So, when Tansy wrote her best of Doctor Who this season thing I was like “over thirty points, no way I can bother doing that oh wouldn’t it be awesome with a best of VIDEO?”

So I set about to watch all thirteen episode, write down my favourite scenes, cut it into a video and upload it for you. It took me ten days. See, my lazy knows no bounds and it gets me into trouble.

And of course, when I’d finally gotten it all sorted and won over iMovie and all that? I had to try three websites before finding one that didn’t immediately delete it for copyright violations… Not sure how long these will stay up, really, and I won’t embed just in case. If they’re gone when you go to watch, let me know, I can sendspace them to you or whatever.

Kaia’s best bits of season 5, part 1.

Kaia’s best bits of season 5, part 2.

You will notice the following:

- I don’t bother with the facing and winning over the monsters thing. It’s the least interesting part of the series.
- Episodes with River Song has the most clips.
- I love Amy, but she’s kind of an asshole in the first video.
- I love Rory even more.
- Something weird happened with the “I’m the bloody queen mate, basically, I rule”. I don’t even know why, but it refused to be widescreen and thus heads are partly chopped off and everyone is really long-faced. Sorry about that.

PS. This is my sixth blog post today. Three here, two at FA blog, one at Swedish blog. I also did two hours of sewing, listened to six podcasts and edited three chapters. I’m TIRED.

Also, might need surgery or other scary procedure on my wisdom tooth. It’s horribly broken, not quite pushed up, laying on its SIDE and the roots are all fucked up. Fun times! Waiting for the referral while ouching about another wisdom tooth I pulled yesterday. Only one left after I get this one out. Maybe done with scary after that.

Not feeling too well this week, teeth aside. I’ve been working on various project, done some sewing and tomorrow Mum and I are going to the museum! But right now I just want to sleep and meh and read a book. Oh and eat something. But not in that order.

I think I’m going to eat strawberries for dinner. With icecream.

I skipped a few days and I’m therefore doing a quick recap of the last three. I have been blogging these every day in my Swedish blog, double posting was too bothersome. So, quick, quick, quick.

Day 03 – The best book you’ve read in the last 12 months

Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan and Power and Majesty by Tansy Rayner Roberts. Tender Morsels was fourteen months ago, and I’m terribly biased regarding Power and Majesty having read it several times before it was published (and Ashiol is MINE, hands off!), but I still love them more than what is probably healthy for me. For totally different reasons too.

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Day 04 – Your favorite book or series ever

Peter Pohl. Converted this to my favourite author because when I went to look up the two books of his that I love more than anything it turned out the series had FIVE books of which I only had read two, and then I fell into nostalgia about all these OTHER books of his that I love and… yeah. Sorry, though, he’s Swedish and only a few books of his are translated, and not the ones I love. Most of them exist in German though, if that helps. (It probably doesn’t.)

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Day 05 – A book or series you hate

I should really save this for later in the month because I’m not going to say a specific book here. I hate beating down on individual books, but here’s some things I hate:

Books where the woman has to be rescued/have limited choices/never makes a choice apart from what man to sleep with.
Books where sexual orientation is used as a plot device/to show oh-look-we’re-inclusive/is horribly stereotyped.
Books that claim to be feminist and or woman friendly but is really stinking of patriarchy.
Books where the heroine is doing many things (violent, tough, takes care of herself) ONLY because of sexual violence towards her in her past.
Books that could have been brilliant, had they been properly executed.
Books with endings that don’t measure up to the rest of the story. That’s just sad.

Ahem. I think you can probably guess a few books this is referring to.

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Not doing the sixth day right now, too tired.

Today it’s time for: A book or series you wish more people were reading and talking about. And you know, my first impulse was to say The Demon’s Lexicon Trilogy. Except that when I ordered the second book, The Demon’s Covenant, from Book Depository they told me that it had a sales rank of roughly 600 (now it’s 900, I suppose sales have gone down a bit), so it’s not exactly doing badly.

So I thought a bit and came up with these two books. (And yes, I know I’m cheating. Shut up.)

Going Bovine by Libba Bray.

It’s a gorgeous first-person-present-tense (which is hard!) adventure by a boy named Cameron. He’s your average lazy, sulky, pot smoking teenage boy who you rather dislike in the beginning. The story starts just as he falls ill with Mad Cow disease and you really can’t tell if the rest of the book is a) reality, b) hallucination because of the disease, or c) a bad trip.

Of course, I don’t think you CAN trip on just weed, but that’s a question for another day.

The voice in this book is unique, driven and feels so damn true. This is really how teenagers talk, except not as obnoxious. It’s funny and sad and crazy and everything in between, all at once. There’s a very amusing sidekick too, with the craziest little quirks, and really, I could read these two talking all day long, adventure or no adventure.

So yes, I’d recommend this book to anyone, except that it’s not out in paperback just yet. Still, Book Depository is ridiculous cheap and ships anywhere at no charge.

Liar by Justine Larbalestier.

This is a book I read last year and loved. It’s a bit hard to talk about because like the one above you can’t tell what’s truth and what’s not, but it’s really the reason I love it so much. This one is about Micah who is a compulsive liar. You think you’ve figured her out every twenty pages, and then she turns it all upside down and you have to start from scratch. It’s equal parts fascinating and frustrating. More fascinating, actually.

I love the voice in this book too, the lying is interesting and actually I should make a list of books with unreliable narrators in because I love them so much. Maybe after this whole blogging adventure is over. I do have a third book I’d like to put on this list, but I think I’ll save it for later in the month.

Keeping you on your toes and all. (Though, if you know me you can probably figure out which one it is.)

For today I am going to write about A book series you wish had gone on longer OR a book series you wish would just freaking end already (or both!). And let me start by saying that I always feel mean about saying that books are lacking in any way because there’s SO MUCH WORK put into each one, but I have come up with one (and a half) series that I wish would’ve ended earlier, and one that I need moooore of already.

The Protector of the Small series by Tamora Pierce (First Test, Page, Squire and Lady Knight) is a suite of books that I believe would’ve been way stronger if there had only been three, or maybe even two of them. I like the main character, Kel, a lot and especially the second and third book are quite good, but… yes. The first one is interesting but a bit longwinded, and the fourth one feels a bit after-the-fact.

(I do love that she doesn’t do the whole “fall in love with one person and living happily after” bit, and I adore Neal, Kel’s best friend. I just want to state that for the record.)

I know that Tamora Pierce is huge and that her books have an enormous following, so I feel a bit like I’m “swearing in church” as us Swedes like to say about this sort of statements, but I do think this is true! Being a bit more tightly written, and featuring a few less battles, caring of horses and riding through the kingdom might have been very good for this particular series. Brilliant even.

I also wish that J.K. Rowling had stopped at seven. I love the actual Harry Potter books, but the extra books, Quidditch Through the Ages, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Beedle the Bard? I don’t know, they’re too much. Having fictional characters writing forewords and pretending like this is a favourite book of theirs only makes me cringe. Cringe, I tell you!

So, yes. Thank you, JKR for not writing another series in the same universe, but do you have to make reference books, fake fairytales and lexicons? Please stop. I love Harry Potter, I want to keep feeling that way!

As for books I wish would go on and on? I’m going to say that I wish that Siren Beat by TansyRR would become a real book (it was released as a novella from Twelfth Planet Press), or preferably a whole bunch of books. And no, I’m not just saying that because she’s my bestie. Honest.

Tansy is an enabler. I so want to do this. I am however not crazy and won’t do it every day. I will try to do most of them, but I’m likely to miss a day or a hundred so it will be interesting to see how long it will take me to get through this whole list…

30 Days of Books (created by alg)

Day 01 – A book series you wish had gone on longer OR a book series you wish would just freaking end already (or both!)
Day 02 – A book or series you wish more people were reading and talking about
Day 03 – The best book you’ve read in the last 12 months
Day 04 – Your favorite book or series ever
Day 05 – A book or series you hate
Day 06 – Favorite book of your favorite series OR your favorite book of all time
Day 07 – Least favorite plot device employed by way too many books you actually enjoyed otherwise
Day 08 – A book everyone should read at least once
Day 09 – Best scene ever
Day 10 – A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving
Day 11 – A book that disappointed you
Day 12 – A book or series of books you’ve watched more than five times
Day 13 – Favorite childhood book OR current favorite YA book (or both!)
Day 14 – Favorite character in a book (of any sex or gender)
Day 15 – Your “comfort” book
Day 16 – Favorite poem or collection of poetry
Day 17 – Favorite story or collection of stories (short stories, novellas, novelettes, etc.)
Day 18 – Favorite beginning scene in a book
Day 19 – Favorite book cover (bonus points for posting an image!)
Day 20 – Favorite kiss
Day 21 – Favorite romantic/sexual relationship (including asexual romantic relationships)
Day 22 – Favorite non-sexual relationship (including asexual romantic relationships)
Day 23 – Most annoying character ever
Day 24 – Best quote from a novel
Day 25 – Any five books from your “to be read” stack
Day 26 – OMG WTF? OR most irritating/awful/annoying book ending
Day 27 – If a book contains ______, you will always read it (and a book or books that contain it)!
Day 28 – First favorite book or series obsession
Day 29 – Saddest character death OR best/most satisfying character death (or both!)
Day 30 – What book are you reading right now?

I’m so sad to see Eduardo leave Arsenal. He used to be this razor sharp player. He used to be somebody people looked at and said “he’s going to become something special”. That is, until he had his leg shattered by Martin Taylor from Birmingham City in 2008. The tackle was so horrendous that Sky didn’t show any repeats (sound familiar?), but if you do a Google search on his full name, Eduardo da Silva, you get a thousand hits of it. This pic was on the THIRD PAGE, because it was all injury time. And no, I’m not putting any of those on my blog because it’s nothing for those of you with a weak stomach. Here’s an example, though.. Only look if you can stomach it, don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Long story short, he was back last season, but his game had changed for the worst. It looked like he was afraid to throw himself into the game, like he avoided tackles at all costs. And sure, it’s not hard to see why, but it was heartbreaking to see. He’s not gotten better, and you could (and I do) say that the injury ruined his career. It robbed him of his touch, his ability to turn quickly and be that precise, amazing football player he once was. And now it’s offical. He’s moving to Shakhtar Donetsk in Ukraine, which is a big step down.

It’s so sad, and it makes me hate football. It can be amazing and beautiful and the best sport out there, but the ugly sides are so… ugly. I don’t just mean the injuries. The media plays a big part too, especially when they run about proclaiming over and over that “oh, it wasn’t on purpose, he’s not that kind of player”.

Tough shit. When you ruin another players career this way YOU ARE THAT KIND OF PLAYER. It doesn’t matter if you meant it or not. It’s only in sports that “I didn’t mean to” counts as an excuse. The rest of us grew out of it in middle school. And if you want to know why this sort of media coverage is so hurtful, do read Tansy’s old post on it, written right after another player of ours had HIS leg chopped off. (And there’s that theme again!)

So, yes. I’m incredibly sad to see Eduardo go, but once a gooner always a gooner. I’m pretty sure the only exception to that rule is named Ashley Cole.

This blogging every fortnight or so thing is good for me. It makes life so much more manageable. True, I blog elsewhere, but that’s not really the POINT, thank you.

Aaaanyway. We’ve had several weeks of 30°C or more weather (possibly it was 25 and up, but it was too much either way) and I’ve spent most of my time flat on my stomach on the bed, computer in front of me and cat behind me, both of us gasping for air in front of the fan. I don’t know why I’m unable to function when it’s this hot (actually, I do, it brings back bad memories), but I do know that I hate it. A lot.

My therapist is good. Some things he says are scary, but I think I need to hear them. He’s put another few diagnoses on me, which is a relief because when the psychiatrist said I was ready to work full-time I wanted to cry. At least there’s somebody who sees that I’m not well yet.

Have done a bit of pretendy work, but am now on summer leave. I started quilting over there, to get my project from a few years ago done.

My grandfather’s dementia is getting worse. On my mum’s birthday he kept asking where we were and who everyone was. It’s very sad, and doesn’t even touch on the fact that he can barely hear, see or walk. My grandmother can’t be away from home for more than an hour or two at a time, and has ot do virtually everything for him.

Seeing him like this just makes me feel that I never want to become this old. There are ninety year olds that are perfectly clear and don’t lose their memory, but I don’t think my odds are good. My grandfather, both his brothers, his mother AND my grandmother on the other side has/had some level of dementia. It’s sad and scary.

My parents went away on holiday (Austria!) and wants me to go over to their place and “check up on” my brother. He’s 25. Yes, seriously. I’m not going to and I told them as much. He would act more like an adult if they’d treat him like one. That’s what I believe.

And now my evening meds are kicking in so it’s bedtime for me. See you next month!

(All pics taken at my grandparents’ summer house two days ago.)

I listened to another episode of Fatcast. They’re up to ten now, with a couple of extra unnumbered episodes thrown in. Yesterday they talked about exercise and it was so awesome that I feel the need to tell you what they talked about. Sometimes just saying “listen to this” isn’t enough after all.

First of all I should say that they ALSO talk about why they love exercise; Lesley says she feels like a gazelle when she swooshes away on the elliptical for hours on end, and Marianne talks about how she loves running because of the impact with every step she takes, and how it makes her go “wow, I’m HEAVY, and it’s awesome”.

But the part that I found the most interesting was when they spoke about why exercise is such a double-edged sword for most people. And not even in the whole disordered eating becoming obsessed with working out kind of way.

A few things they talked about:

* How classist and ableist it is to assume that a) everyone can afford a membership to a gym, b) everyone has the TIME to go to the gym three-four or more times a week, c) everyone has the ability to run, jump, skip, etc, for hours every week. And in many cases, at least in the U.S. you need a car to get to a gym, and the less than stellar neighbourhoods has no gyms nearby. None. It’s the whole grocery store desert all over again.

* It might be sexist too, and Marianne said this bit awesomely:

“So it’s classist and it’s ableist to have all these cultural expectations that everybody is going to exercise in this one particular fashion and I would also say it’s sexist because it’s predominantly women. There was this study recently about how women past a certain age need to up their exercise an hour a day to maintain their youthful figure or whatever. And that pissed me off on so many levels, I mean, there’s so much WRONG with that kind of bullshit, both from an ageism perspective and a sexism perspective and a general fuck-off-it’s-my-body-perspective.”

* Somehow, in many ways it’s become some sort of demented truth that ONLY THE GYM counts. Like, going out dancing for three hours straight or playing football with your kids in the park doesn’t count. It has to be at the gym and it has to be torturous, apparently.

* The TV thing, and with that I mean that kids are said to spend a lot more time in front of the TV these days, and how people are horrified that it means they’re sitting still. Lesley points out that there’s like a hundred other ways this is troubling, and as somebody who watched some American kids TV with a boy I was babysitting… yeah. I agree.

* Fat people are told they have to work out to become thinner, BUT most of them have grown up learning that going outside in ill-fitting clothes (because workout wear for fats is hard to find), especially to a place where most others are fit and capable of much more than you, is a bad idea. And this is hard to re-learn.

* Just the idea of a gym, especially the big franchises are in many ways advertised as a way of losing weight, and more than that, has ads where everyone is skinny and perfect, which is a way makes you feel like, and I quote “it’s trying to erase your body and it’s trying to erase you as a physical being”.

Marianne talked further of this from a feminist perspective:

“As women we are taught that we need to minimise ourselves, that we need to, you know, take up as little space as possible, that we need to have as small of a physical body as possible and I feel very strongly that that is an actual physical manifestation of the minimising of women’s power and embodiment and self-will and all that stuff.”

So, yes. Regardless of size it’s not as easy as it sounds to “make time” for this stuff. And if you’re fat you have all this extra stuff to work through to get there. And even if you do, you are sometimes made to feel like once or twice a week isn’t enough and makes no difference so why should you bother?

I do want to point out that once you do make it to the gym there’s no pointing and laughing, there’s people of all sizes, everyone works out to the best of their abilities and the trainers (of which I’ve talked to two), while skinny and lean (the women) or ridiculously muscled and shiny (the men) do NOT talk about weightloss unless you specifically ask. They’re happy to find you a workout route that works depending on your abilities and while I was scared shitless the first time I’ve come to love that place.

And that was something I never thought I’d say.

Anyway. Listen to this episode. It’s fascinating as it talks about both the cultural expectations, about the actual physical act of making it to the gym, of alternate versions of exercise (dancing around your living room in your underwear was my favourite), of why they exercise and find it fun, and of course there is a rant about workout wear for fat people…

There’s always at least one rant. It’s awesome.

Last but not least, there’s a few programs to help you get started, if the gym is scary. Tansy talked about Life Be In It, which sounds great but has such a couch-potato-fat-hating comic on the webpage that it makes me want to hit things. I’m told there are good things about it, but as I’ve not experienced it myself I’m not sure if I should actually be linking to it. In the podcast they also talk about the Couch to 5k project, which I looked up. It sounds fairly good, but requires you to run with a stopwatch or knowing the exact distance you run, which is a bit on the obsessive side.

Anyway. Podcast. Listen.