'THULHU!

This lead to this which makes me want to watch this. 

Awww

This is new for me: Review time - Graze Nibble Box

oooh! What's in my box?

I recently got a discount for a Graze box. By discount, I mean one free one and one half price so I thought I would give it a go. The website can be found here. After looking at the site, I decided to go for the 'nibble box' once a week. There are two types of boxes: nibble and nutritional, where you choose from only the most nutritional choices.  I actually got my first box last week, but I was so excited I didn't wait to take any pictures.

It's all a load of nuts. The inside of my Graze box

I was quite surprised by a thump it made as it fell through the letter box: yes, it fits through the letter box. The length is less than a side of A4 paper. but as can be seen, there is four pots of snacks. This week they were all nuts from firey cashews to pistachios and almond mixture as I love nuts, but there is a wide range of of other things including dried fruit and nut mixes (some with chocolate!), seeds, foccacia and flapjacks. Over all there is more than one hundred things to choose from. And even better, if you tell them you don't like it, then you won't get it. Any thing else, and it is a free for all, a random choice every week. But if you really love something, again, rate it and you will get it more often.

It tastes good too, and I found a box lasted me a couple of days as afternoon and morning snacks. They post first class as many times a week as there are Royal Mail deliveries. And they arrive when they say they will. I must admit, I was wondering if it would be late but so far it's been great.

Onto the prices. Normally a box is £3.49, but on the website at the minute, there is an offer to get the first box at half price.

I like Graze. The packaging is all recycled and recyclable - even the plastic and the information booklet. The snacks taste good and it is something I think I will carry on with. £3.50 a week is quite a good price to 'eat more healthy food (fewer biscuits)'

Meet Barry, the gut bacterium.

I found this on another blog I follow over at Science Blogs. I watched it and found it both quite cute and at the same time more creepy than I can express. Bloody good, though. I couldn't get it out of my head that she sounded like GLADOS. Maybe the future is closer than we think.

Redemption

90% fucking awesome, 8% tired, 2% spaced out.

I've started LARP again after two years with my nose pressed against the window looking in hungrily. And compared to the the last event I went to, even though that was pretty good, this one was bloody amazing. It didn't feel like I was time in for 4 days, it felt like 2 at the most.  Part of that is that I know more people in the system, (and I know the system!) and I'm more confident in myself and my stupid fear of large crowds of people all breathing all the air and leaving none for me is finally -slowly- getting under control. I won't be getting on the battle field for a couple of years, but the amount of people in the faction is much more dealable now. I don't feel the need to run away and cry in a small space where no-one else is allowed.

Add to that that Leaf is far more fun to play than Sargent Meier ever was, and that rituals are awesome. This character has a lot more roleplay that fighter in her. she isn't a fighter, so I was forced to roleplay. But it was in a friendlier faction, and I actually saw the other factions in character, which I never quite managed to do last time.

I also love the fact that the Hanau Epe are from an area where no one else knows, with a completely different culture, which lead to hour long conversations such as why do you say your name is Jhereg when it is quite clearly X? 

I'm actually looking forward to Convocation, as much for time in as for the fact that behind that the faction isn't tearing itself to shreds with backbiting wah. When I realised I didn't have enough money last time to continue from my first event, I wasn't too heart broken. It's a good sign that I am already stupidly excited about the rest of this season.

Books

It has recently come to my attention that someone has written sequels to Enid Blyton's Mallory Towers. I remember reading, and loving those six stories about Darrell Rivers and her class and the books end as she and her friends go off to university. (St. Andrews. Oh the implicit money...) So what were the six new books? Turns out they follow Felicity, her sister and their class. I can't help but think that there is something wrong there, that the next generation of children will be thinking of the 12 books in the Mallory Towers series.

I genuinly don't think that books like Enid Blyton's, or Elinor M Brent Dyer's should be changed just because it is seen as politically incorrect or it is too hard for children today to understand the grammar and language of  sixty/seventy years ago. It is too hard for children today to understand the grammar of sixty or seventy years ago because they aren't given the chance to try.

I know that some of the books I read and loved as a child were changed, even then from how they were  originally written and that saddens me too. There is always something that rings a little bit false, that jars with the spirit of the text. There is always some sub-text, some shadow of meaning that is lost in these attempts to make the book current, and nothing makes me want to stop reading the books more than that. So I have decided that I want any children I may have in the future to be able to read the books as the author wanted them to be read, not as some interfering busy-body twenty years down the line thinks they should be read. To this aim, I have decided to start collecting the old stories I used to read, as close to the original script as possible. I am fully aware that this is probably going to be a monumentally hard undertaking, because in most cases the original scripts are going to be out of print.

I have already made a start with, yes, Enid Blyton's Mallory Towers and Famous Five, as well as Elinor M Brent Dyer's The Chalet School (all 60 odd of them... horrors!) because if I leave it until I do have children (being at university now, it is far to early) it will be far to late.

Eventually I shall move onto the books by people like Tamora Pierce, Diana Wynne Jones and Diane Duane, all authors I loved, and to be honest still do. I am quite happy to curl up on a rainy afternoon with a cup of tea and a stack of the books I used to read ten years ago.

Some people comfort eat. I comfort read and I don't want my food to be contaminated. So I will collect the books I love and keep them safe so others can read them in the spirit they were written.

It's Christmas!

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