Xenoverse

At last...

2009-10-20T18:01:00.000-07:00

An answer to long-posed question.

Kerrraaaannnngg!!!

2009-06-29T19:42:00.000-07:00

Oh, post something, for goo'ness sakes. I am so sick of looking at that same bloody thing, over and over, day in day out.Something.Anything.Anyone who can watch this and not love it is dead to me.

Thirty Years Ago Today...

2008-08-13T23:06:00.000-07:00

Thirty years ago; this awkward, scruffy, hippy-haired, rotten-mouthed, teen-fugged lump, still fifteen, began his first day of work.Thirty damned years: long enough to break a year-long silence.Feeling old today. But not too old, not yet. Back then, on that day and in that place, there were men who'd worked forty years and more, every day of which spent in that same grim shipyard.Well: I escaped

À la Recherche des Disques Perdus

2007-06-30T13:19:00.000-07:00

I am a man of many, many petty and annoying neuroses, deprecated as the term may be. As with all such, the tiniest infraction causes unseemly distress; always real, and always way out-of-proportion to the [very] particular complaint. My kids have long known, for example, that the easiest way to Off The Old Man Without Being Caught would be to arrange for something sticky to fall onto his fingers

Nae Photies

2007-06-27T23:18:00.000-07:00

Sorry, but all my blog photos are down. I keep them at home, and am tinkering with the server. Normal, crappy service should be restored shortly...Meanwhile I'm coming to grips with a new job, new hardware, a pile of strange code, and a hundred new interfaces - new to me at least. Never had to drive PCI devices before, let alone exotic novelties such as PCI Express or serial RapidIO or RaceWay

Seven Things

2007-06-23T11:37:00.001-07:00

Tagged by DarkoV and, truth be told, nothing better to write about - this was going to be another post-free weekend - try to write seven random things about Me-Me-Meeeeee! that you probably don't know. The problem I have with this kind of thing, as you surely must know by now, is a characteristic pre-onset Alzheimer memory. I may remember tales from the old days, or whenever, but I won't recall

Always Get Fooled Again...

2007-06-11T08:14:00.000-07:00

No matter what the song may advise, I'll always get fooled again - even when I see it coming.I think I realized, maybe one or two seconds before my wife did, that "Nooo! THAT WAS IT! - that was the end!", but not quickly enough to stop her pinging other channels fore and aft to make sure it wasn't the feching Cable. And then, fit of utter disgust, she cut straight to The Tudors on Showtime,

What's today?

2007-06-06T11:54:00.000-07:00

Can't let the day pass without at least a mention of the likes of Lovat, or Todd, or Durning, with whose names we may feel some familiarity, and of the many thousands more who planted their boots in the sand that day and walked them, fighting every step, across beaches, through bocage and bulging forests, and over the rivers to Berlin and beyond.

Basilisk Stare

2007-06-05T00:38:00.000-07:00

Finally.Missed the whole thing last year - shut in one room or another all day every day, banging and tearing and pounding at work - missed it all but thirty minutes there and fifty minutes back, burned to a seat and a steering wheel, broiling in a cockpit, those one or two days in ten I had to be there at that place, bodily. Missed a whole SoCal summer; lost now to history, never to be had back.

Not Only A Stiff Upper Lip

2007-05-31T16:17:00.000-07:00

Youngest daughter - she who is still cute, and our Last Great Hope for the Future - she's always complaining that there ought to be more british comedies on US television. And I'm always complaining that BBC America (and its DVD division) has singularly failed to deliver us any Harry Enfield, or Fast Show, in all these past nine years. although it has to be said that Enfield has been appearing on

Spare him his life from his pork sau-sa-geees

2007-05-22T07:18:00.000-07:00

Families can be cruel.So this is, what, season six of The Sopranos? Seven? There's been a lot of them, anyhow, over just as many years.So I'm in the kitchen Sunday night, making Belovèd some hot chocolate, singing along to the theme song. And I finally asked, after all those years, "What the hell is a 'Boom Boom' anyway?" And why would you get one in your eye?LENNY:My eye! I'm not s'pposed to get

Those days are past, now...

2007-05-18T09:32:00.000-07:00

... and autumn leeeee-aves, lie thick and stiiiill!And sadly Past, too, are those days when this author could understand more than ten percent of this!I'm so feching oot of it, noo, it isnae real.Still: Brammer!, as they used to say. [Tip o' the bunnet tae Shuggy, keeping the old flames alive]UPDATE: second listening, I'm up to upto ninety percent. Phew: Matter of getting the rythms back. But

Hoskins Disease

2007-05-18T08:02:00.001-07:00

Lots of speculation about how The Sopranos might end: in a bloodbath; with a whimper; in a simpering bloodbath, maybe, where Tony breaks down in tears and a disgusted Carmela cracks his skull with that heavy-metal esspresso maker Paulie gave them; a Scorcese ending, Goodfellas or Casino or Depahted - your choice of homage.Of my own two favorite endings to gangster movies, I'd reckon the

What's on this tape, sweetie?

2007-05-09T13:06:00.000-07:00

I have no doubt that I've bored you with this before, but it is a simple fact that error is a primal force in engineering; and as in electronics, so in Life. Error is a product (well, a sum really) of feedback: you plug something in to your magic box, then feed some fraction of its resultant output back to the input and subtract one from the other. This difference - input minus fedback output -

Angry Goldfish

2007-05-04T21:47:00.000-07:00

Bloody hell! Looking over the past few posts - well, somebody has to now and then, so the bits don't rot - looking over the past few posts it appears to all the world that I'm stuck in some kind of Apple-bashing rut, like some fat-arsed snidewit with his belly FUPA'ed out his shirt and a finger corking his nostril clockwise? Where in the three-colored Heck did all that come from? It might well be

What's the Time?

2007-04-18T03:41:00.000-07:00

Time is passing strange. Sometimes it whizzes and wheechs faster than you can hold on to; elsetimes it crawls and plods, slower than you can stand. Other times again - like now - it whirls fast and slow at once. It seems a moment ago that I last wrote here; but that same spell an age of waiting and anticipating a fall out of work that seems no closer yet. Rumor has it we'll survive the coming

She just looks too dead...

2007-03-26T03:14:00.001-07:00

I like to think of myself as being the easygoing type of moralist, who limits his scolding to occasional shouting at or - more effective - brooding disappointment with, his children, for whom I own responsibility to at least try to propel them properwards. More reactive than proactive, if I'm honest - but that's where Mater Familias comes to the fore; and rather like Jack and Mrs Spratt, between

Blogger Ate Your Comments

2007-03-23T13:56:00.000-07:00

Wha???Not as though I get a lot of comments - sob, sniff - but still, that's no reason for Blogger to disable them arbitrarily. It turned them off on its own, but I think I've re-enabled them.So now, make a pot of tea, sit back with a smoke......Tum-tim-tiddle-aye-poh...Do something meantime, via Searchie: You scored as Scientific Atheist. These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself,

Credit Where Due...

2007-03-22T22:50:00.000-07:00

REDIT WHERE IT IS DUE: I have my PC back to life, and my drive, without loss, all thanks to the Windows XP "System Restore" tool, which actually worked as advertised. Who'd have thought?It was hairy for a while, I admit. This machine, its pretty much a games machine nowadays - I don't really work from it any more - and reinstalling games, though tedious, would have been nothing more than

Coming of Age

2007-03-22T01:38:00.000-07:00

Was in the middle of writing another boring post about my putrid PC, when I suddenly realized my boy would have been twenty-one today. Should have attained his majority, be taking his old man out for a drink about now.He was a fighter, in his way, just by being. Lived three years; but three years longer than anyone said he would. The first six months were toughest, perhaps: in the beginning every

Why we have a Second Amendment

2007-03-21T00:33:00.000-07:00

Like it wasn't bad enough that I was paying $3.31 for every scabby gallon of gas tonight; but the only place in reach, before the fumes I'd been running on exhausted, was a feching Shell station.Now: I don't know about your neck of the woods, but way out here, where nary a second may be suffered to pass without a pitch, all the Shell pumps have been fitted with TV's; and from the instant you pull

Night at the Flicks

2007-03-20T00:30:00.000-07:00

UESDAY NIGHT is school night; or class night, since I'm only taking one. We've moved onto Baroque now, having rattled through proto-Renaissance; early Renaissance; 15th Century Northern European; High Renaissance; Mannerism, and Reformation / Counter-Reformation, which sounds like one of those intellectual chitterings they used to run on BBC2 of a Sunday evening, which always seemed to feature

Dreaming in Code

2007-03-17T23:42:00.000-07:00

Jumping Jehosephat - someone's written a book about it. You have no idea how disturbing it is to dream in code: a particularly stressful repetitive experience. Always, in my case at least, running through the coded statements of some pointless infinite loop, asking "what the heck is this doing?", unable to prevent its continued iteration. Language will vary depending on what you are working on -

Wormturn

2007-03-17T14:20:00.000-07:00

AITING FOR THE AXE to fall. You work in a place for a while, things never quite pick up across the years, you just kind of know. Your e-mail tells you of boardroom coups thousands of miles away, your CEO leaves to spend more time with his portfolio, you know the experiment is over, that the black conglomerate heart is reasserting itself. Do you put your name out now, to beat the rush? Or do you

Oh dear...

2007-03-02T17:00:00.000-08:00

There are few things sadder in life than old socialists or young conservatives.

I'll never ever learn

2007-02-23T14:58:00.000-08:00

Never seen Wiktionary before. I should look things up before I type anything anywhere. Lord knows I've told myself this often enough, but of course I never will. The older I get, the more I realize just how full of crap my schoolteachers were. Another childhood certainty vanquished this afternoon. And precisely one moment too late.We were always taught that there were never Kings of Scotland,

Strut, Stride, Sing

2007-02-07T10:51:00.000-08:00

There's this record, right - don't know what it is called, don't know the name of the band - but its been playing on KROQ for a couple months, which makes it new by their standards (they don't play many new records on "The World Famous KROQtm", but when they do, they play them to death forever.)Anyway: the song. That song. Don't know what it is called, don't know the name of the band. Were it up

"I know it was you..."

2007-02-02T09:07:00.000-08:00

That one little "this Pres"..."I know it was you, Fredo."What an apt metaphor for The Deciderer - poor Fredo Corleone, bewilderingly out of his depth.[HT: Sullivan]

Belated Thanks...

2006-11-13T18:00:00.000-08:00

Belated thanks indeed to the people of the Great State of California for throwing out Prop 86. last week while I was away: it was a close call though, as the trail of e-mail titles from my belovèd testified ("Noooooooo!", "Wait, Wait...", then "Yeeeeesssssss!!!"). And many, many thanks to the people of these United States for throwing the bastards out. Not that the new lot are likely to prove any

Irishman Walks Into A Bar...

2006-11-04T22:14:00.000-08:00

In little Britain the idiot in any joke is sure, to be sure, to be Irish: put in barrels, asked to pee in the corner; choosing death by Mau-Mau - that would be Paddy, or Seamus.At school - Catholic school - we were taught that the origin of Irish jokes lay in the envy of Dark Agèd englishmen towards scholastic Irish monks, with their readin' and their writin' and their preachin' and their girlie

Activists Jailed

2006-10-07T14:55:00.000-07:00

Norm Geras, as he often does, points us towards the hidden and the disappeared: three jailed democracy activists in Burma - Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi and Ko Htay Kywe:All three activists are leaders of the '88 Generation Students Group,' and are in need of regular medical attention as they have each already spent 15 years in the State Peace and Development Council’s (SPDC's) notorious prisons.Such

Five Stages of Receiving Bad News

2006-10-04T13:06:00.000-07:00

I awoke this morning to a rather shocking epiphany, prompted by the knowledge that Former Recruittm gets his discharge today, and will be making his way back to the family nest. I was struck, suddenly, with the realisation that I had, like a monkey, speared myself with every one of the Five Stages of Grief over his premature departure - in order, too. Surprised me so because I never did that

Picture of the Day

2006-10-02T00:20:00.000-07:00

It is a measure, I suppose, of how far things have sunk that I visit Daily Kos most days. I said, long time ago, that W could never be forgiven for making the likes of dKos or Atrios appear they were right all along. So I can't say I agree much with the Kossacks political outlook, or strategery, or whatnots, but that's not the point. The fact is, I just can't bear to read any of the mealy-mouthed

What have they gone and done?

2006-09-27T16:28:00.000-07:00

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, torturin' beastie,O, what a panic's in thy breastie!Thou need na start awa sae hasty,Wi' bickering brattle!I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,Wi' murd'ring pattle!This is the saddest day.Hard to believe, isn't it: a President so scaredy, so self-consumed, and a Congress so craven as to vote torture into law? Or rather, to vote torture beyond the law.What have you done to

2006-09-15T01:10:00.000-07:00

Dreadful, dreadful week. What to say? Only that it was not to be, leave it at that - spoken in best pub bore / John Major / Arthur Pewtey voice, try to make light of it. "It was not to be." I've put the [recruit] posts back: I took them down because I didn't want to have to explain; but have since realized, they do. I do not need to write more. I may often mock and bewail my brood in these pages

Bitter Pills, Swallowing of

2006-09-11T12:03:00.000-07:00

No. I don't want to talk about it.

Twofer

2006-09-05T18:00:00.000-07:00

Oh Frabjous day it should have been last Thursday: two boys up and left us all at once. Our diminutive eldest to an apartment fairly close by; and his gargantuan brother, our second, shipped-out to USMC Boot Camp. Should have been, but wasn't. He'd shipped out early, see, a week before he was supposed to - and that week made all the difference to my belovèd. She was ready, she claims, all set-up

And Then One Day...

2006-06-21T14:29:00.000-07:00

... they're all growed up.Such curious coin that fills a parent's pocket, no? Such infinite variety of conflicting faces, of opposites, of paradox, of pro and con? Sat here today, brooding; idly flipping and tossing a shiny new shilling - a King's Shilling - with a head of puff-chested Pride, and a bitter tail of Dread and Trepidation.Week out of high school and he's joined the Marines.We knew it

Who Dares Wake This Slumbering Beast?

2006-06-15T08:31:00.000-07:00

UMMONED BACK TO LIFE, like the Cold Genius in Purcell's King Arthur, only to complain to the sorceror Darko:What power art thou, who from belowHast made me rise unwillingly and slowFrom beds of everlasting snow?See'st thou not how stiff and wondrous old,Far unfit to bear the bitter cold,I can scarcely move or draw my breath?Let me, let me freeze again to death.I am subsumed by My Own Private

Intergalactic Virus

2006-03-08T11:30:00.000-08:00

Long, long time ago, in one of the funnier moments in an otherwise drudge-laden twelve years working for a Defence company, a colleague of mine stood up from his Mac - they were new and still novel, those days - and ran around the office waving his arms, wailing "I've got a virus! I've got a virus! Everybody stop - I've got a virus!" Screaming through one manager's office after another (those

Phew

2006-02-27T09:42:00.000-08:00

You Passed 8th Grade MathCongratulations, you got 10/10 correct!Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?Could have been very embarassing.

Hentahtayn Me!

2006-02-23T21:46:00.000-08:00

In case you're missing all the action, best Achewood story for ages has been running the past couple of weeks; ever since Ray's mom came to visit way back in January: The Great Outdoor Fight. It's gotten so's I can't wait till midnight these days, to read the next installment.Oh - and does anyone know what a Frappr is?

Reality Bound

2006-02-06T11:27:00.000-08:00

Amongst the many interesting discoveries we made this weekend during our too, too brief vacation to Philadelphia, perhaps my favorite is that the automatic sliding doors that bookend the corridors of Amtrak trains do not re-open themselves should you find yourself caught in the gap when they decide it is time to close. This is not some elevator: this is a train, by God. Instead, though you be

Perverse Observations...

2006-02-03T12:49:00.000-08:00

Here is a simple truth, spoken without comment: at the age of forty-three I have now been carded more times while attempting to buy cigarettes than ever I was at the age of fifteen, while attempting [and succeeding] to get rat-arsed in bars.

Shamed!

2006-02-02T13:06:00.000-08:00

Shamed to respond, finally, two months into a new year, with a jingling "Tap-Tap" from Madame-X. Is this thing on?Not hardly: I haven't had a day off in months, or a night off for that matter, being thoroughly-embroiled and entangled by panic of Work. Twenty-hour days with an occasional splat of exhaustion: such is the life I chose.Writing tonight from another state, a faraway state, at the end

Relentless

2005-12-10T13:31:00.000-08:00

Cast your minds back, oh long-time readers: any of you remember this, or this?From XENOVERSE, JUNE 08, 2005...Home again, at last. Not bad, all told?To be clear, recall that we had to drive fifty freeway miles this morning to arrive at the Federal Building in Downtown L.A. by 8.15am, just to ask a question of the Immigration Service - or USCIS, as they are now known. I thought the "C" stood for "

Of Course, You Realize...

2005-12-07T13:43:00.000-08:00

It seems, by Gawd, that there's a War on Fitzmas! - a real war, this time, that even we portly chickenhawks with a gammy leg can fight in? Well, sign me up as a Colonel, give me a regiment of the Dark Brigades and we'll give them What For! How selfish, how self-absorbed, indeed, that with all the scandals there are for us to celebrate at this time, we should have this Rovian Fitzmas stuffed down

A Rose By Any Other Name

2005-12-07T08:26:00.000-08:00

This is so meeeeee that it isn't even funny. Nah: 'course it is.

Killing the Mystery

2005-12-06T18:20:00.000-08:00

Must have been five, six years ago - it was the first time we'd gone to the opera together, Downtown LA - think it was Nozze di Figaro, no matter; we made a night of it, anyway, took a room at the aged Biltmore, hoped for a nice dinner afterwards. Came out around 11.30, decided to walk back to the hotel, look for somewhere nice to eat: gotta be somewhere, right? This was Downtown Los Angeles,

End of the Beginning

2005-11-27T13:40:00.000-08:00

It is with no small amount of dread that I make the announcement today that my wonderful wife and I are officially parents to five teenagers. There'll be no further "pre-teen" hedging necessary: it's all-out war. Our youngest, our cutest, our nicest, too - the last upon whose shoulders any remaining hopes were pinned - she is now Thirteen. It's all downhill from here.Happy birthday Cheech - not

Heckuva Job

2005-11-25T14:40:00.000-08:00

From CNN, via the estimable Josh Marshal, NewDonkey, and myriad others:BROWN TO START EMERGENCY PLANNING CONSULTANCY BUSINESS Thursday, November 24, 2005; Posted: 9:01 p.m. EST (02:01 GMT)DENVER, Colorado (AP) -- Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, heavily criticized for his agency's slow response to Hurricane Katrina, is starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm to help clients avoid the

Stuffed

2005-11-24T22:27:00.000-08:00

Where you been? What you at?Busy. Even today - up wi'the craws, runnin' aroond like a blue-ersed flea, digging through boxes, piles of boxes, digging for kitchenwares - pots, pans, utensils, knives, cutlery holders - all the stuff and crap we've had boxed since the summer, waiting for that damned kitchen to be rebuilt. "Tidy" has never been our family's middle name, but this summer we have

Stoking the Fire...

2005-11-22T23:38:00.000-08:00

Ordinarily any headline run in UK tabloid The Mirror - or for that matter The Sun or The Star or in numerous other rags - any headline that runs in The Mirror would be taken with a huge dose of salt. A typical 'Mirror headline might go BIG BABS' BOOBS EXPLODE!!!!! accompanied with a picture of Barbara Bush, or more likely still, Barbara Windsor.So, you read EXCLUSIVE: BUSH PLOT TO BOMB HIS ARAB

Mange Tout!

2005-11-21T17:58:00.000-08:00

Tonight I cooked dinner.I'll let that sink in.

Fit to burst

2005-11-17T11:43:00.000-08:00

I am still here, course I am: but I'm keeping my head down and my fat gob shut. Too busy to blog, as I've said, but also too angry these days: so many things in the news, my blood is just boiling. I don't write well about political issues, nor yet thoughtfully nor even coherently; and since I can't think straight enough to write of anything else at the moment, I choose to refrain from writing

Internet Down

2005-11-10T09:57:00.000-08:00

" ... ... Septic calling... ... Septic calling... Don't... think... I'm going to make it... ... Say goodbye ... ...aphne for me? ..."The internet is down; the internet is down: the internets are up, but mine is down. First I was dispossessed of my e-mail accounts - taken away in error by my DSL provider, who told my

Star-Spangled Internationale

2005-11-08T21:27:00.000-08:00

T'S ELECTION DAY AGAIN, here in California - special election day, no less - on a ballot of eight initiatives. Not for office. This special election was cooked-up by Governor Schwarzenegger who, being merely Governor, has been unable to implement his various schemes using, you know, the tools of Governorship. He needs more power - sorry, Mo Po-wah - because he isn't just The Governor, he's The

Let Every E'en Be Hallow

2005-11-05T15:23:00.000-08:00

LESS ME, FATHER, for I have sinned. It has been fifteen days since my last confession. Clearly too long, for the Lord has seen fit to visit His terrible wit upon me:I woke up this morning Ah say ah woo-ke up thismaw-awnin, yeahWoke UP this morningAh had Senator Tre-yent Lott, Mississippi, S-s-s-Stuck! Stuck awn ma heeeeee-ad. Woke up this

New Crutch

2005-10-20T00:04:00.000-07:00

As regular readers will know - and let's be honest, all ten of you are pretty regular - I have most unexpectedly, and most uncharacteristically, become a fan of baseball over the past couple of years. Sometimes I've even been known to bore you with photos snapped from my occasional seat in the fifth row behind first base at Dodger Stadium. And when I say my seat I of course mean My Wife's Boss'

Fitzmas Comes Early

2005-10-18T20:10:00.000-07:00

EW WORD FOR TODAY: pajamajadeen - although I think it would be better writ pajamahadeen? It's probably old hat to you lot, you cosmopolitan devils, but I've been busy and keeping my nose clean of distracting blogs lately. Not that I ever read Kos anyway, just arrived there via Memeorandum tonight and thought I'd get into the spirit.Although I do love it when the old "Give 'em enough rope" addage

Spreading like wildfire!

2005-10-11T05:10:00.000-07:00

Sorry folks - me too. Unless it turns out to be a royal pain? I'm half-inclined not to bother, but then, the Terrorists would have won, wouldn't they?Bloody spammers.

A Capilary Hint of Red

2005-10-07T01:50:00.000-07:00

DO ENJOY the writings of Mr Outer Life, but I'm still too scared to read him every day. I've probably written before that he has the uncanny knack of writing about things I happen to be thinking about or experiencing in my own wee life at the time; but writing far more eloquently than I ever could. It's that synchronicity which gives me the willies. He wrote a wonderful post, oh, two-three

Digging In The Dirt

2005-10-05T20:09:00.000-07:00

Tagged with a meme Questionnaire by Cowtown Pattie that I'm reluctant to complete on account of it requiring me to dig purposefully into my memory. I'm not very good at that; and before you all wail about how this site is nothing but the regurgitated memories of a pompous old fart falling into "anecdotage", to borrow a word from the Great Burgess, let me explain that those are all unbidden

Don't Trespass On Me

2005-10-03T16:18:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, it appears the Xenoverse has been discovered by Comment spammers. Somewhat fortuitously, perhaps, it also happens that last week I finally took possession of a small-caliber rifle - I bid for it in a charity auction and won! - completing one more step in the Grand March towards becoming a real american. Imagine: forty-three years old and never held a rifle . Not even a small one

Dusty Trails

2005-09-30T00:23:00.000-07:00

E'RE SUPPOSED TO BE DRIVING to Vegas today, sometime after I've endured some more physical therapy. Very Eddie Izzard, this doctor: Now I'm gonna crack your back! Four places. Little apprehensive about leaving now that the wind has reversed direction: but we figure it's already burnt most of the stuff on this side of the Simi Hills, so it's unlikely to jump over the freeway then burn

Loge's Dance

2005-09-28T16:14:00.000-07:00

4pm: Sat out back at work the other day, having a smoke, in the midst of a thunderstorm. Guy asks: "I'm not from around here. Is this rain normal?" Heck No!, says me, You kidding? September round here it's s'pposed to be real hot, like 80 degrees, but blowing a gale that sooks the moisture out your skin and propels the flames. This is fire season.Sure enough, not two days later, on my goddamned

The End of the World...

2005-09-22T23:20:00.000-07:00

HE END OF THE WORLD, when it comes, will be beautiful. It will be timed - delayed by a couple of hours, even - to coincide with sundown over the western seaboard, where the sun writes "Goodnight" in shadows wreathing Ronald Reagan's tomb.Tonight I watched a rocket streak across the ocean skies: carrying a secret satellite to space, for once, where usually a dummy warhead catapults towards the

Italian Opera

2005-09-21T12:57:00.000-07:00

Madame Butterfly, that most loathsome piece, rendered with great delicacy here, at No-sword, via the excellent discovery of Odious and Peculiar by way of Natalie Solent.Something here for Cowtown Pattie, too - or should I say "Red Ethel Flint"?

Sky Is Falling In.

2005-09-20T11:38:00.000-07:00

AYING IN BED, reading, around 1am, and the dogs start barking: old Maier out in the yard with his old-dawg bark, young Colonel Roughskins down in the kitchen with his high-pitched yelp; and dogs in yards around the neighborhood blabbering and shouting. Coyotes, thinks me, for they had been out in force earlier in the evening, under a crystal-clear sky with just one puff of cloud strategically sat

Gimme a T, for Trouble

2005-09-14T11:09:00.000-07:00

Ever the follower, today I'm propelled by vortices into the slipstream trailing behind Whiskey Prajer and DarkoV, both of whom confess to guilty-secret T-shirts they're way too old, or too embarassed, to wear in front of their families, let alone a gawping public.The impression I receive of both gentlemen from their writings is that they are, most likely, far better dressed than I in the everyday

Those Who Can...

2005-09-13T08:18:00.000-07:00

Speaking of Hitch, he has at last managed to contrive a public debate with the odious George Galloway, a fat frump who has always ran away from Hitchens in the past. I wonder what excuse he'll pull tomorrow?Galloway, you may recall, came to prominence here in the US earlier this year when he harangued some wilting Senators at one of their investigating committees or other. Sort of left them

Dude of Gravity

2005-09-08T09:48:00.000-07:00

Dang, but I need to change my name: mine is indeed a bloatee, one that hides a multitude of chins.Anyway: I began to write a post the other day but I quickly ran out of steam, so it quietly simpered away while I did something more useful, or at least renumerative. It began: Far be it for me to disagree with Hitchens - a writer I very much enjoy, and who I often find

Fading Abilities

2005-09-04T23:33:00.000-07:00

Is this satire? The older I get, it seems, the harder it is to tell:"It took almost no time for President Bush to put his stamp on the national response to the tragedy that has befallen New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, a reminder that modern communications have reshaped the constitutional division of powers in our government in ways that the Founding Fathers never could have imagined.Because the

Too Horrible for Words

2005-09-01T22:57:00.000-07:00

I last wrote Saturday night after a day on the beach, totally oblivious to Katrina and the looming catastrophe in New Orleans. Wasn't until Sunday night that I saw - or read, I suppose - the news. Typical Californian, huh?My favorite US city. Took us six years, but we finally honeymooned there last June: I had visited before, and long promised my wife that one day I'd take her. Place had soul,

Wilkommen to ze Beach!

2005-08-28T01:07:00.000-07:00

UP AT 6.30am TODAY so that we could spend the whole day at the beach. Not by choice, mind: but work. Not even my own. Today was the annual company picnic, and since 'tis my Goddess who plans these picnics for her small insurance broker company - and their matching Xmas parties too - it was a day spent on final preparations and running Point. It does not matter that the actual events are executed

Let Down Your Hair

2005-08-24T11:53:00.000-07:00

RAMBLING TALE TONIGHT, inconsequential chit-chat spun, gold into straw, and drawn over several half-arsed sessions never quite completed. Rather like the subject matter. Like some old and fat Rapunzel I sit at my wheel spinning and dreaming for a thousand and one nights, never quite able to finish anything. If only I knew his true name?...HooseIt'll be another month before the kitchen cabinets

Blinded By New Light

2005-08-09T10:21:00.000-07:00

SCENE: 5am SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, a quiet suburban household: [bang]...BEARDED, FC: urugh...[B A N G ! ! ! !]Uurruuurruuuugh!So the Shuttle landed. Wasn't an earthquake. Well done.An earthquake right now would not be welcome in this household, where four rooms of furniture and seven years family detritus are boxed and stacked in one as we wait the arrival of the kitchen fitter today and the tile

A Wee Wave

2005-08-02T11:45:00.000-07:00

I KNOW I'M ALWAYS COMPLAINING how busy I am, and I know that's considered very bad form on a blog, but dammit, it's the truth. Fact is, lately, I've been too busy with other things even to write an "I'm too busy" complaint. I'm transitioning between jobs - moving internally from one division to another - and having to balance wrapping-up one set of work with reading-up on some completely

Shameless

2005-07-18T09:16:00.000-07:00

Too Old To Rock 'N' Roll...

2005-07-14T09:43:00.000-07:00

'VE REACHED AN AGE - a settled state of being rather - where my natural inclination, on those rare occasions I find myself situated in a record store, is to head for the "Classical" section or perhaps the "Bluegrass" section, or more likely the "Lost Youth" section wherein are contained the LP's of my once-humungous record collection, presented for renewed consumption in convenient Compact Disc

Out with the old, back with the new

2005-07-08T13:08:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid I have to disagree with Andrew Sullivan's take that the BBC has today reverted to "The Old Ways" because it is blaming yesterday's atrocity on the re-election of Tony Blair.I'd say that was exactly wrong.The BBC did indeed revert to the "Old Ways", but that was yesterday, Bomb Day, and only briefly, when it once again called terrorists Terrorists. Those are the "Old Ways" we miss -

Been There, Done That...

2005-07-08T10:50:00.000-07:00

Your Friday Meme comes today via the excellent Cowtown Pattie...bold the states you've been to, underline the states you've lived in and italicize the state you're in now...Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts /

Choose Any Channel You Like...

2005-07-08T09:06:00.000-07:00

Wonderful nostalgia on Boing-Boing featuring this marvellous old-fashioned radio from the Soviet era...ClickskyI have taken the liberty - exploiting in highly-capitalist style the slave labors of the lumpen proletarian Gimp - of magnifying the dial, if only to bring-back mass memories of old.By sheer force of competetive will I shall be first against the wall, I shall!

Begin at the beginning...

2005-07-08T08:07:00.000-07:00

Thanks be to the Chief Blogging Officer for reminding us of the gift of Dylan Thomas, whose poetry I find mesmerising. Being in no part equipped for literary criticism I cannot tell you how or why his painted words beguile me so. Perhaps it is because they are so abstract, so strange at face, but still somehow I read them and, as if by some warm magic ancient as the trees, a meaning emerges where

Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense

2005-07-07T11:49:00.000-07:00

Terrorist attacks are nothing new to Britain - and surely not to London, where the IRA used to reckon one bomb was worth a dozen or more in Belfast. But neither that, nor my countrymen's ability to absorb the damages of evil men should ever be mistaken for complacency. Quiet and reserved we may be, but we are not complacent. Our governments do not treat with terrorists; and any one that did, or

Afterwards...

2005-07-05T07:30:00.000-07:00

Well, that was surely the noisiest Fourth around here that I've ever heard. From about an hour before sundown, the streets around the old outlaws' place erupted in the noise of other peoples' fireworks. Later there were rockets - hundreds of them - but for the first hour or so none it visible; just the noise. Very funny though - rather like crickets, all would go silent moments before we'd notice

Though Rockets Daren't Fly

2005-07-02T01:03:00.000-07:00

LTHOUGH IT IS NOT QUITE my favorite holiday, July 4th - Independence Day - comes a very close second. I love it. I would say that I adore it but that would be unmanly, and lord knows I don't need to invite any further emasculation than already slices my way throughout that day. Although it is not quite July 4th at all today, I am nevertheless posting in anticipation because we've a busy weekend

Grim Weeper

2005-06-28T12:48:00.000-07:00

URE, IT SOUNDS LIKE The Life: laying prone on the couch barely moving for a week, having the whole household running circles to satisfy every gnarled and gnashéd whimsy; steady cornucopious supplies of cleansed cherries and dark grape juice - how decadently Roman, how fittingly hedonist for this, the End of Civilization?These are indeed End Times. I'm not that old, dammit - really I'm not: I'm

Protect Homes, Not Flags

2005-06-23T09:37:00.000-07:00

My apologies. It is probably a very bad idea to even consider posting to one's blog while still in the lingering throes of an unexpected and novel reaction to some newly-prescribed medication. No, not mental, you idiot. Anti-inflammatory, of all bloody things. I therefore apologise in advance. Regular blogging, if there ever was such a thing, shall resume... sometime. I am still alive, though I

Watch You Don't Fall In

2005-06-20T09:26:00.000-07:00

Anyone who ever played fitba' as a kid will instantly recognize the scene below. Some things are timeless, and universal.Clicky the photie! [HatTip to Norm]I find myself this Monday morning still unable to walk or stand, but able to sit, or lie, in reasonable comfort. Let us not speak of the weekend past.While answering comments to the post below I suddenly saw myself turning into a Pub Bore. Is

Jinx

2005-06-17T09:48:00.000-07:00

"Get your own wheelchair, crutch-boy!"- Funny aside in an otherwise dreadful movie.Won't be able to sit here very long today. One of my arthritic ankles - busted knees, ankles, and spine being all I have left from my rugby-playing days - one of my ankles ballooned last night to the extent that I have no arch in my foot. It is impossible to stand, let alone walk, today without the assistance of

Tipping Point

2005-06-16T14:12:00.000-07:00

Beloved wife, who works one ramp down the 101 freeway away from me, just called to check that I hadn't tipped over or fallen off my walking stick or anything during the earthquake?There was a quake? Apparently so. (We're located roughly at Northridge, by this map)Never felt a thing.[p.s. Yuk Yuk!]

Too Long Gone...

2005-06-16T10:05:00.000-07:00

Judging by my miserable score in answering this British immigrant's test, it would appear that the Auld Country would no longer take me back, even if I wanted to return.I scored a pawky eight out of twenty-four, barely qualifying for a seat in a town council. Now I am truly an exile - a stateless transient denied by one, not yet accepted by the other. Sniff!Working from work today, and not from

Petards, the Hoisting of

2005-06-13T12:38:00.000-07:00

There's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows, Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd,They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way,And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;For 'tis the sport to have the engineerHoist with his own petard: and 't shall go hardBut I will delve one yard below their mines,And blow them at the moon.My great-grandfather on my mother's side was in fact that very

Administrative Notes

2005-06-13T10:42:00.000-07:00

Trying something new, which I may or may not keep. I never complain about Blogger, which is after all a totally free service, and you get what you pay for. I have never had any trouble with it. But sometimes I wish I could split my longer posts into two parts - an introduction and a "Read more..." follow-up.Blogger provides a trick to do this, but it is not very discriminating. The "Read more..."

Celebrate This Day The Silvery Tay

2005-06-12T19:57:00.000-07:00

Praise to The Scotsman, paper of note,For reminding me while eating my oatsThat this twelfth day of June, a Sabbath to boot,A full month before the fair grouse we may shoot,That this twelfth day of June we must set us a toast,To remember McGonagall, oor finest of poets.Today we celebrate the man who is officially recognized as the worst poet in the english language: the wonderful, magnificent

The Luck of the Lerchenaus

2005-06-12T11:37:00.000-07:00

According to Sir Denis Forman - why is that name so familiar to me? - according to Sir Denis Forman in A Night at the Opera:Rosenkavalier(Der Rosenkavalier)Richard StraussThe one where a field Marshall's wife sends her lover to assist in the wedding of her cousin with the unforseen result that he falls in love with the cousin's bride and she loses him.Even if you do not like opera but still need

Death To Everyone

2005-06-11T12:35:00.000-07:00

New Word of the day: Mockney - the speaking in a Cockney accent that does not belong to you. Orwoight my sahn?Rant of the day:...Then there are stealth evangelists, ones who invite you to watch sport or go out for dinner and before you know it they are fucking praying away in public in a loud and praising way. They are terrible, terrible people. Then there are the "you are wrong" people who will

Fear of Failure

2005-06-11T11:32:00.001-07:00

ONIGHT - Saturday night - I'm going with my ever-considerate wife to watch LA Opera perform Der Rosenkavalier at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion downtown. It's a very different kind of opera, musically speaking, from my other favorites. It is written almost as one long waltz peppered with crashy bits and some breathtaking trios - kind of beauty that could almost make you believe in Heaven, if that

Book Idea?

2005-06-10T10:01:00.000-07:00

Any budding cartoonists out there? Here's an idea for a book, along the lines of the Book of Bunny Suicides, that I'm sure the Pentagon would pay you good money to write? Sheesh - that could even make it a Defense contract - you could ream them for gazillions.Your book would be called 1001 Ways To Pee On Sacred Texts By Accident.Just sayin'.