Monthly Archives: February 2011

My Mum went in for her scheduled mammogram last week and unfortunately along with some benign cysts a patch of DCIS was revealed. Ductal Carcinoma In Situ is a sort of pre-cancer cancer, in that left alone either absolutely nothing can happen or it can kill; the data behind what is okay to leave and what should be removed is really patchy at the moment and so the doctor has recommended that my Mum have her entire breast removed, as she has had surgery twice before on this issue. Same breast, same spot.

It’s great that it’s been caught early and can be removed before it gets the chance to make a break for it and invade the rest of the body. In many ways DCIS is the “best” cancer of the breast in that it is localised and generally does not involve the chemo- or radiotherapy that is frequently needed with other forms.

My Mum is going to go on holiday for a couple of weeks and think about her options- whether to get reconstruction and if so what sort. I feel sad that this is happening again but positive in that things could be far, far worse.

Part of me wonders whether along with thinning hair and weight gain around my middle, breast related issues are something I should expect to face as I age. DCIS is not hereditary, more a side-effect of living longer and screening better, but I can’t help ponder.

NYT – Prone To Error: Earliest Steps To Find Cancer

Julian Assange: Innocent until proven guilty and all but it reeaaaally doesn’t help your case when you make statements like the ones above.

The only people who object to:

“his restricting her freedom of movement. The violence consisted in a firm hold of the injured party’s arms and a forceful spreading of her legs whilst lying on top of her and with his body weight preventing her from moving or shifting.”

“Assange deliberately consummated sexual intercourse with her by improperly exploiting that she, due to sleep, was in a helpless state.”

“Assange, who was aware that it was the expressed wish of the injured party and a prerequisite of sexual intercourse that a condom be used, still consummated unprotected sexual intercourse with her. The sexual act was designed to violate the injured party’s sexual integrity.”

are “radical feminists”? Really?

Is it that hard for some men to appreciate what bodily integrity means, what violation of boundaries means? Women are verbally and physically harassed ad infinitum it seems but groping only becomes a highlighted issue when men have to experience unwanted physical handling – Gate Rape anyone?

Until charges are made and a trial is had everything is “he said/she said” at the moment, but to put myself in the position of one of the women in question you’d better believe I would feel violated and am pleased to see that Sweden is enlightened, not radical.

The Australian – WikiLeaks founder baffled by sex assault claims
Feministing – Assange says “Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism”…
Jezebel – TSA Groping Is Business As Usual For Women

I had a shower :) I think i’ve fixed all the old archive links so hopefully all should work now.

This evening will mark my first foray into Season One of Miami Vice. Yes, I really have held off this long… More like i’ve been busy fixing the site and sleeping. Good times. Anyway, I am going to have a glass of wine and get all warm and fuzzy over Crockett and Tubbs, but especially over Crockett. Hee.

The Crockett costume is nearly complete – All I need now are the white espadrilles. I even have an actual event to wear it to – Caversham Princess’s upcoming Thirtieth. This is alas all the way off in May, so hopefully I can engineer something before then.

“That’s Tubbs, T-U-B-B-S: Tough, Unique, Bad, Bold and Sassy!”

Yesterday I met up with my Mum in Lahndahn tahn where we went for lunch at The Grill at The Dorchester. It was a great afternoon- excellent food, welcoming service and beautiful surroundings. I was rather apprehensive about going as i’m not exactly used to going to places where the cheapest room is £345 a night; also I wear bright colours and laugh effusively. I don’t fit in, and I know that when i’m nervous I have a tendency to fall over myself or spill things.

The Grill room is Scottish-themed and I got to sit on an excellently squidgy tartan-covered sofa; when I wandered to the toilets (without falling on my face – score!) there were napkins to dry your hands on (I stuffed one into my bag for memories) and seating areas to powder your nose. Proper fancy. I felt very out of place.

I had:

Roasted mackerel with Yorkshire rhubarb, chilli and mint
Roast Angus beef with Yorkshire pudding and all the trimmings
Raspberry soufflé with raspberry sorbet.

These three courses amounted to one of the best meals i’ve had. Each course was served with well-practised flair with multiple servers working as a team to get the plates onto the table, for example one person carved, another added sauce, another plated up- It was like changing a tyre in Formula One. But with less fire retardant.

The flavours in the starter were really intense yet well-balanced, with the tartness of the rhubarb working well with the oily fish; the portion was small but it didn’t matter as everything was so full on. The beef was allll kinds of brilliant- They wheeled the side of beef to the table in a giant silver dome and carved slices off for me before plating it up alongside the pudding, roast spuds, greens, parsnip, courgette and Chantenay carrots. The beef was a rich pink and perfectly medium-rare and very flavoursome.

The soufflé was, I was assured by the server, “The most raspberriest raspberry-thing you will ever taste” and was indeed so – perfectly risen, soft, smooth, pale pink gorgeousness. It definitely set a new high point for desserts.

What was particularly great about all of this is I booked through Top Table and so three courses and a glass of wine were only £27, superb value for such wonderful food and fancy-pants location.

Wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be and had a really good time – Recommended.

Ugh, going through seven years’ worth of blog entries as I edit permalinks is a bit unsettling as I re-read tales of MW#1 and The Monster.

I feel like I need a long hot shower.

Starburst by [ jeremy ] [cc]

So… Here is the new and improved (AKA actually works) nopokemeo. Proudly powered by WordPress… :)

I’m quite pleased with how it’s turned out. Lots of coding done and learning new things and re-immersion in old stuff. It keeps the spirit of the old but is brought up to WordPress speed. I’ve run through the site and tweaked what I can see I need to, but there will be things that don’t look good or right.

Some things have changed:

nopokemeo.org redirects to the blog. Hide your vulnerables when you view the site is all I can say.

The Gallery is off-line for the moment as it also runs off Moveable Type and as that is what broke during the server uprgrade it’s still fucked up. Or at least I can’t edit any of the templates. Grr.

All old links within nopoke are broken, or at least they will direct you to the old site. Sorry about that, but I can only do so much. Will get around to it over the next… while.

Things around images might look a bit “out” as the font arrangement/size is different on here. Again, give me time.

If something is broken or perhaps looks fucked on your particular flavour of OS plus browser or you DESPISE the look of something – COMMENT or EMAIL me. I care.

Is the text too large or too compact? Or perhaps you don’t like an aspect of the colour scheme. Drop me a line.

“Yeezy reupholstered my pussy”

So nopokemeo 2.0 is well under way courtesy of WordPress; am having to re-learn CSS (HORRORS) and fuck around with a lot of complicated code. Or at least it appears complicated *to me*.

Have spent the entire day learning and getting frustrated by new stuff; is satisfying as WP is nice and simple in comparison to Movable Type 5 but is a bit trying as I am actually having to use my brain. Oh dear.

Should probably get some dinner :D

It tells you how well things are going when i’ve installed a brand-new version of Movable Type 5 and am now going to try WordPress…

So the site came back, but somewhere or other a setting didn’t quite work and so I have to try and wade my way through Movable Type’s settings to try and find quite why certain pages do not publish. I am tempted to junk the whole thing and install a new version… URGH.

I suppose I can say it gives me summat to do…

Just in case you think that I and this site have fallen off the face of the planet, the server nopokemeo.org is hosted on is due for some maintenance on the night of the 17th of February.

The site will be off-line from 8pm until 9am the following morning; as I will be at work when things come back up if I need to I won’t be able to do any fixing until later on that day (Friday).

So don’t get your knickers in any sort of twisty arrangement.

Tutorial Beach – Straight From The Eighties: Miami Vice Text

Some of the men in my life…

I ask you, who needs a Valentine when you’ve the fantasy fodder as shown here:

George Clooney,
Dean Winchester,
Han Solo,
Indiana Jones,
Scott Caan,
STATHAM!
and last but not least
Sonny Crockett
(I *so* badly want that poster!)

Han and Indy have been important to me for nigh on twenty-five years; that’s what I call dedication.

I clearly have a weakness for: 1. Brunettes 2. Complex sometimes troubled men. Hmm.

coeur humain by Meul [cc]

BEHOLD:

A fake pair of Wayfarers and a metal badge make me feel like a badass. For ten minutes. As I roll around on top of my duvet cover taking photos of myself.

Photoshop filter magic and hey presto, Eighties magic…

Wait ’til I get the suit :D

Things have got to change. Haircut tomorrow.

Fuck, i’ve just thought- Is it because they’re damaged?

Miami by ewilman [cc]

This weekend I decompressed from a pretty stressful week at work by watching all of series two of Miami Vice (the S1 box set awaits). This was my first foray into Vice and I was immediately smitten; for all its pastels and girls in bikinis i’ve noticed that a great many episodes end on a downer or end sharply with no follow up as to the terrible thing that has just closed the episode. Awesome.

In many episodes I laughed and from time-to-time I also welled up, but what I did a lot of was shouting at Crockett when he hooked up with yet another bad choice on the woman front. “Now you know how it feels to be used, Crockett!” was one choice line I uttered as a rather crumpled Crockett suddenly realised he’d just been fucked (literally) by an international terrorist.

I *hate* it when that happens, don’t you?

I’ve been pondering just why it is I seem to love male fictional protagonists to the point where i’d like to dress up as them. At fifteen I weirded the crap out of my friends by dressing as The Crow for my birthday party, then it was Han Solo in my twenties. There’s something terribly beguiling about the edgy (anti-)hero, yet Crockett is a Good Guy and as much as I love to ogle him I don’t go to bed in my head with him so to speak. To actually “become” him is much more exciting.

It’s not that I don’t find him attractive, so perhaps its the dynamism, the thrusting male? I sometimes find myself identifying with the masculine, probably because I feel I don’t feel fully comfortable with my feminine side. I love putting on makeup and heels, but then again it’s because of the power aspect- Towering over others is something I really enjoy.

Am I confusing attention with power?

In my relationships I have often lacked power, or should I say I have not been assertive when I should have for my best interests. In bed i’ve not found myself very comfortable with taking control of things, but that could be down to my partners and the shitty relationships I was in?

It’s odd that I am relatively comfortable in a rubber dress that clings to every curve, choose to have deep red spiked hair and also wear bright colours, but that I have not been comfortable in any of my relationships. There’s a dichotomy going on: On the one hand I feel like I push people away with my usual dress and attitude; on the other I love dressing up, going bananas with eye makeup and costuming.

I AM CONFUSING.

In the words of Patrick Star:

You Wear It Well
DeBarge
1985

Heard this on an episode of Vice and marvelled at its awesomeness. Cheesy yet brilliant, just like the cameo of the lead singer in the episode – Tubbs gets on down to El DeBarge. A great piece of Eighties pop.

The lovely lady to the left here is modelling what is now my 1980s white blazer. Fingers crossed it: A. Makes it across the Atlantic in one piece… B. Fits. From Fashion Redemption on Etsy.

I know it’s not quite loose enough for Crockett, however I would probably wear it sans Sonny for an evening out on the tiles; i’m not sure I would do that with a properly unstructured sports jacket.

I won the replica Miami-Dade Lieutenant’s badge on eBay and so I am just waiting for all the pieces to come together, or should I say arrive in the post.

Brillig.

Here’s what I handed to the Head’s secretary today about the Academy proposition:

Letter to the Headteacher

“It has been said that becoming an Academy now will enable us as a school to take charge of our own destiny – I would counter that by saying that the idea of being “in charge” and thus in control is just an illusion, that the push towards Academy status is primarily motivated by fear. As an Outstanding school we are being “encouraged” by the Secretary of State for Education to “opt out” – Where Mr. Gove says encourage I say forced due to a lack of options, not an increase. The idea that increased choice will provide a more cost effective, better quality service than that that is currently provided by the public sector has been proved on many prior occasions to be a false one. Is competition as found in the free-market something that should be in education? I would say not.”