Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in astvinr's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, January 10th, 2009
10:42 pm	We won't be meeting again on the slow train This is the very last entry on this site from me. From now on I will post only here. I have resisted all the messing about Livejournal has endured at the hands of its various owners, but, as I warned a while back, it is the childish immaturity of some of my fellow users that finally drives me to quit it. The majority of people who read this blog leave no trace of their interest. They are all mature, adult people. In the extravagantly unlikely case that they should ever be offended by me, they would take it up with me face to face. That will not happen, however, because they are people with free minds. The others are on my ‘friends list’and most of these I’ve known a long time, although, of course, there are some I have never met, and have come to know only through this site. I am very grateful for that in many cases. oycaramba, for one, is a scholar and a gentleman, and someone I am proud to have come to know. They are not the ones who’ve pushed me off Livejournal. I am fed up with pandering to those who make out they’re as hard to break as rough-tough toys for rough-tough boys, but turn out eggshell-skinned china dolls when they get chucked out of the pram. I write this blog to let off steam and to engage in debate with adults. If you get upset, start blubbing, cry, run off to nanny and cling to her pinny all because I’ve said a ‘bad word’, well, there are places you can go to really get that sort of thing out of your system, you adult baby, you. And, if that is your kink, I’m the go-to man to hook you up with the right playmates - I know the strict nurses you need. But they charge. And if you want me to spoon-feed you, wipe your bottom and tuck you in at night, then give me something back. Otherwise, hit the road. To coin a phrase, there are two ‘L’s in ‘dollar’ and two ‘G’s in ‘bugger off.’ If you have a free mind and an open heart, then you can find me on blogspot, which is a place for grown-ups. Current Mood: triste
Monday, December 22nd, 2008
4:06 pm	Oooh, I'm cross... On a good day, the so-called “Conservative” Party acts more like an organised crime syndicate than a legitimate political body, but even by its own appalling standards their latest behaviour is a shocker that should be very troubling everyone. Except that it isn’t. The papers are still all gooey about goggly-eyed David Camoron and his bandit gang. I said I was worked up about the Damian Green business and I could rant for hours, but boiling it all down, here’s why: 1. Politicians are not above the law, even if they think they should be. They don’t believe it’s any problem that civil servants be arrested for leaking, but get all hoity-toity if anyone imagines they ought to face the same treatment. 2. To hear them you’d think the worst thing about it was the fact that the police arrested Damian Green without a warrant. They had warrants for his private homes and offices, but his office in Parliament was raided without a warrant. That’s true, but Damian Green’s Parliamentary office is not his private personal property. The House of Commons is not MPs’ personal property either. It’s ours! They work there for us! The police no more need a warrant to enter a public building like the House of Commons than they would to search a bus. 3. Okay, but that’s not all. I quote from Blackstone’s Statutes on Criminal Law, page 5: Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984: Section 24. Arrest without warrant for arrestable offences... (2) The offences to which subsection (2) below applies are - ...(b) offences under the Official Secrets Act 1911 and 1920 that are not arrestable offences by virtue of the term of imprisonment for which a person may be sentenced in respect of them... ...(e) offences under section 1 of the Public Bodies Corrupt Practices Act 1889 (corruption in office) or section 1 of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906 (corrupt transactions with agents)... 4. I got very heartily sick of hearing our self-appointed lords and masters telling us all that their job is ‘to hold the government to account’. No it’s not. Their job is to represent the interests of their constituents! That’s what they get elected for, even if precious few of those trough-guzzling pigs ever think of the suckers who vote for them once they’re on the gravy train. 5. The Tories have been raving about us being on the slippery slope to a police state and that the Home Secretary should tell the police to back off and leave them alone. In a democracy, the executive and the criminal justice system are kept apart. Politicians make the laws, judges interpret and enact them. In a police state the politicians actually do have the power to command the police and judiciary to do as they want. Be very afraid, voters. That’s precisely what the Tories are calling for. Any bets on what they’d get up to in office? 6. In fact, the police have always been very sympathetic to the Tory Party. In my opinion, the new Tory mayor of London got rid of Met Chief Sir Iain Blair because he wasn’t being a sufficiently obedient poodle. He did not have the power to sack him, but used every loophole in the book to make his job impossible. But now the Tories have got no-one in their pocket in charge of the Met, and, blow me down, the police are actually free to go after their corrupt, lying, cheating, conniving, thieving and treachery. Know what? That’s their job! 7. Now it seems the Tories have employed their press poodles to attack London’s anti-terror chief and interfere in the investigation, publishing his home address so that terrorists and the Tories’ fellow criminals could threaten his family. Words fail me. They really do. This is not just against a whole slew of laws, it’s treason, pure and simple. Not that that surprises me, coming from that evil house of Lords Haw-Haw. Vote them in and it’s curtains for the lot of us. I ain’t kidding. Current Mood: angry (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, December 15th, 2008
10:37 pm	Details of the fraud emerge Some late breaking news throws light tonight on the Wall Street fraud case. Investors who paid millions of dollars in good faith for shares in the Brooklyn Bridge sale are reacting with disbelief to reports they may not have been dealing with the legitimate owner. Similar real estate investments in the Chrysler Building and the Statue of Liberty are also thought to be in jeopardy. Another investment in the banks’ portfolio is believed to have involved a ‘prominent Nigerian businessman’ who needed help moving a ‘substantial sum’ of government money from one account to another. Despite paying massive ‘administrative fees’ investors are still awaiting the vital money transfers. Meanwhile, further downtown, senior bank executives expressed amazement that they were still unable to Find the Lady, even after parting with large sums in ‘futures options’ predicting her movements. That she could remain hidden for so long is a source of wonder and frustration to Wall Street’s finest minds. Current Mood: cynical (2 Comments |Comment on this)
3:57 pm	Latest reading (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 13th, 2008
7:10 pm	Sucker It can get quiet on the late bus after midnight. A teenage girl across the aisle was chatting loudly to a friend on her mobile. I wasn’t interested. I had my nose stuck in a Raymond Chandler, and besides, it was just about the petty office politics of the department store where she worked. Then she said something that made me pay rather a lot of attention. ‘I come in, right, and the supervisor tells me he wants to talk to me and I just know I’m in trouble then but everyone already knew what it was about. It was ’cos I’d left the window open and the vampire had got in...’ Er, sorry. Did I hallucinate that or did you just say...? ‘And the supervisor was really pissed off ’cos the vampire had been in...’ Oh, right... you did. So matter of fact. Not even stressing the word, as though it might be unusual. It’s just one of those things. You have an open window and you’re going to have vampires about the place, aren’t you? They’re like moths. Leave a light burning and they’ll be flapping around it all night. ‘And he said this was a good time to talk about how he thinks my performance has been falling off the last three months...’ The vampire was not mentioned again. There appeared to be no consequences of his visit, no corpses mysteriously drained of all blood found slumped around the bargain bins, so it was only a light ticking off for her this time. The rest of her call involved her worries that her illicit liaison with another supervisor be discovered and cause them both trouble. I tuned out again, but was left with a troubling feeling, not for the first time, that there is a whole, wide world of weirdness just a cat’s scratch under the surface. Current Mood: uncomfortable (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 7th, 2008
6:22 pm	Pwned? I was listening to Simon Mayo talking to the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald the other day. One of the topics was assisted suicide and although I have no opinion on that subject one way or the other, I have to confess, what he had to say made me a little worried. Of course, the issue Sir Ken was pressed on was the Debbie Purdy case, in which a terminally ill woman wanted to be sure that her husband would not face any criminal charges were he to take her to Switzerland to be helped to die. At the High Court, Lord Justice Scott Baker and Mr Justice Aikens concluded that this was for Parliament to decide, which is more than fair enough, but decide on what, exactly? That’s the bit that nobody has made clear. Assisting someone to commit suicide is a serious criminal offence here, punishable by up to fourteen years imprisonment. However, it is no crime in Switzerland, nor in the Netherlands, provided that it is done under special medical supervision. Let us suppose that Debbie Purdy were to go, with her husband, to the Dignitas Clinic in Switzerland to end her life. There would be no legal problem at all with the Swiss authorities. So, what about the British side? All that would have happened on British soil would be that she and her husband would have travelled to a channel port, boarded a ferry and left the country. I may be getting slow in my old age, but I don’t see any criminal act there. In my understanding of the law, leaving the UK is not illegal. Once you are outside UK territorial waters, you are beyond British police jurisdiction. As soon as the Purdys arrived in mainland Europe, the couple would be subject to the laws of the Republic of France, not Britain. This would continue until they crossed the Swiss border. They would then be in a third, completely separate, sovereign nation, with its own laws. “But it’s not a secret that of the 90 or so people who have travelled to Dignitas ... none of those events has resulted in a prosecution,” said Sir Ken. Fine, but what would they be prosecuted for if they did? Assisting someone to commit suicide in another country where it isn’t a crime? How? If the argument is that they might have been leaving Britain with the express intention of committing this act abroad and that therefore the journey from their front doors, across Kent, to the landing stage at Calais were an integral part of the ‘assistance’... well, that would be an interesting one to prove. Think of it this way. In Britain, it is a serious crime to drive your car on the right-hand side of the road. In the Republic of France (and most other countries) this is no crime at all. It is, instead, compulsory. So, a couple who drive down through Kent on their way to a motoring holiday in France must, by definition, be intending all the while to commit an act that would be a serious criminal offence in Britain, namely to drive on the right. Should they be prosecuted when they return? Surely, senior legal minds like those of Sir Ken Macdonald, Lord Justice Scott Baker and Mr Justice Aikens must know that British laws don’t apply in Switzerland. Surely to goodness they realise that our laws don’t affect foreigners living abroad, but... Perhaps they think that British laws apply to UK citizens no matter where they are in the world. That is how they are behaving. That is the only thing that makes sense of their discussions on this matter. I don’t remember that being brought in. And if it were, that would represent a vastly more worrying change in the relationship between the individual and the state than ID cards or presumed consent to organ donation ever could. This would be to say, “We own you! Wherever you go, you’re ours! You can never escape!” That’s the sort of attitude the old Soviet Union used to have towards its unfortunate subjects. But if they have done this, then they haven’t thought it through. Because - outside Northern Ireland perhaps - there really isn’t any such thing as ‘British Law.’ There is the Law of England and Wales. And then there is Scottish Law. So, which one have they decided to attach to everyone like a infinitely stretchable bungie-rope? And what if Scotland decides to reform its law independently of England, as another MacDonald, Margo MacDonald (no relation) has recently suggested? The Independent Lothians MSP, who suffers from Parkinson’s Disease, has said she wants the reassurance of knowing she can end her own life if she decides the condition has become intolerable. Ah yes, as usual. The law is the law for you plebs... but the moment it stops suiting us politicians, we’ll change it. Which might lead me to discuss the Damian Green case, but I’m going to hold fire on that one for now. I’m very worked up about it, but I don’t think we’ve seen the whole picture yet. I strongly suspect there’s a shed-load more arrogance, hypocrisy, treachery and diabolical double-dealing from both sides of the House to bubble up out of that one before long. I can’t wait! See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/lawreports/joshuarozenberg/3287791/Not-enough-evidence-for-assisted-suicide-charges-says-DPP.html http://news.scotsman.com/health/MS-sufferer-to-appeal-against.4641923.jp?CommentPage=1&CommentPageLength=1000 (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 30th, 2008
8:33 pm	Off End Two things I listen to on my bed of pain did get my mind working. One was Susan Blackmore on The Forum on the World Service claiming that we have no free will. I shall come back to that, perhaps. The other one was Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality on BBC Radio 3 talking about offending religious minorities. I did not see eye to eye with him on this. You see, the thing with being offended is that it is your own choice. Trevor Phillips falls into the same trap as so many others in thinking that people have no control over their beliefs. You are born with your religion, it is an organic part of you and when it is threatened, then you are threatened because if it is damaged then you will die. Which would be all well and good, if that were true, except that it isn’t. That’s a lie. You are free to choose your religion. You may even choose not to have one at all. If religions were essential to life then it would be impossible to live without one. Yet millions do, quite happily... indeed more happily in many cases. People who respond with offence when their beliefs are challenged have not just one free choice, but many. They can choose not to be bothered, for a start. They can also choose not to have these beliefs. I took offence not long ago. A friend responded to a light-hearted email with quite insufferable, aggressive and most unamusing rudeness. This offended me, but why? It is my own choice to be offended. I’m sure this person is used to friends reacting positively to his showers of abuse. In fact, I have tolerated this behaviour for a while now, hoping that he might grow out of it. I now know he won’t. But the offence is still my business, not his. He is very, very rude. That’s how he is. My reaction to that is my own affair. I don’t want this kind of rudeness in my life and I am shutting it out. But that’s about me. There’s no point in my getting angry with him. That is, as I said, how he chooses to be. My reaction is my own choice. In Trevor Phillips’ example, people who perform plays which offend the religious are guilty of provoking their violence. I could not disagree more strongly. The first thing you have to ask yourself is whether the religious fanatics had a free choice about how they should act. The answer is that they all have a free choice either to be violent or not. Nothing else matters. Religious protesters may freely choose to be peaceful, no matter what supposed offence they have received. This offence will not result in any physical harm to them. Their precious feelings may be hurt, but there is no risk to their persons, homes or families. They have a free choice not to be violent. They are even free to choose not to be religious at all. Therefore the culpability is entirely theirs. How would it be if I were to ‘counter-sue’? “Your very act of being offended causes offence to me.” How would that go down, I wonder? It’s a good one, I think. It’s like when nit-wits make a fuss about ‘bad language’ and I’ve often thought that if I have to debate these twits I would pretend to find grammar words like ‘the’and ‘a’ offensive, shrieking with horror every time they pronounce the ‘tee-aitch word’ in their statements. ‘I bet you don’t even know what it means!’ I would say, confident that they wouldn’t. It would be very difficult for them to construct a sentence without using any of the words I would claim to find disgusting, but it would be fun to see them try. I’d have a buzzer for every time they got it wrong. In a like manner, we who are not offended should make a thing out of being offended by the idiots’ offence and demand equal time for our offence at theirs. Current Mood: okay (4 Comments |Comment on this)
8:09 pm	Hakayushi Now I understand the true significance of that Ace of Spades I found not long ago. The Death Card, indeed. I have written nothing here for the last month because I have been ill. It has been serious. I have been drained of all energy. I have been in deep physical pain. I have been coughing up blood. The fever has made me sweat more than anything ever before in my life, more even than the heat and humidity in Guangzhou city at the height of summer. My head has been on fire while my feet have trodden on ice. My mind has been unable to create, only to lie in wait for my body to recover. Today, for the first time in a month, I feel as though I am actually getting better. Last night I talked to my ‘guru’ on the phone. For the whole time that I have been so ill, it seems that he has been reading of a book of Zen stories. He has read this book three times, each reading taking a week. The period of his reading has exactly coincided with my fever. Only this last week did he leave the book aside. Only in the last week have I begun to feel my plague abating. He told me that one story had affected him in particular. As he read it, he had determined that he must read it to me, because he knew I needed to hear this story. Of course, he had had no knowledge that I was sick. He read the story to me last night, over the phone. It was about a Zen monk who became very ill. His symptoms were, of course, identical to my own. Unable to find a cure, he undertook a pilgrimage to a noted Zen hermit, called Hakayushi, who lived amid the snows of the highest mountains in Japan. Hakayushi offered him a visualisation to perform that would heal him. The monk, said Hakayushi, had fallen sick because he had been meditating too much. I understand this message. I must undertake the same visualisation and curative meditation that Hakayushi prescribed to the pilgrim. I am into a new phase, and, like my ‘guru’, I must shed my skin. Current Mood: recovering Current Music: Samba Do Suenho (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
7:55 am	Obama-Lama, Obama-Loo! I wake to BBC World Service news and there is only one story. I am delighted, and astonished. I had come to fear for American democracy... all the hanging chad, electoral chicanery and bogus ballots that have characterised their last two elections had made me doubt we would see a genuine contest this time... How wrong I was. This is a renewal and rededication of democracy and hope in America, and in the world. In writing to an Italian friend last night, I was tempted to wonder whether Obama had been possible had Bush not been so very, very bad... in some ways his sheer appalling awfulness has prompted a reaction strong enough to make this astonishing change possible. But Obama is the author of his own success. He is one of the greatest orators I have ever heard. He is another Kennedy indeed. Don’t let’s kid ourselves. There will be dark days as well as good. As I have often noted, the mark of a great statesman (or woman) is not the power to choose between good and evil, but to choose between evil and evil, and there will be a lot of evil choices for President Obama. I have every faith in him to find a way. On every level, my faith is restored. As they are fond of saying, may it really be true this time - may God bless America. On the flippant side though, I think some tiny crumb of thanks must also go to Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross (or Terrence and Philip as I call them now). In the 2004 US election, many British newspapers (The Guardian in particular) tried to intervene in the process, lobbying voters in swing states to choose Kerry. Unsurprisingly, Americans like having foreigners interfere in their affairs no more than we do, and it was often commented thereafter that this campaign had actually backfired, cementing support for Bush. I remember a number of journalists on World Service recently saying that there was a danger to Obama if it was seen that foreigners were supporting him too much. No chance of that! The US election has been absent from our newspaper front pages, from our chat shows, from our phone-ins for the whole of its last, crucial week thanks to the saturation coverage given to that prank. Funnily enough, prior to his disgrace, Russell Brand did dip his oar into the US election, commenting that it was ‘good’ of Americans to give George Bush ‘a go’ at being president because in Britain ‘he wouldn’t be trusted with a pair of scissors.’ This is widely believed to have scuppered Brand’s budding Hollywood career. Nevertheless, I think he has played a microscopic, but still significant part by keeping our noses out of it, and that was a very good thing. Current Mood: hopeful (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 1st, 2008
1:13 am	The Sorry Story of Mr Pad and Mr Trel ( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. ) Current Mood: cheerful (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 18th, 2008
3:53 pm	The only thing you see, you know it's going to be... After my thoughts yesterday, there was only one possible card that would turn up, and, as ever, it was lying in wait for me. I wonder what I'm going to get this time, I thought as I picked it up. “The Ace of Swords shows the beginning of a situation whose potential is as double-edged as the blade of a sword. There is great power, even excessive power at times, in both love and hatred. The Ace implies the use of such power to further one's ends, but what it does not imply is the manner in which those powers will be used, or the end that the means seek to achieve...” All highly appropriate really. It's all a game to me... Current Music: Motörhead - Ace of Spades (Comment on this)
Friday, October 17th, 2008
11:18 pm	Which side am I on? Light or Dark? No matter how hard and long the striving to betterment, is there still a deep-seated core of the worse? Am I on Team Clean, or is my entire being but a mask worn by the avatar of evil? The words of a seeress and long-time confidante strike an uneasy chord in my heart. Is she right? It’s not about doing, it’s about being. Are even my very sense of self, my innate identity and ‘qualia’ of being no more than a cloak that wraps a different drummer? It’s all very English Israelite, I suppose... For the ‘Justified Sinners’ of old, to be among the elect meant that nothing they did in life could jeopardize their salvation - not even murder. On the other hand, no amount of good deeds could save those who were pre-ordained to damnation by God. Their blameless lives were of no avail. Am I like that? Hell-bound however hard I struggle to free my demons? “Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers at night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright...” Or is it simpler? Are there still ‘circuit breakers’ tripped to the ‘evil’ position that could be flipped back over? Only time will tell. But do not expect me to be the same again after this one. Be warned. You may well not like what you find. Current Mood: confused Current Music: The Shamen - Indica (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 4th, 2008
2:22 pm	On the fiddle Oh God, no. Not Mandy again! What is it with this man? He gets the sack time after time, and still they bring him back. I can understand why outstanding political figures may clash with their leaders. I can also understand why men and women of overwhelming talent and ability have to be brought back from the wilderness because they are just so remarkable. But Peter “Mandy” Mandelson? Who the hell do they think he is? Seneca? Palmerstone? Voltaire? If “Mandy” has any of the powers of these heavyweights, it has remained stubbornly invisible to me, and to most of the British public. Actually, the Seneca analogy is not entirely bogus. A thorn in the side of many early emperors, notably Claudius, Seneca was brought into the Nero administration because he was a political genius and Nero rather needed one of them, given his somewhat significant public opinion deficit after setting Rome on fire. Although Seneca tried bravely he did not have a lot to work with, as the Emperor Nero was - quite literally - a flaming maniac. I cannot put “Mandy” in the same frame as Seneca, who was one of the most brilliant literary and political minds of his age, but I can picture Gordon Brown as Nero - fiddling while the economy burns. Current Mood: aghast (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, September 29th, 2008
5:12 pm	Leading me up the garden path After a weekend of good intentions to do lots of different and difficult things, it all comes down to the little things. Pottering about in my garden I decided to continue the process of digging out the bricks. The soil is, like that of many London gardens, the consistency of a fruit cake dough with broken bricks instead of raisins. No sooner do I try to sink my spade into the mulch, than it clangs against a buried brick. I have removed enough from one side of the garden to have built a nice little dry-stone wall around the borders. Now I come to the bottom of the garden. Whenever I have tried delving here before, I have unearthed mostly massive slabs of concrete. This is at the end of the cement “runway” that forms what passes for a path. When we moved in, I tried to see if it continued under the mound of earth at the end of it, but found it went no further. Now I was after gouging the bricks and slabs out from this section. Slowly does it, I thought. Let's take a little bit at a time. I tapped my spade down. It clanged on something hard quite soon. I felt around the edges of what I took to be a brick, trying to find the corner so that I could prise it out. Instead I found a large, flat surface. I removed several more layers of soil then stood back. I looked down at a row of slate steps. This was a garden path, perhaps the original one present at the building of the house a hundred years ago. It was finally back in the daylight. It ran right up to the back wall. I resorted to a broom now to brush away the loose soil. To one side I could even see a stone retainer that would once have held up the side of a flower bed. After an hour, the “runway” and the original path were united. There was a bare gap about a half a metre between the end of one and the beginning of the other, but there was no shortage of concrete slabs to fill that in. From the kitchen window I have been admiring my work. The whole look of the garden is transformed. It now falls into two halves, as its original owners clearly intended. The pile of earth that had covered the path would doubtless have been deposited there in the bombing of our vanished sister street during the war and was then left like that. I would guess that the concrete slabs were the left-overs of some attempts at crazy paving in the 1970s. I shall be interested to see what effect it has on the garden's feng shui. Already a local cat has decided it has better access to its favoured hunting ground and spent the afternoon staring at a spot where mice have been seen. Now it is gone, a robin lands on the bird table. Ah, time to open my Autumn Almanac I think. Current Mood: cheerful (Comment on this)
Friday, September 26th, 2008
10:49 pm	Ratmen of Rodencia! Many years ago, when I was learning French at school, a teacher brought in a copy of a French daily newspaper. I can’t remember which one it was, but the thing that stuck in my mind was the one thing she urged us to ignore. On the funny pages there was a translation of an old American comic strip. In it, Mandrake the Magician was pondering the dilemma posed by the Rat-men. Of course they wanted to take over the world, as all outer-space bad hats did in those days. Doubtless in the original version there would have been exclamations of shock and horror such as ‘Holy Mackinole!’or ‘By Thor’s mighty hammer’ or whatever Mandrake magicians were likely to say. Rendered into French, however, it all became a lot more laid back, casual even. It slouched into an ‘I-suppose-we’d-better-surrender-now’ Gallic fatalism. ‘Vous savais que ces hommes-rats, ils demandent la terre comme rançon?’ ‘Oui, je le sais.’ Oh, have you heard? Those rat-men, they want the world as a ransom. Oh, yes, so they do. How tiresome. There is something a lot more visceral about ‘homme-rat’ too, much like referring to ‘Man-Bat’ instead of ‘Batman’. You get a much stronger sense of these rat-men being, well, seriously ratty. Not having seen any of the earlier episodes, I think another thing that puzzled me was what the hommes-rats had stolen. If they were demanding a ‘ransom’ then, presumably, it would be for the return of something or someone valuable. But if the whole world was the ransom, what could it possibly be? And wouldn’t it have to have been taken away from the world in the first place? So then it would surely be included in the inventory of Planet Earth’s fixtures and fittings when the rat-men take possession anyway? They’d return something only to get it back straight away... along with the whole of the world. A smart trick on their part, I thought, but a pretty dumb piece of bargaining by the Earthlings. It would have been like the Lindbergh kidnapper demanding the entire Lindbergh family, including the baby, as a ransom for the baby. All the same, when I read in the Financial Times today about the deal that George W. Bush is trying to push through the US Congress I was reminded of Mandrake and les hommes-rats. The bankers are rat-men indeed, and their ransom is nothing less than the Earth. This isn’t a negotiation. This is an unconditional surrender... of everything. All that seems to be at issue is just how fast Bush can give it all away. Current Mood: quixotic (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, September 15th, 2008
7:15 pm	Full Moon It is very fitting that all this news of banks a-crashing and a-failing should come on the day of the Full Moon in Pisces. “This is a very volatile full moon, one that will make you and everyone else quite emotional,” said Susan Miller in her horoscopes for this month. “I believe most people will feel a bit wrung out by this particular full moon simply because Uranus will be so prominent and bring up such unexpected news.” Mmmmm, I think you could say that. And Tetsche struck me as right on the money with his “Farmyard Wisdom” for today: “If the full moon falls on t’ roof, they farmers’ll wake up, forsooth!” Here’s hoping you’ve still got a roof for it to fall on. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 12th, 2008
11:17 pm	Life's like that, ain't it? I had a nice joyous day today, in spite of gloomy skies... I had been treated to a delicious meal last night by a good friend who also gifted me a beautiful YSL tie. Well, I had to wear it today, to cheer myself up, and put on my matching suit to stride out under muddy clouds. So full of the joys was I that when I took my jacket off and found a wriggly grub on the lapel, I decided to be kind to it. ‘This isn’t the place for you, little one,’ I said. ‘Let’s put you outside.’ I opened the window and let the tiny caterpillar crawl onto my hand. ‘Off you go,’ I said, blowing it away, ‘go and live your new life in the natural world.’ The grub flew through the air towards the greenery below, but then it stopped. I was mystified to see it hanging, motionless in empty space. Then I saw a thin, glistening thread I had not noticed before. Then many more. ‘...go and live your new life... er... in a spider’s web. Oh!’ And there's the spider, coming to collect. ‘Oh well,’ I said. ‘Sorry kid. That’s nature, isn’t it? It gives and it takes.’ In this case, it gives to the spider. Ah yes, this has been another spider story, hasn’t it? I do seem to be getting a lot of them right now. Current Mood: confused (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, September 6th, 2008
9:38 am	The Elements Rage Sun this morning, but last night Britain was hit by rains of Biblical proportions. I had to rush out into the storm to build an impromptu brick wall against the back door to stop water flooding in underneath it. It was wild out there, and we got off lightly. The West of the country was deluged. So, ports barricaded, I settled down to enjoy a little bit of quiet time and catch up on some of the many, many tapes and DVDs I have been lent recently. My friends have been so generous with filmic goodies lately and my thanks to one and all. You know who you are. First up, though, was one I had taped ages ago to watch and not seen, Sideways, the two blokes on a wine-tasting weekender road-movie thing that everyone was so worked up about a year or two ago. Well, it was okay. It had some good licks in it along the way, but it seemed vaguely familiar from somewhere. Shlubby bloke mopes over his lost love, so his player best friend takes him out of town to get him laid... Player best friend gets lucky... shlubby bloke should do, but doesn't because he's always phoning his lost love drunk and... I watched the first half of it before deciding it was a good point to take a break and turn in for the night, but then, half-way down the stairs, I stopped in my tracks. it struck me where I'd seen it all before. “It’s Swingers!” I said. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am. All the elements are there. Why then did so many critics praise its originality and freshness at the time? Because, I realised, Swingers is a fave film of twenty-somethings and Sideways is basically a remake for the mid-life-crisis set. Their Venn circles don’t intersect so they won’t make the connection. Mind you, I haven’t seen the ending yet. It might surprise me, but I don’t think it will because it also makes me think this this might have been where the whole “shlubby bloke makes it with gorgeous woman” run of films started. Yes, I am following Mark Kermode’s line here, and he was thinking of films like Knocked Up and Good Luck Chuck - it’s almost as though this one gave them permission. Hmmm. Now I shall be watching for every possible sub-text in the second half. If I can be bothered. Current Mood: tempest toss't (6 Comments |Comment on this)
9:18 am	“And you are, every day, relentlessly terminating that life. And you are happy with that?” Creepy... I receive a junk email today with the subject line “Don't let Bashir escape justice”. Too right, I thought. It’s long overdue for Martin Bashir to get his comeuppance. I think that blasted interview had a lot to do with creating Diana mania in the first place, and don’t think I’ve forgotten that Louise Woodward heart-to-heart either, Mart. Yes, justice is called for. Hee hee. But then the grin froze on my face, because I found that fate has indeed engineered just that: 9 Jun 2008 ... Television journalist Martin Bashir, famed for his interviews with Princess Diana and Michael Jackson, has a tumour on his pituitary gland... Coo. I’d not heard that story, but now feel very chagrined at my poor-taste gag (though not so much that I didn't still want to share it!). It raises only the question of who is going to conduct the tear-jerking interview with Bashir when that was so much his trademark? Who could they choose to go head-to-head with him in his last days? Melvin Bragg did a brilliant job with the last ever Dennis Potter interview but I don’t see this being his gig exactly. Jerry Springer? Current Mood: embarrassed (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 4th, 2008
11:24 pm	Men who shout at radios Like the mad blokes in the Private Eye cartoon, I've been doing it as well... again. Answering back when it's just a one-way conversation, but anyway, here are some thoughts for the day that I couldn't be bothered to work up into a posting. Undeveloped, if you will. 1. If they don't destroy the world with their blasted experiment first, I predict that the 'Big Bang' researchers are going to discover that their arch nemesis, Fred Hoyle, was dead right all along. There is no Higs Boson for them to find. The universe is in a steady state. 2. I suspect the Russians will come to regret the rumpus they have started in Georgia... What happens, I wondered, if North Ossetia decides it wants to secede from the Russian Federation in order to unite with newly independent South Ossetia? Do the Russians bomb them both? If they don't, what will they do if Chechnya decides it wants another go at being independent itself? After all, what's good for the goose... (5 Comments |Comment on this)