2014 — 3 June: Tuesday
A dull, grey start1 (though not actually raining — we've already postponed tomorrow's planned walk by one day in hopes of it being drier underfoot on Thursday) and I'm (as ever) faced with a growing need for some basic supplies in the not over-exciting bread and milk line. Plus there's a geographically-remote lunch date at a previously untried hostelry quite some distance up the A34. I'm looking forward to that. Report to follow, no doubt.
I don't take kindly...
... to being told what to do. And what to read. Never have, either. But I was also quite capable of ignoring reading guidelines. Isn't everyone?
To tell the truth, I find the whole notion of you, the ministry and even exam boards laying down the law about set texts fairly obnoxious. I detect something megalomaniac in people sitting about in offices far from classrooms laying down instructions for what tens of thousands of students will read and be examined on.
Thomas Gradgrind lives on, it seems.
I spent my 25 years...
... in thrall to the UK's crazy mortgage system, watching somewhat enviously as my German brothers-in-law became steadily better-off in the rental sector before building their own houses. Now I'm left to wonder how hard an under-occupancy tax would hit me as an impoverished pensioner:
If you buy, you are sucked into a vortex of debt and insecurity. If you don't, you are forced into a rental market of Dickensian cruelty. Rents in this captive market rose by 9% in London in 2012, while median earnings rose by 2%. Landlords possess the kind of power once wielded by Norman barons. They let out properties that would make great homes for frogs (damp, cold, plenty of insects). If you complain you run the risk of a revenge eviction.
Good to see the son of a Thatcher-era housing minister 30 years ago is now doing so well. Perhaps I should I change my politics? (Link.)
Schlock, you say?
But I like some of these! (Link.)
Half a day later...
... and I wonder if Mr. Postie cursed me in absentia this morning while I was out and about enjoying myself / getting lost in the wilds of Northern Hampshire...
"True Blood" is completely bonkers, I agree, but splendidly entertaining. The (replacement) Blu-rays of the "Girl" trilogy are all the extended variants, and "Mercy" is one (I'm pretty sure) of those cancelled-after-just-one-season TV shows that may actually be good. It has the same lead actress as "Orange is the New Black" in its favour.
(This) chap finds he also needs some juvenile SF from his (oh so distant) childhood (1958 in this case) and some rather more philosophical reading to exercise the eyes (and brain!) after extended bouts of TV viewing, too.
"Cloudburst" comes highly recommended — just look at the two leads. "Slither" (horror comedy is not my genre) is the fifth of the films I mentioned last week that had been singled out last November as good examples of work by five of the people who appeared in "Hunger Games". "Drinking Buddies" features actresses 13 from "House" and Jessica from "Twilight". Where's the harm in that? (Olivia Wilde was hilarious in "Butter".)