Bloody Marvellous!

Welcome to my all new second blog. If you haven't come here from my other blog Neal of Arabia then go there immediately and do your homework before proceeding!

In writing Neal of Arabia I've found that I seem to rant a lot about stuff I like and stuff I hate, so I thought I'd give those thoughts their own series!

Every day (well... maybe) I'll list here something that has brought me pleasure and something that has pissed me off. The idea was kind of inspired by Clare's Three Beautiful Things, which has just made it to Blogger's Blogs Of Note - congrats Clare. In 3BT she lists three things that have brought her pleasure every day. That's all well and good but, well, I'm just not that happy. Well I guess I am happy but I also like to wallow in my grumpy moments and rant about things that get my goat. Enter Bloody Marvellous, where you'll get a slice of reality, warts 'n' all, with (I hope) joy and moans in equal measure, and a laugh either way.

OK, here goes....

:-) Shiver of anticipation
I've always been a keen photographer, but have recently decided to get a little more serious about it (the new camera helped). So I've entered some of my existing work into the British Journal of Photography Award competition, and also submitted a small number of images to their Reader's Gallery. I don't expect to win anything but the waiting-to-hear is a pleasure in itself. Does that make me weird? I remember even as a small child getting a real buzz out of waiting for a parcel to come in the post, with the feeling when the post arrives minus-parcel more good than bad, because it meant I'd get another 24 hours of anticipation. I still get it now, waiting for stuff to arrive from Amazon, only now it's once a week instead of every day.

:-( Broken gadgets
Last night Karen was out so I decided to watch one of my favourite films: Koyaanisqatsi. Made in 1982, this masterpiece by Godfrey Reggio with music by Philip Glass contrasts the tranquil beauty of nature with the hustle & bustle of modern life. If you haven't seen it, go and buy it.
The name Koyaanisqatsi apparently comes from the Hopi Indian language and means, "Life out of balance".
I dropped the DVD into the tray of my Philips Home Entertainment System and sat back, ready for my senses to be assailed, then: DISC ERROR appears on the screen. NNoooo! After several attempts at cleaning the disc (which looked pretty clean to start with) it still doesn't work, although it plays perfectly on our Macintosh computer (go figure). Does this mean my pride and joy home cinema is about to go kaputt??? I hate it when essential gadgets like telly stop working! It's well out of warranty but - this being Riyadh - the warranty would be worthless here anyway.

Talk about life out of balance!