What Do I Know?

Friday Cow Blogging

"Here, have some muddy apples, cows."

It's not the rain; it's the mud. We've just had the rainiest January on record, at least here in Southern England. But it's the mud that's had me at my wits' end. Our garden is now composed of several mud pits, the latest near the fence that was damaged during one of the gales that's accompanied our many storms. When the gardener repaired it he mucked up what was left of the grass, and now it's another spot of ankle-deep mud. I don't even go outside without wellies. I'm seriously considering getting a pair for Sparky. He tracks mud inside, making pawprints all over the kitchen floor—the part that's not covered by throwrugs or towels. 

When I saw the cows out near the fence, I grabbed a bag of apples I had chilling in the fridge and my wellies, leaving Sparky inside. They didn't seem to mind that the apples landed in mud. 

They don't know it, but they're lucky—there's at least dry land for them to stand on. Cows in Somerset are standing in flooded fields. Farmers are using boats to get to their land. 

And somehow, I have turned this into another post whinging about the weather. 

Friday Cow Blogging

My new view from my home gym beats the view of the Central line. 

For the last couple of weeks I've been turning my spare room into a gym room, storing my new rowing machine, hand weights, medicine ball, and various other equipment. This week I finally "moved in," saving me thrice weekly trips to the gym. 

Immediately I noticed one great advantage: my view. Instead of looking out over the Central line tracks, I now have a view of my cow-filled pasture.

I'd say that's worth the price of a rowing machine, as well as the time I spent cleaning out the room. Cows, it turns out, are great inspiration for working out. 

WDIK Location Quiz

It's back! After many years in which the WDIK Location Quiz languished in the archives for lack of interesting location photos, it has returned to the pages of What Do I Know?

Instead of a location, though, I've found a photo of a thing. Or a thingy, if you prefer. What exactly would you call this thing here? That, my friends and loyal readers, is the answer to this quiz. 

Tell me what this is, precisely: 

And if you know where it is, precisely, you get extra points. 

Note that there are no rules, and there are no points. There are also no hints, which is as it should be. If you can't decipher this Location Quiz on your own, you shouldn't be playing this game. 

For previous Location Quizes, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. I might have left out a few. 

Sherlock is Saved

The actor formerly known as Troels, playing the part of creepy Charles Augustus Magnusson.

I didn't want to leave my last review of Sherlock hanging, when, as I suspected, the last episode provided much more satisfaction than the previous two. Did it absolve the earlier two? Perhaps. But I'm convinced if I'd never seen the earlier seasons and only tuned in on New Year's Day to watch this season as a "virgin viewer," I'd never have made it to episode 3, "His Last Vow."

Here's the thing: I'm a very picky tv viewer. Most series I never bother watching, and those I do, I tend to turn off after the first episode. They don't seem worth my time. I can always tell a show is losing my interest: I pick up my iPad and start scanning blogs, scrolling through Twitter, even reading Facebook, while watching. Let's face it, if surfing the internet is more entertaining than whatever's on the tube, you probably shouldn't bother.

This happened with Downton Abbey. I watched the first three seasons, but at the end of season three I didn't even bother watching the final episode. And with Borgen, which started out as a promising Danish series, but never had quite the punch that The Killing had. Likewise The Bridge, another Scandinavian offering whose characters didn't intrigue me enough to keep watching. (I had a completely different experience with Ripper Street, which originally didn't thrill me but when I sat down and watched the entire first season, I was hooked. Sadly BBC cancelled it, perhaps hearing of my interest.)

But this is a review of Sherlock, not an examination of my viewing tastes. Interestingly, this episode featured Danish villain Lars Mikkelsen, last seen (by me) in The Killing. Mikkelsen plays Charles Augustus Magnusson, described by The Independent's Ellen Jones as "a viscerally repugnant cross between Hannibal Lecter and Rupert Murdoch." He was far creepier, far more malevolent, than in The Killing. In fact, I had a hard time buying his villain act, perhaps because I still thought of him as Troels. I even wondered, "why is he speaking English?" Also, "when is he going to change his shirt?"

From the beginning, it was apparent this episode was far better written than the other two. The scene with Watson in the drug den had the quick-witted dialogue we've come to expect from Sherlock. The comment about the sprain—I wanted to applaud, but then I'd have missed the next punchline. I really found myself straining to catch every word in this episode, whereas in the last two I kept eyeing the clock, wondering when this drivel would end. 

There was also plenty of eye candy on view: The deserted houses of Leinster Gardens, which everyone knows about but were still a surprise; the ultra modern Swinhay House, aka Appledore; the surprisingly homey (or "homely") home of the elder Holmes. (Sorry; unintentional tongue twisting there. And speaking of tongues...eww!) The drug den, where a new character is introduced (from one of the original Sherlock Holmes stories) is appropriately seedy, contrasting nicely with the oppulent surroundings in the preceding scene.

And then there were those cheekbones, both Cumberbatch's and Mikkelsen's. (See below for my surprising observation.) Combined, they threatened to shred the television screen, but fortunately, Redbeard came along and gave us some relief from all that prominent facial structure. (I won't tell you who Redbeard is; some delightful surprises should be just that.)

The comments at The Guardian's review were much kinder this week than last, as was the rapid response on Twitter. Most people loved the episode, although several complained about the ending. After thinking about it longer, I agree: the ending was too easy, too pat for a man of Sherlock's talents. There were more clever ways to finish off Magnussen. I'm surprised the writer (Steven Moffat) didn't explore them. In fact, I was convinced Magnusson wasn't really dead, but there turned out to be a different surprise ending in store.

The mushy sentimentality that ruined the last episode was kept to a minimum here. At the end when it looked as if another love scene between Sherlock and Watson might be imminent, there was instead a much more believable admission from both characters. But I noticed an odd thing: whereas I've never been a "Benedict Cumberbatch is a hottie!" fangirl, I did think he just looked a lot better this episode. His Sherlock was tougher, cooler, the capable hero we've missed from the last two episodes. Maybe because he didn't have to deliver the silly lines, or force himself to act through the slapstick restaurant scene from episode one, but his acting seemed stronger. He was once again the commanding character from the first two seasons, the man you couldn't take your eyes off of.

Which leads me to conclude that despite the whiz bang stylistics of shows like Sherlock and Dr Who (whose fans have been complaining about similar deviations of character), a viewing experience really boils down to character. Is there a character you root for? A character you're intrigued by? A character who's larger than life, yet human enough to relate to? A character you're sure will triumph in the end, due to his or her own toughness/cleverness/powers of deduction.

This is why the last scene failed so many viewers: Sherlock failed to pull the rabbit out of his hat, and resorted to petty crime rather than ingenious triumph. He was bested by Magnusson, in the end, in a scene that was eerily similar to the final episode of The Killing. 

Yet despite this, I can't complain. Instead, I'll go watch it again, just in case I missed any bits of clever dialogue. Also, I think it might be possible that I am a Benedict Cumberbatch fangirl, after all. 

Friday Cow Blogging

Clearly, this cow moves his lips when he talks and therefore is not so well-bred.

The other day a friend alerted me, via Facebook, to something I really needed to hear. Cow To Moo Everything, by Patrick Stewart, from the How To Do Everything podcast.

Apparently a listener wanted to know if cows in Britain have a British accent. Yes they do, expert British speaker Patrick Stewart informed the listeners. And then he proceeded to demonstrate the different cow sounds. 

You have to listen. Go here now and check it out. 

As someone who does run into cows in my daily life, I can say they do sound different here. In fact, they sound a bit like Patrick Stewart. 

According to Jean-Luc, even cows in different parts of England sound different. And that, perhaps, has something to do with their political leanings.

He imitates the conservative cows in his neighborhood in West Oxfordshire: "I live in David Cameron's district, and I assume these cows voted for him." Then he provides the sound of a Yorkshire cow by comparison. Distinctly different. 

This is good stuff. I'm glad Patrick Stewart loves cows as much as I do. 

Sherlock: Shark Well and Truly Jumped

Sherlock returns, as the bumbling, yet lovable, best man at his friend Watson's wedding. Oh wait, where the hell is Sherlock?! 

There was this television series I adored, last seen a couple of years ago, which went on hiatus while its wildly popular stars found themselves employed as hobbits and ill-bred aliens in wildly popular film series. Finally, the stars returned from Middle-earth and Deep Space and found time to film three more episodes of what had become a wildly popular series, with fans who invented devilish reconstructions of the finale, who hung out in chatrooms and blogs and tumblrs while they waited, patiently, for the stars to return and their beloved series to resume. 

And then it did, and there was great rejoicing across the land, at least in my house. Finally we would learn what happened to Sherlock: how did he survive, if indeed he did, a fall from a four story building? How does he explain this to his friend, Watson, and to us, his loyal fans?

But it turns out that after Sherlock the man jumped from the roof of St Bart's hospital, Sherlock the series promptly jumped the shark. It married off Niles and Daphne. It had a figurative (and perhaps literal) baby, which everyone knows will kill off a television series quicker than a fall from a four story building.

The detective series based on the Victorian crime solver Sherlock Holmes turned into a Gen Y bromance.

The first two of the three episodes were devoted to exploring the relationship between the two men, one of whom has found a woman to love, for some inexplicable reason. Nevermind; the woman isn't the point. She's (very likely) expendable. As is logic and continuity of character. 

It's apparently called "fan service" when a series becomes so popular that the writing becomes a service to the fans, not in service to the story. Clearly, the writers have attempted to give the fans what they (thought they) wanted. More Sherlock/Watson love, please! More Sherlock/Mycroft brotherly banter. It's also called self-indulgence, or, as one typical commenter at The Guardian review called it, "Piss Poor and Self Indulgent Shite". 

That about nails it for me. Especially the second episode, which carried on from the first episode's lingering on the relationship between Sherlock and Watson, after Sherlock ridiculously reveals himself to Watson at the Landmark Hotel restaurant. Sherlock is a lot of things, including a "functioning sociopath," but he's not silly. Yet there he was, painting on a mustache and stealing a pair of reading glasses in order to surprise John, who was preparing to ask Mary to marry him. I was embarrassed for Benedict Cumberbatch, watching this fine actor try to pull off Marx Brothers slapstick.

As for how he faked his own death, we still don't know for sure, after a few explanations that seemed designed more to satisfy the fans who'd spent two years fantasizing about how he did it. (But I have to admit, I, too, was sort of hoping Sherlock and Moriarty would get it on.)

There was more of the annoying text revelations, a device whereby Sherlock's inner thoughts are poured out on screen as if they're text messages. Interestingly, he "reads" everyone he meets except for Molly's boyfriend, who apparently, according to one fan's observations, bears a striking resemblance to a Moriarty assassin from a previous episode. Uh oh. 

The terrorist plot was, instead of the driving force of the script, reduced to a side plot, quickly dealt with, after, of course, a few moments in a Tube carriage where John and Sherlock tell each other how much they love each other. Seriously, they do this. For like five minutes. I write romance, for god's sake, and I almost puked.

But one lame episode wasn't enough to deter us, especially after I got a glimpse of Troels in the very last scene of "The Empty Hearse". (Troels is the character from the first season of The Killing, played by Lars Mikkelsen, who now plays Charles Augustus Magnusson, but so far all we've seen of him is his eyes.) Alas, there was a scheduling conflict: Across the world, in a freezing cold Lambeau Field, the Packers were getting ready to play football, which normally my husband would insist on watching, but we decided to stick with BBC and Sherlock. Because we loved the series that much.

I think we'd have been better off in Lambeau Field. Freezing our asses off would have been more fun than watching Benedict Cumberbatch fumble about as he tried to be someone he's not: A best man. A stand up guy. A man who composes a violin piece for his best friend's wedding. (Okay, that piece was actually nice, but not exactly pertinent to the plot. I mean, if there had been a plot, which there wasn't.)

About halfway through the episode I found myself checking the time, wondering if the Packers were playing yet. I don't even watch football. I hate it, in fact. Yet the jumbled-up script for "The Sign of Three" made me seriously consider switching the channel. There was no plot, other than a wedding, and let's face it, a wedding is about the most boring place anyone could ever find himself. Worse, though, every funny line was completely predictable, starting with Sherlock's urgent message to Greg, which turned out to be a plea for help with the best man's speech. I found myself murmurring the lines in advance of their being uttered by the characters—always a bad sign.

In "The Sign of Three", Sherlock has been asked to be best man at Watson's wedding. Twenty minutes is spent just on the asking, while every character has to express disbelief that Sherlock is best man material. Okay, okay, we get it. The rest of the episode deals with the wedding itself, while the events leading up to it are told in flashback by Sherlock as he delivers the speech. (Confused yet?) It turns out he's been attempting to solve a couple of cases, one while drunk from stag night, and both of them turn out to be connected, and if you can suspend disbelief well enough you just might buy the implausible murder attempt that ends the episode. I can't, and I didn't. But the sheer impossibility of the murder attempt is overshadowed by the achy sentimentality of the entire episode. And the, frankly, quite boring bits of dialogue. The phone call between Sherlock and Mycroft, for instance—any Sherlock fan could have written more scintillating lines. (And I will never be able to look at Mark Gatiss again without imagining his bare abdomen. This is not good.)

After the show my Twitter stream erupted in fury: here's an example, and another: "I can't wait for the episode of #Sherlock in which he investigates where all the story lines have gone." I recognize that fury: whenever I read a book by a favorite author that doesn't live up to her standards, I'm angry, disappointed. I want to vent, more than if I read another mediocre book, or watched another episode of a mundane series. I don't expect great writing from a soap opera like Hollyoaks, but I do from a show like Sherlock, which has justifiably earned its high praise and obsessive fandom.

Sherlock has been a clever, entertaining series, up to now. While the current series is still much better than most of the mediocrity that's on television, it's also not nearly as well written as previous episodes. It's veered off, well, across the shark. As another commenter at The Guardian put it, "Shark well and truly jumped." 

There is still hope, in the form of Troels. If you watch the trailer for episode three, you'll see that the old Sherlock appears to be back, with a villian worthy of his talents, and of the viewer's 90 minutes. 

Let's hope so. 

Vegan in 2014? Here's my advice.

I don't need a recipe for beans, greens, and pasta, one of our ten often-served meals.

I just ran across the Veganuary website, which promises to help people who want to become vegan in January 2014. Check it out, then come back here, because I have more advice. 

It's hard to fathom someone not knowing how to be vegan—it's like not knowing how to ride a bike. When you've never thrown yourself over a two-wheeler and tried to maintain your balance as you hurl down the pavement, the idea seems mad. But once you've tried it a few times, rode your bike to school and back, you're a pro. 

Likewise, the idea of going all day without eating animal food seems daunting, until you've tried it for a few weeks. For me, it's second nature. Eating animals or their by-products—milk, eggs, cheese, etc.—is completely alien to me. Yet my meals would look pretty normal to most everyone. I ate Sloppy Joes last night, with a spinach salad in a nod to healthy eating, and whole wheat buns. The night before we had roast, gravy, and mashed potatoes, with oven-roasted broccoli and runner beans (drizzled with citrus flavored balsamic vinegar) for sides. Last week we had fajitas, and I made a seitan roulade stuffed with mushrooms for Christmas dinner, accompanied by all the usual sides. 

Here's the startling fact: Most families have ten meals they eat on a regular basis, only rarely incorporating other dishes into their rotation. You might be different—but I bet you still have about ten dishes you make on a regular basis, no cookbook or recipe necessary. Something you can throw together without a special trip to the supermarket. Spaghetti, tacos, burgers, stir-fry—you get the drift. We make all those dishes pretty regularly, using vegan ingredients like mince (hamburger "meat") or fake chicken or beef strips for fajitas. 

Find ten dishes you normally eat, and figure out how to veganize them. After you do this, you'll be more than halfway on your way toward living the vegan good life. If you don't like the sound of tofu tacos (I certainly don't) find another substitute. Maybe beans, or maybe vegan crumbles. If you don't like one brand of crumbles, try another. You'll find wide variation in taste and more importantly, texture. Likewise with dairy substitutes. Most vegan cheese isn't all that good, or at least melty, but there are some that are worth checking out. But I've discovered I don't really miss cheese, since my dishes are so flavorful without it. Try making a bechamel sauce with soymilk if you want a creamy addition to a casserole. 

Another fact: most non-vegan recipes adapt very well to vegan additions, such as non-dairy margarine and soy milk (or rice or nut milk). Be careful you're not using sweetened soymilk or nut milk. And do make sure your margarine is non-hydrogenated—that is, free of trans-fats. It's pretty easy to find such a thing nowadays, either in the UK or the US. 

Seek out specialist on-line grocers for hard to find ingredients. Amazon delivers almost any vegan product, right to your door. Here in the UK I've found Vegusto makes superb vegan products, including meats, sausages, lunch slices, and the best tasting cheeses I've ever had—including dairy cheese. 

This vegan olive cheese spread from Saf, based on cashews, is better than any dairy-based cheese spread.

Here's another fact: After I gave up butter, which I used almost exclusively, thinking it was far superior to lowly margarine, I discovered that after about a month I couldn't stand the taste, or even the smell of butter. It smells off, which indeed it is—think about it: it's made from milk that came out of a cow months ago, and has just been sitting around getting rancid all this time. If you give me a cookie that's made with butter, I generally make a face. I'm not a supertaster, but the wang of butter will put me off the whole cookie. 

So don't try giving up butter one day, then switching back the next. Like Dean Ornish says, when you switch from whole milk to fat-free, if you keep switching back and forth every day, in an effort to cut back, you'll never forget the taste of whole milk and fat-free will always make you feel like you're missing something. Go whole hog. (Well, not really—pork isn't vegan, but Vegusto has some great sausages.) Give up dairy, including butter, for a month, and you'll find you actually prefer the alternatives. You'll no longer think of them as "substitutes" and instead they'll be your first choice. 

Last Christmas, my daughter made deviled "eggs", using a recipe from Vegan Crunk. Now, some people call bacon their gateway meat product—they can sustain a vegan lifestyle until they pass a plate of bacon. Not me. You can keep your bacon. But deviled eggs—I would seriously consider popping one of those in my mouth if you passed me a plate, preferably one of those special deviled egg plates like your grandmother had. Not any more. Now that I've had vegan deviled eggs, I'll have to say no thanks to their chicken-produced counterpart. The vegan version is better. Honestly. 

This is perhaps the most important advice I can give you: if you're constantly considering your vegan diet as second-best, as a substitute for the "real" thing, you'll never be satisfied. You need to think of the exciting possibilities instead of the dreary sacrifices. You're not making a sacrifice in any way by choosing a vegan diet. You're simply replacing animal food with plant food. Very delicious plant food that can stand up to non-plant food any day, as long as you are willing to give it a chance. 

Go on, give peas a chance. 

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