life, liberty and the pursuit of geekiness

I don't know whether it's the sheer perversity of life, or something psychological, but I seem to write much more when I've got a job or something to do. Perhaps it's because the frontbrain is occupied, leaving the unconcious to to what it likes. I've fished out an old Doctor Who fic I'd abandoned last year and I've written two pages more of it. Perhaps I'll have it done before the new series starts.

The way I write in Doctor Who is quite different to the way I write in Star Wars or Harry Potter. There, I usually have an idea of what the ending is going to be, and even chunks of the dialogue, verbatim. With Doctor who, I start to write without much idea of where I'm going at all, and just let the story wander on. It seems to have worked so far, but it does produce some rather odd fics. The current one is turning out to be one of those bizarre ones where you perceive the constructs of your own subconscious images of what you're expecting to see. (I've expressed that badly; does anyone understand it?) I thought I could never write anything like that. Oh, well, it's stretching me as a writer!

The release of Abdul Rahman is very good news; but in context, only a small victory. The real one will be when the law in Afganistan is changed to make this situation—where a man is sentenced to die for converting from Islam—impossible. After all, we invaded Afganistan to stop that sort of thing, alledgedly. Even more difficult will be to change the hearts of the local population, who according to one of the judges in the case were ready to form a lynch mob. We heard in the last few days a great deal from representatives of Islam in the media, telling us that the Koran does not require the death penalty for conversion. It isn't the largely secular population of Britian they need to be telling this to; it's their fellow Muslims. If that were being preached in mosques in the Middle East, rather than jihad, we'd have a lot fewer problems. I heard one commentator explain that everyone is born Muslim, some have the misfortune to be brought up in other religions. By that system, every non-Muslim male in the world deserves death.

At home, some bloke from Tyrone with more money than sense has paid £80 000 plus VAT for the numberplate BIG 1. He also bought BIG 2 and BIG 3, leaving him with a total bill of £150 000. That's the price of a small flat.
And in the department of You Can't Make This Up, a plane mean to land at Derry City Airport landed instead at the airstrip of the nearby Ballykelly army base (I drove a tank there once), the pilot having apparently becone lost in midair. To paraphrase one of the passengers: The pilot apologised for landing us at the wrong airport. I thought he was joking until I looked out the window and saw half the British Army running over taking photographs.

elerrina_amanya has left for Belfast with The Vor Game and Cetaganda, and is asking about Brothers in Arms and Borders of Infinity. I love converting my family to my fandoms!

I'd just cleaned the bathroom, and I'd left the window open to let it air out. I went back in for something, and one of the cats had come in and left a little row of muddy footmarks around the rim of the bath. So I said, 'Grr, cats.' and wiped it again. Then I came downstairs to hear my ma cry, 'They've done it AGAIN!"

This time there were footprints ALL OVER THE INSIDE AND AROUND THE EDGE AND ON THE TOILET SEAT AND ON THE FLOOR....

I told my parents that my dream job would be to write; now they keep looking hopefully at me to produce a published book out of my ears. This is not a solution to the current job problem. Not at the rate I write, anyway.

It has been snowing most of the week. Doesn't the weatherman know it's March? I'm a bit worried about the few plants we have—we found that the bank that faces the road is all planted out with daffodils. The people who used to live down the lane or in No. 15 must have planted them. It's like getting a present from the dead!

'Space opera' isn't science fiction, actually; it's future fantasy, parallel to the sort with taverns and elves and magic swords. The tech is, in the Clarke phrase, sufficiently advanced to be magic, when it ins't all handwavium anyway. And it's not likely to lead to any book-burnings by rabid fundamentalists, either, because it doesn't actually mention the word magic. Hhm.

Our oil burner apparently is faulty, and has burned through the winter's supply of oil in six weeks. After scurrying round (unsuccessfully) trying to find someone who'll deliver oil on a Saturday—why must these sieges always happen at 5.15 pm on Friday?!—we turned on the radio to hear: "Have you ever considered alternatives to oil-fired central heating?"

On the bright side of things, my granda just gave me £50. For Christmas.

I just selected first class instead of Super Saver delivery for my brother's MP3 player. Amazon say they're dispatching it and it can't be changed. Grrr! Grrr, I say!

The people who live next door, sort of (sadly they're no Merricks) have had landscapers in for what seems like all the time since we've moved in. We call them 'the Contsant Gardeners'. The end result is a massive bank of peat with a few feeble-looking twiggy shrubs sticking up out of it; rather a poor return, it seems like.

We've made a map of the road, labelled with all the various livestock to be found at each house, for example Slightly Hideous Cat, Relatively Pretty Cat, and Plastic Goat (With Parasol.)