Well, the pies have stopped mincing, my nuts are all roasted, the heavy residual fug of my dad’s Gitanes Filtres is (very) slowly leaving my dining room and I’m about a third of my personal “wine lake” lighter than I was a week ago. In short, Christmas is over.

However, I think my brain needs a bit more time to recover; eg I “hit the sales” this morning in the hopes of some retail therapy, and came back with nothing better than a mop and bucket. And even then, I read the wrong price ticket on the shelf and ended up paying double what I had expected. In short, I think I’m going to need a bit of a mental run-up to 2007, so am going to continue on my hiatus as threatened / promised until 2nd Jan.

Hope y’all had a great Christmas, and hope you have an even better New Year’s Eve. See you in a week or so…

Being as it’s Christmas and being as I’m now busy being eaten out of house and home by various parenty girlfriendy siblingy types, Shit Sandwich is officially on hiatus from now until 27th of December. Depending on how I feel, this may be extended until 3rd Jan. So bollocks to the lot of you. Erm, I mean Merry Christmas.

I may well be posting Christmas musings from time to time as follow-ups to this post; feel free to do likewise. And have a good one….

It’s official. Well, sort of. Vegetarians are cleverer than meat-eaters. A team of alfalfa-munching dung-smelling hippies at the University of Southampton have given hope to wimpy namby-pamby 10-stone weaklings (such as myself) all over the country with the revelation that vegetablists score on average 5 points higher in IQ tests than KFC bucket botherers.

However, my triumphalism was tempered somewhat by this caveat:

“There was no difference in IQ score between strict vegetarians and those who said they were vegetarian but who reported eating fish or chicken.”

So basically, no difference at all, then. A nice man from the British Dietetic Association harrumphed:

“It is very much a Quorn chicken-substitute and the free-range egg situation”

Or something along those lines…

Up to now, it’s just been tittle-tattle in the Guardian, something that will affect mostly poor tropical people living on underwater islands or something. But now - shock horror - it looks like Alpine ski-ing is going to become victim of global warming! Quick! Ring Tarquin and Jemima and tell them to cancel the fondue party! I was SO looking forward to apres-ski with the Fforbes-Ffortescues! What WILL I do with that Pierre Cardin green dyed mink-fur dayglo ski-suit which Auntie Tabitha bought me at the sales in Fortnum and Mason last year? I’d better jump in the Range-Rover and drive round to tell Mummy and Daddy. Yes, I know it’s only 150 yards, but it’s a cold night.

Aaahhh, Xmas. Probably my favourite winter festival to be named after a skin complaint. But what’s it all about? Giving? Receiving? Sponging relatives? Other sexual activities besides those three? Little baby Jesus? Food and booze and that? Never-ending bloody hour-long comedy specials which are even less funny than the original programmes which they at least had the decency to keep to 30 minutes?

For the last poll before you all go home to your kith and kin and leave me in ‘blog limbo, I want to know what means most to you about Winterval, ahem, Luminos, erm, Christmas? Feel free to drop the gift of your suggestions down my Shitty chimney by all means…

A report was issued today by “UK experts” on the continued use of non-human primates in medical research:

“The Weatherall report was commissioned by the Academy of Medical Sciences, Royal Society, Medical Research Council and Wellcome Trust to review the scientific case for such research.”

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but aren’t ALL FOUR of those august bodies (with the possible exception of the Royal Society who, whilst not actually cutting monkeys’ brains open themselves, have always been rabidly pro-vivisection) organisations whose members have a vested interest in a continuation of the status quo? It’s the equivalent of asking McDonalds if it’s still OK to kill animals for meat. There’s more -

“Its chair (was) Sir David Weatherall, emeritus professor of medicine at Oxford University”.

Oxford University is in the process of building a massively lucrative animal testing research lab… hmm, I wonder, could there be any correlation between the identity of the chairman and the report’s findings?

Not content with butchering some of our closest relatives in the name of bad science, it seems that this lot want to make monkeys out of the general public too. It’s a load of Macaque.

Delightful post title.

I’ve just finished watching a random episode of “Rumpole of the Bailey”, which is, for the young / Canadian amongst us, a TV series about top-end posh barristers in London (starring the late Leo McKern), which ran from approx. 1978 - 1992.

It was quite astonishingly bad, in terms of a) the hammy acting, b) the frankly bizarre attempt by the scriptwriters to juxtapose some kind of Agatha Christie Victoriana with modern London, but mostly c) one of the sub-plots, which concerned Rumpole’s practice’s attempt to be “inclusive” by recruiting someone from a “minority”. They settled on a barrister who was believed to be gay, and the conversation amongst the senior partners went something like this:

“Not black, is he?”
“No, he’s not black, but being black isn’t so bad; old Fanshawe” (head of another chambers) “appointed a black fella who ended up becoming King of Limpopoland, or something. Made Fanshawe his Chief Justice. No, this one’s a pooftah.”

That’s only a very slight exaggeration of the actual dialogue. There followed an excruciating interview with the candidate in question, in which the senior barrister indulges in all manner of old Tory innuendo about gays, before refusing to shake the interviewee’s hand on the way out. As it turns out, he was a “rampant heterosexual”, so everything was OK.

What this suggests is that 1) my rose-tinted opinion of the halcyon days of ’70s and ’80s television may well be completely flawed, and b) the most likely reason why they don’t repeat more “classic” comedy stuff (eg Monty Python / The Goodies) is that it’s jam-packed with every kind of horrible right-wing prejudice under the sun. Or should that be in “The Sun”.

As the discerning, well-balanced and gregarious crowd of readers I know you to be, I’m sure you’re not averse to the odd bit of bullshit to add weight to your arguments once in a while. But this weekend, I was right royally BS-busted by my other half, and my appalling short-term memory is to blame.

On Friday, we were talking about the Irish and the English abroad (she’s Irish), and I was desperately trying to mount a rearguard action (ooer) in defence of England’s travelling beer-bellied yobs. “OK, we’re not the most sophisticated nation in the world, but cosmopolitan is as cosmopolitan does”, I quipped. She narrowed her eyes, looked at me suspiciously, thought for a second, and said “Hmmm, I suppose so”. Round one to me.

Then on Sunday morning, sitting having breakfast, we were discussing Christmas presents / the current fashion for giving goats etc. to third world communities as a conscience-salving gift. “Charity is as charity does, you know”, I blustered. I realised that the repetition was a mistake the moment the phrase had left my lips, and her retort was immediate - “Michael, that doesn’t actually mean anything, does it?” “Erm… probably not”, I whimpered into my Mochaccino.

I’d been in the habit of using “X is as X does” for quite a while, because I thought it sounded vaguely clever - but of course it doesn’t mean anything - or if it does, buggered if I know what it is. Damn. In the longer term, it means that I’m obviously not going to get much past the girl in question…

Yet another “big up” from Shit “I don’t do big ups” Sandwich… this time for a rising star in the fundament - sorry, firmament - of journalism. We’re talking about Aditya Chakrabortty, the new wonder of the printed page. Remember the name. He even contributed a comment to the Sandwich (once).

Using the medium of a bewhiskered, traditional home-counties right-wing quite-good-at-sport (and now travel) newspaper, here he tells us all about trekking and Maoism in Nepal, whilst over here, he confides a long-standing fear of “imperious girls”. It’s a stonking good read.

One word of warning - traditionalism with the Telegraph isn’t all it used to be; a “tribalfusion.com” pop-up containing free fucking smileys may accompany one, or both, of the articles.

Last night saw the prestigious Dimbleby Lecture, given by former head of the army Michael Jackson. As he always used to be known. His PR people obviously got sick of the constant references to his Off-The-Wall namesake, so much so that they organised a rebrand. Hence all last night he was referred to as “General Sir Mike Jackson”, and it was always spoken very quickly - “Genresermike Jackson”.

But I have it on good authority from friends at the Beeb that Gen. Jackson himself was all for playing the whole thing for laughs, dressing up in an Avid Merrion mask and a T-Shirt reading “Iraq-o Jacko”, moonwalking to the stage and saying -
“Heee-heeee! Shamone, motherfucker - I’m Mich-ay Jacksay, and this is the Dimblebay Lec-chay! Check my bad self!” (etc)