brother can you spare 7 trillion dimes?

To blog this I'm dragging myself away from the radio/TV/newspaper coverage of the U.S. slow-motion train wreck. If you were a writer you could try and turn it into a 21st century Shakespearian tragedy, but how could any fiction match the real-life scenes in NY and Washington?

I watched the whole first debate, both as politics and as oedipal drama. I still lean towards the younger man, but whoever wins will bring a merciful infusion of brain cells to the top job. Of course the new guy will still feel compelled to pardon the bastards who have been pulling the moronic strings. I'm not feeling reckless enough to mention any names.

Next, there's Palin up against Biden. I wouldn't want to be in his position. He has his hands tied. If he attacks any of her weak points, it'll just make voters feel sorry for her. We can only hope she sabotages herself with one blunders and gaffes.

never take sweeties from a stranger

REMEMBER WHEN YOUR MOTHER TOLD YOU NEVER TO
TAKE SWEETIES FROM STRANGE MEN?

THIS IS THE ONE SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT.

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holiday snaps

I was sent a load of holiday snaps by JQM, taken in France last month. My favourite one is this shot of a female stag party, or whatever you call it when the almost-bride and her mates run around plastered.






I like to think the blow-up guy could be me. It's a long time since I had someone else's hands down my trousers.

luddism in the face of cultural imperialism

Still too busy to blog, mainly because I've now trashed the disk on a second computer, and I'm spending whole days fixing (i.e. further breaking) PCs. This is not how I want to be spending my life, what's left of it. Fortunately the bliss pills keep the rage down to manageable levels. Occasionally I fantasise about binning everything and going back to writing letters and reading the paper.

I don't know about the news in your country, but nothing ever happens here, so for a long time the media have been awash with US concerns. The only break in about two years of election build-up has been serial hurricanes. There's another 4 months of electioneering, and then it will all be over for a couple of years until the next campaign.

Have to go now and walk the dog, so I can be back in time for the live breakfast broadcast of Murray v Federer in the US Open. Thank goodness for American telecasting.

barely blogging

It's been hard to blog recently. Many reasons:

The old dear has been a bit unwell, and when I phone her she's either crawling on the floor searching for various pills she's dropped, or sometimes I catch her mid-vomit. She was throwing up for 4 days, and the family were getting quite distressed. Then yesterday she seemed brighter, and I asked if she had managed to keep any food down yet. "Oh yes, I had bacon and chips last night."

I called her doctor in the middle of the night our time. Me: "she must be quite a challenging patient." The doc: "no comment."

The computer has finally died. I killed it myself so I can't complain.

Everything hurts at the moment - the back, the split thumb skin, the gall bladder, the big toe, and that's only the things I can mention in a family blog.

I'm having to work most days of the week, while still being paid for only 2 days. This is the reverse of what it used to be, so I suppose everything's balancing up. And the material has been horrible java. I quote from the lecture notes I have been given to use:

• System.in is an object of type IputStreamer.
  
  
• An IputStreamer is not a Reader.
  
  
• So we cannot create a BufferReader from System.in.
  
  
• An IputStreamReader is a Reader.
  
  
• And we can create an IputStreamReader from an IputStream.

Jeez! If I go glassy-eyed looking at this stuff, what hope is there for the stoodents I teach?

PS - I have deliberately garbled some of the java above. Wouldn't do to have the stoodents searching the web for help, only for Google to lead them here. No help at all.