NEW LAPTOP

It's a Dell Studio XPS 16¹ and ahhhh, ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, it's so shiny and the screen is so big and the HD is so beefy and the RAM is so plentiful and it's loaded with Vista which makes me crazy but come the weekend I am installing the Windows 7 RC how can I wait what will I install first WHAT WILL I CALL IT OH GOD PLEASURE OVERLOAD


¹Trufax: for all the Apple "just works" schtick I hear, my flist sure does turn up an amazing amount of people freaking out because their Mac/iPod/etc. has broken for the N^th time. Dell laptops are freaking troopers, and I can now say from personal experience that you can literally use them until they fall apart - and then some. Also: customisation potential.

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)
  Jerome K. Jerome
  read by Hugh Laurie
  2 hours, 20 minutes

Go forth and download. It is my firm and full belief that listening to this makes it one hundred percent impossible to have a bad day.

Probably the most delightful thing imaginable: Hugh Laurie reading Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat.

Relatedly, I just this second was struck by the best idea ever to exist: a panfandom [Number] [Noun]s In a Boat AU ficathon.

Five Benders in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Flying Bison)
Three Cylons in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Baltar)
Two Winchesters in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Impala)
Ten Doctors in a Boat (It's Bigger on the Inside)

Brb, vapours.

EXCITING NEWS: I have just inherited my very first iPod (yes, I know. shut up), which I have named Archimedes (yes, I know. shut up).

Therefore: your audiobook recs, let you show me them! I am starting back at the museum tomorrow, and as an unpaid intern, one never knows what kind of repetitive menial tasks one might be assigned.

(If you wanted to rec me some music, too, that would be acceptable; sorting through my music collection is kind of a daunting prospect, especially since I am determined not to let myself be tethered to iTunes)

Just left the following note for my dad and sister:

This Is Just To Say

I have taken
the chicken
left over
from last night

and made
some dumplings and some
noodles
for dinner.

Forgive me
it would otherwise
have just
gone to waste.

— William Carlos Williams


...Yep.

ETA: Except apparently my dad is in the North today. Uh, okay! Thanks for telling me when you were going out, dad. >:O

I should probably go ahead and eat mine now, to make sure they are actually edible. They look kind of deformed charmingly home-made, but otherwise passable. HOWEVER, the kitchen and I have a very uneasy relationship, so I find it best to maintain a healthy suspicion of anything it allows me to produce in order to remain, uh... healthy.

Am pondering doing the love meme that is starting to pop up on ye olde f-list, since I've been feeling pretty crappy and isolated, and because it must be well over a year since I've done one. On the other hand, there's a reason it's been ages, and it's that - for a whole variety of reasons - love memes make me really, really anxious. Which, you know. Seems just a tad self-defeating.

HO-HUM. What else. Starting back at internship on Tuesday. Went shopping for new Intern Clothes; hated it. Treated myself to Public Enemies; quite liked it. Well, except for the whole handheld digital thing. That is not gritty and immediate, Michael Mann, that is just annoying and faintly headache-inducing, and you're not fooling anybody. I understand whyfor the mixed reviews; it definitely wasn't what I was expecting, but I still enjoyed it for its weird, uneven self. Probably won't pay full price for the dvd, but I will keep my eye on the bargain bins, and hope for some good special features. Though really, Billy Crudup's turn as Hoover might be worth the few euro all by itself.

Am potentially going to Riverdance on Friday, for sister's birthday, depending on whether or not she can persuade one of her friends to go with her. The cheese factor, it is high, but whatever - it's still a good show, and I've never been. I have nothing to wear, but my level of not-caring is pretty high, there.

ETA: Friend persuaded, alas.

Yeah, my life is pretty much boring as hell right now. It almost makes the endless, eyeball-curdling drudgery (interspersed with fits of organisational rage) of the cast list reboot seem appealing.



...No, wait.

Things that are good about today:

- Cake! I made cake! Cake that is not only edible, but, despite its rather crude appearance (thanks, lack of proper cake tins), is in fact rather delicious. Considering how prone I am to setting the kitchen/ingredients/myself on fire, this is a big deal for me.

- As always, Independence Day remains an explosive, ridonkulous, 90s-tastic orgy of all my favourite sci-fi actors. WELCOME TO EARTH.

Things that are not good about today:

- Our beater, non-electric, has contrived to loose all its grip padding, uh, stuff around... anywhere you might want to grip. When beating cake batter by hand, this is the kind of thing you tend to notice. As do your fingers. *bandages massive blisters, and makes note to upgrade*

- I have been awake for kind of a long time. Perhaps you can tell.

ETA: Also, watching Independence Day shortly after a viewing of Watchmen is... well. Let's just say it makes you want to keep an eye out for Pyramid Transnational logos in the background.

II.1

Phew.

ندا / Neda

(In Farsi: 'voice', or 'call'.)

I bear witness, because it is the only thing I can do.

Bar the one post, I haven't been spamming you about Iran. I should have been, but I haven't; outside of two or three people, the lack of noise about it on my flist (and my habit of putting my foot square in my mouth when speaking about things) led me to suspect that it would be ill-received. I've spent most of the past week on ontd_political's liveposts, on the various sites that are following this (HuffPo, The Daily Dish, iran.whyweprotest.net, etc.), and on Twitter, the primary point of contact between the Iranians on the ground - the students, the housewives, the marchers in the streets - and the outside world.

Earlier today, Ayatollah Khamenei made a speech at Friday prayers dismissing the protests as the work of international anti-Iranian elements wishing to destabilise the regime; he told the protesters that he, Ahmadinejad, and the rest of the government shall not be moved; he insinuated the beginning of a much severer crackdown on any further protests.

Another Sea of Green march is scheduled for this weekend.

A few minutes ago @ProtesterHelp, a US-based tweep who has been instrumental in communicating with reliable Iranian sources and privately relaying secure internet proxies, tweeted the following:

Mousavi's offices are trashed, Mousavi's staff in police custody, Mousavi is missing. #iranelection #gr88 #clarification

I am sitting here on the edge of my seat, queasy with horror, waiting for this to either be confirmed or debunked - or at the very least clarified.

Start getting angry.

ETA: In case anyone is wondering, at least one reliable tweep in Iran has said that Mousavi is fine, while @ProtesterHelp has had no certain information either way. So basically, we still don't know anything (although the trashed offices and arrested staff have been confirmed).

Okay, Dublin peeps, I know there are a few of you out there on my flist. If you have been keeping up with the events unfolding in Iran - the election fraud, the demonstrations, and the firestorm of violence - there is a protest planned: Thursday 18th June, 2pm-4pm, outside the Iranian embassy, 72 Mount Merrion Ave.

Please come if you can, and please get the word out regardless. Ireland is not as wired a country as we'd like to think we are, and every little helps. If you're not in Dublin, but know people who are - or have Dubliners on your flist, as friends on Facebook, Bebo, Myspace, Twitter, wherever - please let them know that this is happening.

And if you haven't been following what's going down in Iran? You should be.

From the Twitter of an Iranian medical student in Tehran:



( i am holding her little dress )

(This twitterer's username has been purposefully redacted. As the violence worsens, Iran is under a near-total communications blackout, and reports have come in that a number of 'dissident' twitterers in Iran have already been arrested.)

For more information - including a detailed timeline, dedicated liveblogging, mainstream coverage, photos, testimonies, and more - follow the wealth of links here.

And now, after staring at those tweets for the past half hour as I capped and cropped, I am feeling a little ill. I need to sleep - and I'm lucky that I can.

I'll see you tomorrow.

Oh mah gah, I have the worst hiccups ever.

D:

(I know, I know, I have been sadly absent etc. But take comfort in this, at least: yrs trly being in a holding pattern and waiting for certain providers of career-relevant internships to get back to me, a violent fit of the hiccups is in fact a terribly exciting event in the Life Of Sophie right now. Plz help, moderately oxygen-deprived.)

Why hello there, sleeping for twelve hours. I missed you too.

Prop 8 upheld, but 18k same-sex marriages stand. Bed now.

EXAMS OVER; BEYOND CARING; BRB GOING TO STAR TREK AGAIN.

djfgsgjkf it is only just past 10am, and I hate today. Once AGAIN (how many times in a row is this? way too many), I spent most of the night doing the thing where you drop off, then wake up going, "OH GOD, I'VE OVERSLEPT, WHAT TIME IS IT - oh, it's only been twenty minutes." And then the panic takes about ten or fifteen minutes to wear off until you can drop off again. And then wake up again. And then I actually did oversleep.

And then there was NO NOTICE on my local bus stop informing me of a change in route, so in my exhausted haze I stumbled onto my usual bus, completely failing to hear the driver's monotonous, been-saying-this-for-hours announcement that said bus was only going to [stop halfway to my destination]. And THEN when I got off, I didn't have change to hop on the next three buses that instantly whizzed past, so I had to go and get money out of an ATM and buy caffeine just so I could get INTO the library a little over an hour after I'd meant to be there, in order to waste more time wandering around trying to find an available desk with a power socket and to locate the books I need.

(Though perhaps the universe was feeling a smidge guilty, because I did, in fact, manage to locate all the books I need.)

Anyway, the reason I am not really around recently and not really updating is that... this is pretty much my life right now.

Brb failing my exams.

Watching White House Correspondents' Dinner; best part is Obama laughing at his own jokes. Doooooork.

Fact: rumours have been circulating in re. Eircom (my ISP) caving to music biz vis a vis blocking access to filesharing sites & instituting 3-strikes system.

Fact: this morning, was unable to download Bones from either Megaupload or Sendspace (download dialog popped up, 'started' download but did not actually... start); had to watch streaming online.

Fact: have checked all wiring, yet as of hour-ish ago, router no longer receiving wireless signal.

Fact: ummmmmm. :|

Pirating next door's wireless before darting back to study. If I don't return, avenge my internet's death.

Subheading on handout on linguistic relativity/determinism:

2. Bruno Snell and the case of Homer's missing body

Hee hee hee. I love my Anthropology & the Greeks professor.

Okay, body, look. You know what my problem is here? It's not the bad eyesight, or the hearing aids, or the orthopaedic insoles for my shoes (not that I actually wear them, oops), or the bad knees, or the freaky bout of intense arthritis that one time, or the fact that I am plagued by sneaky grey hairs. I can deal. I wouldn't mind, even, were it not for one thing.

My problem? The fact that even though I am evidently an old woman at the age of 22, I still have to deal with shark week once a month.

That is just uncool.

So take Beowulf, add a dash of Transformers and a sprinkle of Braveheart and throw them all in a blender with Predator. That's Outlander. It's basically a riff on the Norse epic, where Grendel is a wild ball of claw-y, tentacle-y vicious alien death that has crash-landed in 8th century Norway, Beowulf is the revenge-obsessed space marine (played by Jesus) on its trail, and Hrothgar is John Hurt.

And it's a bit like Snakes on a Plane, too: you either go 'what, no, get the fuck away from me', or you go 'LOL AWESOME'.

As of yesterday evening, you may count me firmly in the latter category.

LOL AWESOME.