Of Such Small Pleasures

~ So there I was walking back from Largs Bay late in the afternoon, when I looked out to sea and saw this spectacular rain cloud just off the coast. The sun is directly behind the cloud which accounts for the ‘backlighting’ effect. The jetty on the right is the Largs Bay Jetty.

This image was taken with the camera on my Nokia 6280 mobile phone! If I had taken my digital camera with me, it would look as truly magnificent as it actually was. As always, when I don’t have my digital with me, I always seem to miss great photographic opportunities. You’d think I’d learn – but no, I never seem to.

I am grateful at least, for having my phone cam with me.

Again, of such small pleasures as these are my days made whole!

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Book Shopping

~ I seem to have rekindled my love affair with books – not that books and I ever fell out of love. It’s just that since I divested myself of 90% of the hundreds of books I used to own, I have tried not to replace them with others, and up until recently I have keep my book purchases to an absolute minimum.

Since members of the extended family have opened a second hand bookshop on Semaphore Road (the Book Box), I have taken a renewed interest in printed literature, and I now keep a look out for books I think they may be interested in, or just as importantly, books I am interested in.

Most of what I try and get for myself are related to travel in some way, since that is my main interest at the moment, but that doesn’t stop me from grabbing other topics of interest.

Today, while my niece and I were out and about, we passed a small community library near Henley Beach that was selling off some old stock. Titles were going out for ridiculous prices. The most expensive books were 50c each, and the cheapest 10c. As I said to my niece, what is the point of selling books that cheaply? At 10c a book you might as well be giving them away. At least make them all 50c each.

Anyway, I bought four titles, for which the woman behind the counter wanted to charge me 50c!
I said, That’s too cheap, and gave her $2.00 instead.

I bought the screenplay to Stanley Kubrick’s last movie, Eyes Wide Shut (1999); a book called, The Man Who Saved Britain (2006) about James Bond; J.M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K (1983); and Ultimate DVD: The Essential Guide to Building Your DVD Collection (2004).

Eyes Wide Shut is particularly interesting since it reprints in full the original Arthur Schnitzler novel, Dream Story (1926) on which EWS was based.

I bought Ultimate DVD on the basis that when I randomly flipped it open, the first film I landed on was Sergio Leone’s western masterpiece, Once Upon a Time in The West. Since the author also referred to it as a masterpiece, I knew I was in good hands.

The Editor-in-Chief of the book is Peter M. Bracke, who apparently started a DVD focussed web site called, DVDFILE.COM back around the year 2000.

Unfortunately, he only chooses 100 films to include in his ultimate guide. As you might expect with any selection like this, what gets left out is just as important as what gets included. I was disappointed to see that several of my all time favourites were not selected: Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, and Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch in particular. At least he had the good taste to include another favourite, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.

His criteria seems to be DVDs that include lots of extras such as director commentaries, photo galleries, historical and documentary material, interviews, and such like. Since the book was published, a new Blade Runner box set is available, and if Bracke ever produces and updated version of the book I’d be surprised if Blade Runner didn’t get a mention.

You may no longer be able to find a copy of this book, but you can visit the DVDFILE.COM website any time you like – so why not visit now. Image: Terry Gilliam's Brazil

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Retail Therapy

~ Went out for some retail therapy late this afternoon.

On Monday, while in Rundle Mall, Shiels the jeweller had a huge sale on. Actually, I’m not even sure if the it was a Shiels outlet I was looking at!

I was interested in buying a new watch, since my current model is quite some years old, and had stopped working. In the end, I didn’t buy, but since today was ‘pay day’, I decided to go to West Lakes Mall and check out the Shiels there. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the model or make of watch that caught my eye on Monday, which reinforces the notion that I was in the wrong store.

However, not to be denied, I coughed up $129.00 for a new Citizen watch. It appears to be an E6 BLU ARAB DATE 100M TT GENTS DISC model. At least, that’s what the sales docket says. Which is to say it has a blue face plate, displays the date, is water resistant to 100 metres, is designed for males, and I assume has a round face which accounts for the ‘disc’ comment.

Just to cap things off, I then walked 15 metres down the Mall, and paid another $15.00 to replace the battery in my old watch, which now appears to be working just fine.

So why didn’t I save myself $114.00 I hear you ask.

Well, I’m glad you did.

Retail Therapy, that’s why.

It was time to treat myself to something special, and this watch just happened to be the thing I felt I needed. I have decided that I will continue to wear my old watch during the day, and the new Citizen whenever I am going out. It will in effect serve as my ‘dress’ watch.

By the way, the watch looks 100% better than the poor photograph of it illustrating this entry.

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The Incredible Power of ‘Yes’

~ I started reading Yes Man, by Danny Wallace, yesterday.

I haven’t seen the movie with Jim Carrey in the lead role (not one of my favourite actors), but I may just take a look once I finish the book.

I love the premise of Yes Man, although as a general philosophy of life, it has its limitations.

Essentially, Wallace decides to implement major changes to his life by adopting the philosophy to ‘Say Yes More.’ That’s it, but what a philosophy it turns out to be, getting Wallace into all sorts of odd situations that could at any moment be incredibly positive, or downright dangerous.

The key to the success of this philosophy is to keep it as much as possible to yourself, at least in the first stages of implementation. Clearly, if everyone knew you were going to say ‘Yes’ to everything, some would be happy to take advantage of you, if only just to test your resolve.

“Do you have ten bucks on you?”

“Yes.”

“Can I have it?”

“Yes...”

Or how about…
“Is that your car?”

“Yes.”

“Can I take it for a drive?”

“…umm..,”

Well, it’s not hard to see what sort of difficulties one could very quickly get oneself into here. However, the general principals of the concept are good.

If you feel you are stuck in a rut, and need motivation to get out of it, adopting the ‘Say Yes More’ approach to life could be just what you are looking for. Far too often we are afraid to get outside our comfort zones because we are afraid of what my happen to us.

What Danny Wallace discovered is that more often than not, the situations he found himself in turned out to be positive rather than dangerous or unpleasant ones. He began to meet people from all walks of life who he would normally not meet, talk to or associate with. Some were weird, some wonderful, and others truly bizarre, but the experience did not leave him bitter, scarred or triple-locking his front door.

The book is insightful, constantly funny, and a very good read.
Visit Danny’s website here…

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