Oh, and I was tagged by Turboslut (you gotta love that name!), so here goes.

Four Jobs You’ve Had In Your Life
Four Movies You Could Watch Over And Over
Four Places You’ve Lived
Four TV Shows You Love To Watch
Four Places You’ve Been On Vacation
Four Blogs You Visit Daily
Four Of Your Favourite Foods
Four Places You’d Rather Be
Four Albums You Can’t Live Without
Four Vehicles You’ve Owned
Four People To Be Tagged

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Timed out again: Will Return Soon!!!!

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I popped in ‘Heat’ last night ‘coz I was bored and “there’s nowt on telly anyway”. That’s how they used to make ‘em: Al de Niro and Robert Pacino, Val Kilmer, and that mexican-looking bloke, and that italian-looking bloke. A great bunch, blasting all 31 flavours of crap out of banks, armoured trucks, cops, and innocent bystanders. Reading Rachey’s blog, I had to agree. The precise reason I reached for Heat was that I wanted no moral dilemmas whatsoever. I seem to spend too much time nowadays philosophising about the rights and wrongs of some exceedingly impalusible and impossible movie situations. (I guess it’s just my sensitive and caring nature )
Having said that, Hollywood seems to be unable to resist that “confrontation scene”. Allow me to explain. Seeing as how the whole movie is about the cop and the baddie battling each other, they went to extraordinary lengths, stretching the credibility of the plot, in order to put Al and Rob face to face in a battle of words that showed how much they were real men, and grudgingly admired each others intelligence, but had to do what they do.
But that Ashley Judd, COR!!

“Naz gets a gold star in Media Studies. Come to the front of the class, dear boy”

I have written an impromptu Haiku because today is Holocaust Memorial Day.

We shall move ahead
Forgiveness is the best way
To honour the dead

I’m also thinking of starting a section called “Al’s Diaries” that will be based on the doings of a close personal friend of mine. He doesn’t use the net too much, so I’m hoping I can just reveal private and embarassing moments from his personal life without asking him permission, and he will be none the wiser. That’s how I’ve learned to deal with most ethical dilemmas, by the way. For legal reasons, let’s just call him a “fictional character” I totally “made up”, (wink wink) ok?
All you need to know about Al for now his that he is a phenomenal boozer, and has a magnetic personality. Magnet for trouble, that is. Further facets of this diamond may become observable to you as you read about his escapades, although I’m quite convinced that’s all there is to him. (“With friends like these…”)

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday Dear Mozart and Natalya
Happy birthday to you

(Natalya’s my friend, Mozart’s the music/opera/symphony thingy guy)

A new telly program due on Channel Four is called the IT crowd. And I thought it was the I.T.Crowd as in Information Technology. And the telly rushes show loads of gorgeous people having a party, and there I’m thinking “Oh, yeah baby, that’s us I.T. guys alright. Down to a T”

Listening to a John Coltrane best of CD, I was surprised by a song called Lush Life

Oh, and Ioannis, the Rolling Stones song about pills I mentioned called Mother’s Little Helper is also there.

I’m trying to type with some crazy piano banging away in my ears and putting me off, ’cause I’m trying to match his speed with my two typing fingers (and the occasional thumb for the space bar)

If you’ve visited Ioannis’ blog, you’ll know of a nice Saturday I had. I’ll be taking a leaf out of Boudica darling’s blog, and regale you with accounts of my own mystery person, Ms. X. I’m hoping they’ll go someway to explaining why I’ve been so lax with my blogging duties, if you know what I mean! But only after I obtain permission. I see clearly now why Turboslut has gone private with a separate blog for friends only; though I must complain to her that I’m not going to register to comment, and therefore she must set it up in a way to allow me, a non-blogger to comment. (Actually, I just went over to see what she’s on about. HELLOOOO!!)

WAS SUPPOSED TO WRITE, BUT SPENT ALL MY INTERNET CREDIT READING OTHER PEOPLE’S BLOGS.
P.s. I must add this is entirely due to SOME people writing more than necessary!! Yes, I’m talking about YOU!

I’ve decided, from an idea I got while commenting on Jessy’s blog, to teach my readers Russian. I think she might be doing the same with Mandarin. after all, us Isomers are a very social-minded and forward-thinking group.

(I’m trying to find the writing in Russian, but I’m having no joy. I wanted to say “Hello, my name is..” but couldn’t find the Russian, so this will do)

The line for today is:

привет, как ваше имя?

Privyet, kak vaashe eemya?

Hello, what is your name?

And thank heavens for BBC online radio, I’m cracking up listening to Dead Ringers!!

I’m getting tired of kissing the BBC’s over-sized butt (I’m imagining a sort of matronly figure with a ginormous posterior and kindly smile, but you can use your own imagination) but they’ve done it again!! They’ve had Chimp Week going on BBC One and it is absolutely gorge!! Although it is slightly worrying when a local conservationist stands on the shore of the Lake Tanganyika and points out all across the other sides there’s civil unrest and streams of refugees heading towards the reserve. I read African Silence not long ago, and even back in late 70′s, people who actually worked in Africa knew the importance of enrolling the locals in conservation efforts, as well as the impossibility of saving animals without sparing a thought for the local people as well. But now they seem to be catching up, atleast ideogically.
Ape Week was talking about the probable extinction of Orangutans due to crop farming in Indonesia. Apparently jungle habitat is being cleared to make way for farmers to grow Palm Oil trees. One in every ten products on our supermarket shelves contains Palm oil, from cosmetics, to butter, ice-cream, etc. More info on this can be found on this Friends of Earth page.

A little wordplay I heard somewhere that made me laugh. Instead of saying psychiatrist, someone pronounced it Sky-high-atrist. Hmmm, I seem to know some people like that!

I was supposed to upload a humungous blog I wrote at home on me laptop, but this service is not obliging. So, what was I on about??

Well, first I discovered yet another member has joined our web community, it seems that they are jumping in at a crazy rate of almost one person per month!! I worry whether there’s enough space in the ether-cyber area to fit all of them! So a warm welcome to Shasha, or “Dolphin in the blue” as she’s known on the web.

I was watching a Channel Four programme on the delusions of religion. No new ground covered, it was the usual Oxford professor-ish bloke taking us through Jerusalem, the American Bible-belt, and a few interviews with radical crackpots who’ll say anything to escape looking mediocre on television. Not being religious myself, I used to find this rather entertaining not so long ago. Now I see a smugness in the approach of scientists that it seems they can ill afford. Science is supposed to be the quest for truth, and acceptance of doubt, all noble and self-satisfying. But scientists themselves often believe in something purely as a matter of faith, and thus become blind to the very logic they claim to prostate themselves before. Doctoring results is not supposed to take place, yet we have a dog called Snuppy who apparently wasn’t cloned.
So it appears that it’s not only the religious who are prone to leaps of faith in their reckonings. It might be more useful to stop attacking religions, and try to understand the broader concept of faith that human beings of all persuasions appear to display.

I know my birthday’s in Octomber (as a Greek friend of mine would pronounce it), but here’s a list of books from the biography section of Waterstone’s that I might like to own (the books, not the section). I was mooching about there looking for ways to burn the 2000 pence worth of book vouchers I have, but I have to make sure I make the most of the opportunity, and spend the minimum amount of real hard cash on top of the vouchers.
So here they are (so far; more additions are definitely planned)

I’m currently enjoying Sue Townsend’s ‘Adrian Mole and the weapons of mass destruction’. After having read ‘The secret diaries aged 13 3/4′. I’m also trying to keep in touch with my Russki by reading Dostoevsky’s ‘Notes from the underground’, but man!! can he drag on!! I mean, what’s his problem?? Thank heavens there are explanatory notes. 4 days, and I’m still on page 7! And I wanted to get ‘War and Peace’ done over this week!! Wake up, Sunshine.

This is one sentence

Скажите мне вот что: отчего так бывало, что, как нарочно, в те самые, да, в те же самые минуты, в которые я наиболее способен был сознавать все тонкости «всего прекрасного и высокого», как говорили у нас когда-то, мне случалось уже не сознавать, а делать такие неприглядные деянья, такие, которые…ну да, одним словом, которые хоть и все, пожалуй, делают, но которые, как нарочно, приходились у меня именно тогда, когда я наиболее сознавал, что их совсем бы не надо делать?

Twenty commas? I rest my case, Your Honour.

I forgot to tell you that the Munich Posse has already booked their tickets for the next adventure. Andros!!! (“Wha?” you ask. It’s a Greek island near Athens) we’ll go there after our Easter, in time for the Greek Easter. Ioannis has a house on the island, so we’ll be sitting soaking in the sun while he waits on us hand and foot We’ll eat roasted lambkins and let off insane amounts of fireworks in a totally irresponsible manner. For pics of this place magnifico, you can vist Rachey’s, as she was there a while ago. (You have to choose “happy holidays” from her gallery, then “Andros”) We’re gonna have FUN!!!

Oh, and my sister’s now on the website of her research guru. Checkitout. Click on current assistants. My sas is the one with an Msc in Applied Genetics (Number 9 for the lazy sods who can’t read).
Must say, I visited the home page of the professor, and he looks well dodgy.

Jessy’s got an article about suckers and naive elderlies (there’s a difference?) who are scammed by the “You have won a prize” brigade. It’s funny that just the other day I received an offer from Which? magazine (who conducted the survey in the BBC report in Jessy’s article) saying I had already passed two important stages in the process of selection and I had to put some stickers on some letters to claim one of three cars, or £300,000, or something. I just threw them away.

‘It could be sweet’ – Portishead
“You don’t get something for nothing”

I know I should be writing about the New Year, and how Happy it was, and the usual carp. But instead, I’ll pose you a question that kept me awake until I fell asleep. Do kids nowadays choose careers based on what they see on telly? I mean, have the role models for young kids changed? Do they still want to be pilots and firemen (or, as in my case, reliable IT technicians), or do they now want to be “I’m a celebrity, get me on a crap show” or “International Men of Mystery. Yeah baby, groovy”? I guess the only person qualified to answer would be a career advisor for schulers (do they have those in the UK?).

Which seamlessly links into the next topic in this sermon. Does anybody want to be a spy? And is there a market anymore for trench-coated, ninja-deadly intelligentsia in this post-Cold war era? I’ve borrowed a DVD of BBC telly series based on John le Carre’s novel of the same name (if you haven’t guessed the name yet, look at the title of this rant) and I was instantly back in those days in Moscow when I’d bend every now and then to “tie my shoelaces” or “gaze at the wares in the shop windows”. You may not have realised this, but this is Top-spy technique for finding out if anybody is following you. Of course those K.B.G folk wanted me for my inexhaustible knowledge of weapons systems and world-reknown ballistic expertise (I used to be a mean shot with a rubberband in school). The series lasts 315 minutes, and I couldn’t tear myself away from it, even when I thought I heard the soft tread of a rubber-soled shoe in my hallway at 4 a.m. (the hour of the assassin, in case you didn’t know. If you think you’re gonna get snuffed, you can sleep peacefully at any hour except 4 a.m. Course, it didn’t work for J.F.K), which would usually precipitate my springing into action with a stout staff in preparation for the operative from Mossad.

Talking of DVDs, I saw a film advertised on telly as being available on DVD and “MUD” or something. What!! Has the technological advance skipped by me again? Just when I had learned to stop toasting and buttering the DVDs as well!! (They’re not really indestructable. Trust me, I should know)

Ok, the festivities are over, I’m back to my old tricks again. A big thanks to all those who made it a special season, and an official notification to those who did not; you are now on The List.
This being the New Year according to some Gregorian chaps I’ve never met, it is necessary to make some resolutions. Hence, I resolve not to shoot any foxes, nor will I ever buy a 140-foot yacht. I hope I will find the strength in my inner beliefs and convictions to stick to these resolutions.

Remember those red plastic binocular thingies we used to have as kids, in which you inserted a round cardboard dial that had tiny film slides on it, and we used to see wonderful places around the world? What was it called, and more importantly, what has happened to it? (I don’t want silly answers like “The internet happened to it”, or “They never introduced slides with smutty pictures so it obviously died out”.)

On a happier note, after an hour-long televisual tour of churches brought on by the festive season and the birthday of Christmas, I am reminded of old Homer (the philosopher, not the Iliad bloke) who said -”I may not know much about Jebus, but I think we built him a pretty nice cage”