[6] Crab cakes

Hey there faithful readers, to show you that you're always in my thoughts (even when I'm on holiday) I brought you a gift from my trip to cornwall. Can you guess what it is? Well you don't really have to guess, just scroll down and you'll see it.







































That's right! Crappy comic sandy limited edition! Now, you can't say we don't provide costumer satisfaction! Here at needless junk we think every one of you is extremely valuable and we do are best to give you top notch entertainment. Where else can you find this level of commitment? We are true professionals here, we are.

So if any of you has ever got caught by one of our crustacean friends from the sea now you know you can lead a normal life like the rest of us ;)

Did this comic remind anyone else about Pinchy, Homer's lobster pet, or is it just me?

Lookin' forward to your lovely comments,

Me

Cornwall and Devon

So I decided to take the easter weekend off, especially because here in the UK good friday and good monday are bank holidays so it's really a 4-day weekend woot! So me and two friends (Leticia and Nalleli) decided to go to Cornwall because the weather seemed to be (and is) much nicer than in Manchester and there's actually some nice beaches and miles upon miles of coastline you can walk around. Going to Devon wasn't actually in our plans but due to some logistic problems we had to go there and I must say I don't regret it since we saw some very nice things there. The trip was especially nice because we had a car and that allowed us to be very flexible in what we wanted to see; for example, we stayed near Brixham in Devon and we wanted to visit Land's End which is like a 3 hour drive so you can see the nuances that not having a car might have posed. Anyways for those of you who don't know where Cornwall and Devon are, here's a pretty pic for ya.

So, on friday morning, around 7am, we set off. We exited manchester via the M56 and then joined the M6 until Birmingham where we changed to the M5 until Exeter and some miles later we were in Torbay, all in all a 7 hour drive (the island looks much smaller in the maps). The Torbay area is known to be the English Riviera. I was somewhat skeptical about that but it actually turned out to be very nice. We walked along the Torquay coastline which ends in Brixham. Here's some prrety pictures so you can see what I'm talkin' about:








At nightfall we went to Berry Head national reserve where you can see some amazing cliffs and landscapes, just a prelude to all of which we were going to see over the next days. These piccies are not very good since there was no light there and I'm no experienced photographer but here you have'em (the nicer ones aren't actually mine):





Saturday we set off pretty early again (7am) for the 3 and a half hour drive to Land's End, this was what I really wanted to see, it's the most westernly point in mainland Britain and hence the closest you can be to good old Mexico without going out of the island. Again, the landscapes were amazing, judge for yourself:







After that we decided to go to Marazion, where you can find St. Michael's Mount which has a castle on top. You can walk directly to the castle when the tide is low but once it starts rising (around 15:30) you need to make your way back or you might spend the night there, or come back by boat. It was a pity that the castle was closed though since it seemed really interesting but now I have an excuse to go back. Check out the pix:





After that we headed to the small town of St. Ives which is a very nice seaside town which is supposed to be renowned for its culture, there's an extension of London's Tate gallery there. Sadly, the we ran out of batteries on the cameras so there's not to many pictures of this place but here you have a couple:


On our way back we decided to visit Plymouth, the town were the English set off to the "New World", i.e. the U.S. We got there quite late, around 9pm, and with no cameras so I had to use my phone and that's why these pix are shitty. We didn't see much here since it was late we only saw the Barbican areas were you can see the plaques of the ships that sailed off from Plymouth.





Oh, I forgot to say the natural division between the counties of Devon and Cornwall is Tamar River and in order to cross it you have to cross Tamar Bridge. I thought it was nice so I took a pic:


Sunday was a real treat. First off, we drove to Tintagel castle which is the supposed birth place of the legendary King Arthur. As far as i understood nobody's proved that he was actually born there but still people like to beleive it. the thing that caught me off guard is that there isn't any castle! There's just the remains of what once was a small castle destroyed by a fire. But man! The landscapes were breathtaking! And also, between the cliffs a little beach is formed and there's a mini cascade and some caves. It's just really cool. I think this was my favorite part of the trip.







Next off we went to Newquay, where we orginally planned to stay. Newquay is the surfers' paradise in the UK. There's always plenty of young people and now that the weather was decent alot of them were on the beach doing some surfing but I didn't take any pics of them :P. The beach was nice and the sun made appearances at time so I took advantage of that to work on my tan hehe. We also had dinner there in a very nice and very typical restaurant called, what was it called? I actually don't remember but it was something about a Dolphin. The food was really nice.







Monday we had to come back to Manchester :( but not before visiting Dartmouth Castle and having a look at the town of Dartmouth. I've gotta say the town is really peculiar and picturesque because the houses are constructed in the hill which opens up to the River Dart like so:



So that's it after that we came back to manchester after a 7 hour drive. I hope you liked the pics. What were you guys up to on the easter weekend? I know you were out because my visits took a dramatic fall! :P So do tell where you were!

Another book post so you become a little more cultured

Sometimes when you see the title of a book you have no idea as to what to expect since it seems the author was just drunk, high or both when he decided on the title. Sometimes you have to read very deep into the book to finally get to that passage that reveals the meaning of the title and once you read it you get this feeling of complicity; the complicity that lies in the fact of knowing that the author might not only not have been drunk, high or both but that the title he chose makes a whole lotta sense and it's actually very fitting.

One such book is The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger. If you were to try to deduce the contents of the book based only on the title you'd most certainly be way off the real plot. For example, if you had asked me about the book, assuming I didn't have any prior knowledge about it, I would've probably said something like "Well, it's probably about a baseball player whose team was so poor that they didn't have anywhere to play so he collected pledges to buy this old out of use rye field and turn it into a baseball park". To which you would have responded "Man, you're dumb!"

In reality though, you'd probably not get many silly responses since this is a famous book and probably a lot of people have heard something about it. If you're wondering why it's so famous there's probably two main reasons that account for that:

1) It's controversial; the book deals with the psyche of a teenage boy, Holden Caulfield, and puts out there quite blatantly all of his thoughts and feelings. Holden smokes, drinks and swears profusely (most of his swears words are derived from the word goddamn, yes, hardly a swear word nowadays but back in the day...). Sexual topics are explored as well, including what Holden thinks to be a homosexual advance by one former teacher of his, so you might see why the book raised its fair share of eyebrow in 1951.

2) When John Lennon was assasinated, his killer, Mark Chapman, was found carrying a copy of the Catcher in the Rye and he referred to Lennon as the ultimate phony, a word that Holden uses almost as often as 'goddamn' in the book. There's even a conspiracy theory that claims that the book is used by the CIA to brainwash people and that Chapman himself was 'programmed' to kill Lennon because US government thought he was a threat.

Anyways, the whole point of this post was to save you the task of reading 179 pages of the book in order to find the passage that contains the title so I'm gonna post it right here verbatim, if you plan to read the book you can still read on since it won't really spoil it for you.

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be." Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye

Tha passage above encapsulates the whole theme of the novel. Holden speaks this words to his kid sister, Phoebe, who he wants to protect from all the 'phoniness' (or hipocrisy) out there. Throughout the novel Holden exposes his feeling towards all these phonies he encounters in his daily life, he thinks all these people are hypocrites and that they live their life according to what society and appearances dictate them to do. To Holden, most adults are phonies and that's why he sees himself as the protector of innocence, here represented by the little kids playing in the rye field by the cliff. He protects them by 'catching' them and preventing them from falling.

Since I don't really like to give out synopses of books, I'd recommend you to read the book since I obviously left out many important parts of the book and that Holden kid has some interesting ideas and views on the world.

[5] The meaning of life

I've been wanting to update during the week but I haven't had any inspiration lately, yeah, I know, it's not as if my other posts are the product of an illuminated mind so save those witty remarks to yourself....

Today was one of those days,for me at least, when you feel your existence doesn't make the least bit of a difference in the world and that your life's going down the drain hole day by day in the numb vacuum that is your daily routine and day by day you fail to justify all that oxygen you consume.

That's why I decided to ventilate my frustration in some way and the way I chose to do so is through the comic below as opposed to a more heterodox method as, let's say, kicking a pigeon in the park or something.

You might be happy to know that it worked. I am now completely at peace with myself and with the world that surrounds me and nothing can faze me since I know I'm one of god's special creatures! Yay for me!

So without further freddie adu, I give you the aforementioned comic:


Rightie-o, if you don't get the '42' reference go read Hithhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. However, if you don't want to read it I'd recommend you go buy a monkey who can read it and then summarize it for you. Oh, wait! One already did!

And remember, next time you feel suicidal, draw a comic and everything'll magically be better. If you feel you don't have any drawing skills then leave me comments, that'll cheer you up for sure.

Now go and spread the joy.