Right now ...

[blamebrampton]

I have two fics to update, one new one to sketch, a novel to work on, a house to clean, five fics open in tabs to read, about 40 recs outstanding and still 2/3 of hd_hols to look at.

What am I doing?

I am obsessively renewing my email in case the hd_worldcup listings come out. Because I am now officially keen, and both the teams I put as first and second choice are filled with really really magnificent people including actual people I know. I think that age, nationality and natural stoicism aside, I may very well be squeeing.

Which means I will not make it through the ballot and will be reduced to tidying my house. Oh well, I find all the best stuff that way ...

Comments

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I was so happy that you received your first choice!! I did an AM dance of glee, which was very dodgy but heartfelt.

Birthdays are terrible, when I was very little I convinced myself that I will die the day before one so that I will NEVER KNOW what my presents were. Do not let your young children read or watch King Lear, it makes them bleak and prone to drama.

[norton-gale.livejournal.com]

I didn't really care which team I got on, as long as it didn't interfere with the genre I wanted to write. The only one I didn't want was Epilogue because I just wrote an epilogue-compliant fic and now I want to do something a little different.

And I wouldn't think King Lear would be good for kids. Even if performed by puppets. :)

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT PUPPET LEAR? As SOON as I finish my Faust puppets, it is the next classic on my list.

Lear was actually the play that broke me, Dad was always appallingly gloaty about the "My daughter is not even in school and reads Shakespeare ..."* thing. One day I came to him with my much-loved Complete Works clutched to my bosom and said "They all died!"

"Wha?" was his eloquent reply.

"Cordelia, Lear, Gloucester, all dead ... there is no fairness, no justice, just death. There's just death and then nothing!"

"Aren't we the little existentialist?"

For the NEXT TWO YEARS I went to bed every night chanting "Fairies, fairies, fairies, think of fairies, not the yawning maw of oblivion. FUCKING FAIRIES, DAMMIT!"


*Because you keep her around adults all the time and she has no child friends ... To be fair, it wasn't so bad as all my lack of socialisation was ignored my all my schoolmates under the great and shining fact that my grandparents bred horses and PONIES.

[norton-gale.livejournal.com]

Can I possibly persuade you to post pix of your puppets? LOL, I would love to see puppet!Shakespeare or puppet! Goethe.

If I ever made a comedic film about lawyers, I would have a character who makes trial objections through puppets while the character himself maintains a deadpan expression.

And who can resist PONIES! I had only toy horses myself.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

It's Marlowe, really, so to be honest it's Faustus. I will once they are finished! (And once I have a Flickr account, but that will be before they are finished!) I decided that Mephistopheles should be a woman dressed like Elizabeth I, because you know Marlowe would TOTALLY have been thinking that ...

[norton-gale.livejournal.com]

Hmm, interesting angle! Or a male puppet in drag.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

well, since he's a fallen sexless angel ... both and neither, really ... the teeny tiny costumes are largely done, the bodies jointed, but I am still rubbish at carving heads, so I either need to do a sculpting course or else pay someone to do the heads (I could swap costumes if I knew someone who did this!)

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Oops! Pressed send too fast! It should be sockpuppets. Sockpuppets in real life are COMPLETELY UNABLE TO BE ARGUED AGAINST!

If I was my appalling acquaintance who was cheating on his wife, I would have denied everything via a sockpuppet and she would have been too distracted to kill me. He is so stupid.

[norton-gale.livejournal.com]

Sockpuppets (I started typing that with a c!) certainly would have added a surreal flair to that situation. I think more people should use that ploy.

And what happens if you try to argue with a sockpuppet?

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Well, the past puppetshow I did was all static images (drawings and illuminations on sticks backed with card, some pop-up gags), and then some sockpuppets.

Because I hadn't really slept for a month by then, I was a bit mad after the performance and ran around with one of the sockpuppets making unreasonable demands. When people said no or otherwise argued, the puppet:
a. did the open-mouthed muppet head-waving thing
b. tongue-kissed them with its socky felt tongue (NB use clean socks)
c. made inappropriate suggestions regarding where socks could be worn.

I swear that none of this was conscious on my part, it was the sock! But people very quickly stop arguing with the sock and either burst out laughing or beg you to go away.

[norton-gale.livejournal.com]

I love it- it's the sock id bringing out your subconscious impulses!

And a dirty-sock puppet would of course have a filthy mouth. In which case people would be running away...

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Was evil sock. Had 30% synthetic content.

I'm luverly! And I always make sure to have clean socks and undies ... especially given the high running over incidence ...

On the topic of which, loved Sansa's new fic but need another hour to write a comment that doesn't begin "I hate cars!!!"