2014 — 13 August: Wednesday
I've just returned1 from my fourth extended tour of viewing duty in far-off Westeros. Once again, I'm going to need a new hobby. Meanwhile, although I wouldn't put it quite so "Starkly", the hint of autumn in this morning's air suggests that one day, fairly soon, "Winter is coming".
In other news, I learned yesterday that the present Kamp Kommandment of dear Mama's care home is calling it a day, and retiring after 13 years. I bet dM won't even notice.
The urge to "improve"...
... other, younger, people remains strong in the Land of the small-minded Pedagogues. A telling quote from Mr Ice and Fire himself at the Edinburgh Festival:
His books are global bestsellers and adored by his fans, but he admitted there was still a kind of literary prejudice against his type of fantasy fiction. "I've been aware of this since I was a kid and I take heart with
the fact that it is changing.
"When I was 12 or 13, I had teachers take away science fiction books by [Robert A] Heinlein and [Isaac] Asimov and say: 'You're a smart kid, you get good grades. Why are you reading this trash? They rot your mind. You
should be reading Silas Marner.' If I'd been reading Silas Marner, I probably would have stopped reading."
The prejudice against sci-fi and fantasy is still there, but is not what it was. "These things are breaking down. It is an artificial distinction anyway — literary fiction in its present form is a genre itself."
Who, or what, is a "Silas Marner"? :-)
I felt very aggrieved, after finishing with school myself, to learn that some of the Exam Boards were starting to include material such as Wyndham's "Day of the Triffids" as alternatives to earlier, and distinctly soggier, titles in their earlier, and distinctly soggier, "Literature" syllabuses.2 I was stuck with Shaw, Shakespeare, and Dickens in 1967. Although I enjoyed the Shaw and came to adore Dickens, frankly, I would have preferred — and done a lot better3 with — Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein at the time. It was clear to me that the only thing that "mattered" in school (to the school's bean counters, at least) was getting "good" exam results...
Even today, I retain 20 or so Clarkes, a dozen or so Asimovs, and about 40 Heinleins on my somewhat dusty shelves. This isn't my favourite...
... though it contains fascinating letters to his literary agent regarding the long gestation of what became "Stranger in a Strange Land". His masterpiece.
Yesterday's...
... large batch of Win8.1 updates has just been joined by today's Flash Player update. Is that worth some breakfast?
Home from my...
... latest little adventure — a minor-league trek around Soton for a couple of hours in perfect weather for it — it's time to finish supping my cuppa, start thinking about a spot of now very late lunch, and contemplate (among other things) this trio of curiously well-matched titles:
The not so minor-league problem in the basement of "Forbidden Planet" has now been dried out. Maplin proved partially successful: they didn't have the USB 3 SATA disk cradle I've been vaguely meaning to get, but I did find as a consolation prize a dinky little 1TB USB 3 portable drive. And Sports Direct actually had a pair of Reebok trainers in my size (though it remains for me to take them out on a country trek before I can be certain they will assist in my ongoing campaign against blistered feet).
Do you remember...
... this young man? He's now over 80, actually. The (fascinating and skilful) Errol Morris film "The Unknown Known" is slowly but very (very!) surely hanging him out to dry, generally by using...
... his own words, spoken directly to camera, contrasted with interspersed (contradictory) archive footage. Random example, 26 September 2002: "We know they have weapons of mass destruction, we know they have active programmes. There isn't any debate about it." The experience is made considerably weirder by the accompanying "Tim Burton style" music by Danny Elfman. I suspect Rumsfeld's main mistake (besides never learning not to agree to sit in front of the camera) is thinking that other people are as analytical and rational as he clearly (still) believes himself to be.
Thinking more about the film over a reflective cuppa... There's a lengthy Q&A session from March 2014 with Morris after a screening at the ICA — a worthwhile DVD 'extra'. During it, he suggests a new ailment he feels he identified (during the 33 hours of interviews with this vapid "statesman") worthy of inclusion in the next massive edition of the American psychiatrists' bible, the DSM. Namely "Irony Deficit Disorder". Unlike the "Fog of War" examination of Robert McNamara in 2003, one is left with the feeling that Rumsfeld is truly a hollow man.
[Pause]
Baron-Cohen's new book is just as good as his previous one, a decade ago. And the previous one I read by Elliott and Atkinson was "Fantasy Island" about the illusions of the 'legacy' of that unloveable rogue Tony Bliar.