Flags Of All Nations - Especially Mexico

Does not compute but will give you a vague impression.

All my world-exploding thoughts came back to me yesterday and of course in reality would have trouble getting the lid off a jar of pasta sauce. One of them was about the slight (and as far as I was aware unheralded) change to the BBC News set and branding. My thought was about how the impression of an increase in detail might look good for such a set but does it actually detract from the contents of the news that is being presented. The first news programmes I watched started with a mono-tone jingle and a set of wavy lines which vanished with the music leaving the newsreader in front of a plain background maybe with a still photo illustrating the story in progress when the technology allowed. The contents were the thing - not the wonderful sci-fi environment that the presenters had to play in - Peter Snow was the only person allowed to play with graphics in those days. Now I can't help being distracted by the wonderfully-proportioned and tastefully-blurred backgrounds that look like something out of a catalogue of Constructivist art. Is El Lissitzky working in the BBC art department now? (rather apt as I am listening to Kraftwerk). It would all be wonderful on The Culture Show I suppose. Let's have Huw Edwards in a louche pose at the bar talking to Mark Kermode while Lauren Laverne "does serious" and tells it straight in the newsroom. Oh dear! That sounds like the mad colonel who tried to persuade Sue Lawley to demonstrate a condom on a banana.

I've just discovered that Mark Kermode is married to a Professor of film studies - Linda Ruth Williams. I bet it''s difficult to sit through a whole DVD in their house on a Saturday night.

Notes/Rants for this morning

Interests in common - talk about anything - Zellig. printing neatly gives a good impression - my Fs are not like Fs. The Bloomin(g) Heather kills me again and again - but it makes me feel like they have all gone out there for a last-gasp frolic in the face of the end of the world. Self-awareness - is this a sign of depression. It's catastrophe theory - not chaos - sudden tipping over into the tingling and the tears.