Chatterbox Thursday

Classic doing not meeting women wrong. The women I don't meet would only be interested in slightly flabby inefficient men. Sod putting effort into looking got, or hot, or whatever you meant.

I had a whole post about the gym and machines n'stuff. The site crashed and swallowed it, I knew this place had sense.

In short, machines for show, free weights for a pro. Most machines are very poor replacements, ok if you have an injury or to supplement an existing routine but they mainly exist in gyms because it looks fancy.

'Heading the "Hands off our Irn Bru" petition is joiner Ryan Allan from Ayr.

He has already made preparations to preserve his favourite drink and has a stockpile for "when he is hungover".'

Afternoon all,

Finally got round to working on my dissertation, looks like a trip into uni tomorrow to finish it off. So back on the cheese sandwich diet.

TV - watched the first of the new Black mirror episodes. Top class with a good twist. Liking that they can vary episode length to suit the story.




After a chemistry lecture a long time ago about the mechanics of how they can get so much sugar into irn-bru I moved onto diet irn-bru. You adapt to it very quickly. The big juice scandal of recent years was scrapping the 30p refund for returning your glass bottle.

Home-gym - surely running is the only way to go. Free, good for the heart and excellent training for running away from the mutants that'll be stalkng the land when Trump launches his nuclear holocaust later this year.

If that's the case Ryan is taking the whole hair of the dog thing to another level.

All I remember of Ulysses (apart from the theme tune obviously) is an episode where he was faced with some sort of tragic dilemma, something like having to decide to sacrifice his crew or somesuch. I remember finding it quite traumatic as a kid.

Lenin's books.

China Mieville's October is in my to-read pile. I assume it is good.

Sheila Fitzpatrick's The Russia Revolution is readable and informative.

I'm not a proper history geek though.

I would say Orlando Figes's books on Russia are excellent, but then you'd know who I am.

ancientblogger.com (the 'about' section has links to my iTunes and Libsyn podcasts). It's also on the main page. New website so excuse the paucity of content.
@ancientblogger (usually have links aplenty to my stuff on there).

I like the "very short introductions" from Oxford University Press, although they vary in quality and have been accused of dumbing down.

As Rolling said, Orlando Figes is probably the answer, although I notice that there is also a very recent one on the topic by a Yale emerita, Laura Engelstein, called "Russia in Flames" (covering 1914-1921), that I would like to have a look at.