Quiet Days

Although dry it feels so dull and miserable outside. Just hope it will be sunnier. Not planning to go anywhere today but tomorrow i have a couple of visits in Deal. A coffee shop visit in a Hospital as well, and maybe a cinema visit as well. Hence this being a quiet day. Plus a day of reading.

Book 59 - Bret Easton Ellis "American Psycho"

Bret Easton Ellis "American Psycho" (Picador)






Patrick Bateman is a Wall Street yuppie in the late 1980s. He is also a brutal serial killer. There are several recurring themes here (and when I say recurring, I mean it is mentioned at least thirty times): returning video tapes, the Patty Winters Show, deciding where to have dinner, cocaine, all yuppie men are interchangeable and everyone is constantly mistaken for everybody else, women are clueless and needy, tanning, going to the gym, alcohol, decaffeinated espresso (I know - what?), excessive luxury, and brand names, brand names, brand names. And so it goes on ad nauseum.

I cannot stress that last one enough: Bateman describes every single person's outfit by brand name and sometimes even the department store where it was purchased. There are scenes of extremely graphic sex, usually followed by scenes of extremely graphic violence. It all become too tedious and nauseating. Now, there are some amusing bits. I kind of liked the overly dramatic business card comparison. The random chapters of musical critique (Whitney Houston, Huey Lewis & the News, and Genesis) were interesting but I haven't a clue why they were included.

My main issue with this book is that absolutely nothing happens. Seriously: the same thing happens chapter after chapter after chapter and there is no progression of plot, no change in any of the characters. In fact, i gave up reading it half way through. I think he is one sick pathetic puppy. Avoid.

Photos From Yesterday

Just a few pics i took on Sunday.

( Pics here )

Poem of The Week

I thought this poem might be appropriate for some reason



Invictus - Poem by William Ernest Henley



Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

More People Watching

More pics from my people watching studies. I am basing this on a subject that the social psychologist Aleks Krotoski mentioned in The Digital Human - "Rear Window" (BBC Radio 4).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05sstc6

Aleks Krotoski explores the basic human impulse of people watching. We are aware how we perform when we know we are being looked at online but hear little about those watching.

( Pics here )

Dark

As we are now into October here is an episode of The Digital Human - Dark

"We might want to drown it out in light, but, as Aleks Krotoski discovers, darkness can be good for us. Electric light tampers with our circadian rhythms. Now we can light up any part of the day, our body isn't shutting off to sleep as easily as it once did. Aleks discovers the way that technology is starting to recognise this on both a personal level and a societal level."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03g94qw#play

Bagged Plastic

If the government thinks that the 5p plastic bag levy introduced to England today is the end of the plastic waste environmental problem, then at only 2 % of all plastic that is dumped , there is a long way to go, as much as what we buy from supermarkets or via the internet is awash with different plastics right down to those horrible pellets that make up some packaging.

Time to get out the bags for life , cloth bound or hessian bags that we seem to collect and sometimes forget to use.

Scrying For More Charmed

Been watching more episodes of Charmed, both via the two DVD sets i have of Season 1 and 2 , and the episodes shown daily via E4 channel, which is currently season 4. I have tried scrying for more cheap box sets of the following seasons (that is 3 to 8) but as yet no luck. Perhaps in Deal tomorrow.