samedi 31 mai 2003

Macs and sharing things - a test On the latest turn of the file-sharing debate in OS X inspired by Apple's 4.01 iTunes update, which prevents users from sharing except on a network, MacFixit has released a report that some "users have been experimenting with a full iTunes 4.01 installation, in addition to retaining the older 4.0 release". Some apparently with success. For once, I'm not going to write a long piece full of views on the ethics of file sharing. In short, I prefer largely to abide by copyright restrictions and certainly to loot my bank account for software I like, but the broad debate when it comes to paying for music and the record company "majors" is a complex one, with good arguments on both sides. A new spin has been given to the old clash, of course, with the iTunes Music Store, which I inspected tonight with Marianne. For the time being (though there are ways round this), we "froggies", along with most of the world, can only browse the place. But I was surprised, and she very pleased, at what she found there. Today also saw the release of an upgrade to one "peer to peer" (OK, François, "P2P"!) file-sharing "application" (programme), the Gnutella client Acquisition 0.92 for X (1.6 MB download, $15 if it really grabs you). The better known Limewire (4.2 MB; $9.50 if you're so inclined for a "pro" version) saw a thorough overhaul a couple of weeks ago which promised, among other things: "•Better search results, especially for rare files. •Lower bandwidth use, leaving more bandwidth for faster downloads (...) •Better grouping of search results for better downloads and FEWER CORRUPT FILES!" (I'll fix their typo, not their yelling.) These developments supposedly address the most widespread complaints about a Java "app" whose quirks could block up your machine. When it comes to accessing the KaZaA P2P network (that better?) Marianne raves about to an alarming degree, Mac users finally have "Kazaa for MacOs X (sort of)", Neo (1.9 MB, donation-ware) in its 0.90 beta shape. The May issue of 'Univers Macworld' (no website), in a timely article on peer-to-peer matters, gave its rosette to a very different kind of application Direct Connect (688 KB, in its 1.0 "preview" incarnation). Its developers at 'NeoModus' ask people: "tired of other file-sharing communities such as Napster, Gnutella, and Scour? Tired of Napster Clones in general? Looking for something new? Get ready to change the way you think about peer-to-peer file-sharing. NeoModus Direct Connect offers a complete set of tools to locate any type of media. Unlike other impersonal, server-driven file-sharing networks, Direct Connect offers a community-oriented, open, user-controlled network. Moreover, Direct Connect's network architecture is built on a peer-to-peer foundation; users run, control, and maintain the network. Users are able to share any type of file - absolutely no restrictions." Well, there's only one way to find out. I plan to give the lot a go, and see what works best. 'Univers Macworld' dubs as "indispensable", for anybody really into file-sharing, another donation-ware programme called CarraFix (a French job). It's said to "to fix network congestions, often caused by your servers or some P2P programs, on Mac OS X. CarraFix brings features called 'bandwidth throttling', 'traffic shaping' and 'Quality Of Service' to Mac OS X. These features are efficient ways to improve your connection throughput in both download and upload". There's a caveat, apart from being careful which version you download (3.6 MB for the Jaguar one). It's the kind of gadget where it's a very "good idea" to read the frequently asked questions at the Carrafix site before messing around with it. "Indispensable", though? Hmm. We'll see about that... The pic's got nothing to do with all this. Sometimes I'm asked whatever happened to some software of the good old days and especially whether I've kept any of it. The answer, for friends seeking that kind of thing, is frequently "yes". When I saw this lonely Noël 1996 edition of the predecessor to 'Univers Macworld' going for a song, I snapped it up. It'll be intriguing to liberate it from the plastic and find out just what's on that CD! 12:46:34 AM  link   your views? []

vendredi 30 mai 2003

Unbuckle your Swatch: 'Fanfan' is fun Vincent Perez could almost make me jealous! Such youthful energy, such panache ... all I have in common with the man is that I do nearly all my own stunts. Yup, it was 'Fanfan la Tulipe' (lively and noisy Flash site in French) we saw on Wednesday. It's a swashbuckler in the grand tradition with plenty of swordplay, chases and villainy, clearly thoroughly enjoyed by a largely fine cast. Once you've got used to Penélope Cruz laying on a Spanish accent denser than the royal headware. Set vaguely in the reign of a Louis XV (Didier Bourbon) who needs regular reminders of which battle his army is fighting and why it began in the first place, 'Fanfan' bears a passing resemblance to a 'Barry Lyndon' without the length, the seriousness or the sad decline in our hero's fortunes. Director Gérard Krawcsyk whips the adventure along at a spectacular pace, to a soundtrack which would well befit a Western, apart from a running gag involving a fop of a regimental commander (Guillaume Gallienne) and an unfortunate little band of military musicians. A characteristically French delight in absurdity and anachronistic winks lend little touches to the fun. One aspect of the unmasking of the villain (scarcely a spoiler for such a predictable development) inspires the King to remark that it's about time for a single European currency. Elsewhere, we learn that we're caught up in the Seven Years' War (1756-63) - which means, the army decides, with four years already fought, there's only three more to come. If the film has any weighty points to make at all, it's on the utter indifference of court and general alike to the lot of the ordinary trooper. Louis prefers convenient times to watch the mayhem from a safe distance, with about the decisiveness he brings to choosing his eggs, or not, for supper. Luc Besson, who has his own corner of the Net, is right up there in the writing credits, but I'd suspect that the bulk of an entertaining script which takes considerable historical liberties is largely the work of Jean Cosmos. However, Besson's very name will certainly pull in the public in France, I hope, and even beyond. When I saw that TF1, the most populist pap chain of French TV, partly funded the movie, my heart sank, but they do occasionally put the cash where it should go, rather than dispensing handfuls of loot to would-be millionaire game-show participants. 'Fanfan' - find out for yourselves of the exploit that earned him "la tulipe" if you don't know the story already - is not a great film and has no pretensions. But it's a most diverting big screen adventure, sumptuously costumed and set, with some twists in the plot you may even not guess in advance, and a sprinkling of wit. An easy 6/10 for the fun of it. (The pix are by Olivier Gachen and Etienne George for EuropaCorp Distribution. I didn't pinch Penélope or Vincent because they're all over the place anyway.) 7:06:11 PM  link   your views? []

jeudi 29 mai 2003

To the loyal three and a half I stand charged with being "incomprehensible", "enigmatic" and "bored". Bored I am not. I do miss my work-mates, yes, but have plenty to keep me occupied. "But am I boring?" was my obvious response to that one. "Not yet," came the reply. We'll try to keep it that way... Enigmatic? Ah, I see: "those flowers and things". What secret messages? OK, I own up to that much, but as several poets had their "dark ladies", you know, thus is it here. Finding the right plant for the moment, however, is an intriguing challenge which takes me to unusual places. Today I have two choices, but shall offer my wildcat the oddest: the balsam fir, from Canadian forest tree essences. Indeed, I've already mentioned, en passant, 'New Millennium Flower Essences' and even one view of the "meaning of flowers"! Henceforth, maybe I'll add the cryptic warning more often. I fear I can't cater for three and a half such different people without sometimes being incomprehensible. Sorry. The best I can try is to balance the diet. She who might be interested by Brent Simmons' recent chat with O'Reilly or the great iTunes '4.1 patch' debate, row even, sparked by Cory at bOingbOing ("Apple force-feeds customers shit, calls it sunshine") sometimes has little in common with he who drops in for the factory gossip (or flak). What gets left on the plate doesn't bother me in the least, and worse: I almost have the wherewithal to set about 'archetypes, part 2'. Not today, though. When Marianne dropped in for a mid-week visit to her "ailing old man", now that was a real treat! Gosh, we even managed a film without undue interruptions from my insides. More on the movie later... Meanwhile, now Marianne has gone to gird herself for a visit to the Opéra, lucky lass, I thank her for coming by way of a zoo card from Canoë. 1:34:06 PM  link   your views? []

mercredi 28 mai 2003

Full circle for Luciano Berio: a small tribute Tidings come of Luciano Berio's death in Rome, aged 79. Thus passes a composer of very considerable note, who is the subject of a well-written study, 'The past as future' on the site of his publisher, Universal Edition. This article has the merit of being clearer than rather too much writing about 20th century music, while there are links to (brief QuickTime) extracts from two or three of his works. Berio was not among my favourite avant-garde composers - with the exception of some of his pieces for chamber orchestra - but I greatly admired him both as an innovator and a teacher. Of his vocal works, largely written for his wife, soprano Cathy Berberian, I was too young for the initial astonishment at Circles, but when it did come to my ears in the '70s I was deeply impressed by a piece which so successfully married - or rather, set off - lines by e. e. cummings with an ensemble consisting of Cathy B., a harp and two percussionists ... equipped with a battery of 80 instruments or more! The Wergo recording linked above also features 'Sequenza III', which really is a "tour de force" for those who like that kind of thing. Berio it was too who founded the Juilliard Ensemble in 1967. There are iinteresting thoughts on "'Words and Music': Exploring an Intricate Relationship" in the April edition of 'The Juilliard Journal Online'. 1:13:55 PM  link   your views? []

mardi 27 mai 2003

Enjoy it! I'll still be away for a while. This morning I cleaned out the rest of winter from the bathroom; the labour of less than an hour. It's very nearly finished. That remark is no bid to get anywhere near the lifetime achievement to date of Private Eye's admirable E.J. Thribb (at 'trash fiction'). Nor have I entered the competition for the world's most boring blog. I wonder if Meg knows that if you look for that, one wicked search engine takes you not just to the renowned current title-holder, but almost as swiftly to her not.so.soft place in west London (note: the lady jests: click on through). With the "comfiest bed in the world". I mention my own day's major achievement for two reasons. First, there was enough light to see all the filth in the corners and do it. Any lasting sunshine so far this year has rarely coincided with weekends or days when I haven't been working. Could the gloom really be behind us at last? Secondly, when I'd done, I needed to lie down for more than an hour, wait for pain in part of my abdomen to go away and gather my energies anew. I always wanted something of a "lean and hungry look (Steve Dismukes at Elfwood), but never the one that Sam (Kam-elio's oft-times clown of a brother and partner in "the canteen") has started to remark on. Now I'm convinced we're on the right track, my two doctors and me, I only partly regret reading on Saturday a Blogcritics entry by Tom Johnson ('unproductivity | choose your destiny'), to enlighten us that Crohn's disease strikes Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready". That "strikes" proved to be journalist-type licence with a headline, since McCready in fact "came out" with something he'd known for 15 years. Though we can't yet be sure about me, little jigsaw pieces like that fit together quite nicely to make sense of aspects of my own past decade or so. The downside of this is that my reader will henceforth be spared any jests about my bowels and what's coming out of them. No more messing with Shakespeare (bizarrely flattering report of a New York Times pick-up or not), no more lavatory humour. Won't you miss being emmerdé? But there are three upsides. The specialist has agreed to perform the conclusive probing with tubes on June 19, weeks earlier than first planned. A more serious look at this place, among others, reassures me that I'm not yet at a chronic stage and will be doing something about it long before then. Best of all, my buddies at AFP (where desk "boss" Jo even knows all about Crohn's already), can look forward to the return of an NB, with his foul mouth and other pleasing quirks - such as insolence, disrespect and an uncanny ability to interrupt or produce other weapons of mass distraction at precisely the best-judged wrong moment - in rather less than a month's time, revitalised. A handful of us have to maintain the Fleet Street traditions, you know. I was, after all, making at least a token appearance on the picket lines in the Wapping Dispute when some of today's brightest sparks still had their thumbs in their mouths, growing up under 18 years of Tory rule (May 1979-97). Checking the dates reminds me that it's not strictly true, as I like to say, that my departure from Albion's fair shores coincided with the arrival in power of the 'Iron Lady' and her cheery policies of "if it works, let's fix it good and proper" and "every woman, man and child for themselves". My wilfully fateful misreading of the invite letter from Ghyslaine (see, hem, "gurus"), met in the smoke-filled jazz clubs and pubs of London, didn't come until Margaret Thatcher was 15 months into her reign. Though her successor John Major was tossed out on May 1 1997, at the hands of Blair, the poor fellow can still be punched at URBAN 75 by anybody who should really feel so inclined. (u75 is not a twist on the Paris post code, that's pure coincidence, but a lively London e-zine) Dare I use words like "fuckwit" here as liberally as those people do? I got into trouble last night, less for my language that the way I occasionally choose to illustrate my points. I'm glad Marianne enjoyed both her birthday and my anniversary entry, once she'd assured herself that it contained no compromising content. Unfortunately to get there, she called up the archive for the whole of this month and decided to bookmark it for her mum... This earned me an earful of "Oh papa(s), t'es dégueulasse!!" after she'd scrolled too far down. But when I queried the grin in her voice, she confessed to one, and promptly proceeded to inform me of the latest revolting antics of some of her current favourite musicians. I have yet to hear from her mother. I suspect that she, like my workmates, is wise enough to make the very most of my relative confinement to quarters. Today, I might as well try to find out exactly why we're all on strike again. I know it's supposed to be about our pensions, but as in most such activity in France, almost everybody seems to be adding their own unrelated gripes to the stated cause for the protests. It's a traditional way of contributing to the fun. Tony has just told me he still plans to make it this afternoon from Odessa Street to Switzerland. By train. Best of luck, chum! I have unbounded admiration for these chivalrous family visits Tony undertakes, despite the risk he bravely runs sometimes of scarcely being able to go shopping without falling over. While he has no more idea than I do what's really going on here, he was "mildly amused" to see on TV news some American demonstrators with a placard reading 'Chirac is full of crêpe'. He added, for unfair good measure, that while this is true, these people might say so because "crêpes suzette is all they know about French food". 1:19:00 PM  link   your views? []

lundi 26 mai 2003

Cube for OS X, going inside games, and a museum Just spent a while catching up with busy TSers. Derek Ardnt's free OS X game in progress, Cube, has hefty system requirements but it's worth the 12.4 MB download if you've got them. There are several download sites at Cube, a large number of links (to be explored), even a forum (multilingual, but mostly in English). Derek also has a weblog and site. (Thanks to Marcel, aka Mrious_be, for the tip-off. He'd been delving inside Mac games. Again...) zzz The trip to TS, after the weekend excursion with François into Apple's past and the history of other operating systems too, reminds me it's about time to give a mention to the ever developing Apple Museum that keeps Lukas 'Spartacus' Foljanty busy. A "mention très bien", indeed. zzz For Mac "addicts" without reason, desire or perhaps the funds to move on to Ten, reassuring company comes (in French) in the latest issue of SVMMac to plop into this morning's letter box between strikes, even on the day it reached the newsvendors. The item has yet to go up on their site, but June's issue has a feature article where "les irréductibles de Mac OS 9" have their say. 11:57:06 PM  link   your views? [] 'Dessine-moi un mouton,' birthday gal As the lady sings in this song, n'est-ce pas, chérie? Play that in a loop (en boucle) and your mother will be really delighted. Ah, Mylène... You know, she has fans everywhere, from Martin's page to Alexander in Russia (caution: pop-ups)? And magazines, plus a 'Univers' of her own? But you're the real star today, Marianne! Bonne anniversaire! I have decided to celebrate your 14 ans with some more pictures from your own gallery, after a first look through your eyes at la mode. OK, another demoiselle or three, but not a sheep in sight. Some of your pictures are simply fun. They include a series where you have a view of your own on publicity. I've chosen the Coke bottle-trap. The one of the "god television" was too big to scan. Women make another appearance here. Sorry about the feet! No room for everything. I think what both of these two are thinking is clear enough. But if it isn't, it reads "génération stérile". Since you haven't given this one a name, I call it 'Man-maze' ('Labyrinth d'hommes'). I hope I've got it the right way up this time. You have no title for this one either and neither do I, so for now it's 'Abstraction'. Has that teacher who's giving you some excellent marks nowadays told you and the rest of the punks about Max Escher yet? He lived and worked in the Netherlands (1898-1972). But I didn't know until today that his "proper" name was Maurits Cornelis Escher. There are a couple of small galleries of his work, at 'World of Escher and at a fine art site. Art.com has 60 of them. In French, it's mainly Escher and mathematics. Perhaps not on your birthday, huh? One day, though, you could take a look at some more optical illusions. If my own eyes don't deceive me, I'd say you just might have been to Africa a few times too. On the left, your 'Totem'. I don't reckon he'd be too unhappy in a gallery of masques africains. Plenty more of those at L'Afrique chez vous! But these days, a number of countries want the stolen ones back. I have no idea if the person on the right has a name, so I've just called it 'ancient'. Even if it's a recent piece of work. In any case, I like it. And I hope a few other people have enjoyed a look at your "birthday collection" too. Bonne soirée, darling. Bisous à maman. See ya next weekend. "Papa pr..." (but now you know why! At least, that's my excuse). By the way, what was it you said you actually wanted? 5:54:12 PM  link   your views? [] Alas, alack, ailing apart! My wildcat grieves me, for now she too is sick! In solitude, she paces the cage she has made and prowls distant, empty streets. Her wounded heart lacks resolve, her thoughts are dark, and other cats come to her in her dreams. In some fancy, she would like to mate with the lion and ride the tiger, but now she's locked in hyperdrive! So do it, darling! Follow Grace and place your "face right in the triangle door Till you can move right on through instead of just standing there Looking at the floor." While you rest alone and proud, I have but one flower for you today. From Mexico, the zinnia comes. Would that I could have been with you this past weekend! But no. I too was condemned to my corner; and by early afternoon my mind was dead. The hunt goes on, yesterday's battle was against possible amoeba, and this one, Fasigyne (French), four horse-pills in one go, was a killer. I'm saving up the worst for last, but not today, not after that! When still my brain-cells were ticking, I looked at that car on the emptied packet and thought of the host of e-mail jokes that circulated after the US Department of Homeland Security issued its silliest warning stickers. Still alive today, I now understand that the vehicle is not just a warning to steer clear of the wheel. It means: "Stay off any highways at all, even virtual ones, unless you want to get run down." 2:14:14 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 24 mai 2003

Choice morsels from the 'canteen' "No more internet," said my mum on the 'phone, after asking for a quick rundown on what blogging is. It wasn't an order. Just a conversational request from somebody to whom the whole world of the Net remains alien and unnerving. For her, a computer is a word-processor and something other people use for work. Full stop. Over lunch at the "canteen", my very wired buddy François gave me such a lucid explanation of MP4s - the codec and the multimedia products, which have their own site (QuickTime 6 or Windows Media Player, plus rapid registration needed) - and Div-X (now easier on Mac OS X if you can be bothered), that I suggested he'd make a good teacher were he not perfectly happy right now "between jobs". He's got projects a-plenty, including a happy notion of taking himself to Tahiti for a break. Now, what I didn't know, until I asked François how he found it so easy to explain rather complicated things so clearly, was just where he'd started out in telecommunications, multimedia and computer operating systems. "It helps," he replied, "when sometimes you can be about three years ahead of the game. "When something new comes along, it just goes 'whoosh' in your face and you try to understand it, work out what it all means, throw it away if you want. But once you've turned it all around in your head, it's much simpler than it at first seemed." The man has been in the game since the '80s. Met Steve Jobs a handful of times and knows the tales of Apple, Jean-Louis Gassée and France, which has given me some geek-browsing to do (places like 'Infomania', 'L'Aventure Apple', BeOS sites, NeXT and O'Reilly's history of Cocoa...) Oh yeah, and there was plenty of open source stuff too. But that's by the by. Because Mr Demeyer has a far worse sin to his name than being steeped in systems of great interest to me, but none to people like my mum or the wildcat. Rather more "Googled" in at least two languages than he, er ... pretends? ..., young François put France on the Net. Not all by himself, of course. So I couldn't blame him single-handedly for "all that pollution we've got now, then." Nor does he want my useless Minitel printer back. Now there was an expensive way of printing out online bank accounts! And a machine whose very keyboard drove me mad. All I need to know now is whether this is the same François D. behind some of those music posts scattered on the Net. Because if, as I suspect, it is, then we've got even more in common to talk about than sci-fi, hi-tech and sunny paradise dreams... After that, Jean-Paul, who's his equally entertaining and dry-witted weekend lunch partner, it's your turn. Fair warning? Kamel served up the nosh and also lent me a photo of the big news of his own. "Hallo, Ilyas. Bienvenue à l'avenir!" He's a good reason to disappear to Morocco for a couple of months, which is where Kamel's lovely spouse, Nouzha, comes from. She and Ilyas will be back in about three weeks. "And back to work here?" asked François, in the kind of voice where an "as of course she must" went unspoken, after managing an almost passable avoidance of one of those "they all look the same to me" expressions. I just teased Kamel for not having a pic of the little feller with his mum, but it turned out he'd kind-heartedly only produced half a dozen snaps out of a mere three rolls of film. When I asked who the man in the background of one of them was, first Jean-Paul had to repeat the question, then Kamel said: "What man?" Had gently to be shown. Yes. Well. Jean-Paul's been there too, he knows how it is. It's a wonder we got decently fed at all. As for François, I fear the only cure for a certain comment on the lines of "no kids all over my place" might be to unleash Marianne and her views on his CD and/or sci-fi collection. If he can cope with that without laughing, he could probably even persuade my mother that e-mail is not the end of the world. Ilyas. There are two things you might need to know. One is that - there's no end to his wickedness - François called you a "pizzaiola amoeba". And the other is that your dad has already decided you're not destined for the restaurant trade. Today's last tidbit from the canteen is more good news for the quartier as a whole. Enough perhaps even to merit a return visit from Patricia, Zoë and their respective fellers, with others who've abandoned the area of late for bigger flats in other parts of town. Just round the corner, L'Entrepôt lives again. Even the flyer they're putting out (extract here) has an instant appeal. Back in the "peace and love" days, this old print warehouse was turned into a lively arts cinéma-cum-club by Frédéric Mitterand, who introduced me to Somalia with a 1983 movie that really didn't do very well. His international reputation took off with 'Madame Butterfly' 12 years later. L'Entrepôt's reputation, by contrast, saw many ups and downs, mostly downs, after its first change of hands, when it became a gathering place for feminists, viz. 'les Gauchos' (French). Andreas frequented the place and notably took me with him to see Chomsky on screen. A union Christmas dinner there much more recently was OK despite some appalling food. I've not yet tried the latest, most reasonably priced "formule", but those who have are full of praise. As for the music, check it out for yourselves. Things are going to brighten up around here even more. 11:58:27 PM  link   your views? [] Gripes and ... thanks Michael Fish, who seems to have been giving us the weather since I was born, but only really began 32 years ago, told Britain this much: "It's going to be a lovely day -- on Tuesday. But, between now and then, we've got a bank holiday weekend." That was yesterday. The veteran was right. And thoroughly nasty it is this morning, though one of the rituals of 'Today' cheered me: Victim: "With all due respect, John, blah, blah, blah..." 'Harrumph' Humphrys: "Not true!" Victim: "If you'll just let me finish what I'm saying, blah, burble, bull..." H.H.: "You're not answering the question." Victim: "? xxx" (since the response to this one varies widely, depending on who and what is at issue.) Last month, Matt Wells in the 'The Guardian' dubbed J.'H'.H. "the BBC's breakfast rottweiler" in an announcement that it's he who'll revive another national institution, 'Mastermind'. I thought it was the same paper that recently accused 'Today' of "going soft". If it was, I can't find the feature, which I dismissed anyway as another "oh for the golden age" fancy. Whatever. The programme is a reassuring part of my own routines. Unlike the weather. "Not that again!" you cry. Not really, no. But a little "factoid" (as RHP occasionally calls things at TS) is this. Just a decade ago, the Paris weather was an almost clockwork prediction based on forecasts by Fish and friends. What they annnounced for southeast England would come our way one or two days later. Yup. That's how I did it. Better than Météo France. No longer. The pattern today is that we've already got what they've got over there. Or the opposite. It's one pattern I'd like to understand better. I could do with a bit more routine right now. As well as the return of some long-lasting sunshine. It's those costly calls to the wildcat or a big new halogen lamp to replace the one that finally exploded last month, but not both. The 'phone, of course, comes first. The past fortnight has seen one unpredictable development after another, which reached crescendo point yesterday. I hope so, anyway. An unwarranted detail is this morning's unexpected and comforting return to the evacuation of something solid. Or thus it was for 20 minutes, when it merely proved to be a case of "Après moi, le déluge" (an expression which, for anybody interested, gets a mention at another reference place of the kind some people like to keep handy, the Phrase Finder. Enough! I won't have one reader left out there if I blog much of what transpired yesterday with regard to my bowels, the occasional vomiting as well now, and the outcome of further tests. The news isn't great, but could be far worse. Clever Karin! In a couple of weeks all should be clear, but already virtually everything indeed points to Crohn's disease or a "Crohn clone". And that would be perfectly manageable. "You do realise what changes this will make in your life, don't you?" Marianne's mum, who works in a pioneering pharmaceuticals firm, sensibly asked. "Yes, dear." I haven't been short of time to check it all out. Andreas said with his characteristic generosity, "What's money?" And what's another drug or two, plus the rest of it, to add to a short lifelong list? It's not as if I'm in darkest Africa. Until we can start treatment, the fatigue can be draining, but I can handle it. Yesterday's entry about "gurus" of sorts didn't land there by accident. The mistake was finishing it on a Friday night and posting it when the "line" to the server in the States was so damned busy that I could only get rid of all the blunders this morning. zzz That's it! End of grizzle in the drizzle. I just needed the lunch-time outing. This health business is a little pricey now that the "canteen" has begun to become part of an almost daily routine and I don't think I'll get that back from the Sécu! What's been bugging me much more than the bug and minor budgetary disorder has been fretting over the eternal things left undone that ought to have been and others just accomplished which, perhaps, ought not to have been. Sorry to be cryptic, but if there's one thing I enjoy less than the feeling of not being in control of my own life (as best as anybody can), it's what can sometimes become the "imperative" of briefly taking charge of somebody else's. Well, I hope I did right. Responsibility is fine, just as long as it doesn't transgress bounds to become theft. The expression "It's for your own good!" has long been one to stick in my craw. zzz Forget the grumbles. I really want to say a big "Thanks" to quite a number of people who've been worrying about me or simply asking! All over the place they are, it would seem, like the last time I had a spot of medical bother a few years ago. Yup, the blog is, well ... therapeutic on occasion. I sure needed those "mentors" this week, alive in mind if not all on earth, but the notes coming in and the words being passed on are valued just as much. 4:32:44 PM  link   your views? []

vendredi 23 mai 2003

Hearts of oak One or two visitors to my little abode have ventured to remark on a lack of family among all the paintings and photos. No mum or dad, none of the brothers and only two other relatives. Most of them have whole picture-boards full of us all. But they're here, filed away among hundreds of others in albums and packets which one day when I have a year to spare I will turn into digital form. It's my way: I prefer the paintings, several by friends, while the framed photos have another significance. For the family, perhaps somebody more gifted than I can make the most of a very faded small one always in view, taken at my late maternal grandmother's 70th (though Graphic Converter's worked wonders). This was a clan gathering as big as almost any other we had (but who took it?). I've been reflecting this week on my "mentors". When a lad, I read some eccentric or esoteric people. I've mentioned the redoubtable Madame Blavatsky and my own passage to India before. Another was G.I. Gurdjieff. I devoured more than his best-known 'Meetings with Remarkable Men' (and the film of it by Peter Brook. Wikipedia has so much on the fellow, as on almost everything, that I'd better "blogroll" the place. Now there are prize-winning videos about him too. While long hooked, I wouldn't describe G.I. G. as a key teacher in my past. He's not up there with C.J. Jung, a number of physicists, Buddhists and artists, and the long deceased Chinese sages I often mention. The most remarkable "guru" in that sort of way was a man whose real name I never knew, for an encounter which almost stopped time. In Senegal in 1997, I wanted to meet a real "marabout", not some charlatan, to learn more of African traditions of healing, spiritual thinking and folklore It wasn't easy, beginning with a mystery "rendez-vous at the swimming pool at midnight", in the place Marianne and I were using for a base. I got a long grilling from Pape, the man who became our highly amusing guide, about my motives. What and who was I after? It seems I passed the test. The drive took the best part of a long morning, deeper and deeper into the bush and down dirt tracks from one village to another, Pape asking the questions until at last we tracked this man down. One of two odd things was that he was standing outside his hut, waiting for us. Nobody had told him we were coming. Such news doesn't travel from village to village as rapidly as we did. The other was that before he would speak to me, he snapped his fingers at Marianne and she instantly fell asleep on his bed. With Pape translating, we talked for almost three hours, occasionally breaking off for shy villagers who wanted counsel or medical help. A couple of them let me take their pictures, along with many others and notes I took of the things I was shown and told. The marabout very swiftly opened up, showing me his plants and powders, his writings (a mixture of Muslim verses and animist "recipes" and charms), and explained that he knew enough of "western" medicine to help raise money to send villagers he could not help to the clinics. He also took any medicines off people as soon as they came back, telling them to come to him for the daily doses. Otherwise, he said, they might swallow the lot in one go. When he was done, he snapped his fingers again. Wide awake in an instant, if bemused, Marianne much enjoyed the gift-giving that formed part of the exchange (we had brought grain, rice and sugar for the sage and his village). She also soon discovered that pounding the millet, as women do while singing and gossiping, is harder than it looks. Those pestles they wield are very heavy. A man who would have adored this encounter - which came to me as one I only knew I'd awaited for years when it happened - was my uncle, father of no fewer than seven kids, occasional tyrant and godfather, George Bales. His photo isn't a great one, because it comes from the newsprint of his obituary in 'The Times'. George spent much of World War II as an increasingly senior officer and flyer in bomber command. His love of aircraft and travel was such that he set up a business with the assistant he eventually married, Molly. Bales Worldwide, as it's known today, is still going strong, having embroiled most of the family at one time or another, but forced steadily upmarket by the competition from the mass tour operators we've got now. The business, however, was but one facet of a man who voted Tory in Britain but got on famously with Chairman Mao - George in 1969 wrote 'China. The East is Red' ("the story of someone who knew China in 1926 and went back nearly forty years later and found an utterly different world. In this book he gives his own very personal account of his experience," says the only place I can see any copy left for sale. In Australia, which would amuse him...) His achievement in being the first to get the Forbidden City open to foreigners again came, I believe, some years after the night he spent inside the sarcophagus of the pyramid of Kheops, incidentally scaring the living daylights out of the first little group of visitors to arrive in the morning and wake him up. Several screamed when he sat up. George was as physically big as his mind was broad. Among his gurus was a real one in India, a country he loved. Virtually blind in his last years, long after his admired Nehru had gone before him (I can't imagine in which heaven or dimension they may have met up again), this minor handicap didn't stop him stumbling down a long Indian train and finally falling over from his great height on top of a gentleman whose suit was covered with spilt tea and newspaper shredded, but survived. Yet another of George's remarkable conversations with strangers was struck up on the spot. As to real gentlemen, when small, I lived on the lower two floors of a Victorian suburban house with my family, while my maternal grandparents had the top floor for their "flat". The only room in between was my grandfather's study, where he introduced me to journalism. Albert Edward, known to everybody as 'Teddy', was the world's worst driver but one of Britain's greatest garden lovers. He was always out there, when he wasn't travelling or writing articles and books about the growth of the frozen food industry. Son of a butler, he seemed to lack the crippling notions of "class" that bedevilled his wife, my mother and father for a long time. Such things were beyond his gentle nature. Among the most uncomplicated, upright mentors I knew, he was at his happiest in his last years turning the retirement estate where he died (in that family picture) into a magnificent garden in its own right. Everybody thoroughly approved, but nobody else had thought to bother. I hope his beloved and giant acacia tree is still standing among the banal blocks of flats that have long since replaced my childhood home. The real lessons in journalism and the many pitfalls of the profession came from Andreas. If you've seen 'The Killing Fields', then you've heard of Andreas Freund, but you may well have missed the brief scene where his name crops up for a phone call that changed the whole course of the tale near the end. After the divorce, I had the amazing luck, coming back to Paris, to find a flat at number 90. Andreas lived just down the road at number 98. A terrific friend, but a fearsome table-basher when it came to failing to put up with fools, when I wasn't visiting him we often ran into each other outside. From my bedroom window, I could see him making his slow way down the street, stopping often to talk here and there, a great bear of a man going about his business. My "ex-", Catherine, still has my pictures of him, in albums it hurt too much to take when we split up, and which I've since forgotten to loot. We are both honoured to be among those he thanked in the preface to a first-class book which, I see on the Net, is now a widely referenced standard, both in articles and in journalists' training. (My copy was one casualty when the hole in the roof first started leaking, and it shows.) Immensely proud of his French citizenship granted after the war, Breslau-born Andreas was a life-long "Red" and foe of fascists, authoritarians and deceitful politicians whoever they stood for. But though he spoke fluent French, his first tongues were German and English. The hardest task in helping with that book of his was getting him to cut the darned thing!! Every time you thought you'd persuaded him to drop unnecessary bits or references, you'd get back to find more in the manuscript from the daily newspaper clippings that surrounded him in dozens of files. When cancer claimed him, the Paris branch of the NUJ lost somebody totally irreplaceable. Marianne adored Andreas, and he her. The finest teachers are very often one's kids. Lucky enough to watch the magical appearance of her head into the world from the womb, I've been even more fortunate to be close to her ever since. I wouldn't quite say she tells me everything, while some of what she does reveal as her English grandfather's "moulin à paroles" (word-mill) is the product of a most inventive imagination. But for all the kindly warnings from friends about "what happens", she's not the kind of teenager to start clamming up on me all of a sudden. The biggest challenge Marianne's long given me is always to be a father, as well as a friend and one of her confidants. They say the first great love of your life can be the strongest. But I haven't opened the "Ghyslaine box" for years until now. Good heavens! I must have been either very angry or, more likely, totally heart-broken - a regular occurrence - to have torn the best of the rare pictures to tiny pieces. I wonder what made me relent and keep the bits. Those were stormy times, though any quarrels we had I've forgotten, but for one. (Which reminds me of an April Fool's Day tale of a tiff from "her round a few corners", Ann ... Lee Ann ... Lee A. ... Lee, which had me chuckling. "Sweety-pie," in my humble experience, it's every bit as hard to get a "sorry" out of some women as you think it is of we blokes.) I did "get over" Ghyslaine and two others as well, if it took longer than it might have done (confessional tucked away). But a mentor? Oh yes. Not just a language and a culture, but lessons of the heart I dismally failed to learn at the time. A bisexuality which then fascinated but ... alas, also scared the naïf, inexperienced lad that I was. Passion and poetry. Art cinema too. With no Internet then, that lass could make a letter of a line of verse, one wild thought cast into a post-box. Her life was almost constant spontaneous combustion: an imaginative fire I'd never experienced before and rarely since. Rum with coke and Gustav Mahler, an equally tempestuous hero of the time, along with the likes of Leo Ferré, that was a good start to a night. Last I knew, she had three kids: Chanel, Alma and Tadzio. I hope she's happy today. Oh, and after a youth of nothing but dogs, it was certainly Ghyslaine who convinced me of the merits of cats. The wilder, the better. For some reason, all this makes me think of one of many passages in Ventus (a different review from my last fleeting reference to my current reading), which pulled me up for a moment: "I was alone, trapped here perhaps for eternity, with my own thoughts. How I wanted to stop thinking! But my emotions continued to evolve as well, and they commanded me to exist! to persist! and to think. "Oh, I inherited my emotions from Calandria May, and I understand now that each human has a ruling passion, one that serves as a fountainhead from which flow all semblances of happiness, sadness, anger and joy. I understand you better for this, Axel; oh, I thought about you for long hours and days, make no mistake. I wished that I had modeled myself after you, instead of her, for your fuel is a kind of rage driven by joy that finds no outlet. But hers–she is like a wave of sorrow, swelling slow and implacable across the earth she treads. She is nothing but sorrow, and that is what I inherited. So I walked, and I wept." The speaker is a starship, the Desert Voice, which is par for the course with a Karl Schroeder whose first novel is constantly surprising me. I shall be thinking more about that passage for a while, along with the tendency I sometimes have of finding people's "right animals". This last was no teacher, not really. I surprised myself, scared the heck out of Marianne and earned the wrath, at first, of a Tunisian keeper when I found myself undoing the bolt on this beast's cage in a dingy oasis zoo and walking inside. The first thing it did was to leap angrily at me, but it was frightened and I wasn't. The only anger I felt was a quiet one that it should be there at all, and malnourished as well. We had a bit of a "chat" and he let me take a few snaps. "Why did you do that?" asked a much calmer keeper when I was done. "C'est mon frère," was the answer that simply fell out of my mouth. To this day, probably only the animal and me know what that ... kinship was, but it's stuck. Not quite a wolf. Certainly a desert voice. 11:53:03 PM  link   your views? [] Life-saving grace of a fart? ORLANDO -- Some day, diagnosing that nasty stomach bug could be as easy as passing gas. British scientists say a hi-tech test focused on flatus -- the pungent gas emanating from stool -- is highly effective in quickly identifying tough-to-spot viral or bacterial infections of the gut. (...) "We did at one stage discuss the possibility of a 'smart lavatory,' so that you could have a device that could sample the gas in that way," (Dr. Christopher) Probert (of the University of Bristol) said with a smile. "There are a lot of things that we might want to do someday." I know. Another day. Another promise broken. And "stale news" at 'Wired' already. But you'll forgive me my current keen interest, when I caught up with this one at Journalized, where Mike Little gives a good story the treatment it merits. Quickly diagnosed "gas fingerprints" could genuinely save scores of thousands of lives. 1:14:07 AM  link   your views? []

jeudi 22 mai 2003

Sweet dreams Tonight it's Niels Vaes. His place (Flash) and his gifts are in ".be". This one he calls 'Trespasser'. I don't. But there you go... All this 'Matrix' fuss. It's sent me all over the place, learning more about anime. And finding more "fantasy art". 'First Encounters' is rich and intriguing. "Dark Matter at its basic level is the gray area that science cannot quite explain. In this it is symbolic of Science Fiction and Fantasy; the exploration of things not yet discovered, the hope or despair of the future, and the possibilities of a past long forgotten. It is as much an exploration of ourselves as it is a journey into the fantastic. Telling us about our greatest hopes, and our deepest fears." One nice thing about 'Dark Matter' is that it features a different artist each week. The range is remarkable. 11:58:10 PM  link   your views? [] OffenSive, obsceNe Jerks (dealing with them) "Out of it" I may be, in principle. Such is modern technology, however, that three people have been able to issue protests to me from distant parts of the world. These are among what still remain only too frequent updates, to a "union man", about demoralising, nasty behaviour by people despatched by the powers that be at "the factory" in Paris or in other "hubs" to serve the noble cause of AFP in taking command of its various outposts. Now - and you will have to pardon my English - I have been surprised to learn how one or two people I took for relatively decent human beings during our acquaintance on their various news desks turn, once they think themselves far from watchful eyes, into petty empire-builders, office tyrants and total pricks. I should add that recent years have seen commendable efforts by many in top management to clean up this kind of act. The days when unpleasant, occasionally incompetent, bureau chiefs even received "protection", via a foul equivalent of the "old boy network", against complaints from their prey appear to be almost completely behind us and buried. Nevertheless, eventual retribution can't immediately prevent them from making life hell for the - let's hope - diminishing number of journalists, generally young and highly vulnerable "local hires", who still get bad treatment. Hence both a warning and I hope a boost for a couple of my anonymous informants. What's in a name? No bed of roses for the victims if disclosed, but engraved in my brain, and those of like-minded colleagues, when it comes to the perpetrators of such misconduct. Most of the remaining bullies are men. What they do is tantamount to this (again courtesy of Francis's reach beyond that of kids, thank heavens), though those subjected to it are not always women, while those who wield the heavy hand are so obviously into no more than self-gratification. I doubt they really feel much better about it once they've let their wrath fly, but it doesn't stop them coming again. Sometimes the predators are not quite right in the head, though I'd never dream of imagining that anybody in management would deliberately let them go for a few years to some faraway place for the simple reason that nobody can put up with them any longer where they were. But then, remember that the personality changes are occasionally unpredictable. (Credit: 'Alex' for 'Pistou'.) Dealing with these loathsome inviduals is rarely as easy as any old Bob's your uncle. I remember cases where those who contended with them were women, who put up with such perverted behaviour that they became scared to speak out for fear of shaking the nest, perhaps even losing their job on trumped-up charges. But a few fellers had their lives buggered up too. Worse, even when they did have the guts to challenge the ruler of the roost, it backfired on them for a while before "something was done". In the end, though, such affairs have almost always worked out for the best, with support from unexpected quarters as well as the union people. One way or another, the retribution comes, though it's not as "cruel and unusual" as some artists might imagine. This might be read as a contribution to the current electoral campaign for the SNJ (French base), since there ain't much else I can actively do at present but blog. Because in the re-run of the vote, it matters less which union you vote for than the act of voting at all, after last time's unprecedented fiasco. Anyway, if some buddies saw the SNJ logo sitting in an entry with such unlikely partners, I might face instant excommunication! 1:46:09 PM  link   your views? [] 'Dare the grave passage' (M. Tippett) Inclination: unspoken Credit: Greg Crow Misheard line of the day: "Nick, you really are the armpit of God." Music: 'A Child of our Time' (Sir Michael Tippett - 1905-1998) Mood: Insomniac, fanciful, experimental ... rêveur Transition: yang to yin Poem: Crow's Nerve Fails Crow, feeling his brain slip, Finds his every feather the fossil of a murder. Who murdered all these? These living dead, that root in his nerves and his blood Till he is visibly black? How can he fly from his feathers? And why have they homed on him? Is he the archive of their accusations? Or their ghostly purpose, their pining vengeance? Or their unforgiven prisoner? He cannot be forgiven. His prison is the earth. Clothed in his conviction, Trying to remember his crimes Heavily he flies. Ted Hughes Job offer: Credit: R.F. van Koert - from Tish Summers - Digitalis ("adult graphics" site + links). Wildcat Attributed: 'In the Blue Corner' Credit: RSPCA(?) Quote of the night: "Minute after minute, aeon after aeon, Nothing lets up or develops. And this is neither a bad variant nor a tryout. This is where the staring angels go through. This is where all the stars bow down." From 'Pibroch' (by T. Hughes) 1:19:42 AM  link   your views? []

mercredi 21 mai 2003

Blasted Americans, wounded Republicans: holy heart! With my apologies ... and thanks. Apologies for leaving this here for hours as a partly unedited mess. In the final phase of writing, I had major connection glitches. And thanks to Francis for some help with the "top shelf". He doesn't read the stuff, of course, but he knew just where to look. Some pix from 'La Poudre aux Rêves'. Not the American dream...) I usually direct my cordial contempt for some American "thinking", particularly by the semi-elected regime in and around the White House, at the politicians and greediest capitalists. Just as I've made clear that few politicians anywhere have much respect from me. Targetting a people for the acts of their rulers is strictly a "no-no". Some rules are made to be broken. There are moments when my patience with Americans as an alien species runs short. It's a British politician, Tam Dalyell, with whom I breathe fire in agreement about some American manners (for those who don't know of this Labour veteran, Wikipedia has a more extensive, link-rich, warts-and-all bio). While acknowledging the gravity of his allegation, controversial dragon Dalyell already wants Tony Blair "branded as a war criminal". I don't know about Bush. The devious team behind the part-puppet president took pains, as we knew back in March, to be sure a few buddies would join them in refusing to recognise the new International Criminal Court in the Hague. This was part of long-prepared plans for the invasion of Iraq, along with screwing up any effective WMD search by UN inspectors quite as efficiently as "brother-enemy" Saddam. What aroused my wrath was a blunt statement by Dalyell about some US troops in Iraq who "behave like yobs". Tam made a very good point. While renowned for occasional hooliganism, even perfidious Brits rarely turn it into a military virtue when it suits them. They also made more of an effort over hospitals and other vital services. I heard an Iraqi doctor weep at what US troops allowed to happen. It's conceivable that some of those troops were like their great grand-dads who arrived in the trenches: farmboys with scarcely a notion of geography, let alone politics, simply doing their bit for freedom, democracy and the Stars and Stripes. And we Europeans do owe their forebears a great deal. As it becomes dimly apparent that while the "secret stashes" news regarding the Baghdad museum is less clearcut than the harshest critics of pillage charged at the time, the US army, let alone Washington, has much more explaining to do. Dalyell's comment came in a Commons debate Wednesday about a subjects dear to his heart, the ancient ziggurat of Ur (Hansard) ... and reports of a "paint job" by the kind of technically brilliant idiots who had sprayed "friendly fire" almost as freely. He'd already told the House of a family tie to this (and to the people who "set up Kuwait) in 1992. Another charge against farmboy "yobs" comes in separate news reports of a fair chance that American soldiers are happily pinching stones from another old monument for an ad-hoc airbase. zzz At AFP, news flies in from bureaux worldwide which never gets past us on into the wider world. Obviously. Risky claims, especially "conspiracy theories", must be checked and counter-checked. If the sources aren't good enough, then we'll spike them. This can be a pity, because I've seen many more - or less - believable tidbits about the loathsome way in which Washington's louts and their multinational backers are slowly building a "new world order" for the rest of us, which revolt me. Sometimes I can't help flashes of anger at "ordinary American folk" who buy all the bullshit. My outlook has sadly changed since on March 7, I wrote Anti-American sentiment? Mais non! Why the hell not? Since those tough talking days, I've now seen film of a smiling Bush, even when the grin on his face has little to do with what the man may be reading. People who not only believe the spin but flood the web with stale stereotypes and prejudiced nonsense, if not ill-digested lies, about France and old Europe have begun to get on my tits (a view the young lady shares). I could make a good job of developing an anti-US bias were I compelled to read such rubbish and didn't work in a multi-national environment where it's easy to make friends with bright Americans across a broad political spectrum. I really enjoyed helping to build TS with other "founders", all but one of these American. From richly varied professional backgrounds, of different ages, interests and outlooks, we became friends around one common passion: the Mac and some of the best of trans-Atlantic technology (even if many components are farmed out to cheap labour markets abroad). But even the road to making TS one of the friendliest communities on the Web, where our Macs fortunately constitute only about three-quarters of the chat, had its perils. There was a dangerous rift en route when somebody quit over heated debate about the PR&S (politics, religion and sex) business, and feeling ill-treated by me as then "chairperson", despite communal hand-wringing in kid gloves. Too much for some! The episode and some twisted allegations undermined my confidence in my skills in that chair, but the others rallied round to restore it. Some considered me too diplomatic. While my pride and delight in TS is untarnished, I began to post less often there as of "9/11" and eventually took a back seat. That date was a landmark for journalists, who've rarely worked so hard as we have ever since. However, the terrorist attacks on the States triggered reactions from a small handful of TSers which shook me almost as much as the shockwave and global fall-out from the blasts. Diplomat though I can be, it took all the restraint I could muster to avoid acid responses to a few ablaze with patriotic fervour, flag-waving bluster, "my country right or wrong" disease, and incomprehension of the rest of a planet that one inordinately powerful, self-appointed policeman has largely helped to mould. And often to shape, through inexcusable ignorance and lack of savoir-faire, for the worse. Such comments as I ventured earned me stinging reproaches from half a dozen of the handful. To some I politely replied, most got trashed for the junk they were. Now, getting on for two years later, there's only so much sympathy one can feel for a nation in shock. Mine swiftly began to run out. zzz Who in hell did they think they were, these whingers who so cruelly learned how double standards, the seeds of injustice, the greed and self-centredness and a smug faith in all-American values, with the weaponry their own governments had so liberally distributed to some of the world's most barbaric dictators, would end up literally exploding in their faces? They'd been bombed on home soil, and so what, even it was in stupendously novel style? One can unstintly admire the fire-fighters, grieve with the families, but the attacks ... well, they looked like karma come home. Pompous-assed letters informed me that I couldn't possibly conceive of the scale of the shock among the great American people. The ones that pissed me off most were well-meant warnings that it was not my place to make ironic or witty remarks about some of the President's finest speeches, as if I'd spat in the face of God Almighty. Along with more reminders of the sacrifices brave American boys made to save the rest of us twice in one century. "Mon cul!" as we put it here. Americans, at least the cynical shits you find in any rich country and too many a desparately poor one, made an obscene fortune out of two world wars and any number of smaller spats, while preaching that almost unbridled capitalism and globalisation would be magnificent for the rest of us. The world's policeman did nothing when more than three million people died in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Just as it made friends with a pretty tough regime in Rwanda - after the genocide of 1994. Satellites that could spot Russian missile bases in Cuba in 1961 were perfectly useless, we were told, when it came decades later to locating a few hundred thousand black refugees in eastern Zaïre, as then it was. The cop worked hard to ensure the Arab world remained divided against itself, as part of a global energy and control strategy. Instead of funding the United Nations, it shat on it when lesser powers took issue with wayward notions of international law. And Bush gave the job of Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs to a dangerous but allegedly bright spark by the name of Walter Kansteiner. Like many "Africa hands", I read one of his first interviews for allAfrica with a mixture of incredulity, humour and despair. He bestowed several gems on journalist Charlie Cobb: "What are we looking at as we look at Sharia in Northern Nigeria? When we look at Khartoum? And...." "Absolutely. Remember, in grad school when we were all learning to be Africanists it was always called 'the Black-Green line.' And it cut right across the southern Sahel. Historically it's been there and that rivalry, conflict - call it what you want - has historically been a fact of life for decades and centuries." Aahh, well-informed Walt! Yes, that's modern Africa, the one you learned at "grad school". The green sort of Arab-like bit at the top (when you turn the map the right way round), and all those funky darkies at the bottom. But there was better to come: "The Administration has been emphasizing the need to 'fight terrorism' characterizing it as a war. At the same time the Administration has argued in various forums for 'democratic transparency' as the real solution to any number of issues in Africa, any number of states in turmoil. And the two notions seem to be in conflict with one another: the need to fight terrorism and the argument for democratic transparency. How do you resolve that?" "It kind of goes back to that old adage that authoritarian governments are stable governments. They are authoritarian and hence can make security happen. In the short term you can probably make a case for that. In the long term you most certainly cannot. In the long term the stable secure countries are ones that are democratic, that have institutions that let the body politic have a voice. They are countries that have independent judicial systems where civil liberties and human rights are protected and private property rights are protected." This was September 19, 2001, when the Bush-baby was possibly too gripped by that "state of shock" to be lucid about anything. So "it kind of goes back to that old adage" that "we" did right propping up those dictators and thieves. Nothing like a bit of "authority". But hang on. What is this "long term", Waltie boy? You mean you want "civil liberties", "human rights" and all that stuff your friends are domestically stifling today with a package of legislation, having whipped much of a once bold American press into cringing subservience? What you're saying is fine, but would you really install democracy instead of friendly and conveniently "authoritarian" Arab regimes. Now Algeria, Walt told us, was not in his "bailiwick". Neither was Egypt. This obviously came as some relief when asked an irritating question about countries where people just could, and did (in Algeria in December 1991, before the military halted the poll) begin voting Muslim radicals into power. Quelle horreur! Could the reason for that have anything to do with Israeli hardliners and Palestine and US support for constant breaches of UN resolutions, as well as regimes which did nothing about grinding poverty? Walt's learned a lesson or two since. The poor fellow worked his ass off visiting countries which nearly all, oddly enough, produce oil. He even tried, but didn't succeed, to bribe persuade Nigeria to quit OPEC. Now that the invasion of Iraq has been such a rip-roaring success, the idea of setting up a second US oil-defence outpost off west Africa looks like its gone on to the back burner again. Worse, only two of those countries which had enabled Cobb's headline to be "Sub-Saharan African Rallies to US Support" were left on Washington's list of bosom buddies at its shortest. Walter's even made most of the "right" friends. That fellow in Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasago, not only has oil, but is "stable" and adored by his people. In the last election held since first he killed his uncle soon after a coup in 1979, he won 97.1 percent of the vote! The stuff of a wet Rumsfeld dream. The CIA manages to spell the president's name mostly correctly in its Factbook, and even gets quite a lot of its facts right, glossing over a few gory details of no concern to the Kansas city milkman. You do know the fact book, one whose very cover changes like the moods of US presidents? The newest would suggest that the world will become a far safer place, as armour-plated as Pentagon policy, than it was when Bush's dad pledged to make America a kinder and gentler nation" a decade back. We use that book at AFP, but it's usually a good idea to double- if not triple-check what's in it. Unlike the mythical milkman and one real former US secretary of state who was sent to Ethiopia for some talkfest at the headquarters of what's now the 53-member African Union but prudently asked first, "Where is Addis Ababa?", Walter knows where most of those odd places are. That milkman, as I remind far-flung correspondents in African towns with wonderful names, "is the feller you're writing for. Just imagine he knows nothing about your country. The first thing you do is give him an interesting story, and in the 3rd para you add the basics of background." I suppose it must work, because I've seen the most obscure "pick-ups" in Florida papers. It's a fat chance most of AFP's local African reporters will ever be able to afford to see America. There's a better one that the Kansas city milkman might become a US serviceman, in which case he should bloody well behave in a fashion that befits the world's most powerful armed forces! Or even a tourist in Paris, unless he's been turned off by the propaganda war. A little effort to say "Champs Elysées" of instead "Champs" (as in horse on bit) "Ellizez" might also win a friend or two. zzz "To be perfectly honest, I don't much like the Americans," generalised Kamel over lunch, just back from Morocco to resume charge of the "canteen". But then Kamel - the 'Elio' of some entries here (his "nom de patron" at the pizzeria) - had been enjoying a meal in Casablanca's Safir Hotel just two days before Friday's blasts. I've not dug deep enough into the more credible conspiracy theories and bizarre reports we couldn't use at AFP to be sure that when Rumsfeld over-ruled the Pentagon on the military strength needed to conquer Iraq, he had damned good reason to expect a walk-over. That "they 'took out' Saddam", fine, Kamel thought. Whether or not the conspiracy tale about a deal with Russia's Putin, a mysterious plane flight, and the vanishing of any Iraqi Republican Guard to fight was true. There are various ways of "taking people out". "They could 'take out' Algeria's generals while they're at it," Kamel added, perhaps like many compatriots who'd accept a foreign invasion to end years of oil-related corruption and theft. "After that, they go home!" The swift departure of Jay Garner (previously link-probed here) may be a sign that Washington has learned at least something from the Romans, whose emblems it borrows, about how to run a burgeoning empire. Kamel's people endure "terror" from both fundamentalists and the state, sometimes the two hand-in-glove. There, it's life. In Paris, where I've known two people injured, one seriously, in bomb blasts, most of us are sick to the back teeth with American "What we did we do to deserve this?" whining after September 11; let alone the talk of "freedom" and "democracy" and "human rights" that Kamel, like thousands of others, submit to far better, even-handed political analysis than the drivel on CNN, Fox News and other major shapers of opinion for a gullible American public. When some contend that the real problem and ignorance arise because "they don't have much history to speak of", that's unfair even on a nation far too fond of its poor wounded navel. In any case, my answer to that is, "Even were it true, they've begun making history a little too fast for their own good, let alone ours." If US citizens are serious about waging a relentless "war on terror", a phrase about as all-embracing and finally meaningless today as "The Base", that onetime American creation al-Qaeda, a good place to start might just be at home. Right at the top. Enough of this seriousness!! zzz I was mightily cheered to get comment here on my latest 'Matrix' ramble from a rare animal, "Dallas Republican, black turtleneck, go figure" and fine wit Chipstah!, who even found something nice to say about me at his place. What an outstanding exception among his brainless fellow-believers. When it comes to intelligence, Tony's sent in a tiddling test: "Q. What is the penalty for bigamy? A. Two mothers-in-law." It reminded me of an old Jewish jibe I heard about high-handed intervention: "Q. What's worse than a Jewish mother-in-law? A. Two Jewish mothers-in-law." Hey, chipstah! gets to rant on blogcritics. What about little me? Nah... They're just a bunch of Americans! Thank you. Something completely different tomorrow. Em, I mean later. 3:02:22 AM  link   your views? []

mardi 20 mai 2003

Bowel bore and those bastards at work Didn't I say that Karin might be in the wrong job? She isn't: she's great at what she does. Her wealth of medical knowledge comes from previous employment. Yesterday's suggestion, Crohn's disease, hitherto unknown to me, may have been a hole in one on her part. The specialist seen, the focus has narrowed. Since I have by now voided my bowels such entertainment value as may ever have had and the symptoms (incessant loo-visits, occasional abominable abdominal pains and fever, with headaches) remain unchanged, that wraps up the matter for my loyal reader. Mr Gastro-entero-colono-etc. wants to delay probing bores into me from both ends for some weeks, but I see no reason not to have it done as quickly as possible, given that I honestly miss that bunch of bastards on the desk at AFP. Before that, two more blood tests, plus three sets of treatment, to be taken in no particular order, to rule out (or otherwise) the African and other travel possible fall-out. This lot I'll complete in the next eight days. zzz Crohn's is still just a (strong) possibility among several, but this time, when I promise to drop the subject until something really interesting turns up, I mean it. Meanwhile, it's a relief to be able to give Jo, our desk chief, a reasonable notion of how long she can expect not to have to put up with my mug and my lip. I hope a replacement short-term contract employee has a good time. Do the job decently, and you'll find they're really not quite such bastards after all. 3:53:18 PM  link   your views? []

lundi 19 mai 2003

Jargon, odd blobs and ... gabber? I'm a factory run amok. Or so it emerges today. Thus I drop those archetypes, stereotypes and even dreams for a spell as I digest the latest findings. I'll know more tomorrow and still more in the wake of a newly focussed blood test. It's leukocytes and other delights such as polynuclear neutrophils my insides have churned out like nobody's business (so why put it here?) since 1997, especially the latter. Why a further surge has struck now we have yet to find out (at least it wasn't the alcohol after all), but 'How [this] stuff works' is a good start, except that I won't pursue it until tomorrow afternoon. Karin's latest helpful thought was Crohn's disease (I honestly can't recommend reading that unless you're a masochist; in any event, while bits fit, others don't). Still, there's some sort of domestic war going on. zzz But that's boring, is it not? I'm tracking down something else. How was it that some tidbit I wrote here brought about something else, probably miniscule, in the ... 'New York Times'? I've not found it yet, but it apparently coincides with my messing with Shakespeare. Revelation if I recatch the right link... zzz Anyway, I'm out of any wars for another week. The last time I was in a bang-bang situation, apart from a couple of nasty incidents here in Paris, was back in the early '80s. But the most wondrous - straight out of a Western - was a bandit attack on a slow train in a very hot Indian valley in the 1970s. They rode down from the hills either side, firing over our jam-packed coaches until the engine driver thought it wiser to call a halt in a magnificent blast of steam. After the bandits boarded, I did something so stupid out of anger that I nearly got plugged. Never again. To this day, I wonder if they didn't shoot me because they were so startled that anybody could be such an idiot as to challenge them. The uncle of the girl I struck up with on that Madras-Delhi haul had just been killed in a similar attack. So she told me at length, afterwards! Now I am but a desk editor, living such experiences vicariously, which suits me fine, because I was always better at that than reporting. zzz But I've enjoyed the occasional gadabout, nothing spectacular. And the reporters I admire, without envy, do sometimes find themselves in gloriously unlikely situations. I don't know if Emsie "storified" her anecdote last weekend in Slovakia for that EU referendum. I can't see all that's on the AFP wires. But when the Beeb informed us (and even bothered domestic listeners with the news) that a 'Yes' was "voted overwhelmingly", they buried (seven paras down) the detail that the turnout barely scraped through any decision at all! Emsie's highlight came on Saturday night, I learn: the case of the prime minister, a huddle of hacks, the most tedious political analyst in the world and a very loud rock band in the middle of heaven knows precisely where. She managed to escape the analyst's clutches and got a decent quote or two out of Mikulas Dzurinda, the PM, before he took the stage and raised a storm. But I fear our intrepid correspondent found the rock band's performance more stirring than that of the place's centre-right bossman. As well she might, since she may have Afrikaans blood in her veins, but has a taste for things Mediterranean and we "Latin" peoples. (We? My fondness for southern France is "adoption", little else. I know there's some Viking blood in all those white globules, a drop of Irish, but the rest is a mystery. How Latin are we Brits?) South African, Emsie knows places like Spain and Italy much better than me. A band called the Gladiators, perhaps, could scarcely fail to impress. I'd love to know more. My horizons have been broadened. One likely site loads so slowly that it took too long to reach the, er, "death borg". But this one's OK. So which was it, Emsie? Speedcore?, Technocore??, Gabber??! ... or Hardcore???! The mind boggles. Which does Mr Dzurinda speak? 9:02:31 PM  link   your views? [] Mares of the night and an archetype, or two (1) Yes. And stereotypes ... and singularities. I find I still have four readers! After forever alienating another last week. So I hope it's clear to all four that my Grip on Reality remains steadfast, despite some straying down strange roads of late. The night, nonetheless, was so odd that I don't wish to listen to 'Today' today and be drawn back into bomb attacks and the routine madness of some politicians. Just for a day. Thing is, I simply couldn't sleep, finally managed to drop a book at 3:30, yet was up even earlier than yesterday, and while for some 7:15 am is admirably routine, it usually wrecks me. I had three such strange and lucid dreams. Some might argue I had a couple of current worries, one for a good but heartsick acquaintance, the other about my lab results. But though my "unconscious" just may be more concerned than I think it is, I don't buy that. It's true that the laboratoire d'analyses médicales did something perhaps silly. When I did the fresh blood tests on Saturday, they promised speedy results by tomorrow afternoon, despite the current wave of strikes (a good cause: our pensions). I said I knew things were difficult, but would be awfully, ever so, etc, if the assured and efficient woman who was the only one left doing much despite the queues, could see her way to letting me have them by 2:30 pm today instead. I'd rather avoid postponing the next two medical appointments (one brought weeks forward by dint of persuasion and the kindness of the specialist). Instead, we got back from 'The Matrix' to find a message on my ansaphone. "Monsieur," she announced, "we found this (problem I don't fully grasp) with your white blood cells and we thought better to fax them to your cabinet médical de toute urgence, in the hope your doctor sees them rapidly. You may fetch the lot as of first thing Monday." I haven't. There's no point in rushing to collect something I won't understand until hours hence. My stalwart and upright friend David ( a good friend to all in "the factory" likely to benefit from the considerable work he and Dmitri have done of late on the union front, though he shrugs it off), commented that what the lab lady did was a little "unethical", in risking scaring the shit out of me for two days before anything could be done, until I assured him that she had evidently realised that I'm not of the panicking kind. A "worrywart", yes (thanks to Her Imperial Majesty Jen at TS for adding that to my vocabulary all the way from Florida), but too fatalistic or stupid for panic - even during one of the world's worst-ever plane flights in a killer. I'll never forget an Air France pilot for publicly reprimanding a stewardess over the intercom and summoning her "up front" after she informed her human cargo: "Mesdames, Messieurs, I'm so happy to tell you that by the Grace of the Good Lord we shall be landing at Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle in two minutes." Poor lass! No. It's none of that. I dreamed of ... Schrödinger's cat. To be clearer, I had a conversation with Erwin Schrödinger (fun poem link) about singularity. Details elude me now, I just know the cat was black, the man made me laugh, told me something which had me reply, "Ah, now I see!" (What was it I saw? Possibly it was meaningful. I don't recall.) ... I dreamed of my bien-aimée, heart-thief. "In all things," she said, "we are complementary." We were in ... the Sahara, nothing special since both of us travel, we weren't thirsting, and that desert I have penetrated (not far, but deep enough) from both ends, the eastern, in Tunisia, the western in Mauritania. Its immensity gives me great hope for the future of the planet despite humanity. "What I have," she added, "you lack, and what you've got, I haven't." And then a small group of Blue Men arrived, with camels, guns and hidden faces. In real life, I've never seen these Tuaregs, just photos. They were both distant and friendly, neither of us could understand a word of what they were saying until one told us, in French, "We have found the track you lost. We've come to take you there." Fade out, unfortunately... After that exercise in some kind of wish-fulfilment (I half jest) came the strangest. OK, I know I ranted on about Wagner last week, et alors?. I was among the men sitting in the shadows round the fire as Siegfried tells the dark, wicked Hagen his story. Weird thing was that though I've not listened to it all for many a year (after once doing so many, many times), all the German came flooding back, the bit about the flawed hero's blood initiation into birdsong: "In Lied zu dem Wipfel lauscht' ich hinauf; da sass es noch und sang: 'Hei, Siegfried erschlug nun den schlimmen Zwerg! Jetzt wusst ich ihm noch das herrlischte Weib. Auf hohen Felsen sie schläft, Feuer umbrennt ihren Saal; durchschritt' er die Brunst, weckt' er die Braut, Brünnhilde ware dann sein!'" . Und so weiter ("and so on"), a great bleeding chunk of it all! (Of that particular passage, a confounded Mac Sherlock "translator" makes: "In song to the treetop listens I up; there it sat still and sang: 'Hei, Siegfried killed now the bad dwarf! Now wusst I it still the herrlischte woman. On high rock it sleeps, fires umbrennt their hall; if it crossed the Brunst, it wakes the bride, Bruennhilde commodity then its [it is]!' I've seen worse (and three available Watson translators did no better). It was my happy use of words like "herrlischte" which drove even my elderly ex-Camel Corps two-year German teacher crazy, but scraped me an amazing grade 2 in the O-level exam...* But "commodity", huh? Rejoice, all ye feminist anti-Wagnerians! His last wife, Cosima, certainly didn't see herself that way. Nor Brünnhilde. Point is: as other Ring-maniacs know, soon after all that, as a sadly cuckolded Gunther's jaw drops ever further (since he didn't know of a nasty potion), Siegfried reaches his climax, a couple of ravens wing it away like bats out of hell, and Hagen seizes his spear to plunges it straight into the poor lad's back, killing him on the spot. (The picture, not quite how I dreamed it, is from Fritz Lang's 1924 'Siegfried' (thanks to Silent Thrills.) I woke almost at once to the racket of an early tourist coach, some thunderous chords still splitting my skull, and my first waking thought Gunther's almost whispered echo of Hagen's astounded warriors: "Hagen - was tatest du?" ("What have you done?" There you go. A drizzly dreary morning has begun, it's 9:45. I'll get back to this later. zzz I see this won't be finished yet. I'm eager for the symbol book to arrive (not on dreams, thank you). But I'll post the first part, in the wake of a healthy dose of reality. Perhaps a wildcat, wherever she is right now, should be told that I love her and I sorely miss her. On archetypes, stereotypes too, I'll be baksun. Wasn't that how Winnie the Pooh put it? ________ *Loosely, I'd venture: "In sorrow, I gazed up into the treetops: still it perched there and sang: 'Hey! Now Siegfried has slain the wicked dwarf! Now I'm aware of a worthy wife for him. On the high rock she sleeps, fire an inferno around the place; he who can break through the blaze to awaken the bride there, Brünnhilde shall be his.'" Such German as I have is very rusty, one word loses me altogether. Any corrections would be welcome. 1:30:23 PM  link   your views? []

dimanche 18 mai 2003

'Reloaded' revisedlinked ... revisited By Marianne anyway. And though she'll beg to differ, I feel that a daughter's first sortie in the big city with a young man (though not the boyfriend) and nobody else is a "blog-worthy" event. Especially since her alarm clock also woke Daddy at eight o'clock on a Sunday morning. They're going to see 'Matrix Reloaded' in Odessa street. Sorry, Lee my friend, two more for those maddening crowds of yours. Yesterday, we didn't go as far as the Max Linder after all, but to Les Cinq Caumartins, a high-quality place worth publicity as part of one of the diminishing number of independents left in town. Getting there 95 minutes early was Pariscope's fault, not mine, they billed the time wrong. Parisians should know this, because many don't, even Fnac card-holders: if you've got one, you get cut-price tickets at this cinema as well as a handful of the other "indies". Sorry, was it 'Reloaded' you want to know about? In a phrase: well worth the wait! I too shall see it again. A good 9/10 like the first, but different. Had the mysterious Wachowski brothers risked their first inclinations and 'Reloaded' and 'Matrix Revolution' (due in November) been a single film more than four hours long, even the extra bowel-clearing prelude time offered by an over-early arrival wouldn't have been enough for me in my current condition. Moreover, the movie demands constant attention and to every detail, as did the first part of the story and I didn't "get it" all in one go. Some things, even the obvious ones in the private 21st-century recast mythology of the makers, only hit in my sleep (I dreamed, no kidding, of machines). Persephone (Monica Bellucci) had, of course, to be named for her ambiguous role at a gateway, wife of Hades too. And a seductress. Apart from the kingship aspect, I have yet to find my second and third degrees in her screen husband, Merovingian (an excellent Lambert Wilson, whose brief foul-mouthed excursions into his native tongue had a French audience roaring with laughter). I suspect that a few of those who have expressed disappointment with "number two" wanted even more of the sheer bravura John "Bullet" Gaeta displayed with the special effects in 'Matrix' itself, but you can hardly revolutionize that side of the multi-media industry and trigger so many good and bad clones twice in a decade. As it is, 'Reloaded' had quite enough surprises for me, including a car (and other vehicle) chase unlike any predecessor, as breath-takingly new in its way as the one in 'The French Connection' was way back in 1971. Every bit as luscious to look at as 'Matrix' was, 'Reloaded' is equally genially paced. Just one scene seemed a little longer than it needed to be (Marianne felt the same way), but to say which would either disclose a key plot detail you know already or don't want to in advance. My guesswork last month on the plot was wrong. So was almost everybody else I heard or read. So much the better... Since it's no mystery that Neo and Trinity are in love, it will come as no spoiler to remark that such snatched love as Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss make in 'Reloaded' is precisely that: l'amour, not "just" sex. Among other rarities or novelties, Zion is magnificent (I enjoyed the Rasta references) while the machinery took me right back to Metropolis. Randall Duk Kim is The Keymaker, a role that scarcely needs "explaining", the Twins (Adrian and Neil Rayment) and their powers make things worse most satisfactorily, and Morpheus's fellow captain, as Niobe (work that one out), is a stunning Jada Pinkett Smith. There are too many other new faces to mention. We learn more of the nature of Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), including his own love life, and Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) lives up to the multiplicity of his name, while the nature of the Oracle becomes more clear. Whether Gloria Foster will be back in 'Revolution' I don't know. One of the much-visited Source sites lists her last film as 'Reloaded', before diabetes claimed her life in September 2001, but the Wachowski brothers will only tell us want they want to there! Even Ms Moss herself says she didn't know, once on set after all the months of training our heroes endured at the hands of martial arts master Yuen Wo Ping, whether the scenes she was working on for a year and a half would end up part of 'Reloaded' or 'Revolution'. That much she was prepared to tell 'CINE Film(s)' (whence the pix here). I was unjust the other day to slag this off the other day for charging too much for its special on 'Reloaded' (and I'd looked at the price for the wrong country too, so it wasn't just Francis who was bleary-eyed). For 4.95 euros in fact, Marianne's souvenir edition is packed with fascinating details, intelligent writing and interviews, and some good stuff from behind the scenes. One thing I learned from it last night, for instance, after taking most of the car chase scene for technical wizardry when we watched it, was that it isn't. It was filmed the good old-fashioned way, with real people in real vehicles, and one of the stunt women got damned near killed at 140 kilometres an hour (87 mph) It's slightly frustrating to learn that a forthcoming DVD will contain five more revealing and related shorts to add to the four at the Animatrix (not, regrettably, the easiest of download places for those with slow connections), since I have no plans to get a telly while a DVD player is way down low on my shopping list. I'll find a friend! The whole article on Matrix, anime and the Japanese connection is an interesting read, worth exploring further on the Net. And any magazine which agrees with me that Metropolis, which Fritz Lang made in 1927 after all, was the first cyberpunk movie gets my vote. Now I want to see 'Ghost in the Shell, which I missed at the time. At Matrix News & Rumours (fairly regular updates), Shawn Morrison also bemoans the lack of a Mac version (yet?) of the Enter the Matrix video game. It's not that I want to play it; but it notably includes scenes where parts of the film flow, with parts of the cast, into the game, and vice versa. It took me as long to finish this as it did Marianne to form a second opinion. Which was "fabulous", plus a most intriguing guess regarding a previously unspotted aspect of the cliff-hanger end. I won't pass it on. In 'Cloud-Cuckoo Land' warning: SPOILERS, mojoflea got "unplugged", turned off. His vision is quite different from mine or Marianne's. Which is exactly how the Wachowski brothers want each's viewer's response to be. Another fun feller freshly aroused to enjoy disagreeing with is chipstah!, for whom 'Reloaded rocks', but who then does a rewipe to drop a heavier load of it all on things French and the Matrix at Blogcritics. Wake up, Lee! The eagle's unloaded its asshole, hauling in De Villepin "Smith", 'Merde in France' (blogrolled) and 'scrappleface' (ditto) in one funny foul-smelling swoop. Further gleanings: Neo's Matrix (rich site, but erase those friggin' pop-ups) The [Matrix] Slip-Up Archive Dew's Matrix Fan Page (thanks for the sound) Jen's Matrix (belated addition: incompatible with some browsers (the game is find the Menu), but when it is, it's good) Google (if you've nothing better to do for the rest of the decade) If it's photos you're after, the IMDB has nearly five dozen of them! Writing this did not take that long, nor did checking the wretched HTML. Time is one of your private dimensions on the "real". My roof is not leaking again this morning. That hole is only part of a dream. The dream might be my own. It might not. "Chuang-Tzu once dreamed he was a butterfly. When he awoke, he no longer knew if he was a butterfly dreaming he was a man, or a man who had dreamed he was a butterfly." 1:39:53 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 17 mai 2003

OS X: minimiser sur place, restored. Hat off! Another beaut'. Another developer to add to my growing bookmarks of fine ones. A pity I already posted a temporary new desktop overnight, otherwise I'd bother with a screenshot or two. You can find Minimize in Place restored to the Jag by Loopware. Free if you want. It's compatible, after some minimal fiddling with prefs, with Transparent Dock ($8 I forked out to Free Range Mac long back) and with the phenomenal (free) TinkerTool. Tested and approved. And yet MiP is not at VersionTracker. Should OS Xers still not be with me, the Loopware people explain: "Minimize in place is a feature that was created at the early stages of Jaguar (Mac OS 10.2) in which windows could be minimized as floating smaller versions of the window then being dropped into the dock at the bottom or the sides of the screen (depending where you put your dock). Anyways, originally it seems (from sources around the net) that the original purpose of minimize in place was just for testing out badges (a new feature in Jaguar which places the original Apps icon in the corner of a minimized window). It was never intended to hit the retail version of Jaguar and was taken out after 6C48." So they put it back before Apple does. I found this in the latest AVosMac !. They say it's "indispensable"; I'll settle for darned useful. 12:21:55 PM  link   your views? [] Time for a change of scene With 'Matrix' in sight all over (apart from among Brits who must wait another week), today's most irritating spotted blognote was: "I have just seen 'Matrix Reloaded'. It wasn't as good as the first one." That was it. Thank you. It might be an equally bad idea to read Sean at Blogcritics (again). He does warn: "spoilers", which I avoided. But ... I learned that there's this book which looks like my kind of thing, maybe yours? We are going to win the lottery today! I know it. While waiting it was high time for a new desktop. And it's too long since I stopped by chez Markus Begann (some fabulous work) This month's 'Création numérique', meanwhile, partly ignores the 'Matrix' ... with a great story on Sylvain Despretz. Take a gander at this fellow's astounding track record. And work (Flash). The article begins: "He doesn't want to give his age. 'Age is a projection screen on which you put some a priori. Life is more simple when people disassociate age from the work done." There's some sense! 'Création numérique'? These people (in French, becoming part of my "required reading." Along with P I X E L - part of a broader portal site.) Know of others? 12:54:53 AM  link   your views? []

vendredi 16 mai 2003

Deeper into the merde Shit. I lost much of an entry, trying to be too short-cut clever on a slow, migrained mind. But, as I say at work when a mere news bulletin gets lost, it might be better second time round. Rainer will lose me my job if I pinch and practice one of his great e-mail "sigs": "Originality is the art of concealing your sources." OK. Results. Not the blow-by-blow Karin got on the phone, before - "auf wiederhören" when I dare listen further - producing delightful tidbits about a bodily part beginning with "p". I arrived chez Luc "Sherlock" Yang breathless, hot from the lab with the just-finished last test to date. No amoeba, no African thingie, certainly not KwaZulu Natal cholera as the wildcat had suggested, scraping barrels. In any event, the latter kills you quickly, not more than a year later. In short, sweet eff eh!. Tomorrow morning, a thorough blood test. And more enforced "rest", until the specialist's had his say Tuesday. Suspicions now focus not on the "p" nastier minds might have imagined, but the pancreas. Warning: though I was more steady tippler than massive boozer and kidneys and liver are fully restored, Yang explained to me how the pancreas can start showing signs of a hit even six years after you go completely dry... What Karin found, which I need know no more, is that unregulated bile production and occasional difficulty swallowing would fit neatly into the latest hypothesis. If one of my readers doesn't like this medical rundown, there are blogs where brave people daily contend with far worse. And if I'd gleaned less about medicine and science than I have, I'd be surprised that the still steaming sample deposited at the lab had remained of any use four days later. I wasn't going to tell Tony's story, but I will: "Catching up on missed correspondence is the usual mix of pleasure & pain tho' taking more time than ever becos I type more slowly than ever [what does he know about my own typing speed, plus the number of mistakes, this week?]. I admired the layout on yours [ta, mate], but please don't criticise the NUJ's unmemorably named [xxxx] Thingy in my presence; I treasure comforting evidence that somebody is more computer-illiterate than I am.[Did I do that? Who was Thingy?]. "Yr blow by blow (squirt by squirt?) account of yr problems roused sympathy [thanks] & memories of Bangalore in '46, Carruthers. I biked a late specimen across Cambridge in a twopenny tub I'd put in the handlebar basket; this gave ample opportunity to display my wit when curious friends asked what it was." Old chum, you leave out what you've told me unpurged. Am I not to recall that bounce-biking your sample over cobblestones amid gleaming spires was in those days not as easy as stuffing a little plastic bottle into one's pocket? And that at least one of the "curious" was far fairer than even you were, if prim as the turn of the 1940s, and took most uncharitably to being shown the job? zzz 'MamaMoose' has been deep in it on Safari. As with African affairs and any assistance I can give lost colleagues over the 'phone till I'm back, putting in my euro on that TS issue was the least I could do But short of a Safari reinstall with the latest (security-fix) beta via the software update panel, the well-informed 'tacit' nailed my own brief glitch with it right on the head. A side-effect of "taking out", as Americans will put it, that ~user/library/preferences "com.apple.safari.plist" was the loss not of settings for "helper applications". I needed to reset Gordon Byrnes's excellent Enhancer (download place) to recover the hidden stuff and flush out the cache. The same went for Reinhold's wonderful Safaricon (ditto). I thought this needed an upgrade too, before I realised that Safari's own "View" menu required a few moments' re-fixing. I regret to say that, apart from the public convenience 'e dot's' Safari Menu provides, I have no special needs and thus find the rest of all the hard work by other developers either overlap "add-ons" or are redundant. But Pith was cool. Anyway, Camino still tops my list. Stuff hit the fan in this morning's mail, but not in the offer to "fukahorse" or the suggestion from a self-described 'Bozo' that I Lose Weight Now with Phentermine, Adipex, Bontril, Prescribed Online, shipped to Your Door.' Enough already, I'm not allowed "fats". If I knew Some Bozo's home address, he and his charming junkie friend (I do hope not!) would be getting by snail mail whatever part of my own sample the lab left over. The trouble came from somebody who found yesterday's sexual revelations "beyond the pale". Well, I didn't ask him to read them and so his objection is in the trash, costing me 33 percent of my readership in one fell swoop. Had he commented here, I'd have fetched a rarely needed reply: Or sent him to tacit's journal and his ladyfriends there for sorting out. Brickbats are welcome if hurled with sense. Even "You're full of crap" would have sufficed. Simple "furious" doesn't do it for me. Reader number two said "hey, great posts today and yesterday". Why, thanks! And there was me wondering if a little too much had hung out. Worse still, I bothered to take a look at my so-called "referers" and guess what I found. First, references to one Hotmail and one Yahoo account I was, of course, unable to hack. So whoever's saying what about me are safe with their own little secrets. Secondly, there was these surprising bits of nicking or goggling (bottom of each page). This proves that you show a little flesh and you're infamous for at least four seconds. Some people do it all the time, like the 'Madman', "the one your mother warned you about" whose "vital statistics" include: "•legal status: on parole for crimes against nature and the internet (don't ask) [Oh, but I shall... I am!] •skills: hacking, phreaking, reverse engineering, UNIX system administration •hobbies: fly wing collecting, acts of random violence, electrifying common objects, burning stuff, embalming (stuff)." You may explore the rest and his passing obsession with boobage for yourselves. Hence a test, if rather "ado"... Susannah York gave me all I ever lusted for as brief exposure during a tough part in Altman's bold 'The Killing of Sister George'. Bold indeed for 1968... A memory of another fine display lingers from an Aussie-directed film which was not one of Nicolas Roeg's, but if I can't spot it on the IMDB, maybe it was just an unforgettably wet dream. She was just as stunning in uniform (yes, with her it was a turn-on) or behind a sheet in the best film about the 'Battle of Britain', before something horrible happened to her hubby, Christopher Plummer. That movie joined my top 10 for the long movement where a noisy soundtrack vanishes, apart from the score for the deadly ballet in the skies on the crucial, sunny September day when an exhausted, depleted RAF turned the tide. The next day, the night visitors packed it in. Some of Walton's best efforts never made it to the screen, perhaps because director Guy Hamilton's backers spent every last penny on getting hold of all the aircraft. No computerised models back then. If there's even one left going spare, I want a Spitfire. That's probably what my other reader (number three) will do over this post. Heart-thief, spit as much as you want. There's no way your own beauty is going up here. You're already planning to strangle me three times over, so scratching my eyes out can come when I'm already dead. Jealousy is a sin only allowed to me. Don't forget Portia, whose gets a page at ChipRouse, though I'm not inviting the class. Did you know "P" stands for "passionate" ... and "o" for "obedient", "a" for "acceptant"? No, well you're right, such qualities are mercifully strained in my favourite women. Marianne will also murder me for this (her arrival postponed till tomorrow, ouch). But I can't help that. You see, Sondra once volunteered this supplementary detail, still spread all over the bed Net. But I hope she made a packet out of Hugh Hefner - who I'd not care to be, though one could do with even a small percentage of his spare cash - to do whatever came next. Not to post this now would be like the Reverend Raincoat, whose real name was Macintosh, but was more stupid as a religious affairs teacher than my computer. One day he ordered: "Now you boys will read Isaiah, Chapter 36, but you are forbidden from reading verse 12." Evidently, that's one of the few Biblical texts I can still reference in a nanosecond. Curiosity may have killed a cat. Some of them are sillier than Marianne's fictional favourite, Garfield. But the old wolf in me just has to know what Feedster will prowl for. If anything. Okay, Sondra dear, end of Xperiment. We wouldn't want to arouse further eruptions, so you can put it away now. Over in his 'Pop Culture Gadabout', Bill Sherman's already getting exercised by the 'New Pornographers'. Thank you for coming (via Blogcritics, long blogrolled). 8:20:35 PM  link   your views? [] More mistaken ID and mechanical minds "One of the things that a lot of women notice in virtual communities is that if you're a man, people stop offering to help you -- especially when there is a lot of technical stuff to do." Social "psychologist in cyberspace" Sherry Turkle tried being an online man, reports Discover. She also has views on "bonding with machines" and the "profound buttons" pushed by Tamagotchis, and asserts that "intelligent robots are going to be an integral part of our lives". Like it or lump it. Roland Piquepaille picked this up in his endless pursuit of 'Technology Trends. Thanks. 1:00:28 AM  link   your views? []

jeudi 15 mai 2003

Women's words, Wagner ... and who are you? Clare Short's real resignation this week and her statement (published in Tuesday's Independent) restored some of my regard for the woman, almost lost when she proved me wrong just before the war. She deserves the praise from aid agencies. I'm scarcely sorry for President Blair and the upset Labour Party lickers of his backside. What I heard of the parliamentary speech I heard wasn't bad, if not as er ... exciting as Robin Cook's, reportedly drawing sharp intakes of breath from even Tory benches while there was a "stunned silence" in the ranks of the pink. However, as friend Tony once remarked, "Most people make a pretty decent resignation speech, even if the rest was always total rubbish." By contrast, cabinet minister John Reid spouted such drivel on 'Today' this morning that given the energy, I'd have fired off an e-mail. But then the braying of male asses in the Commons had me switch off altogether. Still, Clare's shilly-shallying richly merited a story at 'scrappleface' which made me laugh aloud. One of those Americans who writes dates the odd way round (05/12, and you know, that awful multiple plane attack on November 9), Scott Ott began: "(2003-05-12) -- British Secretary of International Development Clare Short has submitted her quarterly resignation letter..." (read on here) When I saw that Scott toyed with monkeys and Shakespeare three days before I cobbled my own potty tribute, I almost sent him a donation, but managed somehow to fight off the temptation. zzz Now that Shakespeare bloke was one misogynist pig. A few feminists going strong while I began to enjoy him in the late 60s and early 70s were convinced of this and the notion persists, to look at some US campus sites. I never believed it, finding that the fellow distributed his finest lines and discourses to both sexes, measure for measure. It's like an old contention about Wagner, quite a misogynist - was he scared (painting by A. Rackham)? He gets portrayed as a proto-Nazi since Hitler adopted him, which had more to do with the actions of some of the composer's family and circle than Wagner's own increasingly mad essays. The anti-Semitism manifest in a monstrous ego's treatment of Mendelssohn (who mainly bores me stiff too) and in his turgid 'Jewry in Music', stems from the fact that the young Richard Geyer, as he was known until he was around 14, spent his life fighting a belief that he was himself of half-Jewish parentage in company where this just "wasn't on"*. Wagner is still high in my pantheon of artists possessed of a multi-layered universality of insight into the human condition, increasingly taken up with themes of fall and redemption as his work progressed. His final opera, to be called 'The Victors', was to have drawn on the life of the Buddha! However, his women are mainly archetypical characters who redeem flawed men through instinct, love ... and self-immolation. Indeed the man died after a seizure one afternoon while scribbling his 'Über das Weibliche in Menschlischen' ('On the Female Element in Humankind'). I shudder to consider where it was going. By then a long way from Shakespeare, Wagner had been drawn a much younger man to the bard 'Das Lieberverbot' ('The Love Ban'). I fail to see how, as Donna Freitas notes in a look at the feminist matter (with good links), a certain Boom - who or what? - can assert that "Shakespeare invented personality, i.e., what it means to be human." Sweeping stuff! Granted the dubious benefit of my own monkeying around with a string of quotes (and maybe there should be a prize for whoever can track every one of them down to source!), a lovely lady remarked that he was also the "first psychologist". Or just about... And so to women and some sweeping generalisations of my own. Apart from Ursula K. for a few short story re-re-reads (I meant that) as part of a staple diet, and Rebecca B., whose recent concerns include the truth or otherwise about that 'iLoo' (which she's dubbed the "WWW.C" - along with "open cesspools": there's simply no immediate escape from faecal material), I've read not a book by a woman this year. Though not on purpose. The nearest to a convincingly hot romance I've embarked on is part of a current almost indescribable bedtime read. My own review of Karl Schroeder's 'Ventus' (no spoilers here) will be attempted once I'm done. "There's Marguerite Duras," observed the wildcat of women and letters last night, tiger pacing, which was good news since it meant her claws were still on the floor. "Just don't even mention Virginia Woolf!" Cheery site that... Should I also avoid Sylvia Plath while about it? And forget that as a distinct possible for my lone desert island poet, Ted Hughes was inconveniently a man? No, my sharp-edged but passingly marsh-mallowed sweetheart, it wasn't all your books I had in mind. When it comes to blogs, though! My listlink-cum-blogroll is in for an overhaul. Yet I can't help but notice that (with not the least offence intended), my regular reads include far more gals than guys. Why should this be? Well ... one of them led me straight to Natacha Merritt, the main illustrator of this ramble. Is it art, porn or glossy self-indulgence? Amazon readers can't make up their minds. Oh, and sorry I got distracted by that penis picture as we talked, darling, but it was rather strong. Anyone who cares to decide for themselves could run to Digital Diaries (beware, extremely Flash, and be "welcome, voyeurs, to the very private sexual journey of a 21st-century girl." Just 21 to boot. But then, I'd not realised till last week that the highly readable Holly was 23. Donner hit me with your lightning-stick if I've taken a fancy to striplings, but age is immaterial! When I began in the press, somebody told me to check out sports writing. Far from my field, but "some of the best on the planet", he advised. Fair enough, but without belittling the work of my male colleagues - or my own - I've noticed that many women journalists reach parts most of we men don't. There can be this eye for telling details that we'd miss or think irrelevant but can "make" a story, character stuff, even perhaps a different way of asking the right questions and relating the answers. I've read fashion stories whose subjects and vocabulary almost totally evade me, but which grip me from start to finish through sheer style. A handful of "women's magazines" occasionally grab my attention for articles that few men would think to write, but leave me glad I read them. It's not just a matter of enjoyable gossip or the small-talk I'm lousy at. Nor is it some easy, false dichotomy between synthetic and analytical ways of seeing. There's no particular reason why Rebecca, again, should reconsider the 'High Price of Materialism' the way she chooses to because she's a woman. Vagary seems to have taken apathy to extremes since May 1, unless she's vanished from the radar for any number of other reasons, but I'll leave her there in the hope she finds her way back. Over at odessa street, Lee, who does often write as only women will, is today as focussed on 'The Matrix' as everybody else, but with extra reason: her road will go insane this weekend, and perhaps it's not such a good idea after all (even at the Max Linder, safely clear of Lee's). And there are others I've yet to blogroll, along with all the fine fellows in there. Surprises to come. Kim, who's younger than most I occasionally drop in to read, makes no pretence in subtitling 'Fresh Hell' "All pop. No culture," reveals more about American television shows than ever I needed to know or will remember ... and also sets out "Friday fives". The last before tomorrow asks questions about planning and organisation. How do you do? Now, DON'T complain you weren't warned. I rarely shout, but making that clear is vital before sending anybody into 'Violet Blue' and "oral fixations" at 'Tiny Nibbles', with another disclaimer along the lines of "to each their own and here's more than most"! I can see some folk getting lost there and never coming back. But when it comes to that straight women's talk on sex I mentioned today, it's among some places I meant. 'Geek Goddess' claims to be the "original" place for all those women on the leading edge of the feminisation of cyberspace and currently lists a handful. One of those is called 'stopthief', and features some well-armed ladies along with good writing, so I'd better stress here that I've only borrowed a logo for illustrative purposes. Should you disapprove, please leave the knives behind. zzz I suspect that what all this boils down to is one simple thing: Without any pretence at really understanding the whies of it and the differences in thinking, I often find women more interesting than most, I stress "most", men I know. It's not just what they say, but how they say it! There are evidently exceptions among my best friends and most fascinating acquaintances. But being bored is not my strong point, and cars and ball games are only the first off-switches. Blow those personality tests as a separate thread, since everything's long today after brewing all week and more. So it was a man, Rainer, who set my mind down off this long path way back on April 21 with this, the admirable chap. 'The Guardian' query he mentions is still Do you have a male or female brain?, in an article saying "there really are big differences". Should you be too impatient to find out before reading it, here are the tests themselves (more Flash). You think that's it? You gotta be kidding ... if you've got days with nothing better to do. Try shapes. And that's still only part of the start. This is where you can have a holiday; a good thing about all the tests hosted here is that they have the sense to tell you how long they should take. Rainer, like his trigger at codepoetry, was upfront enough to say how he scored. Me too: my IQ is only slightly below average; I'm as aggressive, outgoing and macho to the best degree they come, which is consequently prematurely (but never mind her feelings); my empathy level was so far off the scale that I might as well be living on Pluto; I've got every prejudice in the book, on the Net and some that have yet to be mentioned; and my very essence is like the life of Thomas Hobbes's perfect "natural man": "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." _____ *Part of this I learned in Robert W. Gutman's magistral 'Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind and His Music', the only weighty biography I've read twice. With admirable flair and humour, the genial professor combines an occasionally perfectly damning portrait of a multiple and complex character with acute insight into the layers on layers of substance and meaning in the music. 10:46:24 PM  link   your views? [] Perfectly lunar, like a ring Now I know why Francis slept badly, bleary-eyed behind his counter. I also know there'll be no argument about movies this weekend. Never mind the state of the guts... (which I shouldn't have mentioned: the effect was instantaneous. I was about to say that) now 'Matrix Reloaded' is here, we might even go to town's biggest and best, the Max Linder Panorama, dare I venture that far. Marianne also wants to see 'Fanfan la Tulipe', a notion to which the top half of me is not averse. While I was fuming that Ciné Live dares to cash in on the trend by asking an outrageous ?5.50 for its Matrix special, Francis was busy blaming the moon for tough times in general. It's not actually full until tomorrow, but should he get a siesta or another rough night, he'll be up, says he, for big eclipse. I shan't. Elsewhere in the unreal world outside the Matrix, I'm not sure which colour pill my wildcat chose. She was smouldering where she is and said she wants a helium balloon to rise out of it. Not a bad place whence to watch a lunar eclipse, I'd have thought... She has no money, to speak of, and neither do I. This is simply frustrating. Now I almost feel guilty about buying 'Premiere' for a more acceptable three euros and ordering Robert Donington's 'Wagner's Ring and its symbols' when at last I spotted an available copy again. Will I ever learn to stop lending books to people who disappear? In his own perspective on 'Possessing the Ring' (half the street used to shake during my rare 18-hour weekends with the tetralogy, but nobody complained), Dr Donivan Bessinger, now retired, but deep into "articles which center around the theme of sythesizing modern knowledge to affirm the meaning and healing of human life", also brings Jung into the Wagnerian cosmos. Tonight, the moon becomes a ring all her own. But that doesn't solve the wildcat's problem nor mine. However, I know what my three numbers are and she rattled off her own favourite three like a shot. All we need now is for that full moon to bring blessings rather than a curse. Plus just one more number. It'll have to be Marianne's. I haven't played the loto in years. This time, we'll win. zzz On that other business, today's been a real drag for the resumption of constant visits, but I've enough spark left to complete the promised piece. And some test results are in hand. They mean little to me, but will to Dr Yang tomorrow afternoon. 7:34:58 PM  link   your views? [] When Sandy's 'ghost' was laid, the quest was on! There's a trailer in cinemas this month for some French film soon to be released. In it is one of the oldest jokes around, but still I laughed to see it again. Out on some lonely walk with appropriate waves pounding hard on the rocks, the man says: "Just once, I'd really love to know what it's like to feel a female orgasm as a woman does. Even just the once." His lady companion breaks any spell with her reply: "Just once, I'd really love to know what it's like to feel a female orgasm as a woman does. Even just the once!" I'd better remember what it's called, because it was one of those where young Marianne nudged me and said, "Yes." It's part of our trailer code: as the five or six roll by, there's a nudge and a "yes", "no" or whispered "maybe" and we haggle afterwards. If there's discord, it's "This one of mine for that one of yours" or "Certainly not, you can go with your friends." Melvyn Bragg and his guests began talking this morning about the myth of the Grail. His weekly 'In Our Time' doesn't always grab me, but that did. I switched off long wave as they started on the Fisher King, will catch it later on the Net, given that privilege, and probably record it too for brother Jon and my Dad. "What does it symbolise and why are its stories so resolutely set in these Isles and so often written by the French?" is one of several questions Bragg and co. probe, one of a number which have caused hours of family debate down the years, along with the location of Camelot. The Parsifal, or Perceval, painting is by Jean Delville and used to illustrate a poem by Verlaine on a bilingual site on thevirgin knight ("for all current browsers"). Warning: music! Wagner too. Odd these things should crop up as I'm finishing notes for a promised entry on the writings of women. Wagner has somehow stormed into those as well. I've yet to hear if Bragg delves into it, but that Grail legend is shot through and through with sex. At Voices of Women, one Carolyne Pion slots the tale into an article about 'Rechoreographing the Father-Daughter Dance' (which is something in hand under this leaking roof before she gets too old and it's too late. Considerable caution, once puberty has struck, is really rather important. At least we can hope to avoid what we see as the mistakes in our own upbringing... There's no doubt which bit of the wounded Fisher King's anatomy got lanced, though some writers are ridiculously coy about it even now. Like many teenage lads, I endured the shame the morning my Mum found naughty pictures under the bed. That was in days when my school Oxford dictionary, with no further explanation, defined masturbation as "physical self-abuse"! Life in the late, swinging '60s wasn't always what it's made out to be, which is why students tore up paving stones outside the Sorbonne 35 years ago in Mai Soixante-Huit (French society was even more hidebound then than my own). Back in March at "the canteen", Baudier, no tight-laced bourgeois he, snitched a glance at the mag I was reading - one of the usuals on Macs or graphic design - and recoiled. "Mais, c'est presque du porno, ça!" he exclaimed. "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" "It's just some bloke scratching his back," I answered, before giving the ad for internet service provider Free a first proper look. Yeah, well. Not exactly my thing and not exactly brilliant as an advertisement either. But porn? Come on, André, I've seen some really degrading things for both sexes and, worse, involving kids. You don't browse as much as I do without finding them, whether intentionally or not, and once you've let your e-mail on to people's selling lists... The ad on the right also slightly bothered the man, whose own "thing" about generally whopping boobs I largely spared readers of that piece on his productions; for me, it's just that the girl's corset doesn't come as a turn-on (the ad is for Corbis). That garment reminds me of Playboy models and tracts of a lingerie selection where I think that, were I a woman, I'd probably find both uncomfortable and a nuisance when it came to shedding it all. But to each their own. Many men are obviously bestirred by that sort of thing, or - Playboy thinks they are -along with the flowing manes too well groomed to withstand any breeze, alarmingly long nails and the absurdly high heels almost all of those models seem to insist on wearing to bed. Otherwise this and the harder stuff wouldn't sell so well. My second deeply embarrassed moment came some years back, when Jon and his wife were helping me do up my flat. Or rather, they were doing and I was supposedly helping, but all I got really right was the measurements and the furnishings I wanted. I won't lie and pretend I'd forgotten the horrible months soon after the divorce when I must have spent hours having a go at writing illustrated porn myself. It was no substitute for anything real, but divorce can lead to feelings of emasculation and inadequacy it takes a while to grow beyond. It wasn't even "good porn" if such exists; mostly banal, boring and, in retrospect, disturbingly pubescent. But I couldn't afterwards bring myself to chuck it all out while still grappling with an emotional adolescence. When those two found it, I felt like the world's most red-faced kid all over again. If this tale rings an echo in any reader's mind, well, the shrinks did come to play their part, but true friends I found I had were more valuable in the end. I no longer resent an upbringing which left me all screwed up about sex, despite the "wasted" years. It was not even particularly what I suppose, today, must have been almost routine parental attitudes when I was kid; it was very much me too, what I was. So I'm lucky that I ever genuinely enjoyed any sex at all while still in the full flush of youth - but no thanks at all to the loathsome sexologist somebody once dragged me to see in despair! That was costly, painful and unfruitful. And the "expert" was a feller! Now I've decided that not only do women probably make far better sexologists; in general, they also write about sex in much more interesting (and erotic) ways than your average man. But just as Playboy has its stereotypes, few of them remotely my dreamgirl kind, I long nursed a private one as well. Why one "type" among infinite variations in particular, I've really no idea any more. Maybe because my first head-over-heels teenage infatuation revolved around Susannah York, especially with her hair cropped short and even before I savoured the magnificent sexy food scene with Albert Finney in 'Tom Jones'. Compared to that, today's tendency to have young actresses rip everything off as a matter of course may occasionally be arousing and certainly stirs no prudish nerve in my nature (though Marianne will still sometimes briefly bury her head in my chest), but it's rarely required. Except that Francis the newsvendor told me that a recent edition of Elle was sold out within a day and not just to the usual readers. It seems that Emmanuelle Béart was in it, a fine ode to women in their late 30s, but her clothes weren't. Susannah was such an idol - a kind of archetype even? but let's not get too silly - that I was upset much later when I heard her talk of a bad marriage. "How anybody so lucky could go and treat her wrong!" I snarled at the radio. Not that I ever fell in love with Susannah or anyone like her. No. Indeed, like droves of callow lads, I rushed blindfold into partially "marrying my mother", though it's unfair on either the real one or Marianne's to press any comparison too far. The kind of point made by Carolyn Pion, above but also in reverse, would have been lost on me then. I can hope that Marianne doesn't walk into that particular trap, but know well enough that should she do so, she'll have to find out and deal with it for herself. So who, then, is this other lass who should know better than to be hoisting the fur quite so high at her age, unless she wants to get scratched or it's an unusually compliant pussy? If you don't want to know, you shouldn't be this far down, but Sondra Greenberg (aka Sandy), was in Playboy in 1987, a couple of years before Marianne graced this world. I knew nothing of her then, and little more now, but she decidedly struck a deep chord of fancy before I got bored with types, or simply grew out of it. When first I spotted her, I'd happily have invited her to my desert island, if two people were allowed by the rules. But though she took charge of my fantasies for a while, she'd never have come. She said, on becoming one of the very few women I ever saw in that magazine allowed to look remotely natural, that she hated "loud noise in the morning" and loved "back rubs", two things on which we see eye to eye. However, the island would have driven her mad, since she also sought "a life of energy, motion, excitement, change" ... and very fast bikes. And all this, by the way, answers a question I refused to some years ago. The doggedly persistent asker of the time is likely too far away to read it (or to care), but should she do so, there she has it. Not that it matters. What I fancy nowadays includes a few things both in and out of bed which I used to be too timid to mention, even though none of these are what some might call perverse; it's alarming, with extra years, there seems to come a broader imagination... Oh, about men knowing a female orgasm from inside out; well, we don't yet have that "affinity gene" Hamilton envisages to startling effect. Again, no matter. Other options are intriguing enough. As for Sandy, I hope she found her grail knight, the financial independence she craved, as many kids as she might have wanted, and feels as natural being 40-something as it looks like she did at 28. 6:29:14 PM  link   your views? [] X innovators' contest open to danged furriners "The first contest got off to a smooth start except for one issue: only U.S. residents could compete. As you know from our recent Mac DevCenter survey, a significant number of our readers reside outside the U.S.--roughly one third. So based on reader feedback, I published an article in March stating that we weren't crazy about the restriction either, and that I would see what I could do... (...) "The deadline for entries is Monday, June 16, 2003 at 5 pm PST" (more from Derrick at the MacDev Center). When it comes to good ideas (now I've digested it all), better a late lead than never for people living outside the States. 12:02:57 AM  link   your views? []

mercredi 14 mai 2003

A remarkable (and cautionary) rip-off A visit to 'the cantine' today gave me ... well, it gave me three things (but I just can't believe the first one's still dragging on, not on a diet of pasta, rice and the few other items I'm allowed; my chocolate collection is growing, since I mustn't eat it now, so my hoard for Friday hand-outs will be richer when I get back to work), of which the second was friendly faces and the third a tale about a credit card scam new to me, though three or four years old. A regular whose name I should know but don't recounted the entertaining but lengthy story, which could have cost him 20,000 francs (a bit more than 3,000 euros, or 3,500 dollars). He got just half of it back. It was the start of a long Pentecost weekend when he made a withdrawal from a "hole in the wall". Or so he planned, before the automatic teller, which he noticed was a newly refurbished one, ate his card without explanation. On his trip to the bank to protest when it was finally open again, they denied having collected his card and sent him to his own bank to make a complicated claim. So he did, but the card never showed up again. The state of his bank account, however, was a shock. Here's what transpired. At the machine, the thieves had installed a keyboard on top of the usual one, apparently a practice stolen from American villains, so thin (less than four centimetres) and such a snug fit that you'd not notice when you type in your PIN number. During the weekend, they somehow pinched not only the cards in the teller, but reclaimed the rigged keyboard - along with the PIN numbers it had recorded. For a couple of days, they had a fine old time, even managing to use his card in one or two shops. One of the reasons my acquaintance saw 10,000 francs returned was that he had never signed his credit card on the back, as he showed us, warning us to do likewise. Because when it came to the signatures relating to some of the fraudulent purchases, they didn't match the one on record at his own bank at all. It's never occurred to me not to sign a credit card, since in Britain and some other places they still make you sign the ticket in shops as they used to do here. Malek actually scratched out the signature on his own card on hearing this, but I'll think twice before going that far. Meanwhile, one bank down the street still owes me a "mere" 60 euros, debited from my account after their machine spat back my card on March 30 but failed to produce either banknotes or ticket. When I went to see about that a couple of days later, I was told that I was already person number 20 to moan, but would be reimbursed swiftly. The money still hasn't shown up. So yesterday I had another go, and this time had to produce a letter and a bunch of paperwork. Mr Bank Manager himself eventually appeared, wringing his hands and profusely apologetic. He blamed it all on dust in the works. This would scarcely be worth adding were it not for the fact that the computerised records for the fateful day's dealings had gone, leaving nothing but a written not on file from the day's duty clerk reporting a problem with the machine and the total loss to clients of ... 120 euros. Only two of that score or more had ever registered a formal written complaint! This is unfortunate. The bank is virtually next door to a hotel used by countless foreign tourists. I'll bet that 60 euros was nothing compared to the sums one or two of them must have tried to withdraw. They must have had a really delightful stay! Apparently, there's plenty about avoiding such nastiness right here, if you know where to look, because I'm blowed if I do. I just love the (current?) ad in the corner. Reminds me of my Hotmail in-box... Oh well, back off to the watery hole in the bathroom, speaking of flushing things out. 6:37:46 PM  link   your views? [] Rebuilding places. Like Europe. My head must be quite befuddled over the news. To start with, if I heard things right on the radio this morning, this whole Europe "vs." America thing is taking strange turns with the unlikely prospect of an alliance among Britain, Spain and the US to deal with those nasty Froggies and others who want some kind of new NATO without this century's imperial power. To achieve some such thing, there would have to be a perfidious deal between London and Madrid over Gibraltar, which would not involve asking the people who live there what they think about it. This would be a bad idea, since the Rock has already made its views known but considers that Downing Street doesn't give a hoot. To some wit, Gibraltar is an encyclopaedia of progressive rock. But what's happening these days reminds me more of a fair old step backwards to the big African carve-up at theBerlin Conference in 1884-85. Maybe I should stick to the continent I know best, which is not the one I live on. I can just about name what most bits of the former Soviet Union have become, but I've scarcely the remotest idea how many countries the "new Europe" might include when it gets enlarged. This weekend, my friend Emsie and other "factory slaves" are set to go to a place once called Posonium, among nine different names it seems to have had. The first time I heard some of Smetana's 'Ma Vlast' (of which it's hard to find really stunning recordings, but one I adore is by Smetacek, now almost unobtainable), I thought the Danube was the river in question, but was swiftly corrected. And now Slovakia's another country again, too, from the one he was writing about. Not even the Beeb gives the place much of a mention. So what's going on there this weekend? Another referendum is - that new Europe. Bratislava looks like a nice place. Recent pictures show far less change than in many cities after this painting (I don't know who it's by). Enjoy yourself, Emsie, as best one can on any working visit. Oh, and another thing. It's really quite surprising where you can find English-language newspapers today. This one seems quite excited about the vote. My own breath is bated. 1:41:27 PM  link   your views? []

mardi 13 mai 2003

A very decent developer "MOX est moche," said one or two of the carpers when Alexandre first released MOX Optimize for OS X. "Sod that," I thought. "The interface could look nicer, but the application's done a lovely job further speeding up my Big Cat." Now, at VersionTracker, long after Alex overhauled those looks, a handful are still huffing and puffing. As for me, I was brought up in my tracks by a minor bug this afternoon (rectified now by the developer). I mailed Alexandre at 5:27 pm and the answer was both back and clear at 6:30. Moreover, it worked. There's a man worth his salt. 8:02:49 PM  link   your views? []

lundi 12 mai 2003

A sad demise and a fortunate escape So that's where Béa disappeared after all the hard work in Nigeria. A nice note from Dave informs me that she is "in Sao Tome and Principe this week having a well-deserved rest, and says all is well, except for a near death experience when her pirogue got its outboard caught in a fishing net just as a tornado, waterspout-style thing came in off the Atlantic. "She's OK now." Succinct, wasn't it? São Tomé e Principe are but 400 kilometres (250 miles) from Nigeria by pirogue... I await the photos with a keen interest. I also learn that Ade's got malaria - again. All the best, Ade: here's wishing you well! Thanks also go to K. in Zimbabwe, whose kind but brief mail landed via this place. More of your news please, I'm hungry! As a booster, Dave sent me the tragic tale of the president's pet wallower (from the Vanguard): "ABUJA: Officials at the Nigerian Presidential Villa, Aso Rock, say the accidental death of the presidential hippo is being kept from President Olusegun Obasanjo. "They say Obasanjo will be enraged to hear that the hippo suffocated in a poorly ventilated tank in direct sunshine, after zoo veterinarians captured it for treatment. "Neighbours of the zoo had insisted that something be done about the hippo who made a lot of noise. After a medical examination, the hippo was found too large to return to its original home, and was installed in the open tank where it died. "The hippo was acquired by Nigeria's deceased military ruler General Sani Abacha." 8:45:32 PM  link   your views? [] Where there's Will, there's a way... 'Henry V' in the light of Gulf War II? Or the other way round? Maybe I should read the first act again, with those pre-war diplomatic negotiations to find a justification for invading France (a University of California site even gives a choice of editions). The part about justifications was among those judiciously cut from the famous film Laurence Olivier made during World War II. He went on to run London's National Theatre, which is now staging the play for the first time in the institution's history. A play about all wars, people reckoned this morning on Andrew Marr's 'Start the Week', repeated tonight, in a briefer version, at 2030 GMT on Radio 4. (I missed most of a good programme: state of bowels = urgent visits since 1:20 am = 4 state of mind = progress towards check-up = , i.e. broken through all secretarial firewalls, consultation imminent. Bon courage!, Karin, I'll be back soon*.) 'Start the Week' is also already on the Net (needs Real Player, free version is in small print). What I did hear so far will make me reassess one of my least favourite, apart from those semi-franglais courtship moments, Shakespeare plays. And brother Jon has probably forgiven our mother by now for not waking him up for the battle of Agincourt bit when she took us to see the Olivier film as kids. I hadn't considered, for instance, an ever contemporary war-and-the-media side to the play, apparently highlighted in the new modern-dress London production, despite the obvious "propaganda value" of that 1944 film. Nor the role of the Chorus as one feature of Shakespeare's ability to see and tell several sides of a story. Shakespeare and themes universal. Unbidden springs to mind the thought that my plan for yesterday, before trying to sit through any movie seemed like a lousy idea (so I'll wait for Marianne's thoughts on it), was to see 'X2: X-Men United' (Flash site). The first reviews I saw were mostly thumbs down ("not as good as the first"), but they've improved since, among both press and the public. The connection with "the bard" is not just something I read on Ian McKellan, now taking up roles like Magneto and Gandalf, and the way people see Shakespeare in such unlikely places as Star Trek. It's also precisely that nigh on conventionally godlike, supra-human capacity Shakespeare has for seeing the whole of things and their manifold facets, and his treatment of outsiders, social alienation, madness... Playing opposite McKellan in X2' - I think I had better see it when I can - is another renowned Shakespearean, Patrick Stewart, who braved the stage a couple of years back in Leeds for a one-man show called 'Shylock: Shakespeare's Alien.' This account of it is more sympathetic than one I got after the event from a Yorkshire friend. Unnervingly, run a quick web search for "Shakespeare AND alien" as separate words and you bump into people who seem seriously convinced that Shakespeare was an alien, even a bunch of them. I'd just be intrigued to know how he would have "scored" on those personality tests I have yet to post about. He'd probably blow the software fuses, a person too multiple and complex to fit into any of their scales. _____ (*mood update = briefly . I'd about done this entry before seeing Yang, who ruled me off until "jeudi (...) au moins". Non-negotiable, but I've also been to a lab and got the wherewithal for the first tests. Honestly, no more tiresome running commentary here! To someone else the last word: - Something wicked this way comes. - One sorrow never comes but brings an heir: Open, locks, whoever knocks! O, my offence is rank, It smells to heaven - Great floods have flown from simple sources. - Thou damned tripe visaged rascal, Toads, beetles, bats, light on you! 0 thou odoriferous stench, sound rottenness - Thou hast done a deed whereat valour will weep, On such a full sea we are now afloat! Your bum is the greatest thing about you, so that, in the beastliest sense, you are Pomey the Great: Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem. - 'Tis neither here nor there. Leave thy vain bibble-babble. A friend is one that knows you as you are, Understands where you have been, Accepts what you have become, and still, Gently allows you to grow! - No more be grieved at that which thou hast done, Of all base passions, fear is the most accursed. What's gone and what's past help Should be past grief, And that old common arbitrator, Time, Will one day end it. - I'll be as patient as a gentle stream. - There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. - My library was dukedom large enough. - For my part, it was Greek to me. There is not one Wise man in twenty that will praise himself. Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck! - Now, good digestion wait on appetite, and health on both! - It is the mind that makes the body rich, They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing. (Chorus): - Things without remedy, should be without regard: By medicine life may be prolonged, Yet death will seize the doctor too. We do not keep the outward form of order, where there is deep disorder in the mind. Thought is free - Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie. (With apologies to WS & those monkeys) 5:22:56 PM  link   your views? []

dimanche 11 mai 2003

Iraq and another mail-friend's questions "One insider said 'We can't even run ourselves, let alone a country,'" was a striking comment in a balanced enough BBC report this morning on the "reconstruction" of Iraq -- and how people in Baghdad feel about the work of those insiders. The venerable Alistair Cooke, in "the world's longest running speech radio programme", in his latest Letter from America' considered the problem of installing an administration after the war "insoluble", should the effort fall anything of a total "recreation". Cooke's weekly columns and mannerisms, now that he is in his '90s, sometimes grate on my nerves, yet it's one of the very few programmes I'll go out of my way to catch. Have done for years. Nick Clarke, in a brief bio, describes it as "one man's lifelong crusade to slay misconceptions and prejudice, in a quest for the Holy Grail of Anglo-American harmony." Since March 24, 1946, in fact. "There really don't seem to be many good solutions to this mess," thinks Chris Allbritton at Back in Iraq (he isn't any more), when it comes to "the control of oil", as well as the transitional government question. This comes in the wake of the US proposals currently before the UN Security Council. I've even posted a couple of comments on Chris's journal today, for the first time and likely the last. Had I time I'm not ready to spare, I'd contribute to other people's logs more frequently than I do. But when Chris specifically requests feedback, I'm only too happy, for starters, to reassure him that his work is valuable and professional journalism. The debate about whether weblogs can be journalism at all should be buried. It's dead. O.J. Lasica, a senior editor at the Online Journalism Review, explored the subject with several old hands last September and pursues it with a whole series of reflections at his own place. Blog historians recount how the "yes" or "no" issue came to a head with the 2001 attacks on the United States, drawing a critical perspective well worth reading at Kuro5hin on October 11 that year. That was by K5 founder rusty, who also had a dodgy tum yesterday. "Subjects that cause (rusty) to feel physical pangs of nausea" include blogging about blogs, so he should either avoid reading this or remember that many people, including a good number of the well-informed friends I hope drop in here often, still don't know what blogging is or are only just finding out. Should rusty throw up, he's welcome to some Nautamine, not included in yesterday's picture of my tummy shelf's contents. Intended for travel sickness, which I don't suffer from, the occasional one also quells psychosomatic and other pangs. Came in useful the day I saw my first electrocuted corpse in the Métro. Though I use the M all the time, fellow TS founders lost me when one of them yanked the term "the third rail" into a heated admin discussion we had in the early days about how much we'd allow PRS (politics , religion and sex ) on the site. It was kelly who enlightened me that t3r was not just an alternative guide to Chicago (hi there, Jocelyne!). I should have worked it out for myself. Anyway, I didn't then know about the peevish place, a rich slang resource where some of the links are to sites which translate American into English and even the other way round. The unanswered question here, apart from Iraq's future, is Jane's one: "Where is your blog going and are you going to use categories or not?" The reply on categories is "no", not now there's a search engine which updates itself once a week and more often when I ask. I'm no good at pigeon-holing. Left-handed too. Happy to have been reminded recently by one dangerously caged cat that the reason I couldn't understand something was "because you're a man", but she's lifting the shades - even when my mind's mud and mush. I'll do a separate entry sometime soon to follow up on Rainer's tip-off to some fun personality tests. For my favourite feline, all aspects of life are inseparable, whether she's up or she's down. She's not seen the tests yet. My own results came as no real surprise and were in sharp contrast to those I've seen for some mathematicians, computer programmers and probably bloggers good at categories. Most of the latter do it well and helpfully, but they are "pros"! I didn't plan on many pictures. I didn't plan much of what's happened. I wanted a place of my own for reviews of various arts, a little tech and dollops of PRS. Then Gulf War II started, leaving no way I was going to shut up. The "factory" got dragged in a bit later largely by request, but that suits me too. If this place helps people there and elsewhere keep in touch, well and good. I suppose I intended to keep most entries short: a singularly stupid exercise in ignoring past practice. Then some windbag wrote my bio and reminded me who sometimes I am. Which, today, was a total slob. An overnight return of slow-wittedness and the exhausting shits has got boring beyond belief. I'm impatient now for those probes I also dread. Karin's latest kindly suggestion is "amoeba". It's been a bad idea to research that particular possibility: "invasive gastroenteritis" was particularly delightful... No. If it was that far from "Paradiso Hotel" in KwaZulu-Natal, Marianne would probably have it too... I didn't plan to fall back in love, but that hasn't done any harm, yet. I certainly didn't plan to get so personal here and start delving into psychology, health and the sciences. My main goal remains to spin my own little corner of the web, share as many potentially interesting links as I can and, above all usually, to entertain (while trying to write creatively also keeps me saner). So, Jane, I did think a while back about at least changing the subtitle for something more "explanatory". But I won't. This place remains "an experiment". 11:33:45 PM  link   your views? [] They've done it at TS Techsurvivors has "moved". Same place, but a new way into the forums. Congratulations to Al, Diana, Jen, Kris and (all) Others for their parts in bringing about a difficult and delicate rebirth. Now everybody can all come and skin the baby as well as coo and swap help and ideas. The skinning's not as cruel as it sounds: that's one of several new features. The founder people hope the new board software will prove much more efficient after all the effort (my contribution was minimal, much of the technical side being above my head). For now, I've been looking at those different schemes in different browsers. Nice work!! 12:32:54 AM  link   your views? []

samedi 10 mai 2003

New audio codec test and a big bank of tunes There's a trial at MacDailyNews on 'AAC vs. MP3 at 96-192 kbps using AIFF as the reference point': "Van Vliet's observations echo what most people have said about AAC vs. MP3. AAC is higher quality at the same bit rate, so you can use a smaller file to achieve the same quality as MP3 which is a good thing for portable and computer users. Ultimately, both formats still sound pretty bad in their practical ranges compared to CD." Plus comments (via the MDC). The development centre also draws our attention to a Safari security risk, and back with the music, to a most interesting TuneFinder from those Watson people, Karelia. Watson is giving Sherlock an increasingly hard time! 10:30:56 PM  link   your views? [] Inside story (episode CLXXXIV) and some queries of yours Well since you asked, thank you, I'll just have to break yet another promise. I guess that something like this is what blog-hero Yang heard when he jerked his stethoscope back with a loud exclamation about remarkable and excessive "activity". The man fortunately couldn't see it churning away, since it was scarcely music to his ears, but why spare the reader? And the diet was what he'd said to do, after all. This evening, after eating nothing at all yet, it feels rather bloated, but it's beginning to settle down nicely. Of course I don't take the whole lot at once. I'm not a hypochondriac, but have to think of my posture. This is but a selection from the "tummy shelf". Anyway, the Smecta's for kids, mainly. The Ercefuryl was for travelling. Now it's the Actapulgite, delicious stirred in with Coke, and that Panfurex® Gé stuff. The Immosel briefly worked, but every night I must take a Zoltum. Did they not mean ZapTum? I forgot to say "благодарю" to Yana for whatever it was that dealt with yesterday's blinding headache. Should that be wrong or rude, please blame it on this, but online dictionaries seem to get better by the year. No, I've not been to the 'Russkiy mat' or foul language explanatory place ... yet. Now Dmitri is back from gallivanting around the Urals as president of the Association France-Oural (fine French site), it might be wiser to try rendering my rich resources of rudeness into Russian on him first. How do you say "flatulence"? On second thoughts, this would scarcely be fair on Dmitri. In Moscow, he said, it wasn't actually snowing, but it did where he was earlier in a place I can't pronounce, and that's bad enough. He wasn't gallivanting either. He was doing fine work. But we all make mistakes. The French word "couffin" can mean "cradle" as in '3 Men and a Baby' "filmed as it should have been!" (before Leonard Nimoy tried again). It was consequently regrettable when Catherine, back I believe in her studious Manchester days, was given the tidings of great joy by some proud new parents. "Wonderful!" she said. "Have you got the coffin yet?" Many faux amis knife you straight to the guts, blood on the walls. Just as guts can sometimes be false friends, though it's generally preferable to keep them just as long as you can. "Salut, Francis, et bienvenu à bord!" I've not pillaged his shop for the medical journals; the computer shelves keep me happy. All those magazines about la santé are enough to turn the stomach with fear about everything you haven't got, let alone what you have. How those cigarettes got into the cupboard I can't imagine. I don't even smoke Lucky Strike except when it's very late, I've run out and the tabac is shut. It doesn't do to tell foreign smokers new to France that they really don't have to search high and low for a tobacconist's on such occasions, since most corner cafés keep a stock in a drawer for their patrons and people who ask nicely. They charge more for them, naturally; it's part of the service. But this knowledge is not only bad for your health; it goes easy on shoe-leather, keeps cobblers out of business and stops you bumping into the unexpected. Well, soon enough I'm sure my express ways will have become simple freeways again. No more sudden surges in traffic, no more congestion. They will be far more beautiful to behold than the miracle of Brum and its alike round the world, and will induce less swearing too. It was Karin again who very nearly came up with the answer to all this. Yesterday, she fished out a present just for me, very sweet of her. I did exactly what was written on the packet. Pity the outcome nearly sent me to an early cerceuil. This stuff did not go down too well on top of all the rest. Even before I'd swallowed a whole pill, I was foaming at the mouth. Perhaps it was the mixture that was wrong, because once it was down I used plenty of water and went into the speediest spin I could manage. Maybe that just wasn't fast enough. Another reason to give up smoking. Any thoughts, girls and boys? Some complain that at the rare times you venture to make comments on these experiments of mine, they simply don't show up. They do, really! It's just in the nature of blogland that they take a little while to go where they should and come back. Like spam. I don't even want to think about that. But this month's Univers Macworld returns to that perennial nuisance with an interesting article where I read of Bayesian filtering for the first time. I learned that this is the kind used by Apple's Mail.app, and could be one of the best ways of getting all the junk out of the system. Further exploration revealed that for heavy-duty users, a number of Bayesian software options can cut down in-box constipation by around 80 percent, tried and tested by UM. If Eudora spam becomes unmanageable for Mac people, for instance, they recommend attacking it with a sieve. I've not reached that point yet. But I'm working on a mantra: "I'm really not scared of having all that tubing poked inside me, I'm really not scared..., I'm really not scared." Perhaps in Tibetan, it would sound harmonious, trip off the tongue and do a perfect job (site links to CDs and sound files). At Amazon, Samuel E. Katzen reviews one of these records in glowing terms: "I listen to this music every day. Why? Because it touches something in me that I don't understand completely on an intellectual level, but that on an emotional level, is one of those powerful experiences that you know is good and good for you. As soon as it starts I feel a relaxation response. There are moments in this music that can make you cry with joy. Sound has long since found its way into medicine. I'm all for the holistic approach. And though I'm bad at projecting my voice, I do like it when things are pronounced right. Especially my name. True, I don't make it easy, but it's "tally-essin", not "taleesin" or other variations on the theme. Point is (the last question), Taliesin really is my name, the second one. How that came about is another saga, told before ... and not for tonight. 8:49:33 PM  link   your views? [] 'Miss Marianne' and la mode At one age, full of admiration for Olya and her shop downstairs, Marianne wanted to become a florist. There was the lawyer phase too. The poet and writer. Now I'm not sure. It's fashion time. Whether in York to see Gran and Grandpa or in the shopper's madness of les Halles, Claire's (uses Flash) is an almost obligatory stopping place! Not to all tastes, that's for sure, and I prefer myself to wait outside because of that music! In the heart of Jorvik, there's a very convenient bench where you can usually squeeze in between those gossiping Viking women and watch a colourful world go by. The youngster's pictures have changed a great deal down the years, as of course they do. I'm very fond of the "miniatures 'Orientales', and have framed a superb big white splotches on black piece which dates back to days when she could scarcely talk. Sometimes I think of it as 'The Spaceman', sometimes of 'Paleolithic Manu' (slow-loading but sumptuous page [URL fixed, 17/3/03]). All along, year after year, there have been "les dames, a constant theme. There must be dozens on dozens of them, to such an extent that some people ask "Aren't you going to do anything else?" But I don't have any problem with this obsession, if such it even is. Time has brought many changes of style, from the initial blob heads, small bodies and splayed fingers to a period of hyper-sophistication, occasionally to the point of a cluttered look. All it takes is a little patience and an attentive eye, like the one her grandfather gives such "work", because the devil is in the fine detail, not just the wide variety of hairstyles, clothes and accessories. If you get told off for not spotting the new belt buckle or bracelet, Miss Marianne does have a point. Until recently, almost all were in colour, with careful attention all the way down from the facial expressions to the toes. And most of the models had names and more than touch of character, spelt out or not. There's something going on here, well worth putting on show not just because I'm her proud dad. I don't like them all anyway and neither does she. The latest development is intriguing. The personalities and the physical features are beginning to disappear, the colour has gone, and the body has become little more than an accessory itself, like a mannequin. "Who do you want to be today, young lady?" It's quiet when you're not around, which has both its advantages and its drawbacks. See you next weekend, here's a kiss for today! And it's your uncle Keith's birthday. For once I remembered. I forgot your uncle Jon's on April 30. Craftsmen both, I don't doubt they'll be interested to see what's running in the blood. "I miss you, miss!" Ah, and how much I miss the wildcat in my heart! The 'phone's OK, in its way and each day, and the sooner her trip's over and we see her back (and front) in Paris again, the better. I don't ask her to love me, that's not the way with cats! But just one little word she used the other evening gave me such palpitations and the best night's dreaming of the year. I rejoice that you have taken to each other so well, but know this too, sweetheart: her choices are her own, they're very far from easy right now and her latest journey took her more than halfway to Hades (to each their own hell. This fresh one is full of felines. Hello!) That's most of what you know and all you have to know, so forgive me if my mind sometimes strays when you're here. All she has asked of me is understanding; at least somebody has to and I want to, while each decision, each step now calls for an intuition like yours and a rather better grasp of the nature of cats and other beings with a highly agile intelligence and sharp claws. You certainly don't pick them up and treat them like dolls. I'm not surprised you got scratched before you learned that... The one thing I think she mustn't do is to stop writing, the way she works now is just fine, the hardest thing to change is the course of the voyage. There's no changing the strong winds of the emotions, hers are stormy and quickened by lightning (in the 'Dragon Cave'). When there's anger, it's not for you, darling, and when it's for me, it's usually no more than I merit. And that, as well you know, can sometimes be a rare thing... As to the rest, no "shoulds" nor "oughts". She fuels herself as she will and all we have to do, you and I, is keep an eye on the fire and take care the flame doesn't go out. Now there's a danger I've known people even killed by. Times were it so nearly happened to me. Hence, today it's a red camellia, plucked from a New Zealand essence garden. 4:21:48 PM  link   your views? []

vendredi 9 mai 2003

Half a dozen strikes and unwarranted eruptions A first brickbat flies in the general direction of Emma's errant brother David, who starved the cat, some of us learned at work today. It's a large brickbat because I don't know where his travels have taken him now. Irresponsible youth! (I remember some of my own irresponsible youth only too happily.) Cats are not to be messed with. Just ask Sarah, who as we all know, will explain this to you in just a minute without hesitation, deviation or repetition. And take note that at the TS community, felines are favourites, as evidenced in these relatively recent threads (update May 11: the board has moved, these links sort of fixed): 'Best time to de-flea your cat ...'; 'OT: Would you do this to your cat?!'; and even 'why do people play games on computers?'. Wrong. "cat OR cats" came up in the latter topic because of "sophisticated". You could find out why it arose in 'When is "PENIS" spelled "PEN1S"?' for yourselves. I thought Mayo had forgotten the OT for "off-topic". Appears not. zzz Here's number two for MK, back from her honeymoon and stressing that she is still called "Hoffmann". All I did was ask, as best my befuddled brain recalls, "Did you have a good time?" (to be corrected if I remember wrong). Just why was that such an odd or original question? Was I supposed to ask: "When's the divorce?" But mainly, she failed to put me at the centre of her day and immediately produce pictures, for blogging, of the dress. zzz Number three is enormous and descending on the cranium of one of the individuals on the factory's managerial staff supposedly well versed in medical affairs, who should know better than (i) to think (s)he's wiser than my general practitioner and (ii) exceeds the bounds of this country's lucid legislation by liberally dispensing sometimes incorrect counsel and even sending people on wild goose chases to find the wrong kind of so-called "specialist". Whoopsie. Part of n° 3 has disintegrated into shrapnel in mid-air: this must be headed for the people in the multi-media department who saw me running for the loo nine times this morning before I decided to use another one instead. I know I promised not to mention that again, but it wasn't funny. I also know that this is not genuinely African suffering and I have only an inkling of what it could be without, say, Imodium or the means to get rehydrated (warning: link with unexpected sound). Where did you expect me to do it? In the Métro? zzz Four for the RATP, which plans to shut down my own nearest Métro station for its "vaste programme de rénovation" from May 19. Simultaneously, the Régie Autonome de Transports Parisiens will do likewise with the station just opposite AFP. We have all seen that such closures, which last for more than two months, usually end up with no more than a lick of paint, a few new tiles, freshly whitewashed steps, and - with luck - no more water coming through the ceiling (as it still does in my bedroom, two years on, despite three surveyors and all because of badly replaced chimneys I'm not allowed to fix for myself, even if I dared scramble up there.) zzz Five (speaking of things coming down): the biggest brickbat of all must be reserved for the journalists in Africa (and in Paris) who responded to a call to, ahem, "sex up" our stories on the nasty Ilyushin mid-air accident in the DRC. Even from hardened hacks, it was inappropriate and callous to suggest that we entitle it: "Darling Dr Congo, it's raining policemen." Mini-brickbat spin-offs go to those aviation officials in Ukraine who swore that nobody was hurt at all and the Congolese communications minister for thoroughly confusing just about everybody. zzz Six goes to that unmentionable spaghetti inside me and whatever's inside it, or wherever SassyFabuSpech (the outcome of googling that sent me straight here, but I'm blowed if I can spot the words) mislaid it. This will take me off work tomorrow for one more day on orders to see Dr Yang again instead (from Dr Yang). And to an assistant to a genuine specialist who informed me he is perfectly unavailable until May 27. Today, you see, it was thoroughly enjoyable, if downright exhausting, to pay a working visit to the factory. I miss all those unkind comments and pleas for no more details before lunch; and I confirm here that Karin may be in the wrong job. She is so chock-full of truly sound medical advice (picked up from a previous journalistic incarnation) that were I "out in the bushes" (as some of our African correspondents often put it) with nothing but dysentery and a sat-phone, the first thing I would do is call Karin. In the meantime, there is every chance that if things go on at this rate, the 14ème arrondissement will be knee-deep in it by May 27. But wait, there is hope: said specialist has left a message on my 'phone. Progress, he suggests, as of Monday. It's the darndest thing. Now that I'm in the state of almost enjoyable, sated fatigue that can occasionally strike after a long day's sickness in the family factory, hence the hours it took to write this and anything else today, I'm feeling quite definitely very horny again for the first time in at least a week. What can I do? There's been enough wet, sticky mess as it is! But you didn't need to know that either, did you? As MK put it when I gave her a most generous helping of logorrhea about my condition: "Thanks for sharing!"See you all again asacop (co = conceivably). P.S. Could somebody check my AFP e-mail for me? I clean forgot. The password is "droppings". Those persistent rumours that they helpfully read it all for us anyway are totally without foundation. I know this because I never, ever heard a onetime Président Directeur-Général quoting verbatim from mine, nor did the Hotmail ever suddenly get shut down at a most inappropriate moment just before an assemblée générale about a looming strike. Yes, that particular PDG also never left under ignominious circumstances. 11:02:29 PM  link   your views? [] What to believe? On the right, what Méteo France had to say about Paris yesterday morning. Left, the skies as seen by Weather Underground. On Tuesday, the contrast between the two was far more striking, while the thermometer outside the pharmacie across the street had done another of its daily jumps; one I approved of this time, up by 10°C. Sometimes I wonder if at the French weather centre, they look outside rather than at their charts and satellite pictures. True, they update their site often. But, as ever, I lean to the left. The reality was, as often, somewhere in between. Nine years ago, I fell in love with a laugh in a stairwell, one of the most musical voices I had ever heard. When I discovered the owner, it was her eyes that did it. Life turned upside down, for the first time since the divorce. That affair was as miraculous as it was painful; there was no way it could "work out". I failed to lay the ghost of it to rest until after the turn of the millennium - and this in the worst of possible ways: at another woman's expense. A perceptive thing S. did, when she still scarcely knew me, was to make me a present with a remarkable dedication scrawled over the first chapter. 'Le Paysage et l'amour dans le roman anglais' (Seuil, 1994, reprinted in 1999), seemed to me to have nothing to do with anything at the time, but I was swiftly totally engrossed in it. "Landscape and love, seen as 'the means by which a thinking subject can believe in his material union with the world', have powers which meet: man by their mediation is 'plunged back into his deep waters, magically brought back into alignment with the forces of the earth'." Or not. To make her case, Sorbonne and Harvard graduate Christine Jordis explores the work of people I met at school, from Emily Bronté to Thomas Hardy, D.H. Lawrence and John Cowper Powys among others, in ways I'd never imagined. In the process, she gave me a whole new perspective on the country I'd left behind. But also on me and my upbringing. The latter, no doubt, was S.'s intuitive intention. That I should pursue this road to Kay Redfield Jamison, the creative psychologist I introduced here last week was but part of a natural flow of events. "Karma quand tu nous tiens...," S. wrote. Lunatically in love with a woman whose belief in the law of karma is rock solid and still under the spell of a wonderful uncle who was instrumental in my own months-long passage to India a few years after the "hippie trail" had been blazed, I was perfectly ready to accept that "karma had me by the balls" (though S. put it more politely). But S. also believes in reincarnation and would be quite at home at an (informative) place like Spirit Speaks if she spoke enough English. In the day job she tolerates for an income, she's extremely down to earth, but in what she'd consider her more real life, she is, after years of study, a gifted ... astrologer, decidedly not of the nonsensical newspaper kind. In that role, S. was far less surprised than I was when, in 1996, the French equivalent of the Britannica, the Enclopaedia Universalis sent me its latest two-volume update. "A" included an entry 10 whole pages long, by doctor of Oriental studies Jacques Halbronn, allowed by his peers to take astrology seriously, right there between 'Assistance technique' and 'Atlantique (Alliance)'. Despite a short-lived teenage fancy about becoming a Buddhist monk, preferably in a free Tibet, before this struck me as far too much like very hard work, I am most rarely prone to mystical visions. But I have had two extremely bizarre, even upsetting, experiences. These sense-surround waking dreams were of exactly the kind that people the world over claim to have when they say they "remembered" something from a previous life. Both mine were about experiencing the moments before other people's deaths, there was nothing romantic about them, each was frighteningly vivid, and my shrinks have made neither rational head nor tale of them. When near Madras, I spent a week or so staying at Adyar, where a place where Madame H.P. Blavatsky bought a small, beautifully kept property for the Theosophical Society was still around. That weird woman and her followers would have much to say of my "day-dreams". But now I find that Grace Knoche's outlook on remembering and forgetting past lives does rather less to illuminate my visions, let alone 'Light(ing) a Thousand Lamps'. This particular log entry I've worked on for a while before the lurgy struck me down, halting such things. So it was intriguing coincidence to wander down once more to "the canteen", where I found not only a restored appetite, but also Jean-Paul and François, whose skills in matters internet and telecoms leave me somewhere in the Stone Age while F. smokes carpets (or something...) Science-fiction swiftly became a subject of the hour, along with an invitation southwards to the Lot some summertime: an almost irresistible one, given my affection for the place (today shared by an ever growing number of English settlers spilling over from the Dordogne). Then there was the little matter of, say, 12 dimensions. Francis used a pleated chunk of the paper tablecloth to outline M-theory in terms I could grasp. Jean-Paul and I broke off from an exchange about another "dimension", time, consciousness and perception to listen. Already this month, I've heard from several people whose recent experiences have variously led them "not to believe in anything at all", to disclose how their lives fell apart, or to express major misgivings about matters esoteric. Deeply as I love and like these people, I confess that Francis's enthusiasm came as a well-timed booster shot in the arm. "Get you started on this," he warned me, "and you might be searching for hours." He may be right. Who needs separate lives and reincarnation? Arthur Conan Doyle may have had developed "a credulous acceptance" of spiritualism, but did not, as far as I know, let this interfere with Sherlock Holmes and his methods. So, what if the relentless march of time, as generally we experience it, is but a limitation of our tools of perception, when in fact everything happens at once? Since then, I've discovered "the co-founder of String Theory, and (...) author of international best-selling books such as Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension. He also holds the Henry Semat Professorship in Theoretical Physics at the City University of New York." Dr Michio Maku has a website with forums, along with views on the 'X-Men' and 'The Matrix' vs. Reality (embracing two other lunchtime topics). I plan to explore as an article of faith; this looks like the step on from 'The Tao of Physics' and 'The Turning Point'. It was a very long time ago that I read Fritjof Capra and the world has moved on considerably. Or, it hasn't moved an iota (but we have, and that's a whole different question). Maku took me on to Albert-Laszlo Barabasi and an intriguing paperback out this month: "How Everything is Connected to Everything Else" doesn't sound too bad for the working title of 'Linked'. Then there's 'After the Clockwork Universe' a-coming from S.J. Goerner (reviewed). If those weren't my own past lives I separately envisioned, I wonder whose they were. And why on earth should they have bumped into my mind? 1:39:03 AM  link   your views? []

jeudi 8 mai 2003

Upgrades and other games people play Having vowed to say no more about my insides, I shan't. There's been enough recently about toilets of whatever kind. However, if the blogging incentive is back and natural calls have become sufficiently infrequent to rule out a browser in the bathroom, I'm fit for work tomorrow. There will be further medical intervention, but I'm not making any appointments on a jour férié. May means feast-days. The French particularly like this this year's since all three of them fall on a Thursday, so the childless "font le pont" (the weekend "bridge") - while those with offspring have to decide whether to whip them out of school for a day. VE Day (on which you can even listen to Ed Morrow should you care to) and Ascension don't, however, close all shops and offices like May Day does. Apple and other developers have been equally busy with internal plumbing. Any computer energy I found yesterday went into upgrades: eight of the things. They included one to iPhoto Library Manager (released in mid-April), significant improvements to iView Media Pro, which I use far more than iPhoto anyway but does cost $90/?79 first time round, and Jaguar Cache Cleaner 1.8 (a couple of days old). Almost each time I look, the indefatigable Thorsten Lemke has added something new to his invaluable Graphic Converter, while Gordon Byrnes this week squashed a few more tummy bugs in Safari Enhancer. What started the spate of downloads was the Mac OS X software update panel offer of iTunes 4, not for that wretched music store business (which I'm now told you can use outside the United States once you know how), and the QuickTime 6.2 you need with it to investigate the AAC (advanced audio codec) Apple's raving about: "AAC encoding compresses much more efficiently than older formats like MP3 (which iTunes still supports, by the way), while delivering quality rivaling that of uncompressed CD audio. In fact, expert listeners have judged AAC audio files compressed at 128 kbps (stereo) to be virtually indistinguishable from the original uncompressed audio source." Discovering that Mac OS 10.2.6 was also sitting there waiting was pure accident. Like an idiot, given past experience, I installed it without a second thought; the package was but a mere 6.4 MB as compared to the ridiculous 41.2 MB of 10.2.4, let alone the 81.9 MB for the 10.2.5 "combo" (saved for safety's sake). Even after the customary maintenance routines much beloved of TSers, once 10.2.6 was in, my scanner promptly ceased to be "recognised" and function. "Great," I thought, "par for some of Apple's recent course!" but the insult was unfair since it turned out to be a minor glitch elsewhere. zzz I wish all game developers were as assiduous in ensuring things work properly as most others do, again particularly for we non-North Americans. Now that Apple is determined to sell Macs as gamers' machines as part of the switch campaign, game producers can be slow. At Aspyr, they did react fast when I realised that Marianne was not alone in having trouble with 'The Sims Vacation' and they whipped up a quick support note here for the French almost as soon as I mailed them. We shall probably never find out what happens at the very end of 'Atlantis III' because of a CD-reading error I can't fix (but it's not the CD), while in 'Morpheus', we can't get into one room though we know the door code perfectly well. As for 'Ring', I shall likely finish it in my dotage. If ever... But Marianne and I are not gamers. If they keep us occupied from time to time, then with even the beautiful 'Myst III: Exile', it's because the first place we go, not the last, is the Universal Hint System. "No spoilers. Just the hints you need," they say. Give us the spoilers any day. I was looking for a moan spotted once, which drew considerable comment, about an only too common problem, on the lines of "Buy the game, then find the friggin' patch, but why does it have to be like that?" Couldn't turn it up. In trying, I did stumble on this: "As a woman who plays video games, I've had to think about gender [successes and failures] in videogames, because it's so obvious that I'm playing in a boys' world. The late Dr. Anita Borg taught that technology isn't neutral; tools are shaped by the values and desires of the creators. Often the creators tend to be clueless to the values encoded in their tools, because to them, the tools are transparent - they reflect pure utilitarianism. But to those who are excluded, the tools are highly charged. That's an interesting blog-space, game girl advance. I'll return for a thorough look. 11:57:21 PM  link   your views? [] Baudier's ouvrage Here we have André Baudier, whom I first introduced in this log on March 9. Indeed, it was at "the canteen" (Pizzeria Pernety), when M. Baudier was in a positively exuberant mood, his latest work all but wrapped up, that I asked Sam to lend me his copy of 'L'Odeur des Casernes' (The Stench of the Barracks). My spinach was well spiced up in Oriental fashion that day, Sam had spoilt his other regulars too, and he not only remembered to leave me Baudier's novel, but unexpected signed copies of two more works by the "lion". I think I'll not ask André (if so I may presume), what the picture I can only baptise Salomé "means". Let's just say that 'Le père Noël ATTAQUE et je suis sans défense' (Somogy/Editions d'Art, 1999) is a singularly, on the whole, dark collection of 165 deceptively childlike paintings. Not a word in the book. And that's how it should be. On the back of 'La Cinquintaine Omnibus' (Somogy, 2000), the thinker and sometime mathematician is described by 'Person Magazine' thus: "At 66, an age he wears well, though he would rather live 20 or 30 fewer years badly, (Baudier) has the despair of a great moralist who has survived the temptation of suicide." Cher monsieur, I may write about 'L'Odeur des Casernes' (Séguier, 1989, then Somogy, 2001) if ever I get my head around it! It's neither the French (tricky) nor the forest of wordplay (trickier), while I dimly sense that the three false starts are neither false nor departures. But for the moment, I prefer to dip in, here and there, and would perhaps do better still by beginning at the end. As a structure, it has a perverse fascination. The 'Omnibus', dedicated to "La Belle et la Bête," is more accessible to a reader in search of a story, in this instance that of three sisters (or princesses?) in their 50s, the Paris-Trouville omnibus, and a miracle (the prince?). Text on each left-hand page - wry, inventive and not always dry - with illustrations on the right (as here), it's perhaps the best place to make an odd aquaintance. I should imagine they're all in stock at the Fnac. 5:32:51 PM  link   your views? []

mardi 6 mai 2003

Fowl weather and Texas crude We're stuck again with a grey days spell of the kind Lee caught so well in one of her few photos at 'odessa street' (now among "places I go"). And the equally bleak prospect that, the way things have gone so far, the team currently in the White House may now be elected back in to scare the shit out of some of the rest of us for another four years. Not that I've needed Rumsfeld and that crowd seriously to upset my tummy. Dr Yang, hater of Mondays and a hero of this log, finally gave me what's needed last night, we hope, because the state of my bowels over the past couple of weeks is really of no interest here! The fellow also needed to vent spleen, in his wry and funny way, about recent Middle Eastern matters and media handling of them to a friendly ear, so much that (not for the first time) when we were done I had to sit outside until he'd seen his next patient to fetch paperwork we'd both forgotten. A perhaps unreliable memory reminds me that in 1991, after the last Gulf war, the weather turned unpredictable and often foul for some months. Environmentalists were among those who raised the alarm before this latest one, reported a Washington post article back in March. Last time, wrote Eric Pianin: "retreating Iraqi forces set fire to more than 600 Kuwaiti oil wells, creating toxic smoke that choked the atmosphere and blocked the sun. The Iraqis dumped 4 million barrels of crude oil into the Persian Gulf, tarring beaches, killing more than 25,000 birds and driving millions more away, according to data compiled by the World Resources Institute and other organizations that monitor the environment. Spills of 60 million barrels of oil in the desert formed huge oil lakes and percolated into aquifers. "More than 80 percent of Kuwait's livestock perished during the war, and fisheries were heavily polluted, according to the monitoring groups. The burning oil fields released nearly a half-billion tons of carbon dioxide, an amount of greenhouse gas that many scientists say is the leading cause of the earth's rising temperature." I don't know whether the fearsome tornadoes which just swept part of the American Midwest are related to global warming and will very likely be told that they aren't. But I'll feel much better when there's a team in Washington that takes an intelligent attitude to fossil fuels, if our kids are not going to live under the domes dreamed up by some science-fiction writers. While largely ignoring climate change is not just US policy of course, South Africa is the only country I've been to so far where a privately owned internal combustion engine is indispensable to daily city life. However, the appalling public transport system Johannesburg authorities are trying to change is a legacy of apartheid and not the outcome of urban "planning" where the motor car is god. The mildly gory picture is 'borrowed' from an unlikely tale: "In an industrial park in Philadelphia sits a new machine that can change almost anything into oil.     Really.     'This is a solution to three of the biggest problems facing mankind,' says Brian Appel, chairman and CEO of Changing World Technologies, the company that built this pilot plant and has just completed its first industrial-size installation in Missouri. 'This process can deal with the world's waste. It can supplement our dwindling supplies of oil. And it can slow down global warming.'     Pardon me, says a reporter, shivering in the frigid dawn, but that sounds too good to be true." Well, that's all right then: "600 million tons of turkey guts and other waste into four billion barrels of light Texas crude each year," speculates Brad Lemley in the latest issue of Discover. The story is quite fascinating, but once you reach the end, it's clear that what they're dreaming about at Changing World Technologies could take a very long time coming. Never mind. For now, we've got a fine trio installed to get Iraq's oil ministry up and running again for the "benefit of its owners: the Iraqi people." In George we trust! Oh, as for all those other chemicals that led America, in the first place, into its least well-disguised exercise in imperial management to date, columnist Gwynne Dyer brought me a smile: "The favorite fantasy headline of British comedian Spike Milligan was: 'Archduke Franz Ferdinand Found Alive! First World War a Mistake!' We are unlikely to see a similar headline in any American paper soon, but in the rest of the world the continued failure of the U.S. and British occupation forces in Iraq to find any of the 'weapons of mass destruction' (WMD) that were the alleged reason for their invasion is a diplomatic disaster and a joke in very bad taste." (Thanks to Norm over at 'onegoodmove' for Dyer's diatribe). Time for lunch. I intend to walk out to have it, not being particularly inclined to swallow yet more soup. And whether or not it stays down, I promise not to mention my insides again. But I'd still like to know why the thermometer outside is doing a dance across, roughly, a 12°C spectrum on an almost midday to midday basis. 1:53:00 PM  link   your views? []

dimanche 4 mai 2003

Wilde risks "The British make me sick. They make two kinds of films. A bunch of repressed people gather around and try to emote with the desperation of somebody trying to pass a kidney stone. A bunch of smarmy people gather around and use humor to disguise the fact that they have no actual feelings, and even if they did they'd be unable to express them in a way any of us could readily identify as 'human.' This type of film is generally called a 'comedy of manners.'" Well, that's what Mr. Cranky proclaims to the world before embarking on an exceedingly cranky review of Oliver Parker's 'The Importance of Being Earnest'. Most of the audience when we saw it this weekend, one of the new batch of releases in France, could clearly scarcely have agreed less. It's possible, I suppose, that Mr. Cranky has (a) seen few recent British movies and (b) not yet encountered Oscar Wilde. My only and in the end, minor, problem with this glossy, impeccably cast film was how much of it was Oscar Wilde, but Parker's honest enough to admit that his screenplay was "based on" the original play: sometimes too loosely so for comfort, sometimes amusingly successful (Cecily's visions of a knight in shining armour, the matter of muffins...). Anybody who tries to bring this stage gem to the screen after Anthony Asquith did in 1952 has a hard act to follow and Parker does a nice job in a generally well-paced production, once it settles down after an overheated start. There was nothing serious to fault with the performances, including Reese Witherspoon's (as Cecily), a world away from her last outing in Paris in ... Sweet Home Alabama (no comment). Colin Firth (Jack), Anna Massey (Miss Prism) and Frances O'Connor (Gwendolyn) are first-rate, Rupert Everett (Algy) swiftly improves when he stops being Rupert Everett and Judi Dench dominates the lot and, of course, gets most of Wilde's best lines, as Lady Bracknell. Overall: 6.0/10. That's one point down what I would have given the movie were it shorn of one or two snatches of extra dialogue, had fewer cuts in the text, and avoided a disastrous faux pas in a fortunately brief flashback to Bracknell's past, which was most certainly not Oscar Wilde, any more than a quite unnecessary twist in the closing lines. The satire doesn't quite bite, but Wilde's wit survives the worst of Parker's meddling, something the latter can't avoid, whether it was with the "extras" he added to An Ideal Husband or a rather more successful treatment, to my eyes, of Othello. Purists, steer clear; but I'd recommend this to anyone out for a likeable, if flawed, "comedy of manners". After all Wilde himself called this a "trivial comedy for serious people". 10:21:41 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 3 mai 2003

'What you doing in there, laying an egg?' "Festivalgoers in Britain this summer will be able to try out Microsoft's Internet-enabled portable toilet," is what the small print at the bottom says. One of the crueller comments at Slashdot (thanks) reads "God knows most MS products aren't fit for anything other than wiping..." (from Goldberg's Pants). As for the CNet story Slashdot refers to warns us: "Because of the expensive hardware inside, Microsoft plans to post a guard to protect the iLoo." Anybody looking for a summer job? "Life does not imitate the Onion. No sir," reckons Slashdot. But then what did inspire Brunel University graduate Andrew Cubitt to start sending the web down the toilet, which Mike Little at Journalized ("blogrolled" today) also caught at the time? Should bloggers want something else to ponder while doing a Rodin on the stool, Bill Thompson at Beeb Tech this week watches the governments watching some of us... "When we campaign for net freedom we should not forget that the freedom to speak one's own truth is just as important as the freedom to read what we in the West have to say. Being able to publish a weblog may in fact be more important than being able to read BBC News Online, although our arrogance may sometimes prevent us from seeing this." 4:25:44 PM  link   your views? []

vendredi 2 mai 2003

Random voyeurism She's about half my age, writes well, and shares many of my musical tastes. She another Libra and takes much better pictures of the neighbourhood than mine, but hasn't posted many of them yet. She's conceivably lives next door to Tony, who remembers what the street used to be like long, long before the vast Gaumont Parnasse cinema complex went up and many of the shops turned into crêperies, take-aways and bars. I've likely crossed her path half a dozen times, she doesn't know me from Adam, and she'd she probably find some of the anti-French bullshit that came up in too many weblogs I discovered the other night as tedious and offensive as I do. Hallo, Lee Ann. I like odessa street a lot! But you don't like "using exclamation points!" zzz It was mildly odd that Norm Jensen at 'onegoodmove', where I'll be going back for more, chose to quote Graham Greene the same day as Beerzie Boy did to introduce a kind of ghost story at 'blab-o-rama'. If you think the BBC's biased, you'll find company at Biased BBC, which takes you to people like Peter Briffa, who proclaims himself 'reactionary and proud of it' at Public Interest, one of the few Tory weblogs I find eminently readable for longer than 10 minutes... zzz Where do all those sex blogs cluster? Well, one place is around the reverse cowgirl (aka Susannah Breslin), who is apparently famous and joined some equally renowned people back in February for 'Live from the Blogosphere', in Los Angeles. When it comes to sex, a story at 'Vagary' made me laugh the other day. It began thus: "For a while I dated an older man who happened to be my boss. To be perfectly honest, had he not been my boss, I never would have looked at him twice. I also would have been better off, which pretty much goes without saying. "Once, while we were making out in his car, he was slobbering in my ear, blowing in what he thought was a sexy manner, when he spit his chewing gum into my ear..." and got worse. zzz "I finished Iain M. Banks' Look to Windward yesterday, and I liked it very much," Rainer Brockenhoff announced this week at Solipsism Gradient (aka 'Stochastic Aleatory Ontological Expostulations'). I enjoyed 'Look to Windward' too, and will get back to Mr Banks and his Culture series one day myself. For now, suffice to say that Rainer not only made the excellent Zingg! and XRay, but anybody who can give his place a name like that, link to a host of very interesting places and make me feel I can understand geekspeak merits more than the passing visit. zzz Also across the Atlantic, Holly says she finally found a job, being cat woman: "Cocktail waitress at a gentlemen?s club. Although I doubt you can really call them gentlemen. They?re the furthest thing from. I guess dick-head, asshole, and chump club had already been taken, so they lucked into the gentlemen title." A couple of weeks back, she found the 'Death of the Historical Buddha'. I shall read 'hollygoinglightly' more often too. Now, I think, I can get to sleep. That came hard, indeed impossible, before midnight. I thought I was vaguely planning to write about serendipity again. There's been a lot of it about lately. Instead, I opted for distraction. This blogging business could become addictive. 2:37:16 AM  link   your views? []