ManicWolf

Heads up that I'll be writing a small bit about the new Sherlock episode near the end of this journal, but I'll avoid mentioning any huge spoilers. It's more of a rant about a little niggle I had with it. However, if you have issues with spoilers of any kind I'd avoid reading this!

So firstly, I hope everyone had a great holiday (if you celebrated any particular holiday, that is) and New Year. I had a small and quiet Christmas with the family, as was planned. Can I just say how awesome my brother is for what he got me for Christmas? I was bummed out a few weeks ago that due to my agoraphobia and depression issues I was unable to make a Manics CD and book signing session in Birmingham. My brother - who as I've mentioned is awesome - apparently went along to the signing session and got both a CD and a book signed for me as a surprise Christmas present! Needless to say that my face was like this ---> :D for the rest of the day... hell, it's still like that now! New Year was a quiet one too. I just stayed in and watched the celebrations on TV. But all in all it was a good couple of weeks.

Onto the new Sherlock episode. I really liked it. I liked the plot, I liked the drama and the humour, I liked the array of characters, and I liked Irene Adler (note here that I have never read the books, so my opinion of her comes solely from the programme, and not to how she compares to original book character). It was good to finally have more BAMF-y and intelligent female characters. My one small - and maybe petty - niggle with Irene's character was her sexuality. Not that she was a dominatrix, but that she was (according to her own words) gay, and yet she flirted with Sherlock. Not even just on a intellectual basis, which I could understand if that was the case, but in a sexual way too. So why couldn't she have identified as bi, rather than gay?

I've seen it said that maybe she calls herself gay because she prefers women to men... but that would still make her bi generally. Gay people are exclusively attracted to same-sex people. I don't see why TV shows are always so reluctant to use that label. Why it always has to be a black and white case of straight or gay. It was the same big issue I had with Willow's character in Buffy. In the early years Willow was clearly both romantically and sexually attracted to both Xander and Oz... and yet she suddenly turned gay in the later episodes when she fell in love with Tara. Again, why did she have to change from one end of the scale to the other? Why couldn't she have just been bisexual?

Sorry, I'm ranting too much about this, but it is really something that irks me. I guess a good reason would be if Irene had never actually felt any attraction to a man before Sherlock, and so she thought was she gay before she met him. It was also interesting that Sherlock was pretty much confirmed as asexual though, albeit without explicitly using the word. With the whole "why eat if you're not hungry?" analogy (what is it with Moffat always using metaphors for sex? Dancing in Doctor Who and now eating?), and confirming that he's never had sex. Although it doesn't much help the asexual awareness if the only asexual characters on TV are generally not normal people.

Anyway, I think I've ranted enough about this. Otherwise I'll have to change my user label to "Grumpy old bi-romantic asexual rants about TV characters' sexuality (or lack thereof in some cases)"!

~ Ace.

So, remember how I said that life had a way of giving you hope and then screwing you over? Yeah...



It seems that Pongo's intestines were too damaged - probably in the car accident - to be saved. We've brought his body home and will be burying him in the back garden tomorrow, with a memorial.

Rest in peace, Pongo. We will always love and miss you. You'll always be in our hearts ♥

I've added a few photos of Pongo from over the years under the cut.I would have done more but I can't look at them without crying again, and I'm just emotionally drained right now. I think I need some sleep.

( Pongo picspam under cut )

Yup, crying again now. ;__;

~ Ace.

OK, so now apparently the vets don't think the reason that Pongo is so sick is to do with his kidneys. In fact they don't seem to be able to say what the problem is. They tried feeding him today, but apparently he just threw it up again. They've taken more blood and will be doing more tests tomorrow, but they're not even sure if that will reveal what's wrong with him.They're going to call again tomorrow and let us know if they've found anything.

Ugh, I'm just emotionally exhausted right now. I feel stuck in limbo waiting to find out stuff. The last resort, the vets said, is that if he still won't eat then they can try feeding him intravenously by putting a tube down his nose and into his stomach. Although they say that that isn't very pleasant, rather understandably, and there's still no guarantee he'll be able to keep it down. But if they can't find out the reason why then there's not much hope. He's currently starving to death because he won't eat, or can't keep down what he does eat, and it's not fair to keep him suffering. If they cant find the cause of it, and the intravenous food tube doesn't work then it looks pretty hopeless.

~ Ace.

Ones of my cats, Pongo, was apparently hit by a car last night :(

I found him in the hall, which immediately roused my suspicion since he never usually sleeps there. I damn near had a heart attack when I noticed a blood stain on the carpet and couldn't see him visibly breathing, not to mention him not moving when I touched him.

Anyway, he was very lethargic, and when he got up he walked around for a bit, slumped down again and leaked some more watery blood out, which appeared to be coming from his genitals. He keep growling or meowing when I tried to look and see where the blood was coming from.

Pongo back in March 2009:


Well of course we got him off to the vets. They do suspect he's been hit by a car and has damaged his bladder, amongst the other less serious cuts and bruises, which was why the watery blood was coming from his genitals. They're unable to tell initially, but they hope that the bladder is still in tact, and they'll be phoning later with an update.

So I'll be keeping my fingers crossed. Pongo is a tough cat, he's 9 years old and we've had him literally his whole life (he was born in our house). So I'm desperately hoping he will pull through this.



I'll add the update onto this post when we hear news.

~ Ace.

I didn't get around to putting down my thoughts for last week's Doctor Who on here, but in a nutshell I was pleasantly surprised with it. As someone who's really not that keen on the soap opera style plot twists and story arc with Melody/River I did actually surprisingly enjoy Let's Kill Hitler, despite it being a continuation of that. It was the only other episode of series 6 so far that I really enjoyed, apart from The Doctor's Wife.

Anyway, onto my thoughts about this week's episode which will contain spoilers, and some copy pasting from what I wrote on the Doctor Who LJ group squee post too! As I say, I've been feeling a bit disillusioned with series 6 so far, having only really properly enjoyed two episodes. Up until now...

( Spoilery thoughts below the cut! )

So yeah, all in all I liked that episode a lot. More so than even last week's episode. It contained most of what I like in a good Doctor Who episode. I am preparing myself for more Melody/Rover stuff to come though, so I'm not gonna get my hopes too high. I'm starting to think I may be the only one who doesn't like these long, plotty, twisty story acrs!

~ Ace.

So, 'twas my birthday yesterday, one year older, but no more mature... as I settled to down to watch The Life of Brian and some of my favourite Doctor Who episodes with my Indian takeaway and vegan birthday cake! XD I was hoping to go to Cardiff to see the Doctor Who exhibit (and just because I like Cardiff) but my agoraphobia was being pissy again so I had to put that off.

My Aunt and Uncle got me a book: The Complete Animal Encyclopaedia which is great. My Mum got me "Ed: The Milibands and the Making of a Labour Leader" by Mehdi Hasan and James Macintyre. Ok, I told myself I wasn't going to get that, and my political curiosity wasn't going to win out... so much for that resolve, dammit! It doesn't count if it's a birthday present, right? My Dad has assured me he'll post a card tomorrow. He never forgets, but is always terrible at being organised at stuff like this!

I got money from my Brother, other Aunt and as an extra from Mum, which is helpful because my keyboard is pretty much knackered (why is it when things go wrong with computers, they nearly always go wrong at the same time?!), so I'll be using some of that to buy a new keyboard. Fortunately keyboards aren't as costly as monitors. This one is still partly usable for now, just that certain keys don't register unless you really whack them (Spacebar, O, L, R, and backspace mostly, but a few others too) so when I'm typing quickly these things don't register, and I end up with one loooooong sentence, with no spaces in it, and several letters missing from each word! XD

The last bit of money went towards renewing my Lib Dem membership, which was due for renewal tomorrow, so I figured I might as well do it while I had some spare money. So it was a good birthday! :)

~ Ace.

This computer monitor I got after my old one got knackered is really bright! I always suspected my old monitor was too dark, despite having it's brightness turned up to its highest. When trying online brightness tests it was always still too dark, making it difficult to see darker pictures. This one is fine on the brightness tests, but it'll take some getting used to! Especially since all my old art, which looked fine colour-wise on my old monitor, all look too bright and washed out now. I kinda want to re-colour eveything! That's the problem with digital art I suppose, the colours look different on different monitors. You don't get that problem with traditional art.

Also, I'm gonna sign up for the Liberal Democrat conference in the Autumn since I missed the Spring one. This one's in Birmingham anyway, so it's a lot closer and more convenient. It'll be the first Lib Dem con I'll have even been to, so I'm kind of nervous and excited! Now I've just gotta decide on how many days to go for! :D

~ Ace.

Ugh, it's 5am on a Monday morning... damn insomnia! Don't you just hate it when you wake up at 2am, for no apparent reason other than your brain fucking with you, and aren't able to get back to sleep no matter what you try?

I ended up watching Mr Bean in bed, and then catching up on Have I Got News For You, which I missed earlier in the week (how awesome was Alan Johnson? It makes me miss seeing him in the Commons on the frontbench) and then gave up trying to sleep and got up.

Also I think my old computer monitor is about to crap out on me. It's been dodgy for a while, and seems to be deteriorating fast. It took 4 attempts to get it to actually turn on and show a picture earlier. The first two times; nothing, the third time it just showed a black screen with coloured splodges all over it, and then fourth time lucky it came on properly.

~ Aissa.

Keep calm and carry on?

Well, that was a craptastically disappointing day. Not only watching the party I support and believe in (yes, still, despite everything!) getting crushed in the local elections, but then, rather predictably, watching the No campaign slowly roll its way to victory in the AV referendum vote. Alright, it's been pretty obvious for the last few weeks, or even months, that things would turn out this way but that still doesn't make it sting any less when it happens.

So I have been spending the evening drowning my sorrows in comedy sci-fi by hiding in my bed, avoiding all further political stuff, and listening to the audiobook of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" which is always guaranteed to lift my mood.

I'm not sure how well the Lib Dems can bounce back from this. Nick Clegg talks about dusting ourselves off and carrying on, which all sounds so wonderfully easy and simplistic when it clearly isn't going to be. Although it's stuff like this that really makes me more determined to get over my agoraphobia so I can do more to help out in the coming years. I hated sitting back and not being able to do much this time around, especially for something I believe in so strongly, so I really want to change that in the future. Fuck knows the party'll need all the help it can get!

Well at least there is also Doctor Who tomorrow. When all else fails thank goodness there is still sci-fi to turn to!

~ Ace.

I got my postal vote for the locals and AV referendum yesterday, and filled it in today, yay! I would have gone in person to vote, but I don't trust my agoraphobia enough at the moment to ensure I'd actually be able to do that on the day, so I figured it was better to be safe than sorry.

Rather unsurprisingly to anyone that knows me I voted Liberal Democrat, even though they've got no chance here, it was more a vote of support than in any actual hope of the Lib Dem candidate winning. And a big OH HELL YES! on the voting reform referendum, which is something I care about more than the local election. Although the polls on that aren't looking great right now either :/

Other things:

I don't really celebrate Easter myself - being neither religious nor a big fan of chocolate, so I'm not really enticed by the religious aspect, or the prospect of getting egg-shaped chocolate, and my family doesn't tend to do anything for Easter anyway - therefore I know this weekend more as NEW DOCTOR WHO WEEKEND! FUCK YEAH! *Ahem* Sorry, my geekiness is showing. Of course it has been dampened by the sad news about Elisabeth Sladen. I wonder if they'll dedicate tomorrow's episode to her?

Thirdly *RANTING ANTI-MONARCHIST ALERT!* I'm rather tempted to take a holiday... to a fucking republic for the next 2 weeks! Because the news coverage here will be non-stop royal wedding bollocks for at least the next fortnight. What's that you say? People are still being massacred in Libya? We don't care about that when we have posh people getting married to look at!

So yeah, I am trying (as impossible as it is) to avoid stuff about the royal-let's-distract-everyone-from-the-econimic-woes-and-spending-cuts-wedding as much as I can. Cynical, moi? I dread the day Kate Middleton announces she is pregnant, we'll have 9 months of media obsession then, not to mention all the stuff afterwards!

And, so as not to end this on a grumpy note, I wish everyone a very happy Easter to those of you who do celebrate it, or a happy anything else you might celebrate in place of Easter tho those that don't. I'm not sure if anyone actually celebrates St George's Day (I didn't even have a clue it was tomorrow until they said so on the radio) but if you do have a great one!

~ Ace.

If I venture into the garden will the KILLER SMOG OF DOOM get me? Hmmm, I'd better equip myself first *grabs inhaler* Wish me luck!