[argentinian bloggette] do they know about hat tipping in buenos aires

Argentinian bloggette ** Superchic has this:

A continuación copio el resultado de una encuesta que se realizó en un blog ( no argentino) sobre algunas mujeres over 40. Por favor, leer bien la lista, miren quien aparece con 2 votos!

That's rather interesting because I seem to recall this post as well on sexiest women over 43. Should I be flattered or flattened?

** Cherie reports virus alert for the Superchic site, so I've removed the link.

[late evening listening] arranging life in its correct order

Women make us men look really shallow and they always occupy the high moral ground. We don't arrange it all in our minds the way they do. We don't dwell on every aspect, prioritizing them and reordering them in response to any new nuance. Women read things into our actions which are simply not there, they hear things in our intonation and in our little pregnant silences which speak volumes to them but not to us.

I always feel so inferior talking with a woman because she watches you and takes in every gesture, every hesitation. Don't get me wrong, I can think, I can feel, I can express my feelings but I don't think things through to the nth degree like women. I'm more likely to say, "Right, do we have an agreement then?" and she'll reply, "What did you mean by looking that way when you asked, 'Do we have an agreement then?'?"

They don't care more than us or less than us - we care long after it's over and they've moved on but they are more intense when together. We're more intense when we're away from them, if we love them. We can paint pictures with words and caress them with them and we can gaze at them intensely so that they blush but they know better if we mean it or not.

This is more like us:

[silent saturday] what lurks

[early evening overture] kiss and don't tell

You know, they're not too bad after all and that Paul Stanley - wow:

[saturday country quiz] bumper edition

We haven't had a country quiz for a long while. Try these:

1. In the north is the driest place on Earth, the Atacama Desert, the Mapuche played a major part in its history, politically unstable, Nixon sent operatives in there, people suffered under the Caravan of Death, one of the widest income disparities in the world.

2. At one stage some 17,000 sq mi (44,030 sq km), after unification it became greatly reduced, it's a sacerdotal-elective-monarchical state, used to have a Quartermaster General and Master of the Horse and has the oldest active continuous diplomatic service in the world, dating back to at least AD 325.

3. Not now a country in its own right, it began with the establishment of Deira, 547AD though being more appropriate as the year of establishment, when Bernicia was brought in it became a kingdom, in 627AD, the King became a Christian through Paulinus.

4. Was there ever a country so abused by all? One of the world's oldest civilizations, it once included Mount Ararat, conquered by Greeks, Romans, Persians, Byzantines, Mongols, Arabs, Ottoman Turks, and Russians, there ahve been pogroms aplenty.

5. First inhabited by aborigines of Malayan descent, an island state, in 1999 its feisty neighbour conducted submarine warfare exercises and missile tests near the island, it joined the World Trade Organization in Jan. 2002.

6. Sitting on a fault line, most of the people live in the 7% of the island that is made up of fertile coastland, the Kalmar Union altered its sovereignty in 1397, it had the first female head of state and is known for the beauty of its women whose surnames end in dottir.

7. Dependent on the river running up its centre, one of the most famous nations on earth, the red land was always vital, it has the Khamaseen wind which blows from the south in spring, bringing sand and dust.

Answers

Chile, Vatican City, Northumbria [Northumberland scores you zero points], Armenia, Taiwan, Iceland, Egypt

[promiscuity] results in lower fertility

Apparently, Austrian males are the worst. Get over there, girls, if you want some disease.

Oh yes - like this one very much. Vox reports that Promiscuous women are less fit:

Less fit by the standards of natural selection, anyhow:

The following table shows the average number of children women have birthed by the number of male sexual partners they have had since the age of 18*. Like men, women who have had only one partner are the most fecund.

Whereas monogamous women who have only had one lifetime partner averages 2.29 children, the average US woman with nine partners averages 1.46 children.

Read it all.

Multiple partners say so much about the person doing it. Impaired social and emotional development, inability to take responsibility - it goes on.

Just to finish, I couldn't go past this headline:

Megan Fox Would Rather Kiss Girls

I don't know this Megan Fox from Eve but I can't fault her reasoning - I'd rather kiss girls too. By the way, any idea how I came across that news item? I was googling a certain group with a view to putting up a youtube for someone. Trouble is, I don't like the music. I'll try Iggy Pop.

[drink wine] and stay happier longer

A number of bloggers have covered this one about teetotallers being more stressed out than drinkers. As a Christian, my attitude is this, 1 Timothy 5:23:

Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities.

If it's good enough for Timothy, if Jesus turned water into wine and He drank it at the Last Supper, then it's good enough for me. Plus, the efficacy of wine is just not disputed. All that cancer talk is more than offset by the benefits. No argument from this blog.

[protection] how nanny should we get

Hope it's like this, this year

It might be very difficult to get you interested in this one because 1. it's about sport 2. it's about a sport which not many are interested in.

The issue though transcends any particular country and game and if it had been gridiron or gaelic football, it wouldn't matter. Actually, it's about the Australian game and the second last round of the home and away season. Basically, a player gave an almighty hip and shoulder bump to another and produced an injury. I'm not sure. Maybe he didn't produce an injury but could have.

Either way, he was reported and had to front the tribunal, where he was suspended, which meant, as a star, in missing the crucial last game of the season, the side would go in undermanned. Guess what? They lost. Hence the angst and ire over the rule.

What it comes down to is that the Australian game, traditionally, was always a very physical game, with no padding and so there were injuries. In the nanny state and matriarchal upbringing of kids these days, the authorities determined that the players required protection and so to bump another player high, even if a total accident, is illegal and carries a penalty.

In the outcry over the making of the game into a girly or sissy sport, something, by the way, that if enough people were angry about, would affect gate takings and the AFL would have to look at it - in this, the AFL supremo, Andrew Demetriou, said:

''The fact of the matter is that the rule was considered two years ago and it was on the basis of medical experts and we've made absolutely no apologies for protecting the head because we don't want head injuries,'' Demetriou told Fairfax radio. ''People can bang on about the game's lost the bump … it's complete nonsense. We've had, in two years on our medical survey, the lowest neck and head injuries we've ever had and if that's the by-product of this, so be it.''

I like Andrew Demetriou and a political tract he wrote some years back was good, solid common sense. I don't know how he's been in his job downunder. Also, that team which has now been knocked out of the playoffs [finals] was the one which took the flag from my team last year and yet the principle must transcend this.

Like the gladiatorial contests of old, people want biffo, they want head-to-head contests up and down the ground, champion on champion, they want grunt and solid clashes. Sure they want skill as well but a bit of biffo never hurt anyone [much]. This is the rugby player in me speaking.

On the other hand - head injuries are another thing, as you know. I hope the debate doesn't split down gender lines, with mothers on one side and the lads on the other. Personally, I'm nearly in the middle on this, though more to the male side.

[round the world attempt] thirteen years old

The Beeb is coming out with very interesting things just now. I swear I'm not short of material but this dilemma is quite a puzzler.

A Dutch court has put a 13-year-old girl under state care for two years, stalling her bid to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world. The decision by three Utrecht judges means Laura Dekker's parents, who support her plans, temporarily lose the right to make decisions about her.

A child psychologist will now assess her capacity to undertake the voyage. Miss Dekker says she is happy with the ruling, but she will try to convince the authorities to let her set sail.

We have all the elements here - man against nature, youth striving ever upwards, initiative, the pioneer spirit, wicked state interfering and a pretty girl.

Physically, could she?

Thirteen - possible. Looking at the body, she's capable of much the same as I was at that age and I was never physically weak. I could handle a Sabot at 11 and a Moth at 13, handle them enough to sail them in a race or on a long journey around the bay.

She was born on a boat and has sailed all her life. She's a bit physically weaker than me at that age and yet she'd probably be tougher and very determined. If she had support crew the whole way, as did Ellen Macarthur, if her boat had systems designed for her physical ability and to allow her to sleep, if she does take the two years, then why not, physically?

The dangers of such a journey

Dekker had planned to start her trip in September and to take two years to circumnavigate the world on an eight-metre boat named Guppy.

This is an ultra-small boat in seagoing terms, even for an experienced adult and that's a major worry for a start. It's also a huge boat for a little girl, no matter if she's a world champion dinghy sailor or whatever.

I'd also ask if you would check out this post again - just click to the middle of the videos - and get a feel for what it's like. It is hell out there and the question is not whether the kid can handle the boat - I think she could - but whether she can handle freak conditions.

When crews of seasoned adults, big, beefy men, have trouble with them, when I, not to put too fine a point on it, have trouble handling nature out there, then it's daunting for a kid, no matter how closeby they are in support craft and via radio.

Please check out that video and see what I mean.

Verdict? Possible but only with extreme support. Why do it? Well, why do anything? I can understand that completely. Two years loss of study? Perhaps but she's young and not 10 - she's 13. I'm sure when she comes back, she'd be allowed to catch up. Knowing her determination, she'd probably succeed too.

She said it herself - she hasn't had a normal upbringing, she's clearly self-reliant and as a sailor, if I were the parent and my wife, also a sailor, agreed, perhaps that's the clinching issue.

Actually, one more thing is the clinching issue - what role would authorities, i.e. taxpayers, have when she gets into trouble? Any rescue attempt is measured in tens of thousands of euros and her own crew could not help her in extreme conditions.

Custody

This is frightening. What role does the state have in protecting the child? She's not being sexually abused [it seems], she's not being bullied, she seems quite even-tempered. We don't know and she accepted the state ruling so quickly. She'd like to try again, she said. That's the kid in her talking.

Did the state have the moral right and obligation to stop her? She wanted to beat the 17 year old boy with the record. 17 year old boys, I can attest, are a different kettle of fish to 13 year old girls. At 17, I was sailing something like this.

Look, all right, the kid is too young but not by a lot and she is a good sailor. But custody for two years? That's pretty draconian. And do the parents have any right to judge the fitness of the girl to do the voyage?

This looks line ball, doesn't it?

[change] and the fleeting connections we make

Via the Beeb is this sad story.

When you Google St Kilda, it brings up Melbourne, Australia although, after this news story, the British original might see a revival. The Beeb tells a tale of decline and final abandonment:

People had lived on St Kilda, the westernmost islands of the Outer Hebrides, since prehistoric times. In the 19th Century, tourists began to visit the archipelago and the St Kildans - known as the Hiortaich - became more dependent on the outside world.

In the 1850s, 42 of the islanders emigrated to Australia, half of them dying on the way. The winter of 1929 was particularly hard on the island and some of the remaining inhabitants died, many having already left.

The remaining 36 islanders wrote to the government asking to be taken off so they could lead new lives on the mainland. The island was abandoned the following year.

I'd think it would take a Scot a lot to abandon his homeland [not that these were exactly Scots] but when you think it through - very little peat, a rock covered lightly in grass, what could they do? What was their industry, apart from fishing?

I'm imagining living there on that rocky place in the ocean and am thinking that if they had their families and enough food to subsist, it might be worth continuing. Could they not have had potted gardens inside the houses they built with roofs which opened to the light? In summer it would have been sufficient - I've been to Iceland and there was enough summer light and heat.

Could they not have grazed stock, each household creating its own protected grass paddies, to be covered in winter? In Russia, in my early days there, there was a big to-do in summer of killing a cow, cutting it up and freezing the parts and also bottling berries, as well as veges and fruits. There were places you could get the jars and the metal seals and the rotating sealing device was mechanical and quite easy to use.

By the end of summer, everything was stored and ready and in autumn, the stock was brought into its own sheds, double stone walled. I can't help thinking that if the Russians could do it, the St Kildans could too. Maybe it was just too severe and too hard on available grain to keep the cattle there. Could they not have been put on an ark at the end of summer and taken south, to the borders area?

I suspect that when the tourists started coming in though that the islanders started that comparison thing of their own poor lot against the greener grass and that hastened the shift off the island. What the tourists might have brought is know-how in animal husbandry and crop growing. Why not?



It seems sad to me that things end like this. On that theme, Thud, Over the Water, also laments but his tale is about the British Pub [sorry to steal his pic below]. He writes:

With so many distractions available today it is easy to forget that a pub was for hundreds of years the centre of life (church too perhaps) for so many communities.

It's a snowballing effect over here. As numbers stop going, the pint gets dearer, more stop going, the smoking ban comes in and so on, you have to go further to a watering hole and the costs becomes prohibitive for more than once or twice a week.

Perhaps they will come back one day, these pubs but I suspect it will be more like the American diner replicas and the beer will be chemical lager. Revivalist movements are good but how authentic can they be? I hope he can start something over there.



Rocky islands are one thing and pubs another. People are something else again and why they drift away is a combination of non-proximity, disagreement, pressure of work and lifestyle and so on. Sometimes, a very strong minded person digs in and there it is.

I've lived in three separate countries for long enough to not only make friends but to have family there. As time has gone on, they were of the opinion that such things would always be but as I gained experience, I saw that people you had to leave behind, while making a great deal of effort to keep in touch for a while, slowly reduced that contact and I admit - so did I.

My ex-gf and I were never going to part, we swore that to each other but in the back of my mind, I saw it as two planets on different orbits which had, for a while, coincided. I wanted it not to be so but it was. It's now as if we loop back within range of one another every so often and that's pleasant but there's also a gulf there.

Plus we age and coming into a time when we need certainty, we find only uncertainty and fleeting connections. I don't wish it to be so but often it's out of my hands. I'm happy to continue and never see disagreements as final. Others may disagree.

They say you can never go back. Perhaps so. I believe one can and it can be more rewarding second time round.

[late evening listening] not even the chair

The trouble with Neil Diamond is that someone like me can't present any of his songs. It started out with Solitary Man but that would have led to false speculation, then Cherry Cherry but that might have caused trouble in certain quarters. Next was Red, Red Wine but I don't want you getting the wrong idea. Holly Holy seems to be about some girl. You'll Be a Woman Soon would be just great to run on this blog, wouldn't it?

Ho hum, which Neil Diamond song to use? I Am, I Said? Just listened to it now and it has its own problems as a statement. Hmmmm - a nice, non-controversial song, please Neil?



Oh, to hell with non-controversial. Now reader/listener - this one is not about me, not about my current toothache and muscle spasms, not about any desire on my part whatsoever - it's just a Neil Diamond song and a good one too:

[romance] dying art in films

Everyone to his or her own, natch, yet methinks the quality of romance in films has drastically fallen away in recent years. Mind you, with the new kick-butt female, it would hardly be safe to go anywhere near her and good luck to her in her future celibacy but for normal moviegoers, well there needs to be some sort of love interest in it.

The action genre, my favourite and any other non-mushy genres are obviously not based on saccharine sweet swathes of dialogue and yet to cut it out altogether seems a nod to our new society where so many men and women now live apart, divorced or never married and where the procreative act alone, with no delayed gratification, is the order of the day.

Olga Kurylenko's Camille was a case in point. She had her butt saved, she was given advice which later helped, she twice gave him a car ride which saved his butt and was there any warmth from either of them? Not a bit of it. The third Bourne had all the makings - there they were in the haircutting scene, she'd already admitted it had been difficult for her in Paris and what does he do? Just looks at her stupidly.

Ghost is obviously the benchmark and Demi "can't wait to get my gear off" Moore doesn't do a bad job but it's a bit saccharine for mine. I prefer it when they're an unlikely pair and they come together through grudging admiration for one another. This is romance of the first water:



It's so romantic when they have their falling out, if you remember and as he storms out, he turns and snaps: "And another thing - I faked every orgasm!" Well, it was better than the final scene of Wars of the Roses, anyway. But for true romance, you can't beat this delicate scene when John Connor and Kate Brewster meet again in the back of a pet van, after ten years :

[moonbattery] the idea that we reached the moon

Aha, now at last it comes out:

A treasured piece at the Dutch national museum - a supposed moon rock from the first manned lunar landing - is nothing more than petrified wood. At one point it was insured for around $500,000 (£308,000), but tests have proved it was not the genuine article.

The US agency gave moon rocks to more than 100 countries following lunar missions in the 1970s. US officials said they had no explanation for the Dutch discovery.

I have an explanation - they didn't go and it is moonbattery to say they did. The science itself precludes it and now, the last major argument that they did has fallen away.

Watch the proponents of the moon landing say it was only a one off hoax in Holland and that all the other bits of moon rock are genuine though. :)

Ball and chain quiz by jailhouse lawyer

Mystery over ball and chain found in Thames

The question is: What happened to the prisoner?

[contraception quiz] what chance you'll be pregnant before long

This quiz uses two authorities as sources, one American and one UK NHS and uses the "typical use" chart:

1. Which is the most effective contraceptive method, after abstinence?

a. sterilization [female and male]
b. etonogestrel implant
c. Depo-Provera

2. Which is the most effective method of these three?

a. contraceptive sponge
b. spermicides
c. natural or rhythm method

3. Emergency contraceptive pills initiated within 120 hours has a claimed efficacy rate of:

a. between 75% and 89%
b. between 47% and 62%
c. between 15% and 26%

4. Highly effective methods like Levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine system (IUS) are used by what percentage of the British population?

a. 8%
b. 43%
c. 1%

5. Female sterilization, one of the most effective methods, is used by what percentage in the UK?

a. 11%
b. Doesn't appear on the list, indicating less than 1%
c. 28%

Answers

Etonogestrel implant, natural or rhythm method, between 75% and 89%, 1%, 0%

[islamic agenda] in the steps of the prophet, peace be upon him

How would Mr. Ahmad explain this?

Never, I feel, has a post's conclusions been so inevitable. This is my last, for the moment, on the issue.

To be fair to Iftikhar Ahmad, of the London School of Islamics, from the Islamic point of view, it's more than reasonable that he defends his own community and their needs. He's hardly going to under-represent them and thus he's not doing any particular evil himself. If my job were to defend and promote British interests in Cairo, then it would be dereliction not to do that to the best of my ability and thus I'd need to find good arguments to support what I was doing.

The problem is that my little poll [with the limited sample size], the blog comments and the wider debate in the community does not support Mr. Ahmad's conclusions in the least and anomalies were pointed out in his claims by readers. He stated:

The Muslim schools follow National Curriculum along with Islamic studies and Islamic History based on The Holly Quran and Sunnah. There is no place for Comparative Religion and European Languages.

as against:

My suggestion is that in all state, independent and Christian based school special attention should be given to the teaching of Comparative Religion and Islam should be taught by qualified Muslim Teachers.

... and:

Muslim schools are working to try to create a bridge between communities.

as against:

There is no place for Comparative Religion and European Languages.

I don't know any indigenous Brit or American who swallows that line from the Muslims and the commenter added: "ROFL". As for:

State schools with monolingual teachers are not capable to teach English to bilingual Muslim children

... a commenter says:

Why do you expect english speaking indigenes to fund the teaching of other languages, when you already admit English will be the medium of instruction because it is an economic and social language for communication in the global village.

And by implication therefore, the languages you wish indigenes to pay for will never be of any practical use in a modern world, or, what did you call it..., oh yes, ...a world that has become a global village.

Surely you must realise that incompatible languages CREATE incompatible communities unable to communicate.

... and Mad Piper says:

If Iftikhar Ahmad is an example of a qualified Mohammedan teacher the students are in an even worse situation. His atrocious spelling, grammar, and logic make even my public schools look brilliant.

It's not the purpose of this post to bash Mr. Ahmad who had the decency to come in and put the Muslim point of view but even he must see the hostility from the indigenous population at the hidden agenda he represents and the lack of logic in the arguments for it being benign in terms of the indigenous culture.

Ubermouth was more forthright about this:

With all due respect, this is the typical Islamic propoganda one would expect in rationalizing YOUR culture ISOLATING your children to prevent western assimilation, and you know it.

Young Muslim children influenced by the western culture do not want to follow your culture and this is indicated by the many young girls who run away [not due to inadequate western schools] but to evade enforced,arranged Muslim teenage marriages.

You do NOT accept non Muslims to even teach in your schools so as to not 'tempt' and 'taint' your children with any western influences because the agenda is, as you admit, inflicting the laws and religion of Islam onto the whole unsuspecting planet.

How do YOU justify claiming your people are entitled to a Muslim education[state paid,no less] and cultural,religious identity protection[recognizing the value in all what that entails] when the Islam long term agenda is to deny us ours, GLOBALLY?

Dearieme added an anecdote:

A young acquaintance of mine chose an Islam option in his final year at Oxford. His tutor started by explaining that the Koran is the inerrant word of God and was not to be criticised. My young chum realised that "education" was not the mot juste for such tutorials.

Xlbrl concluded, quite rightly:

The Muslim bridge is not a device to connect two cultures, it is a device to invade it. What is more pathetic, were they to succeed, they would discover they had not even stolen a wealthy land, but only established their pauperized civilization in a different climate. Wealth is not a function of geography. And science has no place in Islam.

Winfred Mann comments on one of the Muslim claims:

“It will help them to develop Islamic Identity crucial for mental, emotional and personality development.”

Why do they need an Islamic Identity to live in Western Culture, which obviously allows for greater freedom?

Tiberius Gracchus, who usually takes a contrary position to whatever is stated in a post, at least conceded:

I think the comments from Mr Ahmad are pretty self refuting- I'm not sure I need to comment on those.

He does say, in defence of Muslim culture in general, which was not the point of the post, incidentally:

You should not caricature all Muslims as having the same view no more than anyone should caricature all Christians as David Duke. As to Muslims- I think we owe them rather a lot from mathematics and the preservation of Greek philosophy, to architecture and art.

If I could come in here and say that my greatest fear is that the agenda of the Muslim leadership who must feel all their birthdays have come at once, the way the Labour government has welcomed their separate community with open arms, this agenda is placing at risk the lives and wellbeing of the ordinary Muslim, e.g. the Pakistani shopkeepers who want no part of the politics and degradation they've escaped from and whose younger generation knows nothing and wants nothing of the oppressive Sharia Law. They need the protection of the government from:

1. the malcontents in the mosques;

2. the backlash of which even the educated commenters on this blog are a part. If these commenters feel this way, then how will all the ASBOs out there feel? How do the thugs on the streets feel?

I don't blame the Muslim leadership themselves - they are the enemy, after all and they're only being loyal to their agenda.

Fine.

I blame this treasonous government, so untouched by any feeling of loyalty to its own country that it would allow an EU monster to both subsume the very identity of the nation but also allow minority groups of proven socially aggressive and savage habits, as shown in this post, to dictate to it, the government ... which is, after all, only the servant of us, the people. The Muslim leadership dictate to the government who then dictate to us what should and shouldn't be in this country.

To hell with you both, I say and I use the word hell advisedly because that is the final resting place for this pernicious scheme for world domination and the Westminster Fifth Column which facilitates this. People who cry G-d is Great while murdering innocents are certainly not going to Heaven anyway, especially one with 72 virgins waiting and we all know where the Westminster pollies are going to end up.

Even enlightened Muslims can see what's going on. Nonie Darwish wrote in the Sunday Telegraph some time back [sorry there's no link]:

Is it any surprise that after decades of indoctrination in a culture of hate, people actually do hate? Arab society has created a system of relying on fear of a common enemy. It's a system that has brought them much-needed unity, cohesion and compliance in a region ravaged by tribal feuds, instability, violence, and selfish corruption.

So Arab leaders blame Jews and Christians rather than provide good schools, roads, hospitals, housing, jobs, or hope to their people.

For 30 years I lived inside this war zone of oppressive dictatorships and police states. Citizens competed to appease and glorify their dictators, but they looked the other way when Muslims tortured and terrorised other Muslims. I witnessed honour killings of girls, oppression of women, female genital mutilation, polygamy and its devastating effect on family relations.

All of this is destroying the Muslim faith from within. It's time for Arabs and Muslims to stand up for their families. We must stop allowing our leaders to use the West and Israel as an excuse to distract from their own failed leadership and their citizens' lack of freedoms. I

t's time to stop allowing Arab leaders to complain about cartoons while turning a blind eye to people who defame Islam by holding Korans in one hand while murdering innocent people with the other.

Muslims need jobs - not jihad.

To say that Islam is not Arabic in its very nature is to never have been at a Muslim prayer session. I have been and I'm not about to explain how. Arabic was the language used though the indigenous language was different. Therefore, all this talk of assimilation and crossing bridges is so much hogwash.

And exposing the scam is not hatred in the least but just as stated - exposure.

This country needs to protect the Muslim and any other citizen equally, as Mr. Ahmad intimated but to do that, the Muslim leadership needs to be identified and sent packing from this country or if that's not possible, it needs to be incarcerated because whether it falls within the race hatred category or it's said ever so nicely, the agenda is as clear as day and that agenda is both anathema and inimicable to western society.

Stephen Pollard, in the Sunday Telegraph, on February 19th, 2006, wrote:

The Sunday Telegraph's poll today, which shows that 40% of British Muslims want Sharia law to replace common law and statutes in parts of the country, is bad enough. But for the full impact, it should be read with the paper's interview with one of the leading experts on the subject, Patrick Sookhdeo.

Sookhdeo said:

“It's confirmation of what they believe to be a familiar pattern: if spokesmen for British Muslims threaten what they call 'adverse consequences' - violence to the rest of us - then the British Government will cave in. I think it is a very dangerous precedent.” “...

Look at what happened in the 1990s. The security services knew about Abu Hamza and the preachers like him. They knew that London was becoming the centre for Islamic terrorists. The police knew. The Government knew. Yet nothing was done. The whole approach towards Muslim militants was based on appeasement. 7/7 proved that that approach does not work - yet it is still being followed.

For example, there is a book, The Noble Koran: a New Rendering of its Meaning in English, which is openly available in Muslim bookshops. It calls for the killing of Jews and Christians, and it sets out a strategy for killing the infidels and for warfare against them.

The Government has done nothing whatever to interfere with the sale of that book. Why not? Government ministers have promised to punish religious hatred, to criminalise the glorification of terrorism, yet they do nothing about this book, which blatantly does both.”

It's more precisely zeroed in on in his next comment:

“...The trouble is that Tony Blair and other ministers see Islam through the prism of their own secular outlook. They simply do not realise how seriously Muslims take their religion. Islamic clerics regard themselves as locked in mortal combat with secularism.

He misses a certain point here and makes the same fundamental mistake most people do - Blair and Brown were and are tools for another power. Cameron has not shown himself to be any different. He's not a Bilderberger but Osborne sure was. Westminster is riddled with them.

When a journalist noted, to Etienne Davignon, "all the recent presidents of the European Commission attended Bilderberg meetings before they were appointed." Davignon's response [was that] he and his colleagues were "excellent talent spotters."

Blair and Brown were not so much groomed but were seen as unprincipled, lying, weak-willed people, given to vague blandishments and who would adopt and advance the globalist stance without objection, this stance requiring the breakdown of societies and of patriotism to a national identity.

Thus Blair and Brown were perfect Westminster material.

Therefore they are/were to be promoted, aided and abetted.

These are the men who have allowed the Muslim leadership unfettered right to dictate to this nation what will be and what will not be. So when the backlash comes, rather than beat down doors and slaughter Muslim families who go about their business just as the Jews were trying to do before Kristallnacht, better to target the real villains - the traitorous Them, the mob at Westminster and the Muslim leadership in the Mosques.

The Mosques should never be vandalized and if that is done, then we're no better than those we attack. No, it is the malcontented plot hatchers inside those mosques, whose bemused smiles at the acquiescence of the lily-livered Labour government has enabled their agenda to accelerate beyond their wildest dreams - they are the ones to be rounded up and put on trial. Not with Sharia Law justice or justice the way it currently stands in these devalued times but through the old concept of British justice in a new form which actually represents justice in most people's minds, universal, particular to our nation and one which our people would accept as just.

At that trial, the MCB will be asked to comment on this, for example:

In 1980, the Islamic Council of Europe laid out their strategy for the future - and the fundamental rule was never dilute your presence. That is to say, do not integrate.

No, we're not doing it, we're really not

Iftekhar A. Hai, director of interfaith relations for United Muslims of America Interfaith Alliance, defended Islamic intrusion into the west thus:

“It is true that Mohammed used the concept of just wars as a last resort to establishing peace among the various tribes of Arabia. But the concept of just war (jihad) was backed up with love, compassion, mercy, forgiveness and reconciliation. Citing examples from the Koran to say that Mohammed was either more or less violent than other Biblical figures is meaningless and anachronistic. We live today by the standards of a modern civilized world; it is not fair to judge Mohammed, who lived 1420 years ago, by today's standards.”

Meaningless and anachronistic? Judge for yourself. Read through that and see how anachronistic it is.

Muslims point to Surah 2:190-193 as proof that Islam teaches only defensive warfare but eschews offense. These verses admonish Muslims only to fight against those who oppress or persecute them and only until the offenders have stopped oppressing them.

However, the Qur'an also teaches Muslims to enter into exile in lands where Islam is not the dominant force, to pursue the adoption of Islam and to view any indigenous reaction to that as oppression and persecution against Islam, thereby requiring Jihad against these infidels:

"Those who believed, and adopted exile, and fought for the Faith, with their property and their persons, in the cause of Allah, as well as those who gave them asylum and aid- these are all friends and protectors, one of another.

As to those who believed but came not into exile, ye owe no duty of protection to them until they come into exile; but if they seek your aid in religion, it is your duty to help them, except against a people with whom ye have a treaty of mutual alliance.

And remember Allah seeth all that ye do. The Unbelievers are protectors, one of another: Unless ye do this, protect each other, there would be tumult and oppression on earth, and great mischief." (Surah 8:72-73)

In this passage, “adopted exile” is translated from the root form hjr, which has, as its primary meaning, the ideas of containment or confinement, and can carry the connotation of being quarantined or compartmentalised. The idea garnered from this verse seems to be as follows:

Adopt exile in a foreign land, voluntarily confining yourself in a non-Muslim society. Eschew assimilation into the culture and way of life of the host country, and instead agitate for Islam. When opposition arises, join together and give aid and fight for Allah against the unbelievers, since unrighteous persecution has now arisen! Thus, defense changes to offense.

The Islamic philosopher and historian, Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406 AD), stated:

“In the Muslim community, the Holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the (Muslim) mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force. Therefore, caliphate and royal authority are united in (Islam), so that the person in charge can devote the available strength to both of them at the same.”

The standard defence is that these verses are now outdated and that Ibn Khaldun was a bit of a strange person. Therefore, the west has nothing to fear. Oh really? Where shall I start? Let's try this:

Al-Buti, a modern Muslim scholar, explains:

“The verse (9:5) does not leave any room in the mind to conjecture about what is called defensive war. This verse asserts that Holy War, which is demanded in Islamic law, is not defensive war (as the Western students of Islam understand it) because it could legitimately be an offensive war. That is the apex and most honorable of all Holy wars.”

Horse's mouth. Al Buti again:

“This is the concept which professional experts of thought attempt to conceal from the eyes of Muslims by claiming that anything that is related to a Holy war in Islamic law is only based on defensive warfare to repel an attack ...

It is no secret that the reason behind this deception is the great fear which dominates foreign countries (East and West alike) that the idea of Holy War for the cause of God would be revived in the hearts of Muslims, then certainly, the collapse of European culture will be accomplished.

The mindset of the European man has matured to embrace Islam as soon as he hears an honest message presented. How much more will it be accepted if this message is followed by a Holy War?”

Al-Amin likewise points to the Qur’an for the justification of offensive holy war:

"God had made it clear to us that (we should) call for acceptance of Islam first, then wage war. It is not admissible to wage war before extending the invitation to embrace Islam first, as the Qur’an says.

‘We verily sent our messenger with clear proofs and revealed to them the scripture and the balance, that mankind may observe right measure, and he revealed iron, wherein is mighty power and uses for mankind and that Allah (God) may know him who helps Him and his messengers—Allah is strong, Almighty"’ (Surah Iron 57:25).”

Need I go on for the full 72 pages of research?

There is a clear clash of cultures here, a clash of civilizations in which a solution cannot be found. Those in our own community who preach tolerance of all things, no matter how bad they are, have glossed over this issue, nay, have misunderstood it and have been taken in by the softly-softly approach of the Islamic vanguard in western nations which even now is revealing itself in its open demands on the government.

Finally

There is no one enemy. It is Them, it is the Muslim leadership, it is our own ASBOs and the new youth sub-culture, which in the 60s was for peace, man, turn on, tune in, drop out but now is considerably nastier but that is another post.

Anyone ever read any William Burroughs? Try The Wild Boys.

The enemy is coming from different directions. This post is about one particular section of the inimicable forces arrayed against us. To wind up, Douglas Adams was quite apt when describing the planet of Krikkit and I think it is not irrelevant in the context of this discussion:

The people of Krikkit believed in "peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life and the obliteration of all other life forms."

Jihad is love? Possibly but love for whom? For our nation and our way of life?

[reading and publishing books] not straightforward

The Dead Tree Press

Tom Christenson, of Blog.rightreading.com has a piece today, entitled "Have the past twenty years been an aberration in the history of book publishing?"

I have described previously the corporate consolidation that has caused the largest book publishers in this country to be subsidiaries of foreign-based conglomerates. For about as long as I have worked in publishing that has been a pretty steady trend, and not a beneficial one to either writers or readers.

The same thinking led the conglomerates to hone in on publishing. Top-heavy, centralized bureaucracies know how to work with a B&N better than with a Cody’s or a Spring Street Books. And they applied their generic corporate management to a ragtag crew of book nerds, most of whom wouldn’t—and shouldn’t—know a balance sheet if their lives depended on it. Finally, unable to grow as fast as their debt structures demanded, these corporations have resorted to slashing expenses.

Tom quotes Douglas Rushov who believes that the corporate hold is declining but it still has a stranglehold as of now. L'Ombre [Francis] talks about a NY Bestseller royalty statement and this one talking about how little of the cover price of a book ends up in the author's pocket:

Of that new author's paperback... of the cover price _94.9%_ goes to someone else. But like the cotton-pickers we're wholly dependent on the plantation owners.

A specific example was quoted:

So the book sold 65,000 out of a possible 73,000 which gives a sell through rate of almost 90% which is incredibly good and explains the bestsellerdom. However despite all these wonderful thing:

My net earnings on this statement was $27,721.31, which was deducted from my advance. My actual earnings from this statement was $0.

To be fair to the publisher, he adds:

However I do not think it is worth complaining too much about the publisher's profit on this book. The publisher, like the agent, will have a few best sellers like this and a lot of dross.

Ebooks

Personalizing the issue, I was feeling out of sorts last evening, thought I'd retire and watch a DVD. Halfway through, it was too hard on the eyes and the necessity to look across at the screen was also tiring. What I needed there and then was a dead tree novel to rest on the bed covers and go through. Something which could sit beside the bed and could be picked up and put down.

E-books have not crossed that bridge yet. Francis mentions other problems with the technology too:

When I make posts estimating costs, revenues and so on I'm guessing. I have no idea whether a particular ebook sells 100 copies or 100,000. I can guess as advances and royalty rates but I don't know for sure. I can guess at publishing costs and printing costs. I can guess what the marketing budget might be. But I don't know. This means that when I read a post like this (or some of its predecessors) or one like this it is hard for me to grasp the precise implications to the author.

Gearlog puts it like this:

If I am going to carry around a digital device, I want to do everything--play music, download videos, surf the Web, send and receive e-mail--not just read books. The printed book is best for presenting lengthy text to the reader, so why try to reinvent a technology that has been around for thousands of years? Invent something new instead.

To be sure, e-book readers have some advantages over paperbound editions. First of all, you can store hundreds of books in a single device, whereas paper is pretty much limited to one copy per, well, copy. You can adjust the size of text on the fly. (For those of us with failing eyesight, this alone could justify the purchase of an -e-book reader.)

They are also much greener than traditional books. After all, it takes a lot more gasoline to ship a book across the country than it does to download it. Of course, e-books cost less, too, but don't expect publishers to pass much of the savings on to you anytime soon. Fundamentally, these latest e-book readers are digital devices acting like dead trees.

E-book readers primarily give you access to limited reading material. The Sony Reader takes you to its Connect service, where you can buy books. The Kindle takes you to the Amazon store. Both services let you upload unrestricted PDFs, but they don't make it easy.

Lord T touches on this with not only the control exerted by houses like Amazon but the errors too, e.g. Amazon deleting Orwell's 1984 from e-readers. The quoted article said:

This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.

Lord T commented:

The publishers etc. all insist on having absolute control and will insist that it is built into any platform their media is on. The Music and Film guys have exactly the same issue and it just goes on. You see I’m happy to buy a film, some music or a book but I get a bit miffed if it is cancelled or deleted even if I do get a refund from the publishers. Bearing in mind some people have bought DRM protected music and lost it all when the store closed down so getting a refund is a big step forward.

They need to accept that the world has moved on and people are looking at different things. I don’t want to buy a CD and not be able to play it in my car or on my computer because some rich music executive thinks I’m going to copy and sell it. Hell, I can get a free copy myself that will play anywhere if I want to. Thank you Mr Hacker.

Publishing online

I've had feedback about my own books, accessible from the sidebar and if that feedback had said, "Your books are cr-p, James," I'd have quoted it here. Doesn't bother me. But one correspondent made me think. She said that though they're presented nicely, who's going to sit at a computer screen for hours reading small text? She was going to eventually print it out and read it.

Speaking for myself, I come to your blog for a blogpost. I see your book, click into it and read the first two paragraphs, then skim down. I might read a bit more. If it looks good, I think I'll come back later. But I never do because I have a busy schedule and so it never happens. If your book was on my e-reader or in dead tree form, I might give it a go. But I wouldn't pay money for soimethig not recommended.

The ideal would be to transfer it across to my reading device and then curl up in bed and start reading your book properly.

So, if that's what I'd do, then that's possibly what you'd do and hence my books, firstly, will remain unread and secondly, are sure not going to make any money, which was never a real hope anyway.

Solution?

Who knows? E-books look closest but there's a large upfront cost and it drags you into that online publishing house interface. Dead tree books are nicer from a library or bookshop but there's a cost factor. Buy and return schemes have a hygiene aspect to it, as do libraries.

[late evening listening] dearieme presents john williams

The comment was made that John Williams may not ooze emotion but he does put lots of tonal emotions into his play. Your thoughts? Question - was the cameraperson a man? :)

[poll] on de-trolling options

A poll is going up which I'd like you to vote in, if you would. You may recall this post about trolls and how to deal with them. People don't like word verification, moderation or having to register and yet something is necessary.

It seems to me the way to go is to leave comments open whilst I'm at the computer but in those wee hours or when away, to:

1. Allow registered members to comment freely [non-registered would not be able to comment until this was switched off].

This is the safest option because only known commenters would comment but as my friend said today, people don't like having to register to comment on a blog.

2. Switch on moderation.

This is a pain in the butt because your comment would not appear, say, until morning and most of us like to see our comment go up. Also, I'd have to filter out the trolls next morning - distasteful.

Anyway, the poll's going up now.

[victimhood poker] over at mark's

Mark Wadsworth's got this thing up about Victimhood Poker and if it weren't so sad, it would be funny. Check it out and you might like to participate.

In a similar vein, Julia M has some fruit inanity to report on.

[science quiz] how much of a boffin are you

1. How many degrees is -459.7ºF in Kelvin?

2. What is a rhinoceros' horn made of?

3. What is the only venomous mammal in the world and even then it's a monotreme?

4. Where, in your household, would you find a magnetron?

5. Which element has the highest melting point?


Answers
0 Kelvin [it doesn't use the word "degrees", incidentally], hair, platypus, microwave oven, carbon

[remakes] why are they never as good

Lord T has a post up about the Day the Earth was Boring:

Just watched the remake of the old sci-fi classic ‘The day the Earth stood still’ I can see why it bombed - it was rubbish ... The remakes have the advantage of the latest technology so why is it that the remakes are not as good as the originals?

It is a point, isn't it? Take your pick but they don't seem to be the same or as good. The only one where I do like the remake in its own way is The Manchurian Candidate, with Denzel Washington. But in general, it's true though. I also like sci-fi in black and white but not everyone does.

Favourite creatures

Zeroing in on our favourite monsters/creatures, my two are above and below. Yours?

[cigarettes] more than cancer sticks in russia

I'm just wondering, you know, if this isn't Ulitsa Musina in my old town. It looks uncannily like it, which shows the uniformity across Russia.

The Croydonian has a post with particular relevance to me:

The Russian tobacco market has been showing a curious trend recently. The cheapest and premium class cigarette brands currently enjoy the biggest demand in Russia. Many tobacco companies focus their efforts on the inexpensive segment and resume the production of Soviet brands...

This is a major market, which can be seen at street level. Basically, if you look at the photo above, through the trees can be seen a housing block. OK, imagine coming downstairs from one of them and going out onto the street. To your left or right will be babushki and other vendors sitting on stools up against the low, wrought iron fences, selling many things but always cigarettes and semechki [seeds].

If you go for a wander, say to the left, then in the next block might be an Apteka [chemist] and some other shops. Up on the next corner is bound to be a two metre by three metre kiosk which sells ust ice-cream. No matter what the season, ice-cream is bought and consumed and let me tell you that, apart from the artificial western brands, there is the real local stuff, crammed with cream.

There'll be ciggie sellers here too. Now, if you multiply this by the number of towns and cities in Russia, remembering that cigarettes are like we drink tea here and you'll see what a huge money-spinner it is - bigger than drugs.

Therefore, any move into the lower end of that market is not going to lose. Therefore the mafia has it under control. They have everything under control, from the immigrants begging at road intersections to the smallest money-spinner.

For the consumer, the average person walking past, it's brilliant though. You needn't go to a shopping complex where the council controls the parking at a huge fee, you needn't drive to your local mall - it's right there where you want it.

[internet addiction] could we be addicted ourselves ... yikes

In a typical Beeb comment, wanting to trash the internet [or rather bloggers], even if it comes from China, they have a piece on internet addiction and people in hospital with it. The Beeb will claim it is just a news magazine bit of reportage but the barb is still in there.

They do, however, raise a valid question - internet addiction.

It seems to me it must be split into two parts - those who use it for social networking and those who use it for political comment - even on the shocking mating habits of the Tibetan yak and what are we going to do about it?

Many fellow political bloggers do both and though I don't use Facebook or any other forum or message board, I do enjoy dialogue on this site and in visiting and there are the occasional emails.

Addiction?

On the social side, undoubtedly it can lead to it and it can almost replace real friendships and not even "almost" at times. We all know of the bored person who lets himself/herself drop into this lifestyle and the "friendships" are very real in our minds.

Can internet friendships lead to real friendship? I'd like to think that in five cases so far, they have. Yet we've all heard tales of horror when two people finally hook up. Maybe that would happen anyway in Real Life.

On the question of addiction to political blogging, there is a nice quote on madness that you know you've crossed the sanity line when you feel your business or project would collapse if you weren't there for one week.

This is definitely a danger - to take oneself so seriously to the point of feeling that one's blog is more than what it is. My blog is a very small fish in the ocean of blogs and placed alongside the British mammoths, which themselves are placed alongside the megablogs in the U.S., it's chicken feed really.

The only strength in my blog is that the views expressed seem to be aligned with the views of many who'd be called small "c" conservative/libertarian/classic liberal. That's all. On visitor numbers, I'm not in the beginner or even the small class but I'm certainly no more than "medium".

My mate and I had a discussion about it and I said the main thing was to get the message up about Them and other naughties. Numbers to the blog are secondary. He said he couldn't give a damn about numbers - he does what he thinks is interesting. I replied that, well, numbers are important in that the message gets out but I had one particular blogger in mind who's in a former group of mine.

He gets around 1000 uniques a day, as he was wont to self-deprecatingly tell his readership every second day. He did this by aggregating, feeding, being signed up for schemes, advertising and whatever. I'm not mocking this and I have ads on my site too. If I knew what an aggregator was, maybe I'd do that too.

I'm at pains here to not try to occupy the high moral ground. Not a bit of it. Of course I was pleased with yesterday's visitors - who wouldn't be pleased? So, fine but I look at him and am not prepared to dedicate the blog to trawling for numbers, in order to appear to be a major player. I wouldn't write this if I didn't think it were so [I just wouldn't write anything about it, if it were].

Look, I do like to tackle major targets like the CFR and CBs and go to the heart of the rot. All the other things like quizzes and so on are also fun. Let's face it, it's nice to put those up and people come to do them.

Addicted?

Maybe. Could I leave the blog for a week? I'm thinking of trying it in September/October, at precisely the time that numbers return in force, so it's a good test. I need to know if I'm addicted. Could I stop the email friendships with various people? Not being an emailer of note, you'd think it would not be a problem but it would.

Could I stop visiting? Probably not because I like what I read and prefer it to the MSM. Seriously I do.

No apologies for the "I, I, I" in this post because talking of internet addiction always makes us look inside ourselves. So this has been thinking aloud this morning in this post.

[westminster] why labour could well be returned

Back to more mundane things and there's a storm brewing in the party political sphere.

1. Those who can see beyond party politics see that the EU is poised to pounce once Irish Lisbon 2 is passed, which they are obviously confident will be signed, otherwise, they would not have pressed for it. What is meant by pounce?

Regionalization of course, with the regional assemblies already in place. It matters not that the country rejected it last time, it's a fait accompli even now and EU money goes to the regions as a first priority. On top of that, it's aided and abetted from the ODPM via Common Purpose.

So, in other words, that is ready to go but it also needs the population to be fed up to the back teeth of Westminster politics, in order to usher in the new devolution, only partially at first, with no ostensible loss of sovereignty. The idea is that Westminster is scandal riddled, e.g. the expenses scandal, Brown's incompetence and Cameron's ineffectual Westminster club games. The EU will fix the mess.

2. Into this steps Dan Hannan who is virtually the only pollie, apart from David Davis and possibly John Redwood, [forgive me if I've left a few out], speaking for the small "c" conservative, the conservative libertarian small government type.

Now, a glance at the UKIP, LPUK and a major section of the Tories shows that these people are not, in general, numpties. In other words, this side of politics is far more likely to fragment and split off, while the Labour numpties will continue to vote for them no matter what state they get the country into.

Therefore, ignoring the by-elections, which have always been protest votes and don't really correspond to general election results, the Labour vote is going to be, on the day, fairly stable. As the voting system is first past the post, it matters not whether they have 22% of the vote if no other party gets more than that.

Right, you say, the conservative vote is considerably more than that at present.

Yes it is - at present. However, in steps Dan Hannan and as Harry Hook says:

I can't figure out whether he's being naively open, shrewd, or just has a death wish. Nonetheless... Dan's got some guts... as well as brains.

Everyone knows he is shooting from the hip and has now invoked Enoch, which is a particular trigger that certain conservatives are not averse to. David Cameron does not really know what to do with him. If he follows Brown's goading and disciplines Hannan, the question is - for what? There are many disgruntled Tories and these sorts of buzzwords start people thinking.

Therefore, Cameron does nothing but that doesn't look good in pro-Cameron Tory eyes. Possibly nothing untoward would happen before the election and Hannan would be spoken to by those inside - therefore collective responsibility reigns and the Tories come to power.

If it were to be handled badly though, Hannan would have no choice but to move out and sitting there are the UKIP and LPUK which, though the policies have differences, might be galvanized by someone of Hannan's stature representing the small "c" conservatives. It would represent the best chance for the smaller parties to find an accommodation anyway - don't forget that FPTP is no good for small parties.

If Hannan left, there'd be quite an exodus of thinking conservatives, even though no one is so far the recipient of hero worship - it's not Nu-Labour and Blair, with it's gaggle of Babes - that he could count on leading some new united party. Therefore, the split in the right wing ranks plays right into Labour's hands and they might just cross the line ahead at the general election.

That would be unthinkable for all the non-numpties out there in Britland but it is a possibility, aggravated by a devolved Scotland and partially devolved Wales plus ... and this is the big plus ... the EU Monster waiting in the background to pick up the pieces.

3. You can reject this thesis, of course but one thing I think you can't deny is that 2010 will be volatile and Britain will once again become interesting to the world, politically.

And don't forget the Parliament for England campaign.

[open letter] to the sane readers

I wasn't going to run another post tonight and certainly not one on a sour note. The nice news at this blog today has certainly brought the vipers and trolls out of their fetid pond [do they live in ponds?] and knowing I couldn't give a damn about anything they say, they've by-passed me and have attacked where they perceive there's someone who cares.

Readers, if you knew the viciousness coming out of their keyboards, you'd wonder why we've put up with it so long. Whereas almost everyone commenting today has been supportive and nice, you should read the filth these people were posting about this lady and about me. As I say, I couldn't give a tinkers myself and even put my own in about one of them, a person I call Mr. Three Inches but it's a running battle and clearly these people have no life other than to troll us.

Last report, the two main trolls have fallen out with each other. Ho hum.

Clearly I'll have to put moderation back on for tonight but knowing people don't like it, I may have to run a registration process which would not be in use while I was at the blog but would kick in at night or if I'm away for any length of time. Those not taking this up would be moderated until the next morning or whatever.

Blogger do have this system but I also have another domain in reserve and might switch nourishing obscurity over to it and that will effectively de-troll this blog. Those of us who run blogs know just how persistent these psycho-pests can be but in our case, this has been going on incessantly for a year and a half now.

So, onto moderation - sorry.

[5000] personal milestone today

Click to get the big pic about all this!

Yes, folks, not only is matrimony in the wind and not only has this been the most uniques I've ever had in one day but this, now, is also ... da da ... da da:

My 5000th post!

Yay! Crack out the bubbly!

[ode to uber] sky's the limit

Well, that was a bit of a shock today. Still reeling but my First Response is:

"Uber, you don't know what we can find; why don't you come with me little girl, on a magic carpet ride?"



OK, now that's sorted, we'll have to decide the venue for that official proposal. Thinking 'bout the south of France, myself, vis-a-vis vous. Howzabout Marseilles?



All right - Paris? Tell me soon 'cause I'll have to steal the dosh to do it right.

Developments

I'm a bit out of practice with this matrimonial stuff and if one remembers that a headmaster of mine once said, "Higham, you're like a cow which gives good milk and then kicks the bucket over," you'll perhaps understand that I've committed a number of faux pas today.

I was tossing up whether to use Bryan Adam's "Everything I do," or "Straight from the Heart" in this post but thought they might be a bit forward and frighten the lady off, so I went with Steppenwolf, Talking Heads and The Angels. It appears that Steppenwolf is not high on the list of romantic, pre-nuptial ditties, according to the afficionados so I may have bombed out there.

Still, it doesn't do to quit at the first hurdle so I'll press the suit again tomorrow upon awakening. Perhaps advice from your experience would assist.