Category Archives: Uncategorized

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I have two packs of tofu to eat before I leave tomorrow, which is just as well cos the vegie options are looking a bit dire. From the Rough Guide, “Vegetarians often have to get by on zakuski, since main courses are overwhelmingly based on meat (myaso), which makes its way into pelmeny, a Russian version of ravioli. Georgian restaurants always have interesting veggie dishes, such as bean stew or stuffed aubergines.”
They define zakuski as “‘tasters’ or small dishes consumed before a meal with vodka, as a snack or as a light meal” so maybe I’ll just be drunk all the time.

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The things we do when we’re avoiding work.
I was doing an online survey, and one of the questions asked what your dream holiday would be like. I discovered that I’d prefer somewhere warm, with low humidity, good food, lots of museums, galleries, historic sites and interesting culture, friendly local nightlife, ideally somewhere cheap and less than eight hours flight from home.
Elsewhere, I saw “what kind of funeral do you want?”. I hadn’t really thought about it, but in the interests of procrastination, I did today.
I want a full choir singing Mozart’s Requiem. I want a memorial service in a national park on a sunny day. I want people to wear what they like, and to bring their toddlers and their dogs, who’ll run around making noise at the most solemn moments.
I want to be cremated, and I want my ashes to be scattered from the top of the cliff on the point at Merricks Beach, where some of them will blow into the sea, some onto the beach, and some into the bushland.
I want a cardboard coffin, and I’d rather people gave flowers to each other, or gave money to charity.
I want a big party afterwards, food and drinks bill on me.
Now I have the Ramones ‘I wanna be cre^H^H^Hsedated’ running through my head.

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More on Google and privacy concerns:
“The erosion of privacy and the intrusion of commercial spam in our lives is subtle. Like boiling a frog alive, we rarely notice how much we’ve lost until its too late. Unless we draw a line now, reminding companies like Google – which exhibit a kind of corporate Asperger’s Syndrome when it comes to privacy – of exactly what we value, then in ten years time it will be too late.”
“It’s ironic,” writes one reader, “for a company that says Do No Evil – they don’t know the definition.”
Reading this in the same week as hype about identity theft concerns bigs up ID cards. God only knows how they think ID cards will help with shopping, and for God’s sake, isn’t your private identity one of the last things you want linked with your shopping habits?
From the article:
“In a survey commissioned by software firm Intervoice, 17% of people said they had stopped banking online while 13% had abandoned web shopping.
More than half thought that the government’s proposed ID card was the best way to combat identity theft.”
And yet:
“An identity card doesn’t really help the problem of identity theft other than at the point of purchase,” he said. ”

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Yet another big fat reason never to eat at one of Gordon Ramsay‘s restaurants. It’s hard to know what’s opinion and what’s fact in an opinion column, but after the chicken soup ‘joke’ where he told vegetarians he’d used chicken stock in the soup, why take a chance? It’s a shame he doesn’t have the imagination to see vegetarian cuisine as a chance to be really interesting.

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Even if you don’t know enough about the towns to laugh, some of the responses are beautifully tragic. Third position in the national league of conference towns vs “thousands of pasty optimists doing brave impressions of sunbathing regardless of the weather”.

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A popular ringtone track is set to scoop the top spot in the UK singles chart, on course to beat Coldplay’s comeback to number one on Sunday. (BBC)
I guess in a way it’s just another novelty single, but it’s still very wrong.