater to heat and I need a shower now. Let this be a lesson to me: procrastination is disastrous.
(Speaking of which, omg Emerson application due tomorrow only have a couple of little things to write and Mum needs to finish my transcript but still. When do you find out if they're letting you in or not? Sent in application to Hampshire and would now be biting nails to the quick except I do that already out of habit. Are my essays shiny enough? Do they make up for my dismal lack of records re. previous academia and my extremely-good-but-not-overwhelmingly-brilliant SAT scores? WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT ME IN THEIR SCHOOL WHEN THERE ARE OTHER PEOPLE? oh God oh God we're all going to die. Put lots of mad things on my Hobbies and Activities page and described the Come All Ye Project and how one of my hobbies on which I spend a lot of time is researching for my Novel. Should I have mentioned that it's got vampires and alternate London and magic in it and I'm researching folklore as well as history and politics and early 20th century domestic life? Oh help.)
Would really love a change of scenery. A really warm change of scenery, possibly with new books and fresh bread, but mostly with warmth. Am having difficulty staying with a book long enough to read it through, and my television schedule mostly has got Doctor Who on at the moment which is mostly just depressing me. (I am beginning to be even more thankful that Moffat is taking over this year than I already was, because... if I were facing another season of RTD, I think I would give up the show, he's got that dismal. Dismal both in terms of how unrelentingly and unnecessarily depressing his episodes want to be, and also in that his writing and directing are terrifically pedestrian and predictable, relying on a lot of cheap tricks -- FUTURE WIKIPEDIA SAYS YOU'RE ALL GOING TO DIE! -- and a fourteen-year-old boy's Rule of Cool.
This show is like concentrated whiplash -- on the one hand, you have this fascinating, multi-layered thinky episodes with glorious ideas and re-interpretations and examinations, like the Moffat episodes, and Human Nature, and even things like "The Shakespeare Code", which is about as perfect a romp as you can get, and on the other hand, you have pretty much the whole 2009 set of specials, which are so flat and juvenile -- and man, I wish RTD at least had a child's idealism, but he mixes some really weird bits of optimistic fancy with nihilist fatalism which mostly just results in things that leave a really, really bad taste in my mouth -- and it just doesn't seem like it can be the same show. I'm hardly expecting Moffat to be The Second Coming or whatever, in which whose season every episode is like Joss Whedon at his most brilliantly meta crossed with Neil Gaiman, but, um, at this point it cannot get very much worse, and the Moff has given me a lot more reason to trust him than RTD ever has -- even when I hadn't started to loathe his episodes so much, I was still very put off by his interviews, in which he frequently seems to be fanboying himself. Anyway. I miss the show that used to make me excited and creative after an episode, instead of frustrated, drained, and occasionally angry.
Also, I haven't yet seen 'The End of Time', so... don't spoil me overmuch. Especially as if I am spoilt anymore than I already am I will lose all resolve to watch it.)
Anyway squared, there's that. Ah, life.
(Article on NPR right now about how cinemas aren't making as much money from films as DVD sales are: why are people so thick about this? It is because CINEMAS ARE OBSCENELY EXPENSIVE. I paid eight fifty to see Sherlock Holmes, and their credit card machine was going to charge me an extra dollar to swipe my debit card. THE PLAGUE? I want to see the film again terribly, because it was gorgeous and clever and wildly, imaginatively entertaining, and also I really love the cinematic experience in general, but I do not exactly have that much money to toss around. If tickets were, say, five dollars, I would probably go three times. As it is, I am still considering waiting a few weeks and then snagging a matinee, on account of how I loved that film LIKE BURNING and it is TOTALLY RELEVANT TO MY NOVEL INTERESTS.
The high price of concessions is of no consequence, as I never buy any. Bring your own snacks! It isn't as though they pat you down before letting you into the cinema!)
At the beginning of a new year I somehow always end up listless and restless and dour. I really don't know if it's end-of-the-holidays gloom or weather-induced claustrophobia, but it seems to occur regularly every year, and I'm a bit weary of it. It must be the weather, because with so much snow and cold I feel hideously trapped -- can't go out very far, can't bicycle, can't even wear favourite clothes because I must wear sweaters and trousers constantly so as not to die, and even then my poor hands are frozen through. (Naturally, I can only find one of every pair of fingerless gloves that I own. And I need more, anyway; I haven't got very many that are actually for warmth and not for sheer vanity.) Also our hot water heater seems to have broken, and I woke up this morning to the news that we have no hot water. (I immediately thought, "DOES THE INTERNET STILL WORK?!" and then remembered that the internet is not powered by water.) I had been putting off a shower and now need one desperately. It is horrible. My hair is all greasy and my face hurts. Fie. We are supposed to get a new heater tomorrow morning, but it should take even more time for the heater to heat and I need a shower now. Let this be a lesson to me: procrastination is disastrous.
(Speaking of which, omg Emerson application due tomorrow only have a couple of little things to write and Mum needs to finish my transcript but still. When do you find out if they're letting you in or not? Sent in application to Hampshire and would now be biting nails to the quick except I do that already out of habit. Are my essays shiny enough? Do they make up for my dismal lack of records re. previous academia and my extremely-good-but-not-overwhelmingly-brilliant SAT scores? WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT ME IN THEIR SCHOOL WHEN THERE ARE OTHER PEOPLE? oh God oh God we're all going to die. Put lots of mad things on my Hobbies and Activities page and described the Come All Ye Project and how one of my hobbies on which I spend a lot of time is researching for my Novel. Should I have mentioned that it's got vampires and alternate London and magic in it and I'm researching folklore as well as history and politics and early 20th century domestic life? Oh help.)
Would really love a change of scenery. A really warm change of scenery, possibly with new books and fresh bread, but mostly with warmth. Am having difficulty staying with a book long enough to read it through, and my television schedule mostly has got Doctor Who on at the moment which is mostly just depressing me. (I am beginning to be even more thankful that Moffat is taking over this year than I already was, because... if I were facing another season of RTD, I think I would give up the show, he's got that dismal. Dismal both in terms of how unrelentingly and unnecessarily depressing his episodes want to be, and also in that his writing and directing are terrifically pedestrian and predictable, relying on a lot of cheap tricks -- FUTURE WIKIPEDIA SAYS YOU'RE ALL GOING TO DIE! -- and a fourteen-year-old boy's Rule of Cool.
This show is like concentrated whiplash -- on the one hand, you have this fascinating, multi-layered thinky episodes with glorious ideas and re-interpretations and examinations, like the Moffat episodes, and Human Nature, and even things like "The Shakespeare Code", which is about as perfect a romp as you can get, and on the other hand, you have pretty much the whole 2009 set of specials, which are so flat and juvenile -- and man, I wish RTD at least had a child's idealism, but he mixes some really weird bits of optimistic fancy with nihilist fatalism which mostly just results in things that leave a really, really bad taste in my mouth -- and it just doesn't seem like it can be the same show. I'm hardly expecting Moffat to be The Second Coming or whatever, in which whose season every episode is like Joss Whedon at his most brilliantly meta crossed with Neil Gaiman, but, um, at this point it cannot get very much worse, and the Moff has given me a lot more reason to trust him than RTD ever has -- even when I hadn't started to loathe his episodes so much, I was still very put off by his interviews, in which he frequently seems to be fanboying himself. Anyway. I miss the show that used to make me excited and creative after an episode, instead of frustrated, drained, and occasionally angry.
Also, I haven't yet seen 'The End of Time', so... don't spoil me overmuch. Especially as if I am spoilt anymore than I already am I will lose all resolve to watch it.)
Anyway squared, there's that. Ah, life.