2014 — 2 July: Wednesday
Today's small-scale adventure is going to be a short walk — though not in the Hindu Kush, Mr Newby.1
Preceded...
... by a bit of breakfast, as usual. And perhaps another piece of the Atrocity Archive? If that's not too Stross-ful. (It's certainly proving an easier read than Ballard's similar title.)
Contrast my stark 1972 paperback of the original 1970 edition by clicking the pic. My newer edition is compellingly illustrated throughout by Phoebe Gloeckner.
Now here's...
... a cheerfully ambiguous story encapsulation:
Nicolas Sarkozy the first former French president to be held overnight for questioning
Is there a queue of the chaps, do you think? (Link.)
I do wish...
... "religious groups" could be persuaded to keep their mouths shut on occasion. Or even all the time? (Link.)
There are some...
... lovely astronomical images here.
The walk was quite hot and rather sticky. Problems I exacerbated by wearing my (successful) anti-horsefly and anti-tick defences. Hence the laundering noises issuing now from the washing machine. But very pleasant nonetheless. I'm sure it's good for us. Meanwhile, I've just received a gentle snailmail reminder from a local solicitor that I have yet to finalise the wording of my latest Will. I'd forgotten all about it. And that bossa nova version of Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" on a CD called "Sachal Jazz" has finally materialised, several months after I'd already got the 'Auto-ripped' MP3 files from Amazon. I'd forgotten all about that, too.
My opinion of...
... what constitutes my favourite fruit varies from season to season. At the moment, for example, having just sampled some reduced-sugar jam on a slice of fresh bread I'm leaning toward blackcurrants.
[Pause]
But do I dare try the extra-strong Marmite that I spotted the other day while buying said jam? I'm not sure the tastebuds could take the shock. And does the fact that (seemingly) every time I need to open a file with LibreOffice there's a refreshed version available mean I'm not sending enough snailmail of my own?
I long ago...
... gave up my adolescent struggle of trying to keep up to date with which of my favourite SF authors had died. My interests have (of course) mutated over the years in the direction of — if I'm honest — very many other fields. But that has done the square root of buggerall to stop me getting horribly fed up with each new name I learn. Today's doleful discovery?
I first became aware of Jeff Jones (as he then was) in 1972 in the pages of National Lampoon. His work was certainly abstruse, but very skilled. Steven Ringgenberg wrote an interesting obituary of Jeffrey Catherine Jones (as she was by the end of her life) for "The Comics Journal" in May 2011, which was four years after I'd stopped buying it.