2012 — 9 August: Thursday
I'm predicting a trip into Soton later today1 for a couple of chores.
Having just been browsing my new copy of "Private Eye", it belatedly occurs to me that actually my parents brought me and my brother up pretty well. The fortnightly parade of greedy thieves, crooks, liars, marital cheats (and that's just the politicians, not even the police, the journalists, the estate agents, the bankers, the financial 'advisors', the financial 'regulators', the local guvmint officials, the charity bosses, the accountants, the solicitors, the judges, the captains of industry, the consultants, or the priests) can frankly get more than a little depressing.
Definitely time for breakfast and another cuppa.
The Music Industry...
... recast in parody form as characters from the Mister Men series of books? Just as well I wouldn't dream of commenting on the accuracy or appropriateness, isn't it? (Link.)
Just what I need!
Having ordered my copy of "Floating Worlds", what better accompaniment?
And here's the lovely item on Edward Gorey that led me (indirectly) to the mat (no mice were injured in testing it, by the way). Source and snippet:
I could scream now, because nobody knew they were there, and I anguished but finally took three of them... You can't believe how much stuff there was... you know, old bookjackets from the '20s, the 'teens. Nobody paid any attention to it.
I had no idea that George Herriman had illustrated Don Marquis. You live and learn.
What can one say?
Some while ago, I was struck by the inanity of Clause 64 of Part 6 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill. Fast forward to this story of a failure to prosecute successfully under precisely this flawed bill. Though what relevance Boris Johnson has is bizarre. Do people only exist by way of reference to tenuous links to other people these days?
Having just caught Mrs Parcelforce, I'm good to go. [Pause] My, it's quite warm down in town.
Before I left, Mrs Parcelforce had just dropped off another four CaseLogic folders (which, accommodating 1,120 CDs, should be enough to keep a reasonable selection of them downstairs). And, just a couple of minutes later, Mr Postie dropped off that 1984 film long missing from my Jamie Lee Curtis collection:
I spotted in town (but refused to pay the High Street price being asked for) a graphic version of "Gulliver's Travels" updated and illustrated by Martin Rowson. I also had a savings account passbook updated — my little new car "fund"2 crawls upwards slowly but surely. Aside to Christa: I've managed to double it since I inherited it from you (not that I wanted to inherit it, my love).
Now that lunch is a repast of the re(cent) past I shall nip out again to buy some tasty comestibles for my visitors tomorrow afternoon.
Pah!
After installing another two pieces of "stick it down" rug-fixing pads under the sacrificial rug in my hallway, and grabbing an assortment of fresh fruit goodies, little balls of meringue, and some wickedly thick fresh cream to offset the healthiness of the fruit... While pausing to catch my breath after some vigorous use of my main Dyson, I was idly trying to respond to an online survey from a credit card company that's just noticed I "haven't logged in for a while". (At least 18 months, by my reckoning.) They'd "like to understand why that is and what we can do to make our services more useful."
Well, they could stop assuming I have any great interest in managing my credit card from my mobile phone, for a start. Then there's the issue of their clumsy online interface. Its security, use of Javascript and cookies. Their arrogant assumption that I actually am happy to adapt my practices to their design rather than have them adapt to me. I would tell them all this, of course, but the survey they've obviously contracted out to some hapless bunch of semi-literate kids already wants more freedom within my browser than I'm prepared to extend to it. And the only other way to contact them is to login to their abysmal system and then create and send a message. Hang on, isn't this where I came in?
It occurs to me that I was systematically gathering and analysing computer system user requirements a lot more professionally than this over 20 years ago, dagnabbit. Isn't it enough that I pay up in full, each month, on time, electronically? What do they want? Blood?
Double Pah!
Had I known at 13:00 what I didn't actually discover until after 18:30 I wouldn't now be about to grab a later-than-usual evening meal having first made an 'emergency' return dash back down to Staples in Shed City to buy another pack of the mini-address labels I use inside those CaseLogic folders. Of course, I'd just run out of the supply I bought about four years ago. Typical. Mind you, the traffic flow was much smoother at this point than it had been earlier.