Friday 20/3/15 - Homework Sucks, Nice Turtleneck, Mr Bond, & This Week's Wristwatches.

- Friday 12:49pm ADST - 

Last weekend
                      I got under the house and got rid of some junk that had been there since the previous owners lived here back in the Nineties. You know, one of those chores that you just put off for years and years. Finally done, now that the house has sold. My hands required some hard-core cleaning by the time I was done. I've always loved the packaging of Solvol soap. It's so 1950s industrial. Added a few more scratches to the Seiko 7002. Which is fine. That's what this watch is for, after all.

Monday, Tuesday

                             This week's trudged along with no major highs or lows. The cat has had an annoying habit of leaping up at the front door at around five or six o'clock in the morning. She's been doing this on and off now for a few years. It got old a long time ago. Usually, when she's patient, she'll sit at the base of the door and stare up at the handle. This is the cue for one of us suckers to go and open the door to let her out.

However, from time to time, she makes a half-hearted leap for the door handle, resulting in her four paws making a soft thud when she lands. It beats me that she hasn't figured out that she can't actually open the door latch with her paws. 

I have begun hanging an empty plastic bag from the door handle in an effort to prevent her from making these leaps in the early hours. Seems to be working. Of course, she reaches into her bag of annoying tricks and begins meowing as she paces throughout the house while my wife and I try to get our last hour or two of sleep. 

Pain in the neck, sometimes, that cat.

I had the Omega Railmaster on. Still plowing through The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell. This copy has a smaller print than I'm used to and I find I'm only getting through seven or eight pages a night. Pretty good so far. Rindell has a nice turn of phrase.

Wednesday

                  Continuing with an assignment which involves a lot of hunting around for the required info. Which is really irritating. I've been feeling a little crappy about my studies lately. Two subjects left, so close to the end of it all, and there doesn't appear to be any work available in the field. I emailed my local council a couple of weeks ago to ask if library jobs tend to become available, since I haven't seen any come up in the last two years or so since I began my course. 

I got a blanket reply telling me to check the council website for any jobs. Well, I knew that! 

Anyway, onwards and upwards. I'll continue with this assignment this week and then spend the majority of next week looking for work. Still had the Railmaster on;

And, earlier today, a new 'teaser' poster was unveiled for SPECTRE;

And Twitter was awash with a mixture of positive comments as well as complaints along the lines of "Bond should be wearing a suit", "Where's his tuxedo?" (do people still say 'tuxedo'?), "That's not Bond, where's his suit?", etc, etc. 

Pack of dummies.

Cinematic Bond has a history of wearing this type of get-up before going out to kick some ass. Connery wore a similar outfit in the failed infiltration of Goldfinger's factory, just prior to the laser and No-Mister-Bond,-I-expect-you-to-die! scene in 1964;

Steve McQueen dressed similarly in Bullitt (Dir: Peter Yates) in 1968;

Roger Moore did the turtleneck thang in his Bond debut,  Live And Let Die;

                                                                picture courtesy of www.moviestillsdb.com

And, in recent years, animated TV spy Sterling Archer has made a big deal of wearing a tactical turtleneck sweater. It's pretty funny when he goes on and on about how he single-handedly brought this garment into spy fashion as a tactical item, referring to it as a 'tactleneck'. Politically incorrect, and full of some low-brow moments, it's one of the funniest shows on TV;

And Lana Kane is awesome!

Anyway, back to Bond and the turtleneck. I grew up on the Roger Moore Bond movies and, when I got older and watched other action films throughout the '80s and '90s, I noticed that the heroes seemed more appropriately dressed for their missions, as opposed to Bond wearing a suit (mostly) at a time when a tactical outfit would have been more suitable.

It was refreshing to see Pierce Brosnan wearing a more mission-appropriate outfit in the Third Act of Goldeneye in '95. Lightweight khaki cargo-type pants and an olive-green shirt. This made sense in the context of the story, since he was flying in to sunny Cuba, but the addition of the tactical vest, with its numerous pockets, perfectly suited Bond in this stage of the story. He'd have looked out of place in this setting wearing one of his Brioni suits.

So, for me, regardless of the fact that I've always viewed Bond as a superhero in a suit, there are times when he needs to dress correctly for an occasion and a dark outfit made up of a close-fitting pullover/sweater, along with dark trousers are as 007-ish to me as his dinner jacket and bow tie. Capped off with a shoulder holster for his Walther PPK and Mr. Bond is ready to rumble.

It's for this reason that I quite like this new poster for SPECTRE. For a Bond fan, this is the (modern) film where 007 goes up against his greatest foe and he needs to look the part.  So I say pooh-pooh to those of you who think the poster should have shown Daniel Craig wearing a suit. I'm sure there'll be plenty of instances where Bond wears suit and tie in this film, as evidenced already by photos taken during production. He is James Bond, after all.

Friday

       I think today will be a quiet one around here. I might just take a few pictures of the next few items to sell on eBay. Although, the light’s not great for taking vibrant photos today, but no matter.

I have multiple copies of wristwatch catalogues from various brands that I accumulated during my time in the industry. I was thinking that maybe I’ll give the Australian Horological Society a call and see if they’d like to have a copy of each for their archives/library. This is assuming, of course, that they actually have an archive or library. Last time I looked them up, there was just an e-mail address, so this leads me to think that it’s an organisation run by volunteers or enthusiasts. There may not be a physical address where I could take these catalogues. For all I know, the Horological Society meets three or four times a year in a rented council hall or board-room.

I think this will require some further investigation.  Something to tackle later. 

Anyway, that's it this week. Thanks for reading and have a great weekend, all!