No one of consequence

Oxfordia!!

2009-11-20T11:47:00Z

That's right, ladies and gents, for one day only Migratory herself will be appearing in Oxford! Starting with a cup of tea with some writers in Borders, she will then venture into the local retail emporiums in search of festive frippery before gracing an eatery with her presence (and that of a friend) in the early evening! Don't miss your chance to pass her in the street and say to yourself "Wasn't that the girl who posted about gibbon testicles?"

Which is to say, I'm going back to Oxford on Saturday. I'm quite looking forwards to it actually - it'll be nice to get away from here for a bit, and to see some familiar faces. :-)

Before that though, I have to get the flat ready for its first inspection. Which is why I'm procrastinating online.

Dave Da Vinci

2009-11-08T21:52:51Z

It turns out then when you don't top up your mobile internet, it doesn't give you internet access. Also it turns out that when you're swamped at work and painfully tired, NaNoWriMo seems like a bit of a chore till your idea hits.

But it's hit and I'm rolling. I scrapped the first idea I was struggling with and went with the idea I was originally planning to write, and rejected because it was so stupid. I've decided I don't care about the stupid. Even when I try for something serious things like time travel and the undead creep in, so why fight it?

And so this year I'm writing about clones. My novel is called Dave Va Vinci, and narrated by Eddie Byron. I started it tonight and for the first time this year I'm enjoying NaNo.

So far, some variation on the word 'fuck' appears every 124 words.

migratory @ 2009-10-19T22:03:00

2009-10-19T21:04:00Z

I've been able to catch some of the current BBC adaptation of Emma, and I have to say it's excellent. Really well done, and Romola Garai makes a wonderful Emma. It's not my favourite Austen, but it's a great adaptation.

But what I really want to say is Johnny Lee Miller Knightly!

*fans self*

That's a potent bit of casting.

Last Chance to Overuse Superlatives

2009-09-27T20:41:46Z

Last Chance to See is getting better and better. Entertaining, educational and yet not worthy or preachy. I don't know how they do it, but I think the wonderful Mark Carwardine is something to do with it. The Madagascar episode was sublime last week, but I think this week's Indonesia one managed to equal it. Turtle babies :-D

Twenty years ago, in Douglas Adams's book from the first trip, Carwardine wrote that there was one outstanding reason to devote a lifetime to conserving these animals. "It is simply this: the world would be a poorer, darker, lonelier place without them." I love that quote.

And next week's episode? KAKAPOS, BABY!

Somewhat recursive

2009-08-31T23:11:50Z

I've been working ~6 days a week for the zoo for the summer. Which is all well and groovy and somewhat part of the territory with this sort of position. But it gets kind of weird when on my day off, after doing all the normal errands and wandering, I settle down in the evening to play Zoo Tycoon.

I wonder if it's some sort of validation thing... when the game congratulates me for my zoo administration skills I assume this also applies to real life. Or possibly it's some weird zoo attachment that needs closer examination. I haven't yet recreated the zoo I work for in pixels, but I guess there's still time.

I wonder if soldiers play Call of Duty or lawyers play Phoenix Wright?

Anyway, I've now been offered a permanent position. 50% admin, 50% marketing, 100% pretty darn cool. I will at least be able to afford this flat I so rashly rushed into.

What of dignity, honour, self-respect?

2009-08-10T22:21:48Z

I find myself rather attracted to a man I know with a gold tooth.
I think that ratcheting sound was my standards lowering. Must be the approach of my 25th birthday.

Anyhow, in other news...

I have a flat! My first ever just-me flat. No family, no waste-of-space boyfriend, no charmingly erratic flatmates. It's all mine :-)

Now, of course, I have to find a way to afford those little essentials like a washing machine...

Work Perks

2009-07-18T21:54:07Z

I have a new friend...

Happy

2009-06-22T23:17:55Z

I graduated today :-)

I wore a silly gown and hat. I let my family try on my hat. I spread the wings of the gown in order to look like Batman. We ate Italian food. Champagne was consumed in moderation. One of my tutors knew who I was and congratulated me without me needing to tell her what I got. I carefully threw my hat in the air for staged photos of spontaneous joy. My father ended up in the middle of a proper Oxford graduation in his car by mistake but made it to mine in time.

Surprisingly, despite the cat-herding drama of getting everyone organised, the day itself went extremely smoothly and was very enjoyable. My Mum told quite a lot of people what I got, whether or not they asked. She also took enthusiastic photos of the pizza man at La Cucina throwing the dough in the air, so I think she had a pretty good day too.

One of the professorships conferred was in the History department to a Professor of Blasphemy. I will never be that cool.

Wow.

2009-06-16T00:26:00Z

Degree results are in.
I scraped a first.

My family are very happy. I'm currently still bit numb, having spent so long preparing myself for the probability that I'd just missed it. I would have been proud of a 2:1, but I can't help feeling I don't quite deserve a first.

Still, gift horse, mouth, etc.

I'll enjoy updating my CV tomorrow. It's been a difficult ride at times, but I've learnt a hell of a lot. I'd be pleased to have done it regardless of the qualification, but this is the extra nice icing on top.

And I think I'll sleep well tonight :-)

It's the Cirrrrcccllleee of Life

2009-06-10T22:38:45Z

So this is Migratory's Theory of Shakespeare Appreciation:

Teenager - Shakespeare's boring.
Adult - Shakespeare's obviously great. I don't actually read any, but everyone knows he's the best.
First year English undergrad - Hey, when you actually read him Shakespeare's pretty darn good.
Final year English undergrad - Although having said that, his contemporaries are somewhat unfairly overshadowed.
Masters student - I'm done with Shakespeare. I'm studying a writer you've never even heard of.
Lecturer - Shakespeare's boring.

This is geeky, but...

2009-05-25T22:40:18Z

Following up from the Gown of Humility stat points, I was playing Morrowind last night and using my slightly disturbing new dagger that administers frost damage for quite a long time. Ten seconds, maybe. Long enough to kill some animals by draining their health bit by bit from one dagger strike.

The result of this being that I can stab a wolf once and then withstand its attack with the sense of pathos that comes with my knowing it's already dead. Bite, bite, snarl, bite, whimper, die.

Which in an odd way is rather like Hamlet.
I'm Laertes, my friends.

But it's for my essay....

2009-05-06T00:16:42Z

You know when you're looking for something and start repeating the mantra in your mind? 'Hairbrush hairbrush hairbrush' etc. And then if you can't find it you end up murmuring it and eventually saying it aloud in a distracted manner?

Yeah, I got as far as the mind mantra today, saying it to myself silently, one step below saying it creepily under my breath. Which could have been a problem, as I was trying to look up how blood effects were created in the Early Modern Theatre.

It suddenly occurred to me that sinisterly muttering 'blood blood blood' in the library could earn me a chat with the university counsellors.

What rhymes with 'laureate'?

2009-04-30T18:58:31Z

There's no official word, but the Times has announced that Carol Ann Duffy will be the next poet laureate.

The One Show listed a few possibilities, bizarrely including Benjamin Zephaniah. He's extremely awesome, but who'd possibly think he'd accept the laureateship? The BBC also gave their five front runners here. If pressed I'd have swung towards Armitage, because I've seen him read and really, really enjoyed it, but no complaints here for the choice of Duffy.

Wendy Cope has a decent argument against the post here. Personally I don't think it should be abolished, but most of my favourites didn't get the laureateship. It has produced some wonderful work - Charge of the Light Brigade being chief - but there's been a greater quantity of awesomeness coming from people writing without official status or the need to be diplomatic. That it makes people notice poetry a little more is justification for the role, but it's not an automatic label of 'best' poet.

I don't think Motion's been a particularly visible laureate. Maybe if you read the right broadsheets you get exposed to him, but he's not been a voice that I've been aware of. A change will be nice.

We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Update: The Times was right.

How Much?

2009-04-29T01:08:16Z

Extra tickets for my graduation (after 2 complimentary) are £15 each. £15 to sit in a different room and watch via video link.

That is disgusting.
I feel like setting loose my keyboard of wrath. I think unleashing phrases like 'discrimination against non-traditional families' would be a low but satisfying blow to start with, before following on to general charges of elitism (keeping out the riff-raff with a cover charge) and opportunism.

Mercenary pricks. Not only have I paid to subsidise noisy building work I won't benefit from, but I get fleeced at my own graduation.

Okayyyyyyy.......

2009-04-20T23:33:25Z

A stranger with my exact name wants to be my facebook friend.

That's just weird. We're not Dave Gorman.
Obviously I'll be ignoring that request.

Planet Narnia

2009-04-17T23:23:29Z

Did anyone catch The Narnia Code last night? It was pretty interesting, although not presented the way I'd have liked.

It was basically plugging Michael Ward's theory set out in Planet Narnia, that the Narnia novels are based upon the medieval model of the solar system. And once it started talking about the theory and the basis for Ward's claims, it was pretty interesting.

Except that for the first half of the programme it kept us in suspense, filling in background to Lewis's life and hinting at this amazing discovery. Which is a big UR Doing it Wrong in academic discussion, which is supposed to outline the theory and then back it up. The biographical bits were well done, but the sense of keeping the viewer waiting got a bit wearing because I had no idea what conclusion I was being shepherded towards or how OMG!AMAZING it was actually going to be.

Once they'd outlined the theory there also wasn't enough devotion to the texts themselves - it was mostly academics discussing reactions to the theory. What we did hear of it sounded very interesting, but Ward only explained three of the books' links to their planet, and those very briefly. Obviously he wants to sell his book, but I don't like to think I buy academic works for the twist ending. I'd buy the book for the detailed textual analysis that goes with the theories outlined in the programme.

Also nothing in the programme convinced me that this was a new, deeper level that made Narnia more meaningful. Assuming Ward can back up his theory with enough evidence, why is a bit of symbolism so important? Someone on the programme said that the surface story acted on one level, the allegory on a second and the secret planetary links on the third.

Why is the planetary model more important and meaningful than the allegory? Because it's hard to spot? Because whatever fundamental meaning all these academics were ascribing to the third level, it wasn't made clear in the programme.

It was an interesting programme, worth looking up on iPlayer, but it couldn't decide if it was about a)the theory or b)how Ward thought it up and what the academic world said about it. More of a) would have been nice - it seemed like Ward touting for his own show on BBC4. I don't really care about his personality - more of the theory everyone was talking about would have been nice.

(And I'm not sure I buy the idea that all the Lewis experts the BBC could possibly have found are male. Just saying.)

Bits and Pieces

2009-04-11T00:01:30Z

andyluke has a very interesting article about the intimidation of the elderly by custom officials here.

*

I'll reserve comment on tonight's Red Dwarf until they've all been aired. I missed a lot of it because I'm currently at home, and my stepfather managed to knock his wine glass over and smash it on my dinner plate. The subsequent drama about whether my dinner might have shreds of glass in took quite a lot of family debate and I therefore missed a fair amount of the episode.
(For the record I was happy to risk the glass. My mother, however, would hear of No Such Thing. All was eventually well, however, and everyone got fed)

*

Also, we went to see Marley and Me tonight. It was considerably better than I'd expected, despite not being my type of film. Our dog got a lot of fuss when we came home :-)

Sheesh

2009-03-20T23:40:58Z

Someone came up to me in Tesco's yesterday to ask me where I got my new coat :-) Said she'd noticed it before but been too shy to ask.
Clearly I'm now a fashion icon.

Anyway... we had to read The Emperor's Babe, by Bernadine Evaristo, for Contemporary Literature this week (I also had to do a presentation on it, so anyone who needs to know about nomadic feminism in this book need look no further than me). It's a rather good book written in very accessible free verse (there's an extract here) and set in Roman London. Zuleika is the main character, who is married to a much older man at age eleven, and the book charts her rebellion over the years against attempts to trap her.

It's also a major part of the book that she's a black woman, which is why one of these covers makes me go WTF?

I know artists don't read every book they illustrate, but surely someone did. You'd hope someone between author and reader has a look at the finished product. They're Penguin, FFS.

Interestingly, the right-hand version is newer and they didn't re-paginate, so I wonder if someone twigged a bit late and they put out a more appropriate version. Or the author took one look at it and told them what was what.

Anyway, it's a good book and our presentation went rather well.

I always wondered how the Master Chief would move if he was a marionette

2009-03-03T21:47:48Z

Against all sense, I bought Halo for my laptop.

My laptop cried.

It's now writing angst-filled poetry about how I'm pushing it too hard.

Sweet Revenge

2009-02-16T22:03:51Z

As an extra-curricular Renaissance seminar today we watched Revengers Tragedy (I really want to put an apostrophe in there, but apparently there isn't one in the film, though there is in the play). It's a futuristic adaptation of a Renaissance play, starring Christopher Ecclestone and Eddie Izzard.

It is amazing. Ecclestone's performance is just fantastic as Vindici, the guy seeking revenge, and the Duke's whole clan of fighting sons (led by Izzard) are bizarrely wonderful. It's such a stylised piece it's difficult to draw comparisons, but I'm blown away by it. It's dark and violent, but it's also frequently very funny - and Ecclestone dances expertly along the line of 'is this funny or just disturbing?'. Not to everyone's taste, obviously, but I thought it was outstanding.

I've just ordered it from amazon. After a few more viewings perhaps my praise will be more coherent. It's just so different from anything I've seen that I don't quite have a handle on it.

Big papery things tied up with string

2009-02-13T22:43:42Z

Staying up till the early hours on the computer is pretty bad.
Staying up till the early hours because I was reading my NaNoWriMo novel is a whole other level of badness.
I'm pretty pleased with it, though, for a rush job. I know I say this every year, but I am tempted to finish it this time. My zombie hero is ready to avenge his own death and it seems a little churlish to leave him standing in the banquet hall with his sword drawn.

Oh, and I ventured into the Bodleian Library today. I managed not to raze it to the ground, but I didn't actually touch a book. So I guess I get 50% for effort.

You feel the urge to push the book far, far under the bed

2009-01-17T22:17:55Z

I'm currently reading Halting State. Frankly, a near future book about an apparently impossible robbery in a World of Warcraft-esq game, and the real-world financial and legal fall-out, sounded geekily awesome. There are a few teensy problems, though. Mostly significantly...

It's written in the second person.

Who the fuck thinks that's a good idea? Especially when balancing three points of view.

I do intend to finish it, but mostly so I can write a cathartically bitter review. I wasted money - on the recommendation of one of those Waterstones staff reviews, I'm fairly sure - on that shit.

And yeah, I get that a book concerned with gaming might want to pay homage to Zork et al, or even Choose Your Own Adventure, but that would be half a page of prologue material. Not a whole novel.

Remember, remember....

2009-01-11T23:52:28Z

So apparently there is no work around home.
This is bad.

However I will draw your attention to the fact that there are currently two elephant keeper jobs going in BIAZA institutions - one at Chester and one at Twycross. Why the sudden defecit of elephant staff?

It's probably libellious to suggest that the previous holders of the positions met on an elephant care conference and ran off together, leaving sudden vacancies behind them :-) Anyway, in case anyone's contemplating a drastic career change, the jobs are here. You do need elephant experience, however...

I'd fancy that animal records post if it wasn't in Cumbria, though.

Another pointless achievement

2009-01-05T00:20:54Z

On the 19th Feb 2006 I posted an entry mentioning a fanfiction idea that had been bugging me. It was a Harry Potter story about the revolt of the owls against the magical compulsion that enslaved them into delivering the post.

I said 'Problem is, it'll probably take all afternoon to write and I can't justify wasting that amount of time on and [sic] idea which may turn out to be fairly stupid in the execution.'

Its now the 5th Jan 2009. "All afternoon" was perhaps a bit optimistic, but The Owls' Story is finally complete. And I actually think that on the whole, it wasn't completely 'stupid in the execution'. It was slow going, but I enjoyed not knowing how it was going to end. Not to mention making it all fit DH :-)

I think fanfic is at it's most fun when you veer off in your own direction. There's no need to keep an eye on making it publishable, and if you want to write something no one else will get it's allowed. People can sneer all they like, but I'm not too proud to play in the pit :-)

Iconography

2008-01-17T23:56:53Z

In lieu of doing something useful, I've been making Discworld (Terry Pratchett) icons. The quotes are mostly courtesy of 'The Wit and Wisdom of Discworld', a wonderful book to dip in and out of which I bought a couple of weeks ago.

I hope you enjoy them, and credit is appreciated.

(7 and 11 aren't new - I've been using them myself for a little while - but I haven't offered them out before so I feel justified including them here.)

1.

2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

11.