Lunch Break Papers

Do you know what's exceedingly good for a sore, slightly swollen throat?
Gargling with ice-cold Slivovitz.
*hic*

Started and finished a 300 page book today ("Tyranny of Distance", about Australian history and how it was influenced by geography - fascinating read); going to have to extract the quotes tomorrow, it needs to go back to the interlibrary loan desk on Friday.

Last night, I dreamt that I wanted to divorce the 9th Doctor so I could marry the 8th Doctor, but after we found desiccated Dalek mutants in a rocket in the front garden (they were of course revived by some Mad Scientist) and the 9th Doctor was almost killed in an accident involving Daleks and a model train set, I changed my mind, and he and I went off to live in a haunted house in London.
My mind is just weird.

Ah, work, the time of the week when I actually have enough leisure to post here. Weird, eh?

About as weird as the dream I had last night, when I found myself on a parallel Earth, accompanied by a friend. There was something subtly wrong on this parallel Earth - we first noticed it while watching the Lord of the Rings movie, and confirmed it by browsing through the book. It started similar enough, but instead of the underlying theme of friendship, and loyalty, and good vs bad, it was reduced to an army under the command of Aragorn burning and pillaging their way through Middle Earth, forcing the Gondorians to fight on their side, and enslaving the Elves.
It seemed as if things like politeness, friendship, courtesy and community were all gone from this place, replaced by egotism, "me-first"-ness and elbow power.
Further confirmation of the wrong-ness of this parallel Earth was achieved when we saw a production of Verdi's Ernani (parallel vision had one version of my friend in the audience and one on the stage), which ended with Ernani killing de Silva, among other things. Even Beatles songs on the radio sounded wrong.
This parallel Earth was a dark shadow cast sideways off of this one, and to set it right, we needed to find out the exact event which caused the split. Too bad I woke up before we found it. Still, I can hear the plot bunnies grazing.

And one of the guys in the Harold Pinter play I'm digitizing sounds like William Shatner.

I couldn't fall asleep last night; it was probably the third cup of coffe yesterday that did it. So I started doing the mental exercises that usually end up with me asleep. No, not counting sheep, but focussing on a story, or a particular train of thought, which usually distracts my brain long enough for my body to fall asleep; the brain then has no other choice but to follow.

Anyway, I don't know why, but last night I began constructing this Doctor Who fan video to the tune of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, beginning with a picture of the Sycorax obviously. The first verse was Tenth Doctor only, the second turned into a Brigadier story, the third verse was regeneration scenes and so on. By the time the line "I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me" showed me Colin Baker scenes, I was chuckling to myself.

I think I should get the video capture card out of the old computer and install it in this one. Might be fun to dabble with video cutting again.

Ah, yes. Did I mention it's snowing again? Mmm, what a lovely springtime!

But enough complaining. It is fun when I can open my snowed-in bedroom window, grab a handful of snow from the roof and throw snowballs at the unsuspecting outside. And this winter, I've been able to do it more often than ever before!

I just hope the weather clears up in a week, because mum and I will be driving to visit my family in the Czech Republic, and I don't much fancy driving under hazardous conditions. We'll be gone from the 18th to the 25th, and I will be taking my camera with me this time around.


While I was walking through the city, I had the feeling that somebody was watching me from the top of a ten-storey building. I don't much like being watched, so I went inside to ask why whoever it was was watching me.
Inside the building, it was dark - the lights were not working correctly; it smelled of raw concrete walls and damp. There was an elevator in the middle of the stairwell, which not only had a bright light in it, but also maroon velvet covering around the inside. Despite its appearance, it refused to take me all the way to the top, which meant that I had to climb the rest of the way over half-built steps and rickety scaffolding in the flickering lights. Occasionally, I came past a window, which gave me a beautiful view of blue skies and birds flying past. I was obviously higher up than I thought, and much higher than the building had appeared from the outside.
Finally, I arrived at the top floor and found myself in a hallway opposite an ordinary grey door, which was not even locked. The rooms behind looked lived-in, though the furniture was old and shabby and put together as if from a flea market, with the occasional antique gleaming in a corner.
Walking through the rooms, I noticed that someone was trying to get my attention. Maybe now I would find out who had been watching me.
I turned around and saw myself in a mirror.
Then I woke up.

So, friend Freud, what do you make of that, then?

I think the best way to combat insomnia (thanks, seiraryu) is to get up early, and exhaust yourself swimming.

The loudness in a swimming pool is equivalent to the amount of schoolchildren present. It is fun though to watch them take pleasure in being noisy, as long as you can submerge yourself to shut them out.

It is time for change when even your dreams start repeating themselves, and you say to yourself in your dream, hang on, I've been here before.

No matter which kind of hair dye I use, the result always turns out a very slightly greenish strawberry red. I am dissatisfied with my hair.

I found the rainbow's end today, but the ATM machine was broken.

There is a record player standing on my desk next to me, and for the first time in years, maybe even decades, I can watch the record revolving. A soothing sight, unless one starts to think about the fact that while the whole record revolves at 33 1/3 RpM, the centre is actually going faster than the outside.

There is a job I am going to apply to. Cross fingers.