Re: security at the ports:
I work for a London wine merchant, we regularly export (mostly French) wine to the US. Last year 'as part of the United Bioterrorism Response Act of 2002' we were required to register with the FDA. I had a few thoughts on this.
1) This doesn't make anyone any safer. In most cases no one from my company even sets eyes on the boxes we are exporting. They do, however pass through at least two warehouses/shipping agents. If the purpose of registration is to identify us with the suspect goods, the shipping paperwork has always had our name and address on it.
2) In order to register we had to find someone in the US to act as our agent. This is OK for established businesses, but it has to make it harder for new exporters to get US customers.
3) The US Government now has a handy database of all foreignors who sell food and drink to the US. I don't know what use this is to them, though.
So, the net result is that they looked like they were doing something to combat Bioterrorism, but what they were actually doing is collecting data (and making me do paperwork).
I repeat, this doesn't make anyone any safer.
I want a pygmy mammoth! The cats could ride on it.
Subthread, if US chaise lounge = UK sun-lounger, does UK chaise-longe = US day bed? and if not, what's a day bed?
Thanks to MKK & epacris for the pictures.
Teresa, my sincerest condolences for the terrible happening (but with congratulations for getting re-printed (and some Heh! because I have a second edition))
In an attempt to raise a smile, you reminded me of the story of the youthfull author who began her book by writing the errata slip......
p.52 for sausage, read hostage
Thanks to Stephan, above.
Is anybody here playing the Hamlet text adventure?
I've got it to 73% but I can't find the chalice. I have grave suspicions about the couch in the back room of the inn, but nothing I do has any effect on it.
Incidentally, whilst in the kitchen type 'make dinner'.
And when I said Bruce, I did mean Xopher. The poster's names have moved to the top?
Bruce, tights = pantyhose. I've always wondered why so many of the US/UK problematic words concern clothing (pants, knickers, vest, jumper, sneakers etc.) and also, why the US version of common words are almost always longer: lift/elevator, flat/apartment (I know, it's a big country.....)
Jelly = jello, but also means clear fruit preserves. Preserves are chunky jams, but I think the terms includes pickles, basically any fruit or veg which is 'preserved'.
Stalagtites/stalagmites. Tights come down.
This is probably not funny (smutty) in the US where tights are nylons, but trust me, when I was 15 it was funny (and dirty) and that's how I know.
I don't think we have almanacs in the UK anymore. The weight/time/currency conversion stuff is in diaries, along with the holidays and saints days - almanacs used to have dates for planting & weather preditions along with calendar notes such as 'on this day in 1235 the bishop of Bath and Wells spontaneously combusted due to overindulgence in pickled mushrooms'; which is probably not that helpful to terrorists. Or anybody, really. Possibly bishops.
Someone should issue an urban almanac: Sept. 5th: Christmas crap appears in supermarkets. Jan 3rd: Hot Cross Buns. June 4th: Back to Skool special!
Friday's rape is very, very, odd.
I think the deal is supposed to be that at the start of the story she doesn't identify as human, and so that she doesn't react to it the way a 'real' woman would. For her, it's just part of the job, & she wants to do her job well.
(quote: 'I hear it's worse for males')
And; she thinks it's part of her job; and the (nice!?) rapist thinks it's part of his. And he doesn't think he's a person either.
So, the kindest interpretation would be that the book moves Friday (and 'Pete') from 'passing' as human to actually being people - in fact taking responsibility for their own actions. And admitting their own humanity.
I agree with most of what Mitch says about the structure of the book above. The plot is.....umm, there's a plot? Heinlein writes women really badly, but I let him off because he lets us kick some ass.
I promise I am not a Neil Gaiman impersonator (is there any money in that? I'm looking for a new job) but I do have a copy of 'Daisy Miller' and 'The Turn of the Screw' in one volumn published by Scholistic which I bought through the school book club when I was about nine. So Henry James in Puffin is not so sureal. Just, you know, really quite sureal.
There's a show running on BBC2 in the UK called 'How clean is Your House' which is pure car crash television. It features 'Dirt detective' Aggie, a pleasant enough woman who takes samples of the grime around the place and tells you what bacteria/livestock you are harbouring; and a woman called Kim with very improbable blond hair - I am not being blondist, if you've seen the show you will know it's very very odd in an over-styled way - who just bullies people whilst employing cringe-making sexual innuendo. Both of them are too proper to use either the vernacular or the medical terms for excrement. People over the age of six (as long as they are not talking to the under sixes) who use 'pee-pee' and 'doo-doo' as exceptable euphemisms should be beaten about the head with a dictionary (Collins is an exceptable weight) until they are sorry.
Mostly they get people who are just too busy with other things to stay on top of the house-keeping: a family with six children; this week a mother and daughter running impeccable stables while neglecting their own accomodation.
The week before last they targeted a single forty-something woman living in squalor whilst looking perfectly respectable, and earning a living as -oh the irony- a domestic cleaner.
As soon as I saw the way she was living I thought: Garbage House. She so clearly needed proper help rather than those clowns running roughshod over her feelings; I was dismayed. I don't think that that intervention will have done her any good, and the house will swiftly return to its former state, except now all her friends and relations and clients will remember the programme.
I'm pleased Mr Drum has been treated more sensitively, and that he has been lucky enough to find kind people to help him. These people are not lazy, or slovenly, and deserve better treatment than that accorded by the BBC.
I could respond to Kevin Andrew, but it would be pointless vitriol, so I shan't.
Vassilissa,
Re: To Kill a Mockingbird, I thought the point of the cola disguised as booze was that the guy never was a drunk, but that the only way he could live in his home town with the (black) woman he loved was to pretend to be unconventional; ie he bucked one set of rules rather than buck the harder set.
Corrections/other readings welcomed.
I once killed a chicken, although I think in the end the poor thing died of fright. I'd rather leave to to someone more competant.
My grandfather was a farmer who raised turkeys for Christmas, and the day we turned the evil feathered gobble monsters into oven-ready was a whole family endeavour. I particularly remember the stink, and the way a cheese sandwich and, perhaps, a nice bowl of vegetable soup, seemed to be a good idea for supper that day. I also remember that the year I was a vegetarian I still had to help with the disemboweling. They f**k you up. it's not just your Mum & Dad, it's the whole crew.
I know where meat comes from, I know I can kill it if I have to, and, better yet, I know how to turn it into dinner.
My sister and her husband run a dairy farm, as does my brother-in-law's father. I find the way they relate to their cows hard to understand - these are nice people who have pet cats from the rescue home, and spoiled non-working dogs - the cows are business. And yet, I heard one talk about the (expected) death of a poor-doing calf with regret. He had spent a couple of hours a day, for about a week trying to get milk down it, although he knew it was probably a waste of time, and it died. Wherepon he had to get someone else to dispose of the corpse because 'once they're dead it turns my stomach.'
A Jersey bull calf has to be shot: it is of no worth as it cannot be raised for meat.
I used to wonder how farmers deal with the range of emotions they feel over the animals they have. Then I found out about the suicide rates.
"women don't take their security seriously enough until something happens"
What?
I just had a very girly night in at my house, and sent my sister-in-law a (short distance)home in a mini-cab, which prompted a discussion on safe behaviour with mini-cab firms.
We agreed that 1) using a familiar firm was good, but 2) Always making sure that the cab driver saw that whoever was taking the cab was coming from friends - who would remember the cab company, and 3) Somebody yells 'call me when you get in!'.
While I suspect that all of the above would not deter a serious malfeasant, it made us all feel safer & I suspect the cabdriver knew exactly what we were doing, we can't stay home & be protected all our lives.
We are in the UK, so everyday use of guns we do not have, (BTW, Teresa, thank you for an interesting piece about the Practical uses of guns for protection. I do get a bit bored of 'We need guns! To shoot bad people! And I have a whole other thing about the bad drunk boyfriend breaks restraining order - with the little lady guns, where should you shoot him if you a)want him dead & b) just want to stop him. & also, legal repurcussions)
In short, I take my security seriously. I don't let fear of being in danger stop me doing anything I really want to. There aren't that many dangerous situations I might get into where a gun would help.
I read the postings here about magical realism and thought stuff like that happens to me All The Time, and then couldn't think of a single example. Since then a pleasantly convoluted one has played out which, since it involves this blog, I thought I would share.
I was reading the archives when I came across Teresa's blog on 'cog', the Honda advert. That was 27th August and the campaign was at full steam in the UK. I had even got a free copy on DVD from 'The Guardian' which I had played a few times. Since a few people posting on the thread from countries where it wasn't running had expressed a desire for said DVD, I decided to offer it up to anyone who cared to send me their address. I wasn't sure anyone would still want it, but I thought that if they did it would be a small piece of altruism that wouldn't cost me much (in one of my incarnations I am She Who Tends the Franking Machine, so even postage was not an issue) and might increase the sum of human happiness slightly.
I should mention that I haven't travelled widely - a little in Europe, but the longest trip I've ever done was London - Winnipeg. I'm not proud of this, I know it's not a prime tourist destination, but it is where one of my closest friends went a) as an exchange teacher, and b) to marry the man she loves and have a delightful, if sticky, baby son (at who's baptism we were treated to a sermon on copyright).
Last week I received an e-mail from a guy asking if I still had the DVD. He lives in Winnipeg. On the same street my friend was living with her fiance before they got married.
I posted the DVD.
I came home & turned on the TV. The advert is running again in the UK.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 8 |
| 2003 | 19 |
Total: 27 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Eleanor Rowe:
Show all comments by Eleanor Rowe.