Tiger prawn anyone?

Last night I took the old pater out for a curry at his local Indian.
I was tempted by their 'special' starter which was described as

Freshly grilled tiger prawn in a delicious sauce conjured up by our own chef

Now I took the word 'prawn' to indicate prawns. Wrong, it really was ONE prawn
lying in a sickly gloop with the consistency of treacle and so sweet it made my teeth itch.
For 'all' this they charged me £4.25.

Did I complain?

Did I bollocks. I smiled sweetly and said it was delicious, when I really wanted to ram
this pathetic little shrimp up the waiters arse. But being typically English, I didn't.

What is it that is ingrained into our psyche that we must retain our dignity within a
restaurant and never make a fuss?

Probably 'cos the rest of the grub was delicious.

Two sides of human nature

Is it just me, or is anyone else thoroughly pissed off with watching news reporters going on and on about the terrible tragedy which befell Indonesia, Thailand et al?
Everytime I turn on the TV I am presented with the same video clips, the same rows of bodies and the same grieving faces, young and old. I'm surprised that any relief
work is getting done at all with the media throng that has descended upon these poor
people.
Yes it was an appalling tragedy and help must be given, but even as I write, there is a debate on the TV about how much dosh each country is giving and shouldn't other countries be giving more.
Shut the fuck up the lot of you. Who really cares how much each country gives, as long as it is something.
Once again the Yanks are the whipping boys and yet they are doing more now with their military than all other countries combined. Even that isn't good enough for some wankers who are now maintaining that the only reason the USA upped the ante concerning the amount of aid given, was to show them in a good light helping a Muslim people out instead of blowing the shit out of them.
We have both ends of the spectrum here.
One side of the Human Race showing ordinary Joe Public of ALL nationalities, putting their hands in their pockets and giving what they can. Holidaymakers of ALL nationalities caught up in this mess and staying on to help the local people get their lives back.
The other side is governments bickering over who should do what instead of getting their thumbs out of their arses and actually doing something practical.
The media pouncing on every story that has a whiff of scandal or sensationalism for the sake of good copy. The perfect example being the "story" of the young Swedish boy who had been abducted by some paedophile, whereas it has since been discovered that the poor lad was a victim of mistaken identity and is subsequently now missing and the kid seen being "abducted" was in fact a German boy being taken from the hospital by a relative.
Fuck checking the story out guys, let's just sell more newsprint.
Thank you for ordinary people.
You know who you are.
Your keeping me sane.


My first rant of the new year - krip.

Looking towards 2005

I'm going to be on hiatus probably until after Christmas and the New Year for the most part. We have Little Princess coming over and I want to spend as much time as I can with her. The next couple of days are going to be hectic, so I won't have time to write.

I know that my zillion of readers, i.e., fans, will be disappointed, but real life has to take priority. Also, if anything really relevant appears on the horizon, like the cure for the common cold has been discovered; or that the moon really is made of swiss cheese; or that there is one terrific sale of land on Atlantis, I do believe that the major news outlets will be on hand to report any and all first hand.

So, just in case you are not able to hear from me beforehand, here goes:

For Christmas, Santa is bringing some pantomime tickets for Little Princess's stocking. Krip has wonderful memories of going when he was a kid. Of course, both Little Princess and I have never gone to a pantomime. We don't do pantomimes in America...we do the ballet "The Nut Cracker". Santa picked Cinderella. It, if anything, will be interesting.

I have been told that Little Princess will either love it or hate it. I only hope that if there is any screaming coming from our seats, it will be from excitement and pure delight, and not from sheer terror. And I'm only describing my reaction.

Right now, I'm having visions of trying to explain to her father why our Little Princess is having these strange nightmares, explaining to him what a pantomime is.

Wait until I have to explain why Little Princess is going to the pub on Christmas Eve and not to midnight Mass...sigh..

Remember that stupid black bird that I wrote about last month? Well, he's still flying into our window. Actually, flying is too tame of a description. He's taken to flinging himself into our window.

I do believe he has a screw loose.

I am just so proud of myself. After our jaunt up North, I have decided to start going on long walks with the mutt. We are now in a regular groove - the mutt and me. We now walk at least four miles a day, totaling 28+ miles last week. At first the going up and down the hills was not making me a happy camper, but now I am rather enjoying it.

I like walking the route we're going because we hardly encounter another human being nor their dogs; only cows, occasional signs of the wildlife out there, and today our first sighting of goats.

Have you every noticed that after spending half a day raking leaves, you go out the next morning and they are back again? Kind of reminds me of dirty dishes, dirty laundry, and dust. It's just like after having washed all the dishes, one mysteriously shows up in the sink; or no matter how much time you have spent washing, drying, and ironing laundry, you open up the laundry basket and lo and behold there's dirty laundry; and after cleaning the house, not a half a day goes by without seeing that damn dust again.

So, like washing dishes, laundry, and cleaning house, sigh, as long as there are leaves still clinging to the trees there will be an ever-ending amount of leaves blanketing the garden.

And this is all much to Krip's chagrin!

REMEMBER THIS AT CHRISTMAS TIME

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, while both male and
female reindeer grow antlers in the summer each year, male reindeer drop their antlers at the beginning of winter, usually late November to mid-December.
Female reindeer retain their antlers till after they give birth in the spring.

Therefore, according to every historical rendition depicting Santa's
reindeer, every single one of them, from Rudolph to Blitzen, had to be a girl.

We should've known... ONLY women would be able to drag a fat-ass man in a
red velvet suit all around the world in one night and not get lost.

Today's Joke...

HILLARY'S BIG NAVAL INSPECTION

November 30, 2004 -- WASHINGTON — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton today is visiting the biggest naval base on the East Coast as part of her role advising Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on making the military more efficient.more

Bwahahaha!! God this is just too funny! Hill and Bill have always detested anything to do with the military, no matter what branch it was. When Billy Blythe became the prez, in 1992, we got a taste of what it would be like with him as the commander-in-chief when his minions looked up as some of our Air Force jets flew over, asking:
"what in the hell were they doing here."
And the reply:
"ah, don't sweat it, they belong to us now."

And at their first state cocktail party, Billy and Hilly Blythe used top ranking officers in the armed forces to be the waiters - in full uniform, I might add. These are just two incidents of eight long-ass years of the co-presidency under Bill and Hill.

They had no respect for the military, and believe me when I say, that they have no respect, still, from our military.

Hillary on any sort of committee having to do with the armed forces is definitely a....joke!

THE NORTH

We just got back last night from a nice long weekend up in Derbyshire. Cold, but beautiful country.

It was great to be able to go walking on the moors and let the mutt run to his hearts' content without worrying about him getting run over. He had a blast and after 3 days of running about chasing anything and everything, he slept the whole way back, and has been sleeping for most of the day today.

We went to a real pub. The kind where everyone sits down and talks about everything under the sun. Where everyone knows everyone and actually says hello. Where people treat you like you have lived in this hamlet all your life, instead of just meeting you that weekend, and actually seemed to have enjoyed your company.

We had a great time; great food, great drink, and overall, a grand time all around. We hated to have to come back down south again.

If we ever win the lottery, we're heading up to THE NORTH, to a little hamlet in Derbyshire, to a kind and more gentle livestyle where the only time that matters is when the pub opens up...and like our friends said to us, "you'll never regret it, and you'll never look back."

Our friends had a chance to get out of the rat race and took it. Maybe we'll get lucky and do the same. Hope so. Until then, we'll just have to visit this lovely piece of land up in THE NORTH once in a while, if just to relax and mellow out.

Dolphins Protect New Zealand Swimmers from Shark

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A pod of dolphins circled protectively round a group of New Zealand swimmers to fend off an attack by a great white shark, media reported on Tuesday. more...

Now this is a great story! Always heard that sharks were afraid of dolphins.

Eeeuuwwww

Sad commentary..

FURY AT RACIST CHANTING
The beautiful game turned ugly again last night - with England's so-called friendly with Spain marred by racist chants.

England's black players, most notably Shaun Wright-Phillips and Ashley Cole, were subjected to monkey chants from thousands of Spanish fans in Madrid. more

We watched some of this game, and remarked how badly they played. In retrospect, perhaps England was off because of the racial remarks by the Spanish spectators. We did see where David Beckham, as captain of the team, was trying to sooth the other players.

I only wished that England would have come back and whooped their asses for the remarks made. Perhaps we will have another chance to.

Why is it that when you blow in a dogs face, he gets wound up and tries to bite your nose off?
But the instant you wind the window down in the car, he sticks his head out into the slipstream, tongue hanging out and looking as daft as a brush.

Mutt vs Squirrel

We have this squirrel who is determined to get to the bird feeder this a.m. It's driving the mutt absolutely crazy; which, in turn, is driving me absolutely crazy. Mutt winds up bouncing off the walls whenever he even catches a glimpse of said squirrel. While said squirrel appears to have a smile on it's face everytime he sees the mutt bouncing off the walls. It's been going on now for about two hours.

And now, I'm starting to go slowly around the bend.

Dam..

Just a little money-laundering.

Beavers Weave Stolen Cash Into Dam

GREENSBURG, La. (AP) - It was probably the world's richest beaver dam. Beavers found a bag of bills stolen from a video poker casino last week, tore it open and wove the money into the sticks and brush of their dam on a creek north of Louisiana Highway 48. Major Michael Martin of the East Feliciana Parish Sheriff's Office says bills used to build the dam were still whole. more

Pure terror

Body of Caucasian woman with blonde hair found in Fallujah: marines

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) - The body of a blonde-haired woman with her legs and arms cut off and throat slit was found lying on the street in Fallujah, a notorious enclave for hostage-takers, marines said.

"It is definitely a Caucasian woman with long blonde hair," said a military official, who cut open a cover that had been over the corpse.

The gruesome discovery was made as the marines moved through the south of Fallujah, hunting out the remaining die-hard rebels after a week of fierce fighting to regain control of the city.

"It is a female... missing all four appendages, with a slashed throat and disembowled, she has been dead for a while but only in this location for a day or two," said Benjamin Finnell, a hospital apprentice with the Navy Corps, who had inspected the body. more

Day in and day out, on the nightly news we had to hear of the alleged atrocities that were alledgely done on the innocent prisoners by some of our troops. Day in and day out, we have been hearing about all the innocent victims of the Iraq war, the wounded, etc. However, what we haven't heard is what is happening to true innocents that have been kidnapped by these people. Well, this is what happened to one woman.

I often wonder what the press would have been like if WWII was going on right now. I suppose Mussolini, Hitler, and the Japanese that backed these men and their philosophies would have been just freedom fighters...freeing the world from the Jews, the Catholics, the gypsies, the crippled, the mentally ill. Don't know. I do know, though, that this woman was killed. Brutally killed. I think that her last thoughts of these people that slaughtered her could not have been that they were rebels or insurgents, her last thoughts were of pure terror(ists).

Yesterday was a beautiful day! We took the mutt out and went for a six mile walk in the countryside. The sun was shining.We had no wind. In fact, I was able to take my fleece off, and walk around in a sleeveless top. Absolutely glorious. Couldn't ask for a nicer day. Wonderful.

Today, we're paying for it. It's cold, cloudy, and back to blah.

Welcome to Monday.

George and Osama decided to settle the war once and for all. They sat down and decided to settle the whole dispute with one big dog fight. They agreed that they would have five years to breed the best fighting dogs in the world and whose ever dog won would be entitled to dominate the world.

Osama and his dog handler Mohammed found the biggest, meanest Dobermans and Rottweilers in the world, then bred them with the biggest, meanest Siberian wolves they could find. From the litters, they selected the biggest and strongest puppy and trained it day and night to fight to the death. After five years, Osama and Mohammed came up with the biggest, meanest dog the world had ever seen. Its cage needed steel bars that were five inches thick and nobody could get near it.

When the day came for the dog fight, George and his dog handler Boudreaux showed up with a nine-foot-long Dachshund. It was the strangest looking dog anyone had ever seen. Boudreaux said it was a Cajun Dachshund. Everyone felt sorry for George and Boudreaux because they knew there was no way that this poor excuse for a dog could possibly last 10 seconds with Osama's big, mean animal.

When the cages were opened up, the Dachshund slowly came out of its cage, wagged its tail, then waddled over towards Osama's dog. The Doberman/Rottweiler/Wolf snarled and leaped out of its cage, then charged the poor Dachshund. But when it got close enough to bite the Dachshund's neck, the Dachshund opened its mouth and ate Osama's dog in one bite. There was nothing left at all of the snarling beast.

Osama came up to George and Boudreaux shaking his head in disbelief. "We don't understand how this could have happened. We had our best people working for five years with the biggest, meanest Dobermans and Rottweilers, and the biggest, meanest Siberian wolves in the world. How did you do this?"

"Da's easy," said Boudreaux the Cajun. "We 'ad our bess plasic surgins workin' fo' five year for to make dat alligator look like a weenie dog."