Race (or is that stroll?) For Life

Nur and my mum, yesterday, triumphantly finishing the Race for Life in Reading. You can tell they ran all the way round, can't you? Well done, though - I'm proud of you.





And here's something I've begun to think about:

14 peaks, 24 hours....hmmm....

New tricks

Grr. You'd think I'd know by now to look before I leap. I've just had to reinstall XP on my ancient laptop after wrestling with an Ubuntu install last night - of course, afterwards I find out that some of the programs I use (Phonmap, for example) aren't compatible. The system did seem to work very well, but it simply refused to see things like my wireless card. Bloody ancient computers. So far, I've got through the main part of a day doing this.

Because You're Gormless.

It's all not going too well so far today: I was hoping to get a lot of writing done, but I seem to be being pursued by noise, distraction, more noise and rogue students talking about hairdressing and cars in a loud voice in the library while I'm BLOODY WORKING. So I've decided to take a break for a cup of coffee and scribble a few things down, just for the hell of it.
Talking of Hell, I haven't written anything about advertisements for ages. The latest beef: noticing that virtually all people in clothing/fashion/hair/makeup ads are about 5 years old. These are people who do not need tarting up, plumping up, or anything lifted, so why are they used? Advertising is all about creating our personal Shnagri-Las after all, and making us feel useless/inadequate/basically crap because we don't have this or that product, or our teeth aren't perfectly white, or our hair isn't Salon Fresh, or our car isn't purring down pristine routes. I just get pissed off at all these apparently over-privileged munchkins traipsing around in FantasyLand.
Some companies, of course, try not to use over-toned homunculi in their ads. Dove is one, with its Real Women "Campaign". I notice it doesn't use Real Trolls, however. Amazingly, Loreal use 70-something Jane Fonda in its ads for Face Glop For Raisin-Faced People. Now, Jane Fonda used to be a stunningly attractive woman, and is still so for her age. Unfortunately, in the ad, what holds me mesmerised are her teeth, which glitter blazing white in unnaturally even rows. It looks like she has an entire gobful of falsies, which makes me wonder why. After all, she is wealthy and famously health conscious, so how come it looks like she's lost all her pearlies?
I imagine she was in some kind of scrap. Perhaps she was on the piss in a bar one time and encountered a tanked up Olivia Newton-John, and they got into an argument regarding their fading revenues from old VHS fitness workout tapes. In a fit of rage, Jane glasses Olivia, who picks up a barstool and smacks her one in the mouth. Because She's Worth It.

Bloggone. (sorry, bad pun)

I'm sorry to see that (not for the first time, it must be said) Marcus has deleted his blog. I've been a consistent reader of it for quite some time, and I've often thought about how I would like to write posts that reflect what he was thinking and writing, but I've not had the time whatsoever to marshal my thoughts and write anything cogent, something that I think is a real shame. He's stopped writing it, or so it seems, because of some kind soul describing it as car crash reading. That's simply not true; it has made good reading throughout. There are certain things he has said that I disagree with - in particular, what he says about Islam, but I understand why he says it - but even so, his awareness of travelling along an important life route, and his sharing of that process, has always made enlightening reading.

I haven't been keeping this up to date once more - been busy doing study. However, I am about top throttle the idiot sitting behind me who keeps on yapping about bugger all and has put me off my stride.
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