2013 — 8 November: Friday
My hope1 in setting out for Waitrose before even my initial cuppa was to dodge both the crowds and the rain. I suppose one out of two isn't too bad, and the car could certainly use more than a bit of a rinse. How about a spot of breakfast? Ghastly weather. Grrr.
De Gustibus...
Back in 1986, Stephen Bayley (who is one day older than me) produced a book of essays ("Sex, Drink, and fast cars") on the creation and consumption of images. I missed his later book ("Taste") that accompanied the 1991 V&A exhibition that he curated, though somehow I failed to miss "Sex: the Erotic Review"2 in 2001. I note that he's now back with "Ugly: the Aesthetics of Everything"...
Culturally, Bayley thinks that pro-ugliness will be the next thing— again (think Dada, punk, etc., then think kitsch). "Much as I admire [Apple head designer] Jony Ive," he said, "his products have run beauty's course. Once you make something so exquisitely refined as an iWhatsit, there is nowhere else to go. Look out for a new generation of ugly products. Same goes for cars. Ferrari has not made a beautiful car for years and years."
Yes, but is the iWhatsit still an overpriced crash lemon?
Until Brian...
... tipped me off a few minutes ago, I hadn't even noticed that Microsoft, for inscrutable reasons, had removed the ability to run the "Windows Experience Index" from Win8.1 Pro. "What," you may well ask, "is this?"
It's what I can see when I've followed the guidance you can inspect by clicking the pic. When I last looked (under Win8Pro, just after I'd installed the 480GB SSD as my system disk), BlackBeast's Base Score was 6.9 but I see from the above that, under Win8.1Pro, it has now crept up to 7.2 — rather odd, surely?
In a different...
... performance index, I see I have only read 12 of the 50 "essential graphic novels" identified by AbeBooks. [Pause] Blimey, it's raining yet again, and is heading rapidly towards time for lunch. I'd meant to mooch around the discount shelves in Asda, but I'm not going to bother in this lousy weather.
It wasn't until...
... the end credits started rolling that I (very belatedly) realised that Bud Cort (rather better remembered by me, at least, in "Harold and Maude" or "Brewster McCloud") appears in Kevin Smith's 1999 "Dogma". I do like that film very much. Perhaps it's time to re-watch "The Last Seduction". Meanwhile, having been alerted to Linda Fiorentino's first film (I'd mistakenly assumed that was Scorsese's 1985 "After Hours") and having further noticed who did the screenplay, it's now on order.
Discovered...
... in yesterday's "Undiscovered":
Ted [Kooser] once told of coming home from a radiation treatment, and as he neared his home, lined up on the fence was a sight he had never witnessed before: vultures, hunkered down,
wing to wing, the length of his yard. He stopped the car, got out, and addressed them.
"Not this time, fellas."