love and peas or else

God there is so much going on, I hardly know where to start. Needless to say this is going to be a rambling post and may or may not be graced with basic requirements like coherence.
First off, I can only gnash my teeth that there is a new season of the sublime comedy Peep Show on channel 4 in England and I can't watch it. In my opinion, only The Simpsons in its prime has been as brilliantly witty as this British comedy. It deserves its own post when I can get around to it as do the brilliant sketches by the stars of the show on BBC Radio 4.
So what have I been doing? I'll pretend like you care and tell you. I recently re-read A short history of nearly everything which is sublime. It does for science what Nigella Lawson did for cooking programmes- turn it into something exciting and sexy. I recently bought Arthur. C. Clarke's Hammer of God which I'm itching to read. I also finally took a deep breath and joined facebook where everyone is now just a mere click away from discovering that I love applejuice and would consider commiting a minor crime to obtain a custard donut. I find all those friend sites distinctly uncomfortable. First there is so many of them- bebo, hi5, facebook, myspace... Secondly there is a distinct 'Look at me!' philosophy that underlies all these sites. I mean, you add your friends and then what? All it does really is make people more reluctant to send emails because all you have to do is put up a pithy post on someone's facebook wall and then you dont have to get in touch for the next few eons.
On a more sombre note, Kurt Vonnegut is dead which really saddened me. he wrote two of the greatest books I've ever read- Slaughterhouse Five and Sirens of Titan. Both are what reviewers in their lighter moments like to call 'mind-fuck' books. Again this is something I'll get around to another time. The couch at home isnt going to warm itself.
Yes, I've been watching a lot of TV. I know a lot of people who hate TV and fair play to them- most of it is indeed trash. However I love TV. Whether it will eventually turn my brain to mush is a matter I will leave for my peers to judge, but I enjoy it. I'm especially fond of the twin pleasures of National Geographic and Animal planet- both of which I would quite happily watch all day. Animal Planet oocasionally airs annoying shows like Animal Cops Houston but on the whole, they are both excellent. The best thirty minutes of my day would typically be National Geographic's Totally Wild. Also thanks to my little brother and sister I've been forced to sit through a few cartoons and some have suprised me. Shows like Kim Possible are actually too witty for kids. There are even the occasional delights to be spotted on the E! Channel which is basically the altar where we are required to bow before our celebrity gods and if necessary burn incense when they come onscreen.
And yes plenty of football- On Saturday I hardly move a muscle from around 3pm when the first game starts. I'll watch all the way to around 10 pm when the last game ends. If the mood takes me, I could even watch re-runs. Football is poetry in motion as someone once said and while slightly exaggerated, they were on the right track. Maybe the poetry of e.e Cummings? I might get seriously depressed if Chelsea win the title though. It's been great season despite the obvious duopoly in the league. Manchester United-dammn them!- have played some of the most exhilarating football I've ever seen, Liverpool unfortunately have been dull much of the time and Arsenal somehow think Jeremy Alladiere and Baptista are Premiership quality. More on all that later.
Of some interest as well was the Don Imus scandal in which a popular but controversial white DJ was fired for calling a team of black female basketball players 'nappy headed ho's'. Guess who came riding to their rescue? Yes, the venerable Snoop Doggy Dogg himself. It was a bit like Hitler condemning someone for anti-semitism. Women all over the world must have cried in anguish at the dark world our place has become when Snoop becomes a spokesman for treating women with dignity. Seeing as the Dogg has spent well over a decade being a hundred times more racist and sexist than Imus could ever hope to be, one can only cover one's eyes at the blinding irony. Maybe soon we'll have the Mehta guys speaking out on the importance of conserving Uganda's forests.
I've also been watching a lot of Sky news and CNN and after a while- when they get off the depressing stuff in the first few minutes of each hour- it becomes almost relaxing. Will the French vote for the mad one or the boring one? Has Gordon Brown messed up the pensions crisis? How many morons does it take to burn an effigy of Richard Gere in India? Soothing, I assure you. Recently I was watching Gordon Brown the Prime Minister to-be and I got to thinking about charisma in politics. Why do we need it? One of the biggest problems with Brown according to the experts and the random guy on the street is that he is not charismatic at all- or to put it bluntly he is a boring guy. Frankly I think that makes him more trustworthy. It's much harder to hide behind smooth-talking charm when you are like Gordon Brown so you get more things done. That's my theory anyway. We don't need more charismatic politicians- we need more boring ones.