The cult of naturalism

At what point did ‘organic’ become the unopposed king of adjectives? At what point over the last decade did it become so fetishised and revered? At what point did people become so disillusioned with science and progress that ‘natural’ is the ultimate state of grace?

I don’t know anything and have done absolutely no research, but I think we’d all agree that I’m more than qualified to make unsubstantiated claims in this area. I think that most people when quizzed would say that natural remedies rather than manufactured chemical remedies are probably in general better for our heath. Most people think that a runt of a potato riddled with mould was probably better for you than the perfectly shaped fertilized mass produced variety. (like i know)

I blame boob jobs and Viagra.

Natural is… we all live in caves, live till around 30 and rummage in the forests for pigs to hatchet and berries to suck… dying of flues and infections.. THAT’S natural, THAT’S organic.

And another thing (daily mail here I come), breast feeding Nazis… yes ok, its good for the baby… yes ok… but its not the be all and end all of babyhood. I have no doubt that for most of these breast Nazis its nothing to do with what’s best for the baby, it’s to do with the cult of the natural. If they invented a baby formula that was demonstrably better, they’d still appose it.

Veg boxes are rubbish, expensive and inefficient - i want my veg to be delivered nicely cleaned and chopped in a bag. Mass produced efficiently on mega farms… feed the world, make it a better place, for you, for me, the entire human race.

And another thing…The opposition to GM foods in the UK is a disgrace, how dare we starve the world and bankrupt the poor to service our nostalgia and indulgent paranoia. When the day comes that we can get all our daily nutrition from a couple of pills and we only need 3 hours sleep in a recharging chamber … I for one will celebrate. In fact I’m working on these things as I type (in my head, admittedly)
There ends another horribly unedited thought.

Champagne Cheddar

It amuses me, the things I consider blogging about… to the point where I just have to go ahead and do it. Today’s is about Champagne and cheese.

I heard on the news today that in France they are expanding the area of villages who are allowed by European law to call their sparkling wine, champagne.

Fair enough, but I happen to live a few miles from a little town called Cheddar… how come factories in Waterford, Coleraine, Yorkshire, Kent etc etc are allowed to call their cheese cheddar.

There you go, that was the post… so ‘unrequired’ that it was required.

Jebus: Martyr or Murderer?

‘Murderer’ is over egging an already well egged pudding - but it has a nice controversial rhythm to it. Anyway, let me tell you a story passed down to me for generations (say).

They say Jebus was born miraculously in a small town just north of Cardiff, a thousand years ago during the English occupation. He was a bit of a thinker and philosopher and when he came of age some people started to say he was ‘the one’, god’s messiah.

As he travelled into Cardiff one spring morning crowds gathered to greet him as their saviour, he didn’t do anything to correct their assertions so the rumours grew - as they did quite often in those times. He did a bit of a speaking tour talking about god and hinting that he was their long-awaited messiah, but then things started to go a bit sour.

There had been rumours of wondrous miraculous happenings, so a caravan of the sick and the needy started to follow him around. One day he was on the way to a wedding when some people stopped him and said… about 10 percent of our children die before they reach the age of 2… what can we do about it? But instead of telling them about water purification, antibiotics and general child heath care (which if he was god, he would have of course known) he said… sorry, I’m on the way to a wedding… but you’ll like this… while I’m there I’m gonna take some of that pure water which you need, and then I’m going to turn it in to wine, yazam! We is going to par-tay. The villagers used their god-given rationale and knew that this couldn’t be the actions of a loving god so they continued their messiah search.

It kept happening… one day on the way to a friend’s funeral… a group mothers came to him and said, our children have all died in the last month of an infection, dozens more are sick, they were innocent kids who we loved, if you are god can you be merciful and raise them from the dead? He said… hmmm , nah sorry… but tell you what how’s about I resurrect my mate Lazarus instead. The mothers where less than impressed, especially when he refused to give them any hints as to why infections spread in the first place (which he of course would have known).

The mothers decided that if someone had this kind of power, yet chose not to use it (apart from the odd party trick), and chose to let these innocent children die that it was tantamount to murder, or at least man slaughter, certainly not the actions of a loving god - so they continued their search for a messiah. Jebus wasn’t the one. There were later rumours of a personal resurrection, but he’s conveniently lifted himself up into the clouds to heaven… the mothers rolled their eyes with a chuckle and continued to worship Yahweh like they always had.

But maybe the problem was that their minds where too small to comprehend the wonder of why Jebus was actually god’s son, and if only they had opened their hearts a little more to Jebus they would have believed… as opposed to following the non-related Jesus of Nazareth who WAS of course, the one, as his actions and the evidence is a lot more compelling.
Happy Easter

The morality of meat

There is quite a push at the moment, on TV at least to encourage us to be more ethical in our consumption of meat and eggs. The latest sermon was given by Jamie Oliver last week in a live audience presentation and debate about battery chicken farming. It’s unfair to call it a ‘sermon’, I like Jamie Oliver and think its great when a star like him is willing to trade in a bit of his credibility to draw attention to causes he believes in, even if it does mean that arm chair sitters like me get to call him preachy.

My better half is a veggie, which you’d think would make for much debate in the house, but it doesn’t really. QMonkey isn’t as narky and argument-baiting in real life (I hope), if it’s not too cheesy to say - we respectfully disagree. The only thing she insists on is that I buy ‘quality’ meat, preferably organic and certainly free range. I’m happy to do this as I do subscribe to the moral of treating animals with respect. At least I think/thought… you sense the unsurity don’t you?

The problem with the TV show is that I was troubled by something, not by the images of the battery hens (although that was shocking in some cases), but I was more troubled by the audience reaction. People were hiding their eyes and shrieking at the scenes of substandard farm conditions, wincing and ugghging at the sight of processed meat. Then came the real revelation for me anyway. Jamie had with him an organically farmed chicken, the kind he is promoting, he had been recently trained and qualified as a slaugherman and was kitted out with state of the art equipment. He showed the humane method of killing the chicken with an electric shock to the neck, then cutting its mouth to let it bleed before butchering.

Here’s the reveal… THIS was the event the audience were most shocked by, they turned away, and some yelped and shouted. I was honestly taken aback by this. The audience were all meat eaters who I presume have no problem dicing a nice chicken breast for their stir fry or tucking in to a tikka masala. They seemed almost surprised that an animal needs to be killed in order to make this happen.

This completely undermined the rest of the program for me, or at least turned the message on its head. In my view if you eat meat then you should be willing if necessary to do the killing yourself, and certainly should be able to watch without feeling any sorrow or guilt or squeamishness. If you don’t like killing animals for meat then become a vegetarian. I have to admit to having never killed a chicken but I have killed fish and eaten them and although I don’t want to, as it’s a bit gruesome and messy, I would have no moral twinges about killing an animal for food.

So having come to the conclusion that these audience members needed to either become vegetarian (for which I think there is a decent moral argument) or harden-the-f***-up, then what is the moral with regards to the treatment of animals before we kill them?

Jeepers, ‘her indoors’ isn’t gonna be happy … but I think I might actually be moving in the opposite direction to Mr Oliver. I think there’s a reasonable case that if these animals are bread for food, the life experience we give them is the life they know, are they really distressed/disappointed to find out that they aren’t wild birds (where a fox will mercilessly tear it apart anyway)? Isn’t the moral question - to farm and eat animals or not to?

Is it right to spend say £1 extra on your chicken fillets to give them a slightly more sanitized 54 days before we slit its throat… as opposed to using that £1 to keep an African child alive for a day longer? I don’t know the answer to that, I’m the question monkey, but if it’s a choice between keeping my child alive for a day or giving a battery chicken a foot more space in his cage, then it’s less of a difficult moral to wrestle with.

The gumpy miser in me

Monday lunchtime I decided that Kentucky Fried Chicken would be the best option when deciding how to make myself fatter. So I headed up the hill at Broadmead, past the Odeon to my fast food purveyor of choice. All I wanted was a Zinger Meal with Coke, the last thing I expected was a moral dilemma.

The young girl behind the till took my order in double quick time, almost before I had said it, then she inquired, in the space usually reserved for ‘is that all sir?’,… ‘would you like to donate 5p extra for the World Health Organisation?’. Without skipping a beat I said ‘no’.

She looked at me with a confused grin and an almost disbelieving gaze, as if had just stolen a bottle of Lucozade from a thirsty African child. When the Zinger Meal arrived she mumbled ‘enjoy your meal’ with undertones of ‘unlike the poor children’.

As I tucked into my, admittedly still very tasty chicken burger, I tried to determine where my sense of charity had gone and why I was suddenly a grumpy miser. It was only 5p for goodness sake. I like to think I’m a caring person, with a generous world view, who does ever such a lot for charity… but doesn’t like to talk about it much. So where did this ‘no’ come from?

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s the same ‘no’ I give in response to questions like ‘would you like to save 50% on your electricity bill?’ or ‘can you spare some change’ or ‘do you have two minutes spare to stop and talk about Help The Aged?’ Compassion fatigue I think they call it and it looks like I’m well and truly infected.

My immediate reaction to any question I’m asked by a stranger is to end the conversation as soon as possible. Whether it’s a charity plugger in the street, or a phone call from a someone who miraculously knows that my contract is almost up - no matter how to-good-to-be-true the deal sounds my only feeling is to say as little as possible and end the conversation. This can’t be a good thing.

If I had the moment again I would say ‘… only if Colonel Sanders agrees to give 5% of his profits to a charity of my choice’ (but quick thinking like that only happens to people on clever American dramas). I think that’s the core of it, it’s the thought that a multimillion pound company ‘giving’ its customers the opportunity to donate money to a charity of KFC’s choice, while they charge us £1.99 for a Coke that cost them 10p to produce! But that won’t stop the nice young KFC girl telling all her mates that I’m a grumpy miser.
 

The apple never falls far from the tree

…but yes it does! At the back of our house, through the gate there is a massive apple tree. I’m talking taller than our house. It is in common land, so no one seems to really own it, so no one bothers to pick the apples. There must be littlerly thousands of apples on the tree, so I thought this year, im gonna take the bull by the horns and get me a big bag of apples (hadn’t thought much past that).

I decided to construct a device a device so cunning it would have make Archimedes blush, an apple catcher if you will. In essence its four metal rods with a large rubble sack slung beneath it to catch the apples. I’ve left it for about a week while I was back in god’s county, I got back yesterday I went out ro collect the spoils. Rather optimistically I brought out a bin bag so I could carry back all my swag (might take a few trips I thought). But, no go! Not one single apple in there, all around the bag im tramping through rotten apples and much but nothing but leaves in the bag! I think someone is taking the mick!

Those Cornish are Clever!

A few times lately, i have wandered into town at lunchtime, to relieve some stress and get myself some overly priced food. Mostly i go to the sandwich shop, sometimes i splash out on some M&S sushi (non Akabusi). But recently I’ve been eating more and more unhealthly Cornish pastys.

I just find it hard to walk past the Cornish Bakehouse, it seems so appealing. And today i realised why. I kid you not, they have a big extractor fan at the front blowing out all the lovely baking smells out in to the street - its the like the pied piper, people walk past and are just drawn in.

It’s clever, but a bit manipulative. Now I’m on to them, I’m going to walk on the other side of the road.

Totally random, but let me throw in a great West Wing quote, from Jed Barlett.

I don’t like the word “stress”. It’s a Madison Avenue word. It’s something that can be cured with flavored coffee and bath bubbles.

I got me a Tiffin!

One of my best friends left Bristol this weekend, which is sad in some ways but great in an other. She donated me her Tiffin!

A ‘tiffin’ is, in this case a metal container with 4 layers, which i can take to my favourite Bristol eatery, The One Stop Thali, they fill it up with what ever goodness they’re serving that day, all for about £6. And there you go, a nice healthily tasty evening meal for two, with zero effort.

You might ask why i haven’t got one before, well, they cost £20, and I’m a bit lazy, and it seemed an effort to actualy go and buy one.

boring post? nope, interesting and informative i think you’ll find!

Recycling causing climate change?

I think recycling is great – waste is   well  a waste  and we should think about it more. But I do love it when something comes up like this.

Apparently there is now a reasonable argument, that its BETTER to use plastic non-biodegradable packaging, because when biodegradable things decompose, they give of methane, which is a greenhouse gas.

Not good news, I grant you… but I like it when the complexities of ‘the right thing’ come to the fore.

Walking to the shops ‘damages planet more than going by car’

Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.

The sums were done by Chris Goodall, campaigning author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, based on the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef production. “Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere,” he said, a calculation based on the Government’s official fuel emission figures. “If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.

So, THATS why im fat - it’s because i care about the environment!

Names for a chain of ‘pun’ Indian restaurants ?

(Thanks to Dodgy Putter) 

A request has gone out for naming ideas, for a chain of pun themed Indian restaurants - all suggestions welcome. To get us started…

• Instant Korma - John Lennon
• Vindaloo Sunset - The Kinks
• Poppadom Preach - Madonna
• Move Over Dhal-ing - Doris Day
• Fight for your right (Chapati) - Beastie Boys

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

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.