Beyond Selidor

Day 5. Pick a song that projects the same mood as your day or week and explain.

'Please Ask For Help' by Telekinesis completely sums up my week. 'I'm not going to knock you down, but I'm not going to help you up' essentially paraphrases how I've been feeling for the past few days: maudlin, unintentionally self-sabotaging, and able to see how to get out of this state of mind but not being able to do it. I'm frustrated with myself, and ready to go back to Cambridge, which, thanksfully, I'm doing in exactly a week.

As far as today goes, though, I'm feeling a bit lyric-less and contemplative. I'm about to head over to the apartment of one of my friends from my German class, where our whole class is having a sushi party, and it's hard to be in a bad mood when there's sushi on the horizon. In any case, while it's not fun to feel unhappy, I'm kind of okay with feeling the full range of human emotions, as I've explained before. I tend to get analytical about my feelings, focusing on them and trying to work out why I'm feeling unhappy at a particular moment, but I don't try to push the unhappiness away or hurry it up. Thus, today's song is 'Kaleidoscope' by Tiësto feat. Jónsi. I can't explain why this song reflects my mood, except to say that it always evokes the image of standing on a bridge, on the shore, on the cliffs of Selidor - some liminal space - and wondering.

The song I've been playing all week, especially over the last 24 hours (50 times!), is 'Girls Like You' by The Naked and Famous, but I don't think it's hugely reflective of my life, aside from the line 'run, whirlwind run', which is totally how I feel all the time. I'm even known as 'Typhoon Ronni' within my family due to my sudden melodramatic flarings of emotion, and the fact that I seem to walk into the house trailing drama behind me...

( the other days )

ETA: You NEED to go and check out the Stratford-on-Hellmouth Tumblr. It's got Whedonverse macros with appropriate Shakespeare quotes pasted over them. My favourite is this one.

I spent the past four days or so watching the entire animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender. I was planning to ration myself to two episodes a day, but, yeah, I'm not a very patient person.

Then I blogged about it. (In other cool news, this is the first time one of my posts has ever been featured on Fandom News - see the heading Fandom Meta Discussion for the link to my post.)

There's some bad news about the release date of the third Romanitas book, Savage City. See Longvision for details.

I don't really have many other interesting things to link today. I'm sure you've all seen the 8-bit Dr Horrible clips, but just in case, I'm linking you to Act I. Act II is now also up, and you should be able to find it in the related videos.

Catie's got a good post about Harry Potter. I don't agree with all her points, but it's well worth a read.

That's it for now.

ETA: I lied! Here's J.K. Rowling being her awesome socialist self:

[Comparing herself with Lord Ashcroft] chose to remain a domiciled taxpayer for a couple of reasons. The main one was that I wanted my children to grow up where I grew up, to have proper roots in a culture as old and magnificent as Britain’s; to be citizens, with everything that implies, of a real country, not free-floating ex-pats, living in the limbo of some tax haven and associating only with the children of similarly greedy tax exiles.

A second reason, however, was that I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism. On the available evidence, I suspect that it is Lord Ashcroft’s idea of being a mug.

I find her humanity humbling and inspirational.

The list of Hugo Awards nominees is out. John Scalzi has his thoughts on the matter here. Neil Gaiman's response is here. This is Abigail Nussbaum's reaction. As for me, I don't know much about the nominees in most categories, but choosing between Neil Gaiman and Cory Doctorow (Best Novel for, respectively, The Graveyard Book and Little Brother) would be like choosing a favourite child. Also, if Dr Horrible doesn't win in its category, I may have to jump out of the window.

Edit: Cory Doctorow's thoughts here on BoingBoing.

Rambling post about the notion of evil as explored in Dr Horrible and The Dark Knight, spoilers abound.

Ministry of Sound CDs listened to since last update: Sessions 2, discs 1 and 2; Sessions 3, discs 1 and 2; Sessions 4, discs 1 and 2; Sessions 5, discs 1 and 2; UK 2006 Annual, discs 1 and 2; US 2007 Annual, discs 1 and 2.