I finished watching Torchwood: Children of Earth last night
( Probable spoilers within )

Never has that icon been more appropriate.
For last night I went to an Ivor Cutler Tribute night at Oran Mor.
I wasn't really sure what to expect but it turned out to be exactly what I wanted. A night of various acts doing their favourite Ivor Cutler songs and poems. And mostly in a manner that Ivor Cutler would have recognised and appreciated.
True Mr. Cutler would probably have complained about the Punk version of Little Black Buzzer as it was very loud. But it also fitted rather well, if requiring slightly more practise on the ending.
My favourite bit though had to be Creative Martyrs reading lines of poetry from fruit. Simple, yet wonderfully clever and nicely done.

A fun night and I may have to hunt out Spangled Cabaret in the future. But not before I have listened to Velvet Donkey again.

Having not posted anything in ages I am falling back on a meme to fill the yawning gap in your Munchkin related waffle.
And so I asked young anthrokeight for five words to waffle about. And got quite a few more;

Sideburns
Sometime towards the begninning of the century someone we all know stupidly suggested the idea of a Victorian themed convention. And before he knew it he was doing publicity and making up stupid games on the hoof.
I, on the other hand, grew facial hair and wore hats.
And learned that this is something I am well qualified for. This facial hair took a number of different versions and seems to have stuck with me.
Which is great as otherwise I am noteworthy only for an annoying habit of insulting people while drunk and of looking like a peeved camel.
And the facial hair hides the camel face.
I first spotted this at 2Con I believe and due to living in England where no one could tell me not to I started growing sideburns.
Initially just simple sidies of a middling length. But as time progressed, gravity took hold, and as my thoughts turned to things Victorian they increased. I also drifted into more formal wear and went through a short period of fancying myself quite the Victorian Gentleman.
And confounding people in London pubs.
But time passed, the full beard appeared and, as it is much easier to care for, stayed. Now only very occasionally do the sideburns return. And not that much over the last couple of years due to certain peoples David Tennant comments.
But still, sidies are cool and make the man if you ask me.

Beer
A handy substitute for water if lost in 1392 beer is made from water, hops, barley and yeast. It has a number of interesting properties including making people so much more interesting, witty, attractive and easy to fool.
It makes me look like a camel.
Beer can be crafted by highly skilled individuals in small buildings to produce many interesting, tasty recipes with a taste for each palatte. Or mass produced by three YTS trainees and a broom in a giant vat under a motorway bridge to be as bland, tasteless and vomit inducing as possible.
Oddly the second is more popular in most of the "Developed" world these days, a fact which has made me consider moving to St. Kilda to rear Puffins.
Your nearest microbrewery almost undoubtedly makes something you will love and gladly sell children for.

Tennants does not.

sha_d
Is the username of a young lady. And much better than her original attempt at an online name which while intending to be Sha The Brewer always read to me as Shat Hebrewer.
Said LJ account is updated even less often than mine, being a victim of the too much to do, not enough time to sit down and write about it. Not least, in her case, due to the fact it is very difficult to type up a blog while knitting.

Arran
The ninth largest British island (not including Ireland) Arran sits in the middle of the Firth of Clyde and gets rained on.
My family has been going there for their holidays since time immemorial when long socks were worn with shorts and everything was oddly silent in home movies.
It is probably the easiest island to get to from Glasgow. It has numerous golf courses, sandy beaches, frighteningly cold water, more than one castle, a distillery, a brewery and a food factory where I once gave myself quite a nasty burn making mustard.
The marketing bumf calls it "Scotland In Miniature" and it is not far wrong. Even the neds are shorter.
It is also, in the right light, on the three days a year when it is dry, stunning to look at. I could stand there for hours just looking at the scenery were it not for the midges which are capable of stripping a fully grown man to the bone in less than half an hour.
Of course she might have been asking about Arran, the ancient name for an area in modern Azerbaijan, but I don't know much about that.

Really Nice Guy
Gandhi, he was pretty nice. And I am given to believe the Dalai Lama is easy to get along with. Although he did cause me several problems a few years back and has yet to apologise.
One likes to think that the majority of people, on first principles, are nice. And certainly such excursions as my recent trip to Australia seem to bear that out.
Sadly this is not always the case and human beings seem to have a startling propensity for going way over the top in retaliation which tends to hide the ninety percent of niceness.
Grrr.

Bonus: Tea
Tea is always a bonus.
Oddly enough I was more of a coffee drinker as a student. It was only when I moved down to England that I took up consumption of the herbal infusion. This was more to do with hereditary indegestion making coffee drinking a distinctly painful experience rather than the English demanding I drink tea or leave.
But it is quite the coincidence.
These days I drink vast quantities of it, even taking myself off to tea shops to try interesting and unusual teas.
Which is actually fairly pointless as I have practically no sense of taste or smell.
Still I feel better afterwards and it does go nicely with cake.

At this point I believe I am supposed to promote the "meme" by offering others five words of their own. Feel free to ask but I am lazy and slow to respond, so be warned.

I get to use my Seaguy icon for real. Huzzah!
Anywho, I have been having a bit of a comic thing of late.
Both Umbrella Academy and Seaguy have just finished their second run. Both very good and, as it turns out, more importantly, free of years of continuity you need to know.
Which is not something that can be said of the more mainstream Marvel comics.
I have recently had a go at reading some X-Men (because it was written by Joss Whedon) and some Captain Britain (because it was written by Paul Cornell). Both I enjoyed and both struck me as being well written. But on both occasions I was forced to stop at points and go googling for previous plots. Or to work out who someone was and so get an idea of what they can do.

Its perfectly fair that continuity should be referred to but these characters have been going for years, many since the sixties. And I'm not sure I can be arsed to spend the time to find it out. I have in fact just spent half an hour on the web checking that Doctor Plokta is the reference I think and not something from 1964.
It does seem that almost every story I have had a go at has, at some point, referred back to something important so it is not like I can just dive in and ignore it.

And this is why I shall never really get into the mainstream DC/Marvel comics. Of course if anyone has recommendations of books to read in a one off way I shall always gladly take them.

And so, to finish, Seaguy, Umbrella Academy and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. All have new stuff out this year. All are great. And all have only a few books of back story so easy enough to get into.

If you have not seen it may I point you in the direction of CSI and an episode called "A Space Oddity".
Yes it is a bit of a twee spoof on Star Trek but there are some excellent bits to it. Including possibly the best cameo I have seen in such things.
Silly, but worth it.