*IS TEN THOUSAND TIMES DED*

Oh my... I cannot articulate how much I love this, mostly because I am laughing too hard. But seriously, this has just given me an entire year's worth of joy in the space of five minutes.

Okay, everyone knows The Wind Beneath My Wings, right? Here's Michael Ball's version, which I happen to like, for reference (excuse the Xena, but this was the only version of it I could find on Youtube). Classic, slow, sentimental, much loved song you can play at weddings, funerals and your Dad's sixtieth birthday bash. You know the one.

Now, here are my beloved, beloved boys Sonata Arctica (YES, the Finnish metal band, for those of you sitting at the back) doing their version of this pop classic. I... am INCOHERENT, seriously. Oh, my BOYS. This is simultaneously utterly and soaringly gorgeous and the funniest thing I have heard ALL DECADE. ~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~

Dear power metal scene, and Sonata Arctica in particular, I love you very, very much. Please do not ever, ever change, and in particular please do not ever develop ANY sense of how you look to people whose senses of the ridiculous have developed beyond the embryonic. Please keep doing wonderful, ludicrous, utterly unselfconscious things like this for ever and ever, because the world could more easily spare a million scoffers than it could spare one band THIS AWESOME. ^_^

...I would totally dance to this if it ever got played in a club. And if they play it live next time I see them, I bet I cry. ^_^

Laters,
Rath

I have NEVER needed this icon more, I swear...

So I was round at the corner shop just down from the office, getting some drinks, and happened to check the biscuit rack. I discovered not only Garibaldi biscuits (which I haven't had in years!) but... Wagon Wheels!

Now, since Wagon Wheels are practically cultural heritage if you were ever a kid in the UK, I grabbed some just for old times' sake (and also planning to introduce lookingforsigns to the concept). They're still being plugged on the strength of being basically the biggest damn biscuit known to man, but as I happened to glance at the back of the packet I noticed that they've acquired a new (to me) marketing slogan which goes:

"You've got to grin to get it in!"

I... really, WHAT? I CANNOT be the only person who reads that and thinks things that have NOTHING to do with chocolate marshmallow biscuits. Can I?

In fact, I am so convinced of this, that I am throwing this benighted gimmick out as a fic prompt to the writers on my friendslist. Any fandom, any genre, any characters of your choice, but I invite you all to, er, rise to the challenge of writing something based around that sentence (and, optionally, a packet of Wagon Wheels)...

Bring it on!

Laters,
Rath

I just had to move to sitting on a breakfast-bar-style wicker high chair at work, with my laptop, because I came back from the bathroom and found that one of my colleagues has stolen my sofa so he can play Lego Batman with the MD.

I ♥ my job.

Laters,
Rath

Can I get an OH MY FUCKING GODS from all the Lovecraft fans and giant tentaclefishoggoths on my flist, please?

Link, for clickyphobes, is to an article about an expedition to the buried, ice-covered, and geologically-shouldn't-be-there Gamburtsevs, the "ghost peaks" of Antarctica. Umm... yep.

Incidentally At The Mountains of Madness was written years before the Gamburtsevs were even discovered (in the fifties, for the record), for anyone who's counting. Hang on to your hats, believers. O_O

Laters,
Rath

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

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)