Ok, I’m off to the Homestead for the weekend.
Don’t worry, I’ve queued up a Sunday Roast so you aren’t bereft of things to read over your morning coffee (the Brain Snail gets very grumpy when there is no ‘Roast it turns out, and I’m all for trying to keep my Minions happy).
Just don’t look for me in the comments till Monday evening 🙂 (That doesn’t mean that you aren’t more than welcome to talk amongst yourselves – the beauty of a medium that is only semi-time dependent).

I hope you don’t get all lonely without me. If you are feeling bereft, comfort yourself with the knowledge that this will give me a chance to work a bit more on Colin.

Continuing a (very) occasional series, I bring you the latest that Akismet has caught for me in it’s shiny net.

The highlight for me was the suit worn by the first dog in space which was inside the cabinet. It looked very comical but was in fact genuine and not just a corset with a plastic snout stuck on top.

My highbrow argument goes something like “Because of Joy King and Steve Orenstein, silly!”

Frivolous bastardisation of our punctuation is one of the key witness to the current decline of our wonderful nation.

It was really nice to see Robbie and cycle round the pubs of Oxford with him. He needs to find some mates, though, and some artistic inspiration. Any friendly humans in Oxford?

The mind does boggle about how the decision is made as to which phrases to program into the spam-bots.

That, and I hope Robbie finds a friend soon.

I love the noise my Mac makes when it empties the trash. It makes me feel like there is a little goblin sitting under my desk munching on my files. A pet goblin, not a scary one. Cute in an ugly way. Good at recycling.

Once again, I’m the girl with a million things to say, but with a chronic case of laryngitis preventing her from saying it. Writers-laryngitis that is. More traditionally, I’d say writers block, but Liz would probably come after me with pointy sticks (in a nice way of course) if I did that. She has a point – getting the words down on the page is always the hard bit, even when it is enjoyable. I’m just being remarkably lazy right now. Ashamed though I am to admit it, vegging out in front of Desparate Housewives or some Farscape is vastly more appealing after a day’s work and session at the gym than sitting in front of another computer typing.

But, I have made a commitment to this blog and to my readers. That, and I’ve been getting some really lovely comments lately about my kick-ass content (I paraphrase, but the sentiment remains the same), which gives me the warm fuzzies, and I want to keep getting the warm fuzzies 😀

All of which means, it’s about time I got off my fat arse and wrote something.

Hmmmmm. Ok.

I was reading this article in the NYT and it put me in mind of something I wrote a few years back. Tweaked, edited, and update, I bring you:

HOW TO SURVIVE A SCI FI FILM:
aka – things to make you suspicious and that should MAKE YOU RUN AWAY NOW!!!!!!!!!

I love sci-fi and fantasy, and have read and watched far too much over the years (according to friends and family that is. As far as I am concerned, bring it on!) All this has left me with a slightly skew-if outlook on life, and more trivia than is good for me. One thing that I have noticed, is the number of cliches that abound in these genres. Whilst watching Alien for the n^th time with my brother, he yelled at the screen “don’t you realise, you never go back for the ships cat!” That stuck, and the idea transmogrified into what you see below. Kind of a beginners guide for the first-time heroine (or hero, I’m not picky. All the gender specific nouns I’ve used are interchangeable). Some of them are inspired by the “classics”, others from weirder places. But I hope all strike a cord, and you find at least a few funny. Do let me know, both what you think of these, and if you can think of more.

Disclaimer – I mean no disrespect! Correction, any disrespect is loving, and irreverent, and based on my deep love of the genre. My intention is that you find this amusing, not insulting. Hope you enjoy…

Continue reading →

I hadn’t noticed the screwy way that comments were displaying in Internet Explorer until recently. I apologise for leaving it so long. I’m looking into it at the moment – just waiting on a response from the K2 forums, though I have the feeling the answer will be “upgrade, pray, live with it”. Whatever the outcome, I am looking into it, I promise!

Seems like it’s that time again. Another few people have inveigled their ways into my affections lately, and have done nice things for/around Bright Meadow.

Firstly it’s the turn of Dewayne. The man has an insanely long blogroll, but Bright Meadow got on there somehow a ways back, and Dewayne’s been a steady commenter ever since. What sterling service has propelled him into the ranks of Minionhood? Well, taking the time to track down an explanation of Morris Dancing is the latest that springs to mind.

Congratulations Dewayne. It couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke 🙂

The next minions are a slight departure for me. I’ve hummed and haa-ed over whether they qualify or not, but I finally plumped down on the side of “why the frell not? It’s my blog and I want to”.

Now, normally Minions are individuals who have participated over a period of time and have become part of the furniture. In a nice way of course. However, in my own mind there are also the people who, whilst they may not be regular visitors to the blog, take the time to help when they can. A case in point is the good people from coComment who have been stopping by over the last couple of days to help out with the whole “blog integration” thing. Logically you would expect a company dedicated to making conversation on the web better to have their people out and about, helping where they can, but it is still a bit of a surprise when they descend in the middle of your own blog.

Trust me on this.
Surprise.

So for all those times they have turned up, said nice things, and helped to rescue the kitten from the tree (and for fixing some very odd behavior regarding permalinks), I would like to name the entire coComment team honorary Blog Minions, with a special shout-out to nicolas and Chris.

Thank you guys – you’ve given the Internet a tool I think is genuinely exciting, and more importantly made me smile. Keep up the good work 😀

Everyone, have a button. What you do with them is totally up to you. (This is a revamped design I came up with late on a Friday evening after a hard week’s work and a workout at the gym. Feel free to use the older style button, design your own button, or just not take one away with you at all. I promise not to be upset 😉 )

For more on what it means to be a Minion, read read this page here, and feel free to interrogate those made Minion before you.

cocomment, conversation, blog minions, blog minion