h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ultima Thule is like an oven and it isn't even that hot a day.

Number crunching continues but the head of school is content with my labours. I will be at this work all of next week.

I think I'll take Saturday morning off and will go in to town. I'm after a CD - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Returns-Return-Forever/dp/B001EX5CMI/ref=pd_bxgy_d_h__img_b

Susan is on mother duty today.

I read this http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/3521831/the-c-of-e-has-forgotten-its-purpose-why-exactly-does-it-exist.thtml in the Speccie.
Liddle is an isspay-poor wind-up merchant. They should give Giles Coren a column.

I took in a rather lavish 4CD box set of the Crusaders - formerly the Jazz Crusaders - to listen to in my office. One PhD student saw the box and started interrogating me about it "what is this about crusaders?Do you agree with the crusades?" (I'll give you three guesses!) I felt rather intimidated and opted for a "it's only jazz daddy-oh don't flip your lid-o-roonie" line of response but coming on top of yesterdays 'holy knives shoved down holy pants' news report and the impending crzzixxinane celebrations of their hokey cokey godletty-thang I feel like someone standing in a diminishing circle of light as dark shadows close in all around...

Sausages for tea.

I have just finished PD James' The Murder Room. Even James' neds and chavs preserve perfectly unsplit infinitives. Commander Dalgleish is one of literature's greatest constipation cases, the uber buttoned-up Brit. Emotionally damaged. Alone. Joyless. A walking bonsai. And a pretty creppy detective too given all of the deus ex machina endings in the series. I think that I have said before that if I could upload my consciousness into a machine and pick my character and environment I'd make myself a late-40's LA private dick a la Philip Marlow. It's funny how many similarities there are between Dalgleish and Marlow...

I listened to some late 1979-early 1980 XTC today. They were great.

Douglas

< I feel like someone standing in a diminishing circle of light as dark shadows close in all around...>

Like the Vashta Nerada? They showed the Doctor episodes "Silence in the Library/Forests of the Dead" again last week. Still great on second or third viewing.
Daleks tomorrow night.

I suppose you could develop that theme. God-bothers as a mindless swarm lurking in the shadows and devouring unsuspecting travellers from the world of light and rationality.

PJ's OH

I don't have the brains to, but you've nevertheless hit on something there. Don't overrate light and rationality, though.

It was kinda scary being interrogated over a box set of jazz CDs, sensing the touch of a medieval religious police mentality and realising that if my questioner's were the rules in operation I could be in line for a throat-slitting. It left me in a bleak mood.

I have just cheered myself up by watching episode 1 of the BBC Pride & Prejudice in the office - it is so perfect that I go all dewy-eyed. The office window is open and I can hear oystercatchers keening in the distance...

I agree with you re. the Dr Who The Library episodes - the first is best, for the 'ghost in the machine' scene.


Douglas

When I got home, Petal said she had opened the front door this afternoon and there,on the landing, were a swarm of J*hov*h's Witlesses lurking in the shadows.

Spooky or what!

PJ's OH

Re: Pride & Prejudice.

I was honoured to meet Eliza Bennet of ML on my recent visit to Cardiff, and even to view her famous lucky underwear!