Journal Entries
A word about my current name
Posted Oct 14, 2015
Which, for the record, is Out in the west Texas town of El Gosho, I fell in love with a Mexican girl, because it won't be for long, as very few of them are.
The Marty Robbins song El Paso is one I remember from childhood and was always captivated by, for several reasons. It's a narrative song; it tells a tragic love story; it's in 3/4 time; it's about a place that sounds exotic (whether or not it actually is); and Marty Robbins has wonderful voice.
While working at Cheapo Discs, all those years ago, I found out that it was one of the songs on Robbins' album Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, which has a number of other songs I was already familiar with (Big Iron, Cool Water, A Hundred and Sixty Acres), and plenty more I wasn't, and is considered a classic album, particularly around here, and which we always paid top dollar for and sold at our highest used CD price (and I got one for myself of course).
It was around that time too that I learned that country and western music actually means two things - country music and western music, and they're not exactly the same. Dolly Parton is country; Gunfighter Ballads is western. Country is usually about broken hearts; western is about cowboys on the trail (a pair of huge generalisations, but you get the idea).
I hear conflicting reports about El Paso itself. I worked with someone who grew up there. She couldn't wait to get out of it. I also hear it's one of the safest places in... Texas? Or the US? I can't recall, which is a little surprising given that it's on the border with Mexico and the Mexican drug wars. Either way, I think I'd like to visit.
And, of course, until I opt for a new name (and probably for a while afterwards), I give myself an earworm every time I come to h2g2 
Discuss this Journal entry [2]
Latest reply: Oct 14, 2015
I don't really know why
Posted Oct 11, 2015
But I've always thought the waltz from Khachaturian's Masquerade Suite to be one of the saddest pieces of music I know of. It's in a minor key... could it be D minor, the saddest of all keys? No, looks like it's in E Minor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPp3Qh-GRqs Close but no cigar.
It's also one of the earliest pieces of classical music I can remember; that and the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Both from before I was four years old certainly, because I remember hearing them at the house we lived at and moved out of before I had my fourth birthday.
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Latest reply: Oct 11, 2015
What I really need is
Posted Sep 30, 2015
A radio alarm clock that can also store and play mp3s and FLACs. Does such a thing exist, I wonder? And I don't mean one that will dock an mp3 player.
Then, when I go to bed, I could listen to my copies of those late-night Radio 4 comedies that I used to love hearing, as well as a certain other Radio 4 series that we all known and love.
Discuss this Journal entry [24]
Latest reply: Sep 30, 2015
A bloody pet spa?
Posted Sep 25, 2015
You may recall a few months ago that I ranted about how the management company that bought this apartment complex earlier this year put my rent up by nearly a century a month, only to tell us two weeks later that they were closing down the laundry room to make a bigger fitness centre and clubhouse 
Well, they've been working on the building for several weeks, and this morning I noticed some signs going up besides various doors for the aforementioned clubhouse, fitness centre... and pet spa 
You took away the laundry room for a place where dogs are going to... well, I don't know what a pet spa even is. And I don't bloody care. I'm so annoyed I could smash a teacup 
Discuss this Journal entry [18]
Latest reply: Sep 25, 2015
Volkswagen
Posted Sep 22, 2015
I'm sure you must have heard about the debacle surrounding the company by now. Which is a damn shame because VWs are the only vehicles I've ever owned, and if I should ever learn to drive here and buy a car, the only ones I'd want to own. I wish they made motorbikes too.
How do the people who perpetrate that kind of thing, whether it's a deliberate intention to do something underhand or an attempt to cover something up, imagine they're going to get away with it? I'm reminded, for instance, of the rootkit Sony put on some of their CDs ten years ago http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal Also Enron. Also the peanut business owner who was jailed yesterday for 28 years. Also Also... I could go on and on and on.
They must know they're eventually going to get found out.
Or are we to assume there are some that have never been uncovered? I think it's a given there must be others that are going on right now.
As for people who think regulation is a Bad Thing... put them all on the B Ark
Discuss this Journal entry [14]
Latest reply: Sep 22, 2015
There is only one thing worse than being Gosho, and that is not being Gosho
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