simon-n-liza

Fancy Mixer!

2010-12-18T17:16:00.000-08:00

It is a week before Christmas, and the cake is finally completed!

Before we get to that, however, let me point out a cunning way of seeing all of the "cake related" posts in one place; I tagged them as "Christmas Cake 2010" and this is a link to all of those posts.

Anyway, on to the topic of this post. As I reported back in August, my grandfather recently passed away. The estate recently cleared probate or whatever it does in England (I have been away so long I have forgotten how such things are conducted, if indeed I ever knew, and tend to view everything through an Americanocentric lens) and my grandfather's estate (won by hard graft at the drafting table with a slide rule and in the windtunnels dedicated to winning the Cold War. Give thanks to my forebear, any of you who do not live in a Communist dystopia!) passed to my father and his brother.

My father, generous to a fault, passed some of the estate to myself and Liza. He said he thought Grandad would want us to have some of it. I don't know if he would - I suspect he never thought about such things - but I am certain he would not begrudge us it, nor would he have a problem with my father disposing of (now) his wealth as he chose.

So, Liza and I decided - rather than spend the entire amount on the sensible, fiscally responsible thing of lowering our debts etc. etc. - we would spend some of it on some fun, joyful things. Or, at least, practical things with an element of joy in them.

So, we bought a Kitchenaid Mixer.

A brief explanation - not about the Kitchenaid Mixer, which really needs no explanation. It is a mixer - it is the best of the generally available brands, I believe. They are very nicely made and they come with a load of attachments. It is very much like the Kenwood device my parents had and my father and I had such fun messing around with while we made sausages.

No, the explanation is about Facebook and the Lowe's page thereon. Liza "liked" this thing (along with half a million other people) when it became clear Lowe's were posting links to a page where one could register and (if you were one of the first 100 people) get a coupon for a 90% discount of some kind of domestic appliance.

Let that sink in for a moment. Facebook. Half a million people. Regular offers to get many different sorts of domestic appliance for a tenth the cost. Current American economy.

Result : Chaos.

Seriously; read the comments if you have a mind. They are full of people begging Lowe's to post the next item, because right now they are on tenterhooks, waiting for the item, waiting to register. Babies are unfed, diapers unchanged, dishes unwashed, dogs pawing at the bowl expecting Winalot and getting nothing but the uncaring sound of their masters frantically clicking the "refresh" button.

It is crazy. Liza was part of it for a while, until I said "Enough! Let us go, even now, unto Lowes and just buy the wretched Kitchenaid!"

And so that is what we did. It was, ironically enough, the last one in the store. It is quite fancy, although it does not have all the hundreds of attachments. I want to get them, as I am a man and thus think attachments are totally awesome.

Sorry, this blog post has been more about my family than the cake. Let us rectify that.

There is the mixer, ready to mix the first batch of anything it has ever mixed! The previous batches of royal icing have been mixed by hand, but this time I wanted to test the mixer. It seemed excessive, but there wasn't anything else to test it with. Kaitlin & Tim are going to make cookies on Thursday with it, but I wanted to try it out before then.

In the bowl; three cups of icing sugar (which the internet tells me is 375g icing sugar, or about three quarters of a pound of the white powdery stuff).

It mixes! I've added the egg white and lemon juice and, hot-diggity, it mixes! I was so excited during this portion of the process, I can't tell you. Tremendous fun. Worth any amount of money.

The final result - a very smooth, very nice royal icing. Liza said (and I agree) it actually gave a better result than mixing it by hand, which was not what I was expecting. I was expecting it to be easier and quicker (maybe) but not give a better result. This just looked better than doing it by hand, which made it easier to justify the expense.

Not that I needed much of an excuse, you understand.

Here is me applying what will be the final layer of icing sugar to the cake. I calculated - I applied the icing in four batches, two of 1.5 cups each, one of 2 cups and one of 3 cups. So, that is a total of 8 cups, which is about 2lbs of icing. That is a pretty substantial amount of icing right there. Just so we know.

And there is the cake in all its final glory! I did the traditional "spiking" on the top of the cake because, well, it's traditional and tradition is important to people other than rooftop-dwelling Jewish violinists, you know. It now has a week for the icing to set and dry, and then it can be eaten!

We are going to get Wensleydale cheese, of course.

Marzipan WIN!

2010-12-12T17:20:00.000-08:00

So, the marzipan recipe was a complete failure, and we ended up with something which was like oatmeal. Tim Ferguson, canon lawyer for the Archdiocese of Detroit, suggested it could be used as unicorn feed.

Lacking a unicorn, however, there wasn't much use for it. So, it languished in the fridge while we went hunting for marzipan.

Marzipan is easier to find than unicorns, although the first place we tried didn't have any. Nor did the third. The second didn't have it either (if it did, why would we have looked in the third place?) but when we asked a person there if they stocked marzipan she asked, "What's marzipan?"

So, I guess you don't carry it, huh?

The fourth place we looked at was Holiday Market, which carries all kinds of cooking and bakery items. We found the marzipan! Our hunt was successful!

Behind me is the Annoyed Woman. She is annoyed. She is annoyed because I was taking a picture of myself, with the marzipan. She had to wait to buy her bakery item. Meh, whatever, right?

Well, no. I only just learned, from Liza (who was there), that said Annoyed Woman (who is annoyed) was buying a 2 lb bag of baking soda.

To be frank, that kind of scares me. Can't you build a bomb big enough to kill God with baking soda and other household chemicals?

So, once we had escaped the Annoyed Woman, who is annoyed, we returned home and removed the cake from the pan, turning it upsidedown as we did so (I say we, but Liza was asleep at this point, because Liza was tired). The above image shows the cake sitting on the platter we used for it.

The recipe for the cake suggests you use marzipan to fill any gaps at the new-bottom of the cake. Now, I didn't want to use the marzipan we had bought because we only had a bit, and it was expensive, and if we go back to get more the Annoyed Woman might be there and be annoyed.

So, I used the unicorn-feed to fill in the gaps, using it like spackle and smoothing it all out. It seemed to work pretty well, although we'll have to see how it tastes.

I then busted out one of the two tins of marzipan and rolled it out into a circle. I had to pieces-part it together because it wouldn't roll properly, and I didn't have enough to roll out a big sheet and cut the circle out of that. I was having to roll it pretty thin, because Annoyed Woman (who is annoyed) stopped me from getting more (also, expensive - but Annoyed Woman is a better excuse).

Marzipan isn't that sticky - especially when you have rolled it out with icing sugar so it does not stick! So, you have to use some kind of warm jam as glue. Traditionally, it is apricot jam, but we didn't have any. So, we used Irish Kiss marmalade, from The Old Rectory, Stratford ON which we bought when we were on vacation there during the holiday we didn't blog about because we were too tired. Anyway, fine marmalade from great people. In the microwave, heat it up, use it as glue.

That is the top circle stuck on, all pieces-parted together. I wasn't too concerned about it, as it was going to be covered in the royal icing.

Here is the cake, fully covered in marzipan. Not much to say, really. In fact, a lot of these pictures are like that, I suppose.

Royal icing - one and half cups of icing sugar, and one egg white. All very simple and easy, although you initially think there is not enough liquid and you want to add more. Here is a hint; don't.

Here is the cake with the royal icing applied. Now, there is really not enough icing here to actually cover the cake - it needs more layers, most definitely. However, this is the first layer and it covers the cake quite evenly. It is all exciting and fun. It seems to be drying pretty quickly and I think I will be able to add another layer tomorrow!

Tremendous excitement, I am sure you will agree. And, if you don't, well then you are annoyed. Like the Annoyed Woman.

Chanelling Allie

2010-12-11T17:34:00.000-08:00

I have done very little today other than write the previous blog post and read the entirety of Hyperbole and Half. I am the world's finest procrastinator. Or maybe I will be tomorrow.

So, I am going to write a blog post. And, as all I have done today is read Allie Brosh, this post might reflect her writing style. Whatever. You should totally read her blog, as it is awesome funny. Also, she totally reminds me of a girl I used to date. Which probably sounds totally creepy and stalkery, but isn't.

What I did do today was (as I said in the previous blogpost) was make marzipan. We decided that marzipan is hellish expensive (this is true) and that it is easy to make.

This is not true.

First, you have to have 4 cups of ground almonds, which is something you can't just find at a regular store. It is not just chopped almonds, it needs to be like almond flour or something like that. I am reminded of my statement one Christmas that (in my precocious "I am winning the science prize, hippies" manner) a brazil nut contained enough energy to blow your right arm off (I dunno if it really did; I might have made that up). My sister, ever clever, said "What about your left arm?" I am also reminded (when placed together, these two things make some kind of sense) of the dangers inherrent in flour mills. Particulate-stuff (flour, powdered sugar) burns in an explosive manner when scattered through the air.

No, seriously. For real. Custard-powder bombs are very real.

(Dash it all, I totally promised myself I was not going to post some reference to cooking meth, or making explosives, or something else I could use to say "there are some recipes on the internet which are awesome and work and some which do not. Like this one for marzipan." And now lookit.)

Alright, I get ahead of myself.

Liza bought 2 lbs of raw almonds and we ground them up in a food processor and then a coffee grinder, and made 4 cups of almond dust. This is not only an explosion risk, but if you have some kind of allergy to nuts, you really shouldn't breathe the same air as me or come into my house.

You know, I have cats too. And nuts. And eggs and maybe fish. You know what? If you have allergies, you probably shouldn't know me. I am like Dr. Mengele only without the cool uniform and knowledge of anatomy.

Too soon?

Then we made the recipe - this required initially to basically make toffee. Sugar and water and boil 'em until they are at the "soft ball" stage. I did this. You then cool down the toffee so it goes thick and creamy and then mix in the ground almonds and egg white. And then you stir and heat it until it gets thicker.

At this point, the "marzipan" looked like oatmeal. Utterly like oatmeal. I still had faith in the internet, because when has it ever lied to me before? Other than all those times, of course.

What you do with this oatmeal mess is pour it on a flat surface and knead until it resembles marzipan.

Let me tell you what does happen if you try this. The oatmeal mess flops everywhere and you have to scoop up boiling sugar-and-nut mixture and put it back in the pan while swearing all the while. This recipe just does not work.

The resulting concoction does not even taste like marzipan. It tastes like oatmeal with a faint tinge of almonds. I put it in the freezer, where it has kind of set into, well, solidified oatmeal. It is grainy and solid and utterly unlike any kind of marzipan I have ever seen.

There are a number of possible uses for this substance;

Building material
Exfoliating face scrub (Liza actually agreed this was a good idea)
Putting it in a pie crust and baking it.

Everything is better in a pie crust. Except maybe more pie crust. Some kind of infinite pie. That might not be good. It would be like a Chinese puzzlebox filled with more puzzleboxes.

So, marzipan making = fail. I feel I may have redeemed myself with the turkey meatballs made from spare, however.

We will bite the bullet and buy actual marzipan, not some kind of exfoliating building material puzzlebox center.

Deep-Fried Candy Bars and Additional CAKETIME!

2010-12-11T09:39:00.000-08:00

Alright people, as promised - updates on the cake! I am really just procrastinating here; I should be working or writing people's Christmas presents, but I am not. So, go figure.

Anyway - we took the cake out of the oven and let it cook down in the tin. I then removed it from the tin and had a gander at it. It looks like a cake. Behold;

That is the cake after I took it out of the tin and wrapped it in greaseproof paper and foil like it said. But then Liza reminded me that when we did it before, we did not take it out of the tin - we just left it in there and fed it there. So, I put it back in the tin.

BUT! Before you see that, here is the cake from last time (the Groom's Cake from the wedding); just so you know everything is proceeding in the usual manner.

It looks very similar (the difference being in lighting and also the fact you are looking at the top of this cake, and the bottom of the new one).

So, I put the cake back in the tin (right way up) and started poking holes in it and drizzling the remains of the brandy on it. You "feed" the cake like this morning and evening until you run out of brandy, basically, making sure it is in an airtight tin while you do this. We slapped on a saucepan lid which fits the tin perfectly and scrunched some foil around it - basically, all you are trying to do is make sure the alcohol does not boil off and the cake dry out.

I just (literally, just before I started typing this post) used up the last of the brandy on the cake. It makes the top of the cake go all spongy and doughy as it soaks in, so I think it's going to need a couple of says to stabilize and so forth. I put the lid back on and wrapped it in plastic wrap to keep the brandy inside. And we are just going to leave that for a couple of days before we start on the next part of the cake.

Oh, yes - there is more.

You have to ice this thing - which is kind of like frosting, but not the same. Frosting is generally soft and all squishy, but that is not the point of this. The idea is very simple - you cover it is a layer of marzipan and then multiple layers of royal icing. You can just slap on the marzipan and slather on a great thick layer of icing, but it doesn't dry right and you get this slightly soft, chewy icing.

You can do this. And you can also pierce your own nipples with a hammer and a rusty nail. It works but no-one is impressed and you wonder why you bothered.

No, what you do is this. You get the marizpan (which is fiendishly expensive in the USA, so we are going to make our own) and glue it to the cake using some kind of melted jam (traditionally, you use apricot, but I have had excellent results using marmalade). You then let this dry for a day or two, and put on multiple thin layers of royal icing, each of which has time to dry properly and fully before you put on the next one.

Anyway, all that is in the future - which is the future-future's past!

Let us speak of our past, which is also the future's past, and indeed everyone's past, except the past-past, of which the past is the future!

Deep fried candy bars.

I'm sorry. I couldn't hear the cry of awed amazement from here. Let's try this again.

I said, Deep Fried Candy Bars.

Yeah, hippies.

Alright, here is now it went down. The Boss was out of town (in Chicago, no less) and there was fear he would be trapped in the Windy City by the massive snowstorm blowing up (in the end, he wasn't - storm hit later). But, armed with this fear, we decided to offer to cook dinner for Housecat who is staying with the Boss. I offered to make proper, genuine, English fish and chips - so we did this.

The point of this story is NOT the consumption of 3 lbs of fried cod and about 6 lbs of fried potato together with batter by six people. Plus a custard tart. No, that's not the point (nor do I have pictures, although I really should have done because fish and chips is totally awesome and you just can't get it here unless you make it. Seriously and for reals, people - utterly impossible to get hold of decent fish and chips here. No-one has the first idea how to make it).

No, the point of the story is that - when I said "I will make fried fish and chips" Housecat expressed interest in deep-fried candy bars. And so some of these were bought. And, when the 3 lbs of fish and 6 lbs of chips had been eaten, fresh batter was made and the oil was skimmed of large bits of floating scraps and . . .

One does not simply fry a WHOLE candy bar (one does also not simply walk into Mordor). The idea is simply insane. So, I cut them into thirds. The basic idea is that, if you eat something in three bites rather than one, you can stave off Type II Diabetes for a day or so.

This is me dipping the pieces of candy (they are Milky Way candies, which are different from UK Milky Way candies, and are closer to Mars Bars) on cocktail sticks into the batter. The batter is made of flour, sugar, beer and cinnamon (for our American friends; everything here has cinnamon in it).

You use the little stick to dip the battered candy into the hot oil (you can see how hot it was on the temperature gauge - don't get your hand in it! It hurts!) What you have to do it hold it there for a few moments while the batter puffs up and the candy starts to float, pulling away from you.

Me continuing to hold the candy, waiting for the moment when . . .

It starts to float! You can see the first candy floating while I dip the second; the candy floats with the little stick above the surface of the oil, making it easy to pull out of the fryer.

When these things are done, they look ugly. They are round and brown and generally look kind of unappetizing. However, when you eat them all that changes. The chocolate and the nougat melts and gets all gooey and warm, and you have the crispy cinnamon batter.

So, yeah. Deep fried candy bars. We are thinking of doing them as a made-to-order desert for the party on Boxing Day. They make the perfect appetizer - they already have the stick in them.

Later today, I might make marzipan.

CAKETIME!

2010-12-08T07:54:00.000-08:00

As previously reported in a couple of blog posts last year, we (that is, the Us) do quite a bit for Christmas. It is an important feast (in both senses of the word) in the calendar. This year, we are sticking with the Stick It To The Jews theme and will continuing to feast upon the meat of a pig. To wit, roasted pork with crackling and some kind of roasted potatoes. Down with the Levitican dietary laws!

In addition to this, we shall be feasting upon a cake containing raisins (although this is NOT some reference to the idiocy of the Temperance Movement and their idiotic translation of the Wedding at Cana - we are just having a cake, which contains raisins). To wit, a traditional fruit cake, made from this recipe. We are, of course, changing the recipe to incorporate the Michigan cherries, miss out the candied peel and so forth - but the central thrust of the cake is the same as Auntie's old standby. And that is merely the first of many sexual inuendos we intended to make (and did make) while whipping up a nice stiff batter.

Fnar-fnar.

Alright, what are you looking at? The first stage in the making of the cake is to gather the dried fruit. We stood in the fruit aisle of the local supermarket and searched for the various kinds of fruit we needed, but were hampered by the Americaness of the locale and the presence of glace cherries and candied peel in the recipe. Seriously, people - those things look like someone ate a Faberge egg in a drunken stupor and threw it up. Let's not go there. Also, those cherries? Make honey red. Not good.

So, what we did was work out how much fruit we needed (about 3lbs) and then just buy roughly the right kinds of fruit up to that weight. We chopped the big fruit up small and threw it all into a large glass bowl and then covered it liberally in brandy.

Alright; for those of you unaware of this - in an effort to control binge drinking, public intoxication, the USA (the fine nation that brought you Prohibition) sets minimum prices on liquor. Yeah, weird, huh? So, what you see as you drive around are large signs reading "LIQUOR STORE - LOWEST PRICES ALLOWED BY STATE LAW". It's awesome - "Get drunk for cheap, you wino!" is the central message here, I feel.

Anyway, we went to one of those placed and purchased brandy. Now, I wanted (so the wino image would be complete) to get brandy in a plastic bottle, but alas! It was not to be. The only brandies which were in plastic bottles were the flavored ones, and those (we felt) would make the cake suck serious amounts of ass. So, instead, we purchased brandy in a glass bottle. Fear not, this is still perhaps the worst brandy Liza has ever tasted. It is a filthy, raw spirit most suitable for degreasing engines. Still, we used it to soak the fruit.

Witness the first significant departure from the recipe as written here. The recipe suggests about 150ml of brandy, which is diddle. It also suggests letting is soak overnight, which is gay as chips, okay? We used about two thirds of a bottle and let it soak for a couple of days. What this does is plump the fruit up really nicely and give it a good flava. If you don't do this (and use too little and not long enough - fnar-fnar) you end up with little hard nubs (fnar-fnar) of fruit (fnar-fnar) in your moist cake (you get the idea - this is kind of deliberate).

So, fruit is left to soak. We go to the Vorisopolis and watch ID4 and Megashark vs Giant Octopus with Housecat while eating chicken and chilli (two days, there - not one day of gluttony and sci-fi B-movies).

A couple of days later, once we have recovered from chilli and Debbie Gibson, we undertake to actually bake this thing. Now, as all men of learning know, you can't just slam cake in a pan in the oven and expect it to work. What you have to do is prepare the pan.

Above you see a 10 inch cake pan lined with a double thickness of greaseproof paper on the bottom and the sides. This is a crazy level of preparation for a cake - most cakes just use a non-stick pan or a single layer of paper. Not this cake. Lest we forget, there is 3 lbs of fruit in here and most of a bottle of brandy. Serious preparations are required. AND! The papery-prep ain't done yet - this is just stage one. I did this arts-and-crafts bit while Liza . . .

Liza gets on with the actual cooking. The cake batter begins life in the "creamed butter and sugar" family. So, she heated the butter (which was frozen, oops!) in the microwave and weighed out the sugar. The recipe calls for that soft, sticky, dark brown muscavado (isn't that a duck?) sugar but we didn't have any of that. Meh, whatevs. We slapped down some regular brown sugar (hey, Father Paul!) and put in a generous dollop of molasses in there. Job done.

Now Liza uses the electric whisk (thank you, Mr Edison) to whisk (does what it says on the tin) the sugar and butter together. Liza does this while hiding from the camera because, well, she is Liza and she does that. I don't question her. I just take photographs while she is not looking.

While she is doing that, I bust out the newspaper and the butcher's string. Yeah, I know. Is this a cake of a papier mache model of a pig? Could be either, I guess. Anyway, the instruction say to wrap the outside of the tin in a folded layer of newspaper and put a pad of newspaper under the tin on top of a baking sheet. I suppose this is to provide some sort of insulation so the outside of the cake does not burn? With a cake this size, there is a very real danger of the edges burning before the inside is done.

Whatever the reason, I deem it worthwhile to follow this step. I muck about with some newspaper (back when this recipe was written, I am certain newsprint was very different and did not have all these color supplements with their glossy paper etc. in - I had to shift through all that and pull it out) and string and eventually manage to get all this together. It's harder than it looks, to do this with only two hands and a wife who is creaming butter and eggs. I managed to get it done with the assistance of some paperclips (non plastic coated, because that would be really bad in a hot oven).

Stage whatever we are up to now. We have creamed sugar and fat, and the eggs get beaten into it. Then, the fruit is added. This is a LOT of fruit, and Liza is quite feeb and pune. So, it's hard on her shoulders. Still, she insists on going this part while I man the camera. Note that no flour has gone in yet - crazy, no, for a cake? So we basically have a very sweet fruit omelette batter here. I resist the temptation to bust out the skillet (or "frying pan" as the Brits call it) and make me some breakfast.

Seriously; the Yanks would totally eat a sweetened fruit omelette for breakfast. Probably with maple sausage and whipped cream. And then they would have coffee and make the world safe for democracy.

You see why I came here? It's badass awesome.

Alright, we are just festive as all Hell. Just look at that. What is in the bowl is the batter mix with about a quarter of the flour sprinkled on top. You have to mix the flour in at this point in the recipe, and that is kind of hard to do. You can't just dump it all in because the batter is, frankly, like some kind of construction material right about now. It's like cement and weighs about as much.

So, what I did (Liza had given up on stiring the batter by this point) was just sprinkle the top of the batter with flour and fold it in. And doesn't it look festive? It looks like some kind of snowy landscape. Seriously - here is a close up of the batter in the bowl.

That looks totally like some kind of Christmas landscape.

Here I am doing the mixing of the flour into the batter so as to make a cake of some kind. This was the second or third load of flour, I think - there was very little flour for a cake of this size (which, lest we forget, is freaking huge).

Alright, the batter is fully mixed and here is me putting it into the pan. What is not shown is me sliding the bowl of batter off the countertop to take it over to the pan and nearly dropping it because it weighs a ton and a half. Seriously, this is one heavy cake and I was really not expecting it.

The batter is so dense and heavy and sticky you can't really pour it in, and if you shove it around it dislodges the greaseproof paper. So, I had to just drop lumps of it into the tin and let them find their own level under their own, enormous, weight. Eventually, there was enough in there to hold the greaseproof paper in place and I could smooth it out.

I don't have pictures of the next stage, which was to put it in the over at 300 degrees F and wait for three hours. It is a really long, slow cooking process but - at the end of it - the cake was perfectly done (cocktail stick stuck in it came out clean) and an incredibly dense, solid mass. Following the instructions, I left it to cool in the pan overnight - but not before poking a few holes in the top and pouring some brandy onto it. This heated and and vaporized almost immediately, but some soaked in.

The next morning (today!) I took it out of the pan and examined it - it is totally badass. Again, no pictures at the moment because I was hurrying. Will get some tonight when I unwrap it from the greaseproof paper and foil it is wrapped in and "feed" it more brandy. I poked some holes in it this morning and drizzled a bit of brandy onto it, and will be repeating this process until either a) the cake disolves into a sticky mess or b) there is no brandy left.

Yay! Christmas!

My Grandfather Died This Morning

2010-08-16T08:00:00.001-07:00

He was an old man - his death certainly occurred long after the average (however that is calculated) age for his demographic, generation and gender. He smoked for years, did not exercise and ate a relatively unhealthy diet for much of it - yet he died in what I am told is a peaceful manner. He had chest pains on Friday and passed away Monday morning, in his sleep.

A comfortable death, I suppose. A late one, certainly. He had his independence to the end (he used to drive around "the old women" who no longer had their mobility; these women were, almost universally, young enough to be his daughter!)

I don't know if, given the choice, I would die like he did - but I suppose if I did I would have no reason to complain.

I won't be able to make the funeral - I am swamped with work, and I simply cannot justify the time off right now. It is the way of my family to be like this, I suppose; and the man my grandfather was would not want me to stop doing something I considered important and vital and worthy simply to stand in a black suit for a few hours. I will say my prayers and offer my Masses for him.

I have an odd approach to grief and loss; my rules to live by include the first, which runs Always be prepared for your own death. There is an adjunct rule to it also; Always be prepared for the deaths of others. I walk the talk, I have been prepared for this death for a very long time, at least since his heart attack which must have been fifteen years ago at the least.

I always recognised grief was selfish - in any situation, it has to be. Either the person is dead and gone and beyond anything (pain, pleasure, whatever) or the person has achieved an eternal reward or punishment. In any case, the emotional reaction is selfish - it is to feel sorry for oneself because you miss the person.

I do miss him. I've missed him for a long time, since I went to America, before that even.

But I am not built to feel sorry for myself. I won't even say grief is the price we pay for love, because that makes it too poetic. I will simply say that people die.

What sits most heavily with me is the fact my grandfather probably died alone - or, at least, without his family around him. He had been alone for a long time - his parents died when he was young, his wife died at least twenty years ago, he was an only child. He told me he had been alone for a long time, and he was used to it. I daresay he was so used to it it became comfortable, even welcome.

I know I would not mind dying alone. Maybe he and I were alike - I like to think we were. Maybe he would have enjoyed it, the peacefulness of not having people fuss over you and worry and project their own petty, human emotion onto an inevitable transition.

But I don't know - and that does make me a little sad.

I wasn't there, because I went to America and pursued . . . something. I am not sure what drew me here - it wasn't simply a selfish desire, but it was not just duty and my obligation to Christian love and family. My parents retired to Scotland. I don't know about my grandfather's other son - he and I have not spoken in years.

My family is not close. Never has been. The death notice from my father was the first communication he and I have had in months.

As I said, I cannot be at the funeral. But, I am always prepared for deaths of others - even yours, if I know you. I am ready for you to die. And so I have a eulogy. Here it is, in brief;

My grandfather was many things - but what will remain with me always was that he was the designer of the Buccaneer Bomber, a deadly engine of war which saw action only years after it was designed. He was head of aerodynamics at British Aerospace.

Ultimately, he made aeroplanes. That is what he did.

When man first crawled out from the forests of Africa, or walked from the Garden of Eden, or was formed in whatever manner your beliefs tell you he was, one of the first things he did - had to be! - was look up at the birds above him, soaring effortlessly. For centuries, we sought to learn to fly, to leave the earth and do something we could only dream of doing. We represented flight in our art, our literature, our legends. Icarus, Wayland Smith, angels and more.

The granting of flight to humanity was a long process, and one my grandfather did not really have a huge influence on. He was not a Montgolfier, he was not a Wright.

But, and this is most important, his work built planes. It made engines which could soar through the air.

No matter what else his work did - defending his country by building war machines, and fighting in the Second World War itself (we don't know what he did, he was tight lipped on it) - that I think will the thing I remember him for.

For centuries, men looked at the skies and said "I want to be able to fly." And for centuries, scientists had to say, "I'm sorry, you can't."

My grandfather made planes. He made men fly.

What did YOU do with your life?

An Open Letter to a Particular PC Manufacturer

2010-02-03T06:29:00.000-08:00

The following is an open letter to a particular PC manufacturer; those who know me know which one, but I feel the piece stands with a generic expy name in there - so that the company itself is not embarassed.

Dear CompuLectaSoft,

I am writing to you in reference to some matters orbiting the subject of computer design philosophy. As a long-time user of IBM-compatible personal computers, often of the so-called “Wintel” architecture (popularly but imprecisely known as “PCs”) I have some small insight which I feel would be beneficial if shared with all parties involved.

There are many design philosophies informing technical and aesthetic choices made in the Wintel domestic and prosumer market. The technical innovations of the decades since the creation of the first PCs have allowed for smaller, more powerful computers available at an increasingly inexpensive price (Moore's Law does, indeed, appear to be being obeyed with an accuracy which marks its formulator as prescient). Additionally, the design aesthetic of the Macintosh brand of computers produced by Apple have influenced both hardware and software design within the Wintel field (witness the recent expressions of the classic MS graphical metaphors in Windows Vista and 7; these are close graphically to modern Macintosh OS). Computers have become sleeker, smaller and with less intrusive and more intuitive interfaces.

While not universally welcoming such design choices, I recognize these are popular among a broad demographic and – thanks to the excellent and robust capitalist system provided by our liberal, free-market democracy – such appeal is what drives innovation and choice. I am, in general, pleased with the direction PC architecture (and, in particular, Wintel architecture) is taking.

That said, I have some specific suggestions concerning your products and innovations, design choice implementations and directional changes which (I believe) would be beneficial for you to incorporate into your ongoing R&D program.

Specifically, have you thought about making your products not suck quite so much ass?

I realize this is a (perhaps overly) broad suggestion, but it is possible to arrive at some advice which is more granular. Have you thought about creating a domestic PC which boots up in under five minutes and does not load enough software to generate a convincing facsimile of The Matrix as found in the eponymous movies by the Wachowski brothers? I would not complain but, to belabor the metaphor, once your engines of pain have loaded this glut of software, we find that they render the vile little bug things which worm their way into Keanu Reeves' navel perfectly – but make the character of Persephone (played by Monica Bellucci) look like Rosie O'Donnell.

Why, precisely, is it necessary to pre-load your PCs with a horde of software which performs functions the average user has no desire to engage with? And why is this software quite so greedy when it comes to system resources, even when not running actively? One begins to wonder if your company is not thinking it can extend its market share by emulating the country's largest employer (the Federal Government) by taking resources to do nothing but employ individuals (in your case, software programs waiting for a user to use them – a foolish prospect at best) who sit around doing nothing. Ooo. Burn.

Speaking of which, why are there not one, but two additional CD burning programs installed on the PC I have had the misfortune to attempt to nurse back to some kind of health? This is, of course, in addition to the program internal to the Windows OS which allows for the burning of CDs. And why is there a DVD burning facility on a PC which has no DVD burner?

There is a gap of silicone and conductor this software can't bridge. There may also be a gap elsewhere, but I would have to X-ray your head to be sure.

I have had the misfortune to use (not, I hasten to add, for myself – I was using another individual's PC) one of your computers (a term I use under advisement, and without prejudice to the truth) which came “bundled” with your suite of media software. The verb “to bundle” is used here in much the same sense as it would be used in documentation written by the New York City Police Department when discussing the activities of the well-known businessman and philanthropist John “Don” Gotti in dealing with commercial rivals; to wit; “John Gotti bundled him in a burlap bag with a heavy weight and dropped him in the East River”. However, to return to your media software – something it appears users are forced to do. Your media suite (a program somewhat larger and more convoluted than “Lost”) appears to load its Brobdingnagian mass in its entirety at the slightest provocation, and usurp the traditional role held by Windows features such as the Media Player, Picture Viewer, and perhaps even the kernel. Time and time again I was forced to stare at a suddenly dimmed screen, wondering if a) there had been a power failure b) your infernal program had kicked in once again and was taking an interminable time to load or c) I had been struck blind by the wrath of the Lord and was being prepared for a role as the Apostle to the Gentiles (c/f the Apostle Paul). While a) was usually a possibility, c) was rejected out of hand as, although God can make good of all things, it is asking a lot even for Him to work with what you produce.

I could go on, and will so long as this remains vaguely amusing. When attempting to access the Task Manager (so that I might, you know, be able to manage the tasks your machina infernalis was running in an onanistic orgy of processor hogging) via the tried-and-tested “three fingered salute” of CTRL-ALT-DEL I was stunned, nay even unto silence, by the fact the machine did nothing for a prolonged period of time, dimmed its screen to black, made a noise with its fan not entirely unlike a Harrier Jump Jet getting ready for the off, and then proceeded to display a small dialogue box which informed me – in terse, unhelpful terms - there had been an error and the security dialog was unable to be displayed. This is, frankly, unacceptable – not that I imply by this statement anything about your technology is acceptable, excepting perhaps the use of the hardware as an object lesson or a hammer.

You may choose to blame the problems on the Windows Vista OS. This is, if you will forgive the analogy, like choosing to blame everything on the Jews; it's not true, it doesn't help solve the problem, and it is the purview of short Austrians with bad mustaches and drunken Australian hypocrites. I have used Vista on other machines and – while it remains a flawed OS – it only reaches its zenith of incompetence when installed on the hardware your company produces and ships to an unsuspecting world, in the manner of a bio-weapons' dealer exercising particularly poor quality control.

I must admit, however, a certain grudging respect for your company – if only for the chutzpah in continuing to sell these products. This reaches a level akin to a man who, having murdered both his parents, requests clemency from the court because he is an orphan. I have also defended your company (and not merely as an exercise in how long it is possible to attempt the impossible before someone calls you on it); there has been a risible question-and-response circulating the internet which runs (if not verbatim, in some similar form); “What is the difference between a CompuLectaSoft PC and a bucket of horse manure?” The generally-accepted form of the answer is “The bucket”.

This, I feel, is unfair, and I have objected to it. I have maintained, without exception, that the level of organization and rationale bestowed on digested hay and oats by the fecal process of a large equine is, in fact, superior to that found in your products.

In conclusion, it is my firm belief your method for designing computers would be considered unusually crude for a colony of cherrystone clams, and that there are tribes in the equatorial jungles of South America who – while yet untouched by civilization – would be capable of producing a superior analytical device from dates and tiger penises, even though neither of these items are indigenous to South America. Had Charles Babbage known what you were going to do, he would have immolated himself on a bonfire made from the manuscripts for his difference engine after writing a Luddite treatise against technology in all its forms.

Thank you for your time,

Yours,

Simon Rafe

It's a lot like steely, but without the carbon

2009-12-25T07:29:00.001-08:00

Christmas Day! In your face, pagan scum!

The day dawns bright and early (and also rainy and cold, but meh) and we set off for the Vorisopolis where we already have the previously-mentioned Pot Of Death (TM) sitting on the stovetop, already full of coke.

(10 liters of Coke there, in a pot. Badass.)

So, I immediately turn the heat up on the pot o' coke and start the process of getting 10 liters of Coca Cola to the boil. This is not a small process, as I am sure you can imagine. It is, in fact, how castles were defended in the Middle Ages.

I then whip out my meat (fnar-fnar). As previously discussed, my meat is so large (fnar-fnar) it could not fit in anything less than a professional recepticle (fnar-fnar). If you remember, I had to use a garbage can to brine it and so - following on with this theme - I transported it from Chez Us to the Vorisopolis in a large garbage bag.

I then put my meat in the professional receptical filled with hot coke and added yet more Coca-Cola, because there was not enough in the pot already!

The lid is put on the pot and the whole thing left to boil. It comes to the boil around about an hour later. So; if you want to attack a Cadbury-Schweppes castle, do so quickly, before they have time to heat the boiling coke.

I am somewhat concerned about the sheer size of this thing - Nigella (May Her Name Ever Be Honored) says a 4.4lb ham will take about 2 to 2 and a half hours. She also says, "for smaller or larger hams, assume an hour per kilo". Well, that is just dandy, Nigella (Whose Eyes Are The Stars), but I suspect these things are not strictly linear. I mean, you can't say "It weighs an ounce, and so it will take one and a half minutes." Nor can you boil a blue whale for about a year and a half an expect it to be cooked through.

So, I went searching on the internet for some kind of guidance, searching for "boiling ham internal temperature" on the Oracle of Google. And lo, I find a website which details how to cook a ham by boiling it. A 12 lb ham (the same size as ours . . . yes, my earlier estimates were entirely too conservative) no less!

This website recommends boiling a 12 lb ham for 4 to 5 hours, which is about what I had estimated and worked out. But, more importantly, this website comes complete with a built-in get-out clause! It is the Baptist Courier, and this article is by someone who looks like she would call Roman Catholics "Cat-licks!" or "Pay-peests!" Awesome.

So, any failures can safely be blamed on this tambourine-shaking Baptist and her hatred of all things Vaticano. An excellent solution, and one without any drawbacks.

A Sexy Woman, Coke and Pot

2009-12-23T14:37:00.000-08:00

The perfect Christmas, no?

Okay, let us begin at the beginning, as opposed to somewhere in the middle, maybe? I dunno. I suppose we never begin at the beginning, as that would involve saying "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth . . ." which isn't even an accurate translation. It is "In the beginning of God's creation of the Heavens and the Earth . . ." Which makes a lot of sense, actually - notice that, in Genesis 1, there are plenty of things which already exist; there is water and the water has a face for the Spirit of God to move over.

Hey, it's Christmas. Let's keep the Christ in Christmas, shall we?

Actually, most of the liberals have managed to keep Christ in Christmas in a manner not dissimilar to some kind of Soviet gulag. Their cry appears to be "Keep Christ in Christmas and don't let Him out!"

Scum.

Anyway, this is tangential, but Liza is going home to pick up a Christmas present for someone and so I have time. Where was I?

Talking about the creation narrative in Genesis.

And on the eighth day, God created Nigella Lawson.

Let's just digress (again) for a few moments. Gentlemen, I give you perhaps the nearest damn thing to perfection. It is Nigella-freaking-Lawson. Let's count the ways;

She is simply stunningly beautiful
She is stunningly simply beautiful
She has a figure which, and let's face it, is awesome is every respect. There is something there. She is not a bumpy twig, nor is she out of proportion thanks to a scalpel and silicone. There is not a single straight line in her body.
Her voice is like blood-heat chocolate and cream in a lead crystal glass. It is registered as a Weapon of Mass Distraction with the Geneva Convention.
She eats. She drinks. You get the impression you could take her out to dinner and she would be the one saying "The fried calamari with the lemon melted-butter look good, but . . . well, the mussels in cream and white wine smell fabulous. Erm . . . well, both. Ooooh! You have Belgian heavy ale to go with that - yes, a glass. No, just a pint. The French onion soup, baked cheese on the top . . . yes, the bread basket would be lovely. For the main course . . . . the steak Diane, blue, with the avocado-stuffed mushrooms and the breaded asparagus. What? Oh the mashed potatoes - could I get an extra side of those as well, please? Of course you should load them - double cream, please. Just the Chardonay, actually - I wouldn't want to be a pig. Dessert? Hmm - that gateaux looks good, but a little skinny bit like that really isn't worth getting the plate dirty for. Oh, you're too kind. Make sure I get a corner, whipped cream and chocolate flakes. Is the cheese tray good? Oh, okay, well - yes, I'll take that too. Coffee to finish. No, no sugar - watching my weight, you know? What are you having?"
She treats food and cooking as only very slightly less erotic than sex.

All of this combines to make her one of the most attractive women in the universe. She is beautiful, confident in her beauty and - most importantly - not worried about weighing a few pounds more than she "needs" (and for "needs" read : "is told to by the media machine".)

So, what does this have to do with Christmas?

Firstly, does it need to have anything to do with Christmas? It is Nigella 'The Goddess" Lawson.

However, there is a relevancy here. For previous Christmas meals here in the United States we have had goose (which was a superb success for everyone except a single individual, who always - whenever we get together for a meal, he always specifies "No Goose!") and then beef brisket. This year, I decided to make ham and not merely any old ham. Oh, no, Sir! I decided to make the Nigella Lawson Ham Cooked In Coca-Cola.

Liza (who, despite being dark and curvy like Nigella Lawson and Monica Bellucci and other women whose names I won't mention as it is to much shame I know them at all, does not appear to trust the Latter-Day Hestia's culinary skills) was leery of such a thing. She has pretty much been a Senate Republican here, but my skills are greater than Harry Reid's (also, I am not an arse) and I was able to defeat her filibuster. I did, however, make bipartisan concessions (see the above "not being an arse" thing) and agreed to make a Nigella Lawson ham (insert your own jokes about good, thick, meaty thighs here) and a standard Dearborn ham.

(Can we just have a moment to appreciate the irony of having a ham named after the city which, outside of the Middle East, has the highest population of Muslims? I totally LOLed.)

We went to Steiner's Meat Market (which is recommended by a friend, and supplies the fine meat (fnar-fnar) ) and ordered the ham. Okay, here is where my rant begins.

Two nations divided by a common language, huh? No, one nation hamstrung by its inability to actually use the language we gave them. Here is something really simple; an animal which eats whatever it likes and roots in its own muck is called a ~~Democrat~~ pig. The meat from this animal is called pork when it is just hacked off the animal. Then, when you subject the meat to certain curing processes, it is called ham or bacon.

Not in America, it seems. Oh, no. In America, land of the free, home of the brave, and place without any sense of using language in a significant manner, the meat of the pig taken from the leg is called a ham. Not "a pork leg". No, it is a ham. Even when it is not cured.

I have no idea why a piece of pig elsewhere is not called a ham, nor indeed how one differentiates between a cured and uncured pig leg. Don't ask me these questions. I just live in America, I don't understand how it works. In that respect, my life is a lot like Congress.

So, we went to Steiner's Meat Market and said "We would like a regular spiral cut ham, of the Dearborn variety, please, Mister Meat-Man." And lo, the Meat-Man did say this would be no problem. And then, lo, I did ask of him, "Can I get a raw ham?" Meaning, "Can I purchase a piece of meat which is identical to the thing I have previously ordered less than an instant ago and which I also called 'ham' except that it is NOT cooked, i.e. it is raw?"

And he says "A fresh ham? Sure."

So, we order this thing. And Liza is there with me. And she has read the recipe. And she says nothing with all her hard-won American-knowledge. And we leave and we are ignorant and the tidal wave builds.

And then a couple of days ago Liza reads the recipe and says "Hang on, this needs a raw ham!" And I say "That is what I ordered, you know." And she says "But we are getting a fresh ham!" And I say "But . . . but . . . what?" And then she explains that a fresh ham is completely indistinguishable from pork and is, in fact, just pork.

And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

So, I go on the internet (ah, internet, mother, father, secret lover, is there any problem you cannot solve?) and I find this recipe for home-curing a ham (that is, turning pork into ham, and not for turning a ham into a ham, because it can't be turned into ham if it is already ham, so it is not already ham, you numpty.)

We go and get the "ham" (read : "leg of pork") and it looks a lot like this;

This this is freaking huge. It really is. It is about a foot long and weights somewhere in the region of 9 lbs. Very scary.

Anyway, now I need to soak this thing - and also need to plan for the simmering of the meat so it gets to temperature (note; insert your own joke about "Nigella Lawson raises my meat's temperature" here.)

(Note about the note; insert your own joke about "Nigella Lawson" and "insert" here.)

There is no way in Hell this pork leg is fitting in the largest pot we have. We will obviously have to get a bigger pot, but - right now - I need to find some sort of container to fit this thing and several litres of brine.

Enter the shower, a scrubbing sponge, bleach, washing up liquid and a garbage can. Oh, God - I have all these items in a post with the words "meat", "insert", "pot", "coke" and "Nigella Lawson". My referral logs are scary enough as it is.

Anyway, I scrub the garbage can clean and shining, and then put the pork in it and pout cold, clear water over it until it is covered. This requires eight liters of water. I then pull the pork out, and work out how much salt and sugar I need to add (3 cups of salt, 4 cups of sugar.)

Okay, let me tell you this right now. If you dip a fresh piece of pork only recently cut from the oinking animal into water, various fats and proteins and whatnot sluice out of it and turn the water into a kind of vaguely milky murk. Exactly the same sort of vaguely milky murk as you get if you do not wash all the soap off.

I am absolutely certain I got all the soap off. I really am. But I still had visual doubts . . .

I then add in 3 cups of salt and 4 cups of sugar. Brown sugar. This makes it even murkier and tints it brown. It now looks like I washed muddy boots in soapy water . . . .

Into this, I put the ham.

and then I realize it is a good idea to refrigerate it. Well, actually, the Senate Republicans attempt another filibuster, but there are sufficient Blue Dog Democrats to get this one passed - Liza thinks we should put it in the fridge, even though it is very cool on the porch and it is ham sitting in salt and sugar.

Soooooo . . . I remove the vegetable trays and lowest shelf from the fridge and put a garbage can in the fridge. Those are words I never expected to have to type.

(Next to it is the other ham - you'd forgotten about it, hadn't you? Shame on you . . . )

Anyway, Liza and I then watch NCIS and go to bed.

The next morning we speak with my boss, Michael Voris, purveyor of fine red-meat rhetoric against hippies and scum, and at whose house we will be hosting the Christmas meal. Do you, we ask, have a large pot? A pot large enough for this vast ham?

Actually, Liza speaks with Mike, because I am in a meeting about designing a website for Agape Gifts. Mike then comes into my office and says "I am going out to get a pot" (insert your own joke here) "We will never be able to get a domestic pot, we will need some industrial thing."

I question this, saying unto Mike, "Boss, just before you go out and get a pot so large it could contain the Red Sea, remember that Liza is a woman and thus has no concept of size. She will have told you this ham is the size of Wisconsin, when, in fact, it is only about an inch too big to fit in the large pasta pot she owns." I pause. "She has, indeed, told you it is size of Wisconsin, has she not?"

Michael makes a face which indicates I know my wife far too well.

I continue. "So, before you go out and get some vast pot, remember this." Mike nods, and leaves.

Now, it seems that the size progression of pots is not (as you might have thought, if you think of such things) simply incremental. It is, in fact, subject to the fallacy of the beard - there does, in fact, come a point when the size of pots crosses some invisible threshold and, suddenly and without prior warning, what was a simple, regular, domestic pot which can be purchased in most stores suddenly becomes a professional, specialist, chef-exclusive item available only in certain stores.

So, Mike - ever inventive - goes to Holiday Market, a store he keeps afloat in the recession virtually single-handedly, and asks them "Do you have a large pot which we can rent?" This strikes the nice ladies at Holiday Market as strange, because they do not normally rent such things out (they do rent things like large chaffing dishes, serving trays, silverware etc. etc.) but not things for cooking. Still, she is inventive and just makes something up on the spot; $25 to rent a large pot.

Now, this is a large industrial cooking pot, not just something a little bigger than the pasta pot we have. Remember, we have crossed some invisible threshold here; we have crossed the Rubicon and the die is cast. We have a pot large enough to feed Caesar's army for the entire Gallic campaign.

Shown for scale; Liza and a lemon.

This pot is freaking huge, it really is. It is a gigantic thing which the four liters of Coca-Cola we have obtained will barely moisten. The ham will be lost inside it, it will swim in a lake of carbonated, caffeinated beverage. This is going to be like filming a remake of The Poseidon Adventure but with really gauche product placement.

And note, of course, that I have not really spoken of the Dearborn ham in this - nor, indeed and in fact, of the second stage of the cooking of Nigella's delicious gam, which is to stuff the meat in the oven after liberally coating it with mustard and sugar and then - with cloves - studding it for your pleasure.

Nor have I spoken of the various trimmings required for the meal - potatoes, vegetables, bread, sauces, chutneys, appetizers, etc. etc.

This is chaos in a sexy, sticky package just waiting to happen, I am sure you agree.

The insanity begins as it always does - late at night, in a cold and dark Church, with Midnight Mass. All is order and calm in the world, and then the savior is born and the peace and quiet of the universe is forever shattered.

And lo, a feast of meats previously forbidden to the Chosen People and spiced with the products of the Western empires is prepared in chaos and with much last minute worry.

Metaphors. They are where it's at.

FacePlace

2009-10-24T15:28:00.000-07:00

So, I joined the FaceBook (that link is to my official, actual, real profile on the book of faces). Those of you who are on the FaceBook can apply to be my friend, and then follow whatever I put on FaceBook.

Some context and musings seems apropos here. Firstly, I long resisted joining FaceBook because it seemed like a lot of effort for no real reason - I always said that I could keep in touch with my friends by writing them an email or giving them a call. The counter to this (that FaceBook was "easier" because you gave generic information to everyone) never commended itself to me - it seemed to devalue a friendship by saying "Oh, hey you and fifty other people - here is what I am doing! Impersonalism ahoy!" To a very large extent, I still agree with this, and the generic FaceBookery (the microblogging posts, the pictures, the status updates etc.) will not take the place of more detailed communication with individuals.

Still - I was never a very good correspondent in that regard, and so FaceBook may prove advantageous to those individuals on the periphery of my social circle, or who are as bad correspondents as I am.

I initially joined FaceBook because of the FarmVille application - Liza was playing it a lot, and it looked like it was awesome fun. Also; it allowed the opportunity to build a vast maze with hedges and toparies etc. etc. which I thought was cool. When I joined by friend Andrew had already built such a maze, and so my plans were stymied. I have now, however, decided on a different vanity project, and am currently grinding like mad to get the requisite money and space to build it.

Sad, I know.

However, when I joined FaceBook I was immediately contacted by an old friend from the UK, who has since completely changed the direction of his life. It was nice to reconnect with old chums like this. I also had to block a crazy individual I had no desire to speak with eveery again - but such things are the nature of the world.

Speaking of "the nature of the world", one hears such horror stories about people losing jobs, friendships, respect and so forth via FaceBook - people post ill-thought-out statements which their boss reads and so forth. Naturally, one wishes to avoid such things if at all possible.

I have come to the conclusion that one is required to either be very circumspect in who one chooses as a friend, or be very circumspect in what one says. Because FaceBook shows everything you say (with a few exceptions) to everyone on your friends list, comments have to be suitable for all the audience.

So, you can create a very small, tight-knit group of friends and say whatever you like - because you are all close friends and revelation of information such as employment, location, personal comments etc. is not an issue. Or, you can have a much larger group - but be careful with what you say (no personal information, information about location etc. etc.)

I chose the later - primarially because one is generally a member of several tight-knit circles, and one would need several FaceBook accounts ... which would kind of defeat the purpose of FaceBook, no? So, I use Yahoo! Groups for such tight-knit communication with groups (and use regular email for personal communication with individuals).

Ultimately, what does this mean for my FaceBook friends? Well - you won't be getting anything really juicy on there. In fact, most of it will be silly posts, sarcastic remarks and demands for cupcakes. It is, indeed, of limited value. If you want to actually engage with me, it is going to have to be the old-fashioned way.

Still, if you want to be a friend (and I actually know you) then welcome! And if you want to join FarmVille and be my neighbor, I will be even more grateful!

Red Letter Day!

2009-10-02T12:04:00.000-07:00

As all men of learning know, I dislike the French. I am English, so this is to be expected. I am also in possession of both my testicles, and so it is even more expected. I am also on record as not appeasing dictators, and so it pretty much a given.

Stop the press! I have now found four French people who I don't despise that much!

Yeah, freaking red letter day!

Okay, who are these French people? Well, in no particular order!

President Nicholas Sarkozy

Yes, indeed - the first citizen of the French Republic. An odd choice, you might think. Why is he so honored as being a Frenchman I do not hate? There are two reasons;

i) Carla Bruni. Seriously, tell me that is not awesome.
ii) Sarkozy "French Fried" Obama at the UN. Let's get this clear right away - a French President lectured the President of the USA about too much appeasement! That is about as likely as Jenna Jameson lecturing the Pope for poor sexual morality. But, it happened and, more importantly, was justified!

These two things make Nick Sarkozy okay in my book. Or, at least, not as bad as the rest of his countrymen.

Luc Besson

The famous French director. Why is he not on the list of "people who suck" along with the rest of France?

i) Leon : The Professional
ii) The fact he (as revealed at the end of this fine video) is perhaps the only person in Hollywood to have a) objected to the Hollywood sympathy towards the rapist Roman Polanski and b) to condemn Polanski. These are, in fact, two different things - it is possible to object to the support while not condemning. Luc has done both. And also made a very fine film or two (see i) above).

In fact, let's put these two things together - Luc Besson made better films than Polanski and never raped a child. In fact, in one of those co-incidences, the extended cut of Leon contains scenes where Mathilda asks for the older Leon to sleep with her, but he refuses. Prescient? Or just moral?

You be the judge.

Jacques Pepin

The famous celebrity chef! Okay, why is he on the list of French people I do not despise?

i) He is Jacques Freaking Pepin! I feel nothing more needs to be said.
ii) He hasn't actually lived in France for decades.

The case rests, m'lud.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Perhaps an unusual choice. However, he is justified by two reasons;

i) He's not actually French. He was from Corsica, which is the bit of France trying (sensibly) to get away from the mainland and trying to get confused with Sardinia.
ii) Under his leadership, thousands of Frenchmen were killed in 1812.

So, there are four French people (or, three and a half, if we count a Corsican as half-French. Hang on; he was a short guy. Three and a quarter?) I do not despise. Quite an achievement.

This should not, however, be interpreted as prejudicial towards my general, erm, well, prejudice towards the French. They are a scum people, from a scum country, which is mostly made of suck and the rest made of fail.

Carla Bruni, however, is still the hottest Head of State Spouse currently alive. And would probably vie with Princess Grace for the hottest HoSS of all time.

Not so much a disappointment . . .

2009-09-30T20:41:00.000-07:00

. . . because, well, it's complicated.

Okay, Roman Polanski had non-consensual sex with a 13 year old girl 32 years ago, and then (when it looked like his plea bargain might not get honored) skipped the country. There are three crimes to address here; non-consensual sex (rape), sex with a 13 year old (statutory rape) and skipping the country (doubtless has a serious criminal name, but let's just call it "running the Hell away").

And now the Americans have apprehended him (or had him apprehended). None of this is really news, but I wanted to bring you up to speed.

What is also not news is the fact many Hollywood elites have defended him, signing a petition which objects to him being held in Switzerland for one or more of these crimes.

Now, I am not going to get into the back and forth of this issue. There is a case to be made that Polanski (and all people who have crimes in their past they have avoided justice for) should be apprehended and placed on trial. There is also a case to be made that Polanski has been a "fugitive" for 32 years and that there has been no concerted effort to apprehend him in those 32 years, so maybe this was completely inappropriate? There is not a case to make that the original crime was not a problem (even if the girl "did not look 13" as many are saying, she said "NO". Having sex with a woman of any age when she says "NO" is rape - very simple and clear). Also; he skipped the country. That is a crime right there - even if the 43 days or so he served in jail are deemed sufficient punishment for his rape.

So, in short - I agree that Polanski should be apprehended and put on trial for whatever crime is still outstanding. I think he should have been apprehended earlier, but - well, if it has been 32 years and nothing has been done, that doesn't mean something shouldn't be done now. We live in a world where you deal with the now and try to make the future better, not a world of recriminations and looking backward.

I can, however, see some of the arguments the other side is making. I don't agree with them, but I can see them. Some of the arguments, however, make no sense to me and are abhorrent.

So, I will not be talking about the arguments made - the foolishness of saying "she looked older" or "was very flirty" or whatever. Or saying that he is a great artiste and so he should be allowed to do this sort of thing. I won't even engage with the idiocy and racism of this being the action of an "angry America". Not going to do it - those arguments are dumb as a bag of hammers and don't even deserve to be heard. The only valid argument for not apprehending Polanski would be "Why now? It hasn't been done for a third of a century!" And that argument, as I said above, is very weak - just because you have failed to be responsible for 11680 days doesn't mean you can't man up and do the right thing on the 11681st!

No, this blog post is specifically about Monica Bellucci, and to explain something.

It is her 45th birthday today - happy birthday, Monica! And many more! Seriously, and many more! I think you will need the years.

Monica has signed the petition calling for Polanski's release. I have tried to find out why - if she gave a statement or reason why - but I couldn't. I suppose her reason is the the usual "mean America / he's an artiste!" one.

Everyone knows I like Monica Bellucci - by which I mean I think she is very beautiful and a very talented actress. I have never, ever, ever, ever said I agree with her politics, religion, ethics or morality. This event throws this into sharp focus, and also teaches me something interesting.

I have often used Monica as an example of the difficulty of boycotting movies or companies to avoid support of evil. She was in The Passion of the Christ and commanded a large salary. So, good Catholics go to see it - but she is an outspoken opponent of the Church on many issues. One particular example; she posed naked while pregnant with her daughter Deva in protest against Italian laws that forbade in vitro fertilization being used by unmarried couples. She appears in many movies nude or in sex scenes (which is why, ironically enough, I haven't actually watched that many of her films!)

But this seems to be something else. She argues against a law which - in fact - seems idiotic. I mean, if you are going to allow the grave evil of in vitro fertilization, why not permit it to be used by unmarried couples? A country which allows in vitro at all has already started chipping away at marriage! That is like banning whiskey, but not gin, from the kids' picnic. She is simply demonstrating the inevitable conclusion of her views - wrong though they are.

And she appears nude. So does everyone else, practically. It is not considered taboo any more. Of course, it is still wrong to do what she does, but - in some way - it seems not as bad as supporting a rapist. Even though these are all serious matters (in many ways, formally defying the Church's support for the in vitro law is the worst and most dangerous sin) the support for a rapist just seems more.

Liza told me about it, and I told her I was not surprised. Monica has a track record (as shown above) of these sort of things. She has a very faulty moral compass. She sells her body to the highest bidder with certain limitations. The fact those limitations are physical intimacy does not change what she does - the difference is simply a matter of scale.

So, I was not surprised. And I was not disappointed - which I was surprised about. Because although I know she is a morally deficient individual who is opposed to what I stand for (and is, ergo, opposed to the Truth), I have always liked her, admired her. I expected to be hurt and offended and wounded, to feel betrayed - illogical though that would be.

I found that was not the case. And I have now realised why.

Monica Bellucci is a beautiful and talented woman. But she is not someone I admire per se. It is an unconscious difficulty when I hear her speak and she does not have the cut-glass, mouth-full-of-chocolate-and-cream English accent of a Narnian noble. When I do expect the Italian accent, it is with the proviso she will immediately begin plotting politics and the piloting of hundred-tonne nuclear-powered warmachines.

Monica Bellucci has, to me, ceased to really be her. Actually, that is not true. She never really was her. What she was - and is - is simply a shape and a face, an appearance which has been loaned to Elizabeth Studdock and Monica Pallavicini. I look on her with much the same concern and worry and disdain as I do anyone opposed to the faith and who is charting a course away from the light of Christ.

I have sort of known this for months now, although it did not crystallize in my mind until today, when I found I did not feel wounded by her "betrayal". I knew she was far from where she should be, but until today I did not realize that I was not hurt by that as I would be treachery, but rather I was just sad about it.

For months now, I have been praying for her at every Mass - offering prayers and my holy communion for her conversion (and those of others). I don't know if it will do any good - and I do worry; is my praying for her an unhealthy fixation on her? I don't know her, and I have admitted my only interest is because of her beauty and skill.

But, then again, someone has to pray for her. And I have to pray for someone. I direct my prayers to that end. I could direct them to someone else's salvation - and then that person might be saved and she not (the problem of petitioning the Lord by prayer notwithstanding!)

My prayers for her are fine. I just need to watch myself and make sure my own motivations are pure - a desire to see her saved, rather than a desire to see her.

I think, having experienced surprise at not feeling betrayed today, I am in a good position. She is beautiful, she is lovely - but so are spiderwebs and Mandelbrot fractals. And I have come to realize there is more danger of me falling in love with Elizabeth Studdock or Monica Pallavicini than Mrs Vincent Cassel.

PS. I did not mention this, because it seemed irrelevant, although interesting - but Monica Bellucci, at 45, is the precisely the same age as Polanski's victim. Added to the fact she has featured in two movies with plots revolving around violence towards women - Irreversible and Malena - her support of a man who raped a 13 year old is even more puzzling.

Quick update because Shaak Ti is working hard!

2009-08-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

Shaak Ti is working very hard right now, and so is running slowly so I can only make a quick update.

eBay is running at $512.41!

Last update before bed!

2009-08-11T19:27:00.000-07:00

Well, the jump to over $450 was not caused by the two items which just closed - one of my books got a bid on it - but then we were put firmly into the $450s by a sudden frenzy of bidding on Gwaihir. So, the total right now stands at $457.85, with several items finishing tomorrow. I have to post a few things in the morning, and will be watching the auctions with interest tomorrow night - those items have already attracted a lot of interest and have many watchers!

A whisker off $450!

2009-08-11T18:27:00.000-07:00

It has become increasingly difficult to track how much money I have "made" on eBay - I deleted a completed auction from my history, and a couple of Liza's mum's things sold, so shouldn't be included in my total.

Still, based on my calculations, my auctions are running at $449.07. Of course, the profit I have made from this is much less - as not all the auctions have finished, and I have not been paid for some of the completed auctions yet. Even so, I am at a current profit of over $300 - which is nice.

Expect further updates in less than half an hour, as that is when two auctions are ending - auctions which may develop into a bidding frenzy!

eBay update

2009-08-10T12:56:00.000-07:00

Well, not many updates over the weekend, mainly because I was listing more items, many items were ending and it was all a wee bit complicated.

Anyway, I think we have a definitive break now - there has been a day or so without any auctions ending, and the next auctions (of my stuff) end tomorrow.

So, here is the breakdown - so far eBay stuff has sold for $391.18, and the multiple auctions I have up at the moment are running at $28.04 currently. We were forced to take down the stuff we were selling for a friend - it simply was not generating interest, and we did not want things to go for nothing. So, we are out a couple of bucks of seller's listing fees.

Similarly, three items we are selling for Liza's mother are not selling right now, although there is some interest. Those auctions also negatively impact our profits.

Because I am waiting for some people to pay for items, and because I have paid seller's fees up front, it is difficult to give a meaningful profit margin. I must admit that I am annoyed by the various fees eBay and PayPal take - but, I suppose, this is the cost of doing business.

However, currently the items which will sell or have sold are running at $419.22, which is not too shabby. I have every confidence this number will rise to the mid $400s by the time all the items have sold, as most have several watchers but not many bids and are currently very low-priced.

And this is why people need to be dispassionate

2009-08-07T20:52:00.001-07:00

I am not, by nature, an emotional person. I can give a very good impression of an emotional person. In fact, I shall do it now;

Drat! I should have used the phrase "I'm not an emotional person, I just play one on a blog!" That would have been awesome, but now the opportunity has passed! Curses!"

See? Entirely faked.

There is an advantage to not being emotional - you don't get carried away. My eBay sales have just broken $400 - thanks in no small part to the craziness of two bidders bidding on this item. The item in question is an Emperor Class Battleship for Battlefleet Gothic and - at the time of typing, when there is about 2 min left to go on the auction, it is running at $37.

Look upon this page, wherein one can buy a brand new, unassembled, complete and totally in a box version of the same model. Do we notice anything a more observant, less emotional person might have noticed?

Ah, yes.

Still. $400. Can't beat that with a stick. This last-minute frenzy is the only reason I stayed up to watch the bidding. My wife is damn cute, and it takes a lot to keep me out of her bed. Emotional insanity is one such thing.

Sexually Frustrated Geeks Make Good Customers

2009-08-07T17:51:00.001-07:00

Thanks to this auction for teeny, tiny sexualized lumps of metal . . . . my eBay is now up to $385.96!

Broken $350!

2009-08-07T12:31:00.000-07:00

Yes, thanks to people bidding on a Mordheim rulebook (which is, as far as I am aware, out of print) and raising the price to over $20, I have now broken the $350 barrier!

Tonight, Liza and I are going to have datenight and put together a 500 piece jigsaw of Luke Skywalker, which should sell rather well I think. It is collectible, no?

And I have a number of auctions ending tonight too - including three which have shown lots of bidding action, but only from a few bidders. Each of these items, however, has fourteen or fifteen watchers! So, hopefully and with any luck, tonight there will be bidding war!

Bwahahaha! Bwaha! Haha! Ha.

Morning sales over

2009-08-07T06:42:00.000-07:00

Well, the second batch of items has now completed selling itself - and thanks to a bit of a bidding war on some Deathwatch Space Marines, the total value is now up to $332.62!

Now, I just have to wait for payment on a couple of them, and then ship them all out! More items end tonight - and I really should find some more things to sell. I am nurturing the vauge hope I can pay for my new water heater in the basement with eBay sales!

Argh! No! I have become old and dull! I am selling toy soldiers from my youth to pay for home repairs!

Friday morning update on the electronic-bay!

2009-08-07T05:55:00.000-07:00

So, two items ended this morning, and there was a bit of a bidding war on one of them, so the total value of all the items I have sold or am selling has now risen to $321.02!

I broke $300!!! This is a very cool, thing because we managed to be $300 overdrawn at the bank . . .

First round of selling done!

2009-08-06T20:24:00.000-07:00

Yes, the first five items have sold and, thanks to a sudden frenzy of bidding on the Limited Edition Emperor's Champion, I made quite a bit of cash!

So, including the stuff which has already sold, I am currently hovering just below $300 at $298.04! I have every confidence by the time I wake tomorrow I shall have broken the $300 dollar mark! Excitement!

Small Bidding Frenzy on Free Models!

2009-08-06T11:48:00.000-07:00

Well, I didn't pay for them.

No, seriously, I didn't - I was painting them for Games Workshop when I quit, and I totally forgot about them! And I felt marginally guilty about that, until they then decided (in gross defiance of employment laws) to say "Thank you for tendering your resignation, and thank you for giving us four weeks notice to train your replacement, which is two more than you are required to give. We are, however, saying you are gone in a week, because we only have to give you a week if we fire you. We aren't firing you, however, because you said you quit, and we'd need a reason to do that, obviously."

Yeah. That annoyed me, as it cost me nearly a month's wages.

Anyway, these models stayed in my case and I don't feel that guilty about keeping them after how they treated me at the end.

Here is the link to the models and there has been a sudden flurry of bidding - a person who wanted them badly (has bid twice before) has now met someone who also wants them badly! It's a war!

And I am the victor! It's like being an arms dealer or something - I guess I am selling soldiers.

Up to $239.26!

Little things have sold

2009-08-06T09:48:00.003-07:00

Some little things I posted yesterday have now got bids, so I am up to $234.02!

Significant update

2009-08-06T06:33:00.000-07:00

Well, perhaps not - eBay is now running at $232.04! But, the significant thing is that I have now got bids on all of the items ending today - and they all have many watchers! So, excitement is coming!

Am I too optimistic to hope for $300?

Morning update

2009-08-06T04:15:00.001-07:00

Early morning update : eBay sales are now at $227.05!

Nearing an arbitary point!

2009-08-05T18:36:00.000-07:00

We are now up to $197.51, which is nearly $200 and that is entirely arbitary.

In other news, at RealCatholicTV.com we broke 500 subscribers today! Yay!

Another update

2009-08-05T18:11:00.001-07:00

This could become tedious, but it is my blog, alright?

It is 2111hrs EST, and the total value of auctions has increased to $192.01. The additional $5.51 has come exclusively from an increased bid on the item ending soonest - I think the frenzy has begun!

Of COURSE I know where my towel is, Mercury!

2009-08-05T17:39:00.001-07:00

Sheesh! Some authoresses!

Update news : eBay stuff now running at $186.50 - with one item ending within 24 hours, and many more items ending in the less-well-defined "tomorrow".

It's 5:30 PM EST - do you know where your eBay is?

2009-08-05T14:30:00.000-07:00

I totally know where my eBay is. I am a frood who knows where his eBay is at.

I have auctions ending soon, and as I am taking tomorrow off, I shall be watching them closely. I intend to give updates when the status of the auctions change.

So far, my items stand at a total value of $185.51, with just over a day to go on the earliest auction. They have many watchers, and so I suspect the price will rise even higher! Bwahahahahaha! Bwaha! Ha! Ho.

People

2009-05-17T19:23:00.000-07:00

Life, you know, is precious.

Everyone says this, but I think we don't always realize it.

Today was the day Barack Obama spoke at Notre Dame. There is much to be said about this (and we have said it) but what I want to blog about today is the hatred and vitriol thrown towards life by liberals.

Yeah, I said it. Liberals, you suck.

I have spent a lot of this evening engaged in public debate on YouTube (sheesh! Why do I bother?) with various people. Check out the comments log for the video in question - look for the comments dated today (the 17th).

Just above, I asked why I bother. I think about this often. I don't like people. I think they are (generally speaking) stupid and capricious and foolish and barely worthy of my time. And yet, here I am, being the lone voice defending the right of very small people to live. A right everyone else (it seems) wants to take away.

Does this mean I care? Does this make me a good person? I mean, am I ever going to meet anyone my actions saved? Even if I did meet a child whose life I saved in utero by convincing his mother not to murder him, he would never know. A mother wouldn't reveal that thing to her son, and certainly wouldn't give enough information for someone to determine precisely who convinced her not to kill.

Why do I do it? I don't even like people - I really don't. And I know most of the children who would be aborted will (sadly enough) have lives which are less than ideal. Is actually living all that great? It is automatically preferable to not living?

I don't know. I really don't. This is a bit of an open and honest revelation for a Catholic anti-abortion apologist. I do honestly not know if the children who are actually aborted would ALL welcome living their life as opposed to being killed in utero and then (we presume) going straight to Heaven.

Of course, this is where my loyalty and humility come into play - I simply trust the words of my Church and my God. They tell me abortion is wrong and needs to be fought - so I fight it. I fight it in all cases, even those where I am honestly not personally sure (based on my own intellect) it is the right thing to do.

Why? Because I trust my own intellect less than I trust my Church's.

Also, there are OTHERS impacted by abortion. Abortion is murder - it is a sin. So, if a woman (or a man) is involved in procuring an abortion, he or she does something bad (a sin). That means, in general, and without other factors being involved, the person goes to Hell when they die.

Which I guess means I care about people enough to try to stop that happening to them.

Or do I? Really? Because, at the end of all things, my life orbits around this simple premise - I want to get to Heaven and please God. And in order to do that, I have to behave as He asks me to. And He tells me to "preach the Gospel". PART of which is arguing against abortion and trying to keep people out of Hell.

I wonder; am I altruistic, or just supremely selfish? I am willing to set aside my own intellectual misgivings about certain things simply to procure myself a place in Heaven?

Do I actually CARE about most people I defend?

What kind of miserable excuse for a Christian am I?

Whatever Happened To The Heroes?

2009-02-16T14:10:00.000-08:00

This is something which just occured to me today. Well, not just occured to me - it's been a point of concern for me for some time. Whatever happened to the heroes?

In line with the general internet trope of posting a video about this stuff, here is the video of the song. Which is completely irrelevant to the topic. But, hey.

Where have all the heroes gone, long time passing? I don't mean to bring up some discussion about the greatest generation or whatever - although perhaps that is relevant. No, I just want to discuss something I have noticed.

Periodically, network television runs out of ideas (shock!) and sometimes they don't have some over-boobed tart they can throw on the screen to get some ratings. And one of the things they turn to in this situation is getting a couple of actors, putting them in a park, and having them hit each other. And then see who steps in (if anyone) to stop the fight. Or, they have someone drop a wallet and see who hands it in. You know the drill - see if good Samaritans exist, or how many people will stop, or whatever.

Now, generally speaking people don't stop to help. They don't get involved. Sometimes they do, but generally speaking they don't. And then the network sticks on a psychologist who explains why.

You know what? This sort of thing concerns me - not the psychologist, but the fact that people don't get involved. That worries me a lot.

Not merely because I might be the guy who drops my wallet, but because it shows a very depressing fact about human nature - no-one is heroic any more. People just don't bother.

Now, I can understand the fact that people might not want to get involved in a brewing fight for fear of getting hurt (although it is, strangely enough, women who get involved more often than men and - despite what you might see on Xena - women are not as tough as men) but what about when it is just verbal? What about when there is absolutely zero risk of physical injury?

The only time this occurs is when someone is being assaulted on the internet, really - someone is being nasty and bullying to someone else. I understand that there are bullies everywhere in the world, and that John Gabriel's Greater Internet ****** Theory (note, this link may contain offensive words to some) is well-documented - but why are there no heroes?

That's my real issue. Not the presence of punks who feel big by insulting someone else, or telling someone to kill themselves, or just being nasty. Idiots have always existed and always will. But why does no-one put them in their place, or at least tell them they are wrong to do such a thing?

This was sparked by a discussion on a forum I am a member of - other people told a user that he should kill himself, and that he was a waste of a human being and so forth. People were, basically, just hurtful.

Very, very few people stood up to say that behaviour was unacceptable. Not to say that the guy being bullied was an awesome dude (he wasn't) but simply to say that telling someone to kill themselves is not cool.

I stood up. I tried to be a hero. And I got blasted and roasted for it - people said that I should let people say what they like, that it didn't matter. Even that people just say stuff and it doesn't mean anything. Plenty of people seemed to think their behaviour was acceptable.

But, for the most part, people just stood pasively by and let it happen.

You know what? I am not sure why people are like this - maybe they always were like this, passive and only-concerned with themselves. The whole "First they came for the Jews . . ." speech is relevant here, I guess. I don't know what causes this - my boss tells me that it's down to the individualism arising from the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment, and I am inclined to agree.

But I will tell you what I do know - a lot of the bad things in this world are completely down to a lack of heroes. Of people who won't do the right thing when all it will cost them is a little bit of time. Imagine if everyone spoke out against injustice - imagine what the world would be like. Imagine if, instead of smiling sicklyly when someone mentioned something immoral, people stood up and said, "Actually, I think that is wrong and bad."

Imagine that world. And then, the next time you are in a position to do something about something, do something. I am sick and tired of being the only damn hero I know.

Bad-Ass

2008-12-19T05:44:00.001-08:00

There is nothing more to be said but this;

Seriously, dude; saint uses a donkey's leg as a weapon?

Homeboy got mad skillz.

The Wonders of Modern Technology

2008-11-21T13:46:00.000-08:00

I could offer some kind of context for this but context is for the weak.

A little reflection . . .

2008-10-30T13:18:00.000-07:00

There is a fantasy I sometimes indulge in. No, not the one of Liza dressed as Wonder Woman, but an altogether more arrogant one.

I am dead and I come, broken and bleeding and tired and worn, to the foot of the steps that lead to the throne of God. And in this fantasy, the gleaming white steps are the concrete representation of Purgatory (after the wonderful work of my friend Mercury Gray). And I stumble up them, step by agonizing step, and eventually come to stand before the throne of Jesus Christ. And He looks down on me, and I can finally meet His gaze.

He speaks to me.

“Welcome, beloved and trusted servant – enter into the kingdom prepared for you before the foundation of the Earth.”

He glances down at my side. I am holding a sword. I realize I have been holding it for a very long time. He shakes His head and smiles.

There are others here – people I recognize, at least I do now. There is Ignatius, and Aquinas, and John-Paul, and others. And because this is a fantasy, even people like Dr. Monica Miller and Michelle Yax (who are still alive) and even people who don't exist – so I can see Vladimir Hunyadi and Elizabeth Studdock.

“You can put it down,” says Ignatius.

“You don't need to fight any more,” adds Aquinas.

“You won,” explains John-Paul.

“The war is over?” I ask.

“For you,” they answer.

And I let go of the sword and – and this is where it really becomes fantastic, because I have no idea what this will feel like, because I don't know how to do anything but fight – I feel at peace. And I am content.

And I want this fantasy to be real so very much – not because I want to feel at peace, but because I want to be able to want to feel at peace. I want to be able to be content with not fighting. I don't want to feel guilty for not trying to advance the Kingdom and get myself to Heaven.

But right now I am not content with that – I feel guilty. And so that is why I do fight, and why I continue to break my friendships and risk hurting others and hold such extreme positions. Right now, I don't actively seek peace. I don't want the war to end, because if it did I think I wouldn't know what to do.

When the war ends for me, I know that I will be happy not fighting. I just don't know what that happiness will feel like.

That's why this is a fantasy.

A Silk-Robed Son-of-a-Bitch

2008-10-07T17:11:00.000-07:00

I apologize for what is perhaps a somewhat brutal title, and I also apologise for not discussing the final day of our recent trip up north - but this was something which resonated with me.

If you would like to read the news report on this matter, please do so. If you want to read my version of it, read on. In fact, in either case, read on - I do more than simply report a fact here.

The basics of the story are simple; a woman goes into an abortion mill for an abortion. And the abortion is botched and a living baby is delivered. The baby is struggling for breath and trying to cling to life - but the baby is alive. The baby has been born. The little girl child is alive and out of the womb and is breathing. The baby, by any standard, even the twisted standards of the pro-abortionists, is a living human being.

And a worker at the abortion mill takes the baby, and sweeps the living human being into a plastic bag, and throws the plastic bag onto the roof of the abortion clinic.

And, of course, the baby dies of exposure.

This is not a theoretical tale, this is not some hypothetical story designed to argue against the Born Alive Infants Protection Act . This is something which really happened. This is yet another example of the thing which Barack Obama says doesn't happen.

(Yes, Barack Obama claims people are never born alive after botched abortions. You know that guy doesn't let little things like facts get in the way of what he does, of course.)

The reaction to this tale around the office where I work was, as would be expected (given the fact I work with human beings not liberals who seem to only care about whales and gays), entirely horrified. It was the reaction of people who didn't believe this sort of thing could happen.

I, of course, had a slightly different reaction.

I am from Europe, of course, and so my reaction was just as horrified as theirs, just as disgusted - but not as shocked. I know this sort of thing happened on a daily basis only a few short centuries ago. 2000 years is not long in the history of the world, and leaving babies to die of exposure because they were unwanted was common practice for the ancient Greeks. The pagan world was full of that sort of stuff - it forms the foundation stone of tales of incest, patricide and revenge.

This ended when that civilization collapsed, and into the void came the Christian world. And that is a simple truism - there is nothing more to be said about that. When Christianity comes, child sacrifice stops.

But we now live in a post-Christian world, don't we? We're too sophisticated to believe the old legends, aren't we? We're so civilized and educated that we can kill children, aren't we?

Have you ever stopped to consider - a simple glance at two images will do - just how much our civilization looks like Greece? Like the nation that killed its children? Take a look at Washington and Athens.

Look at that. Look at the glory that was Greece - look at the nation that was a rotting carcase of decay inside, defended by loyal soldiers on the outside. Look at Washington and look at the decadence and child-sacrifice of Athens. And then look at the Marines and look at the Spartans.

There is a reason they look the same. Because they are.

The title of this blogpost is taken from this article - an excellent study of what liberals are. Liberals are people who, fundamentally, are traitors to human ideals. They are the people who say that civilization simply isn't worth defending, that the civilization we have had is just bad and wrong, and that it needs to be changed.

They forget that the civilization we have is the only one we have. They forget that outside of civilization there is simply darkness, madness and endless war. In the words of Mace Windu, Jedi do not fight for peace, they fight for civilization because only civilization creates peace.

And what do we have now? We have a world where not only do things like this happen - but people running for public office and who stand a strong chance of winning want this to happen.

Barack Obama voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. An act which, if it had not passed in the US Congress, would have made what this murderous witch who stuffed a living human child into a garbage bag did entirely legal (or, merely illegal because it would be something like "inappropriate disposal of medical waste").

Let's go over that again, liberals (really, the rest of this post is written as if the person reading it is a liberal supporter of Obama. Please continue to read if you are not, but you might find yourself being accused of things you don't do. When you see the word "you", rest assured it only refers to you if you are a liberal Obamaite).

Your messiah wants a world where this sort of thing is legal. He wants a world where she wouldn't have had to stuff the child in a garbage bag and throw her on the roof. She could have just waited a few hours and then stuffed her dead body in a garbage bag and disposed of her body entirely legally.

This is the world that Barack Obama wants. This is what the Harvard-educated silk-robed son-of-a-bitch who's never held a single job which wasn't paid for with tax-dollars wants. This is the world he is fighting for. This is what your donations have wrought.

Forget the economy. Forget the war in Iraq. Forget everything else - they don't matter. Obama wants a world where leaving children to die is legal. He wants a world as mad and as dark as the world before Christ.

And now, if you vote for him having read this, you want it too.

Seriously - check out this page. On that page is a video; it is polemic, but what is not? But there are also documents - or links to them, at least. Check them out. Read them. See that Obama genuinely did oppose the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. He worked for a world where infants would be left to die. His story about only opposing it because it didn't contain certain language is a lie. It is a damned, flat-out, total and complete lie. It covers up what he did because even he knows that what he did was wrong. And he has to hide it.

So, read that page. And then, if you vote for Barack, you know that you are voting for a man who thinks that children should be allowed to die. It's that simple. Everything else is meaningless - he supports the killing of 4000 children a day (the number killed by surgical abortions), wants to sign the Freedom of Choice Act (which would make abortion even easier, removing every single law which prevents it - so allowing partial birth, without parental notification, for any reason whatsoever), and wants to allow infanticide.

You know this now. I have told you. There is evidence in the links above.

If you vote for this man, you tacitly agree that this is okay. Or tolerable. Or acceptable when weighed against other things.

Yes, John McCain might bomb Iran. Yes, John McCain might stay in Iraq for 100 years. At the current rate of the war, that means somewhere in the region of 80,000 American soldiers would die (and that is a ludicrously exaggerated number - McCain never meant the war would last 100 years, and you know it).

It takes twenty days to kill that many babies with abortion.

Estimated civilian deaths so far are roughly 80 to 90 thousand. Call it 100 thousand. 110 thousand in total (civilian and military)? Good enough estimate? Over five years. So, 100 years of war at the current rate (which would be impossible, as anyone knows, but I'll play your damn numbers game) - 2.2 million.

At current abortion rates in the USA . . . . 550 days. Eighteen months and about a week. Give or take.

That's it. Those are your numbers.

I wrote this post while watching, of all things, Knight Rider. You remember that, right? 80's series about a man and his talking car. David Hasselhoff with his bouffant hair and leather jacket and chest wig and whatnot. The hero in black riding into town on his trusty steed - updated for the twentieth century, of course.

America was raised on these sort of stories. 20 years ago, we still believed in this kind of hero - a man who risked his life to make things right. A man who worked for the Foundation of Law and Government. A man who "champions the cause of the innocent, the powerless".

A man who does not exist .... not any more, I suppose.

Now our heroes are men who want to kill the innocent and the powerless.

Have we really changed so much?

Time will tell, I suppose. Time will tell me, to be precise, a some point of the morning of November the 5th.

If you were considering voting for Obama and you read this, then you have the facts. You are now, as we Catholics say, culpable. And if you vote for him, saying that "Well, that is okay" or "On balance it's alright because of the war" or some other fatuous excuse, well .... I just destroyed that argument for you. It's not even vaguely comparable.

If you vote for him, you approve of infanticide.

Not "choice". Not "change". Set that aside. Allow Roe v Wade to stand in this scenario - Obama says that already living children should be left to die of exposure. Without food, without comfort, without a blanket for warmth or even human companionship. Medical attention is simply out of the window.

Never mind that all the science says that a human fetus is a living human being - set that aside. A human fetus is certainly a human being when he or she is out of the womb and breathing the cold air of this hideous world we have given as his or her inheritance!

If you vote for the junior Senator from Illinois who won't release his academic or legal records and who has questionable ties to terrorists, you know what you are voting for. You are voting for the tacit approval of this. And yes, if I could vote, I would vote for the tacit approval of the deaths in Iraq - because they are not as bad as this. I would have no choice - just like the babies who are killed, of course.

And that approval makes you my implacable enemy and my implacable foe. I will fight you and your ilk with every breath in my body and every prayer in my heart. I will not rest until you or I are defeated and gone.

If there is justice in this world - karma, payback, cosmic scales, whatever - your plans will come to naught and your house will burn and you will suffer for your allegiance with the darkness.

But there is no justice in this world. And I know it.

But there is justice in the next.

I will see you all in Hell if you do this thing.

It's a while before November the 4th. You still have time.

Think on this when you read my future blogposts, which might bring the usual lighthearted funny back.

The Return of the Funny

2008-10-03T17:13:00.000-07:00

Or, at least, hopefully.

I wish to apologize for the lack of the funny in yesterday's blog entry. As can probably guessed, I was very tired by the time I got around to writing the blog post.

Anyway, I have now just completed a day where we slept in until about 11AM, so while I am slightly tired, I am entirely more capable of bringing the funny. Or, at least, what passes for the funny on this blog.

The first thing we did this morning on getting up was take some photographs of the place where we are staying. As previously mentioned in this fine blog, the place we are staying at is called the Huron House. This tells us that i) it is a house and ii) it is on Lake Huron.

Witness the view from our balcony;

Walking down onto the beach, one finds oneself on the shores of Lake Huron. Lake Huron goes to the north ...

... and also to the south ...

I took off my shoes and socks and walked on the beach, and also paddled in Lake Huron. It is very cold - excessively so. I suspect that it is made of meltwater from Canadian glaciers, like Labatt's is. I think that currently the water coming out of areas north of the 49th parallel will be colder than usual, as Sarah Palin isn't there to heat things up being, as she is, debating with a man old enough to be her father but not nearly half awesome enough.

Anyway, as I had a camera and sand on my toes, I took a picture of my feet. A crazy plan started to form in my mind, which would involve Lake Huron and myself. But, as the shilling shockers say, we anticipate.

We then went in search of sustenance, and came across the Au Sable Inn in Oscoda. "Au Sable" is the name of one of the local rivers which flows into Lake Huron from the west, and is also the name of a small town here. Although all men of learning (and even the French, who actually speak this language) know that "Au Sable" means "with sand", the way to pronounce this is - apparently - Oh-sah-bo. Yeah, right. Bet the Quebecois love that stuff.

Anyway, how can we mock the French some more in this blog post? Why - by talking about the lager which I got with my lunch (which was a semi-decent fish and chips). the lager was "The Lager of the Lakes" and was rather good; it is a local brew. And on the label is a map of the Great Lakes. But not just any map - oh no. This is the worst map in the history of the world. Not since St. Jean de Brebeuf was tortured to death by the Iroquois and was forced to make a map with his own spilled entrails has there been such a bad map of the Great Lakes area. Behold the awfulness.

I mean, seriously. Come on. They say Michigan looks like a mitten or a hand. That doesn't look like a hand. It looks like some kind of carnival freak known as The Hideous Penguin Boy put his flipper into a coffee grinder and then, with the misshapen appendage left afterwards, attempted to make a crude facsimile of a human hand out of petrified chipmunk droppings. With his eyes closed. And while hanging upside down over a cauldron of boiling oil.

Bloody French and their inability to do cartography.

Still, the lager was very tasty and the food was good - although it was accompanied by little carved carrots. A lesser man would have simply assumed that these things were, you know, random shapes. I, on the other hand, know better.

Au Sable is called Oh-sah-bo because it is the Huron or Iroquois or Native American way of pronouncing the French (which simply has to be better than the French way, even if the Native American way involved simply banging the backs of your hands together and going "Blarph-blarph-blarph!") There is a huge Native American influence in the region.

Now, as everyone who has seen my awesome jacket knows, I rather like the Native American style thing going on. And this extends to all aspects of their culture and art. Including .... ancient Huron carrot-carving!

Seriously, man - who can't love these little, somewhat abstract, figures of men rendered entirely in slices of carrot?

Here we see the classic motif of Father and Son - the Father is taller and solid, reliable in the wisdom he will pass onto the younger generation. The Son reaches upwards, not yet having learned that his lot in life is to be eaten as a salad garnish.

With my fish and chips, I had ketchup. But not any old ketchup - oh no, sir! This was fancy ketchup. Check out the bottle;

Look, it is fancy. It says so right on the label! This ketchup was pooh-poohed by Liza as being "just catering ketchup, for God' sake don't take a picture of it, people are looking" but I knew better. It is produced by the Sysco Foods Corporation and is some of the finest ketchup ever. It is certainly better than Heinz, not merely in taste, but also in the fact that - to the best of my knowledge - Ms. Sysco is not married to some stupid flip-flopping Democrat waffle merchant who looks like Herman Munster.

Alas, it seems (according to Liza who, it must be said, knows little of ketchup) that this ketchup is not available in regular stores, but only in those large, catering stores and whatnot. I think this is a great shame, and strongly recommend some kind of petition to get Sysco to sell their product in regular stores - perhaps under the name "Better than Heinz - and not just because we aren't pro-gay, anti-family idiots! We're tomatoey, dammit!"

We then got on the road and went along River Road, which runs parallel to the Au Sable River. And there we stopped, and we took a look at a scenic lookout. I must admit, it was very nice.

(As an aside, I am typing this in the dark, with the lights turned off, so I can watch some fireworks someone has on the beach. But this means Shaak Ti's (my laptop) screen in the only bright thing in the room. And a small flying insect is crawling all over it. My computer has a bug. B'dum-tish!)

Anyway, this was a nice scenic lookout point, and it led down to the Au Sable River. And when I say led down I mean down.

Liza and I went down the dune - which was pretty easy, as gravity and massive amounts of shifting sand did the job for us. And then we splashed around in the river at the bottom, and then tried to climb back up.

Oh God, that was hard work. The sand kept sliding under our feet, the incline was about 60 degrees in parts, it wasn't a short distance. Here is the view back up.

At the end of it, we were pretty knackered. Some nice people took a picture of us after we got to the top (the arrived just as we were getting back to where we had started).

So, much tiredness there indeed.

After that, we went to the lumberman's monument, which is awesome. I bought a book about Paul Bunyan (whom I knew of before I came to the USA, as I am fantastically well-read and educated and that) and we took photographs. Here is a picture of Liza by the monument itself;

And here is a chipmunk! He is there, really - he blends in. Look for the black and white stripes against his little brown body.

And here is a cool shot of us on a giant set of pickup-stix! I could tell you how we did it, but then I'd have to kill you.

We then returned home, where my crazy plan involving Lake Huron and myself was put into practice. It was about 6 PM, and it is October. And it is Lake Huron.

Yes, I went swimming.

Flip me! But Lake Huron is cold this time of year! Sheesh, people! Even my chilblains had chilblains. It was very cold.

Speaking of any kind of blains - it is my believe that David "Asshat" Blaine should try sitting in the Huron for about three days. Preferably in the middle of the Huron. And then he should have to attempt to navigate back using an empty bottle of Lager of the Lakes. That should get rid of the annoying little oik that keeps littering our public spaces with his stupid stunts.

Coming this Fall! David Blaine eats his own head!

I did not stay in the water long, merely long enough to say - in some poorly-thought-out macho way - that I had done it.

Liza, as you will note, was sensible and did not go in Lake Huron. She documented the event.

We then went in the hot tub to warm up, and I am now going to bed.

'Night, John-Boy!

News from the knuckle

2008-10-02T18:08:00.000-07:00

If you hold your left hand out, palm down, and imagine that it is Michigan, you will find myself and Liza on the outer edge of the first finger, in the middle, at the knuckle. This is the town of Oscoda, and it is some small-town little vacation spot. It is on the very edge of Lake Huron, and it's very nice.

We have taken a little vacation, just a few days, after the launch of RealCatholicTV.com, which is excessively pimp. And you get to hear all about it.

It is about a three hour drive up to Oscoda, and en route we played a wonderful game. It is called Take Photographs of DK with Enormous Animals!

A cow

A mouse

A fish

A sea-serpent

This was going to be Babe, but the big blue ox ran away .... and I only got Paul

Anyway, so we arrived at the hotel - and it is very nice. We are staying right on the shores of Lake Huron at the Huron House. Here is our room.

And here is the view from the little peep hole in the door.

We spent about an hour walking around Oscoda - and we had icecream. By cunning carving with a plastic spoon, I created this little version of the Washington Monument. Any other resemblance is purely co-incidental, I assure you.

After my frozen-daily replica of the world's tallest free-standing masonry structure, we went back to the hotel room and went into the hot tub and had champagne.

Life is hard, obviously.

The Coming of the Madness

2008-09-27T07:36:00.000-07:00

I don't claim to be the greatest man in the world (well, okay, I do - I have quoted Johnny with the fiddle more than once) - mainly because I know I could never be as good as my colleague Sadeer Farjo, a man who has so many websites that Google actually recognizes his name as a common search! Sadeer, the handsomest man in the world! All of your camel are belong to Sadeer!

However, I do claim to be better than some. Specifically, with reference to fanfiction. Many people wonder why I write fanfic, thinking the whole thing sad and geeky and so forth. Well, yeah, it is geeky. And my stuff is very geeky - I have loads of webpages devoted to it and hours and hours of work on it. Check them out if you don't believe me - and check out the article I was interviewed for.

Anyway, the general quality level of fanfic is usually against those of us who engage in fanfic. I am not about here to defend the practice - my friend Mercury Gray is better suited to do that, frankly; she is working on a piece of work about the origins of the art form, I think. No, the purpose of this post is to state that, yes, indeed, most fanfic is just awful.

No, it is. Although the group of fanfic authors that I am a member of are truly awesome, they are the small congregation of candles in an otherwise dark universe. Most fanfic is not just bad, it actually warps the fabric of space-time with its dreadful lack of anything even approaching normalcy. Practically every single person who writes fanfic should never be let near a pen, or a piece of paper. In fact, they should be kept away from flat surfaces and anything that might make a mark thereon, in the vain hope that their insanity will not be committed to posterity and thus infect the fertile and fragile minds of those who read it. In centuries to come, archaeologists will run screaming from ancient ruins, having scraped away the detritus of the centuries to reveal the dark and hideous characters that spell the dreadful legend "But hary luvd hermyonee so much that he just had 2 kiss her".

In the future, exhibitionist English duchesses in Daisy Duke shorts and with figures more incomprehensible that $700 billion Wall Street bailout will be bound tightly with straight-jackets in psycho-wards after reading what the careless and uncaring purveyors of fanfiction called "authors" have posted on FanFiction.net, the fingers that they themselves have gnawed down to the knuckles shackled lest they bestow some hideous wound upon their faces twisted with the unrelenting fracture of their minds.

And the word will end in a tide of blood and madness, and Jesus Christ will descend from the Heavens in glory and say "My dad is going to be so ticked off with you people, I can't even begin to tell you."

It will be bad.

The simple fact is that most fanfic is everything that you have been told, and worse. Ours, of course, is not - and I urge you to check it out.

But I also urge you to check out this.

This is truly awesome, and it is a sign that God can make good of all things. And that Cath can make good of bad fanfic. I am not sure which is more impressive, but God's creation of the entire universe from nothing does give Him a certain advantage.

Cath (purveyor of fine baked goods whilst dressed as a belly-dancing Chocobo) has produced the following video, based upon this awful genuine and genuinely awful fanfic. And when I say awful, I don't mean it causes awe - I mean when I read it I am unmanned and void my bowels, claw out my own eyes and call for my mother to make the pain stop. Preferably with some kind of large caliber round.

Click here for the unending madness which, even yet, ends in the middle of what the author might refer to as a sentence if she had heard of the linguistic concept, even if only by reputation

And below can be found the video in question, a dramatic reading of the piece which makes no concessions and pulls no punches. This is the maw of madness, unfiltered through a lens and presented to you raw and bleeding, torn from the walls of a cathedral made entirely of screaming mouths and filled with the bright buzzing of a trillion wailing crystal bees. The light that streams into this place is nothing more than the venom of a thousand scorpions and the screams of the damned. It merely casts shadows, it does not illuminate.

Cath has brought his insanity to us. She has delved into the hideous holocaust where reality is merely the plaything of capricious dark gods to whom time is as a ball of yarn and causality is a bauble of tawdry nothingness. She has delved into the blackness of a night so devoid of light that it burns and a chill realm of endless fire that rends flesh like air. She has done, this, and brought this piece back unto us. For this, she deserves our endless adulation and thanks. She has endured that which is simple destruction to lesser people.

One day, the author of this piece of fiction, the woman by the name of Laura, will return to the earth in her new form, and she will open one of her six mouths as tears of burning pitch stream down her face. And then she will sing the song that will end the universe.

There is no escape. I have seen Armageddon, and it asks for reviews.

Update!

2008-09-21T16:36:00.000-07:00

I apologise for the lack of a less prosaic title for this blog post, but, hey, if you wanted originality you wouldn't come here.

Or would you?

That doesn't mean anything, by the way, it's just a cheap trick to get some kind of suspense. And it fails.

Anyway, what have we been doing recently?

Well, Liza has a new project - it is complex, and that complexity is added to by the simple fact I don't understand what she does for a living. She is a project manager. She manages projects. Beyond the parsing of her title, I cannot comment on her actual day-to-day employment.

We have also been doing a lot of grilling on our mega grill, which is clearly awesome as discussed elsewhere in this fine blog. But, as sundown comes earlier owing to the tilt of our planet taking out continent further away from the ball of fire our world orbits!!! it gets dark quicker. And it is difficult to grill in the dark. And the light from the grill itself is not brilliant to grill by. And our little driveway security light which comes on automatically is broken.

Drat. People are going to come and burgle us now. My house is defended by armed guards from Sarah Palin Securities Inc. And you have no way of checking to see if that is true or not except by coming around and risking getting shot.

Remember; unlike other VPs, if Sarah Palin shoots you, it's 'cause she was aiming for you.

So, in order to grill at night, I have made use of this fine present purchased by my mother in law (I believe) for Christmas. At the time, I was wondering "What the Hell am I going to do with this damn thing? Do I look like a miner or some sort of cartoon mole?" But, it is ideal for night grilling.

Am I not the finest man in the world with this thing on my head?

Secondly, Liza and I went to the Michigan Renaissance Festival, and swanned about in our costumes. Last year, we purchased Liza's truly gorgeous costume from the fine people at Pendragon Costumes - and I also purchased myself a sort of jacket / doublet thing with this green oak leaf design on. Really very very nice they were.

Actually, there is a whole conversation here about this, and one which really defines the type of people that Liza and I are (not as a group, you understand, but rather as individuals). As related elsewhere, Liza's shopping habits do not make sense to the average male. However, I believe that they are common to many women, and so practically everyone who reads this will understand where I am coming from here.

We walked around the ren faire in Holly, MI, last year (around our anniversary) and looked at all the pretty stuff and all the nice people dressed in their ren costumes (and all the somewhat trashy women half-dressed in dresses scooped stupidly low and the middle-aged women with the bingo wings dressed as Xena. Seriously, ladies - there are many sort of ren costume which will make you look good - and lots of them will give you an opportunity to show off your figure and show that you still "have it". But those costumes are not basically swimsuits made of leather or bikinis made of chainmail. There are very few women over 40 who look good in swimsuits when they are just sauntering around. Even the teenagers dressed in those things look, frankly, slutty. It works on a major Saturday afternoon TV series detailing the adventures of a vaguely-subtle lesbian and her Girl-Friday, but not in Michigan in the Fall when surrounded by the vacationing crowd drinking Bud and stroking their beer guts. Frankly, girls, what are you trying to accomplish? Ah - I see. Well, you accomplished it).

It's 3 PM at the Michigan Renaissance Festival; do you know where your self-respect is?

So, anyway - Liza and I walked around the ren faire last year and saw the pretty costumes. And we walked into the Pendragon Costume shop and they had this gorgeous red and gold dress on a mannequin. Called it the "Anne Boleyn" or something similar (it did lack a head, I suppose). So, Liza goes all "Ooooh!" and "Ahhhh!" over this dress, and the lady assistant at the shop asks her if she would like to try it on. So, Liza and lady and the dress go into the changing room to try said dress on (try the dress on Liza, that is - not the two of them. We didn't see that costume at the faire).

Time out here; is there some major disconnect between the genders regarding what it is acceptable to do in a shop, or is it just between me and Liza? Basically, Liza seems to think it is okay to go somewhere and try on clothes without any intention of buying stuff. In fact, she will actually declare her intention to do so prior to engaging in the trying on of clothes. I personally think that if you are going to try something on, you should at least be thinking of buying something. Shops are businesses, not your dress-up trunk, you know.

Anyway, Liza and lady go into small curtained room to get dress in. I ask chap called Ian who runs the shop "How much does that dress run at?" and he tells me an entirely ludicrous figure (not Liza's figure is ludicrous - that would be the figures of the girls dressed as Conanne the Barbarianne). I say to the fellow, "Right, I'll take it." "But you haven't even seen her in it!" he exclaims.

"Ah, no," I explain, "it works like this. Liza will love the dress, and she will come out and be all impressed with it. And she will then uhm and ahh about it, and eventually decide - regretfully - that she cannot afford it. And she will leave, and walk around for a while, and come back and look at it again, and touch it, and coo over it, and then leave the festival without having bought it. And in a week's time she will regret it, and it will just be terrible. I am not going through that crap. I will buy the dress, she will complain and say we can't afford it, I will ignore her blandishments as not being grounded in any sort of reality, and she will be happier in the long run. Ring the damn thing up."

So, Liza comes out the dressing room, looks at herself in the mirror, and promptly bursts into tears as she sees herself. I then say "Let's get the dress" and Liza is all "NOOOOOO!" like Darth Vader when told he's just killed Padme.

So, I felt kind of vindicated there.

Anyway, back to this year's trip to the ren faire. We return to Pendragon Costumes with the intention of purchasing me some fine clothes to go with the jacket / doublet which I purchased the year before. And we also ask about boots which can be worn on the feet and which will make one look pimp. Nice man Ian (who is still there, it seems) directs us to Son of Sandlar which sells boots. I purchase boots. I purchase trousers and leather strappy things and a shirt. I purchase a hat so awesome the gods will notice us again!

Are we not pimp?

In addition to this frivolous use of money, we also added to the Hodge family with Hugebeast. Hugebeast is from Squishable.com, a place which sells 'normous round squishable critters. Hugebeast scared the stuffing out of Baby Kitty -she was all puffed up and absolutely terrified of him. Which was really funny, as Baby Kitty is normally very brave and so forth. Anyway, Hugebeast - 15 inches of 'normous squishable Hodge.

Hugebeast lives on cashews and root beer, and is currently living in the office with myself and Julie. He is very sweet, but he is a bit of a doofus.

Oh, noes!

2008-09-15T07:51:00.000-07:00

By tracking the progress of my wang, so to speak, I have discovered that it has increased by 1.40%.

I have also disovered that my wang is defined as "foreign small".

I've gone right off financial advisors.

What I Don't Understand

2008-09-11T14:54:00.000-07:00

Actually, there are many things I don't understand. Thing such as astrophysics - I understand that there are planets, and that they are large, and that they move. But beyond that it's all a bit complex.

I don't understand international economics, nor indeed how the price of oil can rise so very fast when the West buys most of it. Just refuse to pay that much - what's going to happen? It's a sort of fixed system, isn't it?

But my lack of understanding does not manifest itself in the belief that whatever I do not understand is easy to do, nor the idea that my lack of understanding shows that people are just too stupid because they do actually understand - or admit they don't understand, and yet say that there is something to understand.

Alright, that's complex - I don't expect you to understand that (I'm not sure I understand it myself). But, let me break it down - there appears to be a class of persons who fail to understand how something might work (let's say; government). They don't get it, they don't grasp (as another example) the electoral college. However, instead of saying, "Well, I don't get it - but it must make some kind of logical sense!" they seem to deny all sense of reason and scream "CONSPIRACY!"

Thus, when faced with the fact that the President might not be the person who actually won the popular vote, they don't admit that there are reasons for this which lie beyond their comprehension - but rather state that the reasons are well within their comprehension, are ludicrously simple, and that anyone offering a more complex solution is clearly dumb as a post, and gullible.

Example one; the Moon landings. This over-application of Occam's Razor states that "they are hoaxes!" Why? Because photographs taken on the Moon don't look like we think they should - light reflects oddly, or the stars aren't visible. The idiot who doesn't understand space (which is, let's be fair, most of us - I understand space as The Stuff Which Stays The Hell Away From Us Because It Is Scared That Sarah Palin Will Beat It Up (Which Is Why There Is So Much Of It) - space is complex) says "Well, I know that is not what it would look like on Earth! I can see the stars, why can't I see them there?"

The logical and truthful answer is .... actually, I don't really know. I don't understand why you can't see the stars in those moon landing photographs. But I don't claim my ignorance as some sort of badge of ability to see through flim-flam. I understand that there are things that exist beyond my understanding.

(A paraphrase of Socrates, there.)

Anyway, this is a sidebar. Or a tangent. My main point is not to discuss the act of not understanding, but a particular thing I don't understand.

Recently, I asked our PR company (this is the corporate "our", not the matrimonial "our") what the feedback was regarding our new news program - was it too biased? Or, rather, was the fact it was slightly to the right of Fox an issue? The answer I got back was instructive - and educational, from a woman who understands stuff.

"Well, it's a issue with the people who don't like that viewpoint, I guess. But most people understand than you condemn Sen. Obama for his pro-choice views because you are Catholic and Catholics condemn abortion."

The woman who wrote this is not, as far as I know, Catholic. She was also the woman who came up with this wonderful summation of lapsed / fallen-away / cultural Catholics;

Catholics who hold non-Catholic views

Awesome! That is, frankly, the best description EVER! This woman gets it - she understands perfectly what this is about. There are positions held by the Catholic Church on a wide variety of issues and that Catholics have to subscribe to those positions in order to be Catholic. If you don't, then you aren't really Catholic.

She gets this - others ... don't seem to. And that is what I don't understand?

How can someone who claims to be Catholic honestly support Sen. Obama for President - especially when said claiming-Catholic says that "abortion should be illegal"? Sen. Obama has said that his first act will be to make abortion even more legal. And yet, I encounter these people every single day.

How can someone who claims to be Catholic and who quotes from the catechism to me (proving that he has read it) deny the centrality of the Eucharist, instead choosing to elevate the decalogue and advance an almost sola scriptura point of view? How does this work?

It is this that I do not understand - I understand perfectly that there are those who do not follow a particular viewpoint, and I do not expect them to agree. But what of those whose very positions are logically inconsistent with their professed opinions and views?

Someone who says that abortion should be illegal should not, in a rational and sensible universe, be voting or supporting or even thinking of doing so for Sen. Obama. It defies rational sense to do so.

And yet people do.

I think I will have to do what I despise in others - seek a simpler solution. These people are either hypocritical liars, or very stupid, or both.

In fact, I think my simple solution is just fine. People are simply trying to have their cake and eat it.

I think I understand this now.

So there's this dude, right . . .

2008-09-09T19:13:00.001-07:00

. . . and he is my financial advisor. He advises me. Financially.

I often wondered about that, in the halcyon days before I had some dude who advised me financially. The question came darting into my brain from a strange place, "What exactly would he advise me about?" I mean, financial advice - let's break it down here into two essential points;

1) Spend less and
2) Earn more

That's kind of it. Before I met this dude, my limit of financial advice was dispensed - like some kind of robotic, Hajime Sorayama-esqe fortune cookie - via ATMs. Whenever I would withdraw money from them, it would ask me if I wanted an "Advice Slip". I wondered what this would be like - would it read;

YOUR BALANCE IS 34.25

YOU MAY WITHDRAW 34.25
DON'T RUN WITH SCISSORS

?

I'm not sure - perhaps it should have done.

Anyway, financial advice. My dude is called James Weeks and he works for Ameriprise Financial. These people are clearly awesome in every single respect, and James really knows what is going on. He also appears to be impressed by Sarah Palin, which shows that he is a man of taste and discretion.

Today I met with James and examined my investments. Yeah, I have investments. Don't ask me what they are - it's some kind of combined life insurance / savings account / retirement package. I don't understand this stuff. Apparently, it means I can retire before I die. And if I die before I retire, I still get the money. Or, someone does. My wife, I think.

(Memo to self : offer cat samples of food before eating.)

Anyway, I have this "portfolio" or whatever it is called. It is a breakdown of the places where my (at this stage meagre) investments are going. Rather than put all my eggs in one basket, as it were, my investments are divided up among about thirty different funds and companies and so forth. So each one has about $2.73 in it.

I was examining this list of investments, and one of them is called Wanger International! And another is called Wanger USA! I cannot begin to describe the awesomeness of this.

I have no idea what Wanger International and Wanger USA do - obviously, the world is not so cool and awesome that these are companies who wang. A wanger would obviously be "one who wangs". What that means, precisely, I don't know - but the tendency of the Americans to make verbs out of nouns would suggest that "to wang" would be "to do whatever one does with a wang". And the mere suggestion that I have funds invested in such a company is clearly awesome.

One can even track the progress of my wang, as it were. One can track it in real time, which I think is a scrutiny I am not sure I would want to subject it to under normal circumstances. But, this is the internet.

At this stage (9th Sept 2008 2229hrs EST) it appears that Wanger International has fallen by 3.96%. I have no idea what that means, other than it doesn't sound good. Perhaps the market for wanging has bottomed out? Has the wanger market softened? Has the flow from Wanger dwindled to a trickle?

Can I make more wang jokes? Perhaps - but it's getting late. 'Night, John-boy.

The reaction was precisely what I expected ...

2008-09-08T17:03:00.000-07:00

Okay, so, as all men of learning know, I was recently made a post concerning facts about Sarah Palin and generated a couple of wallpapers. In that post, I predicted that Liza would want wallpapers with Robert Downey Jr. on. In order to pre-empt such demands, I decided to start working on them right away.

And what does Liza do? She walks into the office while I am working on said graphics ... and proceeds to half-colapse in awe and admiration of the hawtness of Mr. Downey. Seriously - she's all falling over and that.

So, for Liza and the rest of you, here are the two newest wallpaper designs (click to get the full-size versions);

You can, of course, still get the Sarah Palin on her own ones too;

A few little-known facts ...

2008-09-08T10:30:00.000-07:00

... about Sarah Palin.

(I found these on a Catholic audio blog website, and that author got them from somewhere else. I am honest about attribution.)

Sarah Palin became governor because five children left her with too much spare energy.
Sarah Palin could not find a good man, so her husband was constructed from the DNA of Washington, Lee, and Genghis Khan.
Sarah Palin will send Biden a pre-debate cheat sheet. The sheet will have tips on defending against Kung Fu Death Grip.
Sarah Palin is on loan from the Justice League.
NFL teams may draft Sarah Palin, if they forfeit all their other players forever, to maintain league parity.
Iran’s nuclear program is a response to Sarah Palin.
We don’t know who would win in a Chuck Norris - Sarah Palin cage match because they’ve never invented a cage that can hold Sarah Palin.
Alaska is the 49th state solely because they knew even before she was born that Sarah Palin would never finish last.
Global Warming doesn’t kill polar bears. Sarah Palin does - usually with her bare hands.
Three of Sarah Palin’s five kids came out sideways - she never flinched.
Sarah Palin’s hotness is the largest single contributor to melting polar ice caps.
It’s not raining in DC. Those are God’s tears of joy that McCain picked Sarah Palin.
Sarah Palin knows the location of DB Cooper’s body because she threw him from the plane.
The Northern Lights are really just the reflection from Sarah Palin’s eyes.
Sarah Palin used to wrestle kodiak bears in Alaskan bare knuckles fight clubs.
Sarah Palin once bagged a caribou by staring it down until it died.
Sarah Palin turned down a job as skipper of a Deadliest Catch boat because it wasn’t challenging enough
Sarah Palin fishes salmon by convincing them it’s in their interest to jump into the boat.
Sarah Palin once guided Santa’s sleigh through an Alaskan blizzard with the light from her smile.
Without her glasses, looking deep into Sarah Palin’s eyes will blind you with the beauty of the tundra sun.
Sarah Palin would have won Miss Alaska, but she forgot to clean off the polar-bear blood.
Sarah Palin wants to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but to save time, she's going to let oil companies do it for her.

Inspired by this, I have made some wallpapers (click on the images to download the full-scale version - these images are wide-screen proportions, as that is what I use on my awesome PC, Shaak Ti, who is about as cool and sexy as Sarah Palin).

Liza is doubtless going to want some kind of Robert Downey Jr. wallpapers and post here in the not-too-distant future, but that's okay because he is i) conservative ii) good-looking in a non-feminine way that guys can admire without seeming to be in any way homosexual and iii) in Ironman and The Incredible Hulk. All of these clealy make him just seven kinds of awesome.

It Must Be True, I Saw It On TV

2008-09-06T06:21:00.000-07:00

I have a healthy respect for infomercials. And you know that must be true because you read it on the internet (which, as all men of learning know, a series of tubes which was invented by Al Gore).

Seriously; why do we accept all this garbage we read on the internet or see on TV? While there are some seriously kick-ass infomercials out there containing nothing but truly awesome factoids which are entirely true (such as the following);

and this one

there are several which are just full of lies, falsehoods and outright flim-flam.

Fig One: the flim-flam merchant of today (no, not Barack Obama); Chef Tony;

Look at him - some kind of fat man in a costume with a suspect mustache. As mentioned elsewhere, the last time I saw a mustache like that it belonged to a man fixing the plumbing (fnar-fnar) of a girl with at least a gallon of silicone installed in her chest.

Everyone knows Chef Tony - and wishes they didn't. He is that fellow with the Miracle Blades which, while blades, are not miraculous. Allow me to compare and contrast a few things in order to showcase the difference between miraculous and not miraculous;

The Incarnation

Verdict? MIRACLE!

Barack Obama's Fatuous Speech to the 2004 DNC

Verdict? NOT A MIRACLE!

The Apparition of the Virgin Mary at Zeitun

Verdict? MIRACLE!

Chef Tony's 'Miracle' Knives

Verdict? NOT A MIRACLE!

Gov. Sarah "The Barracuda" Palin

Verdict? MIRACLE!

Okay - Chef Tony, your Miracle Knives are not miraculous. And you are not what you claim to be either. Neither are you a trustworthy fellow, oh prince of flim-flammery. Let's take a look at a few choice quotes from your Wikipedia page;

... Anthony "Chef Tony" Notaro is a successful infomercial pitchman. Notaro is not a chef as his nickname would suggest ...

... Notaro began his career in 1971 as a professional bum ...

... but relevant statistical evidence is not given that supports this claim ...

... a malfunction in the interlocking lid assembly ...

... putting users of the product at risk of lacerations and/or fingertip amputation ...

What the hey, "Chef" Tony? You aren't a chef. You worked as a "professional bum" (whiskey-tango-foxtrot?) You have no evidence to support what you say. You sell shoddy products - which might cut someone's fingers off.

(I realize the irony of relying on Wikipedia to give me information about someone who I am mocking for unreliable information. It is like of like the blind leading the blind, or some sort of weird, messed-up Escher painting. Like a jackass watching a jackass watching a jackass in front of a mirror. Forever.)

And "Chef" Tony produces garbage infomercials like this;

Right, Tony. Sure. Because I really need to cut a pineapple in half in mid-air. You know, only last week I was attacked by flying pineapples and I was thinking, "Damnit all - if only I had some kind of deadly knife with which I could cut these pineapples in half in mid-air, then I wouldn't be absolutely screwed right now. Oh, wait - no, I'm fine. Because they are just pineapples, and pineapples aren't really a credible threat. They're fruit."

You total asshat, "Chef" Tony.

What I don't get with these commercials is the utter stupidity and illogic inherent in them. If the Miracle Blade can cut through anything (including Ninja Leaping Pineapples), why aren't our forces in Iraq armed with them? Seriously, dudes. Drop Chuck Norris armed with a Miracle Blade on Falujah and just watch the fireworks.

Here is another question; if the Miracle Blade (as we are often shown) can slice through anything (such as the flank of a aircraft carrier) and then slice through a tomato without squishing it, why doesn't it go through the chopping board? Seriously, people - why doesn't it cut straight through the earth to the molten core of this planet and cause an eruption of magma which will destroy all life as we know it (except, of course, the Killer Ninja Flying Pineapples, because they can only be stopped by being cut in half in mid-air by a Miracle Blade).

In fact, pineapples. I want to take issue with you - you aren't an apple, and you aren't from a pine. I call you out on your lying. And there is nothing you can do about my calling you out - as I have a Miracle Blade. Leap at me! Leap at me, you pineapples! And come at me with your raspberries too!

"Chef" Tony has also made a product called "The Ultimate Chopper". I don't know about you, but I would not put any chopper belonging to a man with that mustache anywhere near my food. Maybe it's just a factor of the gradual erosion of innocence in our culture - we now live in a world where not only could Leave it to Beaver not air as people would find it dull, but the very title Leave it to Beaver would only be given to R-rated movies sold in brown-paper bags to men in dirty rain macs. When I was a kid, a chopper was a sort of bike. And all the kids wanted a big purple chopper.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Sarah Palin is no longer the sexiest thing in the world

2008-09-05T18:39:00.000-07:00

Well, she is certainly among the top five sexiest women. And now you can see this in video via the new embedded player from RealCatholicTV.com which is, in fact, the sexiest thing in the world that isn't a Republican woman.

Or Monica Bellucci. I get the impression she would vote Democrat. But, our idols generally have feet of clay.

Here is the player, with a video featuring two stupidly good-looking people; Sarah Palin and my chum Vic Faust. Seriously, people - no-one should be that handsome. It's not fair.

Also featured in that video is Barack Obama, who is a jug-eared baby-killing freak who needs to sit down and shut up.

Hey, here's a game to play with your kids. "What does the cow say?" MOO! "What does the dog say?" WOOF! "What does Barack Obama say?" CHANGE!

Anyway, the above player is from RealCatholicTV.com which is the company I work for. And the embedded player now works. And, hence, all is right with the world.

Or it will be, on November 4th, when Sarah "Goddess in Human Form" Palin is Vice-President-elect. Oh, and John McCain is President-elect. But Sarah's the one to watch.

Palin '16! Or Palin '12, depending on how long John wants to stay at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. for.

Anyway, check out RealCatholicTV.com - it's awesome and access is free!

Cripes, John!

2008-08-29T11:00:00.000-07:00

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) - running for President of the United States of America against Sen. Barak Obama (D-IL) - today announced who would be his Vice Presidential pick competing against Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) for that position. His pick was Gov. Sarah Palin (H-OT)*.

Seriously - take a look at her. Five kids, self-confessed hockey mom, 44 years old, absolute total fox.

I'm not entirely sure what it is - maybe it's the little square glasses? The sharp suits and the pinned up, efficient hair? Maybe it's the fact she can melt titanium from across the room? I dunno. She's damn cute.

Which sort of brings me to the point of my post. No, it wasn't to just highlight the fact that Gov. Palin is a real yummy-mummy (although she clearly is). This blog isn't about that - I'm married and my wife is far cuter than Gov. Palin**. And she's married too. And unless we do some kind of press conference with her, I'm not going to meet her (and, let's be fair, I'm going to have better questions than "Why are you so damn cute?" if we do).

No, this is about Sen. McCain. Damn, John! How do you do this? You are constantly surrounded by foxes (and Fox, as well, but it's the foxes which concern me now). Your first wife was a swimwear model, Cindy McCain is still pretty hot (and was just superfoxbabeschwing! in her youth) and she owns a brewery company (unless she snores, she's getting pretty close to perfect there). And, although you obviously don't look at her in that way, Megan McCain is awful pretty.

How do you manage this? Come January 2009, is the White House going to have a greater concentration of beautiful women than the Playboy Mansion? Are you going to appoint Judge Marilyn Milian to the Supreme Court?

And, let's compare the two campaigns, shall we? Mrs Biden is - and I am being charitable - homely. HRC (who I think I have to include in the campaign) is pretty scary in certain lights, and Chelsea is . . . well, her mouth and smile make her look like she wants to eat something in a single bite. Like, for example, the Bill of Rights.

Michelle Obama is very pretty, I'll give her that - but the fact remains she is always doing that little fist-bump thing. And whenever I see that, I think ghetto-rap-music or some kind of 50 Cent video or something. And then the whole thing falls apart, because - and all women should learn this - when I am made to think of women as being "my bitches" or "my hos" or something equally degrading (as those videos always do) they cease to be attractive. I don't care if you look like Beyonce Knowles' better-looking sister; you just ain't pretty no more.

Seriously, Michelle - have some respect for yourself. Drop the ghetto-chic. Please.

So, Obamanation - zero. Harem-McCain - about a billion and five.

It is these kind of thing which make a fellow believe in karma - get tortured in North Vietnam for five years, spend the rest of your life surrounded by beautiful women? Or is this just the natural result of being a real hunk in your youth?

Ladies and gentlemen; our next President. A hero, a hunk, a man who attracts beautiful women like Barak Obama attracts questions about his associations with terrorists who got off on procedural errors.

Hail to the Chief, baby . . .

* You will notice that I did not make a joke based on R-A(c)K; as that would be crass and unkind.

** Merely to prove that my wife is more beautiful than the stunning Gov. Palin, here is an entirely gratuitous and equally Republican picture of her.

Liza outshot the State champion, there. She and Gov. Palin would probably get on really well. Actually, considering Sen. McCain's ability to surround himself with beautiful women, I suspect Liza might be Secretary of Defence come the new year. Unless John appoints JoAnne Galloway to the position. It wouldn't be the first time a character created by Aaron Sorkin was in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.

Here is another picture of my wife, being hawt.

Both she and Gov. Palin are the same age, give or take a few months. So is Monica Bellucci, another woman who is hot as suns are hot. Ladies, learn this - you don't need to be under 30 (or even under 40) in order to be beautiful.

Professor Paul Z. Myers clearly has issues

2008-07-25T06:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, I don't normally blog about these sort of things here, but this is something which is close to my heart. And, by heart, I don't mean the red, squishy, four-chambered thing in my chest. No, I mean it metaphorically - meaning I care about this.

Just so I can bring you all up to speed, Professor Paul Z. Myers is a teacher at the University of Minnesota, and he is an anti-Christian atheist, witnessed by the fact that he asked for a Eucharistic Host to be delivered to him so that he could descrate it. He said that it was "just a ***-**** wafer" and other such words.

Someone (we don't know who, but God does . . . heh-heh-heh) delivered him one. And he then proceeded to desecrate the Host by driving a rusty nail through the Eucharist and then throwing Jesus into the trash. He also tore out pages of the Qu'ran and Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" and nailed them to the Host as well.

Okay, this presents some issues. Obviously, what he did was wrong and disgusting - but we know that. We know that even if we don't believe in the Real Presence; I don't go around and burn copies of flags whose countries I don't like. It's just impolite. And for those of us who do believe in the Real Presence, well, it's someone physically attacking the Lord of the Universe. And that's awful. However . . .

i) Where did you learn descration, oh dumb ass? Seriously - you put a nail through the Host? Was that the best that your doubtless expensive education could come up with? Sheesh, numbnuts - there are children out there planning to defecate on Hosts, burn them, engage them in a whole slew of horrible things. And you drive a nail through Jesus? Wow - like He's never had that happen before.

The quality of persecutors is really dropping - I expect some inventiveness.

ii) Are you flippin' insane, Professor Paul X. Myers of the University of Minnesota (link to their website here, picture of professor Myers here)? You nailed pages torn from the Qu'ran to the Host? You total asshat - are you looking to get killed? Everyone knows that I don't think the Qu'ran is sacred - I am on record as saying that Islam is a false religion. But I don't go around advertising this fact on national media, nor have I ever torn up a copy of the Qu'ran. Many Muslims react very badly to this sort of thing - or have the demonstrations against the Danish cartoons slipped your shrived atheist mind, Professor Paul Z. Myers of the University of Minnesota, myersp@morris.umn.edu, 320-589-6343, Div of Science and Math?

Seriously, what crazy notion taught you that was a good idea? Do you have a death wish? You can probably count the people killed by Catholics in the last hundred years because of desecration of Hosts on one hand; I can't even begin to remember how many people were killed by the riots and so forth torched off by ONE set of cartoons!

Muslims are . . . volatile people. At least some of them are. And those that aren't tend to not exercise a civilizing influence on the violent ones.

(All information about Professor Myers taken from the University of Minnesota website, and all is publically available. Please call him - I'm sure he'd appreciate it. I don't think he speaks Farsi, however.)

iii) Do you have a very small penis, Professor? Seriously. What is the point in doing this? You don't agree with Christianity - is Christianity hurting you? Did some Catholic schoolgirl throw you over for the Quarterback at your prom? Did a priest cut you up in traffic? Or, more likely, do you simply not like Christianity because it encourages the things which you personally don't like (social responsibility, honesty, sexual ethics) and is against the things you are for (homosexuality, atheistic humanism, communism, hating America?)

But if you don't agree, what's the point of this? It doesn't achieve anything - except to make people upset. Does it advance your cause of making Christianity extinct? Not at all - in fact, it might do just the opposite. Your arguments now sound like a bag-lady screaming at the traffic.

So why do you do this? Answer - because while it doesn't advance your cause, it makes you feel good and powerful, doesn't it? It validates you as a MAN. Because you get to show your power and dominion not by actually dominating anyone, but rather by simply upsetting people. You're like the kid who can't push the big kids off the swing, but you can come in at night and spread dog poo on the seat. Yeah! That'll show 'em!

You are a sad, pathetic indivdual. I will pray for you - not merely that you can convert and say you are sorry before the Islamic terrorists get to you, but also so that you can grow a pair.

In conclusion, I want to say this. We all - Christian, Jew, Muslim - should pray for Professor Paul Z. Myers. To any who may read this - Muslim or otherwise - I do not encourage or condone violence. That would totally defeat the aim of what we are trying to show - namely, that Professor Myers is a spiteful, vindictive man and that we are bigger, calmer and more grown up than that.

If anyone does attack Professor Myers, I will condemn those actions. In fact, I condemn anyone who is planning it or hope it will happen. Frankly, I think it WILL happen - I've seen enough of the world to predict that. I hope it doesn't, but I think it will.

However, please do contact him, write him emails, ring him up. Tell him that he is wrong. The Catholic League is currently mounting a legal case against Professor Myers, I believe - arguing that he has violated the terms of the University of Minnesota.

So, those contact details might not be current for much longer.

I'm With The Band

2008-07-23T17:50:00.000-07:00

Okay, so, this requires a bit of explanation.

The only occupation protected by the United States Constitution is the press - they get "freedom". Or, rather, it is assumed that they have freedom, as their freedom may not be infringed by Congress. Congress, as we all know, is a bicameral House which seeks re-election.

Anyway, in order to be counted as a member of the press you need . . . . a Press Pass. Now, you might think that this is something which would be carefully controlled by the State or Federal Governments. And you would be totally wrong.

No, all you need to do is just have a press card and say "ME AM REPORTER!" to anyone who asks. Yeah, seriously - say this and suddenly you are press and your freedoms aren't restricted. You can get into any parties where people are foolish enough to think that "My Mum's Press Corps" is a legitimate organization, and where there might be celebrities. You can also possibly try to score free coffee, and maybe even pick up chicks with it.

So, what press organizations do is produce their own press cards. And that's it - nothing more. No forms to fill out, no reports to file, no payments to make. Just print a card, laminate it, hang it around your neck on a lanyard - and you too can be a reporter.

I am totally a reporter. Look, I have a card and everything.

As we can clearly see, I am just awesome.

This card was designed by my colleage Julie, who based it on a press card issued by Fox 2 Detroit back in 2001 to our cameraman / editor Dave. Now, remember, the picture you are about to see was taken in 2001.

Hey, Dave - the '70s called; they want their 'tache back. In fact, the last time I saw a 'tache like that, it belonged to a guy fixing a girl's fridge.

Fnar-fnar.

So good, it has multiple airports to facilitate an easy exodus

2008-07-23T15:09:00.000-07:00

Okay, so on the 23rd of June myself and the boss went to Manhattan to talk with Amigot (a web design company) about the website they are designing for us. And I took the camera, which I used to take photographs. And I am posting them here, mainly because it's my blog, and I don't need an excuse. These photos aren't very good, but hey, it's my blog. You want interesting images, do you? Do you? Well, then you should have gone to Lord Lichfield's blog, shouldn't you? What did you come here for? Why are you here? Evidence would suggest that you are gluton for punishment.

A shot of my boss in the New York taxi-cab, checking his text messages on the 'phone. Or perhaps just praying as we weave through crazy traffic.

Some picture taken off a bridge, or something.

Another shot of a bridge - this is a different bridge, I think. It has a Golden Gate quality to it, but clearly isn't. As that is in the 'Frisco Bay. Where they have fruits, nuts and flakes.

A rare sight in New York - a taxi-cab on a bridge. I was clearly very lucky to snap this shot.

Another bridge shot. What do you expect when I go visit a city built on islands?

I have no idea why I took this shot.

Oooo! Look, arty! Or, alternatively, me failing to hold the camera straight as we approach some sort of bridge. I don't know what this bridge was - we were travelling from Flushing to Manhattan. It could have been the Triborough, but I don't think it was.

I was just unfesabily impressed with this - it was a fire-escape on the side of a building. That's just seven kinds of awesome right there.

Hey, it was 42nd Street. What was I supposed to do? Steal the sign? Chorus line not pictured.

This was just a shot of some large skyscraper. I dunno why I took it - it looked cool.

This building had a really cool metallic exterior, like it was made of discared take-out trays or something. Maybe it was, I don't know much about NYC.

The Pershin Square cafe where Russ used to take Anne for donuts and coffee. I snapped that because Mike pointed it out, and I felt it would have been rude not to.

Grand Central Station - does exactly what it says on the tin.

"Oh, say can you see . . . " Yes, I can, although it seems as if I can't see as well. Perhaps I didn't have the flash on or something?

Another shot of GCS. Looks kinda cool, really.

Me in GCS. Ladies, I'm looking at you!

Okay, this was after my meeting. We walked out of the office, and were just standing on the sidewalk talking, and then I looked up and was all like Mayor Ebert from Godzilla (the new, poorer, remake) - only I didn't say "G**-d***". Anyway - "It's the Chrysler Building!"

It's still the Chrysler Building. It's not been knocked down by the USAF trying to hunt a gigantic irradiated lizard that breaths fire and becomes spontaneously pregnant. I actually considered that false advertising.

The other side of the Chrysler Building. It appears to have four way rotational symmetry.

Right, this is the UN. Mike went "Look! The UN!" and so I snapped a shot.

Another shot of the UN. Mike was getting nervous by this point, as he was actually in a car with two foreign nationals, one of whom was taking pictures of the United Nations Building.

A suspension bridge, on the way back to Flushing and Laguardia. I don't know which bridge it was - except it's not the largest single span suspension bridge in the world, as that is the Humber. Which clearly rocks.

This is a shot on a bridge - it might be the same bridge. I dunno. They all looked very similar, to be perfectly frank.

Yeah, the standard of photography has really gone downhill since we invented digital cameras. When you were burning through silver-nitrate, you tended to be a little more circumspect.

I was just so impressed by the fact a Catholic store had Chinese characters on it. That was pretty awesome as far as I was concerned.

What I Do For A Living

2008-07-17T14:44:00.000-07:00

Hi-de-ho!

Many people say "just what is it that you do all day?" And I generally say "Chillin'" - which might be a bit of a fib. No, what I do is make necessarially complex.

Anyway, so far today I have done the following;

a) Been to the dentist
b) Discussed a webpage design with a Catholic priest who dresses up as the real Santa Claus
c) Helped produce the following list of topics for a talk-show interview;

1.Sex,
2.Death
3.Money
4.Religion
5.Politics
6.Children
7.Education
8.Cooking
9.Health
10.Environment
11.Vacations
12.Prayer
13.Family
14.Technology
15.Evolution
16.Highway systems
17.1st boyfriend
18.Parents
19.Healthcare
20.Employment
21.Houses
22.Fashion
23.Shoes
24.Movies
25.Music
26.Internet
27.Theater
28.Celebrities
29.Christmas
30.Thanksgiving
31.Independence Day
32.History
33.Geography
34.Math
35.Languages
36.Canada
37.Mexico
38.Ohio
39.Auto industry
40.Sports
41.Dancing
42.Romantic Dinner
43.Romance
44.Alcoholism
45.Balancing Checkbooks
46.Accessorizing
47.Violence
48.The Flag
49.Barrack Obama
50.John McCain
51.Hilary Clinton
52.Wrapping presents
53.Laundry
54.Chores
55.The color red
56.Sacred scriptures
57.Swimsuits
58.Exercise
59.Football
60.Furniture
61.Decorating
62.Bishops
63.The Pope
64.Saints
65.Candles
66.garbage day
67.sleeping bags
68.barbecue
69.art
70.text messaging
71.rap music
72.lesbians
73.hair
74.paying your bills
75.light bulbs
76.falling leaves
77.the seasons
78.back hair
79.immigration
80.pop tarts
81.make up
82.7-11
83.Iraq
84.Tattoos
85.Iowa
86.Tennis
87.Brooklyn Bridge
88.Notre Dame
89.ink
90.sororities
91.spelling bees
92.beauty pageants
93.road trip
94.beer
95.drugs
96.diapers
97.in-laws
98.bed wetting
99.drapery
100.flagpoles
101.pantyhose

This is my job, people. God bless America.

Yorkshire Meets the United States

2008-07-16T08:32:00.001-07:00

As all men of learning (and Barack Obama, who is a baby-killing monster) know, the primary method of cooking for thousands of years has been to make a fire and put something near it. It was this method which was made popular by such early celebrity chefs as Ug, a Cro-Magnon caveman who specialized in "Wooly Mammoth On Stick" and "Saber-Tooth Tiger On Stick".

Gradually, as liberalism took hold and less and less testosterone was produced by the average man (culminating in the creation of such travesties against nature as My Chemical Romance and Panic at the Disco), people invented technologies which increased the distance between the food and the fire, and - in some cases - contained one of the Four Sacred Elements in vile technology such as a box.

This culminates, ultimately, in raw food diets and tofu. In a more minor way, it leads to the idea that not EVERYTHING can be cooked on a grill.

Say this with me; to Hell with that noise.

To wit - Yorkshire Pudding. For those who you who are not from Yorkshire (i.e. godless heathen barbarians barely worth spitting on) let me explain this. Yorkshire puddings are a batter-based delight made by putting what it basically a savory pancake batter in red-hot fat and baking them in the oven until they rise and are delightful. A REAL Yorkshire pudding in made with animal fat (not namby-pamby liberal fat from vegetables or whatever - DEAD ANIMAL FTW!) and is cooked in a truely huge pan. The little small things you get? Those are just batter puddings - not the same thing AT ALL. Lancashire puddings, perhaps - but that would be insulting to the puddings, I guess.

Anyway, some people of the meanest intellect (a category which I feel genuinely agrieved I cannot include many individuals) maintain that Yorkshire puddings cannot be cooked on a grill.

This, it appears, is not the case.

Amerika; Ist Wunderbar!

2008-07-04T13:07:00.000-07:00

Today is the Fourth of July. In the United States of America, this means it's the day when even B. Hussein Obama pretends to like this country – and he perhaps even remembers to wear a flag pin the right way up.

I've been in the USA for about a year and a half now, and feel that I have correctly assimilated your culture. To wit, I drive a Hummer to my mail box.

But, there is one aspect of American Kulture which I feel that I have not yet truly assimilated – and this is the barbecue. While it is indeed the case that Liza and I own a grill, I felt that my masculinity was being impugned by the fact that it was only just big enough to cook a single chicken. It's a bit like going in the communal shower and seeing that your wedding tackle is embarrassingly small – it doesn't matter how effective it might be, you want something a little more impressive.

(Just so everyone knows, my wedding tackle is freakishly awesome. I was merely using that as an example.)

So, on this 4th of July weekend, Liza and I bit the bullet and went to Kroger and purchased their special offer (actually, we purchased several special offers – one of which was every single burger in the place because they were half off) – a grill large enough to cook a fully-grown bear.

No, seriously.

Look, I have taken a long, hard look at your culture. I have eaten Key Lime pie, I have read Hemmingway, I am not a Communist. And I think that the only centrally-unifying theme which you have is the fact that you tend to cook outside. Which, from a practical point of view, I understand. When your homes began life as a buffalo hide stretched over three poles, graduated to a log cabin, even today are built of untreated pine and plaster, and even the large, stone structures tend to get burned down in wars of 1812 (in your face!) this isn't the worst idea you have had.

No, the worst idea was that universal franchise thing – we tried to warn you. There are some people who cannot be trusted with the vote. I refer to them as Democrats, or – as Ann Coulter calls them – traitors.

Hey, I didn't say it myself.

So, the grill which is large enough to cook a fully-grown bear. It is a dual fuel model – with one side for charcoal, and another for gas. It has a side burner, and a condiment tray. Yeah, bitches – a condiment tray. You don't see that anywhere but on the finest grills. Because, as all men of learning know, serious pit masters don't wanna reach for the 'chup and 'stard any further than they have to.

(The term “pit master” is not, as some of my chums from Yorkshire will think, a title given to “t'bloke in charge of t'pit”. It, in fact, refers to the barbecuer, the dude with the oven mitt and the tongs. Some people might think that the feminine is “pit mistress”. To people such as this I say; the Hell with that noise. Women don't go near a grill such as this – it is a magnet of such masculine potency that any woman coming within five feet of it would immediately turn into a Russian shotputter.)

(As a matter of interest, I picked up the term “pit master” from a TV show on PBS which – the weekend before the 4th – ran for about ten straight hours! Yeah, one episode after another of this dude with shades and a Tony Stark beard incinerating every single kind of animal that walks, crawls, swims or flies in this country from sea to shining sea. Actually, I think he may have gone a fair way into the sea itself – Blue Whale Steaks with Cilantro sound really pimp.)

We went and got this grill, as I mentioned above, from the Kroger store and not from the store which actually specializes in such things. Do you know why? I'll tell you why – the grill store appears to charge about twice as much for the same product. I'm a serious pit master, not Rockefeller!

Anyway, we buy this thing – which masses somewhere in the region of a metric ton. We get the thing home and I open it up and lay all the pieces-parts out on the ground.

That is, if you will forgive me, a lot of pieces to simply construct what is, basically, just an upgraded firepit. Still, I set to work.

That's me fitting the wheels on – you will notice I am hammering in some little end caps. Liza and I had the devil of a job finding them. They were stuffed inside a little bag which was stuffed inside some kind of grill – a grill which was liberally coated with some kind of extra-galactic slime. I jest ye not – slime. Sticky slime that got all over my hands and stuck the screwdriver to my palms. What's that all about? Is this some kind of Islamic Terrorist plot to mess up my grilling on the 4th? “Ah, yes, Achmed” (note, Achmed must be pronounced with extra-phlegm) “Let us defeat the infidel west by covering their grills in sticky-slime!”

Damn you, terrorist! I'm going to grill anyway – and I'm going to grill pork!

Well, not today, as it's Friday.

After a few minutes of not too hard work (this is America, after all) I had produced the following;

There is a thing attached to the grill with a chain – I have no idea what the Hell it is. Look at it;

Anyone know? I certainly don't – it confuses me. It is a long bit of wire with a squirly end. I have no concept of what to do with this. Do pit masters heat it up and brand themselves with it? I think that must be the explanation – burn-scar tissue is like a Saville Row suit when you're naked!

At this point, the element I was somewhat worried about. So far, this whole assembly has just been a big Meccano kit (note to Americans, you don't have Meccano – you call it an “erector set”. Note to non-Americans, no lie. They call their version of Meccano an “erector set”. Only in the USA with its complete failure to understand innuendo could they call a child's toy a term which means “a set which causes to be erect” with a completely straight face. Viz; “That's quite an erector set you have there.” “Yes, indeed – it's Bianca Beauchamp and Kim Kardashian wrestling nude in baby-oil.”)

What is that, now? The third penis reference? I lose count.

Where was I? Oh yes, Meccano.

So far this has just been a case of shoving bolts in holes and screwing them tight (fnar-fnar). But now we get to slap the gas elements in – the “control panel” (basically, three turny-valve-things) and the side burner. Yeah, this thing comes with a condiment tray AND a side burner. I warn you, it is so pimp that even the uncool crowd will find themselves spontaneously mutating into Henry Winkler as they approach this thing.

However, this device has been designed to be so simple even a child could put it together (a child in this country is, of course, not allowed to purchase a grill – because then they might be able to celebrate the abortion they can get without their parents' knowledge with a cook out, and we can't have that. Remember, kids – wholesale murder of children is a-okay provided you don't cut down any trees or say any prayers while doing it!)

The end result of the worrying about gas is that I have now installed my side burner with no real difficulty, allowing me (ironically enough) to heat my beans without moving. And, as well all know, the purpose of grilling outside is to eat as much as possible and burn off as few calories as possible. It is this that won the Cold War – that and the fact Communism really sucks, obviously.

Now came the part which was, on paper, really easy but was, in fact, quite tricky. Why, you ask? I shall tell you – by means of a tale from my youth.

A friend of mine, Alison Munro, back in the UK, bought a great big house – huge thing, looked like a Republican wedding cake (rich, white, square). Massive garden. Also bought a big old greenhouse to go in the garden. Greenhouse is another one of these Meccanno kits on steroids / erector sets on Viagra – the instructions say “You and your friend can assemble this in about two hours”.

You and your friend? Two hours? Let me tell you, myself, Alison, her boyfriend John and our friends Jenny (a medical doctor, no less) & Sara took eight hours to assemble that damn thing. Eight freaking hours.

You and a friend? Two hours? Let me tell you, the only way you are going to be able to assemble that thing in two hours with just a friend is if your friend is some kind of octopus with a degree in civil engineering. Two hours my ass.

The issue was insufficient hands – human beings only have two of them. And the grill now required at least three. Helpfully, the instructions tell you to get your helper at this point.

(Actually, ONE set of instructions tell you to do this – the others tell you to get your helper in Spanish. Am I the only one who is ticked off by having to press one for English? I live in the USA – I shouldn't have to press one for English. You know what? I personally think it should go like this. “For English – the language of the Founding Fathers, the people who wrote the Constitution and built this country from nothing – don't do a damn thing. For Spanish – the language of people who can't be bothered to accept our culture yet want our dollars – dial Pi.”)

So, I get my helper – who proceeds to attempt to take a photograph of the grill in its unfinished state when all the stuff is wonky because I haven't put the hinge bolts in, and can't – because (like most humans) I am not some kind of octopus with a degree in civil engineering. I prevent the image being taken in my best “Paparazzi baiter” manner.

The bolts go in without too much trouble, and the end result is thus. Shown is me, holding the English instructions. Not shown are the Spanish ones (I am lighting the first fire on the grill with those).

And that was basically it – a few more things applied to it, the grill plates put on, the little warming trays hung in place and so forth and we are ready for the final photo opportunity.

Behold the total awesomeness of the interior of this bear-roasting monster!

We Christen the grill tonight – we are having grilled oysters with barbecue sauce and lemon-herb butter, and shrimp, and pineapple, and corn on the cob and that.

God bless America. Where else can you get a grill so large its carbon footprint can be seen from space?

I am a misanthrope

2007-09-21T14:15:00.000-07:00

Hello all! It is about a hour before we set off for the airport, and I have been hungry. But I am not hungry now, as I have now eaten some food.

To wit; a entire tin of refried beans in sandwiches with cheese. It was a very fine meal. However, when I am asked by Homeland Security "Do you have anything on your person likely to cause an explosion?" I will have to answer "Yes, sir! I have an ass full of beans!"

Bear in mind also that I will soon be in a confined space with people who I don't know. My view? If they wanted a pleasant flight they shouldn't have chosen the red-eye cross Atlantic.

I shall be the Rob Rowley of 30,000 feet! (Little joke for the NECTA people there).

Anyway, to more important points;

Liza and I arrive in London very soon, and in Sheffield soon after. We shall be having some sort of going out and celebrating thing on the evening of the 30th September. This is a Sunday. At 10:30 AM that morning we will be having the blessing of our nuptials (fnar-fnar) at the Cathedral Church of Saint Marie just off Fargate in Sheffield. All welcome.

So, watch this blog for updates as to exact time and place for the celebration of the evening - all welcome to that too.

Ciao,

Simon

We have a new house!!!!!!!!

2007-07-24T14:19:00.000-07:00

Well, not really. But we put enough money into this one that you would think we did!!! Here are some before and after shots - we put in 11 new windows and new siding and gutters on the house and garage. I just wanted to sit on the curb and stare at it all afternoon!!!

Click on the photos to make them bigger.

Before..... (this is about 5 years ago)

After!!

The greatest crew of guys ever!

New light fixtures on the whole house...

He made me a cool little address thing with my new numbers...

YAY!!!! Next, we are having the shed in the back demolished and hauled away this Friday, then maybe this Fall we can put in some grass and landscaping and hopefully a privacy fence.

So excited I can't stand it!!!! We have a pretty little home together - I just love Chez Us!

~Liza

Behold how I am NOT dead!

2007-06-11T12:38:00.000-07:00

Yes, indeed - I am NOT dead! Well, I might be. I don't know, actually - how does one determine such a thing? I am not eating, excreting or breeding right now. So, I might be dead.

Anyway, I am still capably of typing and various other things. So, I daresay that is close enough for horseshoes.

Where to begin? Firstly, with an apology to all those who have been eagerly awaiting updates and have got none of them - very sorry INDEED for this! Thanks also to everyone who posted comments - including Myles, who identified himself by name!

So, to the news!

Item the first : I have a Green Card!

Item the first and a half : It's not green, which I felt was disappointing. I wanted a green Green Card. Anyway, this thing allows me to stay here (in the USA) pretty much indefinitely and work and pay taxes and so forth. So, that's all good.

Item the second : Liza and I are coming to the UK in September; we shall be having a blessing ceremony at Ste. Marie's Cathedral in Sheffield (that's the Catholic Cathedral) at 10:30 AM on Saturday 30th September followed by some sort of celebration in the Parish Hall afterwards. That evening, we may VERY WELL go out and get drunk / celebrate etc. All are welcome to attend the Mass, the party or the drinking. Or all three. Please, do come - it would be lovely to see everyone.

Item the third : I went on the GM hotrod power tour - an amazing combination of muscle cars and '65 Chevys and what not. I was part of the video crew, and spent a weekend wandering around a car park in Ohio looking at about 2500 classic cars. All fun and games, there.

So, that is the current state of play in the USA - I'm still working for the same company, and I am still getting paid etc. Currently trying to understand the US tax code. And I can't. So, there you go.

I feel quite American.

Dentista!

2007-01-11T17:52:00.000-08:00

There are certain things which America does very well – they do, for example, do a fine line in oppressing indigenous people, protective trade practices and thinking that Scotland is the capital of France (hint, for all the Americans out there who are scoffing and saying “I know what the capital of France is!” it's not “F”.)

There are things which the UK does well – such a civilization – which America does less than perfectly. Other examples would be the afore-mentioned geography and politics which is slightly more complex that “I have a truly enormous stick and the will to use it”. Gunboat diplomacy aside, the concepts of the Yankies rolling out a red carpet is a wholly different prospect to the Limeys doing it.

In our case, starlets stand half-naked on it and smile vacuously at cameras – in theirs, starlets do exactly that while entertaining the troops. “Sexbomb” is not a noun here – it is an either / or proposition.

But one thing which the USA does much better than the UK is dentisty.

And when I say “does much better” I do not intend to suggest that there is any really sense of comparison which can be made here – except in the idea that one could compare Genghis Khan with the fellow who steals your lunch money. Or perhaps comparing Stalin with the office manager. Or perhaps anyone you see in the wash-out rounds of Pop Idol and Sarah Brightman. There is a vague sense of comparison possible in that one wishes to be in the same league as the other, but the final analysis is that there is such a gulf to be crossed before the actual mountain can be climbed it becomes impassable. This gulf is the metaphorical equivalent of Devilmaw Gorge, the gap that slew Avariel, God's messenger. That is a gulf separated by two ranks of metaphors from the real – a gap which is, itself, impassible to the vast majority of human intellects. And it is twice.

So, UK dentistry is bad.

This is the ultimate point of this post, and all the Americans are saying, “Yup – knew that all along!” but the Brits perhaps are thinking, “Oh, all that means is that we don't spend thousands on vanity treatments which give us teeth as artificial as half of Hollywood's breasts!” And while it is certainly true that veneers and bleach feature more heavily in American dental practices than they do in a Debbie Harry-lookalike carpentry seminar, that is not the key point I wish to make here.

UK dentistry hurts.

The Britons are saying, “And so does US dentistry! You can't extract a tooth or drill a whole or grind a molar without a degree of pain! You can numb it, but not eliminate it.” The Americans tend to numb themselves, and eliminate others, but that is by-the-by. I stand by my countrymen's comment – pain is essential and inevitable for certain types of dental work.

But in England having your teeth cleaned properly and professionally hurts. I mean no disrespect to the fine people in the white coats with the degrees and the Coke-bottle goggle-glasses, and their heaving-bossomed set of nurses packed into starched-erotica like ice-cream into under-sized sundae glasses – I am certain they are doing what they are told. But it bloody hurts.

Last time I had my teeth cleaned at a UK dentist, said sawbones merchant came along and pretty much wrenched by my jaw with a long probe-like thing with a pointed spike on the end. Scrape, wrench, dig in, extract. Pretty much like someone digging a trench for a new fiber-optic line. Then, said doctor grabbed a hand-held pneumatic drill and ran it around my gum line in thirty seconds flat, jarring my teeth loose. I rinsed and spat – the water was tinged with red.

Red. My precious lifeblood, corpuscles I can never get back. Those are mine, damnit. I made those. From iron and stuff. They carry oxygen, you bastard. You want me to suffocate?

His response? “A little bit of bleeding is normal at this stage.” Because I am naïve and tend to trust those who can inject me with lethal doses of barbiturates if they have a mind to do so, I felt this was perhaps normal. You are, after all, removing stuff which is encrusted on your teeth – plaque and whatnot. It is hard and does not dislodge easily. The polishing itself was done with some sort of Borrowers' floor-buffer, and made my teeth buzz with a strange aching sensation for minutes afterwards.

But the USA – oh, that is a delight. The nurse bends over you with a similar tool – which she proceeds to scrape gently and repeatedly and carefully over the lines of tartar and so forth as if she were extracting the bones of some particularly fragile lizard or frog or even osteoporosis-suffering bird from granite. When my teeth are treated with the same degree of respect as a Paleolithic avian, I begin to sit up and take notice.

She then brings forth a buzzing tool – for those of you whose knowledge of nurses stretches to ones who wear vinyl which hangs down not quite as far as the men's tongues, this is not what you think it is. This is a real device used by real nurses – and it is something which is designed to remove hard encrusted tartar etc. It is, I feared, the same pneumatic drill that as nurse used on me before.

Good God, did I just type the words “pneumatic”, “drill”, “vinyl” and “nurse” in the same paragraph? My Google refer logs are scary enough as it is.

This tool is – however – not the hand-held jack-hammer that I have been subjected too before. It is a “sonicator” or something of the sort. Despite the American predilection for making up new nouns by adding the suffix “-ator” to the end of the nearest word that didn't manage to get off the page Webster's fell open on, this describes what it does very well. It sonicates.

I sonicate. You sonicate. He / she / it sonicates. We all sonicate together.

What it does is spray water in a small stream with a sonic pulse in it. It dislodges stuff, I guess. I dunno – maybe you could get the same effect by gargling with your iPod headphones in your mouth and playing Back In Black really loud? Do I look like a sonicatician?

(Kid Dentist and the Sonicaticians would be the best name for a band ever.)

This thing does not hurt. It does not rend my gums to shreds. It does not cause me to grip the arms of the chair and wish death upon the dentist and his humming cohorts. It simply cleans my teeth. A radical concept.

And then she gets this little brush thing and asks, “Is mint flavored toothpaste okay?”

I look at her as if she has just landed from Mars. I expect some sort of trick – if I say “No, I detest and despise mint in all it's forms” is she going to say, “Well, sucks to be you – the only thing anyone sells is mint toothpaste. What do you think this is, Wallgreens' stock on Friday afternoons?”

She continues. “I have cherry, apple, and cinnamon.” Cinnamon? Had she said “and mixed with the blood of unbaptized babies” I would not have been more surprised. Cinnamon?

(Actually, that is another rant entirely – The Cincinnati Chew-Chew – on the prevalence of cinnamon in American cuisine. But I digress. This is me digressing.)

I look at her with a careful look of pity. “I don't spend that much attention on choosing my entrees – I'll take mint.”

She tells me that she has heard that they have made cookie dough flavored toothpaste. I am at a loss for words – what does it taste like, other than raw? Who – who is over five – wishes to eat lots of something that tastes of raw flour and egg? Is this some sort of penance for using the “unbaptized blood” paste?

She then proceeds to carefully clean my teeth, taking time and care, and ensuring that she does not rattle the wildly spinning buffer over my tender gums. She brushes my teeth rather than my mouth.

And finally, she flossed each tooth carefully and elegantly. Rather than simply tapping me on the shoulder and telling me to spit out the only thing that keeps my heart beating.

The whole procedure took about three times longer than it does in the UK – and even without insurance probably cost about the same. It did not cause my any pain or discomfort.

Don't even get me started on the fact I need to have a core and crown due to sawbones dentistry enacted by British dentists who have no idea that you cannot simply drill a random hole in a person's face and fill it with amalgam. That does not work. Even I know that, and I am not a dentist.

The crown and core issue will be the subject of a further rant. But, for now, know this;

People in the USA have good teeth. This is not due to diet, this is due to the fact they go to their dentists because they are not afraid of them.

Pain, ladies and gentlemen, is a state of mind. It is not a way of life.

We are adopting a new kitty!!!

2006-12-13T10:14:00.000-08:00

YAY!!!!

This little one came up to me in the driveway about three weeks ago. I saw her in the front yard, she blended in with the fall leaves, she is a little tortise kitty. I rattled the mail slot on the front door and she came running up to me, and almost came right in the house!!

It was love at first purr. But we already have the Good Queen Muff, and so we decided we couldn't take on another, and we thought she belonged to the people down the street. So we shooed her away.

Well, this morning I was leaving for work, and my neighbor from down the street was going into her dad's house which is next door. We chatted a bit, and then she said that she wanted to show me what she has hidden away in the vacant house (her dad has moved up north with his other daughter).

There was little stripey kitty!!!! (this is what DH and I have called her since we saw her the first time)

She has been feeding it and keeping it in the house until she found a home for it. She has 2 massive dogs and 3 cats, so she couldn't take another.

I went home to tell DH, and at first he said no, but then I guess I looked a bit sad, so he said - ok, this is your Christmas present! Go tell her we will take the little stripey kitty!

So we will make all the vet appointments for both the Muffin Cat and new kitty so we can finally bring her home!!!YAY!!!!!!!

Here are some photos:

They are a bit dark because I didn't want to use a flash on her, and the lighting is not great in that house.

~Liza

Just a drive by update!!!

2006-12-09T12:13:00.000-08:00

Vroooom!!!

Filed Simon's immigration paperwork today!! YAY! It only took us 2.5 months!!

Now we wait for him to receive an adjustment to his residency status, document to travel outside the country, and most importantly permission to FINALLY work for pay!!! It will be so nice to finally be a two income household!

Then about three years till he gets is green card. Which is now white apparently. Go figure.

Hope everyone is well and happy!
Love to all,
~Liza

In Your Face, Indigenous Peoples!

2006-11-25T09:22:00.000-08:00

In Your Face, Indigenous Peoples!

Yay! Thanksgiving! Let us gather together as a Christian Catholic group and celebrate the bringing of Heresy to the USA and the crushing of innocent aborigines! Smallpox-infested blankets optional.

It's one of those odd holidays, isn't it? Incomprehensible from a British perspective – you have only just survived a devastating failure of your crops and so how do you celebrate? By eating everything in sight. This, oh illustrious Pilgrim Fathers, demonstrates what we call a failure to plan.

Anyway, 300 years later the ceremony has settled into the following; i) Purchase more food than God ii) cook said food iii) eat it.

So, armed with the aforementioned more food than God, we arrived at Mike's house (the venue for this charming day of gluttony) and let ourselves in. We prepared the turkey and slapped it in the oven with the appropriate trimmings etc. Then we did very little (I had a beer).

(There is a turkey under there - somewhere... (LR) )

And then we waited, and periodically fiddled with various bits of stuff. For those of you who have never cooked an 18lb turkey before, I point you in the direction of the classic abjuration about battle – nine tenths of it is waiting. In fact, it's more than nine tenths – there are flurries of activity interspersed with terrifying periods of soul-crushing ennui. Look, really, this is why people drink whiskey until the whites of their eyes resemble pickled eggs and watch Roger Moore Bond movies at Christmas – there is nothing else to do.

Anyway, at around 1230 hrs our illustrious leader, Michael “Never Knowingly Conscious In The Bottom Half Of The Day” Voris wakes up and ambles downstairs in the manner of a bear who thinks it might have left the gas on before it settled down for its hibernation. He and Liza then proceed to the store to spend yet more money on yet more food – including the de regieur potatoes.

I wait back at the ranch and kill another one and a half hours. The turkey is still doing the turkey thing.

(Men in the kitchen - ahhhhh...bliss (LR) )

Mike and Liza arrive back. Don and Matt arrive with desserts in tow. Sweet Merciful Jesus – the desserts. Okay, there are six of us here – Mike, myself, Liza, Don, Matt and Mike's dad. Mike's dad is convinced that “He can't eat like that any more” and tends to push his plate away after looking at a sausage. There are six of us.

We have seven desserts – two mince tarts, a cherry chart, a cake, some fudge, a pumpkin pie and a cheesecake. We also have nibbly things, an 18 lb turkey, batter puddings, stuffing, potatoes, about 15 pints of gravy, sausages wrapped in bacon, vegetables, sweet potatoes and enough beer to make Germany think twice.

(Mmmmm...chocolate..... (LR) )

There are six of us.

(The rest of the guys, waiting for the feast. (LR) )

Anyway, the hour draws near. The turkey comes from the oven and is cooked and lovely. Then we begin the flurry to do everything else in the last remaining hour. Yes, for those of you who have never cooked a large meal before, heads up – you cannot boil the carrots at 10 in the morning and then expect them to still work at 4 in the afternoon. It does not work that way. An 18lb turkey takes longer to cook than a batter pudding.

Oh., mum? I finally managed to get batter puddings to work – dunno how. I was a little drunk at this stage and can't remember the exact proportions I used. But they worked – look, a photo.

(These were perfect and tasted fantastic! (LR) )

Anyway, we then ate until we were full. And by “full” I mean “my stomach is dangerously distended and I fear that if I am to move I will rupture.”

We then sat down and tried to digest this vast amount. Mike, Matt and I had a discussion about the nature of authentic Christianity while Liza, Don and Russ went to sleep and digested their meals.

So, a microcosm of the Church, there.

Happy Thanksgiving!

(Commentary and photos by LR)

More photos:

(Gotta love the mess of cooking for a planet. (LR) )

(The bird emerges.... (LR) )

(Mike and his dad, Russ, carving up Simon's Masterpiece (LR) )

(The table all set and pretty (LR) )

(Yep - I was there too, usually cooking or behind the camera. (LR) )

One month down, eternity to go!

2006-10-30T07:55:00.000-08:00

It's been a month! Wow! Can you believe it was four weeks on Saturday that we got married? The time has flown by.

Life is good, if not a bit hectic for us. One car, crazy work/volunteer schedules, spending time with friends and family, Church stuff, you name it. God only knows how we could cram a baby into it, but I know that that all works itself out somehow, so I'm not terribly worried about it.

A photo of Notre Dame game day at our friend Michael's house (never a better way to spend a Saturday):

Mike is wearing his beloved helmet, and Simon is sitting on the couch to the right, Bud in hand.

We had our first sit down and work out the budget last night, and I was a very good girl. I sat and participated all nice and stuff, and didn't bristle too much. Giving up control is hard for me, and being on a budget is even harder. But I know I can do it, I've done it before. Just have to un-do six years of living on my own and not having to justify my horrible spending habits to anyone.

So - here we are, one month in, and still in newlywed mode!

~Liza

Wow! It finally happened!

2006-10-18T14:04:00.000-07:00

Two things have finally happened!

We got married - and - I updated this blog!!!

It was the most perfect and beautiful day ever. We had a wonderful time, and there is just so much to say, I don't even know where to start.

So for now I'll just give you a photo of us at my sweet little bridal shower, and hopefully post more later.

Just know that it was an amazing day, and so far so good, we are still happily in honeymoon mode. :-)

TTFN! (that's - ta ta for now, for those not into the whole IM thing) hehehe - as if I am!! Most of the time Simon has to translate for me!

Anyway - TTFN!!!

~Liza - that's Mrs. to you!! :-)

Announcement of a New Excitement!

2006-10-14T15:33:00.000-07:00

Those of you who wish to follow the adventures of the Hodgebeast and his family (Suzi and the Higlets, and also Minion the Hodgedog and Fr. Hodgebadger and Deacon Smallbadger) can now do so at an exciting new blog located at;

THE HODGEBLOG

The Hodge demanded his own blog, and so we thought it better to give him one before he grew wrathful and destroyed the world.

Livin' la vida Americano

2006-09-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

Hello from this side of the Atlantic.

The Atlantic is a wide and odd ocean, filled with (if the naturalists and Von Daniken are to be believed) with ancient civilisations and whales. Perhaps the two are connected in some way. In any case, the divide is quite clear - the lifestyle of the Americans is odd when compared to ours.

To wit, the concept of 'Normous Pie. Liza does not quite grasp exactly how different this is, but she can't grasp the pie either as it is simply too large.

We went to Sam's Club, which is not a titty bar run by some washed-up 80's Page 3 girl (the non-Americans are going "Who?" while people my age from the right-hand-side of the Atlantic divide are going, "Miss Fox, where are you?"

(Heads up - she became a lesbian.)

Anyway, Sam's Club is - basically - a cash and carry. It is exceedingly large and filled with every sort of food and good one could want. As this is a cash and carry place, the stuff is quite large. We all know the drill - you go to Macro and you buy enough cinnamon to make a cinnamon roll the size of your head.

Every day. For the rest of your life.

Bear in mind this is America - in America, things are big. My new boss, Mike Voris of Saint Michael's Media (donate to us, please) drives a vehicle called an Avalanche. It starts them, I am sure. It combines the attributes of a pick-up and an SUV (which, for the British audience, can be translated as, 'Those damn things the bloody Middle-class women clog up the roads outside the schools with') in a handy, tank-sized package. It's huge - you sit in the passenger seat and you are closer to the next highway than the driver. You need ladders and pitons and oxygen to get into the thing. We went to Ikea - which is, again, huge - and bought 18 chairs, three sets of shelves, some free standing shelves and some meatballs. It all fitted in the back.

So, in the USA, large is the key here. So, imagine for a second the sheer unremiting size of the products you get in an American cash and carry.

It's bloody frightening. We bought some chicken breasts - each one was so large that even Jordan would think twice about having it installed in her chest. We saw rolls of sausage meat as long as I am tall and the thickness of my waist. Vast mountains of melons and oceans of juice.

And the 'Normous Pie.

Behold the pie.

As we can clearly see, the pie is very nice - it is an apple pie, covered in a caramel topping with some nuts going on. It is, basically, an Apple Granny. Except with nuts and some unspecified "crunch".

Now, let us consider the size of the pie. Note that there is nothing to give it scale in the photo - so here is the label. I assure you what it says is accurate.

The thing is a foot across! Sweet Merciful Jesus, it's huge! Let us assume the pie is about three inches deep - which I think it is. That gives it a volume of over five litres! Dear God, man! How big is an apple? About ten centimetres across? Thirteen whole apples - assuming that everything was used (pips, stalks and all) and they didn't shrink down during the cooking.

My God, man - what a pie!

We are taking the pie - together with MEAT ON STICK (my comments on the male phenomena of meat on stick can be found below in the eponymous epistle) and vast quanties of Frat Boy Beer - to Mike's house to watch the Notre Dame (pronounced like "Panto") game on his enormous TV. Do we see a theme here?

In addition to getting into the American way of life by having everything be the size of a house, I have also undertaken the classic immigrant role in the USA; I have done gardening for a beautiful woman living in a nice house in the suburbs.

Part of me kept expecting Eva Longoria to stick her head out of the window - although Hazel Park isn't quite Wistenra Lane.

Still, I am setting into the American way of life quite well, although I am constantly shocked by the vast amount of everything. Note, if you will, as we close this entry, the size of the lawn I am mowing. Now, bear in mind that mower I am using is petrol driven and has more horsepower than the average UK family saloon.

God Bless America - He's better start early, 'cause there's so much of it it's gonna take Him a while.

Darknight

He's heeeeere!

2006-09-08T07:39:00.000-07:00

It's been a week today already, I can't believe it! Since the day he landed, we have been running like crazy people! Spending time with family and friends, and now he's volunteering full time at a Catholic apostolate near by. It's so good to finally have him here - but I realized today that we don't talk nearly as much as when he was 3,000+ miles away! But I did suspect that would happen, so I'm not surprised by it. Once the wedding is past us and we can settle into more of a routine, we will need to make a point of "us time" in the midst of our busy schedules.

How wonderful though, to not have to be tied to a computer just to say hello or good morning. :-) It's all good!

Three weeks from tomorrow is the big day! WOW!!!! I can't believe how fast the time is flying by. Life is so short - we need to grab our happiness while we can.

~Liza

Life's a Beach

2006-08-30T02:04:00.000-07:00

Well, we have more pictures of myself on the beach. To those of you who say that there are no pictures of myself on Lewis except on a beach, I say - it's a bloody island, what do you expect?

Here is a picture of me on the beach with the dog. The dog's name is Ceri as she is very sweet - we have taught her to play fetch and tried to teach her to swim. But she is very affeared when her feet come off the floor of the water, and so does not like it very much.

Here is the dog looking down at the river (heavy with peat) which flows down the beach to the sea. That dark bit there is very deep, and she did not really like going in it at all. She could tell it was deep, and decided not to.

Not shown is dad telling us all to be careful near the edge of the river and then falling over himself.

When in Chrome

2006-08-29T02:22:00.000-07:00

Oh, God.

Right, does anyone else have to deal with this sort of thing? My mother and I despair - we really do.

The oven needed cleaning, it was full of ming and smeg (these are technical terms) and so mother and I went to the supermarket and bought a canister of Mr. Muscle Oven Cleaner ("Loves the jobs you hate" - I'm not sure it really does, I think it's just chemical waste).

Anyway, on the front of said product, it reads "POWERFUL CLEANING PRODUCT - read instructions before using!" On the back, the legend reads "Read all instructions before removing lid."

The oven is a huge thing, really chic and very expensive. It has a manual with it which contains instructions - one would have suspected one would read it. In fact, one would suspect my father would have read it about a million times before even turning the oven on. My father is the man who, when confronted with a webpage which reads "Stage 1 : Click Continue" and a button marked "Continue" and nothing else, rings me up to ask what to do. And after I have said "Click the continue button, dad" proceeds to spend five minutes ensuring I fully understand exactly where said button is on the page.

Okay, so, the oven and cleaner.

Dad took the top off, opened the door, whipped out all the chrome shelves and stacked them on the floor, and covered everything in Mr. Muscle. As the room fills with noxious fumes, he sits down with the oven manual and reads it.

I saunter in. "Dad, have you read the instructions?" "Ah, well, no, son - but I had an oven cleaner once before. You just do that with it."

"Did you wear gloves?" I ask, reading the first of the admonishments. "Ah, well, no, son - but it's okay." "No, dad, it's really not - it contains formaldehyde. Look, it says in case of accidental contact, seek medical advice."

"Ah, be reight."

I read onwards. "Dad, what are those shelves made of?" "Chrome." "Chrome? Chrome as in the chrome listed in this list of things which should not be cleaned with this product?" "Ah, you don't want to pay any attention to that." "Dad, it specifically abdjures one from using it on chrome . . ."

Mum comes in - "Jim, what are you doing? Did you wear gloves?" "Don't worry woman, 'twill be fine. Oh . . ." He shows me the bit of the manual he has just read;

"DO NOT USE MR MUSCLE ON YOUR OVEN AS IT CONTAINS CHEMICALS THAT MAY DAMAGE IT!"

Right, what is this? I wouldn't mind - but in any other circumstance my father would read every last thing which formed part of a series of instructions. We got him on eBay last night - five bloody hours. I've installed software with him - it's all I can do to stop him reading the license agreements. He counts the pieces and dowels of MFI furniture, for God's sake.

What is this with oven cleaner? Do we feel it's such a low-tech system it needs no guidance?

Heads up, people - anything which contains chemicals I cannot pronounce and which I am sure are used to stop dead bodies from decaying is something I really want to use responsibly. There was a woman who lost her arm to Mr. Muscle - dad was cheerfully regaling us with this tale as he sluiced the carcenogenic materials off the oven and myself and mum tried to stop the dog licking them off the floor. "Ah, she must have done something wrong."

"Yes, Jim," says mum, "she didn't wear gloves. Put some gloves on!"

Dad's response in all of this? "It says oven cleaner - you would expect you could clean your oven with it."

My response? "You don't clean your teeth with shampoo." He stayed silent - now I come to think of it, there is a certain foamy quality to his smile.

Darknight

Visual proof

2006-08-29T00:49:00.000-07:00

Okay, here are some photographs of what we went and did yesterday; we have not taken the camera with us (and by "we", I mean "Dad" as it is his camera) very much before, and have certainly not taken any pictures with it.

But here are some pictures of us as we walked around various bits of Lewis and saw things. Most of them are the ocean and related bits of land, which is quite nice, frankly.

Above, we can see a small area of Lewis where there are no piles of stones. However, the locals have noticed this and - through a government grant - have built a pile of stones there so that people will know it is Lewis. I find such a use of tax dollars to be acceptable, especially as they are not mine.

Above we can see Eoropie Beach. I have conveniently marked myself among the thronging hordes there so that people can tell where I am.

Eoropie beach again. That bit of sea is the Atlantic.

These are cows - not rather large sheep (everything on Lewis appears to be sheep orientated, although I have yet to see a specialised lamb restaurant). The humour of cows just wandering onto the beach cannot be underestimated. I wanted to see if they could be chivvied into the water, but I felt such a plan might not have merit.

This is the Butt of Lewis, which is far to the north of the Island, and is very rocky and stormy and so forth. Not shown is the torential downpour which stuck about a minute after this picture was taken. Also not shown in the nice little Church we went to see which Dad pissed up the side of as he was caught short.

Privately, Mother and I feel that God was having revenge upon us in return for Dad's urination on His house with the rain. One cannot be too careful these days . . .

Wee piles o' stones

2006-08-26T07:27:00.000-07:00

Right, Lewis appears to not consist entirely of God-forsaken swamp - a considerable amount of it appears to be piles of stones.

Today, we went and looked at the Calanish stones (note for students of linguistics; these stones are called something else in Gaelic, but I think they just make the names up). Said stones are a bit like Stonehenge, but not in Salisbury.

We also saw a Brok - which is a sort of fort / palace thing in pre-Roman times. It was very large, but built for very small people with low doors and so forth.

We then went to see black houses - which are a sort of house built out of dry stones and with thatched roofs.

Ultimately, these things are all piles of stone. That appears to be one of the technological limitations of the island - the idea of building appears to be to put stones on top of each other. Then again, I'm not sure exactly how else one is supposed to build anything . . .

We also saw the sea - which was next to a pebbly beach - and I fell over and got covered in algae, which I don't recommend. Still, it was a laugh and I got to see the Atlantic - which is rather large and wet.

Darknight

I met Ronnie Corbett!

2006-08-24T23:21:00.000-07:00

I did, you know.

Right, here I am in Lewis - I've been here for a day. On the advice of my mother, I do not describe it as a God-forsaken marsh.

So far, Lewis is rather nice, actually - it is very flat in comparison to Sheffield, has loads of cars, few people and really big houses with lots of land. The roads are long and flanked by rather under-developed farm / moorland and there are loads of Protestant Churches. It is, in fact, a lot like America.

Mum & Dad's house = v. nice and they have a lovely garden (backing onto said "moorland with drainage issues") which is full of chickens and vegetables.

Getting here was not a problem at all - I got on the train, then on the plane, and that was that.

How did I meet Ronnie Corbett? Well - it's not a long story, but it is quite cool.

(In case you don't know who he is!)

I was walking along in the airport, when I saw a man who looked a lot like him queueing. I looked again, and it was him! So, I went up and said "Mr Corbett?" and he said "Yes." And so I told him he had been a great entertainment for years, and I thanked him.

He seemed like a nice fellow (not immediately laughing etc. - but I guess that such things are an act for the camera) and he wasn't stand-offish or anything. He was quite friendly. Of course, one does not want to go up to him and say "Hey, Ronnie! 'I look down on him'!" and annoy him with that sort of thing. So, I was nice and polite and respectful.

Today, the plan is to see the Island while Dad is as work. Mum and I are going to "do the town".

And everything here is in Gaelic - the street signs are in both English and another language. It is very like America - ¿dónde están los haggis?

Quick update!

2006-08-23T02:55:00.000-07:00

Right, an update because otherwise Liza will kill me - she says it's just not good enough for me to be playing second fiddle to a Hodgebeast who is about the same size as a large grape.

Today is my last day at work and tomorrow I take the train to Edinburgh and then take the plane to Stornaway. In fact, I suspect the plane will take me to Stornaway, rather than the other way around.

I will be spending a week with the parents, and will then move south again on the 31st, coming back to Sheffield. I shall then spend the night at Daveanhelen's house (which is very nice) and get a lift from Dave in the DaveMobile (TM) in the small-small time in the morning to the train station, whereupon I shall catch the train to Gatwick and then fly to the USA. I should arrive in Detroit at about midafternoon, local time.

No flowers, please.

So, that is the plan and that. I shall attempt to take photographs with the parents' digital camera and post them on the blog, so that people know what is going on. I daresay that Hodge Jr. will also be continuing his travels - I hope he returns from them before we fly on the 1st, as otherwise he will have to make his own way to Detroit.

Official Statement

2006-08-10T06:49:00.000-07:00

In light of the current domestic situation of increased terror alert in the United Kingdom, and the impact this has on many individuals in her ally, the United States of America, I have taken it upon myself to issue the following formal statement, which can and should be passed to any and all parties concerned.

The practical impact of the increased security at United Kingdom airports is, at worst, an inconvenience and nothing more. Any concern which might be felt is entirely down to illogical emotional reactions, and I urge everyone to keep calm and not imagine disasters where none exist.

I understand that people are concerned for my safety. This is, in itself, touching although unwarranted. The logical conclusion to draw is that the increased security currently employed at UK airports makes travelling safer, not otherwise.

And, just in case anyone is not crystal clear on this.

I am not afraid - neither should any of you be. I have had my life and the lives of those I love threatened by far more immediate and pressing dangers before, and this does not phase me in the slightest. If there are people out there who think they can injure and hurt and cow my nation which has stood involate and uninvaded for nearly 1000 years by simple terror, they are very, very mistaken.

To those individuals, on behalf of my nation, I say this;

You'd better be damn sure you know what the Hell you are doing - 'cause sure as sunrise Her Majesty's Government won't let you have a second chance. You'd better be damn sure you can hit us so hard we never get up again - 'cause nothing else will make us surrender. You'd better be damn sure you're 100% committed - 'cause we'll be on you like a lion if you're not.

You know where we are - we're where we always have been, heads above the parapet. You are where you always have been - slinking and hiding and skulking in shadows.

I'm flying on the 1st of September to Detroit - come Hell or high water. Thousands more of us will fly to the USA before and after that.

You know where we will be.

Quick update

2006-08-08T11:30:00.000-07:00

According to the people in the Archdiocese of Detroit, our forms have arrived there!

Which forms, you ask?

Oh, just don't ask - the forms which prove I am a Christian and a Catholic and am legally entitled to get married and whatnot. Getting these there has been a bit of a nightmare, frankly - one which we have spared you, gentle reader.

Mainly due to the fact we didn't know they weren't there until about two weeks ago.

So . . . they are there now. Bargain.

Darknight

23 days!!!

2006-08-08T10:35:00.000-07:00

Time for an update – it’s been over a month so I think we are due.

As of today, 23 days and Simon will be here!! Oh my!!!!

Preparing for guests to arrive is one thing. You tidy the house, you make the beds with fresh linens, you dust and dust again.

But preparing for your future husband to come – forever - is a completely different concept. How DO you prepare for such a thing? I can do the tangible, like moving things around, making space in closets and drawers, ensuring he has room for his boxes when they arrive for the shipper. All the nesting stuff.

But how do you really prepare for the rest of your life with another person? I think the short answer is, you don’t. You can ask all the what if questions, till you are so tangled up in hypotheticals, that you can’t even think straight.

Or, you can just have Faith.

This is how I have decided to handle this massive and amazing preparation. With Faith.
Way back at the beginning of our courtship, I asked Simon, what if?? How do we know? And his answer was, simply, “How does anyone ever know?” And he’s right. No one who ever takes this step from being alone to being part of another person, ever knows what they are getting into. You just do it on Faith. You pray that you have made the right decisions, and the rest is up to God.

And so this is how I’m approaching this whole amazing adventure we are on. I’m putting it in God’s hands, and letting Him run with it. He’s had pretty good success with the whole universe and stuff, I figure He can handle this.

Oh – and in the process, I’ll bounce around like an excited little kid waiting for Christmas, just knowing that soon he will be here!! Finally!!! And no more email, webcams, or headsets for us!! Woo hoooooo!

23 days and counting!!

~Liza

The Oncoming Storm

2006-07-07T04:49:00.000-07:00

I have no weapons, no defenses, no plan - and that is what scares you to death.

Part of my right now wishes that I was actually the Oncoming Storm, because then I would have a TARDIS to travel around in and the whole "moving my thing" around wouldn't be a problem. I, however, don't have a TARDIS - I have a SIDRAT if I have anything. I have a space which appears to become smaller as I pack stuff.

I have 14 cu ft of space which I can pack stuff in - 14 cu ft is not that much. To give you an idea, 14 cu ft is the space occupied by a cube 2 feet 5 inches on each side. Measure this out with your hands - it isn't big at all.

I also have roughly 10 cu ft of space which is my luggage allowance - which should be okay, I guess. But I have to move this stuff down to London and cart it across the city via Tube (check the date today, BTW - ave ataque vale). So that is going to be an adventure.

Ultimately, there is a lot of "getting rid of thing" going on. Stuff is being dispossed of - in fact, the only things which are really being taken are books. And I have a lot of those. But there are, to a certain degree, impersonal.

So, why the Oncoming Storm?

I don't really have a plan for the USA - I don't. I intend to arrive . . . and that is about it. People keep asking me what I am going to do, if Liza and I are going to move, or stay where we are. What sort of job I will get. And I keep answering them. Most of the time, I just make it up as I go along - but I do it so well.

See, I have no plans and no ideas and very few preconceptions. I am aware of certain things about the USA - it is large and full of people who call themselves American despite having never left their State. There are other things I know about the USA - but these are not relevant. Ultimately, the whole USA adventure is a bit of a mystery - I'm not sure how it is going to pan out.

I am going into this without any ideas or plans - hence the Oncoming Storm. I'm not even sure the USA gets Daleks. One feels it should - Daleks are ace.

So, to answer the question "What are your plans?" honestly, I have to simply say, "What plans?"

Haven't got any. It's so much more fun that way.

In other news, Liza and I chatted about the FOCCUS test thing last night - a basic compatibility test done with multiple choice questions. It was fun - although I get the impression it was designed for people less sophisticated than us. Liza tends to answer the question the psychologists wanted to ask, I tend to answer the one they did. When combined, the results are interesting.

Waaaaz uuuup!

2006-06-01T16:23:00.000-07:00

Yes - we know - you are all wondering if there's anything new with us. So instead of letting all the critters do all the talking, I thought I'd give a little update. Little being the key word.

Let's see, what's been going on... I will be picking up our invitations this weekend from the printer, can't wait to see them!!! I was so excited when the woman called and told me they were ready, and that they really turned out beautiful. Simon's response - "well, she's not going to tell you they look like a bag of arse, is she." That's my dearly beloved for ya. :-)

Mom and I have pretty much beat the whole flower decisions to death - I'm sure she's tired of it already. But I'm sure everything will be lovely, now that we have it figured out. Red and ivory roses - the rest is up to her.

I went for what's known as a "hair trial". This is where you spend a sickening amount of money to see what your hair will look like on the big day, so you don't end up looking like Marge Simpson because the stylist had no idea that you didn't want that massive pile of ringlets on top of your head. I am very pleased with the outcome, and really am glad I did it, it's now one less thing to worry about.

We have finalized things at the restaurant and the hotel, and I'm working on the whole parking debacle this week. Don't ask, just Ooo and Ahhh when you come in from the river front entrance, and don't think about what it's costing. It will be worth it in the long run.

My good friend, Cris, from work, has agreed to do our photos for us!! I'm am so excited about this I can hardly stand it!! She has never done a wedding before, and so we are both excited about the prospect. She and I both like the same style of photography - NO staged triangles of people standing still in formation. Just nice candid shots of people having a nice time. It's all we want, and I think she will be fantastic. She is a very good amateur photographer already, this is just another step in her learning new stuff to do with her very fancy and cool camera. We are going to crash some weddings soon at my church so we can see where the pros set up, and how the mass goes as far as where they put the bride and groom and stuff. That should be fun! She's in Mexico for two weeks - so say a prayer for safe travel and fun times with family.

Simon has finalized things with Evan, his Best Man. Or at least he has told me as much. I have told him (Simon) that I trust him (Evan) explicitly to get him (Simon) to the church on time, and without a hang over. I'm sure he (Evan) will do a fantastic job of this. He (Simon) thinks I'm crazy to trust the wild Jewish California boy - I think he (Evan) will be just fine.

Ahhhhh, the guest list. No matter how many times I go over and over it, I just can't make 80 people cram into the space of 60. Sux having a budget sometimes.

We have also decided on the gameplan for the big day:
- Arrive at church
- Get married
- Take some photos
- Go to luncheon
- Eat food and cake
- Shake hands, hug, kiss people we don't know, and some we do
- Leave everyone to go.....um, act like married people
- 8pm, meet back up with everyone at the pub, have a couple drinks, go back to.....acting like married people

This will be nice in that we get to have some very well needed alone time, and give our visitors some time to visit and see the city and do stuff, and not feel like they have to spend 8 hours in the same room with the same people. A good plan all around.

So that's about it for the wedding plans.

On the home front - I have been having neighbor wars with the neanderthal beast who lives next door to me. He has insisted on leaving his dog out to bark for hours at a time, sometimes until 1:30am. I got tired of it, and called the police a few times. Well - this past weekend, at 1am, after the police left, he went TOTALLY ballistic!!! He stood out under my window and SCREAMED the most vile and disgusting insults and threats I've ever heard. It was totally out of hand. So I called the police again - and that was not exactly a positive experience either. Apparently the officer banged on my door and rang my bell, but I didn't hear it because I have a fan on up stairs. He also wondered why I had waited 40 minutes after the bellowing idiot to call, and um, well, perhaps I was a bit distraught after being threatened to NOT call the police again! DUH! So, anyway, it's been relatively quiet the past couple nights, just hoping it stays that way and we don't have to get into a "you know what" match again. I feel sooooo sorry for the wife and kids - to have to live with an idiot like that - sheesh. There is a reason they call it Hazel Tuckey - it lives next door to me.

Ok - this was going to be short. So much for that idea!!

That's the latest! Stop by again soon - maybe Simon will have something to share. He has his moving boxes, and has given notice at work. Big doin's on his side of the pond!!!

~Liza

Hello from Us

2006-05-19T16:27:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone - My name is Boris. I live with the Liza Mom. When Simon was here at Christmas last year, they came to the shoe shop where I was living in a grocery basket. They rescued me from a life of living with shoes. It was quite traumatic. When they arrived at the shop, they had with them the most beautiful flatcat I have ever seen!! She is so very lovely, and her name is Rosie. She is my fiancée, and I love her very much. The Liza Mom made her special just for me. We will be married when Simon gets here with the Reverend Father Hodgebadger. Until that time, we are chaperoned by Lord Pevril. I'll let him introduce himself when he gets a chance. He sleeps between Rosie and me in the Liza bed. But we are good Catholic beasts and so he really is not needed. We have promised to behave ourselves until we are married.

Anyway - my name is Boris, and yes, I know, I have one big eye and little feets. It is how I am made, and I'm ok with this because I know I am loved, so it makes no difference what I look like.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi!! I'm Rosie! I'm a flatcat! - hehehe! The Liza Mom made me 'cause she was lonely in her big bed at night, and wanted to fill in the space next to her a bit. She also knew that Boris was coming to live with her, and she did not think that he should be alone, so she whipped me up from little snips and scraps from the sewing basket. I'm very happy with how she chose to make me, 'specially my fancy collar. I will be marrying Boris, we are very much in love. I knew from the first time I saw his handsome big eye, and his sweet pink self, that he was the one for me. Hehehe!! I'm very excited about the Hodges coming to live with us!! It's all very fun having them come from so far away in England to be here. Suzi and I will be able to share beauty secrets and stuff, and maybe if Boris and I have little ones, she can help me learn what to expect. She has very sweet little higlets, I can only hope our little ones will be as cute.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I, am Lord Pevril. I am Lord of Pevril Castle in Castleton, England. Yes, that means I am English, so you should be impressed (can't you see my accent?). I, also, was rescued, from a horrid gift emporium where sticky, yelling, obnoxious children run free until their parents buy them something. I am quite grateful. Liza and Simon purchased me, and one of my bin-mates, who went to live with an unusually kind little girl named Lizzie. We both were quite fortunate. My duty is to ensure that Boris and Rosie remain chaste until such time as they are married. This has not been difficult as they are both stuffed animals and don't move much. Still, they have requested the presence of a chaperone so there is no appearance of impropriety. Soon they will be married and I will be out of a job. I may return to England to regain control of my castle, unless Mr. Hodgebeast has a role for me in his dominion over the world. This would be convenient, as I would not be required to fly on a plane again, which is quite disturbing. Sheep are not meant to fly.

Are you looking at me?

2006-05-05T03:49:00.000-07:00

Are you talking to me? I only ask, because there is no-one else here.

Actually, that's not true. There are one million of us each year, actually.

14% of us come from Mexico, which I guess makes me part of the majority as far as the US is concerned; yes, fully understand the insanity of dividing the world into Mexico and "everywhere else", but wait a moment and I shall explain.

Who are we? We are legal immigrants to the United States.

Yeah, that's right - I'm going to be an immigrant. No, I don't speak Spanish. No, I don't come from a third or a second world country. No, I didn't get here via a dusty lorry along backroads with my passage lubricated by pessos and catcus oil.

I come from the fourth largest economy in the world, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, member of the G8, NATO and the EU. I speak the same language as you. I am Caucasian . . . okay, for those of you who want to pretend that Hispanic is a real ethnic division (it's not, really, it's not) and not just part of Caucasian, I am Anglo-Caucasoid. Yes, I just made that up.

And that is the point that I wish to make here.

I'm not going to get involved in the debate about immigration - because, frankly, it bores me. And it is ridiculous and incomprehensible. No, I am not going to talk about the fact President Bush says that the National Anthem should not be sung in Spanish, and yet uses Spanish himself a lot. Neither am I going to ask how many American-born citizens can innumerate the five freedoms granted in the First Ammendment to the United States Constitution vis-a-vis the number of immigrants who can do the same. I am not going to mention the Dubai Ports debacle and the implied racism of that.

No, such issues - from a European perspective - are non-starters.

Briefly, who the Hell are you? I mean, come on. I own books older than your country. You came from nothing yesterday. As far as most of Europe is concerned, you are all immigrants. In fact, as far as many of you yourselves are concerned, you're all immigrants. You lot come over here looking for your histories and families. You make a big thing of it.

That is fine and wonderful - personally, I wouldn't. Personally, I'd say, "I'm a United States Citizen" and concentrate on getting some history myself. But I digress.

Anyway - putting this aside, what points am I here to make? I am not going to talk about the immigration "issue" - partly because it bores me, but partly because I can't speak intelligently on it. It's not that I don't know about the issues - but rather I can't even grasp the rationale behind the debate. I don't know why people hold the views they do.

But, the point I am trying to make? It is very simple.

14% of legal immigrants are from Mexico. That means the other 86% are not. The majority of legal immigrants to the US do not conform to the image you probably have of them, nor are they even included in the groups you are discussing in the debates.

860,000 non-Mexican people - roughly - will become permanent legal residents of the USA in 2006. One of them will be me.

So, why the furore about Mexico? Is it because it is from Mexico and Latin American that the majority of illegal immigrants come?

The anger appears to be that a law might be passed that would make it easier for people to legally become residents of the USA; a fast-track, an amnesty, whatever.

No-one bitches about the 860,000, do they?

So, the problem isn't about legal immigrants - it's about illegal ones. Okay, that I can understand.

But why the anger about making those 1 million illegal immigrants simply another 1 million legal immigrants? Why the anger about this? You know these people would be vetted - they would have to pay for the service. Alongside making legal immigration easier, illegal immigration would have to be made harder. This is logical. The only thing spoken off has been with reference to benefits to the USA.

At this stage, one has to ask; is this really about immigration?

Or is it, perhaps, simply about race?

I don't think it is - but, then again, I know "Hispanic" isn't an ethnic division.

Do you? And, I ask again, are you - when you think of "immigrant" - looking at me?

Darknight

Happy Spring!

2006-05-04T16:13:00.000-07:00

Hello!
It's finally spring! Things are green and flowers are popping out all over the place, it's warm, and a beautiful thing to drive with no shoes on! I love that!

So the planning continues - making arrangements for shipping of things from there to here, finalizing arrangements with where we will have our little luncheon, trying to find a place for the rehearsal meal that won't make us poor, all the fun little things about planning a wedding. :-)

In the mean time, I've been dealing with a nearly broken ankle from missing a step in the corridor at church. Yes, the very evening I would have been fondly remembering the evening of our engagement, I spent with an extremely seriously injured ankle. That was weeks ago, and I'm just now starting to walk in a manner that might be called close to "normal". Still limping with a great deal of pain still, and my toes are still purple - I had to resort to buying another pair of flat shoes. I am totally convinced that there is no such thing as cute flat shoes. And with them, I had to purchase three pair of trousers that are short enough to wear with said flat shoes, or I have very few options for getting dressed for work. I suspect it will be a few months till I can wear proper shoes again.

Sigh.

Anyway, enough about my foot woe!! We are getting married!! This is a really wonderful and amazing thing. I can think of this from a very practical standpoint and realize that I will no longer be alone, I will have someone to be my "helpmate". But from a more important perspective, I will no longer be alone - and I will have a helpmate. The impact of what this really means can be staggering at times. There are some who would say - what the heck is she talking about, she's been there done that, so what's the big deal all of a sudden!? Well, truth be told - I NEVER did that. I have never been in what I consider to be a true marriage in so many respects. Yes, I had a great room mate and a good friend, but Simon will be my first husband. The distinction is dramatic.

I was thinking the other day, that if I had taken the previous episode of my life even half as seriously as I do this decision to marry, it would have never happened. Who knows then what would have come of me, and I don't really care to speculate, as it's silly to do so. But the point being that this isn't just Liza finding some guy on the Internet and hookin' up with him. This is me finding the man who fits me. Not perfectly - that would be horribly booring. But the one who complements me in so many ways. The man who is my calm in the face of my panic, my light in the face of my darkness, my strength over my weakness. He knows me better than I know myself. He loves me inspite of this knowledge. He's stuborn and argumentative, and can be nasty when he's tired. But he will be the one to tell me how beautiful I am when I wake up in the morning, how I am sexy even in flat shoes, and how excited he is to leave everything he has ever known and loved - just to be with me.

The benefit of years is the ability to go into a thing with unclouded vision. Do I think this will be easy? Hell no. I know better than that. Do I think we will live happily ever after? I hope so, but I'm not naive enough to think that it will always be hearts and flowers. Do I think we will always love the way we do now? I hope we don't actually. I want our love to grow and find the depths of itself that only time and marriage can bring. My wish for us is that we will be happy, we will grow in our Faith and our love together, and that we can be an example of that Faith and love to others. Beyond that, it's all cake.

Ok - long rambling update this time. But it's been a beautiful week, I've been stuck in the house when the grass needs cutting, and so I have a lot of time to think. :-) And to sit in front of the computer!!

Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to catch up on things. I am hoping that Simon will give us all an update on how the Hodges are preparing for their move to America. I know they are all VERY excited!

Love to all!

~Liza

Woo freakin' hoo!

2006-04-20T08:37:00.000-07:00

Ok - we finally have an officially official wedding date! I met with wonderful Fr. Mąka, and we booked things really and truly on the church calendar for September 30th!

Tomorrow I have a meeting with the manager of where the luncheon will be to talk the cold hard cash conversation, and see what our measly little budget will actually buy us, and our little guest list of 60.

My good friend at work has offered to take photos at the wedding for us - that is saving us about $1,000, so that is very exciting!!

Let's see - what else - we have decided to not have the Hodgebeast and Suzi on the wedding cake, not only would this be disgusting, but they may wish to take over the reception and would not be able to pay the bill. It could be quite embarassing.

Mom and I are in constant communication over the tiny details, as is expected, and Simon just sits back and wishes the whole thing were over and we were just married with no annoying party and fuss.

So now, with about five months left, we can finally pull all the little pieces together with a date in hand.

I'll be glad myself when it's all over actually, and we can come to some sort of normalcy in our life. After the wedding though comes more immigration "stuff" - how fun!! :-)

Stay tuned....more to come as we move closer to the big move date of September 1st!

~Liza

Another anniversary...

2006-04-15T16:14:00.000-07:00

Somehow, today is more precious than the one before. One year ago, after Easter Vigil, Simon went down on one knee and asked me to marry him. This year, I sit writing this before I leave for this year's vigil, without him.

Only 168 days and he will make good on that promise.

I don't think I will ever go to Easter Vigil again without that memory of him in front of me with a ring in his hand.

There are anniversaries, and then there are moments in time that stay with us forever. One is a date, one changes our lives. I will always remember us in Church after mass, then back at THE PAD getting smashed till all hours of the morning in our own little celebration.

I love you Simon! No more anniversaries alone, ok?

~Liza

I PHYSICALLY have a visa

2006-04-08T05:44:00.000-07:00

Behold!

I have a visa

2006-04-06T08:05:00.000-07:00

See, I would try some witty sort of comment for the post title; such as "There are some things money can't buy . . . for everything else there's Visa" but if that were true then the US Govt. would not ban bribery. It would encourage it an ineffecutal and a good means of supplementing income.

I have a visa.

I went down to London today and got a visa - it was a surprisingly simple process. I managed to get to Grosvenor Square without any problems, and spoke with a nice policeman armed with an H&K MP5 . . . there was a lot of iron around there, let me tell you. Security = the max.

I have a visa.

Anyway, after standing in the 1030 queue for about 45 minutes and chatting with a pair of girls called Clare and Vicki (Clare was going for a family visa so she could go live with her dad Florida, and Vicki was moral support), Clare and I went into the embassy, leaving Vicki outside in Gosvenor Square. Where it was cold.

I have a visa.

We then each got given a ticket with a number on it - mine is 023.

I am not a number - I am a free-man!

Although obviously not quite as free as some, given the fact I had to prove an attachment to Liza.

I have a visa.

Right. Clare was then called forward after about an hour or so. I then waited another 20 minutes - despite her being number 22! - and then got called forward.

Documents were handed in, simple questions were asked. Very business like.

I have a visa.

Then I was told to go sit down again and wait for my number to be called for the interview proper. Which I did, next to Clare.

For two freaking hours!!

And then, the interview comes! I am asked the following questions;

"Could you place your left index finger on the scanner?" (answer : yes)

"Could you place your right index finger on the scanner?" (answer : yes)

"Could you raise your right hand and swear or avow that all answers you will give will be the truth?" (answer : yes)

"Where did you meet Liza?" (answer : On a Catholic message board while I was looking for information on how to apply to become a Priest.)

The response was stunned silence and the words "Okay, you'll get your visa in a few days."

That's it?

I asked, "That's it?" I was answered, "Oh, no."

"Ah," thinks I, "here comes the questioning - a sort of false-sense of security has been built up! Clever!"

"Oh, no - you have to tell the couriers where to send it. Have a nice day."

So . . . I did.

You know what this is? It's anticlimactic. It's bloody unfair. Clare and Vicki and I went and had lunch to celebrate, but even that failed to make it seem as exciting as it should.

Still . . . .

I HAVE A VISA!!!

(Note to the Catholics - I wanted to go to this Church which is near the US Embassy for the 1305 Mass, but I was in the US Embassy then, and the next Mass was 1800. I popped in there before I went in for the interview, and found a little shrine to St. Terese. Those of you who know which is Liza's home parish will appreciate this. So . . . the odd prayer of thanks to her for her intercession would be appreciated, as I was unable to go and assist at Mass.)

(I have a visa.)

You Spin Me Right Round

2006-03-27T10:57:00.000-08:00

Like a record, baby, in fact.

Today - Liza reliably informs me, and I have no reason to doubt her assessment as I agree with it calendrally at least - is the one year anniversary of our engagement.

Liza would be updating this herself, but she is busy in some sort of meeting - which clearly is never an ideal situation, so it falls to me to do this. She has admonished me to "Be nice."

Really, it is an interesting issue this "anniversary" thing - firstly, even considering the time Liza was asked if she would marry me was so very shortly after midnight on the 26th it was only the 27th in the most cursory terms. And, given the fact we had been up all day and had not gone to bed (we were at a late-night function - a description which perhaps does not suit the Easter Vigil in the Roman Church as much as it should) perhaps our engagement anniversary should be yesterday?

Then again, there is the other way of looking at it - liturgically. We got engaged on Easter Sunday (definitely - that begins the moment the bell rings for Mass). So . . . there's almost another month to go.

I've never really understood this concept of anniversaries - a year is kind of an arbitary way of dividing time. Yes, it is a kind of cycle and one which is not overly arbitary - but, then again, the Earth is in a radically different point today than it was 365.25 days ago (everything moves in the universe - even the things you think don't. Ask Monty Python.)

Why should I make such a big thing of it being a year since I got engaged? Doesn't that rather reduce the "getting engaged" to a moment rather than a lifestyle? Wedding anniversaries - in celebrating them, do we perhaps fall into the trap of saying, "Well, we hung on another year!" as if the longevity of something is the benchmark of success?

Let's be fair now - if Liza and I had not been engaged for a year because we had got married, we would probably be happier than we are now.

Ultimately, I question the whole "Wooo! A year!" thing. Or even the "Oh, look - a year" thing. It seems - to me at least - to reduce the matter to a time related issue. Which it is not.

No, it's not. Things like engagements and weddings are not about length of time; they are about the lifestyle choice that they imply and impart.

A year ago, Liza and I decided that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. Whatever that means to your tradition (and it may very well mean something very different to what it means to Liza and I) you will understand that.

Does it matter if that happened a year ago or a day ago? I think it doesn't - it was a life-choice made at a point in time and is designed to last for eternity.

I don't like the phrase "A year ago we were engaged" - neither half of it sits well.

"A year ago" is temporal - it simply places me in relation to an event. "We were engaged" . . . what, we're not anymore?

How about this - we are engaged and we are going to be married for the rest of our lives.

I think that works much better.

Why am I telling you this today? Foolish person - a year ago we got engaged, you've got to do something to celebrate that.

Darknight

Yes - it's only been six months

2006-03-14T19:04:00.000-08:00

Finally we have an interview. We have waited six long months for this - though we prepared ourselves for a year. It doesn't mean we have a visa, and I'm not going to hold my breath just yet. It means we have an interview - or rather HE has an interview as I can not afford to fly to England to be there with him when he goes.

Chances are that he will be granted a visa. I can't see any reason why this should not happen, all our paperwork is in order, and hopefully we didn't miss anything. He will travel all the way down to London for about an hour or so at a window with an immigration officer who will ask him about four questions and then welcome him to America. A bit of an anti-climax after all this waiting, but oh well.

So what's next then -
Well, assuming we do get the visa, first we will be able to set a date with the Church. From this all other things will fall in line - I hope. Given our pittiful state of financial affairs, Simon will not move here until sometime in late August. So we will plan a wedding for September timeframe I guess.

There is a plane ticket to purchase, belongings to pack and ship, a job to quit, and other sundry things associated with leaving one's country for an extended period.

Good news today - but still a very very long road to go. Once he's here the immigration stuff will continue for another three years as we file for adjustment of status, his ability to travel outside the country, working papers, then a green card, then finally permanant residency after three years of marriage.

So that's the latest - stay tuned and hopefully next we will be happy with visa finally in hand.

~Liza

April's Cool, Don't Be A Fool

2006-03-14T10:45:00.000-08:00

Mr. T. had it right - although he wasn't gettin' on no plane, crazy fo'. Shupfo, chump.

Anyway - we have an interview date. Or, rather, I do - 6th of April 10:30 I go to Grosvenor House and see the US officials.

FLIP YES!!!!!

A little history lesson...

2006-02-21T06:18:00.000-08:00

While we wait for our interview - a little look back. This is our timeline from an immigration perspective:

July 28, 2004 - We email for the first time
Mar 19, 2005 - We meet for the first time
Mar 26, 2005 - Our engagement day in England
Sept 29, 2005 - Mailed I-129F
Sept 30, 2005 - Packet arrives at Lincoln, NE Post Office
Sept 30, 2005 - Packet is received and signed for at INS Express
Oct 06, 2005 - Received NOA-1
Oct 21, 2005 - Received NOA-2 via email (15 days!!)
Oct 26, 2005 - Recieved email notice of case going to NVC - BYE BYE NEBRASKA!!
Oct 27, 2005 - Received NOA-2 via snail mail
Nov 09, 2005 - Received case number via email - London here he comes!!!!!
Nov 10, 2005 - Received case number via snail mail.
Nov 25, 2005 - Received PACKET THREE!!!!!!!!
Dec 6, 2005 - Returned Packet Three to the Embassy in London
Jan 9, 2006 - Scheduled medical appointment for January 16th
Jan 10, 2006 - Requested police report
Jan 16, 2006 - Medical appointment today
Feb 07, 2006 - Received police report
Feb 10, 2006 - Returned check list to embassy requesting interview

And now we wait. We understand it may be eight weeks before we hear anything.

~Liza

Ronin

2006-02-11T14:49:00.000-08:00

One's adult life can either be said begin the moment one is allowed to fight (and possibly die) or breed for one's country, or the moment one is allowed to vote to decide who runs the country and have a drink to celebrate afterwards. In the UK, these ages are either 16 or 18.

When I was 16, I was at A-level college and so - as I was living with my parents at the time and was still very much a child - I tend to date my adulthood from age 18, when I went to University.

I have spent all - bar a month - of my adult life in Sheffield. Today I posted the final set of documents to end that. I also said goodbye - a very final, unequivocal goodbye - to some of my friends.

I do not say goodbye, I never have. And, even tonight, I did not truly say goodbye to everyone. In fact, I said goodbye to a single person out of the circle of friends and simply withdrew from the others in silence. It is what I do.

In ancient Japan, a man would be given a sword when he came of age - a tempered piece of pattern-welded steel that could slice through bone and blood like air. In Sheffield, where I still say I come from, despite having only spent 10 years of my 28 here, we invented pattern-welding before the Japanese. The Saxons and Vikings were using it for their Kings' swords.

We. It perhaps sorts ill to say that, because, to be honest, I have abandoned saying "we" about the UK over the last few months. I say "the British", "in Europe". I still say "the Americans" of the place I am going to.

I am now - the man who came of age in the City of Steel and had known nothing but her - a Ronin, a wave-man, a Samurai without a home and a master.

Something about that hurts - I am neither fish nor fowl. I know that a gradual fading of friendships is inevitable unless they are maintained, and they cannot be maintained over 3000 miles of ocean, and I know that a gradual errosion is better than this final and sudden renunciation - so why have I done it?

Quite simply, because to not do it would be death-watch beetle in the soul.

Think on it - my life in Michigan would be tormented and cheapened by the constant ghostly reminders of my time here. My time as a European, British, English, Yorkshire, Sheffield. When it was tough, I would look back. There would be the terrible temptation to return, to give up, to look at the soft place that exists here.

Which is why it cannot be. Like a dishonoured Samurai, I have to break all ties with my former land - and I have to begin that process now. I can take with me exactly what they took with them - the pattern-welded tool that allowed them to practice their trade in foreign lands, divorced from the social mores of their own courts.

In Sheffield, I have been tempered and folded like steel, and she has made me what I am. For that, I shall always honour her - but it is time to leave.

To not do so would simply be too dangerous.

But it is still hard.

Darknight

The fat lady sings in London!

2006-02-07T16:46:00.000-08:00

Well, not quite yet, but soon it will be all over for us - at least we hope.

Simon received his police report in the mail today - the last piece of this long strage immigration trip we've been on. Now he sends in his check list telling them he's ready to go - and they schedule his interview!

And just this week I was crabbing about the waiting. The police report arrived nine days earlier than we expected. Just this morning we were chatting online about how we should be expecting it late next week!!

So anyway - just wanted to give a quick update. This is where we are, and soon we will know when his big interview date will be. I so wish I could be there with him - it's going to kill me to not be there, and to hear at the same time that we have a visa. And for a control freak like me, it's going to be a very long day till I hear from him.

I'll let every one know when we finally have an interview date, and then the outcome. If you don't see it here, surely you will hear me shouting it from the roof tops.

~Liza

Nesting...

2006-01-30T15:47:00.000-08:00

It's what pregnant women when they are expecting a baby in the home. Some how I've started doing that to prepare for a husband.

As soon as he left, I kicked into gear on the bathroom. I've been here for about five years now. It's a sweet little house, little being the key word next to what most people feel they need to live in these days. And with only one bathroom. The rest of the house is very cute, and came to me with fresh paint, new carpet, new furnace, and other nice new shiny things. But the bathroom -------- it was the room from hell. Pepto pink PLASTIC tile covered the walls and ceiling. The only way to get rid of it - rip the walls down to the studs, and put up drywall.

Until a friend at work told me she painted her plastic tile!!! I didn't have the nerve to try it - but finally, with nesting mode kicking in, and wanting to have a nice little place for us to start a life in, I got brave.

I could not be happier!! Why did I wait so long!!? With a huge amount of help from Daddy and Sharon, we installed cabinets and light fixture, the three of us working together like two nurses with a brain surgeon, handing Dr. Papich the needed tools as requested. And we didn't even kill each other in the process. This past weekend I finished the last of the paint, put up the shower curtain and some temporary curtains on the window. All I wanted to do was stand there and look at it.

So - here are some photos of my ittsy-bittsy-yellow-polka-dot---potty. From the ugly stage to where we are now. Still not totally done, I need a towel bar and a robe hook hung, and some knick-knacks, but that will happen. I'm just happy to now show off a bathroom I don't have to appologize for, and is as cute as the rest of the house.

As always - click on the photos to make them larger.

Pretty in pink? I think not!!!

And the rusted medicine cabinet was such a nice touch.

Yes - that really is plastic tile on the ceiling! And with all that nice oozing glue between the tiles! The guy who did this was a real architect too, notice how nicely they are cut to fit. For the sake of your own sanity as well as mine, I've left out the corner where he just painted the wall pink because the tiles didn't fit, or the ones pieced in like jack-o-lantern teeth around the window.

This is half way in - there was not turning back now!! I sing the praises of Gliddon Gripper - totally amazing stuff.

Dr. Papich during a very delicate procedure.

After the work - now it's just pretty.

Next to go is the lace on the window, but it was better than the plain blind.

Just another glamour shot of my bitsy bath.

Must get that door knob back on so I don't lock myself in the bathroom again....good thing Sharon was around to let me out!!

The photos just don't do it justice - but trust me, after living with the plastic tile from hell, this is just bliss.

Hurry up ----- and wait.

2006-01-23T07:30:00.000-08:00

His medical is done - they poked and prodded, and apparently he has an eye that does not work correctly. DK with glasses? Could be very sexy. hehehe

The police report has been ordered and should arrive around mid February. The letter has been sent to request the extension of our petition.

Now all we do is wait. We wait for his police report to arrive, then he sends off the checklist to the consulate telling them he's ready for his interview. Then he makes yet another trip to London.

So - for those wondering what's going on. Nothing. Nothing is going on except waiting. We have done everything we are required to do at this point, all we can do is wait for the process to take its course.

In the mean time, I am in major nesting mode. Re-doing the bathroom, buying stuff for him so he can inhabit THE CRATER (the basement actually), and then next is transforming the extra bedroom into a dressing room, and moving furnature and stuff around. I'm trying to keep busy and keep my mind occupied so I don't go crazy with waiting.

It's amazing how much more patient I'm becoming through all this. ---that's not a joke (mother), I'm really serious.

Anyway - this is avoidance behavior - must get back to work.

~Liza

Drama! Do we really need more drama??

2006-01-13T10:47:00.000-08:00

Simon made it home safe and sound. Sigh......

So we are back on the visa journey again, and start looking at what to do next. We know that he has to have his medical appointment (they want to make sure he's not bringing any strange buzeezes to America, because we don't have any here), and order his police report (just so they know if he's a cereal killer or not - we must protect our Cheerios at all costs.)

Looking through all the paperwork and talking through how long stuff takes, we realize that our original petition is going to expire on February 21!!!!!!! OH NOOOOO!!!!!!

The police report takes at least 40 days, and he still wasn't scheduled for his medical. So he takes the next day off work to get it all sorted. He schedules the medical for the 16th, and goes to the police office to order the report. Meanwhile, I spend a Monday afternoon trying to find out what the heck we are supposed to do if our petition expires. Do we have to start all over at the begining? God forbid - I don't know if I could live through it again!!!

I learn from the wonderful and helpful people on the forum we belong to which is devoted to such things, that we need to request an extension. It needs to be a notarized letter, sent to the consulate in London.

So - I get sick with a horrible cold. I stay home in bed on Tuesday, not thinking it will be the end of the world. I go to work on Wednesday, letter in hand, and have it notarized. I run to the post office, and to FedEx - neither of them could get the letter to Simon before Friday so he can hand deliver it to the consulate in London when he is there on Monday. Oh my - NOW WHAT!!?? Why in the world did I have to get sick when I did? If I had mailed it one day sooner he could have picked it up. Oh well, what can you do, right?

So I emailed the consulate (THANK GOD for the Internet!!). They wrote me back a couple days later and told me that the thing does expire - but that we do NOT have to start the whole process over!!! All we need to do is have a notarized letter of intent that we still intend to marry within 90 days of his arrival in the States. HUZZAH!!! We have such a letter!!!! It's now winging its way to England as we speak, and he will take it to his interview once it's scheduled.

He also received a letter from the police today that he should have the report by the 19th of February!!!! Coolness reigns.

I keep having to think, that once this is all over and we don't have to deal with immigration any more, we will look back and say ----- oh, it wasn't that bad.

:-)

~Liza

Sad dreary day.

2006-01-04T04:58:00.000-08:00

He’s gone.

The house is cold and empty now, just me and the Muff, in a messy house, the remains of a wonderful two weeks. He’s arrived safely back in England, after a two hour delay of his flight (no surprise there).

Now we begin yet another count down till he’s here for good.

Back to work for me today – not really in the mood for it. Over 100 email messages waiting for me, so better get to it I suppose.

Counting the days till I can see him coming into the room to give me a kiss.

~Liza

Meat on Stick!

2006-01-03T12:58:00.000-08:00

It is, ultimately, the simple things in life which are pleasant.

Not that getting down to North Carolina is simple - it is not. It involves no less than four different modes of transport (not counting Shank's Pony); a Jeep, some sort of ex-Vietnam bus (I am convinced that the bus which ferried us from the parking lot to the airport had run GIs into Hanoi hotspots, or perhaps transported arms to the Contras), a Chrysler PT Cruiser with more bling than a group of chavs who mugged Mr. T and an overgrown cigar tube with wings filled with liquid explosive, made from a million different parts all made by the lowest bidder.

Still, despite the inherent complexity of getting to NC (here's a question - if I wanted to transport explosives, would I do so in the same manner as people who have already done this before, and been caught doing so? I like to think not. Why, therefore, are the airline security check procedures based on what has blown stuff up previously? Do we, perhaps, not need to think outside the box here, people?) we managed to get there.

North Carolina is very pretty - is it certainly "the South"; which I distinguish from "the North" by virtue of being between it and the Equator. These things are not difficult, people. It also appears to be the place where there are less Confederate Flags than Hazel Park and less Stars and Stripes than Grovesnor Square. Go figure. There was a monument or something there - raised by ex-Confederate soldiers as a testament to "Southern Ideals".

Excuse me? In Europe, we call such people recidivist traitors. We imprison them. We hang them. We place them in gulags. We certainly do not allow them to erect monuments. An ideological war was fought, a kind of intellectual trial-by-combat, and you lost. Get over it. Here is a late-breaking news-flash; slavery is not a good counterpart to "self-evident" truths.

However, there appear to be other Southern ideals - such as the cooking - which are better counterparts to this. Perhaps the line "All men are created equal, but some are more equal than others" was invented for this very situation; after a week of eating everything that was placed before me (and, when you go to an "All you can stuff down your throat in a hideous orgy of consumption" Southern Bar-B-Q Restaurant, that is rather a lot) I am now far more equal than I was before. I did, however, avoid putting the butter on everything.

Ultimately, North Carolina is very pleasant and friendly - everyone says "hello" and asks how you are. I am not sure if it is done to reply - perhaps not. The defintion of a bore might be Someone who, when you ask him how he is, tells you but that might also apply to a Northerner in a Southern town. I suppose I count as an Easterner. It is a unique experience.

One night when we were there, Otis (Liza's stepfather) and I lit an enormous fire and sat around it and drank Maker's Mark whiskey. It is a scurilous lie with no foundation in truth that the two of us drank three bottles of said liquor over a period of less than a week. It was that guy.

Otis and Lin (Liza's mother) are really nice people - we spent ages talking about all sorts of stuff. Otis is very much into theatrics and Shakespeare in particular. On our little Christmas night (which went on for an age as it seems a family trait to be unable to buy a single present when fifty will do) we had "Dinner Theatre"; Otis gave a sterling rendition of the opening monologue from Richard III and I did (with the help of a cheat sheet) the Battle of Agincourt speech from Henry V ("Once more into the breach, friends, Romans and countrymen, now is the band of brothers until the last sylable of recorded time" . . . or am I getting confused again?)

In addition to the fine food cooked by everyone (I think we all had a hand in something somewhere - although all I did was cut up some chickens, while everyone else made fine things, including - from Liza's grandmother - Continental-style pastries whose name I will not attempt to type or else my fingers may tie in knots) Otis and I roasted MEAT ON STICK!!!!! in the fire.

There is something primal about the roasting of meat on stick. It affirms the manliness of the roaster, and shows a strong, masculine afirmation of his dominance over the lesser things of the world (i.e. sticks and meat). Armed with a stick, meat, fire and sufficient liquor to make the bringing of such things together in close proximity a good idea, one can take on the world.

It is my firm belief that - if someone cannot roast an innocent hot dog on a length of stick, then how can he be trusted? Such a man is like the fellow with a made-up-tie, or a sock down his pants. There is something untrustworthy about a person like that.

It was not, I fear, something the ladies understood. Never mind; Otis and I roasted things on sticks. We drank beer.

Life is good.

Darknight

Merry Christmas From the NC Side

2006-01-03T12:24:00.000-08:00

Sigmund Freud is alive and well in Michigan

2006-01-02T11:52:00.000-08:00

We have now returned from North Carolina (the adventures therein will be the subject of further entries) and have gone for some grocery shopping.

It is this which looms large in my consciousness at this time - observations on the nature of grocery shopping in the USA vis-a-vis the same experience in England.

Firstly, let us speak of feminine hygiene products and sausage - and Freudian comparisons thereto. There is an aisle in the store which contains said products for the female. At the head of this aisle, there is a display of packets of sliced pepperoni sausage.

Right . . . am I the only one who finds this to be a little . . . apropos? Disconcerting? We have products which have (let us be fair) emancipated the modern female to do roller bladeing, skydiving, swimming and so forth while wearing tight white trousers and / or Brazilian cut bikinis without either a) embarrassment or b) attracting sharks. The modern female is no longer rendered persona non grata for a week out of every four. Levitican laws notwithstanding, these products have done much to integrate the female into the full enjoyment of life.

(As an aside, how many women reading this want to go roller bladeing during their period? I mean, come on. Most women I know want to stay at home and eat chocolate and drink red wine and watch Patrick Swayze movies. There is nothing wrong with this, but don't market a product to the strains of "It's my life" pretending it can overcome four and a half thousand years of Original Sin - you are asking a lot of a bit of cotton wool with a string attached.)

Anyway . . . said (emancipating) products are placed next to a metaphorical emasculation product . . . is this a victory for Germaine Greer or what? Is this the First Church of the Magdalene's lobbyists really earning those tithe-dollars? Have I thought about this too much? And could I rip off Sienfeld's style any more if I tried?

Okay, let us discuss what else I saw there. Jack Daniel's alcopops. Yes, you heard me right - JD as an alcopop.

Okay, goys and burls, let me let you into a secret. I drink Jack. I drink Jack or Maker's Mark - both of these are Southern-style Bourbons whose claim to fame according to the marketing man is that they have a good-ol' Southern style to them. Not sure what a good-ol' Southern style is - often these things say on the label "As served to Conferderate troops before the battle of Gettysburg". No wonder they lost.

Because this is the truth of the matter - such things are an acquired taste. They are, perhaps, a taste which is best not acquired. It is said that Coke will dissolve a tooth or clean a penny - Jack not only eats its way through the ABC suit, but is banned in most Middle Eastern countries.

(So is all alcohol - this is hyperbole.)

(Note for the Americans in the audience - hyper-bole is not a large form of tree trunk.)

One is not supposed to like these things when one first drinks them. They are not supposed to be palatable initially. Drinking them is a rite of passage - and a more threatening and impressive one than killing a non-threatening animal the size of a small car with a .45 calibre rifle at 200 yards with a scope and two shots. Look, just don't get me started on the whole "hunting in Michigan" thing - "I'm proud of my son" said some fool of a father on TV. Yeah, he killed something that never hurt him with his own gun before he was old enough to celebrate with a drink afterwards. God Bless America - it sure needs the help.

Anyway, speaking of youngsters and alcohol - WTF is going on with the concept of a Jalckopop? (I am patenting that). I get the idea of a vodka-based alcopop - vodka has very little taste. It is, essentially, something added to soft drinks in order to get a little sloshed without the disgusting taste side effects of the usual rotgut. White wine based drinks are another one favoured by girls who spend three hours getting ready and wear more make-up and jewelery than clothes.

But a Bourbon-based alcopop? That is some hideous concept - the drink itself was a kind of mouthwash pink. It came in a beer-style bottle and a little cardboard case carrying four of them. Supposedly, this makes you look hard and tough.

Lads, let me break this to you gently - you are drinking something the colour of a tart's boudoir - you look about as gay as Liberace and less-tough than that kid in third grade the nerds stole lunch money from. Don't touch the Jalckopop with a bargepole - unless you are going to use said pole to push it into the canal. And, hey - such cruelty to fish can't be any worse than shooting them. I guess they only do it in barrels here.

Butter - this is another thing. Butter. In England, you do two things with butter - you put it on bread products, or you cook with it. Not here - here it is two things; i) whipped and ii) a condiment. Let's address these travesties one at a time.

Whipped butter. It ceases at this stage to be yellow - it goes white. It is also - because of the vast quantity of air in there - easy to spread straight from the fridge.

Hello? If I wanted something that was easy to spread straight from the fridge, I would eat margarine! Don't usurp my homogonised ("Hehe - he said homo!") industrial-plastic-manufacture-by-product's position in gradually turning my arteries into silicon based tubes! Damn you, with you healthy farm-house spread make usable via the fiendish technology of a whisk! Butter is supposed to be a chore - it is supposed to come in lumps which tear the bread into slivers. Don't you understand? If spreading your toast is easy, why, everyone would do it! No-one would need oranges for marmalade - think of the Californians and the Floridians! They need the tax-dollars - they are, after all, living in a tornado-shy and on a fault-line.

Okay, here is the big problem - a condiment. It just gets stuck on everything here - I made Liza some rice last night, and she put butter on it. She sticks it on greens and potatoes and meat and omelettes and fish and giraffes and . . .

(More things which are "not large tree trunks", there.)

Anyway, they sell many forms of "pseudo-butter". Some of them have names like "I can't believe it's not butter" and so forth. We have these too. However, I am - as an Englishman in Detroit (it's like an Englishman in New York, but further north-west, with less jobs and nicer cab-drivers) - perpetually thinking "I can't believe it is butter" - for the butter here comes in silly little sticks; these appear to be the de facto measurement for butter. "A stick". "A stick and a half". Four sticks make a pound.

No, 16 oz make a pound. Four sticks make a very small fire or a malformed tepee.

I am going to market a product called "F*** me, it's butter". It will be butter - and nothing else. It will be yellow. It will come in one pound blocks. It will not be in sticks. It will not be whipped. It will say on the side "Not to be used as a condiment. A portion of the profit goes to supporting rich dotcom millionaires and retirees who have gone to live in a State with perpetual sunshine, but a bad disaster record."

And that brings me on to another thing; weights and measures. I can understand that the gasoline is measured in gallons - we do it in litres, because the "ccs" of our car engine capacities are cubic centimetres rather than concert chambers, and we tend to get miles to the gallon rather than gallons to the mile. It is still a liquid sold by volume.

Okay, why do I have to order a "24 oz" beer? Why is flour measured in "cups"? Only in the USA would I order a beer and a clam chowder and have to order the drink by weight and the food by volume.

Sticks and cups and weight for liquids - what is this? Is this some Federal conspiracy to stop people from knowing how big stuff is? "Maybe then they won't notice the fact we are paying $1642.34 for a toilet seat!"

Cheese and pasta, people - pasta and cheese. Let's get this entirely straight - pasta is not a hard thing to cook; you boil it until soft as you like. In water. Measured by volume.

Cheese sauce is pretty simple to - you have some hot milk, you whisk in flour, you melt in grated cheese. The work of five minutes. None of these ingredients are complex - none of them are hard to find. They do not require specialised skills or stores or storage. One does not need to be a master with five year's experience to remove the wrapper from cheese; Monterey Jack is not the Japanese Fugo Fish.

So why the Sam Hill are there, not one or two, but about a million different kinds of "pasta with cheese" Instameal (TM)? How can these people make a living? "Hey, Tarquin - we need a new product! That Jalckopop didn't go down too well - we've got guys too-queer for CNN holding up liquor stores." "Don't worry, Tony - I've got it. More pasta and sauce crap - kids love it." "Thanks, Tarquin - have some stock options."

In short, shopping in the USA in an experience. One I would recommend to anyone with the patience of a Saint and the capacity to withstand multiple cardiac shocks. I will leave you with one final note, something that I found really surprising.

You cannot buy brown-shelled eggs. All the eggs are whiter than snow - haven't the chicken farmers heard of the Emancipation Proclamation?

Darknight

Merry Christmas From the Michigan Side

2005-12-25T19:34:00.000-08:00

T'was The Night Before Christmas...

2005-12-24T11:28:00.000-08:00

...and all through the house, not a Muffin was stiring, not even a Hodge.

I've been kicked out of my own kitchen. I can't even peak in to see what is setting off the smoke detector and making the place smell heavenly. It has something to do with chicken that has been in a marinade for days, broccoli, carrots, potatoes, rice, and who knows what else!!

Tonight we will have an early dinner, then I have to sing at 6pm Mass. We will come home and relax for a bit, maybe take a nap, then go back for the big Midnight Mass celebration!!! I'm so excited!

Last night was, I think, my favorite night together so far. I made a nice dinner, then we played (American) Trivial Pursuit. It never occured to me that his questions would be totally different, but it makes sense. We had a blast laughing at all the stupid questions. Then I taught him Uno - and that was pretty fun as well. A little cuddle/tickle fest on the couch, and then off to bed with wine headaches. But it was normal, and calm, and sweet, and I can't wait till he is here for good.

Oh - - and he would give me a hard time if I failed to mention that he beat me at both games on my own turf. :-)

Merry Christmas!!

~Liza

Hot Coffee Scandal and Hooker Boots

2005-12-23T09:05:00.000-08:00

Okay, Liza is in the shower and has been needling me to make a post on the blog. She desires me to tell you of the shoes and of Petunia's adventure in the coffee cup.

One morning, Liza was drying her hair with the hair dryer (as one does) when I came into the bathroom with a cup of coffee in one hand and Petunia T. Hodgebeast sitting on the other, looking around and seeing things. Liza - being in a playful mood - blew little Petunia in the face with the hairdryer. She liked it very much - it was an exciting event in her young life - but, as she is only very small, she blew backwards and fell into the coffee mug; which was kind of full of coffee.

At this point, Liza was rendered useless as she burst into tears and ruined her makeup while Petunia swam around for a while as I fished her out. She was gently washed under the tap and squeezed dry and is now none the worse for her adventure. She does, however, smell of coffee but - when you are part of a species (Hodgehegs) which live entirely on fine coffee and vanilla pastries - smelling of coffee is a positive advantage.

We also went to buy shoes. I only have two pairs of shoes - for I am sensible. I have boots for when it is very snowy, and then I have shoes which are black and go with anything. Liza has 42 pairs of shoes.

42 pairs of shoes. Who needs so many shoes? She only has two feet.

She then proceeded to tell me that she needed this particular pair of brown boots. I challenged the necessity of said brown boots - I felt that needed should only really apply to one pair of shoes to keep the cold and rain out, and things like food and shelter. And not even all sorts of food and shelter - the funny Jewish balls in the soup stuff we are having for lunch is not essential. Especially at Christmas.

That is not to imply that one could live in a Matzoh ball - maybe one could. Is that the sort of dance held for girls at their Bat Mitzvah? And is a Bat Mitzvah what BatJew has?

No, I did not invent BatJew.

Okay, where was I? Oh, yeah - hooker boots. Liza maintained that she quote-needed-unquote these brown boots, but that they were expensive. Liza also really liked some brown suede boots, and rather had her eye on some spike-heeled things she called hooker boots. I said I would buy her the brown suede ones for Christmas, but she said they were too expensive. We had a bit of an arguement about this but she eventually saw it my way and said, and I jest ye not, "I'll let you buy me the suede ones, but I will buy these."

Excuse me? Is that girl-logic? (BTW girls, logic is a thought process - not an Albanian Christian name) It is okay for her to have as a present non-essential "Do-Me"-shoes, provided she buys other shoes? Does this make any sort of sense?

"Oh, I can't have an ice-cream, that would make me fat. But, tell you what, if I have a steak as well - then everything is okay!"

Heads up, ladies - buying more stuff does not cancel out stuff! It doesn't work like that.

On an unrelated note - why does American TV give prime-time slots concerned with "How to live your life" to a convicted criminal? America's housewives are taking life-style advice from a woman guilty of lying under oath? And this is good . . . how?

Look, fellas - don't mean to worry you but, let's consider for a second. Martha Stewart - asked by a Judge (after swearing an oath) to tell the truth, didn't. And she is being held up as a role model? Not wishing to be nasty, but this girl has a proven track record for being a liar. This tells me two things; i) I don't trust her stuffing mix to work and ii) I'm not sure I'm really comfortable with "living the Martha lifestyle" (i.e. criminal perjury)

I did, however, find it funny that her show this morning looked back on the year and not a second of it dwelt on her time in stir. Also, it was perhaps ironic that she focused on a charity which helped mothers incarcertated in prison - plenty of the children interviewed said they would like to be teachers or nurses or whatever; I think some of them should have said "I want to be a talk-show host."

Perhaps they edited that out. Happy Holidays.

Darknight