2014 — 30 May: Friday

Mysteriously1 it's already after 10:00 and the game's barely afoot. In fact, in this case (despite the delicious cuppa) the game hasn't even got his outdoor clothes on :-)

I've just updated...

... to the latest release of Scrivener, about which I feel much as I did about "Impression" (for the Acorn RISC PCs I was loyal to for 13 years in a previous lifetime). Except a bit more mildly, as I simply have no further real need for such versatile and heavyweight writing and publishing tools in this deliciously lazy twilight phase of my post-industrial 'career'.

Experiments continue, however, as I still have a few ideas kicking around. Lack of time2 is (was, and always will be) the biggest problem. "Intractable" is a descriptor that's beginning to spring to mind for that one.

An entertaining tale...

... entertainingly told. I do so like a good, literary spat — particularly one where the Catholics get involved. And all participants are safely dead. It followed the publication of Waugh's "Black Mischief"...

Black Mischief

Source and snippet:

Through all this Waugh remained uncharacteristically cautious. In September 1934 — yes, 1934 — Waugh approached the same Daily Express newspaperman who had obtained the scoop (le mot juste in this context) on Waugh's conversion. This was Tom Driberg: gossip columnist, parliamentarian, Anglican, homosexual, possible Soviet agent, and consequently the Englishman most likely to win Cardinal Bourne over.

RJ Stove in American Spectator


This cringe-inducing...

... concluding paragraph from a review of a book on "The paradox of Modern Parenthood" induced a strong disinclination to go anywhere near the book itself:

Senior's paeans to parental self-abnegation and her sour grapes attitude to the lower, animal pleasures of excitement and fun provide a disappointing conclusion to a book that elsewhere seemed keen to challenge the dotty child-centricity of modern family life. "The most productive, generative adults," she writes, "see their children as their superegos ... Their kids hover over them and guide all of their moral choices ... They are exquisitely aware of themselves as role models ... They know they are being watched." It's hard to conceive of a creepier vision of parenthood. Children have many selling points, but their capacity to act as their parents' moral panopticons isn't one of them.

Zoe Heller in LRB


Gotta love those all-seeing panopticons. Bit like Catholic cardinals, I guess. [Pause] The approach of lunch suggests it may be time for those outdoor clothes after all.

We live...

... on a pretty weird planet, apparently. It's humans that are weird, of course. Not the planet:

Islamic justice?

Or, perhaps, my understanding of the meaning of the word "honour" is faulty?

Post-lunch pondering...

... picked up from my porch after my return (at a speed calculated to blow the very large bumblebee off the roof of the Yaris before I arrived). I have an essay collection "Skin" by Dorothy Allison, notable for its inclusion of one about the politics of the strap-on dildo (not entirely sure why that's a political issue, but stay with me here). I was aware of her somewhat-autobiographical novel "Bastard out of Carolina", but never expected to end up getting the film Anjelica Huston directed of it from Korea:

DVD plus book

By an odd coincidence, I was watching Jennifer Jason Leigh just yesterday evening in a couple of episodes of "Weeds". The Underhill book, by the way, contains plentiful evidence of the weirdness of humans and their laws, but is much funnier than the news from Pakistan (generally).

Like I said: weird planet:

Official stats?

Gotta love that word: "estimates". Meanwhile, there are plans for a "Hunger Games" theme park across the pond. Thanks, NPR.

  

Footnotes

1  And yet, explicably.
2  I chose Jim Croce's beautiful song "Time in a Bottle" as a suitable piece for "reflection and contemplation" during Christa's funeral for the line: But there never seems to be enough time, To do the things you want to do. That remained true for our 33 years together and has annoyingly proved equally applicable in the years that have whizzed by since her death.