Hey, MKF! Happy Thursday! And Happy Thursday to Artemis! I don't know how many times I've read one of your posts and wanted to write something ... but didn't because it wasn't Thursday. "Oh, I'll do it next Thursday!" I always said, but I never did. Shame on me, MKF, shame on me ...

I don't know shit about Cricket, but I like hearing about it. Don't they stop for tea while they're playing? That kind of thing always intrigued me - not so much the sport itself, but the culture around it, if that makes sense. I really got into watching Curling this Olympics, and it all started with some story I saw about how they take a break in the middle of the match for snacks.

Anyway, a big thanks to Artemis for keeping this thread alive - AND with genuinely interesting posts, no less! It warms my heart every time I pass by and see this thread up.

_________________
I spent most of my money on liquor and women,
The rest I wasted.

It's Thursday, MKF! I couldn't find any amusing bits of Australiana for today, but going worldwide it's World Water Day, which according to the wikipedia page relates only to fresh water. The oceans must feel so left out - although they had seaQuest DSV, it's not like the world's rivers have ever had a sci-fi show made about them. (Although they did provide the names for all the runabouts on Deep Space Nine, starting with the Rio Grande, Yangtze Kiang, and Ganges, and progressing through various others; as Kira noted, 'the rate we go through runabouts, it's a good thing Earth has so many rivers.' Except the Rio Grande, which for some reason was indestructible. And speaking of Star Trek, it's William Shatner's birthday.)

Cricket does indeed stop for tea, as well as lunch and drinks, but they do go on for a long time, so it's understandable. I did some quick research just now, and found out that there used to be 'timeless' tests, as well as the normal five-day sort, where they'd just keep going until there was a result one way or the other. The longest was between England and South Africa, which went on for ten days, before they agreed to call it a draw, because the English team had to leave in order to get their boat home.

If you enjoy the flavour of cricket, Flashman's Lady is a great novel to have a look at (although most of the cricket stuff is at the start, after which it shifts to Flashman's more traditional pastime of fleeing for dear life, in this case from Borneo pirates and the Queen of Madagascar).

_________________
Chris Cook

Through the Looking-glass - Every world needs a Willow and Tara.

Another Thursday, MKF! Is it really Captain Kirk's birthday today? It's mrs. gorn's birthday today, too! In all the years I've been married to her, I don't how I missed this connection ...

Ten days playing cricket? That's awesome! Does the crowd really stay engaged after the first couple of days? Is there a lot of drinking involved when watching cricket? Again, I know next to nothing about the sport beyond what you've already written, but it strikes me as a sport with a few moments of frantic activity bookended by a lot of standing around.

_________________
I spent most of my money on liquor and women,
The rest I wasted.

It's Thursday MKF! Right before Easter (i.e. four days off work) too, plenty to celebrate - including the birthday of none other than Lucy Lawless! (And happy birthday last week to Mrs. Gorn as well.)

I've never actually been to a cricket match, but I've watched a few on tv - I feel like it's kind of an ingenious balance, with a bit of standing around, then a bit of activity, then a bit more standing around, bit more activity, and so on. It's very measured, most of the activity isn't really dramatic - just another couple of runs, or a decent bowl, or whatever - but it's just enough to trick you into watching the next little bit of boredom while the commentators talk about some match from thirty years ago, or try to identify the species of bird meandering around the outfield. (The commentators themselves have their moments - the set who were active when I was young were memorably immortalised in parody by Billy Birmingham - look up The 12th Man on youtube.) There is drinking (not by me, but generally), although just the kind of Australian baseline drinking, not hooligan drinking - that's reserved for the players themselves when they're packed onto a Sydney-London flight and have nothing better to do that try to break David Boon's record (52 cans).

Kind of awkward for me, as an Aussie, to be talking about cricket at the moment - does the rest of the world know about that whole ball tampering thing, or was it only our newspapers who devoted the first fifteen pages to it, and everyone else is looking nervously at me and wondering what happened with someone's balls and why am I talking about it? To find the silver lining to the whole episode, though, it should give us confidence that the Australian cricket team doesn't cheat routinely, because wow they suck at it. Not only did they lose anyway, their method of cheating seemed to hinge on nobody pointing a tv camera at the players during a test match, which as mentioned, slow enough that they'll point the camera at and analyse literally anything that's happening. As Tony Stark would say, "not a great plan".

_________________
Chris Cook

Through the Looking-glass - Every world needs a Willow and Tara.

Chris I think it's only cricket playing nations who are bothered. But this after last decade's match fixing scandal is a real problem for the national team. Oh man!

PS, I was out taking photos, and found this along the river.
How does one tag users here anyway?

Hey MKF, it's Thursday! And sticking with the Star Trek theme for the moment (everyone loves the Gorn), today is also First Contact Day, celebrating the day Vulcans decided to have a peek at what was going on on Earth, and found out what it's like when you open the window because there's a puppy outside and before you know it you've been adopted and there's nothing you can do about it and the puppy's in the bathroom unwinding the toilet paper. (It's okay when kittens do that, though, because that's adorable.)

For the benefit of the non-Trekkies in the audience, see The United Federation of "hold my beer, I got this" for a pretty accurate summary of what happened over the next couple of centuries.

_________________
Chris Cook

Through the Looking-glass - Every world needs a Willow and Tara.

It's International Human Spaceflight Day, MKF! And Thursday! Back in 1961 (which was a Wednesday, but it was humans doing this, not kittens, so they were ignorant of some important details of how things should properly be done) Yuri Gagarin strapped himself into Vostok 1 and went for an orbit of the planet. We never really covered the space race at school, so I first heard about this from Doctor Who - Second Doctor, 'The Seeds of Death', which begins with the Doctor landing the TARDIS in a space museum on future Earth.

Speaking of stuff that happened in space, it's also the day - quite a way off in the future - when the Psi Corps gets founded, to regulate human telepaths, although in hindsight letting the ones in charge go around in black uniforms might have been a sign there were certain flaws in the plan. But it wasn't all bad - a lot of telepaths (including Willow, in one of my early short fics) weren't fascist secret police, or reprogrammed with evil sleeper personalities, and just got on with living normal lives using their gifts as part of business negotiations and making out with Tara (Willow specifically, that last one, not all of them).

_________________
Chris Cook

Through the Looking-glass - Every world needs a Willow and Tara.

Hmmmm.... been a while. Happy Thursday!
I am doing the same sort of thing I've been doing for years. Greenhouse, high tunnel, veggies, dirt. Otherwise... yeah. Thursday. It's a good thing.

Gorn.... I dimly recall I still need to drink a whiskey at 12th and Vine for you. Will try to get on that....

_________________
Don't confuse me with your reasonableness.

It's Thursday MKF! And the anniversary of us down here choosing our national anthem in 1984, at the end of a typically long and drawn-out process of deciding what ought to replace God Save The Queen, when Advance Australia Fair was selected as suitably boring for a national anthem. I remember being a bit confused when I was young and hadn't figured out that you can put the adjective last, and was unsure what an Australia Fair was meant to be; so far as I can recall, based on it apparently being able to advance, I imagined it had to be literally a fair, like maybe a big top circus tent, mounted on a parade float so it could move around. I did say this was when I was quite young? It did teach me what 'girt' meant, though, by way of a late-night comedy show where they complained about how outdated the lyrics were and pointed out that you never hear anyone saying "I was just down the pub, it was girt with pissed blokes."

Waltzing Matilda was the second choice in the plebiscite to choose the anthem, and pretty much ever since the subject of complaints that it's more Australian and should have been chosen instead. Since it's about a ne'er-do-well who steals a sheep, gets chased by the police, and defiantly drowns himself rather than be caught, it's generally felt to be a) not pompous enough or b) too accurate for how the country is run.

_________________
Chris Cook

Through the Looking-glass - Every world needs a Willow and Tara.

@ MKF - It's just Thursday!

@ Boschi - Welcome back! I thought about you during this long, long winter, wondered how the Hoop Houses were doing. One of these days I will be standing on the corner, corner of 12th Street & Vine ...

@ thespian_phryne - You found me! I have the fondest memories growing up watching old Star Trek episodes with my brother & dad, and the episode with the Gorn was far and away our favorite.

@ Artemis - I always thought Waltzing Matilda was Australia's national anthem, and - outsider's perspective - if it isn't it should be.

_________________
I spent most of my money on liquor and women,
The rest I wasted.

Hey MKF, it's Thursday! And as it happens, on this particular Thursday while your mommies were down at the park for their annual Under Your Spell anniversary singalong day, they got a backup dancer. (I'm in the process of moving house, so I had a play around while I was packing everything up for transport.)

_________________
Chris Cook

Through the Looking-glass - Every world needs a Willow and Tara.

_________________
Amber Benson killed me once.

Check out my finished fics

Current Series: College Confidential ... Adult Confidential ... Hacker Confidential ... Family Confidential

HAHAHAH!

Happy Moving. My sympathies. The next time I move, hopefully will be for my retirement.

Thanks Yeah, several hundred Lego sets take quite a bit of work to pack away in boxes, and there's definitely going to be a lot of reattaching the little bits that fell off when I open them back up again later.

It's Thursday MKF! And, as it happens, the anniversary of the Barb Wire movie, which I suspect is the old chip on the shoulder that the comic book movie industry is wildly over-performing to try to get us all to forget. But since I already mentioned that today last year I went hunting for something else relevant today, and discovered that on this day in 1840 New Zealand was proclaimed to be a separate colony - previously it was part of New South Wales. But for that, Xena and Lord of the Rings could've been ours...

_________________
Chris Cook

Through the Looking-glass - Every world needs a Willow and Tara.

That's been my cell phone wallpaper for the past week.

_________________
I spent most of my money on liquor and women,
The rest I wasted.

Yay Once the move is done and they're unpacked (Willow and Tara are in their original packaging for maximum safety, of course, and the Gorn's joined the other Star Trek figures) I'll see if I can set it up again with better lighting than just the camera flash - I keep meaning to rig up a decent photography light but I've never gotten around to it yet.

Anyway, it's Thursday MKF! And coming up to Mother's Day, although as it happens today was the original Mother's Day back in 1908, so be sure to give your own mommies an extra cuddle and purr today. I'm working on a short fic for the occasion, although what with packing things up I'm not certain it'll be finished in time - luckily the date for Mother's Day varies around the world, so I'll be in time for one or other of them. (In Indonesia it's December 22, so really there's nothing to worry about.)

_________________
Chris Cook

Through the Looking-glass - Every world needs a Willow and Tara.

I nominate Artemis for most productive and prolific Kitten of the year. Well done, sir!

Seconded!

_________________
Amber Benson killed me once.

Check out my finished fics

Current Series: College Confidential ... Adult Confidential ... Hacker Confidential ... Family Confidential

Thanks And, awkwardly timed after just being called productive, the Mother's Day fic is, obviously, not on time. But since I'll be using the 'it's mother's day somewhere loophole' I've decided to go for a slower pace and a few more scenes than I'd planned, so hopefully it'll be worth the wait.

And it's Thursday, MKF! The last day in the old house too, so from tomorrow on, no more spending all my time packing stuff up - instead, spending all my time unpacking (and fixing all the bits that fell off the Lego in transit). But here's something Kittens might enjoy, the Mantlepiece of Amber Stuff (photo'd so I can set it up the same way after the move):



It's not creepy, honest - if it was bedside table, that'd be creepy, this is just fandom. Signed photos and so forth, fairly self-explanatory, yes that's a VHS of Chance (I've got a dvd as well), the kitten (to misquote Top Gear) isn't MKF, but she is MKF's Australian cousin (and a model, not an actual kitty), and over on the far right that's a set from Charmed, which I just thought made a nice backdrop to the action figures there. Far left, yeah, that's me. The open space on the left is where the OMWF statues go, I'd already packed them away in their styrofoam boxes to keep them safe. The image pasted in is to cover up the photoshopped (i.e. not allowed on the board) W/T-as-mums image I did (which is on my site, the one of Tara with their baby and Willow looking on proudly), which somehow I managed to nervously ask Amber to sign - I mean, it's not difficult to imagine someone being presented with 'hey here's this picture of you I photoshopped' and their first thought is 'Oh god, it's my face stuck on a porn star, isn't it?', so that was kind of a daunting moment (I mean obviously the image isn't tacky, but it's mildly racy, so y'know) but she didn't seem perturbed. Since the body for Tara was originally from an ad Lucy Lawless did to promote breastfeeding, she signed it "I got the bod of a warrior!"

(The She-Hulk figure isn't related, that's just because I'm a big fan of She-Hulk, she deserves a small spot on the almighty mantlepiece. Same with the little bits in front of the Chance tape, they're Major Kira's combadge, rank sign, and earring.)

_________________
Chris Cook

Through the Looking-glass - Every world needs a Willow and Tara.

I love your Amber corner! I had to take mine down and now I just have an Amber/etc box in the corner of my room :(

_________________
Amber Benson killed me once.

Check out my finished fics

Current Series: College Confidential ... Adult Confidential ... Hacker Confidential ... Family Confidential

It's Thursday, MKF! And you'll be happy to know that MKF's Australian cousin is curled up snoozing on her brand new display shelf, although a lot of the other decorations are still being unpacked, so it's a work in progress, and I'm not putting up pictures on the walls until all of them are unpacked and I can properly plan out what's going where. (The only thing already up, on another wall, is the framed Women of DC poster, because there's only the one of it so I don't have to work out where other things will go around it anyway.

Still working on the Mother's Day fic, although what with moving (and still having no internet at home) it's slow. But on another Kitten note, while packing things up I found my old folder I used to use for making fic-related notes, which has got a bunch of things I only kind of half-remembered, like the chapter list for Willow's journey through the Labyrinth, the vocab list for the Amazon language, Captain Maclay's crew of seaQuest DSV, and more cryptic random notes like "the pancakes have a crush on Faith". It took me a couple of days to remember why they do (and why pancakes are having a crush on anyone), and it's possible I may revisit some of those ideas sometime.

_________________
Chris Cook

Through the Looking-glass - Every world needs a Willow and Tara.

It's Thursday, MKF! And on this particular Thursday, I no longer have the cold I had last week, which is why very little work got done on the increasingly-inaccurately-named Mother's Day fic, sorry :( But it's back on track. And in further interesting news, I've been going over a few more old story notes, and found another one I think I really should revisit and write up - I won't give anything much away for now, except to say that it should be fun, and there's an entirely logical, plot-relevant reason for Willow and Tara to be in just their underwear for most of it.

_________________
Chris Cook

Through the Looking-glass - Every world needs a Willow and Tara.

It's Thursday, MKF - and here's a bunch of interesting things about this Thursday, to wash away the smell of POTUS's birthday: in 1822 Charles Babbage presented his idea for a difference engine to the Royal Astronomical Society, in 1158 Munich was founded by Henry the Lion (not an actual lion, but if you want to go on imagining Simba's dad, sure why not), UNIVAC I (the first commercial computer) was dedicated to the US census bureau in 1951 (that difference engine idea took a while to get going), and in 1947 a foreman working on a homestead in Roswell, New Mexico, found debris that judging by the amount of different 'true accounts' of what really happened must have come from the simultaneous crash of about twenty different spacecraft. No wonder Area 51 is taking so long to study it, it's probably like trying to sort out a whole stack of jigsaw puzzles when somebody's just dumped them all out onto the table together.

_________________
Chris Cook

Through the Looking-glass - Every world needs a Willow and Tara.

It's Thursday (where you are) MKF, and happy summer solstice, which I'm sure your witchy mums are celebrating with some rites and naked dancing and stuff (so really, just like any other day). Of course that means it's winter solstice down here, and while I didn't keep a stopwatch out to check if it really was the longest night, it's certainly making a good case for being the coldest, so that's near enough. Brr

_________________
Chris Cook

Through the Looking-glass - Every world needs a Willow and Tara.

It's Thursday (US time), MKF - and this week a bunch of people with very nimble fingers (like your mums, but different application) are busy at Summer Games Done Quick - started Monday, and they'll keep going until the end of Sunday, live streaming the whole time. As I write, there's a race going on in Super Mario Bros 3 (one of the finest games of all time), which I remember playing on the old NES, although I never managed to finish it, much less inside of an hour.

_________________
Chris Cook

Through the Looking-glass - Every world needs a Willow and Tara.

It's Thursday, MKF - and a special Thursday for one couple (besides your mums, who I'm sure make days special all the time), who were getting married in the local comic shop when I stopped by after work. If that seems an odd venue, well the groom was dressed as Batman, the bride as Catwoman, and the celebrant was the Joker. There is a Batman's-getting-married thing happening in the comics at the moment, but this wasn't a publicity thing, it was a genuine wedding, so that was sweet to see.

_________________
Chris Cook

Through the Looking-glass - Every world needs a Willow and Tara.

Hey MKF, it's Thursday! Sorry I missed last week, I was hurrying to get the Friday 13th ficlet done in time - speaking of which, I've decided that of course MKF exists in that setting as well, she's a kitty from another dimension W&T found during the monster-hunting travels, when a bunch of campers at one of these endless monster-plagued camps caught sight of her meandering around in the woods and feared the worst. Luckily our favourite witches, knowing better than to jump to conclusions just because a kitty might be able to do all sorts of cool extradimensional-lifeform-type stuff, and adopted her. She rides around in the back seat of their VW, and when needed shapeshifts into a giant panther to help chase down the faster-moving monsters they discover.

_________________
Chris Cook

Through the Looking-glass - Every world needs a Willow and Tara.

It's Thursday, MKF! This particular Thursday furniture has been moved en masse - I'm getting a new printer next week (one of these - already got one, this'll be a second in case I get busy and need to run two at once) and that's not the kind of thing you can just shove on a shelf. (There'll also be a new printer at home, but that's going to be a lot more modest.)

_________________
Chris Cook

Through the Looking-glass - Every world needs a Willow and Tara.

It's Thursday, MKF! Not much to report this Thursday - the new printer's arrived at work (plus a bunch of other toys, including a compressor which is really loud; also a part-time co-worker, I've decided the really loud thing is his responsibility), and I'm still patiently and obsessively organising Lego at home. The sets are all done, at least (Star Wars in chronological order, of course) and for the last few days I've just been unpacking all the minifigs and putting them in their proper places. In some cases, that means inventing a reason why there is a proper place, for anything not actually associated with a set, which means the Well of Souls from Indiana Jones now has actual Egyptian warriors wandering around in it (because where else were they going to go), and the mountaineer minifig has been placed scaling the only Lego mountain available, which is the volcano with a superlaser built in.

One thing worth looking up, I've been listening to podcasts while I'm doing all this very meticulous playing with toys, and found one on iTunes called She-Ra: Progressive of Power, all about the progressive politics built into our favourite cartoon starring (just one alternate universe away from ours) our favourite witches. They're not talking about that version of course (Netflix still hasn't emailed me about hosting it, I'm sure they'll get around to it...) but it's been fun to listen to so far.

_________________
Chris Cook

Through the Looking-glass - Every world needs a Willow and Tara.