2008 — 1 October: Wednesday — rabbits!
Good heavens, how did it suddenly become 02:00? Beats me, chief. Maybe it was the wonderful programme about the BBC Arts strand (Arena) on BBC4? Time for tonight's picture of my absent Best Girl. It shows her in the middle of 2006, shortly after her initial surgery, and sitting by the large bunch of flowers sent to her by her office mates in the translation agency. At this point (as far as we knew) her cancer had been excised with a supposed 2.5% chance of a recurrence. It's often occurred to me since that it's probably best that we can't see into the future:
It's gone positively wintry (or should that be "wintery"?) It must be — they're discussing the difference between a crumpet and a pikelet, both things I associate with this time of year, though many years ago. G'night, at 02:14 or thereabouts. And, yes, I didn't forget to take the final antibiotic.
Drifting back up...
... to the not very soothing sounds of wailing emergency sirens. But I'm in no hurry to hit the road today. There's some supplies shopping to undertake (when does that ever stop?) and I have the car service this afternoon. I shall spend the hour that takes browsing in Comet (down in Millbrook) methinks. It's 09:25, windy, but currently also sunny. Sylvester's little legs are whizzing round outside as he perpetually makes off with his lunch, Tweety-Pie.
(This picture dates back to 21st March last year.)
Is there anybody out there...? dept.
I missed this Calvin and Hobbes line despite having collected all the anthologies. It appears in a piece by Stephen Hawking who, despite having a brain the size of a planet, seems to think humanity should do its best to spread like a plague as widely as possible in the universe.
And why haven't we heard from anyone out there? One view is expressed [in] a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. The caption reads: "Sometimes I think that the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
He goes on to say that "Just because evolution led to intelligence in our case, we shouldn't assume that intelligence is an inevitable consequence of Darwinian natural selection. It is not clear that intelligence confers a long-term survival advantage. Bacteria and insects will survive quite happily even if our so-called intelligence leads us to destroy ourselves." Shades of that 1949 Frederik Pohl short story Let the ants try.
Compare and contrast with that other well-known deep-thinker Jerry Seinfeld: "A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking".
The euro in their pockets... dept.Good God!
The UK is a medium-sized economy — but has giant banks. Royal Bank of Scotland has 2 trillion euros of assets; HSBC 1.6tn; Barclays 1.5tn; and Lloyds/TSB/HBOS 1.4tn. Together those 6.5tn euros of assets are four times Britain's GDP. It seems incredible, but these huge banks are now so concerned about each others' business model and creditworthiness that they have stopped lending normally to each other...
If those deep pockets are so bulging, why do they need to lend to each other? Isn't this just everyone taking in each other's laundry? How does that work? Meanwhile the Tories are banging on about rubbish bins and spelling in their annual conference. It's a mad world, my masters.
Win some, lose some, wince some... dept.
There's a classic 1954 SF short story by Tom Godwin called The cold equations — it deals with the inevitable and tragic consequences of a stowaway on a space flight with finite oxygen supplies... Today the savings account linked to my online current account pays me its net interest for the year. (Win some.) Today the annual car insurance ceases to apply to my premium the no-claims discount earned by Christa now that I'm the principal named driver.1 (Lose some.) And, today I also have the car's first annual service, at 10,580 miles. (Lose some more.) You're way ahead of me, aren't you, Christa? When I subtract from the interest coming in both the car insurance premium and the car service fee going out I have left the princely sum of £5-36. (Wince some.)
Recall the ever-applicable sage counsel of one Wilkins Micawber, and have a cuppa tea, David!
What's a chap to do...? dept.
"Christa's husband" got a call from dear Mama today. She said she wanted me to get a message to Big Bro, and when was he next coming to see her?2 As I was gulping the last of my rapidly-cooling chicken and salad lunch before whizzing the car down to its service, I told her I'd call her back, which I did an hour or so ago, before gulping the reheated crockpot (to which I added some fresh greens at the last minute). Of course, she's entirely forgotten what she wanted to tell Bro but commands me to "keep in touch" and give her some ideas and advice about what she should "do" in light of her shot-to-blazes short term memory, house-bound status, empty food cupboard, and general state of lonely misery.
In the absence of any immediate brainwave, I know exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to sit myself in front of the new Miss Austen regrets DVD,3 and then make an effort to get to bed a bit earlier than the 03:20 that I eventually managed today. (Linux Format magazine is too damned interesting, sometimes.) I re-watched Desert Hearts last night, by the way. Very interesting to see the newly-recorded interviews with Helen Shaver and Patricia Charbonneau 21 years on. The film also contains an early appearance (uncredited) by Jeffrey Tambor (aka the sublime "Hank" from the "Larry Sanders" TV comedy).
How's this for a massive understatement?
