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Hors D'Oeuvres
After whipping up all that boring code, the kitchen is messy and I don't have time to serve up something proper. So this is all you get today.
Little Bits of Things on Toothpicks
I'm completely sheeping along with all the excited buzz behind the BBC Creative Archive. But my motivation-- sure, it's nice that all that quality material is freely available to everyone around the world-- my motivation for being so giddy: all the Father Ted I can eat. Free. Yeah, baby.
Last night we went to Soup Plus, which was, if memory serves correctly, one of the first places Mr Wiggins took me the very first time I visited Sydney. It's a funky little place, always has something good on the menu, always has good music playing. Last night it was a typical jazz quartet: drums, bass, sax and piano. But the singer, oh, the singer! Smoky silky voice, never hitting a note wrong, and she could scat like nobody's business. Mr Wiggins thought she didn't vary her singing style enough, but I was quite content to just listen to her any way she wanted to sing.
Hopefully, the new power cable for my iBook will be moseying along to my house quite soon. Have I mentioned the comatose state of my iBook? It's because Apple, who can ordinarily come up with beautiful and practical physical designs for computers, made the most craptastic power cable for the adapter on the old G3 "clamshell" iBooks. I've had two that died. This most recent one lasted around six months. Apple Australia want AU$195 for an entirely new crummy adapter (aparently you can't just buy the cable bit). You've got to be kidding me. :-/ Instead I ordered one of these and had my mom forward it to me from WA. US$12.95. Sheesh. I really want a new machine. I better stop now or I'll get into major whinge mode.
Dorothea gave me a very pleasant compliment on my rant about Frank Furedi's article. I am going to give her a compliment back, though not because I want to form a mutual appreciation society. It just goes back to what I was saying here. If we respect kids for their potential, then we have to help them achieve it through the creation of acceptable boundaries. They don't get a "Get out of Jail Free" card just for being young. Give them some credit-- they are just as capable of deciding between good and bad as adults, given the right information. Dorothea, I think you displayed admirable patience with an insufferably obnoxious four-year-old.
I love kids. I hope to have one or two at some later date. I probably wouldn't be that bothered if one climbed on me. I wouldn't be too worried about a nice dress because I'd be just as likely to rip it or spill something on it myself. But I'd be appalled and extremely disappointed if a parent (and at the parent, not the offspring) of a child that whacked me and repeatedly clambered on me at a party wasn't reprimanded in some way. I wouldn't have gotten away with that at four, and my parents were Leniency's King and Queen. So I think Creative Guy was being way over on the bigoted side in an unfortunate knee-jerk way. There's a huge middle ground between not wanting to be around kids and being a child-hater, as Tish says. Call a spade a spade and a bratling a bratling.
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