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incandescensWhat an excellent day.
Made it up to London successfully; picked up several good second-hand tradeins at the Notting Hill Gate exchange. (A couple of Hong Kong graphic novels (Saint Legend 6 and Story of the Tao 5), a book by William Goldman about screenwriting in Hollywood, a couple of collections of ghost and vampire stories which should have at least a few interesting tales in there . . .) Forbidden Planet gave me the latest Trigun, Promethea, a Jo Walton novel about dragons which looks intriguing but which is currently in my bedroom and I can't be bothered to go and see what the name is . . .
Murder One was responsible for the real haul of the day. Not the sequel to Amulet of Samarkand, though that's good in itself (and it got nabbed by my mother, since I do have plenty of other things to be getting on with, and she wanted to read it) but a certain proof pre-publication plain-cover this-is-not-to-be-sold copy of Furies of Calderon by one Jim Butcher which I believe I will enjoy. :)
Lunch at Yo! Sushi. Every time I go a while without proper sushi, I forget what it's like. Every time I encounter it again, I remember, and smile blissfully while staring at nothing in particular and enjoying the taste.
Also got another pair of CD drawers from Muji to add to the modular stack in the corner. Mmm, Muji. Excellent place.
Finally got home and persuaded adobe to do the DRM registration thing so that I could download some purchased rpg pdf files from drivethrurpg.com -- feel so competent as a result. Plus, of course, have more stuff to read. Though will be going through ink at quite a rate, given how much black background some of these pages seem to have.
---
Not my Best Side
I
Not my best side, I'm afraid.
The artist didn't give me a chance to
Pose properly, and as you can see,
Poor chap, he had this obsession with
Triangles, so he left off two of my
Feet. I didn't comment at the time
(What, after all, are two feet
To a monster?) but afterwards
I was sorry for the bad publicity.
Why, I said to myself, should my conqueror
Be so ostentatiously beardless, and ride
A horse with a deformed neck and square hoofs?
Why should my victim be so
Unattractive as to be inedible,
And why should she have me literally
On a string? I don't mind dying
Ritually, since I always rise again,
But I should have liked a little more blood
To show they were taking me seriously.
II
It's hard for a girl to be sure if
She wants to be rescued. I mean, I quite
Took to the dragon. It's nice to be
Liked, if you know what I mean. He was
So nicely physical, with his claws
And lovely green skin, and that sexy tail,
And the way he looked at me,
He made me feel he was all ready to
Eat me. And any girl enjoys that.
So when this boy turned up, wearing machinery,
On a really dangerous horse, to be honest
I didn't much fancy him. I mean,
What was he like underneath the hardware?
He might have acne, blackheads or even
Bad breath for all I could tell, but the dragon--
Well, you could see all his equipment
At a glance. Still, what could I do?
The dragon got himself beaten by the boy,
And a girl's got to think of her future.
III
I have diplomas in Dragon
Management and Virgin Reclamation.
My horse is the latest model, with
Automatic transmission and built-in
Obsolescence. My spear is custom-built,
And my prototype armour
Still on the secret list. You can't
Do better than me at the moment.
I'm qualified and equipped to the
Eyebrow. So why be difficult?
Don't you want to be killed and/or rescued
In the most contemporary way? Don't
You want to carry out the roles
That sociology and myth have designed for you?
Don't you realize that, by being choosy,
You are endangering job prospects
In the spear- and horse-building industries?
What, in any case, does it matter what
You want? You're in my way.
-- U. A. Fanthorpe
Made it up to London successfully; picked up several good second-hand tradeins at the Notting Hill Gate exchange. (A couple of Hong Kong graphic novels (Saint Legend 6 and Story of the Tao 5), a book by William Goldman about screenwriting in Hollywood, a couple of collections of ghost and vampire stories which should have at least a few interesting tales in there . . .) Forbidden Planet gave me the latest Trigun, Promethea, a Jo Walton novel about dragons which looks intriguing but which is currently in my bedroom and I can't be bothered to go and see what the name is . . .
Murder One was responsible for the real haul of the day. Not the sequel to Amulet of Samarkand, though that's good in itself (and it got nabbed by my mother, since I do have plenty of other things to be getting on with, and she wanted to read it) but a certain proof pre-publication plain-cover this-is-not-to-be-sold copy of Furies of Calderon by one Jim Butcher which I believe I will enjoy. :)
Lunch at Yo! Sushi. Every time I go a while without proper sushi, I forget what it's like. Every time I encounter it again, I remember, and smile blissfully while staring at nothing in particular and enjoying the taste.
Also got another pair of CD drawers from Muji to add to the modular stack in the corner. Mmm, Muji. Excellent place.
Finally got home and persuaded adobe to do the DRM registration thing so that I could download some purchased rpg pdf files from drivethrurpg.com -- feel so competent as a result. Plus, of course, have more stuff to read. Though will be going through ink at quite a rate, given how much black background some of these pages seem to have.
---
Not my Best Side
I
Not my best side, I'm afraid.
The artist didn't give me a chance to
Pose properly, and as you can see,
Poor chap, he had this obsession with
Triangles, so he left off two of my
Feet. I didn't comment at the time
(What, after all, are two feet
To a monster?) but afterwards
I was sorry for the bad publicity.
Why, I said to myself, should my conqueror
Be so ostentatiously beardless, and ride
A horse with a deformed neck and square hoofs?
Why should my victim be so
Unattractive as to be inedible,
And why should she have me literally
On a string? I don't mind dying
Ritually, since I always rise again,
But I should have liked a little more blood
To show they were taking me seriously.
II
It's hard for a girl to be sure if
She wants to be rescued. I mean, I quite
Took to the dragon. It's nice to be
Liked, if you know what I mean. He was
So nicely physical, with his claws
And lovely green skin, and that sexy tail,
And the way he looked at me,
He made me feel he was all ready to
Eat me. And any girl enjoys that.
So when this boy turned up, wearing machinery,
On a really dangerous horse, to be honest
I didn't much fancy him. I mean,
What was he like underneath the hardware?
He might have acne, blackheads or even
Bad breath for all I could tell, but the dragon--
Well, you could see all his equipment
At a glance. Still, what could I do?
The dragon got himself beaten by the boy,
And a girl's got to think of her future.
III
I have diplomas in Dragon
Management and Virgin Reclamation.
My horse is the latest model, with
Automatic transmission and built-in
Obsolescence. My spear is custom-built,
And my prototype armour
Still on the secret list. You can't
Do better than me at the moment.
I'm qualified and equipped to the
Eyebrow. So why be difficult?
Don't you want to be killed and/or rescued
In the most contemporary way? Don't
You want to carry out the roles
That sociology and myth have designed for you?
Don't you realize that, by being choosy,
You are endangering job prospects
In the spear- and horse-building industries?
What, in any case, does it matter what
You want? You're in my way.
-- U. A. Fanthorpe
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-29 01:20 am (UTC)The Jo Walton novel is Tooth and Claw, and I quite liked it; a reworking of Trollope with the assumption that all the Victorian social confentions are enforced by biology.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-29 07:11 pm (UTC)