Loaves and fishes, food and drink, and Delia...

I've always been intrigued by wine. Well, maybe not wine itself, but rather people who can look at shelves and shelves of bottles and pick out a good one, even one to "go well with" a particular meal. And I may be wrong, but I do think that actually most people can do this.

So why can't I? Did I miss that day at school?

I prefer red to white, Cabernet Merlot is particularly delicious, but equally, I'll gulp a glass of Lambrini if I'm thirsty or skint enough. Yeah I know, classy chick...

So anyway, today's Observer promises me somewhere to start when facing the wine aisle, with Top 25 Wine Truths which indeed give me some ideas, but I still don't feel especially knowledgeable. Oh well, I should enrol on a course...

The 'fat tax' issue seems to be totally ridiculous and kinda scary too. I'm sure if more of us had enough money to live on, we'd be able to afford healthier food anyway.

I want to get back into cooking. I have always loved cooking and until my life got too messed up I did it fairly regularly. Delia's site seems a good place to start. Tortilla looks tempting and, most importantly, cheap. And I used to love a good omelette. That's if I can ever get past the chocolate recipes section...

And to put food and drink in a more global perspective, the horrors of the death penalty are brought forward with this article about prisoners' last meals before they are killed. Depressing and twisted, particularly being refused a cigarette after Dubya apparently banned them on "health grounds".

Vagina Warrior

S from Rape Crisis is nominating me to be a Vagina Warrior!

The website says, amongst other things:

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Although Vagina Warriors are highly original, they possess some general defining characteristics:
They are fierce, obsessed, can’t be stopped, driven.
They are no longer beholden to social customs or inhibited by taboos.
They are not afraid to be alone, not afraid to be ridiculed or attacked.
They are often willing to face anything for the safety and freedom of others.
They love to dance.
They are directed by vision, not ruled by ideology.
They are citizens of the world. They cherish humanity over nationhood.
They have a wicked sense of humor. A Palestinian activist told jokes to an Israeli soldier who pointed a machine gun at her as she tried to pass the checkpoints. She literally disarmed him with her humor.
Vagina Warriors know that compassion is the deepest form of memory.
They know that punishment does not make abusive people behave better. They know that it is more important to provide a space where the best can emerge rather than “teaching people a lesson.”
[...]
Vagina Warriors are done being victims. They know no one is coming to rescue them. They would not want to be rescued.
They have experienced their rage, depression, desire for revenge and they have transformed them through grieving and service. They have confronted the depth of their darkness. They live in their bodies.
They are community makers. They bring everyone in.
Vagina Warriors have a keen ability to live with ambiguity. They can hold two existing, opposite thoughts at the same time.
[...]
Vagina Warriors know that the process of healing from violence is long and happens in stages. They give what they need the most, and by giving this they heal and activate the wounded part inside.
Many Vagina Warriors work primarily on a grassroots level. Because what is done to women is often done in isolation and remains unreported, Vagina Warriors work to make the invisible seen. Mary in Chicago fights for the rights of Women of Color so that they are not disregarded or abused; Nighat risked stoning and public shaming in Pakistan by producing “The Vagina Monologues” in Islamabad so that the stories and passions of women would not go unheard; Esther insists that the hundreds of disappeared girls in Juarez are honored and not forgotten.

For native people, a warrior is one whose basic responsibility is to protect and preserve life. The struggle to end violence on this planet is a battle. Emotional, intellectual, spiritual, physical. It requires every bit of our strength, our courage, our fierceness. It means speaking out when everyone says to be quiet. It means going the distance to hold perpetrators accountable for their actions. It means honoring the truth even if it means losing family, country, and friends. It means developing the spiritual muscle to enter and survive the grief that violence brings and, in that dangerous space of stunned unknowing, inviting the deeper wisdom.

Like Vaginas, Warriors are central to human existence, but they still remain largely unvalued and unseen. This year V-Day celebrates Vagina Warriors around the world, and by doing so we acknowledge these women and men and their work. In every community there are humble activists working every day, beat by beat to undo suffering. They sit by hospital beds, pass new laws, chant taboo words, write boring proposals, beg for money, demonstrate and hold vigils in the streets. They are our mothers, our daughters, our sisters, our aunts, our grandmothers, and our best friends. Every woman has a warrior inside waiting to be born. In order to guarantee a world without violence, in a time of danger and escalating madness, we urge them to come out.

CELEBRATE VAGINA WARRIORS. LET THEM BE HONORED AND SEEN. LET MORE BE BORN.
====

It feels scary, but nice to be recognised like this.

I am a vagina warrior... I feel I need a theme tune ;)

Totally evil

Someone sent me a link to this BBC article about a shop selling coats made of hamster fur.

Since I was a teenager, any huge passion for animal rights has dwindled considerably, but I have three of these babies and the thought of killing 100 of them to make coats is just so awful :(

More Creature Comforts

While giggling quietly to Just a Minute on the BBC Radio Four website, I find myself feeling somewhat guilty for raving about the rodent pets, and completely ignoring the existence of the underwater kinds which also share my living space, though less noisily.

Zee is a goldfish. More specifically, a shubunkin. He seems to have an uncanny knack of surviving where no other fish can, given the considerable number of tank-mates he has had and lost. He (is it a he? who knows?) swims contentedly (I presume? who knows?) around his hexagonal tank amid plants (fake and real), and the air pump vibrates so noisily that he seems to survive on minimal oxygen, as the noise annoys me too much to have it on too often, or for too long.

Interaction with, and entertainment from goldfish is fairly untypical, though he recognises me when it is feeding time. He rather exists in his own hexagonal idyll, providing me with welcome relaxation when I watch him, for which I am grateful.

The other underwater creatures in this house are the intolerably dull sea monkeys. I was stunned to find multitudes of websites and message boards full of people marvelling about these bizarre life forms. Ok, so their ability to be born when they come into contact with water, after being freeze dried, is momentarily impressive, but from then on you are obliged to feed what are essentially little bugs swimming and shagging in a tub of water.

Some people rave about these things, give each a name, and there was even an article published in USA Today in which the author bemoans the death of three of hers (how did she notice?). I could name mine I suppose, if I could tell the difference between them, but they are so very, very dull that they rarely get called anything other than "boring" or "weird".

And yes, they have sex. And when they do it, they really go for it, sometimes shagging for over 24 hours. I did not know this until they started doing it, and I wondered for several days whether two pairs of them were somehow stuck together. Internet research (which led me to discover this incomprehensible adoration of sea monkeys by so many people) told me that they were indeed mating, and this can go on for some time. No baby boring things seem to have appeared yet though.

I know, you're thinking I'm an appalling pet owner, but seriously, they are too, too dull to merit any other kind of written treatment. I look after them well. I figure that inherent boring-ness was not enough to condemn them to certain death by starvation, so I follow the contradictory and confusing instructions on keeping them healthy, and will do for as long as they are swimming and shagging in the plastic tub.

Creatures

Pierrot, aka Nepenthe is bumbling around. Clara and Heidi are quiet for the first time in about 15 hours. Pierrot doesn't know what has hit this house since those two arrived. There seems to be such a huge difference between the two variations of the same species.

Pierrot is gorgeous - grey and white with huge heroin chic eyes. He's enormous (or is that just in comparison to the others?) and really his wheel is too small for him. Maybe that's why he's not on it much. Or is it just that he's lazy... I secretly hope it's the latter, since the energy of the other two puts me to shame.

"The other two", Heidi and Clara were supposed to be able to live happily together. Both female, and from the same litter, and as they're Russian dwarfs they are much more sociable than Syrians. But yeah, after about 3 days of Clara trying to rip Heidi's face off, I had to separate them.

Heidi got the better cage, due to her victimisation, though there are not and never have been any signs of her being traumatised by her previous treatment by her sister.

Clara got the smaller cage, but with a wheel, which she runs on incessantly. I read somewhere that when they're running on their wheel they really and truly believe they are running miles and miles and miles. I don't know whether that's nice or really, really sad.

Heidi's cage has three levels, with big springs and ladders going from floor to floor. She is essentially an acrobat and mostly hangs from one of the levels, spinning herself round and round and round. She eschews the ladders and either traverses from floor to floor via the springs, or more commonly, by climbing up the side of the cage and squeezing between the edge of the cage and the edge of the floor above.

People think hamsters are pets for kids, but for me they are cute, they are friendly (intermittently anyway), they are certainly entertaining, and they are, in a weird way, nice company.

If you agree with me on that point, I like you already.

If you think I'm sad, then you're reading the wrong blog, mate.

4.38am on a Sunday morning, listening to Classic Gold on my funky new DAB radio. IMing my girlfriend, smoking rollies, and creating my very own blog.

Have been downloading lots of random and free programmes tonight. Some useful (HTML editor for instance), some funky (a cool Lemon Jelly screensaver), and some downright daft (a programme which measures how far your mouse travels... as I type, it's gone 2897 inches, some 20 something % of the way up the Eiffel Tower).

About me? Mad, in debt, radical, angry, pacifist, warrior, flower-power chick...

Yeah I know, that says nothing and everything. Well that's me - nothing, and everything :)