Wednesday, November 26, 2003

Here's an anecdote - a couple of days ago, I was at work (in the library, behind an Information desk).

I was approached by a little old lady clutching a piece of paper in her hand.

She told me she wanted 'a couple of things taken off [her] husband's death warrant'......

hmmmm....

Turns out she was after a bit of photocopying, of her husband's death certificate.....

Sunday, November 23, 2003

Great scary video find of the week has got to be 'Dreamcatcher', based on a Stephen King novel.

The good guys are four friends with psychic abilities, and the retarded kid they once saved from a beating. The bad guys are an insane military man (Morgan Freeman), and some really yucky parasitic alien worms that embarrass their human hosts by making them fart uncontrollably and odorously..... before exiting via their respective anuses.......

Gripping stuff (you'll grip your chair and clench your bum), way better than yer average horror flick.

Friday, November 21, 2003

Isn't it frustrating to get an excercise-induced injury evey time you've just paid big bucks to join the gym?

At least its given me the day off work to surf the Net I suppose.

If you're at all interested in history of science, especially during the period when it was okay to be a scientist, philosopher and poet/artist at the same time, you might want to look at this Romantic Natural History site. There are mentions of notables such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Erasmus Darwin, and illustrated with lots of reproductions of 'artists impressions'.

Thursday, November 20, 2003

I know that Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the tv series) is over, kaput, done with....
but I'm still a fan because:

1. one of the heroes is a librarian
2. it has great female characters (all of them, even the role of Dawn)
3. it manages to (just barely) reconcile science with superstition
4. the plots are never boring

Here is a cool site which has no doubt been around since the series started, called Slayage.tvwhich is full of interesting discourse on the plots, characters etc.

I found it in the book 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy' (ed James B South).

This book turned me on to philosophy as a subject and I've since started reading 'Philosophy for Dummies' (by someone completely different and it has no relation to any tv series as far as I know'

Sunday, November 16, 2003

I have a homepage which has pictures of some of my paintings. Its been a while since I last updated it, and it might be even longer now that I've discovered the world of blog. Have a peek.
Hi! First blog from a blog-virgin....
Its late-ish Sunday evening and I've been subjected to yet another play of that terribly uninteresting move, 'X-Men 2'. My other half just loves it. I reckon it could be a guy thing, that he can know its rubbish and want to watch it anyway. I knew the Star Wars prequel was gonna be crap, and so did he - but he made me go see it with him anyway...
What was the last good film I saw? That one about the Inuits set aroun 100 AD, 'Atanarjuit' ('scuse the bad spelling) - magic and shamanism, murder and mayhem, love and jealousy. Cool.