Brian’s Neighborhood

Tim Minchin's Christmas song, White Wine In The Sun, is now available for single purchase on iTunes!

Give this a watch/listen, and then go buy it!  The iTunes version has some very beautiful string accompaniment too.

My husband will get all huffy and say "not until the 21st!" but to me, once the temp dips 35F and below and snow/sleet/ice start blowing around, it's winter. My least favorite season (I'm not alone there, I know) because driving is stressful and just getting anything done or going anywhere is a big hassle.  Not to mention it's fucking cold, and as I get older, cold hurts more. Why can't I convince my husband to give up this farming gig so we can go move someplace warm? I don't care if we're poor, we'll be warm!

Right, now I've got that whining out of the way - who's ready for Christmas?  Another thing I'm grateful for as I get older - Christmas/Holidays is FAR less of a big deal than it used to be.  I do enjoy buying gifts for people, but no longer am I all excited/concerned about what I'll be getting back.  Some might say the loss of that excitement is a bad thing - to me it just means I'm more self-sufficient, and that's a good thing!  (If I really want/need something, I just go buy it now.  Anything extra is nice but nothing to get all worked up over!)

I also gave up (pretty much before I ever started) the stress of holiday cards, decorating, and all that extra jazz.  I send cards to the people closest to me (and the in-laws because they'll get huffy if I don't!) but we don't bother with decorations or parties or anything like that anymore. YAY.  True, I'm still forced to do the holiday parties at work, but even those are low key and require very little from me.  I show up with food, and all is well.

Speaking of food - damn I do hate this section of the year because no matter how hard I try to keep it from happening, the pounds pile on.  That's what New Year's is for though of course, and like billions of people I'll be making that resolution to "get back to a healthy weight".  If only just so my pants fit comfortably again.  I'm annoyed that my favorite trousers are currently all too tight!

Sooooo.  There we go, that's my boring update. Hope your lives are all well.

It takes me for-freakin-ever to read nonfiction.  Not sure why I can fly through fiction but nonfiction takes me at least three times as long to read.  Am I paying more attention or something?

Anyway, right now I'm making my way through Moab Is My Washpot, which is Stephen Fry's autobiography.  The

Moab Is My Washpot

Stephen Fry

 wonderful thing is that he did write it himself and it's completely in his "voice" so it's rather like sitting across from him as he tells you the silly tales of his childhood and school years.  I always wonder how people can remember their earlier years with such detail.  I certainly remember "scenes" but if pressed I doubt I could put them into an actual factual timeline.  It's just as well since I doubt anyone would want to read my life story anyway.  Although I did have a damn fun childhood.

Bad Science

Ben Goldacre

I'm also plowing (slowly, slowly) my way through Bad Science by Ben Goldacre.  I say "plowing" only because I read so dreadfully slow, not because the content is laborious.  If anything, Goldacre makes what might be snore-worthy and makes it fun and interesting.

This is a book that has been known in the Skeptical community as a must-read... along with Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy, and Simon Singh's Trick Or Treatment. It reveals what commonly-held beliefs are misplaced and generally teaches you to question what often sounds too good to be true.

What makes reading both of these books even more fun is both of the authors are also on Twitter so I'm "getting to know" them both through their writing and through their day-to-day twitterings as well. 

Helpful/useful information for us all.

Available free for one week via Skeptic's Society!

Go! Print! Read!

I sympathize.

Recently he appeared on a new episode of England's "Never Mind The Buzzcocks" - a sort of panel "game show" that is less about points and winning anything and more about acting silly.  Which Tim is good at doing, in his disarmingly charming way.

Here's a clip -

I don't like admitting it (who does?) but I'm not feelin' the NaNoWriMo this year.  I know, I know. I'm supposed to "just keep writing anyway".  It's the exercise in making yourself write, not necessarily the story that comes out of it.  I know this and yet, I've just decided not to do it this year. 

I will, however, fiddle around with this story idea a bit more, here and there.  I think there's something to it (and hey, I DO have an ending for it!) and maybe it's more that I think it deserves more time/effort than a violent 30-day writing gorge can give it.  Or, that's a hoity-toity excuse.

I do feel shame, and I do feel guilt. I read the cheering-on emails I get from Chris Baty and others and for a moment or two I think, hey, I'm only a week behind. Maybe....?

And then I think, don't be silly.

And then I think... well.... ..... maybe?

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I'd be lost without my Tweetie.

I've made the mistake of writing the "end" of my NaNoWriMo story. 

It was in my head, and I was excited, because I'd actually come up with an ending.  Which I didn't start out with - so you can imagine my pleasure.  This freak of a story which I'd embarked upon without any knowledge of the characters or the world they live in (or, rather, die in, since I've already killed off half the cast) was just sort of flopping along, without any arms or legs, and while I pitied it, I kept on writing.

And then last night while at the gym (it's annoyingly cliche that my brain really DOES work better during exercise) I struck upon how this monster would actually end.  So I rushed home and wrote it, while it was still all pink and fresh and gleaming.

And now I feel like I'm done.  I know I'm not; I mean, there's a whole lot of middle-stuff that I haven't even considered yet.  Step one, character. Step two, ?? Step three, result!  It's the Underpants Gnomes of stories.  I'm finding it incredibly hard to care about the middle stuff though.  My brain has convinved itself that it's finished this story, and it wants to move on to the next one.

I sense the rest of this month of writing is going to be very painful.

So guess what?  My Minchin-heavy blog will soon be filled with my so-entertaining moanings about writing.  I shall write in order to procrastinate from writing. That's brilliant, isn't it?

I haven't really got much of an idea of what I'll be attempting... I mean, I do have an idea, but there's no plot to it at all. Which might be all right - in the past, when I've had a plot in mind, the characters just sort of went off on their own anyway and completely ignored my wishes. Rampant, they ran. I have no control. It's a damn good thing I'm not a parent if I can't even keep track of my imaginary people.

SO, you've been warned. I think that's rather nice of me, don't you?

Oh and also, if you want to join in, please do visit nanowrimo.org and sign up. It's crazy-fun.

Friday Night with Jonathan Ross airs in the United States on 30 Oct 2009 on BBC America.

BUT, if by chance you don't get BBC America (shame on you) here's the interview: