If there are one or more people on your friends list who make your world a better place just because they exist, and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the Internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.

It's too easy to think that this goes without saying. It may do, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be said. Thanks and love to all of you.

( TTTO 'True Love Waits' by Tom Smith )

Usual disclaimer: not a Christian, don't believe abstinence is best for everyone, don't believe kids should be left in ignorance about sex, not anti-abortion or creationist or Flat Earther. Just playing God's advocate here.

"Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly
And the dreams that you dare to
Oh why then oh why can't I-I-I-I?"

From some commercial or other. No prizes for guessing why it irritates the hell out of me.

Sorry. Not feeling good at the moment. Doubtless it will pass.

Thomas Disch, the sf writer, passed away recently, as many of you will know, and there was much quotage of John Clute on the subject:

"Because of his intellectual audacity, the chillingly distant mannerism of his narrative art, the austerity of the pleasures he affords, and the fine cruelty of his wit, Thomas M. Disch has been perhaps the most respected, least trusted, most envied and least read of all modern first-rank SF writers."

Which I can't help parsing as "his stuff was incomprehensible, uncomfortable, unpleasant and nasty, wasn't he great?" And that is such a typically Clutish sentiment. It certainly explains why I never had the slightest urge to read any Disch (though I can't see any reason I wouldn't have trusted him).

Pleb, me.

I'm fairly sure I didn't have them turned on before that last batch, but they were on when I powered up this morning, and even though I'd turned them off again, the offending update kept trying to install itself and restart my system. I had to remove it again.

Web connection on main machine shot. No idea why. no email, no nothing. Will yell when back.

EDIT: yell. Thank you to Magician and Meg, who commented helpfully online with the solution, and to Keris who actually phoned me and talked me through it. Bless you all.

Much scorn being poured on this first episode by Serious Scientific People. Personally, I liked it and will be watching.

I never really thought they were going to do a serious dramatic version of one of those "oh look, we've found a small brown lump of something, this is tremendously significant since it proves there were people living in Cheltenham in the Middle Ages" programmes that the Countess loves to shout at so much. There are, after all, plenty of real ones, and even those have resorted to making wilder and wilder assumptions in a desperate attempt to make themselves sound interesting to the average pleb like me. "Was the Amesbury Archer the King Of Stonehenge?!?!!" So I was primed for something that was not entirely plausible in the real world, and since that's what I look for in fiction I wasn't disappointed.

( 'Ware spoilers... )

And, of course, it also had the huge advantage of not being nuWho. :)

I asked pbristow to give me a letter for the song meme, which goes:

1. Reply to this post and I'll assign you a letter.
2. List 5 songs you like that start with that letter.
3. Post them to your journal with these instructions.

My songs are all about the letter I, apparently. In fact, I'm going to limit it even further, to songs that begin with the pronoun I.

1. I'll Find My Way Home by Jon Anderson and Vangelis Papathanassiou. There's very little that these two can do that I won't go for, but sometimes they do stray into the weird a little further than I feel like following. This is not one of those times. A deceptively simple but subtle song with lyrics that (mostly) make sense.

2. I'll Never Tell from "Once More With Feeling," performed by Nicholas Brendon and Emma Caulfield. When I start to feel like being able to write songs is maybe some kind of big deal, along comes Joss Whedon and effortlessly knocks out a dozen or so complete gems for a pet project before returning to his proper job at which he is also brilliant, curse him. This one effortlessly transcends the limitations of the performers and plays to their strengths, and is damned funny to boot.

3. I'm Just A Singer In A Rock And Roll Band, by the Moody Blues. There's a specific moment in this song that puts it on this list, right at the end. All the lyrics have been sung, and the music is hurtling along at breakneck pace, firing on all cylinders, and then the lead guitar decides to slam on the brakes, and for a moment you can't help but think that it won't work, something will snap and the whole thing will just keep on going...and then the brakes bite, and the wheels lock, and it's still going forward but it's only momentum now, and oh so gradually it slides to a halt...and then backfires. it's a good song overall, but it's that bit that does it for me.

4. I'm Bored by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. I was going to put I'm The Urban Spaceman, but everyone knows that one. "I'm! Bored! To Death! (Like mort-ar bored.)"

5. I Want Tomorrow by Enya. A lot of the appeal for this one is the memory of the video they made as part of the programme she was doing the music for (The Celts), but it is a good creepy song in its own right, and the string arrangements are nice, if a bit obviously Kate Bush-y.

So there you have it. (Oh yes, and I'm Going Slightly Mad by Queen...and I See Red by Clannad...and I Wanna Go Back To Dixie by Tom Lehrer...and...)