This week I have been

Reading

The 2011 Tour de France race guide.

Watching

An Idiot Abroad

Listening to

The xx

Discovering

(Or rediscovering) Hamlet - Nicki Greenberg's beautiful new version, thanks to the fabulous Snarkattack, who invited me along to see Nicki talk about the creative process behind the book.

Eating

  • An enormous serve of bangers'n'mash and a nourishing pint of Kilkenny at the Town Hall one dismal Tuesday evening.
  • A "Chachi" - chianina meatball sandwich - another brioche donut and some amazing chocolate tart at Beatrix, which Essjay has reviewed.
  • A lazy Sunday lunch at The Crimean. The Polish hunter's stew (bigos) was just the thing to revive me after a chilly bike ride.
  • Generous piles of fried food with oodles of chillies and sichuan peppercorns at Sichuan House
  • Succulent suckling pig at Liberteene.
  • An array of bright, zesty flavours at Chin Chin, where the only problem was having to choose only some of the items from what looks to be a menu that is all hits, no filler.

Links

No real people are actually architects

This time, the family that I assumed the parking attendant was referring to included a dark-haired agnostic architect husband named Alex who liked ethnic food and zombie movies. (For the record, Alex is a product of my imagination. I realize that no real people are actually architects, and that it is a profession that exists entirely in movies, like art gallery owner or children’s bookshop proprietor.)

Mindy Kaling’s imaginary family, from the NYT via Pop Culture Junk Mail.

Let me google that for you

I’m not opposed to people asking questions.  Not at all.  For example “Does the sushi place next to McDonald’s have decent fish rolls?” is not a bad question when asked of a person who regularly visits that particular shop.  ”Does the 109 go down Victoria Street?” is also a reasonable question to ask if you know that somebody in the office is a user of public transport.  Also “What do you feel like for lunch?”.  Perfectly sensible question.

It’s just that there are people who ask questions when they should be pretty confident that the answer is not going to be common knowledge and that the person they have asked will have to do some research in order to provide an answer.  There are scenarios in which this type of question is acceptable, however a lot of the time these questions are asked by people who are either

  1. sitting in front of a computer at the time of asking, or
  2. asking the question via the internet.

This is where www.lmgtfy.com comes in handy.

Here’s how it works.  Somebody emails you/tweets/facebooks (is that even a thing?  Let’s assume it is) a question such as “Where do lemurs come from?”.  Now, the querier is clearly hoping that somebody reading the question will provide the answer.  Don’t do it!  Go to Let me google that for you and type in a the query where do lemurs come from.  Then copy the link that is generated.

Have a look at the comments on this brief David Sedaris article to see how it can work for you, even when dealing with complete strangers…

Daily Drop Cap

Sometimes there’s nothing I particularly want to write, but I know that if I let too many days go by without posting I’ll fall out of the “habit”.

This is why I was excited when @melbournebitter tweeted a link to Daily Drop Cap.

Instant post, and a gorgeous resource!

Something cute

Something to lift an otherwise bleagh Wednesday:

Sichuanese hotpot – via Google Translate

Fuschia Dunlop’s books on the food of Sichuan and Hunan are go-to books in this house.  The recipes we’ve tried from them have always worked, and she writes so well – even of things I normally dislike – that I’ve even been tempted to try the exploding pig kidneys.  Tempted.  But not that tempted.

Given how reliable her recipes are, I’m not sure what prompted the cook to search for an alternative recipe for a hotpot stock, but I’m glad he did.  It’s the most I’ve laughed in ages.

Continue reading Sichuanese hotpot – via Google Translate

“Where in the world…

… and when in time is Stephen Colbert going to be in the Persian Gulf?”

The particularly catchy jingle that goes with these words has been stuck in my head over the past few weeks, so it’s good to get the following answers from the New York Times:

Iraq and now.

I wish I’d just copied the whole post…

The Miss Universe Organisation has removed Dayana Mendoza’s rhapsody about Guantanamo Bay.  Fortunately, Dayana has her necklace to remember her “wonderful time” there. The rest of us only have incomplete quotes and dead links. Oh, and this:

On Friday, we left for Jacksonville for one night because the next day we were going to Guantanamo, Cuba!!!! Wow, my job is amazing!!!! I love it, I let you guys know next week how Guantanamo was …. Muah!

Posted by Dayana

Edit: fortunately the BBC grabbed a lot more from the initial blog than I did and it’s here.

ZOMG! So Gitmo’s, like, sooooooo beautiful!

Misses USA and Universe 2008 (Crystle Stewart and Dayana Mendoza, respectively) have returned from a trip to Guantanamo Bay.  Were they there to draw further attention to the plight of detainees?  No, according to the NY Times, they were there to “to visit troops as part of a U.S.O./Armed Forces Entertainment tour”.

Dayana reports that they had “a wonderful time” and “a loooot of fun!”.  In fact, it was “soooo beautiful”  and such “an incredible experience” that Dayana “bought a necklace … that will remind me off Guantanamo Bay :) ”.

I didn’t want to leave, it was such a relaxing place, so calm and beautiful.

They didn’t completely ignore the detainees:

We visited the Detainees camps and we saw the jails, where they shower, how the recreate themselves with movies, classes of art, books. It was very interesting.

Dayana doesn’t say whether they remain at Gitmo because they heart it so much they don’t want to leave…

Do cats need washing?

Jon Stewart used this clip on the show the other day – even ‘though it’s a very short snippet, looped over and over, I still can’t get over how funny it is.

It’s a chimp!  Washing a cat!  (A very patient cat…)

Save the Words

This is fabulous.  Discovered via a tweet.  Twitter is, therefore, more than mere blateration – it educates!

http://www.savethewords.org/

Improve the web with Nofollow Reciprocity.