2012 — 29 January: Sunday
It's a not-very-bright1 new day, though the cuppa and the BBC 6Music music are both helping. A mere 18.4C in the living room implies atmospheric interchange with the outside world, I guess. But I hate shutting windows.
Early to bed and not so early to rise leaves one a bit dopey, but the sleep deficit does now seem to have been cleared. Ever onward.
What is it about Leonard Cohen? (Just listening to "The Darkness".) And what sounds like a cracking new studio album...
And there's me...
... thinking that "bonus" was simply a Latin word meaning "good":
The remarkable thing about the Hester bonus announcement — which had all the unpredictability of Norman Wisdom approaching a banana skin next to a swimming pool — is that it still
retains the power to shock.
Of course, we are reminded that Hester was only brought in after RBS's spectacular collapse, so perhaps he should be given a cookie and a few million quid just for that. And I know we only own
about 80% of his company, so we should probably know our place and pipe down. Nevertheless, to the untrained eye it doesn't feel the cleanest of breaks with the après moi le déluge
spirit of disgraced former boss Sir Fred Goodwin. In fact, it feels a bit, "No, après moi le déluge".
"Obscaenus" and "ignominiosus" are also words that spring to my mind :-)
My ex-PinPoint...
... chum who so kindly sent me that DVD of "Idiocracy" the other day now lives in a 'red' state of the US. He told me a funny story about a recent event:
We went to a Cincinnati Cyclones ice hockey game on my birthday weekend. As is the case at all sporting events here, large to piddling, the US national anthem was played prior to (what I call)
"Puck Off"
It was presented over the P.A. thusly:-
"tonight's National Anthem is being brought to you by Marathon Oil"
I am not making that up. No sir, not at all.
I actually laughed out loud.
Nice one, Steve!
Time to unchill
Mrs Landingham? What say you I fire up a chunk of crockpotted goodness? I'm hungry. And it's somewhat past fully dark out there, too. Brrr. A lively 19.2C here in the PC corner.
Elegant hedgehogs
I've become increasingly disenchanted with modern fiction, but today, in between other bits and bobs, I've been nibbling gently at "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" by Muriel Barbery. It's quite intriguing. And rather Gallic, of course. I note it's recently been filmed, featuring the rather wonderful Josiane Balasko, whom I first saw in "Gazon Maudit".