So, anyone with a vague interest in the wonderful work of Joss Whedon, I presume you have already seen the first glorious episode of Dr Horrible's Singalong Blog? Because it is very funny, and the music is catchy, and the Bad Horse letter made me laugh so much I had to hit pause or I'd miss the next scene. Oh, and as if it needed saying, Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion are awesome. The second part will be live tomorrow, and the whole thing will be available to watch until Sunday. Go watch!

Speaking of awesome things, the new Joan as Policewoman album is really brilliant. But there are no references to evil horses. At least, not that I've noticed. But still, go listen.

A belated happy birthday to the wonderful zoje_george!

I love beatonna's comics very much, but this might be my favourite yet. Even though it's not a history one.

Now we know how Russell T Davies plans his plots - he reads the worst fanfic he can find! Seriously, I am shocked at how disappointing that was.

I've just finished Chris Cleave's second novel The Other Hand and it is, without any doubt, the best thing I've read all year. It's told by a young Nigerian refugee and a female British journalist who first met each other on an African beach and meet again in Britain several years later. It is very funny, it is very shocking, it is exquisitely written, it is enormously powerful and by the time I finished it I was crying - and I mean properly crying, not just getting a bit red and tearful about the eyes. I was actually sobbing. I know that doesn't sound like much of a recommendation but it should show how overwhelming and beautiful this book is. It's not out until the beginning of August but if you see it, read it.

Another 5 point LJ entry. It's all I can manage right now.

1. I saw Leonard Cohen on Sunday night! He was freaking amazing, and worth the, oh, 32 year wait to see him. Actually, my parents and my sister went to see him in the National Stadium back in '88 and I was offered a ticket and said no, despite grudgingly admitting to liking the then-newish I'm Your Man (the soundtrack to that summer's family holiday to France, bizarrely enough). Anyway, he was wonderful, the coolest old man in music, and there were moments where I was practically in tears. it was an outdoor seated gig, but during 'Take This Waltz' two women waltzed down the aisle near us and soon they were joined by dozens of other waltzing couples who kept dancing throughout the song despite the security people's attempts to stop them. It was kind of magical, rather like the entire gig. He didn't do my favourite song ever ('Sisters of Mercy') but I didn't mind too much.

2. Unearthed early Liz Phair! Oh, Liz, how I loved you back when you were good. Exile in Guyville was the perfect soundtrack to my second year of college.

3. My new MacBook is beautiful and shiny, but it is also annoying, and I request tech advice: we connect to the interbets in our house through a Netopia wireless router. I never had any problems connecting with my old iBook - as soon as I put in the wireless card, it went online. Same goes for this one, but the connection seems to keep cutting out because the airport card keeps "scanning" for new connections despite being connected already. Any suggestions?

4. I finally started watching Gossip Girl which, unsurprisingly, is totally addictive despite the crapness of most of the characters. I did love the fact that Dan described his dad Rufus's '90s band as being "post punk math rock" when Rufus himself looks and dresses (those leather necklaces!) like someone out of Nickleback. I'm assuming they didn't want to cast someone who looks like Stephen Malkmus in the role, but it would have helped.

5. In other camp teen drama news, I am also reading Stephenie Meyers's preposterous Twilight, which is very silly (Edmund Cullen is the crappest secret vampire ever, as he keeps giving hints and "hiding a smile" every time anyone mentions blood or death or vampires or anything vaguely supernatural in his presence. Also he wears truly terrible clothes - there's a bit where the heroine/narrator Bella realises that she's always been so mesmerised by his beauty that she's never really noticed his clothing, and she tells us that he's wearing a beige leather jacket over an ivory turtleneck. Later he dons a slinky knit shirt that shows off his "muscular chest". Good Lord). I just read her most recent novel, The Host, which is a genuinely quite good sci-fi novel set in an Invasion of the Bodysnatchers scenario, after the alien bodysnatchers have won. The narrator, however, is one of the bodysnatchers, and the whole thing is pretty well realised. Sadly, it doesn't include any vampires who sparkle in sunlight, but you can't have everything.

Patsington and I went to see Radiohead last night in Malahide Castle (for free!). I know it isn's particularly credible to say this, but I firmly believe that post-OK Computer Radiohead are overrated. They've still created some amazing songs, but the albums have been formless and meandering. I remember, years and years ago, reading a review of a Huggy Bear gig at which there was a heckler who at first the reviewer thought was shouting sexist abuse but then turned out to be crying "more structure!" Well, that's kind of what I feel like saying to Radiohead. They're still a brilliant live band (the first time I saw them was in Galway back in 1996, and I went to see them with none other than Patsington), but the more noodly songs, while still good, don't work so well in a huge open-air space; they just kind of drft away on the air in a pleasantly waily way.

And as they only played two pre-Kid A songs, and one of them was 'Exit Music' they weren't exactly rocking out (the other OK Computer song was the opening track, 'Airbag', which is still bloody brilliant and a reminder of what a magical guitarist Jonny Greenwood is. I first heard that song on a sun-filled plane going to Boston back in 1997 - the album was just out and I managed to get a copy just before heading off to America for the summer - and it was the perfect soundtrack for the journey). Still, they were still good, and the crowd was really funny and friendly and reminded me of why I love Dublin; Bon Jovi were playing out in Punchestown last night, and the idea that everyone had intended to go there and come to Radiohead by mistake became a kind of crowd-wide joke, so wherever you went people would ask why the band weren't playing 'Bad Medicine' or just praise the "Punchestown" scenery. It was actually more entertaining than Radiohead, at times...

Anyway, I am writing this on my brand new MacBook! So shiny! And it has Photobooth! And Garage Band, which I can't figure out how to work properly yet - any hints gratefully received.

It looks like you can now play the INSANELY addictive game Auszeit on Neon without registering! Just double click groups of matching icons. It's like a cross between Tetris and Connect 4 and I seriously can't stop playing it...

Oh my God, when I said in my last post that the morons next door were listening to something that sounded suspiciously like 2Unlimited, I was kind of joking. But now they actually ARE listening to 2Unlimited! And not some modern remix, but the appalling original of 'No Limits'! I swear to God! This is moving from annoying to slightly hilarious (although I might just think this because I'm sleep deprived).

Another five point lj entry!

1. The dreadful father next door having seemingly just given up on his teenage offspring to start again with his unfortunate new baby (does the baby live next door or not? Does HE still actually live there or not? Who knows! Not the social services, anyway), the weekend parties have begun again. Man, I do feel sorry for that girl (although she is now 18, so it's perfectly legal for him to just leave her on her own for weeks on end), but the reason I am up at half eight on a Saturday morning is because next door they are stil blasting bad techno (last "number" was a ravetastic version of Michael Jackson's 'Earthsong'. Oh yes) and have been doing so all night. I would be sitting out the back garden now if it weren't for the fact that then I'd have to listen to (a) that terrible, terrible music, although it's pulsating through the house anyway so maybe it's not much better in here and (b) the partygoers ridicuously inane conversations. God, I hate them.

2. My laptop has got so slow I'm thinking of going cazy and buying a new Macbook. I've had this iBook for five years and it's been more or less hassle-free - is that a reasonable laptop lifespan?

3. P and I are going down the country today, so the stupid kids can listen to what sounds disturbingly like 2Unlimited as loudly as they like. Friends of ours have a family house in Mayo and we are going to eat lots of delicious food and go for walks. We are taking Ju Ju to the cattery and for a vet check-up, because the foolish little beast has a touch of arthritis and her stout legs are a bit stiff. Wish her luck.

4. We have now watched the first two series of Press Gang and are on to the third. It really is incredibly good, and what's really striking is how ordinary everyone looks. For better or worse, they all actually look like I remember people looking in the early '90s (which is more than I can say for the likes of the glorious 90210, in which, I remember thinking when it was first aired, everyone looked really big-haired and '80s ). But it's quite scary and depressing to realise that if the programme was being made now, everyone from Lynda to Colin's very amusing small-girl assistants would undoubtedly look much glossier and professionally groomed. The older girls wear baggy jumpers, the small girls wear hideous bermuda shorts, and it's a reminder that girls aren't really allowed to look like that on TV anymore. Which makes me sad.

5. I am totally and utterly addicted to the Auszeit game on Neon. Neon is a usually excellent German magazine (although this month's cover is unusually tired and loathesome) whose website is a lesson in how to generate free content as users can write articles. They can also play each other in this amazing game, which is basically like a cross between Connect 4 and Tetris, ie heaven. Basically you get a grid of images. Whenever two or more matching images are side by side, you double click them and they disappear and the images above them slide down. The goal is to get rid of as many images as you can. I was randomly challenged by another user when I was logged in - people basically just offer a challenge to any recent player who is online, it's not a big deal - and I have been ADDICTED ever since. Seriously, it's worth registering on the site just to play!

Happy birthday alltheleaves! Have a lovely day. Hope it's as sunny over there as it is here (and that you're able to catch some of the lovely rays...).

Despite forgetting something crucial this morning and having to cycle home and back again during my lunch-break in the blazing sun in order to collect it, I am having a good(ish) day. Not least because I am now the proud owner of a complete Press Gang box set that just cost £25 on Amazon, reduced from £79.99! I watched one episode this morning when my boss was at a meeting, and it was just as awesome as I remember it. Also, Lynda's baggy red jumper, short black flouncy skirt, black tights and shoes and black over-sized man's jacket are, sadly, more or less a typical stellanova-ensemble circa 1989. Dear oh dear.

1. Happy birthday to the wonderful glitterboy1 and happy belated birthday to the lovely felinitykat! You both rock.

2. It's sunny again! And I am in work, trying to write a very silly article, even though I would prefer to be outside. On Saturday Patsington and I went on our first safari to the rural lane on the other side of the park in nearly a year. The sun was shining, there were beautiful birds everywhere, the fields were full of flowers, and in the ruined 18th century churchyard at the end of the lane was a horse and a (fairly newborn) foal, one of the cutest little things I've ever seen. It was a scene of rustic bliss.

3. Ever since I devoured them all on my honeymoon, I have been meaning to post about the genius of Philip Reeve and his magnificent Mortal Engines quartet. They're possibly the most well-realised feat of the imagination I've ever encountered in fiction - he's created that rare thing, an utterly original fictional world, in which most of the world lives by the principles of "Municipal Darwinism" in giant moving "traction cities" that consume smaller towns. The story races along, Reeve deals with big questions of morality and social justice and memory and what makes us human in an intelligent and thought-provoking way, and, most of all, the characters are complex and real. Amoral, messed-up Hester is one of the greatest anti-heroines ever. And the books are incrediby moving; just thinking of one scene at the end of the last book makes me tear up. In short: read them. And wonder why the hell Philip Pullman's pompous Dark Materials are heralded as works of genius and these book's aren't.

4. Patsington was interviewing gideondefoe on the phone this morning and had to stop the interview for a minute or two because a shouting, puffed-up Ju Ju was having a fight with the identical young cats known to us only as The Twins in the front garden and had to be rescued. We are a very professional journo household. BTW, the new Pirates! book is hilarious.

5. You know when a book looks like it'll be really entertaining and then just...isn't? Take Anna Godbersen's The Luxe. Gossip Girl meets Edith Wharton! It should be so awesome! And yet, it's not, mostly because the author can't write. Bah. Also, check out the "Luxe in the 21st Century" section of the website (it's under Extras). I weep for the future.

Hello, I'm emerging out of the ether again. Remember the days when I posted all the time? Sigh. Anyway, anglaisepaon and starfishchick say five things make a post, and I think I can manage that.

1. We had almost a week of gorgeous summer and now it's lashing rain again. Oh cruel Irish weather, why must you taunt me so? If last summer is anything to go by, this manky weather will continue for the next year, so I suppose I should get used to it (as if the last 32 years wasn't enough time to get used to this country's horrible dampness). Last weekend's weather was ridiculously nice, and against all expectations it even lasted into the bank holiday Monday and, well, most of the week, which I had to spend cooped up in an office, but at least I got to lie out in the park at lunchtime. Oh God, it's thundering now. Brilliant.

2. The current series of Doctor Who is pretty great (I hope you've all been reading my recaps over on Pop Vultures), as is the increasingly deranged Battlestar Galactica. Last night Patsington and I caught up on the last three episodes of 30 Rock. God, I love Tina Fey. I MUST snag an interview with her to tie in with the European release of Baby Mama. By the way, can anyone think of another female TV character who, like Liz Lemon, is depicted looking scruffy and speccy sometimes and be-contact-lensed and foxy when she dresses up to go out, in the manner of an actual human being? Especially in a sitcom? Because I can't. Even the funniest sitcom ladies usually look either groomed and sleek or "comically" dowdy most of the time.

3. I just read Persephone's new reissue of Penelope Mortimer's 1958 novel Daddy's Gone A-Hunting. It's enormously readable but VERY bleak, the sort of novel about women's lives that makes me incredibly grateful for feminism. I've wanted to read her stuff since I read Valerie Grove's excellent biography of her onetime husband John last year, and I want to read more, but I think I might have to read something relatively cosy before I start another one, because two novels about despairing, frustrated suburban wives in a row would make me lose my will to live.

4. Lots of wedding guests very kindly gave us cheques as wedding presents, which had been irresponsibly sitting in a box in our kitchen for the last two months, and the other day Patsington finally went through them all and took those that were made out to him to the bank. However, as he discovered when going through them, all the ones from his relatives on his father's side were made out to Patrick and Anna [Patsington's surname] or even, in one case, Mr and Mrs Patrick [Patsington's surname]. He took them to the bank anyway and was told that the other person would have to sign the back of them before they could be lodged. Except that person doesn't exist. Anyway, apparently as a married woman my identity is so vague in the eyes of the banking system that I can actually sign my ACTUAL NAME on the cheques and that is enough. Hmmmmmmm.

5. I adore Coronation Street, but it's been a bit grim lately, apart from the joy that is the wonderful Becky. Actually, the average episode of Corrie is still funnier than a lot of sitcoms, even with upsetting storylines about babies dying, but still. And Silver Street, the radio soap on the BBC Asian Network, is also pretty depressing, what with Zak being unjustly arrested as a suspected terrorist and Fatima's horrific accident. I've got a couple of week's worth of Archers podcasts to catch up on - Lord knows what's been going on there, it seems to be a bad time in soap land. Although I must give a huge, albeit belated, cheer for Pat in The Archers and her wonderful turn in court last month. I almost cheered aloud in the park as I listened to her stand up to the snide prosecuting barrister without ever losing her cool. More uplifting moments like that, please, soap producers.

I have spent the last three days in la belle France! And two delightful people got married to each other, and there was a fantastic party in the middle of the gorgeously sunny French countryside, and there was a lot of insane dancing, and the next day we all went off in a bus to Monkey Forest and a baby monkey took food from my hand. So basically it was a pretty perfect weekend, even though I packed really badly and forgot everything from my camera to my makeup bag. Congratulations barsine and beau of barsine!

How much do I love artsy German indie electro-popsters Wir Sind Helden? A LOT, that's how much. I've been seeing references to them in German magazines and feminist blogs for years, but only heard them for the first time recently. And oh my God, how did it take me so long? They are so fantastic and last night Ju Ju and I had a bit of a German dance party as we grooved around the kitchen to the sounds of Die Reklamation.

Not only do I absolutely love this song (I can't embed the video), but back in 1995 I created (and never finished) a graphic novel about an indie band who sell their souls to the devil for fame, and a few pages of it, and I am seriously not exaggerating, looked exactly, PANEL FOR PANEL, like a bit of this video. My heroine even looked like, and was dressed identically to, Wir Sind Helden's lead singer/guitarist Judith Holofernes.

I love this song, and its supercute Tintin-esque video:


And this video (and song) just makes me happy:


Because I am a sheep, give me a few "five things" list suggestions!

I was wondering why I love crazy German ice-skating soap opera Alles Was Zählt, which I've been watching avidly online since last week (every single episode is available! It's awesome!). Then it dawned on me. We've got a plucky young ice-skater from the wrong side of the tracks who is discovered at random and chosen for the ice team of a fancy gym, only to become the rival of the owner's glamorous, evil daughter, whose hunky boyfriend is kind to our heroine. Our heroine's brutish stepfather has forbidden her to skate and when he finds out she's been deceiving him, kicks her out of the house and she is forced to go and stay with the owner's family. And when the hunky boyfriend gives her the new skates she needs, they initially hurt her feet so much that when she has to take a surprise skating exam (long story), she needs her scruffy old skates - but the evil rival has stolen them from her locker! So she has to skate in the painful new skates! But she's so awesome that she dazzles all the judges!

In what other medium would we find such a tale? Why, in old-school girls' comics, of course! The whole thing is straight out of Mandy or Judy! And that, I think, is why I love it. That and the fact that every episode ends on an awesome cliffhanger.

My longer Doctor Who review will appear on Pop Vultures, but my shorter one is: brilliant. And ( HUGE SPOILER )

And Catherine Tate wasn't bad at all. And Bernard Cribbins was in it too! Fantastic.

I am back! Yes, Patsington and I have bid farewell to lovely sunny gelato-filled Italia and returned home to, well, quite warm actually Irlanda. Unfortunately, I seem to have picked up sonme vile lurgy and am all bunged up. Bah. But anyway, it's not that bad to be back, apart from work of course. I've been doing more big features in recent months (as opposed to my usual job of doing lots of relatively short ones on top of my editorial work and my four books pages) and had a very big one to do as soon as I got back, but as most of my colleagues have never worked as features writers, they don't seem to realise quite how much time a 2000 word piece based on two very long interviews will take, so the designer calls me every five seconds to see is it finished yet. A freelancer would have been given at least a couple of weeks to put that together - I had three days, including doing the actual interviews AND I also had to do loads of my usual editorial work AND put together two mini-interviews for the fluffier sections of the publication.

Anyway! Enough moaning. The wedding is over, and with it all the hideous wedding-related stress. The ceremony itself was lovely, although I did kind of charge up the aisle at top speed, leaving my poor parents far behind me. We hadn't been able to decide on the perfect arrival music for our musicians (leedy and Busta J, and my friends Angeline and Pól) so in the end Patsington serenaded me with one of his own songs what he wrote for me. The readings were from John Donne (I have loved this poem since I was 15) and WH Auden (look, it mentions frogs!), and then we were married and Jenny and Lisa sand 'This Moment' by the Incredible String Band, which my parents sang at their own wedding, and the Reverend Bill said "you may kiss the bridegroom" and I did and walked down the aisle with our arms around each other feeling very happy.


And then came the reception, which was initially lots of fun but got more stressful after the feast and the (very nice) speeches. Oh, I was so pleased with myself for exerting a near-fascistic level of control over the musical sections of the evening (although I did ask a couple of friends to do DJ sets, I wasn't too bad), spending days putting together the perfect dancefloor playlist on my iPod. Unfortunately, this meant that I had to deal with the technical problems of the sound desk acting up, as well as constantly checking with my DJing chums when their sets were going to end. This was all surprisingly headwrecking. But it all worked out, and everyone danced like mad to everything from Stevie Wonder to the Slits, and I got to play Huggy Bear's seminal riot grrrl classic 'Her Jazz' (the Huggies would probably not approve of being played at a wedding, but still), and my sister Busta J and I achieved our dream of getting everyone to do synchronised dance moves (to our childhood favourite, Paul Simon's 'You Can Call Me Al' and Five's Joan Jett sampling 'Everybody Get Up' which is one of my all time favourite guilty pleasures) which was awesome (there are photographs of all this, unfortunately). One of my friends said 'It's like being at a brilliant club with all your friends!' which was the best compliment I could have received.

I was SO tired by the end, though, and P and I staggered up to the (vair, vair fancy) Shelbourne Hotel, where the staff had left out champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries, and we felt terrible that we were too knackered to appreciate it all and collapsed into bed. Of course, I couldn't collapse before I had taken out the ten zillion pins that were holding up my very impressive hair (a v fancy stylist who works a lot for the magazine did it) and worked out all the knots from the backcombing. Oh the romance of it all.

So there you go, I am married. I don't feel any different, even though I've read lots of articles saying "oh, you think it won't be differen when you're married if you've been living with someone for years, but it is". Actually, it isn't, and I'm not really surprised, becuase as Patsington said during his speech, we've both felt so right together for years, and the wedding was just to celebrate something lovely that already existed.

Thank you all for your congratulations, by the way! I shall post again later about things that have been rocking my world – the genius of Philip Reeve, the sheer joy of campy German soap operas (you can watch one online about rival ice skaters, one rich, one poor, embroiled in a fierce class war!!), gorgeous Italian food – but I haven't had my breakfast yet, so it will have to wait.

Hello! I am in Florence, on my actual honeymoon, which has been absolutely fabulous so far - as was the wedding. Yes, on Saturday afternoon Patsington and I got married, and it was a lovely, lovely day and thanks so much to all of you who came. Anyway, we flew to Pisa on Sunday night and got the train to Florence the next day, and it's just as beautiful as I always thought it would be. Yesterday we went to Santa Croce and I looked at the Giotto frescoes that Lucy and the Emersons look at in A Room with a View. We also strolled over the Ponte Vecchio and climbed up to the Piazza de Michelangelo and gazed out at possibly the single most beautiful view I've ever seen.

This morning we walked out the door of our apartment building (a lovely 17th century palazzo) and took about three steps across the road to the door of the Academia, where we saw Michelangelo's David, which really is pretty impressive in real life, even after a year of studying Italian Renaissance art, which I thought had made me kind of immune to its charms. Now Patsington is having a lie down (although I suspect he is using this an excuse to read the third of Philip Reeve's absolutely and utterly amazinmg Mortal Engines quartet - I took them with me and Patsington started reading the first one as soon as I finished it. He stayed up ridiculously late for two nights finishing it and the next one, and now he is demanding the third book even though I haven't finished it yet) and I am heading off on a solo stroll. Wish me luck!