Sunday Snippets

Particularly nasty and irresponsible headline on today's Sunday Express. Nothing new there, then.
The story is of some Muslim women arrested on suspicion of sheltering terrorists. The headline is 'VEILED THREAT'.
No doubt the Express would argue that the phrase is specific to the women arrested. And if you believed that you'd also believe that Express owner Richard Desmond's Asian Babes is an ante-natal magazine for Asian mothers.

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In yesterday's Guardian, Simon Hoggart was bemoaning the inaccuracy of long-range weather forecasts on television. But the Met Office's long-range local forecasts on the internet are even more fictional. They're often wrong even for the specific day on which you are reading them.
Oddly, I still look at my local forecast every morning. I can only think it's a bit like people who read their horoscope every day even though they know it's rarely accurate and that the whole thing is a load of old cobblers.

Maybe someone should combine meteorology and astrology and produce personalised forecasts:
"Although today will be generally fine, it will piss down for five minutes while you're returning from the newsagent. And your natural optimism, heightened by the current influence of Pluto, means you won't have taken an umbrella with you."
Maybe that's the meaning of the Crowded House lyric 'Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you'. On the other hand, the lyric may just be the meaningless gibberish I've always thought it to be.

Talking of astrology, I read in that supposedly intelligent paper The Observer last week that we Pisceans are going to be particularly bolshie and irritable until next spring because Uranus is buzzing our natal Saturn.
So if I'm a bit tetchy with you in my Comment Box, it's not because of what you've said. It's Uranus.

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I've noticed that the word 'nice', the use of which in an English essay in my day would have you beaten to within an inch of your life, has become a general exclamation of approbation, as in 'Nice!' - in writing as well as in speech.
I think that, like so much linguistic detritus, it's been carried to these shores on the gulf stream. When I read Mr Biz Stone's book about blogging he used 'Nice!' liberally, sometimes when he was moved to a state of almost religious ecstasy by the way a piece of HTML could italicize a word.
Nice! is now beginning to get on my tits big time.
I suppose its popularity may be because adults using it don't look as silly as if they employ terms like 'Cool!' and 'Wicked!'

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Whilst waiting for my teeth to be fixed and the resumption of normal mastication, I've been eating a lot of soft instant meals.
These include Admiral's Pie, which Messrs Young's proudly tell us is the nation's favourite snack. At least they have the honesty to call it a snack since it's decidedly short on Admiral, or rather unidentified 'diced fish fillets (15%)'.

Apparently 40,000 are eaten every day. I'm sure that should be interpreted as 20,000 consumers since you need at least two of them to produce enough energy to wash the plate up afterwards.
That said, it tastes much better than Young's more upmarket Ocean Pie, which is made with pollocks (do your own gags).
But it's probably best if you're not familiar with the song 'A Little Priest' from Sondheim's Sweeney Todd.
Mrs Lovett (consumer testing her pies): Since marine doesn't appeal to you, how about rear admiral?
Todd: Too salty. I prefer general.
And Sweeney may well have been right. Admiral's Pie contains 2.3g of salt.

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Quote of the week:
".........clergy have been forbidden from blessing civil partnerships. We can bless battleships, and cats and dogs at the Pets' Service: just not gay couples wanting to commit to a lifelong relationship."
- Dr Giles Fraser, vicar of Putney.