2014 — 24 March: Monday
Another gloriously-sunny morning despite the current warbler who's just finished warbling her way through Bach's "Coffee Cantata" on BBC Radio 3. We have made tentative plans for a walk today as the "weather window" currently looks better than during the rest of this week. Not that we trust forecasts, particularly. Another nice, hot cuppa too. (Tea, not coffee.) So, again, it's looking good so far.
Though I remember, now, why1 I stalled on "House" Season #7 episode #1 last time I dipped into it :-)
Worth reading...
... for this paragraph, in my opinion, (and other paragraphs in others' opinions). Source and snippet:
As for the Brits, Evelyn Waugh was the kind of novelist to hire someone to cut his grass, and Kingsley Amis the kind who made his son do it. (Amis fils, if you recall, is one of those novelists who pees standing up, a direct result of his mowing-filled childhood.) V.S. Naipul [sic] used pesticides, while Muriel Spark could weed a lawn with one withering look.
Of course, if you use Scotch to water your lawn, it comes up half-cut. Kingsley should have known that, surely?
It seems I can...
... either give up eating unhealthy food, or (more simply) give up reading the confused and ever-changing reports of what foods are deemed healthy from time to time by our much-lobbied guvmint:
As protein and fat bask in the glow of their recovering nutritional reputation, carbohydrates — the soft, distended belly of government eating advice — are looking decidedly
peaky. Carbs are the largest bulk ingredient featured on the NHS's visual depiction of its recommended diet, the
Eat Well Plate. Zoë Harcombe, an independent nutrition expert, has pithily
renamed it the Eat Badly Plate — and you can see why. After all, we feed starchy crops to animals to fatten them, so why won't they have the same effect on us?
The crucial phrase "avoid processed food" appears nowhere in government nutritional guidelines, yet this is the most concise way to sum up in practical terms what is wholesome and healthy
to eat.
Time to slice into a mass-produced bread roll before smearing it thinly with mass-produced, but not yet rancid, animal fat, slapping in a slice of solid mass-produced Devonshire dairy stuff, topping it with delicious mass-extruded dark brown yeast waste from the brewing industry, and remembering to dig out a couple of fresh plums and a "power" bar. That's what I call a packed snack lunch, ideal for a jacket pocket. Then I shall have me another few miles of that fresh air and gentle contour-clambering exercise stuff.
Or has that now been ruled unhealthy, too?
Meanwhile...
... aspects of the world depicted in his 1954 short story "Beep" by James Blish seem to be getting nearer. Spooky. (Link.)
Patiently waiting...
... on my front doorstep for me to return was what you could call the "Hollywood-lite" comedy variation on a somewhat similar theme to that in Ken Kesey's powerful novel "One flew over the cuckoo's nest" (so memorably filmed by Milos Forman in 1975 with, oddly, Christopher Lloyd in his film début). Namely, "The Dream Team"...
... that was first assembled quarter of a century ago. Come on! When was Lorraine Bracco ever less than totally watchable?
I'm an idiot
Because I'd left the price and/or the date of acquisition of the NTSC LaserDisk against this film title in my (you should pardon the term) database, I'd naively assumed today's DVD delivery would be replacing the DVD-R that I equally naively assumed I'd cut from said LaserDisk nearly a decade ago. Not so. Turns out I'd already replaced that by a DVD identical2 to today's delivery.
I need a system sufficiently proof against the fool that uses it around here. Still, perhaps I can pass the spare along to Junior as a late birthday present?
Listening...
... to Neil Innes chatting amiably on BBC 6Music has just sent me in successful search of the two "Rutles" albums, and told me that a third one should be released in May. Cool!