lemon garden

Earlier today I went along to my local cinema (handily placed about 5 minutes walk away) to see the film Syriana. It’s a very good film, with a satisfyingly complex plot. Probably also worth mentioning that, because the film is about the oil industry and Middle Eastern geopolitics, you don’t get a gaggle of teenagers sitting behind you wittering throughout the film. This is a film for grown-ups.

Before the film, they showed the now standard “piracy is bad, don’t do it” advert. First they present some striking scenes from a forthcoming movie, then show how they might appear on a pirate DVD (i.e. muddy incomplete picture, interference, etc). At one point they say the pirate DVD may even include the shadowed form of people getting up to go to the toilet halfway through the film. This is accompanied by a silhouetted figure superimposed over the representative pirate film doing just that. For this reason, they say, pirate DVDs simply cannot compare to the cinema experience.

Except that the problem of people standing up and obscuring your view is common to both the cinema and pirate DVDs. On account of the pirated film having been recorded in a cinema in the first place. Do they not think these warning videos through before broadcasting them?

Mind you, the cinema experience is miles better than any DVD. Pirated or otherwise.

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you the Leader of the Free World:

The BBC has further pictures of George Bush being taught how to play cricket during his recent visit to Pakistan. Most amusing.

Apparently, today is International Polar Bear Day. Which is all fine and dandy, of course, but I want to know what’s so special about international polar bears? What about the humble national polar bear?

Is it only the globe-trotting, citizen-of-the-world type of polar bear who merit a celebratory day? It seems a tad unfair.

Here’s some picture of polar bears to mark the day. Including one of polar bears french kissing, which is something you don’t see every day.

An excellent link for you. Upload a photo of yourself and MyHeritage.com’s fancy facial recognition software will process your image and tell you which celebrity you most resemble!

Apparently I most resemble Art Garfunkel (58% likeness).

Then Mark Hamill (54% likeness).

Then, er, Junichiro Koizumi, the Japanese Prime Minister (53% likeness).

Hm. I’m beginning to suspect this “advanced facial recognition technology” may need a little more work…

Ah, my life is chock-a-block with excitement. Today I did the following:

• vacuumed;
• dusted;
• polished;
• cleaned the bathroom;
• cleaned the kitchen (including the cooker!);
• cleaned the doors of those greasy fingerprints left behind by my uncivilised habit of pushing them open without using the doorhandle;
• cleaned assorted skirting boards;
• polished my shoes;
• washed the bathmats;
• changed the sheets on my bed;
• replaced the strings on my mandolin and both my guitars;
• watered the plants;
• and cooked a rather pleasant risotto for dinner.

Despite the domestic frenzy, I couldn’t quite bring myself to do the ironing. One can go too far with these things.

I also popped out to the shop to buy some bread, milk, eggs and butter. It occurs to me as I write this that I could make a bread and butter pudding with those ingredients. I haven’t eaten bread and butter pudding in years - what have I been doing with my time?

Anyway, when I got home I put the eggs in the fridge and I noticed that one had a few wisps of chicken feathers about it. I wonder if this means I’ve now got a fridge full of bird flu. Sorry, that should read “the deadly H5N1 strain” of bird flu. I think that must be the official name for the troublesome virus.

It’s funny really. You don’t often hear about “the deadly tuberculosis” or “the deadly malaria”. Nor, for that matter, do you hear about “the deadly measles” when a parent refuses an MMR jab for their child. Strange that.

From the department of interesting facts: The UK Government does not collect statistics on dismemberment. ref

I bet you didn’t know that.

I think we need more poets in government. I’ve been trying to read a number of government documents lately and use of English is rather poor, to say the least.

The Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs sponsors something called the Darwin Initiative. It involves giving grants to small conservation projects around the world, which is quite a nice thing to do. Whilst looking at their uninformative, but rather pretty, website I found a page briefly describing a project to protect rhinos in Kenya. The page is entitled, “Building capacity for conservation of a critically endangered flagship species”. Need I say more?

It is Valentine’s Day tomorrow. I am amazed at how a minor, if rather sweet, saint’s day has suddenly exploded into a huge commercial event. I think I first noticed the shops really plugging valentine products last year, but in 2006 it’s gone mad. Every shop in town has devoted swathes of floor space to valentine themed items. Red and black seem to be the colours of choice - red for the heart, black for … er … contrast.

I wonder what will be next. The problem, I suppose, is that we’re running a bit short of suitable festivals. Yet there is so much money to be made out of these “traditional” celebrations that this lack of festivity could seriously endanger the future growth of our economy.

Obviously you’ve got Christmas. And Easter is great for selling eggs, chocolate and stuffed toys (particularly rabbits and chicks). I think the Christians do something at Easter as well. Bonfire Night is a bit limited really. Everyone goes to public firework displays so you can’t even flog fireworks to them. Halloween, having gone almost entirely unmarked for years in the UK, now provides the one window of opportunity for pumpkin growers to sell their wares to the British public.

Other than that, I suppose there might be commercial opportunities in Remembrance Day. Perhaps a chocolate cenotaph, or poppy seed cakes. A special “Remembrance Minute Timer” to measure your period of silence and sombre reflection - complete with customisable ring tone to signal the end of the minute.

Then there is May Day. We could market a children’s maypole to keep the kiddies occupied on the Bank Holiday. It’s never too early to start them on the old fertility rituals. Or perhaps a pair of lovers’ Morris Dancing costumes (with bells!).

Truly, the possibilities are endless.

From the Guardian of 1826, complaining about the driving of the horse-drawn London Mail Cart:

“The speed at which it was going could not, we think, be less than fourteen or fifteen miles per hour, which, in a crowded thoroughfare, is absolutely intolerable.”

Quite right. Lord forfend that traffic, be it motorised or otherwise, should reach such manifestly dangerous speeds, upon Britain’s roads. If such lunacy continues, we may well see people being injured, or even killed, on our roads. No amount of haste is worth a human life, as any sane man would surely agree.

It seems the Islamic world is in uproar because last September a Danish newspaper printed some cartoon caricatures of the prophet Muhammad. For goodness sake, they’re just cartoons. Some people take their religion far too seriously - the root of many a problem in this world.

I understand that images of the prophet are banned in case they inspire idolatry. I’m not sure how much risk there is of people worshipping these cartoons. Mind you, I do sometimes find myself making blood sacrifices to the cartoons in Private Eye, so perhaps they are on to something after all…

Incidentally, the cartoons in question can be seen here. The bomb/turban one is in rather poor taste, but the second one is very funny. And the fourth one is quite prescient.