2010 — 2 October: Saturday
Being a creature of habit1 I'm listening to Brian Matthew, but won't be after 10:00 as a programme trail has just brought the glum news that the dreary replacement for the appalling J Woss is the awful G Norton. Thus BBC Radio 2 lurches from weakness to weakness, unlike its cousin 6Music (and its older sibling Radio 3, of course).
I shall be less grumpy after a cuppa, no doubt.
The correct level of response
An hour or so browsing this web malarkey finally induced a smile. It was my response to a masterly comment (by "BrotherBig") appended to an excellent article by Simon Jenkins (whose wholesale and [in my opinion] wholesome suggested approach to defence cuts — scrap the Armed Forces entirely — so enraged my own Big Bro recently that he was guilty of sending me a piece by James Arbuthnot).
Funnily enough, young James was one of the conversational topics this week with my chum Ian, who has been known to write to his MP when his irritation level rises high enough. Anyway, the thrust of the Jenkins article was that "Home Office threat levels are absurd abstractions of no help to anyone except the security lobby raising cash through fear". Shades of HL Mencken's opinion.2 Source and snippet:
Perhaps the proper response is to devise the Jenkins scale for measuring the level of mendacity, credulity, shroud-waving, etc ... of Home office announcements. Rather than using abstract
nouns, the meter could be calibrated in Labour Home Secretaries:
Straw — slippery, but with redeeming features
Clarke — businesslike threats of impending doom, efficient, off-hand, take it or leave it
Johnson — as Clarke, but with a cherubic smile
Reid — as Clarke, but with the unmistakable threat that he'll take you behind the bike sheds and do you over himself until you agree with Dr Demento
Blunkett — hysteria, thrashing around, prone to display complete ignorance of the technology advocated as a cure, self-pity, contempt for the public
Smith (Jacqui) — empty-headed puppet with strings being pulled clearly visible behind cheque book
Time (10:22) to grab some breakfast and stuff my next pot of crock. There's a subtle variant to the form of the stock I intend to try this week. Report to follow.
It is a little ironic for a chap whose third novel was called "The Corrections" to have his next work hastily reprinted because the initial print run used an uncorrected proof copy. Interesting, too, to see the "Independent" classify the bible as fiction at the end of its little piece. (Source.)
WTF!
The title of a new CBS show which, apparently, stands for "Wow That's Funny!"
TV's often-hypocritical approach to censorship was given its grandest showcase back in 1972, when the comedian George Carlin first took note of Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television. The bit was recreated on stage at the Kennedy Center a few years ago in a posthumous tribute to Carlin, but all the words were bleeped — not only for the PBS audience but for the theatergoers as well.
WebP
Fascinating. But I shall wait for that promised web browser support before I start converting all my images. I host (for example) 1,875 files (over 90 MB) in these diary pages, and most of those image files are JPEGs.
My living room is almost tidy. I shall celebrate with a cuppa.
Shakespeare-ian Logic?
One of the compensations when quickly upheaving, and only later slowly relocating, a goodly proportion of my home library is the stuff I've been finding in long-neglected corners. For example, back in April 2003 (while still enjoying one of the main compensations3 of IBM employment) I treated myself to Donald Simanek's lovely little book "Science Askew" of science humour, from which I've re-drawn the logic symbol joke...
... having had to make do, prior to that, with the equally enjoyable books from Robert L Weber. I bought my first two Webers on my 36th birthday. Christa and I took the day off in October 1987 and whizzed up to London while Peter was in school. Here's some of that day's goodly book haul:
- Winsor McCay: his life and art, by John Canemaker
- Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
- A random walk in science, by Robert L Weber
- More random walks in science, by Robert L Weber
Those last two came from the giant "Dillons" near the British Museum. And you can see the Winsor McCay in yesterday's "Lava lamp" photo. As it happens, I also treated myself, relatively recently, to the deluxe reprint "Absolute Watchmen" 20 years on. (But I was most unimpressed by the film.)
Time to decant my first portion of my latest crockpot creation. Fingers crossed. It's 18:12 and rather gloomy and drizzly out there. [Pause] Yum. But now it's 23:16 and still horribly wet outside. I think it's time for some sleep. When I've done the dishes. <Sigh> I've made a (slow) start on moving my CDs into those CaseLogic folders. Scanning the artwork as I go doesn't exactly speed things up... G'night.