2015 — 23 January: Friday
I shall be getting a chance to do my parental stuff later today — this evening, at least — and have already cleared a path to what my son still regards as "his" bedroom. It will be nice to see him.
I duly watched...
... Luc Besson's "Lucy" last night and, apart from the usual minor irritations of the "universally understandable without text" playback and settings control1 icons, all was well. Although I had forgotten the Oppo was currently set to be a Zone 'A' player, the BD wasn't actually locked to Zone 'B'. The film? It's probably better not to examine the story too closely, if at all; just sit back and enjoy the ravishing images and CGI effects. Shades of "Fifth Element". The sound was pretty spectacular, too.
For my continuing entertainment I have cunningly arranged delivery of a handful of further bits and pieces, and some afternoon tea and biccies. Some time soon, I shall probably get dressed and sort out some breakfast. It feels, in here, as if it's jolly cold, out there, at the moment. [Pause] -6C at 08:50 or so. Horrid.
I have little...
... or no idea who my various neighbours are, let alone what they do for a living. I merely observe that over the years I've moved imperceptibly from being the youngest home owner hereabouts in mid-1981 to being one of the oldest (and, for some years now, the longest in situ, too). Still, there's a certain comfort to be derived from watching smartly-dressed young executive chaps scraping ice off their company Audis and BMWs etc. before carefully easing past one another's gigantic vehicles and setting off. Been there, done that, and don't have to do it any more...
Although in my case it was always a bus ride rather than a company car :-)What about that breakfast?
It seems like...
... only yesterday I was reading Henry Porter's description, in The Observer, of the ongoing official, independent, yada yada, investigation into the origins of the war in Iraq:
Contrast the clear shafts of light that spread from publication of the cables with the interminable ramblings of John Chilcot's committee of pensionable British worthies and you find yourself regretting that the manoeuvrings of Blair and Bush were not exposed to similar scrutiny in 2002 and 2003. Is it any wonder that the internet generation largely supports the dumping of raw information by whistleblowers on the web when they see figures from the 20th-century British establishment like Chilcot forlornly apply to make public two letters from Blair to Bush, only to be refused on the grounds that prime ministers and presidents have a right to keep their correspondence private?
That was four sodding years ago! No published report yet, of course. Can't publish before the next election in case it becomes a political issue. Gotta love the pace of change within the Benighted Kingdom and its privacy-obsessed, arse-covering, Establishment.
Isn't it nice...
... when you stop banging your head against a wall?
Christof Koch, the chief scientific officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and a key player in the Obama administration's multibillion-dollar initiative to map the human brain, is about as credible as neuroscientists get. But, he told me in December: "I think the earliest desire that drove me to study consciousness was that I wanted, secretly, to show myself that it couldn't be explained scientifically. I was raised Roman Catholic, and I wanted to find a place where I could say: OK, here, God has intervened. God created souls, and put them into people." Koch assured me that he had long ago abandoned such improbable notions. Then, not much later, and in all seriousness, he said that on the basis of his recent research he thought it wasn't impossible that his iPhone might have feelings.
But which conscious being (artificial or not) couldn't smile at a field called "mysterianism"? Somebody please beam me up.
I don't think...
... I've previously seen a film 'described' quite so, erm, acronymically:
Its trailer made me guffaw. There may even be a report to follow in due course.
Meanwhile, a snailmail...
... from dear Mama's care-home brings unglad tidings of the next annual hike in her fees. She's now paying, per week, nearly £1,000 more2 than IBM's pension pays me per week, so it's a jolly Good Thing she started out very much richer than I am, isn't it? It makes listening to the whinges of pensioners casually flinging pots of £10,000 at a time into the new Pensioners' Bonds all the more surreal. Back, therefore, to the warbling and fiddling on BBC Radio 3 while I sort out a crust of stale bread and a cheese rind. Or pop a tin of soup over a candle. (Actually, I haven't got any soup. Though it's not a bad idea for winter.)
But the sun is shining, and the temperature has crawled up to nearly +1C out there.
Brrr
Back from my little afternoon expotition I shall now batten down the hatch and await Junior's (and, possibly, his g/f's) arrival sometime later this evening. It's very much like winter out there.
And grab a bite to eat, of course. And field a "don't worry, Mr Mounce, but we just need to tell you" call from a nurse at the care-home who's waiting for a prescription to arrive from the local doctor's practice so she can then stuff some steroids (sadly, I recognised the drug's name) into dear Mama for the next four days or so to try to boost her platelet count (I may have mis-heard) and thus possibly improve her paper-thin skin3 and its consequent tendency to bruise so dramatically.
Followed by a call from Peter (just before the start of the final delicious burst of Simon Rattle's Beethoven from Berlin 20 years ago) postponing tonight's planned invasion as both he and she have developed sore throats in the last day or so and wish to avoid making me "grumpier than usual" by passing their afflictions along to me. (This, I thoroughly approve of.)
"Wetlands", by the way, is very good in some parts and pretty dire in others. I wouldn't classify it as a barrel of laughs. I ended up 'watching' it at about 2x speed since that still gave me more than enough time to read the subtitles.
My mobile phone...
... company is being bought by a Chinese business for a tasty £10.25 billion. Bet I don't get a new mast any nearer Technology Towers.