athena25

gakked from raggedhalo

( Meme - all about me. )

I don't often praise the red tops. In fact, I think I've done it, um, never. But there's a first time for everything, so here goes. I saw the article over the shoulder of someone on the tube yesterday and it caught my eye as standing out from the "celeb" gossip and other associated nonsense. How to Buy No. 10. A good exercise in fact finding - where is that money going and what are the likely results for the general election. It was followed up by an article on how Tory policy is likely to benefit rich people (shock! horror! gasps of amazement!) So far so good - the Mirror is standing firm by its Labour principles and doing a decent bit of digging on the guys that almost every other newspaper has laid back and opened its legs to as the Next Big Thing.

Now here's the rub. When confronted with this by a Mirror reporter and asked for comment, our dear David (he of the rolled up shirt sleeves and rushed visits to irritate flooded folk in Cumbria) makes a rather telling remark, asking why she didn't go and work for an indepenent newspaper.

Right. Because political leanings in media publications are only fun if they are on your side. As Roy Greenslade points out, Mr Cameron has some nerve criticising the independence of a newspaper whilst lapping up the support of Murdoch's Evil Empire. So now the only "independent" opinion is one which supports the Tory party blindly?

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

The sky is bright blue, illuminated by the sun which yields a feeble warmth. A reminder that the light has a physical effect - that it can touch us, that it remembers us. Even in winter when summer is memory held deep in the earth and now, in the sky. It doesn't quite take the edge off the cold however - the wind is picking up now - the clear skies are mercifully clear of rain and the season is showing itself as clear, hard and sharp around the edges. I can feel it about my face and fingers - reminding me to wrap up warm, stay inside, wear a vest, eat my vitamins. Nagging wind.

Days are short, almost an afterthought. It's the evenings and nights that matter now. Deep blues fade to purple and into the black infinite. Cityscapes look like science fiction sets of other worlds - lit up and gleaming with neon pride. I like watching people navigate this curious, alien landscape: brave explorers wrapped up warm against the inhospitable environment. I lurk behind glass. Mission control in a coffee bar with large windows. They are lit up for me, as I sit indoors, tracking their movements with a watchful eye. Trying to work out what wonders they have discovered out there in the cold, what new, fleeting mysteries and messages have arrived with the changing weather.

Each season tells a story. Each day writes something different upon the urban landscape and we sail through it, mostly oblivious. Barely touching the surface of the city in winter. Only the very striking reaches out to us - a sudden frost or snowfall, perhaps. We miss the subtler signs. The last few leaves, brown and dead but still clinging to the trees, unable to let go. The scrape of cloud in the blue like chalky outlines. Hands in a glove, warm and safe.

My brain does not work today. I am trying to think through concrete. It is difficult. I had a very busy weekend which was kind of up and down, so am feeling somewhat wrung out. I'm in a two steps forward one step back process with life at the moment, which means things are moving slowly, but there are setbacks. Consequently, I am having a really hard time concentrating or really doing anything right now. Keeping my eyes open is about the level I'm at. Hopefully going to the gym later on will blow away the cobwebs.

Ran a starter session of Changeling last night, things seemed good - I'll attempt to post a bit on that later - I'm trying out some new stuff in terms of game style. Probably not exactly earth-shattering but different to the norm.

In final, exciting news - I am going to Berlin for a long weekend, seeing Rammstein on Saturday 19 Dec (woo!) so if anyone has any advice on what to see and do, that would be appreciated.

Bear with me on this. For the past few days there has been a strange smell in the office. A sharp tang that only I could smell. I took this, naturally, as signs of oncoming dementia or as a curious stress reaction. No-one else believed me. But each day, it was there, acrid and unpleasant, a little like pear drops.

Then I found it. Lurking in the desk drawer I reserve for treats, painkillers and tissues (all women do this), a testiment to the amount of time I have not been at my desk but have been running around like a fool. A testiment also to the adage - out of sight is out of mind. A dark, green sphere, collapsed in on itself. It is fluffy. A lot like those funny blocks that florists use to put flower displays together. It was once a tangerine. I think. Yuk.

So the smell did have a cause, however distressing and I am not going mad.

I do, however, need to manage my fruit storage a little better.

Additionally, today I plan to return to the gym, after total gym failure last week and a very sporadic attendance record I am beginning to feel it. Time to go running.

Am in a towering inferno of rage over the fallout for Penny Red in comments on a recent article of hers. I am sick to death of the phrase "silly girl", "stupid woman" or similar being used to criticise and attack the opinions of female writers/politicians/anyone. Ad hominem attacks like these one only serve to entrench such attitudes into society: that a woman is less worthy of being listened to because she is a woman.

It's dark and rainy early in the evening, making my way home a little footsore in still-not-quite broken in heeled boots. Together with the stripey socks and velvet jacket I've got a witchety thing going on which matches the weather and my mood. Kind of angry. Kind of sad. Not sure why - I couldn't really face the gym, after ten minutes of not really running and a sweltering changing room full of teenagers reeking of chlorine and bickering about newly employed male teachers I needed to not be in that place. Calmed down now, a little, on the other side of some proper cooked food and an episode of Spooks. In true my-mother's-daughter fashion I got home and cleaned out a kitchen cupboard to relieve my anxiety. Putting things back in order, shevles neatly wiped and everything easily to hand. At least my stress responses have useful outputs.

It's strange not having kangeiko in the flat. On the one hand it's nice to have the space to myself, on the other hand it does feel very empty. I also keep ending up at a loss over what to do with myself - I go to work, I come back home whenever (it's been busy, so usually 8ish) I cook food, I go to bed. My social life is not exactly rocking the kasbah. It doesn't help that mostly everyone is in a couple and I'm trying to avoid them a bit. Not all the time, obviously, because then I'd have to be a hermit - however there's a time and a place for hand holding and currently it should be away from me. Actually, hermitage is pretty much where it'a at. Just without the aescetism. Take tonight. I've cocooned myself into my room, feeling a little bad for having the heating on just to keep my own little nest warm, but not bad enough to sit in the cold, freezing. Even the roleplay has ground to a halt - alasdair 's vampire game finished on the weekend (I somewhat sulkily turned up, got into costume and then dutifully got stabbed by the players then went home) but it appears to have gone down well. That now brings me to only one still extant larp character out of the five I had at the beginning of the year. Dates and times have been working against most other projects. Everyone, it appears, has a busy schedule of activities that clash horribly.

We're all aflutter in theatreland because Big Brum have brought us the London premiere of Edward Bond's new play, A Window. They have also brought us Edward Bond. I managed to say hello without collapsing in a heap. He probably has no idea who I am - I'm planning on keeping it that way. Heroes are best kept at arms length lest they disappoint, and crucially, lest I disappoint them. So work is winning against play right now, which is strange but on the other hand - I have a cool job and I love it, so you can't really criticise.

I've been thinking about holidays as well, and how I perhaps should take some. I've never travelled much - kangeiko does so with work and queenspanky has tagged pretty much every destination going, so I've got a bit of a yen to go somewhere. The question, of course, is where? Something to mull, with my big coffee table fantasy travel book, in the evenings.

Back in London. Trying to balance a need to keep busy, which is currently by far my best strategy for dealing with everything, with not getting so busy that I collapse into a heap. Made a good start by meeting with tyrell  straight from Euston on Friday, then lots of Halloween goodness yesterday so flaking a bit today. I'm also somewhat nervous about work tomorrow, because I did leave in a bit of a rush. Ideally, I'd just like a quiet run of things and for the theatre to keep ticking over nicely until we finish at Christmas. However, ticking over nicely is one thing that theatre, almost be definition, doesn't do.

( Halloween Party )

I currently have a vast quantity of food on the go. Spiced pumpkin soup has just finished, beef in beer is cooking down slowly and I'm marinating some pork for tea tonight. So at least I've got my cookery mojo back. Next on the list is to get back to the gym.

In Lancashire for a bit, returning at some point. There is internet access, but I'm spending time with my folks in the Real World, possibly outdoors. I am 2 hours and 20 minutes by train, plus around thirty minutes by car away from London. I am also on another planet.

Let me give you an idea of the nature of my current environs, out of the window are some hills. There are sheep on them, and also a good thick cloud cover. The village I am in has a population perhaps in the hundreds, on a good day with a following wind. it has two pubs and no post office. I do not have access to the 3G network. The nearest Starbucks is a 40 minute car journey away. The nearest cash point is a twenty minute walk away, there is no public transport to speak of - although there is a bookable bus service for the even more remote villages. There is no local cinema, the nearest one, which screened in a town hall closed around 5 years ago. The film club doggedly show films in a pub every month or so. They are looking forward to seeing In Bruges. I have no idea of the location of the nearest bowl of ramen. It may well be in Manchester, an hour or so drive by car. It is currently raining and about 5-7 degrees colder than Tooting.

It is very quiet. There are no traffic sounds, no sirens, no tannoy announcements, no overheard conversations. I can hear birds twittering and the ticking of the clock which my Grandfather made. Later on, I will go for a walk with my Mum. We might go into nearby Clitheroe, as it is market day. There will be homemade cakes, cheeses impossible to get elsewhere and probably birds of prey from the local rescue centre. I may also pay a visit to the epic wine shop whose cellars reach out under an entire road. 

Embuggerance & Feisty.

I demand someone uses these as a Steampunk detective / villain character pairing.

Of all the places that one might find an article suggesting that the Arts Council should be trimmed, Liberal Conspiracy was the last place I'd look. And yet, there it is. I'm angry. Not just at the tripe splurged on the page by someone with the artistic understanding of a block of tesco value chedder, I'm angry at the tone of the piece, I'm angry at the misrepresentation of "facts". I'm angry at the phrase "if it is of high quality it will stand on its own merits" because popularity and commercial viability is the only way of judging whether something is "good". To me, this is the equivalent of saying that if someone is clever enough they will not need a school or training to be able to become a doctor or that if someone is fast enough they will naturally become an olympic athelete without any sort of coaching. Let's not even go into the fact that something cannot stand on its own merit if no-one knows it exists and marketing costs money.

But more than anything, I'm angry at the context.

Yeah, I'm a grown-up (mostly). I accept that just because you call yourself a liberal and I call myself a liberal does not mean that we automatically share the exact same values. I like Kula Shaker for a start and I know a lot of people can't really get behind that. But I do take it to mean that we at least exist in the same sphere of opinions. You know, free healthcare good, bombing people so we can nick their oil bad. That sort of thing. We might disagree on how we go about these things, or the priority of one versus the other. But we should at least be able to nod along to the headlines then bicker about the footnotes in the pub.

This kind of article is just unacceptable. I'd expect it of the Mail or the Telegraph, or one of those pseudo libertarian wankerish bits of prose that assumes just because they had all the advantages that everyone else does to, and that if other people can't succeed with just elbow grease and a british stiff upper lip then they aren't trying hard enough.

Fuck you.

Seriously.

As if it wasn't difficult enough working in the arts without our own bloody side having a go at us. We're hemorrhaging money to  the Olympics, other sources of funding are down due to the recession and people have less cash in their pockets and/or have no jobs so when they do come to see art they want it either free or at a big reduction. But stuff costs the same, if not more. It costs the same to buy wood to make sets, to buy paper to photocopy scripts, for heating, lighting and to pay staff to show you to your seat. And you need this money upfront. So, unless you have Mummy or Daddy's bottomless bank account, you need the Arts Council.

For all its ills, ACE provides a valuable resource for arts professionals in the UK. Being very blunt, without ACE neither my job nor the organisation I work for would exist. No National Theatre either. Government funding is also vital for access - take free museum entry, for example. How awesome is that? Pretty damn awesome. ACE funding keeps ticket prices down. Fact. Which means that folk like you and me can go and see stuff without taking out a mortgage.   

Or you know, let's all just hang up our coats and go back to a dodgy system of patronage were artists were the lickspittles of the wealthy and priviliged and churned out any number of sycophantic plays or dull as dishwater portraits of Sir I Don't Know Much About Art But I Know I Like Big Pictures Of Me.

There's something to be said about having only one day off a week - it makes doing nothing a bit more special. I've got a certain viewpoint on doing nothing - I'm very bad at it. I need to have at least two or three things happening at the same time. They don't have to be big things - I can read a book, listen to the radio and occasionally stir a pot of stew. That sort of thing. At the moment there is a Christmas cake in the oven, so I'm feeling fairly accomplished on that score, it's never quite right unless it has at least six weeks to mature. This one has some pretty multi-coloured raisins in (lots of ambers and bronzes) alongside dried cherries and cranberries. I missed out on locating my usual glace cherries (proper ones, that are actually cherry coloured) due to lack of time and willpower to go into one of those awful health food stores where everything costs a million billion pounds and is secretly woven out of tofu. Including the malnourished staff.

It's probably as well I didn't go, frankly, because I've been snapping at random strangers* all week - the removal of my weekends and evenings has caused me to become a very grumpy woman. Yesterday I was testy over a selection of danish pastries, possibly down to the fact that I just wanted the man in the shop to tell me what flavour they were and he just wanted me to pick one, bugger off and stop yelling "but is it apricot?!" at him.**

However, once that was done I did have a nice coffee with alasdair where we discussed all things roleplay including Ragnarok, which I'm going to try and work on later today after a meeting with chains_of_irony which will allow me to get all my ducks in a row. It's a lot more time consuming than I'd expected, because I'm balancing a method of weaving everyone's characters together into a meaningful narrative with trying to allow for enough surprises that it doesn't feel as if we are sleepwalking through a story I wrote for everyone to follow. It's about creating opportunities for character development, but because of the condensed timeframe (5 game sessions plus pilot) the players don't have the time to mould and build their protagonists within a game, a lot of that work has to be done outside of a game. They need to know who they are and where they want them to go before they come to the table. And so do I. For each of them, in order to ensure it happens.

Each time we come together the game gets better, which is a good sign, I'm hopeful that the next session (which will be episode two) will be where everyone hits their stride. I'm writing a scenario in which there is room for all of them to strut their stuff a little, rather than the pilot which focussed very heavily on "this is the setting" and "these are the mechanics" with characters getting little more than a "hello my name is..."

We shall see.

* And staff members who keep phoning me in the morning to ask random questions such as "why is no-one picking up the phone in the office?" "Er, because I'm not in until midday?" Yesterday where I got a panicked call to try and locate another staff member, who, curiously, I didn't have lying about my flat. Finally located them using the hitherto unknown ability known as calling them, and spent forever trying to reach the person who needed them only to be told that "yeah, I moved away from the phone after I'd called you, cos, you know, I'd done my bit." The piece de resistance was where someone came in to see how I was doing and then went on and on about how I shouldn't get stressed because then I'd end up with clinical depression. Yeah. Thanks.

** In retrospect we both had a point. It's just mine was better.

Apologies for this being a bunch o links. I found the thread of conversation interesting but have not had the time to actually write something lengthy about it. But trust me, I have thoughts. Oh yes.

Anyhow - here's an article which talks about the issues of men might face when approaching women they don't know, and where those issues might be coming from. And here's a follow-up article by one of my favourite writers on her feelings about the whole thing.  Warning - potential rape triggers. I'm neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the OP - I like the article and I like both what she's talking about and how she's gone about it, I think it's sad that these things still need to be discussed but glad they are being discussed anyhow.* I also like the idea of kicking the "rape fear" and "public safety"  ideas out of the box of Wimmin's Issues and into the world of Everyone's Issues. The theme of personal responsibility for how you might come across is tricky - we aren't mind readers, we don't know what experiences a person might have had and we will mess this up every now and then. I guess the important bit is to be aware, to be reasonable about it. Which does cut both ways. Just as you might reasonably expect someone not to bother you when you've asked them not to, screaming in someone's face "get away you evil rapist man!" when they have said you have nice shoes / nice hair etc is not really a proportionate response.

OK. Team. We need to cut a deal on this. I'm not sure how we work it out, what with my bag of troubles and your bag of troubles. Especially given that we've never met. If you say "hi" to me, I'll say "hi" back. But when I say "hi" that's exactly what I mean. So if I go back to my book, or nod my hello and walk on, that's all she wrote. If you do the same to me when I say "hi" to you, I can take a hint. It's all tied up, for me, in the problem of "chase me! chase me!" versus "no means no".

Which is a big problem and one that I have not wrapped my head around, but I'm working on something. Thoughts from the floor?

* How's that for a big bag of fence sitting?

Stuff continues normal. By "normal" read ridiculously busy, made of theatre, attempting to slowly re-engage with the world, please still be my friend in November when I emerge?

So, that aside, here's an amusing top ten list of Out Of Touch Tories, gakked from Liberal Conspiracy. Ladies and gents, our future government....

Read it and weep.

Work 7/10 Work is keeping me afloat. By afloat, I mean running around like an idiot, because as of today, I now have four jobs for the price of one. I'm still doing my actual job, plus providing cover for the theatre, managing the offsite project (come and see it, it's ace!) and my boss has gone on holiday so I am also technically him for the next two weeks. It's all just about ok, however I'm waiting to see what will happen if/when the wheels fall off. Currently I have managed to solve the Great Heating Crisis of Last Week, the Double Booking of Unable To Use Excel and the What Is This Thing And Why Is It On My Desk of mostly everday. Today I am battling the Rota Of Why Does No-one Answer Their Phone?

Love 0/10 Broke up. It is bad. That's about it.

Friends 9/10 You know who you are. And you are great. I am sorry I have not been able to see you (see "work" above) or spend any meaningful time with you, but at some point soon I shall return to Planet Earth.

Family 8/10 My brother becomes a Doctor on Friday. I greet this news with mixed feelings, firstly a woo and yay cos he has worked so hard for it and overcome the labyrinthine Italian education system, an absentee superviser plus doing battle with the Elements Of Space itself. The grumble is down to my own selfish desire to have a phd of my own, but until someone considers literature as worthy of funding as Poper Science that is not going to happen. Mum and Dad are due down for a visit in November, when hopefully the world will be a bit less full of theatre and I can spend some quality time with them, rather than phone time. Am aiming for a more relaxed and less visit-everything type stay than beforehand.

Made Up Life 4/10 Have not been able to do much or generate sufficient quantities of enthusiasm for any projects that are not strictly required of me. Am hoping that this will pick up at some point.

Misc 5/10 I've been experimenting with my iphone camera (by which I mean waving it at things and then pressing a button) and have got some reasonable results, even branching out into non-food related items, including some shots of the venue after dark, it's a really interesting, creepy space - a decomissioned school, now multi-purpose. Additionally someone reminded me that it is now MID OCTOBER and I have not made my Christmas cake yet, so that's this weekend sorted.

Seriously. I must have done. Because it's now October and things have gone very far, very fast. I sometimes wish there were a remote control for life that gave you the option to press pause (or even rewind and do again). Anyway, so that was September, it was very hectic and seemed to pass by in a flash - during which time I am now a qualified First Aider (hurrah!) done various bits of Odyssey, run two fairly successful episodes of Prime Time Adventures dealt with a variety of RL issues with varying degrees of success and happiness with the outcome and have practically welded myself to work - which is no bad thing, idle hands and all that.

So, yeah. Hey October - how have you been?

Today's word of the day is:

Crash Blossom

Not only is it marvellous and perhaps a fitting title for a book by Mr I Banks or Mr N Stephenson, or an Anime character, it is also amusing.

Language Log will tell you why, for they are the Word Mavens, I just link to this stuff.

Still loving language log...

Memo to self: NEVER get stuck in a clause sequence using indefinite-reference one. There is no way out. One ends up sounding like an inexperienced member of the royal family being interviewed on TV. And one hates that.

Just have a rotten cold and am hiding from the world. Have built a den using blankets and an old clothes horse. Further updates later.

It's Friday. Which means I've found something to get angry about on the internet. This week it is not an event in and of itself, but reactions to it. Harriet Harman is working on stopping businesses from getting tax breaks when they take their staff to lap dancing clubs for jollies. I can think of any number of reasons why this is a good idea, starting with the fact that as a staff day out it's a fairly tasteless idea.

Don't get me wrong - I like burlesque, I have no problem with strip bars or lap dancing clubs (I don't like them, but that's a personal thing). However that's me, on my own time. This is an organisational thing, a business decision. It's about an activity that company's choose to take their workforce to, and therefore are saying "this is the sort of thing we are cool with." Anyone who has ever been on a staff outing will know that the location and type of activtiy is never entirely consensual - I've been dragged along to cricket and forced into a boat and given alcohol with umbrellas in it.* But I was never in a position of being actively offended by the activity on offer.

I don't like strip bars. I don't like lap dancing clubs. I don't like page 3. I'm sick of naked women as a public, common commodity rather than a private activity between consenting adults. Anyone who throws the "women are empowered by stripping" line gets a brick to the head and needs to read this because I cannot tell you how angry that argument makes me.

Secondly, it's sexist. I do not believe for a second that these companies are taking their workforce out to clubs where there are both males and female strippers - so where's the fun for those of us who like the boy flesh?

So yeah, props to Harman.

Right, onto the rage. The first two comments underneath this article made my blood boil. And I know, I know, I know that they are done by crazy internet comment people - like this lot here - and therefore I should not let it get to me. But I am. Because if this is some sort of social consensus then we are fucked, totally, utterly, royally fucked. We've got one person whinging that she shouldn't be wasting her time with this - she's the Equalities Minister, it seems perfectly reasonable to me that she might be interested in this. Then there's the "stupid woman" refrain which naturally gets my goat. I'm annoyed enough that we have to have an Equalities Minister**, but clearly we do.

So there you have it. Minister attempts to do job and gets shouted at by idiots online.

And fuck. I'm standing up for Harman.


* Yeah, it sounds good, but I get seasick. Really, really seasick. And we didn't stop to dock for hours.
** Because I'd really rather we just stopped having inequality, or that everyone in governement had this as part of their job.