So, while I was in Cardiff, I visited some friends.


Hi.

( Doctor Who Up Close & Torchwood )

And now I'm pretty beat, so for a whole load more Doctor Who, Torchwood and other Cardiff Bay pictures, you're just going to have to look me up on Facebook, I'm afraid.

Good grief, an internet connection! In Wales! Whatever next?

The trip to Cardiff was fraught with peril. Peril and rain. Mostly rain. Lots and lots of rain. I arrived utterly soaked to the bone, looking not completely unlike Senator Kelly moments before his rather odd demise n X-men 1. Upon calling home, my mother commented that the worst storm in recent history has followed me every step of he way across the West of England, into Wales, taking rest at Cardiff. Well, at least somebody finally wants to do something with me, even if it is Poseidon himself wantng to wash me way into cold, wet oblivion.

There's a cinema right next door to the hotel, so I went and hid from the torrential downpoor in there or a couple of hours. Saw Diary of the Dead, a viewing notable for several reasons:

- At first I thought the cinema was completely over priced, charging significantly more for both the ticket and the snacks than any other Odeon I've been to. Worth every penny though, as the seating was pretty luxurious, even for one of the smaller not-for-blockbusters screens.
- I was the only person watching Diary of the Dead. This was simultaneously insanely awesome and, I have no shame in admitting, very, very creeeeepy. I was quite spooked! (Although the film as a lot tamer than I expected. I realise George was going for a more realistic look and feel than usual, which was quite nice, to be fair, but for my money, zombies and OTT belong together.)
- Old man Sam! That guy completely stole the show. As far as scene-stealers go, he is the Jack Sparrow of the zombie world.
- This being Cardiff, and the cinema literally sharing a wall with the Doctor Who exhibition (which I will be quite upset if I do not get time to visit), the film was preceded by an extensive preview of the good Doctor's next (and probably final) series. I totally wasn't expecting it, and it was amazing. Instant nerdgasm and three thumbs up.

Much to my surprise, in a scene not unlike the ringwraith sniffing around the log with the hiding hobbits and then moving on prematurely, the rain had moved on further down the coast by te time I crawled out of my hidey-hole once the film was over, so I went for a wander around Cariff Bay / The Millenium Centre, ie. Torchwood's exterior. There was much jumping up and down on the pavement lift at the big mirror monolith (hi,spot the nerdy tourist), but sadly nobody popped out to shoo me off.

... or maybe the did, and slipped me a dose of Retcon. Hrmm.

Picures to follow upon my return to civilizaton.

... unless they also deleted them from my camera. Hrrmmm.

Tags: who
Current Location: Cardiff
Mood: geeky

So.

March, then.

A month of many mixed happenings.

Tomorrow, I'm off to Cardiff for a Meeting of Magnificent Minds for a few days, which should be fun. It's supposed to have rained all weekend and carry on into the coming week, but so far today has been brilliant sunshine all day. Hopefully that will hold out. While I'm there, I fully intend to visit the Doctor Who museum, and also jump up and down on the Torchwood secret lift entrance until they let me in.

Then I'm back home for a week, during which I will find out one way or the other if I will still have a job this time next month. At the moment the outcomes are looking like either redundancy or redeployment to an even worse position than the one I currently have. I anticipate losing what's left of my hair to stress by the time we get to summer.

And then next week, I'm off to Morocco for a couple of weeks. Being a snowy white skinned redhead, I don't do hot weather particularly well, so several gallons of factor 50+ sun cream will need to be appropriated before I depart.

My dad e-mailed myself and my brother the following travel itinerary:

Thursday 20th - travel to Malaga. The company car will pick you up at the airport and deliver you to Algeciras and then a ferry to Tangier. You will arrive Tanger at about 18.00. Dinner will be at a local Pizza place.
Friday 21st - sightseeing around Tangier, picnic lunch, drinks at the casino, dinner at El Minzah Hotel ( black tie).
Saturday 22nd - wake up at 06.00. Drive to Marakech about 6 hours, picnic lunch on the way. Dinner will be barbecued snake and monkey brains in the famous Jemaa-el-Fna square.
Sunday 23rd-sightseeing around Marakech, picnic lunch, most likely drive to the mountains. Dinner at the hotel or a nice restaurant.
Monday 24th - leave Marakech at 12.00 and drive back to Tangier, arrive about 19.0.0 - takeaway dinner.
Tuesday 25th - sightseeing around Tanger. Maybe drive to Chef Chouen. Dinner at a restaurant.
Wednesday 26th - relax in Tangier, ferry to Spain at 19.30, arrive about 22.30 and sleep at hotel.
Thursday 27th - 07.00 car to Malaga airport.

... yeah. Dinner will be Monkey brains and snake. Well, if it's good enough for Doctor Jones...

Mood: anxious

Seriously, if I ever see one of those scarves again, I'm going to burn it with fire.

( probably not the kind of thing you expected me to draw. me neither, for that matter. )

I'm fine with her furthest foot being twice the size of the closer one, really.

Okay, I'm not. It irks me. But too bad!

Tags: art
Mood: grumpy old fart
Music: Sin City - Marv

I've come to a lot of depressing conclusions lately, spent a lot of the last long while down in the dumps wishing things were different. I don't like writing about such things, mostly because I don't like spreading my glumness around to other folks. So I guess that's why I don't post here often anymore, because when I do, it's usually to have a whinge about something, and I'm pretty fed up with that. But today I need to vent!

I still read regularly, mind you, I still keep up with what people are up to and mentally cheer them on in whatever endeavor they currently involve themselves with. I might not show it particularly well, but I'm still interested in everyone else's ups and downs. I'm just even less inclined than usual to say much myself.

The situation at work is not helping matters. We've all pretty much accepted now that our redundancies are a mere two months away, and there's not a whole lot that can be done about that, except suck it up and get on with life. Except nobody has time to prepare for getting on with life, since we're somehow expected to cope with tripple our workload with preparing for wrapping up and exiting the building in the immediate future on top of all our regular work, and somehow keep morale up all the while. Fun times.

I keep telling myself that this is the perfect opportunity to get out of doing bottom of the barrel office admin stuff and get into something art related. But realistically, that just isn't going to happen. In the two years (shit, where the heck has all that time gone?) since finishing uni, I've had basically no time at all to work on portfolio pieces or even just sit and doodle to keep the juices flowing, and with the passage of so very many months of inactivity, my motivation, inspiration and technical ability have all withered and died. I look back at the couple of finished pictures I've done in the last two years and just want to slap myself silly; that there's only ten of them is bad enough, but what gets me is that of those ten, nine of them are utterly derivative fan art. I never used to do fan art. I always had this bubbling well of ideas and inspiration and whatnot that I'd delve into and happily draw away to my heart's content. That's gone. Now all I feel able to do is force myself to put put someone else's creativity on my page. And it is oh so forced. I feel completely burnt out, when really I haven't even started yet. I've never felt so empty or disallusioned before. It's not much fun.

I also stumbled across some stuff on this blessed little internet this week that I really wish I hadn't. Now is really not good timing for old wounds, but sadly you can't unsee stuff, so, crap on a stick. And some other stuff that's actually great news, about old friends and acquaintances from years gone by who have gone on and done really spectacularly well for themselves. I should feel really happy for them, and I am, but mostly I feel completely overwhelmingly disappointed with myself.

Stupid internet.

I think I need to do some retail therapy. I really can't afford it, especially not with the impending lack of employment, but I need shiny new toys to distract me from this most cavernous of slumps. I'm sorely tempted by a sexy new ipod; my old one is now as ancient and decrepit as I myself feel. And on the less financially impacting end of the spectrum, I believe Day Watch just came out on DVD. And Torchwood is on tonight. Excellent.

Mood: crushed

Some more Mass Effect fan art, if for no other reason than Turians kick my arse in ten directions with their pure awesomeness.


( Mass Effect - Betrayal. Cut for huuuugeness. )

Also, Torchwood season 2. Aaah, Torchwood. How we have missed you so. This season looks to be utterly hilarious, and also extremely gay, with Jack already humping absolutely everything in sight, and we're only one episode in. Gwen is still a complete cow and utterly annoying, though. Thankfully Owen has yet to say anything of significance, making himself approximately a billion times less irritating. The entire budget, which appears to have been quadrupled, appears to have been spent on creature effects, which were pretty sparse in the first episode, but looked pretty damned spiffy in the series preview at the end. And, yeah. Lots and lots and lots and lots of gay.

Plus it looks like Martha will be making an entertaining sidestep into Torchwoodland for a few episodes, which, although they obviously didn't put anything too spoilerific in the trailer, seems to involve her getting a long overdue dose of comeuppance for devolving from "hey, finally an intelligent companion" to utterly moronic and undeserving of continued existence. Excellent. I'm still dreading season 4 of the Who, though. There is nothing on this earth that can convince me that Catherine Tate will be a good companion, and the (thankfully brief) return of both Martha and Rose do little to offer encouragement. Seriously, what is with all these thick as shit companions in the new series? It's not like they can't write good, strong, intelligent female characters. For goodness sake, bring back Sally Sparrow already!

And then (actually, before, but who's counting) there was the Sarah Connor Chronicles! Good grief, that was a pleasant surprise. I expected that one to be utterly pants, but it was, in fact, pretty damned good. Great cast, decent writing, surprisingly good Terminator effects, and best of all, it carried on directly from T2 and completely denied T3 ever happened. Roll on episode three tonight. Da Dun! Dun! Da Dun!

Tags: art, who

The Internets told me to make my first post of 2008 a meme. Far be it from me to protest.


1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result as a comment in this post. Also, pass it along in your own journal because it's more amusing that way.



Uh-huh. It's like the internet knows. It knows and it mocks. Although, thankfully, I don't have that particular strain, which is bird flu, which would suck rather much more than current circumstances, so, that's a good thing, I guess.

That's one fugly font, right there. But it's called Snotmaster. I couldn't not use it.

italics!

I go now, to imbibe medication, sneeze, and sweat.

Mood: still ill

*... wherein a leaf is, in fact, a tissue, laden to soaking-point with all manner of festively-hued mucus and excretion.

yep, for crimbo this year, father christmas left a generous helping of influenza, courtesy of my dear grandmother. since boxing day, I've pretty much been a bed-ridden pile of aching joints and exploding orifices. today I'm feeling a little better, well enough to put on DVDs and see what's happening on the interweb, whilst hunting desperately for a new supply of tissues. I've gone through four boxes so far. fortunatly the ceaseless torrent of snot and other pleasant emissions is finally slowing down to a steady trickle. en route I discovered, much to my dismay, that it is in fact about to tick over to 2008 mere moments from now. had no idea it was even new years eve.

oh well. have a good one!

Mood: sick

omg yet another one of these farting Pottarded portrait things. this may or may not be donna from holby, but either way, don't tell her as it is apparently part of a christmas present.

( cut for your comfort and safety )

thankfully there's only one more of these pissing things to do, and that doesn't need to be done until late january. huzzah! never again!

well, not until I need money, at least.

which may be sooner than planned, as it seems like work will be giving us all redundancy as a belated christmas present. erm. yay?

oh well, while this certainly is not good news, not even in the slightest, there's no denying that I can't stand it there anyway. lesson learned: never work for the government. its every bit as corrupt and incestuous as popular fiction would have you believe.

Mood: apathetic
Music: the gone jackals - get outta town

Terry Pratchett has Alzheimers.

I haven't read any Discworld books for a fe