the sanctuary:

I'm thinking of having a spin-off blog. It'll retain the essential formula of this blog - the infrequent posts, the poor quality humour, the oft-complaining tone - but will be set in another city with another person doing the blogging. They will have better hair than me, perhaps, but they'll be recognisably a "Moth type". Perhaps they'll be a musician. Yes, they'll play acoustic guitar.

I'm thinking that the Sanctuary could become a franchise. Apply in writing if you have a concept for a new setting.
posted at 1:37 PM

Well, okay, links. Leave me alone.

Up above you can see there's a link to my personal radio on last.fm, which, you know, is full of hugely entertaining music. Once you leapfrog to someone else in my friends list. The more people on last.fm the better, it would seem, hence the pimp hat.

In related news, Flapjack has moved her blog to her domain instead of blogspot (yay for using fresh snow on the interweb), so that link is now updated. If you've never visited her blog before, why not try now? I think you'll find it full of both plants and bears. Flora and, indeed, fauna.
posted at 10:57 PM

A milk float just went by the window. Nothing odd about that, but it had broken down. Okay, fine, it was being towed, then.

By a fork-lift truck.
posted at 1:41 PM

I should be in bed, but it's Saturday night, live a little. I happened upon this TV movie - Helen of Troy - and, as I've just started to actually properly read The Illiad (as opposed to putting it down after two paragraphs of clanging armour and intestinal losses), I thought "Hmm, give it a go, could be fun".

How right I was. I started watching with an hour to go, and the duel between Paris and Menelaus was just starting. Hmm, I thought. But ok, maybe it's in two parts, or something. Menelaus stepped forward, and was about 12. His bullying older brother Agamemnon (Rufus Sewell, not - I hope you notice - a redhead) was clearly the ringleader in this. I wondered if they'd stay with the text and have Aphrodite swoop in to save Paris. Probably not, on balance. Go with the Wolfgang Petersen version, much less silly.

So they fight, and tussle and such, then a mist appears and - this is lovely - they sit down for a chat. Menelaus asks after Helen, Paris doesn't do much because Agamemnon poisoned the javelin used in the fight. Whatever. They both emerge unscathed from the mist and people look a bit miffed. Especially Agamemnon, who wants Troy, dagnabit. And Hector, oh yes Hector decides to take Paris's place.

Meanwhile, I'm eyeing up the background characters, thinking "That looks like an Odysseus, and maybe that's Diomedes with the slaphead. Or Ajax, could be Ajax.." and then the less-than-hirsute one steps forward and basically says "I AM ACHILLES! RAARRRRR! FEAR MY BALDNESS!!!!1!!!!"

WTF? I realise this is all about the Helen, but come on! The whole entire book is about Achilles sulking in his tent! What's he doing here just after the duel of Paris and Menelaus? I was smiling quite broadly at this point. What next? He tells Hector to have the first throw, and turns his big bald back. And now I give you a script excerpt. Honest to god.

ACHILLES: You should have killed me when you had the chance.

HECTOR: I don't fight that way.

ACHILLES: I do! Rarrrr!

[ACHILLES throws spear through HECTOR'S chest]

PARIS: Achilles..! Take.. me..!

ACHILLES: DIE, HECTOR!!

[Pulls out spear, rams it back in, shakes it about]

I am not joking. Then he - as suggested by Homer - ties the body to the bumper of his chariot and he's off, and he just kind of goes away. When he turns up a little bit later (killed by Paris, arrow through the ankle, if you must know) in his chariot, I half expected Hector to still be bump, bump, bumping along behind. Sadly, he wasn't. But I shall cherish "DIE, HECTOR!!" for a long time.

Also, when they found the horse was pretty classy, too. Apparently the Greeks built it so big reckoning that the Trojans wouldn't be able to fit it in their gates. "Oh, yeah? Well, we'll show them!" said the Trojans. They didn't actually say it, but boy was reverse psychology much easier then, or what?
posted at 1:03 AM

I made crumpets on Sunday. Oh, yes. And I don't mean "I toasted crumpets", no. None of your Sunblest for me! It's not hard - contrary to what you may have heard - it's just time consuming. But very very worth it when you see this start to form in your frying pan -




And then you flip it to seal those lovely bubbles and what should come out but this..



Fluffy! And delicious.

posted at 8:13 PM

We'd been doing pretty well over the weekend. We'd marked out all the meals we were going to have over the three days (we both took yesterday off), bought the ingredients and on Saturday and Sunday we cooked them all. I'll talk about Sunday's lunch later, I have piccies.

But yesterday was a disaster. Didn't bother with lunch, and dinner was a completely inedible mess. It was fried spicy fish, but it was bland and the linguini it was paired with was undercooked and underseasoned. So I have to apologise to the world in general for that.

On the plus side, the weekend was lovely. We did as little as possible and generally enjoyed being alone with each other, something that had been sorely missed through January.

posted at 1:04 PM

Hello again!

I'm back properly now, so let's just put the last month behind us and start afresh. How are you doing? Good, good, happy to hear it. I'm at work at the moment. Did I mention that we have new flat monitors and snazzy barcode readers? No, I don't work in a supermarket. Though.. man, that would be pretty cool. No, it wouldn't. Ignore me.

I had some peanut butter M&Ms yesterday. I must trek to Cybercandy myself sometime and buy their entire stock, just so Masterfoods gets the message. I WANT THEM HERE NOW! Stupid crispy M&Ms. Who wants them? No-one, that's who. But peanut butter... I like the USA for one reason alone - its propensity to cram any and all foodstuffs full of peanut butter. Peanut butter M&Ms, Twixes, chicken kievs...
posted at 1:09 PM