Pig Sty Avenue

It's classical, man, the way this certain line just hits you.  One may be due to bore it out of one, soon, or something.

It's a measure of how things are that I didn't hear this news on Radio 5  just now and say, "Oh, fucking hell!" but instead thought, "Hmm, juicy."

I really am trying not to swear, but, fucking hell!

He gets the top-o-the-page at the Grauniad's Chalkboard for the weekend .  Fucking hell.

Ooyah .

...but fucking hell .

Who cuts your hair, anyway?  Classic.

I had a mad idea about making wine from wormwood, and distilling it.  But a wee bit of googling revealed that absinthe is actually made by mascerating the wormwood and other herbs in alcohol, and the distilling it again, and then mascerating more herbs.  (Never mind absinthe, and miss out the distillation bit, just making tinctures from cheap vodka and any number and combination of herbs sounds like a lot of fun).   A wikipedia article seems to suggest that the thujon  levels of James-Joyce-in-Paris era absinthe were not necessarily that high.   (I remember reading somewhere a theory that Joyce got some of his inspiration for Finnegans Wake through absinthe enhanced dream recall).  This study   (the abstract anyway, I'd like to see the whole study and see what the "other mood state dimensions examined "are;  I do miss my Athens account this weather), shows an effect on attention.  I once smoked sage, which also contains thujon, with...

Here.  

Nice.

Here's a pic to put the fear of God into you, of a Sunday.  I'm still on for the notes to Canto 1, by the way, with little time to read as I think about catching up on household chores neglected during a summer away.

The brilliance of The Smiths, of course, was not in Morrisey's singing or his lyrics, (they were always meant ironically... weren't they?) but in the relationship between the singing and the music, and especially Johnny Marr's genius guitar work.  Which is another way of saying that, whilst I was once a fan of The Smiths, went to see them on the Meat Is Murder tour, (at Newcastle), and still occasionally listen to Hatful of Hollows, I've never had much time for Morrisey. So to answer the question above, no he's not a pop genius, (he's done nothing of note since The Smiths split up), he is a twat, obviously, and he's also a racist twat .  It won't do to make comments about the gates of England being flooded and then say, oh, I abhor racism.  And now he makes a blanket labelling of the whole Chinese race as a "subspecies", (one presumes pejorative intent in use of the prefix), because of Chinese culture's attitude to animals. I could say ...

To check out later .

I'm still a very long way from being able instantly to know what note is represented on the treble clef, and I'm even further away from doing so on the bass.  And I really struggle with 8th notes, still, (never mind those pesky 'teenths).   And my left hand is naturally less able than the right.  So I can try to get three learning outcomes from the left hand part of Ave Maria.  I'm blogging it here so I can have it on the screen and work from the Live! software, which is much easier on the ear than PSP.

At the end of a summer spent working with Italians, I've decided to re-read La Commedia .  I read the Dorothy L Sayers translation when I was a teenager, and loved it, (though I gave up very early in  Paradise).  Probably, I'll get a lot more out of in now than I did then. This time I'm going with the Hollander , which is starting with promise: I read the Introduction last night, which managed to deal with complicated ideas regarding allegory and hold my attention, and I read the 1st Canto this morning, and it works as poetry. The Princeton Dante Project is a useful resource.  And I especially like the Italian audio , so that I can hear it as well as read it in the original.