One of the things that really annoys me about universities is the sorts of things they can get funding for. My old university more or less funds all the things it actually wants to research through the money that comes in from its vital medical research into diet pills. Generally, we've found there's not that much money in curing cancer. We are also world-leaders in IVF research and there's a lot of money in that. Some people, like me for instance, might say that in an over-populated world the money would be better spent looking after orphans.
But wait, we have a new champion, because a study has just been published in America which claims that lesbians are nearly three times more likely to be obese (I take it that this is in the medical sense) than heterosexual women. Obviously, this is a really important stat; if you want to avoid being fat the first thing to do is be straight, with eating better food and exercise coming in a poor second. But it gets better; Boston University researchers have come to the conclusion that this is because lesbians have a 'better body image' than straight women. This is clearly a dialect use of the word 'better'. Over-eating reflects an attitude to food which is just as pathological as under-eating and which just as often stems from bad body image. I can't believe anyone let them out of high school English class let alone gave them medical degrees and money.

Ethical Choices?

This ethical consumer jazz is a bit of a minefield, just when you thought you'ld found a product that might replace its evil counter-part effectively, it turns out it is in fact more evil than the original product and you've been completely had by some canny marketing. There's also the availability problem, The Guardian mentions some wonder product that one discovers, after a significant degree of research, is only available to those within walking distance of a particular environ of Cardiff. Also the question of efficacy, whether it's vegan shoes, washing up liquid or eyeliner while it's manufacture may be actively improving the quality of life of bunnies does it do what it's supposed to? I have also noticed that there is quite a dearth of Irish specific information. So for whatever it may be worth, I will include here tagged with Ethical Living my own discoveries and trials related to the topic. It will all be a bit Dublin City Centre - Ranelagh centred but there you go.

So today I shall be trying to lay my hands on Lilly's washing up liquid, their website lists stockists and I'm going (or possibly more accurately Hannah under duress is going) to Nourish on Wicklow St. Nourish closes ridiculously early. It's apparently made in Cork, out of flowers. I'm currently using Ecover, which has a number of weak points, it's made in Belgium so the carbon footprint ain't great and they have a rolling cut off date rather than fixed (See API's Beauty without Cruelty for this sort of terminology, lots of info on this site but they do make you work for it). I'm not nuts about the actual cleaning power of their washing up liquid either, although it is adequate, however their laundry liquid and all purpose cleaner are great. Ecover stuff is available in a great selection at that healthfood shop next door to Office on Grafton Street, and a more basic selection in the Spar/Centra/whatever at the crossroads in Ranelagh Village.

Reversals

I suppose that it's really a bit much for me to be shocked that my luck turned. I mean, slings and arrows and all that. When something is proverbially fickle, surprise is vulgar. (Agatha Christie says surprise is always vulgar, which I can't help but think must have been something of a professional handicap.) Gamblers have a superstition about not mentioning their luck for fear it might change and Terry Pratchett thinks that Luck dislikes panderers (though she likes Rincewind; Luck has no taste). So I've learnt my lesson, which - apparently - is: don't knock the wisdom of popular culture. (The Shakespeare quote counts in that category; he's always been popular, especially that monologue.)

I seriously hope this is the right lesson, because I don't think I can take a lot more learning just at the moment.

I like symmetry, which means I like mirror images, which means I like reversals. Yes, I'm sure I do. Which is good. Under the circumstances. Nevertheless, in the immortal words of Jet - and note me applying my hard-learnt lesson here - I think it might be time to kick the plan before the plan kicks me.

Gallic Wisdom

This is the way to do it,

How to cure a cold

One tall silk hat, one four-poster bed, one bottle of brandy. To be taken as follows: put the tall silk hat on the right-hand post at the foot of the bed, lie down and arrange yourself comfortably, drink the brandy, and when you see a tall silk hat on both the right and left bedposts you are cured.

A cordiall water: a garland of odd & old receipts to assuage the ills of man or beast/ M. F. K. Fisher (Faber, 1963, p65.)

[I have been so thoroughly indoctrinated by my education, I find myself unable to so much as quote in birthday cards without providing footnotes.]

Today's resolution is..

..To finish at least some of the (approximately) seventeen books I’m reading. I don’t know if this happens to other people, but whenever I’m feeling unsettled in a certain way, and this is usually because I’m having to just deal with something I don’t like rather than been able to face it head on and batter it into submission. There are few things I cope less well with than having to just wait. Anyway whenever I’m feeling like this I am incapable of finishing a book, doesn’t matter whether it’s interesting or enjoyable or not, either way there comes a point where the thought of continuing to read it becomes inexplicably repulsive and I have to go start another one. Anyway the flat finding trauma has left me with a significant number of unfinished books (and a living room that looks an explosion in Hodges*).

What got me thinking about the need to polish off these outstanding books was an entirely useful post by Ms. FatCat (I don’t know if only her friends are allowed to call her this, it’s a bit worrying, I have compromised by adding Ms – I’m not just naturally prissy) about particularly good books that have provoked an emotional reaction. On reading it and its accompanying comments I was barely able restrain myself from immediately heading off to track down both books that are old friends and have been shamefully forgotten and tempting, shiny new ones.

It really is quite wonderful what a good holiday can do for one, however it does appear to have an adverse effect on the standard of one’s of prose.

*& Figgis, Bookshop

Chou

I am going to Italy, Florence to be specific, La Grande Horizontale of cities. There will be wine and sun and more great masterpieces of unsurpassed beauty than you can shake a pointed stick at. There will be handbags and shoes, with any luck these will also be of unsurpassed beauty. There will be five meals a day and a great deal of dozing. I have two new outfits and a pair of killer shades. So long suckers!

The Terraces of Purgatory

This is, of course, courtesy of the nefariously, fabulous TwentyMajor. It perfectly suits my current mood, I’m feeling pretty lazy and this takes my fancy as being marvelously Dantesque (in honour of my forthcoming Italian trip).

Do you
know what would be cool?
If someone, attending a government function of
some kind, replaced the water in the bottles of Ballygowan with 100% pure Galway
water and made them all really, really sick.
And just to make sure they put
some MRSA superbug virus in their too. And some contaminated blood.
And then
shot them all in the face.

The Luck of Angels

I have finally obtained somewhere to live (I believe someone may already have mentioned that) and thus, have now got the headspace to do things other than worry in a very focused fashion. This is why I have only got round to reading Hannah's posts now. As per usual with a lot of the stuff she says, it took a degree of rumination to identify the, perhaps we should call them, affectionate insults that she loads her conversation with at times. The annoying thing about this is that she has buggered off to Italy and I'm not going to be able to call her on them till I catch up with her, by which time it will probably have gone off me.

Anyway in response to one of them, I do know how lucky I am. I just haven't had time to revel/grovel in it yet. I've spent the last two last two weeks actually doing nothing else but flat hunting and staring moodily into space, and of course occasionally snapping at the people that I owe the majority of my life-happiness quotient to. This resulted in the rest of the world making a sudden, en masse reappearance a short period of time after I signed the lease. I am also fighting a fairly constant urge to do nothing but nest. My mind keeps wandering off to think about storage solutions, whether my green glass thingy would look better on the windowsill and maybe buying a bird feeder. I'm fighting that though.

Anyway, in conclusion, whatever about flats, I certainly have better friends than I deserve. People who have, with ridiculous good nature and patience, put up with me panicking, shouting, being completely self-involved, having hysterics, obsessing, snapping, Being Silent (I can do this in caps believe me) and generally being a complete prima dona level pain in the ass. They also carried an awful lot of boxes, organised me, put up with me throwing a strop when someone put the teaspoons in the wrong place (the horror) and when I finally completely fell apart made sure that in the midst of all the boxes I had a bed to sleep in with matching bedlinen (at times they know me scarily well).

Err, thanks guys.