I was reading my junior children a pop-up version of Jack and the Beanstalk last night, and it struck me that this is a tale with a very confused moral message.

We start with Jack's mother sending him off to sell the cow at market. As far as we can tell she is a single parent, and this at a time long before the welfare state, but even so this seems like a disproportionate degree of confidence to place in Jack. She specifies that the cow is all they have left, and yet she forgoes her own responsibility and dispatches her son to negotiate a good price. This is particularly surprising since, as we will soon discover, Jack is clearly an idiot - something you would have thought that with no other children to attend to she would probably have noticed. In fact, with the lack of other children, indeed the lack of anything else (the cow is all they have), you have to ask what was stopping her from going and selling the cow herself. What else did she have to do? However, perhaps I am doing her a disservice and she had decided that this was the time to show Jack that he had to learn to be a man and to perform bovine transactions alone. This being the case, she is guilty less of recklessness or idleness than of pure bad judgement. Whichever it is though, she is hardly blameless for the chaos that follows.

Off Jack goes to market. Except he doesn't get to market, because on the way he meets a strange man who offers to swap Jack's cow for some magic beans. Now I don't know what you've told your children, but like most sane people I've told mine not to talk to strange men. Not even to talk to them, you understand. Still less to accept beans off them in exchange for livestock. And not just any old beans - magic beans. What kind of story is it that suggests to its impressionable readership that accepting comestibles of mystical provenance is a good idea?

Jack goes home and gets rightly pilloried by his mother for squandering their last possession on the beans. Although she in turn demonstrates whence came his wanton nature by simply throwing them in the garden, where overnight they turn into a gigantic beanstalk. What would you do if a huge beanstalk grew in your garden? If you were destitute, you might think "Giant beanstalk, hopefully in not too long there might be some giant beans sprouting, which we could certainly use given that we don't have a cow any more. I must water and tend to this plant, make sure it flourishes, and with hard work and good fortune we might yet prosper". What you probably wouldn't do is stand back and watch your only son climb up it until he disappeared through the clouds. Often when one reads of juvenile delinquence it is tempting to question "What were the parents doing?", and such is the case here. It is easy to wonder whether Jack's mother hadn't kept one of those magic beans back for her own personal use.

So Jack reaches the top of the beanstalk and arrives at a wondrous kingdom, where he finds a castle. There doesn't appear to be anybody at home, but in he saunters anyway, helping himself to sustenance. He's a yob, let's be honest. He's a latterday hoodie. In the midst of his scoffing he hears the giant whose food he's eating heading home. The giant, like everyone else in this story, is evidently a halfwit who can't even formulate a simple rhyme. "Fee fi fo fum" he shouts, "I smell the blood of an Englishman". Now there are an abundance of words which rhyme with Englishman, but "fum" isn't one of them. Can. Ran. Tan. "Home in the sun with a brownish tan, I smell the blood of an Englishman" he could have called, but oh no, he had to make up something nonsensical and STILL couldn't get it right. And what kind of child-eating giant announces his imminent arrival with a chant anyway? Just in case his great clodhopping footsteps are not enough warning to his intruder to get hidden fast, he has his own illiterate theme song. The giant comes home, eats his tea and counts his gold. Great play is made of the fact that he counts his gold, as if the facts that he eats children and is materialistic mean he somehow deserves his fate. Well, if I had gold I would certainly count it regularly, and any child who climbs a cloud-piercing beanstalk and then wanders into my castle unbidden can take his chances.

The giant falls asleep, and Jack - clearly hellbent on continuing his litany of misdeamenour - steals a bag of gold and does a runner, pursued by the giant. Down the beanstalk he climbs, calling to his equally degenerate mother, who grabs an axe and once Jack is safe chops down the beanstalk, in so doing killing the giant. A giant who, according to what we've actually seen (as opposed to scurrilous hearsay), is guilty solely of zealous accountancy. And for this catalogue of bad parenting, foolhardiness, breaking and entering, larceny and murder, what do Jack and his mother get?

They get to live happily ever after!

What kind of lesson is that to give our children?

I've deleted two of my Friends. That's a very emotive way of putting it, isn't it? It makes me sound like something out of 'Blade Runner'. Thing is, one of them had no activity in 312 days, and another had, as far as I can tell, never read anything I'd written and has a weblog which has so little in common with mine that I'd never read it either. I comment rarely but I do keep in touch with what people post, but not in this instance, and it seemed rather pointless to keep this person on my list. It almost seemed disrespectful to the rest of you to retain someone so not attuned to the general ambience.

However, I'm not sure what the form is here. When someone sends you an invitation you get to weigh it up, look at their weblog, consider the issue. When you delete them, bam they're gone. It's a particularly impersonal way to conduct oneself (on what is, though many delude themselves otherwise, a thoroughly impersonal medium). I can't help thinking it might be nice to have a halfway point - when you're thinking of deleting someone, a little window could come up into which you could type "Look, I'm not sure this is really working out... I feel like we've grown apart... It's not you, it's me..." (Apologies for my appropriation of break-up cliches - I've never actually split up with anybody, so I can't draw on personal experience.)

I really ought to be trying to acquire more friends, bearing in mind the utterly pointless piece of promotion I'm going to execute in a forthcoming posting, rather than indulging in this act of wanton recision. Never mind though. It feels good to cleanse. Who will be next for my cyber-scythe? Perhaps I should go the whole hog and start trimming you down one by one, Agatha Christie style. I could whittle it down person by person, ending up with a sole Friend who, to complete the artistic vision, I would probably have to actually murder.

This possibly isn't the best way to encourage people to read my weblog.

I confess to being rather bemused by my statistics on this site. In the eight days since I posted my Steely Dan review, I've apparently had 163 visitors making 518 page views. That's 3.18 page views per visitor (compared to a June average of 1.55) which suggests that rather than just taking a look and deciding it's not for them, many of these 163 have gone on to read other entries here. And yet none of them, not one person out of 163, has felt inclined to leave a comment. Not one! Surely there must have been something in those 518 views that evoked some reaction in somebody? Or have I cornered the market in producing the most apathy-inspiring weblog in existence?

I was wondering this morning why I can never remember where I've put my glasses. Then I realised that in fact I almost always remember where I've put them, but I can never remember where I've put the empty case when I have them on. Which is odd, because if I can generally remember where I've put my glasses when I take them off, why don't I just put the case in one of the places where I put the glasses? Even if it means pretending that the glasses are in the case. Perhaps I should get a fake pair to add the appropriate weight to the case. Then when I come to put down the case, I'll be lulled into thinking that it's got my glasses in it and leave it in one of the handful of places where I know to find it. The only problem is that when I come to actually take off my glasses and put them in the case, I'll have to find something to do with the fake pair in the meantime - somewhere to put them that I would definitely remember. Which given that they will be shaped like a pair of glasses, an object which appears to be hardwired to my amnesia gene, might not be that easy. Perhaps I could incorporate into the fake pair some sort of alarm, like people have in their car keys, which can be set off by pressing a button on a remote sensor. Then I'd just have to be able to locate the remote sensor. Alternatively I could just poke my eyes out with a stick and have done with it.

While hordes of bright young things were cramming into Wembley to receive the ecological exhortations of didactic megastars, a few miles across town Hammersmith Apollo played host to a sellout crowd of the greying and balding who probably won't be around to see California tumble into the sea. This avuncular audience was drawn by Steely Dan, who sauntered nonchalantly on stage like a pair of louche characters from one of their own lyrics.

As on their recordings Walter Becker and Donald Fagen surround themselves on stage with consummate session musicians, and they hit the ground running with vibrant renditions of 'Time Out Of Mind' and 'Godwhacker'. The music may not be jazz but it needs jazz musicians to do it justice, and the horn section in particular - a luxurious combination of baritone and tenor sax, trumpet and trombone - provided rich texture to the arrangements. This spirited opening, however, was followed by an uncertain phase which allowed too much prominence to Becker's sometimes aimless guitar work, and the decision to give him lead vocal duties on 'Haitian Divorce' was curious indeed. Becker's place in the band highlights the problem of converting the duo’s studio roles as directors of proceedings into the live arena. Fagen’s position is straightforward, as the main vocalist; Becker’s less so, and occasionally he seemed somewhat out of his depth.

Thereafter, the concert bedded down into a tour of oldies which was possibly over familiar to those who have followed the resurrected Dan this last decade. Despite not being bound by bona fide hits which demand performance at every show, Steely Dan nevertheless seem to have decided to do a disservice to their own glorious back catalogue by settling on a fairly static list of crowd pleasers. While no fan will dispute the quality of tracks such as 'Josie', 'Kid Charlemagne' and 'My Old School', there are plenty of alternatives from the outer reaches of their body of work which have yet to be performed live and which, to an audience undoubtedly familiar with the entire output of its favourite band, would have tingled the flesh that little bit more. That said, the musicianship was a joy to behold. More of the lead guitar work was delegated to the sublime Jon Herington, and the improvised breaks of tenor player Walt Wieskopf and powerhouse drummer Keith Carlock at the end of 'Aja' breathed new life into familiar territory.

Steely Dan's recent recordings have seen their wry commentaries assume a sense of both their own mortality and of burgeoning global apocalypse. But this was less a night for contemplation than for celebration of a comforting nostalgia, into which a knowing Donald Fagen tapped to elicit a gleeful response by promising that we would be journeying 'deep into the 1970s'. We were all happy to go there. If we're lucky enough to see Steely Dan again on these shores, let's hope they have the nerve to take us even deeper.

I've been thinking about the claim that amongst the persuasive inducements used on Islamic suicide bombers is the promise of an afterlife wherein their every whim is catered to by 72 virgins. I have to say, it's not an idea that really appeals to me. 72 virgins? 72 girls (or, heaven forbid, Ann Widdecombe types who could never get any) who don't know what they're doing? That's not something for which to blow yourself to smithereens. What you want is the promise of 72 relatively experienced women (what I believe the FHM generation have coarsely acronymed as MILFs) who have picked up a few tricks on the way. That would be a lot more of an incentive.

Although... 72 seems like an awful lot. Once you'd got the initial bout of hedonistic indulgence out of the way, I doubt whether any man of my age could happily manage more than twice a day. That means it would be over five weeks before the first of the 72 virgins (or similar) got round to seconds. I can't speak for womankind, so feel free to correct me here, but five weeks without seems like a long time to me. And that's if your suicide bomber keeps to a strict rotational system, which in itself would probably be difficult as you would doubtless have favourites whom you would, no pun intended, queue jump. It all seems like a recipe for bitterness, rivalry and acrimony to me. Eternity in the company of six dozen whinging women is not something I have in mind for myself.

Of course it's possible that the 72 virgins catering to your every whim are there not for mere carnal pleasures but for more prosaic, practical purposes. I really dislike cutting my toenails, and I can certainly see the appeal of having a virgin on hand to do that for me. I never seem to get on top of cataloguing my CD collection, but I'm sure a couple of dedicated virgins could sort that out in no time. I keep forgetting to re-felt the shed roof - dispatch virgins 37 and 52 at once. Perhaps Islamic suicide bombers are people who have just got themselves hopelessly disorganised, and who agree to detonate themselves on the understanding that in the hereafter, they need never compile another Jobs To Do list.