Melissa

Pretty, pretty time

2008-09-06T14:42:40Z

Right, this weekend shall be a wonderful voyage of prettification, I have decided. Today, I shall go out to buy ribbons and beads to make a gorgeous lanyard on which to hang my ID badge. The uniform at work is terrible. Black cardigan, white, sack-like shirt, black bottoms and plain socks and shoes, just like a school uniform. I feel so bland, now I can't wear purple shoes and rainbow-striped socks. (No, I have no sense of colour coordination. I just like pretty colours.)

However, there are loopholes! Precious loopholes, that insist that ID must be prominently displayed, but don't state what on. Thus, I shall push the boundaries and bring some colour into my life!

Apart from that, this LJ is incredibly dull-looking. What I need is MORE pretty icons, MORE exciting HTML in my profile, and MORE pretty pictures. That is, if my one-track mind isn't side tracked again.

Hey! I remembered my password!

2008-09-04T22:34:33Z

Wow, it's been forever since I've posted here. My one track mind got sidetracked by my sudden discovery of the wonderful world of RP.

For anyone who actually remembers me from when I was active, I still haven't made it to NZ, though the relatives did congregate on me for the last few weeks. Eight people in a three bedroom house is an... interesting experience, to say the least. I'm now a receptionist at a Dental teaching hospital, dealing with the wonderful British public. Some people...

Okay, I can understand being a bit late for your appointment. I've done it myself, woken up late, missed the bus, forgotten until 5 minutes before time. But who in their right mind turns up at 11.30, says "Oh, my appointment was at 9, but I had to drop the kids off", eating a McDonalds?! And then has the temerity to get shirty when I tell then they're likely not going to get seen?!

Oooh, it makes me mad. Thankfully, RP provides a lovely outlet in the form of Dilandau Albatou, a fight-picking, back-stabbing, selfish little pretty-boy, who lets me let out all my rage on the innocent. Far better than swearing in front of all the kiddies in the waiting area, though that options tempts me daily.

She's alive......

2008-03-06T23:11:58Z

Ah dear, this has been a rough time. So, it seems that the reason I crashed and burned during uni is depression, which was diagnosed 3 months ago and I'm just awaiting treatment for at the local loony bin. I can't go to NZ yet because I'm too ill to leave the country. SO I'm saving up money from my job and plodding along, until my mother decided to chat. oh god, that was not a fun conversation.
So, she and my dad want to move out of our house. This house is a pile of crap, if you'll excuse my language. It's leaky, cold, has thin walls and is situated in an area with one of the worst gang problems in London. I don't go out at night because of the thought of walking back home. I hate my area, I hate my neighbours, I hate the fact that I feel hemmed in. But still, I've lived here since I was three weeks old and it's familiar. Even though outside is horrific I still have my little safe space and I know my way around.

And even worse, my poor brother is now so ill with his OCD that he can't go to France. My poor little boy He's going to have to repeat a year at uni and he can't come home because this place triggers him and he'll have to move oone of the ut of his house soon.

And lastly I've been wheezing for a week. the physical symptoms of my mental illness is that I breathe extremely shallowly, resulting in the aveoli of my lungs collapsing. Every now and then I realise I haven't breathed enough and suddenly let out this great gaspy wheeze. I've been getting some odd looks at work about that.

Oh, and today was going so well at work too

Okay, that's enough whining

Viva voce

2007-06-22T19:02:17Z

Remember my last post, where I was writing sparkly text to celebrate the fact I completed degree? Well today I got a phone call, the gist of which was "Surprise! We're giving you another exam! Come back in a week and stand in front of all the examiners as they ask you questions about anything from your degree!"

My response can be summed up thus:

squiggle_bat @ 2007-06-07T21:31:00

2007-06-07T20:42:08Z

I've finally completed my degree!!!!!!!!

Given how I bombed these two papers, I'm probably going to end up with a 2:2 at the best rather than keep my 2:1 average from last year, but who cares, it's still a MBioch and I'm done!

Sometimes I'm glad to have siblings

2007-06-04T22:16:54Z

I'm feeling much happier now I've had a chat with my little sister, who was stuck on some work on stem cells. My confidence is restored by my ability to do Year 10 homework. Though I'm sure she regretted it after hearing me go "I think I've got some lecture notes somewhere..." after 10 minutes of spouting stuff off the top of my head.

1 down, 1 to go.

2007-06-04T17:00:56Z

Gah! What is wrong with me? You'd think I'd be able to concentrate in my actual Finals, but no, instead I find myself scribbling three sentences and then zoning out for 10 minutes. Damn, I completely failed that paper. Whatever weird funk I've gotten into had better clear soon.

12 days until freedom

2007-05-26T22:34:32Z

Oh, I cannot wait until I finish my education. But it's a week until my first exam and 12 days until the last, so soon, soon, I shall be free. 17 years of formal education, done! I've been in a weird, depressed funk since before Easter and very nearly ended up walking out last week, but thankfully my mother managed to talk me out of it, just. But still, I really should revise. Really. Possibly it would have been better to have started 3 months ago, but it's too late now. I've completed 82% of my course so as long as I can cram 4 essays-worth of knowledge before Monday, I shall survive.

But what's getting me through is daydreaming about what I shall do with my glorious freedom. The last week of term shall be dedicated to:

Getting a fancy new haircut, not just trimming my split ends with nail scissors
Going to see PotC3
Finally getting round to entering the Bodlean Library (since the Science section is kept in a separate building to the pretty one) and all the glorious other bits of architecture I've been ignoring for the past 4 years
SItting down to draw some more comics
Removing my old DevientArt profile, recreating a shiny, new identity there, and redoing my lovingly drawn, but perspective-challenged, Robin Hobb fanart.
Writing a CV.

And then it's back home to London, where I plan to live with my parents, get some temping work that involves minimal brain activity (Filing? Spreadsheets? Uncomplicated bliss!) and save up for a nice adventure to NZ and some neighbouring parts.

Eurovision!

2007-05-13T17:46:36Z

Oh, it was so beautifully, beautifully camp. I'm not sure what I loved best, but the Ukraine tinfoil-crossdressing, the French mockery of English pronounciations, the German swing and the hot retro Swedish guy were definite highlights.

And the UK beat Ireland and er, well, we didn't come last, at least. Damn, but that Irish girl was awful.

squiggle_bat @ 2007-05-10T01:21:00

2007-05-10T00:51:09Z

Since May time means ~~procrastination~~ revision time, I've been digging through my piles of ~~hoarded crap~~ vital work and happened to find my old sketch pad with what was, at one point, going to be the comic strip version of Frustration, until I realised that this really, really didn't work. However, I'm still fond of these panels, so I thought I'd ~~spam~~ share:

Fun as it is, having humourous panels detracts completely from any tense atmosphere that the text boxes are trying to evoke.

And just because I love 'em, here's Dilandau Albatou and a young Folken Fanel from Escaflowne

He's narcissistic! Pyromaniac! overly-violent! Bitch-slapping! Gender-bending! Tiara-sporting! Albino! How could you not love him?

Pre facial tattoos, mullet, big leather cloak and earrings.

Soap opera days

2007-04-05T02:04:31Z

So what exactly is one supposed to write when secretly contacting their long-lost half brother? "Hi, I'm your sister" feels somehow a bit too abrupt. Ah well, 4 hours of avoidance hasn't given me a better opener.

I'm not dead...

2007-03-08T14:27:28Z

... I just swore that I wouldn't distract myself with the Internet until I finished my lab project.

Admittedly, I thought it would have been over last year, but I seriously underestimated the time and tediousness of the writeup process. And now the deadline looms, loomily, though not as badly as the one in an hour which is about to fly merrily by me. It would have been fine if I hadn't made a STUPID SCHOOLCHILD ERROR when reading one of my graphs that made all of my results GARBAGE. Every. Single. One. It took me 12 hours of recalculations to fix it last week, but they're all correct now. Of course, my conclusions are no longer valid and because I've spent all my time correcting this I haven't been working on an extended essay which I was supposed to hand the first draft of in today and now it looks like a complete pile of pig crap and oh, my supervisor is going to hate me since I sent him an e-mail having to beg for an extra 12 hours.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH *clutches head*

But the vacation starts in two days. Just two days and I can be home. Working on all the same stuff I am now without the benefit of libraries or my own room.

Ah well, only 4 months and then I graduate. And then I get a job. But no lab work, because while that was fun in its own way I've proven conclusively that I have fundamentally the wrong type of personality to go into proper academia.

Fuck, I really should have sorted out a job 6 months ago. "I'm going to go to NZ for a few years to see my grandparents!" isn't much of a life plan when you have less than £0 in the bank AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH :'(

Internet! hugs

2006-09-14T10:51:16Z

Waah, I'm going back to uni on Saturday and I don't know where most of my clothes are! How am I supposed to work with actual people when I only have three pairs of trousers?

Worrying about things like this takes my mind of of thoughts such as "How am I supposed to work in a lab full of expensive equipment when I'm at the bottom of the learning curve and am prone to knocking things over when nervous?"

These last few days have been mad. On Saturday I was invited to a party with my friends from 6th form and ended up getting stupidly drunk, despite the fact I was coaching it to Oxford the next day and hadn't touched a drop since mid-June. I wasn't planning to, it was just that Alejandro's mother kept on walking up to me with alcohol, talling me I was like a second daughter to her and insisting I had some more drink. She's lovely, but scary; I couldn't say no. Here's a picture of all my pretty friends behind the cut:

So, on Sunday, I was planning to go up to Oxford in the morning and drop off a load of my belongings at a friend's house. Instead I wake up with the hangover of DOOM at Alej's place and wince home, trying not to let the vibrations of the bus overcome me. Valiently I gritted my teeth and started to pack my suitcase, but discovered to my horror that the printer took up 2/3 of the room and all the bedding took up the rest of the space, meaning the trip resulted in much less being transported than I hoped. By 3pm I was able to face the journey so coached off and ended up staying the night there. I didn't actually get home again till 9pm Monday.

I'm so jealous of E's housemate. He's got all of the Red Dwarf DVDs signed by the castmembers and was happily showing off pictures of himself at the signing with them after I made the muffled squee. He's agreed to let me borrow series VIII, so at last I'll watch it! (OK, I fixed him with the obsessive fan-stare and he didn't refuse when I begged.)

The last few days have been spent returning books to their libraries, catching up with people and all those other activities that need to be done before moving to another city. My fanwork will probably pick up the pace again, as it seems that I tend to do most when I've got actual deadlines for other things that I need to be distracted from. Let's just hope the IT folks at college are actually there to approve my computer for the network, since I'm going back 2 weeks before the official term start date.

Red Dwarf fic: Frustration (R/L)

2006-09-14T10:16:29Z

Title: Frustration
Fandom: Red Dwarf
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Rimmer/ Lister (of sorts)
Disclaimer: Red dwarf and all associated characters do not belong to me and I make no money with this.
Notes: Thankyou to roadstergal for betaing this story! She's done a wonderful job whacking my stuff into shape, but I'm afraid that I'll have to claim all the errors for myself.

He knew the others were talking about him, and he hated it.

He hated them all, the way they whispered and glanced at him askance when they thought he was looking the other way. He hated the way they subtly shifted away whenever he walked past, like there was a danger that any accidental contact would cause him to lose control again.

He couldn’t even confront them about their intolerable behaviour, as they were just discreet enough that his complaints would sound pathetic if spoken aloud. Cat had always insulted him, like he did the others, but never with such pointed disgust. Kryten, being a cleaning mechanoid, had always fought the losing battle against hygiene aboard ship. Just because he happened to wipe whatever Rimmer touched immediately after he moved away – well, that could be chalked up to coincidence, couldn’t it? Lister had ignored him often enough in the past, but the mischievous twinkle in his eyes, showing he was aware of exactly how much Rimmer was being wound up, had been replaced by a clench-jawed hardness of manner.

No matter. Even if he had complained, they might have felt the need to bring up certain past behaviour of his own in retaliation - behaviour he was trying very hard not to consider the implications of...

.....

It never would have happened on Red Dwarf. If the tension became unbearable there he would just escape for a few weeks, letting the vast emptiness put all of their petty arguments into perspective. Wandering through a deserted city-ship that should have been teeming with life brought home how precious even the most smeggy of company could be. All they had in the universe was each other.

There’d been a certain safety in the loneliness, a sense that they’d never be able to be betrayed as badly as if they were among others. For the first time Rimmer was able to spill out his deepest secrets, his hidden desires, safe in the knowledge that Lister would never be able to use them to harm him. Rimmer had no career prospects to be ruined anymore (even if some would argue he never had any in the first place, he would have ignored them, before), no romantic liaisons to be disrupted and no social groups to be laughed out of. Lister had, surprisingly, not turned away in disgust, though he’d heard many things that had disgusted him. And though he’d teased Rimmer at times about what he heard, he never used it to crush the other man. In the end, it didn’t matter if Lister had gossiped to the others; Holly already knew everything about him, Cat wouldn’t have understood and Kryten probably wouldn’t have cared. In return, Lister had opened up too. It was almost, Rimmer thought, like having a friend.

Rimmer had always thought a true friend would be someone who’d share his interests, his worldview, his background. Lister couldn’t be more different in all of those respects (a fact which frequently drove Rimmer up the wall), but at times there seemed to be a shared warmth, an understanding that made those differences unimportant.

But with the move to Starbug things had gone from one extreme to another. They were packed together like caged rats, with no room to escape, no room to truly relax, no room in which the words screamed in frustration could dissipate. There were no longer limits on what could be used as possible ammunition, and words that had been whispered in the night become weapons to tear the other apart. Although all four found themselves irritated by everyone else onboard, it soon became apparent that Rimmer was, once again, the odd one out. Gone were the heartfelt confessions, and with them the tentative beginnings of friendship. The atmosphere had soured, until it felt like the very air was poisoned by insults.

With no space in which to fully consider what was rising within him Rimmer supposed he couldn’t be completely surprised that in the heat of yet another argument with Lister he’d actually kissed the smegger. He’d grabbed that contorted face and lunged at it desperately, trying to consume the vitriol spewing forth. The feel of the stubble beneath his fingers, the wet, flinching mouth and the other man’s breath - they were all so unbearably real he lost himself completely in the sensations.

Although he had regained his ability to touch some time ago he’d restricted any intimate contact to his love dolls. But they couldn’t compare to real flesh. Their plastic scent, though far less pungent than Lister’s fear-sweat and cigarettes, could never surround him and drive him so wild. The insides of their orifices were soft and tight, but they did not retain heat like Lister’s mouth. Their limbs folded awkwardly, with seams that, though well-recessed, would still irritate the soft skin of his thighs. Lister’s body was pliable, with arms that could be forced down...

He hadn’t even realised that the shock in his gut was Lister’s fist until he curled over and retched.

Lister had scrabbled away, chest heaving erratically.

“What the smeg was that?!” Lister’s voice was weak with shock. He wiped at his mouth and tongue as if to remove the now non-existent foreign saliva. “You... you...” He swallowed. “You’ve gone space crazy”. He stared, wide-eyed, as he crawled back to the door. He didn’t remove his gaze from the heaving hologram, not trusting him to stay put. Not that he could have done anything if Rimmer had decided to keep him there; they both knew the hologram could shatter bone as easily as he did teacups when frustrated, though Rimmer’s aversion to violence had made the likelihood of that laughable. At least, that was how it had been.

Rimmer had let him leave unchallenged; he was paralysed by the realisation that he had, impossibly, made the situation even worse.

...

They hadn’t spoken for weeks, despite the fact that the bruises along Lister’s jaw had faded to a colour barely darker than the rest of his skin. They were an unspoken accusation, along with the tense line of Lister’s back, his carefully controlled breath, the even more careful shifting of his gaze. The only time Lister would respond to Rimmer was when he accidentally shattered a teacup. The ceramic tearing his matrix and the quick flinch were the only signs these days that he was still substantial, still there. It was the only sign of frustration he’d allow himself to display – if he did too much else, he feared it would make it even harder for the other man to come back to him.

He knew Lister would come back; he’d always come back, no matter what terrible things Rimmer had done in the past.

After all, as he told himself time and again, all they had in the Universe was each other.

Panic and the strange moment when fandom and RL coincide

2006-09-04T23:40:34Z

Oh dear, there's only 11 days until I go back to Uni and I've still got 5 papers left to read on biophysics. These all involve maths I've either not studied for 3 years or that is actually above the level I achieved. At least I befriended enough physicists who can explain to me exactly what the various parts mean.

Today, in an effort to work off my restless panic, I strode round for an hour until I ended up in the posh part of London, where I sat down in a cafe to do a bit of work. At some point, a pair of guys sat down next to me and started having a conversation about a visit to the Cannes Film Festival.

I look up and meet the eyes of the guy facing my direction.

It was Kenneth Branagh, the guy who played Lockart in the second HP movie.

I didn't dare look up again, embarrassed that he may somehow divine my secret.

I like to read Snape/ Lockhart slash.

It's cracktastic.

Creep out! (Melissa plays the linky game)

2006-08-29T23:44:47Z

Yay, my baby is working again *hugs laptop*. I've slowly been expanding my fic throughout the day as per Roadstergal's suggestions and am now at a whole 600 words and counting. However there won't be much more done today as listening to my dad rant at the music channels is amusing me far too much to allow me to get to grips with the mood I need.

Urgh, I creeped myself out severely last night by reading The Dinoea House. It made my skin crawl in a way that only people playing with balloons behind my head usually manage to achieve.

Of all the webcomics I was sad to miss out on when my laptop died, Friendly Hostility was the one I missed most. The pacing is a bit manic when read all at once, but for the M,W,F update schedule it's perfect, the cast are all well characterised and it's at turns hilarious and moving. </fangirl>

My baby died on me

2006-08-28T00:06:43Z

Woe. My beloved laptop has crashed. My sadness is great, as I'd so been looking forward to getting back on it again after going away for a few days. My first fanfiction in ages was being sculpted out of the ideas fermenting in my head and I had many bookmarks that urgently needed to be clicked on (alas, I can't quite remember the addresses of the 20 or so webcomics I am addicted to right now).

Now I understand why it'sprudent to back up your harddrive more often than once every 3 months.

However this makes me incredibly happy. I've fallen in love with this girl's HP art.

little thoughts

2006-08-23T22:31:50Z

My sister just walked by with a dead mouse.

Wait, she screamed. It's a live mouse, just stunned.

Just managed to convince her that the floor isn't the best place to release the mouse and perhaps it would be best to drop it outside.

Of course, the cat is prumming and fluffing and just waiting for her to drop it down so it's not going to be a live mouse much longer.

On a smutty note: If, during frottage, the "dickflesh" was ever to "commingle" I don't think the two participants would be gasping for pleasure. It's a shame really, cos the story was otherwise quite good.

Was that the clonk of the flowerpots falling over? I'm guessing the mouse has met it's fate.

Nope, the cat is back in the house, with the mouse. My sister is now being too squeamish. I suppose I'd better dispose of it.

Need concrit on fic

2006-08-20T10:51:09Z

I've been poking round my harddrive and found a mostly completed ficlet which I've been trying to polish up for the last day or so. It's been so long since I've written I can't work out if it's turned out okay. So, what do you think? Please, be brutal. I want it to be as good as I can manage to get it before I post it to any of the communities.

Frustration

He knew the others were talking about him and he hated it.

He hated them all, whispering and glancing at him askance when they thought he was looking the other way. He hated the way they subtly shifted away whenever he walked past, like there was a danger that any accidental contact would cause him to lose control again.

It never would have happened on Red Dwarf. If the tension became unbearable there he would just escape for a few weeks, letting the vast emptiness put all of their petty arguments into perspective. Wandering through a deserted city-ship that should have been teeming with life brought home how precious even the most paltry of company could be. All they had in the universe were each other.

But with the move to Starbug things had gone from one extreme to another. They were cramped together like caged rats, with no room to escape, no room to truly relax, no room in which the words screamed in frustration could dissipate. The atmosphere soured quickly until it felt like the very air was poisoned by insults.

With no space in which to fully consider what was rising within him Rimmer supposed he couldn’t be completely surprised that in the heat of yet another argument with Lister he’d actually kissed the smegger. He’d grabbed that contorted face and lunged at it desperately, almost trying to consume the vitriol spewing forth. The feel of the stubble beneath his fingers, of the wet, flinching mouth and the other man’s breath were all so unbearably real he lost himself completely in the sensations.

He hadn’t even realised that the shock in his gut was Lister’s fist until he curled over and retched.

Lister had scrabbled away, chest heaving erratically.

“What the smeg was that?!” His voice was weak with shock. He was wiping at his mouth and tongue to remove the now non-existent foreign saliva. “You... you...” He swallowed. “You’ve gone space crazy”. Wide-eyed, he stared as he crawled back to the door. He didn’t remove his gaze from the heaving hologram, not trusting him to stay put.

Rimmer had let him leave unchallenged; he was paralysed by the realisation that he had, impossibly, made the situation even worse.

cringe

2006-08-19T16:38:25Z

I just looked down on my bedroom floor and spotted the first drafts to my Jealousy comics lying on the floor in plain sight. Badly drawn, naked Red Dwarf characters in full view of anyone who walked in, including my 14 year old sister with whom I'm bunking. I've no idea how long they were there for...

Corpseberries!

2006-08-14T14:40:13Z

Or, People Make Good Fertiliser.

Brompton cemetary had the ripest, plumpest, most delicious blackberries I've seen for a long time. Mum collected two tupperware boxes full and they shall soon become crumble. For some reason people give you weird looks when you harvest food from graves. We went on a tour there yesterday and saw lots of pretty graves. I also found out that they've still got lots of room in their crypt, since the idea didn't really catch on with the Victorians. While it's a romantically tempting resting place, seeing as I've just signed my body over to medical science once I've finished with it I don't know if there'll be enough left to stick in a box, much less make it worthwhile paying out lots of money for it to be filed away.

I'm a bit torn at the moment. The blood donation charity has sent me a letter giving the times for the local blood drive, which is both a Good Thing and a Necessary Thing. However the last time I did it I had an evil nurse who wouldn't answer my questions, ignored my "owowowows" and left me. I had to get the other nurse to pull out the needle after a minute since it was left resting on a nerve or something horribly painful and I couldn't move my hand to make the blood flow. The whole thing was a horrible and humiliating experience and left me with a disgusting black bloodblister/bruise of DOOM on my arm for the next few weeks. But blood is needed and my mother is going to it, so maybe if I hold my Mummy's hand it'll all be better.

PS: If any of you are from the UK, sign up your future corpse here! The transplant service needs willing donors and frankly, after you die you won't really be needing all your bits and bobs.

Mmm, seaside rock...

2006-08-11T20:47:23Z

..I like it when my mother brings me back presents from Brighton.

Just heard on the news that Craig Charles has been nicked for his crack cocaine (HERE). He's on bail at the mo but is going to be going to trail in September. Let's just hope that whatever happens he gets some proper help for his addiction :(

I've been living in London far too long. Terror alerts result in a small shrug and a vague intention to avoid the more central tube stations just in case. I suppose spending my childhood listening to frequent bomb alert announcements on public transport due to the IRA inured me somewhat. I just hope my grandparents don't have too much trouble: they're going back to NZ next week and my grandad needs to carry quite a few medicines. I suppose they'll need to pull an all nighter before travelling since they'll be spending 12 hours on the plane with just a wallet each for entertainment.

Ahhah, now I understand what that backdated button does!

2006-08-07T22:25:35Z

Ooh, my brother is back in my good books after the mistreatment of my laptop. He sent me "Paint it Black" by the Rolling Stones, which I've quickly become obsessed by. For some reason the rest of my family objects if I leave it on repeat for an hour at a time.

In scribbly news I've ruined a comic page again with experimental colouring in. Since this was the first two panels I've been left with a bit of a vacuum, since I've completed the middle and haven't really planned out the end. I'm now really undecided as to whether the narration boxes for the beginning should be changed and have thus been feeling rather uninspired. My usual method with these comics is that I've got an idea of the emotions of all the characters and how they develop throughout, giving me the pictures, but what exactly they're saying to each other to inspire these is difficult to decide. Eh, it'll come together.

To distract myself from the silly comic I read the 6th Harry Potter book and ended up drawing this:

As you can see, the main reason I need to resist colouring in is that my technique is extremely unsophisticated, since I hated it as a child and thus never got past the "fill in blocks of colour" stage.

This is what a comic panel looks like before it's inked. This is a copy of the one I ruined and it's my baby. Look at it, it's sort of got perspective and everything. It only took me an hour to get down since I had the original to work from, but I was working on the original over 4 days. I can hardly bear to draw over the lines since it's just so gosh-darn cute.

w00t!

2006-08-04T10:47:21Z

The Government's giving me more money for next year's study! My bank balance may even come out in positive figures if I'm careful :D Never has an official letter bearing the words "Redistribution of funds" made me so happy.

Poor little brother. He got the same letter but the funds were distributed away from him. Obviously the world just loves me more. Either that or he's being punished for choosing to study French over Chemistry.

Melissa Pelissa the monster Melissa

2006-08-03T15:50:11Z

Hello there dearies, I've just gotten back from a few weeks with my Aunt's family in a small, quiet town. Any of you who've seen the Brittas Empire would know exactly what sort of town I'm talking about (my 8 year old cousin, who I introduced to the show, was exclaiming over the similarities between Whitby and her own town throughout the outdoor scenes). I've had many wonderful adventures, including:

Dying my hair purple again
Teaching cousins how to have staring contests
Beginning a comic I had no intention of doing, despite the lack of privacy associated with living with two preteens and simultaneously forgetting everything I'd planned to do with my lovely Io research
Being bitten by a pretty kitty, who finds stripy shirts offensive
buying Edward Scissorhands for a wonderfully cheap price

Ooh, I also went into Forbidden Planet, a wonderful London culty-scifi-comic store and found Red Dwarf action figures! They're only a few inches high but they had a bend at the hips. It's a shame there were none out of their boxes as I'd have so been positioning them into all sorts of fun shapes.

The Brittas Empire is still as funny as I remember it when I was a kid. This makes me happy. I'll have to start aquiring the DVDs. Of course, now I'm old enough that I won't have to be extra good in order to be allowed to stay up an extra half hour to watch them.

PS. My brother is a stinking, little bastard. The home computer broke just before I left so I gave him the password to a laptop account with three instructions: Run the virus checker every time you use the laptop, use Firefox, not IE and don't download anything. He didn't do any of that. Inconsiderate bastard. He'd also let the battery run right down too. Well he's not getting the laptop any more; I've changed all the passwords.