I heard the Academic Festival Overture again today, and sat through most of it impatiently awaiting the dramatic finale. It was the musical equivalent of suffering through the semblance of some sort of plot development in an Arnold Schwarzenegger film in order to watch the big Austrian wreak his formulaic mayhem. It seems like my musical tastes, like so many other preferences, haven't noticeably matured since I was a teenager.

What is it about boys and adrenaline?

(As a technical aside, I have recreated the bad typography with some poor typography of my own since my cheap digital camera didn't capture enough data to see the original very well.)

Recently a small group of friends bought me a computer to celebrate my release after a particularly long and harrowing period of enforced detainment, which was the result of a work I created at Waterloo Station during rush hour involving a goat, twenty-two chickens and a naked teenage girl. I still believe it was a valid comment on the world of commerce, though the judge, a mere servant of the establishment, took a rather different view.

I feel sorry for my poor nephews whose primary knowledge of women seems to come from playing computer games. With creations like Lara Croft as their ideals, I fear that their courtship path may be longer and more difficult than most. Or maybe not: I saw an advertisement for a bra that contorted the model's breasts so that they appeared spherical. Can whale bone corsets be far behind?

That was probably my parents' lament three decades ago, albeit without the techno- prefix. I suppose I'm just getting old.

I don't see much of a future for candle-powered vehicles, but I do admire Jeremy's fanaticism. Flame on!

Today Cathcart-Fellingham's oak lies horizontal on the grounds of his estate; every tree surgeon he consulted agreed that it won't survive the multiple amputations. At least the tree's providing lots of fun for squirrels and lawyers. That's just fine; Lord Cathcart-Fellingham has more money than brains.

This is authentic. Suitable for framing, even.

Oh well.

As old habits go, waiting for birds to fly into the frame isn't one of my more destructive practices.

Those figures suggest that a painting's worth almost seven times more than a sculpture, but that calculation only tells half the story. ARTnews didn't tell the other half, and neither will I since I don't have the necessary statistics. A lack of data has never stopped me from speculating before, though, and it won't now.

How big is the painting and how big is the sculpture? If the painting has a larger surface area than the sculpture, then it might only cost five or six times as much. On the other hand, if the comparison is made on cost per gram, I'd bet the painting might be worth a hundred times as much as the sculpture, maybe even a thousand times as much. After all, bronze weighs a lot more than oil and canvas.

Why is ARTnews only telling half the story? What are the editors trying to hide?

The brewery workers have a strong union; in practice that means no one there works before 9:00 or after 17:00. At 16:55 every day the last contents of the brewing vats are dumped into the bottling production line, and that makes all the difference. I had one bottle that was capped at 16:54; it tasted fizzy and watery albeit pleasantly alcoholic. The 16:55 bottle, though, was full of grainy sediments, fibers, and a rich, thick taste albeit pleasantly alcoholic. When it's time to drink Biere d'Alsace, it pays to shop around for the last batch of the day.

Subject: trademark infringement on your web page

Dear Sir,

It has come to my attention that your web page contains an infringing usage of the trademarked term "Dr. Beer" as follows ...

http://www.stare.com/1997/week14.html

You are probably unaware that Dr. Beer is a registered trademark (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office registration #2,080,963) belonging to me, filed in Feb. 1996 and issued in July 1997 based on usage dating from 1988. I therefore respectfully request that you remove your infringing usage of this trademark from your web page and cease using it without proper authorization in the future as your usage directly violates my trademark rights.

Who cares? Life's to short too spend in court, which is more or less what I told Dr. Beer. I also pointed out that Dr. Beer's developer has been used by photographers for decades. Since I couldn't not like a guy named Dr. Beer, I also warned him to stay away from the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, the nasty Philistines (by all accounts) who publish Ansel's books extolling the virtues of Dr. Beer's developer.

I was glad I didn't tell the new Dr. Beer to piss off; he sent me a nice reply in which he agreed most people wouldn't confuse beer with photographic developer.

Take it from Professor Beer (that's me!): don't drink any photographic chemicals with which you're not familiar.

So now you know.

What a great idea!

I can now imagine the perfect meal: Thinker Pasta and cheap Baron Romero wine. I could eat Thinker Pasta until I felt too smart, then I could drink Baron Romero until I became more stupid. Too stupid? Eat more Thinker Pasta! Beautiful!

Bon appétit!

And now you want to know why, so here's why: on 9 June 1998 my plane traveling from LHR to SFO was captured by aliens, people ("creatures" and/or "beings" is perhaps more accurate from your perspective) from another galaxy, or maybe another universe. The words are very confusing, the English language isn't yet ready to deal with the new realities I've experienced. (That's probably not true; I'm sure English is more capable and flexible than I am.)

And here's how: we were coming out of European air space into North American airspace when the 747's engines stopped. Cold. With the white noise gone, all the conversations were first amplified, then they stopped too. As the jet rose silently though the atmosphere and into the darkness of the stratosphere, everyone passed out from the lack of oxygen.

Correction: everyone passed out except me. I had so much whisky to drink that I was almost paralytic. I saw what happened next as if I dreamt it. I saw it but I can't describe it.

And now I'm one of them, or, rather, one of us. Even though nothing's changed everything's different. I'll now return to our regularly-scheduled broadcasts.