Month: February 2003

  • Celebrity Nonsense

    OK – so last it was The Brits. Somehow, these are still painted as a creditable awards ceremony, even though they’ve patently been nonsense since the 1989 Samantha Fox/Mick Fleetwood fiasco. Somehow, for a brief moment, I always find myself watching some of it. It’s a bit like caring what The Sun has on its…

  • The Human Factor

    The latest in my reading of the full Graham Greene oeuvre. This novel is about the life of Castle, a middle ranking official working in intelligence within the Foreign Office. There’s a leak within the department, and the devious Dr Percieval is on the case. There’s no major scandal going on – it’s all very…

  • Swings and Roundabouts

    It’s strange to read about Soho bookshops in Graham Greene’s The Human Factor, and find yourself shopping in a similar enterprise the same day. There’s a place called The Soho Bookshop which has two branches as such – similar to the setup in the Greene novel. They both sell standard fare on the ground floor…

  • Two great banners seen yesterday in LA: Wrap This Administration in Duct Tape and Plastic Somewhere in Texas, a village has lost its idiot

  • Gulf War 2 – The Game

    This is fantastic!

  • The Photos

    Here they are. Click on them for larger versions:

  • A Busy Day

    So it was quite a dilemma for me! Arsenal meeting Man Utd at Old Trafford in the FA Cup while in London the big march was taking place today. I decided to watch the match at work. I didn’t reach Oxford Circus until about 11.30, and it was becoming obvious that there were quite a…

  • War In Iraq

    Things are getting serious now. France, Germany and Russia are dead against the war, and Nato is teetering with France, Germany and Belgium blocking the use of bases in Turkey for attacking Iraq. Meantime, papers like The Evening Standard, The Sun and the Daily Mail accuse France of betrayal since the US helped free France…

  • Norwegian Wood

    The latest book I’ve been reading by Murakami, it’s a little different to the previous two that I’ve read. The same themes of loneliness and isolation are there, but this is a slightly more straightforward love story. And although some the behaviour of characters is maybe strange, there’s no supernatural element to it. I thoroughly…

  • Bereft

    A bit strong I suppose, but that’s how I feel at the moment, lacking internet access. There’s some kind of problem at the BT exchanges – well a couple of hundred of them anyway. Demon are ever so coyly not naming names, but it’s evidently BT’s fault. The fault seems to have been around since…

  • Adaptation

    I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed Being John Malkovich a couple of years ago or so, and Spike Jonze is still on something of a roll. Jackass is his baby, and he seems to have several other irons in the fire. So I was quite impatient to see Adaptation. It begins with the a…

  • Excellent Sunday Night Drama

    Well tonight’s supposed to be the big BBC Three launch night, with a simulcast on BBC2 to introduce this fantastic new channel for 25-34’s. At 33, I’m just within this demo, but then we’re talking about one of the four main BBC TV channels aimed at a singular ten year age range, so I needn’t…