Black

In the news today is that the widow of Oswald Mosley has died. He was the founder of the British Fascists, AKA the Blackshirts.

Anyone want to bet what the de rigeur colour will be at the funeral? *Grin*

Camera

One half of the insurance settlement came through yesterday – the voucher for the replacement of the laptop, to be exact. I’d already decided that at the moment a replacement laptop wasn’t essential (the stolen one was also the old one, a positively archaic beast of an IBM) so it was going to be used in part for a replacement camera. It’s the thing I’d missed most from the first break-in, so it was time to replace it.

So now I have a new toy. The Fuji M603. It’s not perfect – I’d have preferred to have more optical zoom than it’s got, for example – but it seems like a good camera already. One strange thing (for me) is that it doesn’t have a viewfinder – instead it’s all done via the comparatively huge 2.5″ LCD. The manual mode isn’t as good as the last camera, but I rarely used it in anything other than automatic anyway.

As it is, I’m still getting to grips with some of the stuff – in some ways it’s very non-camera, the shutter button is in a different position to usual, for example. But by the weekend there’ll be some shots with it, and I’ll be able to do a better comparison then. And there’ll be plenty of space on it too – I got a 256Mb card to go with it, and it can also take up to a 1Gb Microdrive…

Abusive

While I can kind of understand the newsworthiness of the story about the charming individual now barred via an ASBO from using one particular abusive term, it does also appear to have given every single paper and news website the ability to use that word.

So – is it valid for them to use it, because it’s “newsworthy”? Or is it still just as abusive, and they’re as guilty as anyone else for using it?

GF Asks

In a worthy bit of memery (is that a word?), started off here on Green Fairy’s site (although it does originally hail from elsewhere), GF asks me five questions…

1. What qualities do toy moose have that say, cuddly antelope do not?
  If I knew why I prefer toy moose to any other forms of furry toy, I’d probably be a lot saner than I am. I suppose some of it comes from the sheer ability to pun names based on “moose”, plus there’s the sound of the word, which is infinitely preferable to the sound of “antelope”. Moose, reindeer, elk – they’re all a bit quirky really, aren’t they? On the same kind of vein, I could probably have ended up collecting cuddly fish, or even cows – except cows are cliched.
2. What’s your very first memory?
  For some reason(s) (some of which I know, and others which continue to confuddle me) I have very few memories from before the age of about 10. However, the first clear memory I have is of starting primary school. I’ve always said it was the first day there, but I doubt that’s true – whatever, it was close to the start. By this time I’d been able to read for about 12 to 18 months, thanks to literate parents – but that also made me rather more “advanced” than the rest of the class. So when the teacher told us to get books to start learning to read, she meant Roderick the Red Pirate, not for me to wander over to the other bookshelf, find a Roald Dahl book I hadn’t read before, and get stuck into it. The memory of being forced to prove I could a) read and b) comprehend the book I’d chosen still rankles, and remains in memory.
3. What things do you consider to be overrated?
  How long have you got? From my own perspective, I feel the entire scoped-out timetabled existence of “proper job, marriage, career, house, mortgage, family” is hugely over-rated. That’s probably the biggest one, combined with “having to be in a relationship”. Peter recently said that he felt some people are designed to be single, and I have to admit that I wonder if I’m not one of them. Only time will tell. But the people who look at me in shock to realise I’m happy to be buying ONE ticket to go to a concert, or a film, or whatever, I think their attitude is over-rated, that the innate need some people have to always be in a couple is over-rated.
  I should point out at this juncture that there are probably hundreds of other things I feel are equally over-rated, but I just can’t think of them at the moment. It’s a pretty all-encompassing question, GF!
4. Kindly complete this sentence: “I would rather have my innards scooped out and replaced by earwigs than __________________”
  The first response that sprang to mind was the word “moths” – with spiders coming a close second. Earwigs don’t bother me, spiders I’m not keen on, Moths I’m full-blown phobic about. You want comedy? Stick me in a room with a couple of the flapping hairy bastards, and lock the door.
  Other than that though, I’d rather go through the innard-scoooping than participate in a war (particularly one whose cause I didn’t believe in), live in central London, travelling economy-class to Australia, get married, or go through phobia-based aversion-therapy. As with 3., there’s probably a whole load more answers still floating in the ether to that one too.
5. Do you believe your personality is a product of biology or your environment?
  Um, Yes. I believe it comes from both – there are bits of my personality (as well as body-type, appearance etc.) that are absolutely a product of my parents. There are plenty of others that come from friends, and life experience. It’s quite spooky when I see my father, our mannerisms and personalitys definitely have parts that have been inherited. However, there are other parts that are probably as alien to him as, say, Neptune would be. If pushed, I would probably say that there are basic personality traits that are genetically hard-wired, that are an absolute swine to change or alter, but that the great majority of what makes us individual is based on our own lives, and thus down to environment and experience.

Want to be interviewed?

1. If you want to participate, leave a comment saying “interview me.”
2. I will respond by asking you five questions – each person’s will be different.
3. You will update your journal with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

UPDATED : Pogo and Dragon, your questions are now in the comments box…

Vanity, vanity, all is vanity

I know that yesterday there were a few comments on the idiocy of people undergoing foot surgery in order to wear “sexy” pointy shoes (see GreenFairy, Dragon and Into the Wild for more information) and I must admit, while I agree that people who undergo this treatment are inherently shallow and (quite probably) madder than a bathful of hippos, at the end of the day it’s their own stupidity and thus they pay for the service.

In contrast, the BBC’s report that millions of people never get their eyesight checked, even when they know their vision isn’t as good as it was seems far more upsetting and stupid. I suppose it’s down to the fact that there’s a greater chance of harming others through poor eyesight – I’ve never had a problem per se with fuckheads, so long as they only harm themselves, it’s when they also can harm others that I start having a problem with it. As an example, people only need a basic sight-test before passing their driving test (by which I mean “read that numberplate 50 feet away”) and that’s it. There’s no need for another sight check while driving. A good percentage of these people (the story says 65%) who know that their sight is going to shit and never get it checked are also drivers.

As with the feet/shoes story, vanity is cited as a reason for not getting a sight check. To quote paraphrase from the article, “73% thought they would find them irritating to wear, while 52% did not like the way spectacles made them look. 78% of people cited discomfort as a reason why they would not wear contact lenses, while 67% thought they would be a hassle and 60% believed they would pose a risk to their eyes. Asked about laser eye surgery, 73% said it was too expensive, 37% thought it was too risky and 52% said they did not like the idea of surgery on their eyes.” So – they’d rather not have a brief period of irritation, or not have to look slightly different than run the risk of killing or harming someone while driving. I can understand some of the concerns about laser surgery – I’ve enquired about it, but my eyes are bad enough that even post-surgery I’d still have to wear glasses, albeit ones of a lighter prescription. Contact lenses don’t work for me, although I know several people for whom they’re ideal. But that’s the thing – experimentation, finding out what works and is best for each person.

Personally I’d rather wear glasses than be thinking for the rest of my life about the person I ran over because I didn’t see them.

Light and Tunnels

Well, the letting agents have contacted me, and all’s well so far – the credit check’s been sent off today, so I’m crossing my fingers that everything goes OK. With luck, I should know by the end of the week.

Also, the bank finally confirmed the overdraft I’d requested, which will make doubly sure that everything’s OK for clearing the deposit and first month’s rent – the finances are there, but it’s better to have some form of fiscal padding too. The new house isn’t quite confirmed yet, but there’s definitely light at the end of the tunnel – I just hope that it’s not a freight-train coming the other way…

Comments

Yes, at the moment the commenting system is down. Joy. I know, I know, I really do need to sort out MT, and get that side of things done. The basics are installed, I just need to do the template etc., and move the archives over. “Just”. Ha.