my heart is a glorious machine;

i. So, Dad came upstairs a few minutes ago to tell me that, "oh, there's going to be a Beowulf movie...with Angeline Jolie." We sort of stared at each other in an "o-kay" sort of way, and he said something about Robert Zemeckis directing, "so it might be good, because he's really brilliant," (not that I would know; I am not so well-versed in directors and I had to ask, and apparently he directed Forest Gump and Who Framed Roger Rabbit and some other stuff, which all seems about as far from Beowulf as, well...Angelina Jolie) and I'm still thinking Angeline Jolie? In Beowulf? Angeline Jolie?, because, seriously, who is there for Angelina Jolie to play? And then I thought, oh, oh, sweet Arda, is this the same Beowulf movie that Neil Gaiman did the script for? (Because there could be two totally different Beowulf films coming out in one year. Really!) So, after Dad wanders back downstairs, I had to look it up to see for myself, or I'd sit up all night trying to reconcile the two vastly different worlds of Angelina Jolie and Beowulf. 

I looked it up, and it is. (Right. Like I said, two Beowulf films in one year?) Robert Zemeckis, Neil Gaiman, and Angeline Jolie. As Grendel's mother. Angeline Jolie is going to play an underwater hag. I am thunderstruck, I tell you. Also, the movie is reportedly going to be done with motion-capture technology: i.e., it's all going to be animated. ("Like The Polar Express," the article said, and all I'm saying is that the animation had better be better than The Polar Express, which may have been a technical wonder, but the animation was dead boring.) 

My conclusion? This film is either going to be completely brilliant or fantastically awful.

ii. I am updating Ink & Chocolate, my Vox, every single day now. Or every weekday, anyway. It is for Scholastic Purposes. It is also rather rambly and probably sort of dull, but pop in to read once in a while, won't you? There are Bookish Thoughts. And right now there is costume-squee.

The news of the moment?

We've got a kitten!

My father currently works with special-needs students, and one of his clients' families, I gather, had kittens to get rid of. He brought most of them to the shelter run by a friend's wife, but kept one--he says it's an early Christmas present. I am an absolute girl around cats--I adore them madly, and our little kitten is so bedimmed adorable: I think one would be hard-pressed to find someone who didn't go 'awww!' a little, at least inside, at the sight of him. He is perfectly black, down to his wee little nose; and tiny and soft and very curious and a little bit nervous just now.

Now the real test will be to see how he and our other cat, Roscoe, react to each other. Roscoe is a very mellow and friendly cat (bit of a pushover, really), and this kitty seems awfully quiet and friendly, too--we'll see.


Also, Wordie is the current Best Thing Ever. I am right here, and still sorting out categories, so it's a bit disorganised. But: egad! wordlists! Combining three of my favourite things: words, lists, and community! Squee!!

You know you are losing your touch when:

You write approximately half of a fic you have been trying to write without any success for about a month. You go to bed, and by the next morning have no memory of having done this.

Yeah.

Also? I have been procrastinating about this for quite a while, because I'm sort of worried that if I talk about it too much, I will have to write it, and if I write it, it will EAT MY BRAIN, and tuesday_skyline will disappear into The Black Hole of Banui Where Stories Go To Die. However, Skyline seems to be going strong (too strong! ack! despite the fact that it is still missing a plot), and I really can't procrastinate much longer, or one of these days I'm going to make a reference to the bloody thing and no-one will understand what I mean and think I've gone mental(er).

So, the Story That Ate My Brain. I suppose you've all gathered by now that this is a work of fiction. What you do not know is as follows: Once upon a time there was a copper-haired librarian named Evangeline. In her spare time, and mostly by accident, she hunted vampires. Then there's this whole theorising on the actual nature of vampires, because I can't buy the idea of anything that used to be human being soulless and utterly irredeemable. (Neither can Evangeline. This leads to Interesting Things. I have no idea what they are, though.) This sort of stemmed, in a way, from my frustration with gothic novels and how they're either mocking the cliches and, while being utterly delightful, just don't have enough of that dark-cathedral asethetic I'm craving, or they are stupid and contrived and have teenagers in them and I want to throw things at them. (I haven't read the actual content of most of these, just the summaries and, occasionally, Amazon reviews.) Then the rest of this happened because Evangeline hopped into my brain and attempted mutiny. Apparently, she lives in 1913 or so. She's been rabbiting on about odd things like the dark and...I seem to remember something about brooches or something equally mundane recently. I don't write it down (it's too weird), i.e., I don't remember it. We're going to have a nasty row about this eventually, I'm sure: she'll tell me in biting tones that something tangled up in a long spiel about winter or organising books was Very Important and I ought to have paid attention.

Getting headache. Must go read. (I am aware that the one does not necessarily cure the other.)



P.S.: I could do this for hours. Yes, really.