2009 — 20 March: Friday again already!

Another sunny day is being forecast. Good-oh. I took tonight's picture of Christa on 17th June 2007 during a brief break from our pond draining and filling-in exercise:

Christa in her silk wedding dress, June 2007

I have no plans yet for the day, but suspect I may well fit in a trip to Southampton before I'm very much older. Who knows? I may even find myself inspecting the new Mini at the core of the Apple shop (again). G'night.

Sunny again

Sunny mornings are all very well and good, but where's my Christa to enjoy them with, heh? Still beats going to work, though. NPR has let me down by featuring a long (and in my opinion over-detailed) piece on pet euthanasia, while BBC Radio 4 has similarly driven me away with a piece on legislation to make it legal to assist people to travel abroad to euthanasia clinics. Besides, having watched John Humphrys¹ moon-walking on Marcus Brigstocke's "I've never seen Star Wars" programme last night, his gravitas is down a notch or two with me at the moment. (I thought the programme worked better on radio, but let that pass.)

The first cuppa is a more reliable mood-enhancer. I'm also almost tempted by this to revisit Terry Southern's work. (I never found it quite as engaging as the author, however.) Oh well, better fling some clothes on, I guess, and grab a bit of breakfast. It's 09:27 already. When did that happen?

Unless I miss my guess, the DVD marketing arm of Amazon in the US is getting ever more desperate:

We've noticed that customers who have purchased or rated "Barefoot in the Park" have also
purchased "Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women" on DVD. For this reason, you might
like to know that "Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women" is now available. You can
order yours for just $14.99 by ...

While I will cheerfully own up to a long-standing distant love affair with Jane Fonda,² I draw the line at Mamie Van Doren! Even if her character in this cheesy 1968 epic is called "Moana".

I less cheerfully accept that my chance of becoming one of Mr ERNIE's monthly millionaires has just halved. I wonder how much it costs to mail out over 1,000,000 cheques for £25 each every month? Right. I'm off out in this glorious sunshine. Thanks for the sheepish Samsung ad, Brian! (Link.)

In later news...

I'm back from Southampton (two cups of tea ago, in fact) with a small but choice haul of reading goodies:

Why these? Easy peasy:

American Prometheus
I've been fascinated by the story of Oppenheimer ever since reading "In the matter of..." at some point in the Sixth form.
Trevanian
was an amazing writer, though I've only retained "Shibumi" on my shelves. That, incidentally, was the only title recognised (or, at least commented on) by a visitor in my study on one memorable occasion a decade or more ago.
Berkoff
cannot possibly have written a boring autobiography.
Maconie
I listen to him five nights a week, on average. A no-brainer decision, given my previous acquisition.

I also picked up Linux Format as I have long had a hankering to play with the friendlier interface to LaTeX that is Lyx. And (actually just a few minutes before I set off) young Mr Postie had dropped off two of my favourite "guilty pleasure" films. Although imported from across the pond, they are "all region" Blu-rays, which strikes me as eminently sensible:

Wild Things was one of the very first DVDs I bought back in 1998, as a Region 1 NTSC import shortly before the charmless nerds from "FACT" (without apparent shame) mis-applied the 1984 Video Recordings Act to get my Essex-based importer closed down.³ I had used the same outfit for over a decade to get hold of North American LaserDiscs. (Whenever I'd failed to persuade one of my much-travelled IBM colleagues to do some shopping for me, in fact. I even got one of the Lab Directors in on the act.)

The Fifth Element was the first DVD I saw on a decent-sized plasma screen in what was then Hampshire Audio back before multi-region hacking was widespread. The Blu-ray version is an excellent showcase (particularly the Diva scene) of what 1080p can deliver. I've just (21:54) finished it. The extras are sparse to the point of non-existence, but then the plot wouldn't really stand up to rigorous analysis, and most such "featurettes" tend to be nothing more than extended lovey back-slapping fests.

Footnotes

¹  Browsing the BBC site to ensure I had spelled names correctly led me past this delicious list. If implemented inside (any of) my former employers it would vastly improve the quality of their memos (not that many of those were written in latter years, being almost entirely replaced by emails of often appalling/amusing illiteracy). Mind you, this is a good read.
²  Hilarious in Barbarella, brilliant in Klute, and in They shoot horses, don't they?
³  Just because UK video producers are asleep at the wheel is (in my opinion) not quite a good enough reason to argue that a discrepancy in running time (that is, in fact, an inevitable result of the slightly different frame rates of NTSC and PAL video material) is evidence that the imported material must be different from, and therefore has not been censored (classified) by the BBFC. And therefore cannot be legally sold even though it can be legally imported by individuals. This is one of those "angels dancing on the head or a pin" or "cost of Christ's clothing" arguments that just blows my (non-legal) mind!