tired fools

A friend tells me that he and another are to spend a weekend slaughtering a pig. Apparently this is big in spain also. First watch a video explaining how to slaughter and dismember porky, then proceed. The liver should be eaten immediately. Breakfast is pretty much sorted, bacon, sausage and, of course, black pudding.

ah, these are just great. japanese drugs adds, marvellous.

and there’s more.

via boingboing

apparently he’s dead.

Rick Wright, the keyboards player later told an interviewer: “I saw this guy sitting at the back of the studio… and I didn’t recognise him. I said, ‘Who’s that guy behind you?’ ‘That’s Syd’. And I just cracked up, I couldn’t believe it… he had shaven all his hair off… I mean, his eyebrows, everything… he was jumping up and down brushing his teeth, it was awful…

“Roger [Waters] was in tears, I think I was; we were both in tears. It was very shocking… seven years of no contact and then to walk in while we’re actually doing that particular track. I don’t know - coincidence, karma, fate, who knows? But it was very, very, very powerful.”

this peter whitehead film, of pink floyd’s first recording session, is truly wonderful.

i’ve missed the new dr who since ecclestone went, but caught the last episode of the series. the cyber-men Vs the darleks. and everything that should be.

the final scene was exceptional. the doctor appearing to rose, now cut off from him forever. she tells him she loves him, he pauses, starts to speak and they are cut off. it seemed like he had been about to say “they’ll be others” then thought better of it. but before he could make her happy, say “i love you” she was gone. next episode there’s a new nubile assistant.

i hadn’t noticed before, but flikr displays exif data now. this is the data from the camera which is encoded in the picture. like this:

Camera: Sony Ericsson D750i
Exposure: 0.003 sec (1/320)
Aperture: f/2.8
ISO Speed: 100
Exposure Bias: 0/10 EV

Orientation: Horizontal (normal)
X-Resolution: 13425152/10112359 dpi
Y-Resolution: 39300439/44936621 dpi
Software: R1AA008 prgCXC125952_EU_1_CL 4.5
Date and Time: 2006:06:24 16:17:13
YCbCr Positioning: Co-Sited
Date and Time (Original): 2006:06:24 16:17:13
Date and Time (Digitized): 2006:06:24 16:17:13
Metering Mode: Center Weighted Average
Color Space: sRGB
Digital Zoom Ratio: 100/100
Subject Distance Range: Distant
Compression: JPEG
Image Width: 1632 pixels
Image Height: 1224 pixels

flikr gives you an option of not displaying it.

a slashdot story reveals the new tech going into replacing lost limbs and the like, for US soldiers. it’s only a matter of time . . .

but did you take a good look at the picture? i’m an american soldier, my leg gets blown off. every day i look down at the stump, with its star-spangled banner. fuck.

UPDATE

A news story from the BBC on bionic limbs.

i have always had difficulty with greetings. years ago it was all pretty straightforward, a simple shake of the hand. complications in judging the firmness of grip, perhaps, but essentially one knew what to do. this has all changed.

a friend of mine once made the mistake of gripping a hand raised for a high5, to much laughter. occassionally i proffer my hand to a friend, only to be hugged. sometimes this happens in railway stations, which offends my englishness. further, there is the odd occassion when some peculiar street buffetting of knuckles is called for, or some other hand to hand gesture that i am in ignorance of.

worst of all, of course, is the kissing. should you? one or two cheeks? fuck, even on the mouth for some people. i think i’ve sufferred every faux pas possible in this tawdry continental practice.

but wait . . .perhaps it’s not so foreign after all.

In their mutual visits, as the first act of hospitality, the guest is welcomed in the embraces of their wives and daughters; among friends, they are lent and borrowed without shame; nor are the islanders offended at this strange commerce and its inevitable consequences.

Chalcondyles, on a visit to england, with the emperor of the east, around 1400ad.

Informed as we are of the customs of old England, and assured of the virtue of our mothers, we may smile at the credulity, or resent the injustice, of the great Greek, who must have confounded a modest salute with a criminal embrace.

Gibbon’s comment on this.

Erasmus has a pretty passage on the English fashion of kissing strangers on their arrival and departure, from whence, however, he draws no scandalous inferences.

and a footnote confirming that this horror is, not foreign, but native to these shores.