Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Rath, the Ghost of the Navigator's InsaneJournal:

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Saturday, September 6th, 2008
12:45 pm	Saucermen! RUN AWAAAAAY! (lj)oml404 told me this last night but I only just got around to checking the internet for details - Goteki have reformed! I am stupidly happy about this. Apparently, they had as much fun at their one-off show in London as I and the rest of the audience did. ^____^ New songs. More gigs! Gotekiiiiiiii! *strings self with party lights in celebration and races away to dig the CDs back out of the top of the stack, waving arms gleefully* (Also, have the Myspace page open in the other tab and the onboard player just randomly spun up Shinjuku Lullaby. ♥) Laters, Rath Current Mood: ecstatic Current Music: Goteki, Shinjuku Lullaby (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 5th, 2008
10:53 am	Forthcoming attractions Mostly for zeldenthuis, but if you need a Navigatorsghost: ( What I am doing this month. ) Laters, The Navigator Current Mood: organised Current Music: Bruce Dickinson, The Zoo (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 4th, 2008
3:30 pm	Oh, what? Further to this (pertaining to hexed weather), this (pertaining to frankly abominable weather). Happy now, Carlyon? I hope your house floods and all that you love gets soggy. Laters, Rath (PS For the atheists reading from the LJ feed, this is nothing to do with actually believing that there is a causal link between these events, and entirely to do with this demonstrating why I hate self-righteous pricks. He wanted this to happen and us all to be damp and miserable just because he's got a bee in his bonnet? He's a twat, regardless of whether his actions had any effect on the weather whatsoever...) Current Mood: vengeful Current Music: Dokken, Seven Thunders (4 Comments |Comment on this)
2:37 pm	I can't get over the background detailing, sometimes. The world is so amazing. I got caught in a magnificent, flash-flood rainstorm on my way from Downing to Kynesim HQ earlier today. That in itself would have been fine, only I was wearing heavy jeans and boots that are no longer watertight, and consequently I'm soaked and taking ages to dry. I'm sitting on the sofa in KHQ, with the laptop on my soggy lap. The fronts of my kneejoints are cold, where a draught from the open windows is blowing across the wet denim clinging to them. I can feel the heat from the laptop soaking into my thighs in weird patterns depending on exactly how much pressure it's exerting on different bits of musculature. I can smell warm, damp canvas. And when you think about it in terms of detailing, that's just incredible. I mean, an author who remembered to put in that level of accuracy about exactly what it feels like to be drying out in the office after a storm when you can't change your clothes, would be considered a great writer. A game designer who programs their worlds with that much passing, plot-irrelevant detail without sacrificing gameplay is deemed a star. And yet the universe just naturally has that much random gratuitous data in it and more, and when you think about it, isn't that awesome? I love the world. I even quite like the smell of wet denim. ^_^ Laters, The Navigator Current Mood: quixotic Current Music: Saxon, Dogs of War (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, August 29th, 2008
10:47 am	[Magic] One for the pagan types... Just saw this via (lj)nevla: Senior witch curses Ely's Cromwell re-enactment bash. Is it just me, or is telling the local news that you're going to make it piss with rain on a local educational event setting yourself up quite spectacularly in several directions at once? Especially when you're a self-proclaimed White Witch? See, this is why I don't trust the forces of Right and Good. They think that as long as they're convinced of their own righteousness they can do anything and still call themselves Good, and that worries me because it's exactly the same thinking as led to the witch-burnings he's allegedly protesting about. *mutters* No better than the Christian priest (twat!) who I met once, who proudly told me how he'd sprinkled holy water in the venue before an Inkubus Sukkubus gig to "protect" the audience... Laters, The Navigator Current Mood: annoyed Current Music: Alphaville, Fallen Angel (13 Comments |Comment on this)
9:40 am	Wait, what was that thought? So I was walking through town last night and spotted a double-decker bus with an advert on the side, as you see around English towns. My brain registered black, white, gold; sleek, hard, action-movie lines; a title, the face of the man at the bottom of the image. Thought process that followed went something like: "Ooh, Bangkok Dangerous, must make sure I don't miss that... heh, I like that tagline.[1] And ooh, Nic Cage is kinda hot in that shot - wait, what?" *headdesk* Seriously, brain. I didn't even fancy Nic Cage when he was playing Johnny Blaze, for gods' sakes! Why now? What IS it about me and asdfghj long hair on guys?! [1]A movie about a professional assassin with the tagline "It's all in the execution" is always going to have me on-side from the word go. Me and most of the voices in my head, for that matter. ^_^ *** Meanwhile, in other much more important news, I have a mysterious silver shiny in the post! And evidence suggests that this may be the fault of princess_kessie - thank you hon! *huggles* It's beautiful. ^_^ *** And now, to work, wishing all the while that someone would come round, sweep me off my feet and take me out to lunch. I'm feeling a little worn down at the moment, not to mention hungry. Where's my handsome Prince of Darkness when I need one? Laters, The Navigator Current Mood: hungry Current Music: FireHouse, Reach for the Sky (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 18th, 2008
1:45 am	This is Death, and yet I live again... It is... quarter to two, AM. Just spent a contented hour or so on my latest fic, "White Flowers" - which I will not be able to show to hardly anyone, because I know only a few people who would get it and most of them would kill me for writing it, but just working on it is making me happy anyway. Also been listening to the infamous Nordic Metal Euronymous tribute compilation and remembering exactly how much crystal-cold, razor-edged joy really good Black Metal gives me. The opening main riff of Dissection's Elizabeth Bathori makes me feel like I've just been punched in the chest from the inside and it's so glorious that it makes me want to leap to my feet and stand on the edge of a really high place and scream at the sky. This is Darkness, this is pure, this is slaughter, this is war: this is Life denied and stripped away and in Death I live again! Actually it's only a day late for this post, then; since it was two years ago yesterday that Jon Nödtveidt of Dissection was found dead by his own hand in a circle of lit candles, having left, among other things, the explanation that he was going to Transylvania. I think I have an idea of what he meant, and where he went. I hope he found everything there as he wanted it to be. So, *raises glass*: To the victorious dead! May they not so much rest in peace, but instead ride free to carry on with the battles of their choosing from here to eternity. See you on the other side I hope, you who I never had the fortune to meet on this one! Hails, The Navigator Current Mood: pagan Current Music: Nordic Metal compilation (13 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 11th, 2008
11:25 am	The Navigator's Scrapbook, #2 I had a dream last night that I was in the middle of nowhere with a few people I know, and we were looking up at the sky and I saw what must have been a million million shooting stars all at once. It was as though the whole sky had always been one great dome of clear glass, and someone had smashed it and all the pieces were falling at once. I don't know why I dreamed that, but I'm just posting it because it's the kind of image you want to remember. Having mentioned that... the rest of this post will now consist of stuff I want to show to everyone. In no particular order: I've just discovered Tiny Ghosts. This is a strange little photocomic that isn't really "comic", but a sequence of little thought-provoking two-sentence stories. Mental jumping points, if you will. Some of it is a little too sentimental for my taste (the anti-war ones and the more mawkish romantic ones in particular sometimes cross the line) but the more macabre, weird or just plain leftfield ones are great. This one in particular struck me with some nameless sense of realisation, and left me looking round like I'd just seen the world slip sideways an inch; this one feels awfully believable; this one is sheer poetry. I think my absolute favourite has, though, to be this one. Meanwhile, also in the department of visual arts, I was talking to Koi while it was sitting with its graphics tablet the other night, and asked "draw me something Black Metal?" The result? This, which is absolutely awesome though you may have to adjust your screen brightness a bit to actually see it, looking at how it's come out on the work monitor. ¬.¬ Thank you Koi! Finally, I've been haunted of late by a piece of music. I was in the cinema and caught the trailer for Babylon AD, and my ears instantly pricked up and I went "I know that piece, where do I know it from?" My brain distantly pinged a flag that said Sunshine, and, yes, it's the same piece of music that was on the trailer for that! It turns out to be called Lux Aeterna, and has appeared in about a million different guises on various movie soundtracks/trailers including Requiem for a Dream and, apparently, a trailer for The Two Towers. It's also on Youtube, where it's been used as a songvid piece for every remotely heroic/depressing fandom you can think of. Seriously, have a listen to a few of the versions. It's a gorgeous, spectral piece with a refrain that makes me think for some reason of the mirror scene at the end of Prince of Darkness - it sounds to me like a key, like a song that if played in the right place at the right moment could unlock our reality and create a gateway to another one. One where there's something that really, really wants to be on our side of the gate... and that we really, really don't want here, even if we don't know about it yet. I have no idea why this song affects me like this, but... Okay, post long enough for now... Laters, The Navigator Current Mood: thoughtful Current Music: Clint Mansell, Lux Aeterna (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 3rd, 2008
2:00 am	[Screenstuff] 3:10 to Yuma, Fearless, and other strange things from the haunted fishtank. Just watched 3:10 to Yuma with (lj)oml404 and I honestly can't recommend it highly enough. It's a classic Western of the old school, beautifully shot, laden with character and that special kind of controlled emotion that the genre does so well. Short version of the premise: a crippled war veteran whose ranch is on the verge of repossession volunteers, in exchange for the money that can save his family, to help escort a captured outlaw to the "3:10 to Yuma", the prison train that will take him up to his execution, and the long and convoluted road there causes both men to reassess their own ideas of honour, courage and loyalty. Both Christian Bale as burned-out good guy Dan Evans and Russell Crowe as charismatic, blackhearted villain Ben Wade turn in magnificent performances, and the ending moved me to the brink of tears. I won't say more because it's one I'd honestly rather people saw than were spoilered for, but it's wonderful. See it! We followed that up with Jet Li's Fearless, which while it doesn't grab me so hard as some of the Chinese epics I've seen is certainly pretty good. It doesn't quite have the emotional intensity of things like House of Flying Daggers or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - mostly, I suspect, because Jet Li's acting honestly isn't all that - but any great martial arts movie should stand or fall on its fight scenes, and in that regard Fearless delivers and how. (Although at a couple of moments I admit I was thinking "dude, this is actually just ancient and honourable Chinese version of the WWE, isn't it?") And finally, while we're talking videology - Youtube blindsided me this morning with one of the more startling things I've ever found on it. This is an old bit of camcorder footage from a Mayhem rehearsal, back in 1990 when both Euronymous and Dead were still in the band. I clicked this with interest, having seen a snippet of the footage before, and for a moment I thought it was actually some kind of joke - because - oh, just click it and you'll see. The opening segment looks like one of those dream sequences from some feelgood family movie, or possibly a Timotei advert. Like it couldn't possibly have less to do with the lords of true necro Black Metal. Except of course it isn't a joke, it's a real clip. Boys and girls, Per Yngve "Dead" Ohlin, singer for Mayhem and Morbid, suicide victim at the age of twentyone, legend of the Black Metal scene - and someone who got himself caught on camera, out of all the poses he could have been throwing, like that. Flowers in his hair, no less. Laughing in the sunshine and then ducking into the shade to join his friends and pick up the mic and sing his heart out like the world would never end. If someone had written that sequence into a Mayhem fanfic they'd have been crucified for OOC, and it's real. I love that. (I know most of you won't know or care what this is about, or why it affects me so much - but for the two or three people who will, there you go. Inner Circle Kodak moment, just for you guys. *s*) Laters, The Navigator PS - and for the one person who might want to know this, keep watching that Mayhem video if you've ever wanted a good look at Hellhammer's nipples. Seriously, I have no idea what was going on there. O_O -N. Current Mood: quixotic Current Music: A very, very badly taped version of Freezing Moon... (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 2nd, 2008
11:00 am	I'm sitting on a Saturday morning, installing software on my laptop, downloading old Vond albums from Rapidshare, and listening to Mortiis's The Grudge while I wait for Koi to get up and watch Hellraiser: Hell on Earth with me. (Yes, downloading is the root of all evil; no, my chances of picking up proper copies of the albums in question are fuck-all and they'll be second-hand anyway if I do. I will if I can.) I'm decidedly unused to this kind of mixture of privacy and free time. Usually, these days, I'm either with someone else, working, or trying to sleep. Frequently all three at once. >.> *muses* Late-era Mortiis is actually quite uneasy listening. It's always difficult to listen to something that raw when it's got that much pain and honesty screaming through it... it's like Nine Inch Nails or Type O Negative only a lot worse because I've always genuinely cared about Mortiis. There's not much more lame, I know, than wishing you could reach out to someone who's got far more fans and fame than you have, because you know you'd never get close to them without them thinking you're just another fan - but that doesn't stop me, however cliched it be, from poring over Secrets Of My Kingdom and the lyrics of the albums and thinking "yes, that, and I wish I could tell you to your face that I know it's all true!" In other news, Koi has discovered to its amusement that I can be rendered absolutely harmless and turned into a ball of fluff by the simple process of picking up my plushie skeleton and animating it in my general direction. Try it yourself next time you visit me and watch the result, I gather it's extremely entertaining. [Update: Koi has come down, flopped next to me, and glomped my arm. Typing this left handed. Laters...] The Navigator Current Mood: thoughtful Current Music: Mortiis, Decadent and Desperate (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 21st, 2008
4:51 am	Can't - get - no - sleep. For once, I did NOT ask to be awake at five in the morning. But I am. Also I think I have found the song I want to slice my own ribcage open for so I can tuck it into the cavity of my heart and never be without it. Song in question is Goteki's Shinjuku Lullaby, as if everything they've already done to me over the years wasn't enough, now there's this and it's so much of the truth and beauty of this perfect fucking perfect world that... I don't have words, and I just typoed that as "I don't have worlds", which is not right at all because the problem is more that I have too many of those. Every time I think it can't get betterworsewhatever it does, and every time is one more step towards an ultimate mystery that's an infinite number of steps away and somehow, all the same, this is progress. ...oh, and then there's a remix which may actually be more beautiful and therefore hurt more than the original. I think I want to die. Please. Now, quietly, lying in a gutter in the grey before the dawn, with the sky turning silver-blue between the tops of the skyscrapers and the gulls calling above, and this song playing in my ears. Maybe that way I'd rest in peace. I almost think I would. (Not suicidal, btw. Just want to die this way. Not the same thing. Don't worry.) The Navigator, staring at the sky and watching the neons blinking... Current Mood: wordless. this. Current Music: Goteki, Shinjuku Lullaby [Goteki's Indigo Skies remix] (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, July 18th, 2008
12:13 pm	Okay, bring on the Judas Priest jokes... I usually don't have much (any) time for Christian metal, but even I have to sit up at the idea of a Capuchin friar, aged 62, fronting a metal band. This is fantastic. The guy's not even preaching from the stage, or at least he alleges not to be. He's just a former missionary and member of a holy order who caught heavy metal and decided he had to be part of it. There are no words for how much glee I feel at this - it certainly provides good evidence for my belief that if you have metal in your blood you will find your way to it, no matter how long or circuitous or downright bizarre the route. ^_^ And, this? The fact that I'm amazed to hear something so open-minded from a Christian is probably a damning reflection on Christianity's spokespeople in general, but: "I never did it to preach, I did it because music is beautiful ... If I want to convert people, I simply want to convert them to life, to welcome life, to enjoy life ... I am religious and I am a priest but I am not doing this to convert people to Christ, to faith or the Church, but for them to try to understand life, to be able to enjoy it. Nothing more." - Friar Cesare Bonizzi Yes. YES. Because what the hell else are you supposed to be doing up on that stage? Amen, brother! Incredulously but frankly delightedly, Rath Current Mood: impressed Current Music: Nocturnal Rites, The Vision (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 14th, 2008
12:29 am	Do YOU need a new secret weapon? Are your enemies sneering at your setpiece superpowers? Are your evil plans getting you chased out of town every time swearing that you'd have got away with it if not for those damn kids? Are you so utterly losing your power to terrify, control and appal that even a bunch of dodgy internet types in V for Vendetta masks can raise the populace to laugh heartily at you? Well... get some earplugs and then pay attention, because I think I've just found the ultimate weapon of mind destruction, courtesy of the video screens in Chili's and Koi doing five seconds' work on Youtube: Ladies, gentlemen, strange androgynous things, and evil creatures one and all, I give you: The Power Of Seventies Disco Gone Horribly Wrong! (aka, the video for Sarah Brightman and Hot Gossip performing "I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper". I don't know which is harder to believe - that this exists, or that the singer was later mostly to be famous for being in Phantom of the Opera.) And with that, goodnight, and I hope very much that all of you will be humming this and then hitting yourselves in the side of the head as much as I am for the rest of the week... Laters, Rath (with stylistic and compositional support from Dr Werner Wildstrom) Current Mood: mischievous Current Music: See above (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, July 11th, 2008
3:27 pm	Dust in the throat It just opened up outside and rained so hard for a few moments. I think it's still raining, though not as hard, as I just heard a crash of thunder. Guess who came out today in shirt sleeves and without her jacket? I can tell I need regeneration, on some level, because I'm quietly praying that it will still be raining when I go out to walk home. Walking three miles in a summer storm sounds welcome, today. Laters, The Navigator So we spread like fire, like fire burns the land So we rise like steam... assemble Assemble and command. Current Mood: storm Current Music: Goteki, Steam Virus (still, and I don't know why) (8 Comments |Comment on this)
10:16 am	Things you hear in gay bars that you wouldn't hear anywhere else. So I was out with (lj)oml404 yesterday, and quite by accident we'd wound up in the neighbourhood's new gay bar (replacing the one down the road that closed the other week, apparently there is some law that there must always be one gay bar on that stretch of Newmarket Road). While I was getting drinks from the beautiful, confident-looking lass on the bar, a grinning chap just round the side of the bar from me - who'd apparently just done something impressive on the pool table, I think - broke out in a gleeful yell of "Who's your daddy?!" I smiled. He turned to the barmaid, grinning all over his face. "Come on, who's your daddy?" The barmaid grinned right back. "My wife!" You could've heard a pin drop. You could also, distantly, hear muffled Rathgiggles. PWNED. *** In other news, I gather I forgot to mention that I have yet another new journal, this one on Livejournal because I realised I needed something easier to find (and less full of total nonsense) than this one, to be my muso/band journal. So, over at (lj)faithinfire, you will now find plugs for Fire & Forget, reviews of gigs/albums/other stuff, and life-type posts such as are not too incriminating and might be of interest to someone who only knows me as "'er wot plays bass in Fire & Forget". The only thing currently in there is my review of the Iron Maiden gig last Saturday, but there will be more soon. How is everyone today? I'm bored now, someone entertain me? Cheers, Rath x Current Mood: amused Current Music: Goteki, Steam Virus (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 8th, 2008
11:18 am	Ladies and gentlemen, our fish. Last night in the Triadhouse living room: Rath: *peering at a strangely moving bottle* Why is my booze wobbling? Koi: Cos your bra isn't working properly? Rath: ...X_X BOOZE, Koi, not boobs. My boobs are not wobbling. Koi: Are you suuuure...? Rath: *looks down* Nope, all quiet on the... *momentary pause for thought* ...front. Koi: *speaking simultaneously* BREASTERN front. *evil grin* Rath: ... XD >.<   KOI-OIIII! Mikki: *helpfully* Actually, Brest was a major sea port of naval importance in World War Two... [followed by as many jokes as we could stand about the Assault on Brest, the Germans holding Brest, ad mammarium...] Thank you, I'll be here all week... save me. Love, Rath Current Mood: silly Current Music: Goteki, Steam Virus (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, June 27th, 2008
1:14 pm	YO MAMMA BELIEVES IN THE EVIL RUG! Saw Wanted last night. I have... absolutely no idea what I thought. It's completely insane. ^_^ I definitely enjoyed it, because it's slick and grimy and beautiful and filled with breathtaking stunts and gorgeous cars and highly charged gun and knife play and the kind of lush, hot, breathless over-visualisation that Bekmambetov does so well; but I'm damned if I can tell you whether it's a good movie or not. And also, the words "evil rug" are going to be a feature of my memetic vocabulary for WEEKS. >.> Meanwhile, my PC at work has started making a noise like an ailing flying saucer about to crashland five miles away. Should I be worried? ...and as I started typing this post, someone outside the window started up a barrage of light electro/trance complete with symphonic bleepy effects on what sounds like a concert-size PA. It's obviously THAT sort of day today. How is everyone? Laters, The Navigator Current Mood: amused Current Music: Futuristic noises of various sorts (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 26th, 2008
11:27 am	Whitby WGW *slumps in chair in weary relief* Done it. Me and the rest of the Fired & Forgettables are going to Whitby this October for a whole week (assuming personal circumstances don't intervene). Our lair will be a cottage with three (count 'em!) bedrooms and one sofa, though I can see me and (lj)oml404 having a very ugly fight over the room with the four-poster... However, my first priority at this stage is to buy my mum a box of chocolates and a pot plant, since it was thanks to her that we got anywhere to stay at all (its sooooo helpful having kin who live round the corner from Whitby, hehehe.) She did the necessary ringing round; I just called up now to confirm the booking and pay the deposit. Right through the conversation, I could hear the gulls screaming outside the office window of the lady I was talking to. 'm jealous, now. One of the things on my perfect-life checklist will always be "must be able to hear/watch seagulls without having to move from seat/bed/desk." But it's done, now. I'm going back to Whitby. I'm going home. And home will be full of pretty people in black and music and laughter, and it'll be Samhain, and I'll be with my band, and Wayne Hussey's allegedly headlining and it doesn't get much better than this. So. Happy. ...dammit, why am I crying? *s* Laters, Rath Current Mood: Whitbyish Current Music: Sneaky Bat Machine, More or Less (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
12:00 pm	Tracking my descent For the benefit of those who stood by me and of those who had to go to bed - I'm not dead. Hello people. *s* Thank you so much (lj)fluffymormegil, (lj)oml404 (hope you're feeling better mate!), (lj)lonescorpion raisedbymoogles, deepbluesquee, lookingforsigns and lupie_stardust for all being there for me in one capacity and another. So yeah, I got out of work at two thirty yesterday. That is, two thirty IN THE MORNING. It's quite bizarre, my IJ posts show off the descent of my brain quite neatly. First post is a simple "oh bugger, have to work late," unlocked. Second is a panicked plea for help, locked down to a few close friends. Third, completely private, is the draft of a very ill-advised email that I'm really glad I didn't send, from sometime around midnight. Oh dear. This is your brain on copy-editing... Laters, Rath Current Mood: indescribable Current Music: A-ha, Manhattan Skyline (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
3:46 pm	No Raths today... Because Rath is stuck at work and going to be here for a looooong time. O_O Ah, well. I have, lessee... Live/Insanejournals, email, A-ha, Goteki, Sneaky Bat Machine, Rosetta Stone, Alphaville, Psyclon 9, Elusive, all the tap water I can drink and a bakewell tart to keep me going. Plus a sofa to sleep on if things go really wrong. See you... later? (Anyone who leaves me comments, porn, songs on youtube, or other nice things will, however, be much loved. Thank you.) Love and argh, Rath (I do like the "busy" mood icon in this set. Cityscapes are great even in mini pixel form. I'm picturing Deathwatch working late in his Manhattan office now... actually, that's cool, he can come over here and keep me headcompany while I work too. *yoink*) Current Mood: busy Current Music: Psyclon 9, Inri (9 Comments |Comment on this)