pedanther

1. Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century is back in the rotation on Jaroo, so if defrosted Sherlock Holmes fighting futuristic crime with the assistance of Inspector Lestrade's great-...-granddaughter and a robot that thinks it's Watson sounds like something that you might find amusing (in any of several possible ways), here's your chance. Try to stick it out for at least the first three episodes, as they form a mini-plot-arc setting up the various bits of the series premise. (Also, the third episode is not half bad.) The first episode is only going to be up for a few more days, I think, but if you miss it I'll be happy to give you a brief synopsis of the key points so that you can carry on from episode two; this might in fact be preferable to actually watching the episode.


2. Australia's latest TV panel game is The Unbelievable Truth, based on the British radio panel game of the same name (which airs here on Radio National) in which contestants give lectures that consist almost entirely of lies, and the other contestants have to identify the implausible-but-true bits. Graeme Garden, co-creator of and regular contestant on the radio version, appeared in the second episode, and trounced everybody handily. I'm not sure so far that being on TV has added anything to the format, which after all is basically built around people talking, but allowing for it being early days yet it's not significantly worse either.


3. The same day I finished re-reading The Dragon Hoard, something happened to remind me of another of my favourite books since childhood, John Masefield's The Midnight Folk, so I'm re-reading that now. It's occurred to me that I've had one of Masefield's adventure stories for adults, Odtaa, lying around unread for a couple of years now, and I've been told that it and its sequel Sard Harker have connections to The Midnight Folk by way of shared characters and settings, so perhaps I'll read that next.


4. I mentioned in my last entry that I was unwell. I'm quite better now. I bring this up only because apparently nothing else more noteworthy has happened to me lately.


5. Random musical video link (via): Singer-songwriter duo Lou & Peter Berryman explain that since they've been touring across America, they've become conscious of the fact that all their sentimental songs are about their home state of Wisconsin. To redress the balance, they've written a sentimental song with spaces left blank to be filled in as appropriate.

Sometimes when the grass is blown by the breeze
There's a far-away look in the leaves of the trees
A memory returns, heart-breakingly clear
Of a place I call home, [your state's name here].

A local secondary school's upper year drama students are putting on a stage adaptation of one of my favourite movies. (I am not sure I should say which in a public forum, as I am not certain how official an adaptation it is, and the Morgenstern estate is notoriously unforgiving about people taking liberties.) I was going to go see it tonight, but it was booked out, so I'm going to see it tomorrow night instead.

So what I did do this evening was put up some bookshelves. They're from IKEA, and didn't come with instructions since assembly was a straightforward matter of plugging bits into other bits... up to a point. Figuring out how to attach the crossbraces took a while (and a bit longer to make the little voice insisting there would be disaster if I'd got it wrong shut up). They look quite nice, but in the end there's fewer actual shelves than I would like. They're modular, though, so I'm hoping I'll be able to get more shelves without having to buy a whole new bookcase.

I listened to some radio while I was figuring out the bookshelves, including a program about the world's oldest surviving joke book, "Philogelos", from the third or fourth century AD. It includes a version of this old chestnut (which is therefore officially one of the oldest chestnuts going):

"Doctor, can you help me? Every morning when I wake up, I feel dizzy for half an hour; then I'm all right for the rest of the day."
"The solution is simple: Just wake up half an hour later."


(By the way, by "this evening" I mean Friday, and "tomorrow night" means Saturday, even though I'm writing this after midnight and some people would say that it's therefore Saturday already. The way I see it, it's not tomorrow until I've been to sleep and woken up again. Being smart, you ask: "What if you don't go to sleep at all?" I don't know; it hasn't come up since I adopted this viewpoint. And it's not going to come up tonight, either. *yawn* G'night.)