A Gentleman's Domain

R.I.P T13 and 2008

Some people love memes.  Others can’t stand them, and just ignore it if someone tags them. And then there's the rest of us, who do some and ignore others.   I’ve done a few, but the only one I ever did regularly (i.e. 75 out the last 80 weekly editions) was Thursday Thirteen.  It was a lot of fun, and now it’s over.  The administrators of the meme won’t be able to devote the necessary time to running it, for personal and overwhelming reasons.  It would be churlish to complain, and I understand completely why they must bring it to a halt, but even so I shall miss thinking up new lists, trying to be informative and reasonably entertaining, and getting comments.  I think just about everyone on my blogroll is someone I met through T13.  Some of them I think of as real friends and it comes almost as a surprise to remind myself that I haven’t actually met any of them.

So, that’s the end of making book lists, DVD lists, trying to think of thirteen interesting places I have been, and thumbing through history books to find thirteen historical events involving socks.  I  shall miss it.

Goodbye, too, to 2008.  It’s been a reasonably good year, all told.  The highlight was going back to England for the first time in five years, and the rest of the year life in Florida jigged along nicely.  I’m curious to see what 2009 will bring.  Meanwhile, I’d like to wish all of you a very Happy New Year.  T13 may be gone but I shall still be frequently lurking round your blogs   .
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Come on, let's not be de-lighted!

I wonder if it is just a sign of the times.  This year I have noticed that fewer – considerably fewer – houses where we live are adorned with outdoor Christmas lighting.   This is something one sees a lot in the US (and Canada too, I remember) but is much rarer in England.  Even after several years living on the west bank of the big pond, I still view decorations like that as a novelty. 

So where are they this year?  You’d have to be living in a cave not to know that we are about to enter (maybe already have) a recession, and for just about everyone except bank executives (who are using billions from the government bail-out to continue to pay themselves hundreds of millions in salaries and bonuses, and that’s just wrong!) so maybe ordinary folks, like thee and me, are deciding that they don’t want to add to their December utility bills this year.  That makes perfect sense, but it’s rather a shame.  There are just over 100 row houses, in blocks of five, in the complex where we live, and every year we could count on dozens of them brightening up the long nights with decorative displays, from the sublime (a little nativity scene by the front door) to the ridiculous (cascades of multicoloured flashing lights from roof peak to lawn on every exterior surface).   This year I have counted four houses, and those displays are somewhat muted.

We do our bit, more for form’s sake than any Christmassy fervour.  My wife, whom I have often accused of having a very benevolent attitude to our local utility company, to the extent that she loves to pay them money for services that we do not really need (like illuminating for hours rooms that are empty) though she denies it (“No, I don’t like them. I hate those bastards!”), once suggested we string lights from the edge of our roof, down our front wall.  Since I knew who would be expected to string the lights up, and since we don’t own a ladder, that idea withered on the vine, and instead we have on our upstairs porch a rotating light ball  and an artificial illuminated Xmas tree, bought in a weak moment at Lowes a few years ago, which , when you plug it in, changes colour from pale blue to grey and back to pale blue again, looking for all the world like the ghost of Christmas trees past making an appearance from beyond the veil.  At least it is distinctive. No one else around here has one of those.  Apart from anything else, it’s a very useful landmark to describe when telling pizza delivery people how to find our front door.

I don’t go a bundle on Christmas.  I tell people that Scrooge is my hero, and I certainly don’t buy into any of the religious side of it.  But…. (there had to be a but)  Christmas is a milestone on the road to the end of the year.  Decorations are part of the process of rounding out the twelfth month, and I have to admit I miss them.  Times may be hard, and may well get harder, but walking through our complex in the evenings and seeing nothing but darkened house fronts just rubs it all in.  It’s as though people are giving up without a fight.  A few lights would make all the difference.

Anyway, my dear fellow bloggers,  whether your house is dark or illuminated, whether you will celebrate lavishly or frugally,  may I take this opportunity to thank you for dropping in here from time to time over the past year, and I do hope to enjoy your company again in 2009.  I hope you’ll be making merry this week, and I wish all of you the very happiest of Christmases and a peaceful and successful New Year.
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Thursday Thirteen # 75

I've done this a couple of times before.  Here’s a TT of books with two word titles.  The only rule I set myself is that the two words have to be an adjective and a noun (no articles, no adverbs).  I hope you like...

          Thirteen books with two-word titles
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A Random Memory

Some years ago, when I still lived in England, I flew over to San Francisco to visit a friend for a few days.  I went from Heathrow to SF on one of those ten-hour jaunts that are only bearable if you have an aisle seat and are situated nowhere near any small children.

As it happened, even though we boarded on time, the flight was slightly delayed.  They made a cabin announcement after we had all settled down and strapped ourselves in.  I wasn’t too surprised, and went back to my newspaper, but the passenger next to me, a very pretty blonde lady in her early twenties, said something in a foreign accent about there always being delays.  I agreed with her that, yes, air journeys always do seem to be delayed.  She went on to tell me that she was from Denmark and had just flown in from Copenhagen to Heathrow earlier that day and that that flight too had been delayed.

The thing was, though – and this is what makes it stick in my memory – is that she told me that her Danish boyfriend was an exchange student at Berkeley, where he was spending a year, and that she was flying out to see him as a surprise.  As a surprise!  In other words, he had no idea she was on her way.  I wanted to say: No, that’s a bad move!  Go home and wait till the year is over and he comes home and then pick up from where you left off.  Of course I didn’t.  I nodded and said something like How very nice.   But ever since then I have wondered how he reacted when she showed up at his door. And how she reacted when she found out, as I am positive she did, about his American girlfriend.  It is a dead certainty that the boyfriend had found someone to keep him company during his long year away from home.  It is a fact of  life that activities at home and abroad seldom bear any relation to each other and should always be kept separate. 

For a few moments I considered giving her the phone number of where I was staying, and telling her that if things didn’t go exactly the way she was hoping, to give me a call, but I could tell from her beatific smile that she would not have known what I was talking about, and I had no wish to rain on her parade even though I was sure that in just over ten hours it was about to get soaked. 
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Thursday Thirteen #74

I was sitting in my living room the other day when, for no reason that I can recall, I wondered how many objects I could see from where I sat at my end of the couch, that were also mainstream surnames.  I thought it would be easy but there weren’t as many as I thought. Anyway, here are….

13 things that are also last names

Wood

Steel

Foot

Page

Head

Hook

Ball

Bird

Wax

Bolt

Cable

Wall

Box

I was going to include Hinge, but the only person called Hinge I can think of was Dr. Evadne Hinge, who was a fictional character, so that doesn’t count!  Can you see any, from where you're sitting right now?

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This is bad.

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In fact, it’s worse than bad; it’s bloody disgusting.  It’s just wrong, on so many levels.  First, let’s look at the citation.  Exodus 20:3 in the book of myths and hearsay enjoins you to have only one god. Well, news for you, whoever put the sign up –  the desert god, the god of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is the same god.  The three monotheistic faiths are simply different factions.  If, and I say if, America ever has a Moslem president, he or she will still worship the same god as Christians and Jews.  Exodus 20:3 will not be broken.

Then the claim that Barak Obama is a Moslem.  Yes, a lot of idiots were screaming about that before the election.  The same idiots used to foam at the mouth about the radical pastor at the church that Obama attended for years. Yes, church.  Somehow, he attended church and yet he is a Moslem. How do you work that out?  Was he an undercover Iman perhaps?

But what is worst of all is that some pig-ignorant pastor or priest, a man whose job is to lie for a living, especially to children, has taken the time and trouble to spread this garbage  As we know, there are certain rather dim people who think “If the pastor says it, it must be true.” and will believe anything these charlatans say, without bothering to examine it.  Thus this sort of poison spreads.  I am in favour of free speech so I agree with the man’s right to say this, but that doesn’t mean anyone has to believe it. Everyone is entitled to his opinion, but not everyone is entitled to have his opinion taken seriously.  I would like to think that a lot of people in whichever town that sign has been erected will show their contempt by staying away from that church.  Sadly, I am sure a lot of people won’t.
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