He sketches out a future paradise where people are paid to watch television. Sounds rather like how my utopian friends envisage Basic Income working.
April 21st;
Thursday. A bit clever-clogsy as a case, but a nice clear restatement of the evolutionary argument against realism.
April 20th;
Wednesday. Why are so many girls cutting themselves? I saw this start and can confirm some of what the slightly repetitive article says.
April 19th;
Tuesday. The ragged building across the road is finally having its rendering redone. This started about 2 weeks ago with a funny image. Scaffolding walkways project about 3 feet out from the front which is itself about 3 feet out from the building on the left. Right at that end each level has a short 6-foot-long walkway facing down the street instead of across it. There on each of seven levels one workmen stood on the first day, each directly above the other, slouching, posing, being cool in different positions. Seemingly waiting for something, they made a vertical column of construction lads. A lot like a band of skiffle musicians on a 1961 record sleeve.
Here's how mediaeval adolescents got treated.
April 18th;
Monday. A list of 100 strenuously odd books. Seems offering a bizarre plot premise can sell a project. (Title misleads slightly: it's 99 or 98 deviant novels + 1 or 2 collections of strange short stories.) A story about bees, a tale told by a drug, lift operators in a parallel universe, the usual.
April 17th;
Sunday. 6 or 7 days ago performed a chore, defrosting the fridge, perfectly timing the on/off phases. So I could on the 3rd day cleanly lever out smooth thick slabs of ice with my fingers from the froster, leaving clean cold metal behind. Not one drop of water on the kitchen floor. An academic who defends methods distinct to the humanities.
April 16th;
Saturday. What seemed like a medium-sized scandal about an unmarried member of Britain's government having an affair for several months with a prostitute takes an unexpected direction.
April 15th;
Friday. Jewish Chronicle suggests a Muslim mayor of London might be a good thing.
April 14th;
Thursday. Garrulous American modern architect & socialite Philip Johnson seems to have had a forgotten pro-Nazi period far more intense than that of the proud & private Mies. I underestimated Johnson's chameleon charm.
April 13th;
Wednesday. Depressing (and not so informative) article saying human sacrifice helped create civilisation. Talking of civilisation, Ancient Rome builds.
April 12th;
Tuesday. Weather is warm & sunny again. Harsh profile of former Guardian editor.
April 11th;
Monday. One person I know ought to read this article: how to stop hash making you paranoid.
Meanwhile, famed cannabis smuggler Howard Marks is remembered by Philosophy Magazine because he almost pursued a career in academic philosophy.
April 10th;
Sunday. Book review: state involvement in the Victorian economy.
April 9th;
Saturday. Two afternoons ago, Thursday, just before meeting Akos, an amusing sight at the H&M store while I walked through the Corvin Plaza arcade. (When I mentioned it to Akos half an hour later, he chuckled and called the security men 'amateurs', explaining that in most shops they carry a remote control for the purpose.) In the second I was walking past the H&M exit I glanced to my right into the store to see a really gorgeous blonde walking towards me out through the theft-detection gates with several bags. Just behind her a security man waved an item looking like a clipboard against the gate and the alarm signal went off. The innocent blonde saw & realised nothing of what happened behind her back. She stopped because of the alarm and the other guard came over and went through each of her bags. She didn't just look lovely, but was perfectly turned out as well. The other guard as he shyly examined all her purchases was obviously smitten by her beauty. Two minutes' delay and she was on her way. A friendly favour from one security-guard lad to another, as Akos agreed when I related the story.
Around half past eleven at night find Robin at the nearby Trafo performance space as he comes out of some more experimental music with space-time sculptress Villo and curator-gallerist diva Eszter. We have quite a long natter with the two art maidens about intoxicants and Faustian creativity.
April 8th;
Friday. Events gather momentum.
April 7th;
New Moon. Thursday. Akos moves our afternoon lesson to the sun-warmed children's playground of Grund where we feast on cold beer and hot spicy hamburger. Minutes later it goes dark and Robin & Simon turn up outside my flat in a taxi, taking me back to the building-site area behind Grund to attend an experimental-music event by a friend of his at a stylishly shabby little bar called Golya (Stork). I wax lyrical on the lost sensuality of Victorian femininity, praising several Felix Vallotton prints showing tightly-framed moments of bourgeois tenderness: such as this one and this other one, not to mention
this,
this, and this. Talking of experimental music and femininity, some songs by Canada's favourite sent-down neurology student - Grimes:
Crystal Ball;
Skin;
REALiTi;
Circumambient.
April 6th;
Wednesday. A brewery in Dundee has created two confusing new products: a marmalade-flavoured beer, plus a beer thick & sticky enough to spread on toast like marmalade. Boardgame Orsolya explains today when we meet slightly more clearly what she means about allowing the cosmic will to overrule our conscious minds.
April 5th;
Tuesday. One of our book's contributors reports on how demand for oil is now so low that lots of ocean-going tankers are parked at sea or chugging around looking & waiting for better prices before unloading their black liquid sticky stuff.
April 4th;
Monday. This hacked database of offshore accounts (the 'Panama Papers') is going to dominate headlines for a week or two, so here are several links. How Icelandic anti-bank-fraud activists engaged in bank fraud; how someone wrote it up for the Guardian; and, via Mary, how the Americans are taking this grand stash of tax naughtiness dirt. In case all that's just too depressing, here for musical relief is Funki Porcini and 'Zombie' (obviously this has to be the Crippled Dick Hot Wax selection of Jerry van Rooyen remixes - I'm sure you all knew that already), followed by Funki Porcini's Dubble'.
April 3rd;
Sunday. More work on proposal. Positively
sinister trend in US prisons.
April 2nd;
Saturday. Busy working on book proposal, either side of a brief coffee with the charming Kerrie & John. Meanwhile:
(1) Minimum wages increase unemployment;
(2) Smoke too much cannabis and be increasingly unemployed;
(3) Criticise EU institutions and lose your employment rights (Especially if your book accurately predicts how the euro will fail). Surely not!
April 1st;
Friday. Authoritarian former Home Secretary Charles Clarke might get his wish at last: no phone-buying without ID. April Fools R Us.
Mark Griffith, site administrator /
markgriffith at yahoo.com
