The Lambshanks Redemption

It takes a big goddamn pot..... onions, potatoes, carrots, soaked chick peas, tomato paste & a few herbs & spices............. not forgetting the Lambshanks.

Time. It must be served.
If you want anything to be good it takes time.
[10,000 hours according to Mr. Gladwell. Guess how long it took him to figure that out?]

Pressure. Via vacuum or heat.

That's all. Time & Pressure.
And all will be redeemed

No Mail Intended

I went to my local Post Office, which is run by Hobbits in Middle Earth.
They had hand-painted signs for "National" & "Intentional" mail.
Intentional mail?!
What's that?, I pondered. For I do a lot of pondering these days.
Much too much for my own good really.
What's Intentional Mail?
And what's Unintentional Mail for that matter?
Now I am familiar with Unintentional Email... You know, the times you type off some pissy message then press send and then go: "Bugger! Should NEVER have sent that!"
But I'm not familiar with Unintentional Mail.
How does one go about sending that?
And how does it present itself in the recipient's letter box?
Does it hang limpy half-way through, going "hmmm don't think you really want this...."

The Smell of It

She gets up --------- late;
She showers --------- eventually
& dresses randomly;
She leaves her home late in the afternoon
& strolls in no particular direction;
She passes by many ------- seeing none;
She walks for miles ------ time passes
& darkness descends;
She finds herself on a bridge
& she stops;
She looks down at the raging current of water below -----

DEPRESSION by Kalvin Kline

Burka Barbie

The Burka Barbie (patent pending) will be available in all non-reputable toy stores over the Christmas period.
Her burka comes in three colours:
Afghan blue for summer
Black for funerals .......... & weddings
Dark brown for potholing holidays in Kandahar

She comes with a necessary accessory:
Keffiyeh Ken.
Burka Barbie cannot be seen anywhere without him.


[N.B. not affiliated with Klaus Barbie]

Stripped Bare

I used to be a stripper.
I specialized in the Gaza Strip.
That's the one where I give you all of my possessions, my house & my land.
And you don't tip me.

It's a one-off performance...

Mock Ye Not

It is assumed by many that Arabs have no sense of humour.
We do.
We just play the long game.
Centuries ago we gave the West: medicine, mathematics & astronomy.
The West gave us: The Crusades, The Inquisition & syphilis.

So we gave you Saddam Hussein.

Only joking.........

The fact that hundreds of thousands of people died in the process only goes to prove how serious we are about our comedy.

Ethnic Cleansing

It was the Bedouin Arabs who invented dry-cleaning.
A scarcity of water in the desert, they would sand-blast their clothes clean.
They later made the natural progression to chemicals.
Saddam Hussein was a great proponent of using chemicals to clean out stubborn stains, like the Kurds, for example.

Appropriate Arabs

Most people don't know this: the hijab was just the result of a bad-hair day.
An Arab woman, let's call her Leila, was running late, there were no hair straighteners in those days [& have you seen untamed Arab hair????], she sees a piece of cloth & thinks, " that'll do!", throws it over herself & goes about her business.
Her Arab sisters, ever the followers of fashion, think, "Hey! Leila's onto something here!". So they follow suit, or hijab in this case.....
Then - years later, it is appropriated by the Muslims.

Many things have been appropriated from the Arabs. We don't much mind, it's the fact that we're never asked that pisses us off.

Making Your Mind Up

"The time to make up your mind about people is never," says Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn) in The Philadelphia Story (1940). In most contemporary films, however, the time to make up your mind is during the opening credits. Characters have become standards, symbols representing a social function or status (lawyer, policeman, student, executive, dad, computer geek, whatever). "No real people, just cops," as Mr. Pink would say (Reservoir Dogs). Actors are judged on their ability to assume the model & reinforce it.

Predictability (dramaturgy) has become the golden calf around which we dance. Having the characters' inner lives justify the plot is too complicated & the superficial movies are receiving all the praise.

For me, the heart of a film's appeal lies in the celebration of character — therefore actor. The essence of filmmaking is to provide favorable conditions for actors to find or create characters, favorable conditions to capture human movement. And, if you're very fortunate, recording a "happening".

As Hollywood players scramble to blow our minds (and blow up their budgets), let me remind them that cinema isn't just about thrills, spills and special effects — it's about telling a story and telling it well.
What happens to your story when you remove the music, fx & clever editing?
Are there any characters there to intrigue, inspire, interest, delight & cause us to reflect & question? No?
Can you make your mind up about a character in a split second? Yes?

There are no golden calves anymore. They've all been sold as Cash for Gold.
What's left is raw authenticity.
This is where art begins.

A CALL TO ARMS!

Where we women have been free to pursue a profession, we have come a long way in many and nothing will stop our inevitable rise and success. This will take time and we have still got a long way to go but there is nothing a woman cannot do if she so chooses and is free to do so.

However, there is a dark cloud over two professions where it can be empirically proven that men do better than women:

Cooking
The best chefs in the world tend to be masculine. We’re not talking about the most prolific, or the ones that cook every meal. But when it comes to making you pay currency for a meal – men are significantly more successful at it than women.

&
Dressmaking
Think of a designer. Christian Dior, Halston, Gucci, Yves St.Laurent, Ralph Lauren, Versace, Christian La Croix, Tommy Hilfiger, Tom Ford, Calvin Klein, Jean-Paul Gautier…..
Pay attention. For every Coco there are a hundred McQueens.

We may have equality yet what we lack now is parity!

So I ask you, nay, I implore you,! Take up your pots and pans! pick up a needle and thread! Sear some beef! Crimp some silk!
Encourage your sisters, mothers and daughters!
The next time little Sara wants a toastie – tell her to make it herself!
The next time you wear through your negligee, grab yourself a few metres of wash & wear and a sewing kit!

Do not allow your man to do this for you! Stop him from entering the kitchen. Discourage him from the Singer.

We cannot allow this desperate situation to continue.

No longer will men be the cooks!

No longer will men be the dressmakers!

We women know our place!

TIME WASTER

Time is defined as the indefinite progress of existence. What if you felt that there was no progress in your personal life? Would time, relative to you, stand still? Or perhaps you feel that you don’t have enough time to do all the things you need to do and could benefit from more time? Do you sometimes have the desire to repeat an experience so that you can make different choices?

A time loop or a temporal loop is a common plot device used in science fiction in which time runs normally for a set period and then skips back to repeat what has gone before. Most of the characters in a time loop forget all that has happened as their memories are also reset. The central character, however, (who is to be eventually transformed by this time loop) retains their memory and is aware of having to repeat the same experiences over and over again. The mythological tale of Sisyphus is one of the first recorded times this loop appears. For a crime against the gods, the specifics of which are variously recorded, Sisyphus was condemned to an eternity at hard labour. He was to push a great boulder to the top of a hill. This was eternally frustrating because every time Sisyphus managed to get the boulder to the summit the huge rock rolled right back down again.

The best known example of this device used in film is the 1993 comedy, Groundhog Day. In the movie, actor Bill Murray plays Phil, an arrogant weather forecaster who spends the night in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, where he is to do a broadcast the next day about the annual ritual of the coming out of the groundhog. If the animal sees its shadow it is said to portend six weeks more of winter weather. Phil wakes up the next morning, does his story and is annoyed to discover that he is trapped in Punxsutawney for a second night because of a snowstorm that comes in after the groundhog ceremony. When Phil awakens the next morning, he thinks he is experiencing déjà vu. In reality, he is experiencing the same day all over again. As Phil relives the same Groundhog Day over and over again, he goes through a myriad of highs and lows.
Stories with time loops commonly centre on correcting past mistakes or on getting a character to recognize some key truth; only when this truth is known can escape from the loop follow. In Groundhog Day Phil is given opportunity after opportunity to get the day "right". Since no other character in the film remembers having lived this day before, he can relive it knowing more about what will happen than the previous time. After reliving the same day hundreds of times, Phil finally learns how to live it perfectly.

At first Phil responds with bewilderment, believing that he has a serious case of déjà vu. Then he despairs in the hopelessness of it all and gorges on food. Then, knowing that nothing he does has any consequences he begins to use the information he gains about others to his own advantage. Then he tries a myriad of ways to kill himself. As the days pass endlessly, over an over, into the same day, Phil finally figures out a constructive response: he begins to live his life on this day allotted to him to its fullest. He takes piano lessons, he learns how to sculpt ice, he becomes generous with everything he has because, he knows, he will still have it tomorrow. His final lesson is an encounter with death. When an old vagrant dies, Phil cannot accept the death at first and tries to be good and save the old man by feeding him and keeping him warm. To no avail. The old man still dies. When Phil finally stops trying to control death his final defences are broken and his compassion is extended to those who are living. He now is transformed and the day that was originally a kind of hell becomes a kind of freedom. For, having accepted the true conditions of life, having given up trying to use the weather forecast, by human or groundhog, to control events, he no longer fears life's travails.

How long this takes is open to discussion. Harold Ramis, the film’s director, states on the DVD audio commentary that he believes 10 years passes. However, a few years later, Ramis is quoted to have said: "I think the 10-year estimate is too short. It takes at least 10 years to get good at anything, and allotting for the down time and misguided years he spent, it had to be more like 30 or 40 years".


Groundhog Day allows us to experience what it would be like to make a breakthrough like this in our own lives. Here is a character who is self-absorbed and isolated who finds himself adrift in the hands of fate. Most of us go through our days semi-comatose, yet he has the luxury of being forced to stop, reflect and treat each day like an entire lifetime.

The phrase “Groundhog Day” has become a shorthand illustration for the concept of spiritual transcendence. The film can undoubtedly be considered a tale of self-improvement: look inside yourself and realize that the only satisfaction in life comes from turning outward and concerning yourself with others rather than concentrating solely on your own wants and desires. The film has been described as a film about Zen and is a favourite of Buddhists because they see its themes of selflessness and rebirth in accord with their own spiritual message. The transformation in the movie is a fictional counterpoint to a universal experience: A confrontation with death and an acceptance of the circumstances of life will lead to freedom of the self and a greater enjoyment of life.