Paris. ;___;

Would someone please explain to me why everybody seems to think that Ebony and Ivory is a duet between Paul McCartney and MJ? I've even seen a couple of articles referencing this. Do people not know what Stevie Wonder sounds like??

I find it incredible how well trained those dancers are. Crazy fan jumps on stage, two dancers immediately rush to stop him while nobody else misses a beat.

My iPod died today. I thought it might be the heat, and put it in the fridge on a colleague's suggestion, but no joy. It was briefly revived before dying completely. Fortunately, Apple have an iPod exchange program, so I should have my new one early next week. *crosses fingers*

Also, randomly, I just realised that Elvis had blue eyes. I don't know why I'm so surprised.



tl;dw: Michael Jackson covers the Beatles in painfully tight leather pants while stripping. No, I am not kidding.

( I dunno about you, but I just want to lick that little droplet off the stubble...Mmmmm.... )

Two days before he died. I so wish he could have gotten to share his final vision with the world, just once. ;__;

I dunno, I just like this one. It's from October 2008, and he just looked so happy during that excursion.

I'm thinking of getting a tattoo done. This isn't as random as it sounds, I've been thinking about getting this one on and off for years, and it seems like this might be the time. It would be my first and most likely only, since I doubt I will ever come across anything else that I would want to commit so permanently to my flesh. In this case, though, my idolisation of Michael Jackson has had such a profound influence over so many years on my development, my way of thinking and my attitude to life that I feel I would like to be visibly marked with it.

If I did get it, I would get this, slightly modified to broaden some of the narrower bits, 2-3cm high on my right hip:

( Clicky )

Not sure yet, though. I will give it a few weeks, in any case, since the tattooist is on holiday. ^^;;

Congrats Mike. As your last act on this earth, you broke the internet:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8120324.stm

And to top it off, it's entirely true. I followed the whole thing from beginning to end last night, and after TMZ broke the story that he'd passed on, everything went down. The fan sites, Twitter, CNN, Reuters, Associated Press, TMZ. Even LiveJournal. It took me twenty minutes to make my RIP post, because I refused to go to bed without doing it.

I can't help but feel that, somewhere, he's getting a massive kick out of this right about now.

In the end, I stayed up watching the news reports until the news was confirmed. My flatmate, whose girlfriend’s sister is also a huge fan, came in to see if I was okay after the two of them were woken up by a call from the frantic sister.

( Thoughts in the aftermath )

So it would seem that it was true.

RIP Michael. You're free now.

TMZ are reporting that MJ has died (note that so far TMZ are the only people reporting that - everyone else is just quoting TMZ). Gonna stay up till 12.30 and see if there's an official statement, otherwise go to bed.

00:21 edit: So apparently now it's a coma. I guess we'll see.

I'm setting myself a challenge: Every day for the next twenty working days (and by working days I mean days when I'm actually at work), I'm going to write between 250 and 500 words of something original in my lunch break.

(And nobody say you can't write anything knowing you have only an hour to do it, because I've been writing fanfic like that for aaaaages. It's not perfect, but fine for a first draft. XD)

We shall see how it goes.

The Sofa Cat - Long lost species?

Took Merlin to see the vet again today. The eye looks fine again, we won't be going back for the moment. Yay! They still don't know what infection it was a reaction to, if any, though, so I'll be keeping a close eye on him for the next few weeks.

Feeling very tired, but at the same time bored and restless. Very odd. >_>

You know, over the years I've learned that there are times when there is no more appropriate response than a classic Fuck You daisy.

:)

Today was a very productive day. I did laundry, finished off my taxes, cleaned out the rat cage and the cat litter box, and made the final decision on my July Enchanted Doll order, squeee! XD

I also went back up to Rue Haute to look at that table again. I found it easily enough and the shop was open, but in the end I didn't take it. They were asking 75 euros, and half that would already have been a stretch. It was nicely made, but quite battered: No varnish, split in several places, random little paint splatters, etc. If it had been 15 euros, I would have taken it, but what they were asking was just ridiculous. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, Rue Haute is full of tourist trap antique shops. Basically, it has a number of these warehouse-type shops, huge concrete halls filled to the brim with all kinds of random junk. The idea is to present them as completely disorganised, like someone just turned up with a couple of truckloads of valuable antiques and piled them in, thereby luring tourists into thinking that they can make all sorts of amazing Finds for hardly any money. In fact, of course, everything has been carefully examined and priced by an expert, whose quote the shop then triples. Sometimes they do have some nice things, but 90% of it is absolute crap when you start to look at it. If you know this, though, they're lots of fun to walk around, especially if, like me, you like big, heavy wooden furniture stacked together and speckled with random knicknacks. Today I came across the most beautifully carved mahogany Victorian children's seat, with antique rose silk upholstering. It was really very lovely, but I didn't inquire about the price, because 1) see above, and 2) even if it had been reasonable, it was pretty big and I have no use for it and nowhere to put it. But it was gorgeous.

Went back to the vet today. His eye is better, though still not perfect. You can clearly see the pupil and the blue of the iris now, although it still retains a yellowish cast, and there is a stain of protein (as I learned today) near the bottom. We are continuing the antibiotics and eyedrops, and going back a third time on Tuesday.

The trip was quite an excursion, though. I brought Socrates too, to keep Merlin company, and I'm very glad I did: They were in that box for almost two hours! There was one guy before me, and a patient being seen, so there was already a 45 minute wait before we saw the vet. The man waiting with me was an elderly drunk with a German Shephard mix bitch with an absess on her ear. He didn't have any money to pay or an ID card, and he was pretty confused in general (didn't know whether she was sterilised, etc). Honestly, I was impressed that he brought her in at all, especially for something as relatively unnoticable as an absess under her ear - I know way too many people in much better situations than him who wouldn't have bothered, unfortunately. I know all this because there is only a very thin wall between the waiting room and the office, and the vet was having to speak slowly and clearly to make sure he got it all, so I really couldn't avoid hearing the whole consultation.

Our consultation was pretty quick, since she was more or less satisfied with his progress. Afterwards, I tried to call a taxi. It hadn't occured to me that there might be an issue getting one, since I'd had no trouble ordering one before, but it seems that the agricultural strike was causing issues. Taxi Verts said 30 minutes minimum. Her taxi company said 20-30. There was no one after me, so we were both standing around in the waiting room, wondering what to do. I lamented that I actually only live about 10 minutes away on foot, I just couldn't realistically walk through crowded, busy streets with who knows how many kilos of cat in a box, and then she offered to drive me home! I would still have to wait half an hour for the consultations to end at 7pm, but at least I could leave the cats with her and take a walk, rather than having to sit in the waiting room for ages. She's the younger vet I saw last time, who called her senior colleague in to help, and she seems very competent and extremely sweet.

So I gratefully accepted, and wandered around the block for a while, looking in the windows of all the (sadly shut at that point) antique shops. And in the window of one, I found the most perfect Tonner/Enchanted Doll scale wooden table! I'm going back to see the price tag tomorrow or Monday, I think. It's lovely, very beautifully carved. ^^

So anyway, after that she dropped me off at my place on her way home, which made me very happy.

Why is it that in every hobby or fandom, no matter how small, there is one person who feels that polite but firm disagreement = "jumping on"? It never fails. -_-