London was very picturesque the other night. (Shrunken WordPress pix look pretty terrible – click for full size, as always.)
suffer naught to fate, hit the homeward road
Category: Blog posts
vauxhall skyline
It was raining when I left the office today. The late winter sun, limbering up after so long away from its duties, conspired with the rain to present London with the most gorgeous evening light. Everything at street level glistened darkly; everything above it was golden and exalted, shining aginst a solid drift of lilac nimbostratus. A thick, solid stub of rainbow rose from Waterloo, a pale mirrored reflection a little way north. Creamy wisps scurried south beneath the great dark blanket; at Nine Elms I looked to windward and saw its edge, the horizon banded in dark grey and the most brilliant powder blue.
London Airports as rated by Brosencrantz
Heathrow – a vast, sprawling dystopia full of bizarre luxury excrescences designed to extract the most possible renminbi. Is expected to burst its banks and swallow Berkshire soon, adding Windsor Castle to the tourist funhouse.
Gatwick – Heathrow but smaller and slightly cleaner.
Luton – an indescribable hellhole, hands down the grimmest and most miserable London airport, a permanent building site infested with people whose job is to fine you £70 for not printing off a physical boarding pass. Doesn’t have a railhead and is not walking distance from one; instead a shuttle bus takes you to “Luton Airport Parkway”, which is itself one of the worst railway stations in Britain. The airblade antlers on the taps are pretty cool though.
Stansted – a perfectly adequate midsized airport which handles three times as many passengers as it was built for. Integrated railway station gives it the best ergonomics of a London airport.
City – only really big enough to fly Spitfires.
Southend – so old-fashioned it probably still flies Spitfires. Dismissed as “not really in London”, as if Stansted is any closer. Often eerily empty.
Biggin Hill – genuinely does still fly Spitfires. Our last, best hope should the mighty Luftwaffe return. Surprising fact: is actually still a functional aerodrome.
Croydon – no longer has a runway or flyable aircraft but is otherwise still the most enjoyable airport in London.
“please be quiet. you’re going to ruin asari for me.”
[14:51:58] Brosencrantz: huh, banshees actually have detailed vaginas
[14:53:09] Brosencrantz: I wonder how that went down with the texture artists
[14:53:24] Brosencrantz: “ok chaps, today’s assignments: the wracked, pipe-curled thighs, distended pot belly, and detailed genitalia of a reaperised asari. forget the clitoris and you’ll be fed to the husks.”
[14:53:28] Hovercraft: which pic are you looking at?
[14:53:36] Brosencrantz: http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/074/6/7/mass_effect_3__banshee_reference__by_troodon80-d4sut6n.jpg bottom left
[14:53:51] Brosencrantz: troodon80 has a bunch of ass effect references, I was counting eyes
[14:55:46] Hovercraft: remember that stag party conversation you overhear in the bar on illium in 2?
[14:56:09] Hovercraft: where there’s a human, turian and salarian watching an asari stripper writhe around
[14:56:41] Hovercraft: and they all think she looks most similar to their species
[14:56:59] Hovercraft: then one of them suggests that maybe the asari mind-control them into perceiving them like that
[14:57:16] Brosencrantz: …do you think people see banshees as horrible giant scrawny naked screaming versions of their own species?
[14:57:23] Hovercraft: maybe
[14:59:16] Hovercraft: but I always thought it would have been cool if there was later some explanation where it was just psychology that each race focuses on the similarities between the asari and their species
[14:59:29] Hovercraft: like how people see faces in electrical sockets
[14:59:46] Brosencrantz: mm
[14:59:53] Hovercraft: turians focus on the head tentacles, which are like their crests
[14:59:58] Hovercraft: salarians focus on the…dunno
[15:00:01] Brosencrantz: salarians focus on their… skin or whatever
[15:00:02] Hovercraft: humans focus on the everything
[15:00:08] Hovercraft: ooh skin, good
[15:00:40] Hovercraft: it’s a stretch, and it would still be bullshit because ultimately the asari were designed by humans
[15:00:45] Hovercraft: but it’s a nice thought
[15:01:28] Hovercraft: also, mordin would have delivered the explanation
[15:01:42] Brosencrantz: well, humans focus on the general shape, the face and t&a, and disregard that they’re the wrong colour and have the wrong skin and hair
[15:01:51] Hovercraft: indeed
[15:01:57] Brosencrantz: because sexy blue alien girls
[15:02:23] Hovercraft: it’d be about what each species considers secondary sexual characteristics
[15:02:48] Brosencrantz: which if we really want to develop it with bullshit evopsych, might be because t&a are signs of sexual maturity and fertility in humans
[15:03:08] Brosencrantz: whereas maybe a nice firm crest has the same significance for avian turians
[15:07:09] Hovercraft: it’d also tie in with that question of like “how do crows or mice or whatever other animal tell one another apart? they all look the same”
[15:07:51] Hovercraft: when maybe they only look the same to our untrained eyes, while what we think are big visual differences between individual humans are invisible to other animals
[15:07:58] Hovercraft: animals with good enough vision, at least
[15:08:06] Brosencrantz: animals in the mood for love
[15:08:50] Brosencrantz: wonder how something as awful, child-corrupting and terrifying as a vagina made it past the moral guardians
[15:10:03] Brosencrantz: I guess the fact that banshees are about as unsexy as it’s possible to be while also being a naked lady helps
[15:11:50] Brosencrantz: or maybe they just got distracted by the dude on dude and the krysae sniper rifle
“A German armored engineer company from Havelberg converted an ATF Dingo armored vehicle into an Advent calendar for the Christmas season. (Bundeswehr/Andrea Bienert)” (source.)
underneath the open sky 
