Maru's Mun Journal

There was a tremendous hail- and thunderstorm here today, and I was seeking refuge under an awning while there was thunder and lightning and tremendous downpours that was so loud, I didn't even hear the loudly wailing (from the way its face scrunched up and its mouth was open) baby whose mother was hiding under the awning right next to me with the carriage, the street had turned into a white-water rafting area, and the hailstones were pinging off the pavement and hitting me like little icy pinpricks.

And I was standing there, grinning to myself, and thinking, "Really, Thor, you can't be that pissed off merely because all the fangirls like your little brother better than you?"

I think this is the modern digital-photographic equivalent of what conscientious restorers of museum objects have been done for decades: when you put a Greek vase or a medieval garment back together for display, you use some contrastingly neutral material for the parts that are missing, plain grey linen among all the tyrian-purple-and-gold, or some white clay for the parts of the delicate red-figures vase that remains missing. If broken statues have hands, but not arms, they get steel bars or thin pieces of concrete.

This is what you do when you want to photoshop the background out from a candid picture of a celebrity and make a point of how honest you are, and that you're not 'shopping' the picture: you roughly outline the real object of the picture, then invert the selection and blur the rest. Roughly enough to leave that odd halo-like margin of in-focus background, but still well enough to focus solely on what you want to show.

I must admit it looks odd, but I guess we'll get used to it.-



Of course, Christina Hendricks looks stunning as always. And if this new principle gives me an excuse to repost the picture of her which I found it on, all the better...


[[From here]]

I just allowed a Wagner opera (in which Siegfried was some blue dreadlocked orc with bare legs and big boots) to run on my telly, promptly fell asleep, and woke up two hours later to a some terribly TMI-y medical discussion program.

Argh!!!

That is two hours of prime tagging time I am not getting back. And a pint of chocolate ice ream melted, and half a pint of boilermaker gone stale.

And I missed essayel coming back online, telling me she had tagged, and signing off again after I just didn't answer.

And others were discussing my charrie again in an utterly heart-warming manner. Teja, not Urquhart, of course; I doubt one can discuss Urquhart in a heart-warming manner at all.-

Apologies to all I dropped thread on; I am catching up now.

**grrrrrrs at Wagner**

Earlier tonight, though, I got to use Urquhart's bizarrely anachronistic phone icon for the first time ever in this utterly fun thread with corchen 's newest character in mixed_muses.

There's snow outside. Hot tea to wake me up. Purring cats on my divan with me. A hot bath in my immediate future, before work, to keep nazgulwears' cold from even considering to settle on me next.

And a thread of others discussing my pup to read. Again. Urquhart is a bit of a plot centrifuge, really. He touches somebody, and they start reacting and talking to others and preparing a way to deal with the dangerous lunatic.

While being quite a success with the women. That's canon, too, in the way he charms Maria -- before shooting her through the eye, of course. Saffron is the most fascinating of them, a challenge and an equal, but really, he'll take what he can.

He does, by the way, absolutely take 'No' for an answer, no hard feelings or persecutions. He will argue that he gets his women with either charm or money (totally willing to pay for a professional and use her services, that's canon as well), and the day that neither will get him laid in some way is probably the day he should give up trying. So if he flirts with your female charrie? He'll have no problem with being brushed off, nor cause one for your pup.-

I have internet. I have animals. I have thread. I have fudz and drink. I have a refurbishing program on TV where they are painting walls purple.

Life is rather good.-

Laundry has been washed, all the things from the journey put away, and all the pictures are on my computer. I didn't feel like doing the picture post right away; better let everything settle. Instead, I got source_fairy ready to be apped come next Sunday (at which time I will also retire Asar-Suti and Ma'at, so I won't have too many deities, and redo all the 'Everybody' icons). I fell in love with the charrie Sirona the moment I finished her canon (and knew who she really was), even knew who had to be her PB the first time she was described, and tested her with ceitfianna's OC in Mixed Muses so I know I have an inner!Sirona to speak to me. So let us try the 'Maru can do female charries, too' thing, again. In Milliways, that is; in Morningstar Manor I have several, and acquired another one recently.

I have dealt with all attempts of feline interior decoration, and taken the summer clothes into storage, bringing out the winter things. My kitchen really looks like a kitchen now, having acquired tiling around the surfaces while I was gone; in the evening, I will take the laundry to the dryer and meet the Nazgul for dinner at the little Chinese part, and then RP some.

Tomorrow: return to slavery.-

There is a special revenge England visits on Germany for its many shortcomings: it is called Rosamunde Pilcher. That's some writing lady of the Barbara Cartland/Maeve Binchy/Nicholas Sparks (last one no lady, but still the same for all practical purposes) persuasion who is only moderately successful in her native language but enormously popular among elderly females of the middle to lower middle classes in Germany, in translation, of course.

Following that success, German public television makes the most stomach-heavingly saccarine made-for-TV-movies of those stomach-heavingly saccarine books, filmed on location somewhere over in .uk, and cast with German TV actors. The worst stuff anyone can be subjected to on the effin' tube short of actual so-called "Volksmusik" (wiebke and floppy_hat probably know what that is; the rest should be really grateful they are spared that knowledge!!!), and my mother is just now watching this year's newest offering. Of course it's on for Christmas, too.

So, as not to be forced to eventually spew forth my just-eaten Pink Herring Salad, I will go and read the newest part of the "Taxes" AU POTC fanfic by the_mad_fangirl in pirategasm. Unfortunately, she's strewn that story all over the place, so I'll have to do some hunting and gathering until I get it complete. I like AU fanfics of the reincarnation flavour, as this one is; it's so funny to find the personages from a familiar fandom all mixed and matched differently, and slowly remembering who they used to be. Almost as much fun as ruminating what anybody would be like if they were to reincarnate as Wraeththu in the future...

So I'll be nicely busy until that accursed Pilcher thinggy has run its natural course, and I can go over into the family room again, settle on my favourite sofa, and go on reading The Standing Dead while my parents do as usual in the background.

A propos of that book, I must say Ricardo really does know how to keep his readers on their toes emotionally. He draws you into his world and makes you fear and suffer with and for his characters, as utterly alien to us they might seem at first glance. The whole system is so cruel: everybody suffers dreadfully, from the sartlar all the way up to the Wise, the Chosen and the God Emperor - but somehow nobody gets anything for all their suffering, really. But, on the other hand, do we get any more for all our varigated sufferings in our present world-wide civilisation; any more than a few fleeting pleasures, that is, just like these people back then in that fictional past had as well? Anyway, that's a question I might dwell on when I've finished the second book and write my review for Areion.

I like to "Name the Dinosaur", though. Earthers, heaveners, raveners and even bellowers are comparatively easy, but I'm not quite decided on aquar (Struthiomimus, perhaps? But weren't those supposed to be smaller?), and can't tell at all in case of the "dragons".-

Would you believe it, the moment I get a space all of my own like this where I can put many months worth of blah and hoo, my mind is suddenly as empty as a dry bathtub? There is no effing thing worthwhile to write. Only the small and unimportant things to report like the entity entrusted with getting rid of all superfluous work having done his job very well, and my DVD player slowly losing its mind (only recognises old DVDs it has seen before and is increasingly unable to take in anything new; what an odd thing to do), some idle fun with me speculating what all sorts of persons and characters would be like if reincarnated as Wraeththu.

We all know what tribe Snape, for example, would be if he was reborn as a Wraeththu a few centuries from now, but imagine Sherlock Holmes being reincarnated in that future - he's so screwed up, he'd prolly be a Kamagrian to start with - and so on and on and on... What a cuddly little bunny to while away the day with while one feels a bit off-colour. Yes, and the little ghosts and pumpkin lights I hung up yesterday are doing well, too.

The Nazgul has suggested an impromptu Halloween party for tomorrow, no dressup and no guests, only watching scary movies and eating pumpkin stuff. Unfortunately, the Russian shop is still out of pumpkin juice. I went in there today and forgot I was wearing my gold-on-black Rasputin tee shirt. I only noticed the moment I walked in that shop, but didn't want to turn back as I'd especially gone out to get the juice (which they didn't have). So, I snatched my coat round me when already on their threshold, pretending all the while I was cold while I was in there to keep the piccie of good old Grigori Efimovich from peeking out at those good people who keep the shop and potentially spooking them badly, or at least making them wary of me.
I bought some obnoxious sweets, then, as not to leave the place empty-handed after having come especially and pretending it was underheated.

In another shop, I bought three more Hokkaido pumpkins. And two purple heather bushes.-

We were offline off and on today, and the Metropolitan Falk said the sun spots were to blame. I laughed at him and suggested he was having me on because he was to lazy to re-start the DSL thinggie, but later on, when we were online again, read Telepolis and discovered he hadn't lied after all: there have been sunspots on for the last few days. Might that be the reason why we were offline at work yesterday and the day before? The damn *elekom has already admitted to having spontaneously switched off our leased line, but might the sunspots have affected their measly Saxonian brains? In any case, we are having sunspots, so I am prolly excused for being moody and reincarnating everyone as Wraeththu, the Russians are excused for not having any pumpkin juice, and the Internet is excused for occasionally not being there if it doesn't feel like it.