Smokey the Magnificent

First off, this brought a brief and transient glimmer of joy to my brain, which, let’s face it, usually just sits there, and I thought you might like it: An Illustrated Guide to Bees.

Second off, I am looking forward with fondness to watching the films of my youth with the snortlepig. We watched Mary Poppins the other night while Helpdesk Man was off carousing, and it was nice. For one thing, we ate carrot sticks and cubes of cheese out of an ice cream sundae cup, which for me is pretty darned Martha Stewart. And also, this afternoon I sang “Feed the birds” as I mended a pair of trou (also pretty d. M. S.), and the snortlepig said “Is that Mary Poppums?”, and it had been, like, a week ago, and she is a Clever Pig. And as the years roll on, if I am not taken by Teh Lupus, we can watch The Sound of Music (which Helpdesk Man has never seen and refuses to, kind of like me and Titanic, only now I secretly want to, because I became briefly obsessed with the wreck after reading the autobiography of Violet Jessop, and I even googled pictures, which as someone with a phobia of all undersea life over about a foot long - seriously, we had enormous hoki fillets for breakfast this morning and they gave me the heeby-jeebies - is No Small Thing, and I hear they did a good job on the architectural details of the ship, and plus, Theoden’s in it).

And Anne of Green Gables. You know, people say that watching movies is anti-social and does not promote togetherness; but it’s bunk. Never mind that entire vibrant communities and indeed practically my own marriage are built on a mutual appreciation of River Tam; some of my fondest memories of my smeggier sisters involve sneaking to the living room at ten past four to watch M*A*S*H* of a weekday.

Third off, tomorrow I am going to the Auckland Food Show. I am taking the auxiliary pig, but not the snortle one, and I plan to eat many little things on sticks and chew judiciously at the purveyors of infused olive oil in a manner calculated to imply I shall be back for a bottle on my Next Go Round, which I probably won’t, because really, you can infuse it yourself, or could if you had a rosemary bush, which we don’t, but still, sixteen dollars. (Probably.) And it will be awesome. I will come back laden with cheem.

Nearly every famous speech from history and the arts can be given new meaning by adding “like, so“. Like so:

“I came, I saw, I, like, so conquered”. -Julius Caesar

“Frankly my dear, I, like, so don’t give a damn.” - Rhett Butler

“A woman without a man is, like, so like a fish without a bicycle.” - Gloria Steinem (attrib.)

“E, like, so equals M C squared”. - Einstein

“Make it, like, so so!” - Jean-Luc Picard

“Unfortunately, no-one can be told what the Matrix is. You, like, so have to see it for yourself.” - Morpheus.

“Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak’d meats/Did, like, so coldly furnish forth the marriage table.” - Hamlet

“It’s, like, so a trap!” - Admiral Ackbar

“We are, like, so not amused.” - Queen Victoria

Amirite? It’s nice to know that my $12,000-plus-extras-for-Cookie-Times-from-the-library-vending-machine degree in English didn’t go to waste.

You, like, so shall not pass...

This is why I love Peter, Paul and Mary:

But that is by the by. Did you know David Tennant once played Hamlet? Onstage, but they made a film version as well. Get a load of this:

Tonight I watched Sleeping Beauty with the pig. I hadn’t seen it for a very long time, if ever, and was pleasantly surprised: especially when  Merryweather, acting as the dressmaker’s dummy for a new dress for Briar Rose, said “It looks awful!” and Flora off-handedly replied “That’s because it’s on you, dear” without breaking stride. It amoosed me. What was even more amoosing, though, was when Briar Rose was weeping on the bed because she would never get to marry her true love, and the snortlepig said “Aww, sad. She needs food, feel better”. It’s good to know she has her priorities straight.

What I ended up doing was making this tomato sauce, which was vaguely exciting; inventing a recipe for coconut chocolate chip meringues, which was fun; cleaning the kitchen, which was neither; and eating a big ol’ bowl of pasta with the snortlepig while we watched The Princess and the Frog. Again.

So. If your firstborn child had to get twenty-to-life in the clink for something, would you rather it were insider trading or arson? Discuss.

It occurs to me that I tend to leave things hanging on this blog. So, to recap:

• I finished knitting the pig’s scarf. I have also knitted, but not yet sewn up, two wristlets and a headband. The latter I may end up ripping out (or “frogging”, as they call it in the biz - why, I do not know), because my sister sniggered at it and I have been plagued with doubts ever since. It was supposed to be English … something… stitch… lacy, innit, but it has Lumps in it. And I suspect if I end up putting it on the pig I will wince at the photos in coming years.
• Driving lessons seem to have kind of temporarily dried up. I’m not sure why, but it wasn’t due to anything exciting.
• I successfully filled the snortlepig up with the correct amounts of fish, liver etc last week, and have made a meal plan for this week as well. To make things even more exciting, Helpdesk Man’s lack of steady income has caused us to retrench, slimming the grocery store budget down to svelte and cheeseless proportions. I have rationed Helpdesk Man’s chocolate, and were it not for Easter he may have already gone on a rampage.

Didn’t fancy pasta on Monday, so we had lentils cooked in chicken stock instead. We are thus one up on nutrition. Ha. Take that, cellular degeneration brought on by poverty-of-affluence demineralisation. The snortlepig, interestingly, has decided chicken soup is the best thing ever thunk up by man, so I’ve made a big batch of it replete with minched garlic, onion and carrots, and will freeze it in muffin tins in order to sup on some before Proper Lunch every day.

Today is slightly momentous, in that Helpdesk Man is going to hand in his notice at the respected government institution that gave him his name, focussing his not inconsiderable energies on his new business, Information Highwayman, instead. I am waiting with the pleasant thrill of anticipation to see if we make our first million by 30 or end up moving into Mother’s spare room, feeding gin to the snortlepig to stunt her growth. A more pressing question, however - can I continue to refer to him as Helpdesk Man? Information Highwayman is certainly a good name for a business - in fact, I suspect that’s what prompted the career change - but it doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, blog-wise. Do share your thoughts, which are valuable to me.

Also, I need documentary recommendations. The snortlepig is becoming too jolly sentient to watch dubious movies with, as was brought painfully home wen she started saying “Fall down!” the other night every time somebody got shot in The Boondock Saints. And as Soon-To-Be-Ex-Helpdesk Man* refuses to spend the next fifteen years watch Pollyanna and Meet Me in St Louis while he eats his sup - or worse, Dora the Explorer - we must resort to non-fiction. At least, once we’ve finished the A-Team, which is borderline acceptable in that no matter how many cars blow up or firefights begin, nobody ever gets shot or killed. (It took me, like, a whole season to notice this. I’d long thought it was suspicious that a car could flip three times and explode in a flaming fireball while the bad guys simply hauled themselves peevishly out of the windows unscathed - but I had naively assumed that a team of desperadoes so a) hard-core and b) competent as the A-Team might occasionally hit a target while emptying their two dozen guns, if only by the laws of statistical probability. But nope. Only Imperial Stormtroopers could be so precise.)

So, yeah. No looming undersea life, no searing exposes of the underbelly of Rwanda’s drug trafficking industry - just nice documentaries, TV or movie, that won’t bore STBXHM or scar the pig. If you happen to know anything on the subject of rhinos, babies, duckies, horsies, the moon, milks or mousies, she would be particularly agog.

Go now.

*Not, like, in a divorcey way. Who has the time?

Remember the snortlepig’s security knickers? Well, she seems to have made a new friend. It is a small bottle of peppermint essence. She fell in love with it at the supermarket when I gave it to her to hold in place of the cream, having spotted at the last second that she had taken the lid off and was about to upend it onto the supermarket floor. That same day I made mint chocolate chip ice cream (not my most successful flavour - that was three weeks ago and we still have some lurking in the freezer), and had to wrest the essence away from a squealing pig with entreaties and promises to give it back. When it was returned to her, sans half a teaspoon, she carried it away in sobbing triumph and promptly hid it under the sofa where my clawing fingers and dodgy housekeeping would never find it.

Then a few days ago, the snortlepig’s tiny aunt discovered it under said sofa while searching for the snortlepig’s small wooden animals. I put it back on the shelf and thought nothing of it until today, when the snortlepig started dancing and pointing and saying “DA!” at the pantry. I picked her up, wondering if she’d developed a sudden taste for dried chickpeas… but nope. She’s been carrying the peppermint essence around again for two solid hours. Freak.

Interestingly, although the peppermint smell cannot be detected outside the bottle and although she almost certainly does not associate the two, the mint chocolate chip ice cream was her favourite flavour. She also eats olives. She’s classier than me.

Incidentally, shikakai? Good stuff. Exceptionally. If this keeps up I might be able to wear my hair down occasionally, although of course I would then have to navigate the perils of giving the snortlepig the milks without sitting on it myself or having said pig twine it round her feet and pull. Madonna never had this problem (the Blessed Virgin I mean, not the singer, although I doubt she did either).

I’m drafting a dress! It is harder than it looks. And invisible zips are evil. I will update you when there is good news: until then, don’t ask.

In other news… hoom. Helpdesk Man ate the first ripe tomato of the summer yesterday and his eyes watered a little. I am babysitting my small sisters on Friday, and we will watch the last 29 minutes of Toy Story 2 and the entirety of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. I have an article due in six days that isn’t even remotely written. We watched Season 5 of The Office and are on to Season 6. I’ve been listening, goodness knows why, to wizard rock and have so far sifted only two decent songs from the dross - I Believe in Nargles and Accio Love. Both of which are, quite honestly, rubbish: but I have a small life. Also, the pig’s wet nappy reeks strangely of tuna, which we have not eaten for months. I’d better go change it before worse things happen.

So Helpdesk Man and I are watching our way through the Harry Potter films. Hermione’s eyebrows notwithstanding, I’m enjoying them more than I expected. The Order of the Phoenix, which we watched last night, was positively arty in a few spots. That bit where Fred and George were consoling Nigel after he’d been using Dolores’ torture quill was actually moving. Also, I’d never before considered the awesomeness of the name Dolores Umbridge. She’s good with names, is JK Rowling.

Here’s the thing, though. The Triwizard Cup. Now, clearly it didn’t matter how the contestants got to the cup through the maze: they were being judged on results, not the wizarding prowess they showed during the process. (Which made their previous accrual of points kinda redundant, which was silly, but never mind.) So if Harry proved himself a one-note wonder, it wouldn’t affect his win. That being the case… why didn’t he go with “Accio Firebolt” again? He could have zoomed over the maze looking for the cup found it in seconds. Better yet… why not “Accio Triwizard Cup“? I can buy that the Cup was maybe enchanted to keep it in place, but the broomstick thing should have worked. Silly Harry.

Also, I like that they didn’t tart Hermione up too much. They de-bushified her hair movies before they were supposed to, and put her in civvies when she still should have been wearing robes: but she wasn’t in crop tops and miniskirts, and that is something. There are Standards left in the world. And hoodies, apparently.

Anyway.

Much to my surprise my one-hour-of-housework-a-day resolution has left me eager and sprightly, so my added challenge for this week is to tie up loose ends. Which sounds like killing my ex-bosses, but it isn’t. I’m fairly fond of most of my ex-bosses, with the exception of Simon the evil manager from Rialto who once spent five minutes castigating me for stealing a piece of company scrap paper to write an amoosing story on to pin up by the freezer. Oddly it wasn’t the story he objected to: it was the stealing. Of the scrap paper. Which never actually left the premises, so technically it would be what, vandalism? Graffiti? Anyway he ended up filching $400 from petty cash, so ha.

Most of said loose ends are fairly routine - I have to fix a few flagged articles at Suite, complete my shopping tote bags and mend a few clothes. Sadly, I also feel morally compelled to do my taxes. Yes, those taxes. The ones that should have been done last March, or whenever it is one traditionally does taxes. Helpdesk Man and I have made a date to stare them in the face tonight, and I am hoping to contract fulminating lupus before then in order to gracefully back out. It’s not the money - I’m pretty sure I owe a paltry amount, plus of course the late fee - it’s the psychology of the thing. Ever watch Black Books? Exactly.

The outcome: Peridjinndalmationwhatsername liked A New Hope enough to watch The Empire Strikes Back, but did not feel a pressing need to continue on to Return of the Jedi - excusable, because it was after midnight at that point and we are not as young as we once were. (With the exception of the snortlepig, who napped from Tatooine through to the Imperial Walkers, then perked up and spent all of Dagobah and Cloud City bopping around the living room, sitting on people’s knees and taking their empty candy bar wrappers to the bin. Then as soon as everybody left she marched into the bedroom and said “Bed” very firmly. This is the second time in a week that she’s asked to go to bed - maybe our lazy anti-routine attitude has finally reverse-psychologised her into a Ferber toddler. Maybe I should deny her vegetables in order to imbue them with alluring mystique.)

Furthermore:

• Perithingy was touchingly furious at Han for saying “I know” instead of “I love you, too”.
• The snortlepig cried “Piggy!” in great glee whenever Yoda appeared.
• I’d forgotten how young Harrison Ford was. He was, like, baby-faced. With hair on top. And nary an earring in sight.
• I’d also forgotten how dang loopy Yoda is when first discovered by Luke. Good golly. He must have been breathing in swamp-shroom pollen for twenty years straight. Couldn’t the makers of the *ahem* prequels have put in a subtle hint or two that Yoda’s race typically suffers from a peculiar mental degeneration in old age? And while on the subj, couldn’t they have worked around “I haven’t gone by the name Obi-Wan since oh, before you were born”?
• The sorbet Mark II turned out just fine.

So, Star Wars in a few hours. Luckily I got a head start on cooking last night - we watched Julia & Julia instead of Up as we’d planned, and I got inspired and started peeling onions at 9:45PM. The snortlepig helped. She is good at onions. So the kidney bean sauce is simmering away in the crockpot, the mince just requires seasoning and cooking, and I’ve made the mango sorbet and strawberry sorbet. Actually I’ve made the strawberry sorbet twice. The first time I made it I found it a bit on the sweetish side, and being confident and well-adjusted immediately started to worry that people would think less of me as a sugar-gobbling shill with no appreciation for the natural subtleties of fruit. (This is a Thing we me. I think it stems from growing up with sisters who ordered orange juice when I was wanting milkshakes. It is only in recent years that I have learned to man up and order a caramel milkshake and fries if I want them, even if my sister is ordering a vegan panini and spirulina at the shop next door. It’s so good to grow as a person, don’t you think? Anyway.) So I ruthlessly halved the sugar in the next batch, and it turned outr wimpy and pallid. So I melted it down again, added some more sugar and will shortly plonk it back in the machine to freeze anew. Never let it be said that I lack commitment to my Art.

On the subject of Julie & Julia, I finally got around to looking up Julia’s blog today, and was faintly if illogically surprised to see it looked just like the one in the movie (for the record, atrociously ugly). She comes across better in the blog than the movie - wittier and better at cooking and generally less cutesy and Meg Ryanish. And that’s not a slur on Amy Adams, who is awesome: it was a badly-written character, and Nora Ephron is culpable. For one thing, it sounded like most of her lines were taken from her blog (although I haven’t read enough of it yet to determine whether or not this is the case). Who says “Dreading, dreading, dreading” in real life? And another thing - which was also an issue in You’ve Got Mail, Nora, sorry - people don’t emote when they blog. With their faces, I mean. All those shots of Amy and Meg sitting in front of their laptops, eyebrowing and grimacing away to their voiceovers? Doesn’t happen. Look in an internet cafe sometime. Does the glassy, vacant-eyed, slightly grumpy stare emitted by the average inhabitant give you the slightest clue to what he is typing? No, it does not. It could be a sonnet, a thesis or a Dear John - you just don’t know, because we don’t feel the need to toss our little heads and smirk in synchrony with our thoughts.

Of course, I realise she was probably just trying to jazz up the inevitable eighteen scenes of Julie sitting in front of her laptop, and perhaps she thought the glassy-eyed stare would have gotten a bit much after awhile. But still. There’s “winsomely perky”, and then there’s “I want to chuck you in a flotation tank for eight straight days and we’ll see if your cute bob is still bouncing around your cheekbones then, wench”.

Yes, well.

I made some shorts for the pig today. At least, they were supposed to be shorts: I realised too late that snortlepigs have a crotch-to-knee measurement of about an inch, so they’re kind of three-quartersy.

I like ‘em. The button detail on the hems pleases me, and the ungathered panel on the front waistband (which was due to running out of fabric and having to piece the band) gives the thing a vaguely sailory, Donalf Duckish, Frenchish air which the pig carries off rather well. I can see this in beige and blue for a boy, can’t you?

Helpdesk Man artily arranged these standing up by themselves on the couch. Very Dr Seuss.

Button detail on hem of trousies

The snortlepig, struck by a momentary panic: "Is my squish still on?"

"Smile for the camera", I said, and she did this. She didn't get biddable photogenicity from my side of the family. Freak.

So, yup. I gotta go wash my hair. It’s got a sort of “Anglo-Saxon warrior after a week of battle” vibe, and one cannot watch Star Wars with hair like that. It would be disrespectful to Princess Leia.

PS: Helpdesk Man had the grace to admit that the “Sherlock Holmes” movie was a bit rubbish. We may make it to our fourth anniversary after all.