2014 — 17 March: Monday
Here1 is the final title of last Monday's mammoth delivery. The one Blu-ray:
One who knows assures me it's a heart-warming zombie rom-com (and, to think, some people deride my appetite for literary FanFic).
I was working...
... through the third of my permitted trio of pre-breakfast Sudoku puzzles while listening to a delicate Chopin Nocturne when I was struck by a thought that proves, if further proof is needed, that I am no mathematician. How much bigger than zero is one? Is it actually infinitely bigger? Two, by contrast, is only twice as big as one, but still (presumably) also infinitely bigger than zero. Can a thing that is twice as big as one thing that is itself infinitely bigger than another thing really be only the same "infinitely bigger" than that same other thing?
I never was happy with Aleph-Null and its infinite companions since, clearly, that way lies madness... probably. [Pause] Tea! I need more tea. And, by the way, is the second mug infinitely more refreshing than the first? (No. Not if you ask me.)
Before I forget, this deliciously-weird artefact from 1968 also turned up on Saturday:
Can you believe how young everyone looks? It's starting to get on my few remaining nerves.
This review...
... does seem to suggest that Jonathan Glazer has managed to turn Michel Faber's scary novel (I off-loaded my copy to Len after I'd read it during a Win7 installation) into a half-way decent film. Mind you, I wasn't that taken with "Sexy Beast" and haven't seen "Birth".
In the second half, the alien goes rogue; the action switches from nightclubs and shopping centres to the mist-tangled Highlands. She has sex. She eats gateau. Most shockingly, she begins to enjoy the music of Deacon Blue.
Hongbao...
... is a term I picked up in Private Eye's "Letter from Beijing" a while back. The cash-stuffed brown envelopes of British bribery are red in China:
Josh had a two-part theory. [Shanghai Media Group] might be profitable overall, but the only reasons that they kept [International Channel Shanghai] running at what were surely losses, after it had served its original purpose of promoting the 2010 Expo, were so that (a) functionaries could keep sleeping with presenters and (b) the indifferent kids of low-end higher-ups who bombed the gaokao, the college entrance exam, could get cushy jobs as producers or cameramen. Bosses enjoyed perks like the BMW glinting outside our window. Producers got the hongbaos, red envelopes fat with cash, that the subjects of stories handed over as thank yous after a shoot had finished.
I still recall a reviewer in "Punch" asking "What's happened to Heinlein?" when Farnham's Freehold appeared. I was reminded of that by this tale of a vet's week. Source and (forgive the pun) snippet:
Years ago, a very old woman brought in her middle-aged tomcat with a broken leg. I pinned his femur and castrated him at the same time. I did not mention this to her. When I saw her later, she remarked: "You know, he smells and behaves so much better now that he's had his leg fixed!"
As (more than) half-expected...
... perishing Uncle ERNIE demands to see either the original, or a certified copy of the original, Power of Attorney document before he's prepared to change dear Mama's postal address to mine. Strikes me as overly-officious given the Royal Mail doc I also sent him about the mail re-direction, and given that the Royal Mail had themselves already insisted on seeing the same original document before setting up the about-to-expire redirection in the first place. "Oh, it all makes work for the (non)-working man to do" as Flanders and Swann almost put it.
Still, at least he gave me a pre-paid reply envelope (into which I had fun stuffing all the paperwork).
Not only did...
... this pair of interesting books whisper "Buy me" while I was browsing the shelves in Waterstone's down in Soton this morning...
... but, more vitally, I'd remembered both my store card and the silly bit of card they stamp every time I spend £10 in there so I got a £10 discount. Result!
It remains a somewhat...
... sobering experience to walk around in my back garden — that always having been very much more Christa's domain since the time I rotivated it for her well over 30 years ago. I've just put out my black "glass collection" crate, having spotted a neighbour had done so. I have taken several months to amass a pitiful collection of jam jars not even covering the whole bottom of the crate. I notice wine bottles feature large in the lives of many of my neighbours.