Family life

They're having a charity day at Spud's school today. The kids are all dressing up and Spud said he wanted to go as Uncle Sam, so Mac got out her sewing machine and made him a waistcoat and a top hat.



He thinks he looks cool. I think he looks cute.

Lost in translation

Welsh traffic sign:



The Welsh translates as "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated".

Befuddled drudgery

I think I'm building up a resistance to the painkillers - I can now tie my laces without slobbering all over my shoes. That's a plus.

On the down side: I'm still "out of it" most of the time, my sleep pattern's shot to hell and I'm finding it difficult to take much of an interest in anything at all.

Still, I'm here.

Homemade naan

So, while the global financial system teeters on the verge of collapse, the race for the White House turns nasty and the war for God knows what continues in Afghanistan, I'm making naan bread.

Here's the recipe I'm using:

Ingredients

10oz plain flour
1 heaped tsp caraway seeds
1/4 pint hand-hot milk
1 tsp dried active yeast
1 tsp caster sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp plain yogurt, beaten
1 egg, lightly beaten

Method

Combine milk, yeast and half the sugar in a bowl, whisk and let stand for 20 minutes until a froth develops on the top. Mix in the egg, yogurt and oil.

Sift flour into a large mixing bowl, add salt, baking powder, the remaining sugar and the caraway seeds. Stir in the milk mixture to make a firm dough (if it's too soft and sticky add some more flour) and knead until smooth. Put the dough in an oiled plastic bag and leave in a warm place for an hour to allow it to rise.

Punch out the dough, knead it again and divide it into three pieces. Roll out each piece into a teardrop shape (about 10" by 5").

Preheat oven and heavy baking tray to 275C, place naan on tray and bake for 3 to 4 minutes (until it puffs up) remove from oven, brush top with a little water to dampen slightly then place under a hot grill for 30 seconds.

Modern Britain

Pupils don't give their teachers apples anymore; these days it's hash cakes, according to the Telegraph:-

A 15-year-old girl has been forced to move schools after she reportedly gave teaching staff cakes laced with drugs.

Two teaching assistants at Wortley High School, in Leeds, suffered from dizziness and headaches after eating the hash cakes which the girl took into school last month.

They pair were taken to hospital for emergency check-ups where doctors said that they had probably been drugged with cannabis.

Probably? For some reason the cakes weren't tested for drugs - so maybe it was just bad cake.

In any case, expect a wave of moral panic.

Bartlet meets Obama

By far the funniest thing I came across last week was a piece from Maureen Dowd in the NYT: Aaron Sorkin Conjures a Meeting of Obama and Bartlet.

Sampler:-

OBAMA They pivoted off the argument that I was inexperienced to the criticism that I’m — wait for it — the Messiah, who, by the way, was a community organizer. When I speak I try to lead with inspiration and aptitude. How is that a liability?

BARTLET Because the idea of American exceptionalism doesn’t extend to Americans being exceptional. If you excelled academically and are able to casually use 690 SAT words then you might as well have the press shoot video of you giving the finger to the Statue of Liberty while the Dixie Chicks sing the University of the Taliban fight song. The people who want English to be the official language of the United States are uncomfortable with their leaders being fluent in it.

Pirate talk

Dang! I missed International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Anyway, I imagine most pirates these days talk Swahili.

Stealth cat

My ten-year-old's favorite YouTube video - he laughs his head off the whole way through (again and again and again):-

Rounding up the carnivals

Jason Rosenhouse hosts the second Carnival of Evolution.

Freethought Fort Wayne has Humanist Symposium #25. [Via FIHD]

OrbitalHub hosts Carnival of Space #70.

Jonathan Calder at Liberal England has Britblog Roundup 187.

Ugh!

I can't believe it's been a week since I last posted something here - those seven days have passed in a codeine induced blur. Yep, I'm back on the painkillers: maximum dose! And, just for the record, the op site still hurts like hell.

Don't expect much from me.

Mr Kipling

I feel I should say something after referring to one of Rudyard Kipling's poems in the previous post. Quoting Kipling is considered impolite (not to say offensive) in some circles and, before I'm branded for it, I just wanted to say that I hold with Orwell's assessment of the man:-

"Kipling is a jingo imperialist, he is morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting".

Of course, that's not all Orwell had to say about Kipling: his article (first published in Horizon in 1942) deserves to be read in full.

Tommy turned away

Echoes of Kipling's Tommy Atkins in this story from the BBC:-

A soldier home on leave after being injured in Afghanistan was refused a room by a hotel when he showed his military ID card at reception.

Corporal Tomos Stringer, 23, from Gwynedd, was visiting a wounded colleague in Surrey when he was turned away from the Metro Hotel in Woking.

He spent the night in his car after being told it was management policy not to accept military personnel.

Cpl Stringer, who has since returned to active service in Afghanistan, is reportedly still angry about what happened and the hotel has now apologized.

Sadly, the treatment of Cpl Stringer is not an isolated event: The Herald reported in May that the British government is set to outlaw discrimination against service personnel following a number of incidents:-

Discrimination against service personnel wearing military uniform will become a criminal offence under proposals accepted yesterday by the government.

The move towards outlawing any physical, administrative, or verbal abuse of troops quotes one major incident reported exclusively by The Herald in January, which involved 200 soldiers returning from Afghanistan being forced to strip off their desert camouflage uniforms on the open tarmac at Birmingham International Airport and change into civilian clothing before being allowed through the terminal building.

Three other incidents used as a basis for new legislation included verbal intimidation of RAF personnel in Peterborough which led to a local ban on the wearing of uniform in public, the refusal of Harrods to allow a uniformed Army officer into the store after a Remembrance Day parade, and abusive complaints about seriously injured soldiers from the Headley Court rehabilitation centre being allowed to use one lane of the swimming pool at a nearby leisure centre.

Rain rain rain

It just keeps coming - according to the Telegraph, it's the national emblem.

Busy busy busy

No, really, sometimes I am.

I did however manage to catch that speech by the Republican attack doll. She's clearly nobody's fool and evidently she is "ready for primetime" - though, unlike Roger L Simon, I found her somewhat less than Capraesque.

Midweek games fest

On any given Saturday in the Junior household there's a high possibility that we'll be hosting the Big Fella's friends for one of their major gaming sessions: War Hammer, Risk, War on Terror, Diplomacy, Dungeons and Dragons (1st Edition) and video games - the mix varies.

Today isn't a Saturday but it is the last day of the school holidays, so the Big Fella has organized an Xbox games day: he's linked up a couple of games consoles, commandeered two of the televisions and taken over a couple of rooms for a day of virtual armed combat and heavy metal music. As a result, I've been overrun by up to ten 13 year-olds - though thankfully I only had to prepare lunch for eight of them.

I'm not sure how much blogging I'll get done today - Mac's been up in London all day and she has choir this evening, so I'll be on duty until late in the evening. Back later, maybe.

In the meantime you might want to check out one or two of the blogs in my blogroll over in the right hand sidebar, watch some classic performance poetry or just kick back and listen to some sounds.

Fakin' Palin redux

Frank J at IMAO offers a rough summary of a (now deleted) post at Daily Kos:-

Palin faked that she was pregnant with Trig to cover up that her daughter Bristrol was actually pregnant. When the baby was born and they found out he was black, so she bleached his skin to further conceal the truth. When nosy reporters got close to her secret, she killed a hobo, put the corpse in a gorilla suit, and froze it to claim she had bigfoot and cause a big media distraction. The hobo had hobo friends, though, and they started asking questions, so Palin had to murder them too and bury them in the middle of nowhere. But then there was a proposal to build a bridge to nowhere so she had to oppose that to keep people away from her secret.

Actually, I think Frank might have got a few of the particulars wrong. The google cache of the Daily Kos post is currently available here.

Long day

Just got the young'un to bed, finally. The Big Fella is still up and sitting in front of the TV: he's watching "House" - it's his favorite show right now. One of the reasons he likes it is because Hugh Laurie's character (Dr Gregory House) is just like me (supposedly) - apart from the cane and the Vicodin addiction, obviously.

Personally, I don't think I'm that grouchy.

Surprise of the day

Michael van der Galien at Poligazette has converted to Islam.

Monday roundabout

The latest edition of Democratiya is online.

Michael Totten has "The Truth About Russia in Georgia".

Talking to the animals: Language Log on interspecies communication.

Pajamas TV launched today: "still very much in beta" according to Roger Simon.

And finally,

Orac at Respectful Insolence comes up with "Another reason to hate the Yankees!"

Current reading

Jeremy Paxman's "The English: A Portrait of a People".

Chris Stringer "Homo Britannicus: The Incredible Story of Human Life in Britain".

"Over Here" by Raymond Seitz, former US Ambassador to Britain.