Absent falling coal

Oh god. I just had to run and hug a cushion and drink tea, all because of a pen.

See, my green pen (cases are green...) ran out - disaster! - so I had to buy a new one. Harder than you'd think, given I don't like biro for my notes, just gel pen, but I found one, and was quite happy.

I just made notes, and idly flicked the non-nib end of my pen over the paper while reading a case on screen.

When I looked down, stripes of the green writing had disappeared!

A search on the internet reveals my new pen to in fact be a magic pen.

I don't know whether to be scared, or buy hundreds...


Edit: Unrelatedly, reading cases about chocolate makes me crave 70% dark chocolate, which I don't have (...they were talking about how they make it. Damn them.) and now I'm reading a case about the Wombles.

doo-di-di-doo dee-di-di-doo...Welcome to the Twilight Zone... AKA my head.


Edit of Edit: ...dude. I only just realised why the defendant was trying to call his skips company "Wombles Skips".

All together now... #Remember you're a Womble!#


Edit Edit Edit: The next case is about Sesame Street and the MUPPETS!!! *loves*

...that I sometimes loathe and detest our transport network.

It's going to take me 4 1/2 hours (3 trains and a bus) to get home on Sunday (when it takes me 3 hours and 2 trains to get there on Friday, gr); on 31st December, it is apparently going to take me 3 1/2 hours on buses to get to Oxford from Kettering (as for trains, don't even go there...)

Apologies, entirely inconsequential rant, but it's just tipped the balance and now I am fed up.

Bah. *many other sheep agree*.

t seems to me that, if it be correct to isolate the phrase "for the purpose of criticism or review" then, although the tongue has to perform an act of no small intimacy with the cheek in making the argument, it is arguable that the offending publications can be characterised as criticism or review

This is why I like reading cases. Sometimes, I end up giggling and trying not to spit tea into my laptop.

It's called Glyn v Weston Feature Film Co, [1916] 1 Ch 261

It's all about parody, and whether it infringes copyright - in this case, it's burlesque films based on a novel, and they say that despite burlesque being "as old as Aristophanes" there are no cases where it's been held to be an infringement of copyright.

However, they also said that the novel didn't deserve the protection of the court, because it was on a "hackneyed theme" and was "grossly immoral", being a "sexual adulterous intrigue".

Here's how it was described:

The plaintiff is the authoress of the novel in debate. It is entitled "Three Weeks." First published in 1907, the book was from the point of view of notoriety fortunate enough to be condemned almost unanimously by the critics and to be banned by all the libraries. In consequence, I doubt not, of these attentions it has enjoyed a vogue denied to less daring rivals, and it has reached a sale in this*266 country and America in numerous editions, expensive and cheap, of, I was told, far over a million copies.
The book is said to be an episode in a young Englishman's life without any real beginning or end. In a sense this is a correct enough description of the novel, but the episode referred to absorbs little more than half the book - 160 pages out of a total of 319. The rest is taken up with a description of the young man's life and surroundings before the episode commenced and with a portrayal of the permanent influence upon his moral character and career which the authoress is pleased to attribute to the experience he went through during the episode in question.
The episode itself is a chance meeting at a Lucerne hotel between a beautiful lady of uncertain age and mysterious origin and the young Englishman sent by his parents on the grand tour to cure him of an unsuitable attachment at home. The meeting developed into a liaison which lasted for three weeks, after which the lady returned to the shadowy realm from which she had emerged and of which she was, as it happened, the queen. There, having given birth to a son of whom the young Englishman was the father, she was murdered by her husband, the dissolute king of the country. He in turn was assassinated by a faithful attendant of the queen's, leaving the child, the image of his handsome English father, to succeed to the throne.
In all its essentials the so-called episode is as hackneyed and commonplace a story as could well be conceived. If it is to be distinguished at all from innumerable anticipations in erotic literature, the distinction is to be found in the accessories of the tale. Mystery surrounds the lady. Of a loveliness unaffected by the passage of time, she is said to be polished, blasee, soignee. Even in a Swiss country hotel, but notably at Lucerne and Venice, she is pervaded by a luxury as sybaritic as it is incongruous: no wine can pass her lips which is not either of the deepest red or the richest gold; the roses she wears are matched in colour only by the red of her lips; the fruit with which she toys has to be out of season in order that it may be fabulously expensive. Although attended only by an elderly dignified male servant, the lady apparently carries about with her to Lucerne and Venice - if one may omit so-called mountain excursions to the Right and the Burgenstock - baggage*267 sufficient to fill an ordinary train; it is no extraordinary achievement for her dignified attendant in the space of a week-end to go from Lucerne to Venice, engage a palace on the Grand Canal, supplied with the essential convenience of a side door, and have it equipped with a retinue of Italian servants and, it would seem, an orchestra from Paris, in time to receive the lady on the following Monday travelling from Lucerne with all her baggage and apparently quite unaccompanied. These exaggerated incidents or others like them are of course quite absurd enough to be destitute of novelty in literature of the kind; but if the particular cachet of the plaintiff's novel is not to be found in this setting, then, so far as I can see, it has no cachet at all. At the best, the plaintiff has chosen a hackneyed theme for her episode, and her privilege as an authoress must be strictly confined to the method of treating it which she has adopted.

Stuffy lawyers, much? I now want to find the book and see if it's as badly written as he thought...

Godamnit, why can't law be dull? Then I wouldn't keep getting distracted!

I just spent 20 minutes trawling the internet to fill the inside cover of my brother's birthday card with footnotes.

He'll never forgive me....

...so forgive my excitement.

But, drapey velvet dress = so beautiful.

We do have a slight issue in that I can barely talk at the moment - husky whispers is pretty much all I've managed today - but never fear!

I have a cunning solution... just think Hush from Bufyy (yeah, ok, not screaming to kill the bad guys, the other solution)

The lecture this afternoon was a big French-and-CC enclave. It was lovely - surrounded by hordes of people I know and who know me terrifyingly wonderfully well. The lecture was good too - comforting that my work for EC seems to have been on more or less the right track, but there were a couple of extra interesting bits too.

Being diligent, I'd be doing PIL now - but instead, I've had tea with Sophie, and we've just been to fetch Francesco, French student of our Civil classes last year, from the bus station and are about to go for more tea.

PIL can happen later/tonight, around OUSGG - more lovely people.

This is why I wanted to be back in Oxford.

Never mind the latest Who news.

BBC's Alan Johnston has been released.

I know he was only one man; I know that he was far more fortunate than others in that he wasn't tortured or really harmed in any significant physical way; I know he was lucky because everybody knew him and he had thousands of people working to free him for the 16 weeks he was in captivity.

It still matters to me, because I was, like everyone else, shocked and horrified when he was taken. Call him stupid for staying there when all the other Western journalists had left, and I'll defend your right to that opinion - but I don't agree. In my eyes, he was incredibly brave, staying there, forging links and friendships with the locals, and making sure that Gaza didn't just become a media black hole. Maybe it was just the case that he would always be taken eventually, but it doesn't change the fact that he was brave - braver for knowing it, and also standing the risk of being killed in fighting - and deserved people working to set him free, just like everyone deserves it.

Like I say, for me this outshadows any announcements about s.4 of Who (no, I'm not even going to link, I'm too scared of being lambasted for spoilers...) but you're entitled to disagree (/disclaimer)

Apparently they're fighting back, but given Watford would have to score 3 goals in 9 minutes, I am left with no choice.

I never thought I'd say this, but...

Come on Man U!!!

Otherwise the programme won't end at 7:40 and I'll be very sad...

Dear Sky,

You lose. I wanted to see the eclipse and you chose tonight to get modest and cover yourself in clouds. Why tonight? Other nights you're a brazen hussy all uncovered for the world to see. But when there's something interesting, oh no, up come the clouds.

This is useless behaviour, and should be punished.

No love,

Me.