Why have we started putting birdseed in our food again?

This cycle is, to me, hilarious. In pre-industrial societies, a lot of crops fail, and you are forced to eat things that are called durum. Because they're miserable. And then you get to the point where you can make proper flour, so you do, and that's very nice. And then maybe you start bleaching or otherwise modifying your flour and you start feeling guilty about the Frankenflour, and you dial it back a little.

This is fine. As a rule we probably ought to eat real food. But you know what we are not obliged to eat? Millet.

I read a lot of food blogs, and one of them recently told me I should make a banana bread with millet in it.

My immediate reaction, of course, was to think of The Seven Samurai. Specifically, the scene in which Katsushiro (the young, hot samurai) brings his ration of rice to Shino (the pretty village girl), who, like all the other villagers, has been subsisting on millet. He does this because he has a crush on her, and says by way of explanation, "I had millet for the first time today. It was awful." (Also I think of Honey Huan when she translates for Duke when he is ambassador to China. That's a little more surreal. Also rifles.)

This does not add up to something you should eat if you can avoid it.

Why does Martha come back so many times in Series 4 of Doctor Who?

Yes, we know, Freema Agyeman is really, really gorgeous.

Martha still really, really sucks.

Look: if you want to go home to your fiancé, go. Don't whine, look tortured, and stick around being useless. Nobody cares. And it does not inspire confidence when someone was so stupid as to give you, literally, the power to destroy the earth. How'd she get that gig? Was it by complaining that she's a real doctor? (Also, so glad that she got fast-tracked through her qualifications because of all her field experience...of naming bones in her hand...and whining...and hanging out with aliens... Yup, field experience.)

And why are people still so willing to die for her? Come on, Hath, all she did was pop your dislocated shoulder back into place! This does not mean you owe her your life! Let her die in the tarry muck! No one will cry! Except the Doctor, but at this point he's having an emotional breakdown every time Donna breaks a nail or something, so ignore him.

Why is Happy-Go-Lucky the most infuriating movie I've ever seen?

Seriously, Sally Hawkins, why the bloomin' hell can't you close your goddamn mouth?

But besides that.

Things that are offensive: movies that tell you that you hate yourself and the world and happiness and puppies and all that is good just because you don't dress and act like an insane person.

Look, I don't wear macramé. I have a medium to good filter on things I say. Well, at least I don't think it's cute to have the giggles during an exam. I can wear appropriate footgear. When my bike is stolen, I swear. I don't bemoan how I didn't get to say good-bye, because I'm legitimately peeved. I don't have unfortunate bangs (fringe, for you Brits). I can stop taking lessons with a clearly deranged driving instructor. I know when not to make off-color jokes.

These are all normal, functional things! They do not mean I am a joyless weirdo.

Please, world. Stop making these asinine films, because they encourage people (particularly women) to think that it's endearing to be a failed human being.

It's not.

Why is buttermilk only sold in quarts?

Have you ever come across a recipe that uses more than a cup of buttermilk? Because I haven't. And I bake all the time.

Every other specialized dairy product is sold in sizes from the pint, if not the half-pint. Because you rarely if ever need more than a cup or two of, say, heavy cream, and shops have figured this out.

But here I am, stuck with a cup and three quarters of buttermilk in my fridge, and that's after both scones and pancakes. And while there are worse things than being forced into a week-long bonanza of scones, pancakes, and biscuits, it's still unnecessary and foolish.

Why is Bleak House so misleadingly titled?

Bleak House isn't even an unpleasant place. It's not the big, depressing manor; it's the cosy domicile of the kindly Mr. Jarndyce. It could not be less dire.

The book is no bleaker than any other Dickens. Yes, little Joe dies, but so did young Paul Dombey, and so did Smike, and you were rather fonder of them than of him. Esther gets smallpox, but she pulls through and Mr. Woodcourt still marries her, so that's all right in the end. And Richard is a great big twit, but he succeeds only in destroying himself, so even that can be forgotten.

So there are unhappy women and lost loves and illegitimate children. Are these really that much worse than Mrs. Copperfield's abusive second husband, or Mr. Dorrit's tragic self-importance, or the utter, utter degradation of Gaffer Hexam?

Please note, people: if you say you couldn't get through Bleak House because it was too dismal, you haven't tried.

(Fine, it's bleaker than The Pickwick Papers. But everything is bleaker than The Pickwick Papers, up to and including a hot toddy in front of the fire on Christmas evening after a hearty supper and many presents.)

Why doesn't BBC Sport have daily photo galleries for the cricket any more?

These photo galleries were splendid. They had mostly the best pictures, and they had humorous comments (the BBC has some of the best writers in sports). Every day of cricket would have them; that's five galleries per Test.

Well, this series against India has not had galleries. Are the BBC penny-pinching because of the upcoming Olympics? Because there's a gallery of the testing for the BMX site in London. Which: are you kidding me?

Your cricket team is currently the number one Test side in the world. It's pretty much the only thing in which you currently excel, except apparently rioting. You used to have them. I'm sure it's a budgetary drop in the bucket. And Stuart Broad is really good-looking!

Don't throw me on the mercy of Cricinfo. They're humorless scrubs.

Why do dying people make really creepy requests of their relatives?

[Look, either you've read Tess of the D'Urbervilles or you haven't. If you have, I bet you have your own giant list of things you hated about it. I probably hated the same obvious things, so let's take them as read and I'll move on to my own nutty hatreds.]

Tess, about to be taken by the police to be hanged for murder, asks Angel to marry Liza-Lu.

Heracles, dying in agony, orders Hyllus to marry Iole.

These are both bonkers and creepy as hell.

Let's review:

In Tess, the request is: "You abandoned me until my life was terrible enough that I murdered my lover; we have spent the last few days presumably shagging like bunnies; I'm going to be hanged; please marry my sister; that'll clearly work out."

In Trachiniae: "There's this girl I picked up; for jealousy of her your mother accidentally killed me, and then herself, but that was on purpose; you should marry the girl even though the idea completely horrifies you. Also please set me on fire."

What.

Why is Tess's husband named "Angel" Clare?

Yes, Thomas Hardy likes to beat you savagely about the head and shoulders with the point of his book, and he's a big proponent of telling rather than showing, but this is absurd.

Angel's brothers are named "Felix" and "Cuthbert." Those are both moderately silly names, but neither of them has a patch on "Angel." Moreover, they are names that people are named. Particularly male people. "Angel" is a very unlikely name for a boy, even for a parson's son in Victorian England.

Also, Thomas Hardy, if that's your idea of a redemptive personality, you have problems.

Why is the US Mint messing with success again?

These new pennies appear to have, on the reverse, a rejected design for Captain America's shield. And apparently before that there were Lincoln bicentennial designs, which were also bad, if fortunately short-lived.

What was wrong with the Lincoln Memorial? What could possibly have been wrong with the Lincoln Memorial? It is a handsome building. Lincoln was on the right side both of his time and of history.

Apparently this shield is meant to represent the unity that was President Lincoln's legacy to his grateful country. Sure. To me, it represents both bad art and laziness. Which is similar, I guess.

Why is Yuri Zhivago such an ass?

You have sympathy for him only because you have not read the book and Omar Sharif is appallingly handsome. One forgives him many things.

It doesn't matter how beautiful Lara is, it's still cheating. It doesn't matter how deaf you are to bourgeois sensibilities, it's still cheating. It doesn't matter how many bands of Red partisans capture you, it's still cheating.

The third woman is neither here nor there, I suppose, which is why she never makes it into the films. She is merely a disappointment, not a source of burning indignation. Yuri can't even decline without sucking more people into his vortex to admire his tortured genius, however faded.

His self-satisfaction is just so, so galling. Of course Lara matters so desperately. Of course Tonya is being unreasonable. Of course Vassya is not good enough. Of course Yuri has the right to tell off Komarovsky, as if he himself were some sort of plaster saint.

Piss off, Zhivago.

(Yes, Lara is just as culpable, and Pasha is considerably more destroyed than Tonya is, but the book's not called Nurse Guishar Antipova, so I stuck with Yuri.)

Why is everyone so in love with A Song of Ice and Fire?

I particularly enjoy that HBO decided that A Song of Ice and Fire is clearly too stupidly embarrassing a title and have used the much punchier "Game of Thrones" instead.

I read those books a while ago, you know, when only three or four of them were out. That is, I read some three or four thousand pages, in which damn-all happened and from which I remember three things.

1. Ned Stark died for no goddamn reason, despite being literally the only likable character.
2. Jaime grew a soul, but to make up for it he lost his hand.
3. Jon Snow was all Luke Skywalker all over the place, whining up hill and down dale, except some girl probably not his sister has actually gotten him into bed.

Oh, no, I remember another thing: they completely sucked. Everyone was an ass, and went about scheming to no useful end except a mounting, unrelenting squalid misery, almost everyone died except the people you disliked the most, there were no heroes at all, and George R. R. Martin never took ten words to say anything when he could take two hundred.

It is a dubious distinction for a series when no one can be bothered to read it absent the urging of Lena Headey's breasts.

Edited: And, my God, the asinine spelling.

Why do the Star Wars novels try to keep Han and Leia apart?

Guys: Luke Skywalker is a clean romantic slate. He has probably only ever kissed his sister, since he was The Whiniest Kid on Tatooine. And in book form you don't even have the constant reminder of Mark Hamill's broken face. Do all you want there, but don't mess with success.

I'm just saying. If a woman is willing to jeopardize what appears to be literally the entire Rebel war effort with the exception of Wedge Antilles on a mad rescue attempt, she is probably not going to hook up with a creepy lizard dude who turns pink when he releases pheromones. (This may not be an absolutely accurate recollection of Shadows of the Empire, but it's definitely close enough.) Sure, she led him a merry dance until she realized she liked scoundrels, but then she was pretty straightforward.

And no further courtship needs to occur. No improbably handsome blonds should show up to be manly and kind of stupid and ruin everything but not quite. This is asinine. Come on! This is a love story that was cute and reasonable! At no point did it make us cringe, and it even provided us with much hilarious banter. Do not throw this away because you lack the imagination to write a novel that is driven by things other than romance.

Also: who runs around on Han Solo? Honestly.

Why are single-speed and fixed-gear bicycles all the rage?

So many bicycle manufacturers appear to think that "I commute by bicycle" means "I commute by bicycle in a place that is flatter than most pancakes and I wear skinny jeans while doing it." Apparently it does, for many people. Most of whom appear to be stupid.

You know what things are awesome on a bicycle? Gears! Also brakes! Neither of these makes your cycling experience any less authentic, and if you're concerned about that anyway you can go get yourself a damn penny-farthing and very shortly the force of your opinion will be removed from the market. Meanwhile, those of us who commute in places with hills would like to be thrown a bone.

Say, a bike for someone between "serious racer" and "too dumb to shift gears." Preferably in blue.

Why is the Gap evil?

They are actually marketing: "Leggings: the Denim Alternative."

This is the devil's work.