2013 — 15 April: Monday
"Sunny, warm, and dry" says the BBC weather chappie. We shall see, though it will make a very pleasant change. I'm wearing shorts in gleeful anticipation this morning. The initial cuppa is at hand.1 And I'm still thinking about last night's film... I've got a Blu-ray of it on order from Sainsbury's (a first for me) as they undercut the Amazonian tariff. Their website, however, raised an XSS glitch with the Barclays site that was processing my payment on behalf of my Building Society credit card until I added it to the NoScript whitelist.
It's amazing how many entries have found their way on to that whitelist. And equally amazing that this web commerce lark works at all, given the struggles we had with "interoperability" back in the day. Kids today have no idea... :-)
Meanwhile, Tall Thomas tells me that Ry Cooder first appeared on Captain Beefheart's "Safe as Milk" and Lowell George played with Frank Zappa in the Mothers of Invention before starting Little Feat. And Amazon tells me that my next batch of four CaseLogic CD Wallets2 is now inbound. As is Jeff Beck's "Truth" CD and a DVD of the film "Joe's Apartment" that Lois McMaster Bujold claimed provided her with the inspiration for her glorious "Butter Bugs". (If you have to ask you probably don't want to know.)
Apple is still trying to persuade me to return to the "thinner, faster" iMac fold. Never going to happen. The one that was mine is sitting upstairs under a dust cover until the lad once again relocates it in the new house when the building repairs dust has settled.
Breakfast would be welcome at this point, this point being already 10:21.
We can't have that!
I thought it was about time for the next report on "frequently-challenged" books:
- "Captain Underpants" (series), by Dav Pilkey (offensive language, unsuited for age group)
- "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian," by Sherman Alexie (offensive language, racism, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group)
- "Thirteen Reasons Why," by Jay Asher (drugs/alcohol/smoking, sexually explicit, suicide, unsuited for age group)
- "Fifty Shades of Grey," by E. L. James (offensive language, sexually explicit)
- "And Tango Makes Three," by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell (homosexuality, unsuited for age group)
- "The Kite Runner," by Khaled Hosseini (homosexuality, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit)
- "Looking for Alaska," by John Green (offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group)
- Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz (unsuited for age group, violence)
- "The Glass Castle," by Jeannette Walls (offensive language, sexually explicit)
- "Beloved," by Toni Morrison (sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, violence)
Compare and contrast with the 2011 list I reproduced just two days ago...
The beginning of wisdom?
Just back from a faintly drizzly trip to Asda where I learned that I really don't need replacement Blu-ray copies of "In Bruges" and "American Beauty" for £5 each, nor (for that matter) a copy of "Your Highness" even with Natalie Portman in it. Better make some lunch, I guess. I also note that 'molehole' is currently AWOL somewhere.
[Pause]
I can't pretend that listening to the 6 o'clock news paints an appealing picture of our jolly planet, but so be it. Intelligent ETs will probably simply turn us into a factory farm. We may even constitute the protein, of course. For a while.
Before Brian...
... set off for his tour of the soggier parts of our kingdom he kindly lent me a BFI 2-DVD restored version of "Citizen Kane" — one of his most recent serendipitous car boot sale £1 specials. Having just watched Barry Norman's presentation on it of a new documentary3 and examined evidence of the restoration work I've now opted for the Blu-ray edition of the same material, combining it with "A room with a view" and "The Lost Prince" in a 3 Blu-rays for £17 Amazonian special.