2013 — 21 November: Thursday
La Forza del Destino1 by Verdi is clearly where parts of the music to "The Godfather" came from. And there's me thinking it was all written by Nino Rota. Sleep has clearly fled for the day. Not that the sun is up yet. And the barometer has plunged downward. Time for a cuppa. There's still quite a long time to go before today's lunch date, after all.
Between the scudding...
... clouds that I can now see out there, and the Met Office forecast for Eastleigh, it's apparent that the wind is trending in exactly the "worst" direction when it comes to pushing rain into the books warehouse courtesy of that broken roof tile. Good job it isn't actually raining at the moment, therefore. My flood defences remain in place. If that's the correct term for a towel or two.
Books
I've never worked directly in the "book business" (by which I mean publishing) even if I did once sneakily do some camera copy typesetting without being a member of the appropriate print union (worse, in fact, since I was a manager at the time). The series of vignettes here sound horribly authentic, however. Source and snippet:
To make matters worse, financial success in frontlist publishing is very often random, but the media conglomerates that run most publishing houses act as if it were not. Yes, you may be able to count on a new novel by Surething Jones becoming a big best seller. But the bestseller lists paint nothing remotely like the full financial picture of any publication, because that picture's most important color is the size of the advance. But let's say you publish a fluky blockbuster one year, the corporation will see a spike in your profits and sort of autistically, or at least automatically, raise the profit goal for your division by some corporately predetermined amount for the following year. This is close to clinically insane institutional behavior.
It seems the bean counters are now completely endemic.
The joys of paranoia
Amusing — when viewed from a safe distance. Source and snippet:
On 7th February, 1946, John Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, wrote a letter to "Special Agent in Charge" at the New York field office, drawing his attention to one ALBERT CANUS, "reportedly the New York correspondent of Combat [who] has been filing inaccurate reports which are unfavorable to the public interest of this country." Hoover gave orders "to conduct a preliminary investigation to ascertain his background, activities and affiliations in this country." One of Hoover's underlings had the guts to inform the director that "the subject's true name is ALBERT CAMUS, not ALBERT CANUS" (diplomatically hypothesizing that "Canus" was probably an alias he had cunningly adopted).
Of course, it could never happen nowadays, thank goodness :-)
Intimations...
... of mortality. There's nothing quite like working your way through a "Confidential Medical History" form2 ahead of your newest dental adventure to remind you of all the ills to which flesh can apparently be heir. Such good design, heh? [Pause] Meanwhile, I've just heard from my favourite son that he's safely back from the week in Las Vegas. He said:
It was a weird place. I wouldn't go back...
Never been. Don't ever wish to.
Catching up on correspondence
A very pleasant lunch, followed by our usual semi-tech chit-chat. Next thing you know, it's pitch-dark and about time for yet more calories. Cold, and occasionally windy, out there, but (so far) no nasty rain being blown indoors, which suits me fine. An energy supplier wants me to switch to them (I blame Thatcher). Uncle ERNIE has just entreated me (for the third time) to let him pay his pitiful cheques directly into my account. (Yet another example of less than fully-joined-up systems and databases.) My request to him to arrange exactly this has crossed in the post, it seems.
And another letter for Mrs Mounce. Not my mother, this time, however. The local furniture showroom Christa always preferred to use (or, at least, to examine first) has just invited her along (yet again) to their pre-Xmas "discount" evening. I'm pretty sure I made it perfectly clear — three years ago, when they supplied my new flooring in the wake of the Great New Central Heating adventure, and wanted to charge it all to her account — that the Lady of the House had departed this particular plane of existence.
They've been a bit slow absorbing the message. But since it took me quite a while, too, I'm not proposing to get upset. Literally pointless.