2010 — 4 February: Thursday

As Season #5 of Weeds winds towards the end I find my cheek muscles aching from an essentially permanent smile. Or is it from the dropped jaw? Much as I felt about Northern Exposure back in 1995.

It was good, too, to hear Max Mathews (featured during HAL's "lobotomy") on "Late Junction". I remember he did an amazing piece morphing "When Johnny comes marching home" many years ago. I guess I would have heard that back in the 1970s on BBC Radio London, either on Andy Finney's "Fresh Garbage" or Mike Sparrow's "Breakthrough". Though I have a nagging suspicion that it may have been on a flexi-disc attached to a book on computer music that I borrowed either from the Hatfield Poly1 or from the ICL library back in the day.

It's all fading somewhat into the mists of time, alas. Though I was astonished to find that "The Nonesuch Guide to electronic music" is now out on CD. This was a large collection of electronic plinks and plonks from Beaver and Krause — their track "By your Grace" on the Gandharva album (5 minutes of heavenly music from 1971, recorded in Grace cathedral, San Francisco, with its amazingly extended sound decay time) would definitely be on my Desert Island Discs list. In fact, I've just had to play it again!

I think I will also play it for my chum Peter, who is facing a nasty early-morning drive up to the hospital in which his mother's life is now in all probability ending even as he's on the verge of becoming a grandfather. Hell's teeth. It's a funny old Life.

G'night. At (tut, tut) 01:43 or so. Ever onward.

It must be my advancing years

I also caught about 15 minutes of the "Horizon" programme on not growing old, including a segment on those elderly Ashkenazi Jews who seem largely resistant to the impact of many years slobbing around eating and drinking more or less whatever they like. (I didn't know they descended from medieval communities in the neighbourhood of Christa's old city/village.) Mind you, the last thing the world needs right now is yet more people cluttering up the place.

Somehow, despite my own vast age, I'd never before noticed how dismally grey it can be at this time of year. It's 09:33 and uniformly off-white and off-putting out there. Hibernation really does strike me as a good idea. Failing that, there's always the radio.

I'm not certain that PhD candidates should review books about the creator of Tintin. Source and snippet:

Apostolidès's book is not for the faint of heart: it is densely-packed with close textual analysis and laden with psychological jargon. Discussing Haddock, for example, he writes: "In contrast to his usual hypermasculinized behavior, the captain sometimes acts in a more 'feminine' way, suggesting a certain ambivalent identification with the mother figure." This academic dress will make it tough going for the general reader.

Nathan Perl-Rosenthal in The New Republic


I love the way the "general reader" is assumed to be too thick to understand a book the "general reader" is frankly unlikely ever to pick up in the first place, being already weighed down with all those Dan Browns and Jeffrey Archers (substitute your own preferred despised but popular author here, to taste). Time for breakfast and that all-important second cuppa.

Hooray for one of my heroines; the divine Nancy Banks-Smith. Forty years, heh?

And another: "There's a lot to be said for living alone if there's enough going on", says Katherine Whitehorn. Hear, hear!

Time (11:09) for a smidgen of fresh air, methinks, regardless of the rain. [Pause] Which never amounted to more than a few tiddly bits of drizzle. "Scotch mist", as Dad used to say. It's now 13:40 and a spot of lunch will do nicely. I've treated myself to a nice (I hope!) chicken sandwich and a small bag2 of somewhat luxurious potato crisps. That, and a salad, will do me very well. The sky has brightened up somewhat, and the motorway wasn't too bad. Pity I forgot about the book tokens stuffed into my wallet — I was browsing my next intended book (my second Rick Gekoski) and they would have nicely subsidised its purchase.

Browsing, and...

... munching contemplatively, wandering the web for references to Norman Lindop (as one does when one reminds oneself that he was director of Hatfield Poly during my stint there, and went on to chair a guvmint committee on data protection that reported in 1978) I was amused to find not only a "bromide" of the chap in the National Portrait Gallery, but also to see David Tebbutt, Clifford Stoll, Gordon Dickson and John Brunner all referenced in an MSc paper on computer privacy. Not to mention the 1984 Turing Award lecture. It's long past time I re-read "Shockwave Rider". (Why the hell John Brunner remained so steadfastly under-appreciated is an almost life-long mystery to me. Check this out!)

And while on the subject of amazingly neglected chaps, consider Eric Frank Russell...

Benign neglect

The phone call I got an hour or so ago was from Anglian Home Improvements. Not that the young and not very well-educated sounding mouth-breather made that immediately clear. I've mentioned these incompetent clowns before (here, and here, for example) and, although one of Christa's "to-do" lists contained the long-deferred item about "get them back to repair their appalling handiwork" I don't really want them anywhere near the house. (And nor did she.)

It's 17:08 and I've just been listening to Jaron Lanier (I briefly browsed his latest book "You are not a gadget" just a couple of hours ago.) I note the BBC page says "You are not at Gadget"!

Good God! If you're "a religious man" you can get a suspended sentence for breaking the jaw of a member of the public. Pinch me, somebody. (Source.)

The Mark Thomas manifesto is running at at least one good laugh per minute. Recommended. Highly. Particularly the one about Ofsted inspectors demonstrating their ability to implement their recommendations in actual classrooms. Classic. [Pause] And, in the 1,580 or so tracks so far to have been played on "The Chain", they've only just got around to Kate Bush and The Man with the Child in his Eyes. Goodness, that takes me back. I shall dab my eyes gently and retire downstairs, I think :-)

  

Footnotes

1  Somewhere (I'm almost ashamed to confess) are the library loan slips of the various books I took out during my student days. Very few of them were about aeronautical engineering, I fear.
2  My first since before you-know-who went and did you-know-what!