Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

"... it was a part of pride with Englishmen to hug solitude; ourselves finding ourselves to be remarkable, when there was no competition present."

Perhaps I won't abandon Lawrence halfway across Arabia after all.

Admittedly, giving up halfway isn't exactly my style, but just as the going becomes as tiresome as deep sand, he discards casually a line like that.

You can read the whole thing on telawrence.net. The quote's from Chapter 45, and you'll probably beat me to the end.

In other news, remarkably little has happened. I think I forgot to rant the other day about DVDs, especially boxsets where each disc comes not only with a non-skippable "Not for oil rigs" copyright warning (which usually, oddly, warns me that the FBI will come after me; you'll have to find the country first. Hint: it's not the one between Maine and Vermont), but they increasingly seem to be plagued by some "You wouldn't steal a..." trailer, which is all punchy sound, jolting imagery and a jumping typeface; the latter clearly cribbed from the X Files. And the bloody thing is there, with its message designed for even the American hard-of-thinking, every time one tries to play the DVD. And it can't be skipped.

All of which only encourages me to actually bother to learn how to break encoding and copy the many DVDs I own, if only to get rid of the sodding "Piracy is stealing. Stealing is against the law. Home taping is killing music" message. Either that or go and have a quiet word with someone I know who has a thoroughly illegal collection of every OC ever, and ask for a copy of those, simply to spite the stupid, mindless, arrogant studios (yes, I know it might not damage the profits of the right company, but they ought to self police better; if one media company does something that alienates consumers, then the others ought at least have a quiet word).

Although if I did that then I might have to watch the thing, and I'm not sure whether the Chinese subtitles (hey, it's one way to learn Hanzi) or the High Schooler who has more of a beard than I'm ever likely to (and why do Americans have thick necks?) would be the more annoying.

Which brings me to ad synchronicity. Seen the other day in some forgotten tube station where two neighbouring adverts. One for Greene King IPA, another for O2. One features a vivid green sports pitch bounded by trees, beneath a near cloudless sky. The other features the same, but this time with goalposts. Having commented on it (which reminds me, I was assailed by a group of girls advertising property the other day, simply because I wore yellow*. Very odd), I was walking with a friend when we passed a bus shelter. An advertisement on one side for Foster's or XXXX or - Carling's not Australian, is it? - some Australian beer, featuring winter-clothed desert animal (snake in scarf, tarantula in glove - are tarantulas desert animals? - and there's another one, but I can't remember it now) against a red dust and rocks desert landscape beneath a cloudless sky (it might have had a white sun for good measure, but I wasn't paying that much attention). On the other side was a poster for a Ford Focus, with air conditioning, and so sitting in the middle of a red dust and rocks landscape to emphasise the external heat.

* It was on tube platform, hence the connection.

I just thought it was odd, and somewhat depressing, that the imagery of the adverts is so formulaic, regardless of what it is they are selling.

The connection between DVD piracy and adverts being that I inadvertently came up with "You wouldn't steal a XXXX". Now all I need to do is to find a client for the slogan "the future's got to be a better way" and I'll be able to retire. Or something. Look, you can't expect coherency at this time of night.

Anyway, running on from Americans with silly names (Tate Donovan? So was he born in front of a Turner? Or conceived there?), and desperately trying not to get into the conspiracy which must underlie Jim-from-Neighbours's career (Neighbours, ER, The X Files, 24, Lost and The OC. He's one bit part in Alias away from world domination. What's the betting he turns up in Bond film soon?), someone earlier came by here through searching for 'Xiphisternum' (Google, being Google, now denies this is possible, although it does shove you towards my Flickr account). They came on a computer branded "Ogletree Deakins Nash Smoak", which one hopes is a firm of lawyers, or else I've just been told by mistake that a consignment of heroin/nukes/Ukrainians has made it though customs.

But 'Smoak'? I've heard of keeping up with the Joneses, but that seems to be trying to out-do the Smythes.

Enniwho,

PS. Oh, I've just remembered, the main post of this post was (slight copy and paste from email):
Oooh, oooh, oooh! My sensitive plant [Mimosa something or other] seeds which I sowed months ago have finally sprouted. They're growing quite quickly, as couple of days ago the cotyledons came up, and now the two surviving (of three) seedlings both have one leaf cluster of 3 pairs each, and signs of another budding. And one of them just reacted to being touched by folding the leafs together (I only tested one as they're young and I don't know how much energy they need to react). But how cool is that? A plant which reacts to touch? And it's been slowly reopening as I write. I'm so going to have to be good to resist constantly touching it every time it reopens.

[Apparently they also close down for the night - even later, and the seedleaves have too - to quote an Azism, tres funky].

Anyhoo,

PPS. Following up the infuriating "You wouldn't steal a movie" advert, someone else points out the effect it would have on the internet if every site made you sit through a anti-copyright-theft promo before you could look at anything. I imagine one might tire of Wikipedia after the twelfth "You wouldn't steal a car/television/handbag for your homework" ad.

Take it further. Imagine a world in which every product of design would not start until suitable messages had been communicated for a minute. You wouldn't steal a quilt. You wouldn't steal an alarm clock. You wouldn't steal a floor. You wouldn't steal a carpet. You wouldn't steal a door handle. You wouldn't steal a hinge. You wouldn't steal a plumbing system. You wouldn't steal a wardrobe. You wouldn't steal a kitchen. You wouldn't steal a car key. You wouldn't steal a car door. You wouldn't steal a car seat. You wouldn't steal a seatbelt. You wouldn't steal an ignition switch. You wouldn't steal a clutch. You wouldn't steal an internal combustion engine. You wouldn't steal a gearbox. You wouldn't steal a mirror. You wouldn't steal an indicator. You wouldn't steal an accelerator. You wouldn't steal two and half thousand revolutions per minute. You wouldn't steal 2nd gear. You wouldn't steal third. You wouldn't steal a brake pedal. You wouldn't steal a brake cable. You wouldn't steal brake callipers. You... You wouldn't steal a morgue.

Unsurprisingly I can find many people discussing these enforced sections, yet all of them seem to be expressing annoyance, frustration or dismay. Well done, whoever you may be.

You wouldn't steal a minute: we would.

I think I might move to China. At least there it's only dodgy subtitles permanently affixed to everything. And the DVDs'll be cheaper.

PPPS. Anyone else read Blogger's "Scheduled Outage at 4PDT" as "Scheduled Outrage at 4PDT"?