2011 — 10 September: Saturday
Supping my morning cuppa1 I decided on a burst of Leo Kottke. Haven't heard that in many a year. Actually, I was carefully browsing through the specs of that Brennan JB7 yet again yesterday, to see whether I'd overlooked any possible loophole that would allow me to justify buying it. Alas, given the hundreds of millions of spare instructions per second that I currently have malingering unused in my living room I once again decided "No".
Well that, and the extortionate price. Though it would be quite nice to use one to hold a subset of CDs in uncompressed format (though I couldn't see how in that case the track data would be properly tagged). Come to think of it, that may be a 'USP'? No! Go for a walk in the drizzle, instead. Much better value.
Resiliance (sic)?
Clouds with holes in them? Tsk, tsk.
Better to rely on the kindness of strangers than keep all your bits in one nebulous bucket.
The horror
I wanted to listen to the Missa Luba next, but the only recording I have (the original 1958 one, by Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin) is on a tape cassette I made in October 1984. Good job the hi-fi isn't out of reach. But first, it's time to set out for our drizzly walk. We must be mad but, as Mike says, there are cobwebs to be blown away.
[Pause]
The rain held off until just as I was putting the car back into the garage. It was warm and very humid, but there is now no sign of any cobwebs. Of course, now that I've showered, made myself a cuppa, and am listening to my tape I realise that (being a true Philistine) the only bit I actually want to hear is the 'Sanctus' — used by Lindsay Anderson so memorably in that surreal tale of teen angst "If..." over 40 years ago.
I saw that film in the fleapit in Sedgely while staying for a couple of weeks annual "hols" with my now departed-for-three-years mad Aunt Peg, dear Mama's elder sister.
Golly
I spent the first 59 years of my life in blissful ignorance of the Stendhal Syndrome, only discovering it during an episode of The 'L' Word when I was ploughing my way through the entire glossy saga as a delectable treat a few months ago. Now I find it casually cropping up in this chronicle of recent events on Planet Blair (or "Bizarro" world, for those of you with my U.S. comics background). Snippet and source:
Why did he absent himself from the Hello! photo shoot that featured Grace and her sister, their parents and his fellow godparents Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, all clad in the same white garments — unseen on a public figure since the Maharishi entertained the Beatles — which Mr Tony wore himself? A sense of shame being absent from the Blairite emotional arsenal, it cannot have been that. Did the vista of the girls being baptised in the same waters as Jesus overwhelm him, and cause him a Stendhal Syndrome2-style faint?
By the waters of Babylon, I read it and wept! :-)
"All politics is yokel" is a new one for me. (Link.)
A first time for everything
"Dear Customer" said this afternoon's snail mail from Mr Combined gas and electric man, "We need to decrease your Direct Debit to £22." Who am I to disagree? But I've just called him to give my latest pair of meter readings five weeks after the last lot and suggested dropping my monthly payments from £144 could be a mistake. I mean, I know my new gas central heating system is far more efficient than the original one, but that's just a ridiculous factor. He agreed. We've compromised on £58 per month for a couple of months to "see how things go". What a bright spark he was.
I think that merits a celebratory cuppa. It's 16:20 and heavy grey clouds are awfully abundant at the moment.
But not a first time...
... for a trip back to Cicely, Alaska. Seeing Barry Corbin in "Curdled" a couple of nights ago has prompted me to dig out my set of "Northern Exposure" DVDs. Magic!