Daytime TV is worse than flu

I should consider myself lucky for life could be a whole lot worse. I’ve been consumed by a particularly bad bout of flu for much of this week. I’m lucky as it should only last a few days with home remedies and conventional medicine within easy reach. The only intolerable side effect that I suffered was being subjected to formulaic soul-sapping daytime TV. However, that got me thinking. A fate far worse than suffering from the flu could be inhabiting a world such as this:

You live in a two-storey house surrounded by a white picket fence in a village called Midsomer. Your circle of friends include Jessica Fletcher, Rosemary and Thyme. Your GP is Dr Sloan and you share the occasional beer with Dr Quincy. Your child is completing some homework and asks you what “life expectancy” means.

High temperature, cold sweats, sore throat and runny nose all seem far more tolerable now.

For more opinion on film and TV shows, check out On the box.

Gorilla tactics

I’m getting to the point where I’m incredibly frustrated with the rotten state of mens fashion. Where has comfortable inside leg space gone? Has it been built over with dual-use social housing schemes when I wasn’t looking? Is the clothing industry suffering a worldwide shortage of common sense? Please, I’m not boasting about my measurements but it’s becoming an unbelievable waste of my precious time to scour affordable shops for trousers or jeans that fit my appendages. So much so that I now feel like dressing in something a little more roomier than Gap’s latest loose fit offerings. I have of late desired to commute to and from work in a gorilla suit. Firstly to wade in the joy of space and secondly to observe my fellow commuters’ reactions to something totally out of the ordinary. I’ll keep you posted on how this develops…

Facebook is not that evil

I recently caught up with some colleagues I worked with almost a year ago. I like to think that I have friends in the world of military intelligence. Specifically, they work for an organization which provides open source intelligence on all things military for almost every country in the world.

They work hard and play hard. So much so, that one day I arranged to meet for some frames of pool in one of the more salubrious bars in the one-horse town in which they’re based.

We sipped very sensible pints of coca-cola (they being on duty) and racked up a decent number of frames in the couple of hours they could spare. The banter and conversation flowed like the good old days as we reminisced and updated each other with the latest developments in our areas of expertise. Not a lot different to the numerous social interactions at Facebook where one can buy virtual rounds of drinks, post funny videos and comments on walls, nudge, wink or even poke someone, and find out about others through various personality tests.

But the harsh reality of not getting much ‘table time’ in recent months was about to bite. The rub of the green baize, or more specifically the awkward jaws of the middle pockets, was my undoing. In Facebook I’m saved from the scalpel-like incisive effects of real life. It has spared me from the real time humiliation of being eight-balled in full view of my social network.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year Everyone!

Here’s wishing you good health, much wealth and more happiness in all that you do in 2008.

Don’t optimize. Just keep it real!

Millensmind

New posts in new pages

Check out my mad ramblings under the tabs above. Anyone know how to post to pages?

A polished head and fresh mind

My mind was blank. It was numbed by cold autumn winds and winter frost. The negative externality of a grade 0 cut. The positive was the West Indian lime tonic treatment and head buffed to a visible shine. Now I am back with suitable headwear under which I can germinate my collected thoughts.

Hidden gems

They were decadent dim sums. The Cooking Princess invited us into her kitchen, on the edge of the Thames, for an evening of instruction, indulgence and interesting bird calls.

The workshop consisted of Princess demonstrating at the front of the class while we students coiffed ginger and lemongrass cocktail while taking notes and offering the wisdom of experience to our peers. We soaked up the chemical composition of ingredients, the physical science of the cooking processes, sourcing of groceries and got our hands dirty with mixing and kneading. (A skillfully deployed act of delegation and energy efficiency, must remember that next time I invite guests round for dinner.)

Break-out sessions included constructing dumplings, spring rolls and other oriental snacks in the sophisticated soiree canape style.

My fellow student Sunnygirl even attempted to sabotage my creations by stabbing them with her sumpremely sharpened chopsticks, claiming she was making faces in the dough so that happy smilies would greet the eventual consumers. I saw the funny side and had a stab at hers but was caught chopstick-handed by Princess and reprimanded. Why do I always get caught out in these situations?

With the filling roasted and the dough kneaded, class was ready for the final build. The royal command clearly stated “take a digestible piece of filling” and push into the dough then fold dough round the filling. Of course, being the subversive student I’m prone to be on occasion, I decided my sums shouldn’t be dim and spooned some chilli sauce into one of my dumplings. However, being the not-so-consciencious student meant I’d forgotten to place a ‘mark’ on said compromised dumpling. Hence, when my raw dums were added to the class’s batch, the hidden gem was lost in the mix.

Luckily, tasting each dish that was made meant we were considerabley full after a couple of hours, no doubt the abundance of dough being the major contributing cause of our bloatedness. I think my ‘bomb’ remained undiscovered. Time and comments posted here will tell.

Bombing search indexes may be over. Obliterating real-world taste receptors continues unchecked and unchallenged….

The animal’s trough

Lunchtimes in Holborn can be pleasant. Like when the usual gust of wind up Kingsway drops to a light breeze and the sun streams through the trees along the road. Lincoln’s Inn Field beckons and a picnic awaits. Or the secret passages of Covent Garden become corridors bathed in gold and invite deeper exploration.

Unfortunately, London appears of late to have escaped the ravishes of global warming and returned to those familiar “Wimbledon’s here” downpours and thunderstorms. And now I see how formulaic lunchtimes are at these times.

Following the grey brick road, off to Sainsbury we go and the wisdom of the crowds’ hunt-and-gather tactics become so glaringly obvious. So much so that I become even more frustrated and worked-up of a lunchtime having been saturated with constant messages of how wonderfully well our ‘competition’ performs. The crowd is beginning to anger me.

And I imagine the instigators of this crowd mentality are patting themselves on their collective backs for engineering this contemptable behaviour.

Like cattle on a farm being fed by the farmer, in we trundle one by one to the great feeding trough. There the herd disperses but only to the length of the trough. The same results are presented and the herd makes those familiar and safe choices, content that they are being fed and satisfied that the volume of feed appears endless. No protesting moo or bleat or crow raised for the same feed delivered every day, arranged in the same unimaginative way to the point that the herd instinctively knows where to go for each of their fills.

In realisation of what has been happening to me of these lunchtimes, I am now driven to ensure my hunt for brain and stomach food is not controlled by the seasons nor by the herd. I’m off to find those bejewelled paths to fields of gold…

Fremdschamen

I must recount to you an incident that occurred a few weeks ago. If I don’t, it will annoyingly remain in my cache and rear its ugly head like a nasty search result long since forgotten.

Fremdschamen: a case of feeling embarassment for another who suffered an accident. I’d like to think it was a holy blessing. It was, after all, Pinot Grigio, the blessed ‘water’ of holy Italy. My fellow diners may disagree.

It was a team get-to-know-thou dinner on the 5th floor of Harvey Nicks. Plush surroundings and waiting staff with gastronomic accents and flourishes. On The Box, Bonn Voyage, The Compulsive Theorist, Bill on Business, Kristen and yours truly were imbibing and engourging round the table.

I had taken a large slurp of said holy water while BonViveur recounted a joyously memorable story from his youth. In true style, he ended with a witty quip to which the small audience erupted in laughter and I water-cannoned K and BonViveur. MIAH was collateral, The Compulsive Theorist catching a ricochet of sorts.

I spent the rest of the evening reassuring those in the blast area that this was truly a one-off, that this accomplished host had never before suffered this monumental embarassment, and that my glass would remain firmly on the table.

If you were there, you would have experienced fremdschamen.

Compressed meat

I HATE CORNED BEEF!

I feel compelled to visit my local Tesco Extra and obliterate every instance of it from their shelves. I can’t wait to have the power to clean the world of corned beef. It’s all wrong.