Fussy kids

The Brits are a squeamish nation of fussy kids

It's official. Confirmed by a Hastings fishermen's spokesman. We only want easy-cook, easy-eat fish. Heavens, please, throw all those heads, fins, and bones away. Get rid of the skin, too, while you're there, my good man.

While elsewhere there's enthusiasm for roe and lips and whatever, and heads and bones go to make stocks and soups, apparently (according to the Hastings fishermen) they may as well chuck half of their catch away, back into the sea, because they end up cutting 50% by weight from what they land and the rest goes off to landfill.

For an island nation, with food banks feeding people and everyone under the beady eyes of the recycling police trying to keep as much out of landfill as possible, that's awful and shameful, even if it isn't particularly surprising.

There's a poster on the wall...

...of the Suds 'n' Tubs laundrette I noticed while walking past. It says: “No posters on this wall please”.

Man with a Movie Camera

I knew nothing about this film, until today, when I watched it on the netbook pc. I'd listened to the Cinematic Orchestra's soundtrack, but the version I watched had an earlier band playing the same music (I think). There's music because it's silent (apart from the music, that is). It's also in black and white. It's also about a hundred years old, and so was filmed on hand-cranked boxes with a lens at the front and reels of film passing through the mechanism.

There's always disagreement about the 'without'. As in “without Steve Reich there's be no modern trance, dance, etc. music” because there's the countering “but if he'd not done what he did, someone else would've, just a bit later”. Well, maybe a whole lot later or maybe not at all, and maybe not as well, so there's doubt about without. There's also other claims on the 'first use of', too. So, being careful, the film has early use of that fewer frames speeding up traffic and other movements thing, split screen effects, double exposures, there's all sorts of clever stuff, fun and games going on, as some goings on in the Ukraine (Odessa, Kiev, and somewhere else) unfold on the screen.

It may not sound promising (it'll sound unwatchable to DLL, who can't see the point of B&W, let along anything without a soundtrack) but it is dazzling and I didn't want it to end.

How come...

...when we're managing to wipe out decent species on a daily basis, we still have the common cold bug? That just shows how useless we are. Tigers, rhinos, things of power and beauty? We'll soon wipe those off the face of the planet, matey, have no fear. The germs or virus or whatever it is that makes your nose stream and your eyes water for weeks? Sorry. Nothing we can do.

We're losing butterflies and birds and going out at night shooting badgers, but no-one's making the slightest effort to rid the world of Ant and Dec, a true mystery.