Rude Breadmaking

This one isn't a task as such, more of an addendum to the breadmaking task. I felt I should be a bit more creative than simply slinging stuff into a breadmaker. And so, I created this charming piece of cookery.

Half an hour at 200 degrees celsius later...

The shaft was good, though the balls were a little doughy. Even so, I was able to enjoy a cheese and ham salad testicle for my lunch today.

Fame at Last

The video for the flashmob I attended is now online.

My ugly mug waltzes onto the screen at 0.48

Find the Pterodactyls in Citizen Kane

Everyone knows that Citizen Kane is one of the greatest movies of all time, but did you know that it contains pterodactyls?

Yes, pterodactyls.

Attending the Fortean Times Unconvention had put me in the mood for adding some fortean-themed tasks in the list. This month's FT contains an article on supposed monsters and UFOs in great movies, and there's a scene in Citizen Kane where supposedly pterodactyls were flying around in the background.

As with the Casablanca task, this also gave me an opportunity to see a classic movie that I've never got around to watching. After all, it's such a keystone in cinema that people talk about, say, The Wicker Man as "the Citizen Kane of horror movies" or The Room as "the Citizen Kane of bad movies". Might as well see the Citizen Kane of Citizen Kane.

Compared to Casablanca, I though that it was a more dated movie. Even so, the tale of Charles Foster Kane as a modern-day Ozymandias did grip and intrigue me, and it was particularly poignant finding out eventually what "Rosebud" meant. Nope, no spoilers for you lot.

Anyway, the pterodactyls. Here they are:

Okay, it's just badly-animated birdies whizzing around a soundstage mock-up of the Florida Everglades, but they do kind of look like pterodactyls.

Visit the Cross Bones Graveyard

Just a few streets away from London Bridge tube station is the Cross Bones Graveyard - the site of a medieval graveyard where prostitutes and paupers were buried on unconsecrated ground. It's now because a shrine of sorts for the "Outcast Dead".

I walked out of the tube and past Southwark Cathedral. Apparently a mystery play has been performed there about the prostitutes who were buried at Cross Bones.

Then a stroll through Borough Market - a strangely otherworldly place - like you're entering into a subterranean underworld.

And then the gates of the graveyard itself, which is strewn with offerings.

There isn't public access onto the land itself, so I took a photo through the gates.

An interesting little curiosity of a place, and well worth a visit, if you're in London with a bit of time to spare. There's even a nice little pub just opposite.

Mix a Cocktail

I trawled through various cocktail recipe sites wondering what to make - a Harvey Wallbanger? A Sex on the Beach? A Slow Comfortable Screw? Then I decided I couldn't be bothered with recipes and just went to the shop to see what booze and mixers I could find, and came back with this.

From left to right: Jaffa Cake flavour Cactus Jack's, Apple flavour Cactus Jack's, Shloer fizzy grape juice, Irn Bru, cheap-ass vodka.

A classy set of ingredients, I think you'll agree.

The first combination I tried was Apple Cactus Jack's , vodka and Shloer. They went into the cocktail shaker (acquired for 99p from Home Bargains! Score!) added some ice, and started shaking.

The cocktail shaker exploded.

Still, what didn't go on the floor was nice and drinkable, in a fruity kind of way. I then tried Jaffa Cake Cactus Jack's, vodka and Irn Bru.

Again, the cocktail shaker exploded.

At this point it occurred to me that maybe you shouldn't put fizzy drinks in a cocktail shaker.

Still, a fair amount of it went into a glass.

A cocktail needs a quirky, possibly smutty name. I call it the Embarrassing One Night Stand With An Estonian Lorry Driver.

One trip to the corner shop later, and I'd got some orange juice to replace the fizzy drinks as a mixer. Next was Apple Cactus Jack's, vodka and orange juice. This time the cocktail shaker didn't explode.

Despite looking like flourescent ectoplasm, it tasted good. I call it the Awkward Moment When You Realise You've Made a Joke About Death in Front of a Grieving Relative.

And finally, Apple Cactus Jack's, Jaffa Cake Cactus Jack's and orange juice.

It tasted like....well, like orangey, appley, jaffa cakey drink, quite frankly. I call it They Were Both Poisoned, I Spent The Last Few Years Building Up an Immunity To Iocane Powder.


*hic*

Zorbing

Today I traipsed out to Zorbing Wales near Haverfordwest to try out the silliest of the extreme sports. Basically the closest a human can get to experiencing what it's like to be an Angry Bird - well, until they invent an adrenalin activity that involves being loaded into a catapult and fired at pigs. There may be a marketing opportunity there.

The experience was surprisingly comedic. I was expecting to be nervous, but I didn't expect to be laughing my head off the entire way down.

"Mister, can we have our ball back, please?"

It's a lot of fun, but a bit on the pricey side. Normally it's £45 for two runs for two people, though I only paid £17 because I got a Groupon voucher. It's not something I'd do on a regular basis, but it's worth doing for a one-off or a special occasion.

Attend the Fortean Times Unconvention (2)

After the previous day's shenanigans, I was back on the Sunday for more. And what better way to start than with a talking mongoose?

Gef the talking mongoose, to be precise, who reportedly terrorised a family's farmhouse in the Isle of Man in the 1930s. Gef seems to have been a stroppy little bugger, demanding food, making claims of having supernatural powers, swearing at people and making occasional threats. All this was related by Christopher Josiffe, who brought along his very own knitted replica Gef. I spot a possible merchandising opportunity here?

He concludes (unsurprisingly) that it was probably a hoax by the family daughter to try to frighten her father into moving back to the mainland. I'm sure Josiffe's right about that, but part of me likes the idea of Gef being out there somewhere, perhaps to return among us some day..

Next were Andy Roberts and Dave Clarke, who gave the quote of the day, "People usually associate us with UFO research, but we only do that to piss off the believers." They weren't talking about UFOs, but cursed stones. They brought along a "cursed" stone head, which is on the chair in the right hand side in the photo below (click to embiggen)

The stone supposedly brought a run of bad luck to the couple who previously owned it, but this has to be treated with scepticism because (a) the couple sold it to Roberts and Clarke, who experienced no misfortune as a result and (b) Roberts and Clarke found out that a local had carved and buried it in the 1970s for a practical joke.

Later on, the cursed head was found in the merchandising and cafe area, where it was promptly desecrated by various attendees.

If it's actually cursed, we're all in a lot of trouble.

Back in the arena, a distinct whiff of bullshit was starting to waft through the air. Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince were discussing the influence of hermeticism on the history of science.

Gee, do you think they might have a book to plug?

Picknett began with a slightly paranoid rant about how early scientists like Galileo and Newton were influenced by hermetic thought, and how historians of science could never possibly, possibly accept that this was the origins of science because they're all narrow-minded rationalists and if they told this to Richard Dawkins his head would probably explode or something.

Hang on a minute, it's always been well understood that early scientists believed in stuff like alchemy (which evolved into chemistry), astrology (ditto for astronomy) and Greek philosophy. Richard Dawkins certainly wouldn't like those worldviews, but he probably wouldn't deny that Newton et al believed in them. I was starting to feel quite angry at this point, which wasn't assuaged by the unintentional irony of Picknett declaring that Giordano Bruno had been "airbrushed from history" while pointing to a photo of his monument in Rome.

After Picknett's misreading of the history of science, it was time for Prince to misread quantum physics. He declared that concepts such as the Anthropic Principle demonstrate that modern science is now coming round to a view of the world that resembles hermeticism. In the Q&A session veteran fortean Ian Simmons (who, unlike Picknett and Prince, is an actual scientist) pointed out that quantum physics can only truly be expressed in maths, and hence any verbal description tends to be somewhat metaphorical. Prince's response was, "Yes, er...mumblemumble...anthropic principle...mumblemumble...staggering coincidences...mumble..."

Another questioner made a comment about the status of humans compared to earwigs, to which Prince replied, "Earwigs can't do quantum physics." Neither can you, Mr Prince.

Following that steaming pile of codswallop, there were two excellent talks on art history, with Ted Harrison and Gail-Nina Anderson discussing artistic depictions of the end of the world and Egyptian mummies respectively. Finally, UnCon concluded with a suitably eccentric but also deeply moving screening of the Nina Conti film Her Masters Voice.

The film describes Conti's grief at the death of the theatre maverick Ken Campbell, who became her lover and her mentor in ventriloquism. Conti travels to the Vent Haven convention in the USA to attempt to resolve not only her bereavement but also her feelings about ventriloquism, with the result that a lot of the dialogue is delivered through puppets. Along the way she makes some interesting psychological observations - it seems most ventriloquists are shy people, and tend to use the puppet to say and do things that they wouldn't necessarily do themselves, to the point that the puppet becomes an alter ego. I highly recommend the film, which left me intrigued about an art form that I previously hadn't cared much for.

All in all, a wonderfully quirky weekend. I'll be back next year.

Attend the Fortean Times UnConvention (1)

This task is a bit of a cheat, since I was going to do it anyway, but some things are too much fun not to blog about.

I've subscribed to the Fortean Times for 15 years, and having their magazine plop through my letterbox every month is like getting a regular visit from your favourite dotty auntie. It specialises in bizarre news stories - UFOs, ghosts, great eccentrics, monster sightings, great eccentrics...Not to declare these things as true, but also not to denounce them as silly superstitions. More a celebration of the fact that sometimes life is just plain weird.

Every year the FT has its UnConvention, and last weekend I got on a train to London, where I encountered theremins, transvestite Kate Bush tributes and talking animals.

On the Saturday, first up was Jon Ronson, talking about his book The Psychopath Test, which was something I suspect I'd have enjoyed more if I didn't work in mental health. I found myself thinking about the clinical issues rather than enjoying the laughs, which is probably the wrong approach to take. He commented on the oft-repeated claim that psychopaths don't just occupy prisons, but also the higher echelons of business, politics and the legal profession. Which would certainly explain some of the behaviour of our nation's elites.

Next was Brian Regal talking about the life and ultimately tragic death of Grover Krantz, a naturalist who became obsessed with finding the mythical Sasquatch. Regal suggested Krantz reminded him of the archetypal tale of the lonely scientist, burrowing away searching for the truth, alternately ignored or ridiculed by his peers, and on his deathbed receives the final vindication that he was right after all. According to Regal, Krantz's life was "almost like that."

After David Clarke relating a 19th Century news story of a woman reportedly scared to death by a ghost, and Jan Bondeson telling us about Rolf the talking dog...

...no, not that one...There was cryptozoologist Richard Freeman, describing his searches for mythical great apes in India and Sumatra. I've never been much interested by cryptozoology, which strikes me as a pursuit that involves trekking to the most godawful places on earth in order to look for animals that probably aren't there. Even so, I've generally found Freeman (and his yeti-like colleague Jonathan Downes) such engagingly likeable folk that I've been keen to listen to what they have to say. Even Penn and Teller's Bullshit show seemed strangely charmed by them. For once, Freeman's expeditions may actually be paying dividends. He's come up with increasing amounts of data that the orang-pendek in Sumatra may be an actual sub-species of orang-utan, rather than simply a myth. If he finds it, I suspect he may e-mail the first photo to Penn and Teller.

I took a quick trip to the merchandise area, where I heard Richard Freeman commenting that, "I'd rather eat dog shit wrapped in razor blades than vote Tory" while Jonathan Downes observed, "Diabetes isn't as much fun as it's made out to be." Then back to the arena, where historian and theremin artist Sarah Angliss talked about the invention of the first audio recordings on wax cylinders. She commented on the sensation this caused at the time. This made me think about something that seems so everyday in the world of telephones and iPods must have seemed incredibly alien when the first people actually heard their own voices. Angliss invited a member of the audience to record a wax cylinder, which prompted a young lady to bounce up onto the stage and yell, "I LOVE YOU SAUSAGE MAN!" into the cylinder. No doubt Sausage Man will be honoured.

Then, onto the evening social at a nearby pub. After a gleefully nerdy pub quiz, Sarah Angliss was back, with her "band" Spacedog made up of Angliss, her theremins and some robots.

Also comedian Helen Keen gave us a puppet show about the invention of the photocopier, inspired by her own temping between comedy gigs.

She commented, "When the first Xerox machine was made, it was originally intended that there would only be 5000 of them worldwide. Which means I've operated every single one of the fuckers."

The evening ended with a drag queen performing homage to Kate Bush, where one member of the audience received an impromptu makeover.

Surely, this photo must serve as a warning as to what people will get up to when you stop tolerating drugs.

And then I staggered off drunkenly into the night, ready for day two, which I shall post the review for tomorrow. The second instalment shall involve a talking mongoose, ventriloquist puppets and the desecration of a cursed stone head.

Eat Some Shite Food

After the foodie breadmaking task, comes the anti-foodie task, which shamelessly steals from the Shite Food blog. On this excellent site, an intrepid (and presumably rather ill) gourmet samples the culinary delights from the nastier end of cheap supermarket food. I'm mostly ripping off this post in which he plans a 3 course meal entirely from the Tesco Value range. I've planned not just a meal but also a wine tasting session, sampling red, white and rose.

Starter: Tesco Value Pasta in Tomato and Onion Sauce. 28p

Main Course: Tesco Value Lasagne. 66p

Dessert: Tesco Value Strawberry Trifle 33p

Wine selection: Tesco Value Spanish Red, White and Rose wines. £1.29 each for a 25cl carton.

So, that's a three course banquet, plus three glasses of wine, for a very reasonable sum of £5.14. What could possibly go wrong here?

Let's get the meal going. I opened the pack of pasta in tomato and onion sauce, to be greeted by a faint whiff of tomato cup-a-soup, which then went into a saucepan with some water and butter.

Bizarrely, the pasta takes 8 minutes on a hob and 14 minutes in a microwave. First time I've heard of something taking longer in the microwave. Anyway, the end result was this.

Basically it's powdered tomato and onion soup with pasta shells floating in it. No more, no less. It wasn't awful, just really rather dull to eat. I got halfway through the bowl before giving up out of sheer tedium and chucking the rest in the bin.

Next was the lasagna, which I popped into the microwave for a 6 minute nuking. After peeling back the film lid (and narrowly escaping a steam scald), I was greeted by what looked like a layer of glue with orange blobs of fat around the sides.

Under the pasta glue was a mercifully-stingy layer of manky beef mince.

It didn't smell great, and it didn't taste great either. I wound up pulling a couple of lumps of gristle out of my mouth while eating it. I did manage to finish the lasagna, but had no inclination to scrape out the last few bits in the tray. I offered my cat the opportunity to lick up the scraps.

She's a rescue cat, so I'm sure she's eaten some disgusting things in her time. But even she only managed a few disinterested licks before losing interest.

The lasagna wasn't the only thing with some stingy layers. The strawberry trifle seemed rather short-changing on the actual strawberry.

I opened it up, and just what the hell is this?

Despite looking disgusting, the trifle actually didn't taste that bad, other than the occasional sense of a sugar overdose. It was the tastiest of the three, though that really isn't saying much.

On to the wines...

The carton is something of a surprise. Shite Food compares it to a carton of Um Bongo, and I'm inclined to agree that the silver foil looks like something you should poke a straw through. I only have coloured wine glasses, so I poured some into a clear glass to photograph the colour of the white wine.

No, that's not a urine sample.

There wasn't much of an aroma to it, and it tasted somewhat bland, but still drinkable. I treated myself to a glass.

No wait, this is clearly how you're supposed to drink it.

But where's the damn straw?

Rose next, but when I peeled back the foil there was a horrendous smell. From the colour of it, there was clearly something wrong.

Hmmm, that doesn't look like the wine on the label. More like cloudy tomato juice. One experimental sip, and it went straight down the sink.

Then I noticed some discolourations around the foil opening on the carton.

Clearly the foil seal wasn't airtight, and it had gone bad in the carton. Oh well, on to the red.

This one smelled and tasted stronger than the white. Pretty harsh and chalky actually. However, unlike the rose, it was actually drinkable.

In summary then, the trifle was the nicest of the food courses and the white was the nicest of the wines, though I wouldn't be going out of my way to try any of them again. Then again, in these economic times, we're all only one redundancy notice away from this being our staple diet.

What to finish off with though? After-dinner mints, or Gaviscon?

Postcrossing 3: The Final Frontier

Yet another postcrossing card today, this one from China.

According to the sender, it's a "maximum card" (possibly something lost in translation there, but what am I supposed to do? Criticise them by showing off my grasp of Mandarin?) of "so-called Shangri-La".

According to my extensive research (i.e Wikipedia) there's actually several places that claim to be the real-life Shangri-La, some of which are in China. I think I'd probably better not go there on the whole question of whether the places that are in Tibet count as being in China.

I'll blu-tac it to my wall, next to the one I got from Japan, to see if they start a border dispute with each other.

Join a Flashmob

The flashmob was part of the Size of Wales project, which aims to raise money to protect an area of rainforest the size of Wales. The concept is a bit of an ironic take on the way, whenever people talk about rainforest destruction, they often make reference to "an area of rainforest the size of Wales" being destroyed. Nice to know we've given the world a unit of measurement.

So, on Sunday morning I toddled along to Torchwood HQ. At first, not much appeared to be happening...

...and then this bunch of people appeared.

The guy in the middle with the microphone was some minor celebrity I've never heard of Dan Mitchell from ITV's Show Me the Funny.

There then followed a couple of hours of running around with lumps of chipboard painted as leaves while being filmed for a promo video. I didn't get any photos of this happening, but I'll post a link to the video when it appears on the Intercyberwebs.

Meanwhile, the postcrossing task continues to pay out returns. Today I got a postcard from Japan.

Arigato Yuuyu!

Complete a course on iTunes U

If you haven't come across iTunes U, it's a resource of free university courses distributed through iTunes. Naturally I wanted to learn something that would enrich me spiritually and come in useful in my daily life, so I picked the course Zombies! The Living Dead in Literature from the University of Alabama.

Okay, before you all start laughing, don't tell you lot haven't already got your survival plan worked out for the Zombie Apocalypse. I reckon I could do a good job of fortifying my flat - plenty of sturdy fire doors between me and the shuffling masses, and I live on the first floor, so the neighbours downstairs will get munched first. Also I could use the terraced roofs as an escape route if my perimeters got breached.

On a more serious note, the course was actually pretty good, and covered such issues as race, consumerism and religion through the medium of zombies. I certainly never thought I'd have Freud's concept of the Uncanny explained to me in a lecture entitled, "She's not your mother any more."

This has been one of my favourite tasks so far. I think I may have to spend some more time on iTunes U.

Postcrossing: The Revenge

Success on the Postcrossing task! I got one back from the Netherlands.

According to the sender, she picked a postcard with a drumkit because I live in "the land of the Beatles". True, but I do also come from the land of Shed Seven, so we can't have it all our own way.

Bake Bread

I hadn't quite planned to do this task straight away. But my electricity company got me to do it.

Well, sort of. I was on the phone, sorting out my electricity bill, and Helpful Call Centre Lady pointed out to me that a couple of years ago I'd signed up to some thingy where I collect Argos points as I'm paying my bill. Since I'd then promptly forgotten all about it, the account had accumulated over 60 quid's worth of points.

So, what to spend those points on? I scanned the task list, my eyes settled on number 11...Get a breadmaker!

One trip to Argos later, and this here thingummy appeared in my kitchen.

Yeah, I know, it's probably cheating. When I said "bake bread" you were all probably expecting me to hand-grind the grain into flour, then construct my own wood-fired oven with which to bake the bread. Not go out and get something that looks like what would result if Delia Smith started building robots to take over the earth. Come to think of it, I may have had a dream about that happening.

But the truth is that this thing is just so much fun! You just pour in the ingredients...

...press a button, wait a couple of hours, and then out pops a loaf. There's even a point where it beeps at you to let you know that if you want to chuck anything extra into the breads (raisins, oats, whatever) that you should do it now.

On my third attempt, I decided to add some grated cheese when it beeped. The end result was this:

It looks a little spongey, but it tasted good.

The manual comes with all sorts of recipes for making raisin bread, or coffee bread, but they're mostly just variations on, "When you hear the beeps, chuck stuff in."

There could be endless possibilities here...

Vindaloo bread

Toothpaste bread

Monster Munch bread