Astonished

It's not an uncommon thing for parents to (wisely or unwisely) name their newborn after a celebrity, or even an event.  This happens, no doubt, all around the world.  In some cultures, the naming of the child is far more significant than in ours, for instance, where trends tend to push names rather than wisdom.   (The sort of trend that meant there were seven Michaels in one of my classes at school, back in the fifties.)

But you have to ask yourself why someone - a woman in France - would name their child, Jihad.  Was there some way in which she didn't realise the significance of this name?  Or was it just an attempt to fly in the face of the current cultural climate?   Perhaps there was intended to be some kind of humour in the naming.  We don't know.

What we do know is that the child's uncle bought him a long-sleeved t-shirt with the words, I am a bomb, on it, and he was sent to his nursery school wearing it.  On the back of the shirt were the words: Jihad, born on September 11. These words were actually true, in that the child was born on Sept 11th, 2009. 

His teacher alerted authorities about the words on the shirt, and the town's Mayor asked prosecutors to investigate.  His mother and uncle were charged with condoning a crime over the alleged reference to the Sept 11th attacks in New York.  The trial has been postponed until next March. 

Apparently, the mother was astonished at the reaction to her child's top, and seems to think the affair has mushroomed out of all proportion. 

Advantages of walking a dog

One of the advantages of a dog is that you rediscover your neighbourhood while taking him out of a walk. When my children were small we used to spend a lot of time walking up and down the hilly streets where we live, and finding all sorts of interesting stuff on the way.

Things haven't changed all that much in the intervening twenty-five years; most of the house that were there when the kids were young are still there, most of the cracks in walls, most of the stony driveways that have never been paved over, some of the houses that have never been painted, and much more. Only the people have come and gone.

And that's another interesting thing: I met a man last Saturday whom I hadn't seen for several years. Turns out he's been living down the road for at least five of those years, has married and is just about to have his second child. This evening, while out walking before the evening meal, we met two children (they were cousins, they told me) who asked if my dog was friendly. Someone on Facebook called him a furball the other day, and that's pretty much what he is - badly in need of having his first haircut, in fact. So the last thing he looks is unfriendly. But I assured the kids he was perfectly friendly, and they patted him and chatted in a way that you hardly come across in the neighbourhood these days.

And further up the road I came across a man wearing a t-shirt with 'Speaking in tongues,' 'Holy Spirit' and the like on the back. You'd think someone willing to wear that would be a pretty ardent Christian, but he told me he hadn't been to church for quite a few years. The t-shirt (and several others in different colours that he still owned) were made when he was attending a Revival church in Australia.

Dogs are great conversation starters - it wasn't until my dog stopped outside this man's house (he was unloading his van) that I noticed the t-shirt.

These sort of things have never happened with any of the cats we've owned....!

Tune in the head

I don’t know how it is with other composers, but I find when I’m working on something (as I have been on the third of the brass band pieces I’m currently writing) a tune from that piece will get itself in my head and hammer away at every opportunity. I know composers aren’t supposed to write tunes anymore (sez who?) but I write tunes still; that’s the way I am. At least two of the three ‘movements’ of this brass band collection have big tunes, ones where the tune is built up gradually from a small number of players to the whole band. Listening to it on Sibelius is quite exciting as you hear more and more instruments joining in.
But having the tune go round and round in your head for days on end is as annoying as seeing one of those funny t-shirts where you catch the words on the front but don’t have time to see what’s on the back. Or vice versa.
Or it’s as annoying as reading a review by James Berardinelli and finding that he likes a movie you hated. Or vice versa.


Photo courtesy of Steve 9091, on Flickr.com

The troubles of life

Since shrinking shirts (as opposed to shrinking violets) keeps coming up on my HitTail search results all the time, I thought I’d have another look at what’s out there on the topic.
Google picked up a site called Threadless Nude No More (Google seems to have a bit of a thing about nudity and nakedness) and coincidentally, when I checked out what a threadless t-shirt was, I came across one that had been sold recently on Trade Me, a site I’d spent a good deal of the afternoon on (between sorting out the house still). They sell t-shirts too, and advertise them thus: Don't trade naked, buy a Trade Me t-shirt!
See what I mean about nakedness? You can't get away from it.
The Trade Me seller wrote: This is one of the collection of threadless t shirts. Threadless is an organisation where artists submit their artwork to be printed on t shirts. Each t shirt has its own name and an idea behind it. this one is called "in the event of a playground" and is printed on a blue t shirt. T shirts made in USA
Anyway, the original TNMM site is also a social site, where people discuss things (mostly related to their threadless tees, I think). Under the heading, Shrinking Shirt, Alex Tong, whose user name is secondfate, asked: “I want a Threadless shirt, but they only have it in Men's Large.
If I put it through the wash @ warm, and dry it, would it be feasible for it to shrink to a Mens Small?
Advisable? no? yes?”
Not surprisingly, Alex got some very odd responses, but the general consensus seemed to be that it would better for him to tone up his body for three months and then he’d fit the shirt. Seems a rather drastic approach, and Alex was of the same opinion. Firstly, being Asian he was naturally small, and secondly, if he did build up his body in order to fit this particular Threadless, he’d then be too big for his billion other shirts.
Ah, the troubles of life.

That's Alex in the photo - he actually seems to be a bit of a shrinking violet, if the picture is anything to go by.