2015 — 28 April: Tuesday

To my annoyance1 my bacterial? viral? nastiness has now switched from raising my temperature and making me feel sick. It has relocated its base camp to my nose and throat, and is now requiring constant attention from paper tissues. As I've already warned my intended lunchtime chum, were this a work day and were I still a working chap this would be a day spent at home feeling sorry for myself.

I never had the least sympathy for those strange2 people who regarded themselves as so invaluable to the business that they would drag themselves into the office to host meetings and then cough and splutter and share their bacterial bounty through the air-conditioning... It was not unknown for me to ponder on the decreased productivity they thus induced.

Childhood obesity...

... depends on parental influence and junk food's widespread availability? I'm stunned, not for the first time, by the quality of UK university cutting-edge research. (Link.)

Oh good grief

This book review panders very nicely to some of my prejudices. Source and snippet:

Mixed up with this feeling of craziness was the guilty fear that she was somehow faking it, so Taylor did what any miserable successful person might have done in the early '80s: She entered psychoanalysis... Incessant circular bickering isn't everybody's idea of chemistry, but perhaps not everybody is meant for psychoanalysis.

James Camp, reviewing Barbara Taylor's book in BookForum


For 22 years, with about 4,000 sessions. Blimey. Mind you, my email exchanges with my friend Carol stretch back for 32 years (and I certainly have found them very therapeutic on occasion) so who am I to judge? [Pause, to confirm a thought] Actually, I first heard of Taylor's memoir of madness when Jenny Diski reviewed it 15 months ago. I liked Diski's own story of the half-finished but unoffered cream "gâteau". All the best people are slightly mad, of course.

This sounds...

... like one of the world's more-interesting chaps:

Hamilton

Nice article, and it's attracted more than a few interesting comments.

I'm somewhat shocked...

... to learn that Trollope ("poet of the clerical classes" — really, Mr Gopnik?) wrote a dystopian SF novel. But then I know only the Pallisers and Barsetshire — as it were. (Link.)

The gift...

... that goes on giving:

Thatcher and Murdoch

Crikey. Politicians lie? When did they start doing that, I wonder?

Much as I adore...

... our absurd monarchy3 for its entertainment value, I mightily resent being required by law (I assume) to drag myself down to the local Post Office depot and fork over £11-23 (£8 of which is the outrageous 'fee') to release from Brenda's custody a personally-imported Blu-ray that so far shows no evidence of turning up on this side of the Pond:

I Origin

Its trailer on IMDB a few months ago looked enticing, and I enjoyed Brit Marling's performance (both writing and acting) in "Another Earth", too.

  

Footnotes

1  Although it's what almost always happens.
2  "Strange" merely scratches the sociopathic surface, of course.
3  Not to mention the surreal fiction that these inbred twits are (in any way) "better" than us at anything other than spending my money.