(no subject)

[zotz]

It annoys me how much publicity that the DC sniper's getting. Ten people have been shot, and eight killed, and it's front-page news. Where were the front-page articles when 500 people a year were getting murdered in DC? Pretty thin on the ground. But no, it's in the suburbs now and the victims are mainly white and middle-class, so the happy smiling British media deem it newsworthy.

I have friends who live in the suburbs around DC, so I'm not entirely unconcerned about the situation, but it would be nice if news coverage were a bit more consistent.

Also, Jerry Falwell has apologised. So that's alright then.

What else gives? I went to B-Movie in Lodnod on Friday with my erstwhile flatmate Tom. I asked him a very important question, and the answer was :

It was

Jake

the orange Tweenie!



Oooer missus. Bit of that genderbending going on, methinks.

Yesterday I went in search of people to fix the Rollei, and as predicted nobody'll touch the thing. Happily a couple of friends suggested people who may be prepared to have aquick look and see whether anything inside looks actually broken. If so, apparently Rollei in London are the only people who'll be able to get spares.

Last night I went to Tim's party, at which I was a drunken embarrassment, which I enjoyed greatly.

Quotation of the day's from
www.phys.washington.edu/~cobden/P224/ stuff/leidenfrost_essay.pdf
My failure may have been due to a lack of film boiling
on the feet, but I had also neglected an additional safety
factor. On the other days I had taken the precaution of
clutching an early edition of Fundamentals of Physics
to my chest during the walks so as to bolster my belief in physics.
Alas, I forgot the book on the day when I was so badly
burned.

I have long argued that degree-granting programs
should employ ``fire-walking'' as a last exam. The chair-
person of the program should wait on the far side of a bed
of red-hot coals while a degree candidate is forced to walk
over the coals. If the candidate's belief in physics is strong
enough that the feet are left undamaged, the chairperson
hands the candidate a graduation certificate. The test would
be more revealing than traditional final exams.

Still on the Bunnymen. Isn't Bomber's Bay fantastic?

Comments

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Mmm, Rollei. They make very cute tiny cameras-- my uncle brought one back for my father when he (the uncle) was stationed in, um, the sea near Viet Nam in the sixties. Debriefing fighter pilots returning from dropping very hot things on villages. He doesn't talk about it, at all. (Aside from not being able to, as I'm sure it's all still classified, but you get _nothing_. He's a very nice and sweet guy, too, and has always been one of my favorite uncles. I didn't know this until fairly recently.) Anyway... Said Rollei worked very well, with minimal maintenance required, for something like 30 or 35 years. My father only recently retired it. It needed to have a few screws replaced at one point-- things being loose inside is, in fact, a fairly common ailment.

My fondness for teensy little cameras is the reason I picked that particular digital camera, too-- big cameras seem all wrong to me, after 20 years of my father carrying this little tiny thing around with him on all our vacations and hikes and things.

Your friend appears to have very attractive hands. 8)

[zotz]

Said Rollei worked very well, with minimal maintenance required, for something like 30 or 35 years

Mine went out of production in 1980, and as far as I know it's needed no new parts. It's been stripped to free jams a couple of times, and the battery is out of production (illegal in the US - it was a mercury cell) so I've got a weird adaptor, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's got another ten or fifteen years in it.

Your friend appears to have very attractive hands.

I've not actually met her. Tom seems to still be in touch with her, though. She's apparently working on another costumed children's TV show, with a lot of people who were headhunted from the Tweenies.

[ex-wendles389.livejournal.com]

I expect you're slightly relieved it didn't turn out to be one of the dogs then :)

[zotz]

Disappointed, actually.