BROCCOLI CRACKS GLOBAL WARMING
Dear NASA,
Thanks for all your ideas regarding solutions to climate change, namely:
- Sunshade in outer space
- Cloudmaking kits
- Sulphur screen
- Phytoplankton
- Artificial trees
I have a sixth to add and it comes at a fraction of the price.
It is broccoli.
Its cooling speed from boiling point to room temperature is faster than any plant alive.
As for how you implement this phenomenon, that’s best left to your scientists, as my suggestion of broccoli forests steamed over volcanoes is a little impractical.
Should you choose to roll this out, please forward all proceeds and IP rights to:
Gorran School Minibus Appeal, St Austell, Cornwall, PL26 6NY, United Kingdom.
BIRO (# 74,939)
The chewed pen lid of a biro is feeling pretty pleased with itself as it writes this post.
It finds the keys as slippy as ice as its narrow blade skits across the keys.
The outcome is not deep, or funny, or sexy. Just mechanical, yet precise.
Like a woodpecker fooled by a fake plastic tree, as it taps away to Radiohead.
CHEAP + FAST + GOOD
Cheap: I’m up for it.
Fast: Me too.
Good: And me.
Fast: Too late, at best, only two of us can be in the room together.
Good: Well, leave then.
Cheap: Maybe I should go, I’m the most dispensible.
Fast: No, you stay, I’ll leave. People should be patient, not rich.
Good: No no, I’ll go. Last in, first out.
In walks compromise and conducts a menage a trois.
They sire triplets.
They all lived a priceless, endless and peerless life.
OVERESTIMATION OF DEATH
This morning I heard that the Chilean government has reduced the estimated number deaths in the world’s most severe earthquake from 750 to 250. It offered no explanation, so let’s try and guess.
There is a global media obsession with ‘quantity of deaths’ in that every natural disaster, on the whole, equates to a two week tot up of bodies to sustain the world’s interest in a domestic tragedy and garner its support, emotionally, physically and economically.
What I’m getting at is do they feel less loved than Haiti because (thankfully) only a fraction of their people died? It’s as though the quality of human life lost is irrelevant. As news, it is all about the amount of deaths in as short a time possible. Mass shootings in malls rank high because of their drama, yet famine barely makes the margins because of its slow-kill omnipresence. Even wars slip down the pecking order as they span years and rarely are thousands of people killed within hours.
The depth of death has shrunk. It’s not enough to die alone. You need to die quick, dramatically and among several million if you’re to make the front page at CNN. So, on behalf of the human race, can we plead to all you broadcasters, to try and place death in its true proportion. And on behalf of every Chilean who died, let’s have 250 minutes of silence.
MAISON BERTAUX’S ALMOND CROISSANT
If you only had one meal left with the world at your mercy, what would you eat? Don’t rush, I’d hate for you to get indigestion just thinking about it. If you’re stuck for direction, head for Maison Bertaux at 28 Greek Street, Soho. This cinematic cafe-come-institution is run by two sisters who ooze warmth, wit and the sexy swagger of 60′s Paris – catch them together on the same day and you’ll melt. On the street outside, each table has a half pint glass as a vase with two pence pieces to weigh it down. Noel Fielding and Sigur Ros show their art here. Writers write here. Dancers rest here. Old ladies help clear tables here. You can sit for hours and discuss just about anything if they’re in the mood. The place is cut into slithers as inviting as any cake on earth. And this is why i come here. Cake. One cake in particular. The almond croissant. It deserves its own novel. Muscular, dense, twisted with a thousand stories to tell if you listen real hard. It spans a good seven inches and must weigh a third of a kilo. It belongs half way up Everest and is almost too much for one grown man. So starve yourself. Go in hungry and early, they sell out.
GROWING CONCRETE
The Shard at London Bridge is a force of man against nature. 300 metres up, with a keen eye, on a clearish day, you’ll see the sea. Not bad for a debut building by a young Italian architect who ate his greens. As it shoots up this spring, trees are also hitting their main growth spurt. Every bud within 58 miles of London must look on and say, ‘fucking cheat’. With a crew of over a hundred men bolting on twig after twig of steel, the Shard is a supermodel in the make-up room compared to the hard-grafting trees wooing the sunshine and air. Not that this is bad. By heck, no. The Shard, in its slender beanstalk manner, shall whistle to the trees and egg them on to greater heights and spans. By 2012, when the last pane of glass takes its seat at the summit, we will be blessed with 40 more leafage and therefore less carbon floating around the city. If you have a balcony nearby, turn the plant to face the shard and see it rocket.
If you’re the not the tallest of people and you’d like to put on a few inches yourself, go stare at The Shard. For every hour you watch, you’ll grow a mm.
THINGS YOU CAN ONLY DO ONCE
To mark the first of March, here are a few additions to the list of things you can only do once, the kind of thoughts that pollute heads on this day more than any other day for reasons anthropologists, sociologists and statisticians do not yet know.
- Burn a particular something
- Lose your virginity
- Have your tonsils out
- Be born (medically, not religiously – ie: ‘again’ doesn’t count)
- Commit suicide
- Turn a particular age
- Drown
- Enter parenthood
- Pass your driving test
- Be tried for a particular crime