Yummy Wakame

A chav talks loudly on his mobile:

“Yeah. She’s being a real cow about it. She knows I want it and she wont give it. But yeah, I’m gonna get it. Not long from now. Just wearing her down day by day…… ah hah. ah hah……. yeah. I refuse to put up with her attitude. I can get it anywhere you know. Catch you later.”

“* KQ-4 Helpful Hints file : 1.7
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* New items are marked with++
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* Spoiler warning! (this may ruin your game!)”

Their simple lyrics had a profound impact on me as a teen and have stuck with me through to adulthood.

Depeche Mode - A Question Of Time

I’ve got to get you first
Before they do
It’s just a question of time
Before they lay their hands on you
And make you just like the rest
I’ve got to get to you first
It’s just a question of time

Well now you’re only fifteen
And you look good
I’ll take you under my wing
Somebody should
They’ve persuasive ways
And you’ll believe what they say

It’s just a question of time
It’s running out for you
It won’t be long
Until you’ll do
Exactly what they want you to

I can see them now
Hanging around
To mess you up
To strip you down
And have their fun
With my little one

It’s just a question of time
It’s running out for you
It won’t be long
Until you’ll do
Exactly what they want you to

Sometimes I don’t blame them
For wanting you
You look good
And they need something to do
Until I look at you
And then I condemn them
I know my kind
What goes on in our minds

It’s just a question of time
It should be better
It’s just a question of time
It should be better with you
It’s just a question of time

Woo!

“Free Programming Resources is a directory of links to free programmer resources including free programming tutorials, free online programming books, free compilers, free programming tools, free source code, programming libraries, game programming resources, graphics resources and security tools.”

Brighton hip-hop artist Yoshi has released his fantastic new album ‘flowers & trees’ today! He made a very cool site too. Have a listen… ooh and look, it’s only £5.00.

“‘Flowers & Trees’ is £5.00, which is cheap. It’s cheap because I want you to buy it, own it and have it in your house; that’s what matters to me.” So there you have it.

Astrologers call the period between ages twenty-eight and thirty “Saturn Return”. That’s because it’s the first time the planet Saturn completes its cycle through your birth chart and returns to the spot it occupied when you were born. It is one of the most important times in your life… a time of endings and new beginnings.

For most of us, ending a phase of life that is familiar and embarking on one that is new and untried is unsettling, even painful. Few people describe Saturn Return as a pleasant period. While undergoing your Saturn Return you may find yourself turning inward and reflecting on your individual destiny. You examine your true needs and desires and the role you want to play on the world’s stage. You may feel lonely and alienated from those around you, while family and friends think you are shutting them out. But this is a necessary period of consolidation, when you must retreat from the distractions of the outer world and focus on yourself at your most fundamental level. The Saturn Return is every individual’s search for the Holy Grail.

This transition into adulthood is often accompanied by a sense of urgency, a feeling that you must try to accomplish everything you’ve ever wanted or planned to do now. Goals start to come sharply into focus. If you have not settled into a definite career, or have been pursuing one that is inappropriate for you, you’ll experience a strong push to establish yourself in a more fulfilling occupation. Sometimes this means a complete change.

If you have been building steadily toward a goal that’s right for you, Saturn Return can be a time of achievement and rewards. Your labors bear fruit. However the quality of the entire experience and the extent to which it is felt to be a ‘difficult’ time depends entirely on how one has lived during the previous twenty-nine years. If you have been pursuing an unsuitable vocation or merely fulfilling someone else’s expectations, Saturn can be relentless in prodding you to make adjustments.

Saturn strips away illusions and points out limitations, allowing you to view yourself in a harsh, often unflattering light. At the same time, it endows you with prudence, practicality, and the perseverance to work hard toward achieving your purposes. Saturn Return almost always requires some major adjustments in lifestyle, attitudes, and relationships. Anything you have outgrown, or have tolerated but not found satisfying, must end now or be altered to meet your emerging needs.

Often interpersonal relationships are deeply affected by Saturn Return. Almost everyone who is married will question that commitment. Relationships that start during this period may have a “fated” or “karmic” quality about them.

Saturn is never easy to deal with because his function is that of promoting growth and it is only frustration and pain which at present are sufficient goads to get a human being moving. This frustration and pain have given Saturn a bad reputation. But the planet’s often misunderstood value lies in its very ability to evoke pain. Like the pain of an illness, it warns that something is wrong. Saturn doesn’t create the problems, it merely illuminates them. Growth is often accompanied by trepidation and turmoil. As the old self is pushed aside to make room for the new, you may feel weak and vulnerable. You want to move ahead, yet are frustrated by a fear of doing so, torn between a compelling urge to throw off everything connected with your past and an equally frantic need to cling to the familiar rather than brave the great unknown. Even if your external world seems to be in order, your internal structure may feel as though it’s being assaulted with a battering ram. Nervous conditions, irritability, depression, insomnia, and feelings of insecurity are common. Most people go through some sort of identity crisis.

Even though your Saturn Return may be disturbing, ultimately it reveals what you truly want and sweeps away the clutter that may have been impeding your progress. Your Saturn Return is a personal spring cleaning. No matter how difficult it seems to let go of inappropriate people and things, the first Saturn Return is the time to do it. For if lessons are not learned, the problems will come knocking again during your second Saturn Return at about age fifty-eight, when you are more set in your ways. Once the conflict is confronted, the tension usually subsides. You feel stronger and more capable of moving ahead.

Saturn Return in Leo 12 degrees (Born 13 Feb 1977)
If you were born with Saturn in Leo, the issues during your Saturn Return will be about being “chosen” or “special”, melodrama, the heroic myth, relationship to the Creator, children, creativity and love affairs.

If you want to know when I’ll be at my craziest, my Saturn Return starts from 17 July and should end 24 July 2005… but can end as late as 2007.

Find out where your Saturn Return is.

Mmmmmm mmm…
Ah hah

Break out the bellydancers!

World’s Premier Designer & Builder of Portable & Permanent Walking Meditation Labyrinths

EVERYBODY SAYS THE same thing: “I’ll never be the same again.” As one traveller put it, “By the tenth day, your old belief system is irreparably damaged.” Which is not what they say about Club Med.

Lolita.
via CP of course!

Where I come from there are only ageless spirits that float around free. We look like this and come in many colours. Can you imagine then how strange it must feel to wake up every day in a body that decays over a fast and fleeting life span, stuffed into a skin tight and small like a straightjacket so stifling you can constantly feel your life force being choked and pouring out of it, with a face you don’t recognise and can never get used to, and feet that touch the ground… after spending all the ages swirling free and stretching as far and wide as your dreams?

I came to this realm for a single purpose: If you are my soul then I am your spirit. Take my hand. It’s nearly time to go home.

This video will make you want to do things.

The Balance of the Sexes
Why do women in war time and Presidents of the United States have more sons than daughters? Scientists are looking to animals to provide us with answers.

Dr Valerie Grant at the University of Auckland thinks that female dominance in personality is the crucial factor. She has found that more dominant women are more likely to have sons and that less dominant women are more likely to have daughters. Andrew Luck-Baker attempts to untangle the mysteries of sex ratios and discovers which part of our biology, environment and maybe even personality plays a part in deciding the sex of offspring.

Listen to the show

Step 1
Step 2

Thanks Bsti!

“It sounds strange but I can sense her lying awake in her bed waiting for something to happen…“

“I’ve never really understood the difference between breath and breathe. The action and the substance are so much the same that no one takes a minute to think about there subtle differences. Or similarities for that matter. They’re both eternal. They’re both external and internal, and either one’ll tell a racist joke in Georgia while denouncing omelets for being chicken abortion in India. Then again, you won’t catch a breathe wafting through the air on a cold winter morn, and I’ve yet to hear breath other than when breathe is using it to play the wheeze.

Breathe is familiar with the organs. It asks the lungs how they’d feel about a Camel Light after dinner, and makes sure the heart is back on good terms with the arteries. Even brain has been spotted frequenting breathe’s airspace and save for the funny bone (who so rarely makes an appearance, and when does is generally unwelcomed), breathe is on cross your fingers tight and rope the cows terms with each and every inch of the body.

Breath, he’s got nothing to do with the body and it’s mere coincidence that at times he even shares space with breathe. Breath runs with a more nomadic, free spirited crowd. Through the leaves and above the clouds, blanketing the world and separating blades of grass like hairs on a bald man’s head, breath is silent and spiritual. God knows breath personally. If God farted while they were watching football, breath probably wouldn’t even mention it, but wouldn’t be uncomfortable if the big guy called him on the same foul. People, they agree more with breathe. Breathe tries to keep a pattern going. People like patterns. People like farts, too, most of them just don’t admit it, but leave one rip one day, then let it be known that you played that whistle. Everyone, right away, will start sniffing.” ~ ClickNathan

Even if only half of this were to happen, it would be incredibly sweet!

“When you wan’t something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it.

Whoever you are, or whatever it is you do, when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission on earth. The soul of the world is nourished by people’s happiness. And also by unhappiness, envy and jealousy. To realise one’s destiny is a person’s only real obligation. All things are one.”

Another article from The Week magazine:

Teenage sex: don’t blame the State
The chief duties of a school nurse used to be checking for nits and handing out sticking plasters. Not any more, said Virginia Blackburn in the Daily Express. At the annual congress of the Royal College of Nursing last week, school nurses described how they spend their days dealing with children who have been sexually abused, lured into prostitution, fallen pregnant or contracted a sexually transmitted infection. One nurse recalled a 14-year-old boy who had contracted HIV through sex with other teenagers. “HIV can’t happen to me,” he protested. “It only happens to old people.” Another nurse described the phenomenon known as “daisy-chaining“, in which “groups of teenagers go around to each other’s homes and have sex in a similar way to ’swinging’.”

Teenage sex has become a serious social problem, said the Times. Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe, as well as rocketing levels of STDs. Between 1995 and 2002, cases of gonorrhoea more than doubled in boys aged 13-19, while cases of chlamydia tripled. The government has thrown plenty of money at the problem - since 1998 it has put £138m into the Teenage Pregnancy Strategy, which aims to make the morning-after pill, condoms and sex education more easily available - but the numbers keep rising. The problem is that such projects “tend to obscure the message that the simplest way of avoiding the complications of unprotected sex is not to have it”.

Getting that message across should be the job of parents, not the state, said E. Jane Dickson in The Independent. Too many parents have given up even showing disapproval of teenage sex, for fear of seeming square or unapproachable. “It has become a tenet of liberalism that ‘you can’t stop kids having sex’” - that it is better, in fact, to let them do it under your roof rather than risk driving them away. This is nonsense. Children need - and want - firm guidance. You may not be able to follow them around all day with a bucket of cold water, but you can at least make sure they don’t have orgies in your sitting room. “If we are to restore childhood to our children, someone is going to have to be the grown-up.”

Word of the day:

“England is the only country where the people feel schadenfreude towards themselves.”

Evening Standard: At a recent photo shoot in New York, the It-girl arrived 12 hours late clutching a live chinchilla. “Hold this,” she commanded, handing the creature to a nearby stylist. “Give Mr Gucci a carrot juice and an apple and sit him in the shower.” As the stylist disappeared with the chinchilla, Paris announced: “I named him after a Gucci coat I’ve got made from 100 of his cousins.”

Hey these are actually pretty good!

submit.

Snippet from The Week magazine:

“One of the most bizarre cases ever brought before a British court concerns a man in Bristol who wanted to see his wife in the bath and who, rather than simply walking in on her, rigged up close-circuit TV.

Some time after, the wife turned on the TV in the bedroom - and saw hubby in the tub. But her response was the extraordinary thing about the tale. For she telephoned the police. Rather than telling her not to be silly, they were round in a jiffy. It turns out that in 2003 Parliament passed an act making voyeurism illegal, even if the person you’re ogling is your wife. Is this what Parliament, or the police, or indeed wives, are for?”

That woman has no sense of fun! The whole situation could have been turned to their advantage with just the tiniest bit of creativity. Also I’d like to point out that the term “hubby” is just wrong. It gives me the heebies whenever I hear it.

Was $42.96 NOW! $52.46
SUCKERS!

Life as bachelor girl isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when after years and years of having talented young men cook for you, you have to suddenly fend for yourself. For the first week I was living off cheese sandwiches and tv dinners and my palate nearly died from boredom. Eventually I was forced to learn to cook for the first time. This filled me with dread. Cooking is after all, women’s work. I’d much rather install shelves over sleepy heads, take the garbage out and be waited on hand and foot. The way it’s meant to be. Plus I don’t like to waste my time doing anything I’m not extremely good at because life’s too short.

So anyway I stocked my fridge up with really excellent ingredients and just sat and thought for a minute about what I would like to taste that night. And suddenly all these ideas came flooding in… I took out the ingredients I wanted to eat that night and did something that included all of them. I discovered I can actually cook! And not just cook, but create unforgettably yummy meals. I have become an incredibly fussy eater since Pieter the chef cooked for me every night for years. Even restaurant food often turns my nose up… so I was shocked and amazed to discover I can actually cook to my own ridiculous standard. Four nights in a row later of incredible taste sensations I decided to document my latest home-cooked meal so you can try it out for yourselves. Let’s get to it!

Yummy couscous salad with butterfry surprise!
This is a meal for one so you simply multiply the ingredients to make for more! This vegetarian meal is protein and vitamin packed so it won’t kill you.

These are the ingredients:

• Couscous (what’s couscous? I’ll get to that)
• 2 big chopped up mushrooms or a few small ones (protein)
• A tiny chopped onion
• Chopped garlic
• Chopped coriander (that’s the green herb stuff)
• A half courgette, chopped
• A small handful of Cauldron brand “golden marinated tofu pieces” (protein)
• Some pine nuts
• Some chopped dried fruit (tangy mango and apricot)
• Also, a sprinkling of dried chilli and feta

I can’t stress how easy this meal is. It takes only 10 minutes to prepare, starting with the super quick couscous salad.

Couscous is amazing stuff. Always keep it in your cupboard for emergencies. You use a tiny bit and it expands a whole lot to a whole bowlfull of grainy pasta stuff. Back to the recipe - chuck some couscous in the bottom of a container, pour boiling water over it (about 3 or 4 times the amount of couscous you have in there) stir briefly and leave for 5 minutes to expand.

While that cooks itself, add about half a spoon of butter to a pan, on medium to low (don’t want the butter to burn) and lay the courgettes out. Sprinkle some black pepper over and season. Wait till they’re nicely browned then turn over.

Getting back to the couscous - by now all the water will be absorbed and it will be nicely fluffy so give it a quick stir with a fork. Then add the raw chopped onion, dried fruit, pine nuts and coriander. Stir them in gently and pour out into your plate… sprinkling the chilli on top. This is what it should look like:

The courgettes will be nicely barbequed by now! So move it to the side of the pan so it doesnt burn, add the garlic, throw in the mushrooms and the tofu, and let them get nice and browned. Right at the end mix the courgettes in up with the rest so they get covered in garlic yumminess, and season again. Remember, there’s no meat, so you don’t cook it for long at all!

Chuck it over the couscous salad. Sprinkle a tiny bit of feta and dry chili and serve!

Mmmmmm! Yummy!

Forget Abby. Tell Aunty Nathan your problems. His advice is top!

“Dear Aunty Nathan,

I have a problem for your problem page. I have an important deadline to meet at work on Wednesday. I have completely lost the file containing the work I have done and the work I need to finish before Wed.

How do you suggest I blag my way out of this one?

Quiddity”

Well, Q-diddy, I see your dilemma. I thought about this long and hard trying to determine what the bet possible solution would be for you. And then suddenly it was Wednesday and whatever answer I give you is too late anyway. So I guess the moral to this story is “If something seems really hard, just keeping putting it off, and then it will be over in one way or another.

Problem solved.