jeudi 7 août 2003

No sympathy from me! The dragon-in-waiting this afternoon wore the shortest miniskirt I've seen this year, displaying tanned and remarkable legs. Tony wished to know more, equally remarkable in a man as old as him, but perhaps he practices his faith each Sunday with zeal enough to make up for the rest of the week. The answer was "yes", plus the note that she quite evidently never had the Angelina problem I mentioned yesterday. She chatted me up a little in English. All this was diverting and due reward for the stupidity of offering my place in the queue to a woman who then made use of it for a full 27 minutes. Won't do that again. But she has yet to become a proper dragon. The one she will fully replace when the latter shortly retires never disappears to make a "nice cup of tea", letting the doctor answer his own telephone. She glares through old horn-rimmed spectacles and fiercely defends all three practitioners in the cabinet and their sacred Book of Rendez-vous from any pretenders to their Precious Time. Like all dragons, she has a chink, which I have found. But this must remain a secret -- for now -- between me and bloghero Yang and his partners. Her successor, in the meantime, must learn to wear armour, even on days when she is inclined to wear almost nothing. "Worse yet, meteorologist Jerome Lecou of France's national weather service Meteo France said the cooling effect of nighttime was being progressively reduced so that each day risked being hotter than the previous one," they warn from 'the factory'. Will duty call me tomorrow to check on the young dragon's lack of progress? There is no reason the armour has to be visible... The Norwegian male bus driver who is wearing a skirt, contravening no regulations at all and declaring himself far more comfortable, is the item from AFP I can't find, though it was on the "wires" yesterday. Maybe somebody who should know better "buried" that bit in the story. If so, they shouldn't have let it through like that. Frankly! zzz "You haven't cheered me up at all," the wildcat said at the end of a conversation last night. "I shall call you back tomorrow for a pat on the head." "You can have the pat now, along with a big kiss," I informed her. "That's not what I wanted to hear." There's ingratitude for you. True, I was perfectly beastly to her, told her several things in regrettable taste and teased her relentlessly when she had done nothing to deserve it. But I failed to see that as sufficient cause to behave otherwise. So now I stand accused of recovering some warped sense of humour at the very moment she has mislaid hers. Women! In the winning way we men have, I promised her a flower and she pretended, in the way they do, that this would make her feel better. The oleander, held to represent grace and beauty, survives even the Texas August heat with fortitude, say the gardeners at the place I found this one, a Mr Bruce Miller's Nursery, which also offers a recipe for each month. Given that the two seasons there are generally said to be hot and hotter, almost every one of these well-seasoned dishes looks quite right for now. Not the peanut brittle. So be hardy, ma belle, and remember those boarding-school weekends. The supermarket lettuce may be off, but you're not in Guantanamo Bay. And wash your claws! The oleander is poisonous. zzz Everybody has their off days. Even Brian Hughes. I had high expectations of 'Rant of the Week', but the feller just doesn't seem up to it today. Even insults us! And should that link take you to yesterday's page, as it currently does me, then it's all his fault too. Silly sod. 10:23:13 PM  link   your views? [] Laxer licencing laws A minor drawback of the newish trackback (good description) feature is, I noticed last night, the way I track back myself should I refer to a previous entry. I'll try to work out how to prevent this annoyance, but have never tried to penetrate the code of a "macro" before. That explanation of the feature, saving me sweat in the sun, comes from 'Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Pages,' where I've loitered not only to learn more about the religion but to enjoy such offerings as "full-veil rock 'n' roll". zzz There are a mere six blogs gathered on those pages, along with a Creative Commons licence. During the night, I spent a couple of hours hopelessly waiting for the oven to cool down and browsing the license pages (to give them that S for once) in more depth. The aim, in short, is to provide a structure for people either to put their creative work into the public domain or to keep copyright on it but licencing the use of it, on terms you can specify yourself with the help of a series of proposals. The ... er... Commoners have designed their models for work such as music, photography, literature, websites and academic offerings (but not software), explaining that they wish to put more "raw source material" online and provide easier and cheaper access to it. The initiative was launched in 2001 with assistance from the Center for the Public Domain and a few well-known names (check it out). It has since been extended beyond the United States to Brazil, Finland and Japan, as part of an international project "dedicated to the drafting and eventual adoption of country-specific licenses". Almost needless to say, the CC people are looking for expert volunteer help in producing drafts. In the States, they point out in a page (with links) about the legal background, creative works have been automatically copyrighted under changes effected since 1976, but they "believe that many people would not choose this 'copyright by default' if they had an easy mechanism for turning their work over to the public or exercising some but not all of their legal rights." This approach appeals to the anarchist in me, in a proper sense of that much-abused term, nourished by people like Ursula K. in the 'The Dispossessed' (Amazon UK; no digression here into a book I re-read at least once a decade). I lack the expertise (even if I didn't, I no longer volunteer for something I wouldn't have the time to follow through), but I can surely write about it. zzz At an hour when I would normally be asleep, I modified my own CC licence, which should be clear enough from the few words at the bottom of each page. I was also overheated enough to decide that in approaching six months now, I've buried a gem or two in all the drivel. So this site became an active member of Common Content after I'd had a fresh look at the application of CC principles in the wide range of work and play gathered there. The list has been growing, bit by bit, for nearly two months. 7:40:03 PM  link   your views? [] Getting shot of ghetto thinking The Mac Diva did it again; he's been taking a look at the torturer Taylor's reluctance to quit (Mac-a-ro-nies). I hope that a bunch of us, though not on the continent but usually luckier with the speed of our netlinks, may help gradually bring Africa deeper into a blogosphere currently mainly the realm of people with our privileges. What drew me back to his 'blog (the Liberia piece is second on that archived page), however, was a good sci-fi 'Mixed Grill' (Blogcritics), where escritora looks in particular at Greg Bear. I'm passing on this enthusiasm because Bear's not on my own review radar yet, but has been heaped with praise by Jean-Claude in more than one chat at the "canteen". Mac Diva surprised me nevertheless. "People," he began, "are often surprised that I read some so-called genre fiction because they have me pegged as an 'intellectual.' Actually, I don't perceive a conflict. The best of the genre fiction I read, usually science fiction or, if you prefer, speculative fiction, has the same merits as the literary fiction I read and write." A very likeable French woman who runs the "kid's" books section at Brentano's, which is among the best of the Paris bilingual bookshops, has added Marianne to her little band of budding reviewers. This was excellent news for the lass, but one reason the woman chose her was because of her tastes and the idea that she could help pull sci-fi and fantasy out of the second-class literary ghetto to which some of the finest writing remains confined in France. That such idiotic labelling persists -- "often" -- the other side of the Atlantic was news to me. A propos (of nothing), J.-C., I've got your e-mail on open source software, for which many thanks. The reason I've said nothing about some fascinating links here yet is that you sent me so many of them! Still exploring. 1:48:09 PM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.