Be prepared

It is July tomorrow, I should be thinking what Christmas single I am going to put out in December

A la  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9Eck6rox0s  I am thinking along the lines of ...

White Christmas - I wanna Christmas
White Christmas - a Christmas of my own
White Christmas - I wanna Christmas
White Christmas - a Christmas of my own

Black people gotta lotta presents
But they don't mind throwing a snowball
While white people go to school
Where they teach you how to program in Cobol

An' everybody's singing
Gloved hands to hold too
An' nobody wants
To go to bed!

White Christmas - I wanna Christmas
White Christmas - a Christmas of my own
White Christmas - I wanna Christmas
White Christmas - a Christmas of my own

All the love is in the air
no one's rich enough to buy it
While we walk the streets
singing carols even as we mince pie it

Everybody's singing
Gloved hands to hold too
Nobody wants
To go to bed!

White Christmas - I wanna Christmas
White Christmas - a Christmas of my own
White Christmas - I wanna Christmas
White Christmas - a Christmas of my own

Are you taking orders?
'cause if you're taking orders
I will have some cocktails
and please bring me some h'orderves

athlete

The Bomber had his last primary school sports day yesterday. He won every single event except the javelin and he came second in that by a centimetre.

The Thursday before that he won the long jump and ran the final winning leg of the relay as his school won the Merton Primary Athletics Championships 2012.

This term he's training at the school running club with Vicky Griffiths, who represented Great Britain at 800m at the World Athletics Championships in 2010, and was also a GB Senior International at 4x400m Relay and U20 at 400m.

I am sometimes astounded that he's related to me.

Plumbing the depths

Don't ask me how, but the Bomber's mate Jonnie managed to mess up the flushing mechanism on the upstairs toilet last night.

I stripped it down and shut the water off, and I've been doing a little online research this morning; it looks to me as if I will have to replace a Gerberit Impuls260 dual flush valve.

It seems that Facebook's heuristics have been misled by my intense interest in faulty plumbing however; they're promoting a "discreet male catheter" to me in one of the adverts on the left of my stream. Stream! Geddit? Geddit? Funny!

ExCeL

The British Olympic Association (BOA) announced the 14 athletes that will represent Team GB in the men’s and women’s judo events at the London 2012 Olympic Games, yesterday.

Winston Gordon (35; born and lives Tooting) got the men’s -90kg berth for his third successive games.

I sometimes feel like I go on and on about this, but I am awed by the physical (injuries and rivals) plus the political (last August, Margaret Hicks his original mentor, was sacked as the BJA's elite performance director) obstacles he has overcome with this achievement.

90kg Men Olympic Judo - Wed, 1 August.

Lil' Pulp Fiction

It is never too early to introduce one's offspring to the Tarantino universe.

Gamblers Anonymous

Mum and Dad met the owners of Black Caviar a couple of weeks ago when they were cruising down the Rhine. She won the Diamond Jubilee Stake over the weekend, so here  they are being presented with the trophy by the Queen; extremely cool.

P.S. I bet £20 on Black Caviar at 2 to 7 so I won £5.71 on the race myself. I then reinvested the £25.71 at 15 to 8 for England to beat Italy in the Euro-footy last night, so I am back down to nothing.

Go Kart Mozart

The sleevenotes for Go Kart Mozart's third album take almost as long to read as its 18 tracks take to play. There is a reading list, containing books on sociology, music and mental illness, many of which appear to be made up: you'll search Amazon in vain for Sanitary Ramblings: Women With Their Knickers Down by Dr Ono Powers. There is a playlist, which reveals that On the Hot Dog Streets was made under the influence of both Wiley's Avalanche Music 1 and Thing, a flop 1972 novelty single by Edwina Biglet and the Miglets. And there is a list of potential band names for anyone inspired by the album itself and "thinking of having a go": Doughnut Corporation, Female Rejection, Unlikely Pub, Bing Bong Crosby.
.....read the while thing...

I read the review above in a chanced-upon Grauniard, waiting alone early at the bar and genuinely cried and snorted with laughter, all on my Jack, to the evident bemusement of the other customers. Without hearing a note, I have a new musical hero.

alike in dignty

To the Albert Hall last night to celebrate the 50th anniversary of West Side Story with a high definition film screening that had the score played live by the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra.

The movie's fifty and I'm fifty one. Unlike other classics we grow younger.

Something's coming, I don't know what it is, but it is gonna be great!

Happy Birthday to me

Here's the present I got myself.

In Patagonia

Argentina turns to Wales for help with Falkland Islands

Buenos Aires is thought to have been trying to capitalise on historical links between Wales and Argentina.

In Patagonia, in the south of the country, a dialect of the Welsh language is spoken among thousands of expat descendants of Welsh ancestors who first settled there in 1865.

The settlers built Welsh chapels and their descendants even organise a regular cultural festival. In 2004, the Welsh speakers in Argentina asked to access Welsh television programmes to encourage the growth of the language.

During the Falklands War between Britain and Argentina 30 years ago, there were Welsh language speakers in both sets of troops.

That last sentence is as sad and poignant a thing as I've read in a long time; Kirchner's and Cameron's UN grandstanding are equally distasteful if you want my opinion,

Ho ho, very satirical

I took this picture lunchtime yesterday. If you can sit on the the shelf labelled BUTTS and get your laughing gear around the hole labelled GUM you are more flexible than I am and I've been to one hundred and seventy odd yoga classes.

Breaking the surface

Prodnose: Very pretty, General. Very pretty. But, can they fight?

Myself: It is interesting that Microsoft displayed ARM and x86 versions of the hardware.

Prodnose: Not to me it isn't.

Awesome!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman recently participated in a live chat with The One Ring's Cliff Broadway. During the discussion Kevin revealed that Michael Bay's Ninja Turles will draw inspiration from the fighting styles showcased in The Raid: Redemption (See Icons passim).

You can see said revelation 1:32:55 into this video.

"Michael Bay's Ninja Turles will draw inspiration from the fighting styles showcased in The Raid, " is too much weird in one sentence for me (they want a more credible fighting style for mutant turtles perhaps?), but it has to be acknowledged Mr. Bay can laugh at himself as well as at us.

Furtherst Day

I was genealogically adrift last week in the run up to Father's Day as the Bomber was away camping in Ashdown Forest with the school, while my mum and dad were cruising on the Rhine.

Everyone's back now, and I am taking Ben and Raybs out for Chinese food later so so order is restored to the universe.

I broke the Tarantino code

More revision above for the cinema round in Monday's increasingly esoteric quiz. (It turns out that the guy who sets the questions used to be a film student. He gave me a point for Bubba Ho-Tep last week. The actual quote was from Army of Darkness, but he grokked that they referenced it in the Elvis v The Mummy movie;the technical term, I believe, is a second order Bruce Campbell differential.)

The McKitterick Prize

Ginney Bailey (sister of Greg with whom I've had many a drink in the Gower and the Claude) has won the 2012 Society of Authors' McKitterick Prize, for first novels by writers over the age of 40.

Isn't that great? (Sometimes I feel like almost everyone I know has published a novel or made a movie.)

Only a few minutes until lunch!

Call me anything but (don't call me) late for dinner.

Leveson Inquiry: Winners and Losers

As Rebekah Brooks appears in court over phone hacking 'cover up' claims, her well orchestrated PR fight back begins:

See Icons Passim

There's a city in the Ukraine (see Icons Passim) that was founded in 1869 by a Welsh businessman, John Hughes, who constructed a steel plant and several coal mines in the region; the town was named Yuzovka (Юзовка) in recognition of his role in its founding ("Yuz" being a Russian or Ukrainian approximation of Hughes).

In the Soviet era it was renamed to Staline,and then Stalino.

Today it's called Donetsk, and it is where England drew with France in Euro 2012 last night.

Isn't that great?

O.S? Oh Yes

I am finding Safari Reader which "displays web articles sans ads or clutter so you can read without distractions" to be a huge boon reading web content on the browser. It is also one in the eye for megalomaniac graphic designers, which can't be a bad thing.

By way of contrast with regards to usability, I couldn't even work out how to log off from Windows 2012 Release Candidate Datacenter from the dreaded Metro interface.

QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM

(Note to self: Brushes is the iPad app that David Hockney has used to such acclaim. That has got to be worth £5.49 to try out at some time.)