The spectacularly obtuse blog

Hoopy froods

Seeing that Towel Day was approaching, I nearly ordered this, but I'm making do with the Flickr towelday group instead.

Saw Star Trek last Wednesday; been rewatching Firefly; have so many things to write that I expect my head'll explode before the end of the week, which is exactly why my towel and I are now headed for the cottage to work. No internets, no worries, see.

Here's one of my favourite bits -- the one I can really identify with -- from THHGTTG (well, from So long, and thanks for all the fish, actually):

In Santa Barbara they stopped at a fish restaurant in what seemed to be a converted warehouse.

Fenchurch had red mullet and said it was delicious.

Arthur had a swordfish steak and said it made him angry.

He grabbed a passing waitress by the arm and berated her.

"Why's this fish so bloody good?" he demanded, angrily.

"Please excuse my friend," said Fenchurch to the startled waitress. "I think he's having a nice day at last."

There and back again

Inane blogging: what better way to try and adjust to normal daily life again? The manuscript's finished, and I've also managed to wrap up a dozen of other Very Important Things To Do (which will, in ten years' time, seem totally unimportant, I'm sure).

Random thoughts after months of internet and leisure time deprivation:

• Watched Stranger Than Fiction on dvd in January and again on the telly last night. I like the script, but let it also be known that you can't get more lovely than Emma Thompson in this film. What an awesome, talented woman, and what an awesome, talented portrayal of a quirky British writer. It's saying something that I've watched the film twice already -- even though I have an unusually strong dislike of Will Ferrell and don't really like Dustin Hoffman either.

• Music finds:
• • Antje Duvekot has the sort of rich, earthy and totally disarming voice you can't but adore, even if hers isn't my favourite genre of music. Her lyrics aren't half bad either: check out Poisonjester's Mask.
  • Lonely Drifter Karen is also quite far from what I usually listen to, but that doesn't make their music any less delightful. This article gives a pretty accurate description: "...a delicious concoction taking in Weimar Republic cabaret, Parisian café music, Mittel-European classical traditions, rustic Italian ballads, gipsy folk and more, all topped by the whimsical, occasionally child-like songwriting of frontwoman Tanja Frinton."

• On the book front: Christopher Hitchens, Master and Margarita (whee, audiobook!), Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing, Tim the Tiny Horse (don't ask). Still haven't found the time to bite into Neal Stephenson's Anathema or Matter by Iain M. Banks -- both are simply too long, so I'm mainly having short fiction or poems by Italo Calvino and Julio Cortázar as a light snack in bed. Also anticipating my n^th reread of The Left Hand of Darkness, which I'm sort of saving for an exceptionally miserable day: with this book, the heavens open and everything is good again, because it's a bloody brilliant piece of fiction (the bloody brilliant piece of fiction, in fact), and everything but jolly. I can't stand jolly things on miserable days.

• Addendum: the mysteries of iPods! Mine suddenly claims I have no audiobooks, but Charles Darwin, Douglas Adams, J.K. Rowling and Bill Bryson now appear on the artist list (but not, of course, Stephen Fry or Richard Dawkins, who actually read the audiobooks). Beginning to suspect the thing hates me.