Journal Entries
It's Saturday morning
Posted Oct 20, 2015
I wake up, it's dark, I feel awake enough that doubt I'm going back to sleep. I turn on the radio in the dark, I hear the main (top of the hour) news. I hope it's six o'clock, not five o'clock. I hope it's six o'clock, I hope it's six o'clock.
It's five o'clock 
Yesterday, my Friday, I actually slept right through until the (5.30) alarm woke me up. Last night I set the alarm to my weekend wake-up time - 6.30.
That's got to be the height of wishful thinking.
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Latest reply: Oct 20, 2015
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 
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Latest reply: Sep 25, 2015
There is only one thing worse than being Gosho, and that is not being Gosho
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