duh bells, duh bells

For reasons I shall not attempt to explain, the doorbell isn't working at the moment. It was, however, slightly irritating to pick up the mail this morning and to also see a little card from a delivery firm who had tiptoed to deliver something but claim didn't get an answer.

Well, what ever it was will be available from the depot 12 miles away from 18:30 this evening. I really need to get the door bell winched back into position.

Thanksgiving Thursday Thirteen at Alice's Restaurant

We don't have Thanksgiving here in the U.K., but best wishes for those who do celebrate today's neighbourly and family occasion. Here's a relevant Thursday Thirteen:

1) We don't get any equivalent time off here in England, except at Christmas, with Christmas Day and Boxing Day.
2) The Macy's Parade is well known here, probably also because of its appearance in several films.
3) The whole Pilgrim celebration also probably originates back to the UK Harvest Festivals, but in England that is back in September
4) Washington seemed to get interested in making Thanksgiving a Holiday after trouncing the Brits at Saratoga.
5) How do they choose which of the three turkeys presented to the President will survive? Thats the one that gets all of the press.
6) Some people like to listen to Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant on Thanksgiving. I kinda know why. Oh okay, here's an interview with Arlo and the whole 18 minute song. Song from 14:30 in the realplayer stream.
7) The native Americans seemed to have a celebration already called Keepunumuk going back many many years.
8 ) Thanksgiving also seems nowadays to be major sporting occasion.
9) The day after Thanksgiving holiday (Black Friday) appears to be the largest shopping day in the American year
10) The original feast was crow. This later changed to turkey. When there wasn't enough turkey the saying was 'let them eat crow'.
11) The USDA say that America consumes around 260 million turkeys per year averaging around 14 lbs, of which a decent ptoportion is consumed during Thanksgiving. That's around one turkey for everyone in the United States.
12) Luckily the Puritans brought a drink to America in the Mayflower. Beer.
13) Every long standing successful American TV series has a Thanksgiving episode.

all i wanna do is have some yams

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Tag: Thursday Thirteen, free link friday, 82ask, Alices Restaurant, thanksgiving

London Town

A new distraction for we Londoners, the new mapmylondon site to add stories and photos of London to a map. I can't resist this one and will find a few snaps and moments to add straight away!

Tag: rashbre, mapmylondon, london, map, england, unitedkingdom

OTA Wordless Wednesday

tonight, waiting for the train

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Tag: Wordless Wednesday

my other car is a pynchon novel

The first Pynchon novel I ever read was Gravity's Rainbow, and I was hooked from the moment it came screaming across the sky. Pynchon had a way to describe a scene from the point of view of the people 'in their time' and to flick between narrative and acquired first person like an internal film camera shooting multiple points of view. This creates a strange other world sense in the reader who at some points is confounded and at other times seems to know much more than the characters about what is going on.

Pynchon's writing style is not for everyone though, using oblique references and distractions as well as a sometimes warped sense of humour. I'll admit that I just let some parts wash over me and don't get too hung up if I don't know exactly the doctrine of a narodnik, or the calculus of a cathedral dome, as long as I can keep the general flow going.

But the sense of place, people, perspective, debate, discourse and psychology in the London wartime novel was intense. I can still visualise the browns, the darkened windows, the nighttime and the sometimes almost claustrophobic interaction of some of the characters juxtaposed with arcs from mainland Europe to England as rockets traced their course through the sky. Yet it is an age since I read the book.

When I read Vineland years later, I had a sense of 'is this the same author?' based upon the different style and genre with set in a surfy hippy America. It seemed difficult to imagine the same person creating both of these works, although the style and clever ways to detach from what is happening seem to occur in both novels.

The tangential points within both novels are in some senses very realistic in the way that people who are very comfortable with one anothers' company will digress into all kinds of conversations or dive into their own subconscious and memories.
So with some delight today I heard that Pynchon has just released a new novel. Now I heard this in a discussion where one person was saying that Pynchon was difficult to read and the other person was saying that people only buy his books for show.

But I don't care, I will be adding the new one "Against the Day" to my Christmas List, and hope that Santa is kind.

rashbreのユーザーページ - last.fm

のためのLast.fm統計ページ Last.fm： あなたの音楽のセンスを調べ尽くして、似たセンスのユーザーを見つけ、おすすめの音楽を提供する無料のサービス。
Yes, rashbre is now also available in Japanese on last.fm here

flash hug

Well the British Flash Hug on Friday at 13:14pm in Trafalgar Square was then followed by the Flash Pillow Fight in Buenos Aires. For the British one you just needed a sheet of A4 paper with 'Free Hugs' written in bold.

For the Argentinian one, you needed to bring a pillow.

appealing

Some of my posts have been rather hasty (or even missing) over the last few days because of my other writing attempts. I've been adding a counter of the wordage in my NaNoNovel alongside the posts as I make progress. I'm around half way through and the plot needs some streamlining although I don't think I will be short of ideas for the second half.

Which brings me to the apples. A great accompaniment to novel writing. Healthy, containing vitamin C, antioxidants, phenolics and a reasonable amount of fibre. So that little blob of goodness can help with all manner of healthy being from DNA damage prevention, through stress relief to cholesterol management.

And although the pips are mildly toxic, you'd have to eat a whole treeful before the cyanogenic glycosides had any discernable efferct.

But, you know what, I like the look of them on that plate, and you know something else, a few seconds after I took that picture there was one less to look at.

Yum.

fall

Strangely enough, Autumn seemed to arrive today, all in one go.

Yesterday, we still had quite a few leaves on the trees and there was a hint of sunshine.

Today, first all the leaves fell off of the trees in some heavy winds, and then it started raining like the sky was full.

My car was covered in leaves last night when I made my way home from our quiz. A little tree which was still fully leafy a few days ago was almost bare by this evening.

Thursday Thirteen (V32)

I was at a pub quiz on Thursday evening. There were about 40 of us and we had three rounds. My team were called the Vikings for reasons that would become more apparent if you knew some of the other team names. Here's some of the questions I got wrong. You may notice quite a few of them are from "The American Round"

1) How many legs does a lobster have?
2) What are the three branches of the American government?
3) Where was Picasso born?
4) How many games in an American baseball season?
5) Whats a cornish rex?
6) Whats the name of the 'B' side of Silver Machine, by Hawkwind?
7) How many countries was Britain fighting during the American War of independence?
8 ) Whats the proper name of 'The Strip" in Las Vegas?
9) Where was Barbara Bush born?
10) Whats a knob thatcher?
11) What is the average life of a red blood cell?
12) What is the name of the woman in the Greek myth who disappeared all but her voice?
13) What name for the first company to manufacture motor cars (actually I got this right, but the others were music questions)

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Tag: Thursday Thirteen, free link friday, 82ask

OTA Wordless Wednesday

dark traffic

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Tag: Wordless Wednesday

giza

No, I'm not at the Pyramids today, at least not in real life, but I'm using Cairo for a scene in my novel. Actually I'm using the desert and the city rather than the Pyramids, but I thought the pyamid and sphinx at Giza would make a fine picture for today. Its quite a long time since I was in Cairo, but the first time I was there a friend drove me over to take a look at the Pyramid in this picture. I'd expected the journey to be into the desert and needing a four wheel drive with lots of supplies of water, but we just jumped into his family saloon and drove all the way.

If you havn't visited Giza, you may think it is right in the desert, but actually its just a few hundred metres from a housing estate and a couple of large hotels. We sat in the restaurant of one of the hotels eating mezze and looking at the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx. At the time it was quite a surreal experience, as I'd only been off the plane for a few hours by the time we were standing by a Pyramid. I liked Cairo, and had a chance to explore along the Nile as well and even ordered a small silver cartouche from a jewellry trader which I was able to collect on a subsequent visit.

But now, I'd better get back to my epic plot.