2014 — 24 May: Saturday
What better way1 to spend a few Bank Holiday weekend minutes this morning than with my first revivifying cuppa while browsing carefully (if somewhat blearily-eyed) through the latest Moviemail.com catalogue? I don't always care for their prices, but you cannot easily fault their selections. And no typos! How cool is that?
Having given...
... the inner eye a treat, I'd better do something about the inner man, I suppose. It is, after all, already nearly 11:00 — I almost fell asleep yesterday evening / early this morning over the first two episodes of "West Wing" having been inspired to re-watch them by that "17 People" website. Actually, that particular episode is by no means my favourite, though I concede it contains one of the best of the many fine Donna / Josh conversational exchanges.
The chap who...
... quite beguiled me with his "A Jane Austen Education" a while ago has returned with an excellent essay. Source and snippet:
The one kind of standard that Buell will not permit himself is an aesthetic one. Like many academics now, he'd rather cut his tongue out than admit in public that he thinks a book is good or bad. He fidgets for a page before screwing up the courage to suggest that Stowe's Dred, a sort of thematic sequel to Uncle Tom's Cabin, "seems destined for less success as an act of fictional outreach." A long paragraph ponders why The Marrow of Tradition, by the African American writer Charles Chesnutt, never achieved the popularity of Huckleberry Finn — before the next one tells us that even multiculti critics think it's pretty lousy.
Speaking of...
... lousy literature, I was amused to find some pulp fiction cover artwork via an email I received earlier this morning. Knowing he shared some of my low taste in the genre, I passed one example along to a chum, challenging him to identify the author before I revealed it. (We pensioners know how to live, I assure you.) Not entirely to my surprise, he succeeded, and you can read the rest of the story here.
I was recently...
... told the difference between a cake and a biscuit (if not for VAT-assessment purposes) is that (left to its own devices and a soggy English atmosphere) a cake goes hard and a biscuit goes soft. But I don't know where a cookie falls on that particular behavioural spectrum, so I am therefore now leaving out a newly-uncovered / discovered rock-hard handmade Teonis oatcrunch dipped stem ginger half chocolate-coated cookie in hopes that — rather than it becoming still less penetrable — I will eventually be able to eat it.
Failing that, I suppose I could just lick the chocolate off it, I suppose. (As I just said, we pensioners know how to live, I assure you.)
Having earlier listened to...
... the programme about some of the film music created for "The Wizard of Oz" — a series of stories I somehow missed as a youngster — I suppose I may as well make yet another attempt to watch the damn' thing. So far, I've never actually made it past the sepia section at the start, and the godawful singing. Maybe it's just me? [Pause] I made it as far as the first appearance of the Tin Man this time. That's about 39 minutes in and is quite enough to be going on with.
Over five years? Already?
Has it really been that long since the last time I sat down to enjoy a quick canter through the wit and wisdom of "Weeds"? Great show. Much funnier than the Ozly Wizard, that's for sure.