Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Food sex food sex food sex

Is it just me, or does anyone else find Nigella Express absolutely fucking obscene?
Don't get me wrong. I really admire Nigella Lawson. She is obviously excellent at what she does, and i think she is incredibly attractive. I just think maybe she's gone all Madonna or Michael Jackson and she can no longer see/hear herself as other people do.
Obviously she is setting out to make food sexy, and to offer an alternative sexy to 'size zero skinny'. This is all very well. but what i have seen over the past couple of weeks on the show, i think, is obscene.
Last night she was making chocolate cookies in order to 'comfort' a friend. Self-referentially she commented that some people might think that the (obscene) amount of chocolate she had used for six cookies a little over the top. She followed this with the unbelievably outrageous comment, "But I don't think you can't put a price on human suffering"
WHAT? What the fuck? She's not talking about alleviating torture in oppressive political regimes. She's not talking about buying fairtrade chocolate because real human beings die on cocoa plantations in conditions which equate to slavery. No. She's talking about one of her fucking posh friends who's been dumped by some bloke!!!
Jesus Christ! It makes me feel naive, in that i forget that there are people out there who are so over- privileged that they can make a comment like that and not be burned by it's glaring misguided irony. This is what i find obscene.
I also object to the glamorisation of night-time bingeing in the programme. I know Nigella makes it look all sexy, and she 'needs' these fixes because she is a 'busy mum', but surely such advice is against some kind of National Health directive? You wake up, you're worrying about stuff, "you should go down to the fridge and pour sugar down your neck".
Last night she was drenching french toast in icing sugar and then covering it in pureed strawberries. Then she went back and ate left over bolognese sauce and bread. I feel sick just thinking about it.
Here is my objection to this. It's okay for upper-middle class (or whatever she is) rich people to eat whatever they want because A. they can afford really good quality food and B because food is their hobby or living. Fuck off! Food is a means of survival- it's the difference between being alive and being dead for some people. The programme justifies western gluttony for those wealthy enough to copy it.
If Nigella can't sleep, i suggest she has some sex -much better for de-stressing and promoting sleep- and failing the presence of her lovely husband: just have a wank love and leave the nations eating habits alone!

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

i like my air unconditioned

After three weeks, i have become used to the low hiss of the air conditioning.
I no longer have to tip my head slightly to one side in order to check that my brain/personality is not leaking away slowly through my ears.
The air con also makes me sneeze incessantly. I feel like the caged canary that they used to take down the mines. If i expire, then they will knock the building down: declare it unfit for human habitation.
The job i left in April only just covered my living costs. This job doesn't even do that. Another rejection letter hits the mat.
I try to remember who i am, but the thought is lost in the daily mechanics of the next hour. It gets hot in the office and i'm thinking of all the other things i want to do, and about having time to do them, and i have a flashback to those feelings of twelve months ago and the thought crosses my mind that the fear is still tagging the heels of my memory.