Notes from the front, as it were

[petronia]

1) Laptop died again. It was a mistake to even think of the thing as Ed - but it looks so much like Ed. XD; Small, red and black, powerful but noisy, prone to overheating. Much like Ed it knows its responsibilities and keels over only after the crisis has resolved (read: finals period), but once in the shop half its components will need replacing. Again. Tomorrow I harangue Dell's customer support.

Parents bought me a Nano for Christmas. As it is a precise shade of orange I named it Schuldig; we'll see how that goes. With a bit of luck all it'll do is make psychic songcalls.

2) As usual I've signed up for a bunch of cards via the flist, but can't reciprocate due to lack of time and funds. ^_^; I want to post some fanstuff over the holidays, though, like an informal advent calendar... Have a few items in the queue but suggestions are plenty welcome. XD

3) Caught Quantum of Solace with sororial unit. Am also reading The Alexandria Quartet, finally: or rather, maltreating the lovely jewel-like language in my hurry to understand WTF is going on, though the trail of crumbs is clearly going to end in a Schrodinger's Box. (Now I grok why sub_divided found it so fatal that the Books of Albion opened with a Durrell reference; Libsdom was all hypertextual Interlinear, not massive but friable.) Will post again when done. It goes well with Leonard Cohen's Ten New Songs, which actually features an extended riff on Cavafy. XD usomitai accused me of turning everything to Leonard Cohen. I could probably construct a FST for these books, but not fast enough to take advantage of December's theme.

Other books and movies but will review the lot in a separate post I guess.

4) JAPANESE FANART OF BANDS (thank you cerisier)! Some of whom practically look more like themselves drawn than otherwise. Though it occurs to one that - historically - shoujo manga conventions evolved in large part as a framework for the representation of coltish moppy-haired British boys... yeah.

Comments

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Ehheeh, so you're finally reading the Alexandria Quartet? Would love to see a FST of it. XD

[uminohikari.livejournal.com]

...oh my. I'd be afraid to name anything Schuldig

[deepfryerfire.livejournal.com]

Man oh man be CAREFUL what you name electronics. They really do take on the personalities of their namesakes. A friend of mine learned that lesson the hard way after naming a computer after Miang in Xenogears: suffice to say that it came with Windows ME pre-installed, and unistallable. It's a wonder it didn't catch fire.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I believe it! XD I never used to name my electronics anything, actually, for that very reason. But nowadays the software requires it, and it seems vaguely demeaning to leave it as "Sabina's iPod" or something like that.

(Schuldig: requires frequent brainwashing to maintain docility, as it turns out. Oh well, if that's all... *knocks on wood*)

[canis-m.livejournal.com]

What did you think of Quantum? I still haven't even seen the previous but I liked the, uh, strangely nonsexual pedagogical vibe between Craig's Bond and whasserface.

RE: suggestions, speaking of psychic iPods... XD;

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Speaking of...? XD; Sorry, if I've committed to smth in the past oh 18 months it's gone like the breeze. The brain cells can't cope.

iPods really are psychic, though: I've never owned one before, and the shuffle function is incredibly sophisticated.

[canis-m.livejournal.com]

Oh, it wasn't a commitment in any sense--you'd idly mentioned something about updating Ran's Beatport chart. XD;

Is it? I've only ever had an iPod--which by now is so hoary and ancient it only gets 2-3 hrs of playtime per battery charge--but I don't use Shuffle much, only Repeat.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Ha, yes! I haven't kept up with techno, though - for like 18 months, which is long enough for entire sub-genres of dance music to rise and fall - so it would be old stuff. And a lot more organic. Which kind of defeats the purpose of having a Beatport chart, but oh well.

OTOH I can make proper beatmatched mp3 mixes now! Slowly and painfully! IF ONLY MY LAPTOP WERE WORKING.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

What do you mean, friable? Like the thing comes apart in your hands but little pieces lodge in your lungs and make it hurt every time you breate? (Dad's firm survived for twenty years mostly on money from this one massive class-action suit by abestos plant workers.)

The metaphor I've been using with Chrissie is that there's a fandom Event Horizon: no information from within the black hole ever reaches the outside world, but once you have come close enough to see what's there, it's too late, you're caught in the gravitational pull and the only direction you can travel is down towards the center. Also, due to the compression of space around a black hole, it's hard to know when you have crossed "the" event horizon, because there are always people moving objects that are further into the hole than you; and those objects seem to be impossibly far away, on the other side of their own event horizons. However, to the distant observer BOTH you and they have disappeared from real space.

...Possibly I'm being overdramatic, but what else can I do with my science major. XD Wait until you get to book three and learn about Justine and Nessim, it really does your head in. (Largely because, like I said when I reviewed the book, people are suggestible and reading about a powerful obsession will often cause them to reproduce that obsession in themselves.)

All of the stuff in Justine about Justine using the things her psychiatrists etc told her to draw other people into her personality comes up in Carrie Fisher's books - I just finished Postcards From the Edge. Basically the protagonist has spent the last 8 years in therapy - or rehab - so she has an endless number of clever annedotes to relate about herself. (See, I can still forge connections between things that are not The Libertines! ...Oh, God.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Ha, I still haven't gotten any further in this because it requires too much dedicated brain space!

BTW, randomly found this (http://www.douban.com/note/21418886/) which made me laugh because I'd read that quote by Bernard Butler about working on the second Libs album before, but in context it's something else altogether.

(My current theory is that the wound to the British collective subconscious from the Beatles breakup, John's eventual death etc. was such that they keep sleepwalking through this cycle, but every time it gets etched deeper until there's NO ESCAPE.)

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

The way the interviewer keeps interupting his Suede article to go "does this remind you of anything? nudge nudge wink wink" is actually kind of annoying. Like, Libs fans don't need any help seeing parallels, and it's meaningless if you aren't a fan.

But Bernard's comments are great XD.

Mountolive clears so much up! And it's written much more straightforwardly than the first two. ^^; But it's just as well, I took a break to read Drown by Junot Diaz (the chapter about the junkie girlfriend is NOT the title chapter, amazingly) and Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation by M. T. Anderson. Between these two books I can feel my vocabularly expanding by leaps and bounds: into Carribbean American and drug slang on the one end, and overly proper and literary period language on the other.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

IDK, I think the NME (it's clearly the NME) just uses the Libs as shorthand/benchmark for comparison always, as the readership could hardly be unaware in 2004 - whereas teens wouldn't remember the early 90s dramallamas. XD; Like, before the Libs it was the Smiths breakup, but Peter emulated Morrissey in one aspect at least... I liked the anecdote about nearly getting run over, that was epic.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

I liked how Bernard's version of the car-crash story was that Brett was totally out of it and didn't recognize him at all, while Brett's version was that Bernard thought about running him over. XD;

Ah, okay. Using the Libs as shorthand for dysfunction makes sense, though that's setting the bar pretty high, right.

What was I thinking about before...oh right: maybe Bernard's opinion on whether there was a relationship shouldn't be trusted, he really misread Peter when he was supposed to be recording them.