2013 — 19 January: Saturday
The road to last night's intended destination1 had broken paving, obviously, and took a seriously interesting detour. It began simply enough as I skimmed rather quickly through recordings of two recent Graham Norton shows kindly cut for me by one of my local video consultants. But finding the fare largely lacking in nutritional value I then settled down for a diet of glorious music from the newest toy while tackling the opening chapters of this fascinating recent arrival...
... to which I had been led (a week ago) by a review in the blog here. Who said war is bad for business? Far from it. Very far. And while my preference for the 'cock up' rather than the 'conspiracy' theory of human history remains fairly well-entrenched, I have to admit our wonderful ruling classes really don't have our best interests at heart when it comes to protecting their interests...
Protestors rallied outside the Savoy with banners that read "Ration the Rich" and "Our children must not starve". On the night of 14 September 1940 a group of Stepney workers and their families pushed their way into the Savoy's bomb shelter as the air-raid warning rang out — so that they could shelter beside the Duke and Duchess of Kent, and demanded their fair share of the tea and toast served up on silver trays. The following night the police were waiting to make sure that the action did not happen again.
... or their toast! I'm forever amazed at the wisdom buried in a simple cartoon I've kept in mind ever since spotting it in National Lampoon more years ago than I can now sanely contemplate. It shows a hippie up before a clearly-disapproving judge, who is delivering advice: "You better show me some respect, boy. I had to lick a lot of ass to get where I am." Quite so.
Meanwhile, the ghastly snow now seems to be unnicely frozen in place. I feel little compulsion to venture out. I shall settle for breakfast instead. [Pause] An email from the care-home assures me that dear Mama has no injuries from her fall last night. I hope she wasn't out ice-skating. [Pause] It feels almost mild outside... a mere -1C on my front porch when I sniffed the air a few moments ago. Lots of what looks like frozen slush on the road, though, and still plenty of wheel-spinning. Not for me. Not yet.
I very much hope...
... the anonymous author of the back sleeve note2 on "World Routes" is wrong. If not, most of my fellow subjects are missing out on some glorious 'world' music. As for Ryland P Cooder; I'm a long-time fan. "The Long Riders" is a Walter Hill film soundtrack from 1980 — a very busy time in my life — so I simply missed it. But 35 minutes of beautiful sound is now blasting out of the CD player filling in that 33-year-old gap.
"The Ledge"? — it has an odd, but interesting, premise. And Liv Tyler. 'Nuff said.
The interesting...
... list of stuff that doctors won't do was on the Grauniad's web front page last time I looked. Mere hours ago.
I think we...
... can probably all agree that Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" — which may, or may not, have begun life as "In the Garden of Eden" — is fairly weird. By more or less any standards. However, the enjoyable version of the same 'song' I've just ripped to MP3 from Yat-Kha's 2005 "ReCovers" CD3 is undeniably a lot weirder. I realise that throat-singing is probably not to everyone's taste (though, towards the end of his life, Richard Feynman developed a liking for hearing it and actually travelled to the far East of Russia in pursuit of its main exponents). It works for me. What can I say? Bite me!
I've just been looking on YouTube for the TV programme that I remember featured Feynman's trip... Imagine, if you will, the thoughts and feelings of a UK tax and BBC licence fee payer confronted by this arrant and arrogant nonsense:
Mutter, mutter.