posts interesting only to me

Not quite a happy birthday

Published on March 7, 2012Leave a comment

So this time last year I realised that in 2012, this blog would turn ten years old and today is the big day, as my first post was published on 7 March 2002. Of course, that was two blog versions ago, both of which are still running though not being updated and links to which still work. In fact, I still need to upgrade quite a few entries on those to the “new” Wis[s]e Words, even three years after switching…

Today would be a happy occasion, if not for the depressing fact that today is also exactly four months since Sandra died and of course my thoughs are more with her than with the blog, as they always are. I can sometimes stop thinking about her, especially at work when I keep myself busy, but barely an hour can go by without me being reminded of her. Sometimes this is more difficult than at other times. For example, last Sunday I was listening to the Archers omnibus on Radio 4, a fixed part of my Sunday morning routine: get up during the morning service, get showered and dressed, then make coffee and breakfast while listening to broadcasting house, finally read the newspapers and blogs and all about how Aston Villa once again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory while listening with half an ear to The Archers. I can’t help it, you’re obliged to as a Radio 4 listener and besides Sandra got my addicted to it.

But this week’s omnibus hit me hard, because it included Tony Archer’s heart attack, which made me think of Sandra immediately. Not the heart attack itself, which fortunately she never had, but the circumstances surrounding it. His son Tom had had a bit of a row with him and went back to talk it out again, finding him on the floor and confused and not knowing what was happening, just that he was in pain, breathing rapidly. There have been a number of times that I had to find Sandra like that, having to wait for the ambulance, having to ride with the ambulance to the hospital, knowing that things had gotten bad again.

Which isn’t meant as a plea for sympathy, it’s just one of those things I have to deal with, “flashbacks” like that. At the time when you had to deal with a situation like that, you have no choice but to keep it together, not to think too much about it. And since most of the last two years have been either emergencies or attempts to recover from setbacks, I haven’t had much time to think it all over, which is now coming back to bite me. Now I’ve got too much time to think and wonder about what to do with the rest of my life, other than going to work, blog, read and watch tv…

On a lighter note, Sandra would’ve screamed and screamed reading this story, as she was not fond of spiders. I really shouldn’t have teased her with it as much as I did.

Hullo John got a new ‘puter?

Published on March 6, 2012Leave a comment

Well, yes, I do, as my old one died two weeks back. That was Sandra’s old computer, Id bought for her from a co-worker in 2008 or so and the hard disks just gave up the ghost. Its been through the wars before and she had already lost the data that had been on it a long time ago, so no great loss. Might buy a cheap new harddrive and get it fixed anyway, just for kicks. The new computer is great and I’m well in the honeymoon phase of owning a new computer, except for having to reinstall all my old favourite programmes and settings, which is always a chore. Not of great interest to anyone but me, I know, so have some Alexei Sayle.

Of more interest, this casual suggestion that the US might have experienced its Suez moment:

Humphrey is increasingly of the opinion that we are witnessing the USA’s ‘east of Suez moment’ at which the US is faced with the same strategic challenges that all empires are faced with. The legions will be recalled from Europe soon, and this is going to leave a major series of security and other challenges that need to be filled.

Which would make the War on Iraq something like what the Suez Crisis was for the UK: a point at which America’s military capabilities outreach its political power. It was capable of invading and winning battles, but its military might did not help America reach its wider goals. The War on Iraq was the quintessential late imperial war, one not waged for a concrete, achievable goal, but more to show that the aggressor is still an empire, still top dog. It didn’t quite work out that way, which means the empire is still looking for another enemy to defeat to make everything right again, hence the confrontational stance with Iran.

Posing kittens are posing

Published on March 3, 2012Leave a comment

Hector and Sophie posing for the camera

Sometimes all you want to do is to show off your cats, even slightly unsharp. Hector’s in the front, Sophie, who has adapted the broadband modem she’s sitting on as her latest comfort spot, is in the back. It doesn’t seem to harm the internet speeds, so I let her sleep on it. She seems to need those special places to feel safe, but every now and then she tries a new spot.

Books read February

Published on March 1, 2012Leave a comment

And that’s the second month of 2012 gone, with more books read: seven in total, five science fiction, two history. Need more diversity. I could’ve read more, but got bogged down in one book I didn’t finish, then was ill and disinclined to do anything but look at the telly for a week. I also only managed to review three of them in the month I read them, which isn’t that good either, but it seems I can do only a review a week or so, sometimes two. First world problems?

The End in Africa — Alan Moorehead
The third and final part of Alan Moorehead’s Africa trilogy, reporting on the war in North Africa in 1942-1943.

Seventeenth-century Burma and the Dutch East India Company — Wil O. Dijk
A very interesting, data intense look at an almost forgotten part of Dutch colonial and trading history.

Valor’s Choice — Tanya Huff
The first in a new to me series of military sf books, better than it needed to be.

White Dragon — Anne McCaffrey
The third Dragonriders of Pern novel which I’ve been rediscovering once Anne McCaffrey’s death last year remined me of them. Much better than I remembered.

The People’s Chef — Ruth Brandon
The biography of Victorian chef Alexis Soyer, something Sandra had been wanting me to read last year.

The Better Part of Valor — Tanya Huff
After I’d read the first in the series, I had to read its sequel too.

The Heart of Valor — Tanya Huff
And the third in the series too. All three were eminently readable and fun. What’s more there wasn’t any of the more nasty politics some mil-sf series have at their heart.

Osama — Lavie Tidhar
9/11 meets Life on Mars. A book stuffed with symbolism almost to the point of choking on it, but which just about worked despite or because of it.

Sadie Hawkins Day lives

Published on February 29, 2012Leave a comment

the first appearance of Sadie Hawkins Day

L’il Abner, All Capp’s hillbilly humour/adventure comic strip was of course hugely popular for decades and hugely influencial on American popular culture. One of the things it popularised was Sadiw Hawkins Day, an annual day on which women of l’il Abner’s hillbilly town of Dogpatch got to propose to their men; the rest of the year they had to sit around and wait for their lazy and marriage afearing beaus to propose to them. Even on Sadie Hawkins day they still had to ketch them to actually be able to propose and All Capp managed to milk the pursuit of L’il Abner by his girlfriend Daisy Mae for decades before he eventually married them off.

Sadie Hawkins Day meanwhile had become popular outside the L’il Abner strip as well, merging with an older tradition of February 29th being the only day in the year that women could ask men out to dance, or marriage. That sort of topsy turvy craziness was hilarious back when gender roles were somewhat more strict than in modern times, but Sadie Hawkins day still is celebrated.

As my foster brother found out this morning. He has been living together with his partner for years now, they have two children together and while she would like to get married, he was in no hurry to do so. Which is why a few weeks back she took the matters into her own hands and asked my father for his hand, then surprised him this morning with a true old fashioned marriage proposal, having first collected several witnesses including his daughters and my mother, going down on one knee and popping the big question. He said yes of course; he’d better if he knew what was good for him.

So congratulations to the happy couple and I hope to get the wedding invitation soon.