25 October 2008

Make your bloody mind up

Or, how being trapped in a bookshop with only tea for company can make you do odd things. Namely listing all the varieties of Longmans' imprints in our database...

1796 - Longman
1798 - T.N. Longman
1800 - Longman and Rees
1805 - Longmans, Hurst, Rees, and Orme
1806 - Edward Orme & Longman, Rees, Hurst and Orme
1806-15 - Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme
1812-23 - Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown
1824-31 - Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green
1837 - Longman, Rees, Orme, and Co.
1837 - Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman
1837-41 - Longman, Orme, Brown, Green and Longmans
1842-56 - Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans
1860 - Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts
1866-69 - Longmans, Green, and Co.
1868-77 - Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer
1869-1954 - Longmans, Green, and Co.
1959 - Longmans

No, I didn't have anything better to do.

23 October 2008

How's your paranoia Charlie Brown?

Been trying not to have this self-same thought myself...*


(*The new world order puppets thought that is, not the pumpkin patch one. That would be silly. CFR stands for the Council on Foreign Relations, apparently).

02 October 2008

If I had a time machine

I'd go back to Christmas 1967 and head for New York. I'm going through piles of old music magazines and have come across a picture of Tim Buckley standing in the snow in front of random gig hoardings. On Boxing Day you could escape the sober family atmosphere and check out the Ornette Coleman Trio with John Coltrane at the Village Theatre (tickets $2-4). Then if New Year's Eve turns out to be a drag (no pun intended) cheer yourself up (or not) with the Velvet Underground & Nico any night in the first two weeks of January over on W. 46th St.
Howlin' Wolf is also in town later in the month.

Who needs the court of Louis XVI or Restoration foppery? Jazz and droning violas, that'll do me. And maybe hunt Tim down and buy him a beer while listening to the Wolf at the door, too.