Diet Coke - The Best Thing For You?

A recent study by the University of Stencilvania has shown that, contrary to every previous study ever, Diet Coke is not in fact bad for you. The experiment, which has run for eleven years and during which 1,200 students, 678 unemployed barristers and 27 people walking down the street who had nothing better to do were polled, shows that Diet Coke is imperically good for you in that it tastes nice and wakes you up a bit.

One participant notably remarked, "Water is rubbish - and now that juice is fattening and coffee is trendy again, we're left with little choice really, aren't we?"

The spokesperson for the SBSB (Super Brainy Scientific Bunch), a board of scientists that has perennially criticised Diet Coke for containing a high concentration of additives such as Aspartame, claims the organisation is "very embarrassed indeed" and will now concentrate all of its efforts on debunking the myth that milk prevents those little bits of white appearing on your fingernails.

Diet Coke's taste is said to be linked directly to to how it feels to drink it

What Grinds My Gears Vol. 1

Number 10

I’ve always maintained that it’s well within a commentator’s rights to say a few inane things. It must be tricky to go a full ninety minutes without saying at least one boring thing and I can sympathise with that. What I can’t abide is when a phrase that is clearly erroneous is parroted so frequently that it becomes embedded in the vernacular of the sport. The question of whether ‘daylight ‘ exists between players being a pre-requisite for offside comes to mind as a total invention of football analysts. This was never the rule, nor should it be, but for years pundits harped on about the need for daylight, oblivious to the fact that it was utterly irrelevant.

What’s really in vogue now, though, is the phrase “number 10”: “Mata is a great number 10”; “Rooney is more of a number 10 than ever”; “Spurs seem to have ten number 10s on the pitch.”

But hang on a minute - Where does Messi supposedly play, because it would appear to be absolutely everywhere? Should Jack Wilshere be playing ‘in the hole’ because he’s number 10 for Arsenal? Is he out of position every week? Should someone tell Stoke to stop playing attacking midfielders until they give one the number 10 shirt? Are Edin Dzeko and Emanuel Adebayor (number 10s for Manchester City and Spurs) not two of the most archetypal power forwards in the league? The numbers on the back of players shirts don’t dictate how or where they play; managers do. 

Noone had a go at Thierry Henry for wearing 14 and RVP reportedly chose number 20 to spur him on to win United’s 20^th league title. Yet commentators insist on using the phrase  “number 10” to describe a particular type of playmaker. What’s most frustrating is that sometimes, according to this paradigm, a number 10 is a defence splitting midfield maestro, playing just behind the front line, like Mata or Coutinho and others he is a forward who drops deep to involve himself in build up play, like Aguero or Robbie Keane. The phrase “number 10” to describe almost any attacking player needs discarding into a graveyard along with “YOLO”, “Bieber Fever” and “it’s always in the last place you look.” Of course it is – after that you stop looking.  

Film (P)Review: Gravity

I should probably start by letting you know that I haven’t actually seen this film. This review is actually more a reasoning behind why I’m not going to watch it. Based on reviews I’ve read, the trailer and anecdotal evidence of friends who’ve seen it, I am entirely sure that I have no desire to sit through this $100 million dollar critically acclaimed Hollywood Blockbuster. Here’s why -

First of all, if I wanted to watch an objectively attractive woman whom I don't find subjectively attractive (Sandra Bullock) spin around for two hours panting and moaning, I’d put my sister-in-law on a carousel without her travel sickness medication.

I also object to the notion that because this movie is expensive and in 3D, it is a “must-see”. Yes the visual effects are probably stunning, yes George Clooney is dreamy in a spacesuit, but I’m yet to see a 3D film (apart from Avatar – the exception that proves the rule) wherein the 3D actually added to my enjoyment. Instead the 3D specs, which I have to prop over my existing four eyes, darken the screen, killing contrast, masking detail and dulling the visuals in general. What’s more, most 3D films (admittedly not including Gravity) are not in fact originally shot with 3D cameras but are actually painstakingly doctored post-shoot by the visual effects crew. In Thor 2, for example, a purportedly meaningful clip of pidgeons scattering in Greenwich provides the only fragment that remotely involves 3D.

In Gravity, the 3D is allegedly used to provide depth rather than project hallucinations of debris hurling out of the screen.  This is laudable but the main aspect of this film that people seemed to enjoy was the disorientating nature of the cinematography. I don’t want to be disoriented. I’m likely in the minority here but I hate roller coasters. Originally this stemmed from a deathly fear of pissing my pants in public but later in life I realised that I’m quite happy with four feet planted on the ground and the constituent parts of my body pointing in one direction at a time. The prospect of sitting in a dark auditorium with eighty popcorn-chomping strangers, feeling as if I’m about to either implode or whirl off into nothingness whilst trying to remember which of Newton’s laws it is that’s bringing about my demise is one I dread and will do my best to avoid – even if I have to watch the Counsellor or something equally awful.