If I only had a brain...

and some time. Here are ideas that have been rattling around my head for a while, that I'll probably never do. If anyone wants to run with any of these, please do; I'll probably never get around to it.

A cookbook for party leftovers - you know, baby carrots, dip, crudites, stale chips, salsa, flat beer. I can think of so many things to make.

Screenplay/book about the Land of Oz; the men who created it and Tweetsie Railroad.

Book about graduates of a club like The Cambridge Footlights or The Groundlings who didn't become famous.

Founding a Scottish bakery, with unfancy, good cakes like meringues and shortbread. Though that particular baker has Weight Watchers cookies. I'm sorry but that's just wrong.

An import business for Scottish kitsch, including publications from the esteemed publishing house of D.C Thomson, purveyor of the sentimental, judgemental, parochial and maudlin.

Designing and making stylish, girly clothes for the size that I am, straddling regular and plus size, with giant shoulders and long arms - i.e. big women. And trannies too I suppose.

Speaking of women a bit on the butch side, here's evidence that women are hairier than they used to be, attributed to high carb diets. And evidence that depression is definitely linked to poor diet. So if you are sad, and have a moustache, and you're a girl, eat a salad!

I'm heartened that Chile has elected a woman. Not only a woman, but a socialist single mother who is a pediatrician, and was tortured during the Pinochet regime. She joins the list of woman leaders which is larger than expected. She is inspiring; if she can lead a country, I can make it to the gym twice a week, right?

The blurb for this show pushes all my buttons. I don't doubt that schools are not everything they should be, but it's not due to the government having a monopoly over the school system. That seems like veiled code for the promotion for vouchers. Since I started living here, I've met both astonishingly well-educated and informed individuals, and barely literate, credulous individuals. One thing that America teaches it's youth, which I have seen first-hand with my son, is confidence. When this confidence is backed up by intelligence and ability, it's a wonderful asset. When there is nothing except confidence, it's a cringe making embarassment.