Updates

Seamen: Interesting nuts-and-bolts review of Master and Commander by Harry Knowles at Ain't It Cool News.

Yuletide smut: haven't got my assignment yet. Wibble. (I e-mailed. I hope I didn't give them the wrong email address or something stupid like that.)

Nanowrimo: at 17.000 words and counting. Wibble, redux.

Reading: devoured Redmond O'Hanlon's new book 'Trawler' on the train last night instead of NaNo'ing. The style is more than slightly manic and the number of exclamation points exhausting, but this is a hell of a book. O'Hanlon is like Maturin on crack - a total landlubber of a naturalist who signs on with a deep-sea fishing trawler during the worst storm of the year, when all the other trawlers are safely in harbor. And here's a Guardian review of the book that sums up the real theme of the book better than I could:

You would be hard-pushed to find a better analysis of why males go and do dangerous things and what that does to them - how they cope and how they fail to cope. Why some men are human anglerfish and others are not.

Secret Santa

Got my assignment.

I can do this.

I can do this.

(Thinks: oh Bog. Who am I kidding? I've never even read a story in this pairing before. Although maybe that's a good thing. Wibble.)