SONG TO END THE WEEKEND ON : ‘FASCINATING RHYTHM’

This weekend’s song is ‘Fascinating Rhythm’, from the 1924 Broadway musical ‘Lady Be Good’, music by George Gershwin, lyrics by his older brother Ira, who also wrote the unashamedly atheistic lyrics for ‘It Ain’t Necessarily So’. This version is a recording made in London in 1926 by brother and sister Fred and Adele Astaire with George Gershwin playing piano. This has been one of my favourites for twenty years or more, but I’ve literally only just learned that it was George Gershwin on the piano. It adds to the whole atmosphere, somehow.

It is a wonderful example of the free spirited, gay* heart of the US in particular before the Wall street crash brought everyone down to the basics of surviving during the Great Depression. It is an age that is now, sadly, gone.
So,
As always,
Enjoy, and,
A good week, whether the fascinating rhythm hangs around you all day or not.

*I don’t mean homosexual in this case. This is an older definition, overshadowed by the modern use of the word. Look it up.

AN UNEXPECTED FACT

And there’s me thinking that Tabby was a breed when it’s tabby, a pattern.

INTRODUCING LYRA TAB

This is my newest baby cat.

She’s called (as you already know) Lyra Tab, and she is dead keen on my computer table. Oliver accepts her but Domino has clouted her around her head and snarled at her. I do hope Domino comes around to accepting her! I don’t want to have to take her back.
More soon. . .

LYRA TAB INFORMATION

I am still waiting to hear when I can pick the new kitten Lyra Tab up from the vets.
I went down for ten past nine this morning only to be told that one of the kittens had sneezed, so they had to wait until they were checked over by a vet, and perhaps given a course of antibiotics. I gave them my mobile telephone number and they’ll contact me as soon as Lyra has been checked and is free to come home with me. So I came home and I’m waiting now.
Looks like I’ve got another poorly baby on my hands.

NEW ONE

I’m getting a new baby cat tomorrow. I am calling her Lyra Tab.*
I am getting her from the vets. She is six weeks old and a Tabby, with white paddy paws, and I’ve seen her, but she can’t come with me until she has been properly checked over, which will be tomorrow. Because two cats aren’t enough, and she’ll be loved and cared for and safe with me.
I hope the other two get on with her.
More tomorrow. . .

*I picked the name for obvious reasons. I was going to call her Ayn after Ayn Rand, or Dagny, after the character in her book ‘Atlas Shrugged’, a copy of which I’ve managed to pick up on the cheap with writing big enough for me to read. But Lyra, well, obviously.

THE PEAK OF MOUNT HAPPINESS

The European Champions Football League final result;
Barcelona 2 – 0 Manchester United.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. The almighty Man United have been BEATEN. Lost did you, Sir Alex? Oh dear.
This is possibly the best news I have had in an age.

NUCLEAR WAR!(?)

North Korea has been doing nuclear testing. They can now seriously be considered one of the nations with nuclear weapons. And the world is collectively trembling in it’s boots. An emergency session of the UN called. President Obama speaking out against it. South Korea and Japan, close enough to receive any potential missiles are deeply distressed. Even North Korea’s traditional ally, China, who has more than once used it’s UN veto on behalf of it’s smaller neighbour, is withdrawing support. There is even barely heard speculation from a distance as to what may happen if there was another Korean war, like the one from 1950-1953.
North Korea, a Stalinist nation with a nuclear payload. Sanctions slapped on it in 2006 has just made it more defiant, and more determined to make these weapons. So, what does the rest of the world do?
How about talking? Inviting them to the negotiating table and asking them why they need to have such weapons. Why do they feel so threatened? Treat them decently. They don’t have to be the pariah nation that the west makes them out to be. Like most people, if they are pushed enough, they might just push back. Converse. Treat them decently.
Iran is watching from a distance, on the edge of creating it’s own nuclear weapons. Once they see how the nations treat Korea, they might realise that they were wrong, that the world doesn’t hate them, and doesn’t think they are part of a group of hated and feared nations.
It might just work. As a great man once put it, jaw jaw is better than war war. And anything would be better than a tit for tat nuclear exchange which is what the world seems to be afraid of as a real possibility at the moment.

LOGIC?

Bank holiday UK.
With twice the number of people travelling they half the number of buses.
No other nation would put up with it.

SONG TO END THE WEEKEND ON : ‘THE WINDMILLS OF YOUR MIND’

This weekend’s song is ‘The Windmills of Your Mind’* sung by Noel Harris. Written by Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman and Michel Legrand for the 1968 film ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’, and won the Oscar for best original song at that year’s academy awards. Noel’s father Rex won the award the previous year for ‘Talk To the Animals’ from ‘Dr Doolittle’.
There are many other singers of this song to be found, but I think Noel’s version, with his educated Brit accent, the one sung on the soundtrack of the film, is the best. It is absolutely haunting, and gives me a chill whenever I hear it. Especially the bit;
‘Like a tunnel you can follow, to a tunnel of it’s own,
Down a hollow to a cavern, where the sun has never shone.’

It’s supposed to be about the after effects of a breakup from a love affair, confused thoughts tumbling and working in and out and going around and around;
‘Round, like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel,
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel’.
Anyhow,
As always,
Enjoy, and
A good week, whether the world is like an apple whirling silently in space or not.

*If this disappears ‘due to term of use violation’ I am going to kill someone. I swear to god. And when I turn myself in after, that will be my defence in court, during the trial, it’s all Google’s fault for deliberately ruining my song to end the weekend on.

FORGOTTEN? NEVER

I dreamed that Hayley came to me. She snuggled up against my head and kissed my face, just like she used to do. I stroked her and said ‘Hayley Sweet’. Then I woke up. I have been a bit teary ever since. I think about her frequently, and I miss her so much. Even more than Jessica. She was my sweet disabled baby girl. I wish I could see her again in reality.
I’m still not used to the fact that there are now only two babies in the house, instead of the four there were for so long.

A CONSIDERATION

Go out and look at the sky. Especially at night. See the stars. It’s possible, just using the naked eye and on a clear, dark night (no blinding flare from the earth or full moon) to as far away as the Andromeda galaxy, approximately 2.9 million light years away.
But this is just one tiny part of the known universe. The universe itself is approximately 156 billion light years across. Now, light travels at 186 miles per second. And we’re talking about the time it takes light to travel one year, multiplied 156 billion times.
Going the other way; the smallest independent living thing (not counting bacterium or viruses as they are not considered truly alive) is the nanoarchaeum equitans which is a tiny microbe that lives in almost boiling water in a hydrothermal vent off Iceland. This morsel of life has cells 400 nm in diameter, nm being short for nanometre which is one millionth of a millimetre.
Now, can you imagine the majestic, noble, mighty creator who formed all this?
With this in your mind, can you, honestly, in all reason, believe that this creator god who made rock formations on planets we will never see, is the same god who singled out one planet in this vast universe, and picked one species of this planet, and that he will punish this single species for all eternity for not believing in him?
Really?

BLOODY DAMN DAMN!!!

Most of the songs in the song to end the weekend on are links to YouTube videos, and most of them don’t lead anywhere apart from a page saying ‘this video has been taken down due to terms of use violation’.
Bloody Google sodding everything up, which is about the only thing they are good at. Right. I’ve never used ‘Google’ as a word for searching the Internet, but now I would rather eat my own sick than have anything beyond the basics to do with Google. I’d rather eat a drunken druggie with AIDS who has just eaten rotten meat and his brother’s sick, sick than do anything other than occasionally stick YouTube videos under my ‘Song to End the Weekend On’ category. I have to do this because there is no way I can stick songs from my own collection on this blog.

FROM THE ONION NEWS NETWORK. . .

This is an absolutely bleedin’ hilarious offering from the Onion News Network, one of the consistantly funniest satire sites on the Net. In case you’re wondering, I love Sony. Most of my electronic stuff, including my MP3 player, is made by Sony.
(Warning:There is a lot of adult language in this, so it’s not suitable for young ones).

Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn’t Fucking Work