prof_quotes
The United Nations honored teachers on October 5 with World Teachers Day. Amusing Professor Quotes honors teachers by recording their words—funny, ridiculous, sarcastic, or just plain crazy—and posting them for posterity.

britishcomedy
Monty Python's Flying Circus, one of the UK's most famous comic exports, premiered this week in 1969. You won't find the Spanish Inquisition at this community, but you can find all the British comedy icons you could possibly want.

ggseason8
Fall is the season for season premieres, but what about shows that are gone for good, like the Gilmore Girls? Don't despair, Season 9 just started over at the Virtual Gilmore Girls, where Lorelai, Rory, and all of Stars Hollow live on.

Saturday
mirabehn and emperor put on a joint 30th-birthday ceilidh in Coventry, which delightfully suffered from there being too many great guests there to spend enough time with any of them. (Halfway through I gave up and focused my attention on the gentleman caller instead.) I fiddled a bit (not very well; the prep time and rehearsal period was something like, "Water is Wide." "Key?" "G." "Let's go!") and led a sing-along drinking song (too quickly). But the dancing was great, meeting friends-of-friends was great, and it ended – as it should – with wine, tunes and sandwiches in a hotel room at 2 a.m.

Man, we have really cool friends and need to do more things with them.

Sunday
dextress and I had ordered a bottle of rosé to our room at 2:30 a.m. the previous night, which was possibly ill-advised, except it was brilliant the next morning as we attempted to check out and leave the hotel lobby with the half-full bottle which, it turns out, they never charged us for. We met up with a few other ceilidh-ers for a pub breakfast and I caught the noon train back to London and took a half-hour of sleep at home before heading out to the liveliest session Sunday ever.

Seriously, it was bizarre. There were players out roaming the London streets that haven't been seen in sessions in years (apparently). People were crossing north and south of the river who hadn't left their base sessions since the '80s, and all the fierce young musicians who hang around Waxy O'Connor's and play gigs in Camden and have mic holders taped to their instruments were in.

Everyone got to play their favorite tunes – their weird favorite tunes. It was all, "I love that one! We haven't played that in ages!" "I didn't even know I knew that one any more!" I mean, at the first pub we kept trying to do slow sets, but then the third time through someone would lean over and say, "hey, you know, that goes into [fastish reel] really well," and we'd go into Fastish Reel, and then someone else would make an "oh! Do you know...?" eyebrow and go into Faster Reel, which always goes into VERYFAST REEL, and...well, we tried! And then someone would go into an old, obscure, weird-o tune with a funny shape, or something, and there would be at least two other players stepping up with strong rhythm and "YYY!" faces. And that would keep on for another six or seven tunes until we ran out and stopped, breathing heavily, and someone went up for a round and someone else said, "Jesus! Let's take it down a bit. How about–" and by the time the round of drinks came back, the bearer would have to dodge elbows and flute ends to get them on the table.

The second pub was terrifyingly fast on purpose and everyone who was anyone and under 30 was there. Concertina was there! He kicked off his shoes and pulled one of the flautists up for old-style house dancing. CONCERTINA I'VE MISSED YOU. :( He works for one of the giant Irish banks and doesn't have any time because of the financial crisis, so he isn't coming out to sessions as much, and dammit, you guys, we have to fix the global economy! Before next week! So Concertina can get some sleep and come out and play tunes with me! That pub is good for playing interesting tunes over and over so you can pick up on them and

At the third pub were all the people who haven't been out in years/decades/whatever. TFP and a flautist and I came in in the middle of a set with about ten musicians playing, when there usually aren't more than three or four, and the guitarist shouted, "It's like Christmas in here! What's going on? You just missed [big name] and [big name]!", except that there were like six other big names tucked into corners having at it. IT WAS WEIRD AND CRAZY AND AWESOME. MY THOUGHTS WERE WHIRLED LIKE A POTTER'S WHEEL.

And then the three of us slung down our cases and got to all our favorite old crazy tunes we didn't manage to hit at the first two pubs. And the best ones that we had already! Because different pubs don't count. And by the end they were all running together:

TFP: "Stone of Destiny! A!"
Flautist and I: [blink. notice each other looking confused. share a "Stone of Destiny isn't in A, is it?" look.]
TFP: [starts playing Frank's Reel] :D!
TFP: [gives us a "why aren't you playing, we love this one" look.]
TFP: [sees our "Stone of Destiny isn't in A, and also you're an idiot" looks.]
TFP: ...oh shit you're right. :(

The whole day went on like that for eight hours. EIGHT HOURS! Eight hours of insane high-energy skilled music slapping you back and forth across the face.

So that was an awesome weekend. Man, I always think I'm going to use my weekends to get the sleep I miss when I'm up until small hours at weeknight pubs.

So remember how last week I was all excited because I qualify to stick around and work in the UK for two more years?

Me: Hi! I'm an international student, and I need my certificate of award and transcript letter to renew my visa.
Student Records Office: Those are £35 each for copies.
Me: I never received my originals and I am not paying you £70 for copies of things you never gave me in the first place.

[A WEEK PASSES.]

Me: ...so if I could get those please?
Student Records Office: Oh, you need to talk to the international office for those.

Me: Hi! I'm an international student, and I need my certificate of award and transcript letter to renew my visa.
International Office: Yeah, actually you need to talk to the arts faculty office.

Me: Hi! I'm an international student, and I need my certificate of award and transcript letter to renew my visa. Quite soon. Because it expires in a month.
Arts Faculty Office: Sure! I'll have that in the post for you within a week.

[A WEEK PASSES. THE POST COMES.]

Me: Uh, you've only sent me my transcript letter. And my visa expires in twenty days.
Arts Faculty Office: Oh, you need to talk to the exam office for that, silly.

Could you not have told me this before? When I sent you an email saying "NEED CERTIFICATE AND TRANSCRIPT" and you said "SURE OKAY NO PROBLEM"?

If I get kicked out of the country because my university is doing the Bureaucracy Shuffle, I'm going to be pissed.

edit: Ha!

Exam Office: "We are sill waiting on a final academic signature before we can send out the certificates for your course. If you wish, I will contact you as soon as we get this so you can collect the certificate from us. Otherwise it will be sent to your address as soon as we get the outstanding signature."

Hey, person who hasn't signed yet? WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR I NEED THIS. >:(

Today's dispatch from the Bureau of Please Shoot Me Now:

The headline I've just written: "'Tis the season of affiliate marketing".

:D?

(Much better was the copy that came in yesterday containing the phrase "dog-eat-dog world of pet food marketing", but I'm still pretty sure I work for the most boring publication on the planet.)

Today's dispatch from the Bureau of Actually Things Are Kind of Awesome:

As of today I've got all the qualifications to apply for a two-year residence and work visa! I need my bank to write me a letter saying, "you've had [X money] in your account for three months," but I've got all the other paperwork, and once I have that, I can mail off my application and passport. I AM VERY EXCITED.

I forget if overpriced academic conference dinners (about £30) are good to spend on.

Pros:
- hanging out with PhDs from Trinity College
- possibly somewhere exciting and old
- who will be able to chat about The World's Tiniest Diss Topic, 18th-centry Anglo-Irish historical drama

Cons:
- have to pay for drinks
- cuts into Dublin Saturday night session-hopping time
- possibly somewhere boring and drab
- £30 plus drinks

"Wizard Rock" artist Split Seven Ways has created another song about Gellert Grindelwald and Albus Dumbledore. This is the same artist who sang "I Watch You Slip Away," another such song that has been a guilty pleasure of mine for about a year now.

The song is called "Footnote" and is currently on the playlist on her MySpace page.  There are lyrics with notes in her blog.

I know Wizard Rock can be such a big cheesy piece of cheesecake in the HP fandom, but I kind of have a weakness for it.  Plz feel free to point out any other Grindeldore Wrock songs too if you know of more.

Stolen from everyone.

01. Think of the first word that comes to mind when you think of me.
02. Go to Google Images and search for that word.
03. Reply to this post with one of the pictures on the first page of results.
04. Put this in your own journal so that I can do the same.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/29/lindsey-graham-too-tired_n_130198.html

CHRIS WALLACE: What you're saying is even though Obama got more of a bump –
LINDSEY GRAHAM: It's Sunday, I'm tired. Senator Obama did well. Senator Obama helped himself.
WALLACE: You can't be tired on Sunday morning, sir.

Oh, honey child. :( Have some milk and go to bed. It's been hard for everybody over there, and nobody will think any less of you. Myself, I'm waiting for one of the McCain campaign advisors to just haul out and knock back an on-camera 40. The VP debate on Thursday seems the obvious tipping point into "No, really, who even cares any more", but who knows? Maybe something will happen before then! Senate Republicans are already telling McCain to shoo. Maybe Colin Powell will endorse Obama like he's been hinting? ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN. Another secret baby? A wedding? A scandal! Maybe McCain will have a secret baby! With a man!*

In the meantime, I've booked the following days off work:
Nov. 5 - anticipating an election-night bender, for myself at least if not GOP staff
Nov. 14 - I get to go to the Irish war literature conference! I considered taking the Monday off as well and doing a full weekend, but I'm also hoarding my few remaining holidays for...
Dec. 27-Jan. 3 - ...everyone's favorite Donegal music workshop (apparently), the Frankie Kennedy Winter School. I may regret this when I fully comprehend that I've signed up to spend a week in the most northern part of Ireland in the middle of winter, but for now I'm psyched. Donegal style is fierce.
Jan. 15-19 - Bardcamp. Bardcamp! BARDCAMP.

*I am more sad than ever that Tim Russert isn't around to check out this election cycle.

food_pill
On 10/1/84, William Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" in Neuromancer to describe a virtual space built out of information. Sound familiar? At food_pill, sci-fi fans bring to light other ways in which science fiction has anticipated technology.

cartooning
This week in 1950, the very first Peanuts strip made its debut. In celebration, check out our premier cartoonist community. Discussion ranges from trading illustration tips to sharing industry advice.

bentolunch
What's more fun than bringing a little bouquet of snacks with you to work, school, or a park? At this community, members post pictures of their own supercute bento lunch boxes, ranging from the simple to the ornate.

I read the book years ago but hadn't seen the film since someone pointed out that if they'd just stuck Frodo on an eagle they could have got to Mordor in five minutes. So I was apparently quite annoying to watch it with, starting by calmly asking why they couldn't go get an eagle but by the end I was just pointing at the telly and shrieking "EAGLE!" every so often.

I love Gollum. Unfortunately my boyfriend started getting jealous and went "Hit him harder, Sam!" every time I mentioned this. He's jealous. Of Gollum. So I started pointing out all the gay bits.This didn't work the way I planned because he joined in. I finally got him when he asked were they all going to have an orgy on Frodo's bed. "I know people who write that."

"They what."

Today we had a public argument about his car that ended up with him yelling at me (in the middle of the street!) "It is not small! Shut up!"

My life is full of small pleasures.

This is a horrible thing for me to say about anyone, but WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PARTY TIME!

DEMOCRACY
Hey, my general election ballot came in the mail! I VOTED FOR OBAMA AND JOEY THE SHARK YESTERDAY AND YOU DIDN'T (PROBABLY).

SESSIONS
I've found two good new ones in Richmond, on Monday and Thursday – the Monday one is great, because I can go straight from my early-evening workshop in Hammersmith in a wonderful flow of theory to practice.

I should probably stop sneaking pint glasses out of bars at closing time. I mean, not that it happens frequently, it's just, TFP and I had two full pints, and long overcoats, and then we got to sprawl on the train seats and talk about tunes and clink our pint glasses of Guinness on an empty train. This late-night musician socializing just feels so cool and yet is probably secretly lame. I still, a year after my first London session, have trouble coming to grips with how people actually live like this all the time.

Also, Concertina has a cold and hasn't been around for a week, and no sign of the Scottish fiddle player either (I blame Shoreditch). However, after widening my session umbrella I have about sixteen new close friends (whose last names I don't know), so pfft, who cares. (me. I totally care. oh, Scottish guy, your mystery only increases your appeal. ♥)

CHECK THIS OUT MAN (CONFERENCES)
The Irish and War (scroll down to Future Events) – this talks about some of the random early-18th-century plays I had to go to Dublin for! I can go to a two-day conference where people take my diss topic seriously, and then hang around Dublin for Saturday night music! And hopefully the worst tourists will have shooed by November? :D?

The Viennese Café as an Urban Site of Cultural Exchange – okay that's just sexy. And I spent ages in Vienna two years ago when I was hopping all around Europe (I wonder if I can still get a job at that theatre?) – it's a very wintry-feeling city.

Of course the upcoming
Women and power and politics and sex and stuff in Shakespeare's history plays conference is going to top them all, but that's not until February.

Happy Birthday, longtime_lurker!

U.S. Presidential Election Community

With a historic U.S. election coming down to the wire, causing a lot of buzz in the U.S. and abroad, we thought it would be cool to create a community with a global view on the 2008 election. To that end, we've partnered with various news providers, including The Independent in the UK, Gazeta in Russia, and Mint in India, to allow their journalists to engage with the LiveJournal user community, asking questions and posting news stories for comments and discussion. Our goal is to encourage a lively and spirited debate between users and news providers worldwide on LiveJournal itself, and also to allow republication of user comments from within this community in print and online media outside of LiveJournal. In this way we hope to facilitate cross-border public discussion of the issues and personalities involved to provide a better understanding of the internal political debates here in the U.S. as well as the international perspective of the U.S. election. Whether your views swing red, blue, purple, or neutral, come check out us_election2008 and let your opinions be heard.

Persistent style=mine for Paid Users

Many of you know that you can add the parameter ?style=mine to a journal URL in order to view that journal in your own journal's style. In the spirit of giving users more of what they've been asking for, we're giving our users with Paid Accounts a persistent style=mine option. If you want to override other journals' styles with your own all of the time, just turn on the "View all journals and communities in your own style" setting at the Viewing Options page. This will make it so every journal you view will always be shown in your own style. In addition, you can use the navigation strip at the top of most journals to quickly toggle between the journal's original style and your own style. Head over to paidmembers for more information on this new feature. Speaking of paid accounts . . . .

Paid Account Sale Ending Soon

One minute before the stroke of midnight on September 30th (11:59 p.m. PDT on 9/30/2008, to be exact), our paid account sale comes to an end. Act now to get 20% off the purchase of a 12-month block of paid account time. Check out our paid account sale page for details.  In addition, we wanted to remind everyone about the permanent account sale, coming in November: stay tuned for more information on pricing and other details.

New Profile Page in Beta

We have long wanted to make the profile page easier to navigate, so we have committed our best thoughts to paper (or .pdf) and put the redesigned profile page into Beta. If you want to participate in beta testing for the profile page, go here. The design team has been hard at work incorporating a lot of feedback from the folks over at lj_design into the process, reorganizing information to make it easier to scan and process. This is just the start of the conversation with our users about how to improve the profile page, and we encourage your feedback over on the lj_design post. Our goal is to continue the evolution of the profile page to best suit user needs.



Snap Implementation Changes

We're changing the "Enable graphic previews" setting on the Viewing Options page from a journal setting (whether or not other people see it on your journal) to a user setting (whether or not you see it site-wide). You do not need to make any changes to your settings—whatever you had selected as a journal setting will be used as your new viewing option. For logged-out viewers of your journal, your viewing option will determine whether or not Snap is shown.

Idea Bollywood Club Community

Some people dream of being famous in Hollywood, the so-called Motion Picture Capital of the World, but across the globe in Mumbai there is another dream factory—Bollywood. LiveJournal has partnered with Zoom TV to present a behind-the-scenes look at Idea Bollywood Club, an American Idol-esque show with an Indian twist. If you're keen to find out more about the show's contestants, or want to show your support for your favorites, head on over to bollywoodclub and make yourself heard. All next week the show will be live-blogged, providing an extra bit of insight into the running of the show.

IF THIS WORK DAY DOES NOT END SOON, I WILL GO OUT OF MY MIND AND RAMPAGE ACROSS THE ENTIRE MIDWEST.

I WANT THAT VIDEO >:(

Sorry, flist. I'm seriously crazy right now. I think my overinvestment has reached dangerous levels.

Because I'm sitting here laughing in hysterical horror, and I think the obvious way to deal is to throw a nonsensical terrifying quotes party.

FIRST UP!

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

SECOND UP!

And if it turns out that the candidates must be present in the Senate on Friday, "We've both got big planes. We've painted our slogans on the sides of them," Obama said. "They can get us from Washington, D.C., to Mississippi fairly quickly."

Now you! :D