C'était dinner-time à Chatterley Hall.

Nothing posh. Un simple soûper pour deux.

Lady Constance Chatterley avait une salade. Elle était sur un diet.

Sir Clifford, dans son wheel-chair, avait une très petite salade. Il n'était pas sur un diet, mais dans un wheel-chair vous n'avez pas beaucoup d'exercise. C'est triste, really.

Mais les gens handicappés, ils ne demandent pas la pitié. La sympathie, oui. Un hand avec le wheel-chair, oui. La pitié, jamais.

La conversation était desultoire. Le traffi c était mauvais dans le town ...?

Encore un drop de mayonnaise ...? Cette sorte de chose.

Puis Sir Clifford parla.

"By the way, Connie, tu as rencontré Mellors aujourd'hui?"

"Le gamekeeper? Oui, pourquoi?"

"Tu sais. Ce sujet que nous avons discuté."

"Quel sujet?"

"Mon sexual inadequacy."

"Oh, Cliff ord! Really! Pas à meal-time!"

Je suis avec Lady Chatterley ici. Le sexual inadequacy, c'est un peu off-putting à meal-time. Avec le café et les liqueurs, peut-être, mais over la salade? Cela a un mauvais eff ect sur l'appétit.

Mais Sir Clifford insista. Il était comme ça, Cliff Chatterley.

"J'insiste, chérie. Il faut confronter les facts. Après mon wound en World War I, je ne suis pas un husband complet, et c'est très hard sur toi." Donc, j'ai fait la suggestion d'un petit fling avec Mellors, qui est un grand, jeune bloke et un Lothario, I bet!"

"Clifford, c'est dégoûtant! Un gamekeeper!"

"Ne sois pas un snob, my dear. Une petite affaire avec lui serait très bonne pour toi. Pourquoi pas?"

"Parce que je ne trouve pas Mellors tres handsome et parce que je ne trouve pas sex très intéressant et parce que je suis heureuse comme je suis."

Sir Clifford donna un shrug des shoulders.

Lady Constane fit signe au butler de rémouver les assiettes de salade.

Le butler alla à la cuisine, et répéta à la cook la conversation de Sir

Clifford et Lady Constance.

La cook la répéta à la parlour maid.

La parlour maid répéta la conversation à son boyfriend.

Son boyfriend répéta la conversation a son ami, un Monsieur David Herbert Lawrence.

"Wow!" dit Lawrence. "Un plot pour un novel là! Mais je suis sûr que vous avez la conversation le wrong way round."

"How come?" dit l'ami.

"Well, je suis sûr que Lady Constance est engagée dans une affaire passionnée avec Mellors, et que sir Clifford est furieux."

"Non, non, je ne crois pas ..."

"Si, si! C'est la seule interpretation possible."

Et David Herbert Lawrence commença son novel le next jour.

Moi, je n'ai pas l'intention de le lire.

Je trouve cette sorte de chose un peu naff.

Je suis avec Lady Chatterley là.

Vous pas?

Oui, j'en suis sûr.

Miles Kington. The Franglais Lieutenant's Woman, 1986

@sxh: newest contract requires "presentable" employees
@sxh: i don't see how they could expect to find a gq model that also happens to assemble network infrastructure

A dentist has x-rayed my jaw two times today to find out that one of the teeth will die within a few years. The one that was filled when I was a schoolboy. Fucking soviet medicine...the empire of evil collapsed almost 20 years ago but it's echo still hurts.
On the other hand there is Wanted movie on TV so I can forget about all issues and enjoy crazy racing in Moravia on old soviet cars.

Thirteen years ago, a team of researchers studying the Allan Hills meteorite found evidence that the rock might contain fossils of Martian bacteria. Now, fresh evidence makes a stronger case that Mars once contained life very similar to Earth bacteria.

Spaceflight Now is reporting that, within the next few days, NASA plans to publicly discuss new research concerning ALH 84001, the Martian meteorite found in Allan Hills, Antarctica. The research is said to strengthen the findings of the team that studied the meteorite over a decade ago and announced in 1996 that the meteorite might contain evidence of bacterial life.

The new research, detailed in a 46-page peer reviewed paper, looks at magnetic bacteria found on Earth. The researchers have closely studied magnetic bacteria and the formations they create in rocks. The bacteria leave distinctive remnants in the rock, uniquely-shaped magnetite crystals that test with a chemical purity that reflects biological, rather than geological, origins. That these remnants are unique to magnetic bacteria on Earth and are also found in the Allan Hills meteorite strongly suggests that the crystals indicate ancient bacterial life on Mars.

Critics of the original NASA report have doubted these features as reliable fossils, claiming that the shape and chemical purity could be achieved by the same thermal shock that separated the material from Mars in the first place. But new research reported in the paper disproves the thermal shock theory.

Spaceflight says that the new research isn't quite a "smoking gun," but it greatly strengthens the case for life on Mars, and could change the conversation about future NASA missions.

Via io9.com

I'm all fingers and thumbs today probably because those nerds have eventually managed to launch LHC. After embarrassing breakdowns caused by bread-dropping birds and hugely expensive repairs, the world's biggest hoax science experiment – the Large Hadron Collider – has suddenly burst into life and smashed together proton beams for the first time. We are on the verge of collapse.
And now I'm sitting in the office and trying to answer weird questions to the customer from Colombia without even knowing of the details of the problem.

[+Hobbes] I was driving by a church on the way home and on the message board out front it said "Under new management"

A Quebec white-and-blue flag on my wall tells me that one day I will rebel against present-day madness...there are three portraits of the president hanging in a cubicle of our project assistant. These people used to lick asses but it seems like they are proud of it.

Moscow...the ugliest place in the world. It's a dirty and overcrowded city populated by mongols and refugees from Caucausus that I visited last week. Hopefully, I spent just a day there. Actually, there is nothing except a duty free area at the international airport that worths to look at, but I decided to visit the city center and walk down the Red Square and surroundings to see what changed over there during last decade.
Well...it was a wasting of time. The city is still like a Mongols' camp. Hordes of mobsters-like taxi drivers are waiting for easy money on every corner, soldiers without legs are begging in metro, lemmings walking down the streets, rude officers at railway stations, gangsta-looking like militia, broken traffic lights, endless traffic jams, dust and gasoline that are everywhere - in the air, on the ground and even in people' breathe and fart. Aztec kremlin stands in the middle of the chaos as a reminder of medieval savageness. Junkies along with musicians in subway and dancing people on the train stations that force you to believe it's the last day of mankind on the Earth. A strange-looking fisherman standing on the bank of the Moscow river trying to catch a fish in gasoline water, military headquarters as a devil's lair, huge cathedral that was built on the place of a swimming pool, a government slaughterhouse building as a silent reminder of Stalin's cruelty and satan's building turned into public library. And shadows...you can see and hear them everywhere. Too many people lived and died here so cacophony of their voices became a part of daily life. Mongols, Lithuanian, French and Polish invaders, German, French and Swedish mercenaries and endless crowds of refugees and Russians.
It's a modern Babylon. So huge and cruel so the judgment day will start and probably end here when the time comes...

Today during a lunch break I was sitting in a café with a ginger girl and for some strange reason a thought about whiskey has crossed my mind. Probably it was related with red hair since I was thinking about Scotch. And about a team of New Zealand guys who are currently drilling through ice in Antarctica to uncover two crates of "Rare Old" brand of McKinlay and Co. whiskey that have been buried for 100 years after some Briton left them over there. It would be nice to join those guys and wash out the drink with pizza.
But alas! Except whiskey I was forced to fight with bureaucracy - only in Russia every time you have to fill an application form they ask you to type it in Word, print out and bring to a clerk that will demand to fill it again by hand since her scanner device is out of service. I'm still waiting for space invaders who will bring order to this land.

In Sweden I bought a yearly membership card in a swimming pool for 2300 SEK (333 USD). Here in Russia they offer me the same for 1800 USD. The only difference is the pool is located in 5 min walk from the office. Taking into account average salary in Russia and in Sweden (the latter one is a few times higher) I'm desperately waiting for oil and gas to come to the end in Siberia since it's possibly the only way for the government to stop inflating the prices.

Well...no pool for today. I'll keep reading P&P book then.

Current Mood: bored