Control Issues

I've learned that I control the weather in the UK.

NO REALLY!

If I (or the Man even) decide to do laundry, it rains. If I say, "no, laundry. I shall not lay hands upon thee", it won't rain. Except for today. Today, I got lucky with my rain dance... I am native American after all.

One year ago today. It was cold then, it's cold now. 

New pub in town had this masterpiece: Proscuitto, honey, tomato, figs, and fresh mozzarella. C'est tres bella. Me gusta.

My new pub bev fave since cokes are not to be found at my local. It's fizzy orange juice. But boy oh boy, does it give me the burpy hiccups!

And this is what I've been pissed about for a week. There's this little boy at kiddo's school who has some severe and profound disabilities. He did this to her.
This is what the report says:
"After school club children were outside. Kiddo was playing with wooden blocks alone...*** came outside, went straight to her and grabbed her by the hair and pushed her face into a wooden block on the ground."

Uh, 'scuse me?

No, he had to have "slammed" her face into that block, not "pushed" to get that big of bruise on her face. Also, he pulled out a big chunk of her hair.


I say, fuck inclusion...because this isn't the first time shit like this has happened to her caused by this same child. I honestly don't give a flying fuck if someone's retarded or not...when you hurt my child, you need to be expelled.

So here's the school's solution:

The two children with be kept away from each other. If one is outside, the other must be inside. The two shall take their meals separately.

I understand IEPs. I've implemented them before. But I've never agreed with the policy that just because a child is on a BIP or IEP, that when they are violent, their consequences are different than everyone else's. And so, what I want to know is... when can I go mano y mano with that mom?

I can not wait to get out of here.

Steve McQueen and Round One of Blog Herpes Innoculation

I think I'm hosted by TexaGermaNadian today for Frackin' Friday... Geordiespeakeasyness. Go check it out!

This is greatness for Fun Video Friday. And here's why. Cats are great. Steve McQueen was great. A cat named Steve McQueen can therefur only be greatness. This guy made a TV intro for his cat's life...Wouldn't you watch it? I would, for like three episodes. Because then it'd be canceled and I couldn't watch it after that.



See? Greatness.

***

I don't remember when my first Blog Herpes was bestowed, but I do know that I am the hipster that coined the mint terminology Blog Herpes. Give props where props are due people.

I've been given several awards recently. I've finally recovered...I get around. You should leave comments so I can come visit your blog so I can decide to bestow upon thee some Blog Herpes. You will love it. Here's Round 1:

From Missy at If it's not ok, then it's not the end...

Missy is a sweet lil gal mint posh totty who doesn't get her knickers in a twist if her tash is macked on by a chavette. She lives in sunny County Durham and is a teacher! Who could afford to go away on a holiday/minibreak to NYC! Anyway, I'd like to thank Missy in all her poshtottinessglory and maybe someday I can buy her a pint after work. I don't think she's banned from Wetherspoons but if she is, then we'll just go to The Swan and Three Cygnets. Haway now, go on and visit her. She's a canny lass who always helps me with my Geordiespeak.

Here's where I rub 7 random facts onto you like palm oil...

1. I have dreams about people dying and I wake up crying. Usually, it's either my mam or kiddo. Also, I have dreams where my teeth fall out. I should floss more.
2. I got a Monday job working for couple who own a chef/beautician supply store. I don't know more than that. I just know that I'm going to be doing stuff, like invoices and mailing packages. Yay for college.
3. I think people who want to move to England have only either seen it in the movies or have just visited London.
4. It's likely that I still hold the record for the most books checked out at the Ada Public Library ...for one summer...I would like to say that I hope someone has beaten it, because that was a long time ago...but I really don't. 
5. I don't have any fancy bras. Just white, black, and beige. I wear the beige one when I wear white shirts.
6. I play Words with Friends like a mad fiend. My current opponents are kmstreeter12509 and sleepyjean10. Get the app so you can play with us. It's like Scrabble. I'm mollieisokinuk
7. I used to have to beg The Man for Indian food excursions. Now, he likes it more than I do. I'm still more gustatorily and culinarily adventurous than he is. 

And now I pass it on to 7 people who I don't have to pimp out, but how else would you know why I like them?

ArtsyNina 

I'm a new follower of hers; around two or three weeks. She's renovating her house among other stuff, like experiencing life and living it. But I love watching house renovations. So, I'm excited to see what's in store for it. Life, schmife. Srsly, she's great.

Kristina @ a perfect dose of life

Ah, my portableScrabble nemesis. I really like this kiddo. She's moving to Colorado. Good luck with that! She's just an all around positive kiddo and while she's not really a kiddo, she's not old like me...so I can call her a kiddo. We're about even at Scrabble....maybe I have the edge?

Narragansett #7

One of the best writers out there. Am waiting for her to tap me on the shoulder and ask me to be her readerslasheditor. I'm cheap and fast. (heh heh, that's what she said) She also onceuponatime said some really nice things about me, unprompted by an award meme or anything...just because...and that made my day, week, and month. I just have to keep living up to that praise, shazambooie!!

Michelle at The American Resident

Michelle is an expat who actually likes living over here...prolly because she's here for the duration, with marriage to a native and kids who are natives.  Also, she's a fellow Oklahoman who lives in a reno'd pub. HonesttoBetsy! She's flabbergastingly professional and I always experience a frisson of excitement whenever she drops by my amateur hour.

The outspoken introvert

When she posts, which is not often, you know that you're reading a well-thought-out, crafted gem of several paragraphs. It's food for thought. And now I'm full.

LeighAnn @Twin Spin @Genie in a blog

I like my Twitter conversations with LeighAnn. She's the reason why I started back up again. She writes for several journals, plus her blog, plus mommying twins and a spare. And she looks good doing it...'it' being the classy manner in which she simultaneously parents and ignores children. My guru. Her new name is Guru Latortwipina

Okay, I'm done.

Day 30

Day 30- An author that you'll read, whatever they put out.

George R.R. Martin, Edward Rutherfurd, Terry Pratchett, Cecilia Ahern, and Christopher Moore. Bit of a spectrum there, eh?

Why? Well...

Martin is Martin. Rutherfurd is consistently epic, Ahern is the daughter of the old Taoiseach of Ireland and was a popstar princess...she's champion. Pratchett and Moore are quirky, irreverent, and hilarious. Pratchett is suffering from Alzheimer's but he's trying to develop a cure. Haway, Pratchett!

Interestingly, I haven't read any of the extra books JK Rowling published as addendums to the HP World. Really not all that interested in Babbity Rabbity and the Cackling Stump.



I'm so glad I'm done with this challenge.

Day 29

Day 29- An author you completely avoid/hate/won't read

I got two of them; Stieg Larsson and Nicholas Sparks.

If you've been following the whole 30 Days of Books Challenge then you know all there is to know about Stieg and me.

....this feels redundant...or there's some deja vu going on.

Nicholas Sparks... I know how every single one of his books is going to end. So do you, don't lie to yourself.

Here's how it goes:

1. Start with two pretty white people 
2. Include an obstacle that makes love between them seem impossible
3. They fall in love anyway
4. Throw in a completely-out-of-left-field, exploitative, awful disaster that only serves to jerk tears and turn an otherwise forgettable romance into a tragedy.
5. Rinse. Repeat.

Source of my vitriolic list...does it count that it was referring to the movies and not the books per se, but when you think about it, since the books are the movies' source, then it makes sense?

Plus, Nicholas Sparks doesn't think he writes romance novels... because, and I quote, "if you look for me, I'm in the fiction section. Romance has its own section." 

Bless him.

So I guess I can't stand Nicholas Sparks because of his self-delusion and also because, when I read his books, I end up looking like this: 

source

...only with more snot, redness, and swelling.

A Trolldad, A Foul-mouthed 10 year old, and Day 28

Best link of the day: http://waveatthebus.blogspot.com/

Trolldad waves at his son's bus every morning. The son's in high school. So awesomely embarrassing! I think I would've loved it if my friends did too.

Fun Video for Friday because Sunday should never be allowed to not let Friday go unacknowledged.

Found it here. Why are cursing kids so funny?


Day 28- A book you wish you'd never read.

I wish I'd never read books on Friday or Saturday nights whilst I was a young and vibrant girl in college. There were many a night where I stayed in and read a book, instead of going out with friends.

Okay, I really have no idea if that's a true story or if I'm just place-holding. Or if it's because I really don't want to tell you the answer that pops into my head EVERY time I ask myself what is a book I wish I'd never read.

It's not very shocking, truthfully. It's the Bible.  I've read enough of it to know what it is about but not enough to have any intelligent discourse about it without sounding pedantic.

I hope that many of the things I believe are profound in nature...and this results in my inability to discuss them without being run roughshod by someone (general, could be anyone) who thinks they know more than me just because they've read the Bible and therefore all things spouted in quote format by said typical person, I cannot logically take as empirical. It could be that what is said is true, but it's the attitude of that said type that I cannot abide.

And so, I'm not going to say more than this: I wish I hadn't read it, but I did and that has made all the difference.

Day 27- My winner's pedestal is higher than Aaron Sorkin's

Day 27- A book you would write if you had all the resources


And by resources, we mean the ability to write coherently and for several day stretches at a time. 


The Story of Reddit, which would then become a massively popular bestseller, shooting to the top of the NYTimes list within 2 days of its release on Amazon and Barnes&Noble stores. This amazing Great American Novel would then lead to an optioning battle between Paramount, Pathe', and Bad Robot production companies... finally culminating in an excellent seven figure screenplay deal with Joss Whedon and Aaron Sorkin as my seconds.

Getting caught up: 30 DoB Challenge Days 23-26

Peter the bartender at the local pub gave me two books last night... Jeffrey Deaver's Hard News and The Vanished Man. He said they were good toilet reads. 

Really Peter? Come on. Should I read them or is it too icky? Oh, and get this, he then proceeds to tell me an off-color joke about the Mississippi preacher and was disappointed when I'd already heard it. 

I mean, his cadence was even put off! Ruth hadn't heard the joke though and he was able to tell her about the crazy American preacher. 


I wouldn't have minded normally. But he didn't tell it well. Karl Malden did it better and since I can't embed, here's the link to the West Wing episode he did it in. Peter was quite disturbed to know that his joke was in a West Wing episode. 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX6wOOJy0hk


Why did Karl Malden always play a 'man of the cloth'?




Day 23- Favorite Romance Novel

source

and all the other Pride and Prejudice sequels, like Mr Darcy's Daughters, Bridget Jones' Diary, and Mr Darcy Takes a Wife just to name a few. 


Day 24- A Book you later found out the Author lied about

source

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8459110/Three-Cups-of-Tea-author-made-up-parts-of-book.html
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Cups_of_Tea

Day 25- Favorite Autobiographical/Biographical book

source

Day 26- A Book you wish would be written

Shriner Moltar's memoirs

Day 22 or From the Elite Eight to the Final Four to the Championship FTW!

I don't think you're going to like how this ends...

Well, it was inevitable. It was inevitable that I would have Harry Potter in the final four and it's almost predictable that A Song of Ice and Fire, Wheel of Time, and Lord of the Rings would end up here.

How is it that three of the four series in this round are a direct result of my relationship with The Man? Almost disgusting.

Lord of the Rings lost  because it was the first of its genre. Yeah, both have made up languages that were created by the authors, but as Walt Disney is paraphrased, 'keep moving forward'. Dumbledore had to prevail over Gandalf only because Dumbledore, for all his being a wizard, was mortal and lived and loved as such. I don't even know what Gandalf loved other than the status quo of peace.

A Song of Ice and Fire has been consistently great over the course of the entire series. There were books in the Wheel of Time series where I wanted to  (insert the most awful thing you can do to baby seals) and really, I could've done without two whole books of Perrin's whingeing about Faile. Oh, and the traveling circus. I have no idea why that was even part of the plot. 

Really pretty frickin hard to choose the final winner. I had to sleep on it a couple nights. 

Really, what it boiled down to was a point The Man made (and which I agreed with) when we were happily discussing this bracket line-up. For all of it being fiction, A Song of Ice and Fire is highly lacking in the deus ex machina that you have in the Harry Potter series, or the all the rest of the other series for that matter. It's extremely human in that way. 

Plus, there's still more to come. We don't yet know how the story ends...but I sure did like how it began. George R. R. Martin kills off his characters...because he doesn't fall in love with them. You think one character is the protagonist? BAM! Beheaded on the steps of the Sept of Baelor. Then you think, okay...so his son's the person the story's really about. BAM! Murdered by treacherous vassals.

 I may do this with movies sometime. Who's with me?