Hey there tall, dark and glowy-green-eyed. ♫

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Though it veered off on a tangent halfway through that made me wonder if the publisher had pasted in a Victorian-era Western for a practical joke, this book never lost my attention. Having read quite a few of Doyle's short Sherlock Holmes stories, I was interested to read the detective's first outing, and it was a huge amount of fun. I don't believe I shall ever get tired of finding out how Holmes comes to his conclusions, and the Western segment -- even though its characterisation is a bit shallow -- had me freaking out over the fates of the characters and trying to work out how they would fit into the overall mystery.

I've been told that Doyle wrote better short stories than he did novels, but this book stands up to a lot of his better shorts. And it also continues the trend of Sherlock Holmes stories making me want to type all Victorian. So there's that as well.

Since Doyle books are out of print, I picked up two or three of his non-Sherlock novels free from a site along the lines of Project Gutenberg! One of them, The Parasite, I really really want to start but I promised to read it with my boyfriend and we're reading Watership Down first so aaaa. I will have to practice patience.

This just in: Kelly is still the best.

Teasers:

( 70 icons )

The hotel situation is coming along well! Mostly because we've dumped the old hotel for one where we're not three people in a room for two and where our toilet flushes properly. It's amazing the difference a decent hotel can make for your experience of a city. Anyway, should be able to pick up the work visas tomorrow, and then we can vamoose!

Parcel Force have sat around scratching themselves for four days (for a "two day delivery") and then given me an error message on the tracking page. And no delivery.

I am never going to get this bloody background check holy shitdonkeys.

Edit: Though we do have gas and hot water again as of today (technically as of yesterday, but there was air in the pipes that had to be worked out so not so much), so I guess every cloud has a god-yes-I-can-cook-and-shower-and-do-the-washing-up-again lining.

Son of edit: Also the tracking page is REALLY UNCLEAR but kind of implies that it might've been sent back to England? I don't even know. At least if it is in England and gets returned to mum, maybe she'll send it by DHL the second time like we originally asked her to.

nan posted about doing bloodyvalentine's Bloody Bingo challenge, and I couldn't let her have all the fun.

So apparently I'm volunteering to write (and draw) sexual things. For those of you not in the know, I write sexual things about as frequently as frogs fly over the rainbow. But hey, I'm trying to push my boundaries when it comes to art styles, so why not comfort zones as well?

( My bingo card, involving gore and other such nasty stuff. )

Continuing in the vein of self-improvement (or possibly self-flagellation), most of these are a challenge to myself rather than kinks I have. And the Xeno one will probably turn into an excuse to draw mermaids.

Hey lienne, I don't know if you've come across this before, but it's basically Kink Bingo with emphasis on bloody stuff. No idea why, but I have a strange feeling that it might be right up your alley.

I wonder if I should stop saying that I'm not judgmental. Because I don't think I am, but the last few times I heard/saw someone saying it I could instantly think of exceptions, so maybe I'm wrong and just have a mental disconnect about it. Because humans are ridiculously good at mental disconnects and god knows I can't be the only one who's immune.

And then I start thinking about how there would be so much less conflict and more actual attempts at logic if more people recognised that their brains are not flawless reasoning machines and their personal subjective experience is just that: subjective and not definitive proof of anything. Even multiple people's subjective experience matching up isn't proof that something is true; do you believe in UFOs because a lot of people claim to have been abducted by them? How could mutually exclusive religions exist if their followers' experiences (sensing/speaking to God, feeling auras/energies, etc) proved each religion to be true?

And then I realise that I sometimes judge people who act as though there's no way they can be wrong, or say stuff as fact that's easily shown to be untrue, even though I'm more than likely guilty of that stuff as well. Because brains are flawed and everyone needs a reality check sometimes, including me. And I definitely judge people who go out of their way to reject that reality check.

So I can't call myself non-judgmental. I could call myself less judgmental than a lot of people. I could even say that I perceive myself as less judgmental than a lot of people and have had that perception reinforced by the observations of other people, though that doesn't roll off the tongue as nicely.

Anyway, this got long and rambling and I have cooking and washing up to do.

We don't have any kind of vacuum cleaner and will not have for quite some time, so I'm getting used to sweeping. #hardcorehousekeeping

Luckily, this house has zero carpets, otherwise this would be a lot more annoying. And, since I only have to deal with concrete and stone, I think I actually prefer sweeping to vacuuming. It's a pain that it takes longer, but it's also a better workout and it's a hell of a lot easier to get a broom up our Doom Stairs of Death than it would be a hoover.

Also it feels kind of old fashioned and I'm a horrible hipster who likes vinyl and everything.

In other news, for dinner I'm cooking thin strips of beef wrapped around vegetables and mustard and bacon and stuff. It smells. Awesome. I didn't get it going as early as I would have liked because bluh bluh motivation issues, but it'll be ready in time for dinner, so /waves hands vaguely

I talked to my mum today, and she observed that every time we've Skyped I've been in the kitchen. I've turned into a nice little housewife. More or less.

So yeah, this day starting out under a cloud of blehh because I didn't get productive in time and intensely disliked myself for it. But it has developed into something quietly enjoyable, thanks to very good music and a number of small victories. I even finally remembered to take our eight zillion empty beer bottles back to the shop, for recycling or refilling or whatever they want to do with them, and that's a job that's been waiting for my attention for longer than I want to remember.

What else? Well, we might actually have a microwave come Monday. When we moved into this house there was one from, I am not kidding you, the early 1980s; it was giant and black and bulky and the timer didn't work so I always had to use my phone's timer and stop the cooking manually. And then it broke and so we only had the crockpot and hobs for Christmas and New Year. Every time the repairs have been delayed our landlord's just said "welcome to Mexico".

But! He's decided that it's more cost-effective to just buy a new microwave than try to hunt down parts that are almost a decade older than I am. So hopefully I will soon be able to throw leftovers in the microondas as god intended.

And this has been a post.

ps Our Christmas lights are still up and we intend on leaving them there until February at least. COME AT ME.

Daniel from Amnesia: The Dark Descent this time. This includes trying to reverse-engineer his insanity meter into something that actually makes sense in real life, so trigger warnings for that and domestic abuse talk (for all the zero people who actually read this blog). Oh, and game spoilers, obviously.

( Victorian stuff and Wikipedia ahoy! )

My laptop is covered in Christmas lights because my boyfriend is literally the best person in the world.

And I have a new washing up sponge to replace the old dirty one.

And I am playing me some croony Bing Crosby.

And we managed to find apple cider at the supermarket yesterday.

And I have this excellent herby slightly spicy beef mince to make spaghetti bolognaise with.

And I am making the kitchen noticeably cleaner.

And I have a degree and a job, how did that even happen.

And did I mention that my boyfriend is brilliant?

And I get to live in a country I never thought I'd visit.

And learning Spanish is coming along surprisingly well.

And the guys at the shop I usually buy groceries at are friendly and cool with helping me learn it, so it's not nearly so awkward as it might be.

And I'm going to Skype with my mum and brother this Christmas.

And it's nearly Christmas.

And the kitchen is full of sunlight.

(Originally posted on LJ on the 17th March 2011.)

Incorrect: "Anytime" -- which is an incorrect adjective model to the tune of "everyday" (which is, in fact, an adjective, not a propositional phrase)

Proper: "Any time." (Which is a prepositional phrase.)

WRONG: "I wear these clothes everyday."
RIGHT: "This is my everyday look."

Originally here. Sometimes anonymous makes me so happy. Although "anytime" has been absorbed into everyday informal language, so it only strikes me as odd if a character from way in the past is using it or something.

I should maybe start following the -secrets comms again, because both times I've stuck my head into them recently I've discovered something cool. But I won't, because if I do I'll emerge weeks later, blinking in the sunlight and wondering where all my time disappeared to.

As I was writing this, aingsty_acts linked me to a beautiful, wonderful website which corrects mounds upon mounds of common errors. I... I think the site and I need some time alone right now.

According to the laws of irony, there will be a grammatical error somewhere in this post.

Vital edit: Please take a moment to enjoy the antics of that friendly creature, the Alot.

Originally posted image by image on tumblr, but reading backwards sucks.

Then posted as an entry remarkably similar to this one on livejournal, but now livejournal sucks.

Now posted on Dreamwidth. Third time lucky?!


The following clips are raw footage excerpts from Alex Kralie, a college friend of mine.

In 2006, Alex was in the process of shooting his student film, entitled Oregon Trail. Over the three months that this took place, his film crew complained of freak weather, illness, injured oxen and poor fording decisions.

Alex and his crew vanished without a trace, but these images came into my hands. At the time I was too unnerved to look through them, and eventually forgot about them.

A few days ago I found them filed away in the back of my images folder.

( Season 1 )