2012 — 28 March: Wednesday
A promising start1 for today's walk. We're off on a daffodil hunt. But not before breakfast. And at least one more cuppa.
Spy v Spy was...
... always one of my favourite "bits" in Mad magazine. (Yes. I was a fan. Deal with it.) But the story about what seems to have been an attempt to 'bug' an entire country's telephone service takes some beating. I find much more credible the idea that court powers to conceal evidence of past guvmint embarrassments are being sought in the Justice and Security green paper, cloaked (as effectively as a Romulan spacecraft) in the guise of the eternal war against terror. (Link.)
Ken Clarke's Foreword worryingly talks about common-sense proposals. (I wish he'd stick to hosting jazz programmes on BBC Radio 3 — he's very good at that.) Odd how I used to think the guvmint was basically a trustworthy and benign entity. Recall HL Mencken on practical politics and hobgoblins.
Right! Now where did I put that daffodil net?
Today's venison pie...
... went a long way2 to compensate for the (almost) total lack of yellow flowers. Yet some bluebells are already out and about, as it were. Glorious weather — I even discarded my winter woolly. Nice pint, too. But now (15:52) it's time for another cuppa.
Sticky? Moi?
No, no. I'm just one of the Darling Buds of, erm, March. Just perfick.
Unguilty pleasures
I've been dipping into some of the "fan fiction" textual material that lives on this Interweb malarkey. Indeed, I've been vaguely considering whether or not to contribute a few pieces of my own. Here's a not very typical (but beautifully written) excerpt:
There are categories for posting — by topic of Fight, by location, by number of dumbfounded bystanders, and my personal favorite, by whether someone asks them how long
they've been together. We call that one "Just Partners." The locations are pretty obvious: the lab, the Hoover Building, the parking lots of each, her office or his, the crime
scene, the diner. Occasionally, there are surprises; once, someone reported seeing them bickering about Moroccan beer and ear wax at a liquor store. It's the same thing with
topics: her wanting a gun, her wanting to drive, him being embarrassed when she talks about sex or religion, her anthropological explanations for everything, his insistence
she try some pie, pop culture references, sports.
There's a fair amount of banter on the board (fitting, I suppose) about what qualifies under each category, and whether any given Fight should be filed under multiple categories.
I'm a multiple category poster myself — these are complex people, after all. There's also a question of whether it's a new Fight if it carries from one location to the next.
I personally think it's the same Fight, but if I was to get all meta about it, I suppose you could say their relationship is one big Fight, interspersed with crime-fighting, novel
writing, the rare quiet weekend, and getting captured by serial killers.
It helps if you're more than somewhat familiar with the TV show "Bones", of course. I now am.