2007 — Day 63 - losing one's bottle(s)
All those years of assiduous re-cycling, carefully sorting green from brown from clear, but to what end? Now, glassy-eyed Mr & Mrs Council simply dump everything from all the neighbours' crates into one enormous wheelie bin and whisk it away. Even before one has had a chance to study local imbibing habits.
Oh well. Let's see what joys today's Guardian holds for me. Well, today's Perry Bible Fellowship isn't bad. (This was introduced at the time of the "Berliner" format redesign when the editorial team, in an act of great unwisdom, dumped the sublime Doonesbury without warning, only to be forced by volume of complaint to re-instate him within a week — my immediate mild email enquiry received an initial brush-off followed, a day later, by the most fulsome of apologies.)
Then there's the sad news that a 159-tonne globe sculpture called Spaceship Earth, intended to remind future generations of the world's fragility, has collapsed at Kennesaw State University near Atlanta,2 Georgia. And they cap this with a reprint (from January 1962) of a Michael Frayn column poking fun at decimalisation of the currency... now that we are going into the Common Market the only way left to protect our industries, short of actually improving the quality of the products, is to enshroud the home market in a currency so confused as to be impenetrable to any race less devious than ourselves.
By the way, this is my very last day as an IBM employee! I shall save until tomorrow an account of my final managerial interaction.
Friday tradition
Finding myself in HMV earlier this afternoon, I picked up five DVDs and got £2 change from a £20 note:
- Frankie & Johnny
- Scent of a woman
- Harvey
- The Office, series #2
- The Office, Christmas specials
Particularly appropriate, I felt, in light of my retirement.
Exigent circumstances
A phrase to be found in George Bush's latest signing statement permitting powers to open private US Mail, despite the law currently mandating a warrant. Land of the Free, heh?