I *Heart* Wikipedia
Seriously - when you need to get a calendar for 1924 in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, why would anyone not love it?
All My Saturdays
Is it only me who increasingly finds weekends get lost to a general need to, well, slump after the week? Or is it simply that I'm getting old? Take today - there's a whole bunch of stuff that we need to do, some of it wedding related, some of it not, and I don't actually want to do anything. And this is just becoming par for the course when any weekend rolls around. Last Saturday was my birthday, for heaven's sake, and though I woke up full of determination to make a real day of it, to go out and *do things* both during the day and evening, by the middle of the afternoon I was looking at David and just saying "Shall we not go out tonight? Let's stay in with a nice dinner and have an early night."
God I feel old.
UPDATE: We did finally go out, and actually met up with Alice, Carlos, James, Jenni and some of the other Millarworlders for a few drinks that turned into a few more and a very very good time. Too good, in fact, for David's intention to make it to Paul's birthday party, which we both felt thoroughly wretched about.
Not Just Me Then
Today's leader in The Independent picks up on yesterday's stories about Clare Short and the suggestion that she will be punished for her disloyalty by Chief Whip Jacqui Smith by noting, among other things, that such behaviour would be a gross over-reaction to "a concerned and honest politician". (No link as it's inside the Indie's subscription section.)
Goodbye Money
So it's now exactly a month to the 'wedding', and we're progressively getting things in place. Outfits are under construction, as are rings. We've 'given notice', so the paperwork meaning that we can actually do the deed should be ready soon. I've just booked somewhere for lunch for us and the families on the day (it's just lunch - not a reception, so no, we haven't left it a bit late in the day). We have a meeting at the party venue about catering next week, and most but not yet all of the people we've invited have responded.
And I'm now resigned to the fact that for the next month and a bit, all we're going to do is pay out money. In substantial chunks. All of which will be entirely worth it of course.
Who said you can't buy happiness? 
Short Form
The news that Clare Short will stand down as MP for Birmingham Ladywood at the next election triggered what I'm going to grudgingly acknowledge was a respectful and intelligent interview on the Today programme this morning.
Short, as is often the case, sounded sombre and thoughtful, which is a sharp contrast to the popular image of her as a shrieking harpy, and while putting the knife in to Tony Blair quite effectively managed to skewer David Cameron in passing too. When asked if this was not all just sour grapes at the manner of her own treatment, she sounded dignified and utterly convincing when she said "sour grapes? This is profoundly sad, not sour grapes."
Not for the first time in her career, I find myself entirely in sympathy with her sentiments.
More Comic Stuff
I know a secret. And I'm really not allowed to tell.
But it's very cool.
Comic Stuff
A whole pile of news came out of Marvel on Monday night at the end of the Baltimore Comic Convention, with the key points as far as I'm concerned being:
Alan Davis renewing his exclusive Marvel contract and the announcement that he's going to be producing a new Clan Destine series. Which I'm very happy about.
Thor finally returns in a new series, written by J. Michael Straczynski. I'm happy about the first part of this news, and based on his recent work on Fantastic Four, decidedly 'meh' about the second.
The new team on Runaways after Brian K Vaughan and Adrain Alphona leave will be Joss Whedon and Michael Ryan. I'm very, very happy about this one, because it should mean a significant amount of attention for a series that's always deserved it and rarely got it.
So, mostly good stuuf from my point of view.
Less Glib…
As many people have done today, I've looked back at my blog for this day five years ago, and of the six postings I made during the course of the evening (I was too busy watching news from lunchtime onwards to do much writing about it), this is the one that's most resonating with me, because I'm still able to picture the images it talks about.
I'd like to discuss where we've got to five years later, but to be honest, it's just all too depressing. The cover of today's Independent summarises the last five years in statistics, and generally speaking it's not a positive view or world progress.
Lacking A Pulse
Been to the cinema this evening to see the latest US remake of a Japanese horror film, Pulse.
Let's just say that it has some interesting ideas, but it's lacking in its execution, and leave it at that.
Also, perhaps not the most appropriate day to go and see a film whose climax involves a plane crashing into a building....
Answering The Call
Twenty-odd years ago I had a protracted relationship with a role-playing game called Call of Cthulhu, set in the world of HP Lovecraft's famous stories. I ran a campaign for three friends which lasted, on the basis of a session a week, for the better part of a year, and which to this day remains the fondest memory I have of a role-playing career that took in Dungeons and Dragons, Traveller, Paranoia and a number of abortive efforts to get into less well-known systems. We created, if I can momentarily get a little full-of-ourselves, a wonderful narrative that was full of fun and drama, and which gave all concerned, as far as I know, a lot of pleasure. It was really the last significant role playing experience I had.
And now, suddenly, I'm in a Cthulhu frame of mind again. I'm not sure where it came from, and I don't quite know for certain if it'll lead to anything of consequenece, but I'm acting like a bit of an addict. I'm taking any spare time of an evening to write scenarios in a whole campaign that I've planned out, and I'm desperately trying to track down copies of the rules and various sourcebooks. I've put out a call through David to see if his role-playing mates might be interested in playing this campaign, and there's some positive responses, so it might actually happen.
Which then makes things a bit scary. Because it's twenty years since I played it, and I've never played with these people, and it might be crap. Or I might be crap at it now.
This might have been a bit of a mistake....