2013 — 11 August: Sunday
Crikey. Overnight rain.1 "I shall alert the media."
Meanwhile, two of my chums have now admitted to failing yesterday's UK Citizenship Practice Test. The others are probably wiser than I was to ignore this fatuous piece of guvmint-inspired idiocy. Come to think of it, that's an oxymoron. I must be still half-asleep. Need tea...
Sadly...
... ours is not the only guvmint of idiots, fools, and knaves. Consider just this closing panel from today's "The Strip" by Brian McFadden:
"Rights"? When did we ever really have any of those, except by seizing them?
One of my favourite...
... actresses rises still higher in my estimation when summing up her "worst film" towards the end of a not entirely cringe-free interview...
... despite the fact that I've enjoyed her performance in it twice so far, and even treated myself to it on Blu-ray. But it's a fact of life in this universe that not every story by Philip K Dick makes it as far as turning into a good film.
Cheques and balances
I mentioned, yesterday, the 40% rise in the cost of motion lotion since I first gained my unwanted new 'status' as an elderly motoring widower. That's not been helped by the decline in wages and pensions since the global financial meltdown (for which I shall be paying for the rest of my non-existent grandchild's life, of course). Although I grudgingly concede that the pittance IBM saw fit to pay me as a salary exceeded average UK wages, the fraction of that pittance they now deign to waft in my direction as one of their UK pensioners would only keep dear Mama in her care-home for one week in four.
I shall continue to organise my financial life along strictly Micawberesque principles :-)
And continue to take free walks in the Hampshire countryside...
Oops
Bob Geldof has just told the BBC 6Music world that he's sitting in for "Joe" Cocker. Dare anyone tell him he should have said "Jarvis" Cocker?
I still...
... find it strange to think that Christa has gone. And this, after five years and nine months to the day. Weird. Speaking of which ("weird", that is) here's an NSA surveillance story that should quirk anyone's lips:
The NSA is a "supercomputing powerhouse" with machines so powerful their speed is measured in thousands of trillions of operations per second. The agency turns its giant machine brains to
the task of sifting through unimaginably large troves of data its surveillance programs capture. But ask the NSA, as part of a freedom of information request, to do a seemingly simple
search of its own employees' email? The agency says it doesn't have the technology.
"There's no central method to search an email at this time with the way our records are set up, unfortunately," NSA Freedom of Information Act officer Cindy Blacker told me last week.
The system is "a little antiquated and archaic," she added.
Well, they would say that, wouldn't they? :-)
Beethoven's Ninth leaves very little to be desired, though it can be a bitter-sweet listening experience these days... [Pause] I hate to say it but, having just been on my usual evening round of windows, blinds and curtains, it's horribly autumnal out there right now. Meanwhile, a third chum now tells me he, too, has failed that idiotic UK citizenship test. I'm in good company so far.