The Bleurg Archive - November 2002 |
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Saturday 30th November Part 2: Are we alone as aetheistic-liberal-lefty parents at Christymas? How should we handle this wonderful festival in worship of mamon? Do we explain how the pagan year-end festivals were adopted by the new fangled Christian faith and that this in turn has been stolen by the church of mamon? Do we debate the relative merits of each of these three religions (whilst referring to the world's other faiths of course)? Or do we just say "Aaah, but it's for the kids" and start the great spend-fest right now? Yep, that's the way we're going. The DKNZ®™ advent calendar is up and ready for Dee to open the first prezzie tommorow...
Saturday 30th November Part 1: This is spooky, it's an ESP experiment allegedly, it certainly guessed my card right every time.... go on try it. Apologies to those who have already seen it, I know I'm a bit slow sometimes. Apparently it had the entire staff of the Daily Mirror stumped (maybe that's not saying so much?). They're now testing the readership of the good old Grauni, I trust we'll all do better.....I've got it sussed now (and also why you can't beat it!) Very clever.
Friday 29th November: Desmond
Norman. Well,
he was, I guess, what you would call an inventor. Now
we must jump forwards about ten years. Point of this story? There isn't one. It's funny that me chancing to read that obit dragged up those two memories, memories I'd forgotten I still had. Holistics, that's what it is.
Wednesday 27th November: So, Harry Potter 2.... or whatever it's called. Not very good really, is it? The only thing that can be said is that it's better than the first one, which, let's face it wouldn't be hard. But the girls loved it (as did Zee, strangely), and that's what counts after all. Kay was so into it that she kept standing up out of excitement. The scene in which Potter and co were told to put on ear defenders to shield them from a spell saw Kay with her fingers in her ears too. So she clearly loved every minute of it. And there were a lot of them. Minutes, that is, to the film. So,
why didn't I like it? The trailer to "The Two Towers" was excellent, however.
Tuesday 26th November: The
excellent Eddie Izzard is back with a new Video and, at last, a DVD edition
too. Some good stuff from Eddie again, this time taken from a live
show in New York. There's also sub-titled footage of a show he did
in France ( in French, though with much assistance from a good natured
bi-lingual audience). Good to see that he does not pull his punches
with either the American or French audiences.
There is neither an obvious front or back cover, as one is inverted so
that either can be the front.
My
work diary has "interesting" events from history for every day
of the year. It's usually something obscure like the date that Christopher
Columbus found his teeth (behind the sofa wouldn't you know) or the date
that Alexander the Great first visited a supermarket. What
do you mean you don't have any Queen? Pah!
Friday 22nd November: Wo! Oh, and I found my song on the small is bautiful theme. It's here.
Thursday 21st November: Today
a spelling strategy that worked for me. Well, I tried. Dee, meanwhile has come over all Warholesque (unknowingly I believe). Whilst watching the latest manufactured pop junk she announced, "Some time soon everyone will be a pop star, and then who'll buy the records?" Well, exactly. Elsewhere, I have just have to link to this courtesy of Fraser at Blogjam. Fair made my evening I can say.
Wednesday 20th November: part 2 Returning
from the shops in the car with the girls, sets the scene. Then on
the radio,
we get the intro to "Won't Get fooled Again" by the Who.
Up, not surprisingly, goes the volume. Dee screams from the back,
"Dad, please turn it down, I can't hear myself think!"
Oh yes.
Wednesday 20th November: Guru Nanak's birthday today. The founder of the Sikh faith, I believe. And it means that the girls get a day off school. Which means I toke a day off work. So celebrations all around really. This, is, actually one of the things I like about London. It really is multi-cultural with evidence of it all about. From the Turkish and Bengali shops opposite to the myriad languages heard when just taking a bus journey into 'stow. It really is like being in a foreign land sometimes, but I like that aspect. So many of the things that the little Ingerland-send-them-back-flag- waving nutter brigade are always carping on about are things that I absolutely love. This is what England is about. If anything really might ever turn me into a patriot (the last refuge of the scoundrel according to Dr.Johnson, I believe) it would be this wonderful variety.
Tuesday 19th November: Today
I am once again I am reminded of the old adage that small is beautiful
(which should link nicely to one of my songs, except I can't find the
song in question... rats, give me a day or two!). When
I purchased my humble little lap-top a few months ago I was talked out
of the necessity of such a device in favour of Firewire and 4 USB ports.
The Firewire has remained unlit and only two of the USB ports have ever
been used simultaneously (until now). However, within minutes of
returning home with my loverly new knee warmer, I missed the floppy.
I wanted to move a few little files quickly and ended up using a CD writer
(sometimes I have also resorted to FTP'ing up and down from the worldwide
global information tramway just to move graphics files from old to new
PC). "Why not network them?" I hear you scoff. Hah!
The lap-top insists I use a floppy disk to transfer network settings to
the to the older PCs!
Monday 18th November: This actually came to my attention in last week's Grauni and the Beeb also have a picture of one, then today as "nothing much happened" they sort of came back to haunt me.... In
London we have them as Blue Plaques, high on the walls of houses where
famous folk lived, died or played their geetars. In Paris they're
made of marble and presumably far more chic and stylish. But there
is a plaque saboteur at work. A wonderful woman or man is
hard at work manufacturing and installing bogus plaques. "On April 17 1967, nothing happened here." Though
in French, presumable. Anyway, hats off to the plaquey little anarchist! Cheers matey.
Saturday 16th November: The
house smells gorgeous.
Thursday 14th November: The
punk in me (here for the duration I think) appreciates
Liam Lynch and his "United States of Whatever" obviously.
It takes the wonderful stripped down vitality of the
White Stripes to a very 1977 garage sort of sound. Like he just
turned up and played it in one take. Or so I thought. You
see the other day I heard him on the radio saying how he just went in'
plugged in the bass guitar, cranked it up high and went for it in one
take. And if that wasn't enough, there's more bad news for music fans from Westlife. Young Dee was surfing the cable music channels and came across the Irish drossters (for it was they) announcing they'd just signed up a new five album deal. Aaaaaargh! To finish on a high note, the new Coxon-less Blur single sounds pretty cool. Can't find it anywhere other than Xfm, so go there... they're playing it several times a day.
Tuesday 12th November:
A
Geek! Ha, aha-ha-ha, someone (who will remain nameless) has, I think,
sort of, referred to me (in the nicest possible way) as another computer
geek. Now I don't take offence at the Geek thing, it's the computer
thing that is the cornerstone of this piece. Whilst I know way around
the keyboard (as long as the lights are on), and indeed know more than
most of my friends and co-workers (including the so-called IT department,
natch) about computers it's funny to think that I've arrived at this position.
'twas the Christymas of 1979 (or 80?) and me and my long lasting
friend Tee had enrolled on a programming course. "Mark my words
young Tee," I said, "One day there will a computer so small
it can keep your knees warm!" So, I was right on that score
at least. But, be warned, to this day if you type "Pol Seveski" into any search engine, you'll still get forwarded to the Most Wanted List. Oh yes! No, really!
Monday 11th November: Armistice
day today. Barrel
scraping? Yeah!
Friday 8th November: Well,
I was going to try out the new digi-cam for some fireworks pictures.
But, when I got upstairs I remembered that the DKNZ household lived at
the dawn of time.
One
day they'll turn it off. Which will be sad.
Thursday 7th November: My
mission for November is to bring you a picture of the towers over at Canary
Wharf that let's you see why they lighten my journey to work. Today
someone hooted, hence a bit of camera shake.
Tuesday 5th November: And
today's word is crepuscular.
Monday 4th November: Hurrah! I'm back!! Did you miss me? Zee
whisked me off to Bath for a birthday surpise (though as I had to drive
it wasn't a total surpise). Full Travelblog will follow shortly
( yes, I kow I still owe you the Paris one). In the meantime, and
following a recent Planarchy users survey which suggests I'm not paying
nearly enogh atention to my fashion concious readers, I have some hairdressing
hints for the ladies. And guys, fear not, the latest toga fashions will follow very shortly.....
Friday 1st November: So,
a new month. Welcome November, stage left . This
afternoon I took young Kay to her swimming lesson, as is the routine for
Fridays. I use the time to have a swim myself, very invigorating
it is too. I can really swim out the work worries of the week and,
if I'm lucky, come up with an idea for a song or an item for the bleurg.
And today I had a new pair of trunks. This
is a not un-common experience. When I used to still think I was
going to be a rock star and I had an idea for a song, no problem.
I'd just sing it over and over.... after all if I couldn't remember it
what chance for my adoring public? Sure, I used to get funny looks,
but you have to suffer for your art don't you? But ideas for blogs
aren't musical (well not very often). And if you keep repeating
the key sentences over and over again you really do get some funny looks. But
in the pool there is still a problem. Paper notes get soggy and
dictaphones go fizz-bang-sparky-spark-spark (this is speculation, I haven't
tried either yet).
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