2016 — 1 November: Tuesday — rabbits!
I sometimes wonder1 if I'm too old to keep up the "rabbits!" tradition / superstition that was one of my father's 'gifts' to me. But then I think "What's the harm?" or "Who doesn't need some good luck?" or "Perhaps better not to risk offending the Centzon Totochtin."
I really don't think I need 400 drunken divine rabbits hopping over from the Land of the Aztecs and stomping over me.
No adventures...
... currently planned for today — beyond an item or two in the foodie line. A chap's running low on peas, for example. But, with luck, there's a walk pencilled in for tomorrow.
I finally started watching the new Chuck Lorre comedy "Mom" last night, and approve so far after three episodes. It has some very wicked one-liners, plus Alison Janney. Nothing wrong with that.
This is...
... why I'm not a novelist. Algorithmic prediction of bestsellers:
As to escapism, Americans' idea of that means inhabiting somebody else's job. Work is a riveting topic. The authors don't explore this in detail, but those jobs tend to be emergency-room doctor or fiery litigator, not insurance analyst or dental hygienist. Other favored topics
are "intimate conversation" and "human closeness." ...
But many so-called serious novelists avoid the world of work, unless it's university teaching, presumably due to lack of experience.
Always thought...
... there was something odd about bagels:
Until March this year, when an EU directive put paid to the practice, it was the source of one of the ingredients (an amino acid used as a dough conditioner) in most factory-produced bagels.
"Waiter! There's a hair in my dough."
Oops
Another Windows security hole. And unpatched. How could that possibly be? (Link.)
Having gone...
... to all the trouble2 of upgrading the Linux kernel on my i5NUC I've just put the little perisher (the NUC, not Len) atop Skylark rather than attaching it to the A/V stack at the other end of the living room. I continue to login to it via the wondrous NoMachine Remote Desktop from Skylark. But physically connecting it to a DisplayPort input on the 34" Dell gets me back the 3440x1440 display that was, after all, the motivation behind upgrading the kernel in the first place.
That's quite enough work. How about some lunch?
As my lunching-munching...
... to the musical accompaniment of a re-mastered Rupert Hine "Quantum Jump" CD — that I originally bought second-hand, on vinyl, from a record shop in St Helier on Jersey — nears the end of my smoked salmon sandwich and large, healthy dollop of salad I wonder, not for the first time, what Christa would say if she could see me now. It's nine years since she went into the hospice for her last few days.
November3 (which was never going to rank high on the list of desirable months at the best of times) is a bit too anniversarial for my liking.
KBO
The thing I hate...
... most about the clock-shift is the now rapid descent into earlier and earlier darkness as we thunder towards the ghastly commercial spasm at the tail end of December. Bah, humbug! [Pause] BBC Radio 3 has just dipped into its archive of goodies and played a tantalisingly-brief snatch of Henry Reed's "The Private Life of Hilda Tablet" — a 1954 spoof of cultural pretension. I yield to no-one in my admiration for Reed's "Lessons of War". And have just been utterly delighted to find some further material added here.