my tumblr thang

Mamma Mia ...

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:06:56 +0100

Gagh I’m too lazy to find it but I’m sure the clip must be out there, Meryl Streep singing “Winner Takes It All” in Mamma Mia. I have forever hated the idea of this and any “jukebox” musical, but since I started my Oscar Predictions page for next year, I have not strayed from the gut instinct that it’ll be nominated for Best Picture in ‘09 (after The Departed and No Country etc, it’s even easier to believe, just think about it …), and that clip - I saw it on Richard and Judy last night and I swear, my hand just shot to my mouth I was so literally gobsmacked by the emotion on display. There was a show on ITV tonight about ABBA in general and the movie and I couldn’t be more excited about the movie. I still wouldn’t want to see the show on stage because, as the clips in the doc kinda showed, it’s so easy to do this show badly - there’s this attitude that comes across that’s like, “It’s Mamma Mia, we don’t even have to try,” and it winds up like menopausal karaoke night or something lol - but on the big screen, with this cast, with the beautifully produced music … I swear this movie cannot fail to make even the cynic like me bawl for joy.

Ooh, embedded replay :)

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:53:00 +0100

Ooh, cool, I can do this now with my Facebook Graffiti doodles. Was particularly proud of this since I haven’t so much as touched the Graphire tablet in over a month, lol. You is obviously Sarah, not you who’s reading. Unless you’re Sarah :) (Edit: none of this will make sense if it’s read on the tumblr dashboard or without Flash, lol - it’s not important lol …)

Goddammit. It currently uses “their” which...

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:06:00 +0100

Goddammit. It currently uses “their” which apparently annoys, umm, around 30 people (I searched for “facebook his her” and there are all of two tiny groups lol) - which wasn’t perfect but I was perfectly happy with it. If they’re actually gonna force me (I’ll just not answer as long as I can) then I guess it’ll have to be “her”. I’m sure that will confuse my friends SO much less than “their”. Thanks Facebook. Edit: ok there is another group with almost 70 members. Which I guess makes it all like, totally unanimous … Edit 2: apparently hidden in the code of that box is the more direct “please select male or female” lol. This annoys me so much. Do people *really* care that much what I have between my legs? Does it really confuse them so much that I don’t identify remotely as male but I accept that I’m not female either? Is it that hard to understand? Do I have to have disfiguring surgery to get through to ya? Etc. lol like I wrote in the queer positive facebook group, I’m on the red wine and mad … so for now I’ll just be quiet. Sigh can I just move to Second Life? Please?

"We Like A Big Pie."

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:36:00 +0100

“We Like A Big Pie.”

- omg, Marco Pierre. I won’t beat around the bush on this one ‘cos I’ve too many other to-dos to do today lol, I Am Gay For Him LOL. The purring was icing on the cake. Absolutely my favourite TV chef :) Gorgeous food, amazing personality, if I absolutely have to have a male role-model then, it’s him lol. Edit: omg lol spoke too soon for the quote, “I’d like a chunk. You’re so naughty. I should spank you with rhubarb sticks.” LOL!!! Edit 3: lol sorry I feel like a horny teenager or something I just saw this line on the linked page, “Every time I go to the seaside I always have fish and chips because I love the romance of it all,” … even in the 2 weeks of last year’s Hell’s Kitchen I don’t think I quite realised HOW in love with him I am. I absolutely must throw his books into my next Amazon cart hehe :) I loved the little girl who had a pet rabbit at home too, lol, but of the rabbit dish had to say, “but it’s very nice” LOL.

IMDb :: Boards :: "Doctor Who" (2005) :: Hell of a cast list (possible spoilers!!)

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 18:09:54 +0100

IMDb :: Boards :: "Doctor Who" (2005) :: Hell of a cast list (possible spoilers!!): awww no Maria :( I expected as much but it’s nice knowing for (a little more) certain in advance. And if she does show up it’ll be even more exciting.

Amazing Chain of Events :)

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 04:53:56 +0100

WARNING: this may strike some as just plain silly.

I forget now what my original plan for today was, lol. I found a fix for a few freezing bugs I’ve been having in Second Life that really came to a head in a miserable night yesterday, so for the first time in a while I ventured in there during the day. I found myself at the Kids5b sims that I’ve already mentioned - discovered the whole second sim with even more to behold. Seriously just between those two sims, Second Life is just an overwhelming wonder of creativity, if you’ve a computer that can handle it then you’ve just gotta check it out. But from there I found my way to the main SL5B exhibition … which I thought was a nono for child avatars, but there are a handful of places for us and they’re incredible. But I wandered from those too … and found the main stage.

I’d heard about live music in SL before, in fact I just missed a concert at the Kid5b sim last night by a couple of minutes and was pretty bummed about it, but it never quite captured my imagination a lot. I mean - the cynical objections to the idea are obvious … you’re looking at a computer generated avatar going through the motions of a prewritten animation, beaming across the net, and who knows where and when the audio you’re hearing is coming from?

So, anyway, this girl starts to sing on the stage, Kim Seifert. It could’ve been anyone, my first experience of SL live music. But she was good, great, amazing. I stayed for over an hour in the end, and towards the end, it was so good that I started to regret that Sarah wasn’t there “with” me. Not to mention that it certainly sounded live. Sarah got on but arrived just a little too late. We stayed for two more artists - Christion Dinzeo who wasn’t bad, not the greatest singing voice but a really infectious personality, and someone we didn’t really like, we only heard a song and a half or something. We went back to our beach and sat on the pier for a while.

But, moments later, I got a message from the group I’d joined while listening to Kim (“I got Kimmee’tude” hehe) - she was gonna be singing somewhere else in 15 minutes :) So me and Sarah put on our recently acquired matching pink sun dresses and went along to the Lily Pad. And there was Kim singing again.

Now for a moment, I actually worried, ‘cos she started with the same Johnny Cash song I’d heard at the SL5B stage. Then, halfway through the song, she coughed. She was so self-deprecating about it and apologetic but to me it was about the coolest thing she could’ve done (up till then at least) - I started to think that maybe it really was live afterall.

Then it started to get really cool. There was a little frog at the front of the stage accepting donations for Kim. I’d started to feel guilty when the artists earlier were mentioning tips, I suddenly realised that other people were actually genuinely supporting them instead of just leeching like little me LOL. So I threw L$20 in (in retrospect, she really deserved a LOT more, but I hope there’ll be other occasions in the future). And when she finished the song she was singing, she thanked me, personally, vocally - it’s the first time I’ve heard the words “Melody Paperdoll” spoken out loud, lol … I know it’s so dumb, but it felt so special.

Later I made a request, from the list of songs she’s “learning” on her website. Again she said my name (actually, she talked to me a few more times too, saying I looked adorable and things hehe) and explained she couldn’t do it, but I really didn’t mind, like I guess it says a lot about me that such communication means so much to me or something but, whatever, all I feel is the warm fuzziness :)

Then she said she was gonna do the last song of the night, “Amazing Grace”, another that she’d done earlier at SL5B. She always ends on it and she always dedicates it to someone. And she dedicated it to “this cute little girl, Melody Paperdoll” :-D I know, I know, it’s weird, it’s weird. But what can I say, I’m weird. I’ve never been made to feel so special by a randomly encountered stranger in my life. I managed to record the song and it’s here - Kim, if you somehow stumble across this entry, I hope it’s okay that I’m sharing it.

And the best part is Sarah was with me dancing in her matching pink dress :) Again I know it probably sounds weird to most people but, it was really just such a special day moving into night, we’ve been together as far as I’m concerned for 6 years, but that was our first real date, it really felt like as shared an experience as anything in the real world :) I put yet more screenshots on flickr.

Even iTunes have been quick on this one hehe! Last major mention...

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:49:00 +0100

Even iTunes have been quick on this one hehe! Last major mention I’ll make of this I promise :) Pretty happy with the 30-sec clips again … every time I listen to it now I realise more how everything sounds like crap next to the first 4 songs but I remind myself that I’ve been unfortunate to hear it a hundred times by now :-P Also iTunes has the release date as 17th June, not Friday the 13th as Amazon lol … so that’s nice … I noticed it’s iTunes Plus too, which is cool - I only realised the other day that Teething has at some point in the past year been upgraded to that. My own music aside completely, CD Baby has gotta be one of the best value services on the net, it’s just unbelievable what they do and where they take your music.

The disk image for Visual Hub which looks like a nifty app -...

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:41:00 +0100

The disk image for Visual Hub which looks like a nifty app - downloaded ‘cos I got the Tonys telecast but it’s in grr MPG format (the DVD player plays DVDs and DivX/XviD, and that’s where I’d like to watch it lol).

"Why do sl residents decide to become either parents or children? There are probably as many answers..."

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:49:43 +0100

“Why do sl residents decide to become either parents or children? There are probably as many answers as avatars doing this.”

- Having children and creating families in Second Life - iReport.com - wow, precious sense on the issue! hehe.

Goin' on a bear hunt ...

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:07:17 +0100

I just found it funny that two completely unrelated podcasts I always have on my work playlist this past weekend - SModcast, this week SO adorable for Father’s Day (I know, I’m late, I always keep my podcasts for Saturdays though) featuring little Harley Quinn for the whole hour hehe, and Mark Kermode’s film reviews - featured that song this week, a song which I have never heard yet I feel like I should have LOL. That’s all I had to say, I just liked the coinkidink :)

Will Smith Is… « Cinematically Correct

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 19:53:00 +0100

Will Smith Is… « Cinematically Correct

"Two Words ..."

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 19:51:00 +0100

Holy mackerel, lol. And I must be a geek for knowing what those words were gonna be lol. I’ve been looking forward to the end of the current series of Doctor Who for ages but the anticipation just keeps growing. I had no idea Torchwood would be coming into it, not to mention Sarah Jane, not to mention the kids too? hehe. They had me at Davros but all this other stuff could make it the best episode ever.

Amazon.com: Casper Myers: MP3 Downloads

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 10:05:42 +0100

Amazon.com: Casper Myers: MP3 Downloads: dang that’s fast! It looks like the ‘official release date’ has been determined as Friday the 13th LOL … typical …

"… while there continues to be no limit on the number of songs from a given film that can be..."

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:41:22 +0100

“… while there continues to be no limit on the number of songs from a given film that can be submitted for consideration, no more than two songs from any one film may be nominated for an Academy Award …”

- 81st Academy Rulez … YAY!

"Why would they call themselves ‘Loose Women’ … and then not let you swear?"

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:54:00 +0100

“Why would they call themselves ‘Loose Women’ … and then not let you swear?”

- Alicia Silverstone on Graham Norton talking about Joan Rivers apparently getting thrown off Loose Women for calling Russell Crowe a f**king asshole lol. Rivers replied, “why would they call themselves Loose Women, and then talk about not having sex?!” LOL. Awesome. She’s still so ridiculously adorable too (Alicia not Joan lol). Hideous, hideous show (Loose Women, not Graham Norton lol). (I don’t like it, just in case that’s unclear :-P)
Edit: awwww! Graham: What about bacon? mmm! bacon! Alicia: I like pigs more than I like bacon. Graham: But you can’t eat a pig. Alicia: But you can kiss them and rub their bellies! LOL she could so turn me vegan :)

"Living Lohan" (2008)

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:21:00 +0100

"Living Lohan" (2008): Ooh! LOL just came across this channel hopping waiting for Graham Norton to come on. I’d seen it listed before but I thought it was just a lazy biography type show compiled of press kit material. I stand by my hatred of all things Reality TV, but I love the Lohans so I may have to track down a torrent or something of this series to catch up. Ali looks so much older! lol. So cool to know she’s still singing though, I also stand by what I’ve said before that her Christmas album is just one of the best EVER :-D

"There’s lots of us, we jes don’t always “mingle” a lot. :-)"

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:45:00 +0100

“There’s lots of us, we jes don’t always “mingle” a lot. :-)”

- Second Childhood: Where are all the little people? - a very old thread in a very uncommunicative group but I like it. It actually feels like you’re doing the art of conversation a giant service by daring to be the first person to say the merest “hi” in Second Life, on the social front I’m starting to notice everyone seems to be about as hopeless as everyone else lol. It’s seriously beginning to fascinate me how much I like being around “people” there and how I end up being that person a million times more often than in real life. I guess I’ve always been that way though - at school I hated when a ton of hands went up in the air .. I’d figure, screw it, everyone knows that answer, I’m not needed and I don’t need the attention … but when nobody put their hand up? I wouldn’t be scared at all of looking smart. I do tend to talk when no one else will, so I guess all this isn’t that much of a shocker.
Anyway, sorry, having said I didn’t want a stream of Second Life stuff here, that’s exactly what looks like is happening. I’ll try and keep my random thoughts balanced :) SL just really fascinates me - like, on top of the whole wish fulfilment, creative outlet, self-expression part, lol … I’m beginning to feel like a prepubescent sociologist lol. Maybe I should start work on my Harriet the Spy outfit lol …

CD Baby: CASPER MYERS: Karma Shot

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 01:37:00 +0100

CD Baby: CASPER MYERS: Karma Shot:

Yay! It’s finally up and purchasable lol. iTunes etc should follow in the next weeks and months. They took “(Bonus Track)” off the last two tracks which is a little niggling, I’m pretty adamant that they aren’t a part of the album but I couldn’t resist including at least Cry No More so it’s there at Christmas time when I intend to do a last.fm Powerplay in a vain attempt at Christmas Number One ROFL - but that’s probably just my own fault for not noticing when I checked the details and gave it the OK last week. I’m much happier with the whole thing than I was with Teething, that’s what counts :) I think the download price there is the cheapest it’ll be anywhere, I’m probably a dummy for setting it so low but I feel bad setting the physical CD price any higher than $10 and worse if the MP3 price isn’t significantly lower. But now I’m just babbling as usual.

Edit: ooh, cool, it’s been delivered to 2 download places already - Ruckus aaaaand … Amazon! I don’t think Teething ever went there checks omg yes it did, back in April! lol. Love that the “customers with similar purchases” has all Tori Amos stuff, even though (I don’t think, at least, lookin’ at the stats) nobody’s bought it from there yet. Edit 2: okay why is Tori bringing the stupid out of me this week lol? Those were of course similar purchases to what I’ve bought on Amazon ROFL.

Long and probably meaningless offload of Second Life thoughts...

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:40:00 +0100

Long and probably meaningless offload of Second Life thoughts … wrote this last night, posting now ‘cos it seems like a waste to delete it lol.

It’s that old thing, lol, “I won’t belong to any organization that would have me as a member …” I posted a couple of screengrabs of me in my Second Life here so if you saw those or any of my recent Flickr pics you’ll know that I chose the form of a little girl pretty much from the moment I first set foot in Second Life 2 years ago. I’m not gonna write about why I made that choice, maybe another time; I really don’t think it should be a bigger deal for anyone else than it is for me - it was a no brainer, it was me, it is me, I don’t think I’ve ever made a decision quicker in my life lol.

Anyway, I wanted to put a lot more such screengrabs up somewhere, especially since they look a whole lot better from the new MacBook - but the question was, where to do that? My main site has steadily become purely movie reviews, I don’t want to randomly add another section to it, and pics are just awkward anyway the way I have that place set up. This place I like to be completely unfocussed, literally a tumble of my thoughts that don’t belong anywhere else; so I don’t wanna have a huge stream of Second Life in the mix. I don’t want to sign up to yet another site or anything, so it came down in the end to Flickr or DeviantART.

DeviantART felt wrong (despite I’m sure some thinking the name couldn’t be more perfect LOL) - a screengrab of my avatar (made by sliding a few sliders and donning clothes usually by someone else till it felt like me - a never ending process, let me tell ya lol) in someone else’s created environment doesn’t strike me as something I made at all … in fact, if anything, it feels a lot more like a photograph. The subject is your choice: in this case, my virtual expression of myself; the background, it’s just there. But I was loathe to do that at first because, y’know, I know, Flickr is for photos. Till I found the screenshot flag. This (I’m assuming, haven’t exactly tested it) hides anything flagged as such from anyone who has their preferences set to hide them. Everybody’s (hopefully) happy. At least, nobody’s complained yet lol.

But then, of course, I wanna show off even more despite my shy inhibited demeanour lol. Over a couple of days I’ve found a handful of kid avatar groups that so far seem happy to have my pics in them - one even needed approval, that definitely felt nice when I was accepted. And since getting back into Second Life, I’ve found a lot more of the haunts for, for want of a better term, lol, “people like me” … and there are surprisingly a lot of us. There are blogs on the subject and everything.

It’s comforting, of course, validating and all that … but scary too. I feel like I’m so out of the loop in there sometimes. It’s actually a lot like being a real kid again sometimes - walking into a store or whatever and there’s a little gathering of others in the corner, and it’s somehow just as hard to walk up to them and say hi, lol. I know it’s ridiculous lol. I actually had to put a note in my profile in the end saying I’m shy ‘cos I was so worried people would hate me for not talking much. And on top of all this I don’t know if I even want a ton of SL friends … it just, I don’t know, seems like a nice idea, I guess in the end wanna be a part of something as much as every other person on the planet … like my beach, I’m just building on it bit by bit almost Field of Dreams style, like, I don’t quite know why I bought it or why I’m building it, who I want to come, but I just know that’s where it’s taking me or something lol.

Then there’s the whole “controversy” aspect that I hadn’t been aware was going on most particularly in the past year over child avatars. I mean, obviously I knew all the time that there were those who didn’t like them etc. When I was first in Second Life I got kicked out of more than a few places cos of my size - but I didn’t realise there were people who wanted them outlawed; that news reporters were even going undercover in SL trying to “catch” child avatars doing things they shouldn’t be (I won’t even comment on the sense of that, lol, but I will say, sure, in private I will share kisses and cuddles and words with Sarah - but only Sarah - in SL that aren’t exactly PG material that a real 6 year old should be doing or saying lol but … I don’t know … I’ll leave it at that ‘cos I know the whole dynamic of that is very very weird to some lol: I’ll only say, who’s getting hurt?). There are 5th birthday celebrations in Second Life this month and there was this whole thing where kids weren’t gonna be allowed (they are now I think - but the kids are doing their own thing anyway). Who knows what else I’ve missed while I’ve been away.

It’s really weird that I just suddenly started logging on again on a whim (it was around Alice Liddell’s birthday in May, when I was doing all the Alice in Wonderland stuff, I just figured I’d pop in and see if there was a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party or something anywhere after reading in the beautiful Annotated edition - which I lost this past weekend, grr - that one of the first ever demonstrations of Virtual Reality technology was exactly that … I got distracted, found a cute costume, suddenly I was hooked again LOL) only to find this whole explosion going on lol.

Anyway I’m not sure exactly where I was going with this, lol. I just wanted to write a little something about my latest experiences in Second Life. I get understandably paranoid from time to time when I see my referral stats and someone clicking through from my flickr profile or something and I dread the thought that anyone out there is thinking I’m evil or something. Weird, sure, I’ve always been that lol I don’t mind anyone thinking it; but bad, then, you’re just not paying attention :) That’s all I wanted to say. A couple more people said hi to me in SL since starting this entry - and in both cases I managed to get slightly beyond a nervous mono-syllabic reply lol. So that makes me happy :) Gonna try and put waves and swim balls in my ocean tonight … come and have a swim some time! lol :)

Jessica Lombard posted scans of her lyric notes for “15...

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:12:29 +0100

Jessica Lombard posted scans of her lyric notes for “15 Minutes Ago” - I love stuff like this (thinking of the notes in the big black Rent book, say, Jonathan Larson’s various calculations for “Seasons of Love”, hehe), “Listen” is my favourite song of hers right now, it’s just so simple and beautiful which is even more evident in the notes.