Chopin makes for an uncannily perfect, if not overly original, soundtrack to a quiet evening of sub-freezing outdoor temperatures.

How can xkcd always be so spot-on?

It’s irritating.

So I was wondering:

Is a sudden resurgent bout of infatuation for the lyrics of Syd Barrett and Roger Waters at an adult age, an early warning sign of dementia?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go play that Ummagumma album backwards again…

When your name sounds anything like “Vladimir Vapnik” or “Alexey Chervonenkis“, you just should not be allowed a career in mathematics by the cliché police.

No offense meant to our Russian mathematician friends.

Friday night, following a lengthy explanation of the English word “vicarious”…

Aya-chan: Uhn. I see. Then I think maybe I am bi-carious…

Or maybe just “confused”?

Her: You know: vodka grapefruit and mini-twix does not make for a proper breakfast…

Him: Oh yea? Well, waking me up for sex at 5am to kick me out of bed by 6 does no make for a proper wake-up either.

It appears that I am geared to turn sixteen at the end of this week (I started counting the years backwards a while back).

In celebration, a couple merry friends and I, will be drinking, spinning records and being a general nuisance to the gentle people of Shibuya, on Friday, August the 24th. This is all taking place at Cozmo’s Bar, from 9pm on (presumably until last train’s time).

So feel free to pop by and have a drink or ten with us !

You know there are serious problems with your motivation levels when you’d rather spend the day reading up Agrawal’s [sublimely elegant but entirely irrelevant] PRIMES is in P paper than do actual work.

I am not sure there is any delicate way to put it, so I’m just gonna lay it out there. Might save some people a few bucks, who knows.

These allegedly “bigger” Japanese brands: a crass marketing ploy, it turns out.

I guess it is now time to start hunting for boxes of prophylactics bearing pictures of elephants or dinosaurs…

We interrupt regular programming to announce you the death of Tony Wilson.

If you ever were 14 year old, please pay respects: he is the one to whom you owe royalties for those bouts of awkward teenage moppiness, spent lying on your bed in the dark, listening to comically depressing music. And a fucking genius.

Eight and a half women is probably an even stranger movie. Slightly less awesome, though.

Eight & a half definitely is a strange movie.

I suppose it might be a bit late to ask him… But nevertheless: could Glenn Gould please just shut. the. fuck. up.

Glen: we know you’re a bloody genius, and you do temper that clavier mighty well indeed. But seriously: ENOUGH WITH THE HUMING ALREADY. It is driving me batshit crazy (not that I need much these days).

Thanks.

Have you ever noticed how, sometime, you feel so great about life that the most catastrophic news barely manage to scratch past your happiness before slipping away unnoticed…

But then, when things have come crashing down and you feel utterly miserable about everything, inside or outside, you cannot bring yourself to care, let alone rejoice, about the sort of good news you’d been waiting with baited breath for months until then.

All that in an endlessly repeating sequence, it seems.

I think we need a name for that strangely cyclical phenomenon…

Despite my tummy’s strong disapproval of last night’s excesses, I shall soon be heading north for a [supposedly] relaxing week-end in the land of plentiful, cheap, yummy Indian food (been craving a real tikka massala for months now).

See ya on the other side.