*To which, for the uninformed, the proper response is:
"Oi! Oi! Oi!"
And then the ceremonial tipping back of the beer. And today there will be plenty of that going on, particularly in London (or Northern Australia, as it is translated on most Antipodian maps...)
Those of y'all from the Land Down Under, I hope wherever ye are today, be it Aus itself, the US, Banff Canada, or gosh knows where in Europe, you're able to hear enough of your own music to remind you of the warmth your missing, but not so much as to drive you batty and embarass you.
So, to the Aussies:
Happy Australia Day in general (don't go trying to fry an egg over the eternal flame neath the Arc d'Triumph in Paris, either-- they'll be expecting that, you know)
Dean O'Bailey- Happy belated Birthday!
Lisa- Happy Birthday in advance. Today 1 year ago, we were in Lisbon, I'd been in a horrendous mood, and went out and did something shocking and quite out of character... Then we went to Porto for your birthday, and I think that must've been one of my favourite stops last year. The free Port wine certainly helped... I hope you're well.
Beau- Y'all think about it...
And to the rest of y'all, tip one for the Aussies today. But if you do, don't be the typical Podian and think you're all cool drinking a Foster's. They hate the stuff Down Under...
Cheers!
Friday, January 26, 2007
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Expensive Dang Dessert...
My FAVOURITE book as a child was entitled "The Blueberry Pie Elf." It was written in the mid 1950s by Jane Thayer, illustrated by a gentleman who used only blue ink (in true, mid-century children's book monochromatic fashion), about an elf who simply cannot get enough blueberry pie to satiate himself, and begins leaving subtle hints to the family whose house he secretly cohabits that they might consider baking that particular delight a bit more often.
Strangest thing was, I didn't even like blueberries. Even now, I only eat them in muffins, or in conjunction with red berries. But the book now, the book...
My mom and I wore the only local copy out. I bet she checked it out of the Springdale Public Library every other week. I honestly don't think anyone else ever had a chance. I also suppose it must've been my fault, therefore, that the book got to such a state that the library either threw it away or sold it on. In either case, the book disappeared from my fragile life at a young age, and I've dreamt for years untold about holding it again.
There's not a used book store I've ever passed that I haven't inquired within as to their having the book for sale. Never have I met success. So, today, in desperation, and boredom at work, I consulted google. I found a reproduction recently released and for sale via amazon, but it's got full colour pictures, and is paperback. I prefer the red hardback with blue ink.
There is ONE for sale on ebay. It's the red hardback, with blue ink, and it even still has the tell-tale Dewey Decimal sticker on the spine indicating that it shared the same early fate as what was nearly my personal copy. The auction ends in 8 hours, there are no bids, and the cost is ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS. For a book that sold for all of 85 cents new. I love the book, and would deeply enjoy having it again, but egad man. That's a hella price to put on regaining childhood bliss...
I've found the keys to paradise, but they're in a glass-fronted soda pop machine and I'm out of change...
Thursday, January 18, 2007
I Gave A Pig A Pancake...
The other day, because I have a conscience that won't let me do otherwise, I stopped to help someone with automobile troubles. I didn't want to. Honestly. Quite often, I don't want to, but I almost always stop to help folks whom I think I could. Call it paying it forward, or preventative karma- beating fate at its own game. I do, truly, like helping folks when I can, but it's so often an inconvenience. I have 'more important things' to consider.
But how important would I think someone else's priorities really were if I were the one carrying the tell-tale red 1-gallon gas can down the side of the road when the temperature's below freezing with the wind whipping through my threads? But I was busy. But you've been stranded before. But I'm late for work. Since when did you want to be there that badly?
This whole debate took about 4 and a half seconds before I turned around to give Daniel and Kara, as their names turned out to be, a lift to the gas station and back. I felt good about the decision the whole time, until we got back and the car had been run so dry that it wouldn't start. This was a relatively new car, with fuel injection, so there was no hope of simply dousing the carburetor with fuel until the engine fired. Either it would start, or it wouldn't.
It was at this point that I remembered the children's book entitled "If You Give a Pig a Pancake," which is the latest in a series begun with "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie." The tales are lively and funny, and run through the potential predicament you could land yourself in by sugaring up lesserly evolved mammals who cannot do their own supermarket shopping. If you give a pancake, he'll want syrup, and eventually will end up in your pajamas, in your bed, while you get up early to cook more pancakes. Not the exact plotline, but you get the idea. Nothing is so simple as its appearance.
Daniel's car wouldn't start, and this meant that either I could wish them luck and wave goodbye (as other folks might have done once retrieving them to the car-- once I was this involved, I felt compelled to see them on their way), and be a jerk, or I could offer them yet another ride...somewhere. As it turned out, the car did finally start, but not before I knew fully the threat of filling vermin with chocolate chips.
Applying the book, then, to real life, just makes me more leary-- I like to be helpful, but apparently my generosity has its stretches. This is harsh and selfish, even for me. Six weeks ago I was staying in the house of someone who met me on a bus and thought I looked like I could use a warm bed and a homecooked meal. How quickly we forget...
Loving, in any capacity, is rarely convenient. We are, by nature, self-serving and self-preserving, and putting the needs and concerns of anyone else ahead of ourselves, so far as I've seen, isn't always the easiest, nor most pleasant task. But someone took a risk on me, and I like to think I left them feeling justified and fulfilled by the occasion.
Strangely enough, Jesus advises us: "Don't give your pearls to pigs, and don't give dogs what is sacred, lest they turn upon you and turn you to pieces." (CAUTION: that's the JBLTV- Jeffro Brown loosely translated version- I'll try and get an exact quote when I get home, unless Lori or Tim can beat me to it...) Love then, but evaluate your recipient, I suppose. Of course, then, there's that new Sean Been movie, where he poses as a hitchhiker caught in a rainstorm and then proceeds to destroy the existence of the generous folks who have pity on him.
Blast, but it's a hanged confusing planet we inhabit. I've gone and confused myself from my original point, which, stated simply, was:
Give a Pig a Pancake.
But how important would I think someone else's priorities really were if I were the one carrying the tell-tale red 1-gallon gas can down the side of the road when the temperature's below freezing with the wind whipping through my threads? But I was busy. But you've been stranded before. But I'm late for work. Since when did you want to be there that badly?
This whole debate took about 4 and a half seconds before I turned around to give Daniel and Kara, as their names turned out to be, a lift to the gas station and back. I felt good about the decision the whole time, until we got back and the car had been run so dry that it wouldn't start. This was a relatively new car, with fuel injection, so there was no hope of simply dousing the carburetor with fuel until the engine fired. Either it would start, or it wouldn't.
It was at this point that I remembered the children's book entitled "If You Give a Pig a Pancake," which is the latest in a series begun with "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie." The tales are lively and funny, and run through the potential predicament you could land yourself in by sugaring up lesserly evolved mammals who cannot do their own supermarket shopping. If you give a pancake, he'll want syrup, and eventually will end up in your pajamas, in your bed, while you get up early to cook more pancakes. Not the exact plotline, but you get the idea. Nothing is so simple as its appearance.
Daniel's car wouldn't start, and this meant that either I could wish them luck and wave goodbye (as other folks might have done once retrieving them to the car-- once I was this involved, I felt compelled to see them on their way), and be a jerk, or I could offer them yet another ride...somewhere. As it turned out, the car did finally start, but not before I knew fully the threat of filling vermin with chocolate chips.
Applying the book, then, to real life, just makes me more leary-- I like to be helpful, but apparently my generosity has its stretches. This is harsh and selfish, even for me. Six weeks ago I was staying in the house of someone who met me on a bus and thought I looked like I could use a warm bed and a homecooked meal. How quickly we forget...
Loving, in any capacity, is rarely convenient. We are, by nature, self-serving and self-preserving, and putting the needs and concerns of anyone else ahead of ourselves, so far as I've seen, isn't always the easiest, nor most pleasant task. But someone took a risk on me, and I like to think I left them feeling justified and fulfilled by the occasion.
Strangely enough, Jesus advises us: "Don't give your pearls to pigs, and don't give dogs what is sacred, lest they turn upon you and turn you to pieces." (CAUTION: that's the JBLTV- Jeffro Brown loosely translated version- I'll try and get an exact quote when I get home, unless Lori or Tim can beat me to it...) Love then, but evaluate your recipient, I suppose. Of course, then, there's that new Sean Been movie, where he poses as a hitchhiker caught in a rainstorm and then proceeds to destroy the existence of the generous folks who have pity on him.
Blast, but it's a hanged confusing planet we inhabit. I've gone and confused myself from my original point, which, stated simply, was:
Give a Pig a Pancake.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Posts, Points, and Borders
I'm finally back to something that feels like home should. I've spent the past 2 days rebuilding the barbed-wire fence that is the northernmost border of what remains of my grandfather's farm. I may be lacking in any number of skills and talents, but by gosh I can build a fence.
I've no idea whether it excites any of y'all or not, but I had to tear down and salvage as much of the old fence as possible, and in doing so doubled my at-hand amount of t-posts (the sort of post you build a barbed-wire fence with), and coiled up nearly a mile of wire suitable for reuse into what looked like galvanised Christmas wreaths for some sort of sadistic Yuletide dinner. Then I hand-drove about 50 of the aformentioned posts into the ground over a stretch of about 200 yards/metres, give or take, and stretched 5 new strands of wire along them. The first 3 wires were from the existing, painfully coiled wreaths, and as such, were unrolled and spliced in one at a time, with mimimal effort. The last 2 had to be unrolled from a new, multi-mile coil of wire on the back of the tractor, near the far post. This was done by wrapping my elkhide gloves in a coil or two of the new wire, and walking away from the tractor at about a 45 degree angle to the earth's crust. It was something like playing tug of war with an octopus, yet winning (by degrees). My entire body is wracked and sore.
On the other hand, my entire body is wracked and sore. I like knowing that I've worked. That I've earned my daily allotment of sleep and oxygen. And the pork chops in homemade gravy with brown-beans-and-ham and homemade cornbread, followed by a yellow cake with a caramel and coffee icing that my grandmother made to sustain me thru the lunchtime hours.
Yes, it's been a grand week. I'll sleep sooooooo well tonite.
I've no idea whether it excites any of y'all or not, but I had to tear down and salvage as much of the old fence as possible, and in doing so doubled my at-hand amount of t-posts (the sort of post you build a barbed-wire fence with), and coiled up nearly a mile of wire suitable for reuse into what looked like galvanised Christmas wreaths for some sort of sadistic Yuletide dinner. Then I hand-drove about 50 of the aformentioned posts into the ground over a stretch of about 200 yards/metres, give or take, and stretched 5 new strands of wire along them. The first 3 wires were from the existing, painfully coiled wreaths, and as such, were unrolled and spliced in one at a time, with mimimal effort. The last 2 had to be unrolled from a new, multi-mile coil of wire on the back of the tractor, near the far post. This was done by wrapping my elkhide gloves in a coil or two of the new wire, and walking away from the tractor at about a 45 degree angle to the earth's crust. It was something like playing tug of war with an octopus, yet winning (by degrees). My entire body is wracked and sore.
On the other hand, my entire body is wracked and sore. I like knowing that I've worked. That I've earned my daily allotment of sleep and oxygen. And the pork chops in homemade gravy with brown-beans-and-ham and homemade cornbread, followed by a yellow cake with a caramel and coffee icing that my grandmother made to sustain me thru the lunchtime hours.
Yes, it's been a grand week. I'll sleep sooooooo well tonite.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Hippy New Year!!
Well, as I said last time: when the rest of the world declares a holiday or other general hullabaloo, we make for the woods...
I went with a different crowd, and with different aims this time, though. I spent New Years' Eve, Hugmanae, back down at Devil's Den State Park, near West Fork, Arkansas. (So named because it's situated upon the west fork of the White River).
Present were my friends Tim and Genessa, with a string of Christmas lights across the front of their '67 yellow Split window VW, Adam and Kara, in their '78 tie-dyed, hand painted VW Westphalia edition with a string of white lights along the tent, and John and Amber in their mid-70s microbus standard.
Have I mentioned that I want a VW Camper? They haunt my dreams...
Here's a better shot of Tim's bus... He's proud of it.
Tim's in the process of fabricating a replica of an original Westphalia interior for it. Thus far he's got a nearly complete bed and the guts of a refrigerator. Within 2 weeks, he'll be an expert on the matter. So, anyone with questions about refitting split window buses with original style interiors can direct their questions to him here
WHOOOHOOO! Did that work? Did I include a link? Freaking YEAH!
Y'all have a happy Friday.
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