Beyond Selidor

Day 5. Pick a song that projects the same mood as your day or week and explain.

'Please Ask For Help' by Telekinesis completely sums up my week. 'I'm not going to knock you down, but I'm not going to help you up' essentially paraphrases how I've been feeling for the past few days: maudlin, unintentionally self-sabotaging, and able to see how to get out of this state of mind but not being able to do it. I'm frustrated with myself, and ready to go back to Cambridge, which, thanksfully, I'm doing in exactly a week.

As far as today goes, though, I'm feeling a bit lyric-less and contemplative. I'm about to head over to the apartment of one of my friends from my German class, where our whole class is having a sushi party, and it's hard to be in a bad mood when there's sushi on the horizon. In any case, while it's not fun to feel unhappy, I'm kind of okay with feeling the full range of human emotions, as I've explained before. I tend to get analytical about my feelings, focusing on them and trying to work out why I'm feeling unhappy at a particular moment, but I don't try to push the unhappiness away or hurry it up. Thus, today's song is 'Kaleidoscope' by Tiësto feat. Jónsi. I can't explain why this song reflects my mood, except to say that it always evokes the image of standing on a bridge, on the shore, on the cliffs of Selidor - some liminal space - and wondering.

The song I've been playing all week, especially over the last 24 hours (50 times!), is 'Girls Like You' by The Naked and Famous, but I don't think it's hugely reflective of my life, aside from the line 'run, whirlwind run', which is totally how I feel all the time. I'm even known as 'Typhoon Ronni' within my family due to my sudden melodramatic flarings of emotion, and the fact that I seem to walk into the house trailing drama behind me...

( the other days )

ETA: You NEED to go and check out the Stratford-on-Hellmouth Tumblr. It's got Whedonverse macros with appropriate Shakespeare quotes pasted over them. My favourite is this one.

Last night I went over to my friend M's house for St Patrick's Day shenanigans. There was a group of about six of us. We basically hung around, drinking and chatting, and, as is our wont, listening to increasingly cheesy music. This playlist got quite an airing.

At some point, M, C and I separated off into a little Whedonite group and started discussing which Buffyverse character we identified with. C was convinced he was Giles ('Don't talk Latin in front of the books!'). M said that she was Buffy. I was more confused. I said I thought I might be a strange mixture of Willow, Xander and Dawn. C shook his head emphatically.

'You're Tara,' he said.

I'd never thought about that before, but as soon as he said it, I knew he was right. I'm both amused and confused about what this says about me.

In terms of Firefly/Serenity characters, it's obvious. I'm Simon. No question about it.

I've got some links for you tonight. This two-part interview with Jake Adelstein, an American reporter for Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun who spent 12 years writing about the Yakuza. The interview is absolutely fascinating.

I've been following the whole Avatar: The Last Airbender racebending debacle in a rather scatterbrained manner, but Hal Duncan has some rather important things to say about the matter. Check it out.

Sady Doyle's got some good points to make about the 'Telephone' video clip. Also, I've been saying for years that each era gets the vampires it deserves, but I never really thought much about zombies. But Mark Dery's done it for me.

Now, sleeeeeeeeeep.

ETA: I, um, have 'Mr Vain' by Culture Beat on repeat.

Ronni (in sing-song voice): Good mor-ning ev-ery-one!
Class (in same): Good mor-ning Ronn-i!
Ronni: For news today I'm going to talk about what I did on my weekend.

I hardly ever seem to talk about ACTUAL REAL LIFE RIGHT NOW in this blog. A quick flick back through old posts reveals the vast majority of them are reminiscences, book-reviews, or extended squeeing over whatever I happen to be fangirling at the moment. It's not that nothing ever happens to me, it's more that...other stuff is more interesting.

Well, anyway.

On Saturday morning, Mimi and I took Mum out to breakfast for a belated Mothers' Day. We usually do this, and we usually do it on a day other than Mothers' Day anyway, since Mum, who is the third-most impatient person I know, hates to be in cafes overflowing with the Mothers' Day crowd. Breakfast was a typically insane affair. I had to work at 10, and Mimi had to work at 11, but then wasted half the morning blow-drying her hair. Mum and I couldn't wait, and rushed off to the cafe and started ordering, whereupon Mimi rushed up, hair now blow-dried to perfection, to join us.

Then I raced off to work, which was its usual mix of calming, 'I've-been-doing-this-for-years' fun and 'I've-worked-in-retail-and-thus-lost-all-faith-in-humanity' bizarreness. Are people really so stupid that they think they need to ask me to put their cakes in boxes? It appears so. I wonder what they'd say if I responded to their 'do you have a box for that?'s with 'No, I was thinking of putting it directly into a plastic bag so it can get extra squashed in preparation for your big birthday party.' Morons.

On Saturday night I went to drinks celebrating the birthday party of one of the women at the school. After much difficulty finding the damn place, I made it. It was fun, but a bit bizarre. The men-to-women ratio was very skewed: there were about 30 women and only five or six men. I haven't been somewhere with so many single women since...well, since I have no idea when.

On Saturday we had a family birthday party for my grandfather and my aunt Lynne, the two May birthday people. Phillips parties are always fun, but a bit predictable in their insanity. My grandmother will fuss and worry (about the food, about whoever hasn't arrived yet, about...anything), the aunts will flutter about competently, organising the food, the table and the rest of the family, my little cousins will be cute and out of control, Mimi, the older cousins and I will help where we can, and my grandfather will miss out on most of what's being said. All of this will be done with everyone speaking over the top of one another, lots of rushing from kitchen to dining room, and minor disagreements about everything from the arrangement of the furniture to where the matches are. It was a bit of a smaller event this time, because the_lil_spoon and my cousin, her fiance, are getting married this weekend and had to stay at home to do last-minute wedding preparations, Mimi was at work, and my cousin Lewis was at a birthday party. So, more food for all!

We got home around 6.30ish, and after a brisk editing of Mimi's Art History essay, I jumped online for a bit. I Skyped with Raphael for a while; it was good to talk to him, since neither of us have been around much.

Then I watched The Ruby In The Smoke on TV. I'd already seen this adaptation of Philip Pullman's fantastic book, as it showed in the UK ages ago and paul_temple had sent me a DVD of it, as well as of The Shadow in the North, the next in the series. But it was nice to see it finally in the ABC Sunday night bonnet drama timeslot where it belongs! I thought they did a good job, ultimately, but I thought the casting was pretty woeful.

My quibbles:
It's all lovely and PC to randomly make some characters black, but the casting people should remember that this is an adaptation of a book set in the Victorian era. Nicholas and Matthew Bedwell are not black. It'd be nice to imagine a colour-blind late 19th-century England, but, unfortunately, a black clergyman ministering to a white congregation in Oxford would've raised a few eyebrows (to say nothing of an interracial relationship between a black Nicholas Bedwell and white Rosa Garland, which happens later in the series).
The guy playing Jim was too old. He's meant to be about 13 in the first book, not in his late teens/early 20s. I guess their reasoning was that people might not know that in the Victorian era, 13-year-olds had full-time jobs. I guess they thought that people might wonder why 13-year-old Jim was working at a shipping agency.
Fred Garland was played as too...well, I don't want to say poncy, but unfortunately, that was how he came across. Remember, this guy has to be someone who might credibly be able to kill Jonathan Berry (a monumentally strong murderer).
Sally came across as too weak and weepy. The point made continually in the books is that she's a very rational, calm, collected young woman. This serves as a contrast to the few times that she gets genuinely emotional, highlighting the deep significances of such moments.

What can you do? TV or movie adaptations never manage to get it quite right.

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As you know, I've always got a few things with which I'm utterly obsessed at any given moment. Right now, in terms of TV and movies, it's Firefly, which is, being by Joss Whedon, beyond awesome. I've watched it before, of course, but not for a while. If I were as wittily quotable as the characters on that show...I'd probably have a successful career as a writer, but, oh well.
Book-wise, I'm desperate to read Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. I'm a young-adult reviewer, and this is probably going to be one of the best YA books of the year, and yet tracking down a copy (not a free download, I love the idea of free downloads, but I love holding a book in my hands even more) is proving rather difficult.
Music-wise, I'm going through a Massive Attack phase, again. Massive Attack has been one of my favourite bands since I was about 15 (I don't do change well, and once I love something, I tend to love it forever). I was enthusing before about Joss Whedon's brilliant wittiness, and Massive Attack has it too, in a different way. Mostly, I prefer music with interesting lyrics, and Massive Attack certainly is the top of the clever-lyrics brigade:
'I'm a little curious of you in crowded scenes/And how serene your friends and fiends/We flew and strolled as two eliminated gently/Why don't you close your eyes and reinvent me?' - Mezzanine
'I was looking back to see if you were looking back at me/To see me looking back at you' - Safe From Harm
My personal favourite comes from Teardrop: 'Love, love, is a verb/Love is a doing word'. Mimi scornfully said 'that's just about having sex, Ronni', and I got into a fight with Raphael and romen_dreamer over whether this song is about drugs. (romen_dreamer said, 'So, what, if you don't know what it's about, it's automatically about drugs?") I personally think most of the songs are about having sex while on drugs. While being completely witty about it, of course...