Cussedness
The natural cussedness of things in general.
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Ashamed
Today I am deeply ashamed to call myself a Yorkshireman. Were I to allow full vent to my feelings regarding the election of Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons to the Eurpean Parliament, I would break my computer through sheer rage. I would like to reassure the rest of the country that most of us in the north are actually perfectly nice people, and not hate-filled fascist scum.
Incidentally, someone needs to explain to Andrew Brons that a political system can’t really be called a dictatorship if you can get yourself elected to its ruling body. It is worrying that a person who can poll 10% of the vote doesn’t even seem to understand the most basic terminology of politics, and gives the measure of the mental capacity of the man. Bear in mind that this wall-eyed knuckle-dragger is the best that the BNP can come up with after General Woundwort Nick Griffin; the stupidity of their average supporter doesn’t bear thinking about. Frankly, I’m amazed that enough of them found the right end of the pencil to register their votes.
I’m probably being far too optimistic here, but hopefully this revolting episode will serve as enough of a warning to the real political parties to stop them from messing about, and will motivate them to organise properly and prevent these bottom-feeding shitbags from getting into the UK parliament next year.
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The Colonel’s Daughter And Other Stories by Rose Tremain
I started reading The Colonel’s Daughter, which is not a large volume, in November of last year and I have only just got around to finishing it off. This is not because of any deficiency in the writing, but because it has taken me that long to adjust to the changes to my world sufficiently to enable me to pick up a book for more than a few minutes at a time. For the last five or six months, since Wilf started paying a bit more attention to the world, the only books I have read have had a total word count not exceeding a couple of hundred, and an average sentence length of about ten. The picture-to-word ratio favours the more easily distracted reader, and the number of different colours, textures, flaps, holes, and tactile surfaces on each page would give the staff of a normal printing house conniptions. I don’t mean to complain: it is refreshing to read with someone for whom books are still such a novelty that they’re as much fun upside down as the right way up. After a few months of this sort of thing, though, the average grown-up longs for something with a little more narrative depth than That’s Not My Monster (excellent work thought that is), and I have accordingly, finally, found myself enough time to finish reading this relatively early collection of Rose Tremain’s short stories. (more…)
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Clonehenge
Clonehenge is a rather splendid blog dedicated to replicas of Stonehenge. Apparently the replica henge building trade is rather slow at the moment, so in their search for content they have posted a picture I took of some broken kerbstones at the bottom of my garden. Truly this is what the internet was made for.
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Off On A Comet by Jules Verne
Many of Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaire have aged poorly, but it seems that the problems encountered by a reader of Off On A Comet were significant even before publication. The greatest difficulty is not, remarkably, the stretch required to suspend disbelief in the idea that several sections of the surface of the Earth could be carried off by a passing planetoid without any harm coming to the people on those bits of rock; the separation of a few chunks of the Mediterranean coast from the rest of the planet takes place at night, whilst the forty or so characters are all asleep, so Verne is spared the task of making such an event believable, and we can treat it like any other magical authorial set-up, by simply accepting it. Much harder to swallow is the racism that appears with the characters who appear after the comet has carried off a few square miles of the world, and it seems that even the nineteenth century reader had issues with the prejudice on display in this effort of Verne’s. (more…)
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Captain Nemo in Scary Go Round
Today’s Scary Go Round features Captain Nemo, which is a convergence of two such utterly splendid things that I have to draw attention to it. The current story about Atlantis is shaping up to be one of Mr Allison’s best efforts, and is also probably a good place for new readers to start, as it only features three of the old recurring characters, and you don’t really need to know anything about them to make sense of things. If you haven’t already, you should start reading it.
Also of note is the new “Cat Person” t-shirt, an essential garment for cat people everywhere.
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Eight Hundred Leagues On The Amazon by Jules Verne
Eight Hundred Leagues On The Amazon directly preceded Godfrey Morgan, but the two books are very different. This is classic Verne, with all the narrative drive that characterises his best work. A journey down the Amazon is undertaken on a vast raft built from the huge trees of the rainforest, upon which a small village is built to accommodate the family and staff of the hero of the story, Joam Garral. Garral is a gentleman farmer of Peru with a mysterious past, and his story rattles along entertainingly, with engaging characters and a cracking plot. Even the descriptive passages dealing with the Amazonian scenery are interesting enough to hold the reader’s attention for as long as they last.
Garral is another classic Vernian hero, noble and mysterious, firm of purpose and fatalistic of outlook. So many of Verne’s heroes appear to willingly resign themselves to their doom, or, more accurately, to the design of the author; it is almost as if they know themselves to be the heroes of the works they inhabit, and therefore know that they are assured of a fitting conclusion. Whilst his family are rushing about doing all they can to ensure a happy ending, Garral sits philosophically and awaits the outcome, floating with the current rather like the raft he travels on. Also of interest is Judge Jarriquez, the man with the power to decide Garral’s fate, who is portrayed at first as something of an enemy, but who develops as a character in parallel with the later turns of the plot itself. His passion for solving puzzles turns out to be the key to the entire novel, in a climactic twist that owes more than a little to Poe.
Eight Hundred Leagues… is a rewarding read, and a good place to start for anyone who wants to explore some of Verne’s slightly less famous Voyages Extraordinaire.
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Godfrey Morgan by Jules Verne
Subtitled “A Californian Mystery” in the translation on Gutenberg, somewhat inaccurately, because the twist in the tale will be obvious and entirely unmysterious to even the densest of readers, this is definitely one of Verne’s lesser novels. The eponymous hero finds himself shipwrecked on an island with his dancing and deportment teacher, and falls back on his knowledge of Robinsonade literature in order to survive. Insubstantial and unsatisfying, it doesn’t come near to Verne’s similar shipwreck tales like The Mysterious Island or Lighthouse at the End of the World, and feels like the rather half-hearted fulfilment of a contractual obligation. As ever, this could be down to substandard translation, and the original may be a witty and entertaining comedy: Verne’s less serious works rarely seem to translate all that well.
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The Fight for English by David Crystal
I few months ago I overheard a friend lamenting her lack of knowledge of basic linguistic terminology, complaining that she had never been taught about nouns and verbs and the like, and blaming this gap in her education for a more general inability to use her native tongue adequately and confidently when dealing with her boss. I didn’t like to point out that knowing a few technical words does not necessarily enable one to write or speak well, but her case came to mind whilst reading David Crystal’s recent anti-pedantry effort, The Fight for English. (more…)
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365
I bought that Canon 40D I was talking about buying, and now I have to actually use the thing, so I’ve decided to try to take a photo a day for a year in order to justify the slightly excessive expenditure. You can, should you feel so inclined, follow my efforts by keeping an eye on the relevant Flickr set. Photography is turning out to be a rather pricey hobby, so I feel like I should commit myself to making a serious attempt at doing it properly. Perhaps I should have just stuck to writing reviews of old public domain novels (but fear not, boredom-addicts, I’m not going to stop that particular activity just yet).
Incidentally, I’m starting my Project 365 today as it is my birthday, and that strikes me as a good time to get started on this sort of thing. Today I am 31, or 11111 in binary, or 111 in base 5, which is very mildly diverting. 31 is also a Mersenne prime, the only known Mersenne emirp, and some other things too.
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Fisheye Madness
I went a bit nuts a few weeks back and spent a slightly silly amount of money on a Sigma 4.5mm Circular Fisheye lens. It is brilliant fun. Here is the slideshow of my Flickr set:
I don’t regret a penny of what it cost (although I didn’t pay full price, don’t worry), but I am now yearning for a better camera body to make the most of what the lens can actually do. And with the standard rate VAT reduction, and a £60 cashback offer on the Canon 40D, I’m not sure how much longer I can resist. Maybe I’ll buy myself a birthday present.
Twittering- mintimperial: is a bit worried about his laptop.
- mintimperial: @bracestower Owch.
- mintimperial: refuses to Keep Calm And Carry On: http://flic.kr/p/6BeMtZ
- mintimperial: @edmorrish That would be plausible had the cats not killed all the rabbits already.
- mintimperial: is developing something of an obsession with pylons. http://flic.kr/p/6B8JHh
- mintimperial: @KittyJimjams Nah, moles are badass and super-hard to catch, it's the cat equivalent of killing a ninja.
- mintimperial: @edmorrish Through the catflap, in the jaws of a murderous feline. Have checked floorboards for molehills, no dice.
- mintimperial: @edmorrish There was no-one else in, so unless we have a mole-catching ghost, I'm pretty sure it's one of the cats.
- mintimperial: came home to find a dead mole in the dining room. Now the cats only need to catch a badger to complete the Wind In The Willows Grand Slam.
- mintimperial: has reduced Lawyer Harm Alert Status from "Strangle" to "Throw Rocks". Anticipates reduction to "Glare At" in next day or so.