2010 — 2 November: Tuesday
I must say, the world looks a little brighter after a good night's sleep.1 And helped by a cuppa, of course.
Not to mention a feast of Doonesbury-related celebration. He's 40 this week. Source and snippet:
Watergate was the perfect subject, because every day brought fresh outrages. Everyone was on his game, and we felt unconstrained, because Nixon's wounds were self-inflicted. Monica was good for cartooning, but it was only one running joke. Bush's misrule — accidental war, torture, Katrina, etc. — provoked great cartoons, but there was so much associated tragedy, there wasn't much fun in it.
Isaac Asimov may or may not have read Doonesbury, I don't know. But his autobiographical diary entry for 11th May 1973 certainly suggests he followed Nixon's self-destruction avidly. "Up at six to finger-lick the day's news on Watergate". By that point, of course, it turned out that Nixon had been covering up the break-in for over half a year. Idiot! Isn't it a good job that all politicians everywhere have become so much more honest since his glory days?
It's 09:16 and time for breakfast.
The über-brilliant Maureen Lipman is on "Woman's Hour". Excellent. In more worrying news, Amazon in the US has just shipped the "Complete Larry Sanders" DVD set to me, but estimates its arrival (complete, no doubt, with outrageous Customs charges and Post Orifice "handling fee" demands) to be 17th December. Illegal file downloads would be faster and cheaper :-)
Noon! Already??
And all I've managed is one pitiful letter to one poxy bank manager. Maybe that should be the other way round — he doesn't know what's about to hit him. Right. Where's the nearest snailmail box? Off I go. [Pause] Had I had the wit to call in at the local branch first, I could have saved myself the stamp. Turns out I need the original Lasting Power of Attorney documents (currently lodged with my solicitor up in the Midlands, of course) before I can actually do anything useful with dear Mama's account. Probably just as well, of course, but it all takes time and effort that I'd rather (far rather) devote to other more interesting, more fun, activities. Still, I've made a new lady friend in the local Barclays. That's a start.
Next up, Mrs Landingham? How about a bite to eat? It's 13:14 and I'm starving. All this explication burns calories. As does keeping the central heating on 18C rather than 20C, but that's what woollies were invented for.
The animals that...
... hibernate have the right idea, if you ask me. It's only 16:34 but I already have the lights on and would describe it as "twilightian" outside if I didn't think the more usual adjective was "twilit". Another piece of mail has been cast, as it were, upon the water, and now I have to sit back and await developments. As my chum Geoff said, many months ago, activities such as probate and Power of Attorney are all about the guvmint getting unpaid (and in my case, unskilled) labour (me) to do stuff I would really prefer not to touch with a bargepole. Not that I've ever handled, nor even closely approached, such a useful implement.
Many Monas
I've never actually seen the Mona Lisa in the flesh, as it were (unlike my all-time favourite painting — Dali's "Metamorphosis of Narcissus" — which Christa took me to see in London many years ago). Here's a gallery of weird and wonderful Monas. I like the one in a spacesuit, though I'd be hard pushed to say why (except it reminds me somewhat of a short SF story).
"Up the stairs to Bedfordshire!"
What, already?
Yep. G'night.