Well, it finally got good enough to care about

I can't believe it - I whine and bitch and moan about Jericho all season (and there's not many of you who will listen to that, either!) and then it gets good enough that I become invested in the characters - and it's the freaking hiatus! By the time it comes back - in what February March? - I will have forgotten all about it, what with my short term memory problems and all!


Sorry, what? What were we talking about?
(lame joke, I know)

( The rest is behind the cut for spoilers. )

Another random connection

I just happened to tape Numb3rs after Jericho last week so I watched it more out of laziness (it was all too much to even raise my hand to get to the remote!) than anything else. Apart from the obvious Jossverse connection of David Krumholtz (Serenity's Mr. Universe), I was excited to see Navi Rawat's name in the credits. I loved her portrayal of Dana the Damaged Sayer (in AtS S5e11 Damage) and so was interested to see what she would do here. This episode was S2e14 Harvest.

The story features a couple of Indian girls to whom bad things are happening. I looked and looked and couldn't recognise either of them but this other character spent a lot of time in one of the girl's company - Amita Ramanujan was her name. Nope, no Navi Rawat here! And then I look really, *really* closely. Holy crap - Amita is Navi Rawat (erm .... other way around, I know!) She sure has changed since Dana! Her part was really good and substantial and then I realise that she isn't a guest star, she's main cast! How did I not know this? I am so slow on occasions (and yes, the wits among you are already asking "What do you mean - "on occasion"?" Yeah *funny*!)

And Numb3rs, at least for this episode any way, turns out to be a lot better than I remember from the first 2 or 3 eps - I gave up after them! This programme may just get added to the "May-just-add-to-the-viewing-list-but-was-scarred-by-earlier-exposure-to-this-so-will-not-get-too-carried-away-too-early" list.

I like my lists.

Can chocolate really go off?

After I finished eating my 40g Freddo Frog last night, I sat back and relaxed. As I was sitting there, I got a little restless and started reading the wrapper (as you do when you're at a loss as to what else to do).

Best Before: 29th December (OK, so far) 2005. Hang on, 2005? This thing's 11 months out of frelling date. Gack, I'm poisoned! Or not, as the case may be - it is the next day, I'm still alive and not yet sick!

Does chocolate go off at all? I'd imagine it was so full of preservatives and anti-oxidants and stabilisers and goodness only knows what else that it can't go off! I am a chocolate gourmet gourmand glutton and have never struck a problem. When I lived in Asia, occasionally I bought chocolate that had been allowed to melt and then cooled, with the separation out of some of the milk solids (I think). Even though it would look fairly crappy, it was still perfectly OK to eat, if a little dry.

The closest I think I have come to this was when I bought a Fry's Turkish Delight years ago, in Brunei, I think, and it had tiny little maggots in it. Interestingly, they were only in the turkish delight part of the bar, not the chocolate. The chocolate was perfectly edible, just a few small holes in it, presumably where the maggots had burrowed through to the centre, so I ate the chocolate.

What?

I was desperate, all right?

So anybody have any personal experience of chocolate that has gone off? No third hand tales of someone's brother's cousin's girlfriend's etc!

I hate to burst your bubble

I always feel sad when I see people express boundless enthusiasm for ideas that seem be too good to be true. I listened to someone go into raptures about Masaru Emoto's work on crystalline structures in water and the way that "positive vibrations" can influence the water. Don't get me wrong, if this were to be true it would be wonderful and I would love it to be true but ....

( The rest of my comments are behind the cut for length. )