holy roller novocaine.

locked. sometimes locked. i don't even know anymore.

Come and go as takes your fancy. Lurkers welcome. No drama here!

Use this post as you see fit.

I am on twitter now, for no reason that I can discern. Who should I be following, like?

I've been out of the loop and got way behind on flist for a few days, first from being crazy busy with conference stuff, then from partying/sleeping all weekend.

Conference was generally good, interesting, intense, political, exhausting, other such things. I found giving my paper completely traumatic and don't really feel that good about it at all, so whatever, I am forgetting about it and moving on!

I've never seen Torchwood before, but on Saturday, lying in bed and kind of hungover, I decided to watch all five hours of 'Children of Earth' on iplayer.

( torchwood. spoilers. )

Half tempted to go and watch earlier episodes now, even though I gather they were mostly pretty bad. Only half tempted. Resisting so far.

This entry was originally posted at http://mojo.dreamwidth.org/2624.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Giving conference paper on Thursday but will be busy with other conference stuff all week, still haven't finished it, REALLY QUITE TERRIFIED NOW.

Plus, my short afternoon break to watch the men's Wimbledon final turned out to be a four and a half hour epic watching the longest men's singles final ever in terms of games played. FUCK.

Also, I have deep and abiding love for Federer being as how he is awesome and also quite the dandy, but Andy Roddick totally made me cry at the end. Oh, tennis men!

God, I've just discovered a few hundred words of Terribly Serious Top Gear fic I started writing back during the height of TG obsession. Now I sort of feel compelled to finish it, even though writing earnest Top Gear RPS would clearly be something of a low point in my life. Dilemma.

The new series of TG, by the way? I am loving it in completely unironic ways. I'm definitely over the worst of TG fannishness (I haven't even read Richard Hammond's second memoir, yet. Though I do own it.) but it still keeps pulling me back. Stephen Fry was on this week, which was extra special. And I found the challenge completely hilarious. I just can't help myself. For shame.

I should be in the library all day but I've stayed home to watch tennis; despite this, I am finishing the first draft of my conference paper today if it kills me. YES.

I also may have to go the doctor because I still can't hear out of my left ear, and it really kind of hurts as well. Probably not a good sign?

I've started watching Dollhouse, and having just seen episode six, I'm sort of hooked. While being, you know, incredulous and disturbed. It seems to be critiquing something that it's totally fetishising at the same time. I'm so conflicted.

Not to state the obvious, but I am so, so unspeakably depressed that we've elected two members of the BNP to go and represent us in Europe. That's just. Yeah. Awesome. I hope all the people who didn't go vote in those areas because of their political disillusionment or whatever are pleased with themselves. You know what, if you feel like voting is just a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils? That's sad and everything, but always vote for the lesser of two evils! You know why? It's less evil!

Kings of Leon have lately turned me into an unbearable hipper-than-thou I prefer their earlier work kind of person. And I know exactly how annoying this kind of person is, but I can't help myself. KoL have always been pretty big in the UK, but these days I can't turn a street corner without hearing Sex on Fire blasting out of someone's car or house. And just, like... move on from Sex on Fire, okay, kids?! Or rather, move backwards. Yes, SOF is an audio delight, and I know KoL are very appealing now they're a vaguely alternative boyband, but back when they were sleazy southern rockers they were pretty fucking good, too.

(My neighbour plays Only by the Night about a hundred times a day at full volume, and it's beginning to disrupt my mental stability.)

This is by way of saying that their new single is going to be Notion and they put the video up yesterday, and even though I think Notion is kind of a really dull song, new KoL videos thrill me. Caleb/Wall OTP.

Kings Of Leon - Notion


(It lacks Caleb writhing around on a bed and being physically held down by Nathan and Jared, so is not as good as the sex on fire video, obviously.)

Stuff going on in mojoworld at the moment includes:

in a month-ish I am giving a paper at a conference, which I haven't written yet, and so I'm basically going to spend the next month in a state of ever-escalating anxiety. It's going to be my first conference paper, and it has the safety of being a conference held at the university of excessive acronyms, but the terror of being an international conference full of impressive people who will be mean to me.

my students sat their exam this afternoon and I have to submit all the marks by Friday, and it doesn't look like I'm actually going to make it on to campus to pick up the scripts until tomorrow, so this week I will mostly be marking those and not writing the aforementioned conference paper, which gives me more anxiety. I also have general ongoing marking anxiety because, I don't know, I just don't really feel qualified for the whole process, and I really wish they would double-mark everything, but they don't for first years, so, whatever, but. I fret.

I wasted the whole weekend with a friend visiting, driving around the Norfolk coast drinking wine and listening to Van Morrison. But I feel pretty good about that.

sun! :D

I finally got around to watching season three of Friday Night Lights and I loved it so much I've been going round telling anyone who will listen that FNL is as good and important as The Wire, just in a sort of completely different way. So far people have ignored me, but I will persevere.

( Some random things about it that I loved, with spoilers )

Tags: fnl, higher education, life

I am totally and unnecessarily stressed out at the moment, which I am coping with by writing pointless SN, high on dialogue and low on secret pain. You know, comparatively.

Sports Night, gen. ~2,600 words.
People who are in love with Dan.

( untitled )

Thank you for your thoughtful cut tags and not spoiling me for anything on American Idol this morning, lovely folks. Housemate and I plan to drink much wine and watch it this evening.

So, I thought the guy who claimed money to have his moat cleaned was my favourite story to come out of the expenses scandal, just because there doesn't seem to me to be anything more intrinsically comic than having a moat. But it turns out there is: having a £1,645 floating duck island in your pond. Definitely my new favourite claim. (And naturally, they were both Conservatives. Labour and the Lib Dems just don't know how to be corrupt with style.)

Also in this morning's news, I just heard that my love, Neil Hannon, is doing a concept album about cricket with some other Irish guy. Which, I feel, can only be awesome.

I had no idea Eve Sedgwick had died. Rest in peace, lady. You were awesome, and I will continue to gratuitously quote from Epistemology of the Closet, regardless of relevance, in all my academic writing, ever.

"An understanding of virtually any aspect of modern western culture must be, not merely incomplete, but damaged in its central substance to the degree that it does not incorporate a critical analysis of modern homo/heterosexual definition."

I've been taking the same sort of approach to Dreamwidth as I have to the old global economic meltdown type thing. I've been seeing a lot written about it and sensing that it's really quite important and might at some point actually affect my life, but I've been putting off making the effort to actually understand it.

But! Yesterday I put in the effort for a few hours and vaguely understood why it's good and people might want to move there, and it all sounds fine and wonderful and I am totally on board. I wanna go where the people go, yeah. (Anyone remember that song?) So, should anyone wish to find me over there, here I am: mojo.dreamwidth.org. I've missed a lot of 'Me on DW!' posts, so I'm going to try and track them down.

I can't decide whether to import. I would sort of feel like I was moving house and taking all my useless junk with me, instead of getting rid of it like I should. But I probably will start to crosspost, once I've stopped thinking of the many ways that it will confuse me.

So, yeah. I still don't understand the global economic meltdown really, though.

I'm back! Other people's holiday stories are boring, so let's not bother. Matters arising:

1. How much do I love this Kings of Leon spread from Rolling Stone? A whole lot. Black and white photos, silly hats, Americana, the usual Caleb and Nathan nearly killing each other story, God-fearing, mad childhood, Caleb's complicated soul, Jared and a dog, and wee!Kings of Leon pictures. OH BOYS.

2. Dan Rydell's hatred of soccer is really becoming problematic for me, because that's one of the few sports about which I could comfortably throw around references when writing dialogue. I'm all for putting the sports back in Sports Night, but in order for me to have a character so much as use a passing baseball metaphor, I have to research for about an hour. And then I still get it wrong. Why must you guys have all your own sports? I mean, really.

3. Today I was trying to remember the first icon I ever had on LJ, and after a traumatising browse through some old image folders, I am 99% sure it was this:



How upsetting.

4. I saw Britain's Got Talent for the first time ever tonight, and I learned that the prize is you get to perform on The Royal Variety Show. WHAT. That is the worst prize in the history of ever. Who watches The Royal Variety Show, apart from the Queen? Isn't it kind of a national embarrassment? Why would you enter a competition to win that? I am so confused.

5. I have the house to myself for the evening and I celebrated with a gin & tonic. Alright, three.

Should you need to know, today I am going to Ibiza for a week. Like you do. It is a civilised holiday to meet my cousin's new baby, and not a drugs-sex-alcohol-clubs holiday. Or at least that's the plan. You never know. How much time can I really spend admiring the baby? I'm thinking half an hour, tops. Please do not be too interesting while I am away? Ta.

Okay, if I don't post this story now, I will never post it, and it will just drive me quietly insane, so. This began life as something vaguely fun and silly, and then became something vaguely omgserious.

Sports Night, Dan/Casey. ~6,300 words.
A post-series story in which Steve Sisco tries to kill Dan, basically.

( fall, fall, fall )

So since I'm kind of on my Easter holidays (by which I mean, I've finished teaching and have some days off from the library. I have no excuse not to be doing a ton of studying), I'm indulging in some total timewasting activities. Like, for instance, rewatching Sports Night DVD commentaries. I want so bad that they would have had Josh Charles and Joshua Malina just do commentaries on every episode, you guys. Josh Malina is really funny, and Josh Charles just completely cracks up at everything he says, and it all makes me so happy. But they only do two episodes. So sad.

(Obviously I also wish they would have had Peter Krause and Josh Charles do a bunch of commentaries together, but they only get one, and there's tons of other people on it, too. I suspect Peter Krause has better things to do with his time these days.)

( my favourite bits from the josh charles and josh malina commentaries )

Your help, please. Do people in the US say 'to deck someone', as in, 'to beat someone up'. Like, 'I should have decked that guy!' I must know.

also, would anyone be willing to look at any sports night fic for me any time soon? I've been writing many words of strange and self-indulgent nonsense and kind of need someone to... tell me not to post it. or tell me how to speak american.

Okay, you can have Obama back if you must, but can we keep Michelle? This totally made me cry.

I was lying in bed listening to the radio this morning and trying to be smart and alert and listen out for the inevitable April Fools item. And I discovered that if you listen to the news with that mindset ('is this it? is this it?') for a while, pretty much every story starts to sound like an April Fools joke, because the world is just fundamentally absurd. This was a disorientating revelation.

In other news, Obama is in the UK (and so, apparently, is Rahm!), and if I have anything to say about it, we won't be giving them back. Ha.