Two excellent things are going to be happening within ten days of each other, and I feel the need to promote them shamelessly. If you are, or are able to be, in Oxford, I'd love to see you at either.

DJ deathbyshinies
Place: The Cellar
Date: Tuesday 8 December
Time: 8.30pm
Cost: Free

DJ deathbyshinies takes to the decks once again. The first thirty people to arrive for her set will get a free stamp for all-evening entry, so why not come along to grab your free entry, hear her show the Intrusion DJs how it should be done, and then take a break to get a decent drink elsewhere? Your stamp'll get you in free whenever you choose to come back.. Alternatively, the goths in the corner will certainly be happy to lace you into your corsets and smear you with eyeliner. I shall be rallying the troops (and needing someone to lace me into my corset..) in the Three Goats' Heads from 7pm.

Many Awesome Bands
Place: The Z0₂diac
Date: Saturday 19 December
Time: 6.30pm
Cost: £10 (£5 if you tell me by Thursday 10 December, or get them yourself from band@borderville.com)

Electric Six, Eureka Machines, and Borderville. (Cherish them!) Jaw, meet floor. You will not find camper punk-rock, you will not find happier goth-rock, you will not find more intellectual glam-rock, you will not find darker pop-rock, you will not find me anywhere else. Because, inexplicably, the whole world has not fallen under the thrall of Borderville, I provide yet another enticement: I've played you the music. I've dissected the meaning. But have you seen the charisma that these men have? The electrifying stage-presence, the showmanship, the artistry?

I wish I could show you what it feels like to be in the front row at one of their gigs. But I can't - videos of gigs are always so grainy, and from such a distance - so you can have the closest thing I've found; it's a stripped-down version of one of their songs, recorded for BBC Oxford. Musically and aesthetically, I'm sad that it lacks the bassist and the drummer, and some of the more spectacular costumiery; but it's the closest I've seen to the electricness of seeing them live.

- for a job it turns out that I really really want -

and I haven't heard anything yet. Realistically I know that this means they have offered it to someone else, and are waiting for formalities and references before they commiserate the unsuccessful applicants; but my gods this is driving me slowly insane!

There are many wonderful things in the world - most notably, Theatricalia, which is well on its way to being IMDB for the theatre, and this most excellent queer/straight rights petition - but I'm unable to give them my full attention until I can draw a line under this job interview, one way or another. I am being plagued by increasingly toxic hope.

Still, it's the Geek Quiz tonight, Social Highlight of the Term and all that...

- I just got Cyndi back from the bike repairers! She keeps hopping down into 2nd on the front tire (and I only ride her in 3rd, so I'm thinking of attacking the gear lever with duct tape rather than getting her fixed any more) but she's as whizzy as she ever was, her brakes are tighter (useful to avoid future collisions), and I'm generally much, much happier with these guys' work than the Oxford Cycle Workshop (who have a reputation as a co-operative full of hippies but haven't impressed me in the past).

- Eureka Machines, a bouncy punky rock band I'm pretty fond of, are supporting Electric Six (girl, I wanna take you to a gay bar) at Oxford's biggest music venue on 19 December. I was probably going to go, because both of these bands are awesome cool. And then I found out that the first support act of the evening was to be BORDERVILLE, and then all bets were off. It's not quite the Bowie/Borderville/David Devant line-up, but then I'm too young & beautiful to spontaneously combust from joy just yet. You should all get tickets and join me because it will be the best night of your life. I will offer or find crashspace for all non-Oxford types.

- I've got tomorrow off work, so I'm getting a haircut and writing songs and preparing for my job interview and am basically just ready to take on the world.

ETA: And I was just feeling a bit chilly, and went to find my jumper, and it was *sitting on a hot radiator*. And I'm about to eat toast and jam and drink a cup of tea. I do want this job a lot, but even if I don't get it, my life is already utopia...

If you google the name of my favourite band - Borderville - my LJ is currently the third hit.

EDIT: Apparently, not everyone can see this. The Borderville Joy Through Work hits are real, but I'm the only person getting these results - google obviously thinks my ego needs stroking. This personalised searching thing is kinda creepy..

I'm hoping the rain stays heavy, this weekend, so that I can stay in and read Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical, by the delightfully engaging Rob Shearman who gave the Doctor Who Society such a good time last night.

Even if I do end up staying in all weekend, I am still going to a cottage in the country, and so do need to go and pack rather than sit here listening to glam rock..

Last night, I signed up for Yuletide. I was sleepy as anything and completely overwhelmed by the list of fandoms but knew I'd only regret it if I wasn't involved. Santa, if you're reading this: please feel free to ignore the details that I listed. Some of them are a bit demanding and really I was just thinking out loud. Please bear in mind that I like everything. G to NC-17. Fluff to angst. Serious to silly. At the moment I seem to have a disproportionate amount of love for crossovers, but equally I love the canon-faithful.

I've gone a bit random with my fandom choice this year, choosing "RPF: Oscar Wilde and Circle" (ooh, Santa, I'd be very happy for that to cross over with any Victorian or time-traveling fiction-fandom - sorry, thinking out loud again), "David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars" (how does album fandom even work? Actually, I should know this more than anyone, given that my number one fandom at the moment is a band. But I'm just so excited by the possibilities of this one!), and finally "Withnail & I" for a bit of I-love. And not just so that I can spend a few thousand words thinking about Paul McGann, either. I may have mentioned something about A Rebours in the 'details' sent to my Santa. I'm sorry.

8pm, Three Goats' Heads.

(I would filter this to Oxford-only, but then it won't export to my Facebook..)

This morning, I collided with a car at the corner of James and Hurst streets.

On the one hand, I've written off my bike, will need to pay £200 in insurance excess, and have to go to the police station to "report my injuries". (Just finger injuries - tends to happen when you punch off someone's wing mirror - my head and body are fine.)

On the other hand, being unable to cycle into town means that I can wear stupid clothes and drink a lot at the Borderville gig tonight! They've linked my review of their album from their facebook event. I'm sure this must officially make me a BNF!

It's all about priorities.

I should probably come right out and admit that I love dystopias, and I love musical narratives. (An adolesence spent reading Orwell and Atwood and watching Rocky Horror and Hedwig will do that to a girl.)

It will probably come as a surprise to no-one at all, then, when I say that I love dystopian concept albums. David Bowie's Diamond Dogs and Gary Numan's Replicas hold places in my heart from which they may never be ousted.

Regular readers may also know that I am, at times, prone to hyperbole (ironically, this sentence is in fact understatement). So I really had to look closely at my thought processes when I wanted to log on here today and tell you all that Borderville's Joy Through Work is the best dystopian concept album that I have ever heard. On reflection, I want to modify that statement; Borderville's Joy Through Work is the only dystopian concept album which feels immediate to me. Replicas and Diamond Dogs are quite clearly set in some future: cyberpunk and post-apocalypse, respectively. But Joy Through Work is a dystopian concept album where the dystopia is the capitalist megamachine that I feel crunching us all into its cogs more and more each day. It's real, and it's now, and it's everything that distresses and depresses me about the world I see; yet it offers hope.

I cannot stress enough how much what follows is half review, half creative response to this hope. Of course, I want to excite you all to purchase their album (either today from their website with a beautiful gatefold sleeve, or when it receives its multi-platform digital launch on 5 December), but this is more than that; I want to spread the beauty that they have built out of degradation, and the hope that they have built out of despair.

( Review )

Merlin: the anti-Shrek since 2008.

I know that you all told me, that just because a show teases me with the possibility of slashiness it will never deliver, that does not mean it is actually a good show. I'm going to keep watching it, because apparently I am a tremendous masochist, but really; does your Big Bad absolutely have to be a fat wrinkled dark-skinned woman who speaks with a "lower class" accent and dares to have desires and bodily functions? I'm particularly taken with the fatsuit (hoho she gets stuck in chairs! her breasts don't defy gravity!) and the extended comedy scene about how ridiculous it is that Uther would be attracted to her.

Urk. I should never have started this, should I...

EXCELLENT Hallowe'en party chez sir_rosealot. I was Glory, not that anyone could really tell, and got to suck out people's brains and demand that my minions entertain me by talking about Maths.

( Mathgasm )

( Glorificus )

( My new favourite slash pairing )

( A transformation )

( And finally, just a cute photo )

In conclusion: I did not wake up until 2pm today. This was a truly excellent party.

With a little help from calliope85, ayaron, and chiasmata, I have created something of great wonder:

( the WHAT of Rassilon? )

Why yes, I am wearing this to work today. Why do you ask?

Dear BBC,

Do you know what, this might be the first time I've read an article about fat people on your website that hasn't made me spittingly angry. You present some actual fat lived experience, including a hint in the direction of Health at Every Size, and you do seem to talk about us as if we're human beings, rather than a statistical drain on the NHS.

However, it really isn't that big a step to realise that your own coverage of "the obesity epidemic" has lead to some of the hate your article talks about, now is it? Or, indeed, to mention the nonsense of BMI rather than to quote scare-statistics about how fat we'll all be if "no action is taken". It does somewhat implicitly undermine your point about equality and identity-politics.

And really, really, did you need to ask: "Can people control their dislike of fat people?", and talk about psychological studies like finding me disgusting is somehow innate rather than learned? (Anthropological citations available upon request.)

I was surprised by not hating Susie Orbach (author of Fat is a Feminist Issue AKA "How to diet more effectively through pseudo-feminist psychoanalysis") in this article at all. In fact I agreed with everything she was quoted as saying. Her main point, for those of you with short attention spans: I, as a fat person, am the ultimate bogeyman. Don't be naughty or you might turn into me! There's nothing worse!

I've had this song stuck in my head solidly for about three days. This suggests to me that it does have musical merit above and beyond the implausibly beautiful & charismatic man in the video..

And you think that you're not good enough for me,
And it's true,
But I like you anyway.
You think I'm clever,
Clever as can be,
That might be true,
But I like you anyway.

Fantastic as Borderville are (and an album review will eventually follow, once I've got my head around the splendour), it is becoming rapidly apparent to me that I should have been born ten years before I actually was in order to properly enjoy bands like this. Pure unselfconscious silliness.

Today marks exactly a month since I handed in my Library School dissertation. I've been feeling unstoppable all month.

And so my life spins on, as I sit at the Library Issue Desk eleven hours into my thirteen-hour working day. A few wonderful realisations that have maintained my Month Of Joy so far:

• The realisation that my biggest fandom at the moment is made up of people who are alive now and know I exist. They are called Borderville, and a few weeks ago when one of their gigs was cancelled I found out before they did and had to email them to let them know. In their recent interview in Nightshift, they explictly note my efforts at fantastical glam-goth costumiery: "we’ve got an awesome following who dress up and dance and really help create the atmosphere we need for this to work." I'm awesome. My fandom says so.


• All the exciting new freshers who've started coming along to DocSoc, who have such a diverse range of interests and talents and conversation and I think we might even get to keep some undergraduates!


• Being involved in direct action on issues that matter to me Wednesday, Thursday, and tomorrow. On Wednesday it was taking on an eyewateringly evil Shell milkround event. On Thursday it was standing outside BBC Radio Oxford in the rain, talking to Sixth-formers who came up and said "what's a fascist and why is it bad?". Tomorrow it's a brief stroll in central Oxford to raise awareness about climate change.


• Having guilt-free time to spend reading books: Unseen Academicals, Cryptonomicon, random Doctor Who novels.


• Networking with trade unionists and realising that there is a role for me in real left-wing activism even if I am essentially a well-meaning middle-class guardianista who completely screws up her discourse (just see my comment-retractions to my last few political/theoretical posts for evidence of my fail!).


• Realising how little money I spend - and therefore how little money I can live on - since stopping getting the bus and starting to make all my own lunches. Being able to live on less money means being able to work less and therefore being able to put more time into activism, reading, and Lashings of Ginger Beer, thus extending and maintaining this Month of Joy as far into the future as I can see.

If there are issues that matter to you - if there are things I can do with my time that will make your world better - please let me know. It just might be hypomania talking, but I feel like I'm on fire.

A lot of people of whom I am very fond have made the (very valid) deconstruction of Doctor Who as a white middle-class man who goes around the universe telling people how they ought to do things. I have often disclaimed that I choose to circumlegate these issues because of all the good things I get out of Doctor Who fandom, but a recent post on the Doctor Who Society mailing list has caused me to rethink this.

The Doctor's status as a middle-class white man is very tenuous. It is as tenuous as that of a trans man, because a medical examination could "out" him. It is as tenuous as that of a man on the autistic spectrum, because he learns the rules of human interaction as an outsider. His apparent class-status is part of that; he has learnt the best way to get what he wants is to adopt a certain kind of privileged-male arrogance, except when he's adopting some other persona in order to get what he wants. (Because what he wants is generally to avert catastrophe, save lives, etc, I won't begrudge him that too much.)

“How many heterosexual Doctor Who fans does it take to change a lightbulb? Both” provides an excellent analysis of the queerness of Doctor Who fans, and of the show itself, and points to some things that I had never even considered before as to why I love the show so very much.

Sadly, it's also perturbed me a little; is Moffat's tenure actually going to remove some of the Doctor's glorious queerness? While he was functionally asexual, he could be a queer cipher, a Holmesian "other" in a way I'd never fully analysed; but, unless Moffat gives him boyplots as romance-focussed as "The Girl in the Fireplace" and "Silence in the Library", a lot of the ways in which my dear Doctor differs from the standard sci-fi hero are going to be lost. I can take one Irene Adler, but a whole season of them will sadden me.

Tonight, I could go and meet some Oxford Socialists in a pub (thus fulfilling my commitment to getting more politically active this year). Alternatively, I could go and hang out with the awesome-sounding grassroots group Thames Valley Climate Action, fulfilling much the same goal. I could even go to the Star Trek society and watch some episodes that involve time-travel, or go down to the Cellar and watch some comedy.

Instead, I have a sneaking suspicion that I am going to spend approximately five hours glued to a sofa reading Unseen Academicals. So much for resolutions...

I went straight to university from school, and did a three-year undergraduate course. Then I did my one-year prerequisite library experience, before applying for my Library Masters. Essentially, I am as young as I could possibly be to have this qualification, without having skipped years in school.

I've now chosen to take a year out, because there are things that matter to me more than career progression. This puts me a year behind the person who went straight into a professional position after zir one-year Library Masters.

People talk about the pay gap between men and women with relation to childbirth; they note that women carry a disproportionate amount of childcare responsibility, as well as (generally) bearing the brunt of the actual child-bearing. This means that people see the pay gap as having two components:

1. sheer discrimination, where men and women doing the same job in the same company are paid different amounts based on gendered criteria

2. the fact that, over their career-span, women are more likely to take time out to raise a family, meaning that they are considered to have less workplace experience than a man of a comparable age

These are often put forward as the only explanations, and as self-evidently bad things. I'd like to reframe the debate: what do you think of the following?

Women are more likely to take lower-paid jobs which have a kind of job satisfaction borne of vocation - librarianship, publishing, nursing - but gender statistics at the top of these careers are noticeably reversed. Certainly, some of this comes from socialisation which prepares women for nurturing/service roles, and from the fact that women bear the brunt of childcare. But why, from the principle that women and men should demonstrate equal employment profiles, does it follow that our activism should take the form of encouraging women to strive for more money, and more power in the workplace?

What if I don't want money or power?

Stop there a second - you've just scoffed at me, haven't you? Who could possibly not want money and power?! But these are patriarchal values, and privileging them can be seen as an aspect of "the scapegoating of femininity". Choosing to 'step off the conveyor belt' - is it a devalued, feminine act?

I've been thinking about why I feel like a failure for having chosen to take lower-paid jobs that I know I can do well. Am I a dupe, the victim of a kyriarchy which says I can never be perfect, so why bother trying? Have I fallen, where a hypothetical comparable man wouldn't, into self-deprecation that causes me to undervalue my potential and my abilities? No. But I think we have all fallen victim to a mindset that tells us we should strive for money and power and status more than we should strive for happiness. A patriarchal mindset.

Although.. is it easier to have money and power and status and happiness, if one is a man? Or am I falling victim to socialisation which tells me that I shouldn't worry my pretty little head about money and power? My gods this is a thorny one..

( only spoilers for image/appearance, not plot )

Life continues well. I have free time, truly free time, for the first time in, well, ever; so if there are things I can do with my time that will make your life nicer, let me know.

The only thing I'm having to fight is the idea that it is somehow a failure to have decided to step off the conveyor belt awhile. I've been on this conveyor belt ever since they identified me as "gifted" aged 7 and paid for me to go to a posh school for four years - work hard at prep school so that you can get the scholarship to the independent secondary school so that you can get good GCSEs so that you can get good A-levels so that you can get into Oxford so that you can have your pick of careers, do your library traineeship and an MSc so that you can be a career librarian by your mid-twenties and keep climbing that ladder the rest of your life. Never be satisfied, always yearn for the next thing, keep wanting more. Up the ziggurat, lickety-split.

I do have to remind myself that this constant feeling of well-being, the one that's been with me two solid weeks, ever since I handed in, might not last. Moods fluctuate, that's life, and "happy" means nothing without "sad" to contrast it with. But right now it seems that stepping off the conveyor belt is the best thing that I could possibly have done. Instead of pursuing an ever-moving "next step" goal, I'm just chasing happiness. Of course, I'll never be completely happy until I've smashed the kyriarchy, so that's not as hedonistic a goal as it may appear. But it's unutterably lovely. Long may it last.

On the anonymeme the other day, someone said that they learn from me about discrimination. This was awesome to hear because educating people about these issues is pretty much my number one priority at the moment! But just now, flist, I'm afraid I rather want to learn from you.

Nick Griffin, leader of the fascist BNP, has been invited on Question Time. Oxford Unite Against Facism are rallying people to protest, but I'm not sure I'm in support. I'm seeing arguments saying that allowing his opinions to be ripped apart on air will reduce BNP support, and I think that these arguments make sense.

The same argument was rolled out to defend Griffin at the Oxford Union, and it didn't wash then: one, because speaking to the Oxford Union would essentially be speaking to the converted (..and OUCA), and two, because the BNP in Oxford meant racists and bigots walking around our streets. But I feel like this case is different, although I am very, very open to correction.

So, politically-minded flist members: am I very wrong?


Having handed in is making my life implausibly fantastic. I am making a beautiful termcard for OU DocSoc (for whom I am the Publicity Officer), which I will post here when I'm done. I am starting a new job (one that I can do with a hangover), joining UNISON ('if we're going to get a tory government, one of the things we're going to desperately need is as many people in well-organised unions as possible'), practicing recreational Mathematics, fighting entropy.