Smokey the Magnificent

Yes, the poor sickly wee infant is hale and hearty once more. She is sitting on my knee with a bobbin in one hand and a chapatti in the other, eating both.

Today is the inaugural meeting of my singing group! V exciting. We will wow the world.

You know what’s marvellous? Maple syrup. It seems that something so delicious ought by rights to be made from the pineal glands of endangered veal, but isn’t; it’s made from the boiled down sap of the maple tree. And in case you’re thinking “Duh”, well, you’re clearly a sheltered wee beast protected by Styrofoam pellets from the harsh realities of this world. (Except for Mother; Styrofoam pellets give her the shrieking feebles. We all have our little ways.)

I used to work at an ice cream shop, you see. Not a bad place to work, all things considered; I think I laid down enough calcium to protect me from osteoporosis for the next fifteen pregnancies, and the impressively unflattering qualities of the uniform assured me that Helpdesk Man’s interest in myself was the Real Deal and not some shallow attraction based on the hope that I had shapely knees.

The staff were an interesting bunch. One particular wench, who I will call Tiffanee, greeted life with wide-eyed wonder. Just how wide-eyed I did not realise until one afternoon, when I was scooping myself out some vanilla icecream for lunch.

“Why do you get vanilla? It’s boring,” quoth Tiffanee.

“Not our vanilla,” I said with a disturbing flash of company spirit. “Haven’t you tried it? It’s got real vanilla beans in it.”

“Vanilla what?” saidTiffanee, goggling.

Further investigation revealed that Tiffanee had hitherto spent her life thinking “vanilla” was a synonym for “plain”. I spent some time explaining about pods and alcohol, seeds and extract, the divinity that is real vanilla essence and the devilish impostership of vanillin, which is a byproduct of the paper industry and not worth for your biscuits to wipe their boots on; nor did I fail to touch on the vanilla/Coke conspiracy, nor the method for making vanilla sugar out of used pods. Tiffanee was suitably impressed.

As she began to edge towards the door, I said in a light and joking fashion

“You do know where maple syrup comes from, right?”

“No?” said Tiffanee, her eyes widening again in hopes of some fresh wonder.

I explained, but I don’t think she believed me.

Anyway, this is all but a prelude to the conundrum:

Would you rather have a lifetime supply of maple syrup, or the ability to communicate with geese?

Not strictly relevant, but it rhymes. And actually, having just watched the pilot episode of the X-Files, I am feeling somewhat more disinclined than usual to join the ranks of the FBI, so there you go.

I am happy to report that the snortlepig and I slept blissfully all last night. We’ve also discovered she gets high on baby Panadol. She laughs and spazzes around and goes all ooey, and then makes a dive for her father’s cider and takes a swig from the bottle before we can stop her. Nothing like smelling likker on your baby’s breath to make you feel like a wonderful mother. Come to think of it, that could be why she slept so well…

You know how everyone has a hard time choosing between superpowers? You know, flying, immensely cool, but on the other hand, being able to read, speak and write all the languages of the world… or telekinesis… all good things, difficult choice, etc. Well, I have a conundrum for you. Would you rather have the ability to:

A) Look spectacularly good on ID photos

or

B) be able to stop time, but only for one ten-second interval once a month?

Turns out the snortlepig wasn’t over her ailment after all. She vomited again twice - once just as she was latching on, which is a singularly unpleasant experience unique to breastfeeding mothers - and last night became too fretful to sleep at all. And I do mean “at all” - I think I got maybe an hour’s sleep sometime after 6:22AM? The rest of the night was spent trying to console a fitful, twisting, exhausted piggie whose version of counting sheep was to adopt a series of increasingly Cirque du Soleil sleeping positions, most of which involved sharp body parts in my throat.

So this morning we staggered blearily to the doctor’s - her first doctor’s appointment, come to think of it, which isn’t too shabby for fifteen months. The snortlepig submitted warily to having her squish prodded by a giggly English doctor (who said re squish “Ooh, I’ve never heard it called that before!” and referred to it as the “squidge” thereafter, which the pig bore with patience).  The verdict was a vague “something viral” and the prescription of two lots of sweet sticky syrup, one of which performs a function too vile to name.

This morning I had to decorate a paper bag. Not a mammoth task; all I needed to do was cover up the coffee sticker with something pretty in order to shove a birthday present in it. Should be easy, I thought; I’m good at crafts.

Several minutes later, after hunting futilely around for ribbon or coloured paper, it occurred to me: I’m not good at crafts. Not in general. I can decorate cakes, do a spot of half-hearted calligraphy and cross-stitch to an adequate level, but that’s about it. I haven’t made cards or drawn or done origami or quilling or any of those crafty things for years… even my cutting-out skills are pretty rusty… yet all this time I’ve had the vague impression tucked away that I’m the Sort of Person Who’s Good at Crafts.

And come to think of it, that’s true about a lot of things. According to my fond husband I’m the Sort of Person Who’s Good at Languages… but how many do I speak? One. OK, snatches of Quenya learned by rote, but that doesn’t count. I’m the Sort of Person Who Likes Highbrow Films, but, well, the last movie I saw was Ghost Rider and I’m not sure I can remember the last truly arty film I watched. I’m the Sort of Person Who Reads All the Time, only… I don’t, these days.

So it’s a dangerous line of thinking. Particularly so when it comes to writing. I call myself a freelance writer despite having only a handful of articles published in print, because all the articles about freelance writing talk about the power and magic of owning the term “writer” and self-description and so on. And it fits, during the week before a deadline where the house goes to hell in a handbasket because I’m frantically finishing an article.

It doesn’t fit during other times, when I gradually forget about sending out queries, start to rest on my laurels (such as they are) and stop thinking and acting like a writer. Those times are the beginnings of a gradual slip into becoming The Sort of Person Who Writes. And I don’t want to be The Sort of Person Who Writes, I want to be a writer! But because I’m lazy and have other things to do, and because freelancing is so self-directed, and because I’m not actually relying on my freelancing income to live, the tendency to let things slide is always there.

Other things I do let slide, and that’s OK. I don’t have time to actually draw or do more crafts or learn a language now, and that’s fine, as long as I don’t feel  smug at the rather useless and questionable achievement of being the Sort of Person Who might. There’s no virtue in vague unrealised potential; and one doesn’t get published for being the Sort of Person Who Might Write a Novel, after all.

That is as philosophical as I plan to wax today, fear not. But it puts me in mind of an elderly gentleman who once wandered into the cinema I was cleaning in my glamorous days as an usherette. Usually I shooed people out so I could clean in peace, but this chap seemed nice so we exchanged a few pleasantries as I wielded the broom around his ankles. Then as I moved into the next row, he piped out

“You’re from England, aren’t you? I’d place you at…. ooh… South London.”

“Sorry, no, I’m Australian,” said I, feeling it a more tactful explanation than “It’s prosody, sir, I have Aspie tendencies”. He looked faintly disappointed, but a few rows later piped up again:

“I’m betting you play the cello, do you? You look like the sort of person who’d play the cello.”

I have not, nor am I ever likely to play the cello. But it warmed the cockles of my heart nevertheless to know that to the casual observer I looked like the Sort of Person Who might.

I am happy to report no further spewage on the part of the pig. In fact she was more cheerful than usual yesterday, which gives me another parenting tool to add to my arsenal. “Come on luv” I shall say next time she is whiny, holding her over a bucket: “what you wants is a good womit”.

I am starting to realise just how long the eighth tier of my patchwork skirt really is. I worked on it for an hour and a half yesterday and still haven’t finished piecing it. Am starting to view the rest of the process - ironing, zigzagging the top and bottom edges of each strip, gathering, sewing together with triple stitches, sewing up the side and adding a waistband - with a doomy tunnel-vision horror.

Yesterday was moderately productive. I didn’t feel like going for a walk so fulfilled my Challenge task by doing a spot of gardening with the piggie, and harvested a dozen carrots I’d forgotten about. Some of them were interestingly mutated. Then I made some tarts and a caramel cheesecake, started a double batch of tomato rye bread, sewed about forty-five squares together for my skirt and did two loads of washing. See? I’m not entirely useless…

…Although apparently I am still significantly useless, given that it’s 11:33AM and I’m sitting here under a sleeping pig in my pyjamas because my jeans are in the wash and my tights aren’t dry yet. And my hair isn’t done. And I still haven’t written any of my Bible study homework or my article. In fact, the most productive thing I’ve done today is spilled half a glass of water on a quilt strip. Lalalala.

Have I mentioned I’m trying to start up a singing group? I used to be in a choir. Two, actually. Both rubbish. The first was my school choir, which was obligatorally dreary and at one point featured “Colours of the Wind” with the lyric “spirit” changed to “colour” for religious reasons. We did a yearly circuit of rest homes and bored the residents. The second was a non-auditioned choir comprised almost entirely of senior citizens, which had an interesting effect on the result. Most performances were preceded by violent arguments about the “only pearl earrings” rule (”I’m eighty-five and these garnets haven’t left these ears since your grandmother was in diapers!”); quite a few of the altos were particularly elderly and wandering a little in their wits; and occasionally those sections of the choir which sat in the sunny part of the hall would fall asleep. Plus of course we spent a lot of time singing “It’s a Grand Night For Singing” and “When I’m Sixty-Four”, which didn’t really mesh with my fifteen-year-old self. We once came last in an inter-choir competition.

When I started Uni I had to quit, and as the Uni choir was made up almost entirely of music students doing vocal majors who could actually sing, I graciously retired from the world of song. But now Helpdesk Man has joined his marvy young vocal collective I feel the desire to sing once more, so I sounded out a friend who sounded out a few more, and it looks like five of us are interested! Four of us used to work at Rialto, which made me feel The Rialtos wasn’t a bad name (RiAltos? Altos? Geddit?) - except that as far as I know we’re all sopranos, which… um… could be a problem. I will keep you informed.

So the snortlepig started throwing up last night. Usually I enjoy those parenting milestone moments during which one realises how much one’s baby is growing up - suddenly noticing how tall she is compared to the bookshelf, or counting how many “tricks” she can do. Realising that her vomit now smells like adult vomit rather than baby milky vomit? Not so much.

At least it explained why she’d been whiny and clingy for the past 24 hours. After a night of solid breastfeeding, she seems more like her usual self - she recovered sufficiently to empty several cups of chapatti flour over the floor and into a bunch of storage containers this morning, anyway. I’m so pleased.

On the off-chance that she relapses, though, I don’t feel I should issue myself any particularly strenuous Challenges this week. My to-do list is the same as always - work on my skirt and my sister-in-law’s baby present, try to keep the house clean, do a bit of writing (I have an article due next Monday), do my Bible study homework, make more Helpdesk Muffins, yadda yadda. Oh, and before tomorrow night I need to make a caramel cheesecake and wrap up a present for my sister’s birthday. Nothing too scintillating.

So, let’s see. This week’s Challenge shall be: health and weather permitting, to do something outdoorsy with the dude every day. This can include working around the garden, but not just checking the mail and feeding the chickens, for that is Cheating.

Speaking of chickens, here are some photos from the snortlepig’s recent expedition to the Arboretum. Her foreign aunt will kindly note that I made the cape myself.

And from the Sports Museum on another recent trip (her foreign ant will recognise the jacket, but the trousies were also made by moi):

Yes, my hair is in Minnie Mouse ears. What of it?

I have long been of the opinion that YouTube comments are the absolute dregs of the Internet. It’s ironic, given that YouTube itself could fairly be regarded as the pinnacle of human achievement; but take a video it would be expected only a fairly intelligent person would enjoy, such as a clip from a BBC archaeological documentary or a skit from one of the more sophisticated Fry and Laurie shows, scroll down, and what will you find? Sixteen pages of “Copy n paste this InTo te next 4 videos u watch or smeone u lve will dIe no joke!!!!!”, intermingled with various comments of the “If you like/don’t like this clip you are clearly [gay, Jewish, a woman, retarded, Polish, deaf, tone-deaf, unable to sing, a loser, all of the above, etc]” variety.

So I was watching a clip of Bill Bailey standup comedy in which he mentioned vegetarianism. On the very first page of comments, I found these gems… bolding mine:

he was a vegetarian!!!!
He was not a VEGAN!!!!!
You can still eat some meat if your a vegetarian!!

No you can’t. Neither vegetarians or vegans can eat meat.
Vegetarians do not eat animals.
Vegans do not eat animals, or any products produced by animals, such as milk or gluten.

WHATEVER Real vegetarians are the Vegans anyway!! You can either eat animal parts or none at all! Theres No such class as Vegeterian, your still OMNIVORACIOUS if you eat eggs, milk, and cheese!!!!

I’d like to think this was intentional, but face it, it’s a YouTube comment.

ok first of all i dont understand why you’re getting your pantys in a twist about something thats very simple to understand
when you eat cheese you’re not eating the animal. when you drink milk you’re not drinking it. you are consuming a bi-product of the animal. so yes their is such a class of vegetarian. i really dont understand how you get confused over something this easy to understand.

Rennet, anyone?

Yes milk and cheese are bi products of cows. EGGS how ever are not bi products of chicken!!! No matter how you look at it your eating baby chickens!!!

Um.

hitler wasnt vegitarian he wrote several times in mein kampf about how much he liked bratwursts

Having fallen behind in my Fascist manifesto bedtime reading I can’t definitely falsify this one, but I thought it had a kind of poetry to it….

Here’s the clip itself, just to provide some contrast.

There are those who would say that knowledge is useful as a means of most perfectly expressing our appreciation of creation. There are others who think it is important in that it separates us from the beasts; others who feel it is our duty in order to most thoroughly appreciate Sacred Scripture.

They are, of course, wrong, although all these reasons are important. The primary reason for knowledge is that it allows you to recognise when movies get stuff wrong. Which is of course vital to the pursuit of smugness and the attainment of trivial conversation, both of which are very important things.

Things that bug me in movies naturally fall into my own categories of interest. Hair, for example. As any female who has spent hours fruitlessly attempting to recreate hairstyles from Star Wars: Episode 2 is aware, movie hairdressers are a devious bunch. Though they presumably know how hair works themselves, they bank on the ignorance of the movie-going public to get away with some truly unlikely hairstyles - braids that appear from nowhere, updos that require far more hair in length and thickness than the character possesses, hairstyles for respectable medieval women which blow loose in the breeze, supposed terminal lengths which are barely waist-length, and so on. The oddest example I’ve seen recently was in the animated Beowulf, in which the women sported hairstyles containing  braids that were longer than the loose hair. As any turnip knows, braiding makes hair shorter, not longer - meaning that these animated wenches must have cut one back section of hair a good foot shorter than the braided portions, which would seem to be a strange thing to do. Of course, given the other dubious anatomical features present in, for example, Grendel’s mother, I suppose it is only to be expected.

And of course, historical movies are always a blend of period accuracy and contemporary sensibilities in any case. I highly doubt actresses in Renaissance movies don actual lead makeup for the cause, or forgo using shampoo and conditioner for the duration of filming. And how many actresses conform to the physical standards of beauty prevalent at the time? It just doesn’t work - look at the BBC Pride and Prejudice. Sure, Jane probably would have been considered prettier than Lizzie at the time, but watching the film with modern eyes it seems so obvious she isn’t that all the references to Jane’s superior beauty strike a false note. Given this, I suppose filmmakers figure we wouldn’t be able to cope with a leading lady with unshaven legs or a size 14 figure, let alone wimples and bound hair.

Still, some of the circumstances in which heroines wander around with flowing tresses are quite bizarre. As the owner of flowing tresses myself I happen to know that wind and physical activity quickly turn “flowing” into “matted, dingy and beginning to spontaneously dreadlock”. Adding wood fires into the mix makes them downright dangerous. So to see Eowyn wandering around Rohan, of all places, exposing her perfectly-groomed wavy hair to the howling wind really just reinforces the fact she had a death wish. Even when she’s on the lam riding horses and hauling sacks of potatoes, it doesn’t seem to occur to her to put her hair up. Funnily enough this can be excused during her battle scenes, as neatly-braided hair would have drawn even more attention to herself amidst the shaggy-locked Riders, who apparently found through trial and error that the quickest way to a glorious death is getting hair in your eyes in the middle of a battle. Honestly, is it any wonder the Free Peoples were in jeopardy? At least Galadriel had the sanity to remain a soothing background presence for the sake of her coiffure - and one notes that the actual saviors of Middle-Earth were two of the few characters with short, sensible haircuts.

Another thing that bugs me in films is childbirth - a common peeve among crunchy seditious types, I believe. I read a study once comparing the rates of exotic childbirth complications in film and TV to real life, which was illuminating; but that’s not what bothers me so much as the general attitude of pace. Aaarggh, she’s in labour! Here’s the car! Here’s the lift! Here’s the wheelchair! Here’s the IV! Thirty seconds of screentime, tops; twenty-five hand-held shots in all. One gets the impression of someone running to the bathroom to be sick, which (although a genuine facet of labour generally unrecorded on film) is rather more sudden and urgent than the average childbirth.

Gone with the Wind (the book, not the film), for all its flaws, actually did a decent job of portraying the monotony and dreary lagging of childbirth. Films and TV, not so much. Rachel’s birth in Friends took an appropriately long time, but the realism was counteracted by the fact that she seemed to be perfectly normal and oblivious to events between contractions and had to be told when she was ready to push.

The really odd one is Star Trek. Again, I recognise that the series was made in space-time as well as portraying it; but still. How come every combination of species gives birth reclining? The Bajoran “no pain during childbirth” thing was intriguing, but in general it’s all much of a muchness - screaming, tricorders, oh-dear-the-baby’s-in-distress-we’ll-have-to-transport-it-out. Very dull of the writers, really. Shouldn’t Klingon women at least be gritty and cling to a knotted rope or something?

Another one, of course, is religion. This was brought home to me recently during an embarrassing moment in Bible study, where I was temporarily unable to distinguish between facts about the Ark of the Covenant gleaned from the Old Testament and those picked up from Raiders of the Lost Ark. But it’s the more insidious dumbing-down of religion that bugs me. Take Shepherd Book from Firefly, who responds to River Tam’s criticisms of the Bible not with devastating presuppositional argumentation but a lame line about how “You don’t fix faith, it fixes you” - in other words, it’s OK to believe a load of drivel as long as it makes you feel good. Now, religion being what it is I’m sure this is a true portrayal of the opinions of many, and I don’t object to a different point of view being portrayed per se (especially by a possibly fraudulent Shepherd); but I suspect this was Joss’ way of being terribly sensitive and enlightened about religion, and given many other references in his shows it’s clear he just doesn’t get it.

All this does occasionally hamper my enjoyment of movies. Helpdesk Man, of course, has it worse. Being knowledgeable in computers, swordfighting, science and biomechanics I’m pretty sure he feels actual pain whenever a character destroys a computer by firing into the monitor or indulges in a bout of aim-at-the-sword-not-the-opponent duelling. In this instance my lack of science education is kind of an asset - it never occurred to me to find sound in space a problem until he pointed it out, and I am deliciously free to make up my own mind as to whether replicators/transporter technology/cloaking/phasers/warp drive are possible, fictional or currently in existence.

Other things that don’t bug me include horses - which my horsey friends tell me are always switched around in movies for budgetary reasons, hoping we won’t notice, which clearly I don’t - vehicles, costume authenticity and architecture. Just think how much richer and more frustrating the movie-going experience would be if I were able to simmer about the non-period use of cotton blend, the blatant mixing of Gothic and Baroque architectural elements or the implausibly high engine sound of a…. um, car that makes a different engine sound. I could be like those mysterious contributors to IMDb who point out that a film set in 1954 features a 1955 Chevy in the background, an observation which never fails to astound me.

So tell me, Gentle Readers: what peeves you in film? Are you a doctor who cringes every time CPR is performed incorrectly; an expert in multiple-personality disorder who fins most portrayals of it inaccurate; or a psychobotanist who simply feels left out?

Last night was a twofold milestone, being the first Bnonn and Smokey Night we’d had without the piggie for approximately seven hundred years, and a celebration of the fact that we finally finished paying off the motorbike. The plan was to drop the snortlepig off at her grandparents’ house, go into town and have dinner and a movie - a modest and tame proposal, no doubt, by the standards of my shroom-taking gutter-dwelling readers, but pleasing.

Then we discovered that all the movies we wanted to see started too early or too late, so we adjusted the plan to include a DVD. Then at 8:15, as we were enjoying a slice of cheesecake and a Chai latte (me) and a chocolate pudding and hot chocolate (Helpdesk Man), we got a call from the grandparents saying that the pig was frantic and wished to End it All. So we dashed home, nearly freezing to death in the process, and paused only briefly at the DVD store to get The Mask of Zorro, which was out.

We ended up watching Ghost Rider, a truly appalling movie which froze up halfway through, with the snortlepig nestled on the milks harrumphing and flinging her rear end this way and that, coming up for air only to steal Maltesers from Helpdesk Man.

It was nice.

CS Lewis’ A Grief Observed is a stunning portrayal of grief - incisive, anthropologically dead-on and as keen as Lewis ever is. Except for one thing, and it’s always bugged me. Talking about how he expected to find certain places reminded him more f Joy than others, Lewis comments

“Her absence is no more emphatic in those places than anywhere else. It’s not local at all. I suppose if one were forbidden all salt one wouldn’t notice it much more in any one food more than another. eating in general would be different, every day, at every meal.”

Three words, Jack old bean: Hard boiled eggs. I am fond of salt in general and miss it if it is not around, but the slight passivity of, say, a tuna casserole unsalted is nothing compared to the tantalising horror that in an unsalted hard boiled egg. It is worse than useless. It may as well not exist. I realise Lewis was grieving the death of the love of his life and all that, but surely he cannot have been unaware of this simple fact? Perhaps it is simply proof that even his great mind suffered from the shock after all.