starts with m, rhymes with funny.

(since when paris in fricking august is a good idea?)

more importantly, since i'm going with someone completely hopeless at it, it had to be somewhere i can navigate- not many cities share that distinction. certainly not this one here. (i find the fact that there are motorways running through it very disconcerting. not the only one, surely?)

(i'm missing san seb! can't someone text me if bertador signs with bjarne while i'm gone? no?)

at least i have my travelporn by alaindebotton all ready to ward off the budget airline depression. (broke my secondhand = icky rule for that one & promptly forgot about it. every summer i swear up & down i'll get my unread queue to zero at which point the tour starts, gah.)

(oh, and katla no esplodey pls.)

my love letter to cancer.

dear people, you can't prevent cancer by eating organic, exercising, smiling, listening to music or taking dietary supplements. you can't recover from it by wishing, hoping, holding hands, making a circle, praying, thinking positively, coming up with puns or chatting with others that have it. you'd do better to stop wasting your energy.

there's no noble "fight against cancer". you develop it (and there's a good chance you will, what with being multicellular & having a ridiculous life expectancy), you better be lucky enough to have the right genetic makeup, spot it early, happen to have the money and brains to seek out the best treatment possible, or you'll die. and you won't go down swinging either.

got money left over? donate it to people who do science, willya? and stop appropriating my sport. kthnxbai, A.

somewhat more lighthearted notes from the Tour:

-JC teh ebil podium h8er was that guy? oh dear.

anyway, thanks JC!

-one of those days, i'm going to write an "andy comes of age" thing. until then, the guys over at rtl.lu said it best: merci andy.

-still can't get over how bertie *glompsquish*d andy on the podium. i giggled.

-is there a particular reason why the grand duke of luxembourg is wearing the same suit he wore last year at the champs?

donne, vedete

watched the bbc p&p miniseries. it was, well, p&p.

cons: long. not enough pretty to distract. old people. the kiss at the end, ew.

pros: faithful. added material is pure crack. gratuitous darcy sequences involving water. the fact that elizabeth sings voi che sapete with silly english lyrics.

memorable quote: "wut?"

somebody stop me.

i'm contributing cat pictures to the internets?!

this was going to be a tuesday.

he's pulling a joubert here; namely the

"prometheus with TEH INVISIBLE FIRE OF DOOM"

move from the "ah-ah-uh" programme

can't be arsed to react now. sleep first.

miscellanea.

-"There is a great satisfaction in building good tools for other people to use."

Freeman Dyson

-third scandinavian movie in two days. on tv? we must be in heaven, man! sir.

anyway, one of them was this office movie of lars von trier, and i'm thinking, wow, he's tried hard with the framing but it's all so pretty so you forgive him - turns out it was shot with fixed camera & some code randomly panning, zooming etc and yeah. i like.

-appearently there are turkish people who don't blush upon hearing "inertia creeps".

(okay, it was dark. but they looked quite comfortable.)

omg.

how did the turkishES commentator learn to pronounce "Thor Hushovd"?

a little more flap on the r and ü instead of u and bit more dipthongy with the o and it'll be perfect!

may be the closest anyone ever got.

he then said "chapeau" & all my sympathy deserted me once again, but i suppose he can't really say "hats off to the man" or even "i dips me lid" - not really hat country.

still needs to come clean about the landmarks press booklet though.

(last week i went office chair shopping to IKEA; had to decide between "Karsten" and "Torbjörn". Torbjörn was less comfortable but i got him anyway because i liked the name better. 'cause who you sit on matters.)

ETA:

(i day later)

so i'm watching and i wondered, hey, what's the guy up to?

he started by butchering Jens' name and was about to launch into a sad & slowly narrated story about dead cyclists so i switched back to Int.

i switched to tr again when attacks were going and

the guy was responding to an email! about the dead cyclists! oops, sorry! it was a single cyclist!

so i switched back again.

ten minutes later, i check again, and it's showing the GC teams in position riding tempo and

the guy was talking about what Footon makes!

and and and he said

that the Footon jersey was one of the most popular!

omfg.

followup.

he likes me.

newsflash.

i always knew i was a dog person.

i didn't know that was because i am the cat.

so there's this cat in the house. will stay for a week. has a name so stupid only a human can think of it. (we spare a moment here to mourn the total cost [time, energy spent, nerve connections] of being able to recite a certain musical from start to finish. among others. ahem. least the others i regret less.)

he does all the things i do or feel like doing. (when? well. much more often than i'd like.) looks around suspiciously. a place to hide. meows. gets the wide-pupiled off-blue stare. (pretty sure mine is more of a thousand yarder, his more point blank.) finds somewhere relatively sheltered, gets in. still nervous. looks around, gets out. walks the length of the house. meows again. doesn't know this place. on alert all the time. nothing to do, even as a cat. somebody closes a door. looks up, what was that? can't beat the conditioning. danger, danger. silence. okay then. meows. starts all over again. just killing time. wish i had a way of telling him yes. yes, it will end eventually. or you'll get used to it. will be fine either way.

and here i am sitting & worrying about what he thinks of me.

wait, he doesn't worry about that. i don't think.

and what he's doing all cats do.

(and he's sitting at the threshold of the room watching me type & [i'm sure] thinking of his Name. the name with a why have you forsaken me.)