clo_again

Um. So there was a Wimbledon final at the weekend which involved Roger Federer. And had Andy Roddick commentating - or in truth, talking non-stop for five days about how amazing Roger is and how great he is and how he only copes with being asked about 2009 because he has so much respect for Roger and even though it's been a million years since I wrote anything actually postable in tennis fic, I did a thing. Like, drink too much Pimms and bash angrily at my keyboard while Roger lost, and then spend two days spamming kindoftrouble with emails going DOES THIS MAKE SENSE HOW CAN I MAKE MY DRUNKEN RAMBLINGS MAKE SENSE WHY DO I LOVE TENNIS PLAYERS WHEN THEY DO STUPID THINGS LIKE LOSING, ARGH.

In short, have fic. It's even go about 21% plot going on behind the PWP. Sort of. This is mostly the angry-that-he-lost bit; if I get the sequel, and the prequel, and the sequel-sequel done, there might be actual plot. Plus the other thing I'm about half-way through that isn't even in this series. Because apparently I'm writing tennis RPF again, god.



beautiful and drunk (singing softly to yourself) - Andy Roddick/Roger Federer, explicit, 6093 words post-Wimbledon 2015 final, drunken hurt-comfort sex and Andy pining when he should know better.



I er, was about 50-80% Pimms at various times when I wrote it, so hopefully the editing-bashing means it at least vaguely makes sense.


Posting on AO3 is amazingly more nerve-wracking than here or the Pit of Voles. I'm going to go have a little sit down now.

Oh my god. How is this match in five sets? I DIDN'T EVEN DREAM OF FIVE SETS. Kind of wishing I hadn't recorded the HD coverage now because it's going to take up so much room on the box and our DVD recorder still isn't working. That should probably be my mission this week; work out what cable we need to make it work and DVD this match. Because no way am I not keeping a copy of this.

I still don't actually know who I want to win. I keep vacillating. Argh. On a selfish note though, I almost think it'd be poetic for Andy to win considering my first ever real tennis match was the 04 final when he looked like he was winning and didn't.

I don't think Roger Federer would take that as a good reason for losing though. If he'd won last year I would totally be on Andy's side but as it is... I don't know. Neither of them deserve to lose this match.

(I'm glad it's been this good though. I didn't dare hope it would be this good. This icon says it all.)

I'm home. So far it's weird but mostly nice, although I rather suspect I'll be very glad to head to Newcastle next Saturday just to get out of the house and be doing something again. However, there're no words to express how lovely it was to wake up at 7am this morning (I was in bed by 9:45pm. I'd just spent twenty two hours travelling; seriously, I'm amazed I held out that long) and to be able to get up and meander around without worrying about waking anyone, to wander downstairs and sit on the sofa with a coffee and get reacquainted with Harry the Second (my biiiig laptop). It was unspeakably wonderful. I rather think that if I'd been working in Australia and had my own place, I really wouldn't have wanted to leave. Add 'working in Australia-probably-Sydney-but-Melbourne-would-be-nice-too' to the list of things I'd like to do sometime, along with 'become famous author' and 'own debenture tickets to Wimbledon'.

And now I'm home, I have to say the biggest, hugest, massive-est THANK YOU to chickybee32, mayakitten, acityofwonder, irradiatedsoup, futureperfect and falln who all took time out of their lives and/or opened up their respective houses to the souvenir-crazy Brit to make my whole Australia experience so utterly wonderful. I love all of you. You're amazing. Whenever you all make it to the UK, whatever couch/spare bed I may have at the time is yours, along with tour guiding and much forcing encouraging you to watch British tv.

(I'll probably flail a little bit extra over you if you bring me more Tim Tams but I'll be ridiculously happy to see you regardless. ;) )

Seriously yous guys. You rule. <3

~

IN LESS HAPPY NEWS RELATING TO AUSTRALIA: I hate stupid TV laws that mean I can't watch the Good News Week stuff off the site back here in the UK. Ggrr. And no good Australian proxy servers seem to exist. It means I'll have to wait for the podcast to be uploaded before I can watch Monday's episode but Wil Anderson twittered about how hilarious it was filming it and I don't want to wait. Britain would love your comedy, Australia! You should sell it to Dave so they can repeat it a millionty one times a week!

...Please?

On the plus side I did take about 150 caps of Paul doing his blog while I was still in Oz and now I'm happily engaged in making icons of them all, with only the occasional mournfulness over not being able to rewatch them whenever. Seriously. Unfair. But pretty icons!

And also a plus, my DAAS dvd works just fine on Harry II (who is huge. I'v had dinky little Beaver the Netbook for two months and now I suddenly have all seventeen-inch-screen of Harry back. It's weirding me out) and all my books have arrived so I suppose I should just suck it up and be glad that they upload the podcasts at all, for free. I'm thinking about downloading Thank God You're Here too. I'm pining for Aussie comedy and the new series of QI isn't being shown until *September* even though they've filmed it all, so there's no British awesome to distract me.

The woes of my life. Need moar comedy! Except, I'm pretty sure Dave will have a QI marathon on at some point this week - because they always do - and all will be right with the world once more. Give me a month; you'll say "Paul McDermott" and I'll say "Who?"

...That's a lie. But a comforting one.

~

Oh Andy. There're no words for the
suckitude of this happening to you in the all-too-short grass season. There's a week until Wimbledon starts though, so I'm still optimistic hopeful.

On the subject of tennis, this made me giggle: Robin Soderling never threatened, the rain tried and gave up and the Spanish lunatic could only leave him a mite shaken, but not in the remotest stirred. Federer is so mellow, he just tried to shy away from the intruder instead of clocking him; one would liked to have seen the idiot try the same trick on Marat Safin.

I would indeed. Here's to some idiot running on court to try to drape a flag over Marat Safin! We'd probably get a lesson in how to break a racquet over someone's head. Certainly it'd be an example to all the crazies out there of why Chasing Someone With Easily-a-Potential-Weapon In Hand and a career in using it with no small amount of force, could be a bad idea.

~

...I'm sure there was something else I wanted to say but it's gone. Hm. Went on a walk with the parentals earlier and we saw a cormorant catch and eat an eel, which is exciting but not what I wanted to say. I think.

Oh well. I'm sure either Livejournal, Facebook or Twitter will be around for me to fling it to the internets when I remember.

Dear Andy,

WE ARE NOT AMUSED. Idiot. -_-

No love at all for the rest of Wimbledon,

Clo

I knew I should've buried my lucky socks surreptitiously on Centre Court, since they did such wonders for Marat. Goddammit. And they got Roger through in straight sets, no matter how much I yelled "C'mon Robin!" because I really wanted another set of Roger (kindoftrouble thought I was weird cheering against my favourite player. My adoration of Roger has many conditions and is... complicated. But it can be summed up in: I am always happy when he wins.)

In other news, am home despite the bastards at Crewe cancelling my train when we were all freaking sitting on it and making me wait an extra half hour. I hate them so much, even though it was kinda my fault for missing my direct train from London. But mainly, they cancelled my train and are utter bastards and I hate them. Yes. Also I'm home from three glorious days of Wimbledon and another of Doctor Who exhibition and Paperchase and general awesomeness apart from a certain American... and I have to work tomorrow. Work five days a week without another break until October in fact. It really sucks.

But the pictures kindoftrouble and I - mainly kindoftrouble though - took over the three days? Are beautiful. I loved our amazing seats so much. I'm actually considering paying for my LJ again, just so I have the Scrapbook to upload the shiniest of mine to without resizing them. LJ hasn't done anything really really stupid for a while and I get paid tomorrow... I'm still just a little wary of LJ. I don't know; I'll think about it tomorrow. If I don't do that I'll upload them to Photobucket or something.

I'm off to sink into a bath now. I'm actually tired enough to be dizzy, which is another reason I hated them for cancelling my train. I wish it was tomorrow night already and I had time to sleep. But... shiny Roger pictures make up for a lot. He is so pretty. Really. No matter how much I cheer for the other guy out of sympathy, Roger Federer in all his spectacularly ridiculous idiocy, with his monogrammed belt and clothes and personal chef flown in specially... he is awesome. He is my awesome, adorable, badly dressed, over-monogrammed, beautiful ponce. (I really need my 'poncey Roger' icon back for this post. Again, tomorrow.) I am so happy that I've seen him and he was just a few feet away and I did not embarrass myself too much, except for singing 'Cardigan Man!' to the Batman theme tune loud enough that it's entirely possible he heard us. But. He'd never recognise me again, so it's fine. You know, it's not like it put him off the match. :D

I'm sad I have to wait another year to be at Wimbledon again. There is nothing else like it. It's wonderful.

ANDY RODDICK, I DID NOT JUST SEE YOU LOSE THE FIRST SET. Tell me that I didn't.

Bah. I will not be amused if you lose this match Andy. Not at all.

Icon meme from scoobydumblonde and kindoftrouble:


1.Reply to this post, and I will pick three of your icons.
2.Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3.Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4.This will create a never-ending cycle of icon squee!

(Note: if you want to ask about any of my icons, use my insane journal icons over here, because that's where they all are now.)


scoobydumblonde asked about:



This one has a quote from Red vs Blue, a hilarious Halo-based series that Wikipedia explains far better than I could. I originally came across it through the quote "Time...line? Time isn't made of lines! It's made of circles. That's why clocks are round." which appeared on an icon I found and have since lost from this computer. Such a genius quote demanded Googling, which brought up Red vs Blue, which made hill2k burn some of to DVDs for me and happiness was had all round.

I think for this particular icon, I wanted something with a quote on it because I'd been seeing all these just-text icons around and though they were nifty. Knowing the awesome of RvB, I checked out IMDb's quote list for it, picked this one because I liked the sarcasm and... that's about it. It's been on and off my icon list for a couple of years until I got the extra icon space on IJ and reuploaded it. I don't have much occasion to use it but I like it and one day I'll need to be really really sarcastic about something. And when I do, I have the exact icon for it.



I originally typed 'this icon doesn't need as much explaining as the first', only to realise that it did. A few years back, Guinness made a stunning advert as part of their 'Good things come to those who wait' marketing angle, involving surfers waiting for the perfect wave. It was then, and still is now, my favourite advert ever but it took me a couple of years to think to Google it, which is when I found it on this website (click on 'Quicktime and credits: Guinness: "Surfer" under the pictures to play the ad). It was duly screencapped and I made quite a few icons but this is the one that stuck and has stayed for a few years now. I love the image of the surfer with the surf-horses poised over him. It's beautiful and like fantasy and at the same time, a really neat trick. Plus the advert has quotes from Moby Dick. It's so random and yet so apt, I never get tired of watching it.

I'm not too keen on the slightly fuzzy effect I had a liking for back when I made it though. I think it's time to be hunting out those old screencaps.

You can also watch the ad (and all the slightly varied versions they showed of it, just search 'Guinness surfer') on youtube.




Compared to the last two, this icon is a totally newbie; I only made it a couple of months ago. I realised I didn't have any just-Roger icons anymore which made me sad, because he is still my favourite tennis player even if I'm not so good at keeping up the tennis right now. I knew I wanted a more introspective Roger icon because he'd been having a tough month or so and everyone was shouting about the Great Federer falling from grace, while I wanted to say well you know, you've built him up and up and really, he's just a person underneath, he's not the shining image he can be made out to be. The picture was easy; I've been collecting Roger pictures for years. The quote is from an Evanescence song 'Breathe No More' (lyrics) which I haven't actually heard. I don't even like Evanescence all that much anymore, because I find them a little whiny, but when looking for icon quotes I go through various bands that I know have lyrics to suit the kind of icon-mood I'm aiming for until I find something to fit. This time Evanescence said it exactly right.

I am so very happy with this icon, unlike the other two which are old and were made back when I was still only half-competent in Photoshop. I like the colours and the sharpness and the font. The only thing that annoys me if that I had to make 'the difference between' so small to fit that it's just edged into unreadable but in those cases I tend to go with it and use it as keywords, so those who want to know can look it up. Weirdly, it's also one of the six icons LJ kept for me after my paid account expired even though I didn't use it all that often.


I also really really love this icon because doing this post, it reminded me Andy was playing Roger and I hadn't checked when. Went to the TV, flicked to the sports channels - and their match was literally just starting. So. Much. Love.

~~

So there you go, ask about my icons and you will get essays. You get a cookie if you made it this far. ;) Now ask me to pick your icons! Pick more of mine for me to essay about! The world needs more icon squee.

And now I am off to watch Andy vs Roger. :D If this is too long, let me know and I'll cut it.

They should make pills for this.

(Also, I've called Roger a cock about twenty billion times. You'd swear I didn't love him to pieces in any other match.)

edit: You are such a cock Roger Federer. Really.

Everytime I start to watch Andy, he starts to lose. SO I'm off to play on my new GTA: Vice City that arrived today instead.

Enjoyed 1408 very much. Not perhaps the best movie ever but the jumps were good without being OTT (that is, for me who only finds a specific minority of films freaky enough for emotional scarring. It depends how jumpy you are) and John Cusack was awesome. Plus the frozen hotel room was a beautiful effect/set. Whatever people have said about the ending (I'd read bad things about it), for what it's worth I liked it. Two thumbs up.

I didn't have time to buy a new sketchbook after and still catch the bus. Irritation. Have to go back in Wednesday for some stupid jobs fair thing, so I can pick one up then, along with some bright cutlery. I'm sick of silver; I've used purple-handled ones for three years and damned if I'm going to settle for boring again. Along with the laundry basket I picked up today, room is becoming more like my Lancaster room every day.

Only I discovered today that the rat cage I wanted is three cm too big for the space I have. Very, very annoying since Pets at Home throw in the bedding, food, cleaning stuff and treats with the cage, something I doubt I'll get anywhere else. Add to that the fact that parents won't give me lifts to other pet stores and it's a setback. A somewhat bigger setback than I would've liked, but still. Seeing the two rats they had in the store today, one using the other as a pillow, reaffirmed that I love them and I want some. I'll just have to start shopping around for cages that'll fit is all.

A minor plus is that I checked the website and it listed the cage I was planning to get as big enough for four rats. Considering I only want two, a 3cm-smaller cage shouldn't be too much of a hardship.

edit: Yay Andy! Not that a retirement is a win but still, he was winning before. It counts.

Roger is going to be on at like, stupid-o-clock in the morning but I might stay up to watch it. If Roger wins to get an Andy-Roger match, it'll be worth it.

I love tennis players. I love bloopers. This? Is like Christmas has come in August.

The US Open is really starting to win me over with its marketing this year. Not that I've seen any of it on an actual TV mind- no wait, that's a lie. I saw the nifty Superman/comic-book-type promo after Cincy, which I can't find on YouTube. Woe. But it was good.

Random tangent: YouTube has also informed me that Andy has/had a new girlfriend. Contemplating risking the batshit of his site's forums for gossip after Wikipedia, my usual lazy-source for it, proved full of fail. kindoftrouble? You're the Andypedia; what've I missed?

In conclusion, two things related to this picture of Roger: a) I love his hat and we wants one (you can keep Sharapova's; it looks like a tea-cosy), and b)he looks like he's cut his hair. There will be Great And Terrible Wrath if this is the case.

It's probably a little sad that, if I conquered the world, my first ruling would be "Roger Federer shall not cut his hair without my explicit permission." Not that knowing that it's sad would actually stop me but at least it's acknowledged.

Wait! Gossip - MTF! Excellent! *goes*

edit: Also, it kills me that John Cena was at the Arthur Ashe Kids Day. There need to be tennis/WWE crossovers. Why are there no tennis/WWE crossovers? Roger watches it, or did a while back. Hot guys with racquets plus hot guys in tights. Why are there no crossovers?

Potential tennis/WWE pairings. Discuss.

So Andy Roddick's on Jonathan Ross tomorrow. As is Nick Frost. Am totally calm about this.

...*flails like a mad flailly thing* I'M SO GLAD I MADE THIS ICON TODAY.

Also up to episode 20 of Heroes. See above flailing for general reaction. Especially anytime Peter and Sylar are in a scene together because OMGTHATWILLBESUPERHEROFIGHTOFAWESOME.

The overdose of capslock in this post is entirely justified. Yes.