2015 — 17 October: Saturday
I've become fairly sure the best test1 of a new film's impact on me is if I dream about it and/or wake up with its plot and characters whizzing around between my ears. I won't go probabilistic about it, but merely observe my life — in the last few years, at least — has increasingly seemed best analysed (if at all) with fuzzy logic. But for all current values of the two unknowns, yesterday evening's delighted viewing of the film "x + y" passes my test, with some distinction.
Lest I forget
After my more immediately critical (that is, food-related) shopping yesterday I set off again, this time into the maelstrom that was Asda's Friday lunchtime car park. I'd decided it was time for one of my semi-regular explorations of their cheap DVD shelves on the off-chance of finding further entertainment hiding amidst the dross (I didn't). But I did spot a couple of glass cups of exactly the type I bought recently for use in my skirmishes against tannin stains. Only £2 each, too. Worth knowing, even though I have a kitchen cupboard stuffed dangerously near to overflowing with an amazing array of cups, and even a few saucers. Some of which may even match.
There are a fair few "best" ones secreted in the dining room's cabinet, too. Christa didn't just collect shoes, it seems! Though she didn't seem to object to my preference for a simple mug (for a simple mug).
I didn't...
... know even the first of these "two things":
The reason given for the enterprise is the familiar one, that of bringing Shakespeare "alive for a contemporary readership," an idea that seems to have been around almost as long as the plays themselves.
The Gap of Time begins with a synopsis of The Winter's Tale, a work about which most people know only two things, both of them odd: that much of the action is set in a Bohemia that has somehow ended
up as "a desert country near the sea," and that the play includes the stage direction "Exit, pursued by a bear."
English Lit, at least as "taught" to me nearly 50 years ago, has a lot to answer for.
See, now this is exactly why...
... my latest Will still insists on cremation! Saponificationary source and snippet:
It's common practice for many German cemeteries to recycle graves every 15-25 years, when bodies are expected to be completely skeletonized. But due to the soil condition in some German cemeteries, the corpse wax buildup got so bad that bodies weren't decomposing at all. When gravediggers started exhuming graves to turn over the plots, they found that many of the bodies had turned into soap mummies...
Breakfast? :-)
I don't doubt...
... this will be tosh, but who could resist Queen Hurley?
Meanwhile, BBC Radio 4 has once again discovered the existence of fan fiction...
I can't say...
... I'm terribly enthusiastic about being forced on to Chrome simply to avoid Flash and use HTML5 on BBC web pages:
I've been browsing...
... through some remarkable scientific correspondence. Sample:
Dear Sir : I have the pleasure to introduce to you the Chevalier Landriani, with whose name and merits as a philosopher you cannot be unacquainted.
I have desired Mr. Johnson to send you a copy of my second paper on phlogiston, just printed for the P. Transactions. The only objection that was made to my conclusions was that the acid I got was from the phlogisticated air, which I could not exclude. But tho' I have the same result with common air, in which the phlogisticated air was in much greater abundance, the acid I got was much less. I have many things now on hand, but nothing has occurred of much consequence. I have, however, completely ascertained that spirit of nitre acquires colour by heat without light, and by simply giving out pure air, without imbibing anything, and I have made the experiment in all the kinds of air.
I have lately had a robbery in my laboratory, by which I have suffered, though to me no great amount, and the thieves have gained nothing. My chief expense has been in guarding the place against a similar attack.
On my journey to London, when I meant to have paid the bill I owe you, I unfortunately lost it, together with some other papers, and though I went through every place where I thought I might have left them, I could not secure them. I must therefore trouble your servants for a second copy, and Mr. Johnson shall discharge it immediately.
With my best regards to Mrs. Wedgwood and your son, I am, Dear Sir,
Yours, sincerely,
J. Priestley.
P.S. I hope that the next time you come through Birmingham I shall not miss the pleasure of seeing you.
It's in a set of 97 letters from Joseph Priestley to people such as Josiah Wedgwood (as above), Sir Joseph Banks, Captain James Keir, James Watt, and others. Amazing. These letters were assembled and edited "with copious biographical, bibliographical, and explanatory notes" by Henry Carrington Bolton in 1891 for an edition privately printed in New York in 1892. I doubt too many copies are still knocking around. I picked up mine for £2 in August 1992. The same day I bought a copy of Chesterfield's Letters to his son (1774). I was clearly on a bit of a history kick at the time.