2016 — 10 July: Sunday
I managed to "grow up" without any exposure to Moomin. I had been for many years only vaguely aware of Tove Jansson and her bittersweet body of work — I remember I'd briefly examined one or two of the Puffin books in the paperback shop halfway down that steep hill in St Albans but — over 40 years ago — I concluded they looked a little too outré (or something... whimsical, perhaps?). I thus never got that mythical "round tuit" needed to do any deeper delving. My bad!
My interest was finally sparked when I read a six-page highly adulatory feature on her in the October 2001 "Comics Journal" several months after her death. This gave me some faint inkling of what I'd been missing. It described how (in January 1952) she'd been asked to create a Moomin strip for Associated Newspapers here in the UK. "When their proposal came and they said how many pounds I would get, I became very excited. Only six strips a week — I wouldn't have to make idiotic small illustrations, quarrel with troublesome writers or draw Mother's Day cards..." Depending who you believe, the strip launched on September 20th, 1954 in the "Evening News". Or in 1953!
By January 2005 I'd picked up and skimmed seven of the books. I later bought volume #1 of the saga...
... in its comic strip form in June 2007 but I fear that has been largely overlooked since then. Illness and death have that effect, I've noticed. "Things change".
Fast forward to this morning
Idly browsing iPlayer1 on my SHIELD Android Tablet PC I was delighted to spot "Moominland Tales: the life of Tove Jansson". I'd missed this on Boxing day in 2012 as I was busier then on MP3 file wrangling. It's now safely downloaded.
I'm making a...
... conscious decision to spend less time browsing "news" sources. That way, I feel, lies greater hope of increased sanity, lowered blood pressure, and decreased futile rage. One immediate result has been agonising pins and needles — after sitting on the landing floor for upwards of an hour browsing through the books on the eight shelves...
...I not only bought, but also put up, on a similar Sunday afternoon nearly six years ago.
In my new mood...
... of post-Brexit "daredevil" risk anything behaviour, I've just eaten (though not without initial trepidation) my first-ever bowl of rice, peas, and chicken where the rice included both a hint of garlic and some sweet chilli and lime. It was surprisingly palatable, though I'm now going to douse the afterburn with a cup of tea. There is still, it seems, a first time for everything. Mind you, hunger helps. It's now 16:55 and I'd forgotten about lunch.
Alex Gibney...
... makes interesting documentaries, easily as efficient as the "news" at elevating one's blood pressure. His new one is about Stuxnet, I gather. Source and snippet:
"We know that Stuxnet was launched by Israel and the United States against Iran. The United States won't admit that. Israel won't admit that," says Gibney. "We have a situation now where the weapons have gone way beyond Stuxnet in terms of their sophistication and their destructive power. Yet by keeping that offensive cyber-capability secret we deprive everybody in this country — in a democracy — from having any kind of debate over how and when and why they should be used. So the secrecy is actually putting us in existential risk in this case."
But how many citizens are in any meaningful way qualified to judge such capability? And who frames such debates in the first place? Just askin'.
Tonight's film?
A guilty pleasure: a repeat showing (after less than two years) of this excellently twisty 1998 film by Roland Joffé:
It has a fabulous cast, and — having lent my original NTSC DVD of it to somebody — I finally caved in and bought a replacement PAL DVD.