A little bit of a rant about things

Oh, I truly loath Halloween. Not for any particularly earth-shaking reason, just the normal boring ones, e.g. feeling like I have to spend money on a costume just for the privilege of looking like an idiot while I get drunk down the pub, which is something I do quite happily in my own clothes every other Saturday of the year. As far as I'm concerned Halloween is for three kinds of people: small children, students, and fans of horror films, and I'm happy to leave them to it, provided they leave grumpy old kill-joys like me to 'enjoy'* our beer in a pub that isn't orange.

The thing about this year is that it's also a friend's birthday party, which means I don't even have the get-out-clause of ... um, staying in. Now, for the last few years I've tried to get into the whole Halloween feeling, and made a (half-hearted) effort to dress up and fit in. But this year I just don't want to. I think my antipathy is largely due to an article I read on the BBC News website about how spending on Halloween-related goods is propping up the retail sector even though people are feeling poor because of the public-spending cuts. It seems that the British public are going to spend £280 million on Halloween this year, compared with about £20 million in 2001. Well, bully for the retail sector, I'm not going to begrudge them their livelihoods. I just abhor this kind of meaningless and relentless commercialisation (does that mean that I really do begrudge the retail sector its livelihood? Perhaps it does. Sorry, retail sector).

Alright, it's time to stop being such a grumpy bore and somehow muster some enthusiasm for a night out. On a different, not-entirely-unrelated-to-Halloween note, I did enjoy this column by David Mitchell, and this slideshow of spirit photographs taken by William Hope. (I'm not anti ghosts-and-ghouls-and-things, I just don't like supermarkets to dictate which parties I go to, that's all...)

* I'm stretching the meaning of the word 'enjoy' to its limits, there. We grumpy old kill-joys never actually enjoy anything, but heaven knows that's not our fault. It's the fault of all you horrible cheerful happy people, being so ostentatious in your displays of joie de vivre all the bloody time. Stop pretending that life is anything more than a seemingly endless series of dull and meaningless moments that become increasingly unbearable until you die.

If you thought the lasagne sandwich was a monstrosity, look away now.

For breakfast this morning, I bought a croquette sandwich from the Daily Yamazaki store. I have no excuse other than that it was ¥126, I was hungry, and the picture on the packaging looked quite nice.

It turned out to be a 'macaroni au gratin' croquette sandwich.

In other words ...

Pasta in a flour sauce, in mashed potato, deep fried in breadcrumbs, in a sandwich.

Not since the Romans has the concept of putting-something-the-same-only-a-bit-smaller-into-an-already-totally-adequate-food-item been so expertly applied.

I'm happy to confirm that the sandwich was revolting.

PS, I'm well aware that the Victorians also had dishes involving a gnat in a bluebottle in a bumblebee in a sparrow in a blackbird in a pigeon in a partridge in a pheasant in a chicken in a duck in a goose in a heron in an osprey in an eagle in a velociraptor in an old woman who swallowed a fly, but the Romans were longer ago and so fitted my turn-of-phrase more betterer, so there.