2014 — 24 January: Friday

For only the second time (so far) I've made a second donation to the author of a piece of very useful (and much used) software — WinSCP. "Ev'ry little ($9) helps"!

Having just inspected...

... the pitiful furry remnants lingering in darker corners of my fridge I'm now calculating whether I can safely / lazily dodge the Friday morning1 shoppers without undue risk to my preferred policy of eating fresh food. I shall be out for lunch in any case, today, so that's one less meal to ponder. I've slowly learned that domestic administrivia is largely unavoidable, but I still prefer to minimise it.

Christa would smile :-)

I am slowly...

... collecting evidence that seems to support a theory I have — that there may well be a linear inverse correlation between the size of a car (or van, of course) and the information-processing capabilities (or, perhaps, capability?) of its driver. Until I get permission to rip a few heads off and slice into a few skulls, however, this investigation will have to remain purely in the theoretical realm.

Say it ain't so!

Get past the obstacle that is the opening paragraph (not that it's badly-written) and there's much of interest tucked into this piece. Source and snippet:

Many of the people who have made the biggest contributions to our collective history — intellectuals,2 researchers, composers, writers, artists, and so on — have lived lives that, from the outside, seem fairly pathological. They have often been deeply solitary, have had trouble forming enduring relationships, have been consumed by their projects to the point of obsession, have plunged into the depths of despair, have doubted and disparaged themselves, and have had to endure the coldness and sharpness of the world's judgment. Yet who is to say that these lives are somehow less poignant than those that seem more wholesome?

Mari Ruti in Chronicle Review


Crikey! There's me thinking that that was simply the human condition. Happy now?

No flies on me

Here's an interesting essay — it's the introduction he's written to a new translation of Kafka's Metamorphosis — by David Cronenberg. I've read George Langelaan's 1957 short story "The Fly" but have no desire at all to see any film version. Ever. It would quite put me off my lunch.

TTFN

I have a sneaking...

... suspicion that the steady, dreary, rain that's been falling now since the late afternoon is going to make tomorrow's tentatively-planned walk horribly soggy, more or less wherever we end up. 'Twas ever thus at this nasty time of year. Still, lunch — at the Plough, in Sparsholt (thanks, Len!) — was very tasty.

  

Footnotes

1  Not my favourite day or time to be out and about, particularly in moist winter weather.
2  What, exactly, is it that an "intellectual" does? I've often wondered.