Hi. I still use LJ, follow my friends and similar, but I've moved my main host to Dreamwidth now, and am crossposting everything to here, but asking people to comment there.

Mat Bowles.

It's still fully interoperative, the OpenID comment functions there are good and improving, and I can follow everything from both sites easily.

So, most of you will have noticed that since moving in with Miss Spammy Pants I'm posting a lot less, but she's still posting lots. Now, of course, any good blogger gives away a fair bit of themselves in the persona that they blog with, but it's not the whole picture. So I thought some of you might like to know other aspects of what she's like.

Well, those of you that know me know that, well, mornings? Not really my thing. At all. Never thought I'd ever meet someone palpably worse than me. Until I moved in with her.

( She's worse than me. Really, lots lots worse )

Love you darlin.

So, having been regularly getting books out from the local library^[1], I was tempted to try the "classic" Heinlein that I'd never read. It's recommended in the Guardian's 1000 books list, the only one of his works, and as I've enjoyed^[2] many of his other books, even those dated, I finally got around to taking it out and trying to read it.

It's the revised 'preferred' version, so it's long for a Heinlein and, apart from the obvious not aged very well problem, it seems to suffer in some way. I'm not, actually, enjoying it. I'm about 1/3rd of the way in for those interested. So I thought I'd ask you guys what you think of him and the book.
Poll #1340941 R A Heinlein
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 38

Stranger in a Strange Land

Heinlein

[1] The only books by autopope that I haven't yet read are currently waiting for me to go pick them up. If you're not sure, let Crooked Timber explain Why you should read Charles Stross as part of their Stross book event which I linked to earlier in the week but perhaps didn't push enough. I've not had time to read all of it yet, but what I have read is cool. Especially the Nobel Laureate geeking about the parallel worlds fantasy books...

[2] I read Citizen of the Galaxy and I think a couple others as a teen, and enjoyed what I can remember, I mean to reread at some point. I've read Starship Troopers both as a teen and an adult, and find it a great fun entertaining book with some dodgy politics; I'm one of those rare beasts that prefers the film because of the politics, even if Verhoeven did mess that up quite a bit. Farnham's Freehold is, however, a bit of pulpy trash best consigned to the dustbin of outdated books.

Before I start wading through loads of links, searches and similar, is there out there somewhere a simple guide on petitioning for a town council referendum? Brighouse is part of Calderdale Metropolitan Borough, but several local towns also have their own town council.

( Not my area of expertise (yet) )
( Went to the Halifax cabinet meeting, got a result, yay! )
( And there'd be a lot of support for something I wanted to campaign for anyway )
( Any other stuff people know'd be cool )

So, today, we did go to the Library. It was shut for renovations most of the summer so I couldn't register, but it's now reopened. It is a typical small English town library, gifted to the town by the effective founder, and has an attached art gallery. It's gorgeous.

I registered (painless process all on computer), but forgot to ask how many books I'd be allowed. Given that when I grew up in Devon it was 4, Exeter uni was I think 6, and Merton in Wimbledon was similar, while browsing I chose a pile, then put several back on the shelves.

When checking out, I did ask the question. 20.

You can take out 20 books at once

Plus it's a gorgeous building, in a nice park setting, and it's less'n ten minutes walk. I need to remember to return my books on time and not get banned from this library. Plus, as SB discovered, they seem to have a complete set of Asterix books. Shrub's likely a little young for them. Probably. Anyway...
( Here be a poll )
I did see it on the shelf, and made her take it out to read. Pretty sure I leant susannah_banana my copy, else I'd have put it top of her pile already.

Shrub's already read the two books she took out. Which means given it's half term I might have to take her back for more. What a shame. I'll have to force myself.

I've mentioned the Fantastic Films Weekend a few times recently, but today the National Media Museum put the new website live so we have some details:

This year the line-up includes the Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse double-bill, the ultimate Cushing/Lee pairing in Dracula, Daughters of Darkness, Eyes without a Face, Blood on Satan’s Claw and John Carpenter’s The Thing in 70mm with an exclusive video introduction from Carpenter himself. Our guests will be cult filmmakers Harry Kümel, Peter Duffell, Piers Haggard and Robert Fuest.

Now, I'm not a massive horror film fan (because most horror films don't involve space ships), but I can appreciate a good flick, and the normal selection they've had has been brilliant, last year included Soylent Green, 300 on the IMAX, a showing of Ghostwatch and Forbidden Planet. So that's some proper SF, some decent horror, some weird FX driven stuff and SPARTA!

It's a really cool venue in Bradford, just a few minutes walk from Bradford Interchange bus and rail station, incredibly easy to get to. Especially from our house, the 363 takes 20 minutes from the end of our street. So that's:

7th Fantastic Films Weekend runs from Friday 13 to Sunday 15 June

Admit it, you're interested. And you want to come. You can even throw in a visit to sunny Brighouse and see where I live and everything.

And, honestly? Bradford's actually quite a nice place as well. Honest. Or you could do what some of the British Horror Forum regulars are doing (including pmoodie?), and stay in the hotel down the road from us because it's dead cheap and really nice. And they probably won't bite. Unless you're into that sort of thing. And I know you lot, some of you are...

What have I let myself in for? As of 15.50GMT today there were 113 flood warnings in the country. 60 of these were in West Yorkshire and 6 of them are in our little bit. Our local paper says: Brighouse submerged under torrent of water. Even the canal has burst its banks, flooding several local places of interest including the basement of Jennie's pub.  She'll be posting about that later I suspect, she's home safe now thanks to an ingenious bus driver.  I have some pictures I might be able to upload later (I can't find the cable in the still-packed boxes), so here are some from the local paper instead:

( Pictures gratuitously borrowed from the Courier website )
Don't get floods like this around my part of the country much. No rivers or canals may possibly explain that though. Fun fun...

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( A note to the local paper )

On this whole 'moving in with Jennie and moving to Yorkshire thing'^[1]? It is, unfortunately, too late to change my mind. Look what I just found out:

Embrace are an English guitar rock band from Brighouse

Gotta love Mitch (2:13 in for the reference)

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[1] By the way, I may've forgotten to mention this, I handed my notice in to my landlord last week, I'm moving in formally on Jan 3rd. Just, y'know, for the record.