Kernels Actually

It being Advent, I've ordered rather a large number of things online over the past few days. Most of them I had planned carefully in advance - but this evening, as I sat on my own in front of programmes about repellent teenagers and their worse parents, I ordered something rather odd. Bitter apricot kernels, to be precise. Apparently there is a tribe in, I believe, South America, that have apricot kernels (something that are not in Western diets much these days) as a staple part of their daily intake - and they never get cancer. So I've ordered a big bag off the internet, and I'm going to eat twelve a day. Kernels, that is - not big bags. In fact, if anyone sees me eating more than twelve, they should stop me, because they contain a small amount of cyanide.

My favourite bit about the entire ordering process was the site's inspired name: kernelpower.co.uk. I'm not sure the website's creator was intending to make subliminial references to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and their UK number one hit of July 1990, Turtle Power, by Partners in Kryme, but that's exactly what I thought of the moment I saw the web address. And is that such a bad thing? Sure, anti-cancer products aren't usually branded alongside cult-turned-mainstream comic adaptations, but who's to say it isn't a genius marketing ploy? Frankly, it may well have increased her click-to-purchase ratios. Speaking only for myself, I think the site name had approximately 76% influence on my decision to spend - the remaining 24% was to do with the allegedly life-saving properties of her products. I award zero percent to the site's design, which was, frankly, laughable.

I've just finished watching Love Actually on iTV. I think it is a very bad film, the movie equivalent of a Pepperoni Feast, but this is definitely the third, and possibly the fourth time I have watched it. There's nothing intrinsically wrong or evil about unoriginal, unchallenging, unprovoking films - it's just deeply disappointing for me when I like them. Heck, I even got goosebumps towards the end. Will my cultural hypocrisy never end? Don't answer that.