The General Babblings of Chris Wild
Made pasta for the first time at the weekend. Kids helped out in their own way. It’s not the quickest thing to do but it’s not the hardest either. Although I doubt I will make my FabulousPasta every time I have pasta, I will tend to do it at the weekend. Use the pasta machine for flattening the pasta and cutting Tagliatelle and Fettuccine, even managed to makes some Crab and Salmon based Tortellini.
pasta, Tagliatelle, Fettuccine, Tortellini
pasta, Tagliatelle, Fettuccine, TortelliniI was doing some site stats checking with Google and found a link to my site from the blog Venusberg. The archive link is from 2001.
Now Dan Griffiths, I think that’s his name, seems a intelligent enough chap, his blog in general is interesting enough to read, but I found it odd that he should choose to take a pop at me…
…but has still found time to write an unbelievable amount of terrible poetry and spawn a wain. Which means he must have had sex at least once. Well, probably, anyway.
Now, I’m not going to argue with his comment, there is indeed a large amount of terrible poetry on my site, I did after all write it in my mid to late teens, and I’m not particularly educated in the ways of literay rules and styles. Not to mention the fact that I am crap at English Language; but I still found it odd that he should randomly use me as his jibe of the day.
I can only presume he found the site because of Lords of Midnight and decided I was cheap content for his blog. It seems it was/is his MO as ParallaxView states…
Dan Venusberg is normally a man seemingly content to fritter away his intellect making cheap digs at minor bloggers,
Although I wasn’t actually blogging back then…
The upshot of all this is that it actually pissed me off! Now I’m not a man prone to sensitiveness and self esteem issues, but I actually considered removing stuff from my website! What is all that about?
So Dan, Happy New Year and thanks.
Dan Venusberg, Venusberg, Dan Griffiths, cheap digs, sensitive
I read John Grisham’s “The King of Torts” a couple of weeks ago. It’s the first Grisham book that I’ve read for a while; The Partner being the last one.
Well, I really enjoyed it in an odd kind of way… the story just rolls along and seems to twist and turn, not plot twists, but more what the story is about. There are a number of places where I felt that the author has lost the plot and was breaking rules of coherent and acceptable writing practices; he seems to give you too much information up front. However, this seems not important to the actual story… which is ultimately a moral about greed.
Books, Reading, Greed, John Grisham John Grisham, The King of Torts, The Partner
I went to the Winter Solstice Celebrations at Stonehenge this morning. It isn’t as widely visited as the Summer Solstice, I guess the cold puts most people off, so the reduced numbers make for a more personal moment. There is very little organisation compared to the Summer Solstice, no car parking facilities, no food, etc, but then you only get about a thousand people at the most compared to the twenty five thousand in the summer.
The fog was thick, as it has been for the past few days, so I didn’t actually see the sun until about 9:30am from the motorway on my way to work, but the atmosphere was fantastic and the fog added to the feeling of eerieness that one gets from the stones.
Unlike the summer solstice, the winter solstice has a more defined ceremony for the people who welcome the sun back. I found myself caught between two thoughts for the people who take it seriously; One. You are grown men, get a grip of yourself… and Two. We should all let these people get on with it without our intrusion.
There is a large intrusion of photographers and camera men trying to get the close shot of anyone who remotely look like they take the process seriously. I found myself thinking that they should just be left alone with a small exclusion zone around them. Imagine all these cameras at the front of a church during communion or something.
I also found that you get people dressed up a tad silly to be taken seriously, and that these people detract from what everyone else is doing. A bloke dressed as Merlin springs to mind. Dressed in new modern costime shop atire, complete with jeans and white trainers! Unfortunatley, it is people like him that get the attention of the press, and therefore show a rather silly side of the whole process.
See Also: Summer Solstice 2006 | Summer Solstice 2005 | The Longest Day | Fergus’ Solstice Fotothing
The Longest Night, Winter Solstice, Fog, Stonehenge, Winter Solstice Celebrations Winter Solstice Celebrations, Stonehenge
I finished reading Sideways a few weeks ago, yes I know it’s taken me some time to mention, but there you go. It’s the third in the Trilogy of film books… ie: I read 3 books on the bounce that were made into films all of which I had seen the film first. The book is very good. The story is that of 2 friends who go on a stag week. The groom is going to have his final fling and his best man, Miles, is there for the wine tour. The story has a very interesting interplay between the characters and you seem to get into their mindset pretty well. However, one of the real interesting thing is the detail for the Wine. Miles is a real Wine snob and you get a lot of detail about wine and drinking wine. Although this may sound a little boring, which indeed sometimes it does feel while reading, it actually does two things perfectly… a) gets you into Miles’ character, and b) makes you want to drink the wines they are talking about!
See Also: The Green Mile | Big Fish
Books, Film Adaptation, Reading