2012 — 15 November: Thursday

I chose both of last night's films¹ and we enjoyed both — for once. (We don't always, and nor do we always agree on what makes a given film lousy or laudable — to re-use a choice line from Disney's wonderful "Jungle Book" That's what friends are for.)

Choice #1 "The Proposal", despite running on pretty much the same tram lines as "Green card" or having the smooth predictability of last week's "New in Town", had both snappy dialogue and some well-executed physical comedy. Avoid the alternate ending, however. They wisely discarded it themselves, and could well have done so with the rest of the "extras" on the Blu-ray, too.
Choice #2 "Lars and the real girl", a title I'd already bought but not yet found the necessary 'round tuit' for, was a bit of a jaw-dropper. It reminded me somewhat of "Mumford". Not a comedy, though not lacking in humour. Well worth catching.

Having enjoyed "Salmon Fishing", too (the film preceded the book in my case) I shall offer it to Eileen at this afternoon's miniature tea and book festival gathering. As it's already 10:13 I suppose I'd better ingest some breakfast next. What adventures await today, I wonder?

Just call me...

... "Jack Sprat" if you will, but I've never before had to trim so much horrible fat off a pack of diced meat before adding it to one of my culinary crockpot masterpieces:

The process of transferring the digital picture from the Canon's memory card threw up a Win8 driver problem with the unpowered hub I'd been in the habit of using latterly (for this one task) so I had to exhume and connect up the tiny powered hub I'd bought as a "stylistic" match for that unlamented giant white whale, the iMac.

Every cloud has a silver lining, or some such.

Trial by twits on twitter

I've been listening to the quite stunning BBC Radio 4 interview with an obviously frail Lord McAlpine. Unsurprisingly, no-one in the increasingly-fragmented BBC management cloud was available to comment on their own interview. If this weren't such an inept tragedy it would be a blackly satiric comedy, I suppose. His lawyer has a "very long list" of people in the line of fire who will apparently be receiving an unwelcome letter regarding pre-tweets, post-tweets, re-tweets, and the effect of all this. George Monbiot's apology (for example) has just been acknowledged on air.

And people wonder why I won't touch social networks with a barge-pole.

Yikes

This piece makes a whole lot of sense. Source and (not entirely representative) snippet:

It is no coincidence that as the Supreme Court has been removing the last constraints on the legalized corruption of politicians, the American standard of living has been falling at the fastest rate in decades. According to the Federal Reserve Board's report of June 2012, the median net worth of families plummeted almost 40 percent between 2007 and 2010. This is not only a decline when measured against our own past economic performance; it also represents a decline relative to other countries, a far cry from the post-World War II era, when the United States had by any measure the highest living standard in the world...
A study by the Bertelsmann Foundation concluded that in measures of economic equality, social mobility, and poverty prevention, the United States ranks 27th out of the 31 advanced industrial nations belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Thank God we are still ahead of Turkey, Chile, and Mexico!

Mike Lofgren in American Conservative

I fear I regard politicians as corrupt² from Day 1 of their tenure.

It wasn't until...

... I heard Ted Chiang's excellent SF story "Understand" (when it showed up on what was then known as BBC7 in November 2009) that I encountered the oddball but rather compelling music of "Godspeed you! Black Emperor". Not that I knew that was who it was at the time. I eventually (eleven months later) managed to put two and two together when I heard and recognised the same music played on (of course) BBC 6Music. I was thus able to track down and buy the CD "Yanqui U.X.O."

Today I happened to spot their latest album "Allelujah! Don't bend! Ascend!" as a remarkably cheap MP3 download and clicked on "Buy now" in a moment of weakness. I still have no idea what the title is all about.

And my second guilty MP3 pleasure of the day? I've just bought, and am now (23:06) listening to, the final "Twiglit" soundtrack album.

Footnotes

¹ Working, naturally, from Mike's "To See" list, which he keeps under much better control than I do mine.
² Or, as that wise but untrustworthy itinerant Chinese teller of tall tales Kai Lung once put it: To regard all men as corrupt is wise, but to attempt to discriminate among the various degrees of iniquity is both foolish and discourteous. Quite so.