Does the Enterprise E have Ten-Forward, or any description of bar? And if not, where would be a big social meeting place where people could sit down and read or write if they wanted?

Geeks! I need assistance!

1, Can Tiamat fly?

2, When did Worf & Jadzia get married, in terms of the TNG movies? Before Insurrection or after? And how soon before/after?

Bafta screeners have started coming through, so we *finally* have Star Trek XI. We saw it tonight, and... I liked it. I really liked it. I apologise for nothing and my only regret is that I have Boneitis!
My only gripes were that Uhura only seemed to exist to get felt up, fought over, perved over or snogged ( slight spoiler ) and that Bones didn't get to do more because Karl Urban's McCoy was engaging and charming. Loved Pegg!Scotty, really loved PineKirk - felt he channeled all the best bits of The Shat without. Resorting to the... FAMOUS!... stilteddelivery... QuintoSpock was good too, I suppose the narrative of the film called for his emotions to be more raw and less contained than NimoySpock's...I do love it when Spock Hulks Out in TOS, but only because he does it so rarely... if he's going to go all Amok Time twice a movie or every time someone disses his Momma it might not have the same appeal.

( few more spoilers )
But most of all, you know what? It was bloody good fun. Me likey.

Stolen from mrs_picard, who got the question from fannish_5

NAME THE FIVE MOST ANNOYING CHARACTERS EVER

1 - Jack Shepherd aka Dr Dull aka oh-God-not-him-again-why-can't-we-have-more-of-Ben-or-Des-or-Hurley-or-something? - LOST

Whiny, silver-spooned, needy, overbearing, passive-aggressive, boring-ass douche. A piss-poor choice of emotional centre/pragmatist in an engaging, weirdie-poo drama with a fantastic ensemble cast. He gets out-charisma'd by spores. Should have died along with TV's Greg Grunberg in the pilot and spared us all a flood of Jears.

2 - J.D. - Scrubs

See above for all character traits. His whiny neediness is supposed, somehow, to be endearing, and the throughly destructive, self-obsessed relationship with Elliot is supposed to be a great romance. Like Dr Dull and Lost, I find the least sympathetic character in the great ensemble of Scrubs to be the pragmatist. I'm with Team Janitor - let's wipe that idiot out.

3 - "Mr Big" - Sex And The City

Oooh, he's rich! And he's a thoroughly egotistical, smug, manipulative, petulant manchild! And did I mention, he's rich? That totally makes up for all his flaws! How I wish I could marry a man like that! By which, I mean rich!

4 - Nick Curran - Basic Instinct

A middle aged man who goes to a nightclub in a jumper and jeans. Need I say more? What an absolute cunt.

5 - Simon Moon - Frasier

It's not just because he causes ructions in one of my favourite Ships, honest. It's not just because he's a poorly sketched characature that just doesn't stand up amongst the lovingly created, well-rounded characters of the main ensemble... I might have been able to stand all these flaws, if it weren't for The Accent. The Accent to any Briton is like nails down a blackboard. Plus, Anthony LaPaglia has always looked a little bit like GW Bush to me, so Simon is like the Apocalyptic Dormouse of Doom crashing around the Frasier set with a dreadful GeneriLimey accent. Blech.

Hey! chaletian's doing an MP3 Shuffle meme, so I think I will too!

Jeffrey the Archos is shuffling away... here's 30 first lines - hit me with those titles and artists!

1 - Baby, you understand me now, if sometimes you see that I'm mad...
2 - Spiky lady, shiny queen, don't you tell them what you've seen...
3 - All these people are laughing at him, and although he tries, it's getting to him...
4 - Oh oh oh, woke up today feeling the way I always do...
5 - Aruba, Jamaica, ooh, I wanna take ya - Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama...
6 - He ran the underworld / but thought the dead were dull and uncouth...
7 - The sun has a reason, and the world it will bloom...
8 - I dreamt that I was dreaming / I was wired to a clock / tickled by the minute hand / tick tock tick tick tock
9 - Lift up your head / wash off your mascara / here, take my Kleenex / wipe that lisptick away
10 - She said I know but I just can't tell everything that you've just been saying
11 - David Bowie came to town / flying overhead / "Don't you dig my chops" he cried / this is what they said...
12 - She gave her heart to a wealthy man / a healthy child and a healthy tan...
13 - Flew in from Miami Beach BOAC / Didn't get to bed last night...
14 - Do you feel like a chainstore / practically floored?
15 - Hey man, how come you treat your woman so bad? That's not the way you do it, no no no, you shouldn't do it like that...
16 - Here come old flat-top, he come groovin' up slowly...
17 - Don't change your name, keep it the same for fear I may lose you again...
18 - It's close to midnight, and something evil's lurkin' in the dark...
19 - I never thought I'd miss you half as much as I do...
20 - Bless my soul / Herc was on a roll / person of the week in every Greek opinion poll
21 - Look in the mirror, turn the face up / ever tried to live without the photographs and money?
22 - Build yourself a castle / keep your family safe from harm / get into Classical music / raise rabbits on a farm
23 - Streets like a jungle / so call the police...
24 - Once I believed that when love came to me / it would come with rockets, bells and poetry...
25 - The winter may pass and the spring fade away, the spring fade away...
26 - Whistle for the boys now don't be shy / give us all a song and a reason why...
27 - Alcoholic kind mood / lose my clothes, lose my lube...
28 - Clearing skies and drying eyes, now I see your smile / darkness goes and softness shows a changing style...
29 - She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge / she studied sculpture at St Martin's college
30 - They put a parking lot on a piece of land / where the supermarket used to stand / before that they put up a bowling alley / on the site that used to be the local Palais...

Aaah! mrs_picard been done maded me an icon specially. Look!



Bless you, you crazy Teutonic faux-lesbian!

Cor, haven't posted in a whole week! Been busy busy with life stuff, what big chunks of time I've had have been spent very slowly uploading my old fics to scrib_lit, pecking even more slowly at my writing and Simming.

Plus the whole weekend has been very busy (again), not to mention very awkward as Mum and Stepfather have spent the weekend in Kent for the first time since the incident at Easter. Nobody mentioned my sister's continued exclusion from Mum's house - since the Stepfather reacted so badly to me trying to persuade him to be reasonable last time I was worried something similar would happen and didn't want a scene in front of the kids, plus with me & Hubs still gearing up for my FiL's funeral we really didn't want any more stress... besides, as Hubs noted, neither of us would have put it past the Stepfather just driving off with or without Mum should we 'bully' him by trying to calmly talk about the shitty situation that *he* has created. So the weekend passed without incident, but with me feeling thoroughly guilty at every moment that by visiting them at their resort and welcoming them into our home without mentioning the elephant in the room we were silently condoning the way my sister's been treated. I don't intend to play tit-for-tat and ban the Stepfather from my home over this - I think it's a very childish way to behave that sets a horrible example to my kids on how to deal with problems. But I don't know if I can go up and visit again if no steps are being made to end the stupid situation. Stepfather won't even talk to my sister at the moment - he won't even be *asked* to talk to her without throwing an eppie. I feel uncomfortable as it is socialising with him now - I'm not sure I could accept hospitality from him that's been withdrawn from my sister with no apparent reason.

Randomscribbles.co.uk is shortly to die, but will live on in scrib_lit, the one-stop Scribbles story-stop. It's a bit messy over there at the moment - only the Call Home is posted so far and I really need to put cuts on all the posts, but that's where you go if you want to look back at the real Curate's Egg that was my early ficcing.

Carry on!

Yowza. What a week it's been. Hubs has been working very long hours, Alex is still teething (but the teeth still aren't cutting) and is therefore sleeping terribly, and throughout the whole time we've had the shadow hanging over us of my Father in Law suddenly nosediving in health. As some of you know, he'd had Parkinsons from before I met him and was in a residential home with dementia for many years. He suddenly lost a lot of weight a few weeks ago though, and seemed to have pretty much given up on living. We went to Hastings on Sunday when Hubs visited him in hospital, then Hubs went to see him again on Tuesday, and first thing on Friday morning he found out that his Dad had died in the night.

Hubs is taking it on the chin at the moment - he's not one of life's mopers, and a very practical person - dementia means you slowly lose the person you loved anyway, and I think having been prepared for this for a long time and the element of relief that his Dad's suffering has ended has softened the blow somewhat. We're carrying on with our plans this weekend - seeing friends and all (except me and Alex since he's too little) going to the big bonfire night tonight. I think he'd actually find it much harder just sitting around.

Other big news is that I'm afraid I've decided it's time to let www.randomscribbles.co.uk die. It served me well over the years, but it's so easy to post writing online for free these days it's not worth me shelling out yearly for a fiction website. I'll soon be posting all the content that was on there either on this journal, or more likely I'll set up a second LJ account as a fic depository. The website will go down on the 10th, apparently. So it goes. So it goes.

Hey hey! I've done an Original Short Story! It was for pulped_fictions Halloween Challenge Fest, but I'm posting it here too, because I'm rather proud of it. It's about 3K words.

Title: I Kissed A Ghoul And I Liked It
Challenge: Pulped Fictions - Trick Or Treat
Genre: Comedy, Ghost Story
Rating/Warnings: Rated 15 for swears & heavy sexual references - no explicit scenes, though
Summary: Socially awkward & recently heartbroken; when Brian makes a connection with a girl at his sister's Halloween party he's sure there has to be a catch. He's right.
Author's/Artist's Note: Prompts were 'ghost story, comedy, ghoul, pumpkin'. Hope you enjoy it.

( I Kissed A Ghoul & I Liked It )

Because elektra_lyte is doing me some art...

The first TEN people to comment in this post get to request a drabble* of ANY pairing/character of their choosing (of ANY fandom) from me (with a prompt, if it pleases you to give me one). In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their ability level.

*It will not be a 'Drabble', since it will not be exactly 100 words, but it will be a very short story or scene.

GO!

Hey! And, as it happens, I have more Rollercoaster for ye right now!

Set during Generations. Part 1 tonight, part 2 when I get chance - probably tomorrow.
( The Point of No Return - 1 )

Wooo, I'm finally Spotified up!

And this means I can at last do a tres, tres geeky thing I've been thinking about for a while now - namely, soundtracks to my epic fics.
Here's Rollercoaster's

Tracks are:
Quantum Theory - Jarvis Cocker - General theme
Carioca - Fred Astaire - Sung by Q in 'Blue Fairy Godmothers Don't Wear Sombreros'
Ode To Joy - Beethoven - Sung by Tasha & Data, theme music to triumph over Fajo.
Ballroom Blitz - Sweet - Inspiration for Tasha & Data's dance at the O'Brien Wedding
Baby Get Your Head Screwed On - inspiration for the Time's Arrow adventure
Suddenly Seymour - Little Shop Of Horrors Cast - rehearsed (unsuccessfully) by Data and Tasha during 'The Best Intentions'.
'Something Changed' - Pulp - general theme to the S7 adventures, especially the All Good Things adventure.( Tracks under the cut are for forthcoming stories - possible slight spoilers for where Rollercoaster's going... )
Hope you enjoy!

Fuck a Jesus, I'm tired. It's possible that Alex's very gradually emerging 1st tooth is giving him gip again - whatever it was, I was awake with him at 12.30 (before I'd got any sleep at all), 3 (when I brought him into bed with me so as to avoid giving him another feed) and 5 (when I actually managed to nod off in the middle of feeding him) and then was up at 7.30 for Vi, shortly after which, Alex was awake & crying and soaking wet. He waited til his nappy was off to poo and wee simultaneously. He then cried pretty much solidly until after 11. Vi has been watching a lot of cartoons today in lieu of a mummy with the energy to actually take her out or do something with her.

Mental dreams as a result of all the waking and spending two hours of the night with a baby in my arms though. Fairly certain at one point Da Schneid was wearing a tutu - which frankly I wouldn't put past him - and later on La Reynolds was playing a character trying to pick up women at his wife's funeral. He seemed to be relying on pity shags, and was coming on a bit strong. i recall that he was wearing leggings with 90s style stirrups on the foot under jeans. Weird. But nice to have a random Reynolds dream again. It'd been too long!

I can't believe I never posted about my escape to Colch with violetcreme last weekend! Probably because as soon as I returned home I had to go and join the rest of my family for the long wait in A&E because Vi had tripped and whacked her face on the bottom stair as I was driving back (don't worry, she's fine) and was therefore distracted away from the previous 24 hours, which were epic and awesome and various other annoying Americanised enthusiasms.

Miss C, you see, lives, as those who know Miss C might expect her to, in a fucking MANSION. Admittedly, it's a mansion that's been turned into flats, but they're lovely flats that are probably a little bigger than our house and they have Grounds. I believe my first words of greeting were 'You have fucking squirrels! They're frolicking!'

Missy C also has an iPod full of Kids TV Themes. We kicked off the weekend headbanging to the Knightmare theme while driving to Sainsburys. It's a very good way to commence a Saturday night. There was pizza, tiffin, a whole champers bottle worth of Bucks Fizz, I actually got into Strictly for the first and probably only time. (Highlights: 'He looks like a drunken uncle at a wedding'... 'he's a bit spasmodic... you're a bit Spasmodic.') There was also rather a lot of Quantum Leap, the 'Die Hard' TNG episode, which prompted a loud 'Oh my GOD' from Missy C once Picard got into his jodhpurs, thus exposing the Captain's Log, and we wrote a manifesto that was going to save British Journalism & TV Drama. I don't remember a lot of it, but I think it involved Terry Wogan.

Needless to say, it was brilliant, and plans are afoot to do it again on a bigger scale. Hurrah!

A reasoned response to this article

FUCK OFF! FUCK OFF, DAILY MAIL AND YOUR BOLLOCKS, GHOULISH SPECULATION OVER THE TRAGICALLY EARLY DEATH OF A BLAMELESS SINGER PURELY ON THE GROUNDS THAT HE WAS GAY! HEALTHY YOUNG PEOPLE DO SOMETIMES JUST DIE SUDDENLY OF UNDIAGNOSED CONDITIONS; IT HAPPENED TO A FRIEND OF MINE AT UNIVERSITY, BUT I HAVE NEVER KNOWN ANYBODY TO DIE OF A, SMOKING A SINGLE JOINT OR B, SIMPLY BEING IN A HOMOSEXUAL RELATIONSHIP. YOU LOVE THAT TWO HIGH PROFILE YOUNG GAY MEN HAVE DIED OVER THE LAST COUPLE OF WEEKS, DON'T YOU? YOU'RE GLEEFULLY SALIVATING OVER THE PROSPECT THAT SOMEHOW YOU CAN PIN EITHER OR BOTH OF THESE SAD CASES ONTO THEIR SEXUALITY - YOU WANT MATT LUCAS' EX TO HAVE KILLED HIMSELF OVER THEIR DIVORCE AND YOU WANT STEPHEN GATELY TO HAVE DIED IN A DRUG ORGY, DON'T YOU? DON'T YOU, YOU COMPLETE FUCKING CUNTS? OF COURSE YOU DO, BECAUSE EVEN THOUGH THIS ISN'T THE CASE FOR EITHER OF THEM, STILL YOU SPECUALTE HERE THAT THIS MIGHT SECRETLY BE THE CASE, JUST SO YOU CAN WAVE A BIG PLACARD READING 'I TOLD YOU SO' IN THE FACES OF THEIR GRIEVING LOVED ONES. YEAH - YOU'RE LIKE THAT CULT OF 'GOD HATES FAGS' HEARSE CHASERS WITH A BUNCH OF POORLY WRITTEN PLACARDS, ALL IN COMIC SANS, THE FONT OF PAEDOPHILES!

I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU SO FUCKING MUCH! I HOPE YOUR OFFICE CATCHES FIRE WHICH SIMULTANEOUSLY SETS FIRE TO EVERY PRESENT AND PAST COPY OF YOUR RANCID RAG AND THAT THE REMAINING ASHES ARE MOULDED INTO A GIANT DOG TURD WHICH IS THEN THROWN UNDER A BUSFULL OF SEX OFFENDERS, THUS SENDING THEM AND THE MAIL-TURD CRASHING INTO THE FUCKING SEA. NOT EVEN A NICE SEA, EITHER. AAAAARRRGHHHH!!!!

You just know when the first piece of dialogue in a chapter is 'Welcome to Riker Country', you're going to have fun with it.

'How's about that Indian Ocean?'
'Oh, y'know... big and wet; how I like 'em. Oceans, that is...'

We found the car keys!

Unfortunately, I found them about 10 mins after the locksmith had arrived. Vi had hidden them right at the back of the playpen and then had denied all knowledge. *Sigh*.

Oh, and Alex has started teething (yes, already!) and currently can't go for more than about 4 hours without crying for a feed, so I'm getting him up at 10.30 for a feed, then getting up for him again between 2 and 3, then Hubs sees to him at between 6 and 7. Tiring.

I may have just been brilliant in the chapter of Rollercoaster I'm currently writing, or may have jumped the ficcy shark a little. Hard to tell. I'm fairly certain I've just written an action sequence that's physically impossible, but it was too spectacular not to. Hey-ho.

And La Reynolds was in Casualty again on Sat! Was just channel hopping and there he was! He was playing a Paramedic this time so I was concerned he was coming on as a regular. Alas though, it turned out he was a thieving scumbelina and got sacked before the episode was through. Oh well, at least that means I don't have to watch Casualty every week now.

Fuck, fick, feck! Lost our carkeys! only discovered this when hubs was about to do a big shop this afternoon - lucky then and not as he was supposed to leave for work I suppose, but we've turned the whole house over & they're nowhere to be found. I was the last to have them, to take Alex to the doctors yesterday, but I have absolutely no memory of what I did with them. Apart from making a sow's ear of parallel parking while Alex screamed & hurrying into the house with him to feed him I can't remember a thing. The car's locked up but it's possible I left them in there by accident or even dropped them in the street, although they're not in the street between the car and the door now. Seriously - when I've been concentrating on one or both of the kids, I'm capable of dropping bigger, heavier things than keys and it just not registering at all. Either way, it involves me being a complete and utter mong. Feel like a complete twat, we're now going to have to call out an emergency locksmith tomorrow (expensive) and hope that someone hasn't taken the keys today and wants to come back and nick the car tonight. I just hope they're locked in the car, because I want to know where the Hell they are!