Fad. Fast. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.

The 5:2 diet, and the three ages of man

The three ages:

Age 1:

The skinny years

Subject of comments like “I've seen more fat on a greasy chip / butcher's apron” Skinny McThin of Bones-ville, in the state of malnourished is a wiry, angular creature. In the later stages of the skinny years, often seen trying to 'bulk up' by an intake of protein shakes, protein smoothies, protein bars, and a daily junk-food intake with enough calories to launch several rockets into orbit.

These are the years where, after eating anything, there's a 50/50 chance of hearing “can I have another one of those?”.

These are the years where the whiplash physique sits down next to the fat old dude in the café, and a casual observer without knowledge of the three ages would assume that they've got each other's breakfasts, as the fat old dude (on the advice of his medical staff) tucks into little more than some toast and a cup of tea, Skinny McThin has fried slices, fried eggs, sausages, bacon, beans tomatoes, mushrooms, black pudding, and several slices of bread and butter to mop up any stray fragments that might, just might, get away.

The skinny years can last into the thirties. Mine did. Not far enough though!

Age 2:

Ideal fighting weight:

Suddenly Skinny McThin turns into Muscles McMuscles, of Sixpack Street, Gym-ville, in the state of Toned-and-Honed-on-Sea.

Not much to say about Age 2, because it lasts about one millisecond.

Age 3:

Who ate all the pies? Oh. It was you.

After that brief sojourn in Honed-and-Toned, it's the state of Wideload for Tubby McTubbs, of Lardbutt, Six-Ex-Ell City.

Suddenly, an appetite and eating habits designed around a body that never gained an ounce no matter what went in, are working with a metabolism that has slowed to sluggish, on an extra-fast day. That's fast as in velocity, not as in not eating, there.

Fasting is the basis of that 5:2 diet. That's non-eating fasting, there. Surrounded by the usual quasi-science and media fuss, the revolutionary idea of eating for five days, then not eating for two, apparently makes you thin and you live for ever with perfect blood pressure, skin, and then go to heaven. Or, maybe you just eat five sevenths of what you were eating before, or 71.4% of your previous intake, enough of a cutback to show some benefits.

Or you could just eat smaller meals.

Or, just maybe, accept the three stages and go with it.

Tough? Nah, get going...

Weasel Words

1.    “Tough”

Commonly used in conjunction with “talking”.

Before letting anyone’s suggestion that someone else is tough, here’s one of those thought experiments they love:

You’ve blundered into the bad (that’s not Jacko “BAD”, that’s “Dude, this is, like, serious bad shit we’re in”) side of town, and compounded matters by walking into the worst possible pub to ask directions back to civilisation. The place is wild west crossed with freakshow, and inhabited by locals who, between them, don’t have a single tattoo spelled correctly. Many of them on their faces.

There you are, a rough night in the Masturbating Monkey. Who do you want by your side?

Is it:

Tough talking politician Ann Widdecombe?

Tough talking politician Farage?

Ricky ‘Hitman’ Hatton?

A couple of pitbull terriers?

Here’s my answers:

1)     Ricky Hatton. He’s more likely than the others to talk our way out of there in any case, and if it kicks off the ex-merchant banker or the old biddy ‘aint gonna be much cop, are they?

2)     The dogs. Talk has jack to do with toughness.

3)     We’re stuffed, call us an ambulance, prep A&E. For me. Don’t bother with the other one.

Quack my bitch up

E-harmony get the popcorn

Carling don't do holidays. E-harmony don't do rhyming slang. From their advert, you get the picture: they won't pair a lonely-hearted lady of a certain age, who likes films, with a popcorn machine of the same age, that also likes films. After the looking for a rather less superficial match sales pitch, there's something in there like:

“You'll meet your perfect partner, not just get the popcorn.”

Amazon reviewer gets it right

Sometimes I fall asleep with the headphones on. I worry about the wire strangling me, but not enough to stop. Amazon had that new ear sale warehouse clearout thing and emailed me. A couple of links later, there's a picture of an elastic headband with little speakers in it.

One reviewer wrote:

“I like this product because I like to listen to music while going off to sleep. And because I like to look like a tennis player when I'm in bed.”

Good news...

...a Robert Wyatt biography, and a new CD, both called “Different Every Time”...

...and no-so-good news

...not an album of new music, but a compilation to accompany the book. With the announcement that Wyatt may have decided to draw stumps on the whole composing / recording / mixing / mastering / releasing cycle. He deserves the retirement, he must be around seventy years old, the last forty five of those spent in a wheelchair.

It must be strange, too, being, or having been, a card-carrying communist party member, radical, progressive, militant personality, labelled as a national treasure. Apparently when he curated the Meltdown Festival, he considered a 'PC Gone Mad' theme, featuring no white, and no male musicians, unless they were threatened with deportation. He was going to call it the Anti-Ann Widdecombe Festival.

I like the idea of anything anti-Ann Widdecombe.

Mock Duck

Good name for a band.

“Chris P Skin and the Mock Ducks took the stage to uproarious applause and launched straight into their opening number, “Quack My Bitch Up”...”

Comes in a tin. Not sure what it's made of, as my Chinese is a bit rusty. Worked well in a curry, better texture than those too-Cubist Quorn cubes. On-line research has revealed that there's mock pork, and mock chicken on offer too. No mock beef or lamb, though.

Too much...it's all too much

Talking about Kevin

Kevin was a little bundle of energy, and an old friend’s landlord, then an old friend’s friend. He was an English teacher, a part-time conveyancing practitioner, through that an accidental landlord, and a card-buff. Worryingly, I’m displaying some Kevin behaviours. To whit:

A Kevin Sunday morning

SCENE: the kitchen table. Kevin is sitting at the table with a steaming mug of tea, a cigarette burns in the ashtray. In front of him is the Observer, split into two. He is reading the in-depth catch-up news section, while doing the crossword on another page. One radio is tuned to Radio 4, another to Radio 3. Also open on the table is the book he is currently reading. The television is also on.

PB and I walk in.

I say something about sensory or information overload.

PB explains that Kevin fears missing out on something.

Later I realised that Kevin just hated the thought of letting a precious second slip him by. Kevin claimed that he’d taught his brain to multi-task. Apparently not to the point where he could successfully reverse his car while doing anything else at all, claimed PB. However, all bets were off when it became apparent that Kevin couldn’t reverse his car. In isolation.

Duplicate Bridge

Kevin ran duplicate Bridge evenings, and sometimes he was short of a couple of players to make up the tables, and PB and I would provide (pretty inadequate, it has to be said) making-up numbers. Well, there was free food and drink involved, and Bridge is a great game.

Different players play the same hands in duplicate Bridge (hence the ‘duplicate’). Packs of cards are shuffled, dealt into four hands, and stuffed into holders.

One holder goes on each table.

You and your partner are either north / south or east / west, and you play your hand in front of you, keeping the thirteen cards you start off with. You record the result of the hand, then the north / souths shuffle off one way, and the east / wests t’other, and play another hand, at another table, against other opponents.

In this way, players hold the same cards, eliminating the luck of the deal, and make of them what they can.

Later they gather, compare, count the scores and bewilder the likes of PB and me with tech-details. They all have, it seems, adopted various bidding strategies and conventions according to the circumstances, they have finessed and drawn out and done all sorts of stuff while PB and me’ve flown by the seat of our pants. We never, however, finished in last place.

Those worrying behaviours

Increasingly I’m finding myself wanting to watch the rugby, football or cricket, but with the sound off, because there’s so much great music to listen to, and with a book ready for the half times / drinks / long injury stoppages. Oh and better have the phone and a laptop or netbook to hand as well. Just in case it’s a really long injury and some emails come in…

And when he gets out of order...

A lawless brat from a council flat, oh, oh

A bit of context:

I don’t think too deeply about 99% of the rubbish I blurt out.

I’ve thought deeply about thinking deeply, and on reflection, decided that blurting is the best option. Through blurting comes catharsis. Blurting is like that “best don’t bottle it up love…” from the carey-sharies, just without their recoil and “you can’t say THAT!” directly upon de-bottling (de-bottlement? corkage? outpouring? let's settle on outpouring).

Outpouring allows that mix of what you really think, what you really think right at that moment, and what you’re feeling to surface, and that’s as valid and relevant as anything else you ever communicate, I guess.

I’m not well-educated. That’s my own fault, I was given every opportunity to be well-educated, but there were a number of stumbling blocks. I’m a classroom nightmare. A teacher’s pet, but only if that pets is an unwanted, noisy, disruptive adolescent that chews the furniture, bites the postie and eats the homework. Too often my attention depends on the personality and enthusiasm of whoever’s trying to put things across, rather than the subject matter. On the subject of subject-matter, my first questions are always: “why do I need to know this / what’s this for / what’s the point of this? / why are you telling me this?” rendering the teaching of religious education, history, Latin, and the like absolute non-starters in the first place. Then there’s the assumed authority. You may have the suit and tie (in my day it was the cord jacket with elbow patches) and the tie, and I may be the naughty boy on the back of the bus, but, with all due respect (and to misquote Rod Stewart) naughty boys on the back of the bus have more fun.

The back of the bus is the natural habitat of the genuinely anti-establishment personality.

There’s a price to pay for being anti-establishment. It starts with detentions, lines, canings, all of which generally only strengthen the feelings that lead to authority-issues, which in turn lead to more punishment. How are you supposed to feel about ‘authority’ when your mother comes out with tripe like “this hurts me more than it hurts you”? Even as a very young kid, I was thinking “in that case, how about we swap places and I administer the sound thrashing?” It goes on. It can cost you jobs, money, opportunities (particularly through refusing to play along with hierarchical organisations, and refusing to spend time networking (“She never bothers with people she hates, That's why the lady is a tramp”). Having paid those dues, that’s why I rail against pro-establishment and non-rebels who try to play the anti-establishment card. To a lesser degree, the Chris Moyles, James Cordons of the world, pulling the wool over housewives’ eyes. To a greater extent people like Nigel Farage. How genuine an establishment alternative would UKIP appear, were it better publicised that Farage is an ex-banker, one of the £millions bonus brigade? That whenever they are under threat they resort to calling the police or looking to silence their critics in exactly the establishment ways that they’re supposedly against? That a UKIP councillor had the local cops visit and threaten someone blogging embarrassing facts that discredited him?

Anyway, I’ve found my political philosophy at last, and I’m an anarchist. I truly believe that any state interference, any bunch of monkeys telling me what I should and shouldn’t do and what I should and shouldn’t think, and how to go about living the one life I have, just has to be a bad, inhibiting, repressing thing, whether those monkeys be ‘elected’ politicians or blokes in frocks with silly hats, or clerics or whatever.

On the false anti-establishment theme, apparently Farage backed some wanky UKIP mate of his who came out with some racist shite, saying “he’s just a plain-speaking Essex lad”. I wonder if he’d think me “just a plain speaking Kent boy” on hearing me say:

“Farage is a snivelling little toad, and a euro-MP making him a blood- and money-sucking parasite resembling the ticks my dogs get, and I would love to see him suffer the same fate: painless removal, followed by crushing to death and unceremonious disposal”.

No, no, not the pope's mum

You insult my mother, I punch-a you face

The pope. Head of the Roman Catholic Church, and, apparently, not someone to mess with. Turn the other cheek? Not likely. That’s for hippies and wets.

“Asked about the attack that killed 12 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo – targeted because it had printed depictions of the prophet Muhammad – he said: “One cannot provoke, one cannot insult other people’s faith, one cannot make fun of faith.

“There is a limit. Every religion has its dignity … in freedom of expression there are limits.””

That’s from the Guardian. It printed it deadpan. It left me wondering “have I missed the point entirely? Am I reading something into that that isn’t there?”

I couldn’t understand why the piece didn’t criticise the pope in the slightest. Wasn’t he saying:

“Those Charlie Hebdo people? Had it comin’ to ‘em”?

Thankfully, there were more in-depth articles to come, which confirmed that I still had a grip on the language, if not on the more philosophical, political, and theological arguments surrounding the statement. Many of them echoed the questions that had immediately come to mind. Some answers were provided by the additional information that the pope had said, pointing to an aide, “he insults my mother, do I not punch him in the face?”. There you have it. Don’t insult the pope’s mum. He’ll punch you in the face. Don’t mock the religiously afflicted, or they’ll visit with machine guns.

Oh. And never tell me this god bullshit is anything other than a very negative force.

Borrowing from the later articles, this is, approximately, what I was thinking:

·         Does he really mean that if you take the piss out of these people, you deserve everything you get? After all, what else can you do with people who believe some bloke ascended to heaven on a wing’ed horse? A word of warning, our political establishment, people who sit in power telling us what to think and what to do, believe in wing’ed horses. Vote? Only when My Little Mermaid stands for the La-La-Land Party.

·         What faith can you and can’t you insult? Are there a big four like in football? Islam, roman catholicism, orthodox jews, and…er…Jedi Knights? Is there a Premiership, with the Mormons mid-table and the seventh day adventists fighting relegation? Is a one-man faith equal to one of the mass-delusions?

·         What if faiths fundamentally disagree? (There was a quote somewhere about how, if the major religions ever put down their theological arms and agree about something, that’s bad news for everyone). Taking this point further, what if my faith demands that I take the piss out of yours? What if my faith demands I undermine the dignity of yours? What if I believe it’s pretty worthless an existence unless I can deride you for believing, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that someone can come back from the dead, and the earth’s only a couple of thousand years old? Pythonesque, that is: “What’s that there?” “A rock” “How old is it?” “Several hundred thousand years old” “How old is the earth” “A good deal younger, naturally”. There’s echoes of “It’s only a flesh wound, I’ve had worse” there.

·         Isn’t this stuff the ultimate proof that, however much they spout on about love and peace, religion is all about hate, war, violence and conning the vulnerable?

Values or no values?

Weasel Words

1.    “Values”

Farage. Mark Thomas has reinvented Farage as a noun. The “farage” is that dirty brown liquid you find in the bottom of your wheelie bin during dry-ish weather when the leachate from the vegetable matter you throw away has a real chance to ferment into a nasty, thickish slurry-bilge.

According to Farage, and therefore UKIP, we’re (actually I need to watch my P’s and Q’s a bit more on account of the popularity UKIP is attaining) you’re a Judeo – Christian nation, and us imports paying for bleeding the welfare state dry and running ruining the NHS, and, well, generally going about our root of all evil lifestyles need to understand, respect, and kow-tow to those Judeo – Christian values.

Someone’s values, actually, underpin what any given person is about, I think. For the weasels, however, values are what they want to impose on others. Their own, real, manufactured or imaginary values being, obviously (to them) better by far than anyone else’s.

Those Judeo – Christian ‘values’ were the foundation of the crusades, of the inquisition, of slavery, of racism. The imposition of those values…well, Nigel, how do you think it’s turned out? I’m not the one with the History degree. I’m the one who thinks regarding history as bunk has more than a degree of common sense as a reasonable starting point.

Politicians have values the way actors have characters, make-up and costumes: to suit.

As an illustration, take meat and those UK values. Here we go:

·         Factory farming, ill-treating, killing and eating the following is absolutely fine, according to our your ‘values’: chickens, ducks, cows, sheep, pigs, fish, other stuff, but definitely not swans.

·         Unless you’re a royal or a guest of the royals, whereupon suddenly (tugs forelock) it is absolutely okay to eat swanflesh (what century are we you in again?).

·         Eating dogs, horses, cats, most insects and other people, however, is a vile aberration and anyone with values that contradict yours should be reviled and mocked and treated with distain.

·         It is utterly wrong to cut the fin from a shark and throw the rest away.

·         It is absolutely fine to buy only the breast of a chicken, because, well, who can be bothered with all those bones and things. Make stock? My Judeo – Christian god didn’t invent those little cubes for nothing you know.

·         Frog’s legs? Let’s mock the French for those.

·         Sweetbreads? Kidneys? Liver? Don’t be daft, only oddballs eat offal.

There’s just a small sample of those fine, upstanding, worthy of imposition on others “values” right there, Nigel. You can’t stick ‘values’ in front any old garbage and dignify it. See “community” in the 80’s / 90’s for the proof that that approach is rubbish.

Some folk have values, live by them, and let others get on with their lives and their different values. That approach, in itself, is a value those people have.

Nigel and his like wouldn’t recognise a value if it morphed into a piano and landed on their head.

Happy birthday, KIz

I looked up people born on the 10^th of October. I found out that with age comes distance from popular culture. Almost all of them were greeted with: “nope, not heard of him / her either”. Anyway, starting with Kiz, this year’s birthdays (the birth of the children year, Kiz being the first, starts on October tenth) will be accompanied by famous names with the same birthday…

…famous names that I’ve heard of, that is.

Some 10^th October stuff I’ve found is confusing:

·         In 1582, because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar, whatever that means, the 10^th October simply didn’t exist in Italy, Poland, Spain and Portugal. That smacks of religion. Denying a day the right to exist through some arbitrary lack of reason.

Thelonious Monk: 1917 – 1982, jazz pianist and composer and cooler-than-thou, whoever thou art.

Some 10^th October stuff is misleading:

·         The Great Chicago Fire, it says. Then it says the fire burnt from the 8^th to the 10^th. So, actually, the 10^th is the anniversary of the extinguishing (or burn-out) of the Great Chicago Fire. These historians.

Tony Adams: born 1966. One of the best central defenders ever to have played the game. Now an ex-player and a 24-carat nutter.

Some 10^th October stuff is good news:

·         Fiji became independent. It does not say how, or of what or whom, but taking independence as a good thing, this is a good thing.

Some 10^th October stuff is plain weird:

·         In 1967 countries signed up to the Outer Space Treaty (which should be called the outer-your-tree treaty), among other things, confining use of the moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes.

Charming – outgoing – surprising (it sez ‘ere):

The cod-scientific cobblers says:

Your Sun is in Libra in the Aquarius decanate and the Aries quadrant. (WTF?)

The ruler of your Sun is Venus. Venus bestows a charming, sometimes indulgent nature, with a love of comfort and peace.

Secondary rulers of your decanate and quadrant signs are Uranus (a Finbar Saunders “harf harf” at your anus) and Mars. Uranus adds a sometimes rebellious and wilful spin to the personality, and Mars adds spunk and assertiveness.

Happy birthday kid!

Boyhood

Boyhood

“Good film” I said to MM. “I liked it a lot.”

“What's it about?” he asked.

“Just a kid growing up. Nothing too much happens, really...”

“Those are the best films, sometimes” he said. Boyhood is.

An estranged mother and father. A boy living and growing up, largely, with his mother and sister.

There's a lot of rites of passage, family, human emotions and other clichés queuing up for an airing, but, really, the beauty of the film is just that: it starts, nothing spectacular, or of too much note happens, and all too soon it's all over, roll the credits, and the kid's...does 'nothing much happens' count as a spoiler?

“Who's in it?” MM said.

I had to look it up. “Nathan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, no-one else I've heard of before.

As ever, the casting people manage to get actors who look like the same person growing up to play the part.