Ingratitude! thou marble-hearted fiend...

“Ingratitude is treason to mankind.” James Thomson


Friday 14 May 2010

It may look to the untrained eye I'm sitting on my arse all day...

Apparently I am the only person who has not been eating quinoa since being weaned from the breast. We had a brief dalliance a while ago and I decided it was a little high maintenance - rinsing and toasting and boiling? - and pretty much forgot about it. Now my fat face is killing me a little every time I look at it, and in my efforts to simultaneously eat a lot and lose weight, I am having a quinoa moment. With everything. I think I have eaten my body weight in quinoa today and it isn't even 1pm.

Yes - quinoa and weight loss are my opening blog gambit today. I know you come here for the breakneck thrills. Wait till I tell you about my feelings for roasted beetroot.

Can you eat too much beetroot? It seems like the sort of thing that you imagine is healthy and harmless, like herbal tea or vitamin A, but maybe you could overdo it a little and wake up in hospital needing a liver transplant or dialysis. I can't help but think that the colour could be a warning signal.

Don't worry! It gets better! David Beckham's bizarrely frozen face appeared on the news today in connection with something to do with the World Cup and I still don't really know what it was because I was distracted by his masklike expression. He has the face equivalent of an unblinking eye. Does that sound a little like a free online translation? What I mean is that he is utterly immobile in parts of his facial area, while his mouth moves and speaks and he appears to continue to breathe and otherwise interact normally. It's like Bell's palsy. That he paid for.

Tony Blair went through a period of looking like the Joker in drag - that thing where there is a central eggshell dome of forehead and the eyebrows tip up provocatively at the outer edges. Has he laid off the 'tox lately? The recent photos of him seem to all look relatively normal in a wizened and desiccated way. Redundant I know, but wizened and desiccated are both great words and I couldn't decide.

In other news, I seem to be unable to write anything here that hangs together in a structured way. I am loath to think that this has the flavour of those observational comics who introduce a noun or verb followed by "What's that all about?" Despite appearances, I think a lot about this blog and what I will write here. By noon I have written and discarded or forgotten a dozen posts, if only in my head. (Maybe the head part is where I'm going wrong.) I feel like I'm trying to do too much and I'm not prioritising very well. I want to be funny and provocative and interesting, even though that is a ton of work and I already take ages to churn out the most facile fluff. I seem to have trouble with a narrative here. But, you know, it's a blog, so despite feeling as though I'm not quite hitting the nail on the head, the sky hasn't fallen in.

And finally, proof in today's Daily Mail* that civilisation is being infiltrated by upright, costumed lizards**:


*Or perhaps I should say "more proof," and yes, this is where I have always fully expected the truth to emerge.
**Lizards - ? Possums - ? Dancing teacup poodles? I can't decide.

5 comments:

  1. sweet lord, quinoa - who the hell toasts it? or washes it? i just boil it. i'm all about simplicity when it comes to my oddly spelled ancient grains.

    and yes, i too write many brilliant blog posts...in my head...at 11:52 pm just as i am about to zork out. they are usually so bloody brilliant that i feel there's no way i'll forget them. in the morning? total blankness punctuated by the desperate blinking of the cursor.

    i am polish, i have been known to consume disturbingly huge quantities of beets and the only side effect is...well...the colour of the waste product.

    as for hunger-less weight loss i highly recommend south beach diet which is the only thing i have ever been able to lose weight on and keep it off. alas, no quinoa. or beets.

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  2. That's good news about beets! I have not yet been hospitalised.

    I will look into the South Beach Diet. The one time I cut carbs, I had been eating fairly generous portions of protein all day and feeling increasingly faint and ill and eventually found myself waiting for the bus tearing open a packet of Quorn sausages with my teeth and eating them raw. So that didn't work.

    I lost 45 lbs about 12 years ago following an informal version of Weight Watchers (points system, no meetings) and have kept most of it off, but it could not withstand the baking orgy my life has become.

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  3. I am a 30 year vegetarian, & I love quinoa, which I never wash, toast or boil. I just have someone else do it. I buy it, already prepared in the deli section of my local market.

    On New Years eve 1989, I weighed 208 pounds (I have no idea what that is in stones), & a year later- New Years Eve 1990, I weighed 155. I changed nothing about my diet. I excercised. 2 hours a day-6 days a week. I took 10 aerobic classes a week, plus boxing & weight lifting.

    My current physician is giving me until the end of 2010 to loose 35 pounds. My plan: much less whiskey & pizza & back to the gym in a major way. What I would like to do is eat fritters & watch aerobics on the television... followed by some champagne. Oh, well.

    I never know what I am going to post when I awaken each morning. I have a person challange to do a post a day & sometimes I am just blank.
    I love you blog & your writing...so hang in their little tomato. Your fans await.

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  4. 2 hours a day, 6 days a week? i need a little lie down just reading that. and what kind of life would it be without the occasional pizza? or vast quantities of wine that make you question your mental faculties the following (read: this) morning?

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  5. Yeah, though I admire your dedication Stephen, that is a seriously brutal way to lose weight. I am okay just exercising a little portion control and moving about a bit more. (Thanks for the blog encouragement!)

    Hey! No more talk of pizza here...

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