I guess you might expect a newsagent in Mayfair opposite a Vivienne Westwood boutique to stock genuine French Croustille corn puffs (peanut and emmental flavour), but Spicy Tomato Snaps, too? Plus Golden Wonder, those remnants of crisp heterogeneity, and several kinds of Transform-a-Snack. No Fabergé egg flavour Kettle Chips in sight.

Is the new DVD of the 1969 Doctor Who story, The War Games, eligible for next year's Hugo award for Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form?

Or can the extras be considered eligible for Best Related Work?

On my first working day in Bosnia in January 1997, orienting myself in the National Democratic Institute's office in Tuzla, I noticed that there is an area of that city called "Irac" - "Irishman". I never found out why, and I am still wondering.

Irritating Neologism of the Day: Flexitarian

Forget lentils and tofu. Vegetarian cooking is enjoying a makeover, prompting meat-eaters to put down their steak knives. New green cuisine is tapping into the rise of the "flexitarian", the occasional vegetarian who is helping their waistline and the planet by eating less meat.

Even though that pretty much describes my current diet - I'm still eating meat, but I've been experimenting more and more with vegetarian cookery - I still can't help but find the word rather annoying.

Poll #1428712
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Most irritating neologism

My office stationery suppliers often throw in free gifts with the latest order, often tacky kitchenware that falls apart after a few uses; this time it's something a bit more sophisticated, a little GPS device for navigation while you are driving (specifically, a Connex GPC35Js running a system called PolNav Car Navigator).

My problem: turning the bugger on. The instruction booklet is fairly useless: it says that to get the initial GPS fix you have to have it outside in an area fairly clear of buildings for some time. But what it doesn't give you is the crucial information of what state the unit should be in when you are getting that initial fix. Do I need to have the navigation software turned on, or does the unit magically know how to find the satellites anyway? And what of the mysterious "GPS test" hidden in the settings, where it seems to look for and find the satellite positions, but then not do anything with the information?

Suggestions gratefully accepted.

Some time ago I watched the Doctor Who spinoff video Downtime, written by Marc Platt and directed by Christopher Barry, which unites the Brigadier, Sarah Jane Smith, Victoria Waterfield and the Yeti. Platt's extended novelisation, published as one of the Virgin Missing Adventures, is much better, with lots more background of Victoria's life after leaving the Tardis and of the Brigadier's later experiences; it also includes K9 and a young Captain Bambera. It even has some photos taken from the video, so you can pretend it was better than it was. And of course, being on paper rather than on screen, the effects can be as good as Marc Platt's words make them, and Peter Silverleaf's dismally poor acting is no longer a problem.

It's still a somewhat confusing story, but it is well enough told, and apart from the many moments of continuity joy it also has interesting seeds of the later Sarah Jane audio and TV stories. So I think I can generally recommend it to Who fans. I was able to get it for £2.70 on eBay, so it's not as difficult to find as some Who books are.

Only just realised that the Dead Kennedy's 'Trust Your Mechanic' (Spotify) wouldn't have been out of place, lyrically, as an amusing song on That's Life. Well, the third verse, anyway.

 Because I am so rock'n'roll, I am going on a TOUR in August and September. Hastings, Brighton and two nights in Eastbourne. YEAH! FUCK YOU AMERIKKKA!!!

I'm reminded of my dad, who, after a childhood in Singapore, would constantly tell my mum and I 'I've spent lots of time abroad, now I want to see what England is like. And it's the most diverse country with lots to see, the rolling hills, the cliffs, so much variety...' etc. etc. and so on until one day my mother cracked, booked a fortnight in Rhodes and stocked up on salt tablets. We talked in January about Going Somewhere this year, maybe Barcelona or Berlin (New York and Tokyo still live in Fantasy Vacation Land), but neither of us are too flush at the moment, which would make the crappy exchange rate and the £80 cost of renewing my passport before we even book tickets so painful that we would probably be forced into air-stewardom to pay for our tickets home. 

Mind you, I am as excited as if it were somewhere more exotic. I miss the sea. I grew up not far from the coast, where it was entirely possible to get into the car for a trip to Tesco and end up at Southport. (My dad wasn't a fan of Blackpool - Southport was cleaner, flatter, with Victorian awnings over the shops and just enough of a funfair.) Alan grew up on the East Neuk, with the North Sea walking distance from his teenage bedroom. 'I never understood it in books when people talked about a trip to the seaside.' When Southern Railways had a 90% off sale on Friday, it seemed a good time to book tickets for a weekend away, somewhere coastal where we could take our bikes and cameras and not think about anything from real life for a bit. 'It's not very exotic, though.' 'Do I get to walk along a beach with you? Then that's enough.'  And on a colleague's advice, I added Hastings, and Brighton because even though it has a pebbly beach - in Katherine's words, one which 'looks like it was put there by the council' - there's loads to do and the seaside in August will be amazing. All the tickets cost about £9 total for two of us, so that means a nice hotel room and a cocktail or two. I can't wait.  

This anthology, edited by Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan, pulls together 20 short stories by writers of colour, all exploring different aspects of the colonisation experience through an sfnal lens. They are all very good. I found I had to read most of them very slowly to let the language settle into my brain; I think for that reason my attention lingered a bit more on the stories by Vandana Singh, Maya Khankoje and Tobias Buckell which made slightly fewer demands on me. This is a great anthology.

It was published in 2004. The Hugo Short Story shortlist for 2005, for which most of these would have been eligible, was of particularly poor quality (as I said at the time), and even the least impressive from the Hopkinson/Mehan anthology (I'll identify it as devorah major's "Trade Winds") is a far better story than the Hugo winner (Resnick's "Travels With My Cats"). None of the stories from So Long Been Dreaming got the 11 votes necessary to be recorded on the long list, let alone the 18 needed for the short list. It surely cannot be true that only ten (or fewer) Worldcon members had read So Long Been Dreaming before the nominations deadline? Something is wrong, or at least was wrong in 2005; this year things seem to have improved.

The "jazz magazine" for people who like to masturbate to images of jazzmen achieving orgasm.



Here's a saucy quadruple spread:



Crescendo is a much better "jazz magazine" than Jazz Journal magazine, despite the latter's claim to be "THE WORLD'S GREATEST JAZZ MAGAZINE". Crescendo magazine is much more erotic.

Alas, I was thoroughly spoiled for this by reading David Starkey and Alison Weir on the same subject last year. Though irritated by the writing style I kept hoping that at least I would learn something new; but when I had finished the first quarter of the book without finding anything that had not been covered better by either Starkey or Weir, I decided not to bother with any more.

I wasn't hugely grabbed by Tess of the d'Urbervilles, but I quite liked this, Hardy's first Wessex novel: a decent enough romantic plot, with some very good descriptive passages relating to the countryside. It seemed a much quicker and more enjoyable read than Tess, possibly because Hardy is not trying to be too Deep and Meaningful.

Anyone know where I can get good quality secondhand curtains? My Ebay and charity shop hunt has yielded precisely zip.
Heard about the "Curtain Exchange" but not investigated. Anyone used them?

Some of my online friends have been complaining about Charlie Brooker's new show You Have Been Watching (still available on 4OD if you haven't seen it yet), in which he moves away from obscurist, BBC4 stuff like Screen Wipe and News Wipe into a prime time Channel 4 slot complete with celebrity guests and slightly cheesy Noel's House Party-esque quiz show format.

These friends are saying that he's sold out and gone bland, having taken the Channel 4 shilling and watered down his message in doing so.

These people, in my view, are missing the point of art. The true purpose of great art, the reason why individuals strive towards the heights of creativity and unlocking the secrets of the human soul is to find and articulate a great noble truth, thereby giving more insight into ourselves and giving us all a greater quality of life score with hot chicks.

And let's be honest, despite his status as Livejournal's Imaginary Boyfriend, it's clear from his Guardian columns that Charlie just isn't getting any action. Okay, he get's to hang around with Aisleyne. But he does so with that expression that tries to say, "What, us? Nah, we're just good mates us, hahahahah, no no I don't fancy her hahah we just have a laugh together it's all platonic hahahah", all the while trying hard to conceal from Aisleyne that deep down he'd really, really, really, really like to come on her tits.

Basically, having a show on BBC4 is a bit like being some highbrow, arty indie band playing on a cupboard-sized stage at the Cardiff Barfly. Okay, you might get some attention, but it'll be from the slightly intellectual, mousey girls who just want to talk about guitar pedals and Allen Ginsburg with you anyway. Meanwhile, over at the Millenium Stadium, Razorlight may have a fraction of your art-indie credibility, but they're backstage having a money fight while a queue of buxom rock chicks are inviting them to insert whatever they like into whatever orifice they like.

For final proof that this is Charlie's motivation, he seems to have decided that the best person to give incisive, witty analysis of the week's TV is Jamelia in a ludicrously low-cut dress barely restraining her pendulous udders.

So, if you lot want Charlie to get back to doing highbrow cult TV on arty digital channels, then you're just going to have to offer him some pervy sex. brownstudies, uglybuffy and annomalley you have work to do. Now get to it.

Off to get some brekker then set off for the Chap Olympiad.

I adore getting properly ready. I think it only took an hour and a quarter...bingo!

What do I do now? Anya is asleep with her head on my hand! Isn't there some story about Mohammed cutting of the sleeve of his shirt so as not to disturb his favorite cat who had gone to sleep on him? Send help; I'm writing this one-handed on my phone.

I cannot recall any tv show that I have watched generating as much polarisation as this week's Torchwood. (Of course, I am slow at these things, and watched the later Buffy and mid-period West Wing only a couple of years after first broadcast.)

To generalise brutally, my impression is that a majority of the fanfic side of fandom was appalled, while the more literary sf side was generally fascinated, with plenty of exceptions on both sides. To summarise reaction from my f-list (a number of these posts are locked, so you'll have to take my word for it):

( links )

( What I thought )

( Is that the end? )

Edited to add: For more reactions see here.

I have somehow managed to get jet lag from a two hour flight from the south of France. Something to do with delayed departure, not getting home until one in the morning, and not getting to sleep until three, I think. Briefly: fantastic couple of weeks with my brother, his wife, the nephew and niece, and various French relatives. I have firmly acquired the nickname "juicy" which I'm not altogether keen on (but the point of nicknames is that you don't get to choose them). It does have the advantage that both young children and French people can pronounce it, which is not the case with "Andrew". Saw the Tour de France passing through Nice, the Fondation Maeght, various villages in the mountains, Antibes, etc. Proved my credentials as the world's greatest sportsman by beating a four-year-old at badminton, read a pile of books, ate lots of cheese (but returned to the UK pining for a nice piece of mature cheddar, the world's greatest cheese), drank one glass of wine, one of champagne and one of beer, and gallons of coffee. I would do it all again (especially the camping, at the bottom of a steep river valley away from the heat), but I think I'll wait until the exchange rate is slightly more favourable (three coffees and four scoops of ice cream at Tourrettes sur Loup yesterday came to something like fifteen quid - excellent coffee and ice cream, but almost everything was that eye-wateringly expensive even in supermarkets).

Anything exciting happened? I see nobody seems to give a stuff about MPs' expenses any more.

Poll #1427836 emily
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What was the last book you recommended to someone?