We're all familiar with the Big Bang Theory, the spark that created everything in the universe. But let's now get over it. We’re in danger of losing sight of all the Tiny Bang Theories.
So here is the place to air your tiny theories, to have them discussed, analysed and refined by others. Tiny bang theories may not be much on their own, but added together they may well become bigger than the Big Bang Theory itself.
‘That’s peanuts’, we say when we’re talking about piffling amounts, drops in the ocean. Or we say ‘that’s peanuts’ if we are confirming the presence of peanuts. Or we’re making a distinction between them and chickpeas, which look a bit like peanuts (though, really, we shouldn’t because chickpeas resemble more the hazelnut).(CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)
In rain-lashed Britain we are only two minutes away from experiencing either a drought or a flood. If you look out of your window and it’s a downpour, you can assume the hosepipe ban on watering your garden is temporarily on hold – there’s enough to go round. Maybe even enough for a flood. If it’s drizzling, the drought threat level escalates from amber to red. We’re edging into the territory of a watering can ban. If it’s sunny, something like a sponge ban.(CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)
When Greenland suffers a heat wave the mercury shoots up slightly to 10 degrees Centigrade. You wake up, you look out your window, the surf is thawing. It’s the hot topic on the radio. ‘Wrap up less, Nuuk (the capital of Greenland), it’s going to be a heat wave,' the DJs coo, cranking up the cliched Martha and the Vandellas (click to play, below).
You pull on your shorts, your shades, call the boss, croak down the line that you think you’re coming down with something, won’t be able to make it in. Off down the beach. The promise of sun, sand, sex and walruses.(CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)
Any visitor to the Princess Diana Memorial Playground will be amazed by its creator’s insensitivity. Among the attractions is a tunnel. But it’s by no means the only gaffe made by children’s theme park designers. The JF Kennedy Children’s Memorial Playground includes a grassy knoll; the Mussolini Children’s Memorial Playground a lamppost to hang from.
Choosing the right cheese is a real minefield. Though the comparison does falter a little. For instance, relatively few people have been maimed as a consequence of choosing the wrong cheese.
Cheese-and-wine parties can make or break you in middle-class society. But you don’t need to be a connoisseur to know which cheese goes with which wine. Those Dairylea triangles are quite clearly a fitting match for a tepid Thunderbird.
It’s time for cheese to break out of its conservative tradition. Quattro Formaggi, the four-cheeses pizza could be more inclusive and welcome the addition of a guest cheese to form the ‘Cinque Formaggi’. Or former soft metal chick Suzi Quattro (see video below) allowed to pick which four cheeses she would like to blend on a pizza crust. Technically, it would still be a Quattro Formaggi but more celebrity endorsed.
It wasn’t until the 1980s that it was possible to quash a firewater-induced famine with kebab. Not until an intrepid meat salesman dared to ask Middle Eastern takeaway establishments: ‘Do you think you could shift this sheep’s leg afflicted with elephantiasis?’ that the whole inebriation-dining landscape changed. It was the sort of task Sir Alan Sugar would have chucked out to his Young Turks to sort the wheat from the chaff. ‘Wheat from the chaff, wheat from the chaff’, a phrase that would have echoed around the salesman’s head. That’s it. Of course. Before the 1980s, the only after-hours antidote was cereal in the form of Kellogg’s Cornflakes. Drunk people took on breakfast at the end of the day instead of the beginning. It was feeding oneself before a fast could take hold – taking ‘fix-fast’, as in stopping the fast in its tracks. This salesman realised that the key was selling to people with an impaired judgement.(CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)
It’s early July and it’s a reminder as Argos and Sainsbury’s finish shooting their Christmas adverts, that the curling season is almost upon us. For the unacquainted, curling is lawn bowls on ice. A sport made for the Eskimo pensioner.
Take a look at the video clip (below) and marvel at how much sweeping up is involved. How fastidious its contestants are. It is quite possibly the only sport where the cleaning up starts way before the contest is over. A sport that scouts for emerging talent in the gangs of support staff who sweep up the styrofoam cup and hot dog wrapper shit on the terraces.
