![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Five Things Make a Post
Apr. 5th, 2020 08:09 pm. I'm about a third of the way through The Master and Margarita. It's a weird book. It reminds me more than anything else of The Man Who Was Thursday, Chesterton's novel which he gave the subtitle "A Nightmare". That's not an unfitting description of The Master and Margarita too, although unlike The Man Who Was Thursday, which had one definite viewpoint character, it's not clear whose nightmare it might be; there have been several viewpoint characters already, not all of whom have survived. And none of whom have been either of the title characters, unless they have been and the author has just been behindhand with the formal introductions. (At this point, I'm deliberately steering clear of Wikipedia and anywhere else that might tell me definitely who the title characters are, because that would spoil the fun.)
. I started doing a daily journal on 750 Words in early January, and have only missed a couple of days since (both in the last month). The original plan was to see if I could get some momentum back on fic writing, but I've found it more useful as a place to randomly ramble about what I've been doing and how I'm feeling each day. In theory that ought to have made it easier to do more frequent blog entries, since I've already written down what I've been doing, but the editorial process of deciding what's worth blogging about remains a sticking point. Among the bells and whistles of the 750 Words site is a statistics page that attempts to analyse each entry to determine things like the mood I was in when I wrote it, and I'm sure it's Very Scientific And Reliable but all the same it's reassuring that my entries have gone from mostly being "Upset" to mostly being either "Affectionate" or "Self-Expressive".
. Things continue to be shut down due to coronavirus, but in some cases people are moving activity to the internet. It's been announced that this year's Worldcon will not be happening in New Zealand but they're looking into ways of getting it to happen in cyberspace. Several theatrical organisations with significant collections of performance recordings are doing online virtual seasons, including New York's Metropolitan Opera (new shows daily), London's National Theatre (weekly), and Andrew Lloyd Webber (weekendly). In more local news, the GM of our roleplaying campaign is also looking into ways to move our sessions online so we can keep it rolling.
. I have discovered that toenails are much easier to trim if you do it right after a shower, when they're softened from soaking, than if you do it at some arbitrary time when they're dry and hard. You would perhaps think, especially if you know my age, that it ought not to have taken me this long to figure out. I think partly it's because I usually don't think about trimming my toenails unless they're being annoying, and then I want to do it straight away instead of stopping to plan the most effective method.
. Random fun thing: The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. They do clever arrangements, they're funny, and they're good musicians in that way where you don't notice because they make it look so easy (unless, like me, it's driven home to you by immediately afterwards accidentally clicking on a video by an inferior copycat group).
. I started doing a daily journal on 750 Words in early January, and have only missed a couple of days since (both in the last month). The original plan was to see if I could get some momentum back on fic writing, but I've found it more useful as a place to randomly ramble about what I've been doing and how I'm feeling each day. In theory that ought to have made it easier to do more frequent blog entries, since I've already written down what I've been doing, but the editorial process of deciding what's worth blogging about remains a sticking point. Among the bells and whistles of the 750 Words site is a statistics page that attempts to analyse each entry to determine things like the mood I was in when I wrote it, and I'm sure it's Very Scientific And Reliable but all the same it's reassuring that my entries have gone from mostly being "Upset" to mostly being either "Affectionate" or "Self-Expressive".
. Things continue to be shut down due to coronavirus, but in some cases people are moving activity to the internet. It's been announced that this year's Worldcon will not be happening in New Zealand but they're looking into ways of getting it to happen in cyberspace. Several theatrical organisations with significant collections of performance recordings are doing online virtual seasons, including New York's Metropolitan Opera (new shows daily), London's National Theatre (weekly), and Andrew Lloyd Webber (weekendly). In more local news, the GM of our roleplaying campaign is also looking into ways to move our sessions online so we can keep it rolling.
. I have discovered that toenails are much easier to trim if you do it right after a shower, when they're softened from soaking, than if you do it at some arbitrary time when they're dry and hard. You would perhaps think, especially if you know my age, that it ought not to have taken me this long to figure out. I think partly it's because I usually don't think about trimming my toenails unless they're being annoying, and then I want to do it straight away instead of stopping to plan the most effective method.
. Random fun thing: The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. They do clever arrangements, they're funny, and they're good musicians in that way where you don't notice because they make it look so easy (unless, like me, it's driven home to you by immediately afterwards accidentally clicking on a video by an inferior copycat group).
