This is still the spare room, but this bookcase is overloaded to within an inch of its life. Really, I need to stop complaining about this and do something. But it’s no longer a matter of not wanting to buy any new bookcases: now I’ve genuinely run out of walls to put them against.

I could move to a bigger house, I suppose, but that seems like going too far.

I’m not serious. Really. The situation’s not that bad—but I would love a room where I could have floor-to-ceiling bookcases. With glass doors, to keep the dust down. And maybe cupboards underneath, to store magazines and so forth.

A library, basically. One day, I shall have a room in my house that I can legitimately call the library. One day.

In the meantime, I have a bookcase that’s carrying three times the load of books that it should be:

Actually, this shelf’s not so bad. (Ooh, pretend that you can’t see that collection of Walt Disney’s Annette at the back there—I genuinely have no idea why I bought those. They’re funky, though. Could they qualify as retro decorating items, do you suppose? No, didn’t think so.)

But what annoys me every time I look at this shelf is that I don’t have room for a dedicated detective-fiction bookcase. I’d really like that, because I have a fair number of mysteries (some blended with other genres, some classic), and they’re scattered all over the house: Reginald Hill here, along with Val McDermid (only the Kate Brannigan stuff, which I rather enjoy but don’t actively seek out: I stay away from the Lindsay Gordon mysteries, because they’re a little nasty for me), P. D. James on a lower shelf (I went through a P. D. James phase about a year ago, but I stopped after a while because I realised that Adam Dalgliesh inspired almost homicidal feelings in me. Once I realised that I was shouting, “Why would you propose to her, you daft twat?! She’s leaving because you’ve never even made time to have dinner with her, and you’ve only met her half a dozen times!” at the book while reading, I understood that they weren’t great for my blood pressure), Agatha Christie in the hallway along with my classic Victorian detective fiction, and poor old Rex Stout (bless you, Rex! You were the greatest of them all!) and Dorothy L. Sayers in the living room.

And that’s not even including the various one-offs and minor authors scattered around the place, or the genre-bending detective fiction, such as Simon R. Green’s Hawk and Fisher books on the next shelf down, or Glen Cook’s Garrett, P. I. series and Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy stories, which are in the hallway.

Sigh. One day. When I have my library, which I’ve just decided will have a skylight. A lead-light skylight. And one of those ladders on wheels—although Nick will never use one of those. I might need to rethink this fantasy.

But I’ve just noticed that this second shelf also has my copies of Mary Grant Bruce’s Billabong books. I don’t have a full collection—in fact, I was horrified to find out how many of them there are after I’d bought half a dozen; it was like buying a fantasy novel and then realising the cover indicates “Book One of the Twenty-Seven Book Cycle of the Mist Queen,” and thinking “Dang.” But I’d never read them, and I felt that having grown up in Australia, I should have read them.

I still haven’t read them. Naturally. But I will one day.

I like the new covers for Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series, there in the middle of the shelf under Kim Wilkins’s The Resurrectionists—that’s another book I haven’t read. I did start it, and I’ve read (and loved) the Gina Champion Mysteries (over to the left on the same shelf) because she’s an excellent writer. That’s the problem; she’s too good at writing scary stories. I read the first fifty-odd pages and decided there was no way I could use this as bedtime reading. (Actually, the first Gina Champion book, Bloodlace, terrified me, and they’re written for teenagers.) But I do mean to read the trilogy written around European folklore and, in fact, have the second one, Giants of the Frost, somewhere on this shelf.

And, hey, Garth Nix! That’s the Keys to the Kingdom series (I have the Abhorsen trilogy, in the living room), but I haven’t—surprise, surprise—read them yet. But I have a reason this time! I mean, a good reason. I bought these ones secondhand, and they only had volumes two and three: Grim Tuesday and Drowned Wednesday. So until I bother to buy the first one, Mister Monday, there’s not much point reading these two. Actually, it would probably be counter-productive.

I love the look of those Trixie Beldens, though. I think that’s a complete set: a complete set of the 1970s’ versions, anyway. I had to pick them up piecemeal, but I think I’ve found them all. And those books in front of them are the Dana Girls Mysteries, by the same “author.” Although, now I look closely, that’s only my paperback Dana Girls books. I wonder where I put the half-a-dozen 1970s’ hardbacks that I have?

Oh, who knows where anything is in this completely anarchic cataloguing system?

I see that that’s where I’ve put my Kim Harrison books, though. I was rather enjoying the first one, because the world-building was quite fascinating: essentially, when a genetically modified virus devastates the human population, the vampires, werewolves, witches, and so forth have to come forward in order to help keep basic systems operating (and thus ensure their own survival). But then I became distracted in the middle of the second one, put it down, and then never picked it up again.

I do like the titles, though: they’re all based on Westerns (in fact, I think they’re all Clint Eastwood Westerns): titles such as A Fistful of Charms and For A Few Demons More. I was rather irritated when The Outlaw Demon Wails—best title ever!—was renamed Where Demons Dare in the U. K. People in the U. K. are still going to get a joke based on The Outlaw Josey Wales, surely? I did!

Okay, this post has become far more verbose than intended. But the point of the next two photographs is to show that each of these overloaded shelves:

Also has a whole set of books behind the ones visible at the front of the shelves:

Oh, and perhaps you’d be kind enough to ignore the fact that I own four Pollyanna books, not just the original? Even though the later ones are written by different authors? I don’t quite know why I own four Pollyanna books—especially since all I can think about these days is that scene in the first League of Extraordinary Gentlemen where she points out that even though she’s been ravished by a demon, she’s determined to remain optimistic.

Seriously, though, there has to be something going on behind those books. No-one is that cheerful all the time without some reason. Perhaps she has a secret Lithium habit. Or is bonking the gardener (television has taught me that that’s a traditional way of alleviating boredom for upper-class housewives. Television can’t be wrong!). Or she has a carefully hidden gambling addiction and is over-compensating for the fact that she’s sold all the plate.

There has to be something, though.

On the other hand, now I look at exactly which books are hidden behind the front rows, I’m starting to see the benefits of double-stacking the bookcase.

I don’t intend to get rid of my David Eddings books, because they were gateway fantasy for me. (I first read them with my best friend when we stayed at her father’s house in Sydney for a week. She’d been reading them there and was on book two or three, so I started with book one, and we read through them together, pointing out the bits we especially liked.

But I don’t re-read them: I find the politics—including gender politics and racial issues, especially the fact that the crueler, evil races of this world are apparently Asian, while everyone else is happily Caucasian—questionable.

(It reminds me of when they filmed Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea for the Sci-Fi Channel and cast Shaun Ashmore as Ged. Really, you only needed to have skimmed the books to realise they were some of the least white books around! Le Guin herself rants, and quite rightly, about it here, if you haven’t come across this debate before.)

And on the shallowest level possible, I’m happier having Steven Brust and Charles Stross evident in the living room and hallway and these ones tucked away at the back of a bottom shelf in the spare room.

I’ve been neglecting the Magical Mystery Bookshelf Tour recently: I don’t know why. Perhaps I’m worried about boring people.

Or perhaps it’s that we’re heading into the thoroughly chaotic bookshelves, which are going to confuse people and give them a poor opinion of my organisational skills. (For the record, I labour under a combination of fairly poor spacial-organisation skills—all those years of just shoving everything under my bed, I suppose—and a partner who won’t throw anything, and I mean anything, away.)

Or perhaps it’s as simple as the fact that I’ve been busy and sick, and trying to concentrate on formal publications rather than on taking photographs of my bookshelves.

But in the rundown to mid-semester break—one more class!—I think I can spare some time for photographing my lovely, lovely books.

(Also? I love my camera. These photographs are so much clearer than the earlier ones.)

I’m not showing what’s on the top of these bookcases, because it’s old stuffed toys: not many in total, but including my childhood toy, who now looks less like the beloved companion of a young child and more like the survivor of a horrific accident that included fire and traumatic amputation—he’s homemade, and while he once had little denim boots, they were made to cover his original red-felt boots, which wore away. Since his denim boots have worn away as well, he now has what look like mangled stumps on the ends of his legs, complete with dangling red strands of felt. Poor thing: I led him a hell of a life, I think. He came everywhere. And was frequently left behind, as well. I think he’s earned a nice, quiet retirement on top of a bookshelf in my spare room.

This bookshelf, though, has largely been made over to Nick’s books. Nick, being a science-fiction geek and artist, has an enormous collection of tall hardbacks—and I’m quite pleased about that, frankly, because modern bookshelves aren’t really constructed to take ordinary books. It seems to me that if you want bookshelves that will take standard paperbacks/those slightly larger paperbacks we get now/trade paperbacks, you actually have to make one yourself.

And if you do buy them, and deal with these absurdly large shelves, then the temptation is to cram more and more books on top of the existing books, to fill up the gaps—as you’ll see on a slightly lower shelf.

Actually, I probably didn’t need to mention that these are mostly Nick’s books: the fact that one of them is called The Cult of Mac probably gives it away. And, mind, he bought that book before he got his iPhone, which is the point at which he really drank the Kool-Aid. Before that, he spent so much time with his iMac that I used to called it his iMistress, but now—now it might actually be time for deprogramming.

(I kid, honey. Now, go with the nice man.)

But on these shelves you can really see the chaos that is my idea of organising bookshelves. I can see there my Beverly Cleary (Ramona! Ramona used to annoy me, somewhat—she was a brat—but they were books that showed clearly, and without the abject sentiment of, say, Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, how a family could have two working parents and yet struggle financially, often in quite minor ways, it seemed, that nevertheless added up to serious difficulties. I don’t remember that being prevalent in the other fiction that I read at the time.)

I can also see some Colin Watson (one of the Inspector Purbright mysteries, not a Lucy Teatime novel) and some E. Nesbit on the far left (so that’s where I put those! I was wondering), but behind those is an entire shelf of books that hasn’t seen the light of days in years, probably. No wonder I keep forgetting what I have and rebuying at book sales.

But it’s this last shelf that really, to me, encapsulates one of the problems with spending thirteen years in academia: we just generate so much paper.

The homogenous pile of paper on the left is all the course readers that Nick and I have required either as students ourselves or for the various courses that we’ve taught over the years. We can’t bring ourselves to throw them away, because there’s valuable material in there: photocopies of articles and books chapters, and even some primary texts, that we’d otherwise have to go and gather again if we ever need to re-consult them.

But the truth is that, without some sort of indexing project, we tend to forget what’s in there. And so we never do consult them. But we won’t throw them out, either. The same is true of the files on my desk and on the various bookshelves in the study and for the archive boxes full of the side effects of the research process that we both have stored under our desks.

Of course, the fact that I’m someone to whom reading is roughly analogous to breathing and who prefers to buy than to borrow books doesn’t help matters.

But I’d be remiss to leave this bookcase without pointing out that it is perhaps the geekiest case in the house.

Not only is this where we store RPG manuals (and, sadly, those White Wolf books are mine, though Nick’s the one who bought the Dungeons and Dragons set at an Alumni booksale, despite the fact that we don’t play that version of D&D):

But Nick’s Doctor Who books themselves take up half a shelf.

I’m not even going to go into the manga books. Really, how many books on how to draw robots (and alluring manga-style women) does one man need?

I’ve just been searching on Wikipedia, hoping to find a list of writers who died accidental deaths.

Okay, that sounds ghoulish, but . . . well, no. It’s ghoulish. But it was prompted by the fact that I found out—through a long series of links on other subjects, the rationale for which I’ve forgotten now—that Tennessee Williams choked to death on the lid of an eye-drop bottle.

(I also found out that Robert E. Howard shot himself, which I’d never heard. And that the poet Hart Crane threw himself off a cruise boat into the Gulf of Mexico after being beaten up by a male crew member to whom he’d made advances. Poor bastard.)

I had no idea that that was how Williams died.

Hence the ghoulish searching.

But Wikipedia, while normally good on esoteric lists, had no such list.

Interestingly, though, when you search for “list of accidental deaths of writers,” the fourth item that comes up is “List of The Dick Van Dyke Show Episodes.”

Now, some might say this is simply because the search engine is pulling up key terms such as “list of” and “writers.”

I prefer to think it’s because Wikipedia knows dead when it sees it.

If there can only be one, why does it have to be Christopher Lambert?

When geeks are too obsessed with their games . . .

NICK: So, if I got another copy of Diablo 2, would you play it with me?
ME: I don’t know; I’d probably just die all the time.
NICK: No, I have lots of powerful characters.
ME: But then I’d be a minion. I don’t like being a minion.
NICK: No, we’d be a raiding party.
ME (as light dawns): You just want me to be a mule, so you can carry more loot!
NICK: No! That’s . . . just a pleasant side effect.

I was a little uncertain about the practicalities of live-blogging this episode, since there seemed to be an enormous storm heading straight towards us and, Brisbane’s power-grid being what it is, I was rather alarmed about the possibility of the power going out.

But, as with last night, the storm seems to have boiled away to the north, so we should be all right.

There’s more rain coming, but not sufficient to warrant a severe storm warning. It has, at least, cooled everything down, which is an advantage. I’ve never acclimatised to Brisbane’s weather—at least, not the warm weather.

So here we are, for the second-last episode of season four.

(And I tell a lie, apparently—there is still a severe storm warning for Brisbane City. But if the power goes out in the middle of the episode, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.)

(I’m giving a lecture on—partly, anyway—cliches tomorrow morning, and that always seems to have a detrimental effect on my writing. So keep an eye out for further cliches in this posting. I’m sure there’ll be plenty. Does that qualify as a cliche? It’s certainly not inspired writing.)

But all that’s beside the point—this is the first of the two-part story line that ends season four. I wonder what can possibly happen in this episode?

And here we are on earth—the Doctor panicking about what “Bad Wolf” can mean, but finding that nothing is wrong at all. Apparently.

Donna’s a bit stunned that she’s just met Rose, but the Doctor’s more worried about what Rose’s ability to travel between universes means for the health of the universes themselves.

Of course, he leaves too early: things start going haywire as soon as he gets back in the TARDIS—and the Earth is gone. The TARDIS is fixed, but the Earth has vanished.

Oh, bless, Donna—she’s so free from jealousy, insisting to the Doctor that isn’t it a good thing that Rose is back? I’m not sure about that, myself—but we’ll see.

Martha! She’s in the U.S.

And Torchwood—still in Cardiff. Captain Jack dashing out to see what’s happened, while Ianto and Gwen boggle.

And Sarah Jane, with her adopted son and “Mr Smith,” the computer with the melodramatic fanfare.

And Donna’s family—and Martha, and Captain Jack, and Sarah Jane, all staring up at the sky.

And there’s Rose—and we pan up, following her eye line, to see a sky full of planets, hanging so close to the earth that you’d think we’d be pulled into one of them.

And, the world’s longest credit sequence!

Donna, practical as always, is worried that with the absence of the sun, everyone on earth will freeze to death. And the Doctor’s astonished by the power of the technology that could move the planet.

That’s a nice encapsulation of their differences.

Richard Dawkins! Say hello to Romana for me!

And the Doctor’s going to the Shadow Proclamation—that’s something we’ve been hearing about for several seasons, now. I’m looking forward to seeing how that pays off.

Damn—I can’t keep up with what’s happening. Now there’re two hundred spaceships heading straight for earth. Not that anyone would notice, because they’re all too busy looting the shops, getting drunk in the streets, and beating each other up.

Rose isn’t fussed, though—she’s carrying an enormous gun, so she’s perfectly secure.

Martha’s phoning Captain Jack, to see whether he’s heard from the Doctor. Martha’s on Project Indigo. It’s top secret, but Jack’s heard about it, because he met a soldier in a bar—strictly professional, he tells Ianto.

And now the Daleks are broadcasting “Exterminate!”—and Sarah’s crying, and Jack’s terrified, and Rose looks like she’s barely holding it together. They all know what two hundred Dalek spaceships mean.

And, of course, last time Jack met the Daleks, they killed him. It was a heroic last stand, but he still died.

Supreme Dalek! All red and shiny. He’s pretty funky. But I’m with Jack and Sarah; I don’t like where this is going.

The Doctor, meanwhile, tells us that the Shadow Proclamation are intergalactic policemen—I suppose rather like Interpol. Turns out the Jadoon (don’t correct my spelling!) work for the Shadow Proclamation.

The Shadow Proclamation tell the Doctor that twenty-four planets have been ripped from the skies. Oh, yes, Donna—you’re every bit as important as the Doctor; she’s the one who notices that Pyrovillia is part of this pattern, and the Adipose breeding planet. She doesn’t mention the Lost Moon of Poush, of course, because she wasn’t there for that conversation, but she’s still the catalyst for the Doctor realising what’s happening.

(And he does mention that they’re in a perfect pattern, which is why they’re not falling into each other.)

And the Doctor mentions the Daleks in “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” trying to move the Earth—he doesn’t mention the Time Lords moving the planet in the distant future, in “Trial of a Time Lord.” Self-editing again, Doctor?

Jack’s freaking out almost as much at the idea of Project Indigo as he is at the two hundred Dalek ships. But Martha knows that she takes her orders from UNIT, and she activates it.

Jack tells us that it’s experimental teleport scavenged from the Sontarans—but that without stablisation, Martha’s dead, scattered into atoms.

I know that voice! Oh, damn—Davros! That’s Davros! Brilliant!

And Dalek Kaan—driven insane, somehow, burbling of the arrival of the Doctor. Oh, wow, that CGI for the Shadow Proclamation headquarters is beautiful. Prettiest thing this season, I think.

One of the workers approaches Donna, telling her that there was something on her back, and that she’s so sorry for the loss that is to come.

Oh, I do hate these hints about what’s to come. They keep me worked up for the coming week.

Doctor, don’t dismiss Donna’s advice, even when it’s the bees disappearing. Bees are aliens? I’ve never trusted bees. But they leave a trail that the Doctor can follow. The head woman for the Shadow Proclamation wants to co-opt the TARDIS, to have the Doctor lead them into battle. But she’s also terribly naive, so he just takes off.

The Daleks are rounding people up in the streets, but not every street. Nevertheless, Bernard Cribbens wants to attack them with a paint-gun—he thinks if he blinds them, they’ll be helpless. While he’s explaining this to Sylvia, Donna’s mother, the Daleks blow up a house when a family defies them and runs back inside.

Bernard Cribbens is a good shot, but the Dalek burns off the paint—and then explodes, as Rose appears behind him.

Bernard Cribbens wants to know if she wants to swap guns with him.

Sylvia is learning the truth about where Donna is, as her father tells her that they’re travelling the stars. The Doctor, meanwhile, is following the bees’ trail, but it stops in the middle of the Medusa Cascade—the centre of a rift in time and space, which the Doctor hasn’t visited since he was a boy of ninety. The Doctor’s defeated here—which the very Ennio Morriconian music (as Nick points out) reinforces. This is the point of ultimate defeat: the Doctor has no idea where to go, Sarah is devastated, Torchwood is stalled, Martha seems to be dead . . .

But then a voice comes out of nowhere on the subwave network.

Everyone thinks it’s just a desperate cry for help, until the voice says, “Captain Jack, shame on you!”

It’s Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister. And she’s calling for Jack, Sarah Jane, and Martha, who’s not dead, but in her mother’s home.

(Rose, meanwhile, wants to talk to Harriet, but the Nobles don’t have a webcam—Sylvia thinks they’re naughty. Rose started annoying me, here—she’s a little whingy.)

Jack, of course, is hitting on Sarah Jane. I don’t blame him—and it is Captain Jack.

(And Rose whinges, again.)

The subwave network was invented by the Mr Copper Foundation—and Mr Copper was the man who survived the wreck of the Titanic and left to start a new life on earth with a million pounds. He seems to have brought his alien technology to bear.

Harriet shuts down all possibility of using the mysterious Osterhagen Key. (Don’t correct my spelling.)

(And Rose whinges, again. You were there first, Rose—but there were many companions after you.)

Torchwood, Mr Smith, and Martha are combining their knowledge and technology to send a message to the Doctor, boosting the signal through the subwave network. It will be traced back to Harriet Jones, but she’s not worried about that.

And the Daleks have detected the transmission and are tracing the signal back to its origin: Harriet.

(Rose, the Doctor is in space: is holding your phone up to the ceiling going to make a difference? Oh, never mind.)

The Daleks have found Harriet Jones, who’s masking the location of Sarah, Torchwood, and Martha.

Now she’s transferring control to Torchwood. She knows what’s coming through her door.

And she stands up:

HARRIET: Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister.
DALEKS: Yes, we know who you are.
ME: (Chuckle)
HARRIET: Oh, you know nothing of any human. And that will be your downfall.
DALEKS: Exterminate.
ME: (Sniffle)

It’s a good death, for a character whose every appearance has been fascinating.

And now the Doctor’s skipped forward to the Medusa Cascade, which has been pulled a second out of time from the rest of the universe. And he can see Torchwood, Sarah Jane, and Martha—but not Rose. He hopes Rose is there, but she doesn’t have a webcam.

And then another voice comes in—and Sarah Jane knows that voice. She remembers the genesis of the Daleks.

Davros—Davros resurrected, though Sarah thinks he’s dead and the Doctor knows he’s dead, that his command ship flew straight into the jaws of the Nightmare Child at the gates of Elysium (don’t correct my spelling).

Dalek Kaan gave his mind, flying again and again into the time-locked Time War to rescue Davros. And Davros stripped the flesh from his own bones, literally—NICK: That’s grotesque and implausible—to create a new race of Daleks.

And Dalek Kaan can forsee death for the most faithful companion of all—everlasting death. I really hate these future warnings.

The Daleks have located Torchwood—and Jack is out of there, having used Project Indigo to get his teleport working again. And he also has an enormous gun.

But the Daleks are coming, and there’s only Ianto and Gwen left.

Sarah is leaving, as well—like Jack, she wants to find the Doctor, although she’s leaving her son behind in the car of Mr Smith. And where’s K9? I want K9, dammit!

Rose is off, too—another one seeking the Doctor. She, too, has some kind of teleport technology. But hers can take her straight to the Doctor, who’s landed on an empty street outside a church.

So there’s Rose and the Doctor, staring at each other—and Donna grinning to see it.

And they start running—but the Doctor’s not looking where he’s going. And there’s a Dalek: Rose sees it, the Doctor does not. And it catches him a glancing blow, before Captain Jack arrives and blows it up.

Donna and Rose drag him into the TARDIS while Jack covers them.

And back at Torchwood, Gwen and Ianto are insisting they’re going out kicking and screaming, like Tosh and Owen.

The Doctor is looking pretty bad.

And Sarah Jane is pulled over by a Dalek patrol—who is shot by mysterious benefactors.

The Daleks break into Torchwood, and Gwen and Ianto are shooting them.

The Doctor’s starting his regeneration cycle . . . and the episode is “To Be Continued.”

You bastard, Russell T. Davies! You magnificent bastard!

Feel free to dispute my claim, but I’m sticking by it.

Perhaps the most perfect pop song of the 1980s, anyway. (Although another contender for that title would be “Levi Stubbs’ Tears.” Nick’s vote is for “Just Like Heaven,” and I’m not going to dispute that, either.)

And, really, what is there not to like about Madness?

There were so many of them! There’s a band who didn’t feel that there was any point in restricting their numbers.

Plus, they wrote a gorgeous song about a teenage boy trying to buy his first packet of condoms, but being distracted by his own embarrassment—which made him speak entirely in euphemisms—and by the fact that his neighbours kept coming into the chemist’s.

And, as if that weren’t sufficient reason to love Madness, they also appeared in two separate episodes of The Young Ones, which would be sufficient in itself to make me love them. (Especially since most of the bands who played The Young Ones have since completely disappeared—except Motorhead. That was odd.)

But thinking about The Young Ones led me to Google Alexei Sayle and his biscuit quote, find this:

That’s a Zapata moustache, ennit? He’s Mexican, wasn’t he, eh? Funny, really, you know, Zapata. He starts out as a peasant revolutionary, and ends up as a kind of moustache. Che Guevara, he’s another one. South American revolutionary, ends up as a sort of boutique. Garibaldi, Italian revolutionary, ends up as a kind of biscuit. It’s quite interesting, you know, the number of biscuits that are named after revolutionaries. You’ve got your Garibaldi, of course, you’ve got your Bourbons, then of course you’ve got your Peek Freens Trotsky Assortment.

And then laugh so hard I made myself cough horribly.

But I can’t really blame Madness for that.

ME: I am not sweet!
NICK: You are; you’re a marshmallow, really. (Note: Nick cribs all his lines from Veronica Mars.)
ME: I am not; I’m tough.
NICK: That’s just your tough exterior.
ME: Marshmallows don’t have a tough exterior.
NICK: Roasted ones do.
ME: No, they don’t.
NICK: Look, I’m just working through an idea that I don’t fully understand!

This is the original image:

iPhoto has a range (a small range) of “effects” options, so I ran a cropped version of this image through some of them.

Fading colour:

Boosting colour:

Something called “Antique”:

It’s all just for fun, really—but looking at these, maybe I should start my own range of saccharine greeting cards? I could just run everything through the “antiquing” function, maybe Photoshop an image of a baby into the photo somehow, and Bob’s your uncle!

Actually, I do like the result of boosting the colour. Bougainvilleas are a good subject for that, since their colour is fairly saturated in the first place.

1. Why chocolate coins aren’t available in the shops until Christmas, even though it’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day tomorrow and, also, chocolate coins are brilliant.

2. Whether memes can be de-memed or memed out. The example we were debating was pirates vs ninjas, which I think has been memed out. Nick suggested it had been de-memed, but I maintain that that construction suggests active demotion, which a brief scan of the Internet suggests is definitely not the case.

3. Whether Nick would be better buying a plain black pirate skullcap, a brown one in artificial leather, or a black one with a curiously smiley skull and crossbones on the front.

4. Whether I could justify buying a long, black, female pirate wig with an inbuilt head scarf. Sadly, we decided that September in Brisbane is probably too warm for a fake pirate wig. Plus, I already have a bright green, ’60s-style bob that I never wear.

It was a pretty awesome wig, though.

5. While Nick was wistfully eying Fallout 3, which hasn’t been released for the Wii, whether people who buy games for consoles they don’t own are engaging in a cargo cult or whether it’s an example of sympathetic magic.

I argued that it’s a cargo cult, since they seem to believe that if they simply build up a critical mass of games, the relevant console will appear.

Nick suggested it was sympathetic magic, but I maintain that sympathetic magic more accurately describes inert protective magics, like teddy bears (which I think is an idea I drew from Diana Wynne Jones, originally).

We got some odd looks during that conversation.

6. Whether Nick was better off buying a (plastic) flintlock that was awesome but inert or a cutlass that lit up and had sound effects.

I argued for both, but was overruled.

The conversations were a little pirate themed, admittedly, but that’s hardly surprising under the circumstances.

When your character reaches level eleven in Dungeons and Dragons: Tiny Adventures they face mandatory retirement. (Irritatingly, I didn’t even find out whether she’d succeeded in her last adventure.)

So Saeana’s adventuring days are over. Never again will she inappropriately seduce people in the middle of a fight scene, join a short line of adventurers waiting to enter a castle, or find herself inexplicably in the middle of a Robert Frost poem.

Of course, I have another adventurer, now: Paks, a Half-Elf Paladin. Paks is named after the only other paladin who came to mind: Paksennarion, from Elizabeth Moon’s The Deed of Paksennarion, who I really enjoyed as a character. Of course, Paks is a woman, but I figured that Paks really was a non-gendered name.

And the awesome thing about Paks is that I’m allowed to save one item of Saeana’s inventory to carry over to my new hero: I chose my Vorpal Greatsword. (I don’t know whether I should favour the Vorpal Greatsword because of “Jabberwocky” or because of the Homelands story arc in Fables. Maybe both.)

How could you turn down a Vorpal Greatsword? Saeana never used it, because it is a two-handed weapon, and I was addicted to the combination of my Phasing Short Sword and my Thundering Mace. But I couldn’t bring myself to sell it—and now my Paladin can wield it.

It also gives me a chance to be scornful, when he picks up the rewards suitable to a level one adventurer: “Battleaxe, huh? +1 to Attack? Ha!”

Paks seems to be settling in quite nicely, so far. Of course, he’s only midway through his third encounter, but he’s succeeded in everything he tried to date.

But I’m wondering if he’s going to behave the same way as Saeana did. I know paladins aren’t celibate figures like monks, but they are holy warriors.

I don’t think they should seduce halflings in hot-tubs.

I don’t think they should fight the palace guard in order to defend the succubus that they fancy.

I really don’t think they should seduce and then stab tiefling warlocks, no matter how desperate they are to prevent the coming apocalypse.

I don’t know that Paks is as susceptible as Saeana—but I’ll be keeping an eye on him. Sooner or later, I’m bound to come up with at least one adventurer who knows how to keep their mind on the job.

NICK: I’ve determined that I don’t like tarragon.
ME: Well, he could be an annoying character . . .
NICK: Tarragon, son of Arathorn.
ME: Have I mentioned that it’s time we watched those again? With the new big television?
NICK: I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned the herb.

Because, frankly, I just like writing lists.

1. I’m not too bad at multi-tasking, but I don’t think I’m at superhero level. If there’s one thing that movies and comics have taught me, it’s that superheroes have an extraordinarily difficult time balancing the needs of earning a decent living and fighting crime.

I suppose it would be easier if one were the kind of superhero who was paid for their services to the city. Or a billionaire playboy. Otherwise, it all seems a little difficult.

2. I don’t have any superpowers. I suppose that this should really have been the first item on the list, since it’s essential to a successful career as a superhero, but the multi-tasking still seems an important point.

3. I’m absolutely terrified of insects. So there goes one way of gaining superpowers.

4. I’m also old enough to be disturbed by experiments with nuclear technology—and that carries over to a disinclination to expose myself to gamma radiation. So there’s another means of gaining superpowers off the list.

5. I don’t think I’m a mutant. I certainly don’t seem to have any mutant powers. Of course, if I were to ask my brother whether I’m a mutant, he’d certainly answer, “Yes.” What is it about little brothers that means that if you ask them a simple question such as “Am I a mutant/stupid/making a huge mistake?” they always answer “Yes”?

6. I have no particular facility with technology. Now, it seems to me that you can be a superhero without having superpowers if you’re either excellent at building gadgets or have sufficient money to hire someone who’s excellent at building gadgets. I don’t fall into either of those categories.

7. I’m actually not that keen on being beaten up. This seems a serious disadvantage.

8. There’s always a risk that one will be seduced by the blatant advantages of becoming a supervillain instead. And, much like the Jager plans in which they lose their hats, that never ends well.

9. I struggle enough trying to stay on top of housecleaning. Can you imagine the difficulties of trying to keep a secret lair clean? Because secret lairs are always in inconvenient spaces: perhaps at the bottom of the ocean (think what the humidity would do to your soft furnishings!) or in a cave (the dust! the spiders!). And the whole point of a secret lair is that it’s secret: you can’t hire a cleaning lady. Although if you’re one of those superheroes who has their own butler, that would make things easier.

10. I’m not terribly keen on appearing in public in my underwear.

11. I’m very clumsy. My best friend’s mother used to say that it was as though I had no sense of the relationship between myself and the outside world. I can see that that might be a disadvantage for a superhero.

12. I suspect that my desire to be a superhero would manifest less as a burning desire to help the helpless at the expense of my own peace of mind (and regardless of personal injury) and more as a tendency to lie around on the chaise longues at Justice League headquarters, sipping margaritas and reading my own press clippings.

Actually, that’s a good idea.

Right, I’m off to find a margarita.

And a chaise longue.

And the Justice League.

Actually, forget the Justice League.

And the chaise longue.

I’ve been marking, marking, marking—first fifty first-year assignments and now twenty second-year assignments—all while still shaking off a cold that’s given me a hacking cough and an interestingly husky voice. I suppose I could start a second career as a lounge singer, if I never manage to shake off this cold.

I’m really hanging out, at this stage, for the mid-semester break. I’m exhausted and I’m sure my students must be. But that’s still nearly a fortnight away.

So I haven’t had any energy for blogging the last couple of days—though I do feel guilty about that—and I haven’t had much time for reading, either.

I know things are in dire straits when I don’t have time for reading.

But I’ve been intending to read. So the house is littered with the various books that I’ve either rapidly skimmed through (because I’ve read them before, and they’re an easy way to escape) or that I’m intending to read, but haven’t managed to get to.

I’m not counting The Little, Brown Handbook over on the back of the other sofa, because I haven’t been reading that for pleasure.

But next to me I have a Georgette Heyer, because she’s light and easy, meaning I can dash through a chapter as a relaxing activity before sleep. No reading before sleep means a disrupted night, sadly.

And on the back of this sofa, I have five Diana Wynne Jones books: The Year of the Griffin (because I managed to get through the prequel, The Dark Lord of Derkholm, last week), Charmed Life, Mixed Magics, Howl’s Moving Castle (man, I love that book), and Conrad’s Fate.

I did manage to read Conrad’s Fate over the weekend—I’ve owned it for years—in between marking, and thought I’d read through the rest of the Chrestomanci books. Instead, they keep falling on my head when I’m watching television.

And the sequel to Howl’s Moving Castle, Castle in the Air, is on the washstand in the breakfast nook.

There are also two more of Diana Wynne Jones’s books on the bedhead: Black Maria, which I’ve only read once and want to re-read, and The Pinhoe Egg, her most recent one. I’m partway through that one, but it’s not proving very good bedtime reading, because I’m enjoying it too much. I keep wanting to read more, and I’m not getting the relaxation that bed reading should provide.

(I also have Jacqueline Rose’s The Haunting of Sylvia Plath on the bedhead: I read that as an undergraduate—in Honours year, I think, which would make it a decade ago—and I don’t think I was clever enough then to appreciate it. But I’m too tired at the moment to do justice to it. So it’s optimistically open about three pages into the introduction. I do mean, one day, to read all the main biographies back to back, because the difficulties of writing biographies of Plath fascinate me. But that’s a project for another time.)

Also on the bedhead is Garth Nix’s Sabriel. Now I have read that before and I loved it; I enjoyed it so much that, even though I own both the sequels, I couldn’t bring myself to read the second one, Lirael, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to put it down, and I was supposed to be completing my Masters. Or my Ph.D.—I forget which one, now. The same problem is coming up now: I really want to re-read Sabriel, but I know I can’t spare that much time and that, once again, I’ll have to ignore Lirael. Maybe I should designate those as my Christmas reading? After all, I made it all the way through Susannah Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell a couple of Christmases ago. Lirael shouldn’t be a challenge.

I also have a handful of books about late-Victorian detective fiction lying around, for a journal article that I was writing against the clock and ended up having to abandon when the the cold really took hold. I’ll write it up for another journal at some point, and make a better thing of it, but abandoning it did feel like failure.

So it’s not that I’m lacking the inclination to read. Or the means.

And I’m not lacking the inclination to blog. Or the means, I suppose.

For the first time in, I think, my life, I seem to be too tired to read properly.

It’s a tragedy.

I blame this horrible cold.

But I’m going to have to do something about this, before the entire basis for my sense of self—which is to say, “I read, therefore I am”—crumbles.

I suppose finishing The Pinhoe Egg would be a good start.

Sometimes, when they want to catch the breezes as well as the sun—and who wouldn’t, on a horrible, hot day like today?—the water dragons scramble up into the cat’s claw that covers what used to be a yukka, until it flowered:

These vines aren’t actually resting on anything but themselves, and it amazes me that the dragons are willing to rest their weight on something that must rock alarmingly under them.

I think the advantage for this one, which is the smaller of the the two current dragons, is that while he’s up here, the bigger one can’t chase him around the garden.

(Also? I love the zoom function on this camera.)