True Adventure: Border Crossing!

One summer my best friend and I drove up to Montreal.  We had heard that getting back into the United States could be a real hassle, so we had updated our passports.  Nobody had ever said that getting into Canada might pose a problem, however!  This is my warning to all of you who want to visit Canada:  do not smuggle anything that has any tangential relationship to a gun into the country.

At the border, the friendly Canadian border guards made us get out of the car, then they went through everything in the car.  They searched and searched, but we were more annoyed than worried, since we had no illegal drugs on us.  Still, they searched and searched and searched.  Finally, one of the women came over and coldly asked us where the gun was.

"What gun?" we asked.

"We found the gun lock in the trunk of your car," she replied.  "We know you have a gun."

"Gun lock??"  Best Friend and I looked at each other in shock.  So far as we knew, neither of us owned a gun, so why would we have such an item in the car?  Truthfully, I didn't even know what a gun lock looked like, and apparently neither did Best Friend, since she turned out to be the source of the trouble.  After a moment of thought, she asked the border guard,

"Are you talking about the funny bike lock?"  She had suddenly remembered going to the grand opening of the new Campin' N Shootin' Superstore (not its real name) in her town, where they had given her a free object that resembled a cable bike lock, only very small.  Thinking that it was a bike lock, she had tossed it into the trunk of her car and promptly forgotten about it.  This would not have been so strange, except that when we retrieved the gun lock in question, under the watchful eye of the border guard, it was on a piece of cardboard that clearly had a picture of a gun on it.  Now my best friend is not a blonde like I am, and she doesn't usually pull off such air-headed maneuvers, but in this case all three of us (including the border guard) realized she had been perhaps not the most observant person ever.  At that, the border guard gave up in disgust and let us through.  It seems people from our state often forget guns in their cars when crossing the border, and each fool is worth $500 in fines to the Canadian government.  (We were not crossing at the border with our own state, but near the Thousand Islands region of New York, which is absolutely gorgeous.)

Oddly enough, getting back into the ol' US did not prove to be a problem.  We crossed at the highway that goes straight down to New York City, since Long Island (or, as they call it, Lawn Guiland) was our next destination.  Somehow in this area of the world they know three things about people from our state:  we like to hunt and tend to carry guns around, we wear giant dairy products on our heads, and we are all HUGE fans of our professional football team (let's call them the Butchers).  So the border crossing guard (who was a man) looked at our drivers' licenses more than our passports, then he asked,

"You girls Butcher Backers?"

"Oh, yeah!" we replied.  And he let us through without another glance.  We did run into a blockade on the highway a few miles down the road and wondered if there were TWO border crossings, but the police just glanced into our car and waved us through.  (I did not yet own Erin Caitlyn O'Honda at that point, and my first car Sydney was being held together with duct tape, so we drove my friend's car, also a Honda Accord.  The color is San Marino Red, so she calls him Dan, of course, although she is NOT a Dolphins fan.)  We didn't even have to tell them which team we rooted for or anything.

So a word to the wise:  when going to Canada, empty your car of anything you might have gotten at the Campin' N Shootin' Superstore if you are not 100% certain it applies ONLY to campin'.

Famous Hat

My Adventures in ePlush World

Currently I am one state over, visiting my family, and yesterday my parents and I went shopping for presents for my niece and nephews. We were in the toy section, of course, and my father held up a stuffed animal and said, "Look at this!" It was a hedgehog! It was one of those stuffed animals that comes with a code to enter into the online world (let's call it ePlush), so it was about twice the price of a normal stuffed animal, but it was very cute.

I don't know much about ePlush, other than that Hardingfele's daughter Rock Star Tailor (who is 7 going on 15) is a complete addict, but as someone who is thirty-something-going-on-five myself, I decided to splurge and buy the ePlush Hedgehog. (I am a pathetic aunt; I spent more on this lousy experiment than on the young relatives I was actually shopping for.) It sounded like a lot of fun: the real Sylvia is about halfway through her average life expectancy of four years, but now she could exist in virtual reality forever! (I wasn't ignoring Charlie and Cashmere, but they are only about four years into an eight-to-twelve year lifespan, and anyway we didn't see any ePlush bunnies.) So I bought the little stuffed hedgehog (which is about twice the size of the real Sylvia) and logged into ePlush at my parents' house. (Unlike me, they have internet access at home - that's how I have been blogging lately.)

It wasn't too difficult to adopt the fake Sylvia. (Almost as easy as adopting the real Sylvia; her owner asked me to hedgehog-sit for a weekend and never took her back.) I picked a user name and password, entered the code on Fake Sylvia's tag, and said what I wanted to name her and that she was a girl. Up popped an adoption certificate with a birthdate of May 29, 2008 (the real Sylvia was probably born in April of 2006), a cute picture of the fake Sylvia, and a proclamation that I, Famous Hat, had adopted a girl... PORCUPINE???? I looked at the tag on Fake Sylvia more closely, and sure enough, in font about three microns high, it clearly stated that the animal was a porcupine. (Made in China, of course.) Now in my humble opinion, as well as that of my parents, brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephews, Fake Sylvia looks like a twin of Real Sylvia, except that she is a soft silvery gray while Real Sylvia is what I believe is technically called "agouti," meaning her quills are striped brown and white so that she looks a little bit filthy all the time.

I was supposed to have a photo my brother had taken, of me holding both Sylvias, so that all five of my readers could weigh in on this extremely vital matter: is Fake Sylvia a porcupine, or is she clearly a hedgehog? However, Brother Dearest, after swearing up and down to me that he would email the photo right away, has failed to do so. I will post it as soon as he sends it. (OK, now I have posted it, but it's teeny. I hope you can get an idea of the Two Sylvias!)

Anyway, ePlush is clearly aimed at children, but there are some fun video games on it. Also, you can talk to your pet and she always has something sweet to say in return, like, "You're the best owner!" and "I just love playing with you!" Real Sylvia mostly just says, "HISSSSS," although she does say, "Squeak! Squeak!" when she's happy. Not once has she ever said to me what a great owner I am. The take-home lesson here must be that porcupines are superior pets to hedgehogs.

Famous Hat

Thanks for Everything

Since it is Thanksgiving Day, I thought about taking a day off of blogging, but of the five people who read my blog, I figure an average of 1.3 of you read it every day.  If you are reading this, you are undoubtedly one of my friends (since only people who know me read my blog), so I am thankful for YOU!

It is true that I have not been "lucky in love" as far as romance goes, but when it comes to friends, I have so much to be thankful for.  Like my best friend:  I don't think you ever read this, but I am so thankful that you are such a good sport.  When everyone else was complaining on the cruise ship about the tropical rainstorm, we enjoyed watching it and asking the waiter how to say "rain" in Romanian.  When I spotted absinthe on the menu at the jazz club in New Orleans, you immediately said, "Let's order some!"  When the "continental breakfast" at that hotel in Miami was cereal with no milk, bagels with no cream cheese, and toast with no butter, you thought it was just as funny as I did.  And of course there was the sign at the rest stop on the Ohio Turnpike that said:  "Open 24 hours.  CLOSED," and you said they closed it the moment we showed up.  What would I ever do without a travel companion who laughs at the little absurdities of life instead of getting upset!  Together we have tried to decipher Sheboyganese and Lawn Guilandish, learned to drive stick shift in Seattle traffic (OK, so I did the driving, but you were brave enough to get in the car with me!), drove from New York City to Chicago in one day (let's not repeat that particular adventure, or at least not the part where we're hopped up on caffeine and listening to techno music at 2 am as we pass Gary Works - life may imitate art, but it doesn't need to imitate a Hieronymus Bosch painting!), and found the secret password to French Canada.  (The secret password - and I am totally not making this up - is "d'accord."  They aren't impressed if you know bonjour and merci, since every two-bit tourist knows bonjour and merci, but just reply "d'accord," offhandedly to anything they say, and suddenly you are one of them as they fawn all over you:  "Ah, vous parlez francais!"  And just because you can say the French equivalent of OK!)

Hardingfele, you are like a sister to me... at least according to A-Joz, who has two actual sisters of her own and says you and I act like sisters.  I know you've got my back, even if you did find my Archirritant shockingly palatable.  I guess that would make Rock Star Tailor like a niece to me.  You have certainly been there for me when I needed a bunny-sitter or help with an emergency plant removal, and together we made one of the most vacuous videos ever in the history of YouTube.

EM, I am thankful to have such a great workout partner and fellow shopper!  I know you are so busy with your new project these days, but I can't complain when I'm his honorary aunt, and besides, he's so darn cute!  We'll have to try Twittering again sometime.  Sorry, I am the original Luddite and most of this technology stuff totally eludes me.

Melodee, I am thankful for having just met you.  Although I don't know you well yet, you are very cool and I look forward to getting to know you better.

Angela B, if you are reading this, I am thankful for having met you on the train to New Orleans.  We had such a great time that day in the French Quarter and Point D'Algiers!  I will try to stay in better touch, and I hope you can come visit this crazy town sometime soon.

A-Joz, Kathbert, and Anna Banana II, if any of you are reading this, I am very thankful for your friendship throughout the years.  You have done more than your fair share of listening to me complain, especially about my Archirritant!  

Cat, if you are reading this, thanks for convincing me to start a blog!  It's so much fun!  And thank you for all the rides to choir rehearsal, band practice, and gigs.  I'm always happy to meet a kindred spirit who loves music and animals!

And Rich, what can I say?  I am eternally indebted to you for everything you have done for me over the years.  I have always maintained that you are one in a million, and that time I spotted you in Paris in that crowd of one million just proves my point.  (Does that mean there are a thousand of you in China?)  

And of course I am thankful for all my friends who don't read this blog, like "Ethel" who got stuck with me on that roof in Rouen and paddled across a lake backwards in a canoe with me, but who has 4.5 small children and no time to read blogs anymore, and people who don't read it through no fault of their own, because I haven't told them about it.

Lili, if you happen to be reading this, you are the coolest office mate ever.  If you are reading this tomorrow (which is Friday), could you toss a couple flakes of fish food in Arphaxad and Amminadab's bowl?  Thanks!

And most of all, I am thankful to God for everything He has done for me.

Famous Hat

Seeing You in Profile

Like so many people, I have a profile on a social networking site (let's call it MyFace), which I was talked into creating by two co-workers. (I've got to stop listening to people - that's why I have a blog!) While the blog has turned out to be fun because it is so simple - you write, you publish, maybe you stick in a picture or two - I find MyFace somewhat intimidating. Every time I log in (which, admittedly, is not all that often), I am faced by a bewildering array of messages:

"Iconostasia has invited you to her virtual slumber party. To accept her invitation, just invite 2,000 more friends."

"JoJo has SuperSlapped you! To SuperSlap your other friends, just allow the SuperSlap application to take over your life, use your credit card, and drive your car."

"Capolito has kidnapped you to join his Pirate Army."

"Richard Bonomo is wondering where the bottle of Mexican vanilla extract on his dining room table came from." (As someone replied, "Mexico!")

I don't know what I'm supposed to do about any of this, so honestly I usually ignore it. Then there are the people from the dim, distant past who see your profile and request to be your friend... and of course the random people from Australia who request to be your friend. I generally accept the friendship of people I know, so now they are added to my list of friends. And, sadly, that's usually as far as it goes for me.

Yesterday my officemate said she found her sister's ex-boyfriend on MyFace, and it suddenly occurred to me that I had never searched for any of my own ex-boyfriends. The first one I looked up was Ubi Caritas, the one I almost married. (True story: during Rich's birthday party one year, one guest jokingly wrapped a streamer around his neck to make a noose, and when I said, "No! Don't do it! You have too much to live for!" my boyfriend said, "Like what?" and the erstwhile suicide victim said, "Well! Mr. Ubi Caritas!") Though we both realized it was not going to work out after all, I was the one who ended it and who didn't want to stay friends. Perhaps an overly hasty decision; we have mutual friends so I have a vague idea what Ubi Caritas is up to these days, but do I really want to see him again? It was a moot point anyhow, since both his first and last names are incredibly common, and I did not want to wade through pages and pages and pages of MyFace profiles trying to figure out if one of them was his. This may give you some idea of why our relationship ended: we were given two books by the priest to read, and he had a brief one about the structure of the nuptial Mass (e.g., do you want to memorize your vows, repeat them after the priest, or simply respond "I do") while I had an incredibly deep and beautiful book about the theology of the sacrament called Three to Get Married by Fulton Sheen. Two days later he wanted to swap books and couldn't understand why I wasn't ready yet. Once upon a time we were inseperable, so when we broke up, everyone expressed surprise - and, I couldn't help noting, relief.

So I looked up the boy I was obsessed with back in college, since both his first and last names are unusual. I found him right away, but who knows what he is like now? He was in his mid twenties the last time I saw him and now he is forty. Instead of a picture of himself, he had a picture of some little kids on his profile. His kids? I don't know, and what's more, I don't really care. The reason I never looked him up before must have just been because there was no point. The woman I am now would have no interest in the boy he was, and I have no idea what the man is like. Or what he looks like - maybe he's fat and bald now. Why else would he have a fake picture up? I have a very recent picture of myself on my profile, because so what if I've gained a few pounds? This photo prominently features my prize possession, a taterbug mandolin which is a family heirloom. It has been with me through thick and thin, through Renaissance and mariachi bands, through bluegrass and Mideastern music. I often play it while wearing my Famous Hat!

Don't think I'll bother looking up my high school sweetheart. He has a common first name and an unusual last name, so it's hard to say whether he'd be easy to find or not. But what would I say to him after all this time? Guess I could SuperSlap him and kidnap him for my Pirate Army...

Famous Hat

A Capital Idea for Restitution, Not Retribution

The current justice system clearly does not work. When you have people committing crimes to get into jail because that is the only way they can get medical care, something is obviously wrong. I am opposed to capital punishment (i.e., the death penalty) but not corporal punishment (e.g., caning - what a great idea!) and certainly not to chain gangs. Why should life in jail be all cable TV and weightlifting? I have an idea for an all-new system of justice, based on restitution rather than retribution. After all, what does anyone gain by killing a person who killed a person, other than a sense of vengeance? Why not put the murderer to work instead? And by "work" I mean HARD LABOR at the rate of $9/hour. (This could be adjusted for inflation as needed.)

Here is a comparison of the current system and my system:

White Collar Criminals
Now: stuck in a country club they can't leave, then they get out and still have that $20 million they embezzled stashed in some Swiss bank account
Mine: put their rich white patooties to work with everyone else! They can go free when they've paid back the $20 million, or when they die, whichever comes first

Murderers
Now: "Life," which means maybe 10 years, or the death penalty
Mine: they will spend the rest of their natural lives working to support the family of the person they killed, as well as their own family

Wrong Person Convicted
Now: Oops... our bad. (Double oops if they were executed.)
Mine: They would be released with all the money they had worked to earn over the years. This would come from the infraction pool (see below) and the salary of the lawyers who had them put away - that will keep prosecutors from just trying to get someone convicted and DAs from being lazy

Early Release
Now: for good behavior
Mine: for working overtime and paying off your debt to society... literally!

Bad Behavior
Now: lose TV privileges
Mine: 20c/hour deducted for each infraction

After Prison
Now: no good prospects, so high recidivism rates, which leads to suspicion of all ex-cons
Mine: after all those years of working, they would have marketable skills (at least in the hard labor market)

Added bonus: if you are one of those anti-immigration wackos who think Mexicans are crawling over the border at the rate of 3,000/minute to steal our American jobs, you should LOVE my plan! After all, if we have convicts doing the jobs nobody else wants to do, they won't be available for Mexicans to take. This would stop the flow of illegal immigrants almost as quickly as our currently stalled economy seems to have done.

Famous Hat

[adjective] Birthday, Archirritant!

I am blogging about this true story at the express request of my neighbor A-Joz, who laughed when I told her this story and said, "You have to blog about that!" Here's some background: I would always complain to Hardingfele and A-Joz about my Archirritant, and one day A-Joz said yeah, she couldn't stand her! I was surprised that she felt that strongly about someone just from my gossiping, but she had actually experienced Archirritant's unique ability to walk into a room and suck all the air out of it within seconds. This piqued Hardingfele's curiosity even more; it's one thing if grumpy ol' Famous Hat complains about someone, but quiet, mellow A-Joz?? She must really be a piece of work!! So from then on it became Hardingfele's great desire to meet my Archirritant.

So yesterday was not only Christ the King but also Archirritant's 50-somethingth birthday, and Rich Bonomo had a birthday party for her. Some of the regulars (such as the B Boys) were not going to be there while other regulars (notably Kathbert and Anna Banana II) felt they should make an appearance even though they are not all that fond of Archirritant either. I had no plans to show up, but then I realized here was Hardingfele's chance, since she had been thwarted at every turn (the only times Archirritant didn't show up for free food were those few times Hardingfele came to meet her!), but I was pretty secure in the knowledge she would be at her own birthday party. So I went and brought Hardingfele along.

The first thing Hardingfele did was tell Kathbert she had not given Voodoo Head enough time to work. Kathbert had given Voodoo Head to Rich in a brown paper bag, as if he were lunch, then he gave it to me, then I gave it to Hardingfele. Kathbert said she was getting rejection letters left and right since Voodoo Head had come into her house, so she wanted it out. (I would think that is sort of an improvement over her previous situation of not even receiving acknowledgement from prospective employers, but I can see her point.) Voodoo Head actually comes with an instruction manual, which Rich told me with some alarm contains "a novena!" and A-Joz wondered if Kathbert had followed the instructions closely. When she heard about the brown paper bag, she started laughing. "Of course he wouldn't work if she stuck him in a bag! Way to disrespect Voodoo Head!"

Archirritant must have been taking etiquette classes, because she asked other people questions - and didn't even interrupt their answers! - instead of completely dominating the conversation. As you may have already guessed, Archirritant and Hardingfele totally hit it off, and this morning Hardingfele sent an email to A-Joz and me saying how she seemed like a wonderful conversationalist. Luckily A-Joz was more than willing to back me up in saying Hardingfele must have caught her on an exceptional day.

The worst moment of the night for me came when Archirritant cut and distributed the cake, which was made by her ex-husband and contained lots of milk, cream and butter. (Archirritant is lactose intolerant so Rich made her a lactose-free cake.) Somehow I was the last one and we had run out of cake plates, so it looked like I wouldn't get any. (This was not like that scene in Office Space, since there was plenty of cake left.) Rich said, "So everyone's good then?" and I got mad, being descended from both kinds of Irish (see my previous post on this subject), so I slammed my hand on the table and loudly announced that I had not gotten any cake. Perhaps this was Archirritant's goal, to make me look infantile, but Rich simply got some more plates. Archirritant cut a tiny sliver and put it on her own plate, so I handed her the new plate I had just received and said, "Here's my plate." Kathbert said I should take the sliver instead, since Archirritant couldn't eat that cake, and Archirritant tried to hand me the plate, saying, "I wanted a bigger piece." "So did I!" I retorted. (At this point in the retelling, A-Joz probably would have had milk coming out of her nose, had she been drinking it.) Archirritant cut ANOTHER sliver, but her ex-husband came to the rescue and gallantly offered me his normal-sized piece, taking the sliver for himself. (I said to A-Joz that I didn't know who came off worse in this exchange, Archirritant or me, and she said that she had to vote for Archirritant, since she felt it was rude to give everyone else a normal-sized piece of cake and me a teeny one.)

After dessert, Hardingfele and I had to go to her house to take care of her daughter Rock Star Tailor, since her husband was heading somewhere at seven. We played Trivial Pursuit with her, and the game went something like this: I asked her, "What are pride, greed, envy, lust, sloth, gluttony, and wrath?" and she said, "Vatican City!" and after Hardingfele and I finally stopped laughing, we gave her a pie piece. Not surprisingly, she won the game. (Another Famous Hat tangent: a few weeks ago my best friend and I were trying to think of the Seven Deadly Sins and could only come up with six. When we looked them up, we had been missing Greed. Perhaps this is because greed is the only one we don't suffer from!)

I have a theory about why Archirritant (who was born on the first day you can possibly be a Sagittarius) and Hardingfele (who was born on the last day you can possibly be a Sagittarius) get along: they are both Sagitarrii. I had to look it up to be sure for Archirritant, and it took me to a web page with a picture of a female centaur who looked just like Pebbles Flintstone, I kid you not. When I showed it to Rich, he said he always thought Sagittarius was male, so then we speculated that there must be centaurs of both genders or there would never be any more centaurs. I said how my sign was a mergoat and that's even weirder, and Rich (who has no such identity crisis, since he's just some guy pouring water) didn't know what I meant, so we googled the image of Capricorn. Wouldn't you know, the first picture I clicked on explained the fish tail, saying it was the Babylonian god Ea, a goat who emerged from the sea to bring wisdom to men. That story sounded familiar... so I looked up the chi'wara, an antelope-like mythical creature from Mali that brought wisdom to men, and Rich and I speculated that they came from the same, very ancient myth. (It could be worse - my best friend is stuck in eternal virginity, one of the B Boys is two different diseases - cancer and crabs! - and worst of all, Kathbert bemoans the fact that she is the only inanimate member of the zodiac. I mean, scales? What's up with that? Why would that be in something called "little animals," which is what zodiac is Greek for?)

So here, for all five of my regular readers' edification, are pictures of Capricorn and Chi'wara to prove, once and for all, that they are the same thing.

Famous Hat

Scottish Jelly Beans!

'Tis one of the most disappointing episodes of my life. I entered the "Scottish Jelly Bean Contest" (notice the Scottish tartan and ignore the French Canadian sweatshirt) and every day I entered a flavor. In all, I entered a total of 54 flavors, with some help from my friends, most notably Hardingfele. (She can no longer comment on my blog from her blog - they're having some sort of blog battle - so now she has to post comments as her daughter, "Rock Star Tailor," aka. "Stella.") Unbelievably, not one of my 54 luscious flavors was chosen by those fools at Scottish Jelly Beans. (Fifty-four is the number on the periodic table of my favorite element, xenon. Coincidence???) (Take THAT, conspiracy theorists!)

Here are the flavors I submitted, in no particular order:

earl gray, lingonberry, pomegranate, pesto, chocolate persimmon, chai, eggnog, green chartreuse, pumpkin pie, gingerbread, starfruit, almond, fuschia, Irish cream, clove, black currant, baba ghanouj, chocolate curry, kumquat, hibiscus, spearmint, fresh baked bread, peppermint, green tea, wintergreen, date, orange creme, baklava, tira misu, apricot, mint julep, eucalyptus, strawberry rhubarb, white Russian, tapioca, chocolate peanut butter, sangria, cookie dough, cheese curd, feta, stout, sea salt, cashew, fig, guacamole, tomato, mulberry, pistachio, mustard, Marmite, sweet potato, rose water, Cthulhu (tastes like calimari), chicken (since everything else tastes like it, why not a jelly bean?), tamarind, lychee, lefse, lukefisk (tastes great, and that's no lye!) and last but not least, bean! (sweet red bean) - nothing like a Bean Jelly Bean!

(OK, maybe that's more than 54, but math was never my best subject.)

And one I didn't submit but kind of wanted to: Communion wafer - tasteless, like this suggestion! (Thanks to Best Friend for this and the lutefisk comment.)

There was also an instant win game every day, and my very first day I won a "giant bean." However, I waited and waited and no Giant Bean was forthcoming, so I began to bombard Scottish Jelly Beans and all their subsidiary corporations with emails demanding an explanation for the deplorable lack of Giant Bean in my life. Eventually I recruited all my family and friends in this email carpet bombing effort, and while I was in New Orleans (a good six months after I won the Giant Bean, mind you), the "Giant Bean" arrived in the mail. Hardingfele and her daughter Rock Star Tailor were bunnysitting for me and collecting my mail, and when Hardingfele saw the little package from Scottish Jelly Beans, she left a note on it saying, "Is this the Giant Bean? Pathetic!" I opened the package and inside was a kidney-shaped tin full of jelly beans which was actually about the size of a kidney, so it had maybe fifteen jelly beans inside. I have to back Hardingfele up on this one: PATHETIC!

They had said they were sending me another prize to make up for that one taking so long, but I didn't actually believe them. However, after another month had elapsed, to my surprise there was a large box from Scottish Jelly Bean Corp. sitting in front of my front door. I opened it to find...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn-gceUrMbs

If you are wondering why they are Scottish Jelly Beans, the answer is that we were going to have them be Hawaiian Jelly Beans, and we had this great Spike Jones song called "Hawaiian War Chant" for the background music, but then he talks right in the middle of it! So we decided to go with Scottish fiddle music instead.

Famous Hat