2013 — 17 September: Tuesday
There are, of course, some mornings1 when it's just not worth wrestling with poor old Morpheus any longer. Nor is it worth spending any great effort on trying to pick apart — let alone analyse — the varied components of a dream that had quite so many strands of ... stuff ... tangled into it. No. Better to toddle downstairs and make a nice cuppa while gently awaiting the return of some form of rationality.
But, in the face of news like this, let's not dwell too long on what constitutes rationality these days:
Pass me another Hob Nob, Beulah... when you're done peelin' me that grape.
I'm (clearly) no angel :-)
The foundations of...
... my Universe have just been shaken, not stirred. Or, Wassup, doc?
Nice piece. And I've never ever seen "Black Hawk Down". Or felt any pressing need to. Then I find this:
Bertrand Russell was once asked to compile a list of his twenty favorite words. He was happy to comply, although he qualified the task by observing that the next day he might come up with a substantially different assortment. Some of his choices are typically poetic ("golden," "wind," "alabaster"), others speak to his scientific temperament ("astrolabe," "terraqueous," "sublunary," "alembic"), and others — the most appealing — feel purely idiosyncratic ("begrime," "diapason," "inspissated"). As far as I know, no practical concordance surveys Russell's voluminous œuvre, so it's hard to tell how often he managed to slip a favorite into his essays or memoirs or fictions. But my guess is that whenever Russell incorporated into a paragraph one of his Golden Twenty, the particular sentence took on an extra lustre, a microscopic shine apprehensible to the author alone.
"Inspissated"? Really? Though I guess one of mine would be "cuppa". And there's a lot to be said for "globule", too. Quick pause, while I download the sublime "Sugar Rum Cherry" by Duke Ellington within a few seconds of hearing it played on "Breakfast". Probably the best 69p I shall spend today. And, indeed, it's nearly time (07:49) to hit the supplies trail.
I've cunningly...
... inveigled a chum into joining me for a late-morning diversion, and already cheekily invited myself to blag a cuppa and biccie this afternoon, too. Is this the life? Now, if only the drizzle wasn't quite so, erm, drizzly and the thermometer was just a teensy bit higher...
Amazing, what you...
... can find when you start looking. In this case, five Blu-rays and the original 1974 hardback of the Dover reprint paperback that I've been searching for, on and off, for a couple of weeks. I just cannot fathom where I've hidden the damn' thing:
The Freddie Mercury tribute concert completely passed me by at the time (April 1992) and is, so far, my oddest Blu-ray. It consists of 270 minutes of standard-def concert footage upscaled to 1080i plus excellent quality sound... I got a taste of this on Mike's Quad system just over a week ago after the birthday meal. "Some Like It Hot" is a firm long-time favourite. "Underground" is only the second title I have by Anthony Asquith (the other being the marvellous 1939 "Pygmalion"). "Inseparable" is a leap in the dark. As for the BS Johnson... I had no idea he'd made any films as I know him only for a couple of books; one being the superb "All Bull" about National Service.
I have a sentimental fondness for the music of Queen, not least because their first three or four vinyl albums were among the very first I reviewed from a technical standpoint in an early phase of my freelance journalism life very nearly 40 years ago. How can it be that long, Christa?! Meanwhile, I've just heard Carter Burwell interviewed by Tom Service. I didn't realise he'd written all the music for the films made by the Coen brothers. Stunning talent.