2007 — 6 October: pay day again already?!

Time now (08:40) and my Best Girl has polished off Her breakfast, and nearly all but the morphine is now onboard, so I can think about a slice of toast for myself, maybe. We're already on our second cup of tea, for goodness sake.

We had a major curtain crisis yesterday as we decided that, in fact, we¹ do not like the material bought five years ago after all. Plus a minor prescription glitch; I shall have to word my next request even more carefully than usual. On the theme of careful use of words, the New York Times has a feature on that fine city's Museum of Sex on Fifth Avenue. For those of us unsure of the difference between a kink and a fetish, for example, (and ignoring their split infinitive):

A kink "is the use of props, costumes and role play to enhance partner intimacy." But a fetish "is when the props, costumes or role play replace the partner and the intimacy." So if you want to just visit the museum to gaze at its props and costumes, and then return to the outside world, that is probably a kink; if you want to live there, it's a fetish.

Edward Rothstein in his article "What's Latex Got to Do With It?" (October 2007)

Aren't you glad to know that? Elsewhere, it seems the Museum has a playful warning: "Please do not² touch, lick, stroke or mount the exhibits."

Mad dogs and Englishmen... department

It was such a lovely, sunny morning, with such a cloudless blue sky, that I went temporarily mad in Southampton's Waterstone's and HMV classical CDs basement and now seem to have acquired the following wonderful book and music:

Becoming Jane Austen, the 2003 biography by Jon Spence (the historical consultant on that recently-watched film)
Scheherazade (London Philharmonic, Takuo Yuasa, 1990) coupled with Borodin's Polovtsian Dances (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham, 1974) and (just to make this single CD even better value at £6!) three pieces from Khachaturian
Treemonisha (a 1975 DG recording from New York of Scott Joplin's opera which is, it seems, the only commercial recording available)
Works of Igor Stravinsky³

This last — an amazing 22 CDs for a ludicrous £22 — was originally the unfeasibly expensive "Stravinsky conducts Stravinsky" boxed set from 1991 that is now re-packaged lacking all the documentary annotations, but dripping with every last note from this supreme musical genius of the last century. Bliss!

Footnotes

¹  I always defer in matters of domestic taste; how else do you think we've lasted this long?
²  Which triggers (in my mind, at least) that wonderful old IBM punched card warning: "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate". It took a while for me to understand the art of spindling.
³  My grammar school music teacher (Mr Donald Riddell) was entirely responsible for inculcating in me a life-long love of Stravinsky's music, among other composers.