That was the season that was

So, Merry Christmas. The Premiership is gone with the loss to MU, the League cup with the loss to Chelsea. And now we have Inter, run away leaders of the Italian League. So, that's the season gone right there.


So, here's to 2008/9

Happy new year.

Hey, I missed November

Listening to Central Reservation, Beth Orton.

I appear to have missed out November. First time. Says something about my month. And now 2 in a day.

Click on the Link - I find it rather romantic.

Outside it's Blade Runner

For what seems no good reason I find myself in Kuala Lumpur. It is night and raining. And indeed, it appears to be Blade Runner. Ok, there are no flyers and I have not actually seen Deckard hunting replicants, but apart from that this is it exactly. Constant warm rain, glowing neon, a sky the colour of tv tuned to a dead channel, mixed English and Asian languages, every nationality under the sun. Or rather the rain.

The future is now - just not evenly distributed.

The fusion of William Gibson and Blade Runner reminds me that WG had to leave the cinema when watching the film because he was seeing the Neuromancer in his head on the screen. And somehow they merge in the real world.

Rust never sleeps

But insurance claims do seem to. We are nearing the anniversary of when a well known supermarket (begins with T, ends with Esco) dropped off the weekly shop and drove off with a cheery wave, taking out the side of the purple people carrier on the way. The first I knew about this was when a passing motorist rang the doorbell and asked "is that your PPC that Tesco have just hit?" Unluckily for me I did not take her details. Luckily for me another guy stopped and gave me his, and offered to be a witness.

Insurance paid up apart from my excess, and promised to repay that when they got the money back. We are now getting ready to go to court. Court! What a ridiculous thing. The delivery guy says there was no accident, and so both sides are merrily running up legal bills and threatening to waste court time.

Well I was always interested in legal proceedings. Looks like I will get to see them up close.

Gagarin

Yuri Gagarin appears to be in fact film critic Mark Kermode.


Whilst this would explain why Mark's hairstyle is more appropriate to the 50's, it does beg the question of why he has not aged. Obviously, he is some kind of Soviet super soldier, a la Steve Rodgers, better known as Captain America. Well, known to some anyhow. And thus the hidden conspiricies in the world are laid bare.





Don't rush to thank me.

I remember the future

Today is the 50th Anniversary of Sputnik 1. And the breadcrumbs have never known a man on the moon. I imagined a different future.

There were only just over 50 years from the Wright Brothers to space, and only 12 from the first satellite to man walking on the moon. There has been little progress since. The X-prize may have stimulated interest in private enterprise launching space flights, but in reality these are sub-orbital hops. Not the real thing. I suspect, but hope I am wrong, that interest will die quickly when the routine flights start.

It is a long way to the moon. We don't think about it. Colleagues asked me to help them with a plan to "walk to the moon" to improve fitness. It is difficult to explain that all the interesting stuff happens in the first 10 miles, and then there is more or less nothing to report for a quarter of a million (we can ignore a few Lagrange points). We live in the layer of paint and varnish on a globe. The highest mountain is only 8 miles high, on a planet that is near enough 4 000 miles in diameter. A mere bobble. Space starts in earnest after 100miles. Still insignificant really.

Space is hard. But when I was growing up I thought we would be doing better than this. Here's to Laika, and Gagarin, and Ed White, and Neil Armstrong. And the first man on Mars. I wonder if he is even born yet.

Bat cheez burger

Thank mightgodking, not me.

Is that assigning credit, or blame?

TV now broken. Of course it is. It is 14 months old, and therefore 2 months out of warranty. That is actually quite reasonable. I mean who expects an £800 tv to last?

It then took me until 9pm to make the digibox work with the spare tv. Of course if I had RTFM it might not have taken that long. All I had to do was press reset, hold down the pause and stop buttons, then press FF until I selected SD not HDrni. Obvious really. Can you read the sarcasm?

The best bit is that seeing the 17" replacing the 37", Kid A asked "did you shrink the tv?" Almost made the whole thing worthwhile.

win some lose some

So, the roof leaks and damages the house. Both will cost £800 to fix. The insurance will pay one, but not the other. Not much choice is there?

TV

Mrs Breadcrumb has been away from home earning a crust. What splendid timing, since it co-incides with the Mighty Reds crushing Reading in the League Cup, and a number of excellent documentaries.

Torres is really looking the part. There was a coolness in his hattrick against Reading that just made you feel he could not miss. He is a class apart, and I can feel a Reds hero in development. Nothing against Crouch or Kuyt, but not since Owen have we had striker you feel is going to score. And terrorises defenders.

On tv as well as a Factory documentary (the history of Factory is the nearest thing I would have to a Mastermind subject) there have been some interesting comics documentaries. In search of Steve Ditko was not really illuminating (mainly because he refuses to talk), and Comics Brittania though interesting wasn't that exciting. In search of Mobius was great though. For the first time I could really see the Moebius contribution to Alien. The art is still so fantastic, though it appears that Giraud himself is less fabulous. He himself says that everything is second to his art. Lots of people applauded his genius - none called themselves his friend.

Winter Blues

I am sure that the reason I am so down is because of the change of the seasons, and not because we have run out of money (again), there is a hole in the roof, and I have no work coming in. That would be just crazy talk.

And of course I am fat, which doesn't help. Though apparently I lost 2 kg over the week, I gained 6 kg over the summer. This should help protect me through the winter when the heating is cut off and rain pours in through the roof. So, a bright side, eh?

Bill Bailey Kraftwerk spoof Das Hokey Cokey

You can't argue, can you?

Things fall apart

One of those days. Lost my laptop power cable. Remote for the car doesn't work. They days when everything electric is cursed.
Of course this is all really just because I have just found out that I have put on 5 kg during the summer. Suddenly the folds of fat feel obvious around my midrift. So, for 30 seconds or so I am dedicated to fighting the flab and cutting down on the chocolate, and stepping up the exercise.

But no doubt only for 30 seconds.

I think I would be happy to replace an addition to exercise for several of my other additions.

A cunning plan

Apparently it is a year since Steve Irwin was offed by a "stingray". Now Steve Fossett is "missing" in the Nevada desert? Coincidence? I think not. Obviously there is a serial killer on the loose intent on murdering adventurers called Steve. Now if only we could work out why this particular day is so important.

Celebrity Politics

Last night we voted for a pop star (well, technically a drummer) to be put forward as a candidate to be our local MP. Not sure what this actually says about the democratic process. But at least I am participating. 28 candidates, and 5 or 6 have gone through to the next phase. The rules say that we have to have one women and one BME candidate out of our 3 nominations - in practice the two best candidates (for entirely different reasons) were both white males who don't live in the area. Isn't democracy funny? Meanwhile our previous MP who lost his seat when I moved here, is about to stand as a candidate in my home constituency. Small world. Good news was there were was a reasonable number of people attending the selection meeting - about the same as the number of candidates. In such a way do we contribute to the global democracy - from village halls to number 10. It is a vanishingly small number of people who bestirr themselves to get involved. Imperfect though it is, if you don't get involved you really don't have much say.

Silly Season

A bit of warmth, but an autumn wind in the air. It is still the silly season for news though. Last night's 10 o'clock news had a feature on how there is still peace in Northern Ireland. Good news, but a bit of a sign that not a lot else is happening.

The Mighty Reds, having disposed of Toulouse in old Big Ears, have got Porto, Marseille and Beskitas. Could have been worse. But realistically you would expect the top seeds to get through. Given that that is the 4 English clubs, the 2 Milans and Real and Barca, I can see how UEFA are beginning to think the system needs a shake up.

Jim Shooter going back to LoSH? That would be news (for about a thousand of us worldwide).

Version

Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before. Can't get it out of my head. Like the Go! Team I am thinking of it as a form of brain cancer, when it is just a very sucessful meme.
Back to work, and soon the breadcrumbs will be back at school. Time for the Boo Radleys - "summers gone..."

The boy who cried at Happy Birthday

A refugee from About a boy was at the Breadcrumb's birthday party. He had a handmade jumper, hand made cards and present, and cried at loud noises. He was a vegetarian. Poor lamb - a world of pain awaits. The world of children, who are cruel and relentless.

Other than that a success. Though the divisions between the kids from the schemes and the kids from the middle classes grow bigger by the day. As do the number of single parents. We fit in and don't fit in with all of them.

Breadcrumb Day

Do you mean you don't celebrate Breadcrumb Day?

One more year and they can say "now we are 6".

You are old father time

The breadcrumbs reach 5 tomorrow, but we are holding back celebrations till Thursday. Luckily they are still too young to realise that they are being conned.

As was referee Rob Stiles on Sunday when he gave Chelsea a penalty at Anfield for Malouda throwing himself at Steve Finnan. At least he has apologised, but a probable win has been turned into a disappointing draw.

I was not there because I was learning valuable life lessons at Centre Parcs. The first of these is that the breadcrumbs are heavy, and the second is that I am not a golfer. My first ever driving practice left the shed peppered with dents, and the driving range miraculously untroubled by golf balls. It was a laugh though. And now I ache, ache, ache. All over.

Slow learner/Partition

Having discovered Portishead about a decade later, I would now like to go even further back and finally declare Loveless by My Bloody Valentine one of the great albums of all time. I've always loved Soon, but I think that I was resentful of them damaging my hearing on the Rollercoaster tour (Mary chain, MBV, Dinosaur Jnr and Blur. Yes, that Blur). 1 minute of pure noise is a cleanser for the palatte. 10 minutes is industrial noise damage. Anyway, thanks to the randomness of I-tunes I have been getting odd blasts of MBV which then carve permanent tracks into my brain. Listening to the whole thing at fuck off stupid noise it just works. Next I will be declaring my love for Wire, and going back to 1977 to start all over. (Can you spot the link pop pickers?

Changing tracks disconcertingly, watched a programme on the Partition of India. God, what a sad affair. The saddest thing was watching an old Sikh talking about his father and uncle beheading all the women in the family because of the risk of them being captured and raped by Muslims. How unspeakable. And apparently carried out in silence, with the women co-operating. The Father started with his own daughter. Makes you wonder about the human race. The one bright bit was a Hindi refugee from Lahore, who rather than blaming the Muslims, blamed Hindus for mistreating them in the first place leading to them wanting their own country. But Pakistan was forged in blood, and not got much happier since. Religion is a blight on the face of the planet. Human beings just can't get the "love one another" bit, and use it as an excuse for killing. And killing in revenge. And then killing because they killed us.

Thank God I am an atheist.