| Shall we try this again? |
[Mar. 24th, 2009|03:36 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  cynical | ] |
I really am lousy at keeping diaries... :-p
Anywho, since my creative side is really showing some life again, a place in which to stream-of-consciousness about my thoughts will certainly be useful, and since I happen to have this lying around, it's being volunteered. Although, I'll warn you now, this'll very likely be a release valve for the stresses of my life at times, too.
After all, my youngest brother is a foul-mouthed, arrogant, shouty thug; my second youngest is a facile, self-interested, deceitful, sex-obsessed, reacreational drug addict; my elder brother is a brooding, aggressive, unpredictable, alchoholic, hard drug addict (the latter two to stop himself going psycho and killing everyone, apparently); my father's a self-destructive workaholic with the spine of a fish; and my mother's a cold, distant, selfish, arrogant, vindictive, petty-minded harridan whose pride matters more to her than her family and blinds her completely to her horrid behaviour. Oh, and I myself am a self-pitying, obsessive-compulsive, manic depressive nutcase with an unhealthy obsession with the written word, so I have a fair bit to stress about, all told...
Ever think you did something really horrible in a previous life?
I'll try to keep the venting to a minimum, though - I don't want to beat people around the head with my troubles day in and day out. This is to primarily be a melting pot for my creativity, and thus the next post will be all about one of my current projects.
Later days,
The Foxy Fellow |
|
|
| Just a quick note... |
[Nov. 19th, 2006|12:12 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  listless | ] |
...to say I am still here, just battling with a moderately unpleasant and frustratingly tenacious variation on the theme of flu. I've had it for a week now, fer cryin' out loud...
Later days,
The (under the weather) Foxy Fellow |
|
|
| LOTS to catch up on... |
[Nov. 9th, 2006|07:32 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  Talkative | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | The Feeling - Never be Lonely | ] |
With all the things I need to talk about/report on with regard to my Palma trip, this could well end up setting a new world record for longest online blog entry. :-p
Fortunately, there are such things as LJ-cuts, so I'll hide my travelogue rather than have it unneccesarily bloat out people's friends pages...
( Palma de Mallorca )
If you read that monster, I hope you enjoyed it. Now pardon me while I go soak my fingers for the rest of the night, while mulling over the myriad ideas crowding my brain. I've recently discovered my creative synapses do still work, after all...
Later days,
The Foxy Fellow |
|
|
| I'm off on a jet plane... |
[Oct. 11th, 2006|04:27 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | excited and just a tad nervous | ] |
Be two days 'fore I'm back again...
I'll be off at 5:30am tomorrow, in a taxi heading to Bristol International Airport. From there it's a 2-hour plus flight to Palma. In Palma I will check in at the Hotel Saratoga (4 star! The room's got a balcony and a frickin' minibar! I can't believe I'm staying somewhere so posh!) then spend the afternoon aboard a cruise ship, helping Dad survey what he'll be doing for the next week, and getting a guided tour of the vessel to boot. Then, probably after supper, I'm on my own until Saturday, with another early start to catch the flight home. Somebody pinch me; this can't be real...
I'm surprised at how calm I am in the face of this potentially fantastic experience. There's an undoubted undercurrent of nervousness there, yes, but not the all-out quaking I was expecting. The only mild concerns I have are feeding myself, being the quirky eater I am, and the whole getting back home thing on Saturday. The flight's at 10:10am local time, so I'll be moving by 8:00am at the very latest, I think. I'm not taking any chances whatsoever, cos I'm paranoid like that. Knowing my luck, though, the only taxi I'll find won't be driven by someone who can speak English. :-p
Changing subject, my WebRing account is now gone. I did delete the FurryMagic ring, but just as I'd expected the system brought it back to life almost instantly, now under the management of - surprise, surprise - 'deleted'. The guy must be running over 2000 rings by now, and very likely there are considerably more than 2000 up for adoption, yet the powers that be at WebRing don't seem at all concerned. Besides, if, as seems highly likely, one of the main aims of the new membership system was to cut down on excess rings, than why on earth are so many of the ones being deleted getting resurrected? It makes no sense at all...
Still, I'm shot of their lunacy now, and comfortably ensconced at RingSurf. My two rings are up and running, complete with home page on my website, and already two of the people who belonged to my WebRing ones have joined the furry one. I'm hopeful a lot of the others will follow suit, and that I'll find a nice stack of 'submission to ring' e-mails when I return on Saturday. If anyone knows of a good way to publicise a ring, by the way, feel free to tell me, as I'm determined to make a better fist of these than my previous ones.
Right, if you'll excuse me, I have to make myself some supper and quintuple-check everything's ready.
Later days,
The Foxy Fellow |
|
|
| Well, this was unexpected... |
[Oct. 4th, 2006|03:35 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  indescribable | ] |
I took a phone call last night. Given I was visiting my good friend Richard at the time it came as something of a surprise. There we were watching some episodes of The Raccoons he'd recorded from Boomerang - a real blast from the past for the pair of us - when my mobile comes to life. On the other end is my father, who proceeds to tell me he's booking tickets for a trip he and a colleague will be taking to Palma next week to look at a job on a cruise ship, and ask if I'd like to come along...
Well, I wasn't about to say no, was I?
Thus I'm now booked to fly to Mallorca next Thursday, visit the ship with the others, then be left to my own devices until I return on Saturday. WOO-HAA! This oughta be fun. :-D
In WebRing news, I've put three of my rings out for adoption, and the fourth, the only one I actually created rather than adopted myself, will be deleted within a week. Talking of 'deleted', the overworked fella now runs 1339 rings. Where does he get the time? :-p
The replacement Ringsurf rings are up and running, complete with a homepage on my website - http://www.furrymagic.org/webrings.htm. Now we just wait and see how many members of the old ones transfer over...
Strange as it may seem, I'm feeling quite melancholy at having done all this, but if WebRing insist on being so greedy, then... Hopefully the new rings can grow like the old ones - I actually had quite a strong membership, all told...
Now pardon me while I head out with Loki...
Later days,
The Foxy Fellow |
|
|
| WebRing.com... |
[Oct. 3rd, 2006|03:53 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | irate | ] |
...have just, as someone in their forums succintly put it, committed suicide. Or, as I'd put it, not so much shot themselves in the foot as raked themselves from head to toe with automatic gunfire.
They have just introduced a new membership 'program', as they call it, consisting of three different options:-
1) Free. Manage up to 2 rings, be a member of up to 5.
2) Premium Level 1. $12/year. Manage up to 10 rings, join up to 15.
3) Premium Level 2. $36/year. Manage up to 30 rings, join up to 50.
Existing members have been given until Jan 2007 to choose a membership level and adjust their rings accordingly.
Now, considering that WebRing has been free and unrestricted for all of its 10 or more years up until now, including the time Yahoo! owned it, this has come as no small shock to site members like me. On initial examination it might not seem that bad, but take into account the following...
a) it's a rare WebRing user that belongs to 5 or less rings, making the free option ridiculously restrictive,
b) you're the one who does all the work to publicise and maintain the rings, not WebRing, and suddenly you're expected to pay for the privilege,
c) you don't even own the rings, but are simply allowed to maintain them, unless WebRing deems fit to take them away,
d) although it is possible to manage and belong to more rings than the top level will allow, you will be charged extra for every single ring you run over the thirty, and every membership you have over the forty. Someone on the WebRing forums calculated that to maintain their current quota would cost them over $200 a year, and they weren't even the heaviest user. Not by some way,
e) if you don't want to pay, but keep more rings than your membership level allows, they will be forcibly removed and put up for adoption, and excess memberships will be deleted with all the cold detachment of a Cyberman,
f) the options you have for 'monetizing' rings you run, such as charging people to feature their site prominently on your hub page, actually makes Webring far more cash than it does you, even at the top level, not least if you select the option to use your earnings to pay for your membership. Even if you don't, they'll never be anywhere near enough to offset the membership charge,
...and suddenly the money-grabbing cynicism of it all becomes painfully apparent. The reaction has been quite simply epic - rings are being put up for adoption or deleted by the hundred, memberships are plummeting like the stock market on Black Tuesday and the forums are flooded with vitriolic messages. Deleted rings, by the way, don't stay that way for long - WebRing has backups, and simply reinstates them under the management of 'deleted'. According to one forum post, 'deleted' currently runs over 1000 rings, and it's still going up. There are very likely just as many now up for adoption.
If things keep going this way, Webring will be a digital ghost town well before the transition period is up, and yet the managers seem blissfully oblivious to it all. Apparently they're a rude, arrogant, unhelpful and even abusive lot - several people have labelled them 'dictators' - thus they're very likely to deny there's a problem no matter what, much like a certain Iraqi publicity officer loudly insisting Baghdad was not being invaded even as a column of US tanks rumbled through the streets behind him. Given that this new policy will very likely leave the place vastly more financially unviable than the owners have seemingly claimed it already is, and that I can't imagine many people would want to buy it from them, this could actually be the death of WebRing.
Personally, I will be clearing out of WebRing completely and setting up at Ringsurf instead. It'll take a little while, as I have to give the members of my 4 rings warning and time to clear out before they close, and Ringsurf rings are a little more complex to set up, but at least I'll be my own boss, so to speak, and not paying to be someone else's lackey. Oddly, I have a feeling there's an opportunity here, though typically of my instinctive side I've no idea what it could be. I'll just crack on, and see what happens...
Later days,
The {hopefully back for some time to come} Foxy Fellow |
|
|
| Germany '06 - Day 5 |
[Jun. 13th, 2006|10:15 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  thoughtful | ] |
I really should have posted my thoughts earlier than this, but ah well. First, let's get the home team out of the way...
England: Both promising and frustrating. In the first half we were playing well; Gerrard was starting to show what he can do, Beckham was flinging in some superb crosses and free kicks, Cole was very lively on the flank and generally we looked pretty strong. The only concern at that point was a slight lack of edge with the final touch - not quite connecting with crosses, shots a little wayward and/or scrappy - but it was nothing that wouldn't improve as the tournament progresses.
In the second half, though, things started to assume a painfully familiar pear-like shape, Paraguay getting on top for a while, and proving they could on occasion pose a problem when attacking. Commendably, rather than wait and hope our midfield could tip the balance back our way eventually, Sven decided to bolster things a bit by putting on Owen Hargreaves. Yet, rather than swapping like for like by removing Lampard or Gerrard or Beckham, all of whom had faded a bit, he decided to sacrifice a striker. That could have worked, had the striker in question not been Owen.
Peter Crouch is a provider and a poacher, NOT a lone arrowhead - he hasn't the speed or agility to get around defences or to chase down long passes - so leaving him alone up front seemed odd to say the least. It proved counter-productive, despite Cole taking up a more central supporting position, as whenever we got the ball away from Paraguay we had little attacking thrust, very few options, and all our moves faltered fast as they were so easy to counter. All we could do was play deeper and deeper, endure more and more pressure, and hold on. We were fortunate Paraguay were even weaker than us in the final third, never really threatening Robinson's goal, or we might have had yet another lacklustre draw to add to the collection.
Not for the first time I find myself wondering why Eriksson feels a need to employ the retreat-into-our-collective-shell-and-cross-our-fingers tactic (which I shall from now on call the Swedish Tortoise) so very often, especially when it so very rarely pays off. Even the very best Italian teams, who practically invented the tactic, would struggle to hold on to a 1-goal lead for an entire half of a game, or longer, against opposition of any real calibre, and besides, the Azurri are smart enough to be two or three or four ahead before they even think about it, and won't even try it with the top class teams. Sadly our defeats by France and Brazil and draws with the likes of Greece, Sweden and Lichtenstein during Sven's reign didn't manage to clue the man in. At least, from a recent BBC interview, it does seem to be dawning on him at last. Don't bet against the Tortoise resurfacing later on in the Cup, though... Or against SGE sitting in the dugout, blinking owlishly and failing totally to come up with a way to deal with a rampant Argentina or Germany...
Talking of whom, the hosts can kick off my thoughts on a few teams that caught my attention for one reason or another...
Germany: Look quite strong, pretty capable and mildly inventive in attack, but more than a little shaky in defence. Costa Rica opened them up several times, and they're one of the minnows of the competition. I reckon they'll struggle against stronger opponents unless they can keep possession and have Ballack playing well. However, they're certainly capable of rolling over any tortoises that happen to shuffle their way...
Sweden: Odd how frequently we seem to end up in the same group as them. Even odder how unconvincing they were against Trinidad & Tobago, not exactly the toughest of opposition. Despite their ranks including players like Freddie Ljungberg, Anders Svensson, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Henrik Larsson, all of whom are more than capable, they really struggled to mount a dangerous attack. Barring an abrupt upsurge in confidence and form, I can't see them posing much of a problem from England unless we really play poorly. T&T, on the other hand, could be awkward, as they point-blank refuse to lay down and die...
Argentina: Another old foe, and one looking in pretty fine fettle, it has to be said. On their day they wouldn't just roll the tortoise over but eviscerate it, such is the attacking prowess they have. As seems to be a common trait with South American sides, though, they're not quite as good in defence as they are in attack, and thus a little vulnerable if pressed hard enough; the challenge comes in getting the ball away from Riquelme first. Their first opponents, the Ivory Coast, looked dangerous, too, especially with Drogba at the business end of things.
Brazil: Supposedly the strongest team since the 1970s, and yet they didn't seem fully at the races today. Yes, Ronaldinho seemed to have the ball glued to his feet at times, yes Kaka scored a wonderful goal, and yes they looked fast and dangerous in attack, but they never really looked like you'd think Brazil should look. A big reason were Croatia, a very solid team that you don't so much break down as slowly abrade. Another would be Ronaldo, who for some inscrutable reason didn't seem interested at all for great swathes of the game, only showing small bursts of energy when a good attack happened to come his way (which invariably ended in naught through his lack of real effort) and disappearing completely when it came time to defend. Compare 2006 Ronaldo to the 2002 model that terrorised defences and the difference is huge. I can only think he doesn't want to stretch himself until the knock-out stages, when vaguely challenging opposition start cropping up. Tortoises they encounter will be torn to shreds, pieced back together, then torn to shreds again, and that's just in the first half...
France: Ah, le Bleu. They who won the World Cup in 1998, then managed to crash out of it in 2002 without scoring a goal, and didn't get out of the group stage in Euro 2004. On this showing they won't reach the last 16 here, either. True, Switzerland are a pretty decent team, but they weren't at their best today, and France definitely weren't. Zidane made a few great passes but wasn't nearly as omnipresent as previously, and pretty much everyone else - Viera, Wiltord, Ribery, Gallas, Makalele and even Henry - looked off colour, although I have to note Thierry at least had some excuse in that he had so little support. Amazing how such a vast wealth of talent can produce so little. Maybe they'll pick up in the next match, but I wouldn't bet your house on it, especially as it's against a strong South Korea...
That's it for now; more tomorrow night...
Later days,
The Footballing Foxy Fellow |
|
|
| Foxy Progress |
[Apr. 15th, 2006|05:37 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | hopeful | ] |
Additional - I've joined YouTube, as it seemed damn near perfect for my purposes. First video up and live:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbQ7V3ySJ8Q
This one features Little-Tail and Sandy, interacting rather energetically. Enjoy. :-)
Later days,
The Foxy Fellow |
|
|
| Foxy Possibilities |
[Apr. 15th, 2006|01:20 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | contemplative | ] |
Yes - still alive. Had something of a depression relapse, but I'm coming out the other side now. :)
One thing that's helped greatly is being able to settle down every evening and watch this kind of thing via our cheap and cheerful nightcam:-
The camera feeds into a small televideo, meaning we can record what we see to VHS. Getting the footage from that to my laptop is a little longwinded, but it works wonderfully:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y6skMr7roc
That clip features Little-Tail, the vixen we see the most of, as she's the boldest of the trio. Should be fairly obvious why I call her that. :-p The others I've monickered Sandy and Dabs, again after physical traits. There is a dog fox, but we see so little of him I haven't been able to pick out any distinctive features to name him for. There are also cubs, going by the fact that Sandy's teats are very prominent right now. Give it a few weeks and we may well start seeing them, too. :-D
I'm currently debating setting up an LJ group or Yahoo group or something similar to share all the images and footage I collate. Things giving me pause include finding space for the material, as the avi files in particular can be quite large (biggest right now is a 9min 56sec video of Dabs foraging that weighs in at 95MB) and wondering whether there'd actually be any interest. It's not as if we're filming exotic creatures, after all - just common or garden red foxes foraging and interacting. You never know, though, it might prove popular. Thoughts on this greatly appreciated. :-)
Later days,
The Foxy Fellow |
|
|
| I had a dream... |
[Dec. 30th, 2005|09:45 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  creative | ] |
Which is nothing out of the ordinary. It wasn't a particularly spectacular dream, either - a mere few moments of racing through a town or city in the guise of a child, a clutch of shadowy, nothing-more-than-impressions-of-things-behind-me pursuers on my tail. Literally, tail. This was a furry child, a wolf most likely - my memory of the dream is sketchy, as is usually the case.
I've not had what I could term a proper furry dream before, which made this one noteworthy enough. What made it truly unique was that something about it sparked my creative circuits, got them buzzing to such a degree that, after waking up, I spent a considerable time curled up in my bed mulling over what I'd dreamed, a large chunk of story forming around it, coalescing almost of its own volition. By the time I finally dragged my bones out of the bed I had a solid grounding for a short story in my head, all sprouted from a vivid, immediate fragment of a dream. It all felt rather unreal - still does now, actually. I mean, this kind of thing you only ever hear of anecdotally, or see in melodramatic films, not actually have happen to you...
I'm starting to type the story now, see how things go. It may end up a stand-alone thing, it may end up linked to FurryMagic; I'll just have to feel and find out. Maybe, if I'm really lucky, I'll dream the next installment tonight. You never know. :-p
Later days,
The Foxy Fellow.
PS: Doctor Who series two is looking good, not least cos it includes cat people. All right, they're almost certainly murderously evil cat people, but hey...it's furry at primetime on the BBC. How cool is THAT? :-D |
|
|
| A funny thing happened to me when I got back one night... |
[Dec. 12th, 2005|11:10 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | chipper | ] |
Saturday night, to be precise, after spending the day with Richard trying in vain to help a friend of his get a router to work with AOL. This is a Belkin router, by the way, that an assistant at PC World had insisted would work fine with AOL. Like hell it did...
Anyway, having spent a mildly frustrating day working with networks, and a pleasant evening drooling over RC's recently acquired Xbox360, I got home shortly after 10pm and went straight up to my room. Absent-minded as I am, it was quite a few minutes before I remembered I needed to check the post, in case an eBay purchase had arrived. I padded back downstairs and found it had indeed arrived - groovy. Then I noticed what it was sitting on - a fanfold printout of an unfinished story I'd written around 15 years ago, and was convinced I'd lost for good...
As it turned out, the family of a friend I've not seen for quite a while were cleaning out their attic and stumbled across this little 'manuscript' (as they called it in the accompanying christmas card) and rather kindly sent it back to us. Sometimes life can hit you with the most wonderful surprises. :-)
Naturally, I am making plans to get back in contact with that friend, Diggory by name. Also, this near-magical resurfacing of an old work set me to rummaging through a box of 3.5' disks I had to see exactly what older material I still possessed. I found very little, with got me a little worried. Then I switched to the CDs I had knocking about my room...and, aptly enough, shortly after ten Sunday evening found one crammed to the gills with stories dating back almost as far as the 'manuscript'. That was a feelgood moment, yes indeedy. :-D
Right now, I be working through all this stuff, and realising just how much my style has changed over the years. Whether I've improved or not is a different matter. :-p I like to think I'm a little more adept in my prose nowadays. Certainly it's gotten more elaborate...
I'm also debating whether or not I want to throw a sample of this stuff up on here and/or my website. Depends whether or not people really want to see how bad I used to be (and probably still am) at this writing stuff. :-p
Actually, the more I think about it, the more tempting an archive of older stuff becomes. Hmmmmmm...
Later days,
The Foxy Fellow |
|
|
| Boo-ya! |
[Nov. 27th, 2005|10:33 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | very happy indeed | ] |
Guess what?
Jenna's done! :-D
There's a wallpaper version, too, just cos I felt like it.
Do you know what?
I'm actually quite proud of her. :-)
Later days,
The Foxy Fellow |
|
|
| Brrrrrrrrrrrrr... |
[Nov. 21st, 2005|05:06 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | lethargic | ] |
It appears the weather forecasters were right - we are actually in for a cold winter this time. We're currently shrouded in freezing fog with temperatures varying from 4C in the daytime to -4c at night, and it's only November. Apparently some areas of the UK stand a 100% chance of getting snow before the week is out. I hope we're one of them - it's been too long since I've seen proper snow, as opposed to light sprinklings that last about two hours tops. I want the snows I enjoyed as a child - drifts so deep I could disappear in them when standing up; That's a winter, not the slightly wetter and slightly colder Autumns we've been getting the last few years. Although, if aforementioned light sprinklings can cause road chaos, I dread to think what actual snow would do... :-p
Harry Potter. Easily the best of the films so far, though not without faults. It certainly had much more life and energy than the Chris Columbus dull-a-thons and even Alfonso Cuaron's enjoyable effort. It had more scale and incident, as well, and some great interplay between the leads and other Hogwarts pupils, mostly involving sudden growing interests in the opposite sex. I just wish the screenplay had been more adventurous, hadn't been so intent on touching all the tome of a book's bases and made an effort to distill things a little. It moved along at a furious pace, not dwelling on anything, not character moment or set piece, which meant you got to see a heck of a lot of different things, but also that none of them were allowed much depth or texture, just the minimum then rush to the next bit. So may good moments that could have been even better, if only given a little more room to breathe. So, great film, nice way to pass two and a half hours, but I can't help feeling a bit of judicious pruning would have made it so much better.
We saw new trailers for both Narnia and Kong while we were there, and both are looking very promising indeed, to put it mildly. Roll on December! :-D
Later days,
The Foxy Fellow |
|
|
| Standard DE meanderings... |
[Nov. 16th, 2005|03:25 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | mellow | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | David Bowie - Best of Bowie | ] |
I reckon my imagination is running away with me. The daily walk route Loki and I follow takes in a local recreation ground, a place she always enjoyed going to, and was perfectly comfortable wandering around...until recently. The last week or two, she has been very reluctant to go there, and I can't for the life of me pinpoint why. I have to coax her round the field, her tail constantly against her legs, yet I can see nothing to warrant the behaviour. Now, I must note the day it started; first we encountered, at a distance, a man walking three dogs, all on leads, in Green Lane (a local farm track cum bridle path}. Rather than simply follow me through a stile onto a field route that led to the Rec, she fled 300 or more feet back down the lane. It took a real effort to coax her to me, and she was barely willing to go past the three other dogs even when I put her on her lead, something that normally boosts her confidence greatly.
A little later, I was happily collecting field mushrooms in the middle of the rec, she was sniffing around as she normally does. I look up to notice a large alsatian on a lead entering from the main path to the road, then notice Loki is nowhere to be seen. Normally when a dog she doesn't know appears, she sticks close to me and watches them - lets them make the first move then reacts accordingly. This time, she'd spooked and bolted back through the fields and Green Lane all the way home! That's between 2 and 3 miles, all told. Most definitely NOT her normal behaviour. Fortunately I always carry my mobile with me, so I could call home and ensure she was safe. I don't recall the german shephard behaving at all agressively - in fact, we'd met that dog before, at closer quarters, his owner assuring us he was just a playful softy. It may have been the horses in a paddock adjoining one corner of the rec that startled her, but they normally seem very placid animals, doing little more than graze or gaze inquisitively over the wall at us. Still, either canine or equines could have done something to scare Loki when I was engrossed with the mushrooms, if silently, as I heard nothing.
Given that she's fine until we near the Rec, I can safely assume the three dogs we met had little if nothing to do with her lingering nervousness - if they had, that area of Green Lane would be uncertain territory for her too, and it isn't. Logically, then, it's the alsatian that scared her, but then why did his owner not react at all, as far as I saw? He didn't scold his dog or call my attention to Loki's flight, so either he simply didn't care, or she'd gone before he entered the Rec. One contributing factor has to be the fact that I was recovering from a nasty cold that day, and thus well below par - I've no doubt she knew I was unwell, not at full strength, and was somewhat more on edge as a result. However, I'm operating at 95% or so now, and she's still nervous there.
So, it could have been the alsatian, it could have been the horses, although she's been close to them since and not reacted, it could have been something in a garden of one of the houses between Rec and road or - and here's where my overactive imagination is probably coming in - something else. Maybe I've been overdosing on Scream Team and Most Haunted, but her behaviour of late seems very reminiscent of how canines are reported to react to ghosts and/or haunted locales. All right, I can't imagine it very likely that something would choose to linger in a rural sports field, but this is country that's been lived in for millenia - the local hill forts and the odd long barrow and the roman villa remains are proof of that. Oh, and the day she fled home was October 31st...
Still, the alsatian remains the most likely candidate, so I'll be watching out for him, and observing Loki closely when we do meet him. If she tries to bolt, he's our dog. :-p
Changing tack now, I feel like, for no particular reason, noting the films Rich and I intend to see over the coming months:-
1) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - Obviously. :-p I'm not a huge fan of the first two, as like all Chris Columbus films they're flat, unimaginatively directed and distinctly overlit - everything's too bright and clean - but Alfonso Cuaron's 3rd installment was a definite improvement, and I'm hoping Mike Newell can continue the trend.
2) The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - All right, it's already suffering from the standard Disney self-aggrandising hyperbole, but I'm hopeful about this one. They've not done anything silly like relocate it to modern-day America, and it, from the trailer, looks suitably impressive visually. I just pray director Andrew Adamson (previously of the Shrek movies, intruigingly) manages to avoid that other Disney standard - suffocating sentiment and patronising moralising.
3) King Kong - It's Peter Jackson. Nuff said. :-D
4) V for Vendetta - All right, it doesn't come out until March 17th, but I'm already excited about it - the premise is fantastic. It's based on a graphic novel and focusses on a near-future, totalitarian Britain (not America - how refreshing!) and the vigilante (or terrorist, depending on your outlook) doing his utmost to bring the regime crashing down. It seems this involves dressing up like Guy Fawkes after he got sucked into the Matrix (black wide-brimmed hat, black cloak, black gloves, sinister Fawkes mask - it's a striking look, believe me) throwing knives around, generally kicking ass Neo-style, and blowing up random landmarks. Given it's written and produced by the brothers Wachowski and stars Hugo 'Agent Smith' Weaving, a soupcon of Matrix creeping in was probably inevitable. Hopefully they won't stuff it full of cryptic, dry-as-dust philosophising, and just let the premise breathe...
5) Doom - A little brainless demon-mashing is a good tension-reliever. {ka-chunk} :-p
Yes, we mostly go for big popcorn-fuelled crowd-pleasers. So sue us. :p
Naturally, I'll be putting my thoughts on each film up here once I've watched them.
Later days,
The Foxy Fellow |
|
|
| Just need to blow off a little steam... |
[Nov. 15th, 2005|01:48 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | aggravated | ] |
Am I the only one who thinks cinema tickets are overpriced nowadays? Last night I booked tickets for Rich and I to see the latest Harry Potter flick at our local Vue cinema this Friday evening, and it cost me £13.60! That's £6.30 per ticket with a 50p handling charge, per ticket, on top. Now, if the experience was quality, I wouldn't mind, but Vue Bristol Cribbs Causeway has its faults, aggravating ones too.
If you book online or via phone (that's providing their system doesn't keel over under the onslaught of Potterphiles, like it did yesterday - it was midnight before I was successful), you need to collect your tickets at the cinema, either from automated machines or the manned booths. All well and good, until your chosen machine only gives you one ticket, as it's run out of card. Twice that happened to us over the summer, in succession, with two different machines. Fortunately the staff at the cinema are at least a reasonable lot, if sporting about as much life as your average tree in most cases, so we still managed to see the films. Usually it's the staff at the booths that raise the bar for flat disinterest; those checking the tickets on the way to the screens do sometimes possess a little trace of character. It's worth noting they're all young - student age - even, it would seem, the supervisory staff, on the rare occasions you actually glimpse one.
At least the screening rooms are quite pleasant, and spacious, and nicely sloped to avoid Marge-like hairdos or Ascot-scale hats obscuring your view, but that's all thanks to the previous owners, Warner Village - Vue have done nothing to the place since taking over several years ago bar removing the plastic Bugs and Daffy statues from the foyer. The seats are actually very nice, almost armchair-like (courtesy of the previous tenants again) and you begin to relax. Then the lights dim, the half-full room quietens...and you find yourself sitting through 20-30 MINUTES of adverts and trailers. A smattering is fine, maybe 5-10 minutes, but HALF AN HOUR?! Your ticket says 8:30, but chances are you won't get a glimpse of the actual movie until 9:00. I must say it's more the adverts than the trailers that annoy me. I like getting a feel for the other films doing the cinematic rounds, I don't like being buried under promos for soft drinks and cars...
Talking of soft drinks - £1.85 for a 500ml Oasis?! I can get a 2 litre bottle at Tesco for £1.20...
Sadly, this place is by far the easiest and cheapest to get to when neither of you drive, and we do retain a small affection for it, seeded when it was a Warner Village (W.V. weren't great, but they did at least make a half-decent stab at providing a pleasant experience, as diametrically opposed to mechanical, soulless, utterly faceless Vue who apparently can't be bothered lest it cuts into their profit margin) and nurtured by some wonderful cinematic experiences in spite of Vue's shortcomings, namely anything with LOTR in the title, and War of the Worlds, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory...
Maybe I can talk Rich into switching to the Bristol Odeon. All right, the volume is invariably loud enough to leave me with a skull-splitting headache, it only has 3 screens, it's showing its age, and the bus fare will be a tenner return (£5 each!) on the FirstBus services from Yate (they pretty much monopolise public road transport around here, are close to doing the same with the trains, and have a horrible habit of increasing - sorry, 'revising' - prices on the slightest pretext) as opposed to about £6 return to Cribbs Causeway from our village with South Glos Bus & Coach, but maybe we can save a few pennies on tickets and refreshments. Maybe...
(Don't even mention taxies, by the way - a one-way trip to Cribbs is around £20 at the moment, and will most likely be more the next time we're forced into using one)
{exhales} That's better - nice to get that off me chest, although it'll probably be back on again after HP on Friday... If I find feedback forms lying around, I'll be making good use of one, believe you me...
On a totally different note, I've been playing around in Paint again - this is what I've so far done of the next portrait, most likely to be of Jenna, Ben's younger sister. No, she's not gonna be wearing anything bar her pure white fur; and no, like Vee, nothing will be showing - thick pelt, yadda yadda yadda. :-p
Critiques welcome, as always. :-)
Later days,
The Foxy Fellow |
|
|
| Explanations |
[Nov. 8th, 2005|10:14 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  sleepy | ] |
Only brief ones, as I'm knackered, but here goes...
Put simply, my prolonged absences are always a result of one of, or both of, two things:-
1) A habit of retreating into my shell and letting the world drift by born of my schooldays. I found it was the best way of surviving. To draw attention to myself, quirky creature that I was and still am, was asking for trouble. I got off with only relatively light bullying during my five years at KLB, but it was still enough to make the naive, shy little innocent clam up completely. I still do it quite a bit today, much to my frustration, and rarely for any good reason...
2) Depression. I suffered heavily from it at the beginning of this year, and although over the worst of it the odd mild to moderate relapse does occur. They're slowly becoming less frequent though, so that's a definite plus.
All in all, this makes me a spectacularly unreliable friend, so why the likes of Rich, Eddie and Justin (Threetails) stick with me rather confuses me. Can't say I'm not glad they do, though. :-)
Justin, you will get an e-mail soon, probably overflowing with profuse apologies for disappearing like I did. Quasi and Tyke I've done a disservice by friending on LJ, but not really ever talking to them. I feel a need to rectify that, but if you both prefer I just fade away, that's fine too. :-)
Now excuse me while I collapse into my bed. I'm gonna sleep well tonight...
Later days,
The Foxy Fellow. |
|
|
| The delights of dog ownership. :-p |
[Jul. 19th, 2005|04:34 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | chipper | ] |
All that took a lot of soaking and scrubbing off, believe me...
Course, I then had to wring my clothes out and soak and scrub myself down, too...
I love dogs! :-p
Friends-only entry containing fresh literary goodness should follow fairly shortly, as long I as knuckle down...
Later days,
The Foxy Fellow |
|
|
| When you're hot, you're hot! |
[Jun. 8th, 2005|10:56 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | creative | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Chesney Hawkes - The One And Only | ] |
I seem to be brimming with ideas at the moment. :-)
I've added a new chapter to StarFox Adventures (check me site), FurryMagic version #189326439286493874 is evolving nicely, and Saxon Gate has just sprung back into life. The latter is the most likely to gain a new chapter now, along with slightly revised versions of the first two, incorporating a new running theme I've developed. Y'see, there have been road works outside our house for a few days, working on the sewerage system, with which we have had problems since moving here 14-15 years ago, complete with temporary traffic lights. The latter were the spark for the new idea, conceived of on more than one dead of night walk back from Mr Clark's, the lights glowing steadily ahead of me. Not wanting to spoil things for those actually interested in my oddball little horror tale, suffice it to say the beautifully simple symbolism of them greatly appealed to me, and thus they found a way in. You'll see what I mean before long. {mysterious smile}
Elsewhere, the moorhens are doing spectacularly well, having spawned six fast-growing chicks already, and are now starting on brood number two. We're gonna be overrun with little black featherballs before long. :-D Also, we're starting to get some squirrel activity in our garden - we may actually end up with a resident rodent or two by the end of the summer. What a year this is turning out to be for the wildlife fanatic in me. :-)
Next thing you know I'll be holding a fox...
Nah. :-p
Later days,
The Foxy Fellow |
|
|
| Yet another meme swiped from a friend's journal. :-p |
[Apr. 25th, 2005|04:15 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | chipper | ] |
You're a little gold key, and you unlock other
people's hearts. Your kindness and willingness
to be there for those you care about lets
people open up to you knowing they will be
accepted. People will rely on you, but be
careful not to give more than you have.
What sort of key are you and what do you unlock?
brought to you by Quizilla
Sounds too good to be me... Ah ,well.
I'm half-tempted to do one of these meself should I ever get FurryMagic's character list fixed. All right, it's highly unlikely anyone would ever take it, but it'd be a fun exercise all the same. I'll stick it on my 'mull over' list for now.
Quick summary of news: I now know there to be six fox cubs, not four; I have finally acquired a replacement
laptop, a Compaq Presario; still beavering away at the latest incarnation of FurryMagic, determined to post at least semi-regularly to this journal (friends only); and that's about it...
Later days,
The Foxy Fellow |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
foxyfellowuk's journal