Celebrity Makeovers!

I was in Oxford's Islamic Studies library yesterday and someone had left out a book I think was called "Osama wa al-Jazeera wa...Ana" with a big photo of bin Ladin on the front. I am surely not the first to suggest the man has formidable aesthetic potential were it not for the unfortunate beard and the penchant for slaughter. He has great bone structure.

Now I have a fantasy of giving him a good shave* and an emo hairstyle where it's cut on an angle and swishing gentle across his face...

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*Not as a loaded religious gesture but because he has delicate features and that fluffy monstrosity looks like it is wearing him.

In which I discover that I can, in fact, get bored of looking at myself

My bellydance promo video will be ready soon, which is exciting. My boyfriend is a man of exotic and exquisite taste and I took advantage of this when filming the video. Rather than renting a studio, the band and I took over his house and made it our set. We may have overstepped the bounds of good houseguestery when we nicked his table cloth to use as a dance stage. Or when I did an impromptu bellydance with his antique Afghan sword. But, in balance, he left an anti-tank landmine under the divan, which Miss Manners would probably disapprove of.

I've just spent several hours watching the raw video footage and making notes of especially good or bad bits that the videographer should use/avoid. This was narcissistically fun for about ten minutes; unfortunately the video lasts for an hour. But with any luck my efforts result in a job abroad through the dankest bits of the British winter.

Speaking of travel, I will probably go to Turkey next week as well, courtesy of said boyfriend, who has offered me plane tickets because I lamented not being able to afford a trip. I am giddy that the most interesting and splendid man alive not only actually likes me back but has now magnificently deus-ex-machina-d plane tickets for me. I sometimes think that if my life were a novel the draft would come back from the publisher with lots of red ink to the effect of "This is absurd!"

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