Floating on a sunset cloud... of pain.

Ah, the reason for my panic attack of yesterday has become more plain to me... unexpected pre-lady-time! Whilst researching this post (because, of course, all my blogs are meticulously pre-researched) I found some interesting euphemisims for 'that special time of the month' but none I'd feel comfortable adopting, even for a one-off blog post, so I decided to invent my own. From now on I shall refer to 'floating on a sunset cloud', which hopefully is icky and unsettling enough for everybody - though not quite as pretty and delicate as 'the tears of my disappointed uterus', which is an honest-to-goodness thing someone said somewhere. Don't worry, I'm not about to spend a great deal of time discussing MENSTRUATION because it is, in fact, quite gross. In case you didn't know.

Instead I'll tell you that in an attempt to ignore the pain that nurofen is doing a lousy job at defeating, I'm listening to Peter Gabriel and music from The Rescuers.

I shall also here express my simultaneous emotions of befuddlement that people in general do not find the face of Benedict Cumberbatch completely gorgeous and marvelloustastic

and intense frustration that stupid Channel 9 will not hurry up and give us Australians a damn release date for Sherlock  season 2!

Oh.
No.

Just looked it up... and they have. It's next Wednesday evening. My brother's birthday. I AM SO ANNOYED RIGHT NOW. And the episode has a dominatrix and nudity and stuff in it, so watching it with my family is not going to be an option.




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Deep breaths. There is such a thing as catch up TV. At least there had better be. Though the fact that I will probably have to resort to such a thing is annoying beyond all belief, particularly seeing as the one reason (besides the law) that I didn't just download it off the internet back in January (which was pretty tempting, let me tell you), is because I didn't want to use up downloads on something that I would be able to watch on television legally anyway. AUGH.

I shall hereby assauge my feelings with some more Cumberbatchery thus:

 

Hello.

Been reading Bear Grylls's book, Mud, Sweat and Tears - quite a good read, actually - and he hasn't eaten anything totally disgusting yet, in case you're wondering: so far it's mostly descriptions of gruelling SAS training and stuff.
But as I was reading along about Bear's education and early life, one thing jumped out at me. Bear Grylls went to Eton College!
WAITAMINUTE... Benedict Cumberbatch went to Eton College! Hugh Laurie, Tom Hiddleston, Prince William... going fictional here... Captain Hook, Bertie Wooster, Psmith, Poirot's friend Hastings, James Bond! All Old Etonians!

Who wants to come camp in Windsor with me?

So if an engine catches on fire during takeoff, shrug shoulders, keep upper lip stiff, and press on for Portugal. Got it.

 You guys should listen to Cabin Pressure. Seriously. I'm a little addicted. It's like Fawlty Towers as a radio play. In an aeroplane. Plus, Benedict Cumberbatch.

I just ate laksa. I shouldn't make laksa. I feel sick after eating laksa because I never feel full until I've eaten about twice as much as I need - and then I feel about thrice as full as I want to be.

But laksa is yummy and easy to make. So I shall just have to suffer the consequences. Holidays next week! Yay! Plus I bought a new phone today :-D Now I just have to figure out how it works... and how wireless and all those other things work and whether I can afford them or not.

A man who can imitate a Spanish squirrel helping forty-eight men mow a meadow is capable of anything.

"Providence looks after all the chumps of this world, and personally, I'm all for it."

Woke up this morning ridiculously excited for no reason. Literally woke up singing. (Not a lie.) Hmm. Everything is inexplicably hilarious.
Still, it's better than being pointlessly unhappy. Pointless happiness is OK by me.

Well, anyway, I've found some things to lavish my excited excitement on anyway -

New music! Loveliest new song by Chameleon Circuit :-) Four part harmonies ftw! (Listen to the end)

My sister is coming over :-D

This

Cranford went from being unexpectedly tragic (Should have seen it coming - I've read the book, though that didn't have all the nasty Victorian surgery scenes, I don't think) and dramatic and sad to being adorably lovely and sweet. This seems to be a pattern with BBC period drama... (North and South, anyone?)

I'm making beef pho and family is going to come eat it tonight (Hopefully it won't be poisonous or disgusting or anything)

I'm alive! Being alive is good!

The Weight of Glory is an amazing book of amazingness.

I'm going to go and do a dance or vacuum a floor or something to use up all this hysterical energy.

If you go through life with a smile on your face, you’ll be amazed how many people will come up to you and say ‘What the hell are you grinning about? What’s so funny?’ Make you a lot of new friends." - P. G. Wodehouse

He's murdering the time! Off with his head!

Because I don't earn money during my holidays I often spend a few days during said holidays doing... nothing. To conserve monies - and because nothing can be a fun thing to do. Watched some Agatha Christie yesterday and read some library books. The Agatha Christie films I've watched lately have been At Bertrams Hotel (read the book just previous to watching it - and the plot was changed incomprehensibly. Oh, and it featured the girl who played Hugh Grant's love interest in Love Actually. I love connecting the dots with these British films!) The Sittaford Mystery (which was a bit boring, to be honest. Featuring Carey Mulligan and the mother from Miranda) but the one that really stuck with me - and not in a good way - was Murder is Easy.


Of course, the reason I watched this one was because a certain lovely-voiced actor was in it... and he was lovely to watch, of course, though about halfway through his character seemed to have been elbowed by the story into a completely useless role. And I don't like Julia McKenzie's Miss Marple as much as Geraldine McEwan's - she doesn't bring the same warmth and personality to the story. But the story itself? Was rather convoluted as a story, with many possible suspects and many many murders. Seriously, the number of murders actually started to be funny at the end when Miss Marple was explaining how each of them had been committed. Was the murderer simply wishing to have the entire village to herself? And the revelation at the end was unnecessarily horrible. I was in shock afterwards at the unwholesomeness of the affair - I felt dirty and uncomfortable for hours afterwards - not an effect that an Agatha Christie should leave with one. And it actually made the murderer so pitiable that there was no satisfaction in seeing her carted off. I still can't believe that anyone would adapt one of Christie's stories into something so gratituously nasty. I won't tell you what it was, simply because you might not like spoilers - and also because it would feel weird, writing something so over-the-top unwholesome here on my family friendly blog-a-log.

A Study in Time (Sherlock/Doctor Who)

The Clothes Make The Man... More Handsomer...

I haven't done a really self indulgent, inexcusably gratituous post in a while, so...

Skinny boys in suits!

No excuses. I have fun being this lame.

Perhaps it would be a little less lame if I wrote something interesting underneath each picture, but... what? What can I say? It's Andrew Garfield in a suit!

Additional points for nice hair.


Why is it so difficult to find a decent picture of Michael Crawford as a young man, be-suited or otherwise? And yes, I know: Michael Crawford.

Yes, Dick Van Dyke too.


Bonus round: longcoats!
X-)

I'm In Shock, Look, I've Got A Blanket

I should be reading Père Goriot/doing an assignment right now, but procrastination has once again talked me into internetting my valuable time away.
Just watched/fell in love with the first episode of the recent BBC miniseries Sherlock. I thought I was going to hate it - but I enjoyed the heck out of myself. Now that I've written this down the other two episodes of it will probably be rubbish. Oh well. At least the first one was filled with exciting faithfulness to the original plot & characterisation, plus being gripping, brilliant and led by an actor whose voice I would eat on toast if I could. (Within the first five minutes I found myself wishing I there were some kind of excuse to listen to his voice all day long. I since discovered he does audio books. I want!)
I adore Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, as my battered and much abused Penguin Complete edition can attest. And yes, I do love Holmes and his stories more than I love Agatha Christie's Poirot and Marple, in case you're wondering. (Which you weren't. Nobody ever does, I find.) The 2009 movie massively disappointed me, by its irritating way of playing loose and easy with characterisation and plot. Let me say this once: it requires a great deal of skill and creativity to make an adaptation of a classic and make a good one. I keep seeing and hearing reference made to Bridget Jones's Diary as a modern-day adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. No, it isn't. I have read the book and seen the film, and though both are reasonably entertaining (nothing to write home about, I must add) I cannot qualify Helen Fielding's story as an adaptation. She might have made use of archetypes Jane Austen's book portrayed, but she did not do a modern adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Bollywood did one, albeit a sillified tongue in cheek one, but it was an adaptation. And an amusing one.
But enough rant. No more rant.



Sherlock is awesome.

Adorable mini icons stolen from http://www.redscharlach.co.uk/