Day 25

Lenny: "Quiet everyone. He's about to do something stupid"
Homer: "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but you must have me confused with a fictional television character. Now, if you'll excuse me, my fondue is ready."
(swivels round and knocks fondue onto control station)
(everyone laughs)
Lenny: "There goes Albany!"
Karl: "Uh oh, spaghetti o!"

Woke up at about 8:30 to blissful silence. After breakfast, downloaded some music what I had purchased yesterday. Then, did Mandarin lesson 12. Got through it quite well.

Went through lecture 2 of unit 8 - which finished off Kings and started Isaiah. It wasn't a particularly long one, though, cos there was like a student opinion of teachers thing in the middle which was not recorded.

At about 12:30, went for a walk to post my letters. I did a pretty big rectangle, encompassing the entire length of Hampden road, and the width between said road and Winthrop avenue. It was pretty much just the right length - my legs were getting that painful tired feeling towards the end.

Then, I had lunch and did my ironing (in prep for Sunday) while watching the rest of Secret Window. The twist at the end wasn't so much predictable; it's just been done too many times before - see Fight Club, Sixth Sense, et al. At least the bad guy won - who was like the 'hero' anyway. Anti-hero, I guess. So it was a good film, in the end. Kinda surprisingly.

I read a tiny bit more of my Simpsons book. The author guy is getting old quick - he just can't stop using words like excellent, perfect, exact, best, never done before, greatest in history, etc. Which is, like, too way over the top.
One interesting thing - I was thinking in the morning about a conversation with the Bennifactor on Sunday about how he didn't like his name and I didn't like my name. So I was thinking that neither Joseph nor Joe had special appeal to me, but I thought Joey sounds alright. Then I vaguely recalled how past cell leader Dewy used to say Joe-Joe (I think to annoy me, which it did), so how could I help but progress to the Simpson quote of Barney yelling out 'Joey Joe-Joe'. I couldn't remember the actual joke, though. So, yes, it was mentioned in the few pages I read today. When Homer is talking about a problem this 'friend' of his has. 'Yeah' says Moe, 'so whats his name?' 'Um....Joey.......Joe.......Joe........Samatar........Hasibalabab' (or something equally ridiculous) 'Thats the stupidest name I've ever heard' says Moe. Then some guy at the bar gets up and rushes out crying and Barney calls out 'Joey Joe-Joe!'

I finished Isaiah from one book and started Isaiah from another book. Unfortunately, as I feared, being 66 chapters in length, there is no simple few page summary of the sins that Isaiah pointed out. Also, I'm faced with the problem of if I'm supposed to be dealing just with first Isaiah (1-39) which is definitively attributed to the 8th century, or if I'm supposed to talk about the whole of Isaiah, even though most scholars have pretty much accepted as fact that 40-66 were written 150 years later by some other guy.

I downloaded another few songs in the afternoon - mainly from Newsboys and Craig David. I then had enough 4 star WMAs to convert them to MP3s, but, for some reason, Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand, and World Turning by Yothu Yindi refuse to allow themselves to be burnt to a CD. Which is irritating. So I'm still about 4 or 5 songs short, so I'm gonna wait until I can find some more. Which shouldn't take long - I found some which I had before but I don't have now.

And while I'm on the subject - discovered yesterday a new reason to pine for the itunes music store - they have videos (inc TV shows like Lost - the only ones I saw were bad shows, and I doubt they're cheap). The one that caught my attention was ranked number two - the divine 'Weapon of Choice' by Fatboy Slim, starring Christopher Walken dancing around a hotel. I remember General Harmanto sending it to me some 4+ years ago (just after it came out), and it was so darn good. The songs not half bad, neither. But I wouldn't want it without the clip. They had quite a few U2 ones as well, Fix You by Coldplay, etc. But, what can you do? Except move to the US of A, or western Europe.