1) Where did you begin 2009? Seig-heiling the previous year into oblivion. 2) What was your relationship status by Valentine's Day? Sorta-signle, I'd met paramour but we were still just friends. 3) Were you in school anytime this year? Last year of uni! 4) How did you earn your money? Loan, parents, proper job! Translation. 5) Did you have to go to the hospital? No. 6) Did you have any encounters with the police? Yep, at the G20 protest, got clobbered but they didn't press charges. 7) Would you relive 2009 over and over again? I wouldn't want to live any year over and over again, but if given a choice between this one and all the other years I've known, then yeah. 8) What did you purchase that was over $1000? New computer :) Not here yet tho :( 9) Did you know anybody who got married? No. 10) Did you know anybody who passed away? Not really. 11) Did you know anyone who had a baby? Nope. 12) Did you move anywhere? Yeah, about three times. 13) What concerts/shows did you go to? Went to a lot of BDSM clubs, if that counts. 14) Are you registered to vote? Not right now. 15) Do you still have the same job as you did in 2008? No, but I have a job, which is better than last year (being eaten by wild bees would be better than last year) 16) Has anyone betrayed you in 2009? Yeah. Still don't like talking about those. 17) Where do you live now? Walthamstow, nice little flat with paramour. 18) Describe your birthday? Went to Thorpe Park with friends :) 19) What's one thing you thought you'd never do but did in 2009? Fall in really-love. 20) What has been your favorite moment? Most times with Paramour. It's been a good year. 21) What's something you learned about yourself? Some people are not worth the gas it takes to kill them. 22) Any new additions to your family? Nope 23) What was your best month? You know, most of them were pretty good. 24) Were you in a relationship this year? Yeah :) 25) What music will you remember 2009 by? You can't sum up a year in just one song. Fine. Tomorrow Belongs to Me. 26) Who has been your best drinking buddy/buddies? Gary, Joey, Paramour. Didn't drink that much this year, to be honest. 27) New friend? Camaron, a new guy from uni, pretty cool dude. 28) Favorite Night out? Hallowene, Demon summoning ;) 29) Would you say you've changed since the beginning of this year? Oh yeah, feel pretty good for one thing. 30) Do you think 2010 will be better or worse? No idea. It's starting off pretty well tho. (First year 'knowing you anniversary' with Paramour.)

They found that damn sign, and the bastards who stole it. I am very happy.

Socialism/ leftist politics and class often come into serious conflict- and not always in a constructive way. A very popular jibe to throw at any leftist commentator is "oh, s/he's from a well-off family and s/he went to a good university, therefore s/he can't talk about working class issues or socialism".

Education is designed to equip us with the ability to think, reason, and explain. It gives us the tools to put our thoughts into words. Some people are naturally gifted in this way without an expensive education, but there is no denying that a good education is really bloody useful. If you're Eton and Oxbridge, you are far more likely to have the vocabulary, learned reasoning, and debating ability necessary to really get your point across. A good education should also encourage critical thinking skills, enabling the student to better look at any area of life or leisure, and take it apart. This includes areas like politics and economics.

Whether from direct experience of wealth inequality and the problems it brings, or from a more distant study of history and economic theory, a socialist is a socialist. They see the same problems, and the same solutions. The only difference an education makes is the method of expression.

Not good, not acceptable. You do not steal historical artefacts. You just don't. I want to get my big-arse SS boots and kick those fuckers to death.

I have leather trousers now, yay. They were a tenner and fit quite nicely. (some minor repair work required, but for the price I'm quite okay with making a few repairs)
I have a job interview tomorrow. Must dig out suitable trousers, shirt and jacket. And locate a decent vest, since it's due to freeze this week and ladies' shirts and jackets are far too thin for winter wear.

People buying RATM as some sort of protest against the X-Factor- if you're doing it because you don't want Cowell's pets to win, try again next year. RATM are owned by Sony BMG, just as all Cowell's pets are, and he owns a rather substantial stake. If you buy RATM, you're buying from Cowell. Please seek a decent non-Sony, non-Cowell alternative (maybe even something vaguely seasonally appropriate?) for next year.

There was that dream last night, the one where I was that gorgeous handsome teenaged boy who got tortured, raped and eventually bled to death by this epically creepy old couple who wanted to make the elixir of life from my blood.

I just remembered it, it would make a cool story.

Letsee, there's that, AIoM, that zombies-and-tanks story, and that thriller which is kinda like a modern Turn of the Screw. Out of the lot, the zombie apocalypse one is the most cheerful, where I think most of the characters are going to get out alive... or not. And all, except the Turn of the Screw story, came to me in dreams.

You know, I can't remember the last time I had a nightmare. I used to get occasionally really bad ones but they sorta stopped after I started getting into the Holocaust. Then I got Holocaust dreams but they weren't scary because I was seeing them in the third person, and even being gassed is kinda cool when you're just watching it happen and know it's not real.

AIoM will have sex. I decided that since my characters are getting this depressed they might as well fuck, hopefully by then Mirek will be able to enjoy it (frankly I think he'll find it a lot easier the moment Johannes takes his uniform off), and Johannes can be hung drawn and quartered for a crime he's, y'know, actually done.

So yeah, what started off as porn, turned into not-porn, then lost all sex, will in the end have sex. I knew I wrote all those porny scene for a reason.

What do you do if you discover you've been writing a Holocaust soap opera?
It's kinda important.

Screw this. I'm going to keep writing it, then go back in edit it with scalples.

Fucking book.

Items of information-

A lady I'd never before heard of, though perhaps familiar to scholars. Potentially a hero/ine to those who do not fit gender expections, I give you- Walladah! A woman in eleventh century Arab Cordova, she defied many expectations of the time. She owned property, wrote poetry, opened a palace and literary hall to people of all classes, even slaves, refused the hijab but instead went in public dressed in clothing more suited to the harem, gained great recognition for her skill as a writer and was, in general, not quite what we're nowadays given to expect from women in arab lands.

Drugs saved the world... well, not quite. The money from drug-laundering may have been the only thing between life and death for many areas of the financial system, as the black market thrived during the downturn. Without organised crime, it is suggested, the economy really could have truly collapsed. Not being an economist I cannot really comment on it, but the concept amuses me greatly.

And, as a little Christmas story- guards at a detention centre refuse to allow Father Christmas to give presents to the innocent, deprived children of detainees. Nice one, Yarl's Wood. It's not like you don't have enough bad press already for the way you treat kids. The Daily Mail and all its ilk will have a field day when it hears about *this* little anti-Christmas (possibly interpretable as anti-Christian?) act.

( Weekend- absinthe, Quills, falling out of love with trad goth )

Why isn't this film being singled out by fundies?
Seriously, the whole 'Rite of Spring' segement is just begging for a 'THEY'RE BRAINWASHING OUR KIDS WITH EVOLUTION!' hideous mess. For those who haven't seen it, its the beginning of life as told through Stravinsky's Rite of Spring (yes, that Rite of Spring). Starts off with the universe, and a us being placed at the centre of the galaxy (okay, it was 1940, I can make allowances) and there's out planet, all red hot and volcanoes, then there's water, and the first bacterial life. Slowly bit by bit the life gets more complex, it a bit jerky but hey, you try and fit 6 billion years in 30 minutes and then oh, there's a fish, and here it is and it's got little legs now. Then it jumped to the rather infamous dinosaurs bit which, with it's T-rex killing a Stegasaur and extinction scene has been responsible for traumatising kids around the world. You get to see an Archeopterix and for 1940 it's not too bad.
I mean, this didn't mewan much to me when I first saw this aged 6, but now when I look back, with the backdrop of the whole war of creationism vs evolution, it does make me blink because really, this was 1940.

It almost makes up for Disney being such an arse to Stravinsky and pretty much forcing him to sigh his music over. "We're goign to use it anyway, you migth as well get some money from it. Arse.

To be honest, if I went back three years to when I first applied to my uni, I'm not sure I wouldn't have picked History instead. It had been less than two years since I started studying the Holocaust, and I wasn't sure how much staying power my interest had. Now, well. Come May it'll have been four years. And who knows how much money. And countless minor and two major written works, one of which could potentially be publishable. Leave me one more year and I'll start looking for a more permanent way of comemorating something which has become as important to me as dragons and fanfic. Something small of course, something only I could really know what it was about. A small loop of barbed wire tattooed on my shoulder would do nicely.

Anyway, today I went to the uni which has hands-down the best Holocaust history course around. I mean, everyone I've asked who knows anything about the subject has had the same name to offer. It's outside London, so communiting will be a bitch, but otherwise it seems pretty decent. As a basic format it's a lot like my uni - Large uni campus set in the middle of a park, new buildings clustering around a fancy older one. The difference is that it's like someone took my uni and just increased everything by a factor of about a hundred. The campus is miles bigger, the park is on the edge of two absolutely huge places, the new buildings are shiny clean white futuristic and the old building is like a cross between an Oxford college and a wedding cake. I had a tour and found a course guide I could take with me.

Gods it's going to be weird, and a bit of an adjustment. I'm used to being the one knowing everything about this subject. It's going to be bizarre to have to sit down and shut up for a change... Heh, who am I kidding? I'll be the nightmare student. And then there's the fact that it's just as well there's no such thing as thought crime, and they're not allowed to raid my house, otherwise... yeah. Goddamn this fetish, it's not making anything easy.