Feathers and confectionary airs

I am bone-tired because I got up early (for me, anyway) this morning and took the 18 bus to Drimnagh Castle, where I filled out a form, joined a group of similarly anticipatory people, sat down in front of a mirror, had my hair teased and sprayed and stuffed under a cap, had my face and hands daubed with cosmetic dirt, got dressed in a white petticoat, long, thick, heavy black skirt, white blouse and grey shawl (which proved on closer examination to be half of a towel that had been ripped along the diagonal), and spent several hours nattering with the others who were there, eating lunch (spaghetti and meatballs, and chocolate cake), and reading...

...and then we all got herded to where the cameras and crew were set up, and we spent (I think -- I didn't have my watch) two and a half hours standing in the general vicinity of some cameras, under rain and sunshine, nattering to each other for most of it and standing and/or moving in our set positions when we were told to.

All of which is to say: I have spent a day as an extra on The Tudors! It was rather fun. There was a lot of hanging about doing nothing in particular, but when it came time for me to take up my position, the extras-wrangler[1] said to me, "Okay, you're a butcher's wife," and led me to a waist-high treestump with a pig's head[2] on it, set up next to a barrow that held four baskets of offal[3]. And having said over and over again to the other extras that of course the shot you're in might not get used, and if it does get used you might not be visible, and if you are visible it might just be your elbow or the edge of your skirt or some other non-identifiable part of yourself -- in sum, having reconciled myself to the idea that all of the palaver might not result in my being visible on screen, I was now going to be able to say "look for the woman with the cleaver and the pig's head! that's me!" Result.

(Also, I was standing behind some severed human heads[4] on pikes, and the main bit of business while I was cleaving the pig's head[5] was two young girls staring at the heads and being hastily drawn away by their mother, and I thought the director might be making a Point by having a butcher cleaving a pig's head in the same shot as two children staring at human heads. I thought that was quite clever, though of course it remains to be seen whether it comes across that way in the episode.)

Everyone involved was very nice, brisk and business-like; I sometimes had the disconcerting impression from the hair and make-up people that they were treating us like furniture, and it wasn't because they were rude or offhand, but because our own opinions were irrelevant; we had to look the way other people -- people we weren't even going to meet -- wanted us to look. This is not my typical experience of people who do my hair, and it was a slightly odd experience.

All in all, a good day. Tiring, though. I'm going to sleep for about fifteen hours now.


[1] probably not his official title
[2] real!
[3] also real! and very smelly! and got smellier as the day wore on!
[4] not real, and not very convincing-looking from where I was standing, but maybe they'll pass muster on TV
[5] but not too vigorously, because a) I didn't want to endanger my fingers and b) there was only one pig's head available for cleaving, so it was pretty important that the head should never actually get cleft.

Since my last entry, I have:

-been interviewed by the Evening Herald about Dublin on a Shoestring; the piece appeared in the paper on Thursday the 25th of June. It went well, I think, though in the course of moving from my mouth to the journalist's notebook, the things I said lost some of their flavour, but I suppose that's inevitable.

-also been interviewed for City Channel's Dublin Today programme, to be broadcast on Tuesday the 14th of the July. The nervewracking part of this was the anticipation; the actual interview was very pleasant. My co-author couldn't be there (he was at the hospital), but I pulled it off pretty well by myself.

-sent my CV to Penguin Ireland, who are looking for freelance editors to add to their database (fingers crossed).

-celebrated my 30th birthday with a nice dinner with my parents and brother. I have some pretty painful inner conflicts around being 30, so I didn't want to make a big deal of it. At some point, if those conflicts get resolved or at least lessened, I may have a big fuck-off party to celebrate entering my fourth decade. But not right now.

-borrowed the vocal score of Follies from the ILAC Centre library, in preparation for the musical theatre workshop I'm going to this weekend at the Gaiety School of Acting. They have lots of sheet music there, but very little Sondheim (and, as far as I can tell, pretty much no musicals from the 80s or later, unless I was looking in the wrong place). Still, Follies has some truly amazing songs, so it's enough by itself. I'm thinking of working on "Losing My Mind" and "Could I Leave You?".

-wrote and filed a review of Skim by Mariko & Jillian Tamaki for the Irish Times. Skim is unbelievably good. I hope I did it justice.

-been to a lot more yoga classes. I'm definitely going to keep up with it after the one-month special offer expires. It's expensive (€99 a month, eep), but for what you get, and the benefits I've been getting, it's worth every penny.

-lost 4 pounds without consciously changing my diet. I attribute this to the fact that I've been going to yoga three times a week; my intake of food hasn't increased much, if at all (actually, I've noticed that the yoga seems to have cut down on my cravings for junk food), but my activity level has increased. I'm pretty happy with it, because I do have weight to lose; BMI charts tell me my "medically ideal" weight is somewhere around 11 stone, and I can't even imagine being that thin. But I'm a long way away from that, and weight loss isn't my primary goal in doing the yoga, just a beneficial side effect. If it ever gets to the point where I'm still losing weight beyond a level I'm comfortable with, I can cut down to twice or once a week, or increase my food intake. I think it's likely that my metabolism will adjust before I reach that point, though.

Now I'm going to yoga one more time, and then this weekend I have the musical theatre workshop, and then I would like to have a rest, please, universe...

So, inspired by the latest post at Slacktivist, a perennial favourite discussion topic:

Moments From Movies, TV Episodes, Books (et cetera) That Make You Weep Like A Child

1. "This is my family. I found it, all by myself. It's little, and broken, but still good. Yes, still good." (Lilo & Stitch)

2. "You understand... It is too far. I cannot carry this body with me. It is too heavy." (The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

3. "I want us to stay together. I want us to last." (David to Keith, Six Feet Under)

4. "Isn't she beautiful? There she is! There she is! There she is! There she is!
Mama is everywhere! He must have loved her so much." (Sunday in the Park with George)

5. "I'm a human being, dammit! You can deny me all you want, but you can't deny Ben Sisko! He exists! That space station - those people, that future - they exist! In here. In my mind. You hear what I'm telling you? You can destroy the story, but you cannot destroy an idea. That's ancient knowledge! That future is real - I made it real! You hear me - it's real!" (okay, I cheated on this one and looked up the exact wording because it's been too long since I've seen the episode, which may be the best episode of any sf TV show ever: Deep Space Nine, "Far Beyond the Stars")

6. [That moment in the first Pokémon movie when Ash has turned to stone and Pikachu keeps trying to shock him back to life with increasingly desperate cries of "Pikachuuuuuuu!" And then all the gathered Pokémon, including the clones, weep solitary silver tears that float towards Ash's body and magically revive him and SHUT UP DON'T JUDGE ME IT'S VERY MOVING.]

7. "You are a child, not a weapon. You are my child. You are my daughter, and I love you." (X-23: Innocence Lost, written by Kyle & Yost)

8. "What home?" "Home... is run no more." (WE3, written by Grant Morrison)

9. "Grace-ya, you have our love for two daughters all to yourself. And that's not only because of Lily's death. We're that proud of you." (Good as Lily, written by Derek Kirk Kim)

10. "I'll sail her up the west coast
Through villages and towns
I'll be on my holidays
They'll be doing the rounds
They'll ask me how I got her, I'll say
'I saved my money'
And say 'Isn't she pretty, that ship called Dignity?'" ("Dignity" by Deacon Blue. No, I don't know why this makes me cry, but it does.)

Since my last entry, I have:

-been to the Bikram Yoga studio five more times. It does actually get easier, which is encouraging, but I've had good sessions and bad sessions. I can feel that it is doing me good: my muscles growing stronger, my body growing trimmer, my old cravings for comfort foods that are bad for me abating. For a good while now, I've been in the difficult position of wanting to lose weight, but not wanting to diet because experience has taught me that while I can lose weight on diets, it never stays off, and what's the point of that? But I seem to have found a form of vigorous exercise that I'm likely to stick to, and that makes me feel good; and so far I haven't felt the urge to eat more than I normally do. (Less, if anything.) All else being equal, burning 4,000+ extra calories a week should have the same effect as dieting in terms of weight loss, as well as bringing all the other benefits of regular exercise.

(The posture I like best is standing bow pose, because it's one of those postures you see an expert doing and say to yourself "no fucking way can I do that", and then you try it, and it's... actually not as hard as you think it is. It's not easy, but it can be done by a non-expert.)

-been to Edinburgh. And the funny thing is that my time away had allowed me to forget how charming Edinburgh is; how old and twisty and full of hidden-away crannies and dark corners; how very much like a city that might have been built by fairies or vampires.

-been to see Peer Gynt at the Royal Lyceum Theatre. A very modernised version, and the second half was all over the shop until the very end, but I think that's a defect of the play rather than the production. Overall I loved it, and now I want to track down an early English translation to see where it was changed.

-been to the wedding of dryad_wombat and grahamb, a small and delightful affair, at which I met a friend of dryad_wombat's who took over her class on vampire fiction and turned out to be a former resident of Rathgar (practically my neighbour!) and a former writer for the GCN back when it was still called the Gay Community News and didn't have glossy covers or masses of advertising. A lovely fellow, and he made what was already a lovely day even lovelier.

-visited the two shops I always visit when I'm in Edinburgh: Coda Records and TransReal sf bookshop. Bought 3 CDs and 3 books. Good haul.

-watched the live-action Charlotte's Web at the free outdoor cinema in Grassmarket. It was... pretty good, I guess, although: 1) I kept being reminded of Babe (which was better); 2) I was reading Let The Right One In at the same time, which made for some odd juxtapositions; 3) at some point I thought to myself huh, this is basically a story about a talented and compassionate woman working like mad for the sake of a not-particularly-special man who gets all the benefits from her work while contributing, essentially, nothing. And that kind of took the shine off it.

-got the abstract I sent to this conference accepted (the abstract, for the interest, is ( behind the cut )

-got an email from the London Review of Books saying that while they don't have anything suitable for me at the moment, they will be in touch if anything comes up. I am super pleased by this, not least because the LRB does lovely long essays and reviews, and the prospect of getting 2,000 words or more in which to talk seriously about comics in a major publication makes me want to bounce up and down like a giddy schoolgirl on a pogo stick.

-was told that a chap from the Evening Herald will be phoning tomorrow morning to talk to me about Dublin on a Shoestring.

Blimey, it's a busy life I lead.

So I went to a Bikram yoga session today, because a former co-worker of mine goes there and she always looks svelte and apple-cheeked, so I thought it might do me good. And I think it probably has done me good, and will continue to do me more good, but holy shit. I was not prepared.

Here is a Beginner's Guide to Bikram Yoga, so that if any of you want to try it, you will be better prepared than I was.

1. The big deal thing about Bikram yoga, the thing that makes it different from all other forms of yoga, is that it takes place in a heated room, the idea being that the heat keeps the muscles relaxed and thus makes it possible to go further with the poses. So far so nice, but what you may not realise is that this, combined with the higher-than-average intensity of Bikram practice, means that you will sweat. You will sweat like a very nervous pig on a very hot day. You will sweat more than you thought it possible for a human being to sweat. You will, quite likely, sweat more than you sweated the last time you were in a sauna. This is okay! It's part of the process. Everyone else is sweating as much as you are. That's why it tells you on the website that you need to bring two towels (one for during the session and one for a shower afterwards), and a litre of water. You mostly have to use your towel to cover your yoga mat and stop it from getting slippy, but you might also want to use it to wipe your face or various other body parts, especially during the poses when you have to hold onto your feet or your calves.

2. The sweat also means that by the end of the session, your exercise gear will be completely soaked through, which means you need to bring a full change of clothes -- including underwear. This is the bit that I didn't realise, which meant that I had to go commando and braless on the journey from Harolds Cross to Ranelagh. I will not make that mistake twice.

3. Do not forget to bring soap and shampoo! You really, really don't want to change into your other outfit without showering first, and your hair will get soaked with sweat during the class. Ewwwww.

4. Also, the bit on the website where it says you need to drink a litre of water during the class? They are not kidding. Holy fuck they are not kidding. The teacher won't like it if you drink while the others are doing poses, but there are lots of breaks in between when you'll have a chance to desperately try and replace all the fluid you're losing through sweat. Fortunately they sell water at the studio (at least they do at the Harolds Cross studio).

5. The class is hard work. Really hard work. As a beginner, you are not expected to keep up with everybody else and do everything as the teacher says it; your aim is to get through to the end of the class without leaving the room and doing as many of the poses as you can manage. Halfway through the class, I figured out that since every pose was gone through twice, I could go through the first and sit out the second (or vice versa) if I was feeling stretched beyond my capabilities, which would mean I'd still get through all the poses but wouldn't kill myself in the process. I plan to use this technique again in future until I'm strong enough to do everything twice.

6. Take breaks! Any time you feel like you can't go any further, sit down and get back up when you feel up to it. It says this on the website, and seriously, listen to them, because they are wise.

7. Give yourself a pat on the back when you finish, because you did a hard thing that will do you good!

~~
In other news: I now have proper non-knockoff Converse for the first time since my teenage years. Low-tops rather than my usual high-tops, because I am no longer as enamoured of ankle boots as I once was; now I'm fonder of shoes with laces of a length that I can actually find in the shops when I need to replace them.

Dublin people: I have just ordered a monitor-not-included desktop computer from Dell, and I was rather hoping one of ye would have a monitor to spare. I'll ask Freecycle or actually, you know, buy one if I have to, but I'd rather help a friend out by taking unwanted clutter off their hands. That is, if any of ye do have a monitor that you're not using. *looks around hopefully*

ITEM: I went to see the Handsome Family at Whelan's last night! They were awesome, my friends. Their songs have the dark and morbid beauty of a raven bleeding on a snowdrift, and Rennie Sparks is hilarious. I want to be her when I grow up.

(It occurred to me while I was there that there are advantages to being into relatively small, relatively un-well-known bands. [Rennie: "This next song got banned on three radio stations!" Brett: "It was played on three radio stations."] Discounting the hipster factor of liking to be in the chosen elite that Knows, there's something really delightful about small, intimate gigs where the lead singer has to "excuse me" his way through the audience to get to the stage, where you can sit or stand an arm's-length from the stage without getting crushed, where the band can make jokes as if to a group of friends without it seeming ridiculous. I saw the Handsome Family at Greenbelt years ago, and they were wonderful, but the venue wasn't really suited to their style of music. It was much too large and open, and even at the time [not being all that familiar with them] I could tell that the Handsome Family needed a small space, somewhere dark and maybe a little old and worn, with a worn-down wooden floor and inexplicable decorations on the walls.)

ITEM: Dublin on a Shoestring has come back from the printers and will soon be available in a bookshop near you! (...if you live in Ireland, that is. If you don't, but you'd like a copy, drop me a comment and I can get you one with a 25% discount -- you pay €7.50 rather than the usual RRP of €10! In fact, this offer is also available to Irish-based people.)

It's weird looking at the book, now, because I feel relatively little excitement. I had a squirmy oh-God-can't-look feeling when I first saw the sample copy, and then I steeled my nerves and flipped through it, and... it looked pretty much exactly like the proofs I'd carefully pored over a few weeks before. It hadn't undergone a magical transformation in the mean time. Which was a bit of a letdown! I'm not sure what I was expecting, exactly. Maybe that I would at least feel different about it... but it's all so familiar to me by now that my eyes sort of skate over it. Anyway, less than 50% of the text is mine -- the other portions being either written by my co-author or by other people delegated by him or by me, or else unchanged from previous editions. Maybe that contributes to it. Anyway anyway, I HAS A BOOK! WITH MY NAME ON IT! WOOHOO!

ITEM: Today is my last day at my crappy job that I hate! Sweet freedom beckons! Everyone in the office is very envious of me.

ITEM: I'm going to see Cirque du Cabaret tomorrow night, after vaguely meaning to for over a year!

ITEM: Life is good!

Hello there, LJ! And how are you doing? I'm doing fine, myself. Today I cleared out my room, got rid of two pairs of shoes that let in water and a pile of clothes that I don't wear any more, as well as a lot of random crap that I'd forgotten about and don't want any more. I still have a lot of random crap in my room, but I've made a good start. I cleared out enough storage space that the two boxes of old British comics that were sitting in the middle of floor have now been relocated onto shelves!

Of course, having cleared out a lot of old stuff, I naturally immediately went into town to buy some new stuff. It's the circle of stuff, don'tcha know. I bought some cheap & cheerful staple garments from Top Shop (ribbed vests and leggings), a pair of incredibly gorgeous shoes from Camper (YEAH BABY CAMPER SHOES! I have been craving Camper shoes for so long, my dear flist, you have no idea) that cost more than I have ever spent on any shoes ever (totally worth it, though), a necklace from A*Wear, a new bag (sturdy wine-red canvas, roomy enough to hold a good dozen or so paperback books, properly arranged), a second pair of shoes of which more later, and a pair of black-and-grey striped fisherman's trousers from Tambuli.

There was a dog at Tambuli, a little black-and-white mongrel bitch, who pattered round the counter at the sound of coins clinking in a wallet and open her mouth expectantly. "Put the money in her mouth," said the man behind the counter, and I did, and she pattered back behind the counter and delivered it to him, and he put the receipt into her mouth, and she pattered around the counter again and delivered it to me. If someone had described this to me, I wouldn't have believed them, but I saw it with my own eyes and it is absolutely true. The dog did this trick for the customers who were there before me, and then she did it again for me. It was quite possibly the most adorable thing ever.

The second pair of shoes were black high-heeled T-strap types. Me, wear heels? I KNOW. It is most uncharacteristic! But I am trying to get in touch with my inner femme. So, following the advice of Jem and the Holograms ("She wears what she wears with pride/It reflects how she feels inside!" -- wise words), I am trying out things like high-heeled shoes and depilation. I'm not going to start wearing make-up or anything -- hey, let's not go crazy! -- but the shoes, well, they were on sale (a mere €25!) and they were cute and the heels were broad enough that I thought they'd be relatively easy to walk in, for someone who's new to heels. I tried them out on a brief trip to the local Spar and back, and had to give in and go barefoot for the last 100 metres or so. (Fortunately the pavements round here are pretty clean.) But I think that was mostly because I'd been walking around all day so my feet were already tired. Anyway, I didn't wobble much, but I was pretty slow. But that's normal, right? I mean, nobody runs in heels, right?

Anyway anyway. I have a mere 4 days left in my job, and the sun has been shining, and I'm going to see the Handsome Family on Thursday and to Cirque du Cabaret on Saturday, and my parents are getting me a computer for my birthday (...a proper one, that is; not a teeny little EEE PC that works fine for travel but has shit-all processing power and/or memory), and there is lots of good fanfic for the new Star Trek movie, and I have lots of good books to read, and. Well. Life is good. Right now, for me, life is very good.

This morning on my way to work, I passed a busker singing "The Rare Auld Times", which made me think. When I was working on the Dublin guide, there was a section on "Dublin in books, films and music" which ended up being "Dublin in books and films" because I couldn't get the music section worked out to my satisfaction. I did some research for it, and it struck me that most of the songs about Dublin that I could find were nostalgic or elegaic, or sad in some other way. I couldn't find any Dublin songs that were cheerful. (But that might just have been me and my super-depressing taste in music. I blame my brother for hooking me on the Cure when I was all of 8 years old.)

So now I'm thinking about Dublin songs, and city songs in general. What songs are there about Dublin, or songs that even mention Dublin? "The Rare Auld Times", obvs, which is corny as hell and kinda vaguely racist[1] but it makes me go misty-eyed, perhaps because I learned it in primary school. And it's a sad song, any way you look at it; an old man, his wits scrambled by age and alcohol, his trade made obsolete by improved technology, the city that was his home transforming until it's unrecognisable. Then you have "Summer in Dublin" by Bagatelle, which is more cheerful ("and young people walking down Grafton Street/everyone looking so well"), but still sadly nostalgic, since it's about saying goodbye to a lover. "City Full of Ghosts" by Mike Scott is similar, but more celebratory; even though the thrust of the song is about the singer looking back at his life and being haunted by what once was, it's a cheerful kind of haunting without much regret in it, and along the way there's so much "yay Dublin!" that it doesn't feel like a sad song. ("Dublin is a city full of humour/Dublin is a city full of wit/Dublin is a city full of buskers/Playing old Waterboys hits" -- not as true as it used to be; now it's full of buskers playing "Cannonball" and "Falling Slowly".)

Hm, what else? "Running to Stand Still" refers to Ballymun, albeit obliquely ("I see seven towers but I only see one way out"). "How To Disappear Completely" name-drops the Liffey ("I go where I please/I walk through walls/I float down the Liffey"). Can't think of any more. Anyone else?

Then there's London songs... there are two that always come to my mind when I'm in London, and I've talked about them before: "Waterloo Sunset" by the Kinks and "Baker Street" by Gerry Rafferty. "Waterloo Sunset" is about how nice the city can be when you're not in a rush ("But I am so lazy/don't want to wander/I stay at home at night") while "Baker Street" is about the loneliness and stress of someone who's moved to the city from elsewhere and is desperately trying to "make it" ("This city desert makes you feel so cold/It's got so many people but it's got no soul/And it's taken you so long/To find out you were wrong/When you thought it held everything"). Blur have a bunch of songs relating to London one way or another; "London Loves", "Parklife" et cetera. I have a vague feeling that Suede sang about London as well, but I'm not sure they were explicit about it; I may just have been assuming that the urban landscapes in their songs were London landscapes.

Now, New York songs... "New York, New York" goes without saying and I'm sure there are lots of others but I'm drawing a blank on what they are. Bah.

Any other city songs you know?

[1] At least, this verse makes me go "huh?":

And I courted Peggy Duignan, as pretty as you please,
A rogue and a child of Mary, from the rebel Liberties.
I lost her to a student chap, with skin as black as coal.
When he took her off to Birmingham, he stole away my soul.

Because: apart from needing a word to rhyme with "soul", why does it matter that he was black? Is it somehow worse to lose your girlfriend to a black guy than a white guy?

Hey, Dublin folks! I'm leaving my job on the 5th of June, which is very good news because I don't like my job. To celebrate, I would like to go to Cirque du Cabaret at Vicar Street on the 6th of June. Anyone care to join me?

I had my second ballet class today, and now I am all floppy. But! I was able to do relevés without falling over, even without having my hand on the barre. So I am making progress, even if it's exhausting.

The timing is awkward; I finish work on Mondays at 15:30, and the class starts at 18:15, which means I have two and a half hours or so to kill -- and I really do mean "kill"; it's much too long to just sit in a cafe and read, but not long enough to go home and come back, or to go to the movies. I've ended up doing desultory browsing in nearby shops and lurking in the internet centre on Liffey Street.

This is one of those things that I was going to link to before, but then I thought "nah, everyone who reads my journal will already have seen it", but... maybe not? Anyway.

In response to the continuing cluelessness of white SF/F authors and fans with regard to issues of race, and in particular the continued astonishment that people who are not middle-class white Americans like sf and fantasy (and comics and RPGs and video games and... well, you get the picture), there has been a roll call. I quote:

"If you identify as a POC/nonwhite person and you read or watch scifi or fantasy, give yourself a name check in this thread... I'm tired of people trying to render us invisible unless they have been given a memo about our existences."

Last I checked, that post had 902 comments. If you haven't already, I urge you to read them; they're wonderful. (NB: if you're white, don't comment, even to say "omg this is so awesome!". That post is not for us.)

I bought ballet shoes today. No, really! Plain leather practice shoes, a pale beigey-pink with elastic rather than ribbon. I'm starting ballet classes on Monday, you see, and while the nice man from CoisCéim said I'd only need to wear gym-suitable clothes and "thick socks or indoor shoes", I believe in the importance of wearing the right kit in getting you into the right mindset. And, frankly, if you're going to do ballet lessons, why wouldn't you buy ballet shoes? I mean, when else are you going to have an excuse?

(I am so horribly out of practice. I was doing pliés and ronds de jambes today, just to prepare myself, and the strain in my calf muscles was so bad it was embarrassing. But this is why I'm taking the class: I want to get fitter, and to re-learn some of the movements I learned as a kid and have mostly forgotten through disuse.)

~~

In two completely different contexts today I have seen people criticising a novel they found unsatisfactory and then hastily saying "but of course I mustn't criticise the author for not having written a different book from the one she wrote, because that is Bad and Wrong". Of course, if somebody has written a spy thriller, it would be missing the point to complain that there aren't enough space battles, but I don't actually think it is always illegitimate to say of a novel "wow, this really would have been a better book if it had been completely different".

By which I mean: sometimes a novel is okay, not great but okay, and by reading between the lines of the novel that was actually written you can discern a potential novel, a novel that takes paths the author didn't take because that would have turned the novel she was writing into something other than what she originally intended to write; and sometimes the potential novel is very much better than the actual novel. Sometimes you get the feeling that the author could have written the potential novel, and chose not to, and that was the wrong choice.

I've said before (and I was probably echoing somebody else, whether consciously or not) that a critic has to consider three questions when assessing the merit of a book:
1) What is it trying to do?
2) Does it succeed at what it's trying to do?
3) Is what it's trying to do something that is worth the attempt?

I think that "the author should have written a completely different book"-type observations are answers to question 3 -- the answer being either "no, but if the author'd done things differently in this particular way, that would have been worth doing" or "yes, but this novel hints at the possibility of a different novel that would have been more worthy".

The thing is -- the thing is, you can be writing a perfectly solid genre spy thriller and then halfway through you're doing some research about oil wells in Venezuela and you come across some fascinating and enraging information about colonialism in Latin America, and it's seizing your imagination like nobody's business, and you end up shoehorning a lot of the information you find into the novel even though it's only marginally relevant, and the spy thriller plot starts looking a bit dull compared to all the stuff you've discovered about the Conquista and the indigenous South Americans and Bartolomé de las Casas and the Spanish-American War and the War on Drugs and so on and so forth; and you keep plugging away at it because you said you'd write a spy thriller and so your novel is going to bloody well be a spy thriller; and you do manage to fit in a brief scene where your hero lands in Chiapas and spends time among the EZLN, but the rest of the novel's set in Prague and London and Washington DC, so it sticks out a bit...

...and if that happens (or anything like it happens), the end result is a novel whose ostensible main purpose for existing (the spy thriller plot) was less interesting to the author than the tangential stuff she found along the way, and it shows. The Chiapas sequence is the best in the book. And the readers scratch their heads and say "but why did she bother with the Prague/London/Washington plot when the Latin America stuff is so much more interesting?" And it's not exactly that the Latin America stuff is inherently more interesting, but the author certainly thought it was, and conveyed that interest in her writing. And if this happens, I think the reader is perfectly justified in wondering why the author didn't just write the book about colonialism in Latin America that she clearly wanted to write, because in its current form, the author's interest in the subject is parasitic on the rest of the novel and is draining it of life.

And that's just one example of how the book the author didn't write can overshadow the reader's reactions to the book the author did write. Maybe the premise is inherently dodgy, but could have worked if it had been tweaked. Maybe the premise is good, but has implications that the author doesn't follow up on because that would have required [lots of research/a much longer book/more confidence in her plotting skills/the willingness to confront her own prejudices/a shift in genres]; an attentive reader might enjoy the book for what it is and still think longingly of the unwritten book that would have followed through on the premise. Et cetera.

I mean, all mockery of Anne Rice aside, I do think it's right, more often than not, for an author to say "you are interrogating this text from the wrong perspective; that is not the book I wrote, and I would thank you to consider the book I did actually write". But I don't think that makes the act of saying "you should have written a different book" inherently without merit.

Operation Go To The Theatre At Least Once A Month During 2009 goes well; towards the end of April I suddenly realised I hadn't been yet, and bought myself a ticket for ( Love & Money, reviewed herein; spoilers abound. )

I also went to see All My Sons on Tuesday at the Gate, starring Broadway legend Len Cariou and Dublin legend Barbara Brennan. It was a splendid bit of drama, though it took a while to get moving, and I blame Arthur Miller for that. Too much leisurely scene-setting in the first act. Once it got going, though, it was terrific.

I haz a Dreamwidth! There's nothing actually there at the moment (this is not the backup-to-this-LJ Dreamwidth, it's the fannish-content-from-now-on Dreamwidth), but great oaks, little acorns &c.

So, I'm thinking about Dreamwidth. I've been thinking about it for a while, as metafandom has become veritably clogged up with pro- and anti-Dreamwidth posts and posts about how to handle the transition, if you're planning on making one. And I am, though I'm having to think about what it's going to involve and how best to deal with it.

For some time now, I've felt vaguely dissatisfied with the fact that oodles of cool media-fannish stuff goes on on LJ and yet at least 50% of my flist is non-media-fannish. Now, I love my non-fannish LJ friends (in a safe, non-threatening, non-stalker-like way!), but the fact that I know ye are reading makes me feel a bit inhibited when it comes to posting fannish content here. I prefer doing fannish things in a thoroughly fannish environment, because that way there are more chances for productive interaction and I can make obscure jokes about the Gay Yenta Dragon and expect my audience to get them. So one thing I want to do with DW is use it as a specifically fannish journal space. This would be a brand new, completely blank-slate journal with links back to this journal but nothing more; all fannish content that I might otherwise have posted here would be posted there instead.

But another thing I was planning to do with DW was use it as a backup for this journal (this would be using a separate account from my New Fannish Journal), and that's more problematic, because DW's import tool imports comments as well as my content, and I didn't write all the comments on this journal. You did. And you might not want your comments mirrored elsewhere (though, note, mirroring is all that's going to be done; I'm not going to do anything to the comments once they're imported). And if you'd rather I didn't mirror your comments, it would be a dick move to do so over your objections. So: a poll.

If you would rather I didn't mirror your comments on a Dreamwidth mirror of this journal, please click the radio box below.

Poll #1395821 Dreamwidth importing of LJ comments
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

If Katherine mirrors her LJ on Dreamwidth, I would object to my comments being imported from LJ to Dreamwidth.

ETA: I should add that I have no objection to having my comments mirrored elsewhere than LJ and hereby give blanket permission to do so.

Things that are making me happy right now:
-pancakes for breakfast
-hearts in my cappuccino foam
-Devices and Desires by KJ Parker (it is OMG so good! gothwalk, I know I've pushed KJ Parker at you before to no avail, but seriously: this is the first in a trilogy about clockwork and politics and hunting and blacksmithing and men who are desperately in love with their wives and you would love it)
-knowing that I have only 24 working days left until my notice period runs out and I can leave the office never to return
-upcoming 4-day weekend!
-the fact that the global financial crisis has shifted the Overton window significantly to the left (yes, yes, I know the elites are just as entrenched as ever and the political parties of the left are, at least in Europe, so fragmented and compromised that they're in a bad position to capitalise on this, but the shift in public opinion is still good news)
-the upcoming Dublin Gay Theatre Festival
-the pile of free BL manga I got due to my reviews at Comics Village

and finally:
-Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds on CD, especially "The Spirit of Man". God bless Phil Lynnott. "To the altar of evil like lambs to the slaughter we're led! When the demons arrive, the survivors will envy the dead!" You tell 'em, Philo!

My good friend cartographer has started up modernwisdom, a little community for sharing the nuggets of wisdom one comes across in adult life that are strangely un-obvious and that people generally don't get taught in school or by our parents -- things from syleth's advice on doing things when working up the motivation to get out of bed is a struggle to cartographer's advice on avoiding red-eye in photographs. It's a great idea and I'd love to see it spreading. I've posted there myself a couple of times.

For the first time in ages I feel like I have space in my head. Dublin on a Shoestring is about to be sent to the printers, my conference paper has been written and delivered, I don't have any ongoing courses or major obligations.

If I were in a different mood, this might lead to a lot of Thinking About Where My Life Is Heading, but I actually feel good, so I'm doing as little of that as possible. Inch by inch over the years I've been adding to my marketable skills and my self-confidence, and while I'm not recession-proof by any means, there are enough things I can do that I don't feel a need to cling on to my current position. I have plans and dreams and schemes, which I'm not going to talk about here, and I don't know for sure if any of them are going to come to anything; but living with uncertainty is another thing I've got better at over the years.

For now, I'm just going to enjoy the fact that I have spare time at last, and read the fifth Scott Pilgrim book. Mmm, slacktastic.

( Details of the trip, in chunks. )

So, yeah. There was a conference. It was fantastic. I gave a paper at it. I was fantastic. I met lots of wonderful, intelligent people who are passionate about comics and have interesting ideas about how best to understand them and study them, I ate delicious food, I walked in pine woods on the shores of a lake under a clear blue sky and under a sky thickly sprinkled with stars. I also made paper at a hand papermill and told people about Comix Influx and watched 'Allo 'Allo with Swedish subtitles. (Swedish TV also had live audio coverage of the PirateBay trial, which I'm sure was very fascinating if you knew enough Swedish to understand it.)

I promise I will provide more details later but right now I'm physically and mentally very tired. Too tired to check my email or read my flist (which requires mental resources that at the present moment I just. don't. have).

HUGE thanks to gair for posting the CFP on her journal all those months ago, because otherwise I'd never have learned about this conference and would have missed a fucking brilliant experience. Huge thanks, too, to everyone who gave me your advice and support. There was a definite possibility of my backing out from sheer nervousness at several stages prior to my arrival, and your support helped me go through with it. LOUD CHEERS!

In case you hadn't seen my previous posts on the matter --

Tomorrow I am going to Växjö in Sweden to attend this conference where I will be presenting a paper on Friday morning under the title "Why "global manga" is an oxymoron". This is my first time presenting a paper, and I am a trifle nervous. Well, that's not quite it: I have moments of blinding terror followed by mostly-effective pep talks which create a sense of quiet confidence which doesn't preclude a slight case of the jitters. I am pretty sure it's going to be awesome, though.

I'll be back in Dublin on Sunday (have to spend the night in a hotel near Heathrow on Saturday because of inconvenient flight times). Until then I will probably be pretty quiet and may not have time to read the internet much, if at all. Wish me luck, folks! And thanks to all who have given me advice -- it was gratefully received.

Books with LGBT content (among others) are having their rankings removed from Amazon's database. In many cases, this makes it impossible to find these books using the "search" function. Their explanation? "In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature." The titles affected include children's books like Heather Has Two Mommies and literary classics like Giovanni's Room and The Well of Loneliness. Note that the most explicit reference to sex in The Well of Loneliness is the one sentence "And that night they were not divided."

There is an online petition, which I have signed. The comments at this post include many recommendations of alternative online bookstores.

In conclusion, FUCK YOU, AMAZON.

ETA: Smart Bitches, Trashy Books are trying their hand at a Googlebomb for the phrase "Amazon Rank".

ETA 2: gah, HTML screwups, sorry

ETA 3: I signed the petition a few minutes before making this post. I was signature #1,055. Five hours later, the petition is at over 5,000 signatures.

ETA 4 13/04/09 23:46: According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Amazon's spokesman says this has been "an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error" that is in the process of being fixed. I don't expect we'll get more details, at least not soon, and it may be too much to ask for an apology, but at least they're acknowledging the stupidity of the situation, and (more importantly) fixing it.

My paper is pretty much written now (the first draft, anyway), except for the conclusion. ARGH I HATE WRITING CONCLUSIONS. I am rubbish at it. The last paragraph of a story or a review is always the hardest.

I am seriously tempted to just write "In conclusion: cake mix." and improvise something about how General Mills tried to sell cake mix to the Japanese in the late 60s and failed miserably because even though they came up with a cake mix that could be baked in a rice cooker to make up for the lack of ovens in Japanese kitchens, nobody was very interested because ewww, cake crumbs in your rice cooker? That's just nasty.

...that isn't actually relevant to my main thesis, is it? Bother. Back to the drawing board.

EDIT:: Done! Woohoo! Now I'm going to forget about it for two days and revise it on Monday. Also, there will be slides.

So, I have watched all but one episodes of Merlin and people, people. I was not informed! People kept saying it was lolzy and homoerotic (it is both) and had cute youngsters in it (it does) and suddenly it was the New Shiny Thing that all the slash fandom writers were flocking to, which was my main reason for watching it, because I haven't had an active fandom for months. (I am leery of BBC Saturday teatime dramas ever since the catastrophe that was Robin Hood.) But it's actually rather good, and I don't remember anyone saying that! The plots make sense! The world-building is internally consistent! (...I'll get back to that one later.) The acting is mostly very good! (...and that one, too.) The visuals are incredibly pretty! There's a stern-but-loving mentor figure played by Richard Wilson and a dragon voiced by John Hurt!

And the subtext, MY GOD, the subtext. On the Xena Scale of subtextual homoeroticism which I just made up, Merlin/Arthur and Gwen/Morgana each score at least 8 Gabrielles. Maybe 8.5.

( Some more substantive and spoilery ramblings under the cut )

I need some Merlin icons -- Morgana/Gwen would be especially lovely. Recs, anyone?