Barkerburgh

A few weeks ago I finally got both my computers back to where they were before the Christmas Crash (sounds like a Doctor Who episode, don’t it?).

My server is restored and running Apache/PHP/MySQL again. My databases are safe and my mediawiki installations are all perking. I have Google Desktop Search installed (and it is a magnificent blessing, let me tell ya), and I have started using MS Outlook’s calendar function since my memory is just Swiss cheese and old foam rubber these days. (I’d rather use Mozilla’s Sunbird, but it really, really sucks, sucks, sucks. Really.)

I reconstructed my web technology learning plan and then sat down to start up again, after all these months and I got sad.

It was like everything was finally all ready and all I had to do was sit down and apply myself and start learning.  Easy-peasy, I do it all the time.

But nothing happened.  I was not inspired, I was in fact, bummed.

I know, I know, all I have to do is give myself a shake, take a deep breath, hike up my pants and get down to business.  I know that, and I will do it.  But part of me is just waiting for the next time something critical goes up the fubar, because it will.  The question is ‘how soon?’

Well, back to the old drawing board.

Laura invited me to join her on Thursday evening at the Princess of Wales Theatre to see “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Part I”.

It was based on/cut down from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s stage version of Charles Dicken’s 1838-1839 serialized novel of the same name, minus the ‘Part I’. In 1980, the RSC produced a version that “lasted more than ten hours (counting intermissions and a dinner break - the actual playing time was approximately eight-and-a-half hours)”. This play, and Part II, which I will again be joining Laura to see, were condensed out of that first grand production. Both parts together are six hours, so we didn’t lose much.

In 1982, a miniseries of the production was produced and was later broadcast on America’s PBS. I remember it being on and being interested, but I didn’t watch it, and I don’t remember why. Maybe the length…

Laura, being a big fan, had lots of background on the original production and the original novel, and I enjoyed her sharing immensely.

Being unfamiliar with the story but for the very basics, I did some research on Wednesday about the novel and the stage presentation, which I had heard of, and was intrigued and impressed.

And just so I could catch up a little, I downloaded the Gutenberg text of the novel. I hope I can be prepared for Part II.

(Sometimes when I am really impressed or moved by a show like this, including a TV show or a cinematic movie, I tend to try and replay it in my mind, to think about the language or the imagery or the story, and maybe I have cool dreams. Well, I had cool dreams last night; I just can’t remember what they were - and I really wish I could.)

I was getting so sick of switching over to CNN during commercial breaks and hearing them dissecting every little aspect of every little primary and every little caucus and every little mouth-fart and every little tic and twitch and hiccup of the candidates, their staffs, the exit-polled, and the results, that I was hoping for different news, real news - an earthquake or a tsunami, maybe.

Well, Gott sei dank, I got a metaphorical one.

You’d think, I mean don’t you think you’d think, that if you were a Democratic politician in a high position, that you won partly by claiming the moral high ground during your earlier career and your campaign, that you’d know better than to schwanz a hooker on the public’s clock. Multiple times. I mean, vey iz mir.

Next thing it’ll be CBC and the Olympics. And the Olympics. And the Olympics. And no weeknight Coronation Street.

What a world.