*lays down head and cries* My car's service, including a new cambelt because the old one was about ready to sproing loose and ruin the engine, cost $668.76. And I still don't have access to my money because the HSBC is taking so damn long to transfer it from England to New Zealand (as if they had to send it over in gold bars guarded by Securicor, rather than just change some details on a computer!) so I am having to run up a tab with my parents. I hate this. And I still can't find a job. And when I do find a job all my money is going to go into paying back my parents for months. Why in the WORLD is it so hard to become financially independent? Oh, I know, I know, I'm doing it all wrong, I should have become an accountant, shut right up.

I helped with fruit/salad (as opposed to fruit salad) kebabs at my mother's school this morning. I mostly sliced cheese. And I went to the supermarket, and I baked chocolate chip and walnut oatmeal cookies that are damned good. It is all quite like being a housewife except I'm not anyone's wife and this is not my house. I will go mad.

Sometimes I feel like the Stephen Root character in Office Space, mumbling 'I'll set fire to the building.' Nobody had better try to take my red stapler.

So, I'm finally out in front of the Third World again, because now I have seen The Matrix Reloaded. Went with my dad Tony, screen 9 at the Edge in Auckland. Thoughts:
- Still want Smith to win.
- French people, eh? (shakes head)
- All those crashes on the freeway, and traffic continues to flow? Yeah right.
- Infinitely more satisfying than the exchange, 'What about Neo?' 'He can handle himself' would have been 'What about Neo?' (incredulous eyebrow quirk) 'Have ya met Neo?'
- Really, really want Smith to win.
- Zion people dance skanky.
- On a related note, I can think of better ways to telegraph 'Trinity and Neo are in love' than 'Trinity and Neo are gagging for it.'
- Keanu makes goofy faces when he fights. I bet he looks silly having sex.
- Deep in my heart I would like to believe that on one of those screens, if only for a fraction of a second, was Ted 'Theodore' Logan.
- Speaking of the screens, no LCD!? No flatscreen or widescreen?
- I wonder if the Architect's chair is ERGOnomic.
- My father just got hired for a job with the title Senior Information Architect. You have all been warned. Make nice now and I'll make sure they lubricate your brain-plugs.
- Personally, it would take a lot more than a piece of good chocolate cake to make me blow a Frenchman. Or wear that dress in public, so we all have our own little stopping points, don't we.
- I never want to see a code-shot of something happening in someone's vagina again. This bothered me a lot more than Neo's ass.
- Smith's gonna win.

And tomorrow I'm going to see Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle with my sister Katie and her friend Becks. Has anyone else noticed how, on the bus-stop posters, Drew gets to look cute sitting on the bonnet of a soapy car, and Cameron gets to look cute riding a mechanical bull, and Lucy gets to look stupid wearing a wig and biting a rope? Bill Murray is avenged.

So, okay, Nadia came round tonight to eat key lime pie not made with key limes because we don't have them here but sure-enough limey, and we sat down to watch Romeo + Juliet on the DVD, and Kate, the Baz Luhrmann fan who has watched all the extras, told us that that is not Claire Danes' real hair in the movie, that she is wearing... (drumroll) an Aquatic Wig.

'Aquatic Wig' promptly became the catchphrase of the evening, with fanfiction being proposed on the subject, and then I pointed out that I had some wigs although they were not aquatic, brought back from my sojourn in America, where I actually bought one wig for cosplay purposes and Lizzard gave me two that she didn't need any more. So I brought them out and there was trying on of wigs and now Kate and Nadia are in the bathroom wearing wigs that have, in their day, been Princess Millerna and Mutsuki Asahina, creating styles with my collection of hair accessories.

I tried to sign Paul the Russian Aerodeck Guy's guestbook but it didn't work. Stupid Russian website. *shakes fist*

Katie is wearing Millerna with a yellow bandana and Nadia has put a pink velvet ribbon on Asahina. I have to go. They're saying 'Come and be wigful with us!' and 'Are you aware "wigful" isn't a word?'

I have a new old car, tra la la la la. Psmith is parked on the street outside, in the cul-de-sac parking bay, next to the treasured but ugly old olive-green Ford of the slapper next door's boyfriend, with whom she has screaming profanity-fights up and down the driveway until you just want to go outside and turn the hose on them. Their existence in our cul-de-sac is a strange anomaly. It is a quiet, pleasant little neighbourhoodlet with young children, amiable dogs and a feline criminal mastermind.

For the record, Psmith is pronounced exactly like ordinary Smith. It's 'ps' as in 'psychology.' The name is taken from some novels written by one of my favourite comic authors, P.G. Wodehouse. I thought it would be more interesting.

In between applying for jobs and sorting out car-changing-hands paperwork (must go to the post office to register with the LTSA this afternoon) I'm transcribing Webmistress Lizzard's honkin' huge Q&A panel recording from Anime Boston. I'm a pretty good, accurate transcriber (I had to develop the skill while doing market research over the phone, and that was pen and paper work) but I find I need to work in short bursts or I become discouraged at the sight of the 'time elapsed' counter on iTunes. I'm just past the twenty-minute mark and the whole thing is forty-six minutes and five seconds. A small request/tip for people who attend anime conventions and ask questions at panels: I realise you can't do anything about the microphone not being right near you, making the recording of your voices unfortunately faint, but could you please give some thought to what you're going to ask and the words you're going to use before you get up and open your mouth? Some of these people begin and discard three different sentences before they get to the point. It's as if they sat their with their hand up 'on spec,' waiting to be called, and then tried to compose a question while rising to their feet. A little mental rehearsal and you'll feel so much more confident, and make so much more sense. And there won't be puzzled silences from the panel as they try to figure out who your question is for and what it's about anyway.

Listening to this panel, which featured the Lizzard and two of the con guests, American voice actors Scott McNeil and Kirby Morrow, who worked on the English dub of Escaflowne, is really making me realise: dub VAs don't know jack about the anime they dub. It's not their fault, because they are neither told jack nor given the opportunity to research jack, and the recording methods are such that they often can't even piece together the intended sequence of the plot, but it does mean that apart from explaining this situation in their own defence, pretty much the only thing McNeil and Morrow have to do on this panel is act as Lizzard's jesters while she answers questions with information. They both sound like nice men and I certainly don't mean to disparage their intelligence or ability as actors. But they're being asked about one of the topics in the world on which they can say the least. The fans in the audience all know more than they do about the show they were in. Irony a-go-go.

My stance on dubs has always been, they're okay, and fine for attracting new fans, but I see them as being for other people, particularly ones who find it disconcerting to read subtitles while watching screen action, or whose reading speed/comprehension isn't up to the challenge (younger children, dyslexics, etc). I have neither of those problems so I don't have to take second best. Lucky me. The occasional dub comes along which is a pleasure in and of itself. I felt that way about Pokémon. But as you can see, when a dub *is* good, that means it's overcome immense odds against that outcome, built right into the dubbing industry!

You do get exceptions - I think the dubbing Disney has done on Hayao Miyazaki's movies has been uniformly excellent. It probably makes a big difference that they were working to contractual guidelines from Miyazaki about the handling of his material (e.g. NO CUTS, NO FUDGES), and that a lot of the voice talent was drawn from 'real actors' who studios feel they have to treat a bit better than people who 'just do voices.' Are you gonna just herd Gillian Anderson into a booth and make her read to a screen without explaining to her what's going on with her character and how the story goes? Okay, hope you enjoy your new asshole. And so forth.

Eh, I better go and have my shower. Then drive Psmith around a bit!

You are Genki!!!

Which Stereotypical CLAMP emotion are you?
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I'm pretty sure it was giving my favourite colour as 'pink' that did for me. The thing is, in real life I have no favourite colour. There are lots of nice colours. And then there are colour combinations, which can be awesome or pretty gross (the bright orange and blue signboard of the Howick Christian Outreach Centre, appropriately, made me exclaim 'CHRIST!'), and shades and tints, and patterns, and who can have a favourite colour when there is so much out there? I can only have a favourite in any field when that one absolutely stands out as the unchallenged best, when I'm absurdly prejudiced for some reason, or when the field is very, very limited. This is probably a Gemini thing.

Apropos of nothing except all these quizzes I'm taking, I can't find the original quiz any more (the site seems to be gone) but I remember that my Cowboy Bebop soulmate is Macintyre and the Bebop character I'm supposed to be like is Ed. Which disturbs me. I'd rather be like Meifa. She's so very... updated Miyazaki.

The Yaoi Selector: Which Seme are You?
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It would be a big help to me if the results mentioned which show or series the character is from... as it is, I'm two people I don't recognise, which is worryingly like a movie of the week about Multiple Personality Disorder.

At least both of them are cute gay boys; there are worse secret identities to have.

The Yaoi Selector: Which Uke are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Yay, I am cute with magenta hair. I have no idea who I am, but somehow I'm down with that.

I'm finally getting a new old car. This one (for reasons of cheapness and poverty - I just can't afford to shop the 90s) is a 1986 Honda Accord Aerodeck - here's some Russian guy's site about his car of that ilk so you can see what it will look like.

Wow that guy loves an obscure old Honda. The nice Canadian bloke in Devonport selling me the Aerodeck says there were only about 200 made. Mine is neither as cherry nor as tricked-out as Paul's *^.^; Also, his looks silvery-grey and mine is a metallic light blue which I find quite pleasing. At my mother's suggestion, I am naming it Smith, but I intend to spell it Psmith. (Wodehouse reference.)

You know what THIS means... Wendy's drive-thru. All ROYTE!

You've won Gaddes! Take this and tell the world that
you've started dating imaginary characters! Go on another date, you little socialite, you.

Dido's Escaflowne Dating Game
brought to you by Quizilla

Actually, I just answered the questions at random (which yielded Merle), then looked at 'See all possible outcomes' and chose the date I fancied. Never play fair in love or war. You'll end up dating thirteen-year-old cats. Actually, the time I answered the questions straight-faced I think I got Millerna, which was faintly worrying.

Oh, and in case anyone was fretting, Marilla Gorilla finally got off her can and the money went back to my bank account where it belonged. My mother is cooking lamb shanks for dinner, hurrah. For reasons of not-making-much-sense, in my family these are known as Corky Pops. They are a welcome treat in winter, particularly because there's something satisfying about gnawing the meat off the bones. We are a great family for gnawing. Then we have to be a great family for flossing, because there are shreds of lamb between all our incisors.

Gaddes is not a fussy or fancy person, but I think I'd better not have visible meal remnants still caught in my teeth when he comes round to pick me up. It's the little things that can put the kibosh on romance.

Got a nasty cold, might be getting a car soon (Honda Accord Aerodeck from 1986, apparently they only made 200 before they changed their minds but the Canadian man selling it says it's been a good little car. I might call it the Aeroduck), getting bored.

Against all good sense am scribbling on a Harry Potter fanfic. The one outlined in the Black Dragon Miscellaneous page. Pure sadomasochism on my part. For some reason am typing it in HTML format.

Now have very own forum! Well, have inherited forum from Webmistress Lizzard. Go to Nekomusume.net and it's called, like one of my websites, *escaboys. Am called Déesse on there but the é didn't come out. No-one knows how to pronounce it. It rhymes with 'say yes.'

Really am dreffly bored, hoping that acquisition of car will be swiftly followed by a decent job. HA! Some hope. Recent applications have not even raised a reply acknowledging receipt. To my mind that is bloody rude.

Cold has passed the head-full-of-thick-white-snot phase and moved on to barking cough.

Am not much fun.

Aargh... so much to do to get my websites back to a state I can feel good about, and my family really don't understand. It's not that I want to work on them this much all the time, just that there's been a lot of change and decay in the time when I couldn't touch them and there is much to be put right! Words like 'unhealthy' and 'antisocial' are bandied about. It's not fair. I'm not doing any harm.

I'd better get on with a project that has been delayed for a very long time before I allow myself to do anything more fun - get my fanfictions presentable and onto a site of their own. A lot of the Collected Works are only extant in MS Word format. I need to make HTML files of each chapter, make sure they're formatted correctly (I'm one of those people who gets upset if the right word is not italicised), figure out a system of organisation... ohhh, it's gonna take ages. Well, on with it.

I have a new design for The Allen Schezar Project which I think is really cute and funny, but since, when I was transferring the pages into their new template, I found that there were no working fanfic links on the 'Creativity' page (not since fanfiction.net decided they didn't want to host SMUT any more - oh, and for some reason I still had 'Scars On the Heart,' which isn't SMUT, linked to its old home on Tripod) and realised I had to settle this matter before I could proceed with a clear conscience.

Thank GOD Patrick got in touch and I've been able to upload again. So there is a spandy new index design, and more goodness will eventually follow. As you can see if you click, it's very simple. I admire more intricate design but just can't pull it off myself. It ends up looking messy. Or I just can't think of something to do, even when I'm sitting there saying 'FANCY!' to myself. So I go with cute and clear-cut. Blocks of colour are My Thing.

Still no word from Marilla Gorilla.

Interesting... just as, while I was in England, the colds I caught were weirdly powerful and incapacitating, due to a Kiwi immune system that had no resistance to that strain of the virus, now that I am back in New Zealand, I have a particular 'flavour' of sore throat that I never had in the UK. I'd kind of forgotten about it until it emerged today and then the sense-memories came flooding back. Apparently this particular germ is endemic to Pacific's triple star.

Of course Nadia, who loyally reads this blog, already knows this as we had lunch and afternoon tea together today and I told her. Hallo Nadia. Scully and Angel on the kitchen floor, wha'hae. I am still full up, but then, the sore throat isn't encouraging me to have a big dinner anyway.

I was unseasonably grumpy this morning, but I still don't like precocious children in novels. They are slightly more tolerable if the book was written in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, but still pretty sick-making. Children are much more likeable if you are not supposed to learn from them and feel humbled by their unsophisticated wisdom and all that Rousseauist tripe. I don't mind learning from someone who has actually had more life experience than me, indeed, I tend to feel that's what people with life experience are there for. But children? Equally, that's not what they're for. Most of them are pretty nice even though they're naïve, ignorant and thoughtless. Given their newbie status in life they have a right to be like that, and to exist for their own sake rather than for the edification of adults. That's good enough for me.

Today my sister and I intend to have Late Lunch with friends Harriet and Nadia. Which should be nice. I still have no idea how I got onto the server or how to get onto it again. There was a Peanuts cartoon about this once; Lucy and Linus were sitting in a lawn paddling pool and Snoopy took a running jump to land in the water. When he was in mid-air Lucy bellowed, as only Lucy could bellow, 'YOU'D BETTER NOT!' Snoopy reversed and landed on the grass, then thought 'I wonder how I did that?'

I have now unearthed some fragmentary mental images of the user interface of the client I used - I recall changing the protocol from 'Auto' to 'SSH' and that made it work where previously it hadn't - but I don't have enough to identify the app itself. It just sucks big rocks. To quote one of my sister's catchphrases, it is big and wanky and dumb.

I have been reading Too Close to the Falls by Catherine Gildiner. I often found the protagonist annoying because of her precocity. I was a precocious child myself, but not as precocious as the ones who are always in books because they would just be so INTERESTING for everyone to read about, and I find myself resenting them as show-offs who just make it harder for anyone else to be recognised as in any way special. I resented her mother also because I couldn't believe the scam she was getting away with in life. Characters often talked in ways I couldn't believe anyone ever actually talked impromptu, especially the little deformed lady who ran the town dump. Sigh. You know another book that pissed me off on most of the same points? Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio. It was an Oprah's Book Club choice and my mother passed it to me after her own read saying she thought I'd identify with the protagonist, another nauseatingly precocious girl (I hate how these girls are always reading and spouting philosophy in their early teens - who in the world gives a shit about Saint Thomas Aquinas when they're thirteen?) with Tourette's Syndrome.

Sometimes I wonder if my mother likes me very much.

I seem to be going through a Blackadder III phase. I'm sure I'm not the first to point out that you can interpret the four main seasons of Blackadder as decades of one man's life, his loathsome, ambitious teens, his confident, rather raunchy twenties, his bitter, spiteful thirties once he realises the world doesn't appreciate him, and his numb world-weary forties in which he wants only a little peace and quiet. I seem to have skipped to the third decade equivalent without really ever touching down in the second. On the positive side, this should mean that I get to wear a very natty black waistcoat. On the negative, there's still Baldrick, and Queenie decided long ago she had no use for me.

The Air and Angels wrangle has taken on a new and, from my perspective, thoroughly disturbing permutation. You see, I have evidence that since my return from England, I have successfully uploaded files to the server. I just have absolutely no memory of when and how I achieved this feat. When I got home I made a pretty new avatar icon for use on the Nekomusume.net forums. It looks like this:

(That's a detail from Alphonse Mucha's 'Summer' of 1896, for all you Art Nouveau fans.) It's on the server. I must have gotten it there somehow. But I don't remember doing it. I don't remember which FTP client I used (something secure, obviously; but neither of the secure clients I know I have on the computers is working). Whatever I did, I did it when so jet-lagged that my memory didn't record it; rather as it records very little when I am operating under pressure. Often, when I have just had a job interview or an exam or performed on stage, if someone asks me what it was like I honestly can't tell them. I was in read-only mode. The whole thing makes me feel rather as if I am going mad, in a 'Gaslight' sort of way. I must find whoever is responsible and beat them to a jelly.

Edit a few minutes later: I thought I might have found the answer (a program called MacSFTP) and that wasn't it. You know what this is like? In Diana Wynne Jones' novel Castle in the Air Abdullah comes into possession of a magic carpet, but finds that for some reason he is only able to say the word that activates it in his sleep. (The actual reason is that a djinn with an unpleasant sense of humour has set the magic word as the sound of a snore.) Evidently I can only make a secure FTP connection to www.airandangels.com when so jet-lagged as to be barely human.

And in this field, and in two others in my life which I won't go into here due to extreme irritation, I am stuck in limbo because the person under whose control the situation actually is, is not replying to my messages and I have no idea why. They could be busy. They could be in trouble. They could just not care. Whatever it is, yes, I definitely feel that I am going a bit mad.

Still no luck with the airandangels.com server. Anyway, today my dad Tony and I went to look at the next car on the list, a Honda City E. Tone thought it was more mechanically sound than the Honda Whateverthatwas yesterday but I found it very shabby and ricketty (the interior was really gross and could have done with a professional steam clean - there was most of a dog still in the back seat, judging by the hair). I don't feel safe driving a car that seems like a good puff of wind could lift it off the road.

But then on our way home, we were going the wrong way for a while because Tone can be a bit vague, and spotted a roadside car-for-sale that was right in my price range, a black 1989 Ford Telstar, automatic transmission, apparently sound structurally, and much nicer and sturdier looking. I've left a voicemail message about it and hopefully will be able to make a closer examination in the next couple of days. So that might be a stroke of luck. Perhaps the Hand of Fate guided us when Tone's brain could not.

I am angry with the HSBC, so-called 'the world's local bank,' and yet they tell me it is not possible for a branch in Auckland to directly contact a branch in England to transfer the balance of my account there to a new account here. The branch in England told me this was possible, before I left the country. What sort of international bank has no internal communications? I thought the whole POINT of giant soulless multinationals was so that the same services could be accessed from any branch in the world and interbranch communication would be swift and simple. At this rate it makes more sense for me to withdraw the balance from an ATM and deposit it in my old ANZ account. Apparently I'm going to have to contact the Cambridge branch myself, by phone or fax. So much for service.

So, another cheery day for Sarah!

I'm all excited because today I learned (the news has been out for a while, but I can be dreffly slow) that Hayao Miyazaki is directing an animated film based on one of my all-time favourite fantasy novels, Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. Since I just saw Spirited Away this morning, I'm all psyched for this. Miyazaki's style of animation and direction will complement the unconventional fantasy/romance story perfectly. In fact, next time you watch SA check that scene in which Haku pulls Chihiro along by the hand through a thick stand of beautiful rhododendrons - I almost thought I might spot Howl, Sophie and the enchanted bathtub.

Seeing SA has been a bit of a saga, since my father and I first went to see it yesterday but about fifteen minutes in, just as Chihiro somewhat precipitously reached the bottom of the steps down to the boiler room, the cinema fire alarm went off. We had to evacuate into the street and when the fuss was over and we were allowed back in, it turned out that being shut off suddenly like that had caused something to go wrong with the projector, so we couldn't see the rest of the movie that day. (We went shopping in an Asian grocery store instead, and I got sake and furikake.) The Rialto cinema people were very nice and apologetic, and refunded our money and gave us two free double passes on top. Today when we went back we thought we'd have to use one of those passes to get in, but the ticket wench recognised us from yesterday and said there was nothing to pay. 'We' is me and my father, the only member of my family who will go to an anime movie with me. My sister has a mental block about it which I suspect is partly unconscious prejudice about the Japanese - a sort of inversion of the Japanese belief that no-one who hasn't grown up in their culture, with Japanese ancestry, could understand and appreciate it. She thinks the Japanese couldn't produce anything she would enjoy. Despite her utter love of Jem (she has the series logo tattooed on her back) which is so heavily derived from 'magical girl' anime that... that... okay, it's just very heavily derived. My sister's intransigence on this point really annoys me because it's more like she has decided not to like anime than that she has given anime a chance but found it not to her liking.

Anyway. Spirited Away was a beautiful, fascinating, genuinely magical movie (as opposed to the lazy, imagination-poor pulp that passes for magic nowadays, JK Rowling I am looking at YOU) with a surprising amount of vomit in it. When I have children (well, I hope to have children, this will definitely be in the family DVD library.

Hmm, what else would I like to have in that collection?

Labyrinth
Kiki's Delivery Service
The Last Unicorn
The Princess Bride
Lilo & Stitch
Maybe I should stop, I think my generation is showing.