Five words.

apiphile said: "Give me the titles of 1-5 books, films, songs, plays, poems or comics (as many of the media as you like) that have changed your life. And WHY."

1. Joy Division Unknown Pleasures: caught my ear and led me into becoming a g*th post-punk in black. (This was 1982, it wasn't even called "g*th" then.)
2. J.G. Ballard The Atrocity Exhibition (Re/Search edition with JGB's footnotes): inspirational. I am from Perth, which is Vermillion Sands. It really, really is.
3. B-Side (Australian indie rock fanzine): in the early to mid-'80s, a fanzine that talked about nothing but the music without big slabs of politics, television, etc. was a breath of fresh air. This inspired me to start my own fanzine and get into Australian indie rock, on which I am what passes for an expert.
4. alt.gothic (Usenet newsgroup): Got me back into g*th again starting 1995. Also got me laid copiously. Without a.g I wouldn't have come to Whitby, and thus wouldn't have moved to London.
5. alt.sysadmin.recovery (Usenet newsgroup): Brought home to me the horrible realisation that I would be quite suited to the career I find myself now doing.

It appears to be Summer Week in England.

Tonight: dyeing redcountess' hair red again. arkady and I really need to get back over to the Albatross again to pack more stuff, but if we try right now we'll melt.

Friday: Rebleaching my hair, for B-Movie: The Navy vs. the Night Monsters! For which people will keep to theme by swimming in an ocean of their own sweat. Liz predicts it will be way too hot to go near the place and Arkady will likely be saving her energy for Antilight, so I might be there all alone with my camera (probably the Ixus 50 again this time, though I might bring the Ixus i as well just to show people).

Saturday: I will be hitting Slimes early to see Swarf, who are on at 9pm (Trauma Pet 8pm, Manuskript 10pm), and liz_lowlife will hopefully be able to sort a photo pass in time. Arkady is likely to be at Antilight before me so she can be sure of getting in free before 11pm.

Sunday: Indeterminate plans to visit my parents, who are visiting my mother's sister in Southampton. Last-second tickets are expensive, though.

This Ixus i is so ridiculously cute and small. The current version, the i Zoom, is larger, but I'd love to get my hands on one and see how it does compared to my Ixus 50. It also comes with a belt-clip camera case which would go marvellously on my leather waist clincher, so I'll put the Ixus 50 in it tomorrow night. Liz used it to take the ( worst photo of me ever. )

Arkady downloaded her Thinkpad T23's service manual last night and finally replaced the hard drive. The original 30 gig drive from her Thinkpad A30 worked fine in it, so we're now assuming that the T23 suffered a bad disk, but the A30 actually has a dodgy disk controller. She has installed Dodgy Duck and is now a ( very happy little geek girl indeed. )

gothic_violin is visiting and she and Arkady have been instrument-geeking with snatches of violin for the past two hours.

My new bed is too wonderful for words. I must get a job telecommuting so that I never have to leave it, ever. Once I could hardly believe that people could spend almost a thousand pounds on a bed; I now urge each and every one of you to spend that much as soon as it is feasible for you to do so. OH MY GOD. And I thought I loved my bed when I was a student bum. Liz: "And now your love is sanctioned by the Pope!"

Liz on the phone to her mother, about the invasion of Iraq: "It's a Good-Old-Boys' war."