Mornings

I have to have a blood test tomorrow - at 9am. Since it is a fortnight since I have been out of bed and up by 9am this is entertaining. I'm assuming I'm not meant to have eaten or drunk for 12 hours before, but naturally no one said anything.

I also have to be up by 9am on Saturday for a northern odyssey, with the complication of a house guest Friday night rather than the anticpated Thursday night. The good news is at least I have Thursday to write two lectures. And to ponder whether to buy that Laurel & Hardy boxset with is about 1/4 RRP (£49 in Zavvis, £50 in HMV, released at £200 - not cheaper online).

Some of the lines in the Doctor Who Special (they'll go for the song and dance routine one of these days - and did we need the queen, especially given the opinions of her great-whatever-grandmother on him?) about Earth Christmas customs made me rather misread the headline:

Turkey attacks Kurdish bases in Iraq

especially as I'd just read the headline

Escaped zoo tiger kills man

and was already thinking of animal attacks. I note on the BBC News that the reporter was in New York, which seems rather sensible if a tiger is on the loose in San Francisco. Although perhaps a little over cautious. And did they really tell you to look away from the football scores which they then read out? Or were you meant to hit the mute button?

Morning

"I never get enough sleep. I stay up late at night, cause I'm Night Guy. Night Guy wants to stay up late. 'What about getting up after five hours sleep?', oh that's Morning Guy's problem. That's not my problem, I'm Night Guy. I stay up as late as I want. So you get up in the morning, your alarm, you're exhausted, groggy, oooh you hate that Night Guy! See, Night Guy always screws Morning Guy. There's nothing Morning Guy can do. The only thing Morning Guy can do is try and oversleep often enough so that Day Guy looes his job and Night Guy has no money to go out anymore."

So the solution to fear of oversleeping? Fail to sleep. Or at least sleep very little. I think there was some sleep before 4.30am, but little. At 7.30 it becomes easier. Once the alarms start.

I like the alarms on my new phone. If you don't turn it off properly, it gives you a 9 minute snooze, which works well with five alarms set.

The nurse had fun - at least three attempts to snag a vein. Remind me never to start mainlining heroin. Ow ow ow. Perhaps I don't have enough veins - with the proper amount of blood. Stands to reason that it looks like I've got high blood pressure - it has to go somewhere. Apparently I should have had some water before I left home. Don't eat but drink. Okay, brief me guys.

Meanwhile, yes, let's have that Laurel & Hardy boxset - and place your bets that I spend as much on tracking down the omitted films (Fra Viavolo, Bonnie Scotland, Flying Deuces, Babes in Toyland and I assume Atoll K, The Bullfighters, Nothing But Trouble, The Big Noise, The Dancing Masters, Jitterbugs, Air Raid Wardens, A-Haunting We Will Go and Great Guns - the post Hal Roach Fox and MGM features).

Whilst musing on classic comedies it strikes me that I should price the Harold Lloyd complete set again, and see what other Keaton is out there (not that I've watched the five DVD set I have). I don't want to start on Chaplin. Yet

Came home with a box of Belgian chocolate biscuits which will be transformed into a Useful Tin For Keeping Things In and watched the finale of Seinfeld. I think I need to watch something different before I do season four of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Maybe some of the inexplicably purchased Hitchcock films.

On Collecting Works

You'd hope when a DVD had a title like Collected Shorts or 32 Short Films that Amazon (or the online retailer of your choice) would feel the need to list the contents, since the picture of the cover isn't always clear enough. Sometimes they have "Includes ..." and then a list, but there's no way to be certain if that is complete or partial. Other times you are dependent on reviews.

Given how many boxsets there are on the market these days, this is an issue. They start overlapping. And if the online sites don't give you complete information, it can get expensive. More expensive. Or you end up with two copies of Juno and the Paycock (The Early Hitchcock Collection and The Collection).

( Cut for Obsessive Compulsion )