Tuesday 21 July 2009

Bollocks!


Having a bad day is one thing. Having someone stomp on your fragile dreams is another. So it's so heart-warming to know that iPhone Dax still loves me.

I know she does, cos waiting fert bus home tonight, I put the iPod function on shuffle and she did her stuff: 'Mentally Dull' by the South Park crew first, followed by 'Jenny Needs A Shooter' by Warren Zevon, followed by 'Whistle For The Choir' by The Fratellis, followed by '我的問題你沒回答' by Aaron Kwok. Even 'Ain't That A Bitch' by Aerosmith, and then '海嘯' by Soler. And now what do we have? Oh lookie, it's 'Good Lovin' Gone Bad' by Bad Company.

See? She loves me, alright.

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Saturday 18 July 2009

Writing. Hmpff.


What you have there,’ he says, looking at me like I really should know better, ‘is a repeat of the RSI that started last year.’ He sits back in his chair, adjusting his glasses and getting comfortable. ‘So tell me what you’ve been doing and why you weren’t wearing the support I gave you last time.

There’s no point pretending. I was supposed to be taking a rest from writing completely - my current ‘Supernatural’ story is finished and polished and I have the last chapter ready to post just now. I had intended to re-read another, half finished zombie fic and give my subconscious a week to think of an ending. Then probably a week or so after that I would sit down and bang it all out, and then the posting of the chapters would begin. A nice, familiar routine.

But getting caught on MSN and being challenged to a fic ruined all that. And the trouble is, I loved it - loved the idea of getting one over on my challenger, actually writing it (it’s that old excitement of embarking on a new fic, mixed with the giddy fun of it being for an entirely new fandom). I had thought it would be barely 10,000 words, simple and streamlined. I did not bargain on actually really getting into it and, having completed 30,000 words, ending up fleshing it out and making sure every point was covered, and therefore ending up with nearly 40,000 words. In six days.

So when I woke up with a very obvious, very punishing twinge in my right wrist and back of my hand, I had no-one to blame but myself. Trouble is, I’d do it all again and I wouldn’t change a thing. Why didn’t I wear the support whilst typing? It slows me down. When I have 6,000 words coming thick and fast every night, I do not need to be hampered, yanking me back to barely ninety words a minute. I don’t even want to think about how frustrating that is. I am wearing the new and improved support right now, and I’m struggling to make fifty words a minute. Someone shoot me - or get me a free copy of MacSpeak.

So how do I answer the good Doctor Mak, who’s watching me like he expects me to tell him a tall tale about a new table or computer at work, or a pretence at not having used my hand at all and I must have fallen awkwardly?

Been writing.
And you didn’t wear the support?
Lost it.
A sigh, a slight shake of the head, a scribble on a piece of paper. ‘I’ll get you a new one. This one will be bigger and bulkier - but you wouldn’t need it if you had used the other one when typing. Have you thought of getting some software so you can dictate your work instead of typing it?
Thought about it. It’s expensive.
So is paying for anti-inflammatories, wrist supports and pain-killers on a semi-regular basis,’ he points out.

But Hong Kong clinic prices are peanuts compared to the UK - at least, for my needs. I am trying though - I’m wearing it now, aren’t I?

Luckily, the beast in question is now written and all I have to do is re-read and polish it. Job done. Don’t need my right hand for that. It’s actually done me a lot of good, in some ways. It’s the first non-‘Supernatural’ story I’ve written since July 2007. It’s been a breath of fresh air, and it’s also given me a break from dank, nasty, carve-you-up monster fics (which I still love and am getting straight back to next week). It’s also pushed me into full-on geeky fan territory. I struggled with the concept of becoming even more of a complete fangirl than I already am by joining probably the largest sci-fi geekdom on the planet - it’s a cliche, a sad moniker, a sign of how living alone I am. But, seeing as I’ve already written for arguably the world’s second largest sci-fi fandom (‘Doctor bloody Who’) anyway, what was one jump up the ladder between readers? So yes, I wrote it, and I had a damn good time doing it, too. Maybe one day far in the future I’ll consider doing another one. But not this year. And yes, before you ask, it is Star Trek’s cancelled funship ‘Enterprise’. I’m sure in a few weeks it’ll appear in my bag o’shite over at the fan fiction archive, and I’ll be plugging it here.

Which brings me to the actual reason I was blogging today: the Supernatural story that will no doubt already be posted in its entirety before this update is published:



Title: “Crazy Circles”


Rating: Rated T for language and gore. Sorry, couldn’t fit any sex in this one. I promise it’ll be in the next story I write. With bells on.
Summary:
SEASON 4 SPOILERS to 4x22!
Moments after the end of episode 4x22, Sam and Dean realise they’re the only things standing in the way of destiny. Or are they? Can Dean do what he must - at the right time, in the right place?
Posted first (as always) at SPNVille.net.

Disclaimer:
I do not own the TV show ‘Supernatural’ either in whole or in part, but I wish I could write episodes full time. Or get a life. Or both.
Linky-link-link:



Don’t say I never give you owt.

Soopytwist, people.

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Sunday 12 July 2009

Best choons. Ever


Yup, came second int pub quiz. ‘Go team’, as they say.

And yup, have fallen in love. Wi two BEST CHOONS EVER. You might have heard these before, but I’m in Hong Kong, and as such, am not part of hit parade where you live. So, kids, label this under ‘choons’ as I get out of my Michael (comfy chair) and start singing, very loudly, to the following Songs Of The Week:

Nothing Like You And I
By The Perishers

We spent some time together walking
Spent some time just talking
‘bout who we were
You held my hand so very tightly
And told me what we could be dreaming of

There’s nothing like you and I
Nothing like you and I
There’s nothing like you and I

We spent some time together drinking
Spent some time just thinking
‘bout days of joy
As our hearts started beating faster
I recalled your laughter from long ago

There’s nothing like you and I
Nothing like you and I
There’s nothing like you and I

We spent some time together crying
Spent some time just trying
to let each other go
I held your hand so very tightly
And told you what I would be dreaming of

There’s nothing like you and I
Nothing like you and I
There’s nothing like you and I

So why do I even try?
There’s nothing like you and I



Wherever You Will Go
by The Calling

So lately, been wonderin’
Who will be there to take my place
When I’m gone, you’ll need love
To light the shadows on your face
If a great wave should fall
Fall upon us all
And between the sand and stone
Could you make it on your own

If I could, then I would
I’ll go wherever you will go
Way up high or down low
I’ll go wherever you will go

And maybe, I’ll find out
The way to make it back someday
To watch you, to guide you
Through the darkest of your days
If a great wave should fall
Fall upon us all
Well I hope there’s someone out there
Who can bring me back to you

If I could, then I would
I’ll go wherever you will go
Way up high or down low
I’ll go wherever you will go

Run away with my heart
Run away with my hope
Run away with my love

I know now, just quite how
My life and love might still go on
In your heart and your mind
I’ll stay with you for all of time
If I could, then I would
I’ll go wherever you will go
Way up high or down low
I’ll go wherever you will go

If I could turn back time
I’ll go wherever you will go
If I could make you mine
I’ll go wherever you will go




Soopytwist

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Saturday 11 July 2009

The more things change, the more they stay the same


Oh, what a week. Been very busy, you see. Either watching telly or tweeting about telly or writing about telly or chatting to England about telly. Yes, I have got this Thursday’s ‘Burn Notice’, but no, I’ve not had chance to watch it. I will do as soon as I’ve finished publishing this. Yes, I’ve got parts one to three of the miserably short ‘series three’ of ‘Torchwood’. Likewise, I shall plough through all three hours probably back-to-back tomorrow, Sunday, my one day off. No spoilers, please, or I shall stab you int eye wi fork.

Been catching up on older telly, and have been loving it. Oh, how those two boys make me laugh. One (the one my sister likes) is 6’4 with lovely brown hair, possesses puppy-dog eyes and a stubborn streak a mile wide. The other one (who I like) is shorter, with a pretence at blond hair, a big smile and big arms, and is just a complete shameless stud muffin. You know who I’m talking about, right?


A-haaa! Got you! No, not those two, but these two:


Don’t judge me. I missed the series as I was relocating to new continents while all the hoo-ha was going on. I’ve ripped through all four seasons so fast my head’s been spinning - but I haven’t seen the very last episode of season four, ‘These Are The Voyages…’. There are a few reasons for this.

1.
If I never watch the very last one, the show can never be over. See? I did this with ‘Supernatural’s season two boxed set of DVDs, and I know my lil sis did it with ‘21 Jump Street’. It’s a universally accepted way to prolong the suspension of disbelief. It works for me, as Hunter once said.

2.
It’s shite. Honestly - ask anyone. I have been warned time and time again by well-meaning friends and people who don’t even know me. The cast didn’t even like it. The crew didn’t like it. The bloke who fetched Scott Bakula’s fucking coffee didn’t like it. It was derided, insulted and dismissed as the purest form of arse-gravy ever to drop from some hack’s printer in La-La Land by pretty much the entire planet, regardless of language or country. I thought this was a myth until I actually did a little research. All you have to do is clock the terrifyingly high number of icons scattered over many different fandoms proclaiming that they refuse to believe certain characters have been killed off, others have been screwed over, and still others have been written against type in the very last forty minutes of the show’s history - that really should have been their finest hour. And, love him to bits as I do, not even the guest starring-might of Jonathan Frakes is enough to make me weaken and watch the damn thing. And the funny thing is, a couple of paperbacks were rushed out soon after The End, making up for certain results that the entire fandom (and in fact, even the casual viewer, apparently) rejected as plain stupid and downright insulting. I won’t go into details - oh, alright, I will, cos it rankles me and I haven’t even seen it.

If you don’t want to read the SPOILER BITS, you’ll have to RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! from the following few paragraphs:



(This is a spoiler space.
Honest.
Not an excuse to use an almost Carry On Enterprisin' type naughty seaside postcard.)

So then, spoilers for the finale that aired about... ooh, four years ago? Which everyone has seen but me? Right then:

They killed Trip Tucker.

REALLY?

I know it was the last episode, but come on, why? What purpose could there have been, when it was the end anyway? Why ruin the dream that a million fanboys and girls were sharing around the globe? That dream being that brave wee Trip would end up going where no Earthboy had gone before by making good on certain obligations to the VHLF* he’d been chasing for two years? And by extension, did this not make him more of an explorer than any other bugger on the ship? Yeah, everyone did their science thing and got on with life, collating and learning and finding out and fighting and eating and shagging and dying and such. But who among them actually put their money where their mouth was in seeing nothing wrong in making friends with, and ultimately Best Friend With Benefit’ing a non-human, on or off the ship? Trip’s constant efforts to make the less than cuddly Vulcan science officer understand what humans were all about, and how Vulcans might be completely different but if there’s once universal constant it’s that people always end up thinking like people, no matter their background, was perhaps the best insight into the human condition since the Prophets turned up on DS9 and went “’Ere, Sisko, what’s this baseball thing all about then? Why play sports at all?

By the time James Tiberius Kirk turns up a hundred years later, it’ll be commonplace for Starfleet officers to screw Orion (slave) girls, go-go dancers on planet Disco, waitresses and pleasure princesses on Risa and pretty much anyone else they like. But back when the Enterprise NX-01 was first sent out, none of the crew had actually left Earth before, and the only aliens anyone had really seen in passing were the Vulcans that taught at the Academy in San Francisco (I doubt Trip would put T’Pol in the same category as Mister Velik, the ‘pointy-eared professor who scared the Hell outta [him]’ at said institution).

But he managed to make her lose that stick up her arse and even enjoy herself a few times. He may or may not have been the cause of her addiction to the substance that helped her unlock deeply suppressed emotions (“I wanted to feel. And I did. I wanted more” - yeah, and we know what of, pet), made her see she didn’t have to marry some barely-familiar bloke back on Vulcan just cos her mam told her to cos it should have been her own personal choice. He didn’t cause a scene or add to her fucking hyowj mountain of problems when she was caged into doing just that three years later, and in fact was her closest friend in this life before and after Kos was a distant memory.

Cliched maybe, but the fact remains that in every mirror universe, time hiccup and intergalactic genetic scandal, they always end up either on top of or right next to each other. More often than not, there are half-human half-Vulcan kids thrown into the story too, just to tease the audience with images of fair-haired, pointy-eared Vulcans with huge, pecan pie-eating grins, or cute little babbies rolling around with pointy ears and tufty hair - babbies that suffer a tragic end at the hands of writers who just don’t know what to do with the monster of a possible story arc they’ve created.

An explorer, then. You can traipse around the entire galaxy and see all there is to see, but at the end of the day, the greatest journey you can make is getting to know someone and daring to trust them. Ask the Doctor, he’s had nine hundred years of the same old shite, and look how often he’s let himself get attached to a Companion before they’ve left, one way or another.

Hence the ‘Trip is not dead’ campaign rampant across Tinternet, and the follow-up books that corrected the history books - he wasn’t dead, and he wasn’t even resting. It was all some Section 31 bollocks about removing all records of Commander Charles ‘Trip’ Tucker III from active duty so they could use him in some Earth Alliance / Romulan cold war. As I’ll probably never read the book, and I know damn well I will never watch the last episode, I’ll just file it under Alternate Universe possibilities while I go back to season one, and start watching the really good episodes all over again. Think I’ll start with ‘Strange New World’. Always a giggle.

Oh! And yes, that was a quote from Quark as this post’s title.

*VHLF = Vulcan he likes to fuck. Yes, that's present tense, folks.

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Tuesday 7 July 2009

Time passes by so slowly


Or not. I sent him a real birthday card this last week. My first bloke. My crush when I didn’t know what crushes were. The one who looks like Tom Cruise (in a good way) except for being blond. And shares a name with some Hong Kong-singer-original Heavenly King I quite like.

It’s not the acceptance of his response. It’s the sending that counts. After all, he grew up and got life, a wife, a summat to do wi pay. What’s that called? “Job”. Yeah, that. I chose… Cyber-life. And doing quite well, I might add! Have entered into the ‘Supernatural’ fan fiction summer competition at SPNVille.net. Have to wait till 15th July to be told I crashed and burned, wi no hope of winning. Lotsa shite to write about, just no time.

So we’re into July already. Fuck me. If I blink will it be Christmas?

Hmm… Birmingham (England) or Vancouver (Canada) for holiday 2010? Well, never been to Canada (chorus of ‘Blame Canada! echoes through what is laughingly termed my ‘brain’), but have been stuck ont M6 over Brummie Land - int pissing rain - more often than I care to remember. In fact, I don’t think I’ve EVER been waiting int traffic jam to get over Brummie Land ont M6 when it HASN’T pissed it down.

Canada it is, then.

Fert holiday - next year. Long time away yet. Hmm.

So while iTunes is blaring out Thunder Kiss ‘65 by White Zombie, I have to say: I haz pikchers: let me show you them:





Proper girlie porn, no?
Ah well. Peach and lube, people. Soopytwist.

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Saturday 4 July 2009

Conversations of the week


Mate: Michael Jackson’s dead.
Me: And?
Mate: Well... he’s dead.
Me: So you said. So I said, ‘And?’
Mate: Just thought it would be something you’d like to know.
Me: How does it affect ‘Doctor bloody Who’, ‘Supernatural’, ‘Burn Notice’, ‘Enterprise’, writing / reading / beta’ing fan-fiction, government tax rebates, the price of vodka, the price of a new iPhone 3G S or the monsoon weather we’re experiencing right now?
Mate: It doesn’t.
Me: And there’s the definition of something that would not interest me.
Mate: Gotcha.



Mate: I reckon Michael Jackson’s not dead, you know.
Me: What?
Mate: I said, I reckon Michael Jackson’s not dead. He’s done a bunk, living like Elvis. And Lord Lucan. And Sooty.
Me: Didn’t we have a conversation whereby I elicited your explanation of why news about Michael Jackson, and thoughts thereon, did not interest me?
Mate: Oh yeah, sorry.
Silence.
Mate: But what if he was dead and came back as a zombie?
Me: Would anyone notice the difference?
Mate: That’s not nice.
Me: Most true things aren’t.



Me: I swear to Sod, if one more person pokes me in the eye with a fucking umbrella, I’m going to start kneeing people in the back of the leg. At a zebra crossing they’ll go down like dominoes.
Mate: That’s a bit excessive.
Me: It’s a bit bloody rude, is what it is. Why can’t people realise there are others walking on the same fucking pavement?
Mate: Ah. You forget that Hong Kong pedestrians have the spatial awareness of a leaf falling off a tree.
Me: So I did. I’ll just start swiping the spikes from my field of vision. It’ll make me laugh to see the water slide off and onto their heads as the brolly gets knocked to one side.
Mate: That’s the spirit.




Student: Teacher, did you see ‘Transformers 2’?
Me: Not yet. Have you seen it?
Student: Yeeess! I very like! So exciting!
Me: ‘I really liked it.’ What was your favourite part?
Student: When Oktimush Pime died.
Me: Optimus Prime.
Student: Yes, I say already. He dead but Sam plug in the power, and he not die.
Me: Riiiiiiiight. So he was dead, then he wasn’t. Are you sure he was really dead, not just resting?
Fellow student: Or Jesus?
Me: Pardon?
Fellow student: Jesus. If he was died, then he no died again, then he maybe is Jesus.
Silence.
Me: A cyber-Jesus?
Student: Woss mean ‘cyber’?
Me: Like... robots, or made of computer brains.
Student: Yes! Oktimush Pime is the cyber-Jesus!
Me: I like it.



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