Excellence, donkeys and tea strainers

It really is quite a gloomy looking today (or at least it was before night fell). I do wish the weather would get it's arse in gear and either be nice and sunny or start bucketing it down with rain. All this in between, overcast nonsense is very tiresome.

Despite the weather I am feeling inexplicably upbeat today. My mood can be partly put down to Jolie Holland, and her really rather excellent Escondida album... Well I fell in love with a boy who has a real live romance with a train. Music is particularly nice this week as I've got the office all to myself, so I've been able to use speakers instead of headphones. I think that Escondida may well be my favourite album of the last 12 months, at the moment I'd say it was a toss up between that and Kanye West's The College Dropout.

I watched Dogville this weekend. I remember wanting to go see it when it came out in Geneva a couple of years ago, but for some reason I didn't get round to watching it. I was surprised at how well the chalk lines on the floor, for scenery, worked. I'd thought it might have been too distracting, but found myself entirely willing suspend disbelief. I was saddened to hear that they had removed the butchered donkey scenes from the next film in the trilogy, Manderlay, as Lars Von Trier didn't want the row about it to overshadow the film. I'm not saddened because I particularly want to see butchered donkey (the cow is something of a one off for me), or because I worry that the donkey died in vain, but just because if the director wanted to have scenes of a dead donkey in his film then I think he should be able to. But I suppose when there are so many people with so little to do and so much time on their hands, they have to find things to kick up a fuss about.

In other news, Deadwood is still absolutely bloody brilliant. And for any readers of the male persuasion aren't you pleased that you live in a day and age where there are better methods than sticking a thin metal rod up (or should that be down) your penis to discover whether or not you have kidney stones in your bladder. Although I imagine it would not be a good deal more pleasant if you come equipped with female plumbing.

Incidentally, I was just looking at a kidney stones webpage which included the following: The doctor usually asks you to save the passed stone(s) for testing. (You can catch it in a cup or tea strainer used only for this purpose.). I really quite like the parenthetical addition, although I'm fairly convinced I could piss through a tea strainer and then remember to thoroughly wash it before I used it for its more usual purpose.)