Cooking A Frog And Other Chestnuts

Like an eighties Ford Escort, this entry is likely to have spoilers.

I seem to remember that Cheffery with Amphibians is some sort of management parable to justify changes in processes - though so wonderful is the analogy that I cannot remember whether it supports sudden or gradual change which means that without supporting text, the whole thing is meaningless and may as well be ignored.

Have you noticed how only the naffest of characters in TV now have musical ring-tones? Even on the "kids'-show-for-adults" that is Torchwood, all the mobiles simply ring like good old-fashioned phones. Beth's phone had the same ring-tone as mine which causes no end of confusion in our house. Luckily no-one decided to ring us at 18:20 on Saturday when the Sofa was pulled out - though luckily not needed - and we all sat down rapt for new Doctor Who. Our neighbour across the street had just got Hi-Def and was pleased that the box had arrived in time - only to discover that Doctor Who is still filmed in good-old wrinkle-concealing, lo-def Tellyboxviewervision. There was of course the consolation of the highly-textured, son-of-a-sod hands on Gardeners' World the night before. Now that I am unable to read Private Eye in low light I am not actually sure that high-def would actually give me any increase in enjoyment. I may be wrong but surely after a while, the fill-in-the-gaps extrapolation of the brain lets you concentrate on the story rather than how you could take Billie Piper's fingerprints from the screen (nice to see her back so early on by the way).

Actually finished The Outsider by Camus in about 90 minutes all together. I thought I should read it after hearing it mentioned in some Radio 4 poll as the most life-changing book for men. I suppose that must be way up the list partly because it is so short, though it obviously has much meaning for life in general because of mind-focusing qualities of being sentenced to death by guillotine in a public place. The real meaning is do-se-doing around my head at the moment with equal odds on it falling out of one ear as a meaningless piece of brain-dumping that gains most of its kudos from being written by an Algerian-born, footballer-turned-philosopher, or establishing itself as a life-affirming instruction manual for how to be happy. Still, the bits on the beach with the hot sun are nice. Then again I did once think that the best book I'd ever read was Bridge Across Forever by Richard Bach and now all I can remember about that is the bit about how the Lemon Meringue Pie was good if you didn't like it too lemony. Oh and the bit about the Wookie.

Life-Affirming books? Hmmmn. Or is it Life-Changing? From a purely physical point of view you could have Ulysses because of both the many false starts that most people seem to have trying to read it and the simple amount of time it takes up to make a serious attempt at it. Or maybe it could be just because it makes you realise that everything is just going to happen in the way it is going to happen - no matter what philosophy/exercise programme/diet/meditation de-jour you follow, life bowls googlies and you have to deal with them as they arrive. I think that chimes an iota with The Outsider, about which I am of course quietly smug.

Maybe life is just like cooking frogs - pointless, slimy and fraught with Health and Safety issues.