2009 — 27 May: Wednesday
Well, I tried... I tried Buying the cow — pretty poor stuff, gross in parts. I tried Factory Girl — it reminded me of all the things I didn't care for about Warhol.1 I'm currently trying Knocked Up — while it's doing better than the other two, it's fair to say it's still not exactly keeping 100% of my interest. (After all, I've just paused it downstairs while I prepare and publish this midnight entry.)
I (again) have Big Bro to thank for my next picture of Christa, Peter, dear Mama and me. It's the last of the three he sent over a couple of days ago. I'm puzzled, though — why were all four of us looking away from his camera? By the way, Bro, these last two were definitely July 1984, not July 1985.
Christa, Peter, dear Mama and me in mid-1984
Spooky. Oh well, here's hoping (in the face of a pessimistic weather forecast) for a walk later today. G'night.
The curse of Firefox
A reader considerably more alert than me (particularly at 00:40 or after) pointed out my malformed "&mdash" character. If (as I had) I omit the trailing semicolon Firefox displays the dash. IE and Opera (correctly) do not. Sorry about that — thanks, Mike. It's obviously time (08:12) for the cuppa that wakes me up. I can't say the weather looks entirely promising for a walk quite yet.
How dare he?
Big Bro (whom I don't wish to upset, 'cos he's found a slide of me actually in the Aeronca and will scan it) had the temerity to ask if I was "100% sure" about the year of the photos
he'd scanned for me. Well, I wrote to my friend Carol on Friday 13th July 1984... Dallas, here I come (tomorrow morning). You want an example of irony? My long-lost New Zealand brother,
whom I last saw nearly two years ago, and (before that) in 1975, turns up tonight, 13 hours before I set off and, to top that, an American couple Christa hasn't seen for 16 years arrive on
Sunday for two days, 30 hours after I've gone!
The aged P, who is staying while I'm away, doesn't know whether she's coming or going...
Now, when did I stop calling her the 'aged P' (from "Great Expectations" of course) and switch over to 'dear Mama'? That, I have no idea. It's 08:52, there's still some drizzle, and it's time for breakfast.
Alas, the "drizzle" is now (09:27) heavy enough to have become audible on the skylight. No walk today, therefore.
Today's Private Eye is (even more) wonderful (than usual).
Only connect
I've just scanned the artwork for that lovely film To kill a mockingbird. It was produced by Alan Pakula (think "Klute", not to mention one of the best films still not yet available on DVD: "The sterile cuckoo" [aka Pookie] from the excellent novel by John Nichols, who was uncredited for his work on "Missing") and directed by Robert Mulligan — the brother of the actor Richard who (of course) played "Burt Campbell" in the wonderful Soap over 30 years ago. It was also Robert Duvall's first film. I'm getting old, Christa!
"Demand (for oil) is dropping faster than they can scale down production." How does that work? Besides keeping up the cost of petrol, that is. It's fast approaching time for my next major dollop of national news, having just ingested my next major dollop of food. Apparently it's going to be much better weather tomorrow.
There must be something special about novels I recall from the 1950s and 1960s for them to remain so vividly in my head after four decades or more. I was surprised, having just scanned the artwork for To Sir with love to discover that Braithwaite's novel was written for the screen, produced and directed by the chap who wrote Shogun. (Yet I stalled within the first 60 pages or so of that when my pal Lesley lent it to me several years ago. And she romped through Frank Herbert's "Dune".) Odd.
Just Larkin about
This made me smile (which, given that I'm listening to an NPR phone-in about the North Korean weapons tests, is a Good Thing). It's a comment featured in association with the poem of the month in October 2008 on the website of the Philip Larkin Society:
I worked at the University Library from 1963-1966 as a Library Assistant and made many friends there, with most of whom I still keep in touch. One day in 1965 one of those friends, a particularly attractive girl, was caught by Philip in the stacks being rather too friendly with her then boyfriend, now husband. She is almost certain, because of the date of the poem, that 'Administration' was written after a telling-off she was given by Philip over this incident.
This made me smile, too, though I've never actually seen the TV programme being excoriated:
If this freakish parade of the dull, the desperate and the downright deluded really is, as Cowell suggests, the perfect antidote to the recession, then kick away the chair and let me swing right now.
Such is the lowest common denominator bread-and-circuses dimension to the series, I wouldn't be surprised if Gordon Brown were to pop up on the final night and give the winner a seat in the Cabinet.
Crikey! She's just dissed 13,000,000 viewers. :-) I may have to start getting the Torygraph.
"Only 4% of therapists are in what I'd call the loony category," said Philip Hodson, during an item on psychotherapists' attitudes to re-alignment of sexual orientation. Crikey, again. Good old BBC Radio 4. (All in the Mind.)
Amazing foresight
It's 20:51 and a set of newly-grilled sausages is cooling down ready for packing into a sandwich for tomorrow's walk (on the assumption that the weather will permit this — a walk, that is). I figured the oldest pack of ham is just a little too far past its "use by" date. Now all I have to do is remember to take some bread out of the freezer. How difficult can that be? I've also just ordered a new, and very interesting-looking, book by Simon Garfield (he of the error stamp-collecting obsession). I shall bequeath to Brian J the task of deducing its title. Yes, you can borrow it after I've read it. (Grin.)
Both these musical items are intriguing:
Note the first Google hit for the latter (if you search for "FM3 Buddha Machine") carries a software health warning.
I'm tired, so that's it for today. Heavens, it's only 22:14 too!