Books read (15-18)
Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn (2012)
The Severed Streets, Paul Cornell (2014)
Indexing, Seanan McGuire (2013)
Cuckoo Song, Frances Hardinge (2014)

Films watched (139-152) (2 at the cinema, 9 DVD, 3 tv)
Big Fish
Maps to the Stars (rewatch)
Under the Skin (rewatch)
Short Term 12
Edge of Tomorrow
Zombieland
End of Watch
To Catch a Thief
Mission Impossible IV: Ghost Protocol
The Babadook
Ghostbusters (rewatch)
Mud
Killer Joe
One Day

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (32)
Katherine Ryan (comedy, Leicester Square Theatre, London)

Had a very productive morning and late-last-night. To sort the study I moved most things into the living room, which has gone through the stage of looking worse before it gets better, and is not an absolutely higgledy piggledy tip. Still some work to do, I warned K the new housemate that I was planning to do this while she was away this weekend and she said that was ok...

The ratio of fiction to non-fiction, oversize, read/unread books has changed and they don't fit on their allocated shelves any more so I did some reorganising. The main shelves are now all fiction (with room for the anthologies). Most non-fiction has moved upstairs, I'm interested to see if it makes a difference what I read if I engage the fiction/non-fiction choice first and go to the relevant shelves rather than get distracted from worthy science by shiny fiction. Reference books (including work) and craft books (including filmmaking) stay in the study. Art books have moved to the living room where one can lounge on a sofa or at the coffee table with them.

The stationery box: two Airmail letter pads, as I said on Twitter, is probably more than I'll need in my remaining lifetime. One I inherited from my Dad. I used to get through a pad a year when my peak fanzine activity overlapped with not really having much internet. And eight ordinary writing paper pads, though the cheap ones (from Woolworths!) can be used as general paper. I can get rid of a lot of odd sized envelopes, not sure best how yet, and have a stack of blank notelets/greeting cards for a charity shop.

I loaded up the car after lunch and went first to return some curtains and buy some pillows (all went smoothly), then via C to the tip recycling centre and a huffing half hour getting rid of old pillows, bookcase, mouldy chipboard, glass, deckchair, duvets, soil and white spirit. Yay for being able to lift half a bookcase over my head. The recycling centre was full of staff in orange jackets, looking a bit like angry hornets, but helpfully calling out things to people who were wandering about confused like "Broken glass is Hardcore" and "Duvets are Bulky Items" and "Put the whole deckchair in Wood". I got rid of loads of manky rubbish that had been sitting around in the garden for a few weeks getting wet and mouldy.

Reversed the car into the garage in one clean swoop at home, no back and forths today! Cleaned the boot out, reset the car seats, and wiped down half the garage shelves ready to hold new things. Looking good!

I think the only thing that needs to be done this weekend now is laundry and a shower, and packing for work, then I can spend the rest of the afternoon/evening setting up my new phone and maybe nibbling away at another couple of areas like Gift Bags & Wrapping Paper, or craft projects, and working out where they should go. It would not be polite of me to leave the living room in this cluttered state for too long.

I have three boxes of old paper sf fanzines (i.e. ones I picked up from Memory Hole, not given contemporaneously) and another 1-2 boxes I was more an active participant with (i.e. mostly UK 1990s). I am loath to throw them out as so much effort and care went into the making of them. On the other hand, that's four boxes of paper I'll not read again and paper is heavy and my hand hurts. Does anyone still want paper fanzines? I'd be happy (especially for the 90s box) to pull out a run of Plokta, Banana Wings etc esp. if editors want some file copies. Also FAPA mailings which I think are in the loft.

It's worth an ask if there's something you want.

Books read (14)
Haunted, Chuck Palahniuk (2005)

Films watched (114-138) (18 at the cinema, 3 DVD, 4 tv) (second half of Cambridge Film Festival this month)
In Order of Disappearance (Cambridge Film Festival)
Attila Marcel (Cambridge Film Festival)
The Canal (Cambridge Film Festival)
Beloved (Cambridge Film Festival) (shorts)
M (Cambridge Film Festival) (rewatch)
Joy of Man's Desiring (Cambridge Film Festival)
Life Lessons (Cambridge Film Festival) (shorts)
20,000 Days on Earth (Cambridge Film Festival)
Stations of the Cross (Cambridge Film Festival)
Tasting Menu (Cambridge Film Festival)
Down By Law (Cambridge Film Festival)
Finsterworld (Cambridge Film Festival)
The Distance (Cambridge Film Festival)
2001: A Space Odyssey (rewatch)
Matchstick Men
A Poem in Exile (Cambridge Film Festival)
The Dance of Reality (Cambridge Film Festival)
Twins 2 (Cambridge Film Festival) (shorts)
Way of the Gun
Clue (rewatch)
Maps to the Stars
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (rewatch)
Rambo: First Blood
A Time to Kill

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (31)
Suuns (gig, Village Underground, London)

Doing Live Journal like it's 2003! After an epic battle at beckyc's I got 20 Questions right, and now it's my turn to do one.

I'm thinking of a film. Ask questions with a Yes/No answer until you can correctly guess it. With the old rules a No would mean it's someone else's turn to guess, but we're a lot quieter these days and you can probably carry on.

Edit: The Wizard of Oz, guessed by beckyc. My favourite questions were Unnatural Death + Songs.

A few years ago I was at a science fiction convention, chatting to people in the bar, and as the evening wore on I found I was in a great conversation with five of the most awesome, interesting, witty, clever women at the con! There were laughs, there was insight, it was amazing. I was obviously outclassed by these fabulous women, was grateful that they seemed to tolerate me hanging on, and glad that they liked it when I tried to contribute, even though I was the rubbish one and not really good enough for their company.

And time passed, and we kept talking, and it was gone midnight, and it was getting later, and one of us (it might have been me) said they knew it was time to go to bed, but they didn't want to leave this conversation, as they were astounded that such cool people would hang out with them. And everyone around the table agreed, but in their minds each of them had been the less cool person who was thrilled to be hanging out as equals with the awesome people. What, you too? But you're the cool one! No, you're the cool one!


I don't know what makes it such an attractive brain-trap, to think that someone is more important that you and won't want to talk to you, it's not exactly imposter syndrome, (it's maybe a fear of disturbing someone you respect? the awkwardness of making first contact even when it's someone you know?), but in a heck of a lot of cases if you're thinking it about them, it turns out they're thinking it about you.

(Also I don't want to be the cool person, I want to be the friendly approachable person)

The festival brochure came out on Friday (downloadable pdf is available from this page) and I have made my first stab at a schedule. There are forty things, clash-free as long as nothing starts late, and I can wiggle a bit, but I usually end up seeing about 25 over the 10.5 days as sometimes on the day sleep or a meal seem more necessary or I do some reviewing or interview transcribing...

This year I'm looking forward to the special streams of Gerhard Lamprecht and retro 3D, and the Catalan stream.

( cut list of 40 films )

I'm missing a couple of things I'd like to see due to clashes, and I may go back later and put asterisks by the films I'm most keen to see.

Books read (11 so far)
None. Started but have not yet finished Tristram Shandy and Ancillary Justice.

Films watched (69-77) (0 at the cinema, 8 DVD, 1 tv)
Rush
The Impostor
Moonrise Kingdom
The Act of Killing
Safety Not Guaranteed
Laughter in Paradise
Resident Evil
The Green Mile
Mystic River

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (24-24)
Rachel Parris: Live in Vegas (comedy, London)

Not a lot in June, hurt back reduced the number of trips out.

Good but difficult: The Act of Killing, The Impostor, Mystic River

Regarding yesterday's post, did I ever tell you about the new hamster? Revel passed away last summer, leaving just Humphrey the small hamster (Roborovski), and maybe sometime around Christmas Ozy bought me a new hamster as a replacement, and food and everything. She is a Syrian hamster so much bigger than Humphrey, black and white with a saddle like a Friesian cow, still not at all friendly and likes to stand rock still when I'm there as I'm a scary predator, and her name is... her name is... I've forgotten. I am a bad bad person. I came here to look it up but I paged back to Revel entries and I seem not to have mentioned her.

What is her name?
What should her name be?
Am I a bad person?

EDIT: It is Matilda. Odd name for a hamster which might be why I forgot it. Your suggestions were better :-)

Really quite belated.

Books read (9 so far)
None. Not a one. Spent more time doing online study than reading.

Films watched (36-49) (10 at the cinema, 2 DVD, 1 video, 1 stream)
Push
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier (rewatch)
5x2
Hairspray (John Waters version) (rewatch)
Noah
The Double
Upstream Color (rewatch)
Batman Begins (rewatch)
The Dark Knight (rewatch)
The Dark Knight Rises (rewatch)
The Secret of Kells
Muppets Most Wanted
Locke
It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine. plus reading and talk by Crispin Glover

Gigs, comedy, clubs etc (15-20)
Megson (gig, Royston)
Austentatious (improv, Cambridge)
Perception (exhibition, Science Centre, Cambridge)
Downing, Christ's, Emmanuel, Darwin (visit four Cambridge colleges)
Kim and Lee (gig, Histon)
Creative Cabaret (cabaret, Cambridge)

Locke was a film where most people I spoke to who had seen it had got different things or interpretations from it. A surprising amount of post-film discussion for something that seemed so straightforward (a man leaves his job, gets in his car, and drives for 85 minutes. The reasons unfold in a series of phone conversations with his family and colleagues. Tom Hardy is the only actor we see; all others are voices)

The Batman trilogy was shown at the cinema in London; 8.5 hours to sit through all of them (with short breaks). Worth it to see the things that were set up near the beginning of the first pay off in the third (long after my memory had forgotten them from watching the films years apart). Lots of discussion (and arguing) of the themes of the three films, how they were different and which themes echoed right the way through all three films and several characters.