Another first-post-in-a-long-time. Ahhhhh. Lovely. Well, here is a review of the latest miniseries of Torchwood, entitled Children of Earth, as written by Russell T Davies and a few other people, broadcast Monday the 6th of July to Friday the 10th of July, gaining ratings of up to 6.2 million and released on DVD on my birthday in two days, blah etc....

( obvious spoilers are obvious )

Okay, so what's the excuse for not talking or posting this time around? Well, it's the band. As I hoped last post, the band has broadened from a one-off, thrown-together concert thing to being a full-time job, pretty much (except without the money XD). A few weeks of frenzied writing, singing and practising later, and our first album is ready to be recorded. 'Tis called Radio Dreams, and it has nothing in the way of actual music, covers or physical CD-ness yet. All it does have is a tracklist and the lyrics, which I shall put here now for people's enjoyment. Some of the songs have already been posted on here (such as The Purple in the Eye, The Painted Man and Crystal Scream), but I shall post them here anyway.

Ludicrous, silly and probably unncecessary warning, but a warning nonetheless: If our band somehow starts playing outside of school concerts and in members' garages, and becomes a proper, money-making band, then I shall have to take these lyrics down. Yes, it is a very silly idea, as the thought of professional recording has not once crossed my head, and the album is purely a little friendly project born out of pre-exam anxiety, but if it should ever happen...

( radio dreams )

"I'll be back later today to talk about the aforementioned stuff and chat with people for the first time in ages" - my mouth, previous entry. Erm, yeah, obviously I underestimated my tiredness and found myself practically paralysed in bed with books for several days after I said that. It happens. I am actually fully back now, and shall prove it by explaining the title of this entry: it is a line from St Thomas's rather beautiful song "Like the Byrds". It is also an attention-grabbing title. And I am a big ol' attention seeker.

Three (four now!) weeks of news. Right, let me start with the "The Purple in the Eye" concert performance. It was absolutely incredible, and I mean that in a wholly enthusiastic, rabid way and not in the trivial way that I have used "incredible" in the past. It was one of the best experiences of my life so far, no doubt about it.

Of course, I was worried beforehand, worried sick, as described in rather angsty detail two entries back. The worry proved to be unjustified, as I predicted in the same entry. This was for two main reasons: the first being the fact that my parents and an uncle and many many friends turned up completely unexpectedly an hour before the performance and gave me Useful Moral Support and jumped like sharks onto the row of chairs closest to the stage, and the second being the comment somebody made about the song as I left the hall: "That was a well safe song." Under normal circumstances, I would have been annoyed at that person for using such modern, chavvy, irritating language. Instead, I was grateful and ecstatic that someone liked it and thought it was good. Apart from that remark, I really don't know how the song went down, so I'm treasuring it.

Overall - I sang the best I've done in my life, my friends did justice to my work, my family were there, and at least one person liked it. Awesomesauce. I wish someone had taped the performance on something other than a listen-only CD thingy, as it would have been something I'd be pleased to share with everyone on LJ and elsewhere. Oh well. Next time! (Yes, as a band, we're thinking of doing more songs, which is about the most exciting prospect ever.)

In other news: I have come up with another massive project. Yes, another one. (Don't think I can't hear you groan.) It's probably my wackiest yet: it concerns two psychopaths who flee from a sinister mental treatment ward in a tatty old zeppelin and find themselves in a strange and very creepy world of quantum physics and lots of violence. Perfectly sane, of course.

Talking to people will happen when both I and all the people I wish to talk to are online. Hopefully that will be soon. :)

Yes. That may have been a gap in LJ usage - in fact, plain computer usage - for three weeks or so. Give or take. Why? Because, while arriving in France for the very first time since last summer, my suitcase got lost. The baggage reclaim conveyor belt thingy whose proper name I can't recall kept turning and chugging, but just couldn't bring itself to vomit up my bag. And then it stopped. Everyone else had gone, and I was quite frightened, mostly for my computer, but also for all the DVDs and books I had in there. Especially Firefly.

Three weeks on holiday without Firefly without a word processor! It was a nightmare for me, but I got through it. As it turned out, the bag never left England and we had to pick it up when we returned. Tis all over, thank somebody. Well, apart from the internet and writing mess I have to clean up. Priority one: talk to people whom I haven't talked to for three weeks (or more). Priority two: Write three weeks' worth of ideas. Priority three: Sleep. I lost much of it thinking about my baggage. Priority four: update my journal with news of the "The Purple in the Eye" performance that I talked about ages ago.

It seems like priority four is going to be done first, seeing as I'm on LJ.

Actually, no - I'm yawning - priority three is. I'll be back later today to talk about the aforementioned stuff and chat with people for the first time in ages. I shall now nod off. *nods off*

What have I done?!

The answer is that I have formed a temporary bandy thing with a few friends, have given them the "The Purple in the Eye" music to practice and we're performing it at the school concert on Friday, with myself singing (usually I play drums, but no-one else knows the words and tune well enough to sing the piece, so I have to!...) Oh dear me.

I am terrified. I have never sung something in front of nearly a thousand people before. Oh dear. Oh no. Other phrases beginning with "oh". I have an okay voice, I suppose, but can it fill the entire thousand-person hall? Yeah, alright, I'll have a microphone, but argh! Singers are always at the front of bands when they perform, so my friends will feel far away, and all those people will seem close... all listening, each and every one of those thousand people judging me.

I am scared witless. Is the song too weird and sci-fi and cultish to be sung at a mainstream school concert? Do the constantly changing tune and multiple riffs make it too disjointed?

And the thing is, it'll probably be an amazing, enjoyable experience, and I know it... but my mind just can't get its weird lobey tentacley brain-things round that concept. I'm still scared.

I think I shall watch some more Firefly now. It is the only thing comforting me. I love that programme.

I have a somewhat blasphemous and life-changing statement to make: Doctor Who is no longer my favourite television programme.

As I mentioned in my last post, I've finally started watching a series called Firefly. Yes, 'tis true, I bought the DVD a few weeks ago after several years of thinking it looked shiny and "right up my street" as they say these days. And now I've fallen completely in love.

I think that's because of the characters of Firefly - that small, believable, tight-knit family of characters. I like Torchwood and Lost for the same reason, but Firefly's sense of family blows those two out of the water. It's lovely and somehow cosy, despite the constant danger, to watch the characters interact, episode after episode, in the same space, under similar circumstances.

Of course, the plots are excellent, but don't matter to me as much as the characters. Oh, the characters! *character-gasm* The mysterious, deadpan Mal, the intense Zoe and her whimsical husband Wash, the Tam siblings with their trauma-shot relationship, gruff, quirky Jayne, elegant Inara and sweet little Kaylee... *second character-gasm* All so brilliantly drawn.

I'm a newbie to this fandom so I don't know the exact story of how Firefly came to be cancelled, but whoever did it, well, they deserve death by engine (as iconed, and demonstrated here - if you've never watched Firefly before then this would be a good place to start soaking in its awesomeness.)

That's an 11/10 and a recommendation to everyone on my friends list, by the way. :)

I haven't been making too much progress with the sekrit project what with all the Timey rewriting I've been doing. I'm now back on track, and I think I've just written some of my best stuff yet for it. Just thought nobody people would like to know that I have not abandoned it. It's coming.

Meanwhile, I've also been writing a kids' fable about the importance of the apostrophe in today's society, having been driven completely round the bend a couple of days ago by looking at the outrageously punctuated and spelt Facebook pages of some of my friends. Look out for that soon as well.

Final bit of news - I've discovered an incredible new style of icon-making thanks to playing around on Corel Paint Shop for about two hours (what? I had nothing to do that afternoon!...) and have since used it to make the Who icon I'm using now. It looks lovely and smooth and saturated with colour to me, compared to my previous efforts, though I expect I shall be laughing at it after another few hours of iconing.

Really, final bit of news this time: I've started watching Firefly at last. It's better than sex.

Here come the memes, doo doo dooo... I SAY!

( hebenaheh )

Hokay. That is it for the memes for now. If I have missed any recent memes, please let me know. XD

It's been a while since I updated, and I've been getting bored of seeing the very sad news of Holly's death constantly at the front of my journal, so here's a song and a poem to fill this page here.

The song is a song about the world going wrong in lots of little places, which has been one of my biggest fears all through my life. It's the first of my few songs that has a proper melody and professional sheet music for guitar, bass and vocals. Hooray. Now all I need is a band...

The poem is one I wrote for my girlfriend on Valentine's Day three days ago, but it doesn't look like it! I felt I couldn't write something completely twee and cheesy about love and happiness, so it turned into a weird, metaphysical, borderline-insane thing with an almost Shakespearian feel to it, using the Who buzz-phrase "causal nexus". Oops. 

Coming soon: memes. I have been tagged multiple times during my recent absence, so I'm way behind on the meme front. More memes. Yes.

( buy song, get one poem free )

My cat Holly passed away yesterday. A massive tumour had grown inside her intestine and had latched onto several glands. She'd been throwing up on a regular basis for two weeks by the time she died, so we knew something was wrong. I never expected her to die, though. I told everyone in my family the night before the vets operated that she wouldn't die. I feel a bit stupid and guilty for that now.

Never mind me, though. Holly was a gorgeous cat, weird and eccentric and possibly plain mad, but she had the most gentle touch of any cat I've ever seen. She'll be missed (especially by her brother Pebble. We'll have to give him lots of extra love now).