Boris wins

Boris Johnson won the London mayoral election.

Brilliant.

My hatred for Ken Livingstone rivaled my political hatred for Dick Cheney, but being local - was probably more visceral. Livingstone's reign was divisive and expensive. I really believe that London will be better off without him. I can only say one good thing about him - Ken Livingstone genuinely loves London. I do believe it. But it's a love tainted by strange Gramscian political philosophies and a self-loathing hatred of the West demonstrated most strongly by his odd love-in with Islamist extremists. And it's hard to hold those views and do right by a town which, arguably, figures most importantly in the history of Western Civilization. I guess there's one more thing I kinda liked about Ken. I strongly supported Livingstone's anti-pigeon policy, which I hope Boris will continue.

As for the municipal qualities of Mr Johnson, I'm not sure. But I think he's actually going to do a pretty good job. Saying stupid, offensive things never seemed to hurt Ken. The best thing Boris Johnson can do is dismantle the strange gravy train that Ken Livingstone set up to provide succor to his cronies. The second best thing he can do is relatively little - allowing the far more accountable London boroughs to make decisions locally. And he can make a start by allowing councils more control over the main streets and pavements (sidewalks). As it is, Transport for London, has the (largely unused) enforcement powers for the sidewalks along "red routes" (main thoroughfares) and fail to make sure that pathways are clear and clean. This may seem like a trivial concern, but it actually impacts daily on the lives of millions of Londoners.

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Almost best of all, Boris Johnson struck a blow for the hair challenged everywhere. And for that, we mussy-headed few thank him. I explained this to an anti-Boris co-worker, who wondered why Boris couldn't be bothered to comb his hair. I even challenged her on her lack of tolerance for the disability of permanent bad hair day - a condition I've suffered from my whole life.

Of course, she probably should have said "Oh come on, your hair's not as bad as Johnson's."

But she didn't.

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Political pundits everywhere are blaming Gordon Brown for the dismal results for Labour. His bad policies and his grim demeanor are certainly partly to blame. But I think the link starts to crumble when it comes to London. Ken Livingstone is very much his own man. He's won the mayoralty once as an Independent and once as the Labour candidate - and this campaign was disassociated from Labour as much as it could be - Ken literally returned to the colours he used as an Independent candidate.

And London is not the nation, it's both bigger and smaller than that. It's insulting to Boris Johnson, to Ken Livingstone and most of all to Londoners to assume that this election was driven by national policies. Love or hate for Ken was brewing strong before Gordon Brown ever stepped to the helm.

Crisis, what crisis

Labour suffered landslide losses in the local elections last night. It looks like the Prime Minister is in trouble. Well, it looked like Gordon Brown was in trouble before, but now there's some hard data.

For American readers, many folks in England elected some of their local councillors last night. Not the whole country, just some areas, and in some councils - just some councillors. (I know it's confusing). So you might say that it's not really a referendum on Gordo - but it is. And it is because in this country, local areas are where politicians traditionally have been grown - where a cadre of footsoldiers are what can win and lose you a general election.

And especially, when it looks like Labour may have been pushed into third place (behind the hopeless LibDems) and the Conservatives are winning seats in places where - as a BBC radio presenter put it - I didn't know there were any Tories there.

According to the beeb:

BBC research suggests the party has fallen into third place nationally with 24% of the vote, beaten by the Tories on 44% and Lib Dems on 25%.

So far they are the worst local poll results for Labour in 40 years.

But the party's chief whip Geoff Hoon told the BBC there was "no crisis" for Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the lead-up to the next general election.

Geoff Hoon says "no crisis" - what a loon, that Mr Hoon.

The Mayor of London

No return as yet. Fingers crossed that London follows the national trend.

Buddy backs Boris

Buddy backs Boris Johnson in London's mayoral elections. (Today!)

The Wright Stuff

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

Barack Obama's [ex] pastor Jeremiah Wright has gone all nutso. He is like a pastor scorned and he's struck back in an alarming melange of pointed social critique and crazy conspiracy theory.

What a dumbass. I realise Wright's probably feeling pretty neglected by his protege, but really he should have just taken a leaf out of Peter Mandelson's book. He's a British politico and Tony Blair crony who suffered scandal after scandal - but knew when to slink off and shut up and he's been rewarded with a couple of comebacks and now a very cushy position in European government. Not only has the good reverend potentially damaged Obama's chances, he's almost certainly blown his own chances of national power straight out of the water.

Certain right wing bloggers have a race theory about this - that because Wright's ideology is based on pervasiveness of racism and oppression in America to the extent that a black man could never be president - he has to make sure that this remains the case if a black man gets close and torpedo his chances. Maybe, but I kind of doubt it. It smacks of ridiculousness. Besides, I don't really feel that electing a president who's black will any more relieve America of racial tension or redeem past crimes than electing a woman president will make sexism and misogyny a dim and distant memory. (Although I think either would have beneficial effects)

Like a lot of people who behave so self-destructively, Wright's behavior seemed pathological to me. Like he just couldn't help it. Like an ill-tempered couple who just can't stop picking fights with each other. Still, he's an adult, a man of stature and experience and really Reverend Wright should have known better.

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Barack Obama has denounced Rev. Wright's words. He found them offensive. Well, good - I guess. But it struck me that what Obama really found offensive was that Wright wasn't following the party line anymore, wasn't giving Obama his due. After all, he'd heard 20 years of Wright's challenging sermons - but only a few minutes of Wright's criticisms of one Barack Obama.

A cut that's easy to maintain

There comes a time in every woman's life when she says "I can't be bothered with the elaborate 'dos. Just give me a nice simple haircut that takes about five minutes to fix and is easy to maintain."

For me, that point came when I was about ten or so. Roughly about the time I didn't want my mother to brush my hair anymore.

I just can't be bothered much with the whole hair thing. So this post isn't about hair. It's about gardening.

I've reached a point where I need a garden that take about five minutes to fix and is easy to maintain. My garden is quite small, but my plant collection and the fact that I've waaay overplanted means that it requires a fair bit of maintenance. Weeding, pruning, staking, feeding, mulching, lifting, dividing - and worst of all - pest control.

I've decided I'm going to pitch out a bunch of stuff and replant with minimum fuss plantings that I know can withstand me nemeses: the gastropods, the lily beetle and a nasty kind of root grub that goes after rhododendrons and impatiens (a plant I previously thought was easy peasy). I'm going to dig up all my oriental and asiatic lilies and I think I'm going to get rid of a large tree peony, too. (It's nice, but I'm afraid it's just too big for my small garden). I think I'm going to replace the lifted items with hellebores, day lilies, ferns, heuchera and white Japanese anemones. (It won't take many. The garden is small and there are some there already).

And best of all, I think I'm going to make my VolMom do much of the work when she's over in May.

I want less of this


grubs on impatiens


pretty, but evil


snail damage

More of these

hellebore


terracotta daylily


Japanese anemone - though I want the pure white kind


heuchera

Way to go PA

Hurray for Hillary!

ID please

My local cemetery often has football (soccer) related floral tributes. Lots and lots of soccer balls. Football strips (jerseys) and crests - mostly in Arsenal and Chelsea colours.






And the occasional Manchester United strip:




But here's one I don't recognise. Which football team is this? It's driving me crazy. Sam, do you know?

The ten pence punch

In Gordon Brown's last budget as Chancellor he messed around with the tax bandings - that is he adjusted marginal rates. He announced it as a tax cut. For some - mostly those of higher than median wages, it genuinely was. But for the very low paid, it was tax hike. The first level of taxation was at 10% - quite a low rate of income tax - and to me absolutely right that the first tranche of taxable income should be taxed at a low rate - to reduce the burden on the low paid. Gordon Brown's budget essentially doubled that rate of tax for the working poor. Interestingly enough, the press failed to pick up on it for a day or two and spun Gordon's spin as if they were paid hacks. But here's what I wrote about it:

Anyway, Gordo likes to make out that he's a swell and generous kind a guy. Sure, he taxes the rich, but only to give to the poor - especially the poor little tots.

Only it's a terrible lie and his current budget is a prime example. The headlines all read that he's cut the basic tax rate, but he's managed to actually increase the taxes on the very low paid while reducing taxes on those earning over $100,000.

Labour will tell you that the very low paid with children can always apply for tax credits. Sure, but you're forced to apply as a supplicant to Gordon Brown and entangle yourself into a notoriously knotty bureacracy. (The Treasury admitted only last week the system of credits was baffling.) But the point is that the young and potentially aspirational folks on low wages are hit with yet another Gordon Brown sucker punch.

This country has long had a problem of keeping people mouldering away on benefits - de-skilling and degenerating. For many it doesn't pay to work. With the abolition of the 10 pence marginal rate it pays even less.

And surely, if Labour is to stand for anything, it must be for labour - you know - the workers - and not screwing them out of the wages they earn cleaning toilets, stocking shelves and picking up trash by the side of the road.

Most Labour politicians and left-wing pundits were oddly silent on the matter. And they've kept schtum for nearly a year. If I were to be charitable, I would say that they'd perhaps been kept silent by the party whips - told to shut up until Gordon's coronation last summer, then to zip their lips until Autumn election (which didn't happen), then to twiddle their thumbs until this year's budget was announced in case this error was corrected.

But the current chancellor Alistair Darling - on orders from the true head of the exchequer no doubt - has decided to go ahead and scrap the 1o p rate.

This is bad policy. Here's something I wrote about that a while ago.

The point is, of course, that everyone has to start somewhere. And unless you're the privileged child of wealth, the place you start is at a very low wage job. You work your way up. And you should be rewarded for trading a life of penurious leisure for penurious labor by keeping as much of your wage as possible when you're at that rough, rotten bottom rung of the economic ladder.

It's not as if the low-paid don't pay taxes. They pay a lot of tax (proportionately). They pay taxes on goods and services. They are almost certainly paying other payroll taxes (FICA in the US, National Insurance in the UK). And they can't escape the taxman with sheltered income and offshore accounts.

I believe in the hand up, not the handout. But forcing the poor to hand-over disproportionately, making their precarious situation all the more tottering is just wrong.

Now the Labour back benches are in turmoil. And they should be. Gordon Brown is concerned only so much as in threatens his (weakening) grip on power - but still refuses to acknowledge the harm this policy will do.

Shame on him.

Things I'd like to blog about

The Ten-P tax
The London mayoral elections
an IPPR report on why we should side with the Muslim Brotherhood (bad idea, btw)
The dreary cold weather (cruel.April.month)
Our colds
the implosion of Gordon Brown
the weirdness of the Shannon Matthews case

but I can't 'cause I'm too tired to even drag up links

My first movie on flickr

My first movie on flickr
Originally uploaded by London looks

Flickr is now allowing users to upload short (90 seconds or less) video clips. Like some users, I'm not too sure about it. But we'll see.

Perfect pansies

facing up to it, originally uploaded by London looks.

This perfect little viola was on a grave in the local cemetery. Mine never look this good. VolMom's a dab hand at pansy rearing - apparently there's some kind of special pansy fertilizer that can make all the difference (she was tipped off by the VolAunt) - and it's remarkably and counter-intuitively high in nitrogen (I'm told). I've never seen it for sale in this country.

In the interests of global peace and security

I don't believe it! Gordon Brown has finally said something doesn't make me queasy. He wants to expand the Anglosphere, by deepening relations between Britain and America, or so he says in the Wall Street Journal. And he has a whole host of policy prescriptions backed by nebulous spending commitments.

And since our little family embodies the Anglo-American bond, we should get a grant. In the interests of global peace and security, of course.



British and American

In the mouth, not on the mouth

In the mouth, not on the mouth, originally uploaded by London looks.

The Vol-in-Law needs to work on his technique a little.

Cross selling

Cadbury's, the British chocolatier (confectioner is the real word, I think), has been running a series of high concept ads. And by high concept, I mean weird and not much to do with chocolate.

The first in the series was a gorilla banging on a drum to the tune of Phil Collins Something in the Air Tonight. What's that to do with candy bars, you ask? Nothing, as far as I can tell, I reply.

The second is short film of airport trucks racing around, losing your luggage (no doubt the trucks and the suitcases have escaped from Terminal 5) to the tune of Queen's Don't Stop Me Now. The ad is brilliant in the sense that it's beautiful and watchable, but I still don't want to eat their chocolate.

The ad has, however, led directly to me and the Vol-in-Law rumbling about how we don't have any Queen in our CD collections. And today, I placed an order for best-of collection.

Class claims

The Vol-in-Law has had a high school friend visiting him this week. This friend is working class. His claim to working class status stem primarily from the fact that his father is working class in the traditional sense. That is, he works in a skilled, manual trade.

Now, while this friend was here - my husband tried to convince him that we weren't as solidly middle class as we appear. I didn't think that was particularly fair on me, as I believe that I am firmly of the middle class* - and of the professional/academic variety at that. My family has enough diplomas and certificates to wall paper a small north-facing wall of a bijou pied-a-terre. I'm not sure why the Vol-in-Law found it necessary to do this, but perhaps it's one of those weird British affectations all mixed in with some kind reverse snobbery. At any rate, the ViL swore blind that we weren't nearly as middle class as some of our acquaintances. This proof by comparison is a fairly weak one in my book and the working class fellow wasn't buying it at all.

"Yer the most middle class people I know," he declared in his thick Ulster brogue.
"That may very well be the case, but that doesn't mean we're like the middle class of London" said I.

But certainly, it must appear that way. The ViL is a lecturer and I have an ill-defined job snuffling at the public trough. We serve some kind of exotic vegetables at nearly every meal (roasted fennel again or shall we have crushed celeriac?). We have art on the wall and ninety percent of the food we try to feed our baby is organic and made in France.

But the friend's working class claims are muddy, too. My husband's working class friend, for a long time, did not have a job. He claimed benefits. Under New Labour terminology this underscores his working-class-ness, though why this should be I don't know. I would tend to put that kind of behaviour in the scrounger category. To be fair, this fellow is from a working class, Protestant area of Belfast and in the past jobs weren't so easy to find. On the other hand, this fellow has a degree and I reckon that the reason he was forced into working a normal (low-skilled manual labor) job was because he earned too much money to claim benefits anymore. And the source of this income? Selling hobbyist books that he wrote and illustrated. Yes, that's right, the scrounger was kicked off benefits because he was simply too successful as a man of letters. So exactly how working class is that?

But really, the whole discussion leaves me baffled. So the best course of action is to turn to a reliable source - The Telegraph - for a quiz that will settle the score.

And how did I score? Well, I was - as I expected - on the cusp between two categories. I'll let you guess which.

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*When I declared this, the ViL said "Yes, in Lawrenceburg."

UPDATE: The quiz I included was for British- Americans may like to try these quizzes. The home decor one certainly got to who I really am (and it's a bit lower than I came out on the Brit quiz).

self medicating

I used to love me some whiskey. I'm partial to Jack. But since pregnancy and what with the breastfeeding and all, I've barely had a sniff much less a sip in nineteen months.

I have a cold. I've almost completely lost my voice. My throat hurts and my eyes are bleary. Time for a house call by Dr Daniels.

Let me just say, I'm feeling pretty mellow.

American Idol Shocker - total spoiler

OK, so on my last post I made a little joke about Michael Johns. And no one commented. No one even said the wallaby was cute (which he/she/it certainly was).


Is it because y'all knew that he got sent home in a shocking turnout?

Yes, here in the UK we're a couple days behind.

The Vol-in-Law checked the outcome on line because we realised we probably wouldn't find out til nearly midnight - and frankly we can't stay up anymore. He found out, his jaw dropped and then said "I can't even say it."

Who? Who? I said "Not that little David Archuleta. Not...no, not Michael Johns."

He handed me the laptop and my jaw dropped, too.

Dang.

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In other news about foreigners on American Idol, I just want the American people to know that Gordon Brown doesn't normally look all chirpy and happy and smiley like that. (I couldn't find a picture of his appearance in a quick search) No - normally he has a rictus grin and a creepy demeanor. I guess the fact that he was getting praised on American tv for dipping his hand in my pocket (once again)* just warmed his ice cold soul.

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*Not that mosquito nets aren't a good thing to spend money on - but I rather think it was the dipping into the pocket rather than the malaria prevention which made Gordon feel so warm and cuddly.

wallaby

wallaby, originally uploaded by London looks.

Tonight while watching American Idol, Simon Cowell called Michael Johns a wannabe.

I thought he said wallaby.

You know 'cause he's Australian and all.

How 'bout them Vols?

1987 1989

1991 1996 1997 1998

2007

2008

Congratulations Lady Vols and Coach Summitt once again.

Trouble in Tibet

I thought the boycott of the Beijing Olympics by celebrity luminaries on the basis of Chinese involvement in Darfur was ridiculous. I'm no fan of the Chinese communist government, but really... I thought it was fairly laughable considering all the other nasty stuff that China has done and continues to do in terms of human rights, property rights and civil rights to its own people.

OK, so the Chinese sold weapons to the Sudanese. They probably also sold them contaminated pet food and lead painted toys, or at least they would have, had the Sudanese been in the market for such things. I don't think China really cares about the oppression of this or that group in the Sudan. They just wanted to sell some guns, just like they sell some guns to all kinds of people. If that's a measure of moral depravity*, then the US and the UK and the Czechs and so on should just cover their heads in global shame.

So at least with the Tibet thing, there's a legitimate reason to be hacked off with China. I'm glad that expenditure of celebrity energy is going to something real.



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*I'm not saying it's not.

Very tired

I know I've not been up to my usual standard of wit and wry observational humor. But I am sleep deprived. Buddy isn't doing well on the whole sleep thing.

I am, as the Brits would say, knackered.

What a difference a day makes

Yesterday:





Today:



Yes, that's snow.



Snow in April. Where's the Spring? Spring, Spring, where are you?

Radio wave

Used to be, on Sunday mornings, I'd switch it over to AM and tune in to the only and only country music station in the country to listen to a couple of hours of the classics while I cleaned the kitchen or worked in the garden.

The radio station went bust a couple of years ago and it hasn't been replaced. The development of digital radio brought Hungarian talk radio, and Nigerian faith music and French pop - but no country music.

It's a travesty, really.

And frankly, I've never been able to keep the kitchen as clean since then.

But some things in radio do last. Frank Strovel III - blogger at Left of the Dial - this week celebrated 15 years in his radio gig, by playing the classics on a Wednesday morning.

I feel for her, I kinda do

I'm no fan of Naomi Campbell. I think celebrities get away with far too much and appalling, base, rude behavior is excused and overlooked far too often.

Ms Campbell's behavior has been consistently appalling, assaulting maids, suing the press, throwing fits and on and on.

And, of course, there's really no excuse for spitting in the face of a police officer. At the very least it's a stupid thing to do.

But having had my own blood-boiling run-ins with Heathrow staff, understanding that the newly opened Terminal Five is a cluster-fuck of enormous proportions, and seeing the mountain of lost luggage*, I must admit I felt more than a twinge of sympathy.


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*btw, all that lost luggage is auctioned off within walking distance from my house. I've never been to the auction, but I've always wanted to go.

Not really in the mood for a photo shoot today

Not really in the mood for a photo shoot today, originally uploaded by London looks.

This week, on the day I don't work. I took Buddy to his usual Wednesday playgroup. A notice on the door said that there was going to be a "team" photographing for "research" on the role of women in economic decisions in the household.

There wasn't a team there, just one of the regular mums with her very nice Nikon. And I couldn't really see how taking photos of children playing is social research. Almost certainly what it really was, was marketing research. She's probably a part time employee of an ad agency and she's being paid boo-coo bucks to take shots of the tykes and what they're wearing... Great work if you can get it.

Buddy is a regular male model. He's a Zoolander in training. And when he saw her camera he started striking a pose. That kid seriously mugs up. He no longer had eyes for mommy, but was smiling coyly up at the woman whose camera cost 3 or 4 times what mine did.

I guess Buddy wasn't dressed cute enough (2nd or third hand pair of overalls, shirt from WalMart) - or maybe I wasn't (I don't even want to tell you what I was wearing) cause she didn't turn her lens on him. I wanted to tell the woman - "C'mon, that camera's digitial - just shoot a few frames of the kid. And if you can't do that, at least pretend to take a shot. He's only a baby, he'll be fooled." Instead she muttered something about him being a cute kid and moved on.

In the afternoon, I took Buddy out for his usual walk in the cemetery in his designer sweater, as you do. I propped him in front of sward of daffodils and began snapping. But apparently, the magic was gone. I couldn't get him to really raise a smile. Of course, maybe he thought I wanted him to go for the moody look. Or perhaps, I'd inadvertently set him in a pile of cremains. (I did look.)

Lottery

Oregon is running a lottery for places in its state run health insurance scheme. The BBC takes its usual sneering tone for stories on America, but in this instance it's probably deserved.

Hope for Zimbabwe

Maybe the opposition parties have won in Zimbabwe, maybe they haven't. I hope they have.

Maybe Robert Mugabe will accept this as an invitation to step down gracefully, maybe he won't. I hope he does. I think he's a mad despot, but he actually has a chance to redeem himself in the eyes of history by stepping down now.

Zimbabwe has been locked in a spiral of doom for years while Western countries and South Africa have done nothing to rescue it. It's a country of tremendous resources and resilience. It shouldn't have to be this way.

Win me, win me, win me

I'm still hoping for a Hillary Clinton candidacy. I still think that she represents absolutely the best hope for America. I believe that she not only knows how to craft and develop policy, but that her policies are the ones which will result in a stronger economy, a stronger America, stronger Americans (as they'll be healthier) and will develop a balanced, progressive agenda. Not too lefty, but definitely not of the variety that's gonna screw the little folk.

I've never voted Republican in my life. Really. I did once abstain in a particular Senate race (though voted on the rest of the ballot) to avoid voting against Fred Thompson. Local connections, ya know. Anyway, I'd rather eat a razor blade than vote for McCain. That dude is nutso. He wants another 100 years in Iraq. He's a neo-con, but not like the current lot. He actually believes in that stuff. His domestic policies will be same-old, same-old disaster that Bush-Cheney have brought us, but his foreign policy will be Bush-and-a-half. No thanks.

Now, I can do enough math that I see that an Obama nomination is a real possibility (though not cast in stone). But Obama and his camp have played so sexist and so dirty and his supporters swung negative so fast and for so long that I think I'd really have a hard time voting for that guy. Of course, I don't want more of the same in the White House, but I'm not willing to have my vote taken for granted by people who've treated my candidate so despicably.

So, what's Obama's strategy for winning back people like me? How can he win me? Can that Obama camp learn to be nice, learn to bridge the divide come Autumn? If they're starting to lose a life-long Democrat like me (who, wasn't against Obama in the beginning, btw) how are they going to win over the waiverers and the typical white voters who are probably even less forgiving of a certain kind of politics?

I despair for the Democratic party. I know for a fact the Republicans are laughing up their sleeve and salivating over the prospect of an Obama nomination.

Vote Hillary Clinton - the unity candidate.


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I'm not alone! Via Tennessee Guerilla Women I have stolen a link list of pissed off Hillary supporters.


Riverdaughter: If he can ignore you now and treat you like $#$%, what makes you think he’s going to change after you’re married to him?

Anglachel: Hillary must surrender, and her supporters had best learn to lean back and enjoy it, or else we just can't tell what these wild young 'uns might take it into their heads to do.

Reclusive Leftist: Personally I’m reminded of the way male animals fluff up their fur and making big threat displays to scare off the other males and intimidate the females.

Donna Darko: Their disrespect for the working class people of this country is so visible to me, so transparent, that I am continually just grossed out by their sexism and their classism, and their sense of entitlement.

Corrente: All of these folks have tried to argue that this "Tonya Harding option" stuff was from some supposedly objective anonymous DNC official. Nope — this is something straight from Obama’s people as I expected. ABC News’ Sunlen Miller reports: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told a crowd in Vinton, Iowa Thursday that he’s not going to pull a Tonya Harding on his rival candidates.

Men for Hillary: Today, I Begin my Independence from the Democratic Party!

Cancelled early

Tonight my husband told me that I should have my own sit-com based on my life, featuring my wit and witticisms. He said it would be really good and that they would probably cast Janeane Garofolo as me (which I'm ok with).

But then he said that it should be like a British sitcom, with just six episodes instead of the longer American series. And it should probably only run for one season.

Me: Are you saying I don't have enough material?
Him: Well, there's a limit to your quirkiness, the second series just wouldn't be as good.

Vol Repatriated?

Will the Vol Abroad be a Vol Repatriated? Lately with the low dollar, the real estate market supposedly in crisis and London house prices remaining steady I've fantasised a little bit about taking our London equity and throwing it at the Tennessee housing market. The Vol-in-Law and I have independently spent time looking at Nashville (him) and Knoxville (me) home searches. The other day I found the perfect house (though not in my perfect neighborhood) and I imagined my new life in every room.

Problem is, we'd need jobs, you know to keep eating and stuff. And my career has been built into kind of a niche thing that doesn't really exist in the US. And his job isn't exactly one of those things that you can find on every street corner either.

And when the ViL came home today telling me someone he came in contact with through his work had died, probably from complications of tuberculosis. I was like - we have to get out of here. (I have a bit of a TB phobia and once left a job because I thought my miniscule exposure risk was entirely too high).

I'm seriously thinking about setting up a PayPal repatriation fund. How much do you think the Brits would pay to get rid of me?

Great light, bad wind

going to seed, originally uploaded by London looks.

The weather has been spectacularly awful. Rain, rain, cold, drizzle, drab, glum, gray.

Finally, some decent light, so I got out to the park as quick as I could to take some photos.

But the wind was so gusty that I had a hard to time grabbing a focus on my subjects as they were always being blown out of the frame.

I did get the occasional good shot. Here's one (I think). A hellebore going to seed.

Wise use of time?

I had a kind of important planning meeting with my boss as I go back to work on a more full time basis. I spent probably too much time talking about Tennessee basketball - men's and women's teams. Most folks don't even know what NCAA stands for over here. I'm sure he was bored senseless. But heck, I looked at all of his holiday pics a couple of weeks ago. Fair's fair.

Progression of thought

Today Buddy bit a big old chunk of glass from the rim of a very expensive piece of Finnish designer stemware.

• wow, what a set of choppers - he has jaws of steel
• oh my god, he has a piece of glass in his mouth
• that's why we can't have nice things around here
  

V&A

This week we have the happy circumstance of a nursery place but not yet back in full (or full-ish) time work. So I dropped the kid at the daycare and took myself to the Victoria and Albert to look at the stuff and to take some pictures. Like the one above, which could be turned into a Christmas card if I could be bothered to send such things out.

No visit to a museum is complete without a visit to the museum shop (and the one at the V&A is practically unavoidable given that it's dead centre in the building). I perused the expensive goo-gaws and desirable design items. Two things caught my eye - child sized fake Japanese armor (so cool, but Buddy's not old enough) and baby sized cotton kimonos.

I knew the cotton kimono would be overpriced, but I was willing to pay. I set my reservation price in my head and hunted for one with a price tag.

£35.00

That exceeded my reservation price by some considerable margin. That's around $70. For a thin cotton baby bathrobe. Ridiculous.

The things you learn

Sometimes you learn a lot of neat things through blogging. Sometimes people leave interesting facts and tips in the comments.


For example, a crystal ball can be used to record the weather.

The Wallace guy of the Wallace Collection in London also supplied water fountains in Paris.

Sir Richard Wallace may be considered a true philanthropist, in the proper sense of the word, as opposed to certain members of the elite, for whom charitable deeds were only a way of increasing their fame. Of all his numerous contributions to Parisian heritage, the best-known, as they are still very recognizable and useful today, are the fountains which bear his name.

As a result of the siege of Paris and the Commune episode, many aqueducts had been destroyed, and the price of water, already higher than normal, went up considerably. Because of this, most of the poor found that they were unable to get water without having to pay for it. The temptation to take to liquor was strong among the lower classes, and it was considered a moral duty to keep them from falling into alcoholism. Even today, when water and hygiene are not a problem for the vast majority of Parisians, these fountains are often the only sources of free water for the homeless.

I found this out because of link left on this photo of one of the Wallace Fountains that I took on my birthday two years ago.




Britain is a country without free water fountains or a culture of giving out free water and you can see what the lower orders have come to.

And you can use a potato to fix a light fixture. We haven't done it yet, but it's on our list. (Tipped from here)

Cool.

Bad parenting

In England we get a developmental check at 8 months old. A health visitor (baby nurse) comes round to the house and makes sure baby is coming on normally and that you're not feeding the baby ground up glass or something.

Our local service was running behind, so Buddy only got his check this week. His length was measured for the first time since birth - he's 74.5 centimeters long - that's 2 ft 5. According to the growth charts that puts him just about in the 85th percentile for height. His weight is just a shade under 21 lbs - which is a shade above the median. But apparently he's a pinhead, his head circumference puts him in only the 20th percentile. I find this hard to believe considering his 12 to 18 month old hats are a little too small.

The health visitor asked us many questions about his development.

Holding a cup? - check

Babbling? - check

Pincer grip? - check

Crawling? - check

Following conversations? - err... sorta, like mom and dad he's a much better talker than listener

Sleeping through the night? - No.

Oh my goodness, you'da thought we were deliberately getting up in the night shining a flashlight in his eyes and crashing a cymbal over his head the way the health visitor reacted. The baby should be sleeping through the night. There's no reason for him to be waking in the night. It's only bad parenting that causes a baby to wake up. Whatever it is, he couldn't possibly be hungry.

And then when we admitted that we were co-sleeping, ohhh - the look of derision. "Well, you can continue with that if you want him sleeping with you at two and a half," she said. But it sounded more like "Well, you can continue with that if you want him to become a spree killer and a defrauder of churches."

Whatever.

I'm not going to let her beat me with the stick of bad parenting because my baby doesn't sleep through the night. For the record, usually he wakes, he feeds, he goes back to sleep. He's done that through teething and ear aches and recently his only really bad sleeping was when he had the stomach cruds causing diarrhea and vomiting. I think the whole sleeping through the night thing is a fallacy anyway. He used to sleep through, but he couldn't keep the weight on. He was a skinny little thing. He started waking to feed and now he's normal.

I'm not saying I wouldn't like a lot more sleep. I'm not saying that it wouldn't be nice to have one of those babies who goes down at 7 and sleeps til 7. But I'd also like to go out to the theater or dinner at an adult restaurant at the drop of a hat, too.

Her sleep solution was the old cry-it-out method. She said it would be sorted over a weekend as long as we stayed firm. Ehhhh, don't think so. Besides, that kid ain't gonna break over a couple of days.

She did have some good advice. We're going to start giving him more chewy solids more often and we're going to brush his teeth more regularly.

Sleep through the night, you must be joking.

Car stero discussion

My husband has been sitting in the backseat with Buddy and he's finding his lack of access to the AC and heater and CD player a little frustrating.

Recently he asked if we could hear the Marty Robbins CD instead of my current frequently played Amy Winehouse.

And I said No, No, No.

The Horny Man

Nooooo....It's not what you think. It's the Horniman Museum. A museum, full of culture and stuff. A real museum. We just pronounce it the Horny Man Museum because we're puerile. (And a hearty welcome to my new readers who come to me via Google!)

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So it's Easter weekend but the weather is sketchy, what to do, what to do - especially with a 9 month old baby? Well, the Horny Man Horniman is the obvious answer. It's one of my very favorite kinds of museums, it's a museum of stuff. Weird, random stuff. It was started by an obsessive Victorian collector - and it's kind of like a combination of the Natural History and Victoria and Albert museums and an aquarium, but smaller and not in Central London, so you can drive to it. All the better.

And I thought there might be a chance that Buddy would be interested in some of the colorful displays and hands on stuff. There was less hands on stuff than I remembered - and what there was wasn't entirely appropriate for a baby (there's a great assortment of "hands on" musical instruments that's marvellous fun for 3+ set)

Buddy certainly liked looking at the fish.


Moon jellyfish

The Horniman has a nice collection of stuffed dead critters which doesn't hold a baby's attention for very long. Though this exhibit was certainly eye catching.



Want a closer look? Yep, it's mounted dog heads.



Very unnerving.

Overall, it was a pretty good way to spend a cold and windy day and as long as we kept moving through the exhibits Buddy didn't get too bored. But this was definitely his favorite bit:

I didn't tell you so

You know all this stuff about Obama and his preacher. I could have told you so. I could have, but I didn't. And why didn't I? Because when it comes down to it, I'm a party loyalist. But it's out now...

Man, this stuff has been shunting around conservative web sites for ages, if you'd bother to read it. Which I don't. But my husband does. He's been telling me all about it - for months.

And it's amazing that Obama has been getting away with it for so long. And I've been thinking, goodness - the GOP and the press are gonna tear this guy up if he gets the nomination. But all we hear about it Hillary Clinton and her divisive nature. Well, guess what. All that stuff about Hillary is old news. Old, old, old news. We've heard it all before. Ho hum. Yawn.

Now I will say that Barack Obama has a fine turn of phrase. He is a kick-ass speaker. He is good. Almost as good as Bill Clinton, but with a better voice. So maybe he's going to turn this around for himself.

But you know who else is an arresting speaker? Obama's pastor. Jeremiah Wright. So when Obama says he doesn't remember hearing anything offensive, I gotta think that's not quite right. And that's coming from a gal who's tuned out on a lot of sermons. Audacity of hope? Audacity of thinking he was gonna get away with being associated with a kooky, woman-hating, racist preacher. The press might give him an easy ride on it now, but you know who won't give him an easy ride in the fall.

Snippets

Tonight the packaging for some salsa I was going to use for our dinner didn't seem quite right to me. I had visions of the Tylenol product tampering case. But the Vol-in-Law wanted some salsa on the bean chalupas I was cooking. I dithered about using the salsa, but he promised to be a guinea pig and scooped his hand into container to sample it.

Ewww....and now I really don't want it.

(By the way, I made his with the salsa mine and Buddy's without.)


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One of the Vol-in-Law's students came up to him today and said "Your wife is the Vol Abroad." Apparently, he's been doing some professorial Internet stalking.

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This is one of the reasons blogging has been light.

No-palm Sunday

We don't go to church much, because well, we're heatherns. But we have gone to our local parish church the last two Christmases after we got a card through our door inviting us to carol services. We got a card through our door this week, too. For Easter services. And the best part about it is that there was a Palm Sunday service on Sunday evening.

Evening.

Yep. That's right. You don't have to drag yourself out of bed early. A Palm Sunday evening service.

I was really excited about going to church in the evening (we don't like to get up) and the church people giving Buddy a little palm frond that he could wave about and we could all shout Hosannah!

But it wasn't like that. It was a perfectly nice service, but apparently mostly aimed at the young singles (who have a social directly afterwards). There were no palm fronds. And there were no other babies. Ooops. Babies in this country go to bed early. Well, all of them except for ours.

Baseball, Motherhood and secondary market for baby clothes

I'm not a baseball fan. I'm just not. American football is the slowest game I can stand. I've just never been able to find that pace, get into that groove that people talk about. I've attended one baseball game - a home fixture for the struggling Astros back in 1991*. After I realised how much stadium beers cost and then my buzz wore off, I was ready to leave.

I don't have a team. I guess if I had a team I might lean toward the Braves, though apparently one of my great-grandmothers was an avid White Sox fan. And I have no animosity toward any team in major league baseball, either.

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Buddy, who had about a million outfits when he was born - more than he could actually wear, has started running out of long sleeved shirts. It's a combination of fewer gifts in this size and just needing more outfits per day, what with him eating (and spilling) solids and crawling around on his belly.

So, being cheapos, we decided to go to a local used-baby-clothes sale. We arrived late, but that meant the crowds were gone and we found a table run by an American woman who had two little boys older than Buddy. She had a lot of American labels and she had a quite a few American sports themed outfits (which believe it or not aren't wildly popular amongst Wimbledon parents). We bought some hockey and basketball themed baby shoes and a baseball outfit.

Yeah, yeah I know...I don't like baseball. But this friend of mine does. And he's a huge Cards fan. And this was a little Cardinals outfit and it was only a pound ($2). And I thought, it's worth a pound just for the photos.







Was it worth it? (I just realised everything but his socks came from that woman's table. I should have got her number.)




_______
*I have attended many t-ball games, though.

Homeowner pesky problems

I really can't tell this story to give enough credit to exactly how annoying it was... so you'll just have to imagine... and then make it at least two times worse than that.

...says Genderist

We have a similar situation. In our bathroom. We've suffered in the semi-gloom for a long time, as two of our three sockets have the screwy-part remnants of cheap lightbulbs permanently (?) stuck in them.

And while the last lightbulb still shines, it flickers ominously. And it was from the same cheap, substandard lot as the other disintegrating lightbulbs.

With lightbulbs, as with most things, you get what you pay for.

Pink camellia

Pink camellia, originally uploaded by London looks.

This is an inherited camellia - it was in the garden when I moved in. I don't like the color and I much prefer singles. But oh well. For years, it's had blossom drop - it would bloom and then immediately the dang blossoms would fall off.

But I always loved the glossy leaves and the promise of the buds. I think I've finally got the soil acidity right, because the blossoms are hanging on this year.

torn

torn, originally uploaded by London looks.

We've been having lots of storms. In a break in the whirling greyness, a brief moment of sunshine, I captured this plum blossom, torn by the storm.

Sealing wax and bits of string and some duct tape

Did you know my blog comes up fourth on Google if you look for this information:

how to build Arc de Triomphe using styrofoam and cardboard

Wow, the internet is amazing. But believe me, I have no idea.

I don't know how to build the Arc de Triomphe out of balsa wood or modelling clay either. But give me some flour, newspaper, some cardboard and paint and I could probably make something resembling the Parisian landmark out of paper mache.

Really. I'm pretty good with paper mache. That's probably something you didn't know.

For one week only

I've been thinking about jobs I'd like to have, for one week only

• black jack dealer in Tunica
• personal assistant to Suggs
• golf pro (this is one for which I'm totally, totally unqualified as I've only ever played two rounds of golf in my life - both badly)
• host/presenter of goofy Saturday night variety show
• policy advisor to the President on matters of...well, it doesn't really matter - I just want to walk a piece of paper around the West Wing in an officious manner
• any job where I get to wear country-music-star style Western wear for a week (tassels and spurs, tassels and spurs)
• exhibit judge at Chelsea Flower Show
  

How 'bout you?

Bionic woman

I've been seeing a lot of promos for the Bionic Woman series. The main character - the Bionic woman says "I'm a bartender and a dropout...." blah, blah, blah. And then she turns bionic and then she's off on missions for some kind of secret government agency.

So, and you have to love the power of the Internet for this - I say to my husband. "Do you really want a dropout to be running secret missions for the government? I bet the original bionic woman wasn't a bartender and a dropout."

And he says "Probably not."

And I say "So what was she?"

And he says "I don't know."

And I say "Well, you're the one with a laptop on your lap. Google it." And he did . And you know, you gotta love the power of the internet. How did we look up useless trivia like that back in the day?

And it turns out the original bionic woman was a tennis pro. A tennis pro? How's that much better suited for the secret action spy missioning thing than a bartender?

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Do go read the Bionic Woman summary on wikipedia. If that's all true, then that was one stupid show. But I think I watched it whenever I could. I certainly dimly remember discussing the bionic woman on the playground and running with a chook-chook-chook-chook-chook-chook sound in exaggerated slow-mo.

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Tennis pro is a stupid job to be going into being a secret agent, but that was the cover in I Spy. Now that's a show I'd love to see in rerun on British cable. Along with Matlock.

Vacation

I want to go on vacation. Some place warm and full of light. With lots of interesting things to photograph. And babysitters galore.

Happy Birthday Vol Mom

IMG_0828-1, originally uploaded by London looks.

Happy Birthday!

Bombs away

We often visit Richmond Deer Park - apparently the largest enclosed space or largest enclosed park in Europe.

I like to visit Isabella plantation. It's full of magnolias, camellias, rhododendron and azaleas. So this time of year (and through the end of May) visits are especially rewarding for the floral photographer (or lovers of ericaceous plants or both).

The park service is redoing a path from one of the parking lots to the plantation and they found an extra special surprise recently. An unexploded World War Two bomb. Bloody Germans, messing up our park.

The bomb was detonated in a controlled explosion and the work carried on.

I'd like to say that we'd walked over that spot a million times, just to heighten the drama on the old blog. But we hadn't - we tend to approach the plantation from a slightly different direction.


The work on the path where the bomb was found

There's a problem with my account

I've received an email that there's a problem with my account. Eeegads. I've got to update my personal info and password straight away. I know that it must be true, because even though I usually receive emails I don't even bank with - this time it's an establishment that I actually do have an account with:

The problem....

might be due to either of the following reasons:

A recent updates in our billing server ( Due to slightly problem )

A recent change in your personal information ( i.e. change of Question ).

An inability to accurately verify your selected option of payment due to an internal error within our processors.

Please update and verify your information by clicking the link below:

Does anybody know what a "slightly" problem is. Could be a technical banking term.

Do the decent thing

Do the decent thing, Barack Obama, and step down now before things get ugly. Clearly, you can't win in the big states - so why drag this on? Your candidacy is divisive and apparently the press have gotten bored of giving you an easy ride.

Heh.

Blogging block

OK, so I'm having a bit of a blogging block. When blocked, use lists. These are things I could have blogged about:

• I'm really hoping that Hillary Clinton does well today. But I'm not staying up for the returns.
• Buddy sounds like he's got a smoker's cough. Which is ridiculous, because he doesn't really have the manual dexterity to use a lighter yet.
• The British government is talking about having mandatory public/voluntary service before becoming a citizen. Not sure what I think about that - mandatory voluntary service. I think all public policy should pass an oxymoron test. On the other hand, I've actually done the public service that I need to qualify and I just did it out civic duty.
• Gary Gygax, of D&D fame, is dead.
  
• Margaret Hodge, Minister of Culture (that's the job I'd want!) said that the Proms - a great British institution - weren't actually embracing a wide enough section of British life or some such rubbish. Hello! It's the one big public event where people actually seem proud to be British. I guess that's the problem for people like her. Maybe the Labour government should work on being proud to be British themselves before making citizenship even more onerous.
  

From the last night of the proms:


Land of Hope and Glory


Rule Britannia

And though not as overtly patriotic - you gotta love the fantasia of British sea songs, too.

Happy British Mother's Day

unfolding, originally uploaded by London looks.

I bought myself some blue anemones for Mothering Sunday.

What America might find surprising about me

I missed the boys' episode of American Idol earlier this week because I was doing community service (voluntary, not court imposed - I'm just lettin' ya know). But I watched the girls last night and the results, too.

This morning on our way out to the new cemetery section's grand opening (yes, I will tell you all about it), I told the Vol-in-Law that I had to get back in time to watch the boys in re-run.

He did his little eye roll and said "I married a middle-class girl."


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In this week's American Idol theme, the little filmed vignettes of the contestants were all based around "what America doesn't know about me". And the responses were "I'm a hula dancer", "I'm a drag racer", "I ride a Harley, but I also love to read," and so on... But one of them was "I don't like different kind of foods to touch on my plate." Two minutes of "green bean juice running into other food icks me out" and so on...

I thought to myself: Hey girl, America really didn't want to know that about you - so now America is gonna send you home. And America did.

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After three years of blogging, I reckon there's very little that America doesn't know about me that it might have wanted to know or that I didn't want America to know (wait, does that make sense? No, it doesn't - eh, work it out)

Here's one thing America already knows about me. I go to the local cemetery events. My local cemetery has events and I go to them. I've been the open day, the re-dedication of the civilian war memorial and today the grand opening of a new section of the cemetery - a vaulted burial village. A thanatopia, a necropolis if you will. It's all supposed to be landscaped and nice and easy, just slide open the doors and pop in the dead.

In fact, the grand opening was supposed to be (I guess) a little presentation about the future of burial and then a demonstration of loading up the vaults and then some light refreshments (yes, seriously).

I've been really wanting to go because I wanted to know what kind of person shows up to such a thing. (Yes, I do recognise the irony.)

So, we go and there's no one else there. No one. True, we were a little late, but it looked like we were the only people to show up. And there was nothing going on. Although the new vaults had been prepared ready for the demonstration.

So what does the Vol-in-Law say? He says: "Now we know exactly what kind of person shows up to these kinds of things." And if I shared that story as an American Idol contestant, well - I pretty much would deserve to get sent home.

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Ok, so what was the burial village like? Well, let me say this. Just roll me in an old carpet and throw me in a dumpster, 'cause that's the way I'd rather end up than in that stinky old burial village.

It was half-ass. Nah, it was a quarter ass. The burial vault things were ok though there was an overreliance on resin - a cheapo material. It was the landscaping was absolutely atrocious. To me, it sort of signified the absolute worst about public private partnerships. Yes, the contractor had probably planted out the requisite number of trees. But the soil wasn't prepared properly, the trees were absolutely the wrong kind of trees (cheapy pines for an area with very questionable drainage that had been stripped of topsoil during construction), and the sodding was a joke. If that plant material isn't 90% dead by July, I'll eat my hat. Looked to me like the partnership was poorly specified and our neighbouring council (which owns the cemetery) got taken for a ride. Shameful.

The pre-prepared burial vaults do make sense though - particularly in a country that is very short of burial space and where traditionally there have been multiple burials in the same plot. This system allows you to easily layer at least three caskets in the same vault without disturbing either previous occupants or your neighbours.


Folks are dying to get in.


Pile 'em high and stack 'em deep. Note the sod just plunked down on piled up subsoil.

The funny things that babies do

Buddy is very advanced for his age. He's discovered the slide out drawer on the computer and is nearly there on the DVD player.

Parenting tip: Babies don't respond to "Hey Buddy, I don't think that's a good idea."

The funny things that Brits do

Noddy in chains, originally uploaded by London looks.

It's quite common to see abandoned stuffed animals and dolls strapped to the front of trucks and maintenance vehicles in this country.

I don't know why.

Dog bites child

The NHS is reporting a 40% increase in dog bites over the last four years, but in London the number of dog bites has doubled. Children under the age of 9 are the most frequent victims.

According to a BBC story this morning:

Norman Lamb, Liberal Democrat health spokesman, called for more to be done to make people aware of the risks of irresponsible dog ownership.

The Liberal Democrats want to see stricter legal duties laid on dog owners, and control orders to impose conditions on ownership - or in severe cases disqualify irresponsible owners.

Of the attack figures Mr Lamb added: "These are dramatic increases. I think in some communities these dogs have become a badge of honour, a fashion accessory in a way, and I think that's very disturbing."

I've certainly noticed an increase in the number of Staffordshire Bull Terriers (or allied breeds). I see them in parks (we spend a lot of time in parks these days) and on the street. Quite often not on a leash. Quite often accessorised in an intimidating fashion (spiked collars and the like). And quite often in the company of people whom I would not describe as responsible owners.

It scares me to death. They could have Buddy away in an instant and there'd be absolutely nothing I could do about it.

Defenders of the breed say that it's not the animals, it's the owners.

OK. It's the owners. But these are dangerous breeds because they can inflict serious damage. And the owners are brutalising their animals. I've witnessed it myself and I've seen the evidence in public parks.

Some owners seem appalled at the notion that their precious pups could be used to maim:

A lot of people look at them horrified, like you've got Satan himself on the end of your lead," says Marian Waller of Dulwich, south London, owner of a Staffordshire bull terrier named Teddy. "They look at you like you're taking the Hound of the Baskervilles for a walk." She adds, "They'll cross the road to get away. I don't know why, because they're great with people. (The Independent, July 2006)

Yep. I'm one of those people. Because Ms Waller, I just don't know if you're one of those people who encourages a happy friendly pup or if you've tortured your dog into some kind of killing machine. And even if you look like the next Miss Marple, how do I know that you're not looking after the dog for your teenaged, hoodlum grandson and the dog is much, much more than you can handle. And frankly, there's no way I can know.

We know that these dogs were bred to fight and to maim and to kill. And yes, in the right hands and in the right circumstances I'm sure they can be wonderful dogs. But many of the breed are ending up in the wrong hands:

Typical new breed of owner: young lad, aged 15-22. Typical purpose for having the dog: to gain respect, to intimidate, to use as a form of protection, and sometimes for crime.

And they're certainly ending up in the wrong circumstances. If people were just wanting canine companionship they probably wouldn't opt for a larger, dangerous breed in the crowded conditions of Inner London. For when I talk about seeing these dogs on the streets, I'm talking about the congested sidewalks of the local town centres of London. People naturally brush against each other, old people, babies and toddlers in strollers, the noise of traffic, and increasingly other dogs. (Even fans of the breed acknowledge that the males are prone to fight each other).

My council, Wandsworth, is taking action on dangerous dogs and irresponsible owners, but frankly it couldn't happen soon enough.

Wandsworth Council's leader, Edward Lister, is also calling for a new licensing system - including a minimum age for keeping a dog - to deal with the problem of irresponsible ownership.

The new licences would require stringent tests preventing those deemed unsuitable from owning a dog. We need sharper powers if we are to tackle this problem proactively."

Coun Lister added: "A risk-based approach to dog ownership would identify those animals for which a licence would be necessary. It could include, for example, all types of bull terrier - going beyond the very narrow list covered by the Dangerous Dog Act.

"Crucially it would also look at who was owning and controlling the dog. In our experience in Wandsworth most of the problems are with animals owned by young people aged 13-17.

"There should be a minimum age for ownership. You could add a fit and proper person test which would weed out many other unsuitable types. The critics might say this would be as unworkable as the current legislation or as irrelevant as the old licence system. That would be giving up before we've started.

Dog defenders are quick to blame irresponsible owners. If that's really the problem, then licensing seems like an ideal solution. If the dogs are inherently dangerous, then they just don't belong in crowded urban environments.

The Very Reverend Vol Abroad

Did you know that you can get ordained, for free, online?

Well, you can.

And the ACLU is defending your rights as a free, online, ordained minister (what you haven't already gotten ordained? - didn't you follow the link?) to conduct weddings in Pennsylvania.

(And no, I didn't get ordained yet - I'll let you know.)

Casting one's pearls

Has anybody ever got a job from sending out a speculative resume/CV?

Other Cat's new life in the country

cat and daisies, originally uploaded by London looks.

Poor old Other Cat (who blogged anonymously), she's gone to a new life in the country. A farm, just over the rainbow bridge, turn left at the field of dreams.

Ahem.

Poor old Other Cat. She'd always struggled with her food allergies. We'd managed it for years by feeding her ridiculously expensive cat food and keeping her away from people junk food (which she loved). Over the past few months, the food allergies had come back in spades. She couldn't keep the ridiculously expensive cat food down. She couldn't even keep the beyond ridiculously expensive cat food down ($90 a month, just for food). Each morning we searched for cat puke, hoping we'd find it all before Buddy did. The garden was full of cat puke. The sores on her skin were coming back (her skin itched so bad from the allergies that she would literally tear holes in herself).

We couldn't take care of her anymore. And rehoming wasn't an option for poor old Other Cat - a kitty who would flee in terror from regular visitors, the mailman, the gas man and lately the baby (although to be fair he would pull on her fur, which must have been torture considering the state of her skin). She was a cat who mourned and pined pitifully for weeks and weeks when her mother died - and we felt sure she would pine for us, too. (She always did when we were away.)

The decision has been weighing on us for a long time. It seems like a lame thing to put a cat down for - food allergies. But crawling babies and cat vomit don't mix well. And Other Cat wasn't happy and was getting less happy.

I have to be honest and say if we were childless still we would have tried harder and kept her going for longer. But we aren't and we just didn't have the energy to take the extraordinary measures to keep her going in a good state. Today was the end for her, a little over a week shy of her eighth birthday.

We were with her when she was born and we were with her when she died.

Poor old Other Cat.

Go Vols

Yesterday I was wheeling Buddy to daycare beneath his luminous Volunteer stroller blanket. I thought to myself as I passed people in cars and buses and on foot on the sidewalks. Let them look on and know that our Men's Basketball Team is Number One. Let them eat their hearts out.

But then I remembered that hardly any of them know or care.


Here's one I took earlier

Fortunately, even though I'm only working on a limited basis right now, my short time in the office exposes me to a "new guy" who has a working knowledge of NCAA sports.

Raped twice

Tennessee isn't the only state where victims of rape have to pick up the tab for collecting evidence of their own rape.

North Carolina rape victims are charged, too.

Like Tennessee (now), in North Carolina there's a fund to reimburse victims...until the fund runs out. Not just unlucky enough to get raped...you have to hope you're not raped too late in the fiscal year to cover the fees of collecting criminal evidence.

A rape kit isn't treatment - it's police business and law enforcement should pay.

Measles scare

I'm watching a very scary show about measles.

According to WHO a population needs to have 95% immunisation to have "herd immunity" - I'm watching a show saying that London's rates of measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shots are about 75%. Apparently, the numbers of measles outbreaks are on the rise.

All this due to the MMR scare (link to the Science Museum's online exhibit).

Obviously, armed with this information I'd be a fool not to get Buddy the shots.

But not yet.

And that's not by choice. The MMR vaccine is given for the first time at 12 months.

The story featured a very angry mother whose little baby contracted measles because others have failed to inoculate their children.

Her baby seems to be ok, unlike these boys who were left disabled after contracting measles.

The boys’ doctors blame the now discredited research of Dr Andrew Wakefield for the boys’ condition. They say his claim that MMR could cause autism led to the outbreak because fewer children are being vaccinated.

Matthew Costen, 13, was blinded and paralysed after contracting measles last year. He is believed to have caught the disease from his friend Joe Quick, 9, who suffered partial paralysis to his left side and damage to his speech. Their condition originated from an area of south London where the take-up rate of MMR, which offers protection against measles, mumps and rubella, had fallen to 52%.

For medical reasons unrelated to MMR, neither boy could receive the vaccine. This meant they were dependent on other children being vaccinated to minimise their exposure to the infection.

Busy Mom time lag

I like that Busy Mom blog. I do. But I got to get Busy Mom on the time lag now - and for the stupidest reason. She has American Idol spoilers on her blog.

I try to stay away from the reality tv show lark. It's not snobbery. I mean - it can't be considering that I have an addiction to DNA testing talk shows.

It's the commitment. I am a reality tv show commitment-phobe.

I just can't be signing up for regular viewings of can't-miss-tv. If I miss an episode of Maury Povich originally run in 2003, well - it's not that big of a deal. But miss a key installment of a reality tv contest and then I feel somehow incomplete. I know I'm a bitch for the tv, but it's true.

I thought I could watch the audition phase of American Idol and not get hooked. I've watched audition phases before and walked away. But they were in deep re-run. The overall winner had already been selected. The shows I'm watching now are probably only three days or so behind the US show.

Dang. My life is lame now.

Not those dang cartoons again

Here's a true story. It's one that might be familiar to you if you were raised amongst the hard core Protestant, as I was.

A Protestant walks into a Catholic Church and is offended.

Why? Because of the depiction of the Prophet. Not that prophet. But our prophet, our final prophet and savior, Jesus. And there were depictions of Jesus and his whole family and some people who went before him and his Apostles, too.

I didn't say anything, and I wasn't deeply offended. But I did sort of wonder if anyone had told the Catholics that maybe putting up graven images and praying before them was not just a little idolatrous. Perhaps a teensy bit heretical or even blasphemous. Seriously. And from talking to others over the years, it turns out I'm not the only one to feel this way when first faced with these differences in Christian worship.

Even now - and I'm essentially faithless - I sometimes feel a little bit squidgy inside when I see representative religious art displayed prominently in a place of Christian worship - even though, very likely, I've specifically gone into the church to see the art.

But my squidginess is but a vestigal reminder of the blood shed in the towns and fields of Europe over these differences among people who really are our co-religionists. Now I can enjoy religious art in churches from a secular point of view, but as a youth I reconciled it with the notion that the Catholics were wrong but well intentioned with their display of graven images. I could look upon it much more in sadness than in anger.

So I guess what I'm saying here is I understand how somebody could find those Danish Mohammed cartoons or any other depiction of "The Prophet" offensive. It's my understanding that Mohammed warned against the worship of himself as a kind of Godhead and thus came the prohibition of images of himself - to help folks avoid the temptation. But it was also consistent with Mohammed's destruction of idols at Qabah and his fight against the pagan and polytheistic. So yes, a devout Muslim might see a graven image of Mohammed and feel just a little squidgy or maybe a bit more.

But in the end, the prohibition is for Muslims not to depict their prophet. It's not actually a prohibition that falls on us the infidel. The right response would have been to right a strongly worded letter-to-the-editor (or blog post) about how deeply squidgy seeing the prophet depicted that way made devout Muslims feel and then that should have been the end of it. Or even, perhaps, writing letters to advertisers in the Jyllands-Posten (the newspaper commissioning the cartoons) saying that Muslims could no longer in good conscience patronise their businesses. But that wasn't the response. And that wasn't the end.

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I originally began drafting this post back in January. After Ezra Levant was brought before the Alberta Human Rights Commission for publishing copies of the cartoons in his now defunct (aka online only) magazine. I never finished the post, because - well, I'm busy. And it seemed like it was being covered well enough by the usual right wing suspects. Although it's absolutely wrong to leave cases of free speech and liberty to the right wing blogosphere, or folks will start to think it's a right wing issue only.

I couldn't believe that people were still going on about it and that publishers in a supposedly free country (Canada) were being subject to public prosecution (of a sorts) just for publishing some pictures.

Mr Levant has been accused publishing the cartoons in order to increase circulation to his magazine and for using his summons to an HRC tribunal as an opportunity to self-promote. (He uploaded his statements to YouTube). Maybe. But the guy was being subject to a ridiculous kangaroo court, congrats to him for trying to make lemonade from lemons. And he still has to bear the cost of defending himself.

The Canadian Muslim Imam who brought the complaint against Mr Levant has withdrawn his charge. Syed Soharwardy says it's because he realised just how important free speech was to Canadians. Mr Levant reckons elsewise. And Christopher Hitchens weighs in, too.

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But that's not all. In the past week, Danish authorities have made arrests to stop a plot to murder one of the original Danish cartoonists. That's a lot more than a strongly worded letter. Read more about it at this Danish blog dedicated to the cartoons and their aftermath.

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And now NOT the Danish cartoons, but medieval depictions of Mohamed are being targeted by many thousands of the faithful. There can be absolutely no doubt that these paintings weren't done with any spirit of malice. Yet Wikipedia is being bombarded with requests to take them down from the entry on Mohamed. Good for Wikipedia for refusing.