Janelle Monae best geek :3. Me? Just some kind of other geek - currently burined in putting my machine back together with lovely lovely win7 64 - lots of newness.

Be funky.

Awesome ASL signed single ladies with coreo! Signed songs are fifteen kinds of fuckawesome and inspiring - I wanna get enough vocab to integrate signing into fusion work

And here's the ever-awesome Lee giving it the BSL version .

This is the first video I've seen from the last but one Namoli Brennet album. She's getting kind of an alt-countyr feeling mixed in with the Americana folk these days and that rather tickles me. Being a fan of an artist for awhile and getting to hear them develop is the best thing.

I'm not expecting to have the time or energy for much internetness before next Wednesday but until then, there are always fraggles .

I am deep in Migraine land today and thus very hard of thinking. But having seen a Green Party election broadcast recently courtesy of Jim Jepps, I thought I'd share it with you. food for thought.

Oh and David Cameron, thank you for making it even easier to not vote Tory than it already was. Aligning yourself with religious groups on Abortion, sex education and assisted suicide just makes you and your parties descent into US style conservatism all the more visible.

I think I must have gotten old; I'm not keeping track of bands obsessively the way I used to anymore. I discovered this morning that I'd missed two Namoli Brennet albums without even trying and that Shikhee is nearly done with a fourth Android Lust album - I'm twitchy and excited as all get out about this and can't wait for the results. To tide me over I've sniffed out some of the Sisters back catalogue and am now shaking my arse to the finest 'not-goth ... honest' that money can buy.

On that subject, any of you who dance should go take note of Lektrik's post at Electric Love Affair about traditional dance to filthy industrial and glitch; shaking your arse in trad style to dirty glitchy industrial filth is an unmitigated pleasure that everyone should share.

In other news, my consultant and I may finally have discovered a combination of drugs that is semi-useful; I don't want to get too hopeful too soon but they appear to be working. Superstitious actions of your choice designed to influence fate (natural or supernatural) to encourage this to keep being the case would be very welcome. This whole thing has been a bit of a mess and involved far more arguing with what should be otherwise sensible people than I'd hoped so having it come to some kind of conclusion (preferably involving amgic words like 'remission' and 'quiet period' would be bloody delightful.

Finally, It has recently been brought to my attention that UK pharmacists are, like their US counterparts, able to refuse to dispense any drug that they feel goes against their religious convictions. Being firmly in favour of an entirely secular state, firmly pro-choice and firmly pro rationality I'm not especially chuffed about this. I can also see this potentially having a negative impact on Aids patients, Trans people and anyone suffering from any condition percieved as being a result of behaviour any religious group may percieve as immoral.. You can read more about it in the Guardian here, and by Laura and Helen from the F Word here and here, covering feminist perspectives on this one.

The last couple of weeks have been slightly fail, my joints have been much worse than usual and various other things have flared up in unpleasant ways so on Monday I decided it was time to do some things about it. I booked an appointment with a different doctor who seemed to look at things differently, took a whole bunch of tests (results coming in a week, then we'll talk again) and actually seemed to understand how I was feeling about things in a way none of the others have. I'm feeling a lot better about some things because of this and have been given access to some physio and a rather significant referral I'm very happy about. I've also picked up some nicer Painkillers (more effective / less chance of certain side effects) that are letting me do more / do things for longer than I would otherwise be able to feeling like this.

I've also got an appointment with someone to do things to my hair on Monday and a rescheduled appointment with my specialist next Monday; both of which I am hellishly nervous about but that should prove helpful as well .. here's hoping.

Other than that this weekend I've got some writing to finish (which I think is going to be doable) and we're going to see some friends tomorrow afternoon to hang out and have tea; I'm rather looking forward to it.

I've been very pleasantly suprised by how many signs I recognise as-is, and am beginning to pick up a few new things as well. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have been.

We're seeing Alice in Wonderland in 3D tomorrow evening, then I'm off to a yoga class. I've not done any Yoga in years, but I enjoyed it a lot back when and it helped me out a lot with my hips. I'm hopeful it may help me with the joint problems I've been having recently by being a low impact way to strengthen the muscles around them, improve my flexibility a little and generally be a reasonably fluffy yet effective form of exercise that'll go well with dance. Trip report to follow ...