Who or what I am

This is weird. I'm turning into someone that's completely alien to the person I was until very recently.

Most noticeably, why am I turning into a vegetarian? Why? How has this happened? How can I go for 32.5 years happily eating everything that doesn't look like a pet and is conventionally edible, then suddenly bam, I don't like meat? That does not make sense. Fish I've been struggling with for a while, both from the point of view of fish rights (why is it less cruel to kill a fish?) and from the fact that it suddenly started to taste all fleshy, then bacon suddenly became vile. My mum was talking about lamb, and there is No Way on this planet I'd eat it. Tonight I had a expensive and perfectly cooked piece of roast beef for dinner, nearly gagged when I was carving it, and had to force it down, only because it was expensive and I'm having palpitations at imagined lack of iron. That pretty much leaves chicken and turkey which I fear have a very limited life on my menu. All very nice and all, but I never do anything unless I do it with boundless enthusiasm and I live with a vegetable hating carnivore. And it's a little disturbing, I was a fairly gung ho omnivore until very recently and I am not the sort of person that follows popular trends, the fact that it's more common now thanks to Hugh Furrily-Witteringand Jamie Oliver is usually precisely the thing that sends me off to the abattoir (so to speak).

Having never disliked men in any way shape or form since before I can remember, today I have turned into a man hater. This is the singularly most unlikely thing ever to happen to me, seriously. Prior to today I was much more into silencing feminists, now I'm having these disturbingly feminist-ish thoughts. No reason either, if I'd been unceremoniously dumped or something, that would possibly explain it, but no, I just have a new personality. Not one that hates men to the extent of liking women I may add. Just to clarify.

In addition to being unable to write, I appear to also have forgotten how to read. I can't do it. This is unfortunate and may well severely interfere with my studies, which won't matter in the fullness of time, I'll no doubt wake up tomorrow with a passion for gardening and won't care tuppence about transport any more.

My imagination, paranoia and hypochondria are still intact and functioning as normal, there's still a little of me in here.

Cruelty

The New Scientist tells me that hackers can modify pacemakers to wear down the batteries or give the wearer electric shocks. And apparently other hackers sent flashing images last year to the Epilepsy Foundation website to try and trigger attacks.

Can people really be that cruel? That's beyond being a prankster.

In another entirely different and far less sinister type of cruelty, I find poor Jools Oliver being targeted as a victim in a loveless marriage again, contrary to the ongoing evidence of a sweet little family that deal admirably with inevitable difficulties. (Or maybe I'm naively believing in true love and it's all a sham). An interview she did with Red magazine contained the confession that she was considering taking fertility drugs to conceive again as "Jamie would do anything for a boy". This was an aside at the end of an interview, but is the quote that made the cover, and I've seen several reports that admit to taking the information from that Red interview, which take the "Jamie Oliver forces his wife to have IVF such is his desperation for a child" angle as if Jamie is a monster interested only in his needs. And Jools mentions nothing of IVF, only of taking fertility drugs, which she details in her book "Minus Nine to One" and is not something she kept hidden. I recall Davina McCall saying, in one of the Channel 4 snippets of celebrities answering a question, that she would like to "give her husband a son" - so what of it? Many men make no secret of the fact that they'd like a son if they have daughters. But the media are determined to prove that the Olivers can't possibly be as happy as they seem to be, there must be cracks somewhere...


(yes, I know, the pukka thing's annoying, but he is an amazing chef and he is a hero for school dinners, chickens and Sainsburys. She's a poppet).

Why do the public delight in reading of other's downfalls? Clearly they want to read about celebrities suffering or the stories of such wouldn't sell. The greedy consumption of gloom fuels the media's cruelty.