2012 — 26 October: Friday
Well, the Walker Brothers1 have chickened out of walking this morning on the not entirely unreasonable grounds that it's currently a bit doubleplusungood (neither dry nor warm) out there. That means it's now over a week since the last smidgen of fresh air'n'exercise. Not really good enough. Though it will give me time to listen properly to the three sets of MP3s I bought yesterday:
I was thoroughly dischuffed — not for the first time — by the lengths now needed to find playlist and track listings from the BBC as I was winkling out details of the Bach keyboard sonata that had caught my fancy (No. 7 in G minor) on this occasion. The Unthanks were live in session on 6Music later that afternoon, and their website has details of their new projects.
Time (10:32) for some breakfast.
Re-reading in "Mostly Men"...
... the interview (by Lynn Barber) of Sir James Savile originally published in the Independent on Sunday in July 1990 is a whole new experience two decades later. There has been a persistent rumour about him for years, and journalists have often told me as a fact: 'Jimmy Savile? Of course, you know he's into little girls.' But then, as Ms Barber says, "My best subjects are the last people on earth that you would want to have to your dinner party."
It's now apparent — having heard an entire 007-themed Kermode and Mayo film review programme — that I'd managed to overlook the release of yet another James Bond film. The previous one was so poor, it seems, that they now refer to it as "Question of Sport". Who knew?
I was amused...
... to find Abraham Maslow banging up against Asimov's Laws of Robotics. Source and snippet:
The first vision is that of the techno-optimist or -utopian: Granted the proper rope, humanity clambers right up Maslow's pyramid of needs, takes a seat in the lotus position, and finally goes about
its true business of self-actualizing and achieving inner peace. Thanks to the labor and intelligence of our robots, all our material wants are met and we are able to lead lives of religious fulfillment,
practice our hobbies, pursue our intellectual and creative interests...
In the opposing vision, mankind decides that the bottom of Maslow's pyramid is a nice place for a nap. This is the future depicted in the 2008 film WALL-E, and more darkly in many earlier stories — a
future in which humanity becomes a race of Homer Simpsons, a leisure society of consumption and entertainment turned to endomorphic excess. The culminating achievement of human ingenuity, robotic beings
that are smarter, stronger, and better than ourselves, transforms us into beings dumber, weaker, and worse than ourselves.
Be still, oh spinning head. Time for my evening meal, methinks.
[Pause] Very much enjoyed "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen". And now there's some chattering about Raymond Queneau in "The Verb". It's many years since I read either Zazie dans le Metro, or his Exercises in Style.