Perspective

Damn those Puritans. There was only a little whisky in the house and it’s not possible to buy any after 10 pm so I am only just not legal to drive. I should be more prepared for nights like this. Although it’s hard to prepare for the unexpected.

I see that the Puritans are once more trying to deflect from the effects of traffic fumes. The radio recently was full of Volkswagen’s dodgy emissions trick and claimed that millions might be able to get compensation for respiratory illnesses brought about by breathing Volkswagens or some such thing.

At the time, I did wonder how any claim would stand up, since all respiratory illnesses are now solely caused by smoking.

Naturally the antismokers are incensed that someone is trying to muscle in on their territory. So in retaliation, we once more have the ridiculous claim that someone smoking in a car pickles the children in the back seat.

Second-hand smoke contains 4,000 chemicals, more than 50 of which cause cancer.

The average cigarette contains around 0.6 grams of tobacco, most of which is cellulose because it’s made of leaves. Let’s pretend there is no cellulose, no actual leaf matter, and that all of it is made of the 4000 chemicals that the pseudoscientists like to blab about.

Okay, that means there is roughly 0.00015 grams of each chemical present in a cigarette. Fifty of them cause cancer so we have 0.0075 grams of carcinogens.

That’s in a cigarette, not in the smoke. Most of the burned cigarette is ash, not smoke. Let’s pretend there is no ash and there is no absorption of any of these chemicals by the smoker. All the cigarette magically vapourises into child-destroying lumpy death smoke.

So now we have no leaves, no ash, no smoker, just a cigarette that is entirely a child-seeking death missile. 0.0075 grams of chemicals with big, nasty, child-biting teeth. Oh and none of it goes out of the open window either. None escapes through vents and none sticks to fabric or coats the interior of the car in any way.

I have a small car. I will underestimate its interior as being about 1.5 m by 2 m by 1.5 m. It’s a little bigger than that but I am not going to measure it now. Those measurements only give me 4.5 cubic metres but that does give me a cancer causing maximum of about 0.0017g per cubic metre. That assumes total vapourisation and no sticking to any surfaces and no escaping through windows or vents. Even so, it’s not much, is it?

Yet we are to believe that this is enough to eradicate the child species from the face of the planet. Even though they will get out of that car and breathe in the diesel fumes belched by buses and trucks. Which has no effect whatsoever because the computer has been programmed to say those fumes don’t exist.

If it’s all about tobacco, why does anyone care about vehicle emissions? They don’t cause any respiratory diseases. Smoking causes them all.

There are no children in my car and as far as I am aware, never have been. I check under the seats and in the ashtrays daily in case of a child infestation but so far, no sign of them.

It’s probably the smoking that keeps them away. In which case, I recommend it as a car fumigation device.

Routine application should keep your car child-free.

Happy days!

I am so excited 😀

More to come

Salty fatty people

Your body will regulate its salt and water content to the level it wants it to be at. If you eat too much salt you get thirsty and drink more water. If your kidneys don’t excrete the salt fast enough you’ll get water retention and bloating.

This is not fat. It’s water. it is not the same thing as being fat at all. Slow down with the salt and your kidneys will catch up and you’ll lose the excess water too. In a matter of days or even hours.

There are hormonal reasons for water retention too so if you’re a premenstrual woman at the moment… put down the frying pan, have a nice cup of tea and calm down. I wasn’t getting at you, honest.

The mob with the surprisingly honest name of CASH (because that’s what it’s all about for them really) are pretending that water retention is the same as obesity and that you get fat from eating salt. Salt has no digestible or metabolisable calories at all. It’s a ground-up rock. It has no more calories than powdered brick.

Even the Experts who Say are balking at this one. It’s utter bilge. It’s beyond even the mythologically homeopathic status of tobacco smoke, which gets deadlier as it gets more dilute. That has now reached the point where it’s at its most deadly when you can neither see nor smell it and hoo boy, we can have so much fun with that one. Someone, one day, will die from trying not to breathe air.

In the bag of pork scratchings I like to get from time to time (I usually get a pack of six bags and have been known to eat all of them in an evening) there is a lot of salt. A lot of fat too. With a smidgeon of protein. They are not a ‘healthy food choice’, it’s roast pig skin, but they are really nice. If I make a roast pork joint I always put the skin (and underlying fat) back in the oven to get properly crisped up. Then I coat it in salt and have it as snacks.

The new place has about 5 kg of salt moved in already. I’m not going to run out any time soon 🙂

When I buy salted peanuts I find they have often skimped on the salt so I add some. Sometimes with crisps too. Boiled eggs are inedible without copious amounts of added salt and unsalted butter tastes like creamed cockroach shit.

I like salt and I’ll eat as much as I damn well please. I like fat too. The hot fat on a roast beef or pork joint is wonderful to eat while carving. Preferably dipped in salt.

I like burgers, hot dogs, pakora, anything at all deep fried (except broccoli – that stuff is grown to be model railway trees and has no other realistic function). I am particularly fond of curries and pizza and all kinds of pasta and at a pinch you can eat pasta just boiled and salted and it tastes pretty good. I eat some fruit, not much, I eat vegetables if they’re on the pizza and if they are on my plate I’ll eat them too. But I don’t seek out those things.

I go for the food that most regard as crap junk food. I am 5’9″ and a hint over 12 stone. There is only one person on the planet who can confirm that not much of it is fat.

It used to be. I used to be 15 stone and climbing but then I was on enforced healthy eating. Mostly cereals, which I rarely touch now. Not since grasping the point that when farmers want to fatten pigs for market, they increase the cereal content of the feed. It’s not fat that makes you fat. The fat you eat is not usually human fat and is not immediately stored. It has to be broken down and rebuilt.

It’s much easier for your body to build fat reserves from simple carbohydrates. The sort you find in cereals.

Nobody puts salt on cereals, except the Scots who put it on porridge. Everyone else puts something different on cereals. They add sugar because cereals are seriously boring foods. This just makes it worse.

The CASH article is just another attempt to get money and to control us as well as a good dig at ‘Big Food’. If they actually gave a shit about obesity they’d look at the real causes.

Such as – nobody really does much physical movement any more. It started around 1900 with  the invention of the motor car.

Tomorrow night I will be permanently moved to my new place. It’s five miles (8 km) from work. I can take the bus once I ditch what’s left of my car but at a pinch I could walk it. It would only take 90 minutes or so.

Realistically, how many of today’s generation would even consider doing that?

Trying to blame it on salt? Really?

I wonder who the CASH mob score on the BMI game?

Chrissie Hynde and Madrugada

So apparently Chrissie Hynde, the lead singer of The Pretenders, has been out giving her opinion about rape and blame. You can read the article here
She makes several points and I personally don’t agree with most of them. She claims that scantily clad women were likely to “entice a rapist” and that it is their “fault” if they are attacked. Lets look at that. Now I am a firm believer that women should be able to wear what they want, and I think in most cases then rape is more about power and thus what a woman wears isn’t really what gets you raped. People should wear what they want in their own time. And really men get raped too. Surely that’s not because their dress was a bit too short or their heels were a bit too high. And just to go all the way, if a nudist gets raped is it then her fault? I mean she was all naked and walking around with other naked people. All that nakedness. How will we deal?

She also comments that You know, if you don’t want to entice a rapist, don’t wear high heels so you can’t run from him.. Now I have heard of women who can actually run in heels. God knows how they do it but it should be possible.
But if it’s your fault that you got raped because you wore heels and couldn’t run away does that mean that every woman wearing trousers is also to blame? I mean surely it must be easier to run away if you’re wearing a dress and your rapist has his trousers down his ankles. But then again a dress does mean easy access so it could be a sign saying “Oi you there, come rape me!”. And if that is true does that mean women are not even safe in a burqa? Perhaps women should just break out the full plated body armour. Look on the bright side it’ll be a cheap work out too.

I will say this; I have always dressed rather conservative. Trousers, t-shirt and sneakers. One Christmas my grandmother gave me a shirt and a pair of tights. I wore the shirt the day after to the Christmas family get together with trousers and my grandmother asked why I was wearing my dress with jeans. I never learned to walk in heels. I once, at a New Years party with friend,s wore sneakers with a fancy dress. Now my way of dressing and lack of heels didn’t save me. Would it really save others?

Madrugada

Now Madrugada is an alternative rock band from Norway that my mother introduced me to. They started out in 1993 but the band split up after guitar player Rober Burås’ death in 2007.

Majesty

The lead singer Sivert Høyem has since made 4 solo records. I saw him live last year with my mother and he is a rather talented guy.

Honey Bee

Lift Me – feat Ane Brun

Now this is my personal favourite. It’s a bit more bluesy I’d say than the other songs

Adam Cohen

It’s been a bit of a hard time this past weeks time and more. I’ve just felt drained and sad. You know one of those times where you just feel like a bad remark away from getting misty eyed

I got invited to my granddad’s birthday party which was very surprising since I only tend to get invited to the big celebrations. My grandmother isn’t always the most tactful person. So I spent a lot of time wondering why I’d been invited trying to find the catch. Seems like there for once wasn’t one. It was a pleasant visit with great food and he liked his gift.

I try to be a happy person, which in times like these isn’t always easy. I’ve had people tell me that I need to toughen up and not be so silly and in a way that has been a thing I’ve been grumbling over for a while now. When did it become okay to be a douche bag to people? My brothers and I were raised to say please and thank you and my dad always told us never to tease others about the way they looked because people were responsible for the way they act but not for their physical features. But it seems like these days if someone does something to piss of another it’s “this fat bitch”. I once heard someone, walking past an imigrant, who joked that some people would look better in a burka. Or my grandmother at a birthday party saying very loudly “was that Hellen? I barely recognised her because she’s gotten so fat!”. When did that become okay?

Another thing I don’t get is those going “oh it’s freedom of speech!”. And really I support freedom of speech. It has done some great things through the years. But it seems like today a lot of people will act like a dick and then pull up the shield of freedom of speech. Yes, you can say whatever you like but do we really need to? Is it really necessary to tell some local politician that you hope his kids get cancer because you don’t agree with his opinions? And what I really don’t get is those who’ll go around poking people with their mean stick and then acts all omg like get a grip. Freedom of speech bro. I mean if you stand in the street calling passerbys the c word you shouldn’t really be surprised or run crying when you at some point get a word back or get punched.

I just don’t understand people who seem to go out of their way to be negative. I’ll stop rambling and get on to the music.

I must admit I’ve never gotten into Leonard Cohen. He writes some great songs, I rather like Jennifer Warnes tribute cd Famous Blue Raincoat, I just never really fell in love with Cohen’s singing style. I am however very fond of the music that his son Adam Cohen makes. So he is today’s music segment.

What other guy

Cohen is what I usually put on when I want something soft and gentle.

Overrated

I absolutely love this song. It’s the song I imagine myself having that first dance with my newly husband at our wedding. It is just beautiful and for me fitting.

We go home

This one from the newest album has a bit more go to it. It was the first one I heard and the one that drew me into the world of Adam Cohen

Love is

I have a neighbour who is a big papa Cohen fan so I let her borrow the newest Adam album since she was curious as to wether she’d like his music or not. She didn’t. She thought his lyrics was rather empty compared to his father’s. I disagree, I think if you look past the upbeat music you do find pretty good lyrics too.

Lisa Ekdahl

I can happily inform that my reading situation isn’t as bad as first thought. I have made a reading challenge on my GoodReads app but apparently it hadn’t accepted a good chuck of the books I had read. So with the two books I’ve read the last few days I’m now up to 12 books read this year which isn’t too bad. My aim is 25 so I’m slowly closing in.

Can we take a moment to talk about the heat? I don’t know about where you guys are but here it is way too hot. Well 26 degrees Celsius. I was made for the cold. I don’t function in this heat. I spent my first 4 years with Swedish and Norwegian winters so I do find it a bit funny when I’ve mentioned to friends that I may relocate to Scotland and their first reaction is do you know how cold it is there? I just smile happily and go yes!
I usually bring Susie with me when I go to the local shop. It helps a bit with my anxiety. But she would get too warm and even though I’d park her in the shade she’d be panting when I’d get out from the shop. So I started to bring water with me. I fill up my purple penguin water bottle and off we go. But does she want to drink it? No way! Strange brown water on the parking lot is apparently appetizing, I had to pull her away to make sure she didn’t try to drink it,but she turns her snout away when I try giving her clean water. Dogs!
She does how ever seem to have accepted Igor a lot more. She let him sniff her paws and tail and even let him crawl on her so that’s good.

Now Lisa Ekdahl’s music has been in my life for a big part of it. It was some of the Swedish music my mum brought back with us. My mum always wanted me to have some of the Swedish culture too in my upbringing, mostly music. I must admit that since I don’t really remember living in Sweden I always felt much more Danish. Especially after my mum and I took a Christmas shopping trip to my birth city and everyone I tried to speak “Swedish” to replied to me in English. So even though I don’t in some ways connect her with my heritage I do in other ways since I’ve been listening to her cds since I was a child. So more a sense of growing up with her than a sense of national pride. I do now as an adult living on my own actually own most of her albums and listen to them regularly.

Vem Vet

This is her far most known song here in Denmark and her first one if I remember correctly.

Benen i kors

Now this is my all time favourite of her Swedish songs. I haven’t got a number on how many times over the years I’ve listened to this song and been singing along and just enjoyed the beauty of it.

Give me that slow knowing smile

It’s funny I once spoke to a guy on Twitter who also liked Lisa Ekdahl. He knew her English songs and I knew her Swedish ones at that point and we came to the conclusion that together we’d make a pretty good Lisa Ekdahl fan.

One life

I went to see her live some time ago and it was there I really started my journey into her English music. It’s funny, her English songs are in some ways much more jazz influenced than her Swedish songs. But it could just be from growing up and evolving her style.

You want her approval

Now this song gave me goosebumps at the concert. It’s pretty amazing, she’s just a rather tiny woman but that voice is just wow! If you ever get the chance I highly recommend seeing her live. It is quite the experience.

Creative corner – Nails

Trying to write on a laptop with a dog trying to lick your eye can be a bit of a challenge. Especially if you’re in a slight bit of a hurry. I’m meeting mum in town today for some burger and expensive tea.

Now yesterday was my grandfather’s birthday party so I figured I’d do something special with my nails. I wanted something light and girly and to try out some of my new things from the German shopping orgy. So this is what I came up with

If you’re for some reason interested in how I achieved this here is a rough guide.

What you’ll need is

A base coat
3 polishes of your choice I chose 3 pink ones where one was a bit lighter than the other and a white polish (who was camera shy)
A top coat
A make up sponge
A stamping polish I chose white
A stamping plate, scraper, stamper, lint roller and tape
Nail glue or a clear top coat
A pearl like half bead and tiny beads
Tooth picks and if you have one of those wax pencils to pick up beads
Nail polish remover
Q-tips and a small brush that you won’t mind using with nail polish remover

How to

1. Apply base coat to all fingers and let it dry for a few minutes
2. Apply coats of white polish to an okay opacity.
3. Apply 3 lines of the pink polish on your make up sponge and dap on all fingers. Let it dry for a few minutes and go over again with the sponge with fresh polish. Do this until you have desired opacity. I just needed to go over mine twice.
   Apply a layer of top coat to blend the colours a bit more together.
   A video on how to make this gradient effect Here
   
4. Clean up around the nail with the Q-tip and brush and let polish completely dry.
5. Apply your stamping polish to the stamping plate, scrape away the excess polish and transfer the image to the nail with the stamper. I used a bow pattern on all my fingers except the ring finger.
   A video on how to stamp here
6. Use tape to remove what stamping image got onto your skin
7. On the ring finger I applied a bit of nail glue but you can also use clear polish, use my wax pencil to place the pearl half bead and then used a tooth pick dipped in top coat to line the smaller beads around the half pearl
8. Top coat all your nails and let them dry.

Top 5 films I can’t wait to watch

Today is a pretty good day. For once I actually slept through the entire night. This is a bit of a rare thing for me so I am very excited.

Now in my last post the very talented Westcoast2 left a melody. I personally think it’s really good so in case you missed it I’m putting a link so you can go check him out. Go give a brother some love. Or something… (I did ask for permission first)

Soap Shop II

on to the films

Agent 47

Now I must admit I got very giddy when seeing this trailer. I really enjoyed the first Hitman film. No, it wasn’t a master piece in anyway and the plot may have been a bit airy but come on. There’s an awesome Hitman, guns, things blowing up and a hot babe. Which as far as I can see from the trailer pretty much summons up both films.
Growing up my dad and I would watch Steven Segal films, the Die Hard films and so on together. So I love a good action film. Now I must admit I’m a bit bummed out that Timothy Olyphant isn’t Agent 47 but the new guy looks pretty decent too.

Suicide Squad

Now this trailer made my inner fan girl jump and squee in excitement. I have always been a massive Batman fan. As a kid my mum sewed me a Batsuit which was just a jogging suit with a homemade Batman logo but I loved the thing to pieces. So much so that when I grew out of it I made my mum toss it in front of me so I could be certain she wouldn’t pass it on to my younger brother.
Harley Quinn was one of my favourite characters in the series. So something with her in it is sure to excite me. And it’ll be very interesting to see what they’ll do with the Joker. Heath Ledger did an amazing job. It’ll be a tough act to follow.

Furious 7

I may in many cases be a girly girl who knows nothing about cars but I do really enjoy this series of films. I once had a boyfriend ask me to show him one of my favourite films so I showed him one of the Fast and the Furious films. He kept falling asleep so I made him rewatch it untill he stayed up the entire way through.
Now in this newest one they have combined some of the best things I like in an action film. Car chases, things blowing up and Jason Statham. Can it get any better than that?

Cinderella

Besides action films I grew up with Disney. My brothers and I had a vhs tape with Lion King that we saw so much the tape broke. My first film in the cinema was watching The Little Mermaid. Yes, I still watch the new Disney films. I adore Frozen. So when I heard that this was coming out I knew I had to see it. I know I’m a bit behind as it has already hit dvds I just haven’t had the chance yet to pick it up.

Minions

This one just looks very, very funny. I really liked the minions in Despicable Me so I am very much hoping that they’ll be able to hold up a film of their own. I will watch it along with Leggy as I already made him familiar with the minions.

So which films are you guys looking forward to watching?

Hannah Schneider

Today is a big day in the CstM house because today is the day Susie turns 7. Susie for those of you who don’t know is a little long coated dachshund who I’ve had since she was a tiny pup. I went to the breeder and looked at Susie and all her siblings. Most of them were crying not liking being picked up by a stranger. But Susie was all quiet. She did however cry all the way home so my mum asked dryly if I couldn’t have picked up one of her siblings since then at least she’d have been cried out.

I am one of those weird people who talk with their dog. The neighborhood people have been treated to me in a high pitched voice going “Run Susie! Run like the wind!” when we’ve been out walking. I also tell her where I am off to when I leave her alone. Always with a promise of a swift return. I once even went as far as telling her that I had my phone on me so she could always call if she needed anything. Even I had to stop up for a moment after that one and wonder “Did I just say that to my dog?”. And yes, yes I did.

She is also the main reason I have a TV. Well besides being stuck paying TV licence and having a program pack as part of rent so it was silly not to own a TV since I was already paying as if I had one. But the one who uses the live TV part of the TV is Susie when she’s alone. She always watches the state channel usually sending stuff like The Flying Doctors, Downton Abbey and Antiques Roadshow. My mum vetoed against the channel sending all the CSI and like shows as she figured crime and death wasn’t too good for a young dog all alone.

Now today we are trying something new. We are doing one music post with only one artist. Today is Hannah Schneider, an artist I am very fond of. I have seen her a few times live and she is absolutely brilliant. I don’t know how you can pack that much song into such a petite woman.

Raindrops

This is the first song I ever heard from her. It’s usually not the one I start out showing people but I figured we’d go by chronological order and please my inner “OCD”. I’ve sent some of her videos to Twitter friends and one commented that I should be getting a PR pay for my work in spreading the HS hype.

Old Enough

Now this is my personal favourite from the first album. I love the silent Danish counting in the beginning and just how this song in some ways remind me of myself. “I’m old enough to know better” “But I’m young enough to do it anyway”. I think most of us know about that.

In the Line of Fire (Kitchen sessions)

This one I know all the lyrics to by heart. Well that may actually count for most of her songs.She made an extra cd called Kitchen Sessions where she kind of redid her two first records in a more rustic way.

Everything (Live)

I must say that my favourite album is the 3rd and newest. It has a natural blend of the first two but also opens up a bit more to the world and drawing inspiration from it. Butterfly Lovers is a great example of that but YouTube said no so instead you’re getting Everything

Dreaming Kind

Now if I remember correctly you may have to do some yes I’m over 18 thing to see this video as it contains wild and crazy things like smoking and a nipple! What kind of evil ways am I leading you lot?
Now it is a pretty good song too.

So who else out there have pets?

Bookcase of Shame

I have now reached the Matt Smith episodes of Doctor Who so I went to the local shop in the search of fish fingers. I didn’t see any so I asked the shop lady just in case I had overlooked them. She looked at me like she was wondering if I was really seriously asking for fish fingers. Apparently most people stop eating those after the age of 10 or so. I was never most people. I did how ever have to make do with the grown up side of a haddock thing.

Amazon was very close to going back to the boycott list. I love books and I very much like a good bargain on books so for a long time Amazon was my main dealer for books. Books here in Denmark can be very expensive. It’s gotten better but still not compeatable with Amazon or Bookdepository prices. Danish books cost about 40£ for a brand new hardback and about 30£ for a paperback. After a while they do go down in price and if you’re lucky you may find an old book in a supermarket for 10 or 8£. Now English books tend to be a bit cheaper.

But one of the things that made Amazon my main dealer was that they used to have free shipping to Denmark if you used over 25£. I usually ended up buying more to hit the free shipping so in my mind it was a bit of a win win for the both of us. But then one day they said no more free shipping and I said fine! No more buying from you. Well most of the time. I have been loosening my no buying band against them though. I mean if America can loosen up against Cuba then surely I could forgive a bit of shipping.

But my point with this was that during the times I have bought quite a lot of cheap books. I have a very long wish list and every once in a while I’ll go in and order a big stack. I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I had some years of absolutely no concentration. I had trouble just watching a film in one go. So I have collected quite a few books that I still haven’t gotten round to reading. And as there was still coming out new and shiny books it was getting a bit much. So last year I made my first new years resolution; read more books than I buy. I did pretty good last year. I read 25 books in total. This year has been a bit slow so far. I’ve only read about 4 so far.

So I’ve mentioned to some before about my bookcase of shame. It is my bookcase filled with the books I still haven’t read. I am slowly making my way through it. And yes, I know it’s probably a lot of books for some people. But I regret nothing! Well perhaps some of the classics. I must have been very optimistic when buying Moby Dick, Shakespeare and that Alan Greenspan one.

Enough talk here it is in all it’s glory