Dispatches: In God’s Name has just finished its airing on Channel 4, and holy holy fuck are these people completely mental. The filmmaker, David Modell, has written two editorials in the Independent and Telegraph.
A couple of interesting points:
- A magistrate needed to check with a lawyer to see if his resignation over his own religious beliefs gave him a legal leg to stand on in an employment tribunal (wow, I wouldn’t have wanted to appear before him given his apparent familiarity with the law).
- Anti-abortion activists said nothing about promoting sensible and practical sex education to minimise the need for abortion.
- Christian fundamentalists say we can’t tolerate Islam because it’s intolerant (and they say Americans are the ones with no sense of irony).
- Most unfortunately, the freak who needs to see the word ‘Jesus’ taped to the ceiling above his head to prevent bad thoughts when he wakes up in the morning is getting married, which means he might breed.
Why do people always feel the need to meddle in other people’s personal lives? *sigh*
Hundreds watch New Kids comeback:
Some fans had been waiting for 48 hours so they were able to get the best view of the group - brothers Jordan and Jonathan Knight, Donnie Wahlberg, Danny Wood and McIntyre - on stage.
Ya know, I would’ve thought that most of us fans (yes, this I must admit*) would have got over the tack that is NKOTB by now. I wonder about this new single — I’ll probably listen to it over the Internet and giggle. I somehow doubt they can match or surpass the songwriting greatness of Gary Barlow.
Ah — found it on YouTube. They do know they’re not teenagers any more, right? The quality of that track should only appeal to tweens who can’t know any better. It’s pathetic.
* I wonder if my sister’s pal Gwen will admit to it — she had a full-length, 1:1 scale portrait of Jordan Knight painted and managed to blag her way in to see them when they performed in Singapore in 1992. I just went to the concert with my mates.
- watched Jonathon Ross
- went to Body Pump (and was encouraged to also give Body Attack a go)
- hung out with my cousin and his family (wow, that baby can talk — her favourite thing to say is, “I don’t know?!”)
- had a few drinks with Kirstie (it was her birthday)
- did the six-kilometre walk around the loch in Strathclyde Park in aid of St. Andrew’s Hospice
- did the weekly shop in Asda (in Hamilton this time)
- watched old episodes of Cold Case
A question for you domestic gods and goddesses (who also work full-time jobs) out there:
How the fuck do you find the time?
I get up at 6am and am usually not home till well after 7pm. Then we need to make dinner, our packed lunches for the following day, wash the dishes, and I have a shower. I try to start heading to bed at 10pm on school nights. There is important television that needs to be watched (I’ve gotta get mindless gratification somehow). As a result, we end up eating out more than we planned. And I never get enough sleep.
I am completely aware of the OAMC method (Once A Month Cooking), but our freezer isn’t big enough to hold that amount of food (even if it’s Once A Week Cooking) — Neil and I get to use one shelf in our two-shelf freezer, as Neil’s sister loves her ready meals and ice lollies. Our shelf currently contains two pizzas (in case of emergency), paus, and a small pack of yong tau foo.
These may sound like absolutely imbecilic follow-up questions, but I feel the need to restate the fact that I have no natural talent nor interest in cooking. I only want to eat good food that isn’t likely to cause heart failure or high blood pressure in the immediate future and I get tired of eating the same food all the time.
How far can we go in prepping our dinners so all we need to do when we come home is bung them under the grill or throw them into the saucepan / wok?
By that I mean we shouldn’t even have to think about any further prep beyond maybe cooking rice or pasta. Plus we like chicken and beef. And fish. I like the lamb but the Neil doesn’t.
Can you store pre-chopped herbs (garlic, ginger, onion, mostly) and vegetables (green leafies) and will they last a week in the fridge?
I’m currently assuming all I need to do to protect chopped onions and garlic from going off too soon is to soak them in oil, but then since I know nothing about cooking I’m probably wrong. Would clingfilm work for the others?
I’m obsessed with these wee containers that promise not to leak smells from Ikea and I’d love a reason to buy them.
Are there any good alternatives to tomato-based pasta sauces, besides garlic and olive oil, that don’t go off too quickly?
As a general rule, I hate hot tomatoes, and cream seems to go off really quickly. To keep using olive oil and garlic will wear thin. Not that we’ve started yet, but I anticipate the boredom.
What really is the best way to freeze seafood?
The raw prawns in Asda are in a ‘protective ice glaze’, does that mean we just need to make sure our seafood is damp? WTF?
(The title of this post comes from my favourite line in a book — well, manuscript — I’m reading right now.)
Burma and Zimbabwe ’s leaders are in the news for being totally paranoid, incompetent, and brutal.
My fantasy would be to have a bunch of countries put their military and aid resources together and smuggle the ordinary populations out and settle them where they will be treated more fairly, leaving the leaders to wake up one morning to realise that they have no population to oppress, they have no labour resources. No labour, no GDP. Being in power suddenly doesn’t seem like such a great idea.
Like hell that’s going to happen, but it’s nice to dream about logistical impossibilities.
(Wouldn’t work with Tibet, though — the CCP would be glad to be rid of the native Tibetans.)
Dr Who fan in knitted puppet row:
“This lady, with the best will in the world, wanted to share with friends, family and fans.
“But there were some unscrupulous people taking these patterns and using them on eBay to make profit for themselves. Unfortunately, we had to get to the source of the patterns - and that was her website.”
Um, how about prosecuting the offenders on eBay, then letting her know that her pattern was being abused and advising her to make her licence terms extremely clear?
On a related note, Web users back code for bloggers:
Three quarters of web users who have posted comment on blogs and news sites were oblivious to libel law, said the report, even though the person posting the comment, rather than the host site, would be liable for any offence.
I’m sure it won’t stop those anonymous commenters from trolling and posting death threats, though. Also, where would it apply? Is this libel law global? If it isn’t, what if the site is hosted in one country, with the blogger posting in another, and the commenter posting in yet another?
Of the 1001, I’ve read:
- Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
- Fury, Salman Rushdie
- Life of Pi, Yann Martel
- Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
- Glamorama, Bret Easton Ellis
- Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
- The Secret History, Donna Tartt
- American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
- A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
- Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul, Douglas Adams
- Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams
- The Cider House Rules, John Irving
- Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis
- The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
- The World According to Garp, John Irving
- Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
- Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
- Crash, J. G. Ballard
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson
- Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
- God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Kurt Vonnegut
- Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
- To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
- Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
- Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
- Animal Farm, George Orwell
- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
- Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D.H. Lawrence
- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Dracula, Bram Stoker
- The Time Machine, H.G. Wells
- The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
- Madame Bovary, Gustav Flaubert
- Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell
- Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
- Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
- Persuasion, Jane Austen
- Emma, Jane Austen
- Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
- Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
- Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
Of the 1001, I’d like to read:
- Drop City, T.C. Boyle
- Under The Skin, Michel Faber
- Complicity, Iain Banks
- Get Shorty, Elmore Leonard
- The Black Dahlia, James Ellroy
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
- In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
- I, Robot, Isaac Asimov
- The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells
- Hunger, Knut Hamsun
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
- Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Of the 1001, the books I read and couldn’t stand:
- Atonement, Ian McEwan
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
- Neuromancer, William Gibson
- Catch-22, Joseph Heller
- On the Road, Jack Kerouac
- The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
- Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
Having read just 49 of the 1001, I suppose that’s pretty shite. There’s so much interesting stuff that’s been published and isn’t on the list, though.