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.

It has become traditional to do that thing where you mark the end of the year by running together the first sentence of your first post from every month, resulting in pleasingly surreal and surprisingly representative dadaist gibberish. Thusly:

I have to report quite the nicest new year wish I've had so far. Hello, February, who the hell let you in? Oo, er. Arrived safely in France. I love the bit where I tell a room full of anxious first-years that it's actually significantly difficult to get thrown out of the faculty, they're fine if they pass three courses in their first year. I was going to review Wolverine, honestly I was. Back at work, alas. Hooray, my dreams are back! Wheee! new words! Good grief, it's October. Gawsh. Oh, happy day!

Doing my mystic gypsy bit, I divine the following about 2009:

1. I still habitually start months with surprised exclamations.
   
2. France loomed large in the year.
   
3. I still enjoy the bit where I make students' lives better.
   
4. Other than that I hate my job.
   
5. Disappointing year for Hollywood popcorn movies. (Yes, I didn't like Star Trek either.)
   
6. Still get high on words.
   
7. For a year which really presented hitherto-unsuspected magnitudes of suck, I actually sound quite determinedly upbeat. That, or extremely sarcastic.

Today, in wanton retreat from all the orientation material I've been updating, I played Zelda in short, compensatory bursts in between packing up the booze cabinet so the Evil Landlord's sister could spirit it away. This necessitated rearranging (and incidentally New Year-cleaning) the kitchen to fit in all the cabinet contents, and thereafter constructing a map so the Evil Landlord could find it all again, although I admit it might have been more amusing to let him bumble around for ever before discovering that all the tall booze is now stashed in with the catfood.

The Zelda thing has re-started after a two-week hiatus after I had to call in stv as a consultant to get me through the horrible bit of the fire temple where I kept falling off the curving ramp trying to run it before the time limit, which he humiliated me utterly by doing first go, without touching the sides. In revenge I have subsequently kicked the butts of the bosses for both the fire and water temples, first go without touching the sides, and in the last one without even using up my healing potions. Currently hung up on trying to catch sufficiently large fish: got annoyed, watched more Supernatural, which (towards the end of Season 4) is extremely angsty and in which angels are bastards and Sam is being a dingbat. On the upside, meta episode is meta. In-episode slash references make me strangely happy.

I'm going to bed now, I seem to be babbling.

The Department of Non-Evil Evil strikes back! My Evil Landlord ambled amiably into my study on Saturday morning, announced "You won't let me buy you a computer so here's something else instead", and dumped a large, flat box in front of me. This, it transpired, contained a 32-inch flat-screen TV which is apparently mine, mine, mine and never leaving. The whole thing appears to be the result of the weird Germanic self-guilt-trip the EL seems to have embraced since that time the house was robbed because he'd wandered out without setting the alarm or locking the security gate. Both our computers were nicked; I replaced mine without too much hassle since I had the money at the time, and I also decline to point fingers at actions taken under the influence of the early-morning fog. (One time I accidentally joined the navy before my first cup of tea). But there has apparently been Brooding. Now there is transferred guilt on account of the ridiculously expensive nature of the gift, even a jointly-enjoyed gift. This, however, is mostly eclipsed by a large helping of girlish glee. I have ordered the DVD set of The Middleman in celebration. I have a sexy, sexy TV into which I shall crawl happily for the foreseeable future.

Now all we need is for Telkom to get off their butts and install our home ADSL. The absolute lack of home Internet for the last week and a half is making me extremely twitchy, particularly since a DNS glitch in the cardboard-and-string systems of my Cherished Institution wantonly deprived me of internet access for most of yesterday. Techno-jinx still prevailing, apparently. Damned cosmic wossnames. There is a small but real possibility that when the Telkom guys do actually arrive, their mutilated corpses will be tactfully buried in the garden just as soon as they've activated the line and I've ripped them limb from limb with vigour, aplomb and a cheesegrater. Also, internet withdrawal seems to give me backache. Well, phooey.

When I was eight years old I gave up biting my nails. I remember the occasion quite vividly: one day I looked down at my nibbled-at hands, thought "that's ugly, I should stop that", and did so. I haven't bitten them since. This suggests that, while in later life my willpower seems to be a small, mad, fluffy thing crouched on a rock in the depths of my subconscious, refusing to stir when prodded with sticks, technically it does exist and should be in there somewhere. Consequently, in a spirit of enquiry, a few days ago I randomly decided to give up saying "fuck", just to see if I could - while I have a just appreciation for its Anglo-Saxon bluntness, I lard my conversation with it far too heavily, and occasionally can't help using it in a professional context, upon which people look at me sideways. So far so good - I've involuntarily uttered it once in the last three days, and that while slightly sloshed. I shall watch my own progress with interest.

The weekend seems to have been a bit of a mad social whirl. We (jo&stv and Evil Landlord and I) took my mother out for lunch to Overture on Saturday, as a thank-you for her entirely saintly energies in looking after my dad. She is an Amazing Person, TM, and richly deserved Overture's view, good-humoured and attentive staff (the manager was hilarious), flowly-freeing wine, kick-butt pumpkin risotto, hake with mussels, and pork belly with pork rillette beignet, the latter pretentious-sounding concoction being a sort of pork stuffing in a thin deep-fried pastry baggie, and frankly delectable. She possibly didn't richly deserve the lunacy levels of the conversation, but hopefully it was at least entertaining.

The EL has also recently had the counter in the dining room flung out and replaced with a fitted version with room for the bar 'fridge, and in the course of unpacking the old cupboards and repacking the new we found no less than four bottles of champagne. This means we lugged two of them plus the Cointreau over to jo&stv's for potjie last night, and made French 75s (Cointreau, gin, champagne, lemon, hold the sugar, I like them dry). These are evil. In a good way. And get you very sloshed very quickly. Then again, it's been a hellish couple of weeks and I think I deserved to get slightly drunk and almost say "fuck" several times. But only almost!

Now, onward! to arrange internet connectivity for my dad at his new frail care institution, into which he moves on Friday. friendly_shrink's nice husband has, bless him, sorted out the Windows install problem on dad's computer by giving me a legal copy, and I am fiendishly scheming to persuade the Evil Landlord to let me install an ADSL line, so I can hijack the Iburst and haul it over there for Dad. Since this entails allowing Telkom over our threshold, I may be making a hell of a lot of creme caramel in the next few weeks. Will the Evil Landlord accept Telkom sweetened with creme caramel? News at 11!

You know, there might be a zeppelin in the garage and elephant catapults on the roof, and he still cannot master the complex topographical processes of loading the dishwasher, but I still have a damn fine Evil Landlord. Apart from his cheerful acceptance of lawful-good-tenants-in-law occupying the house for months at a time, the fact that he keeps the chocolate jar continuously filled and his uncomplaining situation of the internet connection in my study rather than his, he is also a Lesser Demon of Carpentry of notable unselfishness. I worked out the other day, of the approximately three hundred miles of fitted bookshelves he's installed in the house, at least 200 miles of them are for my benefit. Memo to self, must put my rent up again.

The new plan is to wildly build a 1m-extension onto the main bathroom so he can fit in a proper shower; when I jokingly suggested that he should do the same to my study (the extension, not the shower), he said "Good idea!" with some enthusiasm, and is proceeding to double the building costs by doing exactly that, recking not my guilty expostulations about not being serious. I am forced to conclude that, unless he's doing all this for a new, improved Seekrit Tenant he's planning on installing, he's probably not going to throw me out into the snow any time soon. On the downside, the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Army of Reconstruction is scheduled for the end of next month, producing the alarming side-effect that the EL will have to use my bathroom for the duration, and it's un-separated from my bedroom by any vestige of door.

His most recent project has been the construction of a new cabinet thingy to house the television, sound system and my ever-burgeoning DVD collection, which has seriously outgrown its bookshelf. The last few months have been notable for the EL vanishing into the garage at frequent intervals, therefrom to produce sound effects of sawing, sanding, hammering and faint thuds I think must be the result of bumping into things while high on varnish fumes. We moved the cabinet into the living room on Sunday, thereby completely reconfiguring the living room and making me very happy (I love rearranging furniture, it's like taking a holiday). It's a damned fine cabinet. Viz:



I draw your attention in particular to the four-panel cat portrait effect on top of the cabinet. This photo is important for short_mort to see, since she hasn't yet witnessed the fate of the beautiful cat-photos she sent me (two out of the four, the Ounce and Golux ones), and she needs cheering up.

In other, completely random news, "enjoyed a mild success in Purgatory" is my new, favourite catch phrase. Courtesy of Pajiba. Even more randomly, Purgatorial movie notwithstanding, isn't it nice to see Sidney's BF get some famelove? He's cute in a kinda goofy way.

We have new kitchen lights, lots of focused spots, which is good in the sense that I'm less likely to cut my fingers off while chopping onions in stygian gloom. On the other hand, we also now have an interesting foot-shaped hole in the living room ceiling, where the Evil Landlord, engaged in muffled installation noises, stepped on a beam that turned out not to be a beam. I was peaceably reading on the comfy new couch below at the time. The sudden appearance of a disembodied foot where no foot should be is strangely interesting, as are the attendant Germanic curses.

Busy packing for the flight tonight, having acquired new suitcase and wrestled with the Virgin Atlantic online check-in for slightly over an hour. The wretched thing will not let me change the seat booking it randomly allocated me in place of the one I actually requested. I'm going to have to fight with them when I arrive at the airport, I travel seldom enough that I get seriously petulant when denied a window seat. Currently the major problem facing me is which of the Bookshelf of Unread Reproach gets to travel with me. It's tricky, because I can't read properly on planes, my attention is always faintly distracted, so it needs to be something fluffy. In pursuit of this, and in defiance of all the BoUR resolutions, I have achieved a copy of the new JD Robb. This is a seriously flawed plan, I can whack through one of those in about two hours. Let's hope there's something good on TV.

Random Linkery, to close tabs before I bugger off: Superheroes. Of an alternative and rather poignant variety. Also, USA's economy as third-world analogue. It's all horrifyingly familiar.

In other news, Ounce has finally decided that the new couches are not actually going to swallow him whole and are, in defiance of paranoia, rather comfy. (The baleful glare says "The couch may not be killing and eating me, but don't think I don't know you're about to.")

Good grief. I just scored a completely random University Avenue parking disk. That is, I am now legally permitted to grab the closest possible parking to my office, behind the booms, requiring card access, and generally reserved for deanly gods, HoDs and those admin bods who cling with limpet-like tenacity to the highest possible rung on the ladder. I fall into none of these categories, and have for fifteen years grimly climbed six flights of stairs to reach my car. The Cosmic Wossnames are clearly setting out to compensate me for a job which I do well but reluctantly and which is currently turning me into a lizard.

The Dynamic Duo, viz. jo&stv, came round to visit at an advanced hour of last night, rescuing me from swearing at the TV (Roswell is being more than usually silly with more than usually ridiculous marital plots¹), to say happy birthday to the EL. He was, of course, out, being fed birthday dinners by his dear old silver-haired German mother (a very sweet and slightly scary lady). Disturbed by his absence, jo&stv proceeded to fill the temporary void by raiding his bedroom and constructing an unreasonable Evil Landlord fascimile, ( thusly. )

Oh, yes. That. The subject line is courtesy of Charles Stross, who is an Odd Man, TM.

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¹ Marital plots are always more or less ridiculous, especially when teenagers are involved. Honestly.

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.

So, indexing. Gawsh. Turns out indexing is a great, flubbery, tentacular, flailing brute of a process that has to be mastered, pinned to the mat with carefully alphabetised and sub-sectioned logical pins, and it grows and shrinks appendages even as you're wrestling it. I don't have the final page proofs yet, but I've spent the last weekend and quite a lot of the evenings of the last week inventing indexing terms, and I'm starting to dream in sub-entries. It's a surprisingly demanding and subtle art, as you end up having to assess quite stringently what you're actually doing at any point in the work - what the focus and nub of the argument is. It seems to be an organic, inter-related, intuitive sort of thing, which is pretty much how my mind works, so lucky there. Even so, I can't help feeling that passing by my study at the moment runs the risk of being startled by a giant tentacle suddenly crashing through the window, with me trapped and flailing at the end of it, like that bit with Will Smith in Men In Black. If this book turns out to be a cute alien baby who throws up on me, I'm going to be a bit miffed. Also, intrigued.

Not watching much Farscape at the moment, being as how me and the Evil Landlord are locked into some kind of stupid cold war in which neither of us will be the first to suggest it. He's ahead on points by virtue of the fact that he's spending his evenings sitting in the living room so I can't watch X-Files either. On the upside, lots of indexing. Also, I may be able to grab him with a flailing tentacle next time he wanders past my study and beat his bloody uncommunicative head against the wall.

Last Night I Dreamed: I'd just moved into a huge old Victorian house with my family, and had an amazing bedroom with attached library and door into the garden, plus enormous bathroom occupied by some sort of hob or brownie who nicked the soap. My sister was annoyed because I had the bigger room. There was also a lift going down to the basement, which contained a giant room knee-deep in water, hosting a knitting convention.

dreams, 16-19; floods, 21-22; house-moving, 16; invasion, 18, 19; knitting, 19; sibling rivalry, 17.
home, 16-19; anxiety about, 18-19; dream about, 16; flooding of, 19; space for books in, 17; invasion by fey, 18; invasion by knitters, 19; theft from, 18.

Today I finally found time to work through the sample edited chapter of my book the nice copy-editor sent me. She is on record as saying that it didn't need much editing, as I write very well (preens), but she's bloody well gone through the entire thing and changed "which" to "that" throughout. I am reconciled to the American spelling, although the word "marvelous" in the title is going to look extremely odd. I will even put up with her refusal to hyphenate sensible words such as "re-explorations" or "pre-eminent", and I positively approve of her tendency to swoop wholesale upon the egregiously unnecessary commas with which I am prone to sprinkle my writing, and to expunge them ruthlessly. But "which" is NOT incorrect in a relative clause. The desperate need to replace it with "that" is a popular grammatical urban myth which I deny, disbelieve and excoriate. It's nonsense. It's an incorrection. Language Log agrees, and they know everything. I shall fight this to the bitter end, in the teeth of editors and worse. *plants grammatical flag, glowers threateningly*.

In the Department of My Evil Landlord Is Completely Insane (In A Good Way), he has madly constructed a beautiful little piano stool, only to inform me that it's the mock-up and "not very well made". The real one will be made in cherry wood, presumably to some exactingly Germanic standard of perfection. (This has not prevented me from seating myself upon the mock-up for an hour and playing Beethoven. Badly). He has also made something of an epic record for belated birthday goodness in presenting me with the first six volumes of Girl Genius, which are by some bizarre happenstance apparently available on Take2. I mean, overkill much? There's generosity, and then there's wow, insane. I am a very, very happy pseudo-Victorian spark-fancier. A favourite web comic is somehow different, and much realer, in hard copy.

And, in the Department of Belated Linkery, I promised various people last night to link to Passive-Aggressive Appetizers. Courtesy of the Whatever. These are amusingly evil-minded.

Now off to brief my next year's cohort of orientation leaders, about to begin training. This will end at about 7pm, thus presenting me with a perfect 12-hour day. Phooey.