‮hjap‮

Patchy, and there were bits that I could have done better, but it improved greatly about half way through.

Method acting? What's that?

Lindsay Duncan has apparently stolen Frances de la Tour. I seem to be okay with this.

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Buggeration. It turns out that there already is a Paul Hamilton, he works for the RSC and is thus more successful and handsome than I, and naturally he's Equity-registered. So I'm not allowed to use my name for professional, performance-related purposes.

Insisting on the A J isn't enough, apparently. The rules have changed since Russell T. Davies or Richard E. Grant. This is Annoying. I don't even like the bloody name—my mother chose it—but the one thing I've always been most successful at was being Paul A J Hamilton, and now I'm not allowed to do that any more.

I need a new name. It's not going to be an issue until someone starts paying me for work, but I suspect it's better to start sooner rather than later.

From now on I want you all to refer to me as Loretta. I can pretty much guarantee that Pajhy McCloakGuy isn't taken.

I'm thinking about dusting off an old roleplaying character, but he's not likely to have sufficient Google presence. George Ominokouhai? Ian Spector Fuckup?

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I was awesomesauce bottled tonight. Gods, but I've missed the stage.

And now, a gift for my loyal readers: your very own pajh-inna-box. Go to cereproc.com, and select William (Southern English) from the Live Demo list in the topbar (requires Flash). You can make me say anything you like. If you make me say anything nice about David Cameron, I will find you and kill you.

scattergather is already finding it useful for phrases like please drink my booze, I do not want it.

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Gale force winds forecast today, up to 60 knots.

What a fucking day to be wearing a skirt.

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To: tycho@penny-arcade.com
From: [me]
Subject:Seasonal microbrews, brigand

Dear Jerry/Tycho

I've enjoyed reading PA for many years, but today's comic was a stroke of pure genius that struck a chord deep within my very soul.

I hereby unconditionally offer you my firstborn.

All the best,

pajh

~

They're my lungs [their title, not mine]

Sirs,

Sheila Duffy of ASH Scotland witters interminably about the already well-known dangers of smoking (Opinion, 23 September), with cherry-picked statistics about the cost of smoking to the NHS. She neglects to mention that tobacco tax revenue far outstrips this figure and provides plenty of extra money left over to pay for the generous government grants that make up her salary. [sources: http://tinyurl.com/lvbm37, http://tinyurl.com/m2z8pk]

The simple fact of the matter is this: at no time in the last fifty years has a rational human being in the western hemisphere, whether adult or child, ever read the Surgeon General's warning, smacked their forehead in despair and cried to the heavens that they should have been told before. We all know what smoking does to us and some of us still choose to do it, and the figures show clearly that we more than adequately cover the social costs of our choice. It is not within the Government's remit to tell us what we can do in the privacy of our own lungs, and is certainly not up to interfering busybodies like Sheila Duffy and ASH.

Fact is it's got precisely fuck-all to do with the dangers of smoking to the individual, and it's got even less to do with somebody please thinking of the chiiildrun. It's got everything to do with the fact that Sheila Duffy personally doesn't like the fact that some people smoke.

I am glad to live in a world in which Sheila Duffy doesn't get to tell me what to do.

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This evening was the first time—and the last, I hope—that I'll ever have to say Hello, you must be my daughter.

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TRAPPED IN PEEBLES STOP SEND HELP STOP

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People are totally willing to pay me real money to talk into a microphone.

Form an orderly queue, ladies, there's enough pajh to go around.

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Spike Milligan's Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall at the Lyceum, early part of October.

Who's going?

This entry was originally posted at http://gominokouhai.dreamwidth.org/192046.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Random guy in queue in Scotmid: Thank you for the cookery.

I'm gonna live forever, I'm gonna learn how to fly.

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The EHRC has requested that the BNP comply with the Race Relations Act. Well, I'm glad that's all been sorted out. What would we do without the EHRC to defeat fascism for us?

~

Following this moderately amusing exchange in recent Scotsman letters pages—which, for once, I had nothing to do with—comes the story of Larry W. Peterman, acquitted on pornography charges because of the records of what everyone else in the community was watching at the time. Further information in the New York Times. I love it when stuff like this happens: there are fewer dirty secrets, and the secrets that are left don't stay dirty when we know that everyone has a handful of harmless ones. The unbounded accessibility of information makes us all a bit more equal.

Related: via miss_s_b's random squeezings comes tyrell's insightful post: There is no more plausible deniability in the world. It's harrowing to hear of Neda Soltani's death, but the ray of hope is this: it can't be long before despots realise that they can't get away with this shit any more. If the state-sponsored murder of an Iranian woman doesn't hit your personal buttons, then remember Ian Tomlinson. That which affects Iran affects us all.

They've got guns and sticks, but we've got the Internet. The panopticon works both ways.

Next: find some way to empower the dissemination of information on tyranny such that that it will actually stop tyrants doing it.

~

I'm going to the Actor Expo tradeshow on Saturday. I'm not entirely sure what one's supposed to do there, but I've signed up for a couple of seminars, including How to make it big in Hollywood, from which I'm hoping that some generalized non-Hollywood-specific information can be extrapolated. If it turns out to be an hour on how to get a US visa I'm going to be disappointed.

Typically, neither my headshots nor my business cards are likely to be ready until after the expo. Oh well.

This entry was originally posted at http://gominokouhai.dreamwidth.org/191632.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I was in Macbeth with Ailidh Mackay
who was in Atonement with Keira Knightley (mmm)
who was in Love Actually with Colin Firth
who was in Where the Truth Lies with Kevin Bacon.

Anyone out there got an Erdos number, and if so, can we co-author something?

This entry was originally posted at http://gominokouhai.dreamwidth.org/191138.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Today is the anniversary of 1944. People did different things then, such as storming beaches to defend humanity from fascism so you wouldn't have to. Remember that the next time you see the BNP claiming legitimacy on a ballot paper.

Tonight I raise a glass to those 175,000 men braver than I.

~

I have decided upon my new life goal. I shall design and build miniature bridges to allow waterfowl to cross roads in safety. I shall call my invention the `duckqueduct'.

This entry was originally posted at http://gominokouhai.dreamwidth.org/190769.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Lovelace and Babbage!

Starring: Ada Lovelace!

And Charles Babbage!

This is quite possibly the best thing ever. And the artist claims that she's not doing a comic. I need all of you to email her and tell her how many copies you'd buy, and convince her otherwise.

( Quite long )

Off to the West Coast for the weekend. I need a holiday.

This entry was originally posted at http://gominokouhai.dreamwidth.org/190644.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Jason Rust, Scottish Conservative Candidate for Edinburgh South West, has sent me a nice letter indicating that he looks forward to working with me in the future. Bear in mind that the elections haven't happened yet. Say what you like about the Tories, but they're not backward about coming forward.

The letter includes a nice headshot of Jason Rust MP. Tell me: have these two men ever been seen together?

The actual exodus to Dreamwidth seems to have begun. I've had a play around on the site, and it looks pretty reasonable; it already does several things significantly better than LJ. And it could be a lot worse. It could be DreamWidth.

spudtater's post here (which is the same as spudtater's post here, I think) contains some pretty good suggestions on how to handle the transition. If I'm doing this right, you should be able to read this post on LJ, just like we all did in the old days, when the internet was built out of tin cans and string, and before LJ sold us all to the Russian Mafia, or whatever it was that they did.

Dreamwidth posts from yr. corresp. are syndicated at gominokouhai_fd for those who want to continue reading me on LJ, although I'm not sure how well that will handle friends-locking. Let's find out.

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I know you're going to dig this.

Happy time_t = 1234567890, everybody!

Where's my flying car?

It's snowed a bit today. Naturally the South-East has ground to a halt, the newspapers are panicking in an apocalyptic frenzy, and Sainsburys is full of people stocking up on cans and bottled water. I expect the looting to start any minute now. Hordes of bondage-gear-clad barbarians will be clubbing each other over the head to get to the last packet of organic rocket. All because it's a bit nippy today.

I came to work in my boots and changed into my shoes once I got here. That was the total inconvenience suffered today. Other than that, the world is all pretty and white.

Jesus Christ, people, put on a jacket or something. Or you could move to the south of France, where you'll never have to worry about winter weather occurring during winter, and I won't have to listen to you.

In other news: I aten't dead. How are folks?

I made mince pies for verdandiweaves' pseudo-party on Friday. Now I'm making more of them. The previous ones were just for the guinea pigs. These ones are important: they're to go to stormsearch's parents.

I made the mincemeat myself, and the pastry, and everything.

I don't own a star-shaped pastry cutter. No matter: I have a knife and an understanding of geometry. I want five-pointed stars made out of pastry: that's easy. I can make do with circles of pastry, made with a conventional pastry cutter, and a knowledge of 72° angles.

It feels faintly sacrilegious to be carving pentagrams into pastry for Christmas-themed mince pies. No matter: I know that I've got several millennia of culture that Jesus simply wasn't born early enough for.

And if the Abrahamic religions had anything going for them, then the resultant pagan munchies wouldn't be so damn delicious, would they?

( Food porn )

Sacrilicious.

A merry Yule, or Solstice, or whatever, to you all. Goddess bless us, every one.