Is it New Years, New Year's, or New Years'...

or does it matter? Any which way you put it, I hope yours is great. Me? I'm going to go out with a few friends at 3 pm.

Yes. I shall get my drink on from 3 to 6 pm because I fall asleep by 10 usually. Ideally, I will look something like this...

Regrettably, and in a way, predictably jejeune, I'll most likely end up going out like this:

So I'll come home and get my New Years/Year's/Years' kiss and then go to sleep. Pathetic. ABOUT THE GOING TO SLEEP EARLY PART NOT THE KISS PART! THE KISS PART IS AWESOMERAD! I mean, I'm still 17 in my head but I'm not physically capable of doing what my past-17-year-old self used to be able to do. That's the pathetic part.

What are you doing tomorrow night?

So I finally get around to playing with

my birthday present: a new Bamboo Tablet and drawing software.

self portrait. Whaddya think?

It's taken me five months to get around to actually sitting down with it. Oh yeah, I got a crockpot and hairdryer for Christmas. I used the hairdryer immediately upon receipt. 

What? I had dirty hair and needed a shower. Obviously my husband was telling me something without telling me something.


I took several days away from teh internetz and am slogging through all the new stuff on reddit and catching up on my Google Reader. Happily, I am doing this while watching one of SciMan's pressies, Blue Planet/Planet Earth/Frozen Planet. Orca whales are bastards.

In which I compare the local law enforcement to cats

Here's the 411 from a 405'er... Living in this part of Durham is like living with a cat. Without fail, every night, police sirens go by our window, heading south to Brandon (and Crook, I assume but that's just too obvious).

Making the connection yet? Well, it's like this: you cat owners have a cat. Cat is in a room. Cat decides to run at breakneck speed from that room to another, bottlebrush tail bristling. Cat comes to full stop. Cat sheepishly looks at you as if to say, "What? Haters gonna hate." Yep. That is just how the Durham vehicularly mobile constabulary behaves.



I imagine the police cars in some sort of rank, a la taxis. All of a sudden, they leave at breakneck speed, sirens blaring. They're tearing down the A690 and  upon reaching some chav's terraced council home, come to a full stop.

Having never seen Co. Durham police in action in my sleepy village, I can only infer that this is all they do. I picture it like this: they tear down the road, wahwahing at top volume only to stop abruptly and park the police car.





Oh, it's quite within the realm of possibility that arrests are being made, but riddle me this... why is it that the sirens don't come back?

Alcohol is the best thing about this.

I follow MichonMichon/Jules and she had a video on yesterday's post. It was Epic Meal Time's Breakfast of Booze. I think I was in some way inspired by that yelling man, hence all the curse words.

This is the ingredient list. We're in England, so weights are grams and kilograms for the dry fruit ingredients. Yes yes, Derpina, there are some tsps and tbsps but those aren't necessary to the story.  

Assembly table #1

The cauldron. Normally used for the Christmas Chutneys, but this year, it was decided that the making of the chutney was far too dangerous for their relationships with one another. So, cakes it was.

 This is Ruth's mother, Susan. She's lining the cake tins with parchment paper. Notice the coffee mug. The cuppa is ever present in this house, in this country. Omnipresent, really...like a Route 44 Sonic drink in a teacher's classroom: ubiquitous.

 Commence round 1 with all this butter!

 It goes in the cauldron! Add lots of sugar! That's smart.

Count those mutha-fucking eggs! 12! And we ain't even done yet!

The stuff that goes in cake.

Put some peel there, bitches. Life's too short to drink alone.

Mixed fruit and currants soaked in Courvoisier

They all go in!

Divide it evenly, yo. Make some divots in the middle for the alcohol collection. Was told that one of these would be mine. Dammit.

Start round two. That's me folks. I was a mixin' fool! Roo's mom brought an industrial strength one because she learned from last year's mishap: the mixer's motor burned out.

 Whoomp! Dere it is! Shakalaka. This one was mine. It has crystallized ginger, dates, nuts, and other mixed fruits too. I think there was mango. Not positive. It too has a divot for the alcohol. It was my "practice cake".

 Take it to the pub and eat that brick. Fucker was massive. This was only half of it. Gave the other half to Peter the Bartender. Haven't heard back from him about it, so it must've been alright.

So theoretically speaking, there'd be a cake in a tin on my counter (aka 'bench' in this neck of the woods) and I'd be "feeding" it spirits each week... Like I have some minor cake god to appease.

I couldn't wait for that though. I wanted to try it out. And you know what? It was like fruitcake. I don't like fruitcake really. Neither do SciMan and Kiddo. But you know what else? When Roo gives me the Christmas Cake that I helped to make, I'm going to eat some and be grateful that I have such a great friend in her. She drives me places that would take me an hour by bus (not counting wait times). We have a lot of laughs together; our taste in alcohol is similar: I like it straight from the bottle and not in a cake, so does she. My kid loves her and vice versa. She's my first grown-up friend* and I'm very very lucky to have one like her.







*to all my other friends that I made before I was "grown-up": I love you realhard. It isn't that I don't think you are "real" friends, it's that you met me when I was young and stupid and you liked me. You even like me now when I'm older and more stupid than before and I imagine that you'll keep on keepin' on when I'm way old and catatonically senile. I sure as hell hope so. You know my skeletons, so to speak. And maybe, just maybe it's because of that that I'm wondering what's wrong with you.

SciMan and Kiddo are forced to get to know the natives on a very intimate level

I take today's general bemusement from SciMan's Google+ entry from earlier today.

"Today's cultural exposure hit a bit of a new low. While Kiddo and I were waiting for a bus at Durham bus station, I heard something that caught my attention, turned, and sure enough, there was a man standing in the corner of the room peeing on one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. Clean button up shirt, black slacks and sport jacket. He was less than 10 feet from the public restroom, which costs 20 pence to use. There is a restaurant next door. There is a pub across the street. He chose to pee on the floor inside the bus station and then trail footsteps of urine as he walked away. It was 2pm on Sunday afternoon."

This is England. Land of the pee, home of the depraved.

Want to know more? Tough.

I made Christmas Cake. In October. I'm still reeling from it. I have pictures, just have been too lazy to find the cable to connect my phone to the laptop in order to upload pictures. But really, who cares? It's a damn process of making cake, that after baking is soaked in alcohol. The only reason why I'd bother is to show the magnitude of ingredients and the size of the cauldron it was mixed in.

That's right, bitches. C-c-c-c-CAULDRON!

 So, let me know what you want me to do. If there's enough interest, I'll get off my fat ass and find that damn cable so you can see my lovely long hair tied back in a ponytail as I struggle with the mixer of mixers in the massive cauldron of a 14 egg cake.

British people have thanksgiving too.

On this day in 2010: Clubbing Seals!
Not really. I was lying.

I've been asked by a lot of people here about what all is entailed in the holiday known as American Thanksgiving (not to be confused with Canadian Thanksgiving). You know, "All I know about America is what I see in the movies" kind of questions.

Like, what do you eat? And what do you eat?

Those are very easy questions to answer. And I answer the best I can, in the only way I can. With honesty and in bold.

"TV dinners for my family, usually. One year, we had tamales! I know a gal whose family likes to BBQ crab legs on Thanksgiving."


What about the Native Americans? Do they celebrate Thanksgiving the way you do?


"Hmm, well, Chinese food is very popular with the Redskins Indians Native Americans First Peoples tribes. There's not a whole lot of interaction between the ethnic groups because you know, it'd be like Jews celebrating Hitler's birthday."

Quite, quite. I can see that being a bit awkward for you.

"Yeah, it's not like they'd want invite us onto the rez on that day."


What about presents? Do you give each other pressies?

"Yes! Especially, we give presents to newly arrived immigrants. It's not really widely known outside of the lower 48. We want to make sure it stays local and as "American" as possible and does not become an exported custom. I know how much you Europeans hate amalgamating the rest of American culture into your own. It's our gift to you."


I appreciate it! Ta, very much. Are there any special Thanksgiving carols, like the Christmas ones?

"Oh sure, lots of them. There's 'Hold on Grandaddy, Momma's dialling 911', 'Quick, quick, pick it up before someone sees'. That one's got a dance to go with it. There's 'Salty Gravy and Bland Casserole'. My mom's favorite is 'Never Gonna Dessert You', by Trick Ghastly."


I've never heard of those! You'll have to teach them to me!

"Not surprised. They're Southern traditionals. Not much good from there reaches anywhere."




And what did I get today from my friend? A pressie. A DVD copy of Peter's Friends with an all-star cast of some British actors you've heard of and some you haven't. I love it.

I am very happy and thankful for clean, potable water coming out of my faucet. I am happy and thankful for trashmen and trash collection. I am very happy and thankful for non-censored, relatively free, somewhat inexpensive internet access. You should be too. Call your congressperson ASAP to tell them so.

I am overthemoonandback for my daughter and her health status. Same goes for SciMan and all my family. I love all my friends real, virtual, and imaginary. That means you. And I hope of hopes, that if you celebrate today, that you let someone take your keys (in a non-spouse swap way, unless that's your thing, then by all means) to your car so that you do not drink and drive.

Happy Thanksgiving to all and to all a good night!

Golden Rations could be a good cereal brand name

Ever hear about the Golden Ratio? What about the idea that the closer your face is to perfect symmetry, the "hotter" you are to the opposite sex?

So in nature and art, also science and mathematics, there exists a number that provides a basis for an algorithm to indicate supreme beauty...although most likely, this is highly exaggerated.

The Fibonacci spiral approximates this... AND SO DOES MY FACE!

My friend,  DrSpach, did one for herself on Google+ and showed lots of us... I begged her to do mine and gave her a few options to choose from.
Here are the ones she used:

Here's the result of the symmetrical division of my face...

Rachel McAdams could be my twin! So too could Sister Wendy. Wee-nay-issahnce!

Thanks Stf! I've always wondered about my own symmetry. Because now I can tell photographers to shove it when they want me to photograph me from the left as now I have irrefutable scientific proof that my right side is my better side.

So why am I left-handed?

Short Saga of Discounted Pussy Energy

Oh. I couldn't make this up if I wanted to.

So, I originally saw the Pussy at Makro. It wasn't hurt or used up or bent all out of shape when I first saw it. My new friend, a fellow Amurrikan named Tammy, has a membership to this Costco/Sam's Warehouse lookalike and she invited me along; she wanted to buy a turkey, I like looking at mass quantities of shit. Long story short, I had to take a picture of this (scroll down if you haven't seen it yet. Better yet, read that post before continuing).

Anyway, the turkey wasn't forthcoming on the first trip. Hmm, methinks you're getting the long story long. No turkey meant a second visit. Also, I saw the big "Santa Present" that Natalie wanted at Costco, but didn't buy it then as I wanted to check online prices and local toy stores. I like helping where I can. However, this is not relevant.

Back at Makro the second time to get the turkey, we swing by the discounted/damaged stock section on the way to the checkout lines. Tammy likes to buy her trashbags from that section.

Lo and behold, doth the Makro provide...

See? What the customer really wants is unbent, unadulterated pussy in a can. I mean, this canned pussy is good to go for another 20 years or so. It'll still be as fresh then as it is now...maybe a little flat but who cares! There might be a little more packaging to trim but it's the (reciprocal) journey that's the fun part, not the destination.

LOOK AT ALL THIS CHEAP PUSSY THAT I DIDN'T BUY FOR MY HUSBAND! It's because it has the EXCL STD. Gives a whole new meaning for the "V" in VAT. Instead of value added tax, we now have vagina added tax.

I... I don't... I don't even... I don't even know how to fit this into my paradigm.