Sunday, January 25, 2004
Oh the joys of a small town mentality...
Local paper currently leads with a story about someone buying a big house[1]. Beneath it is the huge headline "Vanishing pigs hurt farmer". And that's not physically hurt, in a being trampled or gored way, for instance, but emotionally. Apparently someone nicked some of his pigs. And then they came back for more. And then they cleared out the rest. The farmer was a bit miffed because it was 'high-welfare' meat as well (the inverted commas are the paper's).
What no invisible pigs? Not even some that managed to fly away? Not even one poor pun about the swine that would do such as thing?
[1] Yes, it is a very big house, a very big house in the cun-trai. It's also currently owned by famous people (whose chief activity seems to be propping up various bars, and standing bemusedly in the wine section of Waitrose), and they just sold it to a very rich Russian.
Speaking of rich Russians - since when have the UK granted asylum to people from Russia? I thought the country was supposed to be carrying on the polite pretence that Russia was a civilised place, and there really is nothing to be worried about. Chechnya? Nothing to see here, move along now.
Opps. Managing to read about a programme I could have watched, had I not been typing this. What is it with Americans and sex, and why the recent surge in programmes on this (Channel 4 had a load recently as well)?
Having just checked what else is on, and decided nothing, I have one comment. Why is the name "Dateline London" (on at 10:30 GMT on BBC News 24 in the UK) so annoying? Dateline? That's just CNN for "we can't be arsed to improve our grammar, and it saves space (usually all of 3 character's worth)".
Idling through the multitude of digital channels I found one précis that started "Drama series about a successful female lawyer who has a drastic change of career and opens up a male strip club after she is deserted by her husband...". Oooh, bad plot, with varying degrees of porn. Somehow BBC Parliament's repeats look like a better option.
Or maybe I'll just give up and go to bed with a suitable boy (oi, it's the name of a book[2]). Yes, that means I have finally finished Middlemarch. It went a bit Wuthering Heights at the end though (all lashing rain and released passion). It wasn't a particularly great book, but now I'm wondering if that Withering book is really as bad as I remember it. Thinking about it, GCSEs didn't kill To kill a mocking bird, so it must be something about the tale of incestuous mad people on moors.
[2] A very heavy book. It's 960g. And yes I am anal enough to have weighed it (well the scales were out, it was there, and it was heavy). That's nearly a kilogram of book. Most books that heavy come with diagrams, footnotes and references, and usually require a desk to read.
And why does this computer wreck reception of most decent radio stations, and then stubbornly mangle any attempt at streaming radio off the internet. It means that if I want radio I have to put up with local commercial radio. Which is very, very commercial (well it's got enough of them, although to be fair they are the same every ad break), and still retains (other than crap taste in music) that WI local radio for local people feeling.
And I'm stopping now as their scattergun playlist has just flung up someone whose mother I used to watch on Blue Peter. Strangely crap reception makes Sophie Ellis-Bextor sound better. Probably because one assumes the strident fuzziness is from the static.
While I remember - what does one do about a bird that insists on starting to sing about midnight? In mid-winter? It's pretty dark, it's bloody cold, there's thick ice that hasn't melted despite being in the sun all day, and this bird decides to try to attract a mate. Bet the thing will still be trying when it starts snowing during the week.
Anyhoo, I've had enough of this, I probably ought to go bed, and go to sleep.
Local paper currently leads with a story about someone buying a big house[1]. Beneath it is the huge headline "Vanishing pigs hurt farmer". And that's not physically hurt, in a being trampled or gored way, for instance, but emotionally. Apparently someone nicked some of his pigs. And then they came back for more. And then they cleared out the rest. The farmer was a bit miffed because it was 'high-welfare' meat as well (the inverted commas are the paper's).
What no invisible pigs? Not even some that managed to fly away? Not even one poor pun about the swine that would do such as thing?
[1] Yes, it is a very big house, a very big house in the cun-trai. It's also currently owned by famous people (whose chief activity seems to be propping up various bars, and standing bemusedly in the wine section of Waitrose), and they just sold it to a very rich Russian.
Speaking of rich Russians - since when have the UK granted asylum to people from Russia? I thought the country was supposed to be carrying on the polite pretence that Russia was a civilised place, and there really is nothing to be worried about. Chechnya? Nothing to see here, move along now.
Opps. Managing to read about a programme I could have watched, had I not been typing this. What is it with Americans and sex, and why the recent surge in programmes on this (Channel 4 had a load recently as well)?
Having just checked what else is on, and decided nothing, I have one comment. Why is the name "Dateline London" (on at 10:30 GMT on BBC News 24 in the UK) so annoying? Dateline? That's just CNN for "we can't be arsed to improve our grammar, and it saves space (usually all of 3 character's worth)".
Idling through the multitude of digital channels I found one précis that started "Drama series about a successful female lawyer who has a drastic change of career and opens up a male strip club after she is deserted by her husband...". Oooh, bad plot, with varying degrees of porn. Somehow BBC Parliament's repeats look like a better option.
Or maybe I'll just give up and go to bed with a suitable boy (oi, it's the name of a book[2]). Yes, that means I have finally finished Middlemarch. It went a bit Wuthering Heights at the end though (all lashing rain and released passion). It wasn't a particularly great book, but now I'm wondering if that Withering book is really as bad as I remember it. Thinking about it, GCSEs didn't kill To kill a mocking bird, so it must be something about the tale of incestuous mad people on moors.
[2] A very heavy book. It's 960g. And yes I am anal enough to have weighed it (well the scales were out, it was there, and it was heavy). That's nearly a kilogram of book. Most books that heavy come with diagrams, footnotes and references, and usually require a desk to read.
And why does this computer wreck reception of most decent radio stations, and then stubbornly mangle any attempt at streaming radio off the internet. It means that if I want radio I have to put up with local commercial radio. Which is very, very commercial (well it's got enough of them, although to be fair they are the same every ad break), and still retains (other than crap taste in music) that WI local radio for local people feeling.
And I'm stopping now as their scattergun playlist has just flung up someone whose mother I used to watch on Blue Peter. Strangely crap reception makes Sophie Ellis-Bextor sound better. Probably because one assumes the strident fuzziness is from the static.
While I remember - what does one do about a bird that insists on starting to sing about midnight? In mid-winter? It's pretty dark, it's bloody cold, there's thick ice that hasn't melted despite being in the sun all day, and this bird decides to try to attract a mate. Bet the thing will still be trying when it starts snowing during the week.
Anyhoo, I've had enough of this, I probably ought to go bed, and go to sleep.
