Wow. I think the BBC forgot how to BBC.
We’re getting pretty desperate for stuff to watch on TV these days. We both favor non-fiction — documentaries, science, history, that sort of thing — and the BBC has arrived at a rigid formula for this kind of programming that is just unbearably dumbed down and insulting.
First of all, they’re clearly hoping each new presenter will turn out to be some kind of enduring BBC superstar. The whole series will be written through the eyes of some unattractive douche-canoe you never heard of and her meaningful journey to discover some boring shit that is peripheral to the main topic. (I blame Carl Sagan and Cosmos for this phenomenon).
This person will invariably have a serious speech impediment. The successful candidate will be a young fat goth chick, an old skinny goth chick or a dweeby guy of ambiguous sexuality. He or she will have a PhD in something. Go figure.
For certain sure, the presenter will NOT be an elderly white man who knows what the fuck he’s talking about.
There will be much dumbness, condescension and breathless reporting of facts that were once regarded as common knowledge. Oh, and animations. Silly ones in the style of Terry Gilliam with goofy music. Tubas and or kazoos feature prominently here.
So we feared the worse for the most recent BBC program we recorded, a three parter on the British food harvest. But…actually…its awesome.
I know you USAians can’t use the BBC iPlayer, but if you click the link, I think it’ll allow you to play clips and look at charts and stuff. The program is chock full of big robot machines driven by GPS satellite, fun science facts and nifty gadgets for measuring the moisture content of grain and much more. Also, capitalism. And it isn’t dumb at all.
But here’s the thing — we’ve watched two of the three programs, and there has been a noticeable absence of these words: organic. Sustainable. Climate change. Shoot, they even revisited how plants love, love, LOVE some sweet CO2.
The BBC.
You reckon we’ve maybe turned a corner on globular warmening at last?
September 16, 2013 — 10:43 pm
Comments: 18
Beanz
I fell asleep and snored through my usual post composing time tonight, so you get beans. Or, beanz. Specifically, here’s a Mail article about Heinz Beans advertisements through the ages.
It’s hard to overstate what an enormous brand Heinz is over here. I tried to scratch up a country-by-country sales comparison, but the best I could find were these bullet points:
●Heinz employs approximately 2,500 people across the UK and Ireland
●The Kitt Green factory, in Wigan, produces more than 1 billion cans per year of beans, soups and pasta meals and is Heinz’s largest food factory around the world
●The UK is the biggest bean eating nation in the World
●More than 1.5 million cans of Heinz Beanz are sold each day
●Recently recognised as one of the UK’s most loved food and drink brands following consumer research by FreshMinds
Those English people up there? Yes, they are doing what you think they’re doing: they’re making baked bean sammiches. Because, fuck knows. Baked beans are principally a breakfast food here (aiiiiii!), but they’re good for a snack any time because…no, they’re not. They’re runny orange sweet beans, Jesus what is the matter with these people?
I mean, being a Southerner, I grew up on beans. Nice, salty beans, slow cooked with a bit of pork and served with a garnish of raw onion and slice of cornbread.
Honestly, I do not know what these things are supposed to be. Get them away from me.
September 3, 2013 — 10:45 pm
Comments: 50
Comes the harvest…
And today we harvested the currants. Red currants, black currants, white currants and green currants (the latter are any currants which are not fully ripe). Y’all will have to forgive me this evening; I’ve got about six pounds of the suckers to clean and sort. And find room for in the freezer. Before I can drink.
Have a good weekend, everyone!
August 2, 2013 — 9:55 pm
Comments: 22
back yard artichoke
Well. Not to go all Pollyanna on your asses, but it would seem every variation in weather is ideal condition for something and our shit Winter has had some interesting side effects. Everyone’s roses are spectacular this year (we have…eight, I think). A whole patch of opium poppies have sprung up were they were not deliberately planted (it is legal to grow somniferum in the garden here, but not to harvest). The elder flower was especially impressive all over the county (meaning mucho elderberries in the Fall).
And this guy, my back yard artichoke. Made it through the Winter and is busy growing three heads (as you do). This sucker was at the optimum harvesting age, before the thistle begins to open. Not the biggest ‘choke ever, but sweet and tender.
The perks of marrying a gardener who likes a challenge.
July 9, 2013 — 9:51 pm
Comments: 21
Cupcakes for Jesus
So endeth a week of short posts. The church fête is this weekend, so we’re baking Cupcakes for Jesus tonight.
We bring cupcakes by tradition (Uncle B does the actual baking, and I assist by washing things and fetching things and reading him the recipe wrong). By tradition, we finish them at two in the morning, rather the worse for strong drink. And, also by tradition, I chuck way too much red food coloring into the frosting, turning the end result a toxic pink that adults won’t touch.
This year, it looks like we’ll be finishing fairly sober and not long after midnight — so yay! I still spilled too much coloring in the frosting, though. Tradition!
Good weekend, all.
July 5, 2013 — 10:41 pm
Comments: 16
They’re real and they’re…well, presumably spectacular
Deep fried Mars bar. I always wondered if that was for real, but if the Scotsman is highlighting it as their Scottish Fact of the Week, then I guess it’s legit. They turned twenty last year.
Okay, I’m a fraud. I have been following the news. Oh, not American politics, which still makes me want to punch kittens. I’ve been watching, with an increasing sphincter-clench, the Far East hotting up fast. Wasn’t there a time when threatening to bomb the US mainland was an unequivocal act of war? But China has no intention of shutting Pyongyang up.
Meanwhile, they — China — are beefing up their drone arsenal, just as we have been telling everybody we’ll send our drones where we like and shoot whom we please. (Nice precedent, guys. Really, as an aside, we’d better litigate an individual right to shoot at drones before we don’t know whose drone that is over Mr McGregor’s barn).
Oh, skip all that and just read this one, an overview of how tetchy it is between Japan and China at the moment. All it takes is a slip of the finger in the danger zone and I smell history coming at us, fast.
So — fuck it! — candy bars it is. Near as I can figure it, a Mars Bar is what we ‘Muricans would call a Milky Way. Because — again I say, fuck it! — when you’ve got World War Yang coming at you, a 1,200 calorie snack doesn’t seem that big a problem.
March 26, 2013 — 11:12 pm
Comments: 36
Scots go potty for Krispy Kreme
“The first few days were utterly chaotic, horrendous, and I know that police were called.”
The Krispy Kreme in Edinburgh has applied for special permission to stay open all night. On account of insatiable local demand. For some reason. Really, are there enough R’s in all the world for a drunken Scot to say “Krispy Kreme”?
Life insists on screwing with my cultural stereotypes.
You’ll be relieved to know the picture isn’t from the Edinburgh Krispy Kreme, it’s from a page about their stores in the Middle East. They have eighty.
No reason not to sell donuts in the Middle East, I just…that image of Keffiyeh Man holding up a glazed donut messes with my norms in the worst way (also, if they were going to use t-shirt guy twice, did they think we wouldn’t notice they flipped the picture and the 2 on his shirt is backwards?)
KK is, of course, an artifact of the Deep South (or the South, anyway…I think the first one was in North Carolina). Fond memory of childhood. Teen years, actually. Krispy Kreme was the only place a seriously impaired weasel could get a cup of coffee at three in the morning. As I recall, our local in Nashville was across from the Old Colony Cleaners (some wag always stole the “y”).
The whole back wall was glass, and we could watch as the donuts moved down a conveyor past the various Stations of the Cross. Most fascinating thing that the aforementioned seriously impaired weasel ever saw.
They give a pretty good feel for the experience here. Watch it a few dozen times, seriously impaired.
February 26, 2013 — 11:37 pm
Comments: 46
Flickaburger
Say, I haven’t posted about our little food scandal, have I? A month ago, somebody tested some supermarket hamburgers (who does this?) and found they were up to 35% horse meat. It was Tesco’s, one of our more downmarket chains, so everyone pretty much yukked it up.
Then they started testing more stuff. Horse turned up in a LOT more places, anywhere there was beef. Or, rather, “beef” — some products were 100% horse.
And then pork turned up where it shouldn’t oughta, and the Muslims and Jews turned green.
It’s touched Waitrose, our most upmarket chain. It caught Burger King out, and they had to run an apology ad in the paper. Oh, this one has legs (yeah, that’s been the best part — the jokes).
The problem isn’t horsemeat, of course, which is eaten on purpose in many places on the continent. The problem is they didn’t know what the hell was in our food.
Me, I eat a lot of dodgy cafe burgers and value-priced chili, so I’ve undoubtedly consumed my share. Luckily for me, I’m not a bit squeamish about what I eat — unless I see it being made. If you want to know more — and why would you? — Richard North is your man.
p.s. Speaking of DNA and dodgy burgers…yes, I’m calling the Dead Pool for Davem123. I’ll be astonished if that perpburger tests as somebody else. See you here Friday 6 WBT.
February 13, 2013 — 11:49 pm
Comments: 32
Bend over — here it comes!
“What’re you in for, son?”
It tells you all you need to know about food taxes here that you’ll make an extra £8 million if you can smuggle your ton of Chinese garlic past the tax man.
Hey — been shopping? I don’t know about the States, but over here…oh, my sweet, fancy Moses! Have the prices gone up since Christmas! They kept everything steady and ran lots of sales before the holidays, but now…let ‘er rip!
Like most people (I assume), we buy the same things over and over, so we notice. Cheap cat food by the six pack: £2.99 a fortnight ago, £3.50 today. Butter, £1 to £2. Liquor…no, I don’t even want to talk about liquor.
I’m taking up smack. It’s cheaper.
And the sneaky bastards are covering it up. First, the sneaky bastards at the supermarket are all touting this “brand match” thing. They’re holding prices fairly even on the big brand name products, where they have a lot of margin to play with, and steadily rising the price of the lesser brands, store brands and generics. So the register receipts say, “you saved £5 today!”…on the price of Heinz beans or Smirnoff vodka, while the basic, minimum cost of eating goes up and up.
Second, the sneaky bastards in government are pegging inflation to things like house prices and new cars. Well, sure…house prices have dropped. And everybody’s terrified to buy the big ticket items like cars, if they don’t absolutely have to, so no. Those aren’t going up, either. Yay, no inflation!
Meanwhile, back in Meatworld, where people must eat, wear clothes, heat the house and gas up the car before they do anything else, costs are galloping away. Food and energy. Through. The. Freaking. Roof.
And if our farmer neighbors are any indication, we ain’t seen nothing yet. Costs of grain and other animal feeds went up sharply this year. So, to avoid having to feed herds and flocks through the Winter, many of them took the loss and sold off as much livestock as they dared in the Fall. So there’s an abundance of meat on the market…until it’s gone.
Oh, what larks!
January 9, 2013 — 10:47 pm
Comments: 30
Bacon Eiffel Tower!
Yes! YESSS!!! I have made it through another week without blogging politics!!!
Oh, god <sobs into her hands>.
We’ll get through this. We’ll get through it together.
More people playing with their food here. Looks like a decent righty blog, if you fancy poking around. And you think you can read financial prognostication right now without popping a blood vessel.
Try to have a good weekend, everyone!
January 4, 2013 — 11:51 pm
Comments: 27