shadows of echoes of memories of songs

There's no clearly-defined etiquette for introducing people to each other on LiveJournal, but I've been meaning to do this for ages, so I'm just going to wade in and etiquette be damned: bluedevi, meet juggzy -- juggzy, meet bluedevi. Both of you write extremely entertainingly and insightfully about the trials and tribulations of teaching, and continue to make me think it's something I do actually want to do; but because both of you keep these posts friends-locked (for obvious and good reasons!) I can't point you at each other's posts.

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I confess I don't often read dennyd because I don't actually know him in real life (though I may have bumped into him in gothdom without realising), but some people on my flist (I won't embarrass them by naming them) may be amused by his recent poll about spam and, er, huge mailshots. (Non-work-safe content, but no images.)

Talking of the G-word, it sounds like half of my flist must have met each other (whether they realised it or not) at the recent Masked Ball in Oxford. Truly, I am a nexus of goth! (Yet not actually a goth myself, obviously.) verlaine and bluedevi, do you know taimatsu? I notice all three of you appear in these photos so I guess you at least have a mutual friend. By the way, bluedevi, taimatsu sings too (far better than me!) -- I feel the possibility of a London Music Meet rapidly gaining momentum (perhaps if/when tjej has succeeded in kidnapping my piano?).

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sion_a, I can't really do an introduction here because I have a read-only relationship with the lady in question, but I keep meaning to let you know that you may be interested in ozarque's engaging and readable discussions of linguistics. (Thanks to livredor for alerting me to that one.)

While we're wandering around in the grey area between introductions and reading-recommendations, one of the people I met at truecatachresis's party was the author of Schrödinger's Rabbits, which is not about rabbits but sounds interesting nonetheless. addedentry helpfully points out that it is available in its entirety online, though I suspect the author might prefer to get the royalties.

Now I probably won't be buying that one since I can read it online and I'm trying to save money at the moment, but at some point I do intend to buy Ice Museum, written by somebody whom I know tangentially, though not by that name. Damn, it's hard to claim tenuous-fame-by-proxy when it's at least two degrees away and I'm not even sure if the missing link (as it were) in the chain wants to be outed as a relative...

I also may not be able to resist buying books about badgers, as recommended by my friend Tim. Tim sends me pictures of badgers (and a mushroom), though personally he prefers otters. Unfortunately (but understandably) the person I know who's most likely to be charmed by Tim's merry mustelids isn't likely to be reading this, but perhaps the information will filter through somehow?

Since other people's dreams are just so interesting, I thought I'd post some more of mine. You lucky, lucky people. ( Dream a little dream of me... )

So long as my dreams have badgers in, though, really, I'm happy. People sometimes ask me if I get bored of people giving me badgers, showing me pictures of badgers, emailing me links to every news story about badgers. Believe it or not, the answer is "NO!" A picture of a badger will always make me smile. Even this picture from a lame poster campaign momentarily gave me the feel-good factor. I'm seriously considering wandering over to the Cotswolds just to visit a tearoom with badgers in the name. The merest sniff of a stripy-faced member of the family mustelidae can lift my heart a little. They're just so damn cute.

And to be honest, my heart could do with a bit of lifting at the moment: LiveJournal hasn't been the cheeriest place to be lately. Not even any really exciting memes, though I like what keirf did with the age meme. Apropos of memes, or rather LiveJournal's own peculiar brand of misnomemes, I don't think I ever got round to telling anybody that my inner gay man was David Bowie. (Thanks to minkboylove, who thinks too much about quizzes sometimes, for that one.) It's funny how the things that get passed around are always lame, while laugh-out-loud things like Michael Kelly's lateral thinking questions (thanks, kennedybak!) mostly get passed over .

It gets worse, though: earlier this week it looked as though Dark Side of the Moon was going to be voted the Best Album Ever, though this potential disaster seems to have been temporarily averted. (Though who knows what new horrors the vote for Best Single Ever will throw up?) Meanwhile, all-wimmin community theladiesloos is going through the teething problems that all new internet communities face; it's currently at the "You stole my safe space" stage, where people realise that they actually have to at least pretend to play nicely with people they don't actually like. (On the positive side, though, all-blerk equivalent thecompanyofmen proves that boys really can open up and talk honestly about sex, which is truly heartwarming to see.) Not all men are so relaxed, though: I've been enjoying a bizarre bitchfight with a random stranger in the nether commenting regions of barrysarll's LiveJournal; the which shenanigans have, if nothing else, provided me with the best retort ever: "Now who is the one who knows nothing of which they speak?" (Guys, if you put your playground comebacks through the "talk like a grown-up" filter, you have to proof-read them first or else you end up sounding like a prick.)

Tediously, the whole palaver was an indirect result of the increasingly silly news coverage about Prince Harry's latest gaffe. It may be boring to say that this news story is boring, but I can't help it: it is every bit as boring as I am now meta-boring for talking about it. (Now, if it was Wills, rather than Harry, it would be a different matter: the former Most Desirable Man in Scotland would look positively sizzling in sexy SS gear.)

Predictably, there have already been calls from the baying hordes of peons for fancy dress shops to be banned from selling even the sort of tacky pseudo-Nazi regalia sported by the Party Prince; less predictably, a search on eBay for "Nazi uniform" throws up only a copy of the edition of the Sun containing this non-story, and a predictable overpriced leather trenchcoat given a false frisson of interest by the addition of the words "GOTH NAZI" in the subject line. Surely you can buy anything on eBay? Still, I can't really complain about the internet's biggest jumble sale, when a pair of purple DMs bought for £7 in a charity shop have just fetched me £16, and a copy of the guitar music for "Disintegration" (bought for a fiver in a sale) netted an unbelievable £21. Now that's cheering.