Smokey the Magnificent

I told you, spammers love me.

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Thank you, “Vintage Tupperware”. I am touched.

In other news, potty training is not progressing as well as one might wish. I just had to google “how to clean urine off sheepskin rugs”, which is not the sort of thing I prefer googling.It’s a good thing we have wooden floors. In actual fact the house does currently smell a little like a public lavatory, but that isn’t the snortlepig’s fault. My family of origin skipped town for a two-week holiday, leaving us with two pungent and tumorous mice. Helpdesk Man is disgusted. The snortlepig, who appears to have no sense of smell, is thrilled. She hunkers down by their cages, points repeatedly from one to the other and whispers “Mouse… mouse…. mouse…” in loving tones.

So I just finished reading the Harry Potter books for the second time, in quick succession, and I had a few thoughts:

• Does the Sorting Hat have a quota? I mean, it seems likely that the odd group of first-years would be populated by far more Hufflepuff-worthy students than Gryffindor-worthy ones. What if forty-five out of fifty students ended up in Ravenclaw one year? It’d totally mess up the Quidditch team. That’s probably how Hermione ended up in Gryffindor… the Hat was all “Let’s see, freakishly brilliant brainpower… um, let’s just ignore that for a bit, gotta juggle the numbers”. It’s a scam.
• If food is one of the five exceptions to whatisname’s elemental laws of transfiguration and can’t be conjured into existence (as described by Hermione in book 7), how did Mrs Weasley pour a creamy sauce into a saucepan from the tip of her wand in an earlier book? It certainly seemed as if she conjured it up, although I suppose one could make a convoluted argument that she had made it earlier and was simply returning it from an alternate plane of dimension or summat.
• And there are numerous instances of things being transfigured into animals. Why couldn’t one simply transfigure a log into a pig, then kill it and eat its meat?
• Similarly, unless clothing was also un-transfigurable, there’s no reason the Weasleys should have had shabby robes. In fact, the whole “Weasleys are poor” thing becomes ridiculous. People transfigured armchairs all the time; Dumbledore made beds once; so the Weasley home could have been brimming with sumptuous furniture. And why buy cauldrons and so on? I can see how spellbooks might be protected by some kind of magical copyright preventing their creation out of thin air, but scales and owls and so forth? It makes no sense.

You know, I’d probably find the answers to these questions have already been discussed ad nauseum if I ventured onto a Harry Potter forum… but that is a step I dare not take. So anyone care to venture a theory?

There are a couple of children roaming our garden outside the house. I can hear them talking and clattering things, but I cannot confront them because a) I am not wearing a shirt, and would half to walk past the open front door to get one, b) the piggie is sleeping on my lap and c) I am a pansy. They’ve been round the house several times now, and I am afraid they might try to wander in or something.

Awkward.

Maybe I’ll sic the pig on ‘em. She can get mighty cantankerous when roused from a nap.

We had it. I shall not dwell on the particulars. Always forward-thinking, is Smokey, despite an occasional yearning to travel back to 1977 in a time machine and see the first showing of Star Wars. (Wouldn’t that be awesome?)

Anyway. The fallout: my excellent mother gave the snortlepig a potty. This means we have to house-train her. So far she has had a fine time prancing around the house naked, smacking her squish and trying to remove the receptacle part of the potty in the hopes of using it for water play (which… never mind). Signs of Elimination Awareness are notably lacking, but I will keep you apprised.

The passing of Christmas has given me thoughts about the next milestone, New Years Resolutions. I have not always kept Resolutions, excepting an annual angsty determination during my troubled youth to become thinner than my thin sister (which never eventuated; still hasn’t; but I can make puff pastry from scratch and she can’t, so ha. Come to think of it, there might be a causal connection here.) Two years ago I had a very specific and concrete list of Resolutions, which worked to some degree - not the degree of actually fulfilling them, ’cause that’s crazy talk, but the degree of doing more of whatever it was than I otherwise would have done. F’rinstance, “read one theology book a month” didn’t quite pan out, but I did read several, which I otherwise might not have done.

(Interruption: snortlepig throomed on my trousies.)

Then the next year I abandoned concreteness in favour of vague general intentions, and pretty much did squat. Moral: concreteness is key.

So this year, I have some fairly specific goals and slightly less than a week in which to revise them.

(Interruption: snortlepig throomed in the potty while reading Animalia, another Christmas gift. Go snortlepig! Yay for throom! Rah rah rah, etc.)

Let me tell you them.

-Get my learner’s and restricted licence. This is a tad intimidating and I’d really rather not… but come on. I’m 23. It’s getting pathetic. And I have a copy of the Road Code… somewhere. My friends assure me that the learner’s test is dead easy, but I’m not sure they have fully engaged with the cluenessness of a Smokey on the road. Where others subconsciously pick up road rules just by driving around with their parents, making the whole process seem absurdly intuitive, Smokeys… don’t. A quick readthrough of the Road Code was something of a revelation, similar to the discovery of Tolkien’s hobbit runes, but slightly less obvious. Still, we shall do our best.

(Interruption: the snortlepig throomed on the floor again. Twice. I guess she peaked early.)

-Publish 9 print articles. I had a vague aim for 12 last year but totally didn’t make it - I published what, four? Not very many. But it’s good money and keeps the old synapses perky, so I should make more of an effort.

(Interruption: good golly, that’s one leaky pig.)

-Handmake all gifts. I’m of two minds about this, mostly due to laziness, but I feel faintly obliged as a blogger to have at least one goal that’s eco-friendly or anti-sweatshop or similarly noble. And I feel even less inclined to vow only to eat the produce of my veggie garden or live on $30 grocery money a week, or whatever the cool people do. I could manage a “no buying clothes new” thing, but that wouldn’t really be a challenge now I’m into sewing. I will think on it.

-Learn to make ferments, a la Traditional Foodism.

No more ideas as yet… but note that in a rare moment of realism, I have not put “learn Spanish”. I might have to add “Potty train the snortlepig”, though…

I finally got around to putting up my punk dress on Craftster. This one:

In other sewing news, I adapted a crayon roll tutorial to make a hair accessories holder for my dear friend April. It sorta rolls shut and ties with a ribbon, and I put a wee pocket on the front for no good reason.

Fortunately the photos are small enough you can’t see my wonky topstitching. Topstitching is like the scones of the sewing world - not hard in theory, but sublime if perfect and unpleasant if not, and the mark of a fine cook where fancier dishes can be fudged and disguised with bits of herbs and such.

For my other friend (for I have two!) I made a reversible tote bag, with a girly side and a geeky side. The girly side had a flower and swirly embroidery, and the geeky side had an embroidered quote from the X-Files… namely “I’m in love with Assistant Director Skinner”, which is funnier in context. Sadly I finished that one about four minutes before the friend showed up to collect it, so I didn’t get photos: it did put me on a bit of a tote bag kick though, so I have another one half cut out. Goodness knows I could use them - the weird Plunket ones I got given at an expo have the consistency of cheap fusible webbing and can’t be trusted with so much as a bag of chocolate chips. Neither can Helpdesk Man, but he has more tensile strength.

[Sung by Edward, or similar]

When you wake up

Yeah, you know I’m gonna be

The shadow in the corner watching over you

When you go out

Yeah, you know I’m gonna be

The hooded figure softly slinking after you.

If you get drunk

Yeah, you know I’m gonna be

The man who buys a bottle of absinthe for you

And if I haver

At the corner of the bar

The girl I call my snickle oodlekums is you.

And I would kill a hundred fish

And I would kill a hundred more

Just to be the man who killed two hundred fish

And left them at your door

When I’m working

Yeah, you know I’m gonna be

The man who sells illegal kidneys just for you

And when the money

Comes to me from Shady Fred

I’ll mug him for his cut and pass it on to you.

When you come home

Yeah, you know I’m gonna be

The one who euthanised your goldfish just for you

Did your dishes

Rearranged your DVDs

And drew a poem on the mirror just for you.

And I’d decapitate a pig

And I’d decapitate one more

Just to be the man who put two headless pigs

Outside your bedroom door…

[Edward, or similar, staked by Buffy: FINIS]

Merry Christmas!

If you could cross any animal with any other animal to produce an int’resting hybrid, which two would you choose?

I want this song at my funeral. This version of the song, I mean: this exact one. K?

While I’m on the subject it seems prudent to list all the songs I want at my funeral, given that I tend to forget and tell different people different things. Only, um, I forget the rest. I wanted Into the West for a while after ROTK came out, but that’s kinda passe now: and one wouldn’t want people snorting cynically and rolling their eyes as my lifeless corpus was wheeled down the aisle. (I still have a sneaking yen for “White shores” being engraved on my tombstone, though. What do you think? Too much?) There are plenty of hymns I like, but I’m not sure whether any of them are particularly funeral-friendly. “To be a pilgrim”, perhaps.

If I had real chutzpah, I’d request ‘Requiem for Evita’, just to make people nervy. And if I were a meaner man than I am I’d choose a piece of music from, say, Sense and Sensibility, which my mother tentatively describes as her favourite film, just so every time she watched it she’d think of me and come over all wibbly. Although we had the Star Wars theme song at our wedding and I can still hear that without thinking of the fateful day…. I guess it simply has stronger associations. Which would be an interesting psychological test for my mother. Which had a stronger claim on her memory: her own dead daughter or a cracking Jane Austen adaptation starring Emma Thompson? Then again, I wouldn’t be around to assess the results. Probably a good thing, too: Emma Thompson is smashing.

On a related note, if anyone ever dies in a manner which associates The Princess Bride, Breakfast at Tiffany’s or of course Star Wars in my mind with said death, there will be hell to pay. Please keep this in mind before taking up any extreme sports or ingesting trans fats, OK? If I’m right in the middle of “My hands are dirty.” “My hands are dirty too” and the phone rings saying they found your body in a desolate field mauled by raptors, I will be very put out. Just sayin’.

Anyway, it seems I could use some suggestions. Funeral songs. Hit me with your best. And do you feel the final coffin procession should be accompanied by a slow and weepy tune, or something rollicking and upbeat as if to say “Hah! I boogie in the face of death!”? I’ve been to both and am unsure.

I learned a new word recently: limned. It means something along the lines of “looking shiny when light hits it”. The reason I know this word is that I’ve been reading a collection of short stories from the library, pleasingly titled St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised By Wolves. The stories are good - creepy and imaginative, which I like - but there in every single one, every twenty pages or so, is the word. Limned. Tombstones limned by moonlight, mirrors limned by moonlight, rocks limned by… moonlight again, I think. It’s most odd. Then again I’ve been using word “canard” in every possible context since coming across it a few days ago, so can’t complain.

Today I am joining my sister-in-law and her baby for a massive pre-Christmas grocery shopping mish. The pressure is intense. What am I likely to forget? We’re having a slightly non-traditional menu this year, so I can’t just check off turkey, potatoes and cream and figure I’m safe. Turkey being prohibitively expensive and also somewhat evil, we’re doing a roast chicken (I know, only marginally less evil) and also focaccia, chocolate mousse and almond torte, while the inlaws provide ham, wine, salad, trifle and milktart. Then on Christmas Day I’m bringing a cold roast pumpkin and feta salad with cashews in, and possibly lemon sorbet.

LATER:

We came. We shopped. We conquered. My feet hurt.

Also, would somebody kindly tell me the correct spelling and pronunciation of “focaccia”? Focaccia and foccacia both anger the spellchecker and I’m never sure whether to call it fokaysheea, fokarchia or fukarsha.

So, I don’t drink. That is, I don’t Don’t Drink, I just don’t drink. I don’t like the taste. Nothing sinister. I’m perfectly normal.

But today I required some red wine for a braised shin of beast, and being an independent go-getter I ventured into the Wine and Beer aisle to get some. Being, as I say, a non-drinker, I have perhaps a distorted and overly respectful view of the alcohol scene. I think of it in movie-like imagery, involving crystal-clear glasses and candlelight reflecting off the ruby-red liquor and a smoky jazz solo crooning in the background. And in my mind, a bottle of such wine would cost, say, $60 minimum. $120, easy. $200, no sweat. Well, it isn’t like that in the supermarket. The bottle I eventually procured from the “Reds” was $5.99. In its defense, it wasn’t the cheapest. It was the cheapest equal, and its copartner had a smeggier label. Ach well, I thought, it’s for cooking: as long as it doesn’t etch a hole in my Le Creuset we’ll be fine. (See, I don’t utterly lack taste. I use Le Creuset.)

So I got it home, only to find at the critical shin-of-beef-searing moment that we do not possess a corkscrew. Now, Helpdesk Man does drink - cider mostly, but the occasional schlp of whiskey when the pressures of helpdesking get too much. Curiously though, neither of these beverages apparently requires a corkscrew. And for some reason, he doesn’t own a Swiss Army Knife. What kind of man - ? Anyhoo. So after an abortive attempt to MacGyver a corkscrew out of sewing machine repair kit implements, Helpdesk Man trotted off to ask the neighbors for a corkscrew. And I stood in the kitchen, turning the shin of beast to prevent it scorching, and musing that we just don’t do Gracious Living as well as we ought.

They lent us one - but here’s the kicker. As the neighbor, whom we had never met before, handed the corkscrew over, he said reproachfully “I thought you guys were Christians“.

Another golden evangelism opportunity lost to the Demon Drink. The shin of beast is, however, delicious.

Spam is getting cunning. I just deleted 17 off this very blog, and they were all “This is a very interesting blog, I havc read several of your posts and will refer it to my friends” and “Great content, I like how you are clear in the message you convey”. It’s a wee bit canned, a la “Smokering is a pleasure to teach” from my old school reports (administered to every student who didn’t actively try to sever the teacher’s thumbs) or “You have a lovely and unique VOICE” from Suite101, which is a bit of a joke as every single Suite writer gets told the same thing. Still, I have to admire the fiendish psychology that would prey on the ego of a tentative newbie blogger. I can just see it stammering now, eyes misting up behind its spectacles, “Q-quality content! I have quality content!”

Fortunately, being under no illusions about my content, I remain immune from pharmaceutical blandishments. Now, if they started sending messages like “Dude, that’s sick” or “Quit bugging the public with the mundane details of your parochial little life”, my bank account details would be skipping over the ‘net in a flash. And this is why research is the most important part of freelancing.

Research, and a Lovely and Unique Voice.