Yesterday was suicide hot. Ungodly hot. Possibly apocalypse hot. Hell may have opened, briefly. The English cricket team folded completely against South Africa, it was that bad (SA innings 312/2. Gawsh). Today is better, cloudy and slightly cooler. It's also the Evil Landlord's birthday, so anyone who knows him, please do the usual email thingy! it's his big 40 and he's trying to pretend it isn't happening. To which I say, bollocks.

Yesterday's heat also means I retreated cravenly into the arms of the air-conditioned cinema as soon as I finished work. It's a bit difficult for me to review 500 Days of Summer because I think the Pajiba review nailed it so cleverly, but hey, it's that or actually get on with reviewing excluded student transcripts, which is uniformly depressing. 500 Days, despite being a cute, quirky movie about falling in love, watched by me, single for the last 8 years, all on my own in the cinema¹, surprisingly wasn't.( I don't think you can actually spoil this film, but have a cut anyway. )

This has been a good decade for indie whimsicality. Shall add this one to Eternal Sunshine, Waitress and the rest on the Must Acquire list. The one Pajiba identifies as "whimsyquirkalicious", and about my fondness for the movies on which I am completely unashamed.

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¹ This is a rhetorical whinge, I actually love watching movies on my own.

Things I Learned At My 40th Birthday Party:

1. The properties of thixotropic fluids. A sudden, entirely spontaneous demonstration of fluid dynamics in non-Newtonian fluids was perpetrated by smoczek, aided and abetted by various engineer types, who generated small pots full of a cornstarch/water solution and exhorted the unsuspecting to prod them, slowly and fast. That stuff is weird, having a sort of optional viscosity which solidifies, or not, depending on the kind of force exerted. Strangely magical, actually.
2. All geeks, of whatever variety, can instantly name their favourite space probe when asked. This is a bit like the Zoobiscuit Test: a category of questions which, while bizarrely pointless, generate instant compliance when put, because the interlocuter clearly agrees that they're important. I didn't at first think that I fell into this particular geek category, but in fact mine is Cassini-Huygens, probably on account of my obsession with Saturn. (Its moons get in my eyes. Also, rings).

I am happily surrounded by geeks, who are excellent company and know me well enough to give excellent birthday presents. The house is full of booze, flowers, chocolate, books and cooking paraphernalia, and there is surprisingly little cornstarch solution tramped into the carpets. It was a lovely party, thank you all.

(The subject line, incidentally, appropos of absolutely nothing except that my mp3 player presented me randomly with the Magnetic Fields's "Wi' Nae Wee Bairn Ye'll Me Beget" as I was travelling back from visiting my dad this morning, causing me to laugh a great deal. It's a sort of evil-minded parody of Robert Burns meets the Childe Ballads, the young lady protecting her virginity via a fairly classic shape-changing competition, with the usual Magnetic Fields demented twist. The verse which made me nearly drive into a tree (again!) went: "I'll turn into a vampire and kiss you on the neck / Well I'll turn into a siller cross and send thee back to Heck..." Hee. Parodic bowlderisation of vampire references in the service of the rhyme scheme ftw.)

Because I have to: courtesy of grumpyolddog, "Hey There Cthulhu", a particularly iconoclastic filk which renders a slightly saccharine song pleasingly demented.


Several peoples have asked me what I want for my birthday. I'm personally totally terrible with gifts for other people, it's completely random whether I find something for you or not, so I truly don't mind if you turn up just with you, booze and the desire to party, it's karmically inevitable. But in case you're in the mad present-giving mood and want some hints, here's the Usual List:

• Books, DVDs, cds, graphic novels always good. I have slightly random wishlists on both Amazon.uk and Loot.co.za, under my Real Name, TM. Anything on there is something I mean to acquire sometime. You probably want to ignore all the kids' books and music, they're there because I plan to get them for my niece. In the graphic novel arena I still only have the first Sandman volume, and am also pining vaguely after 1602 and pretty much anything Ultimate. Because they're so pretty.
• Cookbooks are always good, my sister's family + dad just gave me a couple of massive and lovely British winter cookbook tomes which have made me Very, Very Happy. I don't own any Jamie Oliver (stv, stop spitting) or Nigella Lawson. These are my Secret Sorrows.
• You absolutely, totally, cannot go wrong with either chocolate or flowers, love 'em both. Also vouchers, wine or exotic bath oil or bath pearls and other strange unguents.
• Functional owls. You know the drill. I love owls but hate bric-a-brac, so anything owl-inscribed that I can actually use gets my vote. (first_fallen, I'm not sure the loopy owl pen with the eyes that roll back actually counts).

Mostly, though, it'll just be lovely to see everyone.

This post does have a unified theme, btw. pumeza's birthday card to me was this (by Ursula Vernon, naturally):

Perfect birthday! wake up to bucketing rain and high winds, lie in bed enjoying it without having to dash off to work. When maxbarners arrives, tragically without smoczek because her work is being evil, hijack his plan to go out for a birthday breakfast and instead use him as an excuse to make waffles. With chocolate ice cream, because that's all that was in the house. Consume vast and unlikely quantities of same.

Read multitudinous birthday messages on Twitter and Facebook and email, being touched and surprised that so many people remembered. Realise that both Facebook and LJ send out reminders if you tell them your birthday, which I apparently did. Be touched and happy anyway.

Spend the afternoon in a warm kitchen with cats and tea and loud rock music, cooking enormous meals and chocolate cake for my favourite group of role-playing lunatics this evening. Why, yes, role-playing is my idea of a perfect way to spend a birthday evening. Why, yes, I am an enormous geek.

That Dreaded Age has apparently found me still firmly in the Cooking Huge Meals For Friends camp, to which I say, damn straight. It's also given me a bit of a warning about doddering dillyness, being as how I accidentally left my wallet on the counter in the liquor store this afternoon, necessitating one of those embarassing groping sessions at the Woolies checkout, immediately followed by fleeing the store without paying. On the upside, the Cosmic Wossnames dictate that I wasn't actually pickpocketed, and didn't drop the wretched thing in the street, and that the liquor store clerk returned it to me with the minimum of mockery, so I think we're ahead.

My subconscious seems to be firmly convinced that this is just another birthday and I'm really no more than a day older now than I was yesterday, so I seem refreshingly free of Milestone Angst. Thanks to everyone for wishes, will reply individually, eventually, but for now know that there's a Warm Glow that's not entirely about the Earl Grey. Also, looking forward to seeing a pleasing proportion of you on Saturday.

I do love extended birthdays. Celebrations for mine this year started yesterday, owing to smoczek having the brilliant idea of using my birthday as an excuse to go back to Overture, which the Salty Cracker Club loved. So I was hauled out there for a birthday lunch with smoczek and maxbarners and the Evil Landlord and the friendly_shrink and her Internet Romance, now Internet Husband, and fed royally. Also wined a lot. You can do the Overture meal with wine by the course, and they give you a large glass of wine with each dish, impeccably tuned to the food, and fill it up if you ask. (Jo asked. Naturally). They are also remarkably understanding if you turn down the aforementioned impeccably chosen pairing, as I did, on the grounds that you can't stand muscadel and would rather have port, which they cheerfully supply.

The food was wonderful. The food is always wonderful. The waiter's mastery of the lifted eyebrow when Jo ordered pork belly for dessert was commendable. The company was perfect. Probably the best part of it all, though, was the view.



and:



and Jo, hauntingly backlit:



Memo to self: take mother there while she's visiting. It's the perfect excuse.

One of these days I might actually get my ducks in a row¹, life-wise, and afford things like, oh, I dunno, a new car. Or at least a newish car. Or at least a car under 15 years old, and one which doesn't react to the increased mileage of my dad being in Hout Bay (my fuel costs have exactly doubled since he's been here) by breaking down cheerily every week or so. In the last few weeks I have had to take it in for a leaking oil pressure gauge, a passenger window cowering in the bottom of the door and refusing to come out, and a slow puncture resulting in a new tyre. Today: on the way to Hout Bay, reaching the traffic light on the freeway intersection with the Kirstenbosch road, a sudden leap in the temperature gauge to maximum, and a madly flashing oil light.

Since I'm paranoid in the extreme about these things, I promptly turned left and coasted down the handy hill to the handy garage, where I ascertained that both the oil and the water levels were fine and the fanbelt was whole and apparently functional. Theories: (a) a kink in the cooling system so the water's not circulating; (2) a buggered fan, or (3) paranoid delusions in the temperature warning wossnames. Oh, or (4), see subject line. The invisible Diana Wynne Jones ones.

Either way, I managed to resolve the crisis by hitting my insurance company for a tow (they were polite, pleasant and efficient, provided a tow truck within 25 minutes and phoned me back three times to make sure it had arrived, so go A&G, apparently the anti-Telkom) and hitting jo&stv for a lift home (they were completely coincidentally on their way back from Hout Bay at the time). All in all, as breakdown crises go it could have been a lot worse. I definitely have to get a new cellphone, though, five calls and two SMSes and the battery is well nigh flat, from full.

After several months of wild pendulum swings for and against, I've eventually decided to have a gosh-darned birthday party, on the grounds that one doesn't leap madly and involuntarily off the precipice of one's thirties every birthday, or in fact every decade. I've sent out a bunch of invitationary sort of emails for the 27th June: if you're reading this, are in Cape Town at the time and are miffed that you didn't get an invite, please feel free to send me a motivation in triplicate as to why you should. The most likely explaination is that I had a moment of complete mental aberration.

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¹ Am I strangely alone in that this expression always makes me imagine them forming ranks and goose-stepping? Yes? Thought so.

This is a public service announcement. Today is my Evil Landlord's birthday. Eschewing all pretence at being a Lawful Good Tenant, I am announcing this to the four winds of Teh Internets, wilfully disregarding his preference for sneaking this unGermanic birthday business in under the radar in the hopes that everyone will ignore it. It would make me strangely happy if as many people as possible would email or phone him with birthday greetings, which would (a) simultaneously annoy and amuse him, and (b) go some way towards assuaging my guilt at not having been able to think up a present for him. He's hell to buy for, and my inventiveness kinda dried up after the sizzling inspiration of the original Star Wars theatrical releases on DVD for Christmas. There should probably be a law against birthdays occurring too close to Christmas, it's wearing on the gift-provisionally-challenged. I'll wait for something to occur to me randomly at some later stage when he's least expecting it. Heh.

Life is a bowl of cherries this morning. Fresh cherries are reasonably cheap in the shops at the moment, and there's something curiously satisfying about cherries for breakfast. Although I have to restrain my impulse to spit the pips out of my third-floor window at passing students. Students have no business cluttering up campus at this time of year, they're probably writing supps or doing summer term courses, and are therefore academically dodgy and deserve aerial pip bombardment. Although the Dean probably wouldn't like it, so I merely think wistfully about it, instead. Lawful Good, that's me. Occasionally.

Edited to add: stvil has updated the Evil Landlord's blog, a sort of Baudrillardian simulacrum written by lots of people not including the Evil Landlord, with a fine and vintage display of Goon Show pseudo-German. Bring your own pickelhaube, and read at your peril.

librsa bought me The Dangerous Alphabet, which is by Neil Gaiman with illustrations by Gris Grimly. librsa's superhero powers are Confusing Fog of Non-Sequitur, and Perfectly Chosen Gifts. Dangerous Alphabet introduces itself thusly:

A piratical ghost story in thirteen ingenious but potentially disturbing rhyming couplets, originally conceived as a confection both to amuse and to entertain by Mr. Neil Gaiman, scrivener, and then doodled and elaborated upon, illustrated, and beaten soundly by Mr. Gris Grimley, etcher and illuminator, featuring two brave children, their diminutive but no less courageous gazelle, and a large number of extremely dangerous trolls, monsters, bugbears, creatures, and other such nastiness, many of which have perfectly disgusting eating habits and ought not, under any circumstances, to be encouraged.

I'm particularly fond of the "diminutive but no less courageous gazelle". It's bug-eyed and spindly.



Everybody needs a copy of The Dangerous Alphabet immediately. I'm just saying.

I am back at work today, hacking, snuffling and reeling slightly, but immeasurably better than The Great Flattened Horizontality that was last week. My day has also been pleasingly improved by the receipt of four SMSes, five Facebook messages and six e-mails in addition to a dangerous alphabet. Thank you, all you nice peoples.

My Evil Landlord ¹ is severely in the dogbox at the moment - not because I'm fulminating domestically against him (although I am led to believe that our exchanges about loading the dishwasher are worthy of an Old Married Couple) - but because he underwent a rare moment of unGermanic inefficiency over the weekend and missed his mother's birthday party. He was convinced it was on Saturday night when it was actually on Friday; various frantic relatives phoned all conceivable friends-of-Evil-Landlord² with increasing desperation as Friday night wore on, but no-one's cellphone ring was loud enough to overcome the ambient noise at the steak restaurant where we were doing our usual end-of-month payday restaurant celebration with jo&stv. His mother is apparently severely narked.

The problem I have - and I'm surveying this anthropologically, from the point of view of someone with deeply civilised parents who I think would resort to ridicule rather than guilt-trip if I screwed up thusly - is that her level of infuriation seems to indicate that he is in the particular dogbox reserved for Offspring Who Forget Parental Birthdays, with a side-order of Offspring Who Forget Important Family Gatherings. This seems unfair, since he clearly remembered it and planned to attend - in fact, he's guilty of no more than momentary mental aberration, disorganisation and planning snafu, which happens to all of us, be we never so German. I suspect the guilt-trip response is partly because they were seriously worried he'd had an accident or something, and swung to the relieved/annoyed pole when they finally made contact. Which is understandable, but still a tad unfair.

Then again, the victim is my Evil Landlord, who has Shrug And Ignore It down to a fine art.

I have to say: Nelson's Eye? Seriously good steak. They proudly trumpet their basic disinterest in such frou-frou as starters and side-dishes, which they provide in more or less token form, and which are in consequence seriously behind those of the Hussar, my usual steak-house benchmark. This is problematical while you're actually eating the starter, because Nelson's Eye's prices are ... pricey. One and a half times Hussar, on average. You feel gypped for the duration of the starter. Then you wade into the steak, and All Becomes Clear. Those prices? Totally valid.

Last Night I Dreamed: I was trying to knit socks. This was a sad, frantic experience during which I became bogged down in morasses of multiple double-pointed needles in hundreds of sizes, circular needles like coiled springs and art deco representations of Shub Niggurath, and rope-like, writhing yarn in nauseating pastels. I think my subconscious is seriously threatened by my current vague leaning towards trying to knit a woolly hat for my niece. It seems a valid use for a skein of purple wool, but if normal needles warp space-time, imagine what I could do with circulars.

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¹ Who finally gets his own tag. Words cannot describe how little this would mean to him, given his professed and vindictive ignorance of all things bloggity.

² If the EL had a blog, or thought about these things, he would presumably be apologising e'en now to all the people who had their Friday nights disturbed by frantic EL relatives, but he doesn't and doesn't, so this is about as good as it's going to get. I'm personally rather interested to see how far they threw the net.

I am happy to report that wolverine_nun and her husband are now rejoicing in the possession of Alexandra Stephanie, "weighing 2.7 kg and hale and hearty", according to her dad. This was a scheduled caesarian this afternoon. I am fulfilling my contracted duty of releasing this information to the world, or at least as much of it as reads my blog. Also, yay! congrats!