‮hjap‮

It's snowed a bit today. Naturally the South-East has ground to a halt, the newspapers are panicking in an apocalyptic frenzy, and Sainsburys is full of people stocking up on cans and bottled water. I expect the looting to start any minute now. Hordes of bondage-gear-clad barbarians will be clubbing each other over the head to get to the last packet of organic rocket. All because it's a bit nippy today.

I came to work in my boots and changed into my shoes once I got here. That was the total inconvenience suffered today. Other than that, the world is all pretty and white.

Jesus Christ, people, put on a jacket or something. Or you could move to the south of France, where you'll never have to worry about winter weather occurring during winter, and I won't have to listen to you.

In other news: I aten't dead. How are folks?

I will not take lectures on professionalism from a bunch of raging arseholes whose sole job is handled by an automated system, when they can't even do that right and have to get me to bail them out.

Thank Goat that libel laws don't apply to true statements.

Thanks to an impromptu meeting this morning, today's already been three hours longer than it should be, and I've spent my booze fund on taxis rushing about the place. That was before I had to deal with this defensive bitch from $AGENCY. I need a holiday.

It seems there's no escape.

The old phone died with a pathetic whimper, but the nice people at the Orange Shop told me that I was due for a free upgrade. So now I have this thing with a 3.2 megapixel camera with Zeiss lenses, radio, mp3 player, video player, and an ARM processor core driving quad-band GSM, GPRS, and UMTS. I'm told it makes phone calls too, but I've not found that function yet.

All I actually want is something that will allow me to sometimes make phone calls when I'm not near a telephone. Instead I'm lugging around a billion times the processing power of the Apollo missions on my belt, probably. Meanwhile, even as they cram unsolicited silicon into my pocket, I can't help but think about all of those proteins going unfolded.

Having said that, the radio is quite nice. I'm rapidly learning about the current standard of voiceover talent, and thus that breaking into the industry really shouldn't be very difficult. On the other hand, given the quality of the scripting, I'm not sure I want to any more.

Right. I have had it with these motherfuckin' asterisks in this motherfuckin' textual medium.

If you're going to say fuck, then for fuck's sake, say fuck. Anything less, and you merely demonstrate that you lack the courage of your convictions.

It's like anything else. Either reword the sentence so that you don't have to say fuck, or, if you want to, just say fuck. This applies for other similar words, too.

Less pathetic bowdlerization of language. More saying fuck when the word fuck is required.

The Royal Society of Edinburgh recently released a report damning VisitScotland and calling for it to be scrapped. Or so the Scotsman tells me. Actually, the RSE's press release says nothing of the kind: it barely mentions VisitScotland at all, and merely recommends that they (for a suitably nebulous they) radically reform the support structures for tourism. I haven't read the report: perhaps the report has stronger language. Perhaps the Scotsman is just being sensationalist again.

It's true that VisitScotland are, often, a bunch of incompetent morons who seem to have difficulty in the important business field of arse/elbow distinction. I'm wildly in favour of sweeping reforms, or, on bad days, the tactical nuking of Livingston; nonetheless I think scrapped is a bit strong. First of all they need to decide whether or not they're working with, or against, the accommodation providers, and then I think we can work upwards from there.

However, the knives are out now. Apparently (so the Scotsman tells me) VisitScotland had to change their information on rail travel, because FirstScotrail complained that they were being OMGMEEEAN to them. This is ironic, because the bandwagon that FirstScotrail are jumping on is just about the only movement-related thing that's happening to wagons of any kind at the moment.

Laying aside for a moment the astounding fact that VisitScotland actually got something right for once—namely, that the state of the railways is woeful and unless you're travelling between Edinburgh and Glasgow you'd better get a car, and if you are travelling between Edinburgh and Glasgow it would be faster to walk—this presents me with a moral dilemma. I loathe both organizations, and now they're fighting, so which do I root for?

I have to come down on the side of VisitScotland, because, while it is bungling, inept, and sometimes belligerent, there have been occasions when they've sent us a guest and nothing has gone catastrophically wrong. With FirstScotrail, on the other hand, I've learned to take a massive dose of opiate-based painkillers before even setting foot in the station. There has been one single occasion that I can recall in the last eight years when I've got on a train and not wanted to kill everyone before it starts to move. (Notable example here, and there are many others that languish unblogged because they are too painful to recall.)

Besides, in this case VisitScotland were being entirely accurate and honest, and they were reporting unbiased facts that tourists should know. This is their job, and I wish they'd do it more often. They didn't describe the rail network as skeletal, they said that it was at its most skeletal in the Highlands [emphasis mine, exactitude-fans]—that's a comparative, and to my knowledge it's not libellous or legally actionable in any way. They also apparently had a picture of a sign that said Beware of the trains. This is good advice. Even if the rail network was marvellous, if you get hit by a train it's really going to put a crimp in your day. This is the sort of thing that, in my experience, a lot of tourists need to be told.

I see what's going on here. Not only is it open season on VisitScotland, but one of the most notable complaints in the RSE report (so the Scotsman tells me) is that VisitScotland focuses too much on the central areas, as opposed to the outlying ones that need support. The tourism industry in those areas is struggling for a number of reasons, but key to them is not that VisitScotland has abandoned them, it's that tourists can't bloody get to them in the first place. This is, of course, the fault of FirstScotrail, not VisitScotland^[0], and as a result FirstScotrail has noted that the best defence is a good offence, and that, conveniently, that VisitScotland is now fair game.

Actually, no, there's no moral dilemma here for me at all. I am still on the side of Right as always. Both of you are cretins and should learn to do your jobs. You, provide public transport to places that people want to go; and you, provide information for tourists. It shouldn't be that hard. It's what you're paid to do.

If that's too difficult for you, could you try not to be complete bastards while you're at it? That would be nice, thanks.

~

Holy damn, there were a lot of StudlyCaps in this post. Do businesses think that extra capital letters give them an extra competitive edge?

It doesn't. Even if Scotland's rail network is a bit dodgy is a controversial statement, this isn't: BiCapitalization makes you look like a wanker. This is Truth.

I never really understood the Higgs Boson. It's supposed to give mass to other particles by dint of its very proximity, in the same manner, it was explained to me once, as you get a cluster of people surrounding Maggie Thatcher at a cocktail party^[0]. But if the Higgs Boson is a boson, then it's a particle with mass, and nobody could ever explain to me where it gets its mass.

(Another thing I never got was the Hubble Constant. Galaxies are expanding faster the farther away from us they are, it is true, but due to the distances involved we're seeing those galaxies farther back in the past. So all it shows you is that the rate of expansion of the Universe is slowing, as one might expect. If anything, it should be called the Hubble Variable.)

Nonetheless, reports are pouring in from all corners of the Empire about the weird alternate universe in which we now live. clanwilliam turned into a beard-toting evil mastermind, but perhaps fortunately, one who couldn't get out of bed; and verdandiweaves missed Christmas.

For myself, the landlord turned up today and actually fixed things. Apparently the long-running problem we'd been having with the plumbing was the result of cast-iron pipes, which had filled with a hundred years of rust. That's why I've had no hot water for the last year. Who has cast-iron pipes? What's the one material most likely to cause problems on contact with water?^[1]

In further news: after a shaky start, work is actually going well, I've fixed all the problems, and $BOSS_1 seems quite calm. I think this new universe and I are going to get on well.

That said, when I get home tonight I'm firing up Rome: Total War and crushing the Gauls under my iron sandal. They've earned it.

Dear Tourists:

Welcome to Edinburgh. We hope you enjoy our fabulous cultural festival. Please feel free to monopolize our entire pavements for your personal convenience.

~

Dear Tesco:

I think it's really great that we have a nationwide network of washing-powder shops, offering such a wide range of virtually indistinguishable options. Have you considered diversifying into maybe selling some food?

~

Dear The City of Edinburgh Council:

I'm told you're on strike today. Thank you. Please continue.

~

Dear Nokia:

I don't appreciate getting ear-fucked by a Dalek who claims to be my girlfriend. I feel like I'm carrying on a torrid affair with Nicholas Briggs. Make phones that work, kthx.

~

Dear pajh's subconscious:

I'm advised that I was cackling maniacally in my sleep again. If you're going to give me awesome dreams, could you at least fix it so that I can remember them?

If her profile is to be believed, this woman is 25 years old.

I weep for the state of education in Penicuik.

(WARNING: mosts of the following post will be composed of cheap digs at the Scotsman's abysmal science coverage. Since this is not exactly news to many of you, feel free to skip. Otherwise, feel free to immerse yourself in the deathless wit of my pin-sharp prose. 'Cos it's, like, pin-sharp.)

( Pin-sharp deathless prose follows )

Several members of my friends list may be interested in Five reasons not to visit the Edinburgh Festival. Specifically, many of you may be all too familiar with reason #5.

--
[0] Because I can. Also, because the Scotsman doesn't seem to have any qualms about doing the exact same thing to Guido's blog on the exact same page.

...include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The title of the episode.
• Your opinion of the episode.
• Apparently, Rusty (OBE) wrote the episode.
• Extonic light.

I appreciate that we're mired in an illegal war, and the Government are turning into jackbooted thugs, and I had to walk two miles tonight with an exhausted cripple because the taxis are fucking useless, but did you all really want to add this extra little piece of irritation to my evening?

PUT IT BEHIND A FUCKING CUT.

Right, so. Let me see if I've got this right.

It's not okay to touch people's boobs at a comic-con. This is fine, I can understand that.

But it is okay to express why it's not okay to touch boobs at a con by advocating face-punching and nut-kicking, not just directed at the one wanker who suggested the boob-touching, but at all men.

Dear Feminists: kindly fuck off.

I really thought that we were finally getting somewhere. I thought that some of us had penises and some of us had vaginas, but that we looked at each other and we saw people. The rest was details. But no, everything has to be Us vs. Them and everybody has to be categorized into tiny little exclusive boxes. And specifically, all men fall into one of the two categories of Threat or Menace.

This should be a better world, a friend of mine said. A more honest one, where sex isn't shameful or degrading. I wish this was the kind of world where [one could] say, Wow, I'd like to touch your breasts, and people would understand that it's not a way of reducing you to a set of nipples and ignoring the rest of you, but rather a way of saying that I may not yet know your mind, but your body is beautiful.

Nice idea. Then they made the mistake of trying it, which was pretty stupid. Then they made the further mistake of writing about it on the Internet.

About three hundred comments later, it all went horribly wrong.

I was particularly amused by the handful of people who, after two hundred comments all saying brilliant and beautiful and I wish I'd been there, piped up to post this is completely reprehensible and under no circumstances could anyone ever think it was remotely appropriate. And then, when I had the gall to ask a simple question like what distinguishes this from other forms of social interaction, or what's so different about boobs, all I get—from otherwise highly intelligent people whose thoughts I am honoured and privileged to read—is argument by repeated assertion and a whole lot of well if you don't understand, then I'm certainly not going to tell you.

You ever wonder why we filthy men spent centuries thinking you were all stupider than we are? It's because of shit like this. You won't talk to us.

I don't have boobs. I don't know what it's like. This is the Internet. We are having a discussion.

TALK TO US.

The Internet[...] work[s] how [it's] supposed to, crow the militant third-wavers at feministsf. How's that exactly? By stifling debate and restoring the status quo? By screeching the loudest until everyone else backs down?

Now we're back to the 1970s again—in which I'm scared to approach anybody in case they turn into a spitting harpy who tears my groin off when I offer them a compliment; in which men are from Mars and women are from Venus and this is apparently okay because acting like we are members of the same species is apparently beyond people; in which I can't have sex with anyone at all because even if they say yes they're probably just a brainwashed agent of the Patriarchy.

Now we live in a world where no-one is allowed to even think about questioning ingrained social mores, in case people shout at them on the Internet.

Thanks, feminists. I expect you think you've made progress.

ObWondermark.

~

Comments are disabled because when I say talk to us I mean us in general. Don't talk to me. I am tired of dealing with this bullshit and you've all depressed the hell out of me. I'll come back and play when you're capable of treating people as people.

Half of my friends page has erupted in an enraged frenzy about self-declared fattist and narcissistic, imperious, self-absorbed bitch Ruth Fowler's article in the Grauniad today. Good on you all.

This comes shortly after a post on British Dining about Jay Rayner's idiotic allergy sufferers are all attention-seeking whiners screed in that self-same organ. I think that the Graun's Comment Is Free section is becoming a refuge for all those wankers who have been booted off the BBC's odious Have Your Say section. It's best just to ignore them and hope they go away.

The current flap appears to have been kick-started by that eternal beacon of small-minded nastiness the Daily Hate, who have denounced the Miss England finalist as being fat. Much as I hate to link to the Hate, go and have a look. There are pictures. (There would have to be, knowing the intellectual capacity of the average Mail reader.)

That's Chloe Marshall, size 16, BMI 26.03. Yep, she's a wee bit chunky on the thighs there, but she's smiling, she's got a pretty face, she's comfortable with her body and so should you be. Furthermore, she probably knows how to string a sentence together without infuriating the entire western hemisphere. Ruth Fowler, the Graun's resident fattist, has none of these qualities—although, for an allegedly serious writer, she does have an awful lot of nudie pictures on her shitty frame-based website.

One of these women is a normal, happy person. The other is an attention-seeking, misogynist, hateful, tiny-breasted, mean-spirited cow. To be perfectly honest, I know which of the two I'd rather fuck, but that's only because, as a wise man once said, woman unable to talk bullshit with cock in mouth.

Never before has the phrase I'd hit it been so appropriate. Doubly so, in fact.^[0]

If I had to take one of them out for dinner, I'd take the one who looks like she knows how to enjoy food—or, indeed, enjoy anything at all. Chloe Marshall might not be the brightest button in the box either—she is, after all, seventeen years old and a Miss England contestant—but I've seen no evidence that she's quite so utterly stupid as the bitter hag with the Cambridge First^[1], and she is, at least, a human being.

~

To my knowledge, to date, no terrorists have been caught with the use of the new anti-terror provisions. The ones that have been caught have had a tendency to announce their intention to drive flaming jeeps into airports by, um, driving flaming jeeps into airports, which was illegal before the new laws were brought out anyway. If I recall correctly, blowing stuff up was also illegal before September 11th, which makes one wonder what all those new laws were for in the first place.

This is what the anti-terror laws are being used for instead. Anybody surprised?

I've never met a terrorist and I don't need protecting from them. But I do need protection from officious council scumbags. Can I get some laws? Thought not.

~

All should read cairmen's excellent post on the bloodspell blog, in which he points out just exactly how copyright laws are doing the opposite of protecting the artists. Speaking as an artist, I'm not being protected by a blanket refusal to allow the release of my work. Nor are Bioware being protected by preventing distribution of a work that uses some of their art in a manner which is, pretty much undeniably, non-infringing. This really is taking the use of the phrase derivative work to extremes.

I've never met a plagiarist and I don't need protecting from them. But I do need protection from officious lawyers. Can I get some laws? Maybe—cairmen's post outlines how to start.

--
[0] While we're on the subject: never has the phrase I'd hit it been quite so inappropriate.
[1] It's a First from New Hall, so it barely counts anyway. And once you get into Cambridge, it's relatively easy to get a First as long as you buckle down to studying and eschew all semblance of a social life. I suspect that wasn't much of a problem for the Sociopathic Narcissist, since with a personality like that I doubt she would have been in much demand at all those garden parties.

I just got a telemarketer to hang up on me. Ah, good times. Getting ragingly angry with morons for being moronic: it has its benefits. I'm thinking about writing a lifestyle course.

~

Rory Bremner is in the Scotsman today, lamenting the unsatirizable state of modern government. He's got a point: it was so damn easy with Blair. Ping-pong ball eyes and a creepy grin and everyone knew exactly who you were. Spitting Image even did a fair job with Major, but Brown seems to have no qualities worthy of caricature.

It's a bit like having an uncle who's been building something in the shed for the last ten years [quoth he]. You go down and see what he's up to, look through the window—and there's nothing there.

It's partly our own fault. When Blair turned into a crazed warmongering lunatic (on about Day 2, as I recall), we were all frantic to get him out. What's this about some secret deal struck over bruschetta in some London restaurant?... Blair is to hand over to Brown? fantastic! Brown for President! Brown for Pope!

We all latched onto the Granita deal and waited and prayed for that glorious day when Brown would lead us triumphant into a new era with Britain free from pop-eyed gurning self-important madmen. We all got exactly what we wished for, and now people are complaining that it somehow isn't sensational enough.

Brown so far has not introduced any interesting new police-state legislation or forced us into any more illegal wars. Nor, to my knowledge, has he spent ninety per cent of his time saying look at it from my perspective and what you must understand is this. He is, in fact, almost exactly like that last episode of Doctor Who: nothing happened in it, but at least it didn't have farting aliens and blowjob jokes and Peter Kay.

~

Also in the Scotsman today is a letter from D MacDonald of Edinburgh, whose woe is expressed thus:

With the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns on the near horizon, it seems pertinent to point out that Edinburgh does not have a street named in honour of our national poet. This is surely an appropriate time to consider remedying this anomaly.

D MacDonald neglects to mention that, while it is true that we have no street, you can't walk for ten yards in the Old Town without colliding with a plaque celebrating the fact that the quill-wielding hack once paused near here to tie his shoelaces.

I have never understood the point of Burns and I never will. The man sold out rich millennia of Scottish culture and history for personal gain, and he was successful to such an extent that we are known across the planet as a race of skirt-wearing offal-munchers who can't talk properly. Scots isn't even a language: it's a dialect, and since the one linguist on my friends list appears to have gone crazy-religious and dropped off the Internet, there's no one to debate me on this point.

No one, ever, has ever said fair fa' yer honest sonsie face unless they're reading that crappy poem on the night we have dedicated to the ink-slinging old fool. Sonsie isn't even a word.

The man's got a national holiday, a dozen statues, two sets of commemorative stamps, and a plaque on every street corner in the land. I'm quite happy that we name our streets instead after obese stocking-clad Germans and their retarded inbred offspring. Let's at least try to give the impression that there's a bit more to Scotland than tartan haggises and bagpipes, shall we?

On the train over to Fife on Friday, we encountered the first—but, I suspect, by no means the last—infestation of mindless jobsworth officialdom to plague Three Guys Argue A Lot About Cookery (title subject to change).

We were filming ourselves sitting at a table talking about the Fife Diet while Fife itself rolled into view beyond the window. Because we are Professional Televison People, the camera was balanced precariously on top of the bike rack across the aisle. And every time one of us tried to say anything, the bloody recorded woman decided to announce again that the next stop was Inverkeithing, as indeed it had been for the last twenty minutes.

INT. TRAIN CARRIAGE. DAY

Our Heroes are sat around a table, talking about the Fife Diet. Enter stage right THE TICKET INSPECTOR.

THE TICKET INSPECTOR
You can't film in 'ere, mate.

OUR HEROES
Why not?

Beat.

TICKET INSPECTOR
Because... there are people walkin' past.

OUR HEROES
Okay.

Exit THE TICKET INSPECTOR, satisfied. HOLD on OUR HEROES as the CAMERA continues rolling uninterrupted.

(TELEVISION SCRIPTS always have some of the WORDS in CAPITALS, usually PROPER NOUNS but also sometimes VERBS. This is because it helps DIRECTORS to CONCENTRATE after they've DONE all of that COKE.)

The mind of the bureaucrat is a simple one to understand, if not always this simple to subvert. You can't do that invariably translates as you are doing something slightly different, therefore Strange and Frightening to me, and you must be destroyed.

~

Most of the discussion on the Fife Diet has been going on over at cairmen's LiveJournal. This is because he has a vastly greater number of friends than I do, and as such is a comment on the quantity, not necessarily the quality, of such friends—although it wouldn't hurt if you buggers commented every once in a while. You know who you are.

Most of the commentary seems to be along the lines of:

But why are you doing this?
But you don't live in Fife.
But that's not what the Fife Diet is about.
You should be doing something completely different, or better still, nothing at all!

Fortunately, the response to all of these queries is the same one:

SHUT UP!

I am doing this for Science and, as already discussed, for you, the entertained viewer. As a result I am already looking forward to ten more swede meals before Saturday. The last thing I need is an existential crisis on top of my critically low blood sugar levels.

The only way to explore a concept is to push at its boundaries. The most popular, highly-publicized and critically-acclaimed experiment in local sourcing is The Fife Diet, so we decided to investigate it and use it as a stepping stone to explore the wider concepts of food miles and local sourcing. Thus, we've taken a strict interpretation of the Fife Diet in order to see just what, exactly, local produce actually means.

To take an early example: followers of the Fife Diet as set out in their press releases are allowed bread, for instance, as long as they make it themselves. We found out on Day -1 that the flour may be local, but the wheat that makes the flour is from Canada. This raises serious questions about what constitutes local, what we're all going to have to learn to deal with when the oil runs out, and—perhaps most important of all—how much hypocrisy we're all willing to put up with from hippies.

We could, theoretically, invent our own diet and call it the Edinburgh Diet and test that, but that wouldn't prove anything about the Fife Diet. Doing so would be irrelevant and pointless. Doing this instead has the potential to enlighten, and to inform and entertain. And I'm getting to eat vegetables, which may or may not be a good thing.

When the entertained viewer gives every impression of merely being a playa-hater or, worse, a bureaucrat, then I start considering quitting my diet. If I quit it now, then I've spent eighty quid, pissed off my managers, and eaten leaves, and none of us will have learned anything as a result.

(Although I have learned what happens if you make porridge with the wrong kind of oatmeal.)

With thanks to lady_rani here:

Doctor Who executive producer Russell T Davies has accused BBC1 of cocking up the scheduling of the show, claiming it will lose 1.5m viewers in its new timeslot.

He then goes on to whine and stamp his feet a lot. More so than I think JNT ever did when they buggered about with the scheduling on his watch, but possibly less than Toby Hadoke did. In any case it's somewhat unbecoming—isn't it?—for the BBC's darling to throw a tantrum in a trade journal instead of maybe doing something about it or getting on with his job.

And frankly, Auntie's new attempt to recapture the glory of Britain's Got Talentless Media Whores needs all the help it can get. Didn't everyone get sick of back-to-back talent shows about three years ago?

Bitching about a scheduling conflict is, like, so 2007, dude. The viewers don't care any more. In times gone past, the announcement of a new season would launch a flurry of panicked complaints about: shit! I'm at work then orbut I have to go to a paaaarty that night. This year, the entire Internet has proffered a collective shrug and said: I'll catch it on iPlayer.

The most common thing I hear about BBC iPlayer, in every case is almost exactly the same words: It has totally revolutionized the way I watch television. I don't make a habit of asking people their opinion of iPlayer, but it often comes up in conversation regardless, because it is a Remarkably Cool Thing.

I still don't own a television set or have TV reception in my flat. (We do pay the licence fee, though.) Over the last two months I have watched infinity per cent more television than ever before. Much of it has been good television, which has forced me to reassess my attitude towards the medium. And my BitTorrent usage has dropped right off.

This is LiveJournal, so everyone reading this is acutely aware that the Internet has made it a million times easier to whinge and prate. Sometimes, when done right, the Internet also removes the reasons for such grousery in the first place.

(Although, now I come to think about it, it would make much more sense than it really should for Auntie to continue to determine ratings figures the old way even when everyone in the country is using the newer, more convenient, niftier 21st-century system. As a result, the entire next commissioning round would be decided on the basis of the five people left in the country who think that Satan invented the Internet.)

Oh, one more thing:

I'll rewrite [scripts] 100% if I have to, [Rusty] said. With Steven Moffat's scripts, I don't touch a word, but anyone else's I do.

...is by far the smartest thing I've ever heard him say. And it shows, Russell, oh how it shows.

Food miles, eh? Tricky problem, in these enlightened carbon-neutral times. If food isn't locally sourced then we're all going to die in a fiery inferno—and that, I'm told, is 100% scientific fact.

Fortunately, I happen to live in the breadbasket of the North, in the very heart of a pastoral Utopia surrounded by bleating lambs and grunting squealing little bacons and dewy-eyed beefs, and lush verdant acres of pert little potatoes and... other vegetable-type things. Scotland is a vast cornucopia of food-producing regions, places like the Borders and Aberdeenshire and Tayside.

Places, in other words, exactly unlike Fife. Despite the fact that it's just across the river, I've never been to Fife, just passed through it on the way to interesting places. I have, however, spoken to some refugees from that benighted region and Fife, I'm told, is a howling concrete wasteland populated by commuter accountants and neds, with nary a frolicking filly to be seen anywhere. Chief imports: buckfast. Chief exports: violence.

So it seems natural that the local experiment in locally-sourced food is The Fife Diet.

The Fife Diet consists of food entirely sourced from and/or grown in Fife or the surrounding regions (for a somewhat lax definition of Fife which I suspect often includes Tescos). There is one pig farm and it happens to be the excellent Puddledub. Other than that, there doesn't seem to be a lot in Fife itself.

My compatriots and I are going to give it a bash for a week, and do it properly. <clarkson>We asked ourselves, How hard... can it be?</clarkson>

So I'm going to be subsisting on swede and kale for a week. And it is going to be blogged and filmed. I am doing this for you, the viewer.

Tomorrow, three guys and a camera go to Fife and look for food.

I expect to have died of scurvy by Thursday.

Yesterday, at 05.48UT, was the Vernal Equinox. Happy Vernal Equinox, everybody!

Today, it is snowing. At Easter.

I knew I was wearing the wrong hat when I went out this morning. If you'll excuse me, I'm off to take some painkillers and whimper for a bit.

Children. I don't get it. How is it that we're not allowed to have sex in public, yet we're allowed to display the resultant fruits to all and sundry, when all and sundry are just trying to enjoy their eggs benedict and mocha in peace?

I'm allowed—not that I've ever felt the inclination—to go up to a baby and coo my, what a beautiful child, although if I ever did so I'd be channeling Alan Rickman and thus would scare the crap out of everybody (or at least, such is my fervent hope). This, to my mind, is functionally equivalent to going up to the mother and declaring how gloriously fecund you are!, which would get me locked away.

Madam, your functional genitalia do credit to our society. See? I'm not allowed to say it. I'm even less allowed to say your contribution to overpopulation cheapens us as a species, but your fertile uterus is nonetheless a cause for celebration.

In this era of compassionate-conservative, aw-look-Cameron's-just-a-cuddly-bear, thinly veiled bigotry that passes for Tory sentiment these days, the standard line on The Gays is: we don't mind what they do behind closed doors, just do they have to flaunt it so much, with their holding hands in public and their leather trousers with the bottom cut out? This is not an attitude with which I agree (except possibly for the bit about the trousers), but it seems that it's a thing considered socially acceptable to say. Why does the same not apply to standard, vanilla, heterosexual breeders?

...oh, right. Because standard, vanilla, heterosexual breeders are a significant voting demographic. Of course.

Far be it from me to suggest that Vile Spawn should be locked up until they can be productive members of society: that would be illiberal of me. I just think it would be fair if, when they won't shut up, we can duct-tape them shut.

Today at the Farmers' Market was the Great Scottish Sausage Taste-Off, although they spelled it differently. (Taste off, without a hyphen, is what the sausages do when you've left them out for too long.) Three of the finest local farms went head-to-head, or rather skin-to-skin, with the Finest™ range from three of our mighty supermarket chains.

A blind tasting was arranged, with paper plates labelled A to F, cocktail sticks at ten paces, and a thronging crowd of blue-rinsed biddies who gave every impression they were standing in a queue when they were, in fact, merely dithering. The cocktail sticks provided were insufficient for me to rectify this situation to my satisfaction, and stormsearch wouldn't allow me to appropriate the knife they were using to cut up soss.

Of the soss on offer (sossonoffer—try saying that with a mouthful of the aforementioned), it was easy to tell the superior locally-sourced farm produce from their inferior, wraithlike mass-produced counterparts. If nothing else, the amount of added water gave it away. On the one hand we had soulless cylinders of reconstituted offal and tubular forcemeat. On the other... was Sausage.

It was quite interesting—one of the supermarket sausages actually had a really nice balance of herbs and spices, but even so the meat itself was pale and bland. (Pigling Bland?) Despite the best efforts of a whole team of food scientists paid fuck-you money by a multinational corporation, there's still no substitute for looking after your animals and not cramming in stupid crap to reduce costs. And thus, as I have always said, do Happy Pigs Make The Best Bacon.

Of the three True Sausages, the one that both stormsearch and I rated most highly was—we were told in nudge-nudge wink-wink say-no-more fashion by the vaguely disturbing chap organizing the Taste-Off—Piperfield Pork, suppliers to no less a luminary than Dr B himself and, oddly enough, the only one of the three I haven't tried yet. My freezer (and J's too) is already way too full of meat, so I shall have to wait until next week's market to acquire some, when the results of the Taste-Off are announced.

( Spoilers! )

Today I are mostly eatin' Rannoch smoked chicken on organic rye bread, which I picked up from a deli near work. I am having a good day. And I have been organic and locally-sourced, and my Food Miles have been minimal. Much more importantly, the food has been fantastic.

( Oh dear, he's at it again )

Thus:

Richard Lucas (Letters, 12 December) is justified in his concern at being tarred with the same brush as the American ``Christian Right''. His Dispensationalist brethren across the Atlantic have a remarkable knack for making all other Christians look bad by association—although sometimes it seems that Mr Lucas needs little help in this regard.

The phrase ``Christian Right'', in common usage, has come to encompass much more than a simple description of neoconservative politics as they apply to pronouncements of faith. The phrase can also imply religious bigotry, overzealous proselytizing, a penchant for warmongery, or, very often, a smug conviction that no one else is entitled to theological opinions of any kind.

May I humbly submit to the Scotsman the phrase ``Christian Convinced-they're-right''?

Well, I thought it was funny. Today I am setting conference rooms and doing accounts, so I am easily amused.