So, the grand saga to do with that post title? I'll let my twitter updates say it all. Have put them in proper order, since copying directly would deliver them from last to first.

( Stuff here )

Hmm. So when I woke up this morning, my brain attempted, in the space between 'still asleep' and 'have to get up', to entertain me by composing dirty limericks. WTF, brain?

...No, you can't see them. They didn't work very well, and I've since forgotten them.

Well, okay, in consolation, something else from my weird brain. When I was told of a certain limerick that ST: TNG's Data attempted to recite but was interrupted, I found myself thinking up what the rest of it. Bit he said in bold, the rest's mine. Male POV.

There was a young lady from Venus,
whose body was shaped like a penis
Until she got us bare
She wasn't aware
But knew it as fact once she'd seen us.

Yeah, yeah, but I was kinda sleep-deprived when I thought it up.


Oh, and cool thing: finding emerald green medieval dress with velvet bodice in a shop. Princess dress. Fits me like it was made for me. I have nowhere to wear it specifically and it's kind of expensive, but I don't care. I saw it and pretty much fell in love with it, I'm still sort of bubbly over finding it. I'm paying for it bit by bit, because I intend to own that. It's gorgeous and it suits me and whee, I think this is what that 'retail therapy' idea is supposed to feel like. Normally I hate shopping. Normally I buy clothes only when I must. But this one just clicked and now I'm all happy.

It's a novel sensation to associate with clothing.

So I was reading a news article online that discussed, quite thoughtfully, the childfree lifestyle, and how childfree folk tend to be happier than some would think.
There was a veritable explosion of comments. Some of them opted to be truly obnoxious about it.
In 'The Case Against Having Kids', various reasons were given.
Some of the commenters disregarded these reasons entirely. They chose to interpret it as 'The Case Against Kids', and a personal affront to them.

( In which a Rilwen rants a bit )

Was feeling a bit sick, Mum said I should eat something. Made a sandwich. For the record, slightly bitter apple slices and strawberry jam go very badly with each other, I have discovered.
And then I wanted to wash the taste away. Orange juice was a bad idea. It merely combined the taste in my mouth, making it even worse.
And then I was still feeling sick, so took a ginger tablet, herbal remedies and all that natural fun. It dissolved in the mouthful of water, so I was forced to taste that, too. Ick.
And THEN I had to brush my teeth. Adding mint to this fascinating combination of flavours.

Today has been a veritable taste sensation.
I don't want to try it again.

Got back earlier from a local theatre production. The play they put on? Hamlet.
It was very interesting, the actors were good.
Hamlet was rather funny in his mannerisms, taking clear and sadistic joy in weirding out Polonius.
Ophelia looked a bit like what you'd get if River Tam put a bit more weight on, and she had a good singing voice.
The most amusing bit, however, was noting that Hamlet seemed to have more chemistry with Horatio than with Ophelia. Seriously, those two oooozed subtext. It was awesome.
Horatio looked like he could be Nathan Fillion's brother.
Osric was so incredibly camp, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were oily and appropriately courtier-ish.
Claudius was alternately anguished and manipulative, and Laertes seethed with righteous rage.
Good performances, good interpretation, I'm glad it was chosen for our Uni class for Writing for Performance to go see- we needed to have some performance's staging, acting, etc to talk about in our discussions on the topic.

Got the buggers!

There were a couple of large flies in my room. They exasperated me. I'm not so good at direct kills on account of the ick factor. But I was getting really, really annoyed.

So I brought in the vacuum cleaner, extended its wand, removed the attachment on the end...

...and hunted the bastards down in midair. Settling anywhere became death for them. Overkill? What's that? It got rid of them, in a satisfying balance between remoteness and directness. Truth be told, if I didn't have so much stuff in my room that I'd rather keep, I'd want a flamethrower.

Because it worked, and they are gone.

They shall trouble me no more, and if any others turn up, they'll meet the same fate.

I am death. I am genocide. I am... The Cleaner, doom upon insects! MUHAHAHAHA!


*ahem*
Move along, nothing to see here...

This is a rant. It will be angry. It will be heated. It will be written rapidly just to get this out so I can vent what I feel right now. With that warning in place, let's press on!

Right now?
I really, really detest my father. He's an ignorant, closed-minded, patronising piece of crap. Oh yes, how could I possibly know what I'm talking about, for he is the All Knowing Adult.

( Rant. More swearing ahoy. )

And in more news, David Carradine, who I'll admit I mainly knew from his awesome as Bill in Kill Bill, is also dead.

RIP... :(

Seriously, this seems not a great time for anybody.

So, I only found this out after seeing it in a friend's msn notes. One of my fave authors, David Eddings, has died.
I've loved his books for much of my life. His stuff influenced my notions of how good fantasy literature could be. His stuff is funny and exciting, and while it used the archetypes, it used them well. His locations felt real, he researched his details, and all of his characters were people even beyond their archetypes. They actually interacted as though they liked each other, not just as though they were carrying out set roles. His books were always a good read.

RIP, David. All of your fans will miss you. ):

A list of personal news from yestreday and today. The big stuff is nearer the bottom. If you wanna reply, don't feel it just has to be on the big one, because I can still answer about the other things.
( news )

So, Easter's over.

My inner blasphemous heathen... ok, outer blasphemous heathen, wishes they'd killed and revived that Jesus guy a few more times around the year, so we could have more chocolate occasions.

My Easter stuff was dark chocolate. I love dark chocolate... but not this dark. It was 70%, and that's the level where the bitter aftertaste gets unpleasant. I managed to consume it via tactics like eating it with grapes, squishing bits of it between sweet biscuits, and filling tiny hollow eggs with castor sugar in a spectacular display of 'Rilwen abuses sugar liek whoa'.

Nothing for it but to buy lots of Easter eggs now that they'll be on sale, and enjoy my chocolate fix cheaper while other people are trying to jog away the ones they ate on Easter proper. :D

It helps that I only got the single container, which was one palm-sized hollow egg, plus about six hollow eggs about the size of the final joint of my thumb.

Some may still be unaware, others will already know, of the fires in Victoria at the moment. As there was one person concerned and asking, to others: I'm in NSW, and nowhere near the fires. I'm lucky. Lots of others aren't.
I'd been partly unaware of just how bad the fires got, until now. They were on the news, and... Ok, I knew they were bad. But not this bad. About five thousand people no longer have their homes. Death toll over 130 people, and that number's going to go up, because there are still people unaccounted for. And the fires aren't out yet. It's not over. It's the worst bushfire in Australian history, they're saying, worse than Ash Wednesday. The tally horrifies me.
My sister's still at school, and they're getting donations in at the school. I just gave my mum some of my money, to give to my sister to take to school in the morning. She said it was kind of a lot, but it really isn't. I had the money in my wallet. I got it out ages ago and didn't get around to spending it. I don't need it. These people do. And mum suggested we go through our stuff, for the clothes we don't want and were going to give to an op shop, because they'll probably do an appeal soon asking for those.
It's all...kind of overwhelming. It's huge. I don't think the human mind is built for this sort of thing. Or at least not mine. I'm having trouble comprehending the full scale of it, and I'm not even directly affected. How much worse must it be for the people who are?
Some of them...they didn't get any warning. They stayed or fled or got caught on the road by the fire. It just moved too fast. One guy on the news said the wind was so strong, it blew the veranda off his house before the fire even reached it.
They need rain. I really hope it rains. That might slow all of this down or maybe even stop it.
...I'm rambling. It's late and I just finished watching the news and I'm rambling. It's all just so horrific. But so many people are giving money and things, they're raised several million in a single day, our firefighters from here in NSW are going down there to help. Everybody's helping. It won't fix what the fire did, but it'll make things not quite as bad.
I think somebody on the news said it was the most devastating event in Australia's peacetime history. To descend to black humour for a moment, this is not the kind of history anyone wants to witness. Big momentous events make the history books, but they also make a lot of people sad or hurt or dead.
This isn't very polished. Sorry if I don't make too much sense. I'm just trying to get down what I'm thinking.

Just read Stephen King's Duma Key. Holy crap, do not read that book late at night like I did if you value your sanity.
The...thing, in it. Scares the crap out of me.
Ok. It's almost one am. I'm far from the sea. My home is not near the ocean. The water here is fresh water. The thing can't bear fresh water. And I'm wearing silver. It hates that. It may sound silly, but a pendant on string and a right-hand ring are the things that will hopefully help me avoid nightmares.
*shudder*

Safe...safe...sometimes it's easier to use the rules of the fiction than to get a freaked brain to realise there is actually no real thing to fear. And fresh water and silver are the rules, and nobody here is making the special art. Safe...

This is going to amuse some, likely. I don't care. Posting it is part of reassuring myself. There are downsides to a strong imagination. Here's one.

Now, I feel I should begin by explaining that I am a dreadful and inept cook. Things I make up along the way turn out terribly, things I cook by instruction, I require near-constant guidance...
My sister made edible things even when small. Me? Rock cakes. So terrible even the dog wouldn't touch them. And we were using the same ingredients.

And yet, today, I made shortbread biscuits. And they are edible. I rejoice.
Some may know the habit on the site known as Fandom_wank to post recipes in response to wanky comments. The recipe was in one of those posts. This person right here supplied it. The recipe:

You need:
250g plain flour
125g rice flour
125g castor sugar
250g firm butter, chopped


Method:
Place the plain flour, rice flour and sugar in a bowl. Add butter and rub in with fingertips until a smooth dough has formed. Pat dough out to a 5mm thickness. Using a star cutter or cutter of your choice cut out shapes and place on a Glad Bake lined tray. Prick each biscuit with a fork. Sprinkle lightly with a little sugar. Bake 180c for 20-25 minutes or until golden in colour. Remove from oven and allow to cool. When cold store in an airtight container.

I did not have rice flour, so I just used extra plain flour. And I added a small amount of cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom to the mixture, because I felt like it.

Still- hooray, they turned out well, I did it by myself with no other family members looking on, advising or instructing, and now I am celebrating cooking something that I did not fail at. Yay. ^^

So, upon discovering that other people named their computers, I realised it wouldn't be quite as weird if I named mine.

Thus, after Lycaenion introduced me to Deep Space Nine, I promptly named my laptop Dukat...because it is a stubborn bastard prone to doing unexpected and unwanted things, can be charming/entertaining when it behaves, and...it has Vista, which is pretty damn close to 'possessed by evil Pah-wraith/spirit'.
And the main computer, which is supposed to cooperate with it but frequently doesn't? Is now named Weyoun...partly because it keeps dying on us.

I'd have named them after Star Wars villains, except that a lot of those are even nastier and it might be considered tempting fate to use them as namesakes. *would be too scared to name anything Palpatine, lest it murder me in the night and try to conquer the Internet*

So yeah. Ah well, at least there are plenty of people who apparently do the same. That does make a person feel a little less odd. ^^ (Warning, link is to TVtropes, which has been known to eat up hours of time if read by the unwary.)

Random update of today, over and out. :p

My internet time just got a lot more limited, because my laptop has decided to stop connecting. I want to try and get it fixed as soon as possible, but until then, only the main computer works...albeit slowly, and that's the shared computer. So... *sigh* I will be somewhat more absent.

EDIT:
"It's working...it's working!" :D

...now if it hopefully stays working...

Disclaimer: The following rant contains swearing, naive and idealistic wishes about the way the world should be, rage, and attempts to explore a whole host of issues, from one distinctly limited perspective. You have been warned. ;)

( Long rant, regarding lots of issues )