I expected a lot better. I don’t know exactly why but this just grates on me. It tries to be eclectic without really finding a unique voice. Crazy was excellent and Just a Thought is OK but the album is just bleh on the whole.

What is this really about?

On the surface it’s about a creative challenge, but it might be a study of two filmmakers. Lars Von Trier seems cruel and his films are full of cruelty, but they are also ultimately human.

At the end, Lars admits to perhaps trying to bring Jørgen Leth out of a slump or a depression but also that in trying to be Jørgen’s saviour he is rescuing himself, or that part of himself that is like his idol.

Absolutely brilliant. Funny, intense and very British.

This is a great documentary featuring some really great characters. Guy Clark is particularly funny. The subject matter is quite bleak, starting with the damage done to Townes’ mind by insulin shock therapy and going kind of downhill from then on. It’s amazing he lived as long as he did.

The music is particularly haunting and you get a good sense of why so many people consider him a great songwriter. Even despite the slide-guitar drenched shmaltzy Nashville version of Pancho and Lefty that crosses the line into that horrible mush that is modern country.

My most memorable part is when a Dutch interviewer asks him why his songs are all so sad and he replies that they aren’t sad, they’re hopeless.

Really quite bad, and yet good enough to be forgivable.

Grainy like a pear, not much flavour, and not much of it.

Kind of like a little orange. Very sour. You’re supposed to eat the skin but it tastes bad. Tough and nasty.

Like a giant orange but with unpleasant looking skin. Not too bad.

Great book! Better than I was expecting.

It creates a framework within which you can capture all of your responsibilities and plans and organise them efficiently. I was a little dismayed at times because some aspects were glossed over pretty quickly but David Allen writes quite generally to allow you to incorporate your own ideas and methods into the overall framework.

The unexpected benefit of using this system is how great it makes you feel to have things all written down or stored in some fashion and easily accessible. It doesn’t give you the energy to do everything you have to do, but it shows you how to use the energy you do have to its best advantage.

While Proust’s writing is convoluted enough to make reading him require a certain amount of concentration, it is always a pleasure. He dissects at length the meaning of all gestures, tones of voice, turns of phrase or even shafts of light. I was left feeling that no two gestures are the same, that each and every smile, for example, is unique, and while it may borrow something from the idea of a smile that we have learned to recognise, it is always imbued with the character of its giver and translated in the mind of its observer. Like phrases in a piece of music, it is copied yet transformed, built upon or expressed more subtly, given more meaning by juxtaposition with other emotions, other gestures, or even inverted to portray its opposite.

The names we give our interactions are useful conventions that aid understanding but they also limit our interpretation of the world around us. Proust’s world, though seemingly made up of very little, is rich with meaning, and he conveys this with great precision and insight.