Just a quick note to let you all know that tomorrow (Saturday 29th November) is Buy Nothing Day, and we're having a Free Shop in Next to Nowhere from 12pm. The weekly cafe is also on (not free, I'm afraid, but by donation and the food is usually pretty good).
So - bring your old stuff (including all those working electricals that the charity shops won't take anymore) and pick up new stuff without any money changing hands. There will also be music, discussions (not compulsory) and possibly workshops.

Also, if anybody's interested, there's a protest against the BNP, who have been active and leafleting in the City Centre. Meet for this 10am at the top of Church St. (bottom of Bold St.)

I have spent the weekend chasing a giant robot spider around Liverpool with my Dad, and just about everybody I know in Liverpool at various points along the way.

La Princesse, it has to be said, was £1.8 million well-spent. Yes, we need hospitals and affordable public transport more than giant robot spiders, but to my mind these things are not in opposition. What we need is less public money funding new shopping centres and corporate takeovers of the NHS, and then we could have our hospitals, buses, trains and giant robot spiders for free. I tell you, after the revolution, there will be giant robot spiders for all! However, if they're provided by La Machine, there will also be raincoats - lots of raincoats, and umbrellas, and all manner of actual warnings that you are standing in a zone in which you are likely to be soaked through to the skin by special effects, several times in quick succession...

Today I've been with feistyfingers, photographing clothes to sell on e-bay while trying very hard not to just swap them with each other and thus make no progress on the cash or wardrobe-space fronts for either of us. Then we managed to get distracted by corsetry, so photos are not yet finished, and we'll just have to do it all again sometime...

This evening, we've put spot-on anti-flea stuff on the cats, since they're getting more sociable with The Reverend lately and you never know what might hop off the likes of him.

And that's all for now.

(And yes, I am inviting the obvious response to the deliberate inaccuracy in my post's title...)

This afternoon I got paid to sit drinking tea and chatting to other Continuing Education tutors while pimping my course at the open day, and it appears to be getting a lot of interest! John Sayle's 'Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy' was getting less interest, which is a shame because it looks great. If it interests you, go and sign up!.

I’m back at proper work now, too, and they’ve decided to lend me to the VI (Visual Impairment) dept. for part of the week on account of my IT skills. The team leader was showing me around the main teaching room and explaining it all to me this morning. It’ll involve training on new specialist software, a slightly different kind of documentation, some different support priorities etc. Good team, good students, all sounding very nice – I’m quite looking forward to it. Then he starts to explain that the room can get a little busy and noisy, and I say yes, that’s OK, and he continues “What with the audio software, people coming and going, and of course the dogs.”

Oh yeah. When you work in the VI dept., there are likely to be dogs. This makes sense. This should have occurred to me. And I am now less excited, and somewhat nervous.

So, I’ve explained that I do have a bit of a phobia, but I should be OK if the dogs are well-behaved (which guide dogs invariably are) and quiet (which they are most of the time) and not overly friendly (we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it).

And I’ve decided something. This is a silly phobia and I don’t want it anymore. It gets in the way of seeing dog-owning friends, enjoying walks in the park, could make me a weak point in direct actions, and now it could get in the way of work I would otherwise quite enjoy. It’s time to get over it, and this will probably be an ideal situation to start doing that. Guide dogs are trained to be calm and non-aggressive, and they’re generally breeds that don’t have a face like a BNP candidate or mouths designed by HR Geiger. The only real problem is that I will actually be at work, so I can’t exactly run out if it gets too much.

I’ll just have to see how it goes. Psiren’s still adamant that she wants to be a dog when she grows up, so I’m going to have to get used to it some day.

...running around like a headless proverb, by the looks of it. It’s shaping up to be a busy one. Before the Discworld con at the end of August I’ve got six costumes to make (with help, of course, once I’ve called the troops in), a creative writing course to prepare and promote, a load of narratology stuff to read and annotate, a research blog to begin (I’ll link when it’s up and running) and the actually Blogfic to plan and hopefully begin writing for my Phud.

Other things I’d like to do if I get half a chance include editing my NaNo, getting some work done on the house and crafting a bunch of stuff besides costumes (bags and waistcoats, extreme knitting, felting).

As well as Discworld, I’m going camping this weekend and to Reykjavik in the second week of August, so I at least have some actual holidays in my holidays...

I’d best get on with it, so in lieu of a controversial political rant, I’m going to point those interested to a couple of ones I’ve enjoyed today:

This one on the Bechdel test (which I was calling 'The Rule' and others call the 'Mo Movie Measure') and how screenwriting students and professionals are discouraged from challenging it, and this feminist review of Dr. Horrible, which I still haven’t seen! I signed up for the e-mail list and they never bloody sent me anything, so I missed it. Having downloaded iTunes especially, I find it isn’t available in the UK shop yet, and they won’t let me buy from the US one without a US-based bank account.

Gorrammit, I missed a fictional blog by Joss Whedon – I fail my Ph.d., and I haven’t even had my registration Viva yet.

I’ve been closeted away for the last couple of weeks, finishing off my PG Cert and various other bits and pieces, but I think I’m ready to re-emerge on LJ.

The recent mixture of bright sunshine and heavy thunderstorms (sometimes within a minute of each other) has made for disappointing marches, but a lush garden, with a good supply of salad and herbs, and even a the odd strawberry and raspberry. Tomatoes look promising this year. I don’t get enough light to expect a decent supply of edibles, especially within my tiny vegetable patch, but I’ve got a lot of purple flowers amongst general greenery, and soon there may be carrots.

Life is good.

Sent Zippy in for a service and MOT, because it's that time of year. I've managed to acquire a trustworthy Dude for such things, whose prices are reasonable and who doesn't treat me like I wouldn't know the inside of a bike from the business end of a blender (though, quite frankly, I wouldn't).

So, Dude brings Zippy back to me with shiny new back tyre and fresh spark plug, and proceeds to explain how nobody's ever touched that engine before and it was in a right state, and all the little things he's done regarding the cleaning of the carburettor and tuning of the little...tuning pegs, or whatever...that make it go vroooom instead of put-put-put, and I'm saying "Wow, yes, thanks very much" and handing over the cash, when he says:

"And...erm...I won't tell you exactly what else I did, but I believe in giving a bike back at its absolute best, so...go a bit easy, because you might find it's got a bit more kick than before."

In the words of Han Solo, he's made some "Special Modifications". Not de-limited it, he says - that would cost me £50 and give it a top speed of near 60mph - but whatever he's done, that speedo needle is going unfamiliar places. Before, I'd just crank the throttle all the way pretty much as soon as I was clear of the lights, knowing that I'd barely break 30mph downhill with a good wind behind me. Now I have to watch for speed cameras - I don't think my Speedo's very accurate, but it hit 45mph today, and I think it could have gone faster. I'm going to have to get on a clear A-road at some point and find out what it can do, and piss off all the wankers who shout at me out the windows of their bespoilered knobmobiles by overtaking them on a 50cc scooter.

Wheeee...this is fun!

Here's a one for all you Fighting Fantasy and Choose Your Own Adventure fans:

Paper Pong!



Apparently, you can also get it as a printed book.

I find something utterly irresistible about this.

...because it leads to waking up to hear this, a man telling me how, in my search for equality, I mustn't forget that women have a greater responsibility to uphold moral decency, an inherent virtue that men don't (bless them, they can't help it, you see, and so can't be blamed), and so for me to go drinking to excess isn't merely *bad* (as it is for men), it's bad *and* behaving like a man, heavens forefend.

While I'm at it, why don't I just chain myself to the kitchen sink and throw away the key - I don't need fun and freedom, the knowledge of my virtue and moral superiority is enough to keep me smiling while the changes my mother was fighting for 30 years ago are slowly pulled back from under us.

I'm not normally a big drinker, but the patronising ramblings of Thought For The Day speakers are more than enough to send me reaching for the bottle.

Yes, it's that time again. If anybody wants to join a mailing list for these - which includes the opportunity to discuss or announce any workshops you might like to run or take part in - then e-mail liverpool-skill-sharers@googlegroups.com, or go to http://groups.google.co.uk/group/liverpool-skill-sharers to sign up.

( Flyer behind cut )

Many thanks to daria2 for the first link on the way to discovering The Rule, or the Mo Movie Measure, though I'd apply it to any narrative medium. The story passes if:

1) There are at least 2 female characters.
2) They talk to each other.
3) About something other than a man.

This is so simple and brilliant, I can't believe I've never noticed it before - and applying it to just a few stories should put to bed any risidual feelings that patriarchy's not such a big deal anymore.

I'm going to start applying that to everything I watch or read - not to mention write. And going back to Firefly, I'm now trying to think of a single example of two female crew members speaking to each other about something other than a man. Innara and Kaylee talk about sex/being a companion/how nice Kaylee's hair is - I'm not sure this really counts, as it's all pretty much "How can we pleeze teh menz". The closest that springs to mind is when Kaylee and River are chasing each other round the ship, but that's not exactly a conversation. The other female-only conversations that spring to mind are Kaylee and Innara talking about Simon, Innara and Nandy talking about Mal. It's not that women don't have serious conversations in Firefly, it's just that every time they do, they're talking to a man. I think Whedon can be let off the hook to an extent, because Buffy passes with flying colours from the first episode, and I maintain that this doesn't make Firefly more sexist than anything else on TV, but it gives me a bit of a jolt to see how ubiquitous this is, even in a show that I enjoy and tend to point to as having some very strong female characters.

In response to This review of Firefly.

I'm not replying on her page because she seems to have left LJ, and because the reply got too long, so I’ll put it ( here )

Well, it’s 1am, so never let it be said I scabbed on a strike day. However, next time I think we should do what crocodilewings suggests. It doesn’t exactly hit them very hard to spend a day not using the service that we've already paid for, and not viewing the adverts that the advertisers have already paid for. Somehow, I think LJ will not find itself significantly short for 24 hours' less content, because people aren't paying for content, and if they're paying at all it's annually or monthly, not daily. Creative civil disobedience is not only a more effective option but much more fun.

So – haven’t blogged for some time, though I’ve had blogs and forums very much on my mind. I’m in one of those over-analytical, argumentative moods where everything I write ends up sounding over-the-top or vindictive or both, but because I also have a huge paranoia about causing any offence or upset to anybody I end up going over it for hours and hours making it less controversial, to the point of pointlessness, and then normally chicken out of posting it anyway, or post it and spend all day worrying about the reactions, so I’ve decided I just want to blog about something nice.

( So – knitting! )

Before we Freecycle it, is anybody in need of a small-ish vacuum cleaner?

1400W, no-particular-brand, bagless, fairly new and works fine but doesn't like copious amounts of cat hair. Should be fine for a pet-free house, though.

Going begging, first to call it gets it.

Next skill-share day 2nd March, flyer below:





I'm hopeful about some semi-organised workshops at this one (I do mean semi-organised - nobody's running full-on tutorials with handouts, at least I'm certainly not), so even if you think you have no skills, come along and learn one!

Having let my roots grow out for about six months, I’ve noticed that my natural hair colour has changed since I started dying it. Lightish brown with hints of red has become darkish brown flecked with grey (and it’s not just the odd stray hair, there’s a fair amount of it once you start looking.) Bleaching makes it as porous as the rest, so it won’t notice when I’ve done a re-dye, which is a shame. I’d love to have purple hair with streaks of silver...

Anyhow, I’ve been seeing a lot of films, plays and gigs recently, and haven’t reviewed anything on this blog for ages, so here goes...

The best and worst films of 2008 (well, so far)...

Worst: Lust, Caution
( Caution – spoilers )

Best: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
( Not very spoilery unless you haven’t seen a trailer )

Anyone who liked Bill Bailey’s “3 men wenten into ane pubbe” has to check out Chaucer Hath a Blog.

For verily ich ylolzed lyk unto ane draiyne.

I sat down intending to do a write-up of today: the diversity of the skills that were shared and demonstrated, the friendly buzz and energy of busy people, the delicious home-cooked food and the generosity of the donations to the Free Shop... It all seemed a little out of context, though, so instead I found myself writing a bit on ( how and why Crafty Day developed )
( and the philosophy behind it. )

I really enjoyed today[1]. Thanks to everyone who came, who brought stuff, who did stuff, who helped fetch and carry, who set up, who tidied, who cooked, who washed up, and who asked for another one. As soon as my finger’s recovered, I’m on it.
In the meantime, take at look at the Next to Nowhere site to see if there’s anything else going on there that interests you.

[1] Yes, despite getting skewered by my sewing machine. Just a small blip on an otherwise smooth learning curve...

Sunday 13th January is the date for your diaries!

This will be a Crafty Day with a slight difference. Rather than try to cram a dozen sewing machines into my house and work with no elbow room, I'm opening it up to all takers and holding it in Next to Nowhere (the basement under News From Nowhere, also known as Liverpool Social Centre). It's being combined with a Free Shop, which is similar to the Swap Shop we had at mine not long ago.

What to bring
Bring anything you don't want for the Free Shop, take anything you do, and then make what you like out of it (or just bring your own crafty projects to work on, it's all good). Come along with whatever equipment you use for whatever creative or constructive projects you do, or just bring yourself and learn something new (I'm calling it a skill-share day now, as it's about all kinds of practical skills, not just the specifically crafty ones, though those are very welcome). Also, pass the flyer on to anyone you know who might be interested or has interesting skills to share.

Food and drink
The centre's quite well-equipped, and normally has ample tea and coffee. There are also limited but workable cooking facilities (a small oven and one electric ring), so if anybody wanted to cook something, that's great. I will ask, though, out of respect for those who've put the work into creating and running the space, that anyone preparing food keeps it vegan. If anybody does want to cook, let me know what you're planning and I can put out a call to contribute ingredients. There are plenty of big pans and crockery etc.

Place, time and getting there
To get into the basement, ring the bell marked "basement" by the glass door next to the shop (News from Nowhere is at the top end of Bold Street, near Forbidden Planet). Ring it several times, and somebody will answer it eventually - it can be temperamental! We'll be starting at 1pm, but if anybody's keen I could do with a hand setting up and I'll be there from about 11:30. I'll be taking myself, my sewing machines and several boxes and bags of fabric and other useful stuff in the car, which I'll park at Mount Pleasant, so anybody who wants to help me shift it all to Bold Street, your presence is welcome and I'll give you a lift in! Also, if you live vaguely near me and need transport for your equipment, let me know and I'll try to save space for you (or at least your sewing machine) and pick you up en route.

( Flyer under the cut )

70 words

Touchtyping online

And I hope you all waste as much time trying to beat your original score as I did.

Having spent one month doing nothing but writing, I have spent most of the next being completely slack on projects both personal and academic, and have barely even blogged. I think, given the intensity of NaNo, I can probably allow myself this luxury, as long as it stops here.

So: Liverpool’s Culture of Capital year has arrived, and any architecture or organisation that isn’t entirely about profit is being systematically demolished to make room for brand new shopping centres full of things nobody needs and few can afford, bland new apartment complexes that will start falling down in 25 years' time and new streetlights with silly blue spikes on top (to replace perfectly sufficient ones that were put in less than three years ago). Yay for us!

( Thoughts on '07 and resolute sentiments for '08 )

Best of everything to you all, and an icing-covered New Year with sprinkles on top.