2014 — 25 July: Friday
Is it me1 or is it just the teensiest, tiniest bit cooler this morning? Here's hoping. Though Mrs cheery BBC Radio 3 has just told the nation the "hot weather" is set to "go on rising and rising into August". What a joyless prospect that is. 116F at the airport in Phoenix sounds a tad warm, too.
I've re-stuffed...
... Mother Hubbard's irritating self-emptying cupboard for the weekend almost before my first cuppa has finished cooling to drinkability. If you're going to shop on a Friday, shop early (say I). What's next? On my non-existent agenda. Actually, I did dither before putting the car back on its nest. It seems a while since I last hit the local metropolis. I may yet have another expotition after breakfast.
If I was running a...
... little online enterprise with revenue that had risen by 23% to $19.34 billion in the last three months of trading, I suspect I wouldn't worry too much about losing the odd $126 million. Unless, of course, I could feel the hot breath of a tax-collector breathing down the back of my neck. (Link.)
Meanwhile, from what NPR is reporting about the ghastly religious cleansing in and around Mosul by ISIS, I think I shall not be visiting any time soon. I doubt they're too keen on agnostics.
Elsewhere...
... someone likes punning:
I see that...
... Charles Stross has already admitted taking 'inspiration' for "Palimpsest" — some of my reading yesterday evening — from Asimov's "The End of Eternity". I think he could have flung mentions of "Beep" (Blish), "Time Patrol" (Anderson), "Last and First Men" (Stapledon), and "By his bootstraps" (Heinlein) into the enjoyable mix.
I've just flung...
... another 59p into the Bezos Begging Bowl, in exchange for Track #4 from Margaret Fingerhut's album "Endless Song" — the transcription for piano by Liszt of Schubert's Ave Maria. Meanwhile, I'm amused to see that the two Stefan Zweig books that arrived this morning...
... were translated by that very smart lady Anthea Bell, who in earlier times had a lot of fun inserting the puns into her translations of Asterix...
Shortly before...
... the brief late afternoon shower put him (or her) to flight, I found an unexpected caller resting on my back doorstep:
Having enjoyed my...
... fishy salad lunch rather more than the quick soaking of a white T-shirt (fresh on today, dagnabbit) unwelcomely spattered by some sardine-flavoured tomato sauce before the decorative pattern took root — I can now report (though not before an extended break for some reading of the Zweig) an interesting trio of DVD arrivals:
I find it very hard...
... to get excited by the news being pumped out so relentlessly all day so far that the 'Great Recession' is over. Growth of 0.1%? Gimme a break. One million more people may well be at work than in early 2008, but with no overall increase in manufacturing, surely that means productivity is well down. Oh, wait, 80% of the UK's economic activity is in the Service sector.
Meanwhile, price rises have certainly continued. Petrol, for example, was less than £1/litre when I started driving in October 2007, but is currently about £1-32/litre. Yet, big surprise — my £1 of 2007 pension is certainly not now £1-32 of 2014 pension! And what about interest rates for us poor pensioners? And would-be savers?
I know of...
... only one other book to compare with this funny one by Bel Kaufman, that I bought just over 40 years ago:
She's just died, I learned, before the New York Times paywall slammed shut on my web browsing. The UK equivalent, I'd contend, wouldn't be Braithwaite's "Please, Sir" but rather JL Carr's wonderful 1972 "The Harpole Report". I bought a newer copy than this one in 1984 to give to Carol over in New York.
It occurs to me only now that I was reading about teaching in 1972 because I hadn't then yet eliminated it as a possible career.