preparing for emergencies

Yes I know most of you will have seen it already – it’s been in the papers and everything but hey.
The government in the UK in an attempt to scaremonger are producing pamphlets on how to deal with emergencies. Copies of the booklet will be sent to all households in the UK throughout August. Once the delivery is completed, people will be able to order alternative versions by post, or download them from the website.
So some bright spark has spoofed the website. That’s what makes the internet fun!
The real one (useful in an emergency when your internet connection has gone to hell and all forms of communication are down)
The spoof one (useful for laughing with your mates in the pub at the weekend)

The Stepford Wives

I go to Clapham Picturehouse quite a lot now I’ve discovered how nice it is and that it’s local too. So when the picturehouse group opened a new cinema by work (Olympia Cinema) I decided to go check it out. Last weekend was the opening weekend so along with lots of other people in the know I was invited to a sneak preview of The Stepford Wives.

The Olympia Cinema is actually the conference centre with a screen at the weekends. Nice enough but not as cosy as a real cinema.

The Stepford Wives was kind of the same. Nice enough but not a patch on the original. This version is a comedy but unlike it’s alter ego was lacking the black humour and suspense. I’ll not spoil the plot since it doesn’t open for another couple of weeks but one point where they mention AOL had the whole cinema (excluding me) laughing.
Well worth going but don’t expect suspense or to be thrilled.

amish in the city

So reality TV has hit a new low. Or has it?
Amish in the city is a show from UPN which is going to take five young amish and put them in a house with five other youngsters.
Sounds mad. It probably is mad. The US news are going crazy about it. People are up in arms about it.
Can I just mention that no one forced these people to apply or appear on TV.
Amish tradition means they test their faith and devotion to their lifestyle by leaving it, returning better people no doubt. If these five young people can cope with the reality TV fest and then return to a low tech simple life then they are sure to be better people for it.
On a side note is Randy – the one in the middle – cute or am I blinded by the blonde hair and cute smile?

notetoself: nothing is as it seems

Okay so talk me through this then as I am having difficulty grasping the concept.
I’ve just eaten an Organic Wild Blueberry Yogurt from Marks & Spencer. So you would expect it to contain organic stuff and wild blueberries. Not sure how wild they can be if they are being made into yogurt by a multinational store but that’s another question for another day.
Todays question features on the ingredients list which states ‘natural flavourings*’
* Indicates permitted non-organic ingredients of non-agricultural origin.
So first up if it’s organic how come it’s allowed to have non organic stuff in it. If it’s natural flavourings how come it’s non-agricultural? what is that? sawdust? nah that wouldn’t add much flavour…

notetoself: Orange are cool!

Okay so recently Orange have been very good to me so I am slightly biased but really they are very very cool! Orange Wednesdays (241 cinema tickets every Wednesday) have meant I could see loads of films again.
I was about due an upgrade again (well actually a little passed it but until my old phone started not ringing sometimes I hadn’t worried about it) so I went along to the orange site to see what phones they had when I saw a great new tariff. I wanted a Nokia 7610 too but they didn’t have it in stock. SO they called me on Thurday to say they had it in stock and would mail it out and switch my tariff.
So expect lots of new photo’s taken with a swanky new phone soon!

notetoself: don’t believe the hype

So Allan and I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11.
Ordinarily I hate films which have been hyped as much as this. I went anyway (partly to see what the fuss was all about and partly to see if it was going to be as bad as I thought).
I was suprised. It was biased yes. It was a shameless attack on bush and the US government. However it was also truly shocking. despite knowing it must have been edited to be far worse than it was the fact that he had so much footage to edit down was bad in itself.
Bush needed no help in looking foolhardy or stupid. The US government needed no help looking corrupt to the core.
I’d heartily recommend this film to anyone. I’d caution though that you will come out wondering how on earth we let people like this run the western world and make decisions on our behalf.
You will no doubt be as shocked as everyone in our audience by the news that most bills passed inthe US are not read by the politicians emplyed to do so.