This week I have faced the following potential melt-downs, not including my own elevated angst levels:

1. A student who will not accept the transfer credits I've awarded her; after a FOURTH round of arguments with me, she's taken it to the Dean. (Who will refer it straight back to me for comment, but that's another couple of hours of double-checking and justification).
   
2. A company sponsoring a student who has had several discussions with me about the student's curriculum and best interests, and then used a broad misinterpretation of the info I gave them to turn around and slap the poor sod with disciplinary action for misinformation.
   
3. An annoyed parent-of-student once more on my case threatening to get angry on me because the admin process I warned him would grind out the answer he needs sometime in early December, still hasn't ground it out. (Yes, it's still November).
   
4. The need to order exactly the right distribution of T-shirt sizes for my orientation leaders, now, immediately, despite the fact that I can only select the actual OLs in December when results are out. Apparently I'm supposed to count up all the sizes and then proportionally reduce the order to get to the correct number. I shudder to think of the chaos this is going to cause. OLs get extremely plaintive if you put them into the wrong-sized T-shirt.
   
5. Ongoing and completely unnecessary venue conflicts created by an administrator in another faculty getting the wrong end of the stick, repeatedly and hard, after not actually reading any of my emails properly.
   
6. Three students in crisis and tears because the Summer Term has at the last minute cancelled the courses they need to do to graduate. One of these is partially my fault, I missed a point when counting her courses early in the term, and she withdrew from a course she actually needed. Other than feeling futile remorse there is not a bloody thing I can do about this.
   

Under these circumstances the only possible response is to contemplate the lot of those more unhappy than I am, namely Not Always Right. This made me laugh until I choked. Tech support humour ftw.

Heigh, ho. Yet-another-unsuccessful-lectureship-application last week has induced the usual despair and angst, leading to a vale of tears and self-loathing, a retreat into Supernatural and sewing, and really boring blog posts, for which I apologise. In an effort both at distraction and actual interest, have some Monday morning linkery.

• Completely incredible Bioshock cosplay, photographed at an aquarium. Now I want to play Bioshock again. Memo to self, make Evil Landlord buy the sequel when it comes out, possibly by repeat application of creme caramel.
  
  
• We don't often get to hear about this side of the abortion/adoption debate. Reading this is making me slightly ashamed of even thinking casually about adoption as an issue; it's also engendering the usual feminist rage about patriarchal control of female reproduction and the incredible powerlessness of so many women in this situation. Also, now I like Juno a lot less.

In other, less depressing news, Hobbit has a new trick, viz. lurking under the giant leaves of the delicious monster on the edge of the patio, and ambushing your ankles as you walk past. Fortunately he still hasn't got the hang of this strange "skirt" concept, and tends to suddenly veer off and look embarrassed at the last minute instead of actually connecting with my ankles.

Also, halfway through Season 2 of Supernatural, and am I imagining it, or is the writing suddenly on an upswing? I'm a bit over-emotional at the moment anyway, but "Houses of the Holy", "Born Under a Bad Sign", "Roadkill" and "Heart" were a series of gut-punches which did wonderful things with the emotional arc of the season, and also didn't go quite where narrative cliché dictated they should. ("Tall Tales" was also bloody good fun, and the slow-dancing alien made me laugh a great deal). Also, this show works as a Necessary Perspective Vortex: no matter how annoying my life is, at least I don't have to deal with demon possession, a life based on credit card fraud and running from the police, and the ongoing possibility of having to kill someone I love.

Right, own up. Who's got my Buffy Season 4^H^H^H 7? and, more importantly, what's the deep-seated human foible which leads me to believe, every single time I lend something out, that of course I'll remember who borrowed it and therefore won't have to write it down? Because I never do remember. Never. Because my memory transcends all metaphors of fluff and swiss cheese and goldfish to wander, vaguely and hopelessly, around whole new elevated planes of confusion, absence and loss.

Further to the above: also missing copies of Twin Peaks, Iron Council, several Bujolds and a bunch of other things which, naturally, I can't remember but which are causing suspicious gaps in my shelves. Please interrogate your stashes severely and report back posthaste.

Edited to add: further dispatches from the Elevated Plane of Confusion and Doubt: no, wait, not Buffy Season 4, I actually still have that (which means you can collect it this evening, w-n); it's Season 7 I'm missing. Also Doctor Who season 3. Also, my brain.

Today's amusing billboard: LEE-ANN SNOGS A BOYTJIE!! I don't know who the hell Lee-Ann is, but I'm very amused by the language choice of the headline. For a start, "snog" is unabashed Brit slang while "boytjie" is very much a South-Africanism; the wide lexical range creates a sort of airy, unresolved bounce between contexts. The use of the diminutive (often an endearment) is playful, denoting an affectionate intimacy with Lee-Ann, but it also diminishes the significance of the partner, clearly a negligible quantity, to allow the focus to remain firmly on Lee-Ann herself (whoever the hell she is). More than this, the language (and multiple exclamation points) contributes to the mere fact of the billboard to suggest, on the "man bites dog" principle, that it's somehow outrageous for Lee-Ann (whoever the hell she is) to snog a boy: I was left with a vague suspicion that she's actually a lesbian. Alternatively, the "boytjie" bit could also imply that she's an older woman shamelessly grabbing a much younger man.

A quick google, of course, absolutely deflates this lovely tension and implication: Lee-Ann is presumably Lee-Ann Liebenberg, a fairly minor South African model/celebrity, and she's found a new boyfriend indecently quickly after a break-up. This is one of those stories where the subject matter is infinitely less interesting than the linguistic play in its headline. Sigh.

In other news, have found the solution to Supernatural freaking me the hell out. Knitting. Another twelve rows on the Ravenclaw scarf while flinching away from ghosts, demons and hellhounds. Still a Sam girl, but Dean is growing on me.

So, I have the oddest friends within a considerable radius of this bit of the galactic spiral arm. At least, this is currently my best explanation for it. I got back from Muizenberg at about 11pm last night, having had supper with The Nicest Ex-Supervisor In The World, to find a small, lovingly-bubble-rapped parcel sitting just inside the front gate, tucked up against the wall. Upon cautious investigation (because I've been watching waaaaay too much Supernatural and in my slightly exhausted state was vaguely expecting a dripping packet of occultly-significant organs) I discovered the following:



I do have a known wol fixation, so presumably this is for me, although this could always be an unduly narcissistic assumption. My best theories: either (a) someone came past late last night, saw by his darkened study that the Evil Landlord had given up on Dragon Age (which was generating an above-average level of swearing last time I looked) and gone to bed, and my car wasn't there, and simply left the parcel; or (b)someone classifies this as a "non-functional owl" and, knowing my known proclivities, was too afraid to give it to me face-to-face. Of course there's always (c), which is not actually incompatible with either of the above: someone's trying to mess with my head. In which case this is an Owl with a Purpose and is thus entirely functional, silly.

Either way, thank you, whoever. It's a cute owl, and the solid, slightly pearly glass makes him pick up the light and glow slightly. Alternatively, if undue narcissism prevails and in fact it's your owl that you accidentally left there for good and sufficient reason which fails to leap immediately to mind, my apologies, and you know where to find him.

Following a vague recommendation from someone-or-other, I completely forget who, I've spent chunks of the last few weeks scientifically investigating the works of Tamora Pierce. Pierce is a writer of young adult fantasy, and I was interested in her because she does some quite deliberate things with feminist themes and strong women negotiating medieval, male-dominated societies. It's been a slightly ambivalent reading experience. She's easy to read, and I find myself mentally classing her stories with the Anne McCaffrey Dragonsinger ones in terms of their tendency towards wish-fulfilment and cute-creature-hugging; I also worry a little about a potentially slightly facile feminism. Nonetheless I'm left overall with a strong sense that her Tortall series is a worthwhile project that does something necessary in terms of role models for teenage girls.

The first Tortall series follows Alanna, who wants to train as a knight but has to disguise herself as a boy to do so. The disguised-as-a-boy bit is not treated realistically at all: young Alan should have been discovered posthaste and probably raped. But the urgency of the girl's need to fulfil a role not prescribed for her by her society is very apparent, and you end up rooting for her throughout. It's clearly an early work; the book's writing is a bit halting at times (she definitely gets better over time) and the magic/fighting combination is a little too idealised. The subsequent series which focuses on Keladry, the first girl to actually train openly as a knight, is stronger, more straightforwardly mundane and far more realistic as well as better written.

Good Things: solid detail in fighting, war, tactics (I am so an SCA geek); training is hard work, particularly for girls trying to overcome the strength deficit compared to boys. Prejudice against girls fighting. Page hazing rituals. Social awareness: the feudal system's privilege is neatly deconstructed in Keladry's story. Good teaching. Realistic teen romance! ye gods, how rare is it for teens in y.a. books to (a) play around with sex (b) sensibly (c) in a valid emotional context and (d) with a shifting series of partners, crushes and relationships. Death to the One Troo Love! JK Rowling's bloody saccharine Epilogue, take that!
Bad Things: clunky writing at times, narrative hiccups, falters and rushes. Slightly Shakespearian gender-swapping unrealisms. Too much cutesy power, too many cutesy people, not quite enough grey between heroes and villains. Bloody magically-enhanced animal deus ex machinas, although I can completely see these appealing to the teen girl demographic.

In completely another area of the young-girl-protagonist spectrum, Cathrynne M. Valente has posted the final chapter of her wonderful fairy tale, the one with September and the leopard and the wyverary A-through-L. And the soap golem. Baumish. Nesbitesque. Thurberoid. Other good things, including unexpected and off-beat and occasionally very cruel. Definitely well worth a read, particularly now that the whole thing's up.

My Masters student, who has a pleasingly demented streak which has not in any way prevented her submitting a slightly kick-butt dissertation on women in fairy tale (Basile, Perrault and Disney, my work here is done), just popped into my office in order to leave me the following offering:



You add water and it turns into a prince. Apparently. (If you have the duck version, apparently it turns into a princess. The logic here escapes me, although I'm somewhat charmed by the idea of "The Frog Duck to Prince Princess" advertised on the label).

My annoying day full of meetings and annoyance just improved immeasurably. Am off, chortling, to turn frogs into princes and (apparently) watch it grow 600%. For some reason I find this slightly dodgy. In other news, apparently I'm five.

... with, in fact, a looking-type gaze. Wols plus bonus Goon Show! Never say I don't spoil you. (Wol courtesy of Zooborns, who are ridiculously cute as well as being rabidly eco-minded).

Memo to self: post more random wols.

So, it's been bucketing with rain for two days. This makes me happy. Except, that is, when I dash through the storm chortling in glee, fling myself into the car, wipe down enough interior windows that I can see through the condensation sufficiently to drive, start her up and take off, only to have about three litres of water cascade gently through from under the dashboard, piling up in the centre console and, with a mathematical accuracy I somewhat resent, inside my left boot. I have no idea where it's coming from. Probably from the ventilation grille for the fan, which has always leaked a little bit but never like this - I'm not sure if a new hole has opened up in the space-time continuum, or if the rain was at exactly the right angle to catch the pre-existing small hole. I shall have to Take Steps. In future, I shall park the car in the inverse position. Wheels in the air.

We had Random Themed Movie Club on Friday night, watching "time travel movies" chosen by stv. The Jacket started out all harrowing and ended up all soppy; Primer was almost, but not quite, completely incomprehensible from beginning to end, and made us realise that that XKCD strip could actually be perfectly accurate. That being said, I nonetheless thoroughly enjoyed both of them; Jacket for its snowscapes, small girl child and Adrien Brody, who does vulnerable/haunted rather endearingly, and Primer for its beautiful naturalism and geek-speak observed in its natural habitat - not to mention the unusual experience of watching a film that's clearly considerably more intelligent than I am rather than, as is more common in the average Hollywood dreck, considerably less. The two movies were also a fascinating comparison: the absolute simplicity of time-travel as a plot in one, versus the absolute mind-bending complexity in the other. I feel much more lateral now.

Memo to self: it's possibly counter-productive to watch Supernatural at night when I'm alone in the house (the Evil Landlord being off at Here Be Dragons), as at a generous estimate I only see about 70% of any one episode, owing to being too scared to look at the screen. The creepy build-up music does it for me every time. This is also causing me to remember that in fact I only used to be able to watch X-Files, back in the day when it was on TV, by dint of importing bumpycat to come and hold my hand every Friday night. I am an enormous wuss. Next plan: watch Supernatural from the other side of the room while filing bills.

On the upside, Sam is cute. On the further upside, Cape Town weather continues bizarre - it's bucketing with rain, and there are branches down all over the garden from the high winds. I am a happy bunny, albeit a quivering, wild-eyed happy bunny convinced there's something under my bed. The main problem is that there often is something under my bed, on account of how Golux likes to go and fossick around in there, among the boxes of role-playing dreck and the small, feral herds of straying boots, making interesting bumping noises in the night. It's probably all good for the moral fibre, if tending to make the nervous fibre a bit twangy.