There Ain't No Devil, It's Just God When He's Drunk

I had to put this in because who doesn't love gay penguins? Take that, crazy fundamentalists who say that homosexuality is 'unnatural.' Unfortunately, while love might conquer all, when you're in a zoo, you're subject to the rule of Prop 8 -esque discrimination. Booo.

A couple of gay penguins are attempting to steal eggs from straight birds in an effort to become "fathers", it has been reported.

The two penguins have started placing stones at the feet of parents before waddling away with their eggs, in a bid to hide their theft.

But the deception has been noticed by other penguins at the zoo, who have ostracised the gay couple from their group. Now keepers have decided to segregate the pair of three-year-old male birds to avoid disrupting the rest of the community during the hatching season.

Gay penguins

Travelling always leaves me shattered. I think I mentally think about how travel tires me out, and voila, I bring it on myself.

Yep, I am back from a WONDERFUL mini-holiday. On Wednesday, I took the train south of 4.5 hours and arrived in the bustling city of London where I met up with a pal from my post-grad course. After a delicious (and big and $14) banana and nutella crepe and a cup of tea, I headed even farther south to the beach side towns of Brighton and Hove (mainly Hove) where my super wonderful friend Kiki (as she is nicknamed) and her husband live for a fabulous Thanksgiving long weekend.

I've had Thanksgivings in the UK before, but nothing has been as delicious or authentic as what we had. 4 years ago, when I was in Edinburgh studying for the year, the abroad office put on a little shindig Scottish style, complete with turkey (the stuffing was ham and stuffed inside the slice of turkey breast like an embedded medallion of meat), kilted sausages (tiny sausages wrapped in bacon), and brussle sprouts.

Then, of course, there was the ceilidh and everyone ended up getting even more pissed at the pub down the street.

Also that year, my fellow American flatmate decieded to share Thanksgiving with the Brits of our flat. Unfortunatley, unable to find the turkey, Virginia (so I label people from where they're from...so what) bought a ham that ended up being too big for our small University issued oven and ended up being a half cooked half burnt to death lump of pig flesh. Also, the sweet potatoes and marshmallows were too bizzare for the Brits to comprehend and remained mostly uneaten, as did the collared greens. But she got an A for effort!

This Thanksgiving was great. We had turkey, corn bread (made with Polenta meal as it is known here), green beans, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and mince pies for pudding. And delicious Scrumpy, a cloudy apple cider that is apparently pretty prevelant in the south of England. Also, good banter, good music, and good company...it couldn't get better. I think the British guests found it to be nothing more than a large version of a Sunday Roast, but I for one, in the Thanksgiving tradition, was extreamely thankful for my friend for hosting such a great meal and for putting me up for 4 days and 3 nights.

It's the holidays and traditions away from home that remind you the most that you're not home, and being able to share Thanksgiving with another ex-pat helped to re-create that bit of home that was missing from those past Novembers, no matter how fun, strange, or memorable they were.

Righty- have been a bit AWOL due to my narcoleptic tendencies brought on by work. But now I am back. And drunk. And free (ish).

Tuesday is when SAfriend comes round to dinner because she has an art class at 6:30. This evenings menu- Vietnamese Prawn Salad. I am so into this whole Vietnamese cooking thing. I think maybe bio-dad is really from Vietnam instead of Thailand, as he claims, because I have been doing a butt load ot Vietnamese cooking lately. And kick ass at it!

Anyway, SAfriend was over and she brought CAVA!! SAfriend finally got a job from the temp agency, so to celebrate, we popped open the CAVA- which then had to be finished in less than an hour because of her class. Done and done. Then Scottie got home and for some reason wanted to celebrate my 3 day weekend (oh yeah, I decieded it's my right or whatever as as American to celebrate Thanksgiving by taking the next 3 days off of work to go down to Hove to see my other amazing American friend and think about religious fanatics and cultural genocide). So then I got wine. And more wine.

And did some online plane bookings.

Life hate #3
Companies that charge you up the ass and then screw you while you're down. So far, this has happened twice to me in the span of two months. The first came from theuksource.co.uk, aka the worst online electornics company EVER. My poor moblie came with a broken charger and rather than pay for a new one, I went online to find a cheaper one. The Uk source has one for like £2. Hot. And after some research that stated that my particular mobile has a fail for a battery, I decieded to get a £3 battery. £5 or so in total. Then the wankers decieded to charge me £6 (£3 per item!) for shipping. WHAT?!?! To make matters worse, I didn't recieve anything for a month. A MONTH!! I sent the 3 e-mails. The first one said 'WHERE IS MY ORDER?!?!' The second one echoed that, and the third said 'CANCEL OR I WILL CONTACT MY CREDIT CARD AND DECLARE FRAUD.' I finally got an e-mail saying it was in the post. Kinda. A few days later I get a note from Royal Mail saying that someone skimped on the postage and that I owend £1.20 to get my parcel delivered. Fine. Whatever, just give it to me already. THEN when it arrives, it is only the charger- no battery in sight. And no word at all from the dodgy website that took my money but none of my e-mails (and they don't have a phone, so no one can call...at all..not even to order a pizza).

Rant!

Well now it sorta happened again, this time in the lovely orange guise of EasyJet. EasyJet, in order to make money, charges for your soul. I am flying from Edinburgh to London, then connecting to the US. So one would assume that I might have some luggage. Not with EasyJet! You get to pay £6 to STOW something up to 20kg. You can buy extra weight at a discount online, with an extra 6kg costing £18!!!! So I am only going to the US with extra underwear and maybe a sock. THEN they sneak in £5 insurance that you have to untick in a clever way or else it sneaks its way into your overall charges. THEN they also charge £6 to use your Visa card.

All this, and my original plan was to take the train for £25, no limit on luggage weight...but Scottie wanted to get into London at a reasonable time so this relatives could pick us up....oh the things we do for love and decency.

More wine please.

Now, I know I just did a post about strange food and how hard core I am when it comes to eating strange shit, but I do have my limits. Ladies and gents, enter Natural Harvest. Yes indeed, a cooking book devoted to using seaman as an ingredient.

Never, no way, no how!

As the book states:

Semen is not only nutritious, but it also has a wonderful texture and amazing cooking properties. Like fine wine and cheeses, the taste of semen is complex and dynamic. Semen is inexpensive to produce and is commonly available in many, if not most, homes and restaurants. Despite all of these positive qualities, semen remains neglected as a food. This book hopes to change that. Once you overcome any initial hesitation, you will be surprised to learn how wonderful semen is in the kitchen. Semen is an exciting ingredient that can give every dish you make an interesting twist. If you are a passionate cook and are not afraid to experiment with new ingredients - you will love this cook book!

Or, if you just like the milking men for their spunk. Delish!

K, I just vomed a little.

First men-bras, now seamen cook books. Is there anything you can't buy nowadays?

Now, I like to think of myself as a very UN-hater...a lover, an optimist, and a good karmaist. But that being said, there are some things in life that I just HATE and can do nothing about. Two of them happened today.

1) Being trapped on the other side of the street when your bus arrives and not being able to run across to catch it because of cars of death that won't stop to let you make it. *&%"&£%&*$^ how I hate that! Since J-Walking isn't illegal in the UK (at least as far as I know), everyone just waits to dash across the road. At the hospital, the bus stop is conveniently directly across the road...across the very busy road...and while there is a crosswalk, it's about 25 yards up the road, meaning I would just be backtracking, and no one wants to do that.

2) Mixed car messages. This happened to me in the parking lot. It was a double lane and there were two cars coming my way. One of them looked like it was going to stop and let me go, the other was reving it's engine. When Car 1 rolled to a stop, I made like I was about to cross the street, but then Car 2 started reving it's engine, so I thought I would just let them pass instead, but then Car 1 was waving his hand for me to go, so I did, causing Car 2 to rev some more and then gun the engine when I was just a hairsbreadth out of his lane so he could jump in front of nice Car 1. And this was in a parking lot. Of a hospital. Where sick kids and people in wheelchairs and crutches walk/roll/hobble. Grrrrrrrrrrr...

Watch this space, I am sure that there will be plenty more life hates coming your way.

So once upon a time I had this friend in High School. He was funny, super cool to hang out with, and we got along really really well in that God-I-Love-Hanging-Out-With-You-But-Not-In-That-Boyfriend/Girlfriend-Kind-Of-Way. This guy was the type you never felt embarrassed asking to Turnabout or Prom (and possibly Homecoming) when you had no one ask you and were surrounded by all your happy couple friends.

Anyway, I have not spoken to this guy in 4 years, save that one time 3 years ago when I ran into him and his mom on my way to get a sandwich on my lunch break and we talked for 3 minutes. Nada. He's not even on facebook or anything like that, so as far as I know, he could be dead, married, missing a limb, and I would have no idea. Right. So then today, I wake up from my slumber at 5:55am, hit the power button on my laptop, and go about my waking up routine while it warms it ancient self up. Once dressed and in the process of munching on cereal, I open my mailbox and low and behold.

Subject: How's life
So there's been this peculiar smell brewing near the copy machine at my work. It's affecting people's ability to work and no one can locate the source. In the adjacent room is a fish tank and Jim, our company fish, has apparently gone missing. It instantly became obvious that my boss threw Jim into the copy machine and stuffed his tiny body in the gears to conceal his ill doings.
He's been known to kill small animals and it's rumored he has bodies in his basement. No one will ever know what became of Jim, but under the copy machine were two dead rotting rats, holding hands, and crawling with maggots.
I love my job.

Tell me a story


That's it. After over 4 years of not talking, not exchaning an e-mail, and IM, anything. But it totally sums up my relationship with this guy and the kind of person he is. Ridiculous, hilarious, and making me laugh and be happy I know him.

Tell me a story.

How do you top that? I don't. I can't. So instead I also bleather about work.

Re: How's Life?
About a week ago, what I assumed was a female approached me at the reception desk of the hospital where I worked and asked me to phone Tanya for her to get her work schedule. She was a new nurse about to start work, so I phoned through and didn't think anything of it until she actually started working. Yesterday was her first day on the job, and as one of the other nurses brought her around to meet me, she introduced herself as Gordon. 'Hmm,' I thought, 'Well, in this day and age...I suppose some women prefer the name Gordon.....After all, Lexy changed her name to Alex.' But I couldn't help but wonder....what gender did it belong to and what was its original sex? Feminine voice, feminine facial features.....butch manly crew cut...could definitely get away with wearing flannel it flannel lumber jack shirts existed in the UK....something that could either pass off as super tiny titties or just normal sized moobs for a person that size....

I wanted to make it my secret investigation- discover its gender. All day on the way to work today I obsessed over what questions I could ask it without sounding too obvious. Would a butch lesbo answer differently than a gay man? Than a straight man? Than a straight woman? Sports? Cooking? Fashion? Cars? How do you lead a person into revealing what gender they identify with without sounding like prying douche?

Alas, before I could set my machinations in to action, Gordon approached me this morning, apparently to reintroduce himself as I was entering patient data into the computer.

'Hi, I'm Gordon.'
'Yes, I remember, how are you?'
'Good. I'm a trans-male. I'm not quite there yet, but hopefully in a few months you'll start seeing some real changes.'
'Ah. Well, if I'm around that long, I'm only a temp.'

And off went Gordon and there went a whole days worth of plans to spy, pry, and gleen.



So...tell me a story

I'm trying to bide my time, do some alpaca knitting, and because I'm a car nerd, get in some Top Gear on bbc iplayer. They play this song a lot and I am totes digging it at the mo.



Enjoy before youtube pulls it!
xx