Our Time Is At An End

Hell of a year.  On the personal scale, 2010 has seen me become a doctor, work on three separate projects, lose two family members and gain a new job in a new university.  On a larger canvas, we have a new government and a new Prime Minister, and a new international treaty regarding nuclear arms reduction.  Mixed blessings in other words.

I've also drunk an awful lot of cocktails.

What will next year hold?  Moving house, certainly.  New responsibilities and trials and opportunities, no doubt.  More cocktails are also inevitable.  I'm also working on a new project for this here blog (though it might eventually get its own site) that I'm very excited about, mainly because it's in collaboration with someone who gratifyingly unable to understand he's approximately seven times too talented to have to deal with me.

I hope everyone is able to look back on 2010 with fondness, but is looking forward to the New Year, too.  Everyone have fun tonight.

See you in January.

A Tale Of Cocktails #6

Fuzzy Navel
.

Ingredients

1 oz vodka

1/2 oz peach Schnapps

4 1/2 oz orange juice
Fruit garnish

.

Taste: 8        

Look: 6        

Cost: 9         
Name: 8
Prep: 6

Alcohol: 2

Overall: 7

Preparation: Pour everything but the cherry into a cocktail shaker with cracked ice.  Shake, and then pour into a cocktail glass before garnishing.

General Comments: Liking that name.  Apparently, it's there to remind you what needs to go into it.  "Fuzzy" for peach, and "Navel" for orange (apparently, that's a type of orange, or so The Other Half tells me).  Apparently, there's no interest in reminding people about the vodka.  Presumably because it's shite.

Beyond that, this is another one of those tremendously dangerous cocktails that are both very refreshing and difficult to recognise as alcoholic.  In other words, it wins drinks.  Well, it would if it wasn't so weak.  Frankly, though, that might be less of a flaw, and more of a public service.

Walking With Company

Issue #8 of Panel Talk is out now, and features Chris B and I discussing The Walking Dead's first two chapters, and how they measure up to the first season of the AMC TV series.

Offences Against Nature

How can marmite chocolate possibly exist in the world? With celery as a principal ingredient?  It literally tastes like normal chocolate dipped in marmite, which means it's about the best way to experience marmite possible but a total waste of perfectly serviceable chocolate.

If even that wasn't bad enough, though, the marmite after-taste outlives the chocolate for some five minutes.  If the chocolate is a welcome house guest, polite enough to leave early, then the marmite is a vicious scabies-ridden squatter, squeezing out black formless babies ten a time whilst they wait for a council flat to use as a spawning pool.

It's not good, is my point.

Xmas Quz

Tis the season, my friends!  As a slightly tardy Christmas present to you, I offer you a quasi-festive quiz.  None of which, I hasten to add, I actually bothered to write.  Big props to Mickey E and J for all the work that went into this.

Round 1: Words

The following are all anagrams of Christmas-related items, unscramble the anagram and give me the item.

1. Scratches Arm Rick. Christmas cracker

2. A Shifty Girl. Fairy lights

3. Quenches Pees. Queen's Speech

4. Let Sin. Tinsel

5. Drunker yet in. Turkey dinner

Round 2: Baking

1. What component of bread dough makes it elastic, and is developed by kneading? Gluten

2. What type of chemical reaction is worked on the sugars in dough by the action of yeast? Fermentation

3. What gas is produced by this reaction, causing doughs to rise? CO2

4. Which type of dough uses a culture of lactobacillus to create lactic acid to assist leavening? Sourdough

5. Which German Christmas biscuits traditionally include carbonate of potassium or ammonium as a raising agent? Lebkuchen

Round 3: Sacred Christmas Music

1. Which hymn always begins the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King's College, Cambridge? "Once In Royal David's City"

2. The Austrian carol "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht" is better known by what English title? "Silent Night"

3. The carol with the first line "Lully lullay, thou little tiny child" comes from the medieval mystery plays of which Midlands city? Coventry

4. Which oratorio by Handel is usually performed during advent, and is famous for its "Hallelujah!" chorus? "Messiah"

5. Which English poetess wrote the lyrics to "In the bleak midwinter"? Christina Rossetti

Round 4: Tea

1. Who wrote, in 1662, "And afterwards I did send for a Cupp of Tee (a China drink) of which I never drank before"? Samuel Pepys

2. What flavouring is added to black tea to make Earl Grey tea? Bergamot

3. Taiwanese Pearl Tea contains pearl-like globules made of which starch? Tapioca

4. Which country is the largest producer of tea in the world? India

5. Lapsang Souchong is a black tea with which distinctive (and very strong) flavour? Smokey

Round 5: Christmas Films

1. The first two films in which franchise starring Bruce Willis involve different buildings being seized by terrorists on Christmas Eve? Die Hard

2. Which film starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan involves the son of a widowed father calling a radio chat show on Christmas Eve to seek a new partner for his father? Sleepless In Seattle

3. In which rom-com does the title character meet Mark Darcy at a Christmas party hosted by her parents? Bridget Jones' Diary

4. Which oft-repeated 1984 horror comedy begins when a Christmas gift of a Mogwai gets wet? Gremlins

5. Which film (and stage show) involving drugs, AIDS, death and general misery in the East Village in New York City starts one Christmas Eve and ends the next one? Rent

Round 6: Classic Pub Quiz Questions

1. Who owns the territory of Rapa Nui? Chile

2. Which jazz singer was nicknamed Lady Day? Billie Holliday

3. Operation Just Cause was part of the conflict to remove General Noriega from which country? Panama

4. Coulrophobia is the fear of what? Clowns

5. Which seabird has the Latin name Puffinus puffinus? Manx Shearwater

General Knowledge

1. (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone) Name any one of the five things Harry gets from the Wizard Christmas Crackers? White mice, a wizard chess set, a Rear-Admiral hat, a set of non-explodable luminous balloons, a grow-your-own-warts kit.

2. Isopachytes are lines of equal what? Thickness

3. What is the name of the business run by Mrs Precious Ramotswe? The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency

4. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys wrote a soundtrack to which classic Russian film, which was performed live at Swan Hunter shipyard in 2006? Battleship Potemkin

5. The reindeer Donner and Blitzen take their names from the German words for what? Thunder and lightning

6. What is the collective noun for rhinos? A crash

7. What was the name of the noted BBC correspondent who died this week, and who was famed for his reporting of the Falklands conflict? Brian Hanrahan

8. Which nut, (although it's not technically a nut), forms the basis of frangipane? Almond

9. Who was the first director of the FBI? J. Edgar Hoover

10. In radio technology, what does the acronym DAB stand for? Digital Audio Broadcast

A Christmas Cartlilage Fish

I figured I should probably put together a review of the Doctor Who Christmas Special, but in truth there isn't a great deal to say.  It's always easier to deconstruct a failure than it is a success - I guess when something works there's a fear that pulling it apart will break the toy forever.

And this year's special was definitely a success. I confess to being initially skeptical of the "Who does Christmas Carol" idea, and not just because even gorgeous redheads cannot be allowed to replace the Great Gonzo when it comes to adaptations of the tale.  I just didn't see how it was fit.

Clearly, I didn't think about it for long enough.  A Christmas Carol at its heart is already a story about time travel. Sure, the means by which Scrooge visits different Christmases is supernatural, but that doesn't really matter.  What matters is that Moffat's Christmas Carol takes what is often the best approach to taking classic stories and moulding them into something new: it asks one simple question and allows everything else to spin out from it.  In this case, the question is this: what if the Ghost of Christmas Past had allowed Scrooge to interact with his past self?

I'm pretty sure the result blows apart Moffat's own rules over when the TARDIS can be used.  In fact, combine this with the well-written but structurally unsound conclusion to the last season it's possible the series is on the point of breaking with any story logic whatsoever.  That's a problem for later, though.  I'm prepared to let Moffat off on this occasion, partially because the story was so good, partially because the central question was so smart, but also because the rule-breaking was set-up and not conclusion (I still don't understand how hard it is for so many people to realise the importance of the distinction). I suppose a little bit more lee-way can be given at Christmas - it's easier to note the wild inconsistencies when they occur within the same series.

Also, having re-written Dickens in a way that entirely makes sense and avoids dumping all over the source material, Moffat must have sat down for a few minutes and thought: "Fuck it, I'll put a flying shark in there".

This is definitely the guy I want running Who.

A Tribute

Mr Ross: Did you hear?  The creator of the Wombles has died.

P: What?  They've created a Wombles diet?

SpaceSquid: Yep.  You can only eat things that the everyday folk leave behind.

Badum-tish!

Rest in peace, Elisabeth.