Sushi Akabusi

It’s possibly my greatest franchise idea ever, if only I could get the big man on board!

i don’t understand! This post gets about 50% of my daily hits!
Contact me and let me know what led you here… apart from its obvious comic brilliance

Irish Blood, English Heart

I’m a proud Irishman, well, a proud Ulsterman, well, not that proud. A few years ago i moved to the South West of England for 9 month job - just for a change, and in true story telling fashion, here i am 4 years on with a house, a garden, a cat, a wife and 3 month old son!

 

Cards on table, i’m a Northern Irish unionist (with a very small ‘u’), so deep down i consider myself more British than Churchill! But, i’ll never be English. I like English people, probably more than any other national group, apart from N Irish (of course), my wife is ‘one of them’ which is great. BUT i’m not sure how i feel about my son being English.

I think it all comes to a head when i think of sport, obviously my son is going to end up being a world famous sports star - but would i be happy with him representing England at football or rugby. So i’ve made a decision.

If he’s a rugby player, then its gotta be Ireland, Ireland are a world class team and there’s a history of English born players like Easterby playing for them (i’ll not mention Shane Geraghty to him!). But if football is his game, much as i love N Ireland football team, i do tend to support England anyway - so i’ll let him off with that.

Or maybe, i get no say whatsoever anyway!

Studio 60 - Let the British decide!

 

Last night on British TV, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip aired for the first time. For all fans of the West Wing this moment was long awaited. Billed as Aaron Sorkin’s ‘new’ West Wing, staring one its’ main characters, it was certain to be great.

The problem is, it has already been cancelled in the USA, we Brits didn’t get a say! So I , like many other WW geeks sat down to watch it last night almost wanting it to be rubbish - so that I wouldn’t be frustrated that there’s only one series. A great unfinished masterpiece! (thanks RJ).

All WW geeks will remember the episode when Matthew Perry cameo’d as a right-wing lawyer and I’m sure everyone thought to themselves… whoa, I didn’t know that Chandler from Friends could actually act! I guess Mr. Sorkin thought the same, so he cast him alongside Brad Whitford in his Studio 60.

I tried my best not to like it, but when WG Snuffy Walden’s name appeared in the opening credits I knew I was in trouble… and yes… it was great, no point denying it. The drama, the intelligent dialog, the subtle nuances, dramatic punch the air moments.

The problem is, as always, when Sorkin makes this kind of quality series, almost by definition it will have a limited audience – a lot of what makes it great would have to be removed, if it was to be given mass appeal. So the burden of the sky-high budget, makes it very hard to be viable.

So, I guess I’m left again, in the TV Hades of wanting it to be great, yet on the other hand knowing im might be happier if its rubbish.

(Update: after 4 episode - hmmm ok, im starting to see that i could get bored after a full series)

Homeopathy - what’s all that about then?

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z1QFZcnAi4&NR=1

Saw this on BBC 4 recently - fascinating.

I think my own view is (blogs are opinion forms after all!) if it works it works… it doesn’t mater if we don’t know why or how it works. There are many things we don’t know how or why they work.

But at the basic level, we have to find out IF it works. I think I always just assumed Homeopathy was based on some form of medical science. Maybe it needs to win Randi’s million dollars, before I give it a whirl next time im ill.

Too much intellectual energy applied to the untestable?

(the fact that ‘untestable’ isn’t even really a word, lets you know what im not talking about myself in this post)

It’s a little known secret that Question Monkey’s alter ego’s Daily Planet is actually a public body that funds histograpers, archaeologists, philosophers, and theologians. (I’m reasonably sure that all those quotation marks and apostrophes are in the right place, but no promises)

Defence in early… It’s worth noting, that I consider the work of the professions of most of those listed above to be extremely important to the fabric of our community. I value their role in understanding ourselves, our society, our past and our future, and the world in which we live. There we go.

As P Diddy said to J Lo, here comes the but… My ire is focused on the Theologers among you (possibly because I know at least two of my readers are semi-pros themselves and might rise to the bait!)… should public money really be given to people who want to study the nature of something which is untestable - i.e. spirituality, belief and faith? (outside of the field of psychology)

I sometimes see it as a waste, that such intelligent people, expend such effort into deciphering and expounding books like the Bible, writing at length about every nuance should be interpreted, and how it is applicable today. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve no problem with a church minister or a priest doing this - but I’m not sure how it adds to the wider community, outside of their specific faith group.

Only investigate the nature of that which is first, demonstrable  (to slightly misquote Russell).

Maybe there should be one, heavily funded study, to decide whether it’s reasonable to assume that the bible is indeed, a book which is worthily of its own branch in the humanities. Then we can decide if the study of it should get any more funding than the study of Lord of the rings, Harry Potter or the effect of the button fastener on 18th century urban culture (you think I joke?)

revision: of course, things like art and literature are untestable… in fact pretty much all of the humanities are… so what the heck im i going on about!

Annoying Arguments – any examples?

I love nothing more than a good ole debate. No holds barred, avoiding personal insult, but relentlessly trying to probe for holes in your opponent’s argument. I have a number of good friends who are of a similar vain, which makes for interesting discussions.

With one friend in particular, there have been all too numerous occasions when we’ve gone to far and one or both of us has had to break out the ‘tail between legs’ apology the next day. In spite of that, he’s one of my best friends and I don’t see that changing. It’s something we both enjoy, like lion cubs on the Serengeti honing our fighting skills ready for the ‘real’ fight (all too often we find out that actually we agree with each other, and were just sussing out the strength of our own argument! Let’s call that annoying argument No.1!).

As I said, I love a good barny! But I hate it when people use cheap predictable techniques to hide a poor argument. Here’s some of them.

Scrambling for the intellectual high-ground.
“..Voltaire totally rubbished your argument in his Treatise on etc etc… oh!  You haven’t read it?…   well how about you go and read that and get back to me”

Even people who agree with you on everything else disagree with you on this! 
This is a hard one to describe, because it’s subtle, but is often used.
“I’m not even going to argue with you, because I know someone who is ‘one of you’ who even thinks you’re wrong”

I used to think that, but now I’ve realised I was wrong. Often used, and quite powerful.
“I used to be an atheist too, but now I’ve realised god exists maybe in time you will too”
“I used to be a Christian, but now I’ve realised it was all in my head, maybe in time you’ll realise too”
“I used to be an idiot too, like you, so i can relate to what you’re thinking… let me help you take your blinkers off”

Any more examples for me?

The anatomy of a swear word

Something that’s always confused me, was what public body decides what words are swear words and what aren’t?

I think its another one of those things, that when you have a child and you are getting yourself ready for some questions - you realise you don’t actually know why you know what you know. Swear words fall in to this category.

[warning: I'm going just type the full words rather than messing around with $%&£ etc]

When I was young, fart was a swear word, the correct colloquial term for flatulence was poof (poof is probably more of a swear word these days ironically). But now, when my son lets rip his mum says ‘ooh, was that mr farty pants’, but we wouldn’t dream of describing his poo poo as shit!

Why? But even shit has been downgraded, I hear my dad sometimes say it these days, but when I were a lad I’d have been in big trouble. Even crap was borderline.

I have a confession to make, I don’t think im offended by any word. By that I mean, by the word it self. I’m offended just as much if someone calls me a absolute idiot than if im called a fucking idiot. Further to that, im not sure I want to teach my children to be offended by particular words. Of course I want to teach them to be polite and respectful but do I really want to punish them for exclaiming Oh Fuck! when then stub their toe rather than Oh crap?

First of all, Oh Fuck! is a more expressive phrase, im minded to say its better use of the English language. I’m loathed to teach them that there is such a thing as ‘bad’ language - language is a wonderful expressive, beautiful and powerful tool. It would be like telling Picasso to keep painting, but don’t use a certain offensive palette of colours, or telling Mozart to compose, but never use the key of B minor,because it’s a swear key.

(i feel myself brewing up an other post on the nature of ‘offence’)

New Gadget - to give or to keep?

I’ve bought a new gadget… well actually for my dad. He’s impressively into new things and decided he wanted an MP3 player for his birthday (even though he doesn’t listen to music much). He is going to Australia next month, so will maybe get some use out of it listening to audio books or some Van the man and Sinatra.

Thing is… I don’t want to give it to him I want to keep it. It’s a Samsung YP-K5. very slinky, nice interface and with its own little slide out speaker. The whole thing is no bigger than a mobile phone – and as I say – I want it.

My favourite eatery in Bristol

 

The One Stop Thahi is great! Let me set the scene, its about the size of a midsize living room, there are about 6 tables and random carved chairs. The décor is quite eurasian and mystical, with a hint of bollywood with middle eastern rugs on the floor and, importantly a performance area! (I’ll get to that later).

The food is Hindu vegetarian, and there’s no real menu… you really just get ‘what’s on’. My better half is a veggie, but I have to say I would very rarly not have meat when I go out – but at the thali café even if it was on the menu it would some how seem inappropriate!

Oh yeah, the performance area is, a stool. Where ‘alternative’ artists do their thing. And when I say alternative I’m not talking indie-rock… last time I was there it was a guy in  full top-hat and tails playing a classical music on a saw. Tongue no where near his cheek.

Is friendship like a cricketers batting average?

I’m a cricket fan. Not to the extent that I go to all the home  games or know obscure statistics from 1956. But I watch every England test match on TV and usually go to The Oval one day a year with my dad. And I tend to go and see a couple of county 20/20 games, whilst sipping pimms on the village green.

Batting averages are generally taken as the telling statistic when judging a players quality… a good test match player will have an average of around 40, a great one will have an average over 50.

The average, of course, starts to mean more as time goes on. Sometimes a player will burst on the scene and score 3 hundreds in his first 5 games, and have an average right away of 60+. People will love him, and think he’s the next Bradman, but inevitably he has a bad run of form and his average dips. As time goes on though, he can afford to get 3 or 4 low scores and his average won’t be effected too much, and 3 or 4 high scores won’t make him out to be a genius.

(I used to go to church where the preacher would tell a completely random story then at the end say ,  ‘and that’s a bit like Jesus’… and it was all wonderfully make sense!)

Well, that’s a bit like friendship. Sometimes we make new friends (especially of the opposite sex) and they are wonderful right from the start, you love everything they do, it seems like you’re going to be best friends for ever (BFF!). Then you start to fall out with them, they do something that annoys you, really annoys you – and if you haven’t build up enough of an average then, that could be the end of it.

Whereas you have other friends you’ve known for years, with whom you have a decent average. If you, for some reason are a really good friend to you a couple of times, its not going to move them too far in to ‘brother’ status right away… similarly if they upset you or do a few stupid things  they will have built up enough average to still be a good friend.

(this is my worst and most obvious post to date, sorry )

Suddenly, im a prolific songwriter!

Suddenly, im a prolific songwriter!

My son is only a few months old, and after trying numerous methods and voodoos to try to get him to sleep at night, I did the unthinkable, reached for the guitar.

It turns out I can improvise a fun, informative tuneful ditty at the drop of a hat – the early reviews have been positive!

At this stage most of the lyrics revolve around a farmyard theme, There once was a cow who went moo, his friend was a cat who went meaow….

You get the idea. An album may soon be on the way

The concealing power of the question mark?

A few weeks ago, The Jon Stewart Show did a comedy piece on the use of questions on 24 Hour news channels. Specifically Fox News (surprise, surprise).

So, being the Question Monkey I felt duty bound to analyse.

I’m rarely shocked by American news coverage but this was a new high. When discussing a topic they decided that they could throw in the most one sided ludicrous accusations on their Headline Ticker.

You want some examples don’t you?

Showing on their Headline bar at the bottom of the screen…

George Bush, greatest president ever?
Are Muslims suffering from insanity?
Iran is planning to attack us?
Imigration should be ended, and illegals sent home?

Should say, it wasn’t just Fox, it was CNN as well.

Stewart of course had his own comedy headline bar.

Bush guilty of voter fraud? 
You’re mama is a wh*re?
Cheney is satan?

Etc etc, you get the idea

Faith shaken by the Bear!

i think im disappointed. One of my favorite TV shows is Bear Grylls, Born Survivor .

With little more than a knife and the clothes on his back, Bear puts himself in the position of a stranded tourist by parachuting into the middle of some of the world’s greatest natural wildernesses, including the Amazon, the swamps of the Everglades, the Alps and the Moab Desert.

This man is literally, my hero! :) , he bit the head of a snake for food to stave of hunger, and peed on a shirt then wrapped it round his head to shop his brain frying!  But some newspapers are running stories today that he spent some nights in a travel tavern during the shooting, where they serve blueberry muffns and pancakes for breakfast.

Better than the book?

I think there should be a moratorium on the phrase, the movie was good but not as good as the book. You will think that im short fused, but it just really annoys me - especially in terms of Lord of the rings and Harry Potter.

Here the thing - reading the book before hand spoils a good movie. It’s not the fault of the movie - trying reading a book after you’ve seen the movie… maybe you’ll say i liked the book, but it wasn’t as good as the movie. (Especially if the movie is Die Hard or Bad Boys!)

Slavery - a morality tale?

… he’s my question… is there such a thing as timeless morality, absolute morals, eternal right and wrong? Good and evil?

This year marked the bi-centenary of the abolition of the slave-trade in England. In the modern world its a no brainer that slavery is unethical. But does that mean that it was always unethical and we only realised it 200 years ago, or did it become unethical when public opinion decided it was.

in 1770 little johnnys parents would have been chuffed if their son got a job as a slave master, and his C of E vicar would have considered him to be an upstanding young man. Were they wrong? or just ethical in their time.

The Prime Minister decided that it was right that he apologised for slavery.  If the time line was reversed, would Benjamin Disreali  feel he needed to ‘apologise’ for our legalising of homosexuality and abortion? Quite possiblly.