2009 — 21 October: Wednesday
Two heads (they say) are better than one. Tonight's picture shows Christa on 1st September 2007 with her German friend Barbara (one of our neighbours here for more than two decades before succumbing to the lure of the north):
G'night.
In years gone by...
... I thought very little of being up and about at this ghastly time (07:38 or so) and I still do! But with a cuppa and some lovely Bach I shall kick back and uncontemplate things like trotting down to the bus stop in time to catch a coachload of coughers en route to unlovely Millbrook (for example). Last night saw the end of my self-imposed task of merging in all the DVD and Blu-ray artwork accumulated in the last 18 months or so into my set of A4 folders. I had a two-inch pile of the stuff, irritation at the sight of which reached a tipping point last Sunday.
On the scale of useful activities I'd rate it somewhat higher than quite a lot of what went on (goes on?) in the computing industry. Think of it as my local attempt to decrease entropy, if only briefly. My man flu malingers somewhat (I'm sure it's only a cold) and I'm amused to hear the UK's chief medical officer dodging questions about health and safety of the new vaccine while many front-line nurses and doctors can articulate good reasons1 for dodging the vaccine itself. Still, a) I'm not in a high-risk group, b) I don't "do" vaccinations, and c) who wants to live forever?2 Besides, a doctor's surgery is not the healthiest of places to visit.
When theatrical types fall out... dept.
Actor Jeremy Piven left a Broadway production of Mamet's "Speed the Plow" (plough?) claiming he had mercury poisoning...
Mamet himself positively skewered Piven's story about contracting mercury poisoning from an excess of fish in his diet. "My understanding," the playwright said, in what has already come to be regarded as one of the great theatrical putdowns, "is that he is leaving showbusiness to pursue a career as a thermometer."
Here's a question...
... you don't get asked every day:
... when's the last time any of us has seen a former child star wearing a giant roasted chicken battling comestible defense mechanisms while a peanut-allergic weather girl lowers the hero via spaghetti rappelling rope into a shaft of razor-sharp peanut brittle where the slightest scratch could prove deadly to her?
That reminds me: I've got some foody shopping to do if I ever want to eat again. It's 10:35 and the rain has yet to arrive.
Is it my imagination, or are things pretty quiet out there? I'm just (11:46) back from a local supplies run and in dire need of my next cuppa. Either I've become massively unfit in the course of a week, or my nasty little virus carries "debilitating effects" in its little strands of genetic material. Intelligent design? Pah!
TV is good for us!
NPR has just interviewed Charles Kenny about this article. He sounded extremely plausible.
"Any fule kno" tea and fresh air are vital parts of any post-viral treatment, so I'm off out with my main co-pilot on a minor-league expotition. Toot toot.
Oh dear.
A release candidate version of a myth-busting matrix. How cool is that?
A lot cooler than my poor ol' throat in the unpleasant aftermath of my virus. <Sigh> But not as cool as this.
Say what?
I've read this three times. I'm still not sure what it means. It's from a speech by the Governor of the Bank of England but could just as easily have been one of the gnomic utterances from Alan Greenspan:
In a speech in Edinburgh, he said some banks might have to split their core business from riskier practices, so they did not get too big to be allowed to fail.
Christa and I both very much enjoyed the strange HBO TV series "Carnivàle", which ran to two seasons, and then (sadly) ran out of money. So I'm distracting myself from my now lousy sore throat by re-watching it. Marvellous stuff. Check out the IMDB voting figures for it!
Now, (23:17) having done the dishes, I decided to clean out the sink's drain-pipe once again. (Last done 16 months ago.) Yuk, again... I'm obviously doing something cumulatively different from Christa with regard to keeping it unclogged as I know she always asked me to do the unfastening of the pipework. Maybe regular doses of bleach and hot water will help?