Going cold turkey.

Today is Thanksgiving in the US. It's a big family holiday there. Bigger than Christmas. Ideal for Euro-American couples: no fighting about whose parents you go to at Christmas (there's that excuse out the window...). And like Christmas, the traditional meal consists of turkey with all the trimmings. Oversized turkey (that doesn't fit in conventional European ovens). And cranberry sauce. A real nightmare for vegetarians. Apparently. (The turkey, not the cranberry sauce. Obviously. Although the whole thing's probably an even bigger nightmare for the turkey itself. Except for the one that's pardonned by the President of the United States every year.) Weird. But tasty!

I'm very grateful to all the American families who welcomed me into their homes and families for Thanksgiving those years when I lived in the US on my own. It was nice not to be left out in the cold.

Well, I'm not celebrating Thanksgiving today. I'm having miso soup with seaweed and tofu (don't pan it, it's yummy). But to all the Yanks both at home and abroad, gathered as a family, or on your own: here's a little thought and prayer for you all.

Namaste.

Oh what the hell? Gobble gobble!!!!

Is two really better than one?

You see all sorts on the internet (especially when you're not busy with loads of auditions or doing your taxes). And dismiss most of it instantly. But this headline really caught my eye and my imagination. I think it was an ad on Facebook. I've seen it before, in different guises: the Hollywood diet, the diet of the stars, the diet of the supermodels etc.... It keeps coming up on my page, maybe they've earmarked me as a fatty! Now how would they do that? I don't know. Maybe they can deduce my body mass from the pressure that I put on individual keys on my computer keyboard. Is that paranoid enough for you?

Anyway, this headline was different. It went something like: "How combining 2 diets will help you lose weight twice as fast." And I have to say, that for a moment, I though: EUREKA! Then I thought about it a bit more a realised it was probably a load of twaddle. Then I checked it out. It was a very well crafted piece of hard sell, complete with testimonies urging you to give it a go. All very tempting.

I can't believe that there's enough room left in my consciousness to contemplate this sort of thing when we are apparently flushing ourselves down the deepest financial hole ever, Africa is imploding from massacres and starvation, the environment is on the blink, and welcoming sunny Thailand is on the brink of a military coup! And Christmas is in 29 days.

Time for some comic relief. Of sorts. (Open season on Americans ends Jan 3rd...) The BBC showed some footage from Bangkok airport, quite tellingly interviewing stranded passengers but apparently not the protesters. One of the men being filmed was a middle aged American tourist who was harranging a rather dismayed Thai Airways representative. The following words actually came out of his mouth: "Tomorrow is a big holiday in the US [Note: The holiday in question is Thanksgiving. Europeans don't celebrates it because we don't celebrate ethnic cleansing.] and now loads of people are going to miss it because of your cockaminey little protest over here." Yes, he actually called the public disorder that could lead to the overthrowing of the current Thai governent "cockaminey". Puts the invasion of Iraq in perspective. Thank goodness for Obama.

Have a nice day!


The double diet was Acai Berries and a brand of Green Tea promoted on the Oprah Winfrey show. Now you know.