2011 — 15 February: Tuesday
Start the day with a Microsoft patch, heh?1 It's raining. Sleep has worked its usual magic, and now I have it in mind to go on the hunt for my latest copy of The Word magazine. (It's good to have goals.) Breakfast first, Mrs Landingham?
Fleet of wheel
Just had a call from a chap2 wondering where to find his hire car. It's at "Fault" Wallington, of course. Half a mile or so from the railway station. Meanwhile, all the nasty news sounds somehow better on the 8 o'clock BBC Radio 3 bulletin for some reason. Apart from the weather forecast. Rain. They got that right.
I'm shocked, ...
... shocked to find that gambling is going on here.
In Casablanca, of course, not Barcap.
Call me a foolish optimist...
... but the rain appears to have slackened off (almost). Mind you, it's pretty damn' cool out there. It's 10:16 and Time waits for Norman (or something).
Today's philosophical question
Can one have too much of a Good Thing? Not when it's the long-awaited boxed set of the very effable...
... Larry Sanders Show, no. It will sit alongside The West Wing rather than being filed away into my CaseLogic folders. But how can it be 13 years since the series ended? Impossible!
Today's psychological question
Can reverting to the Windows "Classic" GUI really speed things up the way it seems to, or is it all in my mind?
Having listened...
... to the "phone-in" on the problems of being a first-time house buyer (average age now 37!) and then to the guvmint's comments and predictions on various inflation indices, I'm left wondering if anything actually ever changes:
Hah! the prime minister has just been reported as condemning the excessive payrises that all the newly privatised chairpeople of (generally monopolistic) industries such as water and electricity supply have been awarding themselves. (We're talking 40 to 70% here, note.) Oh well, I've never really signed up to that branch of economic theory that says you have to remove money from poor to give them more incentive to work while you have to give money to rich for precisely the same purpose. One in 12 here are now behind with their mortgage payments. (Please explain, without writing on both sides of the paper at once, how double digit interest rates squeeze inflation out of our system.)
The PM at the time was John Major as this was seven months after the "lady" who'd been so hell-bent on selling off the country's silver in the first place had finally been cast (as it were) into the ash heap of history. (A phrase supposedly coined by that well-known Thatcherite Leon Trotsky.)
I may yet get a visit this afternoon from Tall Thomas, who is currently being driven to distraction by his two toddlers, I gather. Meanwhile, having browsed a few of the pages from yesterday's Heinlein biography, I've ordered the hardback from the US. I'm not really a big fan of deferred gratification — never have been.
What better than to rest my eyelids briefly together while listening to a favourite piece of music? Sadly, much as I admire Stravinsky, his 1919 Firebird Suite was marred for me by the coughing of several members of the audience. That's just one of the reasons I prefer studio recordings. Time for tea.
Seeing the current "Woman's Hour Drama" in the BBC Radio 4 schedule (I'll be doing something else while it's on, I don't doubt) reminds me what Nancy Banks-Smith said about this title.
Somewhat later...
... I've just finished the first DVD (bringing me to the halfway point of Season #1 back in 1992 — 19 years ago; how's that even possible?). Utterly brilliant. In fact, I now think it may just have the edge over "Seinfeld". There was a line near the start of Episode #1 when Larry suggests (while desperately trying to wriggle out of doing a live commercial) that it would be unethical for him to promote a product he hasn't used. Artie (the producer) retorts: "Unethical? Please, Larry, don't start pulling that thread or our whole world will unravel."
And episode #3 with the tarantulas and Carol Burnett (who was nominated for an Emmy for, perhaps, ten minutes of screen time). Magic.