What's with today, today?

I have been thinking a lot about homelessness lately- working in the city it can be quite in your face- and so I thought I would share some things I've come across in the past little while... My thinking for this post started with a bit of a rant about political correctness. Triggered in turn by a comment on an internet site who created a character who was homeless and mentally ill, of perpetuating stereotypes of homeless people as having mental illnesses and being drug and/or alcohol addicts. Sadly I do not remember exactly what the person said, but it puzzled me somewhat. The first thought I had was that when I think about people being derogatory toward homeless people is the accusation of laziness and the need for hard work/a job. The second was that a large proportion of homeless people have addictions and/or mental illnesses, and the third was that in a way the remark could in a way be construed as saying that it was right to dismiss people who are mentally ill or addicted, bu...

In the last few months I have seen two romantic comedies at the cinema- 'The Proposal' and 'The Ugly Truth'. One of these is about a Canadian editor who proposes marriage to her assistant in order to be able to stay and work in America, one is about a tv producer who is forced to hire a misogynistic presenter whom she instantly dislikes in order to get ratings. One of these movies horrified me with its attitude toward women, one of them pleasantly surprised me, even if it had some cringe-worthy moments. Which is which? Spoilers ahead... 'The Proposal' starts with a self-confident editor, a terrible boss with her life (and those of her subordinates) firmly under her control, being threatened with deportation because she hasn't fulfilled her visa requirements. She then gets her overworked and overlooked assistant to pretend to be her fiance, and agree to marry her, so that she can stay. While she uses her power over him to do this, from then on he has someth...

One of the things I wanted to do when I grew up was to catalogue fairy tales. I read a few collections of fairy tales from various countries and noticed that there were notable similarities between folk tales from completely unrelated countries. I decided I would hunt down these similarities, compare them, and find out why this was. When I grew up, I found this had already been done. Well, fairy tales had been catalogued- centuries ago. There were universally acknowledged and referenced 'types', which you can refer to by number if you know the catalogue well. This was fairly discouraging. I guess I should have seen it coming, what with the collections of comparative folktales and all, but you always hope. They'd even tried to figure out why. This is where Jung's idea of the collective unconscious theory comes in. As far as I understand it, the theory states that human experience is to some extent innately shared between all humanity, without needing to be learned, and ...

I had millions of ideas to share with you all on the bus ride home, but once I got here they all went out of my mind completely. But why is it that my bus always leaves exactly as I reach the bus stop. No matter when I start running, or where the bus is when I begin, or how fast I sprint ('sprint' for a given value of 'wearing work shoes') the moment I can reach out and touch the doors is the moment that they close, and the bus drives off, not heeding my waving arms and exclamations? On another note, I have often spent time defending Gen Y against the various slights made on them, but maybe there is something in this attention span, instant gratification thing. I say this because I notice myself checking facebook compulsively for new updates, but worse still getting annoyed when there haven't been any new posters put up on the traffic light post near my bus stop for over a week. Where are the new things? I already know I can get beginner piano lessons, I need more ...

So I suppose I have given you long enough to finish that long and, if I say so myself, very long-winded blogpost that I wrote last, and now is the time to write something new. Strangely I have spent a long time wanting to write something, but now that I start all my ideas disappear like magic. Or maybe not strangely. Maybe that is just the nature of writing? So now I will do something a bit unusual and share with you a recipe that I came up with the other day. It's pretty simple, but tasty (and healthy!) Baked pears Ingredients: 2 pears Natural yoghurt Cinnamon Nutmeg Honey Thinly slice pears, place in a baking tray. Brush with honey, sprinkle with cinnamon and nutmeg. Place in preheated oven on low/moderate heat (go for 180 degrees if unsure), bake approx. 15 minutes or until starting to soften. Serve with scoop of yoghurt and a drizzle of honey. Serves 2 (vary number of pears for different amounts of people)