|
Here is a Sup—I mean repository of the texts of my together with some readings of them. The essays were broadcast by WXXI 91.5 Classical of Rochester, NY on Salmagundy each Saturday at 9:35am Eastern Time, from the beginning of time (1985) till May 2009 when Entropa (evil Goddess of Change-for-the-Worse-or-Possibly-the-Worst) troubled the minds of the WXXIites and they retired Simon and Salmagundy, and Rochester went into a terminal decline---for ever.
I continued on that brilliant bastion of all that's good and kultured, WCLV's syndicated Weekend Radio on many (mainly NPRish) stations traditionally on the first and third weekends of the month, though weekendage varied, till the horror crept ever onward and that too was devoured (in August 2023, a date which will live in infamy or at lease mild irritation)... and only I remain, defiant though wimpering.
Richard Howland-Bolton
There are pop-up pics and links all over the place here. In text they are indicated by a double underline like this:
mouse-overing brings the pop-up up and clicking (usually) goes to the link |
|
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!
|
| Read More... |
|
I was at the office the other day, and I was working away merrily (...well at any rate I was working away) with a colleague towards the end of the day, when suddenly looking up I noticed that it was the end of the day and that all our other colleagues had gone home.
And we were alone.
|
| Read More... |
|
[Sigh]
As I write, which as usual is over a commercial breakfast, it is raining down here in Texas; and drear and dark and (relatively-ish speaking) really cold; though, thank goodness, the weatherman’s promise of ‘rain turning to freezing rain---and a reign of terror on the roads and the destruction of Texas as y’all knowed her’ didn’t in the event materialise. And Einstein Bros contra-TexMex bagelorium and Darned-good-according-to-their-registered-trade-mark-coffee emporium is, as a consequence of weatherman-induced fear, quite quiet and no one I know is here to interfere with my essay-starting and thus make life more pleasant; and so, in the utter boredom of my solitary Plano breakfast in winter, I am left with my mind a-wandering even more than usual, and I find myself dreaming of a Spring that at the moment seems yonks away...
|
| Read More... |
|
Thanksgiving Day having passed such a short time ago this seems an appropriate moment to look at the other side of the coin: at You'rewelcomegiving Day.
You'rewelcomegiving is that nonchalant, not-quite-smug, and rather indeterminately located holiday wherein we take the time to celebrate one of the only three things that America has ever given to the culture of the world that are totally unalloyed, pure, joyous improvements (the other two being of course the Marshall Plan and Carrot Cake). Everything else---McDonalds, Hollywood, saying (but obviously not meaning) "Have a nice day", pointlessly expensive and choice-ridden coffee---have all been unmitigated disasters and have been to the culture of the world the equivalent of bovine spongeform encephalopathy or at least of a nasty bout of foot fungus.
|
| Read More... |
|
Of course it goes without saying that anything that limits freedom of speech is suspect. Why, even that old chestnut about the prohibition of shouting "Fire!" in a crowded (and presumably non-conflagrational) theatre isn't completely absolute: I mean how else could you have a play about how those nasty German soldiers in WWI Belgium treated poor Nurse Edith Cavell when they finally noticed that she was helping soldiers go home; or about the events in London in 1666?
I mean you can’t have your squad go “Bang! You’re dead!” nor can you leave the way clear for Sir Christopher to rebuild all those London churches without first shouting “Fire!” and in the latter example probably shouting it a lot more than once.
|
| Read More... |
|
If you remember, before all that nonsense of Simon's Centennial Celebration, I flew the paranoid skies to Florida; well I'm back from my trip and for once I wasn't accurate in the prediction that with airline security getting tighter and tighter we'd all end up having to fly in the nude, indeed I wasn't forced to take my clothes off, not once---not even in the shower! But to forget my homage to Carey Grant's excellent performance in 'Charade' for a moment; while I was gone the universe co-incidentally concatenated (as it so often does) something I heard on the wireless with something I read whilst catching up on my backlog of messages on the ANSAX list .
|
| Read More... |
|
For today's dedicated technopoodle the great curse of Life (and the Universe and perhaps even of Everything) is that, almost inevitably, today's "Oh! Wow!" is tomorrow's ho-hum. And that that time-scale is pretty-well not metaphorical!
In its most general extent it's all the fault of that damn Moore and his Loore, I mean Law---though of course it's not really a real law like the Law of Gravity that has underpinnings and maths and stuff, it's more of an observed phenomenon that has sort of held good for the last foorety or moore years.
More's Lore states that computer chip density doubles every eighteen or so months1 . And all the dreadful just-in-time obsolescence we suffer naturally follows from it---Not to mention that even worse just-before-it's-time-and-as-soon-as-you've-given-the-sales-guy-your-bloody-credit-card obsolescence.
|
| Read More... |
|
Well I am absolutely wetlanded with work at the moment (...and I have to say that because I do so want to be seen as PC and I'm becoming so environmentally sensitive nowadays that I now consider the word "swamp" to be awfully disparaging and quite taboo, and so from now on I am only ever going to say things like "with this new project on top of everything else I'm absolutely wetlanded with work!") where was I? Oh! Yes! Busy.
What is is that they say? "When you're up to your ass in alligators you forget that your original purpose was to ruin the Wetlands and cause all sorts of environmental problems for future generations." Though, now I come to think of it, what a member of the species Equus asinus would be doing in a swamp is anyone's guess! So I might have got that saying wrong.
|
| Read More... |
|
I have this thing about the signage used over here, and have commented on examples of signs that I've seen and that have struck me significant many a time. In fact my very first broadcast essay was about American signs---and before you get all excited; let me quash any forming, vague hope that any return to my beginnings might signal an end.
This won't be my last piece... well unless...
... well you know,
... just unless!
|
| Read More... |
|
One of the most onerous duties of a parent, and one of the most constant and demanding, is the familiar one of dropped-project up-picking: you know the completion of tasks started, but willfully abandoned, by the child.
Ahh! I still remember, Oh! eighteen or more years ago, the pain, the exhaustion---and the frozen shock---after slaving away with intense concentration for an hour or so at the igloo in the back garden that then-little Raed and Ead had begged me----begged me to help them start building; when upon glancing up I noticed the little buggers watching me through the kitchen window, with hot chocolate steaming in their mugs: the horrid little deserters.
|
| Read More... |
 |
 |
