Noams and Norms

Here's the ideal festive present for your pseudo-leftist friends: a Gnome Chomsky, or if you prefer, a Garden Noam. Other punning products on sale at the same site include meditating Garden 'OMs'.

Thanks to normblog for the link. Of course, what members of the decent left would really like to receive this holiday season is a Garden Norm...

Raindrops on roses, etc.

I've been tagged again. This time, Norm has challenged me to list seven things I love. Previous participants in the game have used up one of their choices on 'my family' or similar, but I'm going to cheat a little and take that as read. So here's my list, arranged in roughly the daily order in which they are experienced (on an ideal day, that is):

Reading in bed in the morning

The first coffee of the day

My MacBook

The piano

Summer evenings in the garden

Cool jazz

Glenlivet single malt whisky

Since most of the people I'd tag have already been approached, and I don't want to risk alienating those I've tagged before, I'm going to defy superstition and break the chain. 

Seven songs

Bob has tagged me for this 'Seven songs' thing that's going around (serves me right for targeting him for that sentences game). So this is what you have to do:

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.

Here we go then. Here are seven songs that are going round in my head these days, in no particular order (and sorry that, unlike Bob, I lack the technical know-how to provide links to audio clips):

Bruce Springsteen, 'Girls In Their Summer Clothes' . A characteristic mix of acute social observation and seasonal intensity, with just a hint of middle-aged masculine wistfulness with which I painfully identify.

Arild Andersen, Vassilis Tsabropoulos and John Marshall, 'Pavane'. A lovely jazz reworking of Ravel, arranged (and with some beautiful piano playing) by Tsabropoulos.

Moby, 'Ooh Yeah'. OK, it may be (brilliantly) annoying, but it's the first track on the free disc given away with last week's 'Sunday Times' and I can't get it out of my head.

Vanessa Carlton 'A Thousand Miles'. Because when you're a parent, the songs that live in your head are frequently those played by your children, and my daughter has just taught herself to play this on the piano (and the video, with Carlton and her baby grand travelling down what looks like the Pacific Coast Highway, is fun).

Mariza, 'Ha uma musica do povo'. Watching Mariza perform this song, with words by the great Fernando Pessoa, at the 'Concerto em Lisboa', always bring me out in goosebumps.

Todd Gustavsen Trio, 'Being There'. The kind of languid piano jazz that calms the soul and puts you in mind of long wine-filled summer evenings.

Barry Ryan, 'The Colour of My Love'. A wild card. I don't know if it's spring-time nostalgia, or the 40th anniversary of its release, but just lately I've been revisiting this poignant reminder of youth and first love.

I tag (with absolutely no compulsion involved) : Shuggy, Paul at Mars Hill, Lisa at Rullsenberg Rules, Daniel at The Stark Tenet, Tom, Peter and Paulie.

Friday fun and games

Norm has tagged me for this random sentences game thingy. Here's what you have to do:

1. Pick up the nearest book.

2. Open to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the next three sentences.

5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

My nearest book: Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet. The sixth, seventh and eighth sentences on page 123 are:

The sensation that travel brings? I have it by going from Lisbon to Benfica, and have it more intensely than one who goes from Lisbon to China, because if the freedom isn't in me, then I won't have it no matter where I go. 'Any road,' said Carlyle, 'this simple Entepfuhl road, will lead you to the end of the World'.

My turn to tag. My five tag-ees (if this is their kind of thing - and as someone with a deep antipathy to chain letters and emails, I'll understand if it's not) are: Andrew, Bob, Roland, Paul and David.

Footnote: This is probably breaking the rules of the game, but what I found interesting about doing this is that my randomly-chosen three sentences make perfect sense on their own. But wrenched from their original context, they convey a very different meaning to that intended by the author. This is cheating, but here's the omitted ninth sentence:

But the Entepfuhl road, if it is followed all the way to the end, returns to Entepfuhl; so that Entepfuhl, where we already were, is the same end of the world we set out to find.