Print is Dead

For the early part of my childhood, I never had access to a computer. They were still sci-fi devices all big and filled rooms and were DATABASES. They could shoot nukes across the world and were powered by a computer in American called WHOPPER which is why for ages I thought that’s what Burger King’s tagline ‘Home of the Whopper’ meant. So for all intents and purposes, for a small boy growing up in Bournemouth it might have been a parallel universe. So instead I read books. All books. All the time. Loads of them. And I absolutely loved it. I had my head constantly in a book pretty much from the age of 7 to 13. Then I got my own computer. It was pretty cool. I could make it speak in a weird Stephen Hawking voice and I could play games on it. It was a useful diversion. I remember doing some homework, making a mistake, applying some tip-ex, then booting up my computer to play a quick game whilst it dried. Several hours later my parents demanded to see my homework and I...er... oops.

I bought a modem for it by saving up my pocket money. Wow. The internet wasn’t quite as we know it but it was on the way. I was on bulletin boards and then AOL and it was keyword: amazing. But the speeds were slow, and I couldn’t really do much. I still read loads of books. Fast forward a few years where I hardly ever read a book for fun in university. Too much going on. Then I travelled abroad for a few years. I read a lot then as it was handy to have something to read on planes, trains, and er buses. I also got into audiobooks too, as I was sometimes too far away from English language books stores to buy books so I downloaded them and listened to them instead.

Nowadays, I am a book hoarder and collector, but seldom reader of them. I just don’t have time. Yes, I sneak in a few pages here and there during the day when I read the books I have on my phone, but I don’t consciously sit down and read. Yet ironically, I probably physically read more than I have ever done in my life. A few newspaper websites, magazines, numerous blogs, techy stuff, work PDFs on my kindle. I’m all read out. When I travel for business, I do read to pass the time, but that’s about it. I save up books now to read on holidays. I haven’t been on holiday since I became a dad so I guess I will have to see how that pans out.  

Cereal Killer

I had Frosties for breakfast today. I haven’t actually eaten cereal in years, ever since I read a great article about it (which I have managed to dig up here). The article tells the history of processed breakfast cereals right back to the nineteenth century in the corn belt of the Mid-west of America. In the article it goes on about how what was once a great idea, became gradually a bad idea (for consumers) and basically a wonderful marketing phenomena (which was good for shareholders and company executives). It was a presidential nutritional advisor that actually made the argument that breakfast cereals should be treated the same as sugar and alcohol, due to the empty calories that all three foodstuffs offered. Now, I am loathe to befuddle correlation with causation, but the two most obese countries in the world are COINCIDENTALLY the two countries where sugary cereal sales are the highest. There are bound to be other factors, natch.

What it boils down to is that fact that some damn fine advertising guys have been on the case for decades. I ate cereal when I was a kid. Everyone did. They probably still do. Why? Because parents bought them as they were hoodwinked into believing that all cereals were healthy. Why would the colourful cereal boxes lie? Well, they don’t exactly lie, but the fact that the cereal companies fought tooth and nail to prevent a traffic light system on their boxes is highly informative. Portion size, daily amounts, the difference between type of milk that should be used all muddy the water and prevent first time analysis in the supermarket aisle. Also, kids screamed for cereal. All the TV adverts showed wonderfully inventive cartoon characters doing funny things. They don’t so much now, but when I was a kid there used to be toys in the boxes too. Or coupons to collect where you sent them off with a few stamps and you would get a Tony the Tiger bike sticker set after a month!

So anyway, I had some Frosties this morning. My normal bowl, which I use for normal stuff, has a capacity for 2.5 times the recommended daily allowance of 30g of Frosties. So I filled it up. With milk. And the calories contained were more than a bacon sandwich which I thought I wanted more but naturally declined as I thought it would be more calorific. Now, I am not saying that all cereals are created the same, but even things like all bran are damn high in salt, and special K is damn high in sugar. Ironically, all of the vitamins that they say are contained all occur naturally in corn and wheat, but the process of creating the cereal strips them out so they have to be artificially added back in.

 I don’t think I will be feeding my son sugary cereal when he is old enough.

Edit: shit, I gave him some sugary muesli for breakfast this morning. Oh well, if it was good enough for me... 

Aggressive pacifism.

Do you have a child? I do. It's tough. Very tough. If you have a child you are well aware of that fact. If you don't have a child, well, I am sure you can empathise. There are lots of difficult areas in life with a child. Restaurants are tough. So are aeroplanes. But we don't go to restaurants or fly on aeroplanes every day. Or week. Or month maybe.

One thing we do go to every week, is the supermarket. Supermarkets are fun. Well. Not really. But one thing that makes them a tiny bit more easier, is the parent and child parking. Nice and close to the door. Very useful for when it is cold and raining. Like winter. Some people find it easier to park there even when they don't have a child. They may have had a child a few decades ago, or they've left their child at home in an oven. However they feel the need to park close to the store for some reason. Laziness probably. Which makes people with genuine alive and present children unable to park in theit own designated spaces.

If you are one of those people, I'm going to passive aggressive your arse off with my vituperative funny looks. *looks*