2007 — Day 77 - warm & quietly gurgling
Lovely long piece about Patti Smith (60!) in today's Guardian. Makes up for all the drivel about celebs that even this paper resorts to sometimes. Mind you, Alexander Chancellor (while pushing a mention of his [fourth] stolen car radio) manages "They, on the other hand, are ill-educated young women from the British working class, elevated by our perverted television culture to precarious positions of fleeting fame." And Shazia Mirza (in this week's New Statesman) offers "It seems that if you sit there like a piece of plankton dosed up on Quaaludes and saying stupid things, Britain rewards you with hollow fame, money, cars, sex, love, TV shows, column inches and new teeth." I know which I'd choose.
But I can't help thinking a poet put it slightly better:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains...
The thought of a distant civilisation picking up TV transmissions from this planet is enough to make you shudder.
Borders going cheap
Half price sales with prices that are then re-halved. What's not to like? Thus I came home this afternoon raring for Madame's Aldi meatballs, and clutching, inter alia:
- The Quitter by Harvey Pekar. I've been waiting for this instalment (from his Cleveland adolescence) to show up as a paperback
- Banana Skins by Donough O'Brien, (and with a foreword by that once high-flying Tory stalwart of truthfulness, Jonathan Aitken)
- Demented by Jacky Fleming. Leo Baxendale (you either know who he created or you don't!) reckons she personifies a grown up Minnie the Minx
- Degrees Kelvin by David Lindley. A close examination of the bumpy life and scientific career of William Thomson
- The World on Sunday by Nicholson Baker and his wife, Margaret Brentano. An unbelievable gem at £6.49, covering graphic art in Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper between 1898 and 1911. Fantastic!
Alia? Two magazines: the new Linux Format (including OpenSUSE 10.2) and the latest issue of Book and Magazine Collector (when did they add "and magazine"?) for its features on Tom Stoppard and the divine Posy Simmonds.
Now it's time to catch up with one of my favorite retired couples. Put the kettle on, Roger!