LITTLE GREG: [pokes at a finger of squared off chocolate that looks like it's been squished by a Big Hand] We found this at the grime scene. It appears to be a new type of Twix product. But not a limited edition flavour that hangs around the big players and disappears after several months! It looks like a whole new product from the Twix brand. Could it cause (arf), a ‘ripple‘?

NICK STOKES: Are you sure about this, Little Greg? Twix Limited Editions have a noble tradition – orange, dark-chocolate flavour (when done for Mars, the ‘midnight’ edition?), er, maybe some others? Are you sure the Twix Gang would bother?

LG: Look at the packaging we found under this ‘ere microscope. It is silver – this means “diet” in UK branding, viz “Diet Coke”. Another well-known gang-runner in the brand game. And observe the lettering, “fino”. How continental!

NS: Chocolate is always Different On The Continent isn’t it. A Mars Bar is a Twix in France, isn’t it? And I am sure I ran the Twix Fino through AFIS (Ed: google obv) which said this has been on the continental market already under the name ‘Tropix’.

LG: You are well travelled for someone who lives in Las Vegas and never appears to go on vay-cay. And are you making all of that up?

NS: I’m not even sure myself anymore. But tropix makes mre sense than ‘fino’. Tropical, and Twix! But then again that might make one think it is an Um Bungo flavoured Twix. Only Grissom could get down with that bad boy. Anyway, so you say this is essentially a “Diet Twix”, with a wafer instead of a biscuit. What’s the chemical analysis?

LG: Traces of Kinder Bueno, covered in a bit too much caramel for the quantity of wafer. Tried to take epithelials, but it crumbles to pieces in a very unsatisfactory manner. PH level resting at “I’ll give it a few months”. As depressing ‘diet options’ go, it’s a snooze.

[Shouting is heard from outside the lab]

SOMEONE UPDATING A BLOG: “Bring back the orange flavour!”

NS: [wry look] Can’t get the staff these days.

And remember…

IT’S GOT TO RHYME!

5/1 Israel
11/2 Azerbaijan
6/1 Denmark
15/2 Norway
10/1 Croatia
12/1 Greece, Armenia and Sweden
14/1 Germany
20/1 Belgium
25/1 Ukraine
33/1 Slovakia, Iceland, United Kingdom, Ireland and Turkey
40/1 Moldova, Spain and Romania
50/1 Russia, Malta, Lithuania, Cyprus and Georgia
66/1 Bosnia & Herzegovina, Estonia, Albania and Serbia
80/1 Finland and Switzerland
100/1 Latvia, Belarus, Portugal, France, Bulgaria and The Netherlands
150/1 Slovenia
200/1 FYR Macedonia and Poland

The 100/1 Netherlands appears to have been time-travelling with the Nolans, which would demand better odds in *my* book. Key-changes, nonsense lyrics “sha la lie, sha la la”, but… NO ENGLISH! And the crowd gasp as the ball just clips the goalpost…

Am surprised to see Ireland relatively low, given they are fielding someone who has already WON, the big CHEATS. (I have heard about 10 seconds of it, before the drippiness had me running back to the loving arms of SPAIN. Y viva!).

chicken wings are NOT for flying

Ah, who can forget the wide-eyed terror of throwing up a hail of low level umbrellas to catch a clumsy chicken who missed your initial shot, but not being able to stay and look after him as two other chickens are falling down on the other side and they’re scared and they’re crying, wah! They need umbrellas, and I have an unlimited supply! When will these chickens learn that their wings are NOT… for flying.

Fact: this is the only online flash game for which I have actually bought merchandise. A man in the supermarket agreed with me vehemently – “they’re for EATING!”… and then followed me around the aisles (probably seeing if I was going to pick up some of those terrifyingly grey ‘Basics!’ chicken wings).

There are many more beautiful looking games in the same style at orisinal.com, but Chicken Wings… is the only one that has had me in a long term trance of joy as your chubby chicken guardian runs about with umbrellas, flinging them up for his chicks to catch and gently drift down safely to the ground.

Warning: if you try to play this on a trackpad rather than a mouse, there will be tears before bedtime! I am quite sure of this! What we need are games designed to take advantage of their hem hem unique capabilities (or perhaps what *I* need is a USB mouse, hmm).

suga shikao, making jam, yesterday

And as for being ‘the ambassador of Jpop’ whilst at the same time ‘breaking all the rules of pop’ (hurrah!), this is a ridiculous critic perceived cliché that goes back to the fetishisation of shibuya-kei – loved for deliberately sounding ‘alien’, for ‘futurist retro lounge living’ and all that nerdist hipster jazz – that Japanese Pop holds a secret key to enlighten Western Pop… Pizzicato 5 were going to save indiepop, right? Some sense that there’s still the exotic East/West relationship even in our – ahem – global markets of 2009.

But heck why should that be bad? Perhaps not even exoticism. A quirk! Like Japanese pop is the sexy robot twin to boring old Western Pop. That for Jpop to be unique in the Western market, it has to sound ‘strangely like nothing [one has] heard before’. It’s not a call for originality, it’s kind of cynical and a little patronising – like Jpop, in familiar genres, can’t stand the heat on the international market. And leads to this strange skewing of what Jpop means, or can ever mean to a Western audience, of quirky hipster cult, nerdy anime cult or serious arty cult (you see where I am going)…

So, of course, Suga Shikao comes out and plays 19sai *first*. From here on in we are in unknown territory. 19sai shows off a gloriously husky voice (someone might have whimpered and it might have been ME) and a strangely country sound! My minimal Japanese language skills go as far as translating the lyrics to the chorus: dai kirai kao na boku juukyuusai – aka – i really hate MY FACE at 19yrs old? Do correct me if I’m wrong. It is likely and plausible*. I personally wonder whether it’s a song of triumph rather than emo salad – Suga Shikao is 40odd and looks to me, to be about 19. When he was actually 19 he must have looked about 8. WHERE ARE THE PICTURES IN THE ATTIC?

So, from this kind of country rock, I had assumed that SS wouldn’t really diverge much from this – ahem – musical model. I’m wrong! It was impossible for me to note the title of the songs so I’m afraid I have to talk in terms like ‘the funky one’ — I have a note which reads “is calling this ‘brown-eyed funk’ equivalent to ‘blue-eyed soul’, or just getting things wrong”? Musically, a lot of the time it’s like Sly & the Family Stone knocking on the door and offering to see to your plumbing (we wonder, later, what soundtracks Japanese porn – but gravure idols pop careers are a question for another day; BANANA MANGO HIGH SCHOOL ANYONE??), at other times its electropop as catchy as Robyn and Kleerup.

ONE song in particular, which I am VERY KEEN on finding, is the song that started off sounding like Scooter, then switched to the Feeling, then back to Scooter, then the Feeling, and, and, what WAS that! A pet love of the shibuya-kei music big for indie geekz0r like me was rapid switching between genres in the same songs and cut-ups. Initially great, later… kind of cynical and really irritating? The closing song, and god forbid I describe it as a “funk-out”, BUT, seems to have the refrain ‘Sexy Bonfire’, but can research find me this song? NO. Sexy Bonfire!

(My companion dares me to yell for ‘Real Face’. My face goes bright red, because… I TOTALLY COULD, but given the mostly Japanese audience, people would ALSO have understood what I meant, and I’m not quite sure if I am ready to show my shameful Jboyband addiction with the world right now? Oh, you guys? You’re FINE.)

But ‘breaking the rules’? Hardly! Instead, SS plays the game perfectly – he looks and acts every inch like a pop star. His bird poses have me squealing each time he extends his arms (er, when he’s not playing the guitar obviously) – last time this happened to me I THINK it was with TIM WHEELER from ASH, please draw your own conclusions here, damaging as they may be. What you wonder is, in a venue like this, who was going to come and see him? Even though the ICA has a large series of Japanese events (much loved! Keep at it! Show “BANDAGE” please!) they’ve always been more on the indie/arthouse side of things.

It’s kind of incongruous to see Suga Shikao pop up here. For context, I believe the last person I saw perform at the ICA was MC Pitman. So in terms of ‘breaking the UK market’, this is… a pretty poor stage to do so! However, that live DVD for the Japanese market (Suga Shikao on the newly revived Routemaster! Suga Shikao for Mayor in a ropey blonde wigg!) might do pretty well, and I hope it does! His show is fantastic, his band are extremely crushworthy in terms of FINGERS OF FUNKY FLAME, and even if there is a little too much wow-chikky-wow for my tastes, the energy of it all made enough for a great show. We dance about, I rejoice in the height of a mostly-Japanese audience levelling the gig-going playing field (I CAN SEE!) and all have a GRATE TIME. I even learn how to wave my arms in the right direction at the same time as everyone else – a trick everybody else apart from myself, my companion, and the tipsy girl in a fedora hat seems to know. YEAH!

*(I wonder if not understanding the lyrics is actually a bonus – going by 19sai (the one lyric that perhaps I understand! if I do not have them wrong!), the rest of the lyrics could be “culture alienation boredom and despair” for all I know. But taking this further will give me a 2987452897 page ramble about ‘do lyrics even matter’ which I cannot do right now. Mostly because I fear the answers that I will get, as someone who has listened to pop in various non-comprehensible languages since 16sai… freak!)

(Thanks to Natalie from Muso’s Guide for getting us tix to this!)

Perhaps it is THE MAN with THE KEG who safeguards the pub who makes it so great – (if you squint in the above picture you can see him but pub correspondants will be out with their cameras to capture his full glory soon) – plenty vicarious fun can be had in merrily eyeing the door for a minute or so. The man with the keg stands above the door, bearing the keg.
Given kegs are not very light…oOne day that keg is going fall and rain a rain of BEER on the righteous/unrighteous. I have debated whether I would welcome the deluge were it to rain on me. On the plus side, I would smell like a champ. On the negative side, I could have DRUNK that beer. Is the keg a deterrent or an incentive?

Is it true that yon man is called TAN O SHANTER btw? Anyone?!

And speaking of beer, the Chandos can always keep its beer well – unlike the next pub in the list, where I have had sulphurous pints a plenty. OK OK, the Harp down the road might serve a load of indie beer and have liver and bacon bubbling away behind the bar, but good luck if you can ever fit in there without praying to the baby Jeebus and sacrificing a few fried chicken bones well in advance. The Harp also has a split personality – a strangely ornate room upstairs, a bit conference room-y and a little corridor downstairs and whilst I should be so fond of the little indie pub, it can feel a bit insidious in a way that the Chandos never has a pretension of bein’.

To be fair, sometimes it can be crowded, and it is a little southern than my drinking companions usually prefer. It can feel sparse, if you like things like carpets on the floor. Still, one of my softest pub spots is for the Chandos. It is the pub where I like to go and have a pint when I don’t feel like just catching my train and going home, it is where I have gathered Pub Drunks Who Like Doctor Who To Talk About Doctor Who, it is where I dragged my friend to come and meet me straight off her plane from far away climes, and the pub where I made my debut as Russell Brand in Trig Brother 2006 with a knitting needle with a shiny tin foil covering. This is all downstairs, of course. Upstairs has witnessed horrors of which we fear to tread, but the Chandos is all about the downstairs, the booths, the spiral seats in the centre and those stained glass windows.

Apparently they do food as well, but in years of going there, I have never seen anyone eat there. Either downstairs is for VAMPIRES, or food is restricted to upstairs (this is more likely, but THIS WILL NOT STOP ME FROM CHECKING THE DOWNSTAIRS CLIENTELE FOR *~SPARKLES~*). Yay, the Chandos <3

“Every Wednesday evening 2 courses are £11.90 and 3 courses are £14.90 from The Dial Ladies night menu. Visit www.thedial.uk.com to see the full menu.

BEER COCKTAILS ARE JUST £4.95!”

BEER COCKTAILS?!

http://www.bittersweetpartnership.com/experiment/

(Let’s have an example of this beer cocktail then:
Amber Mojito
6 fresh mint leaves / caster sugar / 1/2 lime, cut into wedges / 60ml Havana rum / ice / 100ml ice cold Coors Light / 1 spring mint to garnish)

Well I can’t see WHY you’d want to do this in any way at all but whatever…. for one crazy second I thought this would be like – you know – Black Velvet (guinness and champagne)… but I was wrong. Yet I still don’t know who on earth the Bittersweet Partnership are (I wonder what their name could.. imply…) – ooh and note the “Coors Light”, for the ladies…

More clicking through, and by this time I have developed RSI, I get the “Alfie” page: http://www.bittersweetpartnership.com/whats_it_all_about/. (DYS?). It appears that the main push from the Bittersweet Partnership, via a Facebook intro, is to raise awareness of a super new product. KASTEEL CRU ROSE. You heard. Rose and lager. Rose… and… la…

Rosé lager! All this clicking and we’ve reached the grail. And what a grail! This isn’t just a fruit beer. This is pink wine topped up with Wifebeater!

My Former Boss once poured half a bottle of pink blossom hill into the remnants of his pint of Carling at the end of a boozy lunchtime, and i suspect Kasteel Cru Rose would not at all dissimilar… if you’re reading, Former Boss, perhaps you could sue them? I mean, SOMEONE SHOULD. This hamfisted and bon-bon-bonKERS attempt to get women drinking beer by MAKING IT INTO COCKTAILS is both the worst and best thing ever! Let’s think about the assumption it’s making: women like cocktails. Women don’t like beer. But if it was in a cocktail!! There’s only one problem – and that is that brewed hops plus tequilla plus vermouth plus a maraschino cherry and ideally a sparkler would taste like a Hermesetas addled pig had done his business in your mouth… \o/ \o/ ???

Taking this back to the initial facebook page for “women who like beer” – it’s not surprising that no-one is ‘a fan’, given that by the time we’ve gotten to the crux of this bizarre push, we’re not reeeally talking beer anymore, are we Tonto. It makes me wonder what’s lurking at the bottom of other facebook ads. A fanpage for La Roux will turn out to be advertising Jeremy Vine endorsed stock cubes?!

Oh, and whilst I’m putting “cru” on a beer doesn’t make it any more premium… (hello Kronenboug ‘Premier Cru’ et al, purse, sows ear, springs to mind)…

Full disclosure: you can probably disregard all of this as I myself have been known to sample the power shandy in my younger days (half of budvar, topped up with smirnoff ice). Internet searches give me a whole range of variants on the power shandy – mostly with a “bomb” aspect – i.e drop a shot of midori into a can of Special Brew. One suggestion is for a shot of soju to be chucked in a mug of Hite! Non, mon cher…

Therein lies the question. So far I have a little clay dish with some chicken fat in it (which has been in my fridge since 12 Feb 2009) and RIGHT NOW I am cooking a duck. The duck is cooked skin side down on the lowest heat EVER for 15 mins, and then I will be left with even more fat to store: hurrah!!

QUESTIONS: 1. Will anything go badly wrong if I just pour the duck fat on top of the existing chicken fat?
2. How long can you store dripping for anyway? I have a vague memory of a tub of dripping living in the fridge when I was very small, I was kind of fascinated by it and it never seemed to get used..
3. Is the theory that you just continually keep topping up dripping with fat from yr meat something I have IMAGINED?
4. Is my quest for dripping gonna kill me somehow?

SKOOL ME DRIPPIN’.

If you could answer me within the next hour that wd be grebt as my duck is cooking RIGHT NOW and soon I will add the CABBAGE.

I am making simmered duck with cabbage and potato btw. Just in case you were interested. Oh come on, it’s better than the Goombay Dance Band, isn’t it. OR IS IT (yes).

Loose tea is meant to be leaf tea, surely – what’s with the fine powder? Sure, if you’re having INSTANT TEA (my friend put forward the point the other day that ochazuke is kind of instant tea – but this depends if it has some sort of tea granules in it – I have always poured tea over mine, it is TEA SOAKED RICE after all and more tea has never hurt, anyway)… and it’s meant to dissolve, but this stuff doesn’t…

AM I DOING SOMETHING WRONG? Or do I need to visit Taylors of Harrogate and ask “whut up”?

You play the part of someone whose DS is hijacked by an obsessive gamer named Arino, who boasts of his supremacy in ALL GAMING! Indignant at your petty noughties gaming, he sends you back to the past to challenge him, turning you into a kid to take on child!Arino. This has the utterly charming effect of placing two little kids on the floor in front of a tv and gaming console on the bottom screen whilst the game gets played on the DS top-screen. The kids crawl about, sprawl on the floor, punch the air, exclaim out loud at the scary bits, howl in unfairness, fish out magazines for hints and tips (familiar to anyone who read eg SEGA FORCE et al – yeah yeah I’m a generation after typing out debug scripts, deal) and cheer on each other. It sounds nothing special at all but the down to earth charm of it, even the kids stumbling around on the floor and switching on consoles has gotten me OBSESSED.

The actual gameplay is passing through a series of retro-challenges, all new ones but fictionally provided for throughout the 80s, produced by a company called TOMATO. The first challenge is a Space Invaders Clone named Cosmic Gate (which I might have played until midnight last night and until my thumbs hurt, WHAT OF IT). I then unlocked a game called Ninja Haggle Man (!) but fear of RSI (grown-ups just don’t get it).

The utterly bizarre thing is that child!Arino sees Future!Arino through the TV screen… his first reaction = “omg, I’m a freak!” – I have no idea how this is going to pan out! Is Arino going to go on some sort of passage of redemption? Future!Arino is a crazed, maniacal and mean nutloop, and child!Arino notices this. But if, faced with the vision of the future, he changes, then how will we even play the game? And on taking on the challenges, will I myself, as the player, TAKE ARINO’S PLACE? Warghle! It’s like Back to the Future.

Wiki tells me the game is based on a Retro Game Master aka GameCenter CX (ゲームセンターCX, GemuSentaa CX), which obviously I have never seen but it does look a step up or two from Gamesmaster. I’d much rather play this than something featuring the gurning avatar of Dominik Diamond (don’t even TALK to me about Dexter sodding Fletcher).

In a way, it’s like going back to the ideal gaming experience as a kid – you always get your go, you have a supportive friend to play with (even though at the same time he’s your nemesis), you have a your mum in the background occasionally talking about snacks and doing your homework (but she can’t stop you! hahahaa)! And of course, you get a whole bunch of crazy topics to talk to child!Arino about – when asking what you do instead of smashing controllers when you lose, you have the option to tell him that you “get up and meow”. As an Only Child, perhaps I could adopt this strategy when I find myself losing at videogames in the present?

Anyway, this article reminded me that recently I picked up my first SHOUJO MANGA (manga for gurlies, typically published by Shoujo Beat over here)! My decision to Try It (given that I hates all comics) was provoked by intense lolz from recent jdrama Yasuko to Kenji, which featured boyband drummer Masahiro Matsuoka as an ex-biker gang leader turned awesome shoujo manga artiste (each episode would feature him dressing up his two goons as eg swooning schoolgirls, cheerleaders, puppy-walkers etc).

I picked up “Absolute Boyfriend”, as I have familiarity with the jdrama (‘Zettai Kareshi’) based on the manga, which turns out to come with two further ‘stand-alone’ comics, “I Won’t Let You Become A Star” and “Aromatics”. I’m not sure if each ‘book’ has one ‘serial’ in each instalment, followed by two standalones or whether this is a one off as it was the last episode of ‘Absolute Boyfriend’, mind. As AB is the finale of a long-running story, it’s actually quite hard to say anything about it without talking about the drama which is a different kettle of cream-puffs. So I shan’t bother!

I Won’t Let You Become A Star! is not in fact about someone jealous of their lover’s X-Factor rising success, but the following: A girl with psychic powers meets a cute boy on a train! Girl with psychic powers called to exorcise ghosts from local boy’s only high school! Haunting boys are former student council members! Student council president is the cute boy from the train! OH NOES BUT HE IS DEAD!! OR IS HE?? Psychic girl ends up on rubbish dates with the ghosts at the flicks! The least subtle subtext ever as 3 boys take turns ‘possessing’ physic girl’s body and they stay up all night ‘painting the gym’!

Aromatics features the story of a high-schooler who can ‘smell pheromones’! It’s easier to have this as ‘identify’ pheromones, as he uses this ‘talent’ of his to match up couples with compatible smells. Well, I guess it’s as good as Blood Type matching agencies. In this story, there’s a saucy librarian and a sweet’n’shy glasses-wearing girl who’s the librarian’s helper… which do we guess will eventually end up winning the incense heir’s heart? Murder attempts! The ‘smeller’ catches a cold!!

Did I like any of them though? The answer is… yes!! Whilst both are big-hearted “and they call it, puppy looooo-ooo-ve” stories, what do they have? Absolute Boyfriend has a ROBOT LOVER! IWLBAS (phew) has a PSYCHIC GIRL and an ambiguously-living love interest! Aromatics has super-intuition based on traditional family institutions and wearing a smelly kimono! Whilst the end of the line is always boy-meets-girl (or ‘boy meets boy’ if you L your BL), the only way this could be Sweet Valley High (say) is if Jessica Wakefield found forbidden love with a boy from the future who could only appear in her dreams and would leave a single red rose by her door every night to prove that he really WAS THERE! Ie awesome of course. Unashamedly romantic in every ridiculous sense!

SO WHERE ARE MY PRETTY-BOY ANGST-RIDDEN VAMPS?? Not in this one – I am not denying for one second that this genre doesn’t exist, but if we’re looking at that, don’t we look at Buffy, Stephenie Myer’s Twilight series and Anne Rice? Oh, so western-centric, but yeah – if the ‘manga’ traditionally conceived of by your western peeps is the shonen stuff (Naruto, Jump, Bleach <– I have read none because they are comics for BOYS and probably rub, although Shokotan is just so goshdarned cute she almost makes me want to give some a go?!), saying that the shoujo stuff is ‘pretty boy vampires’ is as inward looking as all get-go, looking specifically towards your gothic subbacultchas, your gosurori and you know – who cares huh??

But yet! The front page of the Shojo Beat magazine features a story called ‘Vampire Knights’ – the tagline? Cross Academy is attended by two groups of students: the Day Class and the Night Class. At twilight, when the students of the Day Class return to their dorm, they cross paths with the Night Class on their way to school. Yuki Cross and Zero Kiryu are the Guardians of the school, there to protect the Day Class from the Academy’s dark secret: the Night Class is full of vampires.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK! OK, busted. We has vamp, and it’s shoujo manga, of course they will be pretty. Anyway, shut up!! Pretty-boy vampires are awesome!! Tssk. Yet, making this and yaoi the only girls interest stuff is missing – well – EVERYTHING else! There can be plenty of thrill-power in a story which concludes with wistful sighing and holding hands too! Stupid nerds. I wonder what shoujo manga I should read next!! YAOI YAOI YAOI. Seeing as the books are £6ish each it had BETTER BE GOOD. Bear in mind, a book doesn’t even contain a whole story! Is it too western-centric yet again to say that if it looks like a book it should quack like a book and eg GIMME THE WHOLE STORY? Oh, I’m so greedy! Anyway it’s definitely better than “Hulk Vs Predator” or whatever silly musclefest boy comics you all like. Yeah!

Bizarrely, these books are authored by a rather “keen” Mormon author, and don’t feature drinking, drugging or… s3xxxing? Hold on a second, but you know the whole vampire thing is massively… like… about…? SINKING FANGS INTO NECKS and so on? Apparently these series are big business in the US (apparently whilst magic is evil, vampires – providing they don’t booze or s3x0r – are fine!) and set to be huge in other territories. Now I love me some teen vampire trash but when written by a woman who allegedly hasn’t seen an R-rated film “on principle” – whut?

I admit I haven’t seen an R rated film myself – I still don’t QUITE know what it means! I thought it was the stage above 18, but apparently not! From FAN FIC, I have the following assumptions about RATINGS:

G: this is ‘U’. People occasionally look at each other and hold hands. Either dull or insanely fluffy. Can often contain lots of talk about FEELINGS, but then there is a crossover with R – see entry for “R”.
PG-13: boys KISS, if this is a PG rating then I am 1xmonkeys uncle d00ds – surely that would make it a 15 yes? Generally written in inappropriate fonts and purple text.
NC-17: = 18, although frankly given some of the FILTH out there it is probably XXXXX r4ted (but you don’t get that rating at the cinemas that I go to so it doesn’t count). Smut basically.
R: warning – here be EMO! Basically R means “your characters will be unhappy, angst a lot and there will be domestic abuse perhaps BUT ONLY BECAUSE HE LOVES HIM AND HE COULD NEVER BE WITH HIM”. The end scene is generally someone sobbing alone in the Cold Night Air. Either no w1nkies feature at all, or LOTS of w1nkies do. WTF. This rating does not exist in this country and frankly it baffles me, my dere. Can sometimes be smut, can sometimes be nuzzink. K-bizarre.

I’d rather read some of this vampire chicklit! Undead (And Unwed)! Now THERE’s vampire “fic” for you! *adds to wishlist* – seriously this is genius. GENIUS.

I pretty much believe the internet is full of great recipes to try, but the world of American volume-based recipes using cups and “sticks” of butter just doesn’t work in the UK. I end up poking anxiously with floury hands on my laptop trying to check whether a teaspoon is a teaspoon is a teaspoon. Well, NO MORE. I am coming up with a definitive cheat sheet for the fridge, but it is NOT HELPED by finding ridiculous sites like the above which claims the UK equivalent to 1 US “cup” is “3/4 of a cup and 2 dsp”. Leaving aside the fact that I am British and am not quite sure of the difference between a desertspoon and a teaspoon (the REALLY weeny spoons, I guess?) – NO! UK measurements do not involve cups! They involve weights, in grams, or at a PUSH I can accept pounds and ounces in old money. What NONSENSE is this site claiming?!

Or if anyone would like to say that the UK started it with Pints and Imperial Pints and I am just thick, they are welcome to Try It, but frankly – weight based measurements are the way to go. I mean, even if you DO measure by volume, a cup of flour is different to a cup of WALNUTS or whatever. The standard in the UK is metric, I just find it downright bizarre have NO clue what that site is referencing. I now judge it: UNHELPFUL! And my cheatsheet is back at square one as how can I trust anything else on that site?

And speaking of which, where can I buy a set of balance scales from these days? Are they the sort of things found in Past Tymes stores and bought by Live Roleplaying Enthusiasts? (Sorry Tom).

===========================

Chestnut Cupcakes with Chocolate (Kate) Ganache ♥♥♥ – makes at the least 12, probably some more depending on how much you fill the cases innit.

APPARATUS

one big bowl, one medium bowl, one little bowl
2 x cake baking trays
cake cases
wooden spoon
tongue to lick spoon with
electric whisk or well-developed biceps (mmmm Yamapi’s arms mmmmm)
blender multiprick thing

OPTIONAL
1 x laptop computer to watch Proposal Daisakusen on for the aforementioned Yamapi’s arms omg like seriously he was wearing a white vest and oh god NRGRGHHHH ihwsi fuohsauioghighuiahuiohuig I nearly died.

INGREDIENTS

110g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
200g sugar (i used half caster/half golden caster here)
80-100g chesnuts! (i used frozen ones – will explain what I did with these shortly)
110g room temperature butter plus a splodge more (a teaspoon cut off the side did me)
250ml semi-skimmed milk (plus an extra splash)
1 tsp rice vinegar
2 big eggys
1/2 tsp of vanilla extract* (tho, see note below about this)

CHOCOLATE KATE ‘GANACHE’ (here we get way more inexact as I just hoofed this entirely)
A “big bar” (100g or so?) of any fair-trade dark chocolate, I used something that was 72% cocoa solids but I can’t remember the brand, sry
Splodge of that semi-skimmed milk from before
Splodge of the butter as well

METHOD

1. Preheat yr oven to 180C

2. Add 1tsp of rice vinegar (but I guess any vinegar will do!) to 250ml milk and leaving it to sit and curdle itself for at least 10 mins, or however long it takes you to do steps 3-5 :)

2. sift your flour and bicarb into a medium size bowl. You can do this whilst step 3 is boiling if you want…

3. OK, some explanation here – you want to somehow obtain a chestnut puree. I suppose you could just use store bought chestnut puree and save yrself f-d but I had some chestnuts in the freezer so here is what I did; Boil up your chestnuts and get them nice and soft and plonk them in a bowl. Get out multiprick and whizz the chestnuts. You will note with some dismay it is not quite a smooth puree so add your splodge of butter and splash of milk and don’t worry! it will ALL BE OKAY. Leave the chestnuts to the side for now cos they’ll have to cool off a bit whilst you…

4. Cream together your butter and sugar in the big bowl – I used an electric whisk but you don’t have to, just get it nice and fluffy, lots of beating. Then, add your eggs one at a time, beat some more. Then add your chesnut puree! And yep, beat more some! Plonk in the vanilla essence at this stage too.

5. Add the dry stuff (flour and bicarb) and fold it in in bits, alternating with your fake buttermilk mixture that you made in step 2. Taste some of it! Nom nom.

6. When all nicely mixed together, stick your cake cases in your tin and put a tablespoon of mix in each one – mine didn’t rise that much so don’t worry about overfilling as much.

7. BAAAAAAKE! 25 mins turning once, shifting the stuff round from lower shelf to top shelf if your oven is as bloody tempramental as mine.

8. Cool on wire rack. Or whatever.

KATE GANACHE:

Break up your chocolate and melt it in MARIE’S BATH (bain marie = glass bowl suspended over boiling water so the steam nicely melts your choc). Stir stir, lovely melty chocolate nom nom. You want it to get to a nice smooth consistency so it can go on the top of your cupcakes, so add in milk veery gradually and stir around – it will look like it’s going a bit gritty but it will smooth out – add a wee bit of butter towards the end as well. As a ‘guide’, my mixture went a little lighter brown rather than the original very dark as a result of adding the milk… then I added it to the cupcakes by dipping the back of a spoon in the kate ganache and then laying the spoon on top of the cupcakes. It was a little messy but sadly the decor of cupcakes isn’t my strong point.

*Feedback: sadly no taste of chestnuts remained at the end. JUST as they came out the oven there was something nice and subtle there, but as they cooled it just went away. And for some reason we got a strange tang of… orange?? I just don’t even KNOW, you guys. I’m not sure whether I should be using more chestnuts, or whether a different type of sugar would bring out the chestnut flavour rather than overwhelm it. Also, you’ll see I used vanilla extract there – I’m not sure if that was actually necessary here, if I were trying it again I don’t think I’d use it, or if you MUST, just the tiniest splash you can fit in… any ideas, o readers, as to why chestnut may not be chestnut?

“…. we had a hard limit of 8 characters for player skills, enemy skills, and enemy names, and a generous 10 for item and equipment names. The hard part is that 8 characters in Japanese can give you enemy names like 憤怒の眼光主, which romanizes as “Fundo No Gankou-Nushi” and translates as the even lengthier “Owner of the Malicious Glare.”

That’s a lot to pack into 8 English letters. So in this case, we jettisoned the word “Owner” as being the least meaningful word in the name, and were left with “Malicious Glare.” Casting about for some shorter synonyms for “malicious” gives us words like “evil” and “bad,” which are both short enough to fit. But Evilglare and Badglare have that slightly clumsy air that went hand-in-hand with the old NES days, and we try to produce localizations more natural than that, even with character limits as tough as these.

Read more of the article for weapons workarounds and maintaining historical authenticity! Sigh – I so wish this was my job…

As the preface says: “[S]erious food enthusiasts seized upon [his recipes] without being sure that this was the same man who spoke over the Soviet radio, talked with Hollywood lawyers and wrote the sort of spy thrillers that had to be submitted to the War Office before publication. It is.”.

Nigella could never make cooking look this shexay….

99 no Namida essentially does what it says on the tin. It’s an emotional development game (one might say… an EMO game?!) which creates a ‘personality profile’ based on your answering a few questions on the starting input screen, and then uses this profile to generate a story which should… make you cry! The point being that it is healthy to unleash your emotions and release stress, whether that is through a solitary tear rolling down the cheek or an all out bawl.

Whether this is true or not, I certainly can’t imagine playing this one on the tube. And how does it measure if you’ve cried or not? And if it doesn’t try and measure, then why not just read a weepy book? Or download aforementioned “1 Litre of Tears” into yr iPod? (Or in fact, read the actual true-life diary the story came from?). Can the crying game… really be a game at all? So – I seriously have zero clue on whether this will make it out of Japan. Can any of our Japanese correspondents confirm or deny swathes of salarymen sniffling as inconspiciously as possible into their briefcases on the tube each morning? Or… given the genre of the mag I saw the original ad in, swathes of schoolgirls gathered round in the playground, at the heart-rending stories of … ???

Well – I suppose emotional development is as important as mental development, given the popularity of Prof. Kawashima’s Brain Training — which has JUST dropped out of the UK charts! For the first time since release! Is this a sign that we’re ready to develop other parts of our mind, as well as arithmetic and logic? Hardly very Vulcan, is it…

“This year Sony/ATV, which owns the publishing rights to the Beatles catalogue, said it would license their tracks. The first deal was with a US nappy brand to use the line All You Need is Luvs. It does not need to consult the surviving Beatles but said it felt a “moral obligation” to do so.”

Methinks Jacobs Creek are missing a trick here – come on guys – “Ticket To Wine” is up for grabs!

We note that Wagamama (on London’s Trendy Wigmore Street only for the timebeing) has commenced a new breakfast menu (pdf)! Your standard smoothies are still there, but what is this I see? Allow me to extract a few portions that drew my attn in particular…

breakfast yaki soba £5.50
teppan fried soba noodles with egg, smoked streaky bacon,
savoy cabbage, mushrooms and fresh chopped tomatoes (ed thinks: …. …. ….ed does not even KNOW)

wagamama kedgeree £5.50
a blend of sticky rice, naturally smoked haddock, spring onion and a
soft boiled egg bound in a curry sauce (ed thinks: haddock? curry sauce?? BREAKFAST?? BLEEE!!!)

okonomiyaki £4.95 (FOR BREAKFAST??? D00ds)
a traditional japanese style omelette filled with red and green peppers,
savoy and white cabbage and mushrooms topped with
katsuobushi (dried tuna fish shavings) and aonori (seaweed)(ed thinks: b-b-b-but… where will they COOK it?)

asa gohan v £3.95
a traditional japanese breakfast of sticky rice, miso soup and pickles
can also be ordered with grilled salmon (ed thinks: frankly I have sort of been of the opinion that whenever people claim this is a traditional japanese breakfast they are just taking the mickey out of me as in every single dorama I watch everyone is ALWAYS having either toast or cereal and I have not yet seen one single breakfast scene featuring rice, soup or pickles – not even in Gokusen(2) – bluddy kids?? Someone who has actually been actual Japan, not just telly Japan can probably inform me whether this is GENERALLY the case or not- please?)

They will also do you toast, pastries, a regular “full english”, scrambled eggs, coffee etc… but frankly in for a fusion penny in for a fusion couple of yen, am I right?

Nice to see them still pushing the Dark Chocolate flavours, although I think I’m still yet to see a dark chocolate teacake in this ‘ere London. Then again! I am no teacake fan. Get your marshmallows off me bleeergh cough hack splutter. Even IF they are arguably the most fun to eat in their methodology as long as you do it correctly, ie smash the teacake against your forehead first in order to crack the chocolate coatin. If you like, you can shout “Haaaaaaai-YAAAA!” whilst doing so, but hey, it’s not essential. I’d shout “YAAAMAPIII DAAAAAAI-SKKKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII” – or I would – if I liked teacakes. But as I don’t – my confession remains…. unmade. DAMN YOU FOUL MARSHMALLOW.

Then I realised I was only cheating myself…

Anyway – my point is, there’s nothing sad about remembering Ankst compilation “S4C Makes Me Want To Smoke Crack” so shut up rude Lollards – yes, it was me who texted in, and I’m not ashamed!! Well, of the Catatonia perhaps, bleeergh. The Rheinhallt H Rowlands track, however, is CLASSIC. Or, as they don’t say in Welsh – clyssych.

Tonight leading Moomin academic Dr Vick, Tom Ewing and Pete Baran, corralled into brilliance by the Atommick Brane herself halloo the return of the kid-lit husband list! (Ms Puddleduck come on down!) (PuddleDUMB more like!) We’ll tackle Tove Jansson, Raymond Briggs, Uncle (<— the Elephant in the Castle!) (he has a B.A.!), the general disjunction between morals and quality in children’s art and the horrific not-so-SUBtext of Toy Story II. Plus something SO SCARY even Beaver Hateman and Knobsman Carsmile will tremble in fear. Tune in and find out for yourself! 7pm GMT, 104.4 Resonance FM, online at www.resonancefm.com and follow-ups at freakytrigger.co.uk, wild surmise to ftlollards@gmail.com.

AH! The embedding isn’t working so youtube link to Junior Spesh instead!

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WTF who pays 20p extra for mayonnaise? Look, mayonnaise is foul anyway, you freaks, and second of all – 20p extra for sauces?! ZOMG, I dunno where these Red Hot guys are from but in SE14 you get free mayonnaise and ketchup even if you don’t want it – they are sort of swirled together in a tub in a yin yang like pattern?? And once I was drunk and thought it was a strawberry yoghurt thing and we were getting free pudding? And then I put it in my mouth and it was FOUL MAYONNAISE. Hitten da heart that’s a sick. I HATE MAYONNAISE >:(

We are assuming a junior spesh is £1.50 for 1pc, chips and a drink. We wouldn’t know, because we always go for the 2pcs and chips for £1.99 option. In Dallas Fried Chicken on Brixton Road, sometimes you used to get a sneaky extra bonus hot wing underneath. We were good customers there… whatever is £1.99 in the chicken shop will usually do you, either 2pcs and chips or 1pc, 3x hot wings and chips. NOM NOM DIRTY CHICKEN.

Says Mr Eavis: “He will appeal to the young people and under-25s for sure, so that’s a big pull for them,” he said.

“It’s not like the traditional one we do, like Radiohead, Coldplay and Muse and Oasis.”

I dunno, I hear that being a Glastonbury headliner brings LOADS of problems! Like, now Jay-Z will have to worry about Nas giving him hash cookies before his normal cookies before he goes on stage and he’ll end up giggling his way through all the sweary bits!

Note how I subtly avoid mentioning the Neil Diamond issue… pah Anne Diamond would be better… and she no doubt needs the cash far more than rub old Neil.