I have a junk mind, I like trash. I like AC/DC. It is very hard for me to get high-class culture. My mind is a scary, narrow, dark place. At times I try to fight this with various strategies. Like I take cello lessons, as you know. So today, driving to work, listening to “Highway to Hell” on my recently-repaired CD player in the funky Fiat Dobl

Nowadays, come bedtime, many children have a new bugbear that wasn’t around when we were their age. You guessed it: blowfish.

:: The Blowfish Talk: How to Discuss Blowfish With Your Child

Many thanks to Joeri for this fine link. Go there now!

Occasionally I am struck by phrases I type in IM conversations or on this blog that would not have been conceivable before the advent of the internet. For example, I just now typed, “i also really want the style sheets accessible thru MT, we have that at RH, but it’s still ftp at FL”.

But there are other phrases I’d like to see that haven’t occurred naturally, such as, “Nickleback dissolved in gigantic tank of citric acid, slowly”.

What phrases are you still waiting for?

I pulled a tick out of Gamma’s head in church yesterday. Actually, she pulled it out herself. I wrote about it at Raising Hell today. In fact, I was almost relieved to find a tick in her scalp because I’d been expecting to get something bloggable from the outing, which was for Beta’s confirmation yesterday, and Gamma was being, alas, well-behaved. More or less. So when I found noticed the tick while stroking her hair, I thought, “alright! Here’s my post!”

Sad, isn’t it.

I was like, what do I do. The actual tick thing, I mean. Writing the post, no problem – all I need is a tiny hook to hang my nonsense on by now. I can make something out of nearly nothing as you know if you’ve been reading my stuff for very long. But the actual real life tick. Hrm. Pull it out? It was already slightly engorged with blood… Ticks carry diseases here, Lyme’s Disease and a couple others. You want to avoid squirting the blood back into the person in case it contains any bacteria, and you want to avoid ripping off the tick’s head for the same reason.

My mother-in-law is an expert tick remover, so we decided (in whispers so as not to alarm Gamma) that I would drive Gamma there. But then Gamma scratched her head and removed the tick by accident, head and all.

So, then, two things: a discrete tick-hunt in a crowded church (what are those people looking for? Vermin?) and a certain amount of blood on a little girl’s head. Then I realized we were in a Catholic church, where blood is at home. I mean, you know. That big statue of a guy bleeding from a variety of wounds. Drinking blood, etc. So we concentrated on the tick. But it was gone.

Dead? Squished on the floor? Climbing someone elses pantleg? We’ll never know.

[Excuse me while I scratch my head.]

Fuck I hate ticks. That’s one of the less pleasant things about living in Austria. Not only do they have a good supply of ticks, many of the ticks carry nasty diseases, only some of which you can be innoculated against.

And the pharmaceutical companies here pull out all the stops in their scare campaigns to sell their vaccines or sera or whatever. A tick is bad enough actual size. You should see what they look like enlarged one million times.

It was warm and sunny.
The sky was blue.
I mowed the lawn, baked a rhubarb-strawberry cobbler and barbecued Indonesian chicken sate and other good stuff.
The in-laws came over and we ate so much we all had to lie down afterwards.
We all got along.
No cats vomited.
The end.

Look, Bush is off the hook. Maybe he knew beforehand that etc etc, and maybe the president as chief executive officer bears ultimate responsibility. But he was never actually elected president, so he’s totally off the hook here.

I should be a spin doctor.