A Little Too Much Merriment

This bleary-eyed trio of gingerbread secular humanists seem to have been overdoing it on the Christmas ale.

Silent Night

Graveyard shifts are creepy. You're working in a virtually abandoned office building, all alone, and all of a sudden everything becomes terrifying in its own "wow, you have an extremely over-active imagination" way. I'm jumpy by nature, but when you put me in an oh so quiet cubicle where the motion sensor lights seem to be triggered by everything but actual human motion and the computers make grumbling sounds when they receive email, it starts to make me nervous.

You do your best to suppress your fears: loud cheery music, raiding the cupboards, talking to yourself... It's like babysitting without kids to harass you about playing Monopoly Jr. every twelve seconds. But then you start thinking about babysitting, and about that story you heard where the girl was murdered, and that story about the man with the hook, and then you start to think about Scream, where everyone was murdered, and then you start thinking non-scary movies that could be scary if you applied the plot to your present situation... like Ghostbusters... maybe you shouldn't raid the fridge. Zoul might be in there... or Rick Moranis. Maybe you should put on headphones to block out the sounds... maybe not. If you do you won't hear the murderers approach. crap, maybe you should turn the music off all together. maybe you should hide quietly under a desk until daybreak!

But you eventually talk yourself off a ledge, get your work done as fast as humanly possible and get the hell out of the haunted office building.

It's always the same, and the job I'm working right now is following the graveyard shift formula to a T. Dark hallways, strange noises, fridge that could very well be growing the next Swamp Thing, but to give it it's own special set of terrifying characteristics, they've placed these life-sized gems in the hallway:





Now, those are illuminated by my flash, but in the dim natural light, they look like humans crouching outside the door waiting to either: A) beat me over the head with a guitar or B) smother me with a sheet. Every time I see them from the corner of my eye I jump about 50 feet.

So employers of the night shift I implore you, if we must work the vampire hours, could we at least do it without dead performers staring us down?

electroCUTEion

Its been a little dry here for the past month or so. Every time I get out of my car I'm administered an electric shock so powerful it leaves my fingers tingling long after I exit the garage-- and the shocks don't end with the car. It must be my electric personality because whatever I touch in the apartment seems to send out sparks as well.

Unfortunately, the first thing I usually lay my hands on when I come home is the kitten. The routine is as follows: Gil pokes his head out from under my bed covers, confirms it is me and not the "League of Evil Kitten Eaters" come to fry him up, and then he purrs and cuddles for approximately 32 seconds before attacking my feet and becoming the most annoying feline on the planet.

But since there is no moisture in the air, the routine has changed a bit: cat sees me, gains visual confirmation of non-kitten eater, starts to purr and **SHOCK**. You can see the betrayal in his eyes. The girl formerly known only as "the one who won't chew on my legs" as turned into "the girl who specializes in electro-shock treatments". What an unhappy cat. But this new superconductivity has its benefits. Gil loves to sit on my computer, there's nothing I can do about it, but with the dry air, it shocks him too. This is happening with such frequency he's now terrified to walk across the keys. Victory!

So cat leaves the computer alone for the most part. Sadly, one day, while going out of his way to walk AROUND the MacBook, he accidentally grazed a corner and **ZAP**. And that was the last straw. This little kitten reared up on his little kitten legs and took one of his little kitten paws and smacked the computer with all his little kitten strength. And the futility of the gesture was absolutely adorable.



Electrocution: hands down, the best way to bring out the personality in your pet.

Christmas Lessons

This was my first year of solo holiday baking. The Baking of the Christmas Cookies: definitely my #1 Holiday Spirit booster (not that the fake snow at the mall didn't transport me to a winter wonderland) but when you do anything for the first time by yourself, in your own apartment, without a wooden spoon or an electric mixer... or a rolling pin, you realize just how much work your mother was doing while you watched "A Muppet Christmas Carol" in the other room.

I called Mom for three recipes; our holiday favorites: Almond Crescents, Sugar Cookies and English Toffee and I found each cookie not only required some unanticipated extra work, but levels of creativity I wasn't initially prepared to devote to baked goods.

The Sugar Cookies were simple enough, even though I somehow managed to forget "Rolled Sugar Cookies" would require a rolling pin. Not to be deterred, I spent much of my time flouring a bottle of Perrier and hoping it wouldn't explode before I could cut out six dozen tiny pine trees.

The English Toffee: something should have clicked when I read the toffee needed to heat to 300 degrees. Nothing did, but if it had, it would have sounded like a morse code message and it would have said said: "Don't use that plastic spoon to stir, stupid". The next message would have said "no, dummy, the metal one is NOT a better choice."

The Almond Crescents I thought I had under control. The only difficult ingredient was "blanched almonds, finely chopped". They do not sell these at Trader Joe's. The closest thing I could find to "blanched almonds, finely chopped" was whole almonds: raw. Blanching is not a difficult process. You let the almonds sit in boiling water for 60 seconds and then peel the skin off. Though time consuming, it's very brainless. Then came the chopping part. I don't own a legitimate knife set-- my tried and true alternative, the butter knife, proved too dull and spoons were completely ineffective, so I resorted to the only thing in my apartment I was 100% confident could do the job: a hammer. And since I'm working nights, this meant I was hammering almonds at 3:30 in the morning. I bet my neighbors love me. Now that I think about it, I should probably send them some cookies.

The fourth and final recipe was not a mom recipe. I found it on the internet, and all I can say for this one is: Don't bake from an internet recipe without a reliable wireless connection.



Happy Holidays!

more fuzzy

As Requested

Oh, Euclid. Euclid.

Over the weekend, my mother and I decided that at last we would tackle the gargantuan, Herculean, Sisyphean task of cleaning the store room. Other people have attics, but our house is a ranch, and even if it were taller it would not be old enough to have an attic. My parents had it built roughly 25 years ago. I remember once, after reading one of those Bernie-in-the-Besseldorf-Hotel books (bodies were always turning up there – never stay at the Besseldorf), being grateful that no one lived there before us, no one could have died there without our knowing it, no one could have been buried in the dirt floor of the basement in 1892. Not only because the basement floor is cement, but because the basement floor was poured in 1980 and is covered in an enormous orange rug that would be really annoying to roll back in order to bury a body. So: no ghosts likely to roam the . . . one . . . hallway. However, the freezer? In the store room? Easily big enough to hide a body in. And practical. Thus creative children such as myself can find terror where no reason for it could possibly exist. Good for me! A-plus-plus.

Aside from the body-sized freezer, the store room contains the hot water heater and the enormous stand my father built to grow seedlings inside, which is so old I have no memory of it in use. It now functions as an inconveniently bulky shelf, along with three or four other sets of inconvenient shelves that contain the following: eleven billion dusty cardboard boxes. Winter clothes. Summer clothes. Shoeboxes of negatives. Old letters. Biology textbooks. Sundry photographic equipment. Twenty-five cookie tins. A fake Christmas tree (boxed). A picture of Pushkin, my mother’s guinea pig. A paper maché stegasaurus. Eight baskets. Three shelves of Christmas decorations. A plate from Russia. Stickers from Denmark. Two sewing machines, clearly a dueling set. Two slide projectors and two screens, perhaps for the same purpose. Enough scrap fabric to clothe the Von Trapp children twice. One large Pound Puppy. A longhouse (small-scale). Twinkle lights galore. And thirteen bags and two days’ worth of garbage.

There was also a box of games that were too boring to be played but in such perfect condition that they couldn’t be thrown away. It was an impasse, and that was how my parents and I found ourselves sitting in the basement with a little delight called


It’s hard to tell, but that says O! Euclid. It is an amusing and scholarly card game for ages 9-99. On the side it says


O! Euclid, the geometry fun game, provides the following instructions



with which you can also build an ultra cold atom collider if you are of a mind to.

My mother, who is a tutor in math among other things, knew every question, which was good because I mainly abstained except to occasionally say, “Oh yeah? Can be divided by its diagonals to form six equilateral triangles, eh? Prove it!” I have, in the past, been accused of Not Liking Math, which is not true, and in fact, I liked geometry best. I even liked geometry proofs. And adding picas in base-twelve always brightens a dull workday. But I am the Harold Skimpole of math. What could I possibly understand about the world of numbers, being but an English major?

Just enough, it turns out, to have some profound doubts about the geometry fun game.

Is it possible that the educated professionals who made up a game that requires the players to have the formula for calculating the area of a trapezoid readily at hand are the same people who came up with the following questions?



There is no such thing as a loperbola. That is ridiculous. Why would one introduce the idea of a “high-perbola” having a “low-perbola” counterpart? While you’re at it, why don’t you give the kids a list of misspelled vocabulary words, too, just to, you know, warn them of possible pitfalls. Or, er, push them in ahahahahahaha!



Again. No such thing as a left triangle. This seems deliberately confusing, and since the copyright is 1988, I can only conclude that these so-called teachers are actually Russian infiltrators who, in their desperation, have resorted to planting false information in children’s games so as to poison the mathemetical consciousnesses of future American cosmonauts with such foolish concepts as a “left triangle” and a “loperbola.”



[Blogger hates me. The answer to the last question is: "Betsy Ross used this method to form five-pointed stars for our flag." I guess those 9- to 99-year-olds are ALL American.]

Now that the innocent students are failing geometry, thanks to Russia, we’re going to come at them from another angle (no pun intended) and make them feel stupid about geography and history as well -- but unjustifiably, because the Pentagon is not called the Regular Pentagon. I expect it is more often described as “irregular” if anything. And the fact that you can make a pentagon by tying a knot in a strip of paper (which I’d like to see, Betsy) is one of the most useless facts a person could possibly know. How many would-be astronauts went mad before the age of twelve trying to tie a pentagon in a strip of paper? This must have put off the development of a space station for at least ten years.

Communists 1 NASA 0



Clipped? Is that a technical term?

And no, I’m not sure you can just paint an octagon red and put it up as a stop sign. The Department of Transportation is very strict about regulating road signs. Children should not be encouraged to put up their own.

Here I begin to suspect not a nefarious misinformation campaign, but simple sloppiness.



A line that goes around? Goes around what? The mulberry bush? And since when do circles have holes in the middle? They have a point in the middle. A point is not a hole. A point is defined by coordinates. A hole is a denomination used to measure donut parts.

This is how Wikipedia, not even the paragon (not a shape) of collected human knowledge, defines a circle: “A two-dimensional geometric figure consisting of the set of all those points in a plane that are equally distant from another point.”

Let’s revisit the definition on this flashcard once more, just for comparison: “A Circle is a line that goes around and has a hole in the middle.”

The conspiracy theory falls apart here. Let’s face it, Soviet spies are just smarter than this.



THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A BOLA. Though if there were, it would explain why the two symmetrical bolas are called a “pair o’ bolas.”

Hey, my father thought it was funny.

No longer able to support a proper conspiracy theory, I’m faced with only one other explanation. The geometry fun game is not supposed to be called, “O! Euclid.” It’s supposed to be “Oh, Euclid.”

Needless to say, we kept it.

And then the sun set, the sky cleared, and the stars came out.

Oops, how could this possibly have gotten in here.

I (More or Less) Voted Today

Simon likes to vote. Simon votes whenever given the opportunity. Except that one time when Simon didn't know anything about the school budget and didn't really want to vote on it, but Simon's father dragged Simon to the high school anyway after Simon's mother told Simon how Simon probably would want to vote.

Simon votes at every opportunity whether Simon feels like it or not.

Thus, the well-trained Simon arrived at the town polling center at 8:25 this morning to do what Americans almost by definition do: vote on stuff. In this instance, unlike the school budget scenario, Simon was well-informed and of a very strong mind. Simon marched into the polling station (otherwise known as the #6 Rotary Community Center or something else quaint), arms akimbo, and said, "I am Simon!"

And they said, "Who?"

"Simon!"

"You're not in the book. Have you moved recently?"

"I am Simon! I am here to vote!"

"Are you registered?"

At this point, Simon surprised herself by turning from Giddy Voter to Election Official's Worst Nightmare. "Pardon? You do not have 'Simon' in your book? How can you not have 'Simon' in your book? My permanent address has been the same for almost a quarter of a century. I have voted here since I turned eighteen. I have never voted anywhere else. I am an American citizen AND I WILL VOTE!"

"If you'd like to step over here and fill out an affidavit . . ."

"A what?"

"Fill out this ballot, put the ballot inside the envelope, fill out the envelope, and we'll take it to the board of elections. And they'll verify it."

"They'll verify . . . that I live where I live. Where I have always lived. Where, to the best of the Board of Election's knowledge, I have never not lived?"

"Yes."

"And then what? When will this be counted? Is it like an absentee ballot? They only count it if they need it? What if someone accidentally EATS IT on the way to the Board of Elections and THAT'S the one they NEEDED?"

"If you'd like to go to the Board of Elections and get a court order to use the machine, you can do that."

"That won't be necessary, thank you. I have to go to work. I am a hard-working American and I am late for work, where I work hard. For the British. But that is beside the point. Give me my stupid affidavit."

And so I voted. And then I went to work, where I did not work but harrassed the Board of Elections by phone.

"Excuse me, I am an American citizen and I had to vote on an affidavit. What are you people doing down there, making paper airplanes out of registration documents?"

The woman I spoke with refused to believe that this was the worst thing that had ever happened to anyone on voting day. She consulted her computer, or some deer droppings, it is always hard to tell over the phone, and she informed me that the Board of Elections had sent something to my house in August, but it was returned to them as undeliverable.

Because a piece of mail went astray, they assumed I had moved.

This, evidently, is enough to get a person removed from the Voting Book Thing, which is enough to make it so you can't vote except for on a ballot that will never be counted.

"Were you on vacation in August? Away from home?" said the deer-dropping investigator.

Because when you're not standing at your mailbox waiting for the mailman to physically put your mail in your hands, he just dumps it straight in the garbage. There's a huge garbage can in the back of those trucks. That's not mail back there, that's garbage. Un-de-liverable garbage.

After I call the post office tomorrow to find out whether they're, you know, delivering mail or just receiving and shredding it, I'll be calling back the Board of Elections, and I will do that over and over again until my eloquent castigation of their staggeringly inaccurate operation makes them break down. I am Simon! When Simon doesn't get to vote, others must be made to cry.

More Updates

Now I remember the REALLY IMPORTANT UPDATE that completely slipped my mind the last time I posted. The coyotes in the gravel pit. They are back. I remembered it on Halloween when I took the HMS Genius outside after dinner. She was sniffing around trying to figure out what other dog had been walking all over her territory like Winnie-the-Pooh following his own tracks around a spinney of larch trees . . .

(Real-time update: Learnt new word today. spinney. n. a small wood with undergrowth. 1926 MILNE W-t-P There was a small spinney of larch trees just here, and it seemed as if the two Woozles, if that is what they were, had been going round this spinney; so round this spinney went Pooh and Piglet after them.)

. . . so the dog was grappling with the existential question of who you are if you can't identify yourself by smell, and I was listening to the trick-or-treaters making a commotion in the streets. It was a warmish night and they were out in droves, all the small children. The small children decorated like pretty little petit-fours. Small, short-legged, bite-sized children. But our coyotes must be a kinder, gentler breed of bloodthirsty death-hounds, because as far as I know, nobody was eaten. ALAS. As an update this had enormous potential but due to our coyote population being a bunch of pansies, I'm afraid it comes to nothing.

But I do have another Halloween story full of intrigue, mystery, disguise, thrills, spills, close calls, swift escapes, death-defying feats, fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, and heart-healthy whole grain cereal! One morning many months ago I opened the kitchen cupboard and found this peculiar specimen masquerading as a box of Cheerios.


I was afraid to open it in case armed croutons leapt out and burnt down Troy, but I quickly discovered that so thorough was the disguise that it contained nothing more than a freakishly large bag of Cheerios.

What we have here is the first documented case of either (1) a sting operation set up by a wholesale-sized crouton box to infiltrate the General Mills mafia and expose its heinous crimes, or (2) a Halloween party held in, given by, and attended by foods residing in and around a kitchen cupboard. Since croutons are famously inept and therefore much more likely to get the date of Halloween wrong than to be secret agents, I find that option two explains why this oddity showed up as long ago as last February, and yet did not bring about any arrests.

The substance of this update, in case it is not clear, is that the crouton box has at last managed to wear its costume on the correct date, and that must give it a pleasant feeling of vindication.

My next update concerns the amazing discovery I made on my birthday. It is called Ribbon Pie. It is easy and quick to assemble, given that you have just had a birthday and have a new pie plate and fresh ribbons at hand. Voilà:


The paper flower is of course a garnish, as we all know paper is not edible.

Lastly, I must report that my mum has pulled up her mums and now the prettiest thing in the garden is sage, as seen here.


On a related and obvious note, it snowed.


I am no longer sure what season it is and will save that update for later.

Updates

Today I am a year older than I was this time last year. I realize that that is always true, but today it is more true than on other days. My financial man, Peter, whom we met in an earlier post, and whom we're all glad to know has not yet absconded to Mexico with my money although he has so far lost me thirteen dollars and one cent, which means I can't have those used, grape-flavored orthopedic shoes I was so looking forward to, sent me a birthday card. (Perhaps to make up for ruining my future.) On the front it has a picture of the sun rising out of a blue banana. Or a bunch of multi-colored bananas. Or perhaps it is of multi-colored bananas hugging a tomato with spikes. Perhaps the tomato is dressed up for Halloween. Perhaps it is dressed up as a pineapple. The picture is by Terry Frost and does not have a title, but it was painted in 1989 and that is informative enough, really. I can't see the influence of Cornwall on his work, but who am I to judge? In the opinion of Óláfr, for example, it is “excavatory, immersive, a contraction of the spirit, a descent,” so there you go. To each his own.



My car dealership also sent me a card. It did not compare.

There was some other stuff relating to updates but now I forgot them. Oh right. Please notice the Halloween theme. I would like to thank Matt for the use of his sensitive and evocative photograph of the glow-in-the-dark skeletons and ringwraith look-a-likes and scary, scary hedgehogs. Few people could have portrayed a glowing green femur with such truth. I think Óláfr might have described this, also, as “excavatory, immersive, a contraction of the spirit, a descent” if I could drag him away from Terry Frost.

Also, it is getting colder. My mum's mums look like this now:



Erm. Little Robin Redbreast. He is still there. He is still saying "Weeee!" It is how he copes. "Weeee!" he says to the driving wind and the sleet and snow in which he will soon be buried. He is a hero, is our Little Robin Redbreast.



Well, this seems like it should be done now. Almost none of this has been about genuine updates. I don't know why I thought I had things to update. It must have turned into Old News while I was busy not posting. That's irking. Update: I am irked. And I have a new hat. There. Not one but two true updates. Now I am done.

Excuse me, you've got a little something on your lip...

Thank goodness his feet can't reach the pedals.

Someone's Not a Fan of Anne of Green Gables

"How's Fin?"
"you mean, Gil?"
"yeah, Gil... I knew it was a fish part."

Gilbert P. Kitten: Cute

When I first mentioned to Simon I was getting a kitty and that I was going to name it Gil she said "great, and then you can make it business cards that say 'Gilbert P. Kitten: Cute'". I do not think she was taking me seriously. But Gilbert P. Kitten has arrived and he has finally come out from under the bed.





The first order of business was to introduce him to the hedgehogs. Since I do not own an actual Simon and Ivan set, I had to introduce him to the animatronic hedgehog Simon sent me for my 22nd birthday.



They are going to get along famously.

Other than eating, sleeping and attending hedgehog themed social events, Gil's favorite activities are playing with a green ribbon, chasing a ball around the apartment and attacking my feet. His current mission in life is to find out what exactly the computer does and his method of examination involves stepping on all the keys and batting at the letters as they appear in the blogger window. The off-chance that I will get tired and allow him to continue his experimentation is the only reason he is cuddling with me as I type.



Welcome to the hedgehog family, Gilbert P. Kitten. Two gold stars and some chocolate to anyone that can tell me what the P stands for.

Blogiversary 2006

First of all, on behalf of Ivan and myself, I must thank our readers. I think there are at least six of you now and if we were all Vikings, and you six were berserkers, we’d be unstoppable. Therefore I feel comfortable calling this “an army of readers”, which is immensely satisfying. Thank you, anachronistically literate Viking readers. We like you a lot.

The west coast blogiversary celebration having already commenced with the consumption of Reese's Pieces, Friday's east coast party was heralded by a phone call from Matt, party-organizer, to Simon:

Simon: Hello?
Matt: Hi there.
Simon: Uh, hi. . . . How's it going?
Matt: Well, I'm standing in your garage.
Simon: Why are you doing that?
Matt: My feet are muddy.

Glamorous parties, they are not only for Los Angeles. We have them here, too. Just look at the number of attendees who showed up wearing tiaras.

Simon and Ivan could only manage to carry a single one between them. Platinum and diamonds are heavy. This picture was taken before the row over who got to be Ariel and who had to settle for Cinderella.



Patchogue arrived not only with a tiara but wearing particularly shiny skin. She's posing next to the spider plant, which did not wear jewelry of any kind because it simply doesn't need to.



Heslington did not notice he was wearing a tiara. He does not notice much, actually.



Richard Armitage showed up somewhat overdressed; the tiara, on him, rather smacked of affectation and did not go over well.



In keeping with the tradition of arriving with strange offerings, Adam brought a pirate sword of the plastic blow-up variety. It is pictured here with a previous gift of like kind: a pink blow-up mace. Few people are aware of how historically accurate this reproduction actually is. It so happens that a common Viking saying around the year AD 800 was, "Give me that jewel-encrusted Bible or face spikey pink death!"



The sight of it scares me witless, really.

Matt came bearing chocolate cupcakes covered in chocolate frosting, filled with chocolate pudding, and topped with chocolate chips, which lent them a hedgehogian appearance. Normally I don't take part in cannibalism, but one has to be prepared to make exceptions in certain circumstances, especially if a whole lot of chocolate is involved. They may have had a few structural difficulties but they were delicious.



Naturally the presence of Ivan was much missed, and I am collecting donations to fly her in for next year. I'm also thinking of holding a bake sale and perhaps a silent auction. I have a pink blow-up mace that I think would fetch a handsome sum if I patched its leak. And painted it brown.

Mt. Hope & Environs