George W Bush was careful to point out the “Saddam Hussein will continue to receive the due process and legal rights that he denied to the Iraqi people”.
That’ll be jolly useful to him if he wants to negotiate exactly how much he’s going to be executed.
I may have mentioned before that one of the most delightful things about my friend Jason Fout is that his often serious and challenging obsession with matters theological is tempered by a similar obsession with matters culinary. As such, Jason stands as a living example of the importance of sensual experience in spiritual understanding, every bit as much as the cinematic joy that is Babette’s Feast.
Jason was our very own Babette a couple of weeks ago at St Mark’s, when he prepared a selection of pizzas along these lines:
And the pizza in question did indeed live up to the look on his daughter Alex’s face.
On Sunday I invited Jason and family back to Victoria Street after he preached at St Mark’s (a sermon in which he disappointingly ignored my suggestion to preach on Guy Fawkes) and became increasingly nervous that, even with Alastair’s capable assistance, we would end up serving something which to an expert like Revd Fout would seem the equivalent of beans on toast. Actually, I even considered cutting my losses and making him beans on toast.
But Alastair and myself discovered something wonderful; cooking is not about following instructions, or trying to recreate something you’ve seen your Mum do. In fact, you can make it up!
We even cooked something with a name that we thought had been made up too – a poussin. (Well, four of them actually – poussi?) Though later we were informed that a poussin is a teenage chicken, and I suddenly felt quite bad about eating them. I mean, they were probably quite unhappy in a sulky, listless way, but they still had their whole adult lives ahead of them.
The joy of cooking the poussi was not in the simplicity of the process (you put them in the oven) so much as the little artistic details we achieved. Alastair bought some fresh basil and liberally shredded it over the teenage birds, whilst I slapped on olive oil and herbs. Then I sliced up some apple and stuffed it into the teenage birds’ orifices. And finally (possibly getting a bit carried away) we sprinkled them with mulled wine mix.
An example poussin follows.
The look on Jason’s face says the following:
1. That joy at freshly cooked food runs in his family.
2. That the poussin was a success.
3. That Jason was actually quite jealous of our achievements with the poussin.
The reason I bring all this up, apart from the need to brag, is that if we were in a television programme called Can’t Cook, Can Cook (I admit it’s not conceptually as brilliant as the original), in this instance the Can’t Cookers put up a pretty good fight.
I’m quite keen to know how the audience would have voted. So if you feel you can judge our efforts on the above photos, please do let me know.*
If you prefer simpler pleasures, maybe you’d like to draw me a picture of what you think a poussin looks like when it’s still running around?
*Keen judges may wish to take into account the fact that I was aided in the Can’t Cook kitchen by Alastair, who can cook, whereas Jason made several pizzas alone. In this case, I feel for the sake of fairness I should point out that Jason managed to lose the middle of one of his pizzas in the oven, along with half a jar full of anchovies – which was of course a huge tragedy.
Okay, I confess I’ve been catching up on Neighbours since I got back from Australia. Not obsessively – just to see the bits I learned I’d missed on the Ramsey Street tour, like Connor being horribly murdered and Sky getting pregnant by three different people.
The following line from an episode at the end of August leapt out at me. Paul and his children are having a jokey chat about home videos and Robert (who is, incidentally, pretending to be Cameron in this particular scene) makes a comment about Paul’s 80s mullet. Paul responds:
“I did not have an 80s mullet! Excuse me, it was your Uncle Scotty who was the king of the mullet. That was until nature took revenge and his hairline started receding…”
In case you forget who played “Uncle Scotty”, I would point out that this is a brazen jibe about none other than Jason Donovan and his current follically-challenged state.
It’s just one step away from joking about Aunty Charlene and her breast cancer…
Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Philippe have separated after seven years of marriage. The figures on Oscar winners’ marriages aren’t great, are they? I’d like to see a comparison with other, lower profile but still high stress, positions – CEOs, politicians and so forth. I doubt it’s specific to actresses, no matter how tempting that is as a simple explanation.
On Saturday, one of my best friends got married. Thinking back, there weren’t actually wedding bells, but there were all the staples of weddings past, present and future:
Perhaps predictably, one of the readings was from Ecclesiastes, as ridiculed by James a few days ago. What James failed to point out is that the following line ends “and a threefold cord is not quickly broken”. There are several lines about two being better than one, and suddenly we get three into the equation. Who is the third? The priest? The mother of the bride? Solomon? And if three lie down together, can they all keep warm, or does that only work in twos? And if so, which one gets cold?
These are questions for couples everywhere to explore themselves. To Michaela and Darren: good luck in finding your answers.
Jimmy Carr has co-written a book called The Naked Jape in which he explains how to tell jokes.
Not only is this like Hitler writing a book on international diplomacy, it is clear from the extracts in The Sunday Telegraph that he has nothing interesting to say on the subject. Aside from recapping some classic one-liners that don’t work on paper, it’s full of well-worn observations about the power of shock, the importance of timing, and the fact that ‘k’ and ‘oo’ sounds are inherently funny.
There are, however, hints at why Jimmy Carr himself fails to be funny so regularly (however many ‘k’ and ‘oo’ sounds he uses). He advises, for example, that comedians should “project a demeanour of relaxed confidence”; so that’s what he’s trying to do! I’m sorry to break it to you Jimmy, it’s coming across as a demeanour of being an unpleasant, arrogant dickhead.
And on that subject, I read that David Blunkett’s book has only sold 768 copies in its first week of publication.
That isn’t very many.
While I am enjoying my continued feeling of glorious triumph over Blunkett (if you recall, my blog brought about his downfall), I would say that if you’re torn between buying his book and Carr’s, please buy the Blunkett – if he doesn’t shift a few more books he may redirect his poisonous personality (which in the world of literature just mingles nicely) back towards political ambitions (which, I believe his book makes clear, are to eventually run the world).
He’s talking right now on Newsnight about the BBC’s report on Wednesday about Afghanistan, where they interviewed leaders of the Taliban. Fox is claiming that this is not objective reporting; he seems to think that objective journalism only contains information from and statements by the side that the prevailing opinion believes is in the right.
This is, quite simply, utter crap. If he believes it, he is the worse form of complete fucking idiot. If he doesn’t believe it, he’s a political weasel who deserves screen coverage less than those he is seeking to censor.
Quite simply, we cannot sustain a democracy unless the public has a reasonable amount of information to go on. That includes statements that may be complete lies, from people who may be our utter, implacable, enemies. The people must make these determinations: they cannot be pre-decided by people like Liam Fox. Any belief that this is not the case is arrogant, and a worying public admission. That it is not unexpected is perhaps the most searing indictment of our current political system.
Liam Fox does not deserve his seat in parliament. If David Cameron supports him, he does not deserve the leadership of his party, and his party certainly does not deserve to form a government.
That this leaves us with the option of an immature party that cannot decide whether to stick by its beliefs or to chase votes, and a party split by the already-made decision to ignore its history to cynical win victories, should be an indication of the mountain we have to climb to achieve any kind of real democracy in this country.
You might expect me to laud the BBC for sticking up for its reports here. I don’t simply because its reporters don’t have the balls to call Liam Fox on his unacceptable propaganda – precisely what he is complaining about from the other side.
While I’m here: Amnesty International’s campaign against online censorship.
Here at Talk To Rex, we don’t have any of those newfangled things that technology has brought us recently. Okay, so we’ve got a blog. But we don’t have digital telly – in fact, the other James doesn’t have a telly at all. As a result, I didn’t get to see Torchwood on Sunday, when it showed on BBC 3, but instead had to record it off BBC 2 on Wednesday night.
Just in case you were wondering why we hadn’t commented on it yet.
Anyway. I sat down with a very nice lamb dinner to watch the opening two episodes, and my main impression at this point is pretty good. The dark mood doesn’t feel forced, the two main characters feel real (the others are a bit more cardboard, but there is scope for them to develop and round out), I quite liked the music (which means it wasn’t too annoying or foreground), and although the design was sometimes a bit chunky (the Torchwood vehicle could be more cool, frankly) they’ve got the cool gadgets and they battle aliens.
But … but, but, but. There were a couple of bits that reminded me too much of the parts of Doctor Who where the writers can’t find an explanation for what needs to happen, so just come up with a magical explanation for it; that Russell T Davies turned Doctor Who from sci-fi into fantasy was grating, but for him to set up Torchwood as fantasy not sci-fi as well just suggests that he’s in completely the wrong job. And, although they manage to do more per episode than Doctor Who, it’s still a bit slow for my taste.
That’s pretty minor, though – but I do have to wonder whether we really need a low budget X-Files set in Cardiff.
The writer of Ecclesiastes says in chapter 4: “Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?”
Well – actually there are quite a few ways of keeping warm alone. And whilst I applaud the suggestion of keeping warm by lying down with somebody – for it is certainly a good method and arguably the most fun – I offer the following alternative methods of keeping warm for those who are not in such a relationship during the winter months:
A radiator
An immersion heater
A blanket
A hairdryer
A wooly jumper
A dog or a cat
Or a hamster if you can’t afford the above (a big one)
A warm bath (more of a short-term solution)
Jumping up and down lots
Hugging your pillow and pretending it’s someone you like
Whisky
I’m sure there are others, but those are the main ones.
Talk To Rex 
