Our guest steps out for a walk in Paris despite having said "I've seen almost everything." I wait for him outside the photocopying place; a boy pours his thickshake across the wet footpath where it behaves like a glacier. The Bangladeshi steps out, unfolds my boyfriend's umbrella (later he will use it as a blind man's cane, an imaginary sword, a cricket bat); then, after posting a letter, we're underground for ages. Have I ever seen a tourist move so slowly? When we eventually get to Montaparnasse station he gets so overwhelmed by the system of staircases that he simply stops.

I'm wearing a kind of disguise - a hat, big sunglasses. A madman grabs my elbow and says "are you expecting sun?" (A kind of summer joke, in Paris.) I catch up my friend in a nondescript courtyard where he finishes a cigarette then descends to a public library. There's a wonderful local assortment of discs and books. I peer at him between bookshelves. He flicks through a lavishly-illustrated volume called Contre le racisme: les combats de la LICRA. After he has left the library, I settle down to read it.    

Well, with all the viking entries, I needed a proper viking icon. The text says Roðgeirr in Futhark runes, for the record (pronounced Roth-gayr, it's the old Norse version of Roger), and it's my drawing of viking!Roger...

ANYWAY. This weekend I've blown a thousand bucks on viking stuff. No, really, $1000. Yes, I'm crazy.

What I bought:
-A $140 bow, plus 3 pretty arrows, and a quiver covered in fox fur
-A whole fox fur (used as scarf)
-A long thin belt with metal ornament on the ends
-A drinking horn (with leather strap to hang from belt)
-Two purses (one dark leather with a buckle, one pinkish with a tooth fastening that I will decorate a burned pattern with a copper bit, both to hang from belt)
-A giant black pair of scissors (with leather strap for belt)
-A bronze knotwork ring and knotwork bracelet
-A bone Freya necklace (goddess of love, beauty and fertility, as well as war, battle, death, magic, prophecy, and wealth) and a bone K rune bracelet
-A bone comb (with leather strap)
-A small bone-handled knife (with leather sheath and strap for belt)
-Two bronze dress ornaments
-Two large multi-coloured beaded necklaces
-4 peacock feathers (doesn't sound like much of a viking thing, but remember that they traded all over Europe, Russia, Asia and even Africa)

I also already had a large dragon/knotwork brooch I inherited... I don't have a ring for keys, but I do have 6 old style random keys. I might just use a leather strap to thread them on, although a ring would be cooler, if I can get hold of one someplace.

Line also got a bow, arrows and quiver, although much cheaper ones. As well as some jewlery, a gorgeous carved bone necklace that I wanted to buy myself too, but there was only one, and I have lots of necklaces now anyway, and she'll actually wear it besides in costume, which I won't. Oh, and awesome large wood earrings that had small BELLS on them.

Line's mom has said that she'll sew my dress (assuming I buy linen and get hold of the pattern). It's not a very complicated dress, so. (Oh, and screw shoes.) I will look awesome for aLEP. I mean, sure it's not a Middle earth outfit, but viking is close enough.

Plus, I'm a viking fangirl. And first guy in costume I saw in there was a young guy who had the exact hair of and looked really like thrall!Manni and I swooned. I really wish Steph would come online and RP some vikings with me. Or, hey. Anyone up for viking RP?

About the market itself:
It's not just a market of put up tents, it's also a whole village. Fires going everywhere, a billion people in costumes, making and selling all manner of stuff. (There was a tent where they sold buckets. Just buckets.) And masses of jewelery, furs, instruments, games, charms, textiles, clothes, spices, food, tools, bowls, ornaments, weapons, armour, and wow did I mention jewelery?

It's so... atmospheric. And music, jugglers, storytellers, swordplay, horses and animals, and then all the different languages. (I counted at least 7 different languages being spoken around.) And it's by the sea, in this gorgeous foresty area (a viking ship graveyard), and they actually have 5 variously sized viking ships at beach there. Even though it was drizzling all day, the place was still full of people. Including lots of gorgeous guys with long hair in costume. Gosh, I love it all so much.

You know what would be nice? Not being woken up out of a sound sleep. I needed to be up anyway, but feh.

Her bag and her trousers are different scarlets. She checks a map at Gare du Nord, tracing a line with her finger, then asks for directions and sets off towards a bus-stop. Here, she looks at the timetable as if she were a paleographer examining something hard. We board the #65 (she trips!) which heaves us towards the edge of Paris, past petrol stations and neon-lit stores. The woman beside me is reading a tract called "how to use the transcendental Zen game." When the scarlet woman closes her eyes I know I'm in for trouble.

We get off at the end of the line: Aubervilliers. It's just like Paris only with fewer storeys. The woman is having trouble finding her way; while chasing her around the park I step in two different piles of dog-shit. Then she's off along residential streets to a dead-end lane crowded with parked vehicles. It's dark and silent; I find a building with up-ended office furniture on the roof.

HEY

HEY

SAM WATERSON AND BOBBY SEAN MUST HAVE AN EYEBROW OFF

Dude, what is this? Only 90 people signed up for a Long Expected Party 08?

Guys, it's so much fun! Everyone who's within reasonable travel distance from Oslo should go!

Really, it's awesome!

Last time there were like 220 people there, and now suddenly so few? You don't even need to be a LotR fan (I mean, I'm not really myself), but it's such a lovely experience and awesome people!

(In other news, I spent $250 at viking stuff yesterday and am going back to buy more today. I'll have a full viking costume for aLEP!)

A hooded man, bouncing; his energy-to-step ratio is high. We descend avenue Bolivar then turn into the courtyard of some commission flats. I like these buildings, all in red brick with communal gardens. But at night it makes no sense for me to be here. "Are you looking for something?" he says. "I'm walking," I reply. He repeats this to his friend in a scared voice. The friend is tougher, with pink stars on his cap. "Paris is a big place," he warns me. I say: "I'm from Australia."

I don't know how many people here are into Sherlock Holmes, but I thought I'd post a link anyway.

Title: Strangers on a Train
Author: miss_morland
Pairing: Holmes/Watson, Dumbledore/Grindelwald (implied)
Summary: Holmes and Watson discuss two mysterious strangers.
Word count: 897
Rating: PG
Warnings: Crossover, unbetaed.
Disclaimer: Holmes and Watson are in public domain. Still, I did not create them, nor anything you might recognise from the Potter novels.
Notes: Written in response to gokuma's request for a Harry Potter/Sherlock Holmes crossover.

'I almost suspected that my imagination had been playing tricks on me.'

A carefully-dressed man, jewelled in silver, loping underground at Les Halles. "Eiffel Tower?" a tourist shouts. Then we take the metro to St. Lazare. Here, the train is delayed "because of a passenger on the tracks." The platform fills with anxious people until I'm having trouble keeping off the tracks myself. The electronic sign predicts eleven minutes, then nine minutes, then ten; when the train finally arrives, it says seven. The man tries to squeeze on board but cannot make it. We end up taking the next one.

"Sorry. C'mon back up! I'm fucking sorry, you know?" (A disembarking foreigner raves in English.) The man is on the phone, saying "go on, go on." I notice his Mali-shaped pendant; the concentration of Africans on this line is undeniable. At St. Ouen he gets off and is picked up at the top of the escalator by a silver car, still talking into his phone.

It's raining. I buy my lunch from a nearby bakery in which everyone is hysterically laughing. "Give me an Eiffel Tower!" a customer shouts.

So I've just returned from seeing The Incredible Hulk. I fear I'm having to have to go for a bit of a lie-down because between Tim Roth and Edward Norton - sfsdfdsfsdfsd. Indeed. Yes.

Those (very lovely) bits aside, it was a great movie - everything that I hoped it would be. I am very well pleased.

Dad made brats. The neighbors are having big parties that they did not invite us to. There was hot dog eating on TV this morning. The wail of firecrackers in the distance. People parking their cars along the edge of our yard and all the little kids grab branches and pincones from our trees and wave them around as they walk by.

IT'S THE FOURTH OF JULY.

Good morning, my little hostiles, and a happy Friday to you all.

http://www.friendlyhostility.com

Episode 593
( Click here for the commentary. )

Descending rue de Belleville all flashy in a black dress that makes her limbs look pale. We pass dumped mattresses then enter a cigarette store; she buys Marlboro Lights, I buy a Chupa-Chup, Julien buys cigars. Then, at the roundabout, she meets some world-weary friends with bicycles. What's this fashion for looking prematurely middle-aged? I notice on the front of the dress the silver face of an iconic rock-star. A passing woman asks me "where is Atlas Street?" Then the pale girl walks home.


***
New-month reminders:
1) online map
2) thielpoems

title: Perfectionism
summary: Gellert is never quite as in control as he'd wish.
characters/pairings: Gellert Grindelwald, miscellaneous unimportant original characters, implied AD/GG
genre: drama
ratings/warnings: PG
word count: 697
disclaimer: Sadly, this all belongs to JKR.
a/n: I apologize for somewhat spamming this community with fic, I can't seem to help it.

(perfectionism)

I ATEN'T DEAD!