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adventures with British television
So there I was, sitting on the couch after Daziel and Pascoe, feeling sort of guilty that I wasn't doing my assignments but also loath to move from watching whodunnits with Mum. Along comes Jonathon Creek.
I am still wondering how a television show that incorporated a hilarious plotline about a pugnacious drunk dwarf being eaten by a python expected us to take the main mystery at all seriously. Pure crack. Brilliant. *managed to work out two of the major twists before they were revealed, ha ha!*
Freya
Name Origin: Scandinavian
Number of Syllables: 2.00
Gender: Female
More interesting facts about the name Freya:
Lucky Number: 1
Ruling Planet: The Sun
Element: Fire
Primary Color: Red
Traits: Very much the driving life force. A leader. Ambitious. Tends to be impatient. The explorer. The extrovert. Automatically assumes command. Frequently a "big brother" or "big sister". Very strong feelings either for or against. Would not knowingly hurt anyone but might not realize her/his own strength. Can stand being praised and is entitled to it. Praise can spur to greater things.
From http://www.thenamesite.com
~
Well, gee, now I know how many syllables my name has. That's been really bugging me, y'know?
Apart from that - O.O Scarily accurate. On practically all counts.
Speaking of merrily buying entire series on DVD (of course we were, you just missed it) - I am now the proud owner of all of Firefly, and am treating myself to a daily dose of Mal-and-Inara. LOVE.
List, because I am in a semi-masochistic mood and because listmaking is a timehonoured form of procrastination:
Things That Must Be Done This Weekend
*Core line maths work *collapses* Took me a couple of solid hours. Ugh.
* Extension line maths work
*Chem log book entry
* Physics reading & homework
* English oral - time, edit and polish. Will involve large amounts of cutting *winces*
* English creative - finish and footnote. Wah.
I am wavering between scrapping my creative altogether and kind of liking it. Worried about how little it actually has to do with The Duchess of Malfi, but meh, I can discount this semester of English anyway. Snippets from said creative for perusal and/or feedback by any interested parties:
Everything in life and beyond, when viewed from the correct angle, is a voyage. You were told that years ago, and for all intents and purposes it seems to be true. Perhaps she was speaking metaphorically – but then again, you’ve certainly spent enough time on ships.
Seven years now, the number of days in a week, the highest probability when two dice are rolled, a Mersenne prime number. Seven – sette, septem, sept, siete, heptá. Seven deadly sins – and, less well known, four cardinal virtues and three theological virtues. Three and four make seven. It’s amazing where a classical education comes in useful.
But for seven years, your lessons haven’t been of the intellectual nature. You’ve learnt that a man can become quite intimately familiar with an inanimate object.
An oar, for example.
~
Ostensibly, of course, you’re not allowed to talk – but in the night, when you can’t see the blisters on your hands or the face of the man next to you, and if there is any energy left in your body to keep you awake… you do. Hushed, crude conversation with not even the slightest overtone of amicability, but it’s enough to calm the instinct to communicate with your fellow man. Even if your fellow man is a thrice-convicted murderer who swears as he breathes. Beggars can’t be choosers, hey?
There is always talk of women, though you stay quiet during this. Your instinct to talk has always come second to contempt of pointless speech and lack of intelligence. You listen, instead, to the vulgar laughter and filthy stories and the almost-hidden notes of yearning behind them as criminals and unfortunates play up their masculinity for the crowd and never, ever mention the word love.
They’re all playing parts and you’re an actor amongst amateurs, which is both pleasingly alliterative and a powerful weapon in a place like this. It’s easy enough for you to slip away from questions and ignore lewd voices in the dark, rough hands along your collarbone.
- You’re a pretty one, aren’t you...
Overlaid like lace on steel, same words, different voice.
- And you’re a shameless flatterer, Maria.
- Why, Daniel...
You do not like to talk of women, or think of women. Women means Maria, Maria-of-the-dark-hair, Maria-of-the-amused-eyes who became Maria-the-betrayer. Maria who spoke of voyages and the nature of love, and who left you with nothing but a faintly mocking laugh still echoing in your ears.
~
Perhaps there are other stories like yours, but they aren’t mentioned. There’s an unspoken rule about the past – you don’t talk about it much, and most don’t even think about it. Not the bits that matter, anyhow. And not because it’s unpleasant, no, but because even painful memories can seem better than a reality that alternates between monotony and pain. You, who can play the consummate poet when the mood takes you, think of it as seeing the past through rose-tinted glasses.
There are many things that can stain something red.
~
You are different. You hate your past, you’re perfectly happy to dwell on it with a somewhat masochistic relish, and you are probably the only person on the galley who prefers the present. It rings in your ears, mocking counterpoint to the thrumming rhythm of the oarstroke, itCOULDbeworseitCOULDbeworse.
~
Even in this crazy floating hell you cannot escape it, you must live in a microcosm of hierarchy that mimics the corruption of the outside world. For the rest of his life, you think, corruption will smell like this; the sweat and feet and filth and disease of human depravity.
~
You learn not to court ambition, not to rise above yourself and not to be anything that attracts attention. Many things are learned in the galleys, the teachers being the rough scrape of wood on wood and the stories that people tell and, perhaps most of all, the stories that they do not tell. Hard lessons, life lessons. You learn that pity is dangerous, that naivety and optimism deserve nothing better than to be preyed upon, and that good and evil are far more fluid than God would have you believe.
God isn’t welcome in the world of the ships. You agree wholeheartedly, because you’ve seen His representatives on earth and you’re somewhat less then impressed. The others are less personal in their exclusion; they fear His bedfellows, the promise of hellfire and the subtler hell of conscience.
Perhaps above all other things you have learnt that conscience is something to keep hidden deep inside, to be examined only in the final, naked darkness when loyalty and justice have deserted you and all other things have been stripped away.
You have learnt…
You wonder if revenge counts as an inanimate object. Possibly it can only be classified as an abstract. The contemplation of this fills a good two hours, during which one of the men retches up blood and the splinter in your wrist starts to throb again. Easy to take refuge in the dry mechanism of academic thought.
~
You have a reputation, of sorts, built up around a few unwise words of defiance and a natural half-smile that knows much more than it conveys. You are brave, apparently, you have been given the label of melancholy, which can mean all manner of things, you are the soft-spoken scholar who does not belong among these criminals. Sometimes you wish to laugh because they are so far from the truth, and sometimes you could wince at the thoughtless clarity with which you are portrayed. You’re a murderer, you tell them, you killed a man.
But you’re never quite sure if they believe you.
It’s an odd kind of stasis, to be warily respected in this thrown-together community, but never truly accepted as part of it. You’re not the type to care – besides, you’re getting out.
~
A sudden jolt back to reality – voices above, a call to stow oars, the sudden unmistakable smell of tar, fish, harbour. A harsh mingled scream of drums and seabirds from the shore, the sound of one voyage ending and another being born.
In other news, my paid account time has finally run out and my icons have passed into the shadows. Woe.
I am still wondering how a television show that incorporated a hilarious plotline about a pugnacious drunk dwarf being eaten by a python expected us to take the main mystery at all seriously. Pure crack. Brilliant. *managed to work out two of the major twists before they were revealed, ha ha!*
Freya
Name Origin: Scandinavian
Number of Syllables: 2.00
Gender: Female
More interesting facts about the name Freya:
Lucky Number: 1
Ruling Planet: The Sun
Element: Fire
Primary Color: Red
Traits: Very much the driving life force. A leader. Ambitious. Tends to be impatient. The explorer. The extrovert. Automatically assumes command. Frequently a "big brother" or "big sister". Very strong feelings either for or against. Would not knowingly hurt anyone but might not realize her/his own strength. Can stand being praised and is entitled to it. Praise can spur to greater things.
From http://www.thenamesite.com
~
Well, gee, now I know how many syllables my name has. That's been really bugging me, y'know?
Apart from that - O.O Scarily accurate. On practically all counts.
Speaking of merrily buying entire series on DVD (of course we were, you just missed it) - I am now the proud owner of all of Firefly, and am treating myself to a daily dose of Mal-and-Inara. LOVE.
List, because I am in a semi-masochistic mood and because listmaking is a timehonoured form of procrastination:
Things That Must Be Done This Weekend
*
* Extension line maths work
*
* Physics reading & homework
* English oral - time, edit and polish. Will involve large amounts of cutting *winces*
* English creative - finish and footnote. Wah.
I am wavering between scrapping my creative altogether and kind of liking it. Worried about how little it actually has to do with The Duchess of Malfi, but meh, I can discount this semester of English anyway. Snippets from said creative for perusal and/or feedback by any interested parties:
Everything in life and beyond, when viewed from the correct angle, is a voyage. You were told that years ago, and for all intents and purposes it seems to be true. Perhaps she was speaking metaphorically – but then again, you’ve certainly spent enough time on ships.
Seven years now, the number of days in a week, the highest probability when two dice are rolled, a Mersenne prime number. Seven – sette, septem, sept, siete, heptá. Seven deadly sins – and, less well known, four cardinal virtues and three theological virtues. Three and four make seven. It’s amazing where a classical education comes in useful.
But for seven years, your lessons haven’t been of the intellectual nature. You’ve learnt that a man can become quite intimately familiar with an inanimate object.
An oar, for example.
~
Ostensibly, of course, you’re not allowed to talk – but in the night, when you can’t see the blisters on your hands or the face of the man next to you, and if there is any energy left in your body to keep you awake… you do. Hushed, crude conversation with not even the slightest overtone of amicability, but it’s enough to calm the instinct to communicate with your fellow man. Even if your fellow man is a thrice-convicted murderer who swears as he breathes. Beggars can’t be choosers, hey?
There is always talk of women, though you stay quiet during this. Your instinct to talk has always come second to contempt of pointless speech and lack of intelligence. You listen, instead, to the vulgar laughter and filthy stories and the almost-hidden notes of yearning behind them as criminals and unfortunates play up their masculinity for the crowd and never, ever mention the word love.
They’re all playing parts and you’re an actor amongst amateurs, which is both pleasingly alliterative and a powerful weapon in a place like this. It’s easy enough for you to slip away from questions and ignore lewd voices in the dark, rough hands along your collarbone.
- You’re a pretty one, aren’t you...
Overlaid like lace on steel, same words, different voice.
- And you’re a shameless flatterer, Maria.
- Why, Daniel...
You do not like to talk of women, or think of women. Women means Maria, Maria-of-the-dark-hair, Maria-of-the-amused-eyes who became Maria-the-betrayer. Maria who spoke of voyages and the nature of love, and who left you with nothing but a faintly mocking laugh still echoing in your ears.
~
Perhaps there are other stories like yours, but they aren’t mentioned. There’s an unspoken rule about the past – you don’t talk about it much, and most don’t even think about it. Not the bits that matter, anyhow. And not because it’s unpleasant, no, but because even painful memories can seem better than a reality that alternates between monotony and pain. You, who can play the consummate poet when the mood takes you, think of it as seeing the past through rose-tinted glasses.
There are many things that can stain something red.
~
You are different. You hate your past, you’re perfectly happy to dwell on it with a somewhat masochistic relish, and you are probably the only person on the galley who prefers the present. It rings in your ears, mocking counterpoint to the thrumming rhythm of the oarstroke, itCOULDbeworseitCOULDbeworse.
~
Even in this crazy floating hell you cannot escape it, you must live in a microcosm of hierarchy that mimics the corruption of the outside world. For the rest of his life, you think, corruption will smell like this; the sweat and feet and filth and disease of human depravity.
~
You learn not to court ambition, not to rise above yourself and not to be anything that attracts attention. Many things are learned in the galleys, the teachers being the rough scrape of wood on wood and the stories that people tell and, perhaps most of all, the stories that they do not tell. Hard lessons, life lessons. You learn that pity is dangerous, that naivety and optimism deserve nothing better than to be preyed upon, and that good and evil are far more fluid than God would have you believe.
God isn’t welcome in the world of the ships. You agree wholeheartedly, because you’ve seen His representatives on earth and you’re somewhat less then impressed. The others are less personal in their exclusion; they fear His bedfellows, the promise of hellfire and the subtler hell of conscience.
Perhaps above all other things you have learnt that conscience is something to keep hidden deep inside, to be examined only in the final, naked darkness when loyalty and justice have deserted you and all other things have been stripped away.
You have learnt…
You wonder if revenge counts as an inanimate object. Possibly it can only be classified as an abstract. The contemplation of this fills a good two hours, during which one of the men retches up blood and the splinter in your wrist starts to throb again. Easy to take refuge in the dry mechanism of academic thought.
~
You have a reputation, of sorts, built up around a few unwise words of defiance and a natural half-smile that knows much more than it conveys. You are brave, apparently, you have been given the label of melancholy, which can mean all manner of things, you are the soft-spoken scholar who does not belong among these criminals. Sometimes you wish to laugh because they are so far from the truth, and sometimes you could wince at the thoughtless clarity with which you are portrayed. You’re a murderer, you tell them, you killed a man.
But you’re never quite sure if they believe you.
It’s an odd kind of stasis, to be warily respected in this thrown-together community, but never truly accepted as part of it. You’re not the type to care – besides, you’re getting out.
~
A sudden jolt back to reality – voices above, a call to stow oars, the sudden unmistakable smell of tar, fish, harbour. A harsh mingled scream of drums and seabirds from the shore, the sound of one voyage ending and another being born.
In other news, my paid account time has finally run out and my icons have passed into the shadows. Woe.
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