Neighbours: Now With 10% More Fat Than The Next Leading Brand!

So I was reading the paper a couple of days ago and I read an article that said you were much more likely to be overweight if your neighbours were. They said it was like "keeping up with the Joneses".

Now, I don't know about anyone else but I would be a bit worried if I started putting on weight to keep up with the way that my neighbours looked. Apart from the fact that it's just a little bit weird and sad*, surely it's not good for your health at all?! With all of the warnings that we have about being over a certain weight I find it odd that people would be putting on weight in this way: can't we just leave the whole keeping up with your neighbours thing to TVs and sofas?

Perhaps I'm not the best example though. I'm a healthy weight and living in a fairly slim neighbourhood - would I really be fatter if I lived in a neighbourhood with more overweight people? Can I extend this "area" to mean my whole town? If this was the case I can say this research is terrible since there's a lot of large people walking down my high street eating a Greggs** pastie*** and McDonalds. At the same time.

I wonder what kind of sample they had? If we think about this deep enough it could have been done in particularly hefty streets in generally hefty towns. At least this research doesn't state the obvious though: most of them say things that are blatant even to people who've been on another planet for all their lives (we're talking smoking here, which is such a stupid subject if looked at in more depth).

Somebody please tell me if this is applicable to anybody/anywhere near them. I'm very interested....

*Sad = just something a bit weird and pitiful really. Like people who constantly go "ahhh, isn't that cute" whenever they see a baby or any kind of animal
**Greggs = I wished I'd never have to explain since it's disgusting. They're a bakers who make nice doughnuts and little else - I think that they serve food disgracefully high in fat, salt and sugar, mostly at the same time. Catch the smell wafting around on the mornings and be sickened for the rest of the day. Don't be fooled by the apparent "healthy" options like the piled high cajun sandwiches or whatever they are. No comparison to rival bakers Milligans in my own humble opinion
***Pastie = I deliberately spelt it this way so that people who didn't know what one was wouldn't say "pasty" as in looking a bit white and ill. Pasties (pass-teees) are like a savoury pastry with various fillings. Quite filling, quite fattening in some cases but if you ever have a chicken tikka flavoured one you'll understand that one every now and then is pretty good for you really. Available in corned beef, chicken bake, tikka, cheese and onion, and the most famous Cornish to name a few

Burn After Reading

Maybe this is the first time I've ever gone to the cinema to see a film that has really only just been released? I think four or five days after the initial release is a pretty good amount of time, and the cinema screen was still practically empty (because all the tiddlywinks wanted to go and see High School Musical - shudder).

Lets get straight to the point: Burn After Reading is as strange and oddly protracted as any Coen Brothers' movie, and still has a very dark thread running through it. After all, they don't really hold anything back do they? The story follows how the secret documents of sacked CIA man Osmond Cox (John Malkovich) are lost by an incompetent secretary at a gym and are found by two employees there (Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt). In the mean time Cox's wife (Tilda Swinton) is having an affair with their friend Harry (George Clooney) and things start to get.... complicated.

Well, there's lots of paranoia involved, particularly from Clooney, and just general stupidity, particularly from Pitt. The voice that he puts on to essentially blackmail Cox, for instance, is idiotically contrived and I had to stop myself from laughing at the incompetency - no wonder he gets punched in the face. And worse, but I'll not give it away.

There are some hilarious moments as with all of the Coens' less serious movies. Let's put it this way: you just have to see Clooney's home-made chair to believe it. Then there's the scene that I've colourfully called "the chopping of the carrots" and the whole way that Pitt acts in the movie - I can't believe that he didn't know that his character was gay when he was acting it out.

When we finally get to the climax you wonder how everything will be resolved. There isn't a definitive twist, as such, but there is a rather weird final scene. I can't give it away. But it's certainly not as thoughtful as the last little sequence in Fargo - in fact, you have to wonder about the morality of the whole thing. But it's pretty funny.

It's true that it isn't as good as Fargo or even the Big Lebowski, but it's still distinctly a Coen movie, and it's still got all the twisted, juicy elements that you would expect - probably isn't good enough for the Oscars like No Country For Old Men but definitely deserves some good recognition. Can more people go to see it before it tumbles into obscurity in the face of all the tween movies that are being paraded at the minute? Please?

Trick Or Treat

Well I've noticed it's been two whole weeks since I last posted here - that's pretty awful isn't it? First of all I have to say - how come it was the 28th yesterday and now today it's the 31st!? Have I completely lost track of all the dates and everything!? No wonder my pumpkin looks so angry, I bet he's lost in the tardis too... it was bad enough when the clocks went back and I kept losing track of the time (NOT helped by other people who kept getting the time wrong as well)...

So anyway, it's Halloween - when I lock the doors at night. People living the UK will probably understand when I say that it's annoying having a bunch of chavs* turn up at your door dressed as, er, chavs* and singing that awful "Sky is blue" song. It's not good. Whatever happened to little kids putting a bedsheet with two holes over their heads and asking elderly women for candy? I'm lying, some people still do that and other, sadder people decorate their house in all manner of creepy paraphernalia. Never floated my boat personally!

But for today I will be playing "Halloween" by Siouxsie and the Banshees. Although, when I think about it just about anything from their "Juju" album would be appropriate (erm, apart from "Arabian Nights" and "Monitor" I think). Not that I need an excuse to bang that brilliant gothic masterpiece on mind you...

Coincidentally**, it's Bonfire Night next week and little old me will be busy with sparklers and Damp Squibs***. More on that next week though.

*Chavs = a derogatory term used to describe rather arrogant people who constantly wear shellsuits and a lot of "bling" on any visible part of skin - Burberry is a must, as is swearing in any available public space. They also have a very annoying tendency to tuck their tracksuit bottoms into their socks
**Coincidentally = speaking of "Juju" and songs that go with Halloween, another Siouxsie song from the album (at least the restored edition) can be used to soundtrack Bonfire Night - "Fireworks" - which is why I started talking about it
***Damp Squibs = a daft term that my mum and I developed years ago to describe fireworks that promise a lot but then end up giving out the weakest of displays, such as those ones that shoot into the air with a massive squeal and then give a little pop with no lights. Makes you think either: "what a waste of money" or "I don't know why I bother". But it's funny!

Increasingly Stupid, Increasingly Forgetful

Well I've been watching the third series of Heroes and thinking "do the writers actually remember anything they've written in the previous series?"

The thing that's getting to me is that if Noah Bennet really really really wants to kill of Sylar then why doesn't he just shoot him in the head like it said in Series 2? You'd think that someone who worked in the company for so long would realise these little things - but I guess it's not very entertaining if you kill off your main bad guy in one go now is it?

Still.... someone else must have picked up on this...

Spore!

Everyone seems to be going on about this game called Spore that EA have released. It's the brainchild of the guy who brought us The Sims (you can tell this post was well researched...) and basically you're supposed to start off with a little creature and then multiply, befriend or fight other little creatures in order to populate your planet more and save it. Then you can blast off into space and explore other planets.

Now, I wasn't sure if it was any good or not until I heard people saying how brilliant it was (reviewers and that sort mostly) and thought "hmm, maybe I should look into this." I thought it was only going to be for PC, which would be a real pain since I don't have any of these fancy graphics cards or anything, so imagine my delight when I heard there's a DS version!

I'm pleasantly surprised, because normally these games are PC or bust... Still I feel the need to check it out. Since I feel like I'm progressing nicely with the 3 games I purchased for my little red companion in the summer I need something to mix it up a little. A good old fashioned incredibly long and logistical game is needed!

Eats, Shoots and Leaves: Resurrection Of The Stickler

In reading through Lynne Truss's book "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" (a no-nonsense guide to punctuation that is often pretty funny and sometimes throws some weird facts at you) it dawned on me that I am a "stickler".

A stickler is someone who goes around and gasps at the shoddy use of punctuation, and in my case this is particularly true of the apostrophe. There are many times when I want to have a heart attacks because I see signs like "CD's for sale" or "50% off hose's" (and I know this is a bit of an odd example).

To add to the issue this afternoon when in a shop I saw the line "... and all the bands I'm yet to discover" instead of the fully grammatical "...and all the bands I've yet to discover". Tsk tsk, this is awfully sloppy and is setting a bad example. I would blame texting but to be perfectly honest I text people far more than a call them; I'd be a hypocrite to say that this wonderful function is causing the death of English grammar.

But like Lynne says, all of the sticklers need to unite and fight the wave of sloppy grammarians who think it's okay to be shoddy with words - they are effectively killing our language. Where would we be, after all, without apostrophes and commas? They help us understand the true meanings of sentences and are necessary to be fully understood. You wouldn't want to read a book and think that it's about a completely different subject to that which the author intended would you?

Gather the following items and join me in the grammar wars: stickers, banners, balaclavas, megaphones, spray cans, and a gun (to shoot people who still won't get the message or maybe even to turn on yourself if the situation gets too awful which is how I feel sometimes).

Oh, what's the use? I even corrected the grammar of my friend the other day and she was surprised and shocked that I'd be so picky about where she put her comma: "But it's grammatically incorrect for what you're trying to say!" I squealed. "So? Stop nit-picking!" She protested. Am I the only stickler in this part of the world!?

For those of you who don't understand the panda, I'll explain: The idea is based around a joke about a dictionary entry about the panda. Instead of typing "eats shoots and leaves" which suggests the panda's eating habits, the compiler of the dictionary wrote "eats, shoots and leaves" which suggests that pandas eat in a restaurant, shoot everyone dead and then leaves without a care in the world. Awful joke, but it makes a valid point!

Double The Love

Diva and I have no idea if this is legal but I received an award from Brett the other day I gave it to her and now she wants to give it to this blog, feeling that I deserve to have it both here and on Jamjarsuperstar.

I think this is fair enough, and to make it more legal I've decided not to nominate anyone and just leave it as the people I've mentioned on JJS.

Extra thanks to everyone who has given me awards/memes/general praise and support throughout my blogging voyage so far!!