Yes, it’s Moose again. Cas is off bear hunting this weekend in the wilds of Bedfordshire; I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it when she gets back. This has left me in charge of the meadow for a couple of days (the power, the power!). As she might not be back in time to dish up a roast tomorrow I thought I’d treat you to a little snack.

Boy survives two hour flight to Moscow hanging on to plane wing. It may be a cheap way to fly, but you’ve got to be pretty desparate to try it.

In London this week burning chillis sparked a terrorist alert. Is it comforting that people are so aware of terrorism that they are alert, or worrying that we live in such a climate of fear that people panic when they smell something they don’t recognise?

Spoiler alert – Don’t click on this link unless you’ve seen the film Serenity. There’s a rumour that there might be a Serenity sequel.

And finally, especially for Abi, some trailers that have caught my eye this week.
Sweeney Todd – Mmmmm, Johnny Depp. (though I was having a few technical difficulties getting it to play – not sure if that was the site or my pc)
Southland Tales – starts off normal then quickly moves into ‘what the…?’ territory.
Youth Without Youth – no, I don’t understand it either, but I’m intrigued.
Be Kind Rewind – Jack Black and Mos Def making their own versions of popular films.
No Country for Old Men – the Coen brothers. Nothing more to say.

Oh, and the title? Apparently that’s my role in the office.

So I’ve just spent 15 minutes writing a post to explain why I won’t be writing a Roast this weekend and all of a sudden I find myself writing a Roast. Indecisiveness, your name is Cas.

Why wasn’t I going to write a Roast this week? Because they take a long time to write and require more than a fair bit of mental energy and humour, neither of which I exactly have in abundance after this past week. Why has it been a shitty, evil, nasty weird week? It just has. I’ve been feeling down for a couple of reasons that are too long and depressing to go into at the moment, and then some other nasty personal shit dropped on my head from a high height on Monday evening and… I’m sure I will tell you all about it some day but right now I can only just skate over the surface of it before bursting into tears (as my boss will testify after an unadvised “Cas, are you OK?” comment on Tuesday). I want to be able to write it out because that’s my outlet, however as it stands it’s all still too fresh and… *struggles for the word* Ughy to really even contemplate going in to.

So why have I decided to write the Roast after all if all of the above still stands true (and it does)? Well, for a couple of reasons. I’ve said it before and no doubt I’ll say it again, but I like having people read Bright Meadow and comment. It’s got to the point that people come to the site expressly for the Sunday Roasts and they get disappointed/annoyed with me if they don’t find one, and I can’t cope with any more people being disappointed/annoyed with me right now. Then of course there is the fact that my writing mojo has recently taking an inexplicable detour and is currently leaning more to non-blog stuff – at least with regular Sunday Roasts there’s still content for y’all to read any my slightly more erratic post schedule maintains some structure.

And lastly there’s the fact that I keep finding this stuff I want to tell people about!

So I sit here at the dining room table on a Sunday afternoon, armed with a pot of Assam tea and a list of links as long as a very short person’s arm, and I write the Roast. By sticking to the routine I shall make my way through this, evil step-grandparents be damned! It’s that or dive into another bottle of mediocre rose and I’ve drunk more than enough this week thank you very much!

A new study shows that too little sleep doubles the risk of heart disease. It also says that too much sleep isn’t good for you but I shall choose to ignore that. I normally get around seven hours a night during the week. The fact that I then habitually dormouse my way through the weekend is irrelevant, or rather more to do with my history of ME and the fact I genuinely need more sleep if I’m to keep functioning. But anyway – science has proven that your mother was right: the best medicine is a good nights sleep 😛

I love it when Micro$oft makes a frack up on this scale.

Who’d have thunk that an Eastenders actress could actually act? But it turns out this one can (at least now she’s no longer in Eastenders). I will admit to looking forward to this when it comes to the UK next year – if only because David Eick is behind it and we’ve got so totally hooked on BSG that Moose and myself nearly had a nock-down, drag-out brawl over the ending of Season 3 last night. Well, our voices got a little raised at any rate 😉

The Tories want responsibility for out-of-hours GP services transfered back to GPs. I’m in a conflict about this as a shit GP-controlled out-of-hours service landed me in hospital strung out on morphine, whilst a shit PCT-controlled out-of-hours service landed me in hospital strung out on morphine…

For my mum – a daring Bear rescue

I’ve loved, adored and worshipped Stephen Fry since the days of Jeeves & Wooster. Not only is the man insanely funny (if you haven’t watched QI yet, do so), he is fiendishly intelligent and… well, didn’t I pretty much cover it with ‘loved, adored and worshipped’? So it gives me more than a little pleasure to introduce his blog.

Another thing I’ve long been a fan of is Terry Pratchett. I can’t remember when I first got my mitts on a book, but I think I have Tim DeCamp, Edgarley School and a debate team where the topic was ‘dragons’ to thank… So I’ve read all the books cover to cover more than is probably healthy. I have my favourite characters and stories but I am always at something of a loss with where to start people off if they are new to the books (because, all agree, “Colour of Magic” and “Light Fantastic” aren’t the best of the bunch). So here’s a handy reading guide to the collection.

Abi told me off the other week for not including enough movie trailers. Sorry Abi 🙁 Because I dare not incur the wrath again,
Atonement – I’ve seen this and it is damn good with a glorious sound track, beautiful cinematography, and amazing acting. If you haven’t seen it already, do so. Now.
Grace is Gone – John Cusack. Need I say more?

And with that done for another week, I am going to curl up and watch some Black Adder to cheer myself up. Followed by some SG:1 Season 4. And maybe even a fairy cake. Mmmm, fairy cakes… (Worry not, all isn’t actually as bad as the first half of this post makes out. I’m just drama-queening it because it’s nice to moan occasionally. I’m not going to jump off a bridge or anything, just feel a little sorry for myself 🙂 )

Once again, I wouldn’t trouble yourselves looking for the provenance of the roast title. This one is a pure Cas-classic. We’ve been on a bit of a Battlestar Galactica binge lately at Meadow Towers – I got season 3 for my birthday, and because it had been six months since we’d last watched season 2, Moose and I decided to go back and refresh our memories before starting on the good stuff (and it is very, very good). In one of the episodes, they show the Cylon resurrection. With one model, she wakes up in a bath of goo and all her Cylon friends are around the edge, reassuring her (it turns out that being reborn is a little traumatic). And then they show the resurrection of a different model. Again, a naked woman wakes up in a bath of goo with all her Cylon friends around the edge, murmuring nice things at her, ‘telling her it will be OK’, and then camera pans back to show that this particular Cylon has been handcuffed to the sides of the bath…

Which prompted me to go “because of course, nothing says relax like handcuffs!” Moose looked at me, I looked at Moose, and we both went “Roast title!”

So there you have it.

How has this week gone? Slowly is the only word for it. It has felt like a whole week of Fridays – hard work, tiring, and never ending. Bleck. There are times I could cheerfully knock hit certain people at work upside the head with a frying pan. Grrr. But enough of that. The week has ended well with a supreme dinner party here at Meadow Towers – luckily for me, Moose is a lovely person and a damn good cook so I got a delicious birthday meal I didn’t have to do anything for other than buy the wine and cut up the bread and make the salad. And invite people. Plus I got lots of penguin goodies so all in all, this week wasn’t too bad.

I’m not sure if the non-UK readers are going to get this story, but it tickled me pink, so here it is for all you marmite loving/hating Paddington fans out there: Paddington bear still eats marmalade. The advert is sheer genius, even though it does mess with a childhood favourite.

A man was recently refused alcohol because he refused to prove he was over 21. He was 72. There really is nothing I can add to that story to make it any better.

General Sir Richard Dannatt is growing concerned about the gulf between the army and the nation in the UK. I personally have a very ambivalent attitude to the armed forces. Members of my family have served for years (my uncle is one year shy of his half century in the TAs and has served in both Iraq conflicts, Afghanistan twice, the Balkans, and sundry other conflicts) and I am intensely proud of the work they have done. On the other hand, I find violence abhorent and vehemently disagree with armed conflict of any kind. But back to the article – what got me wasn’t the stated treatment of returning soldiers at the hands of the general public. It was the quote from the general saying “we still have a nation that, at times, seems immune to homeless and psychologically-damaged soldiers”.
Surely that is more of a stunning indictment of the armed forces that they demob soldiers without the support of finding them housing or psychological support, than that the nation is at fault?

ProBlogger recently took a poll of how long people had been blogging. The results can be seen here. What I find interesting is the really sharp drop at 3-4 years. Seemingly, that’s the make/break point for serious bloggers. Survive that year and you’re set. *counts back on Bright Meadow* Um, this could be an interesting year 😉

Where do you stand on Smilies? Nils isn’t a fan. He does make a good point – they are ugly and far too prone to misinterpretation. But I am guilty of using them incessantly. I blame my early introduction to MSN. The conversations were fast and, between the group of us, we rapidly developed a shorthand that made full use of smilies. In the context of the IM, the people I was speaking to knew that when I typed o_O I was raising an eyebrow to signal my skepticism. Just as *plink* and *chocolate orange* became shorthand for certain in-jokes, a 😉 at the end of a sentence took the sting out of heavy British sarcasm and loving irreverence our American friends had troubles translating. Somehow I just never got rid of the use of smilies – they are part of my digital lexicon. I do try to be sparing with them, but even now there are people I speak to online with whom I can have entire conversations in L33T and emoticons. But just for you Nils, I try and keep them from littering Bright Meadow too much.

The XKCD comic is really tickling my fancy at the moment – I think the ones I like best are the ones like this one where I genuinely don’t get the joke till the last frame. Genius.

And on that note, I am going to nurse my not-quite-hangover and watch more BSG:3 Thank any god you care to mention that Apollo is no longer wearing that fat suit!

As you’re never going to guess where this week’s title has come from, I’ll tell you now to spare you the misery: it is courtesy of a particularly fine example of the Chav-sub-section of humanity who sat behind us on the bus on Friday morning. I’m not sure of the direct translation, but I suspect from the context she was telling her friend not to get stressed out about a particular situation she found herself in. I do so love traveling by bus – you get to overhear some truly amazing conversations!

I’m writing this whilst Moose has banned me from the kitchen (and consequently the living room as well – damn open plan!) I shouldn’t really complain about this ban as it’s due to birthday cake creation (yum!) but… Well, you know when you’re told you can’t do something you instantly want to do it? Yup. Anyone would think I was 2 tomorrow, not 25.

But this is a perfect opportunity to write the Roast without distraction of the TV, so write the Roast I will (here’s hoping I can get it in before the F1 starts…)

Hamlet has long been my favourite Shakespeare play (of the dramas. I’ve got a soft spot for Taming of the Shrew from the comedies). I’m not sure why, but I just like it. One of my ambitions has always been to watch Hamlet by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). If I could see it at the Globe, even better. So when it was announced they are putting it on again, I was over the moon. And then I read that my favourite actor, David Tennant will play Hamlet and my cup runneth over. Now I’ve just got to score some tickets…

The pint survives. Kind of.

I’ll agree with this scientists who feel the UK must have a human space role.

The BBC is to televise the Super Bowl. My question is why? We have football (soccer) which demands more skill – even I can see that. And let’s face it, all American Football is is Rugby for wooses. I mean, what’s with all that padding?!

Google has recently called for coherent web privacy laws. I’m thinking back a little while and struggling not to go “pot, say hello to mr. kettle”. They do have a point though.

The Archbishop has called for the Monarch to remain defender of THE faith, not defender of faith. I’m a closet monarchist at heart. I love that we have a queen which, theoretically at least, limits the potential god-like power of the American presidential model we seem to have been going down the line of lately. I also like the history and the pomp and stuff. It gives an identity to the nation. However, I do *not* like that the monarch is ‘defender of the faith’ that is not my faith and is not the faith of a significant number of people who are also British. For once Prince Charles seems to be talking sense when he wants to become defender of Faith in general. Because how can having the monarch just defend one faith actually be less divisive, as the archbishop claims? Also, what’s with his attack on extra-curricular activities?! The main reason parents put their children INTO these programs, which include learning a musical instrument, sport, or a foreign language, are because those are the very classes schools themselves no longer teach. Grrr.

A lady on Hong Kong has brutally attacked a python in defense of her pet dog. Yes, congratulations to the woman for saving her pet and, as she points out, small children are potentially at danger from evil snakes, but… I just can’t get the image out of my head of some Paris Hilton look-alike ineffectually kicking a python with her stillettos in defense of her rat-sized dog…

Here are lots of pictures of gorgeous libraries. No reason, they’re just nice to look at.

Look after your Introvert and they will look after you.

Run! It’s an Alien Fish! Nooooooo…

Got yourself Google Earth? Well, now you’ve got yourself a flight simulator (thanks to the Crazy Canal Man for this one).

“It still shocks me that the term “career woman” exists, with no counterpart for men; being ambitious with one’s work or not pursuing romance still has a stigma attached if you are female.”

As a Mac user, I frequently crow with unholy glee over my PC user friends who don’t have the great freeware that us Mac people use. So, for all you poor Windows-Slaves out there, here’s ten pieces of software you don’t have to pay for, but that do a damn-good job. Got anything else to add to the list? Drop into the comments and share 🙂

Look! It’s everyone’s favourite digital publisher talking about e-publishing and e-books on Radio 4. A few good points get made in the piece, not particularly one closing statement that says (I paraphrase) “e-books and digital publishing currently take the worst parts of the book world and the worst parts of the digital world and smash them together. Till we reverse that, people aren’t going to use them”. I did want to hammer one of the participants over the head with a hardback copy of War and Peace everytime he talked about “leveraging the Community”, but other than that, it’s a great 13 minutes of radio.

Masters of Media has a great preci of Andrew Keen’s book “The Cult of the Amateur” which I’ve previously mentioned in a Roast – the dark side of web 2.0

We’ve had pretty libraries this week, so why not 7 big holes? (Thanks Moose)

And now we end, as all the best Roasts do, with a movie trailer: Iron Man. *shiver* Looks good 😀

So what to say about this week? Well, I made it into work on Tuesday (woo hoo!), watched Knocked Up on Wednesday (enjoyable), assembled flat-pack furniture on Thursday, enhanced my leadership skills with three hours of e-learning on Friday, vegged around Meadow Towers on Saturday and wrote the Roast/did laundry on Sunday.

Not, all things considered, the most riveting of weeks, but then it can’t all be bungee-jumping off Tower Bridge and single-handedly white water rafting down the Congo. I am rejuvenated after last weeks unfortunate food poisoning incident and am ready to face the horrors my 25th birthday might have in store for me next week, that’s the important thing.

For some reason, the roastable material this week hasn’t been very forthcoming. Either I’m getting harder to please in my old age, or teh interweb is getting boring. Either way, enjoy what we (Moose normally contributes a good couple of links each week, and today is no different) have found for you.

The Eurostar can now make it from Paris to London in just over two hours. So I can get to another country by train faster than I can get back to the Homestead by train. That’s just not right!

A senior judge has called for the whole population and every UK visitor to go on a national DNA database. I can’t quite write a coherent argument as it’s just 10.30 and I only have one cup of tea under my belt, but the spidy senses are tingling more than a little. It’s also made me realise that I know more about civil liberties, privacy and legal rights in the States than I do in my own country (courtesy of too much CSI, NCIS, West Wing und so weiter). Something I should probably rectify before I start spouting off because I know there are significant differences!

Preston gets a Wallace and Gromit statue. Southampton gets laser lights. I live in the wrong city!

There is no substitute for sheer stupidity in this world.

Are you going Pink for October? Bright Meadow will be (though I will try to make it slightly less garish than last years eye-burning effort!)

And lastly, Facebook has announced that they are rolling out a limited public search on profiles. I’m not sure what my own feelings toward this are – a fairly typical blend of a knee-jerk “oh no, my privacy!” and “cool, more people will be able to find me” – and I haven’t had time to sort through all the possible implications in my brain, so I am going to do what I normally do in these situations: throw you in the direction of other informed discussion on the matter.

And then I am going to prod you in this direction for some thoughts on our tendency to go a little ga-ga and over the top about things.

And lastly, I shall end it all with a movie trailer for
Fierce People, the only one that’s caught my eye this week.

Now I’m off to watch a bit of the grand prix. Anything rather than hoover the flat as I have to do before the inspection tomorrow!

For those of you who haven’t been following my adventures on Tumbleweeds (and why not?), I am back in the country and I am recovering from what was almost certainly a short, swift, but definitely NOT very sweet bout of food poisoning. I want to blame some suspect fresh pasta Moose handed me on Thursday when I had nothing in the larder that tempted me for dinner. She wants to pin the blame on a dodgy Slimfast or some bug I picked up in Guernsey. Whatever the trigger, I’ve been lying round Meadow Towers, groaning pathetically for the past four days with just about enough energy to crawl to the sofa and watch episodes of Firefly all day, before crawling back to bed. Seriously! It takes more energy than you’d think to have a shower and wash and blow dry your hair. For the super-curious and to reassure those of you worried about my personal hygiene, the latter all have been taken care of. Slowly, and with many sit-downs to stave off fainting fits and embarrassing trips to A&E (you cracked your head open in the bathtub and then half-strangled yourself with the hairdryer cord how again, exactly?)

The diverse symptoms of possible food poisoning I won’t go in to because they were bad enough to experience first hand, let alone describe, but they have resulted in nothing more substantive than a few cream crackers and numerous glasses of water passing my lips since Thursday evening. Oh, and one cup of tea and an English muffin this morning that I’m not sure was the wisest move. Great for dropping a few pounds maybe, not the best for mental clarity or physical stamina. You would not believe how long it has taken me to write these few coherent sentences…

So I want to you take this Toast (just the thought of a roast right now is making me queasy…) as a sign that I do adore of all you, my blog-reading and commenting lovelies. It won’t be the best ever, or the longest, but I have missed you these past couple of weeks (thanks to Neko and Moose for looking after things and doing some great Roasts of their own) and didn’t want to keep you hanging around any longer for a genuine Cas post.

Because we (me especially) could do with a laugh, here’s a new web-comic that’s been catching my eye on and off lately – Rusty Fork.

Oh how I wish I had the mental thing-y-ness to write a coherent intro to this link right now, but I don’t. I’ve been slurring sentences, making up words, and just plain resorting to mime at times lately to get my meaning across (hand wave, gesture, frantic scribble, handwave, nod head, shake head, grimace, sigh Moose eventually managed to translate to “oh, you want to sign the tenancy agreement now?”). Take pity on me and go read how danah lost control of Facebook.

Not sexy, not funny, but useful: manual Gantt charting in Excel.

I have no idea how I stumbled across this site, but I’ve been an awed subscriber since before I got an RSS reader (so several years at least) – these gardens are just so gloriously beautiful.

Read and write on the screen, or resort to paper? Here’s how the greats do it. For the curious, here’s how I do it (an amalgam of laptop, notebooks, moleskines and lots of kit-kats).

Moose linked to The Nines movie trailer last week. This week it’s my turn to link to the audio commentary.

For the curious, the pictures from my recent trip to Guernsey. I didn’t take that many, being one of those people who prefers to look at the world as a whole, rather than just through a viewfinder, but I did take a couple of nice shots 🙂

And that’s it. I am now off to collapse on the sofa and watch either the rest of Back to the Future II, or more Firefly, depending on who wins the battle for the remote.

And so the baton has been handed over to me. Yes, it’s Moose here. I’ve been lurking in the background for the past few days, making sure no-one has been caught in moderation, deleting spam etc. But it’s Sunday, so time for a roast.

I’m a big film fan and something that has always irritated me is the Hollywood tendancy to overlook everyone outisde the US when it comes to film websites. Most (not all, but most) film websites are geared towards the US audience, which means US release dates, US only competitions, US restricted access even on some sites. I was glad to read this week that I’m not the only person who thinks that when you put something on the internet it’s unfair to restrict it to one country.

Last week was the inaugural Slavery Memorial Day, prompting a tearful apology from London Mayor Ken Livingstone.

Teaxs has just executed its 400th person since the death penalty was re-introduced in 1976.

It was GCSE time this week. (national exams everyone takes at the age of 16 for any non-Brits reading). Once again the media knew the results before the students did, leading to stories like this one being posted the night before the results were due. I always think this is unfair on the kids that tried their best but didn’t do that well. Not everyone is academic; that doesn’t make them stupid, but the media going on and on about how easy the exams are probably does.

One of the scariest road junctions in the UK has been voted the top roadside attraction/distraction in a poll by the RAC. Spagetti Junction in Birmingham is a pretty impressive site from the air. Not sure I’d actually want to drive through it though.

If this keeps up, one day monkeys could take over the world. Better go warn Charlton Heston.

And finally, film trailers that have caught my eye this week:
Alvin and the Chipmunks – for 2 reasons: 1, my brother used to have an Alvin and Chipmunks record when we were little, and 2, what has happened to Jason Lee’s career?
Rendition – it’s interesting to see how quickly Hollywood is picking up on political/war stories these days.
The Last Legion – because ‘fantasy action adventure’ and ‘Colin Firth’ are not words that normally go together.
Enchanted – because it made me laugh, particularly James Marsden and the bicycles (near the end of the trailer)
The Nines – because I have no idea what’s going on here, but it still made me want to see it.