2014 — 30 April: Wednesday
While I accustom myself1 to the dreadful shock of the rounded tabs of the latest, greatest Firefox (which now exactly matches the visual style of Thunderbird to my elderly early-morning eyes) at least I can smile at Jenni Diski's perfect characterisation of my / her generation:
When we're dead I suspect it will be as if we had never been. The feminists, the radical left, the communards: all will dissolve into a trivial pop culture history called the Sixties, much slighter and less consequential than it thought itself to be. So bear with us. Those few of our parents, aunts and uncles who remain still disapprove of us. The young now disapprove of us too. Even some of our own demographic disapprove of us. So nothing, really, has changed for the self-loving unloved baby boomers.
Aah, I dimly recall the Sixties :-)
I take comfort from the thought that, in another seven weeks, the nights start drawing in. "Throw another hippy on the fire, Elmer." Now, where did I put my bus pass?
Here's exactly what...
... the world needs lots more of. Rifle-toting toddlers (with Peace symbols and wall-hung crucifixes) from across the Pond who are freaked out by seeing dinosaurs:
"Armed to the milk teeth", indeed. Saints preserve us.
A wage-slave...
... of my acquaintance, knowing my sense (?) of humour, has just (before breakfast, even) pointed me to a superb essay on programming, and why it sucks. Thanks, Tom!
Breakfast? Digesting.
Lunch? Packed.
Boots? Located.
It's clearly time I wasn't here. Did I mention the sun's now shining?
Now that I've...
... returned from our delightful ramble around Alresford (muddy, but not impassable), heard enough of Steven Wilson's music to wish to get me some of it for myself, set the laundry to doing its thing, made sure the next cuppa is close at hand, I can finally sit and enjoy the "Scheherazade" while reading my Kindle download of Peter Welch's book "And then I thought I was a fish". If you have to ask "Who's he?" I would draw your attention to the essay mentioned above.
The snippet from his introduction amused me:
Her initial reaction was just ignorance: plenty of people take a break in the nuthouse for minor breakdowns or other temporary and unshocking reasons. The appropriate response to "I was
in a mental institution," is "Why?" Unfortunately for me, the answer to that question is "I had a full blown psychotic episode because I took too many drugs, thought I was Jesus, and
stole some cars."
A decade later, I live in Brooklyn, I'm surrounded by jaded New Yorkers, and I work in IT (a) so I have fewer professional and social worries about elaborating on this
particular section of my life.
(a) Where an active cocaine habit isn't necessarily a deal breaker.
The joke made...
... about Sydney Pollack's excellent 1975 film "Three Days of the Condor" was that he didn't get given enough money to make the full six day's worth of James Grady's source novel. Today's Blu-ray delivery boasts a DTS-HD 5.1 audio (which is also a neat trick for a film with mono sound). The Decca Vivaldi, by contrast, dates from 2004, is in glorious 24-bit 96KHz stereo, and even features a theorbo. The Disney? Full-on DTS-HD MA 7.1 (completely wasted on my pitiful two loudspeakers, of course).
Holding up...
... the jazz end of the less esoteric audio spectrum is this trio. The Bill Evans is playing as I type — mighty fine it is, too.
