Sententiola

nuditea:

not classified, i guess!

…

Not classified?  Or…

… highly classified?!!?

??

!

A health update. I’m still in hospital, some prospect of getting out tomorrow. Much hinges, it seems, on whether I shall ever exceed a score of three hundred in the blowing-into-a-tube game.

When I woke up coughing last night I found myself becoming bizarrely interested in the civic status of members of the British (and other places’) royal family. Does the Prince of Wales need a passport? Is the Duchess of Cambridge liable for jury-service? Is Prince Harry registered to vote? These seemed very pressing questions. But I was rather dozy at the time.

I’m okay. I’m being looked after, even if sometimes I feel slightly under-informed. It’s a bit warm in here, but I’d rather be too warm than too cold. This could have happened at a better time, but it could have happened at a worse. And maybe tomorrow I’ll be out and back to… normal? Yes. A new kind of normal.

And how are you?

So last night I went to a little Half-Price Chocolate Day (15 February) party hosted by a very nice friend of mine who has very nice friends.  There was chocolate (although it’s bizarre how hard it was to actually find discounted Valentine’s chocolate — it had just all vanished, and meanwhile there was a baffling quantity of half-price *Easter* chocolate, which does not compute at all) and there was pizza and the conversation was mostly about ancient Greek and pandas.  Then we watched the 2007 adaptation of Persuasion, which was entertaining.  Most of the time I was a bit ‘Wentworth just spends all his time bitching and sulking and being passive-aggressive, why on earth would Anne want to marry him?’ but then occasionally he appeared wearing this absolutely gorgeous blue waistcoat and at those times I whole-heartedly shipped it.  (I also shipped Sir Walter / Mr Elliot, but nobody was with me there so I gave up and shipped Sir Walter / a nice cup of Gold Blend for old times’ sake.)

Tomorrow off for a nice weekend away with lovely Pear who is lovely.  <3

Oops.

As bits of publicity material / leaks about series four of Being human have been becoming more frequent over the last few months, I’ve developed the habit of just scrolling away / turning off the sound on the TV / running away with my hands over my ears every time I’ve seen anything that might possible contain spoilers.

As a result I have singularly failed to notice that the series actually started yesterday.

I feel a bit silly now.

But the up-side is that there’s new Being human!  I can watch it tonight on the iplayer!  Yaaaaaay!

Another irrelevant thought I had today: if you ever wanted to stop people buying a certain brand of sandwiches (or other packaged food products, but I think sandwiches would be especially suitable), I reckon a pretty effective way to do it would be to go into the shop and sneakily adorn each package with a colourful, friendly-looking printed label saying ‘GUARANTEED 100% SAFE TO EAT!’

Tweeted a flippant criticism of Fathers 4 Justice this morning.  They just retweeted it without comment.  And I must say, it left me completely stumped and a little off-balance.

I mean, looking at their Twitter, I suspect they may just have some kind of gizmo that automatically retweets any tweet that mentions them.  So I’m not going to say ‘Well played, Fathers 4 Justice’.

But I have learned today that that is a pretty good trick.  Just retweet it and move on.  Leaves the other person with nowhere to go and feeling slightly confused.  Neat.

Oh, I’ve caught up. I was less far behind than I thought… Confusing.

peanutbutterandjamzee:

palesheep:

‘Kay, so not that these ideas of mine generally seem to take off, but giving it a shot anyway. I just watched this video, in which John Green can’t remember the words to Hush Little Baby and starts making stuff up, and it turns hilarious. And I realized that I don’t remember much farther than he does.

So I figure, if each person adds one more silly ad-lib link to the song, this could be a pretty fun chain. (I recommend using ‘I’m’ in place of ‘Mommy’ or ‘Daddy’ or what-have-you, just so it all flows together)

(Doing the first five lines as normal, and then the fun begins)

Hush little baby, don’t say a word;
I’m gonna buy you a mocking bird.

And if that mocking bird don’t sing,
I’m gonna buy you a diamond ring.

And if that diamond ring don’t shine…

I’m gonna buy you a piece of twine.

And if that piece of twine don’t tie… 

I’m gonna buy you a pink bow-tie;

And if that pink bow-tie won’t bow…

Summary: a meme where I say ten things about myself.  Press J to skip down (or K to skip up).

· • ·

I’m actually not tagging anyone because, after subtracting Alex and the people Alex already tagged, I haven’t actually got ten tumblfriends who do memes!  But, er, if you want to do this meme, consider yourself tagged.  :)

Okay, ten things about me.  Hmm.

1. I picked up the complete Buffy DVDs in the sales and I’m part of the way through the first season.  I’ve actually never watched it properly, in the right order and stuff.  I watched some episodes from later seasons when they were on television the first time round, but not enough to really know what was going on.  So yay, catching up with late-1990s pop culture at last!  After this I might even read some Harry Potter books or something.
2. (Speaking of Buffy, you know the Moloch episode?  You know the bit where Moloch brings up Buffy’s student record on the screen, and then sends it to the kid who’s in his thrall and says ‘watch her’?  Is there a theory about why when it comes up on the first screen it says she’s a sophomore and her date of birth is in October 1980, and then when it comes up on the kid’s screen it says she’s a senior born in 1979?  Or is it just an inexplicable continuity error?)
3. (I’m not counting number 2 as a thing about me, by the way, I just wanted to start a new paragraph and I’m in list-format so it has to have a number.  So don’t count number 2.  Or, er, number 3.)
4. (So just to be clear, the next one should be counted as number 2, and then you go on counting from there.  This one doesn’t count either.  So here comes number 2…)
5. My breathing is still kinda wonky sometimes.  Long-term followers may remember that when I moved into my current flat I thought I was allergic to my bedroom because I was having trouble breathing at night.  And then I realized it might be my nice new duvet, and it was.  It’s definitely a lot better since then, with my even newer hypoallergenic duvet, but still sometimes if there’s a lot of dust or if it rains overnight or for no discernible reason I’ll have a few nights when I cough a lot and have to prop myself up on a big pile of pillows to sleep.  Pear keeps telling me I should see a doctor, which is correct and I’ll try to do that soon.
6. Pear is lovely and takes care of me and I love them.
7. There are so many people I wish I had time to follow on Tumblr because I keep catching glimpses of them being awesome all over the place.  I can’t even remember who they all are, but if you follow me and are awesome and I don’t follow you then you’re probably one of them.
8. I like my eyebrows.  They’re good eyebrows.  I wish I had slightly better motor-control over them, for irony / comedy purposes.
9. Pear says I should mention that I speak Latin, because some of you who are new may not know this.  So that’s a thing.  I haven’t really done it for a while because my main Latin-speaking occasion is the London Latin Circle, which meets on Thursday evenings, and Revels also rehearses on Thursday (and Tuesday) evenings from October to mid-December.  But I’ll go to the next session, next week, and hopefully I won’t find I’ve forgotten how to say anything.
10. (Remember, this isn’t actually number 10, this is number 7, because 2-4 don’t count.  Er, also this one doesn’t count, so it isn’t number 7.  Number 7 is the next one.  Yes.)
11. Pear also says I should say that I have hetasomethingsomethingchromia.  Which is apparently the fancy name for the fact that the colour of the outer edges of my irises (irides?) is different from the colour near the pupils.  Or something.  I don’t know, you might need to ask Pear about that one.
12. And I only wear blue, black, white, and grey.  I don’t really remember why, it’s just become a thing.  It makes matching clothes easier, which is useful because my sense of colour is not that great.  I mean I can tell the difference between colours — I think I’m probably fairly average at that, not especially bad — but I haven’t got great instincts about what colours don’t go well together.  Of course not all shades of blue or black or grey go together but the odds are better.
13. I nearly collided with the Secretary of State a couple of days ago.  I was going down in the lift and reading Through the looking-glass, and the lift stopped so I just sort of assumed it had reached the floor I wanted to get off at and I started going out of the lift, and he was looking at his phone and started trying to come into the lift.  But we noticed each other in time and didn’t crash, which is good because that would probably have been treason or something.  He was quite apologetic about it, even though it was at least half my fault.  He looks better in person than he does on television.
14. (So, I’m sure you’re already totally on top of it by now, and I don’t want to be annoying, but just in case you’ve lost track, this next one is going to be number 10, which is the last one.  Okay, so, yes, good.)
15. I had a great-aunt whom I always called Aunt Audrey and every single other person in my family called Vera.  I’d always thought it was a bit odd that everyone else kept getting her name wrong, but it was only some time after she died that I thought more carefully about it and realized that it was really a very curious thing.  I asked Dad (her nephew) and he explained that when I was born he asked her whether she would like me to call her Auntie Vera, like he and his sisters did, or Great-Aunt Vera, or something else.  And she revealed, rather to his surprise, that not only did she not really like being called Auntie Vera but she didn’t especially like being called Vera at all.  She much preferred her middle name, Audrey.  But no one had ever asked her what she wanted to be called, and she had never said anything.  So I called her Aunt Audrey.  And now ever since Dad told me that story I try to check with people from time to time that I’m calling them what they want to be called, ‘cause I have this sort of horror of one day finding out that I’ve spent decades calling someone by a name they don’t like.  D:
16. (That was the last one.  That was ten things.)
17. (I’m pretty sure it was ten.)
18. (Yup, I just counted again, that was definitely ten things.  So it’s over now.  That’s it.)
19. (Bye.)

(Source: snarkilyyours, via peanutbutterandjamzee)

(Context.)

torayot:

tudoudou:

She says “I’d be more likely to describe myself as Conservative than feminist because I don’t think being female is the most defining characteristic about me.”

…Erm, that is not what feminism is about. How are you… what.

She also said that Cruel Intention is her guilty pleasure DVD because “it reminds me of being a 12-year-old at a sleepover.” That is not an age appropriate film lol.

you’d think she would know a basic definition of feminism considering her level of education and political experience.

APPARENTLY NOT LOL

Oh, I glimpsed that deadline over someone’s shoulder on the train and wondered who the interviewee was, and then the next time I got a look over the same shoulder the page had turned and there was a picture of Marina Diamandis and I was like ‘Nooooo!  But she seems so awesome!’

So I’m actually quite glad to find out it was just a minor Tory politician.

Pear and I feel this is an important question to which the internet has not devoted adequate time and thought.

It’s a difficult one.  I thought at first a baby griffin might be cute but eaglets are kind of scraggy-looking.  A baby unicorn wouldn’t be much cuter than a foal, which is quite cute but not very mythical.  A baby manticore would be weird.  A good contender for Least Cute And Most Horrifying would be a baby centaur.  Human babies are chubby-squishy-cute and foals are gangly-stumbly-cute and they do not go together.

Let’s get on this, people.  This is the sort of thing the internet should have comprehensively covered by now.  We have a public duty, you know.