watch tHe skies

I was happily sat watching some crap on TV the other night, when a Bird’s Eye advert came on and told me that most salmon, one of my favourite foods, is often artificially coloured. So much so that there is even a “Salmon colour wheel” used to measure the pinkness.

You see, the flesh of wild salmon is naturally pink because the fish consume large amounts of shrimps. However, almost 90% of the salmon sold in supermarkets is farmed. So farmed salmon isn’t fed on shrimps, and guess how it gets its pink colour? Chemicals of course! Our friends in the industry are feeding the salmon canthaxanthin, which is also fed to chickens to give their skin and eggs a brighter yellow complexion.

This depresses me. Perhaps it would have been better for me to be blissfully ignorant of all this. It seems that more and more foods are being pumped full of toxins just to sell them without regard to the long-term effects. At a time where Tescos posts record profits yet again, perhaps Jamie Oliver needs to get back on our TVs and save the grown ups this time.

Our tiling is now finished and looks great. Thanks to Parkside tiles in Wigston for the excellent Amalfi range.

Looks like the kitchen completion date will slip in to June. We have decided to have the ceiling skimmed as it’s looking a bit ropey and spoils the kitchen that we have worked so hard on. Unfortunately our plasterer can’t do it until the end of May, so we will have to delay the floor installation until after the ceiling is done and painted.

Hopefully the fridge will be installed in the coming week. The knackered little one we have borrowed to keep us going is tripping the RCD on a regular basis, so we have just about had enough of it.

It seems like a good idea for Scolari to be appointed England Manager by the FA, but it just doesn’t seem right. Why? Because Scolari has already managed two national teams, so we aren’t even sloppy seconds.

In a competition where all of the people on the pitch have to be of the nationality of the country that they represent, why can the manager be from anywhere? It would appear to me that making that the rule would not necessarily be the fair thing to do, but logical at least.

Ok so it means that we would have Alan Curbishley or similar to mismanage us, but at least we would be mismanaged by an Englishman…

Finally the tiles are going on. All in place, tomorrow they get grouted. Hopefully the fridge is turning up next week and I just have to paint the wall above the window. Like the sockets? All from Screwfix, half the price of B&Q. Floor still to go.
So there is a chance that we might reach our aim of getting kitchen done before baby arrives, but only if baby goes late by a couple of weeks!

…but if they did….

Well I never thought I’d see the day when Arsene Wenger guided the Arse to a Champions League title. Well, there you go. Despite one of the worst performances by Arsenal this season, they are in the Final held in 3 week’s time, and they are going to have to play one hell of a lot better to lift the cup in Paris. Still, a night to savour for Gooners and a second year with an English team in the final. Can the English prove that we are the best footballers in Europe for a second year running*? Fingers crossed.

* Yes I know that Arsenal have almost no English players, but a man can dream can’t he?

Just finished watching the second episode of the new Dr Who series, and I must say that so far it is very good. This episode was not only scary and spooky, but well acted and having some really impressive SFX. Featuring a CGI werewolf, the BBC have clearly upped the budget from the first series, which did suffer from some pretty lame effects at times. The werewolf here though was excellent, beautifully animated and genuinely scary.

Although I was disappointed when Christopher Ecclestone left the role, David Tennant is turning out to be a rather cool Doctor, continuing the rather enigmatic Doctor creared by his predecessor. He also seems to have a fair amount of chemistry with Billie Piper’s Rose Tyler.

Next week it looks like we will see the return of  K-9, and the episode also made the first reference to the forthcoming spin-off, Torchwood, featuring the Captain Jack (John Barrowman) from the previous series.

Jenny went out to a Bodyshop party tonight, so I got a rare night in to myself. So what did I do? Well I thought I’d watch Alien Vs Predator, a movie that I saw at the cinema and was pretty disappointed with. Anyway on second viewing I was surprised to find that it actually is more poop than originally thought.

It’s nothing in particular, but a combination of things. Firstly the story is pretty dire and not very much happens in it. Secondly it makes the Predators who were so effectively scary and powerful, look pretty lame in comparison to the Aliens. Thirdly it makes the whole gestation thing from the Alien movies look daft as suddenly these things don’t take but a few minutes to pop out and grow to full size, draining almost the entire dose of suspense in Alien out in one go.

But its biggest crime to me is taking two very cool franchises and delivering a bastard child that fails to inherit the best DNA from either. For me there was a way cooler story just waiting to be explored and I cannot for the life of me understand why they didn’t use it.

Don’t know what that is?

Ok, well here goes, a slightly modified version of the concept I originally posted on DVDLard way back in 2004. (more…)

Acording to Sci-Fi.com, JJ Abrams, creator of Lost and director of the upcoming Mission: Impossible III, has been signed by Paramout Pictures to resurrect Star Trek. I’m not sure how I feel about this. After all, Abrams is a highly talented producer, and is looking like the next big thing in Hollywood if M:I3 is the hit that we all expect it to be.

But what the Star Trek franchise needs, after being milked by Paramount for such a long time, is to be left alone for a few years, to give it a chance to freshen up. SciFi has moved on considerably since Jean Luc first sat in his Captain’s Chair, shows like Battlestar Galactica have made the formulaic Star Trek concept look very tired.

Still, if anyone can do it, JJ can, and with the Star Wars TV show appearing in a couple of years, perhaps the safest place for Trek is on the big screen…

Yesterday I read an article by a guy called Steve Manning about how to write a book. In particular he was talking about writing fiction and the crux of the article was about where to get a plot from.

His suggestion is to head down to the nearest used bookstore and trawl the shelves for a “bestseller”. He then recommends that you buy it, read it and if you liked the story, distil its plot down on a piece of paper and there you have it a plot. Then feel free to tweak time, place etc to get the theme of your story.

My first reaction was abject horror, surely that is simple theft? Then it occurred to me that actually when you think about it, there are only a handful of basic themes, forbidden love, the nobody destined to save the kingdom, the crime of passion etc., a theory suggested by Joseph Campbell (”The Hero has a thousand faces”), based on human pschological makeup. I mean, how many times has Romeo and Juliet been used as a plot? Sure it’s tweaked here and there but still people pay good money to see films and read books with the same basic plot?

So is Manning’s idea plagiarism, or just an honest suggestion of the process used by successful authors? Probably a bit of both, and with the recent Da Vinci case closed, perhaps it supports the fact that these guys who churn a book out every couple of years are going straight to the best source of stories to fast track their new income stream; the used book shop :).