You know what helps if you're really bummed about something you're not prepared to discuss in your blog? (Women's trouble.) Putting on snowflake footie pyjamas (I mended the rip in the butt) and watching The Frighteners and The Lost Boys on DVD. It also helps if your nice German flatmate watches with you and contributes a box of Tia Maria-filled chocolates, inducing a light buzz. Have a glass of vodka and cranberry juice during 'The Lost Boys' and pretend it's David's blood. By these means you can go to sleep feeling pretty good after all.

I really love The Lost Boys. When I eventually get back to a life where I have access to the technology to make my own webpages, I want to make a little love-it-site called 'All the Damn' Vampires.' It will include a page on 'Sam: Gay and Okay.' I love how one of the subtexts of that movie is, being a vampire is a big problem and a bad thing, being a camp early-teenage boy who sleeps in a 'Born to Shop' teeshirt with posters of cute pouty guys on his bedroom walls is not. It's just nice how the filmmakers wrote and played it. Sam is an apparently gay character ('culturally' gay, at least) whose gayness is not an issue in the story - not considered a problem by him or anyone else, just part of his personality. We could do with more of that in the movies. It could go a long way towards helping gay teenagers feel less like their sexuality has to be the defining issue of their lives - and less like they can never be really comfortable and accepted as a friend or family member among people who aren't gay. Which are two unfortunate side-effects of some of the meant-to-be-positive politicised ways homosexuality has been portrayed in movies and TV, and the cultural hangover from homosexuality's former underground subculture status.

I sometimes wonder if I find too much subtext in The Lost Boys. When David treats Star as if she's his property, I think 'Star of David' - and historically, Jews have often been scapegoated for vampire activity. Okay okay, I say that like I think vampires are real *^.^* But one of many anti-Semitic beliefs current in mediaeval Europe and thereafter was that Jewish religious ritual required the blood of children, or even the sacrifice of babies. (Nowadays this slander tends to be applied to pagan and Wiccan groups who are conflated in the minds of the religious right with Satanists. I don't know what Satanists may do but we pagan witchy types definitely do not 'put babbies in the cauldron,' to quote Nanny Ogg.) When children went missing (missing children are a prominent feature of life in Santa Carla), if their bodies weren't found in some obvious way like floating in a nearby body of water, local groups of Jews or gypsies (Star dresses like a gypsy, and gypsies were another marginalised group in Europe suspected of Satanic practises involving children) were frequently accused of abduction and/or murder, and massacred or driven out of the neighbourhood. But most people at that time also believed in the reality of vampires... therefore, in a missing child case without other leads to go on, the 'usual suspects' would be Jews, gypsies and vampires, because all supposedly wanted the blood of children. It just seems like something the writers might have laid in as a sort of narrative Easter egg for viewers interested in vampire lore beyond the movies.

I find myself wondering something similar about the choice of names for the Frog brothers. 'Edgar and Alan' (that's how the name is spelled in the end credits) works as a joke for mainstream audiences because it makes you think of Edgar Allan Poe, and by association the macabre and sinister. And the Frog brothers are pretty macabre and sinister. However, if you're interested in vampire stories you may know that in the 1970s or early 80s (I can't remember precisely right now) the Japanese manga (comic book) author/artist Moto Hagio created a book called 'Poe Clan,' about two androgynously beautiful 'brother' vampires in a homosexual relationship, named Edgar and Allan. She was a groundbreaker in the 'yaoi' genre of manga centred on a romantic and rather angst-ridden view of male homosexual relationships. Edgar and Alan Frog work in their parents' comic book shop. Could the parents possibly have read Hagio's work? More to the point, could the screenwriters as they researched vampire literature, and is this another Easter egg for people with specialised knowledge? Well, maybe. I don't know. It's just one of the trains of thought that I've had sparking off from watching The Lost Boys.

Maybe I'm just being stereotype-ruled reading Sam as a gay character because of his cultural attributes. But I do still think it's funny and cute when they're at a beach concert featuring a strutting, leather-pants-wearing, chain-jewellery-wearing, muscle-bound and well oiled saxophonist/vocalist, and Michael gets distracted gazing puppy-eyed at Star up in the crowd, and Sam takes his head between his hands and swivels it back to the stage - 'now there's somethin' worth ogling!' *^.^*

I want a Mondrian bathrobe and an adorable Nanook dog like Sam's. But I have grown out of wanting a giant wristwatch wall clock.

Goddamnit, next time I write here I've got to remember to archive the previous posts!

The banana pancakes last night were goooooooooooooood. We had a small crisis, though! While we were watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Katie, who had gone into the kitchen for a mo, came back and sat down and there was a noise like 'crack' crossed with a noise like 'doink' and she subsided two or three inches with a very startled expression. One end of the seat of our couch has caved in! Katie and I began to laugh helplessly and try to work out what we could do, like email Marilla at Hockey's (the real estate agents who act as property managers for our landlord), so I staggered down the hall to Mark's room and said 'Can I come in and email Marilla from your computer, Katie's broken the settee with her bum.'

We didn't actually email Marilla but Mark came and had a look at the sofa and while he was there he coughed, and I said that sounds nasty, and he said I've had it for ages, and I said I know a spell to get rid of that, so I scampered upstairs and got my embarrassing Teen Witch book by Silver Ravenwolf (embarrassing because I am no longer a teenager, not by a long shot) which has the spell I wanted, and I made the conservatory into sacred space (using the Mylar Valentine helium balloon Elka brought home from work for the element of Air) and put Mark's cough into the egg, and today I biffed it into the Cam and asked the river to take the cough away.

The egg, like the two that went into my pancakes, was actually Katie's, so I must pay her back. An egg economy, it's like Bone.

Those bananas are keeping amazingly well. I ate one for a midnight snack last night thinking it would have gotten floury, judging by the look of the skin, but it was still firm and delicious. I don't have to make a cake to get rid of them after all, they're fine to eat as they are.

We call her Marilla Gorilla behind her back.

I should probably go home and eat a banana, I'm getting hungry and punchy. Also tonight I can watch Samurai Jack! Who-pah!

Either my best friend is super-busy or she doesn't feel like emailing me while she's bummed about not going to Edinburgh (see Lizzard's blog - link in the sidebar).

I slept in this morning, because I could, and opened my eyes properly around tennish. I read a couple of chapters of my new book The Six Wives of Henry VIII, which is just as good as Alison Weir's other history books. She's so good at picking out interesting detail. My favourite Wife is Katherine of Aragon. Since she's young at the moment I'm visualising her played by Amber Benson. I do feel so sorry for her. If only Prince Henry had lived instead of becoming a Sudden Infant Death Syndrome statistic, her marriage might have survived too. No matter how much in love with Anne Boleyn Henry was, surely the fact that he had a wife who'd borne a son that lived would have made him hesitate to launch the Great Matter. And poor Princess Mary would have had a much happier childhood too. But Elizabeth would never have been born, so that's probably not a good thing to wish for. I just feel sorry for Katherine, who seems to have been such a nice woman, sincere and brave and kind-hearted, and worth ten of the vixen who replaced her. Bad Anne Boleyn. Brother-shagger. Blah.

Well, all right, not proven brother-shagger, probably just set up by Cromwell who was fed up with her.

Still not a class act like Catalina!

After that I got out my nummy new sketchpad and pencils, found the right pages to refer to in my Sailor Moon artbooks (from the TV series - first season vols I and II, and the R book. They have neat sections in the back of the character design 'model sheets' used by the animators), and resumed my fanart habit. Because of my relationship shrine, Focus: Yuuichirou & Rei, I wanted to draw some nice couple art, imagining Rei a couple of years older than at the end of Sailor Stars and having finally warmed up to Yuuichirou. I warmed up with a sketch of Rei on her graduation day, which might be okay if I reworked it sometime - I was trying to make it a windy day, to break up the formality of her pose, as if for a portrait photo, with her hair and uniform skirt blowing around, but the hair looks stiff and I always have difficulty drawing pleats, so file that under Work In Progress. Also her hands came out funny, holding the tube in which her diploma is rolled. Fingers are terribly difficult, and I also have trouble with wrists (not to mention ankles) - these narrow, very flexible and expressive joints are hard for me to draw. Legs are easier than arms but basically, I have to struggle and erase and refine a lot to create a passable figure drawing. I wish I was better at sketching.

Then I started a couple pinup - I'd decided on the pair of them at the beach, Yuuichirou rubbing sunscreen on Rei's shoulders for her, aww, cute. This is just going to be a pencil drawing as I'm too pleased with the way Rei's hair came out to mess with adding ink or colour. She's holding one side of it flipped over her head and tumbling over her arm, out of Yuuichirou's way as he works on that side, and it looks rather beautiful. Overall, Rei has come out looking, well, a bit 'phwoar.' My worst tendency as an illustrator is to turn my girls into bombshell/strumpet/minx figures with voluptuous thighs and 1940s pinup girl poses, regardless of what my original intention for the picture was. I really have to discipline myself if I want to draw a more innocent-looking girl, but I decided that since this was a swimsuit picture it was okay for Rei to be foxy. So she is. So far Yuuichirou is only a few ghosty outlines showing more or less where he is, kneeling behind her (she's sitting on her towel). I've drawn his hand resting on her shoulder fairly clearly, now the rest of his body has to grow from the stump of that wrist, like how they reassembled Leeloo in The Fifth Element! I'll work on it more tonight and try to get him looking as cute as she is. Although obviously in a more manly biseinen way.

Tonight is Buffy and Angel night, yay, yay. I'm going to make myself banana pancakes for dinner. The important thing is to mash the bananas really well, last time I did them there were still a lot of chunks whose texture I found unpleasant while eating them. Maybe I could try straining the banana through the sieve so it's really like puree. And tomorrow I'll make a banana crunch cake (will need to buy walnuts for the topping) and that ought to deal with the excessive number of bananas in my possession!

Uncharacteristically, I'm going to sit down and talk about something semi-serious, my thoughts about the burgeoning war upon Iraq. In general I am opposed to warmaking and militarism. But I do think that some wars are justifiable. In some cases there is just nothing else viable or honourable to do. See both World Wars. For once America is actually in the forefront of trying to take military action, rather than being isolationist assholes as they were in the aforementioned world wars. I think the problem is that practically the only other time anyone can remember America doing this is in Vietnam, a war that was none of their business. This has typecast America in people's minds as the place that has no business involved in a war except as last-minute reinforcements. The lobbying against an unjust war by the Baby Boomers has somehow created a hangover sense that all war is unjust.

But I think that in this case it is actually necessary to invade Iraq, not because of any rubbish about oil (although the people who despise a concern with world oil prices appear not to realise how much of modern civilisation depends on reliable oil supplies) or an Axis of Evil or who's harbouring what. We need to depose Saddam Hussein and his horrid family and help some nice Iraqis (there must be some) set up a decent government. It's the lesser of two evils. Entre deux maux il faut choisir le moindre, because you cannot simply have a state of suspension in which no choice is made and no consequences result. Yes, some civilians will die, as if an awful lot of Iraqi civilians don't die unnecessarily all the time. And then with goodwill and hard work hopefully a state can be built in which civilian deaths will reach an all-time low and Iraq might actually start to be a nice place to live. It will not be ideal but you don't get ideal situations, people or materials to work with in life. You get what's here and you try to make the best of it.

Some people accuse the United States of being imperialistic in its attitude and projected action. Sometimes I think imperialism isn't such a bad thing. A lot of good things resulted from the Roman, Chinese, Moorish and British Empires. Like civilisation as we know it advancing and spreading through the world. Where racism and/or cruelty was part of the imperial strategy that was bad. Definitely. I am not condoning colonial oppression of indigenous peoples. But you *can* colonise without oppressing. That would be kind of a good thing to do in shitholes like Iraq and North Korea, n'est-ce pas? It would be extremely difficult to do. It would require great vigilance and honour. It would sure as hell be something worthwhile to aspire to.

I think something that a lot of people do not realise is that civilisation is not self-sustaining. And I cannot agree with the people who feel that civilisation is somehow intrinsically bad. Civilisation is why I didn't die of my multiple serious bouts of tonsillitis in childhood. Civilisation is why my father didn't die of the brain injury and fractured skull he received in a cycling accident as a youth. (Of course, without civilisation he wouldn't have been riding a bike, but I daresay he would have managed to break his head somehow, he was that sort of youth.) Civilisation is something we have to keep working on and working toward and the progress is not always clean or easy. It often involves that choix entre deux maux. It often suffers sabotage from that monster Human Nature. But we must keep it going or we are not fulfiling the point of our existence as the intelligent beings on this planet. Meaning of life, right there: to make things better. The state of Iraq's a thing that could do with some betterment. It's not going to get it unless we get rid of Saddam Hussein, because no-one really has the ability to get rid of Saddam Hussein except we over here in civilisation.

With all that painfully thought out and dubiously expressed, I will just say that the timing stinks because the international situation makes people nervous of travel and has led to the cancellation of my best friend's school's Europe trip so she can't come and see me this summer.

Oh, but, awesome news: Hugh the flatmate I dislike is moving out. And I have permission (from the property manager, even) to move into Mark the flatmate I will miss's room when he goes. Rock the house! I wonder who will take Hugh's room and mine when I've vacated it. When they are both gone it will be an all-girl house for a while.

Irony: one reason I was excited about getting Mark's room was that it had space for my friend to sleep on the floor when she came to see me. Oh well.

So I am full of plans for my little Wicca cleansing ceremony for moving in (which will include a rather non-Wiccan mopping of the floor with very hot water and Dettol), and the property manager tells me a man will come and see about the oven which has been smoking annoyingly, and I have a beautiful outfit to wear as Anne's bridesmaid in April and she paid for it, which is nice.

I will have to seriously work on spending less money in future since I'm certainly not getting paid any more per month but I will be paying more rent and taking on Mark's ntl phone/cable account - an expenditure of about £80 pounds more pcm. I think I will have to make up an actual budget with a 'pocket money allowance' per week. I should probably have been doing that from the beginning, but you know me, fly on a wing and a prayer.

Ummmm... I think that's about all. There has been almost NOTHING to do at work this morning, most of us might as well have stayed home and come in after lunch. Typical for a Wednesday. We meet our deadlines but the people we need our proofs back from seldom do.

It occurred to me the other day that if I wrote a novel based on 'what I know,' like they tell you to do, it would have an awfully narrow appeal. This is why I'd rather write fantasy.

I think I'll go to the toilet.

Today I woke up to a mystery, not one of life's deep cosmic mysteries, or a noirishly cool hardboiled detective mystery, but the trivial yet nagging mystery, Where Is My Toothbrush? It's nowhere to be found in either of the house bathrooms (and I don't think I've never used it in the secondary bathroom anyway). I know of no reason to suspect any of my housemates of misappropriating it. I haven't annoyed any of them recently. It's just... gorn. I think I could make some kind of blues lament out of this: Woke up this mornin', my toothbrush done left me. I've bought a new one at Boots today, so presumably the original will show up again soon, somewhere unlikely, perhaps dirty. I sure don't want to resume using a toothbrush that's been on a mysterious absence.

Tomorrow I'm expecting the delivery of my latest booty from Amazon.co.uk, translated books four and five of the Marmalade Boy manga series by Wataru Yoshizumi. I'm loving this series - it's a teenage romcom/soap with adorable art and a nice dysfunctional edge to some of the emotional drama. And it kicks Dawson's Creek's arse. (Does a creek have an arse? Hard to be sure. It certainly has a bottom.)

Tokyopop, the English publisher, has this gimmick where they print the manga right to left, as in the original Japanese, so the art isn't flipped; they also include the odd word of Japanese in the dialogue, the sort of words that committed otaku know anyway, like 'baka,' 'kawaii' and 'urusee.' (Stupid, cute and 'shut up, you!') I'm teetering between finding this kewl and worrying that it's elitist and may deter inexperienced manga readers. Still, they do provide explanations of what they're doing, so I'm overall relaxed and tending towards the kewl verdict.

New favourite quote, taken from Xander in the latest ep of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I am indeed dedicated to keeping up online, and you can too at The Buffy Cross and Stake, which seems to get its well-written summaries, if not its transcripts, online the quickest after screening): 'Let's get this gay show on the gay road!' I know he's only kidding about converting to homosexuality in the wake of his latest disastrous encounter with a demon woman, but the yaoi fangirl in me says yes Xander, go for it, and jump Spike! Or take a field trip to LA, you always had a crush on Angel... and he's less likely to turn you down by means of physical violence.

My tattoo is healing nicely and no longer needs a dressing (although it sometimes gives me a spasm of hella itching). I'll show yez a photo once I have a photo to show, which, with my present access to photographic technology, I don't.

My Australian co-worker Meghan turned me onto this site, and the similar AustraliaShop. I promptly went a bit mad with the Switch card (oh come on, I only spent £25). At these wonderful websites you can buy the taste treats of Australia, and in TopGoodies' case, New Zealand and South Africa. Things like L&P (my favourite soft drink, marketed under the slogan 'World Famous In New Zealand'), Burger Rings corn snacks (which are ring-shaped but do not taste remotely burgery - in my family we call them Bugger Rings and like them a lot), and the Holy Grails of Antipodean chocolate biscuit technology: Tim Tams and Mallowpuffs.

Also I have next week off work. I must think of something delightful to do.

Welm... here I am at work, net-footling in a lull between jobs. What is there to tell you? Got an appointment for my tattoo (Thursday at two), having trouble shopping for a Valentine present for my best male friend, have a really yukky and sore boo-boo on my right index finger where the blister from the burn from the rim of the hot frying pan has come off, mailing off my claim for the travel vouchers tomorrow and hoping it *isn't* a scam, waiting for a package from Amazon.co.uk, I want my Marmalade Boy!

Finished the book about Henry VIII. He died in the end. Want to find book by same author focusing on his wives.

Well, it ain't £10,000, but I've won the travel vouchers. Yummy! My best girl friend thinks it's a scam, like one she heard of in New York... surely they wouldn't do that in Cambridge?

Kevin is my sugar daddy. He sent me Icebones by Stephen Baxter - it was waiting for me in an Amazon box in the snow when I ventured out today! That seemed very appropriate somehow. Memo, take it off the wish list.

I tramped through the lovely snow to Tattoo Crazy where I made my appointment for next Thursday, then went round the corner to Tattie's and had a slap-up lunch to celebrate - a big baked potato with salami, cheese and garlic mushrooms. (I left about a quarter of the spud on my plate, to my surprise. I guess I filled up on the mushrooms. I love garlicky mushrooms.) I got paid this week so I'm feeling carefree. The snow has been falling all day and I still find it hopelessly exotic. Pancakes for tea tonight, I think. And it's Buffy/Angel night on telly!

A lot of people seem grumpy or panicky about the snow. The only ones I sympathise with are the Big Issue vendors. For the rest of us, we have warm clothes and homes to go to! Let's enjoy how beautiful it is!

I may just sleep in my trackpants and All Blacks jersey tonight, though. It got pretty chilly even in my snug little bunker of a bedroom.

Oh, and the February National Geographic arrived this morning. I love the National Geographic. I can't believe I've got a year's subscription for just £25.00. That, my friends, is awesome value.

I'm quite happy today! Isn't that nice.

Last night as I was snuggling into my downy nest (bed) my flatmate Katie informed me through the door that there was a message on the phone for me - the tattoo place called and they FINALLY have my transfer ready!

GLEE!

So Ima go in on Thursday and make my appointment in person. (It's easy to walk to from my house.) Maybe I can get it done as soon as, I dunno, Friday? It'll be better to do my initial ow-ow recovery time over the weekend. It'll be so great to get this done.

Then I went to sleep and dreamed that I was at the tattoo studio and they showed me the transfer and they'd changed the picture - they put a red floppy Linux hat on Minako, left out her angel wings and took the heart symbol out of her hands! Then they told me it would cost £410. >.< Yes. Colour me anxious to get this over with.

In other news, I found a competition scratch card lying on the ground in the bus station this morning - someone was a littlerbug, or perhaps it slipped unheeded from betwixt the pages of a magazine they were carrying - and, observing that it had not been scratched, proceeded to scratch it. Two game panels and I won a prize in both. What unusual luck! I don't know exactly which prizes I'll get, because you have to phone a special hotline to hear the list and get your prize-claimin' number and I'm saving that to do tonight after work, but I'm rather pleased. Based on the possibilities detailed on the back of the card, I'm most likely to be getting a £1,500 holiday voucher and an additional £100 travel voucher, but I might get something else from the pool like a DVD player or £10,000 - you never know when you, well, don't know. The nice thing is that I know I have won something, and what to expect at minimum. It's not going to be a nasty surprise or a let-down. If I get a substantial cash prize I'm buying a car, but of course that is not to be counted upon. Then again, I could be winning a safari in Kenya. That's another of the possibilities. I don't much want to *go* on safari in Kenya. I don't have a Safari Buddy (in this country, anyway) and a solitary sojourn doesn't much appeal. Maybe they would let me exchange that prize for cash, and an elephant could have a rest instead of carrying me around.

So overall I'm rather pleased. I'm also pleased that I am to be a bridesmaid for the first time in my life, at my friend Anne's second wedding in April. I get to wear flowers on my head. Perhaps I should insist on a backless frock to show off my tattoo, which by then will have healed nicely.

At the moment my Golden Ticket is being looked after by Henry VIII - or at least by the book about him in which I've pressed it. Henry assures me that if any naughty people try to meddle with it he will have Sir Nicholas Carew trounce them.

Today I forgot to pack a lunch for work so I had to go over the road to Tesco's and buy something. Memo to self: Do not repeat this mistake. You don't like egg and cress sandwiches that much.

I think I get paid this week, finally. It will be nice to be in the black again.

I've been having a pancake-eating fad. I still don't have my tattoo and am contemplating barging into the store next Thursday (when I will be free from work) and not going away until they give me a settled appointment date. I am contemplating growing my hair out again but hate the thought of how LONG it's going to take. Last night I watched both Rush Hour movies on DVD. I was puzzled by the lack of subtitling of Cantonese dialogue. I don't know half of what Zhang Ziyi was saying, including what she was ranting about right before she died. If I ever assemble a crack all-female team of fictional warriors, I will have Xena, Scully, Ripley, Buffy, Faith, the Powerpuff Girls and any Zhang Ziyi character - probably Jen from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon because she has the most beautiful clothes and can fly kung-fu style.

Today at work we had 'mugshot' pictures taken for a bulletin board to be hung at the entry to office space on this floor. It was like school pictures again. I hope I didn't look a gonk. When I have a picture taken I have a tendency to either tuck my chin into my neck, creating an expression of culpable gormlessness (not to mention a double chin), or thrust it forward like a Hapsburg, so facially speaking, my chin is the Weakest Link. My nose is not a prize-winner but at least it stays put and doesn't either retreat or advance to an embarrassing extent. This reminds me of the description of Murphy's eyebrows in Spike Milligan's Puckoon: 'For all their size dose eyebrows were as mobile as piglets and in moments of acute agitation had been seen as far south as his chin.' (They are also described as being 'like giant Coypu rats' and impaling insects in dry weather.) I remember Rumer Godden describing a pair of fearsome and mobile eyebrows as resembling two hairy caterpillars bouncing on a trampoline (in Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, I think, a book which enchanted me in childhood), but Murphy's pair have always remained in my mind as the acme of extreme eyebrowness.

My own eyebrows are as nothing compared with them.

I'm sitting at work waiting to be given something to do. I thought I'd found some work but Maggie Supervisor said DON'T TOUCH THAT so I skittered back to my chair and tucked my tail in.

They've just handed round our free copies of the newspaper we publish. On the front page, Car woman's trip to coast with 27 dogs. Dog-lover Barbara Byrne decided to visit the coast for the day - and took 27 dogs along with her in her car. Police spotted the amazing sight as she drove at 40 mph in the fast lane of the A1(M) dual carriageway, Huntingdon magistrates heard, but Byrne ignored demands to stop and carried on for a further 15 miles. Full story - page 2.

Never underestimate the determination of a weird old dog lady, rozzers.

Want the full story? Oh okay why not.

An animal lover seen swerving from lane to lane on a motorway had 27 dogs in her car, a court heard.
Police spotted Barbara Byrne, 61, driving erratically on the A1(M). When she was stopped after a 15-mile pursuit, officers found a dog on her lap, four others loose and 22 in the rear of the car.
She denied driving without due care and attention, failing to stop and driving otherwise than in accordance with a licence. She was convicted after a three-hour trial at Huntingdon Magistrates' Court.
PC Sarah Gaylor told the court Byrne did not stop despite repeated orders to do so. She added Byrne was driving at 40mph in the fast lane on a road with a 70mph limit.
Byrne, from Tongham in Surrey, wanted to take her dogs to Skegness.
PC Gaylor radioed for assistance and as Byrne grew close to a turn-off another patrol car joined them. Byrne was blocked off and an officer snatched her car keys. PC Gaylor said she then realised the car was full of dogs.
She said: 'Mrs Byrne was in the driving seat with a can of Coke between her thighs and a small dog in her lap. There were four or five dogs either in the front passenger seat or the front passenger seat's footwell. None of these dogs were restrained.'
The back seat had been pulled down to make room for a metal cage which contained 22 small brown cocker spaniel-type dogs.
Mauro Maselli, defending, said as an elderly lady with walking difficulties, Mrs Byrne needed her licence.
The trial was stopped several times after outbursts by Byrne. At one point she was taken to the cells and was asked to apologise to the court.
Magistrates found her guilty on all charges, disqualified her from driving for 12 months and ordered her to take a retest at the end of the disqualification period.
She was fined £50 and ordered to pay £75 in costs.

What I find amazing about this piece of journalism is that nowhere does the writer mention what sort of car Mrs Byrne was driving. A station wagon would seem plausible but I find it irresistible to imagine a Mini Cooper or Volkswagen Beetle. Or perhaps a Reliant Robin, a bizarre three-wheeled vehicle which appears to be endemic to the British Isles.

I wonder if Mrs Byrne still has all her dogs? And how small were the small brown cocker spaniel-type ones? I'm imagining cocker-Tribble crosses.

In other animal news, a very nice-looking cat named Stanley (he is shown photographed with the two also nice-looking children of his owner) is back at home and recovering after a stay at the vet's to have an air-gun pellet removed. Some arse had shot at him and punctured his chest, lungs and intestines, putting him in critical condition. Something very similar happened to my aunt's equally nice cat Tabitha, who unfortunately did not survive. What is wrong with people? Either they're barmpots who see nothing wrong with putting 27 dogs in a car and driving at 40 in a 70 lane, while balancing a can of Coke, or barmpots who see nothing wrong with taking potshots at nice ginger cats.

Fighting with best female friend. It's one of those suck situations where neither of us wants to be having a fight but we just can't get out of it. I wish I'd never gone to see her this past summer. Things could have stayed the way they were before and we both would have been happier. Instead things between us have been awkward ever since. I'm hurting someone I adore and the worst of it is that I've gotten into one of those black-dog moods where a bad part of you wants to hurt the other person so they can feel crappy like you, yeah, see how it feels - as if they don't know. Jeez. Always nice to know you have a little monster inside you trying to get you to be all alone with it. Jo Meets Apollyon And He Wins.

Someone emailed me plaintively to ask how you do pronounce 'manga.' Answer: the first 'a' sound is the same as the second. It's a short 'ah,' like the 'ah' you say when you realise something, or more sharply when someone drives a sewing pin into your thigh. There is only one 'a' sound in Japanese, it's not like devious English which has words like 'cat' and 'cape' and 'cart' in which 'a' is pronounced different ways and the spelling isn't always a reliable guide. It's really simple but English-speakers trip themselves up by expecting it to be tricky. Traumatised by their untrustworthy mother tongue they are unable to take an honest language at its word.

Because I'm one of those lucky people to whom pronunciation of foreign languages comes fairly easily (well, except French, French often gets me with its dumb vowels, not to mention my own language - ask my parents sometime about my amusing English mispronunciations) I suppose I piss off people who really can't grasp the rules. Well, okay, they piss me off too, saying 'cheeyoozo' instead of 'kyuzo' when an Italian shop puts up its 'closed' sign (chiuso). We're all in a world of piss. To quote Nick Harrison, life's a phlegm sandwich. Love is pus. It's all bodily effluent with you, isn't it Harrison?

Anyway, I'm royally bummed. Not about the pronunciation. It really isn't people's fault if they find that difficult, and I understand they're trying. Never mind the piss. I hereby retract the piss.

sigh

You know, it's interesting, I didn't have many pimples when I was a teenager but got Hell Acne, the kind that requires treatment from a dermatologist, when I was 21. And I seem to be having my teenage emotions and angst and mood swings in my twenties too. It's so lame. I offend myself with this stuff. I feel like I'm a perpetual fifteen-year-old, and gawd, isn't being fifteen miserable? (In case you're picturing me all red and lumpy, you might like to know that the dermatologist did her job and the acne is gone now.) I'm intellectually way beyond this s[p]it. I have a Master's degree over here. But I still behave and feel like an emotionally inadequate dork. I say the things I know should go unsaid, I rail against the things common sense says I should just accept and mourn and maybe one day get over.

I really hoped being in my twenties would be nicer than this. I thought this was the decade where you started a career and found a serious boyfriend and began having a real, able-to-be-taken-seriously life. I thought it was the respite after adolescence. Ha blooming ha.

Okay, updates on stuff in my life. I realise I haven't done this in a while for which I apologise. Sometimes I feel so little interest in what I'm doing that it's hard to motivate myself to put it online - or, of course, so much time passes between me doing something interesting and being able to use a computer that I can't be bothered to write about old news. Cf my Christmas holidays avec famille. It's improved a bit lately, though.

The Tattoo (see below, the Tattoo Crazy entry) - I phoned the studio this morning and the pleasant girl who answered said that they have a backlog on transfer designs (she referred to my Minako picture as 'the manga princess,' pronouncing 'manga' to rhyme with 'anger,' but I told myself it would be Comic Book Guy-ish to correct her) and she would try to get the guy to 'get his skates on.' So maybe next week? I dunno. Anyway, I gave them my home phone number so it's easier to reach me.

My cellphone, which is a few years old, is starting to get this weird thing where the charger doesn't always work when I plug it into the battery. I have to jiggle it around until somehow the points make contact in the right way and it begins to transfer juice. This is annoying and puzzling.

A mixed blessing appears to be coming my way. Mark, the nice DDR guy from the front room of the house, told me and Elka the new German girl (Kim's gone) while we were watching 'Angel' on Thursday night that he's intending to move out in February/March. This means that I can move down to his room (for about 40 more pounds per month) and have lots more space to kick around in. I may even be able to display my Escaflowne Hitomi statuette and my Serial Experiments Lain teddy-bear-PJs dolly separately, instead of how I have them now to save space: Lain is sitting on the feather base that Hitomi is poised atop, with her arm round Hitomi's leg for balance. This is good, obviously, but I will miss Mark who is a good chap, and he will be taking with him the house's only DVD player. Not to mention he was the one with the cable subscription. I may be able to take it over from him when he leaves, but I don't have a TV to watch my cable on, and can't afford one any time soon. Unless that one in the conservatory is the landlord's property, we're a bit screwed in terms of watching most of our favourite shows.

But anyway, having a real human-sized room will be awesome. There's a little no-longer-functional fireplace that I can use as my witchy-poo altar - I don't have anywhere to set one up in my present titchy room. There's a lovely big bay window too.

I have thought of a riddle.
Q. What do you call it when you are attacked by an army of Vulcans riding bikes?
A. Cycle logical warfare.

No movement on the tattoo front. Tuesday last week they said they'd need a couple of days to draw up the transfer and they'd give me a call when ready. Hmm. Today I emailed them to ask what gives. Hopefully I will get some sort of response soonish. Waiting is frustrating. I want to get it over with.

For anyone who gives a hoot, this is what I've finally arrived at for my tattoo design.
http://yanagi.nu/dreamscapes/csv/svmina/v-minako19.jpg
Disregard the background pattern and the borders, colour the heart in Minako's hands red, and that's my tat. I may be able to get it done on Thursday... it all depends on the people at Tattoo Crazy. So here's hoping!

Went to a tattoo place today, but the tattoo bloke looked at my labyrinth pendant aghast and said it was not humanly possible to render in tattoo form - so now I'm printing off tattoo-friendly internet pictures of Sailor Moon, Sailor Venus, and on a whim Rainbow Brite, which my sister will help me pick from. It is next to impossible to find a clear scan of the cover art of the CD Escaflowne: For Lovers Only, which was what I'd originally wanted. Two feathers, one black, one white, arranged like the Yin-Yang symbol. Simple and beautiful. Oh well.

Since I'm getting the tattoo at the small of my back, just above my bottom, my sister the wag suggested I could get the London Underground sign that says MIND THE GAP.

This morning while my sister and father went to have a father-son visit to the London boat show (she is his son when duty calls), Wendy and I had a mother-daughter trip to Harrods, just for a lark. We spent little money and had a good time.

British Museum tomorrow, possible tattooing, and a visit to the Forbidden Planet bookshop if we can at all finagle it in. Tony, Kate and I are in at least sixth heaven there; Wendy is entirely unmoved, so perhaps she could go and have a hot chocolate and some Wendy Time in a café while we scamper around uttering little cries of delight over the Roswell viewers' guides and Dalek pepperpots and oh look it's a Patty-Cake I haven't seen before and there's the last book of that Stephen Baxter mammoth trilogy that I can never find in libraries! (Icebones.)

The awkward thing about the tattoo studio we found, although it is a nice one not far from Earl's Court (recommended to us by a policewoman my dad asked for directions, she got her navel pierced there, don't we live in a wonderful world?), is that you get into it through a gay men's fashion and novelty shop, and the studio is downstairs in the basement. You don't know whether to walk past the cockrings with eyes averted, or to have a good stare, or what. Whenever I inadvertently find myself in an environment dedicated to the gay subculture I'm always afraid of being thrown out for having no willy. I don't think it would cut much ice to point out that I'm attracted to men too.

I think having Sailor Moon above your bum is at least as good as MIND THE GAP.

My family have come from New Zealand to visit me! We had a happy Christmas together and now we're in London seeing things. We came by a circuitous route, going to Bath for two nights and taking in Stonehenge by the way. It rained like there was going to be a prize for Best Raining, but I enjoyed myself mostly. (When not feeling too beastly tired and wet.)

My best friend and I have been reading the same book, The Other Boleyn Girl, at the same time, which is a nice feeling! And we both liked it, which is also a nice feeling.

Since getting to London we've done the Natural History, Science and Design Museums, also a walk in Hyde Park (in the rain, a constant motif of this holiday) and the Tate Modern. That last was just today. I am not a huge fan of modern art. Some of it is good but far too much of it is just wanking. There was one video exhibit that was literally wanking, albeit with trimmings. I do not want to see an 'artist' wearing boxing gloves and a rubber mask sloshing tomato sauce over his half-erect penis. I like a penis as much as the next girl (assuming the next girl is not k.d. lang) but that is not art, it's a waste of everyone's time and perfectly good tomato sauce.

Anyway, I am looking forward more to what I think of as the Tate Ancient (cf Hymns Ancient and Modern). I think we're doing the British Museum tomorrow, about which I am majorly excited. The Rosetta Stone. Drool!

Ummm... what else... not much time left on the internet café meter. Three minutes and counting. Well, my sister and I are planning to get tattoos together this holiday. She is getting the logo from the 80s cartoon Jem and I am getting the design from one of my favourite pieces of jewellery, a bronze labyrinth/phoenix pendant from Pyramid Collections.That's here, from memory. That'll be the mediaeval labyrinth design, which is not like a maze you can get lost in - it means that although the course of life's path can be confusing and seem to take many random turns, we are all ultimately moving towards our destiny, and Someone Up There knows how it all works and will guide our steps if we let it be. That's a message I like, although I perceive it from a Wicca/pagan viewpoint rather than the Christiam one of the people who came up with it. Now I just hope getting it done won't be too owwy.