There's one of the (straight) chicas at work who I semi-flirt with. She's very cute and cool. But straight and married. She does semi-flirt back (she's the personable and cute type with everyone, so no big). Nice way to pass time at work, but I did wonder if I was being overly charming around her to get that quality of interaction. However, I met her hubby the other evening, and I nearly LOL'd out loud. He's like the guy version of me. Similar hair, nose, glasses, height, geekiness and sense of humour. Ok, he's a bit more slender (she is nicely rounded) and doesn't have tits out to there. And obviously possesses other accoutrements. But that explains the semi-flirting, heh heh.

Last weekend she got the start of a back piece done, and today she was showing it to those who were interested (not gratuitously). It's going to look fab. She already has a small tattoo on her wrist (you know, nice and all that), but this back piece is her entire back, not the small thing I thought it would be. And it's very very groovy and is going to look amazing once the colour is in. So, I thought she was cute before, but I was really struggling to furl my tongue back into my head during the show-and-tell today.

She was telling me that hubby was a bit squicked about rubbing in cream into the freshly tattoo'd and raw skin (he's fine when it's past the scabbing stage, apparently) and it was a bit awkward doing it herself. I was sooooo restrained and didn't say, "I WILL!" No, I made a wee joke about vicarious sensitivity and casually strolled off. Such self-control. Honestly, I amaze myself. ;-)

PJ Harvey and Björk do a cover of the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction. It starts off  bit slow, but frankly I don't care because I think Polly Jean is so hot I could watch her covering Tammy Wynette's greatest hits. Even if they were then followed by Sid Vicious and Yoko Ono duets. Mmm mmm mmm. Mmmm.

Then here's Stevie Nicks as a Tex-Mex restaurant owner, as played by the lovely Lucy Lawless. I know it's silly, and you have to ignore the really irritating audience laugh track, but you know, Fleetwood Mac and some of Stevie's solo offerings was a big chunk of the emo music of my teenage years. I still love songs like Dreams and so on.

I didn't fancy Stevie though. No, I reserved my rock-chick fancies for babes like Pat Benatar (god, those hair-dos... and woo-hoo, the fight-dance!) and Chrissy Hynde, while the rock-boy equivalent was Prince (such a bad boy, sexin up that nice wee Sheena Easton).


ETA: Ok, this lolcat made me cry with laughter. OMGWTFBBQ!

ETA2: Prince linkie fixed now too. :-)

Ok, I don't possess a TV - I have never owned one of my own - and I don't imagine myself getting one in a hurry. I just wish you could plug gaming consoles into an LCD screen (the kind attached to a computer).

So, as you may gather, there isn't much TV that I see. I've loved Torchwood, I am enjoying Heroes and I did watch all of the latest series of Doctor Who, despite the fact I wish David Tennant would disappear into a singularity. However, I have some guilty secrets: I watched all of the first series of Desperate Housewives (am I the only person in the world who thinks that Bree is a sex goddess?), although I don't have any desire to get the rest. And I am addicted to The L Word. I mean, cute girlie-girls getting it on with each other? Just call me Bubba.

So, I just watched the show that was broadcast on Monday in the US, which is the 3rd of this new series. Thank god, it was fab. As good as the best eps in the first series (if we don't count Marina). The pretentious arty Jenny moment was actually amusing, if you realised it was a homage to A Streetcar Named Desire, down to the saxophone music. Jenny was an amusing fruit loop. Max was almost endearing... despite his macking up to the boss's daughter and still somehow not divulging his status. The ensemble pieces were mainly great, except the "straights vs queers" cocktail party - stereotypes much? The showdown between Shane and Papi was fun. Cybill Shepherd is doing a decent job, and hopefully her botox will wear off a bit soon. Alice was cute, of course. I even managed to ignore Angstus and his sulking.

But. That good stuff pales into insignificance next to Bette. It's interesting, because Jennifer Beals strikes me as more than a little bit hippy-dippy in RL (not in a bad way), but she can play determined, proper, type-A, focussed, kick-arse chick in style. And those skirts. Dear bloody god. You can't call it walking, what she does in them. And there she is, struggling with her ethics for all of 5 seconds before she unleashes the Bette Beast. Rrrrrrowr. And while her perky blonde little offsider doesn't do it for me in the slightest, she at least does a good job of seeming caught up in the whirlwind. And what a fiiiine whirlwind it is too. Welcome back, to Bette and her moves.

I suppose it's too much to hope they sustain that quality throughout the rest of the series, but I certainly have higher hopes than I did a few weeks back.

I don't care about what mechanism appears to make astrology work more often than not, but I think it's often just as valid as a lot of stuff that's spouted in the realms of psychology and sociology. However, I don't swallow it whole; I take it as it fits (with much of that realm of stuff).

So, the moon was in Scorpio when I was born. This apparently means that I can be "Brooding, Intense, Motivated, Dominating, Spiteful, Loyal, Creative, Suspicious". Well, hm. I only brood occasionally. I'm not in the slightest bit spiteful or suspicious, and I'm not terribly motivated in general. I don't think I have fantastic willpower. In fact, the only qualities I totally agree with there are "intense" and "loyal". However, Milton Black has some more relevant things to say:

You have strongly pronounced likes and dislikes.  (Really?!)
You tend to hold what others would term peculiar moral and social ideals. (*cough*)
You cannot abide criticism of your actions, because you hold fast to your ideals and try to live by them. (At least my reaction to that kind of criticism has somewhat improved with age!)

But a common theme for us moon in Scorp types is a liking for privacy. For me, this isn't the same as liking secrecy, but it can tip over that if someone starts digging too hard at something that doesn't concern them. Not something that happens to me that often these days. When I was a kid, I used to love reading stories about houses with secret passages and priest's holes and the like. I would spend hours fantasising about building tunnel networks under the house. Ok, literally escapist fantasies, heh, but they have a specific kind of form.

Getting to the point (yes, there is one), I WANT one of these secret rooms!!1! Aren't they bloody cool? I wouldn't be sticking a study or a studio in there, though. I'm sure I could come up something a lot more interesting to put in such a funky kind of space. If I ever get to build my dream house, I'm going to get one of those.

Why didn't I watch this earlier? Naveen Andrews!!!!11!!!  I had no idea he was in this! Ok, I've resigned myself to the fact that no-one's ever going to cast him with long hair again, like they did in The English Patient, but at least it's long enough. :-) *drooool!*

He makes about as convincing an Iraqi as I do, but he can act. I'm enjoying the programme itself overall, but it doesn't grab me the way that Firefly did, if we're going to talk American TV - too many standard gender roles, methinks. And bugger-all humour. Still, the eye-candy is pretty bloody fabulous. And by that, I mean the landscape too - I'm definitely going back to Hawaii one day.

*goes back to Ep 9 and more drooling* (Plot, what plot?)

"...don't come easy to me
How can I find a way
To make you see
I love you
Words don't come easy."

There you go, crappy 80s emo song of the day. FR David, what a whiner. Being a one-hit wonder was both a blessing and a curse: a blessing because he didn't inflict any more songs on us; a curse because we had to endure that PoS for weeks before it went away. Other than being whiny, what a stupid lyric - he's talking about words and he wants the love object to see he loves her/him. Puhlease.

And what's worse is I didn't need to google either the lyric or the guy's name. They're emblazoned on my brain, seemingly forever. Googling... ack! there is a discography - 1982 - 24 effing years. My brain was obviously a sponge when I was 14.

That's all a big diversion. I've been mulling over trying to lure people into *cough*sharing*cough* an online sub to the OED. I've been missing it. However, a one-year sub costs around $AU540. At the moment, the Compact OED (which is the whole 20 volume set in one volume - the original pages are digitally reduced and printed 9-up in this edition -they provide a magnifying glass) is going on Amazon for $AU300.

Hell, it's almost worth buying a dictionary a year and flogging each one off for half-price when you get the next one. But I find it incredibly bloody irksome that the printed and bound version is nearly HALF the price of the online version!!!!11!! I dearly love the OED, but I think OUP's marketing department need a big bloody kick in their collective goolies.

So, what to do now? It's really an addiction I need to slake (especially since the OED's free offer is running out in a couple of days). I could go work at universities again... (yet another appealing reason to do so).

But, here's me being a geek. I would love to own the compact edition. What a piece of the printer's art! The scanning and reduction of the type was possible 10 and more ago years ago, digitally or photographically (when I was a photolithographer), but I'm pretty sure the actual physical ink-and-paper technology must have come a ways as well. Assuming that the type is smaller than Gideon-bible size, that is, and that the pages are properly opaque.

I've been meaning to do this for a while, and since I need to cheer myself up (the trouble with having technologically-challenged friends is that they don't answer their bloody emails)...

( Trix's list of the L-Word cast in order of shaggability )
And can I just say that the above ratings refer to their characters? For example, I think that Erin Daniels seems like a groovy person, but she doesn't trip my gaydar or bi-dar in the slightest, and, I'm sorry, but a professional tennis player does NOT have arms like limp spaghetti (advice to show writers: do not ever get her to do a scene lifting weights again. Just too pathetic). And I think Mia Kirshner is cool too, although she has to play the most gratuitously out-there stuff as Jenny. Leisha Hailey, especially in her brunette incarnation, is the person I'd probably find the most attractive in RL (always excepting Karina Lombard...).

I like being here, much more so than Canberra. Canberra is so utterly homogonised, except perhaps for the ambassadors and their various families. Here, there are all sorts. I miss this kind of cultural diversity.

I really like King Street here in Newtown. Just to put in Auckland terms, it's like a big long Ponsonby Rd crossed with K Rd, without K Rd's sleaziness or Ponsonby Rd's - I have to say it - ponciness. The area around reminds me of Grey Lynn/Ponsonby, those late-19th Century central Auckland suburbs. Narrow streets and small houses (especially in Australian terms), and those vibrant yet slightly-decayed-round-the-edges-shops. The queer culture (not just "gay") is evident, and it is like standing in a revitalising rainstorm. I haven't realised how much I've missed it.

So, I've done my normal "holiday" pursuits: spent way too much money on books, music and especially food. I've tried sampling coffee around and about, but haven't really found a cup that makes me go, "Yum!". I had high hopes of a cafe called Allegro, where they roast on the premises, but like everywhere else I've encountered so far around here, they do a light French roast which is too acidic for my taste. Dark roast is the way to go, for me. To put in spice terms, it's like the difference between nutmeg and cinnamon: nutmeg is great for extra zing and a sharper note, but if you want your apple pie to taste right, it has to be cinnamon. Oh, and speaking of hot drink oddness, to all those baristas out there, chocolate sprinkled over one's chai latte does NOT work. Kills the small hint of spices you get in the commercial syrups and you most certainly can't taste the tea. Cinnamon OR nutmeg are just fine, thank you.

I just had some delicious sushi - just from a sushi robot, but yummo. While I was there, they were showing stuff from a Japanese TV programme on sushi - how the fish is caught, how it's prepared, types of sushi, etc. They kept doing long slow food porn shots of the rich and glistening hunks of flesh, I mean fish. But they killed the mood with a nice middle-aged Japanese bloke complete with bushy fu manchu moustache and pony tail, gobbling it up, and, presumably, giving a spiel on what it tastes like. Frankly, I'd much rather watch Nigella Lawson doing food porn, any time. I'd much rather watch Nigella Lawson doing ANY porn, any time. Or in fact, anything at all, if it's in close proximity to me. (sorry, gratuitous Nigella-dribble there).

I had good intentions of going to the Australia Museum today, but didn't get the time. As well as my coffee search, I bumped into one of my old colleagues, Chris, who left my last workplace to come back to Australia a couple of months after I left. So off we went and caught up on the goss and talked boring techie talk. He's looking so much happier and relaxed back here, and he told to me that he is utterly relieved to be out of Wellington. It was very evident. Personally, I'd be relieved to be back there, but it's all about what we have an affinity for, isn't it? I also can't believe I just bumped into the only other person I know in Sydney; I didn't have a clue that he lived in Newtown, and there ARE 4 million people in this town, after all.

Other than catching up with Chris, I also had the massage from hell (actually, it was fantastic), which I evidently needed, given how much everything is aching right now. But my upper back is sooo much looser and I feel like I've dropped 20 kilos. Must remember that while I'm not having sex, a massage is a GOOD THING to have regularly. The massage chappie told me that everything was completely locked up (yes, I could tell that when he ran his fingers down my spine, and I had to stop myself from yelping, in several places)... but that once he had a chance to work on me, everything loosened up incredibly well. Sounds like me, really, all or nothing.

So, I'm back off home tomorrow evening, but I hope to get to the museum in the morning, it's just a quick train ride from here. And I've definitely decided that I need to come visit more often, so as to be able to recharge various of my batteries more often.