The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed a different camera in the shot. I finally gave up trying to get my phone camera to do what I want, i.e. produce nicer colours and do better in low light without using the flash. You might think I have a thing for Olympus — my first digital camera way back when was an Olympus Camedia, and I now own a Trip 35 and this little number — but it was basically the best I found at that price point (i.e. decent performance on the cheap).
(These pictures are taken before breakfast, so my stomach is empty.)
I’ve wondered if Assad is hanging on the way he is because he reckons the world will pretty much forget about Syria and focus on Iran once war is declared. Then he can suppress as violently as he likes.
Okay, so I didn’t realise it was ‘controversial’ or ‘provocative’ to call this gestating foetus a parasite*. I definitely don’t mean it in a bad way, just that I’m feeding it from the inside. It seems particularly apt in my case, because I am — by all accounts — tiny, and so it seems any nutrition I put in my gob probably goes straight to it. I want to eat more but it’s not always easy.
Why Singapore Has the Cleanest Government Money Can Buy. We know that at some point, any more money doesn’t add any more motivation to do a good job. [tongue firmly in cheek]So clearly the government has found the sweet spot.[/tongue firmly in cheek]
I was genuinely saddened to read that Heather Armstrong and her husband have split up (a trial separation). Neil says why care, I don’t know them anyway. There are people who are happy about it.
It’s not about caring about her or her family’s happiness on a personal level, but that they were a family and things got bad enough that the parents chose to separate. I’m always sad to hear about families / couples splitting up, all these people who seemed genuinely to care for each other. The emotional fallout for everyone is heartrending.
(I might also be extra emotional with the whole ‘pregnant’ thing — I cried at a movie trailer the other night. This has never happened in my life.)
So no one knows what really happened between Jon and Heather Armstrong, and I don’t care to know. I just hope their time apart helps them work out what’s best for them and their daughters, because that’s what counts in the end.
The introduction says that George Friel, the author of Mr. Alfred, M.A., was a teacher and hated it. You can tell, given the title character’s disdain for / exhaustion with his profession.
Mr. Alfred is a teacher in a shit part of Glasgow, teaching (mostly) shitty kids. His one ray of hope is Rose Weipers, a female student. But his feelings for her (which are never entirely clear — is he honourable or a dirty old man?) are soon found out and his life comes crashing down around his ears.
Like Robin Jenkins was really good at doing, Friel wrote very descriptively about life in Glasgow’s less-than-prosperous areas. History tends to repeat itself, or young people with nothing to hope for all turn out the same, no matter the decade. And lots of men still spend their evenings like Mr. Alfred — drinking.
Is it a cautionary tale? I don’t know. But it’s edgier and harder than Robin Jenkins. Worth a read if you’re at all familiar with the city.
I was into exposed zippers before exposed zippers were cool.
Seriously, Some of my favourite clothes have zippers all over them. Not in the way they do them now (read: cheap), but as embellishment. Studs, snaps, and zippers always made me look favourably on an item of clothing.
BLESSUS, on the other hand, has made the zipper an indispensable item in their collection. Take this dress for example. I like the top and skirt, but it’d be boring to just wear it like that all the time. Getting a few pieces that interchange, and maybe even designing and making up some separates that use the same system (for the extremely ambitious among us) could extend a wardrobe almost infinitely.
One thing my mother’s been asking me is if I’m having any strange pregnancy cravings. Apparently they can happen at any stage. I don’t know if this makes me weird, but I’ve always been about food cravings. Some days I have needed fish, or chicken, or beef. It’s almost always savoury — I’m not a chocolate and cake kind of person, never have been.
So craving something isn’t a new experience for me. But these days, I’ve started wanting to eat things like ice cream relatively often (about once or twice a week). Do you know how hard it is to get plain old chocolate chip ice cream at the supermarket? It’s either vanilla or something super-fancy. Very uncool.
And to top it all off, as I was wolfing down a pretty big dinner (by my standards) recently, I suddenly started thinking — pancakes, I want pancakes. And tinned peaches. So although it was freezing and we don’t have a car, we walked the 30 minutes to the supermarket. And then we went home and I had pancakes and tinned peaches. Neil is so good to me. Heh.
(I suspect I do not normally eat much sugar, so my body is needing extra calories to keep my energy up. Gummy bears and cola bottles are pretty popular with me at the moment, too.)
The MP in question may have had to resign because he made this spoof, but it’s too good to miss:
Joan is Joan McAlpine, an MSP who says unionist parties are anti-Scottish because they ‘gang up’ to fight the SNP’s oft-avowed desire for Scottish independence. It’s at 2:54 in the following clip.
How terribly disingenuous of her, and of Nicola Sturgeon on Question Time. No wonder no one cares about politics, they’re a bunch of slimeballs.
