2009 — 30 October: Friday

There's a handwritten note on the back of tonight's picture of Christa, suggesting I would have been not more than one year old when it was taken!

Christa in Meisenheim, 1951/2

I can get awfully tired waiting for the iMac to finish (re)doing its iTunes thing. It's 00:36 and I've retreated upstairs, though I'm still listening to the sound of a BBC4 programme about the glamour set of the 1920s Bright Young Things. But I think I shall now retire to bed with Jane Austen to keep me company.

G'night.

Ouch!

I haven't even started slicing and dicing the next batch of veggies for the crockpot and I've managed to cut open1 the fleshy part (I refuse to call it a ball) of one of my thumbs while harvesting a few more grapes from my vine with the "help" of some kitchen scissors. Bloody things. Haven't even had a cuppa tea, either. It's 09:31 and my day's supply of gruntle has completely disappeared.

Herewith the grapes of wrath:

Grapes

Haven't shed this much blood since the day of the pheasant attack by Rosie the Riveter. Now, about that cuppa.

According to jolly James Jolly, the conductor Artur Rodzinski (I've just listened to him conducting a couple of Slavonic Dances) was so paranoid he never mounted the rostrum without a loaded pistol in his pocket to defend himself against members of his orchestra. Talk about adversarial relationship! Time to get some breakfast in me before lunch, I guess. It's already 11:33 somehow.

What am I missing? I'm working through a batch of Amazon recommendations. They suggest that because I bought Mac OS X Snow Leopard I now need Windows 7 Home Premium. How odd.

What could be better...

... on a peaceful Friday afternoon, than to let the new Ubuntu slurp gently on to the little HP Media PC? Only two hours (or so) to go. I suppose I'd better get some lunch inside me as it's already 13:44. Clearly a day for pottering around not getting too much done.

Can't say for sure that I know what a "cheeseball riff" is, but I quite enjoyed the original movie "The Boondock Saints". There's now a sequel reviewed here. No Willem Dafoe this time, sadly.

I love understatement:

The frugal-minded grocer's daughter who went to Oxford, married well, was a successful commercial chemist, and went on to great political achievement was not much inclined to sympathetic inquiry about daily life in the working class, let alone of those on the dole. She seems to have viewed her own success as proof of the possibility of anyone's success...

As in domestic affairs, so in foreign. [Claire Berlinski] quotes Thatcher's welcoming comment to a Congolese Marxist leader, whom she met at 10 Downing: "I hate Communists." The translator rendered this, "Prime Minister Thatcher says that she has never been wholly supportive of the ideas of Karl Marx." Clearly, her visceral hatred had something to do with the inadequacy and inefficiency of planned economies, but also everything to do with her abiding perception of the immorality of the system.

Tod Lindberg in World Affairs


I'm not a communist, but I'm again reminded that if you're not one at 20 you have no heart (or was it soul?) while if you're still one at 40 you have no brain.

Oh dear

Nothing quite like "sending a social policy message" by sacking a drugs expert (because of his preference for an evidence-based approach rather than a policy-based approach) to make the UK guvmint look (as ever, whatever the stripe, alas) rather stupid. It must be very nice to be as wise as our series of Home Secretaries have been on this issue.2 And I'm no more a drug user than I am a communist. Farewell, Professor David Nutt. (His paper.)

Oh dear, oh dear

What, I wonder, is our guvmint's attitude to the importation of "artificial virginal hymens"?

Recently, a hospital in Hangzhou had a bout of conscience attack. When a prostitute showed up for her ninth hymen repair in the last 3 years, the hospital refused on moral grounds.

EastSouthWestNorth


Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear

Is this to be our education policy? Gosh. Crikey, even. Or, perhaps, "Yaroo, you rotters!"

Truly, this is one bizarre world.

The new Ubuntu is behaving nicely. iTunes on the iMac downstairs has finally finished reloading my mp3 library. Time to tear myself away from these delightful time-wasting devices. Tutti-Frutti here I come.

  

Footnotes

1  I often noticed Christa sporting little bandaids from time to time — I'm now finally beginning to see why. Dangerous places, gardens and kitchens...
2  I've observed late-night binge drinkers in Winchester. I watched my Dad die from tobacco-induced lung cancer. I note the carnage on our roads and the correlation with alcohol levels. And were I to be out walking late at night I'd far rather see "stoned" youths heading towards me than I would drunken yobs.