Terrorist plots

Jesus. If Easyjet had not buggered up my plans, I would have been flying back into Heathrow today. Or not, as it happens. By all accounts I would have been stranded in Berlin today. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, queues of 500 metres! Queueing for half a kilometre - it boggles the mind. BBC News 24 has been giving us wide-angle shots of Manchester, showing people in the aforementioned queues with everything in clear plastic bags and women with screaming babies being forced to taste their own milk. It is not nice. But the thought of nine aircraft being blown up is not nice either. I'm quite surprised that no one on my flist has been talking about it yet.

I'm worried about my own plans, a little, but not as much as I'm worried about Pedar's - he's going to India this week, for such a short time that if he's delayed more than twenty-four hours it's no longer worth his going - and Scary American Cousin's, who's going home this week and I think Heathrow to New York is one of the flights that was supposed to be blown up. (I can't find an online reference to this, but it was just mentioned on the BBC television news.)

While I'm here, though, here we have John Reid looking serious and bald, and talking about the UK's terror threat level. (I have reservations about the "terror threat level"; it seems to be just an attempt to ape the Americans, because what, exactly, does it achieve? I rather believe that the correct measures would be taken by the appropriate authorities with or without a metereological terror prediction, and can you really say it offers any benefit to the general population? Sorry, Tony, can't come into work today, terror threat too high? Huh.) In addition, you know they're taking things seriously when the Opposition leader can't praise the government enough. Although not so seriously that Tony Blair isn't in the Caribbean sunning himself. Apparently I am not the only person in the country being resolutely strung along by her elected representative.

In the meantime, I am sitting here with the television on because I want to hear what they have to say over at the good old Department of Homeland Security. I remember writing last year how irritating I found them after the attacks on July 7th, but it's only half seven in the morning over there so we shall see.

I have to fly to New York in two weeks, but I suppose things will be back to normal then. None of this, however, stops me being pissed off at Easyjet. Bastards. What if I wanted to be stranded in an airport for hours and hours, huh? I like airports. This may make me unique among humanity, I know. But I do. And in all seriousness, they treated me pretty damn shabbily and terrorist attacks do not change this fact.

(You know, this is why I would suck at writing a real blog. I can't write intelligent commentary, I end up babbling.)

Enough babble for now. I almost wish I had to go into work today - I'm not because of my stupid buggered-up travel plans - rather than sitting here trawling through the various news sites.

Fannish babble and memery

I am trying to do a title meme in which you discuss the literary, musical and otherwise misc. allusions in your fic titles. I have so many fics with stupid and/or wacky titles I've given up midway through. So I am using a different meme instead, nabbed from mireille719:

Make up a title for a story I didn't write, and I will respond with details of those non-written stories. You may, if you like, include details, such as pairings or fandom or whatnot.

Sounds like fun, and keeps me from doing anything productive. I need to read Mill's On the Subjugation of the Rights of Women over the weekend, which is more fun than it sounds - I fangirl Mill liek woah, I am sorry to say - but the bit that will not be fun is the actual writing of the five-thousand-word paper on feminism. I have at least managed to reduce the length and breadth of the field into something specific, which I think will be some kind of anaylsis of the tensions between liberalism and radical feminism with particular emphasis on Simone de Beauvoir, but I don't know that it will be fun, exactly.

Err, that's it. I have spent a wonderfully exciting day doing, err, very little, sitting on the shop counter reading out the choice bits from the Chambers Gigglossary Project. Next week Tony's in Colwyn Bay, so Jon and I are in charge. Between us we hope not to piss off any customers, be responsible for any traffic accidents or cause any major conflagrations. (How'd I get to be in charge, anyway, even it is joint? I'm a seasonal fill-in! I've worked there two years!) But, oh, well, it's the best job anyone has ever consented to give me £5.25 an hour for.

Anyway, this is all babble. I want to do that title meme - the one I gave up on - and review season 5 of The X-Files, which is pretty damn marvellous, and all sorts of things, but not right now. So, err, make up titles for stories I didn't write, and two other things:

-The Tenth Doctor ficathon masterlist is complete. Yep, every single recipient got a story. Yep, I have no brain left. I am never running a ficathon again. And I can hold myself to that - this time! - because I can't think of anything else I would ever want to run a ficathon about.

-And I have finally succumbed to peer pressure and got Miranda so I can use AIM and LJ Talk. If you've got an AIM screenname and fancy talking to me, let me know what it is (mine's seemsitswritten).