[Updated the next day to avoid a new piece tediously treading old ground.]
The entry title's a slight variation on my parting line to some mates in the office, since of them I requested merely an occasional visit.
Unreliable with vows of silence on life's oddities, if never commitments to friends, I'll brag that when an independent financial advisor perused a dossier full of words, numbers, colourful camemberts and tables, she said it was the most well-prepared case to be put to a bank -- when it has your neck in a noose and an eager hand on the lever -- anybody had shown her in a long career.
It took me hours to compile the damned sit-rep and long-term solution request plan yesterday, and I disappointed Sam by skipping lunch at the Canteen, but suspect even a recently mentioned ex-wimmel would be impressed.
[Update of Tuesday afternoon.] It worked. The latest episode began with a trip to the post office to sign for a registered letter to be taken in my stride over a strong coffee before moving in to wage "wow, quite a battle!" -- yes, Nadia, it was but thanks for some hot tips. Now it's over, I'll just say one learns to thrown punches every bit as hard as you get once a bank thinks it's just told you, three days after the measure was enacted, you'll never use a cheque book again in the next five years and your Visa card is for the trash bin.
In brief, the bank's servant responsible for my accounts took none too kindly to my iron insistence that his director take part in our friendly chit-chat, then to see his chair literally pulled from under him for the use of the boss while he stood in the corner.
All the vilainous measures I've logged in the past week are lifted as of today, the content of even this morning's letter rendered null and void, and I guess the BNP would consider I'm "on parole", though its staff weren't quite as blunt as me. That's fine, just as long as the bank acknowledges that henceforth, the person who decides how my long-term cashflow concerns are dealt with is me, not some salesperson out for his or her cut.
I return to these dull matters to say both this log and the Lotus Project will go on unhindered and I wouldn't be telling you so were it not for wise advice from several readers of both, one online, the other still largely under wraps, and also people who share my appreciation of the 'Voices of Women' to such an extent they've become much more than one of the things I write about here, to be pursued.
That really good coffee I needed was served in a corner café for whose owner the very mention of jazz in France, or anywhere else, is to unleash an almost irresistible tide of the latest tidings, names of hot clubs, great guys and delectable dames. On trying to cork the flow with a "More next time maybe? See, I've got this r.v. at the bank," the response regarding such institutions, where harmony is scarcely the rule, is virtually unprintable even on a log where pretty much anything goes apart from libel...
Since they're an abiding interest, a scheme actively to promote up and coming musicians in need of a boost in their own "war" -- against diehard barons of an obsolescent music industry obsolescence -- is no longer just an old, occasionally updated, file full of notes, noises and netlinks on "Nick's Mac" (whose real name is grey wolf).
"Wimmel," if not thrown at you before, was Tony's invention for "woman in my life", so does that give us "mimmel" too?
With surprise, I briefly saw another wimmel at the Factory today, a rare and still heartstab occurrence though I gave up my gift for reinventing her months ago. It's painful when women remain so fair once a guy's packed this in. I dared not engage her in a quick chat since (a) she looked preoccupied and (b) those eyes of hers, I'd better not go on...
Even if dropping in to the place when on vacation to check over a financial file was little fun, it was a good if odd feeling to get a glimpse of her, agreeable to be wished luck for the bid permanently to resolve a dilemma which left me with precisely eight euros and 75 cents left in pocket if I didn't, and nice to get more helpful hints.
Meanwhile Martin, who was "on Africa", unwittingly gave me an idea how to get useful words like "wimmel" or Ellie's magnificent "ungodily" into circulation more quickly than any currency is likely to come flying my way for a while.
"I don't read your blog," he reminded me -- who can blame him? -- but I wonder what my favourite online reference site could do with wimmels. Martin does get a regular dose of 'Arts and Letters Daily', he said, killing two birds with one stone. Now I remember what I've intended to add to a part of the blogroll for weeks and AL Daily came up when I turned to the Wikipedia to give him a quick fix on Morocco's king.
"It seemed preposterous that an encyclopedia could be written and edited by just anyone," AL Daily comments. "Maybe that’s what Wikipedia really is..."
Quite. So I rejoice they put it on today's front page and plugged into 'The Book Stops Here' (Wired 13.03), an article adding to some I've written titbits about to show how the free -- in all senses -- encyclopaedia gets put together when "anyone can edit" the Wikipedia.
In Wired, Daniel H. Pink describes this initiative as a "self-organizing, self-repairing, hyperaddictive library of the future", which sums it up nicely, if it's non-fiction you need.
Since it's a form of the "quiet revolution" in action, Pink tickled me with the disclosure that the place has a "god-king", one Jimmy Wales. There's a name to ring bells for anybody who ever sought out "artwork" either for a weblog or other wicked reasons, pictures of a kind to please ... not everybody. Wales was CEO of Bomis when its company's 'Babe Report' (you've been alerted) was a prime draw. That was before pictures of girls as unburdened by garments as possible ceased to be a sporadic feature of this place and I was interested in adolescent provocation -- especially of search engines -- than evoking the 'Voices of Women' instead.
Like me, though you may dub me a moron for retaining such faith the day before my first dealings with the "god-king" of my bank branch face to face, it seems the
"Wikipedia represents a belief in the supremacy of reason and the goodness of others. In the Wikipedia ideal, people of goodwill sometimes disagree. But from the respectful clash of opposing viewpoints and the combined wisdom of the many, something resembling the truth will emerge. Most of the time.
"If you looked up Jimmy Carter on Wikipedia one morning this winter, you would have discovered something you couldn't learn from Britannica," Pink writes. "According to the photo that accompanied Carter's entry, America's 39th president was a scruffy, random unshaven man with his left index finger shoved firmly up his nose.
"Lurking in the underbrush of Wikipedia's idyllic forest of reason and good intentions are contributors less noble in purpose, whose numbers are multiplying. Wiki devotees have names for many of them. First, there are the trolls, minor troublemakers who breach the principle of good faith with inane edits designed to rile serious users. More insidious are vandals, who try to wreck the site - inserting profanity and ethnic slurs, unleashing bots that put ads into entries, and pasting pictures of penises and other junior-high laugh-getters. Considering how easy it is to make changes on Wikipedia, you'd imagine these ne'er-do-wells could potentially overwhelm the site. But they haven't - at least not yet - because defenses against them are built into the structure."
That's as much as I'll lift, suggesting that if you're in the mood for an entertaining story, do read the rest at 'Wired' (home page this time).
As with the Wikipedia, so it is with the blogosphere.
The "defences ... built into the structure" consist almost invariably of people! Even on launching this log -- its second birthday went as unnoticed as those, unfortunately, of only too many of my friends -- back in days when "how many hits?" and "getting Googled" sometimes worried me, I knew little of spiders and never risked the silliness (or was it really balls?) to send anybody the kind of "request" that landed in my mail last week:
"I saw the 'Blogroll Me' link on your site. I'll put up your link if you put up ours,"
read an opening sentence without a "Hi".
Guess what? Wikipedia covers netiquette more comprehensively than the notion probably penetrated my correspondent's head. For now, the fellow will have to take this for an answer, along with an assurance Google and its kind will likely find him soon enough, since that's what he says he wants. The very name of his band indicates an obsession with the most powerful world leader, in whom I've lost almost all interest.
But, mate, while I'd suggest just a little diplomacy can get people a long way and that you check out what a poetic friend of yours wrote about 'Listening through Mindfulness' (mousemusings), don't let me discourage you!
If everybody were as disabused by politicians as I've become, the world would be even worse off, and if it's music you're making and it sounds good to me, then I'll keep an ear out for you still.
Today's voice?
Apple being Apple, on my first chance in months to cross town to the official repair workshop with two dud iPods for attention during a week I can even fetch them back once fixed ... it was "exceptionally shut" until Wednesday. The other poor sod swearing outside and who'd found no warning online was less lucky. He'd shlepped in from the backwater 'burbs and didn't have a headful of Katie Melua. 'Call off the Search', which is new to me but released in November 2003, when she was 18.
And she's "got it", this girl really does. With more attention, maybe I'd have heard her top charts for weeks -- was that, by any chance, with 'The Closest Thing to Crazy', a scrumptious song whose title's all it has in common with the other bloke outside the shut shop? -- but I'll go crazy the next time I see Katie Melua (official site) -- or anybody else young and very gifted -- called "the next Norah Jones". There must be a dozen of 'em now.
Why the heck can so few critics hear musicians for who they are instead of leaping for labels? As for mindfulness, Melua turns hers to very sweet jazz and good old backyard blues, as well as some standards, with a voice and timing to melt you in minutes.
Another real talent to follow. Closely.
Oh. With all due respect and that to my workmates, I'm glad you won't have to visit me behind bars, let alone assail my ears.
There are fine exceptions in the instrumentalists and spare-time singers among you, including the ladies, but usually when I'm reduced to sticking on my iPod while working on the desk, well ... you know what I'm trying to shut out, don't you, and that it's not just the politicians you sometimes insist on listening to, as if having to read the buggers' drivel wasn't enough, on the blasted telly?
9:49:25 PM link 
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