This baffles me

For some reason, I have a bruise — a small one — between my left hand’s third and fourth metacarpophalangeal joints, on the palmar side. This appeared in the middle of yesterday afternoon, sometime after 15:00. I have absolutely no idea where it came from In the first place, I don’t recall bashing my hand off anything (and it’s pretty unusual to do that with the palmar surface anyway), and during that period I was sitting at the computer. I was using the mouse, but I don’t rest my hand on the mouse, certainly not that hard. It’s not hugely painful, though it is interfering a bit with typing and mouse usage. I’m just puzzled about how I got it. A bruise appearing in the morning because you have done something in your sleep — that happens; but a bruise appearing while you are sitting quietly at the keyboard — how does that happen?

Oh. My. Fucking. Gods.

Radio 3. Good stuff on Radio 3. Don’t like absolutely all of it, but so what? Good music — plus the occasional piece which sounds like an accident in an anvil factory — some of which is jazz and some “world music”, but mostly “classical” (although I must say I share President Bartlet’s doubts about calling something “classical music” when the guy only finished writing it this afternoon), including stuff you don’t normally come across. Continuity announcers who are the aural equivalent of a really good hot water bottle on a cold winter night. A perfect combination of restfulness and challenge.

I have never listened to Radio 3 at 15:40 before.

Oh...

It’s like the bastard offspring of Radio 1 at its worst and CBBC. It sounds like two 12-year-old, absolute fuckwits bantering — and it is the worst by far fucking banter I have ever heard. It’s the sort of “banter” that would be rejected as too inane for the Oscars. It makes Hank on The Larry Sanders Show sound like Oscar fucking Wilde. I’ve had toothache that was more amusing.

What The Fuck are the BBC playing at? Has someone spiked the tea of the Radio 3 controllers? Whose abortion of an idea is this, and where do they live so we can hunt them down and exterminate them before they contaminate anyone else’s mind. I’d rather go hunting with Dick Cheney wearing my nice new quail hat than listen to this drivel again. Oh, for the arm of Gil Hamilton, that I could reach into the set and wring their damned necks to shut them up!


This has been a rant. It should have been typed with CAPSLOCK on, but I took pity on you all.

Coming to a TV near you...

Just saw on BBC4 that the new adaptation of Fred Hoyle and John Elliott’s 1961 classic A For Andromeda will be shown next Monday night, 9pm. Unlike the original, this is a single hour-and-a-half production rather than a serial. This is a good time to be an SF fan. :)