Like a Summer Thursday

Mutterings continued.

Things I've discovered thanks to rock music:

1. Eric Satie. On the self titled Blood, Sweat and Tears album are a couple of short tracks entitled Variations on a Theme by Eric Satie, one of which closes side two. It's a short flute piece which ends with the sound of footsteps and a closing door and is just gorgeous. So it's thanks to B,S & T that I discovered the sublime Trois Gymnopedie suite that has become one of my favourite pieces of music.

2. Herman Hesse. On the Santana Abraxas album cover (back in the days when there were album covers, is a quote from Hesse's Demien. Being a huge Santana fan (still am) this sparked my interest in the books of Hesse. And being a teenager in the 70's and into that sort of thing, I got hooked on Siddhartha, Steppenwolf (especially Steppenwolf!), the Glass Bead Game, etc etc.

3. Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. I have the Emerson, Lake and Palmer version. And that's as much as I'm going to say.

"Granny says 'nothing wrong' with Timberlake's penis

Justin Timberlake's grandmother says Britney Spears was wrong to suggest he's got a tiny penis." Now, that is just plain wrong on so many levels! (Whenever I see a photo of Mr Timberlake, I think it's Orlando Bloom. Ditto Elijah Wood and that guy in Spiderman.)

"A billionaire media baron has taken a step to demonstrate his belief that women should run the world because men have "mucked it up" with too much warfare and military spending." Which just adds to the theory that Margaret Thatcher is really a man in drag.

Happy birthday, John Alderton and happy anniversary Will and Anne Shakespeare.

"The Earl and Countess of Wessex have named their daughter Louise Alice Elizabeth Mary Mountbatten-Windsor." Knew there would be an Elizabeth in there somewhere. Poor kid has the initials LAEM Mountbatten-Windsor. Good thing it wasn't Mary Elizabeth.

And this one I'll quote in full, cos it made me laugh:

"American tourists want to hunt haggis

A third of all American visitors to Scotland believe haggis is an animal.

Researchers have found almost one in four of those questioned said they had come to Scotland under the belief they could hunt it.

US tour operators are even selling haggis hunting tours.

Some 1,000 Americans took part in the survey, which was launched in the summer when haggis maker Hall's teamed up with a US tourism association website.

Hall's, which is based in Broxburn, West Lothian, asked Americans considering a trip to Scotland why they wanted to come and what they expected to see.

One American tourist believed that haggis was a wild beast of the Highlands, no bigger than a grouse, which only came out at night.

Another claimed haggis was a creature that sometimes ventured into the cities and was similar to a fox.

Anna Finlay, of Hall's, said: "It's amazing in this day and age that the myth of the haggis roaming the glens continues to resonate with overseas visitors."

The recipe for haggis varies but it can be made using a sheep's stomach bag filled with a mix of sheep's liver, heart and lung, oatmeal, suet, stock, onions and spices."

I remember seeing a doco on Americans travelling in the UK - some of them were complaining that Stonehenge wasn't next to the ocean "like it is in the brochures".