Behold my wonderful birthday-girl hard at work in her studio, even on her special day. Love you hun!!

To honour the birthday of Lyn, the most wonderful, kind, patient and generous fiance a guy could wish for, I'd just like to direct you here

[Edited Yesterday at 17:07:18 - double post]
[Edited Today at 00:20:39 - corrected a bit]

Today is my dads birthday, and tomorrow is lyn's. I find it curious that two of the most special people in my life have birthdays so close. Without dad I wouldnt have had the upbringing I did, and without Lyn I would never have moved to London and seen how much potential life truly has. Thus, in entirely different ways, dad and lyn made me who I am today (the large role my mum played notwithstanding). All that I can do is wish them both the best of birthdays, and record that I love them more than I can say.

It has been another of those quiet, chilled out sundays. Apart from some work on my thesis this morning, I haven't really done much. Lyn has been busy at work in her studio. Mind you, I did come across the beginnings of something interesting earlier: I had known about Star Trek: Of Gods and Men for a while now, but,, arrogantly perhaps couldn't be bothered to engage with it. I finally gave it a viewing this afternoon. It's strange: it is a version of star trek which is not the official version, as made by paramount, but which has many of the original actors in it, so you can't call it fanfiction either. It sort of merges the two genres in a way, which interests me greatly. Like fanfic it takes an original text and adds to it in a way the oiginal creators might not have intended, yet it has many actors from the original. I suppose it can be seen as a type of 'official fanfic', yet I still feel a sense of subversiveness to it, as if it's makers were trying to tell paramount something. To my mind it almost yearns for the reinvigoration of a moribund franchise.

Either way, it seems to me that this might be the beginning of something. Textual play is opening up: we saw a good example at the olympics with bond and the queen. Like fanfiction, and like Of Gods and Men, that sequence can be seen to both add to, play with and pay tribute to an original text, but like the latter and unlike the former, it was semi-official, using original actors in their original roles. Could both be instances of a new kind of postmodern artistic movement, one which plays with established texts in new ways? Both constitute the breaking of accepted barriers. Could textual play itself be becoming mainstream? Now that certainly is an interesting prospect. after all, if bond can meet the queen, then why not anything else? Why can't a borg cube fight an imperial deathstar, or Gollum poke harry potter in the eye?

According to click this week, Bing translator can now traslate things into Klingon. Trekkie that I am, I loved the idea, and, rather than making the effort to find anything more substantial to write about, I thought I'd share the following with you:

'' DaH blog qaStaHvIS tlhIngan vIta'laH! cool, wIjuS? rejmorgh yIDaQo', English Hol yIlo' jatlhqa' wa'leS. Qapla'!''