For fans of Joss Whedon (Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Serenity): Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. I checked on Wikipedia (as I generally do when I need to make any important decisions, form opinions, and so on) and apparently it was written during the Writer’s Strike, a “3-part musical comedy produced for the Internet, telling the story of a low-rent supervillain, the hero who keeps beating him up, and the cute girl from the laundromat he’s too shy to talk to”. I’ve only watched the first Act so far; it reminds me a bit of the musical episode of Buffy, and Dr Horrible himself is similar to the three geeky villains in whichever Buffy series it is that Willow turns evil (she ends up skinning one of the villains alive). The show’s free to watch on the website till 20th July.

Also, to echo hundreds of annoyed voices, WTF happened to Last.fm? To quote user bad_wisdom, the new profile layout looks like “a twisted nightmare freak baby of Last.fm and Facebook”. Bwahaha. I’m quite enjoying reading the comments, but it does look pretty vile: for a start (and where to start?), there’s too much space taken up by the profile box at the top of the page (which used to fit neatly into the left hand column) - the focus should be on the music that’s being listened to, not the user’s avatar. Too much space taken up by ‘Recently Listened Tracks’, which used to be very compact at the centre of the page. Comments hidden at the bottom of the page, and a stupid Facebook wannabe list of ‘recent activity’ (X and Y are now friends; X is no longer single; Y is now an atheist, etc). Yuck. It’s hurting my eyes.

Here’s hoping the hundreds thousands of negative comments will cause a rethink.

I’m really in the mood for watching Test cricket today. Curses to pay TV. In Melbourne, even overseas Tests were shown on normal TV. Really, though, if all these sports are only on pay TV, how do they expect to inspire kids to start playing them?

That’s my rant for today. I suppose I should go listen to Test Match Special (if it’s not raining. Which is a VERY big if).

ETA: Alternatively, I could just read the Guardian’s ‘live over by over!’ coverage:

36th over: South Africa 100-4 (Prince 28 de Villiers 8)
The bizarre rogues gallery of celebrities in the pavilion has been bolstered by wee Ronnie Corbett, who seems to be having a hearty chuckle with Stephen Fry about something or other. Christ I find Stephen Fry irritating. He’s so unbearably smug. The thing has its roots in that film Wilde, ever since when Fry seems to have actually become convinced that he’s the genuine reincarnation of old Oscar, on the grounds that he too is fat, camp, lank haired and prone to the odd bon mot. Fry actually made headlines once for telling American customs that he “had nothing to declare but his genius”, my how everyone chortled. Hold on, aren’t you just repeating a joke that was made 100 years ago? I mean, isn’t the whole point of being a wit that you’re supposed to be original? If I grow my beard and shine my pate, and start mincing around talking about the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” does that mean I’m a modern day Shakespeare? Arse.

There is stuff about cricket in it too. Honest.

I meant to post this ages ago: Diablo Cody (Juno’s screenwriter) in conversation with John Cusack. Now there’s a twosome I’d like to make a threesome.

Intellectually and conversationally.

Obviously.

Nonetheless, Diablo Cody is many degrees of awesome. This is from her old 2002 blog, Red Secretary, a parody in which she writes as a secretary living in Belarus:

11/20/02: I have formed an American-style “riot grrl” musical group. The group is called Thomas Vulva Edison, and we play music in the style of street punks and Gloria Steinem. I play the electrified Fender bass and also sing/shriek the most incensed and vitriolic of lyric. Jascha plays lead guitar (an electrified absinthe-green Ibanez flying V). I know that he is a boy and not a “riot grrl,” but his guitaring is so renowned and his arse so tight and admirable that I am compelled to share a stage with him and reap the inevitable fandom-by-proxy. O Secretary, so like Yoko Ono clinging nude to her Beetle!

She also has old blogs here and here, and her current blog’s here. She mentions blogging in the John Cusack conversation as well. I love the internet, being able to read people’s past selves (even though it becomes slightly unnerving when some of those past selves are yours).

So (in the interests of not letting another two weeks go by before posting again):

• Just noticed that Angels in America is only 5 pounds on Amazon! Gosh. A friend lent it to me ages ago and I loved it (once I actually got around to watching it; it’s easy to delay watching something when you know it’s going to last six hours). My favourite character was the crazy visionary Mormon lady married to the closeted Republican (or possibly Meryl Streep as a rabbi).
• My legs ache from dancing (salsa, not swing; I was just going to write there are no swingers in this town but that was totally not what I meant).
• I’m seeing that Dylan Thomas flick tomorrow evening. No high hopes for it (it got mediocre reviews, and besides, it stars Keira Knightley, who mostly I just find a bit annoying and wooden. Except for in Love Actually, where she was OK, but only because she had such a minor part).
• My internet connection is rubbish at the moment and keeps dropping out. I want to slap it and tell it to get its act together.
• Yes, I think that just about covers it.

That was a truly awful effort at posting once every two days during June, wasn’t it? I should’ve stuck to my April goal of posting once a week. First, because it’s more realistic, and second, because for some reason it makes it ever so much easier to post more than once a week. OK then. I think I’ll do that from now on.

Curiosity: when you haven’t posted regularly in a while, it becomes much more difficult to think of things to post about when you finally get around to it. You’d think there would be more things, on account of more time having passed since the previous post and, consequently, more to blog about, but it doesn’t work that way at all. And there isn’t even Prof Gunther von Hagens dissecting body parts on TV to inspire me this time (I used to love that show. I think it was on just before midnight, and I’d catch it when I arrived back from swing dancing of a Thursday evening. Fabulous. Both the dancing and the dissecting). Instead, there’s a 1960s legal drama on BBC4 called ‘The Boys’; it might be good, but I’m not even half-watching it so I’m not qualified to comment; except to say that it’s less inspiring in an immediate blogging sense than Prof Hagens and his activities.

Speaking of whom, I just found out from Wikipedia that his name isn’t Gunther von Hagens at all! I knew it! In fact he was born Gunther Liebchen - Gunther Sweetheart! That’s almost too wonderful to be true. Von Hagens is the name of his first wife, and I’d say it was jolly liberated of him to take his wife’s name, if it weren’t for the obvious disadvantages of being ‘Professor Sweetheart, the sinister fedora-wearing cutting edge dissectionist’. I notice he hasn’t taken his second wife’s surname, ‘Whalley’.

(Item: I remembered what ‘Liebchen’ meant from GCSE German, which is staggering, since I don’t remember anything from GCSE German. I didn’t remember anything from GCSE German when I was taking it. Except ‘Fernsehapparat’ - television - because it sounded so unlike ‘television’).

I think I might change my name to ‘von Hagens’, too. ‘Kate von Hagens’. It has a ring to it.

See? Prof Hagens is an inspiration, even when he’s not on the Fernsehapparat.