See ya

Gordon Brown, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer (Treasury Secretary) and heir-apparent to Tony Blair, will likely take the crown before the year is out. A dour Scot and prone to worry, this time he's going on about the dissolution of the Union.

Yes, well he should worry. A Scot and a Scottish MP who wishes to rule o'er England, too. The Union between the crowns of Scotland and England will this year be 300 years old, but nobody's celebrating. The Union is in peril and Gordo knows that as the Union goes - so goes his future.

I know I'm not a citizen of this country and even if I were I could never be English, but I have to say "Na, na, na, na, hey, hey, hey goooood-bye." See ya, Scots. I, for one, have had enough of your English-bashing, your whinging and your scrounging. Take your bloody depleting North Sea oil and go. See how long you can keep your high-spending, low-producing Socialism without English subsidy. I'm tired of being bossed around by people who are even pastier than the English.

I've always regretted the prohibition of the possibility of secession in US Constitution. It seemed to lack a certain openness to the potentiality of irreconcilable differences. I hope the Scots seize their opportunity for rerendum for independence - and that they don't dally.

Justifiable?

If someone kept forcing you into icy water to retrieve a bleeding nasty duck, force fed with vitamin lead, you might snap, too.

What not to wear

Is that Nick Saban guy an idiot? Can't be if he's just signed a coaching contract worth a jillion with Alabama. But just look...just look what he turned up in to his first "official" Crimson Tide sporting event. A purple shirt (his old LSU school colors) to an Alabama basketball game. My old pal and a bona fide Alabama alumnus says:

From all I've heard, Nick Saban is one sharp cookie. How could he not realize a purple(ish) shirt would not be the best thing to wear to his first Bama sporting event? Even casual fans know, you wear Crimson to Crimson Tide sporting events.

His fashion gaffe isn't helped by the fact that Alabama was playing LSU that night. Apparently, many an Alabama fan is in a kerfuffle over the Saban sartorial choice - and was it really purple or was it magenta, and when did Saban know it was purple, and so on...


Well, I've got a few things to say about it myself...

1. I can kinda see what he's up to - he's wearing one of those kinda iridescent shirts with one color (purple) in the warp and another color (crimson) in the weft. See the shirt is two things at once... he's building a bridge between the two proud academic institutions of the two fine states of Alabama and Louisiana [cough...splutter...evil chuckle].
2. But as my brother says "You can only have ONE team in the NCAA," and the very idea of having two in one conference is ridiculous.
3. Besides that, when you take the King's shilling, you wear his colors.
4. Man - that shirt so does not go with the rest of his tacky-ass sky blue leisure suit outfit. I just thank my lucky stars we gotta a man-with-a-fashion-plan in Coach Bruce Pearl.

England safe again...

...for fat pet owners. Or more politely, the owners of fat pets.

The case of the two brothers who owned a really, really fat dog who were charged with animal cruelty for overfeeding it has concluded this week in the conviction of the two men. But at least British justice is consistent, and the guys got merely a slap on the wrist. I think they had to promise not to be so generous with the kibble, but they received no jail time and no fine and they got Rusty the-not-quite-so-fat dog back.

Magistrates convicted Derek Benton, 62 and his brother David, 53, of causing unnecessary suffering after a £12,000 two-day trial. But they decided that the dog, Rusty - who was 11-and-a-half stone [160 pounds] at his heaviest - could be returned to the Bentons providing it was properly cared for. They imposed a conditional discharge on each of the men.

Whewwwww....the Vol-in-Law and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. We have a fat cat.

Earlier the brothers' lawyer, Ann-Marie Gregory, had told the court in Ely, Cambridgeshire, that the case had left the owners of overweight animals living in fear of prosecution.

You got that right. And our poor kitties have been on a diet ever since a co-worker of mine highlighted parallels in the pet rearing approaches of the Benton Brothers and ourselves.

The kitty diet update

Hey, after a slow start - the cats have actually lost weight. Fancy didn't really need to lose weight, but she'd put on just enough that we didn't think it would hurt her. But Other Cat, well - her lack of personal responsibility was putting us in danger of a court date. After following Melusina's advice of 2/3 cup of cat food per cat per day, Other Cat is considerably lighter - though still "big boned" - and Fancy is down to an optimum weight which means we've moved them back to regular food, but we're keeping a close eye on portion size. Other Cat already seems more active, so we're hoping that her weight loss will continue - albeit perhaps at a slower rate.

Monkey in the sea...

...cat on the bag, dog in the boot.

Yesterday I was oop North...in the Newcastle area. Every time anyone says anything to me in a thick Geordie accent (I don't know why they're called Geordies) I either have to say "Pardon" or I just nod and smile and hope the meaning of their strangely inflected words will sink in before I have to make a cogent reply. I once nodded and smiled when a Geordie fishmonger suggested a most intimate encounter - for all I knew he'd been merely asking for directions. When I finally figured out that he wished me to use an approach more suited to a Washington intern, all I could do was flutter a polite "no thanks."

I call this impenetrable version of the accent "Monkey in the Sea". As in "He was all monkey-in-the-sea." This is based on a sketch from a show called I'm Alan Partridge. In the sketch the Southern English guy (Alan) has a dawning horror as he realises that the Geordie character threw his pet monkey in the sea because it ate 200 of his duty free cigarettes. And the folks of this area have form when it comes to monkeys. According to legend - the citizens of a nearish town hanged a shipwrecked monkey beached on their shores on the charge of being an invading Frenchman.

Among the wreckage [of a Napoleonic French vessle] lay one wet and sorrowful looking survivor, the ship's pet monkey dressed to amuse in a military style uniform. The fishermen apparently questioned the monkey and held a beach-based trial. Unfamiliar with what a Frenchman looked like they came to the conclusion that this monkey was a French spy and should be sentenced to death. The unfortunate creature was to die by hanging, with the mast of a fishing boat (a coble) providing a convenient gallows.

Anyway, so I'm in a taxi yesterday from my hotel to my work gig and my cabbie was all monkey-in-the-sea. I'm all "what..." until finally I figure out he's talking about a tool for a timing belt. But the folks up there are really nice, so I engage in the whole timing belt discussion. I pay him and then he gets my bag out of the trunk. But he's taking a long time and I hear a strange brushing commotion coming from that area.

A little background...when I go away I always take my black roller-bag - the one with the orange Power T on it and when I come back Other Cat - the white cat - always lies down on it, shedding copiously. I prefer to believe it's because she missed me. Her fur is particularly difficult to get off - vacuuming won't do it - and I'm lazy and slovenly, so I drag the bag around with enough cat hair on it to make a whole 'nother cat. Seriously, it looks like some kind of weird angora roller bag.

I go round the back and the cabbie is vigorously sweeping the bag with his hand and he's all monkey-in-the-sea about a dog-in-the-boot and I can't figure out what the heck he's saying. But finally, finally I realise that he'd been transporting his dog in the boot - and though he'd put a blanket down he thought his dog hair had gotten all over my bag. He was MOR-T-FIED and mumbling apologies and, bless him, he'd actually managed to get all the cat hair off with his hand, before I just burst out laughing.

"Aww Sugar," I said "That's my cat's hair." And I tipped extra.

Science made simple

Confused about global warming? Wondering what you can do?

This article sums it all up nicely.

Best place for 'em

Hey, David Beckham is moving to the US of A. He told the British media that he wasn't moving for the money - but he's getting like a million bucks a week.

But he's not moving for the money...and I believe him.

1. He's getting on a bit. He's not as good as he used to be. He stepped down as England skipper and then was dropped from the team roster. His International career - let's face it - is pretty much over. His football performance in the World Cup this summer was lacklustre (for him).
2. His wife's "career" isn't taking off in London or Madrid. The ex-Spice girl never wanted to move to Spain after he was transferred to Real Madrid. She preferred to stay in England to work first on her singing career (she can't) and then on her celebrity career. But that resulted in David playing away a little too often. So she want to Spain and wrote a book called That Extra Half Inch - which she says is about fashion, but which I suspect is about starving oneself - her only real talent. Spain was never going to work out for Posh and England wearies of her. So where to next - the land of her new best friend - Katie Holmies and other celebs.
3. I believe that David Beckham genuinely has a missionary zeal for football. I think he finds it staggering that America doesn't embrace the sport that he and the rest of the world loves. I think he wants to make America love soccer, too.
4. I believe that David Beckham sees the US as an untapped soccer market. Yes, that's kind of about the money, but it's probably more about pioneering and entrepreneurship.
5. There is a wider range of hair products available in the US.

MP3 ruminations

...On the way from Newcastle to London on the overcrowded, delayed 17:32

• Does George Strait think that living in Tennessee is some kind of 2nd rate consolation prize? All my Texas relatives only moved there after they got in trouble with the law or the banks (or both) of the Volunteer State.
• Wouldn't it be cool to hear Tanya re-do Delta Dawn now that her own rose has faded a little? A sneering, lucky teenager has a different interpretation of life's maddening disappointments.
• "Well, it was all that I could do to keep from cryin," always makes me smile.
• I don't care if liking Johnny Cash's "Hurt" is something even people who don't like country do. I think it's awesome.
• I kinda miss my old buddy Jack.
• Anyone who thinks the Dixie Chicks hate America should have a listen to "Travelling Soldier".
• All of my rowdy friends have NOT settled down. I'm the ice tea drinking one these days - but folks still come round for my cornbread. Mmmm - cornbread and iced tea.
• That whole Van Lear Rose album kicks ass. See Johnny Cash comment above.
  

A two-percenter?

Via Volunteer Voters

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP) - An Army private at Fort Campbell charged with the slaughter of an Iraqi family was diagnosed as a homicidal threat by a military mental health team three months before the attack.

Hmmm...a soldier... homicidal?


Actually they didn't use to be. In World War II, very few American men fired their weapons in the vicinity of the enemy. That's very few men in combat units. Even fewer actually shot to kill - about two percent of soldiers. Half of those two percenters were normal guys who believed they were there to do a job - and they were able to shoot and to kill and then they were able to come home and be normal. The other half were...well, psychopathic. They'd been waiting for this big turkey shoot all their lives. Finally, finally able to kill without consequence. Presumably, some of them came back and were able follow the observable rules of society and others weren't.

The Army was pretty shocked when they came up with these numbers. Surely Americans were a little more bloodthirsty than that? Nope. Not really. Most people have an aversion to that kind of thing - particularly if they're not in the heat of the moment. Many people can't find it in themselves to do it. And if they do manage it, there are consequences. Mental consequences. It's hard on a human to kill another human.

So the Army came up with some better training. More desensitizing and of course, practice, practice, practice. They were able to get a much higher percentage of soldiers to shoot to kill. They helped these soldiers find their inner killer. But I'm not sure they helped them with how to put it away again.

Pork belly

Last Spring, I began to hear rumours about a Polish restaurant in Tooting (my area of London). I heard that it was in a Polish club, but that the restaurant was open to non-members. I had visions of a little storefront club - with a bar full of horny-handed, bleary-eyed Polish labourers smoking cheap, bootlegged Eastern European cigarettes - with a tiny dining room off to the side, lit by flourescent strip, rickety tables covered by cheap yellowing vinyl tablecloths.

I ventured out with the Vol-in-Law sometime in July to visit the Polish restaurant. It turns out that the Polish club - The White Eagle - is really more in Balham than in Tooting (a little further north) - and it's not a little store front joint. It's in a massive old pub building - imposing with a full parking lot out the front and a gristly-armed hard man (probably named Stanislav) guarding the door. Nope. I didn't believe I cared for that - we got a curry that night instead.

The Texan and I had talked about going there a couple of times, but never followed through. But the Texan came back from the States this morning determined and texted us about going to the Polish restaurant. So we made the plan to go to the White Eagle and if for some reason that didn't work out, we could always choose from one of the many, many fine curry establishments in Tooting.

Stanislav wasn't on the door last night. And we were able to go through the 1970s wood panneled club bar into the restaurant without challenge. For a Monday night the place was...well, empty. There was absolutely no one there. But the restaurant itself was really lovely, beautiful blond hardwood floors. All the Christmas decorations were still up, bizarrely, but it was certainly festive enough. There was a salsa class going on in the function room which we could see and hear through glass doors, so until the waitress turned up the Baltic pop enough to drown in out, it was one of those weird conjunctions of culture that one seems to regularly find in London.

The menu offered a variety of Polish standards at quite good prices. We ordered practically the most expensive thing on the menu - the platter that includes all those Polish standards- for three.

"Is that a lot of food?" the Vol-in-Law asked.
"Mmmm...is good choice," said the the Polish waitress in a suitably Boris-and-Natasha-esque accent.

We chose to have our food brought out in one big platter, rather than separately plated. She brought out two big pyrex casseroles on their own stands full of food - Hunter stew, breaded pork chops, weird blossoms of sausage meat, dumplings, potatos and stuffed cabbage rolls. We ordered a salad "set" as well in a bid for healthfulness and received two delicious varieties of pickled cabbage.

It was a good choice and it was a lot of food. My husband is known for being able to pack away the food, was in pain as he left. The Texan, well - that girl can pack away a lot of food. And me, I'm eating for two. Of course, with the amount of dumplings I ate - those two really should have been a couple of brickies called Mikoslaw and Lucasz.

The Vol-in-Law and the Texan both ordered Polish beer on tap which they decreed very tasty and quite strong and it was at a good price, too. (I had just enough for a few sips - and I agree it went down very well.)

Below is a photo of the Polish platter at Daquise in Central London. The food we were served last night was just about as tasty, not quite as pretty and heaped up in copious amounts and pound for pound much, much cheaper.

Where? Say what?

In Lawrence County, Tennessee there's a town called Loretto. OK, that doesn't look hard - sound it out. LOW-ReT-OH (almost like Low-RENT-oh, which would be appropriate). But that's not the way you say it. It's LOW-rett-uh. I know it's a small distinction - but an important one. To locals, anyway.

The British are very proud of their practically unpronounceable place names. The Welsh have that especially locked up, for example - Llanelli - is pronounced as far as I can tell
ccchuchhAN- echhhhchh-LEE. I was once on a train that passed through the tiny town of Llanelli and the whole carriage sounded like it was clearing its throat of a small, but very sticky lurgy. But for all the throat clearing and bizarre pronunciation rules of Wales - at least they seem to follow some rules.

Parts of London near me are Streatham, Balham and Clapham. That's stret-'m, bal-'m and clap-'m. How would you pronounce Loughborough - a town located somewhere in the Midlands.? Low-burr-OH? Lau-bor-uh? A co-worker of mine once heard an American asking a platform attendant where he might catch the train to Luga-buruga (I still maintain that they guy was trying to read from some badly hand written note where the Hs looked like As.) But anyway, it's Luffburow.

There are quite a few other examples of place names which foreigners invariably get wrong causing no end of sneering and jeering from the Brits. Though of course, 9 out of 10 BBC presenters can't say Michigan, Maryland, or Houston properly. And St Louis - is almost always St Louie, but I could forgive anyone for not knowing the right way say Louisville.

But one town looks like it's solved the conundrum of pronouncing place names. Via the Lynnster Zone - the town of Guin, Alabama tells you exactly how to say their town's name on their highway sign.

Dahlia rivalry

This weekend in London was gray and damp and miserable. On Saturday it drizzled, occasionally raining. I caught cabin fever - so we went down to the garden centre in Morden, South London. It adjoins on to a National Trust property - and we thought we might be able to go for a walk if the weather cleared. It did not.

I didn't buy any bulbs last fall and I'm not planning any major additions to the garden for the summer. The garden is pretty full. I have a problem. I overplant.

But the garden centre workers were setting up a dahlia display. Dahlias. I've never grown them. I've always imagined them to be fussy and difficult, slug prone and requiring pinching back and precise mixes of fertilizer - not to mention more sun and more growing space than I can probably provide.

But I saw this awesome orange and white dahlia. Big and blowsy. Tennessee orange at the base and white at the tips. I had to have it.

I asked the Vol-in-Law if he wanted to get a pack of dahlias. You never know what his response will be to something like that. He'll either be completely dismissive or he'll really contemplate and mull over his decision. He mulled. He looked at all the different colors and finally he asked me:

Would you mind if I got the Alabama dahlia?

The Alabama dahlia. Sure enough the dahlia he was looking at was crimson and white and in just the same pattern as the Tennessee dahlia. Now I had to ponder. I've seen that one in real life - it's really beautiful. So we got it. At the check out, I held up the two packets of dahlias and made them play fight - "grrr...arrrgh" while we were waiting for the cashier.

"Wouldn't it be funny," the Vol-in-Law said "if they really did fight and the UT dahlia was a small and puny and the Alabama dahlia was all big and beautiful?"

"No, that would not be funny at all," I said.


The Alabama dahlia at our hotel in Bayeux France

cravings

Since this whole pregnancy lark, I've had something new to blame food cravings on - rather than homesickness, boredom or depression.

Do I want a sausage biscuit? Must be the hormones. Do I want a SunDrop to wash that down with? Must be the hormones. Never mind that these are truly the food and drink of the gods.

Actually, I haven't been plagued with too many cravings that I'm reasonably sure are pregnancy related rather than the result of bad habits of life time - other than cravings for apples or beef. And these are reasonably easily satisified. I have been dreading having cravings that just can't be satisfied on British soil (e.g. sausage biscuit, SunDrop) or could only be satisfied by visiting one of those exclusive epiceries in the American expat ghettoes of London (e.g. velveeta shells and cheese). I refuse to pay the equivalent of $10 for a small packet of highly processed American food. I've been an expat for 10 years now, I generally know how to substitute and make do. Do you think you can buy hushpuppies anywhere in London. Course not - but I do know how to fry some up.

But for the past few days, I've been craving Fritos. They don't sell Fritos here. And I've only ever found something resembling Fritos once and that was in a Kosher grocery in North West of Wembley - which is about an hour a bit away by Tube. But I ask myself...would it really be worth the trouble of making the Vol-in-Law travel all that way?

Overseen in the Underground

What's one to do if one fails to bring sufficiently interesting reading material during one's commute on the Underground?

Read over someone's shoulder of course.

I just happened to glance at my neighbour's book. It had a page of jokes. Oh, what joy. Ideal reading-over-the-shoulder type material. I only managed to get one joke down while he was next to me, but it kinda tickled me all the same.

A chicken is lying back against the pillows, smoking a cigarettte, a satisfied grin on his beak.
An egg is lying next to the chicken, frowning and frustrated.
The chicken says "Well, I guess that answered that question then."

Extremist U.

Are British Universities hotbeds of extremism? Is the UK taxpayer educating the next wave of terrorists and suicide bombers?

Probably.

Via Right Truth a report on the extremist elements rife in a number of UK (and mostly English) univerisities.

Europe recognized their problems with terror in universities and Adrian Morgan writes an excellent 2 part report at Family Security Matters. Mr. Morgan is also a writer at Western Resistance.

On Monday September 26, 2005, Britain's Social Affairs Unit published a report by Professor Anthony Glees and Chris Pope from Brunel University. This report, entitled "When Students Turn To Terror", listed 24 universities where radicalism flourished, including Birmingham, Brunel, Durham, Leeds, Leeds Metropolitan, Luton, Leicester, Manchester Metropolitan, Newcastle, Nottingham, Reading, Swansea, and Wolverhampton. Coming out while Britain was still reeling from the horrors of 7/7 when 52 people died on London Transport, Professor Glees' report galvanized the UK media. Already mosques and radical preachers had been named as contributing factors to the bombings of July 7, 2005. Universities had thitherto been ignored. Yet Britain's campuses had long been the playgrounds of amateur radicals and Islamists.

Well, I'm not so sure that Europe really did recognise the problem. When the current Labour government suggested that Universities start monitoring the activities of some of their radical elements - most of the leftists I know got all a-twitter. "They want the universities to spy on their own students. Outrageous."

Actually, not so outrageous. If students are meeting in their own private accomodation and keeping their terror activities off campus then I would agree that the university has no business in monitoring their behaviour. However, these students are fly-posting on university bulletin boards and using university meeting rooms (at low-low to no cost). These student-radicals are recruiting on campus. This makes it the university's responsibility to make sure that university property isn't being used for potentially catastrophic ends. It makes it the university's responsibility to protect other students from these student-radicals. And I'm not talking protecting them from a potential threat - but protecting existing students - especially female, homosexual and Jewish students.

I'm a free speech fundamentalist - but I don't necessarily believe in subsidised speech. I would ask leftists who might use the Islamaphobia label if at least the same standards should be applied to speech on university property and in university meeting rooms. If some skinhead types were railing on about scantily clad women and homos and the Jooos - what should happen? If women were being harrassed on campus - if there was a climate of fear created by skinhead activists - then what should happen? Well, the university authorities should step in. And I guarantee you that Qaradawi inspired radical Islamism certainly doesn't vary strongly from neo-Nazi views on homosexuality and the Jews and takes a somewhat dimmer view of outspoken, bare-headed women. The university also has a responsibility to protect Muslim students - in particular Muslims who practice a less Wahabist, less radical form of Islam - e.g. Muslims who will happily associate with students from other religions or Muslim women who don't cover their hair. I know Muslim students who have been harassed and intimidated for not being "Muslim enough".

This doesn't mean turning kids over to the authorities for their hot head views. This means creating a climate where harrassed students can make a complaint and zero tolerance attitude to threating misogynistic, anti-Semetic and anti-homosexual language and behaviour.

This means not supporting radical Islamist values with free or subsidised meeting spaces. For example, some time last year a radical group at my husband's university booked a hall for their outrageous anti-semetic propaganda. They claimed that it was for one thing when booking - but advertised another anti-semetic event. A group of Jewish students complained, the university investigated and the Islamists were moved on basically on the grounds that they had reserved the hall for one purpose and were using it for another.

Speech or incitement?

Remember those Danish cartoons - you know those 12 inflammatory cartoons - that caused outrage among Muslims throughout the world?

Remember the outrage? I bet my friend VolK does. She was making her very first visit to London during the time of the cartoon protests and got to see the big parade from the window of her first hotel and then she moved hotels only to find out she was just around the corner from the Danish Embassy.

Remeber what some of the protesters said - "Bomb, bomb Denmark" and "Bomb, bomb USA" and one exhorted Osama Bin Laden to attack Denmark so that the mujihadeen brothers could take the Danish wives as war booty. And there was more stuff about beheading those who insult Islam and Denmark would pay with blood and so on.

You might also remember that the only people arrested at the time were some folks protesting the protesters in favour of free speech. But the police have made up for that and done some investigation and handed over files to the Prosecution Service...we do have some standards in the UK, you know, and they're not double all the time.

Just yesterday, the first of this lot was convicted for inciting murder - a Mr Umran Javed of Birmingham, UK.

He's very sorry for all the trouble he caused and he was just angry at the time - he didn't really want anyone to bomb the USA or Denmark. Course not. He and some of the other Islamists who've gotten themselves in trouble over pesky placards and incitement have kind of plead the "heat of the moment" defense. But Mr Javed's got form. At least I think he has - maybe it's a different Umran Javed.

Here's something from Eye on the World last week:

A British Muslim Umran Javed, who is on trial for soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred and who claims that he is being misunderstood, had this to say back in 2001 (taken from the BBC's Panorama program)

You can follow the link to see who wanted to bomb that time.

And here's something from a 2005 Jihad Watch post:

Another Muslim extremist, Umran Javed, told the debate that although he did not see an attack on Ireland as likely, retaliation would come "swiftly" if Ireland increased its support for the United States...

OK...the dude is bad. But does he deserve to go down? Is his shouting and slathering really incitement? I certainly find what he said offensive. I find it scary and I think it's just the tip of a very big iceberg of Islamist hate. I personally wish that Umran Javed would fall into the sea. But am I hypocritical if I rejoice in him being convicted?

I grant that the kind of stuff he said - including Remember the lesson of Theo Van Gogh - was at the very least in the gray area between offensive but permissable speech and incitement. But shouldn't incitement have some kind of direct effect to make it really incitement?

I'm not talking about what the actual law is here. In the UK, the free speech law is an ass. You can be convicted of stirring up religious or racial hatred. People have been convicted for calling each other nigger. Black people have been convicted for calling each other nigger. I don't think that's right. But just because people are being put away or persistently prosecuted under these laws doesn't mean that my opinion about the limits of free speech should change. I don't think it ought to be against the law to call somebody a racial epithet (though I agree that it's not nice.) And I think that there ought to be a test of reasonableness applied to incitement. Does a reasonable person think that even a mad person would take Javed's words and then act on them directly. From what I've seen, I'm not sure. But of course, I haven't seen all the evidence and I didn't sit on that jury*.

What others say:

Exile from On the Wing in Denmark:

The Old Bailey did it right. The jury convicted Umran Javed of soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred during the oh-so-spontaneous islamic demonstration in London in february last year. Finally the Brits have tired of muslim indignation. About time too. The time has long passed for some "British indignation" served cold, courtesy of Her Majesty's Prison.

Peter Sanderson is pretty equivocal and says:

Although I think they are absolute morons, they are entitled to their idiotic opinions. As long as they stick to waving placards around and not actually bombing Denmark, I can live alongside them happily.

I understand his sentiments, to some extent I've expressed them myself. But I don't think he quite gets just how dangerous these people are. Though it's interesting that the image he chose for his post was this one:









Yes, that's right - it says "Freedom of expression go to hell". Hoisted by their own placard?

And finally, Craig at Bring It On - explores the legal framework around incitement in the US - and isn't sure that Javed could have/should have been convicted. I guess my free speech fundamentalism is largely framed by my US outlook.

__________
* and thank goodness I'm not on that jury - as according to Brights News Feed

Supporters of Javed in the coutroom apparently protested loudly at the conviction, one man shouting “Allahu Akbar, I curse the judge, the court, the jury, all of you.”

You nasty thing

I'm going to work - on the tube (yes, I am late). I am watching a woman go through her purse and dump old receipts into the empty seat next to her. I am doing it surreptitiously - my gaze is lowered as a respectful Londoner's should be.

Now I am watchng her pick a few hairs out of her purse and dump it on top of the receipts. That's not very nice.

Now I am watching her clean her hair out of her brush. She is pulling clumps of residual hair out of her brush and I know what she's gonna do with it. I stare openly now - jaw dropped. She sees me, but I don't look away. Yes, that's right you are a nasty thing.

She drops the clot of hair back into her purse.

Trafficked

Yesterday, while I was out and about I was offered bootleg DVDs by a middle aged Chinese man. One of them was Apocalypto, which tempted me as I'm curious about the film but don't want to give that Mel Gibson any of my money.

But I couldn't be sure the DVD would be of any quality or indeed would even have Apocalypto content on the disk. And to be honest, I didn't want to encourage the vile trade. And it wasn't a vile trade in intelllectual property that concerned me, but the trafficking of humans.

The man selling the DVDs - he looked so sad and tired and weighed down. He had a look in his eyes that one rarely sees in the west these days (some of those 1930s photos of sharecroppers had it). He was almost certainly a slave, working to pay off passage to the first world.

I declined the DVDs. I looked him in the eyes as I did it. I hope I did it in a nice enough way.

Meet Cletus

Guess what, y'all. I'm pregnant. I'm really sorry if you know me and this is the first time you're hearing about this. But I think I'm still in shock and I didn't know how to announce.

I'm not just a little bit pregnant either, but like almost five months pregnant. I may not be easily shocked, but it takes me a little while to come round.

Anyway, I've already noticed it getting in the way of my blogging - 'cause like I want to relate my hilarious adventures of cross-cultural pre-natal care in the NHS, but that would have seemed a little bit odd if I'd said "a funny thing happened to a friend of mine".

Plus, though my blogging identity has never been that clear to me or probably to anyone else (just what kind of a blog is this?) one thing it wasn't was a Mommy Blog. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just that I figure I've got the number one Tennessean in London blog and do I really want to even dabble in the same category as blogging supremas like Busy Mom, Suburban Turmoil (also pregnant) and Katie Allison Granju (also pregnant) who has written like real books on parenting.

-0-

We've been calling it Cletus. As in Cletus the Fetus. Cletus has his own website - www.cletusthefetus.com ...sort of... it's a lapsed URL now, but here's the tag line:

Featuring cartoons about a talking fetus who escaped from an abortion clinic. Offers episodes, bios and downloads.

Well that sounds like a laugh a minute, can't imagine why that's not still going. I'm not sure it would be worth me buying up the URL at this point, since nobody but me and my brother think that calling "it" Cletus is funny or cute. I'm a bit worried that if it's a boy, it will be stuck with the moniker Cletus - though I can guarantee you that it won't be appearing on any birth certificate.



-0-

So, my Vol blogging was light this Fall - I was a little distracted by the whole nausea, pregancy-shock thing. But for the record - and summing up a whole season of missed football posting - at least the Vols did better than last year. However, I reckon Phil better watch his step after that Outback Bowl performance. I didn't know what time the game finished, but I knew we'd lost before looking up the scores because of the number of people landing on my blog from the search string "Fire Phil Fulmer". Yikes. The Vols started out good, but it sorta petered out.

Anyway, my point is, win or lose, boy or girl, I will be raising this child in full Vol-itude. I haven't bought a single baby thing yet - or even really started looking, but I have noticed that there are a lot of cute Lil' Volunteer things on the market.





















All photos have been ripped from Team Baby Entertainment

I even suggested to the Vol-in-Law that if we had a girl we could name her Chelsea Volunteer (Chelsea after my favorite English Premiership team). And believe it or not, he only vetoed the Chelsea bit.

Pic-a-day?

Squirrels on snark is posting a photo a day:

Thanks to Newscoma, I learned about an idea for taking and posting a snapshot a day for 365 consecutive days. I've joined a group on flickr called Project 365 and the tree at left is my first contribution. I took it about 8:45 this morning on a farm just outside Martin, Tennessee.

Me - I don't think I have the dedication for a picture a day. Some days I click and some days I don't. But I did today:



It's a portrait of my little cat Fancy. The one with the bald spots on her shoulders.